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In the spring of 1999, at the height of the Internet boom, the 17-year-old whiz wanted to strut his stuff outside of his windswept patch of prairie. He was too young for a nationwide programming competition sponsored by Microsoft Corp. Haberman wowed the judges with a flashy Web page design and finished second in the country. Emboldened, Stephen came up with a radical idea: Maybe he would skip college altogether and mine a quick fortune in dot-com gold. She steered him to a full scholarship at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Half a world away, in the western Indian city of Nagpur, a 19-year-old named Deepa Paranjpe was having an argument with her father. Western companies were frantically hiring Indians to scour millions of software programs and eradicate the much-feared millennium bug. The former railroad employee urged his daughter to pursue traditional engineering, a much safer course. When he demanded perfection at school, she delivered nothing less. But she turned a deaf ear to his career advice and plunged into software. As Stephen and Deepa emerge this summer from graduate school - one in Pittsburgh, the other in Bombay - theyll find that their decisions of a half-decade ago placed their dreams on a collision course. The Internet links that were being pieced together at the turn of the century now provide broadband connections between multinational companies and brainy programmers the world over. For Deepa and tens of thousands of other Indian students, the globalization of technology offers the promise of power and riches in a blossoming local tech industry. But for Stephen and his classmates in the United States, the sudden need to compete with workers across the world ushers in an era of uncertainty. US software programmers career prospects, once dazzling, are now in doubt.
This could mean a wealth of good new jobs, even more than United States companies could fill. But in 500 years of Western history, there has always been something new. This time, though, theres no guarantee that the next earth-shaking innovations will pop up in America. Deepa, for example, has high-speed Internet, a world-class university, and a venture-capital industry thats starting to take shape in Bombay. Whats more, her home country is luring back entrepreneurs and technologists who lived in Silicon Valley during the bubble years. Many came home to India after the crash and now are sowing the seeds of Californias startup culture throughout the subcontinent. Whats to stop Deepa from mixing the same magic that Andreessen conjured a decade ago when he co-founded Netscape? Its clear that in a networked world, United States leadership in innovation will find itself under siege. One danger is that high-tech horror stories - the pink slips and falling wages - will scare the coming generation of American math whizzes away from software careers, starving the tech economy of brainpower. While the number of students in computer-science programs is holding steady - for now - the elite schools have seen applications fall by as much as 30 in two years. If that trend continues, the United States will be relying more than ever on foreign-born graduates for software innovation. And as more foreigners decide to start careers and companies back in their home countries, the United States could find itself lacking a vital resource. Ballmer says the shortfall of United States tech students worries him more than any other issue.
The pay was $45,000 - barely more than an outsourcing company charges for Indian labor. Fortunately for him, he was able to convince his new boss quickly that he was much more than a programmer. Within weeks, his boss nearly doubled Reeds pay and made him the chief software architect. He had great strategic thinking skills, says Jon Carson, cMarkets chief executive. To prepare students for the hot jobs, universities may need to revamp their computer-science programs. Carnegie Mellon University, where Stephen now studies, has already begun that process. His one-year masters program focuses on giving students the skills needed to manage teams and to play the role of software architect. Such workers are the visionaries who design massive projects or products that hundreds or even thousands of programmers flesh out. The key players in the drama, including these two masters students, Stephen and Deepa, dont have the luxury to wait and see how it turns out. Deepa graduates in May from the Bombay campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, a top university nestled between two lakes. Stephen emerges three months later from the Pittsburgh campus of CMU. The options theyre eyeing illustrate the unfolding map of an industry in full mutation. Deepa, for example, could suffer if the United States government moves to block offshore development or if rocky experiences in foreign lands spark an industry backlash. And Stephen, if he misplays his hand, could find himself competing with lowballing Filipinos or Uruguayans. For now, their stories reflect the moods in their two countries - one with lots to lose, the other with a world to win. Deepa is brimming with optimism about the future, convinced that her opportunities are limited by nothing more than her imagination. She is thinking not only about the next job but about the startup that shell found after that. Even at 22, hes attuned to the risks of a global market for software talent. While confident hell make a good living, hes plotting out a career that sacrifices opportunities for a measure of safety. Self-protection, an afterthought five years ago, is a pillar of his strategy. Seeking a Niche Its midday in the windowless basement labs at CMUs Wean Hall. Stephen, tall and lanky, wearing a white T-shirt tucked into jeans, leans back in his chair and ponders his future. He signed up for the masters program at CMU on the advice of a professor in Omaha who told him that graduates with an MS could land more interesting jobs and make more money.
NasdaqNM: AMZN - News - are hiring cheaper undergrads, he says, and barely giving the masters a look. But the idea of working in a finance-industry tech shop leaves him cold. The 17-year-old hotshot who was ready to skip college and make a mint has undergone quite a change. Hes married, has witnessed the bumps in the world of software, and plans to establish an upper-middle-class lifestyle, and maybe more as a businessman. Hell gather three or four colleagues and produce custom software for businesses in town, from hospitals and steakhouses to law firms. Omaha is plenty big, he says, for a good business, but its remote enough to insulate his startup from offshore competition - and even from the bigger competitors in Chicago. Stephen understands the threat posed by smart and hungry programmers in distant lands. From his senior year in high school all the way through college, he worked as a freelancer for a New York software-development company, Beachead Technologies Inc. Geoff Brookins, Beacheads young founder, spotted Stephens prize-winning entry in the 1999 Microsoft Web-site design contest. Brookins quickly signed him on at $15 an hour, ultimately paying him $45 an hour. Like the Indians, Stephen provided a low-cost alternative to big-city programmers - but he had an advantage because he spoke American English and was only one time zone away from New York. The job let Stephen work on projects that normally would have been far beyond the reach of a student. One was to create IBMs NYSE: IBM - News Web page for its Linux operating-system technology - a crucial arm of Big Blues business. The student also got to spend much of the summer of 2001 working at Beacheads office in New York City. But he stopped working for Beachead after he moved to Pittsburgh last summer. It was there that Stephen got a strong signal that the prospects were dimming for programmers. When his wife, Amy, a fellow computer-science student from Nebraska, began looking for programming work, she came back to their suburban apartment disheartened. The only available jobs, she says, would have paid me interns rates. She ditched the profession and is now writing a Christian-themed novel. Then, Stephens...
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