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Gates Calls for Increase in Tech Labor Supply
Randeep Igochyorjob writes "Reuters is reporting that
Bill Gates is asking for the removal of quotas for guest workers by removing the caps on non-immigrant alien workers. In a mild attempt at balance, buried near the end of the story, the article also says "Undersecretary of Commerce Phil Bond, a top Bush administration technology official, pointed out that the unemployment rate for engineers is above the national average." I'm wondering if raising wages might attract the "needed" workers from domestic sources or is Gate's request "necessary to remain competitive and innovative"."
Gates is doing this to try and save money. It's a pretty smart move considering the average salary in the US for coders is over $90k. In Canada it's more like $35k and that's CAD! I would love to go to the US and earn $65k USD per year. But I'm pretty sure I would have a hard time in Redmond, considering I am a PHP geek.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Sounds like he wants a bunch of foreign workers who wouldn't quibble over a $20,000-30,000 salary where a US coder would expect a bit more.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
These wouldn't happen to be faux engineers would they? The dime a dozen Ameritrain, cram all you possibly can about pointing and clicking the night before the test Miscrosoft Certified System Engineer's?
I find it hard to believe that it is difficult to find qualified individuals within the United States. Especially after the last four years the industry has been through.
Should we be opposed to this? Considering that the alternative is shipping the jobs outside the US, if we keep the wage-earners inside the US, the residual income from the job will stay (for the most part) inside the US. Might not be as good as every last engineer drawing a top dollar salary, but its better than 100% of the spending going away from the US.
with a Bush flunky. I feel so dirty. I'm going to take a shower now
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
He believes in capitalism when it works for him. When it doesn't he cries to the guvmnt for help for his poor poor self like any welfare queen.
...'cause I probably am, after thinking this one up.
Maybe he wants to import the tech intelligentsia of other countries in order to train them to be be knowledgable in, and advocates of, Microsoft software? Give them a contract that says they'll work in the US for five or ten years, then send them home.
Side benefits including being able to seed developing nations with pro-Microsoft software development houses,
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You mean I actually have to pay my employees?
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
The head of a corporation that's sitting on ~US$50 Billion in cash yet whines that it doesn't have the resources / capabilities (they really mean "financial interest") in fixing major security defects in their less-than-current products is whining that they need cheaper labor?!??
I'm a fairly pro-immigration guy, but in this particular case Bill Gates can fuck himself in the ass with a cactus.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
And I guess Phil Bond has tried to hire a good engineer lately? We've been trying to hire good engineers for 12 months in Seattle. Of 500 resumes, 50 got interviews but we have only hired 5. Several got better offers, including some from Microsoft.
Just because a small percentage of IT engineers are unemployed doesn't mean they deserve a job. Many of the engineers I've interviewed are unemployable. I'd jump at the chance to hire some good foreign engineers. They would get paid the same salaries as US engineers but would cost us more due to lawyers and relocation costs.
And I'd rather compete against a guy here making $50K sitting next to me than the same guy over in India making $15K.
But if you open the floodgates, then wages here will be cut in half and hardly any American college students will enter the field.
I think he does have a point. We've come to a point where our workforce sometime cannot compete with the brightest that come from other nations. I think Gates has point here, in the interests of keeping the US a leader in technology - but at the same time, I don't think this is the long-term solution. We need to do a better job of education, revamping the public school system because it isn't working across the board the way it should.
THEN we can talk about staying a world technology leader.
Microsoft is having a hard time finding skilled workers within the United States, and the lack of H-1B visas for skilled workers is only making the situation worse, Gates said in a panel discussion at the Library of Congress.
Translation: "the available labour wants more money than we want to pay."
Aha! This is how he plans to get Longhorn out before the end of the decade!
At the moment, engineers are at a low point in terms of their employment prospects and hence their bargaining position. The engineers are at their weakest now, making this the ideal time to strike.
The other part of this is that the wheels of government turn slowly. By the time this is all ironed out, there will likely be an upturn. If BG waits until then to make his request it will be both too late, and the engineers will be stronger again.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Wealthy business owners will always complain that labor isn't cheap enough or plentiful enough. This is just more of the same, and very predictable.
As almost anyone in the software development field can tell you, there is no shortage of software developers. There is, however, a shortage of companies willing to invest in their employees by properly training them. There is also a shortage of companies that advertise open positions with reasonable requirements.
