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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jan Crawley who wrote (34918)	2/15/1998 1:40:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

By Emmy Kondo ABCNEWS.com Despite peaceful and prosperous times, many American business and government leaders are biting their nails. Last month's good news about unemployment -now at a 24-year low of 4.7 percent-leaves many large firms worried that a lack of skilled labor will compromise future growth. Can the American educational system produce workers qualified to lead the global technological revolution? Are today's kids ready to become tomorrow's Dilberts? Historically, the United States has led the world in scientific and technological advances-thanks in no small part to Cold War defense budgets that allocated huge sums of money to scientific education and research. Can anything motivate the nation as strongly as the Red Menace once did? Celebrities Tout Code Perhaps: The government understands the bottom line when it comes to funding priorities, and it's tackling the high-tech labor crunch with zeal. "This is of enormous importance," Commerce Secretary William Daley said during a recent interview. Last month, the Clinton Administration announced that it will spend $28 million to retrain workers, create an Internet jobs bazaar and try to convince kids that the computer sciences are cool. The p.-r. blitz will include public service videos starring Jimmy Smits, tough-guy star of the television cop show NYPD Blue. Code-Dependent Economy The market competitiveness of everything from toasters to medical devices is predicated on the quality of the trillions of lines of codes jammed out by programmers, the assembly-line workers of the 21st century. Programmers are increasingly responsible for our quality of life: they make sure our financial transactions, cars, planes, security systems, and medical procedures function properly. But 69 percent of companies surveyed say that "few" or "some" applicants for information technology jobs possess the skills required. And 68% cite a lack of skilled or trained workers as a barrier to future growth, according to a study by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the Information Technology Association of America, an industry trade group. "The shortage is a fundamental threat to the economic growth of the United States," says ITAA president Harris N. Miller. "It's not just hurting the ability of classic computer companies to grow. It's hurting the ability of the entire economy to grow through productivity increases." Future Schlock? But many skeptics say the high-tech industries are sounding an unnecessarily alarmist note. "I feel this is a four-year bubble," says Scott Anderson, a programmer and owner of Copan Software. "By the year 2001 we are going to begin seeing a glut. This industry is a cyclical one of demand and surplus." Robert Lerman, a policy analyst at the Urban Institute, suggests we're seeing a young industry with its head in the clouds, rather than a grave national crisis. "Personnel people put out unrealistic expectations," he said. "And when they can't meet those expectations, or can't find enough people meeting those unrealistic expectations, then they say there is a shortage." Many argue that federal tax dollars should not be targeted towards helping an already wealthy industry reap ever greater profits. "If you put it in perspective, the demand for skill in the U.S. economy has been high across the board," says Lerman. "College graduates are getting all kinds of jobs-including these jobs-and this industry is having to compete in a broad market which has been expanding for the more educated." Incentives: Mostly Bells and Whistles? Technology companies are notorious for the creative ways they try to seduce new employees and salaries for new hires with hot skills have skyrocketed in recent months. But Anderson, a software-industry veteran, says that those already-employed are not getting the equity raises they deserve. "People are pleading for equity and going unanswered. Companies are not willing to raise salaries pre-emptively, and that's how you know there's not a true shortage." On closer inspection, many of the new incentives aren't big bottom-line items like salaries, tuition reimbursements or stock options, but cheap perks that make employees happy in the day-to-day: flexible scheduling, casual dress codes, one-time bonusess, and all the free soda and munchies they can stomach. Programmer Daniel Reinhurst says such carrots look better than they taste, especially to twentysomething candidates. "You hear these crazy stories about what people are offering." he says. "But sure, some big company buys a bunch of Snapple wholesale or puts up a basketball hoop. How much does it really cost them? In exchange, you get people working insane amounts of overtime who live at the office."