employment market for applied cryptographers?

Perry E. Metzger perry at piermont.com
Fri Aug 16 12:57:09 EDT 2002


Adam Back <adam at cypherspace.org> writes:
> Are there any more definitive security industry stats?  Are applied
> crypto people suffering higher rates of unemployment than general
> application programmers?  (From my statistically too small sample of
> acquaintances it might appear so.)

Hard to say.

I've seen very high rates of unemployment among people of all walks of
life in New York of late -- I know a lot of lawyers, systems
administrators, secretaries, advertising types, etc. who are out of
work or have been underemployed for a year or longer. I'm not sure
that it is just cryptographers.

Always keep in mind when you hear the latest economic statistics that
measuring the size of the US economy, or the number of unemployed
people, is partially voodoo. When was the last time you saw any
estimate of the margin of error on the supposedly "scientific"
measurement of quarterly economic growth? How many illegal immigrants
are being polled in the employment stats? How much of the revenue of
underground businesses gets counted in the GDP figures?

[I myself am not working at the moment, but voluntarily so I suppose I
wouldn't count in the statistics as "unemployed" -- starting a company
during a recession turns out to be a great way to burn yourself
completely out out, and I decided to take some time off of
working. Haven't given much thought to what I'll do to find a job when
I decide I want one again...]


Perry

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