Just hop on over to your favorite job site, and take a peek. "Candidate must have a BS in Computer Science, and 20 years of experience in the following technologies: C, C++, Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Perl, Fortran, SQL, Oracle, DB/2, SQL Server, Informix, stored procedures, COBOL, point-of-sale systems, grocery store management, garbage collection, be willing to travel frequently, and willing to divorce spouse if spouse demands too much time.
Companies can then use the excuse that nobody meets the required qualifications to show the need for more H-1B visas, or worse, offshore outsource the work.
"I'm wondering if raising wages might attract the "needed" workers from domestic sources"
Some work to do (and hence some jobs) would attract many of the out-of-work engineers in the US. If Gates wants to lift restrictions on non-immigrant workers, they must be cheaper than all those domestic engineers out of work?
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
If you have 500 resumes and you can't find 12 candidates, then you're just too damn picky. Period.
This is supply and demand folks. If you can't find the supply, then demand less. Don't screw us all by attempting to artificially increase the supply.
Legally H1Bs MUST be paid the prevailing wage. I'm not sure how much enforcement the DOL does on this, and despite horror stories from Sun Microsystems, this is in fact the law.
I know in my workplace which has both H1Bs and GC/citizens, the rate of pay is the same. In fact the H1Bs cost the company more because of the immigration and relocation costs. At least for my company I think we'd rather hire locals, but as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it turns out to be very difficult to hire locals - they just aren't up to the snuff. The nice thing about hiring foreign born talent is all the preselection has been done.
The US is about immigration and building a better life for everyone, I think the H1B program should be more focused on turning 'temporary' workers into permanent residents. I think the biggest flaw in the H1B is training all these foreign engineers then kicking them out after 6 years - why not keep them in the country, it just enriches everyone.
The biggest problem comes when H1Bs are treated like revolving door visas - this is where the salary undercut, the excessive overtime (we can fire you and kick you out of the country!) abuses come into play. If you build a future for these people in the country they take part of civics better and are more resistant to employer abuses.
Entirely untrue. Over $15 billion is sent home to Mexico from US migrants every year - Mexico's 2nd largest source of foreign revenue (behind oil). H1B visa employees virtually invariably have family remaining in the old country and large sums of cash will be wired back home.
There are more than enough skilled, talented tech people in the US to fill all the jobs. There are even enough to replace the slovenly incompetents who blow enough smoke to convince the non-techie managers that they need to stick around. It has been this way for years. Shortly after my position was shipped to Mexico City and I was politely encouraged to leave the building 's CEO gave a speech about how was in dire need of good, qualified tech people. I promptly sent a letter pointing out that I was willing to relocate anywhere in the world, work any shift and reminded them that I had a perfect employment record as a sub-contractor on an project, aced every aptitude/performance test they threw my way and quickly mastered every new system/process they created. My request was ignored, so I could only conclude that 's plea for capable, productive workers was just a smokescreen so they could argue for more H1B workers. Meanwhile dozens of contractors were shown the door while the ex-Xerox salesman who got a friend to make him project manager then promptly declared backups for the mission-critical database to be an unnecessary waste of resources got to pick which 80% were laid off, then collected his bonus for reducing labor expenses.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
I need more CHEAP meat for my money making machine. Something which a lot of other industries seem to have achieved in the US of A. You people have one of the most working hours per week and least amount of vacation days in the world. Crap social security. Companies with a lot of power over workers etc.
Why would that be you think?
I suggest you make it illegal for politicians to receive money in your country. You know, as a start. Otherwise you shouldn't be surprised to be handled like cattle.
But this is just my opinion.
- -- Truth addict for life.
The shortage is with companies being too picky in hiring!
...one of those "underemployed" types with qualifications out the yingyang!
I know a half dozen types of Unix, but I don't know "X" Unx. Unless I lie and say I know "X" Unix, they won't even look at my resume! And knowing at least half a dozen flavours of Unix, I can probably pick up any reasonable type of Unix in a few weeks.
Or, if you know, say Java, C, Pascal and a few otehr langauges...and they are looking for C++, chances are, you can pick it up in a few weeks.
