                     THE ELECTRONIC IDENTITY
                          Career Choices

                          Robert Parson


     IBM is losing millions of dollars.  Compaq, though not losing 
money, is losing market share.  The entire industry is complaining 
that profit margins are shrinking.  Nearly every hardware and 
software developer is looking at ways to shave a few bucks.  IBM 
in particular has laid off several thousand people and no longer 
has an "Employment for Life" policy.

     Demand for computers continues to expand, but major companies 
are having problems with their bottom lines.  Some of this can be 
attributed to more savvy buyers and users.  Why should you buy 
True Blue when you can by Clone Red at a much lower price?  Compaq 
itself is essentially a clonemaker.  Apple Computer may even be 
having this same cloning problem soon.

     With the concerns facing the industry this may be a shaky 
time for young people to enter the computer business, most 
especially programmers.

     This year tens of thousands of programmers will be leaving 
college or technical schools facing what could be an uncertain 
future.  These are not students with a rough knowledge of 
QuickBasic.  These young people are armed with Cobol, Fortran or 
any number of other higher level languages.

     For the time being at least, the market for programmers 
remains strong.  Opening up nearly any classified ad section in a 
newspaper will reveal opportunities for programmers.  Larger 
newspapers have page upon page of computer career listings. But 
sometime in the future, and I believe this isn't very far away, 
the number of openings will start shrinking and there will be 
fierce competition for those jobs.  This will result eventually in 
a reduction in pay scales.  There will still be high paying 
programming jobs, but those are going to be tougher to find.

     The days of $50 an hour programming jobs are numbered. 

     In the industry I work in, Broadcasting, we have reached a 
saturation point.  There are roughly 12 thousand radio and tv 
stations.  Each year tens of thousands of Broadcast and Journalism 
students graduate from college.  Even after you add all the various 
networks, there is simply no room for all these people.

     Of course, the more talented will always rise to higher 
levels of responsibility and pay.  But there is intense 
competition for those jobs and even talented people can remain 
trapped in low paying jobs.

     Temporary Employment agencies have listings daily for 
Secretaries with WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 experience.  These are 
generally filled at a rate of less than $7.00 an hour.  That's 
because even though the skills are in demand, those skills are 
widely available.

     The field of computer programming could reach that same 
saturation point.  The thought of boilerrooms full of programmers 
churning out applications for minimum wage is chilling.

     However I could be wrong.  I hope I am.

     The other side of the coin is that programmers could be 
command the same kind of respect and wages as Physicians and 
Attorneys.  But even that analogy is flawed since many lawyers who 
have graduated recently are having difficulties finding jobs.

     Ten years ago we had the video explosion.  It seemed video 
stores were popping up all over the place.  I used to joke about 
"Grandma's Restaurant and Video Rentals."  I certainly hope I wont 
have to change that to "Grandma's Restaurant, Video Rentals and 
Turbo Pascal."

--------------

     Now that I've painted a fairly bleak view of the future, 
let's look at a few hopeful things:

     The nation's largest Multiple (Cable) System Operator, TCI 
has announced a four year, two million dollar fiber optic plan.  
This has much the same goals as the government's National Data 
Highway program.  TCI customers will have true Interactive TV in a 
few short years.  Order a Bagel from your TV while watching Paris, 
Arkansas High School play Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

     Prices on computers built around the Intel 80486 chip will be 
coming down for two reasons.  First, Intel's Pentium cpu chip is 
out.  It zooms along at about four times the speed of the '486.  
Second, rival chip maker AMD is shipping chips based on the Intel 
'486 microcode.  This is from a court ruling in their favor, but 
Intel is appealing the decision.  AMD is working on a '486 clone 
using their own microcode and hope to be able to ship those later 
this summer.  Whatever happens it means more power for fewer bucks.

     Microsoft C-E-O Bill Gates is getting married.  He'll marry 
Melinda French, who works for Microsoft.
     
     A few things a bit less happy:

     MS-DOS 6.0 has been released.  But there are apparently 
problems with the disk compression scheme.

     Prodigy will soon start charging an hourly rate for many of 
their services.  This is in addition to their monthly fee.  People 
are escaping from there and subscribing to other online services 
in droves.

     GEnie has started a $2.00 per month surcharge on Electronic 
Funds Transfer accounts.  This charge does not apply to credit 
card accounts.  People are escaping from there and subscribing to 
other online services in droves.

___________

     I know I promised the second part of an examination of 
Electronic Terrorism this month.  I'm still trying to track down 
some information and hope to have it next month.

                                              (c) 1993 Robert Parson