Companies are looking for too many "exact" matches since they have had the cream of the crop from the Dot-Busts period. Now that those who couldn't get jobs have moved on to something else, they are still too picky in recruiting...so although there is a surplus of techies, they can't find enough people to hire with the "exact" skill set they want. STOOOPPIIIDDDDD!!!!!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
It's all about raising the value of their stock. Which is the same way Jobs makes his $$$ but it kills jobs but some investors wealthy.
http://www.h1b.info/
Microsoft in November 2002 announced plans to build a half-billion dollar complex in Hyderabad, India. With this new development center, Microsoft can use L-1 visas to displace further US citizen employees and will not be subject to H-1B caps. Other major companies in the US are doing the same. This is why reform is needed across all US visa types and not just for H-1B visas alone. It was through the use of these "special" visas that all of the September 11th terrorists secured admittance to the United States. There is virtually no security or monitoring of these special visa holders.
When your pro-corporate agenda is rejected by the Bush adminstration, maybe it is time to get a new line of bull shit.
We have what I would call an emerging tech state. Even way out here in the Bush, we have DSL and wifi, and have had it for quite some time. We also have favorable government, and many other incentives. Heck, we get a check for about $1,000 just for filling out a form, and no state income taxes. Most places don't have a sales tax, either.
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska
What are you going to do when President Gates signs a decree proclaiming Linux a terrorist tool? Just a thought. Seems like this is where he's headed.
http://xs4.xs.to/pics/04481/p556222.gif
Legally H1Bs MUST be paid the prevailing wage.
The only real effect that rule can have is to slow down the rate of salary decreases, not stop it. H1Bs can always be hired for the lower-end of the prevailing scale (for justifiable reasons, such as that their worse English skills make them less productive employees).
Then next year, the prevailing wage has gone down because it now includes all those H1Bs (and local workers competing with them). Over enough time, you reach the same point as if the rule had never existed at all.
it's a sign that you're not paying enough. If you really need them, your client needs them, and they'll have to pay. In the end the money will come out of some rich bastards pocket (your boss). We've got plenty of resources in this country, both people and goods. What we don't have is a second world economy where the poor are played against each other to enthrone a few lucky capital kings. But attitudes like yours will get us there.
What disgusts me about your company is this: You complain about not getting engineers you want, but you aren't willing to pay them what they're worth. It takes years to get the skills you want and constant effort to maintain them. Typical to HR, all you think about is the 40/week the tech puts in, not the other 40/week he's spending keeping his skills up to day. You people have road too far too long on the good graces of 'geeks' who haven't considered that extra job 'work'. People who thought it was fun designing a network topology. Now, there's so much competition for labor that there's not enough uber geeks doing it for love, and you're having to pay up for the expertise you want. To be honest, your companies standards are probably artificially high to create exactly the situation that makes it possible to let more cheap foreign labor in. This isn't some nutball conspiracy either. It's a known fact that during the 90's reports were forged to justify the rapidly increasing the H-1B Visa program.
Put another way, why should you expect to pay less for someone who maintains your most critical IT infrastructure, then for someone maintaining your most critical legal structure? Or Accounting Systems? If you can find competent Lawyers and Accountants, what makes you think you can't find competent Engineers?
Sorry to be so blunt, but that's the reality of it.
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no jobs? Thats bullcrap. I am one semester away from graduating with a masters in CS. With normal effort (applying through campus and through company websites) I have given about 6 interviews already this semester. I already have 2 offers and 2 interivews in the second round. And I am one of these foreigners who requires H1B. We don't get paid any less than an American employee, big companies, especially ones like Microsoft and Google pay everyone the same. If anything they have to pay more to sponsor visas (lawyers fees).
Let's see. The company I worked for in the mid-90's has since folded. The company I worked for in the late 90's folded a few months after I bailed in 1999. The huge, theoretically safe $BIG_PHARMA company I worked for laid off my entire department, lock, stock and IT department. The company I'm working for now desperately needs more people but they're afraid to hire anyone because financing is iffy.
Of the men and women I've worked with in the past 20 years, the one still in CS are the ones who learned to jump from one speciality to another - which means I've done everything from middleware to SMTP agents to device drivers - which makes it really hard to convince an HR person that not having 8 years in Visual C++ isn't a problem.
Yeah, I can see where you'd think there were lots of CS positions going unfilled due to lack of qualified applicants.
Clear, Dark Skies
In a technical field it is very easy to reject candidates in a phone screen interval - total lack of knowledge, unwillingness to solve problems, lack of interest in the job, all these things can kill you within 45-60 minutes.
I think a technical quiz phone screen is a total B.S. way to determine the potential value of an employee. You are attempting to quiz somebody on formulaic stuff most of which can be found in 5-10 minutes online anyway. The real value of an employee comes from skills that cannot be demonstrated in 30 minutes, but rather how they handle complex issues like influencing the attitudes of their coworkers, solving issues that are complex blend of personal relationships and technical problem, whether they have a good sense of when a problem can be solved vs. when it should be left alone.
Quizing people on off the cuff regurgitated technotrivia on the phone is unfortunately easier that really understanding what kind of employee they will be, so it is the path people tend to take. But it isn't the way you get the best employee. It's how you get somebody with a the ability to sound knowledgable on the phone.
So, Bill Gates, richest man in the world (almost), who made his fortune with the help of American developers, now wants to bring a million Indians in to destroy the U.S. software industry as a job prospect for his own countrymen. What a guy! Let me add a few thoughts worth contemplating:
1. If Americans are supposedly so stupid compared to Indians, why exactly was it American engineers who developed the transistor (Bell Labs), the airplane (Wright Brothers), the light bulb (Thomas Edison), most of the foundation of modern computer science, the Unix operating system and the C language, Minix (upon which Linux was based), BSD, Java, the laser, the space shuttle, the satellite (yes, the Russians were first with the dog, but we leapfrogged them and our technology was much, much better -- also, Russia was stealing American technology throughout the cold war to help them compete), the nuclear submarine, the skyscraper, steel reinforced concrete, a vast number of modern medical procedures, the atomic and hydrogen bombs (those German physicists were aided by many American physicists and engineers), the atomic power plant, the Apollo Moon shot (most of the engineers were Americans, don't get started on Nazi rocket scientists...) and the personal computer? I could go on, but considering India's main claim to fame is the supposed invention of the number zero, and that it was a cruddy little third world country until the tech boom (and the technology WE GAVE THEM)... Well... You see my point. India's claim to have the best engineers in the world is pure hubris and fantasy.
2. If Bill G et al were REALLY concerned about producing more computer science graduates, they'd give kids a reason to enter the field instead of destroying their job prospects. But they're not. What they're concerned about is cheap, easy to exploit foreign labor. They don't care whether the foreigners are any good at programming at all; it isn't just IIT grads coming over, you know, it's the losers, too. And unlike Americans, they have lie-packed resumes that are impossible to doublecheck.
3. If these guys get their way and wipe out the computer science field for Americans, my people will figure out a new way to survive. We'll go into government, or civil service, or start our own local companies and bulletin boards, or turn to hacking like our Russian jobless counterparts.
4. I think it's very interesting that corporate America is so determined to wreck things for the very people who are best positioned to take revenge, whether it's by contributing to open-source and destroying the proprietary market, starting a company to directly compete, or going berserk and writing the next generation of viruses. It seems a little nuts to me, but then, nobody ever said suits had any common sense.
5. This ought to clear up the question of how committed Bill Gates et al are to "developers, developers, developers". I like the guy who suggested Bill G fuck himself with a cactus. That was perfect. My only gripe is, what about the poor cactus? I think he should use a cattle prod instead. It's the high-tech solution.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Mod the parent up. So many people and companies say they want smarts but what they really want is a narrowly defined skill set.
To Mr. Gates: there are plenty of smart people out there. They may not have the exact skill set you're looking for so spend some of that cash M$ is hoarding and train them.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I went into Georgia Tech with the intent of being a CS major because I absolutely loved CS as a hobby, and figured a degree in CS would be a good way to make "mad money"
Right about my senior year of high school is when all the Indian programmers started taking American jobs.
I realized half way through my first year that there's no point in my doing CS, I despise higher-level mathematics, and I'll not make any significant money anyway.
So I'm switching schools and changing to Psychology, which I at least find *interesting* to study academically, and I'll probably make the same amount of money after graduation, anyway.
You should have followed the job to Mexico City. I took a job voluntarily here, including a pretty big pay cut, and have never been happier.
You're a suburbanite.
Interesting scenario. However, the rupee is going up while the dollar continues to decline. Once China stops pegging the value of its currency to the dollar, the yuan will go up while the dollar will decline further.
My point? Even if foreign companies get good enough to compete with US companies, they won't be able to compete on cost as the dollar declines and comes into equilibrium with their currencies.
If you create artificially high supply of workers by enticing foreigners here, then less domestic students will enter computer science courses. Eventually, those foreigners aren't going to want to come here because they'll be able to make just as much money in their own country. Then we'll be double-screwed because we won't be able to get foreign or domestic workers.
H1B visas should be drastically cut with an onerous method of getting someone approved for a H1B position.
The current method of providing a 1/2 page job advertisement with impossible skill requirments just to qualify an already know offshore worker is unethical and should be made illegal.
Those job ads are easy to spot since they are much larger than other ads and they have 2 or 5 impossible skills only a few hundred people have.
...so it's only natural that Gates is complaining that there aren't enough really smart and talented techie people out there. eh.
...because you never know who you're dealing with.
Take me, for example. I combined some fairly standard academic CS fields (AI, language processing, etc) with Japanese. And, presto, the number of US-based competitors I had for some positions is in the double digits. And English/Japanese bilingual engineers aren't exactly suffering a crush of supply in Japan -- thats why they brought me over here. I probably have email addresses for half of the bilingual natural language researchers in the US, and the most common way people get hired is to start with someone you already know who does it and ask "Say, give me somebody". When the hiring dynamic works like that, you don't have to slice $10k off your salary and work EA-style hours to have a chance at getting the job for 3 years before it gets moved to Bangalore sans you.
We techies can't stay mired in the industrial production mode where we're moderately skilled labor which is essentially fungible. Any tech position which fits that description will see its salary decline asymptotically to nothing, guaranteed. And don't expect the government or unions to protect you like they spent a lot of the last century protecting the guys at the GM plant or in textiles (by the way, any time you think you've got it rough, take a look at those guys) -- the economy is globalizing and you can either get on the train or get crushed by it. There are like fifty zillion different occupational specialties which we just can't bloody find enough people to do -- I know one employer who would throw $80,000 at someone capable of designing a UI in Arabic (and being able to work in the office efficiently) if he could just find that someone.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I've worked with enough knuckleheads from both sides of the world to suggest a different source for the problem. What we need is an increase in the average quality of code. If I can pay for an idiot from Bangalore or an idiot from good old USA, and either way there is a 50% chance that the code is going to suck and fail, and a 50% chance that the code will work... barely... but still suck then I'm better of paying for the cheapest idiot. If there were a way that I could guarantee good product then it would be worth almost any price. But a lot of things would have to change for that to happen:
By maintaining caps on visas, we encourage outsourcing. Here's a logical-extreme thought experiment: we remove all limits on immigration, and every engineer in the world decides to move to the U.S. As a result outsourcing ceases because there are no engineers outside the U.S. to outsource work to.
TFA says "Congress capped the number of non-immigrant visas for skilled professionals [to] ensure more jobs for home-grown tech workers." But the economics don't work that way: by capping visas, they move jobs overseas. I'm cynical enough to believe that was the real intent, since the corporate owners of our politicians want to preserve a healthy outsourcing market.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Bill Gates is right. There is a shortage of labor at the price he'd like to pay. Similarly, there's a shortage of $1/gal gasoline.
The 5.7% figure that is mentioned is the unemployment rate for those in the CS field. This number sounds low but unemployment rates don't convey the employment condition in a particular field because those who change lines of work no longer get counted. For older, unemployed programmers, this is their best option. They no longer count as unemployed programmers but as employed retail store clerks. I know dozens of ex-coworkers who've lost jobs in their 40s and 50s. I've read many posts on slashdot claiming only 2nd rate programmers and engineers are pushed out. Those expressing such opinions seem to think their own skills are of such high quality that they will be spared such a fate. I guarantee each of these ex-coworkers I've referred to entertained similar notions. At this time, no accurate assesment exists of the underemployment problem in the USA.
Electronic circuit design was my first career after college. I watched manufacturing being outsourced in the 80s. By the late 80s, it was clear that the engineering work would also be outsourced. I retooled myself to be a software developer and have been doing that for more than 10 years. Now, the same thing is happening to this line of work.
When these high paying jobs leave the USA, the incomes leave too. People with lower incomes eventually have to consume less. Tough times lie ahead for many Americans.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
... I can tell you that there are a ton of H1's who get brought into the country, not because employers can't find talent, but because they're willing to cut every corner necessary. I've seen cases where a firm will stick 5 to 6 of them in a single apartment for the duration of their contract. They take it because it's their way out of a bad situation, and I can't fault them, although it sucks for the US born worker.
There are quite a few H1-B shops (a bunch of them in Edison, NJ particularly) which bring underskilled workers over from India and Africa in droves and stick them on projects to hope that they'll pick their skills up quick enough to perform adequately on their projects before they're fired. Then, once they get a few of these projects under their belts, they can charge just as much as US citizens because they have the experience that college grads who were born here lack.
It used to be that an employee would be brought in at the entry level and allowed to learn and apply the tools of his trade. Nowadays, that seems to be primarily the domain of the immigrant worker.
I spoke recently to a local employer about an entry level position. They wanted a college grad DBA with Visual Basic, Linux, PHP, MySQL, SQL Server, and C++ experience. They were offering a entry rate of $2100 a month and wondering why they had such a hard time filling a position. When I told him to look at what he was looking to pay, he seemed genuinely offended. I'm sure the position will stay open until the next wave of H1s can come through.
It would be nice if they'd give the median salary instead, wouldn't it? I have a feeling that's a lot lower.
Beauty is just a light switch away.
Why shouldn't engineers from around the world have an equal chance to compete?
I say let anyone live and work anywhere in the world, and most slashdot commenters should be ashamed.
Where were you when the rest of the world was asking you for help?
In Africa, curing Malaria.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
A lot of people posting here need a reality check.
I'll be blunt: If you are in the industry and don't have a job right now, you either suck, interview poorly, or are trying for positions you aren't qualified for. The industry is hot right now and there are loads of great opportunities.
Too many people came out of the late-90's with inflated egos...
There's more to this than just the economic analysis (and whatever anecdotal evidence you may have with your given company or companies). As a general rule, bad things happen to nations that fail to look within for the resources they need to perpetuate (though I'd rather not push the energy resources aspect of this at the moment). In particular, a move to abdicate the proper development and subsequent use of intellectual talent has an instant demoralizing and chilling effect on the future population, which one way or another will work itself into the culture of that generation. A powerful message that the men in charge would rather get somebody else to do the job than own up to their responsibility of making it unnecessary.
You're looking elsewhere for people who, ultimately, retain loyalty to their nation of origin (with the exception of those who're seeking asylum, or some other pretty unusual circumstance). When it comes down to it, they may respect and admire the characteristics of the nation that employs them, but if it became feasible to set up shop back home at a reasonable quality of life, national pride dictates they'd probably take it. If the benefactor pushed strongly for this kind of importing of brainpower, then they may inadvertantly find themselves creating a significant foundation for such a large scale transition. So while it may work out just great for the export nation (at the cost of spending a generation of its own talent beyond borders), it eventually leaves the import nation with a vacuum that can't be easily filled.
Heck, the Roman empire's sole strength was its military (let's admit that it had few other redeeming qualities), and at the end of its effective lifespan it was relying on foreign mercenaries. I'm sure it seemed like a great cost-benefit proposal to the powers that be, probably because there weren't enough of them considering the subtle and/or long term ramifications. It wasn't really even that this strategy wasn't effective in the near term; it was that the citizenry just stopped caring about or respecting the premises of the nation's eminence. That's something that can't be bought and sold so easily.
FORTH is a threaded-interpreted language. Note the "ed". Check out Chuck Moore's web site if you don't believe me. I guess the questions really were impossible - especially since you were talking gibberish that even you obviously don't understand. And you're interviewing people. Sheesh.
That is all.
MSFT stock options no longer have the same pull they did in the '90's? Finding it hard to bring in the employees when the new kid is the one that can promise its employees that their options will make them overnight millionares? Feeling the pressure to compete with the upstart operating systems but finding that the company just can't maintain a technological erection the way it could a decade ago? Is the problem that Microsoft just isn't really getting laid the way it used to? Maybe Ballmer wasn't really the infusion of corporate viagra that your company needed. Maybe you should go back to the old mistress for some advice on what to do when your company gets older and its ass gets flabby. Maybe that's the real problem here...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Now, I'm rather cynical here; I believe that we are a country made of immigrants, and it would be very hypocritical of me to demand a closed door policy. Sadly, others are not so 'open' in their thoughts, even though few Americans have more than a handful of generations behind them. I'm 4th Gen, myself. How about you, reader?
Ahh, much the way I feel. There's a question I like to ask those who are against immigration, "legal" or "illegal" which usually leads to another one.
1. What Native American Indian tribe are you a member of?
Most of the tyme it's "none", it so then I ask,
2. What NDN tribe signed your, or the ancestor of your's who immigrated here, papers?
Forget open borders, remove all borders.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yep, so long as they have no pride in their work or any professional ethics, Bill will get them. I've been to university; I've seen the sort of people that apply to MS for work, and the sort that don't.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I agree, soundbite culture will not allow you to use the figure that most closely represents reality. You have to face the fact that most of the media is in a ratings arms race as to who can tell the most evil story. The median is far more representative of most peoples experience, its just far more exciting to talk about the average which represents no one but leaves everyone feeling dissatisfied with their lot in life.
On the other hand you could ask why 5% of the population is paying itself millions of dollars and creating this false average value. But that would be "communism" and that is as we all know a bad thing.
I say that whatever king Bill says is law, its for the econonmy stupid, for freedom and free trade. All you whining middle class workers just have to face economic reality - you are worth nothing. What the economy needs is cheap labour from abroard and if King Bill cant have it then all of your jobs will have to be outsourced to India - thats the real agenda here.
In a way he has a point, if his business wants to compete and remain the most profitable software company in the world then he has to use the cheapest workforce he can find. Sadly that means that the US i.t. worker can look forward to a future of declining saleries and job opportunities. As people often point out the US economy is the most sucessful in the world and has achieved this status by lightly regulated raw capitalism.
Its time that IT workers retrained as telephone sanitisers, hairdressers and middle management executives (burger flippers). After all thats what happened to the steel workers, ship builders, coal miners, semiconductor fab workers, Car workers, metal workers, electronics assemblers.
Whats so special about your job that it cant be exported to the third world like all the others?
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
"Lower the pay of US professionals to $50,000, Ballmer suggests, and it won't make sense for employers to put up with the hassle of doing business in theThird World. (Kent Hollenback, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to say what the company pays employees.) "
o ry445480235.asp
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/12/28/st
I was interviewing one guy, and asked if he knows Lisp. He didn't. So I handed him a short bit of Lisp code and asked him to make a particular change. I wasn't interested in if he did it right (he didn't), but rather how he handled the situation (very well). I've been working side-by-side with him for years now, and am very happy to do so. Next time I'm interviewing a programmer, I'll do the same thing.
But even there, some basic technical questions can be good for a quick bit of preliminary screening. Consider this: my old roommate was interviewing for a Unix sysadmin. He had applicants with "X years of Unix experience" on their resume, but couldn't tell him what ls does. Sure, phone screening won't catch everybody who doesn't meet the basic qualifications. It won't even catch half of them. It certainly won't tell you who the diamond in the rough is. But it's a quick way to weed out some people who are blatanly unsuited for the job, without the time and expense of an interview.
Maybe the guy could have learned Unix well. But he said he already had, and clearly hadn't. Would you want him as your sysadmin? What about when he tells you, "yes, I've automated backups"? Could you believe it? Would you know to assign him tasks that let him self-train, or would you just throw him at the server like an experienced sysadmin?
Um, sorry, I have to disagree with you. Regardless of the rhetoric, they want code monkeys that will work for peanuts and do sleep-deprivation tricks. IBM Austin's recent reqs was for college grads, not any industry veterans that know how to create software due to something called, oh I'm searching for the word... experience. Those with your, "solid quantitative skills" are out of luck if they're past their twenties.
Go ahead, vote Republican. Enjoy the new Depression.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
"Gates Calls for Increase in dirt cheap Tech Labor Supply who are willing to work 20 hour days under sweatshop conditions"
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
People like myself who went into IT (B.S. of CS), who are caught up in an expensive, if not troubled, education system because we listened to corporations, who after creating a craze, try to 180 on it, are the people who these laws are protecting. Whether faults with education or the market, we have been left out as the bastard children of incompetent parents.
I really look forward to being one of the care takers of the previous generation; I am your future.
Puh-lease! After graduating #2 in the entire class at Penn State in their "wonderful" Information Sciences & Technology Bachelor program with a 3.9 QPA guess how many offers I received? Zip, Zilch, Nada. Oh yeah plus the 8 years of experience in the field... (cue: Crickets Chirping)
Now I know PA isn't the heart of IT, but I exhausted every avenue and still barely eeked out a semi-decent position. I hear about how we need more overseas labor, and we "wish" we could find local skilled labor, but we just can't... Bullshit.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Computer Science (the "science" of computation) is, at its core, mathematics. The fact that it has an instantiation in hardware or software is not particularly relevant. It is about algorithms and the analysis there-of.
That's all fine and good, but not relevant to most of the tasks employers want. You need to work with specific technology, coordinate with multiple other people, communicate with the customer (whoever specifies the requirements), perform first-level quality assurance (unit testing, et al.), design interdependent systems, and encode processes in a computer language. Computer science does not address any of these. You might, occasionally, need to analyze or design an algorithm, but that can be very rare.
What they want are software engineers. Since that's what many call their programmers, they seem to know it at some level. However, high school students still are primarily getting computer science degrees.
I haven't heard the word "Polymorphism" since college; took my memory banks a minute to bring the definition you wanted back to the surface.
The reason this was the case is because it was buried under 6 years of practical experience in which no one has used the word in my presence.
Sounds to me like you're throwing too much academic-ese at people. There is not one thing in that whole list that I don't deal with in some manner at least once a week, and I had read your post twice to figure out what the hell you were talking about.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I work for a fortune 500 companies, and I see all types of things. I also worked 7 years as a consultant, so I saw one or two things there. It is not a vanishing work force MS is caring about. It is a cheap workforce. I also would be willing to bet if you looked at the majority of the tech people that have been laid off for a significant time. They are individuals with lots of experience. I know when I noticed the end of consulting, as I knew it. I could get no one to hire me due to the salary I made. I had to fib and say I made 30 grand less, just to get the interviews. I ended up taking a 40k cut just to get a job. I see now companies post "Entry Level" positions with things like 7 years of c++ experience, 3 years of .Net experience, for 32k. They already have a person in India that will take the job, but they have to post it here for a certain number of weeks to get that person here.
That is what this is about. There are plenty of tech people that cannot get a job. They could be bringing in more college hires. This is about two things.
1) Money. They want to pay less for more. Thank you Walmart LOL.
2) They want people they can work until they fall over and will not go to human resources or sue.
In my opinion
Bill Gates knows he could overfill his employment rolls if he simply pays more.
But he doesn't want to pay more.
The man who has $80 billion to his name doesn't want his payroll to be an extra 2% of his corporate expenses.
He'd rather import people and leave you and your family in the street.
Why do we let these guys live? They're not necessary to the process. Once they strike gold, their job is done.
I say we outsource Bill Gates.
Two key differences between IT workers and steel workers, ship builders, etc. IT work is generally high skill while auto work and coal mining is not. The IT industry is generally not burdend by shortsighted unions. Absent the unions, no assembly line worker would be making $25/hour with full benefits. And so, the jobs go somewhere else where there are no unions. IT jobs have wages that fluctuates wildly. Entry level is cheap. But there's also tremendous value in experiance; someone who knows the product or codebase is worth a lot more. It's amusing how outsorucing is playing out. Some stuff is being brought back to the US where they pay more, but they get the value of stability. On the other hand, India is starting to be undercut by China and other places where workers are willing to work for less.
And to put this in the context of the article and Mr. Gates' comments, we can either bring the workers here (and have the benifits of taxing them and having an educated population) or we can send the work there. Either way, it's a global marketplace for labor and we can compete, or become obsolete.
bance.net
Check out Concord, CA. Hispanic population has skyrocketed. White population has declined drastically. As a result? The city budget is out of whack, crime has gone up, social services are being taxed. Drive down Monument Blvd, what was once a nice area, and you'll find no less than 50-100 Mexicans standing around waiting for someone to pick them up, despite the "Do not pick up day laborers" signs all up & down the streets. At night, it's no longer safe to walk down the same street. This is a street where I'd run over to Jack In The Box with friends when I was a kid. Thanks to the Mexican gangs that have come into the area along with the growing Mexican population, it's dangerous to be out.
The schools have also suffered, thanks to the influx of non-English speaking families, and the Bush Administrations "No Child Left Behind" act.
Article here
I no longer buy the 'they come here for a better life" crap. They flood here because the United States is a huge cash cow for them. Plain and simple.