Tech Czar Unimpressed With US IT Workforce

theodp writes, "'The IT work force is not skilled enough and almost never can be skilled enough,' said Robert Cresanti, Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology. So what does the Poli Sci grad and ex-General Counsel for the ITAA think is the answer? Open the gates to more foreign workers, urged Cresanti, including H-1B holders."

Comments

Or alternatively

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

So what does the Poli Sci grad and ex-General Counsel for the ITAA think is the answer? Open the gates to more foreign workers, urged Cresanti, including H-1B holders.

But since he thinks the problem is that "there are not enough engineers with the appropriate skill sets", surely the long-term solution is to adjust your training and education regime so that there are enough such engineers? Hint to start with: degree courses in fields such as Computer Science and Software Engineering should not have teaching Visual Basic.Net and Java as the primary or only focus!

Re:Or alternatively

[eno2001]

Yup. And it should start even earlier than college. When I was growing up, it was pretty much derigeur for boys to be trained in basic electronics. What kid didn't build a crystal radio set in the 50s? Today, I say both boys and girls should be taught more than how to use a mouse and point and click on the web. You really should know the why before you know the how. Anyone who disagrees with me on this is just a part of the problem. That is all.

Re:Or alternatively

[eln]

Schooling in general has seemed to shift more toward "job skills" than theory lately, and that is a bad thing. In just about any field, if your education is geared toward a specific type of job, you're going to be doomed to failure because the job market changes too much for what you were taught to be relevant for long. If, however, you're taught theory (the why behind the how, as you noted), you are a much more flexible worker, and are in a position to quickly learn and adapt job skills in the changing market.

Re:Or alternatively

[waveclaw]

Training? But that costs money.

But since he thinks the problem is that "there are not enough engineers with the appropriate skill sets"

Not hardly. The problem really is "there are no engineers cheap enough and with the appropriate skill sets." When was the last time you saw a job requiring Senior level engineering skills, but only offering fresh-out-of-college pay?

FTA:

"without H-1B visas, we would have economic dislocation," Cresanti said.

Oh poo hoo, we have to pay top dollar for top quality says industry shrill. Instead, how about we import some cheap labor and dangle VISA restructions over their head to keep them working like slaves?

You want the skill$ you hand over the bill$. What ever happened to paying a good days wages for a good days work? Henry Ford paid his workers enough to afford his new cars. The money he paid out came right back into his pocket because he through globally and invested locally. If you keep pouring money into $THIRD_WORLD_COUNTRY don't be surpised when their highly trained employees cost as much as local ones. (HINT: rising wages <--> rising standard of living.)

Again, FTA:

"Math and science are ingrained. We're a country of laws and men. They're a country of engineers."

says the man with a Polical Science degree. You won't get any argument about that from me, though. The No. 1 concern of politicos when discussion H1-B's and international trade is pushing our lawyer-based society (e.g. claiming patents = invention and lawsuits = income) on China. The irony in that be hip deep.

Management can either enable employees or get out of the way. If you look at your workforce and think 'they're undertrained, I wonder if I can replace them with equally undertrained but cheaper forgein imports.' Which one are you doing?

Re:Or alternatively

[Lemmy Caution]

One problem is that employers are ambivalent about this. They put a pressure on academia to act more as job-training centers, and the students misguidedly play along: they don't want to learn about algorithms, they want to learn C++. They, and their parents, want immediately useful job skills that will get them placed the day they graduate. And employers don't want to have to spend money on on-the-job training.

The results are disposable generations of workers: the skills of each graduating class are relevant for as long as those specific techniques are used. If they are able to generalize their knowledge and become more flexible, they can continue to do well (but, of course, they are then competing for positions with the next generation of recent college grads.)

While there are problems with Japan's higher education system, one thing that they do right is to make specialized skill training the responsibility of the employer. Of course, part of the problem is that employer costs are already strained by health care costs, so they are reluctant to invest more in their workers.

Re:Or alternatively

[drgonzo59]

Exactly. I grew up in Soviet Russia.

By the time I graduated high school there and came to US for college I was ready to go into the Junior level science and math courses. I graduated Summa Cum Laude easily, from an average 4 year university, without that much effort (I wouldn't say I didn't sleep nights sweating, some quarters I would just coast by...).

While kids in US where taking "typing" classes in High School we were taught about spanning trees, while the U.S. kids spent their time finding what sport club they wanted to join, we learned discrete math. Children in U.S. are babied and spoiled when it comes to science, parents never studied it much and never see a need to push their children to study it. (I am talking about the average here, of course there are schools like Harvard, Caltech, Yale and so on that does have exceptional students).

But at the same time, I would have to say that playing sports and socializing has its benefits because it builds valuable interpersonal skills which will help when it comes time to work as part of a team. That is something that was never emphasized in my early education. The key is balance, teach both, perhaps U.S. education will come around some day, I hope so, because this is a great country and I love it for it freedom and values, and I don't want to see it fall behind -- I want my children to get a good science education.

Green Card

[Boronx]

How about instead of H1-Bs, we fast-track green cards for people with needed skills, or is that not enough like indentured servitude?

Re:Green Card

[Tablizer]

How about instead of H1-Bs, we fast-track green cards for people with needed skills, or is that not enough like indentured servitude?

I've seen H-1B abuse with my own eyes at a very large telecom. They want people they can manipulate, not full-blown citizens with real choices. There is no "shortage", just lobbyists looking for an angle. See about this Rand study:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB1505/in dex1.html

Pay as always is the answer

[cmorriss]

When faced with a workforce shortage, in no other field has the answer been to import skilled labor from other countries. The answer has always been to increase pay until the appropriate number of skilled candidates are attracted.

Allowing companies to import all of the skilled labor at cheap prices sets the stage for a dangerous trend. Ultimately it will sink wages throughout the workforce as companies see they can start trying this in other fields.

The government seems to think it has to use tarrifs to protect the iron industry but actively participates in the lowering of wages in the IT field.

I sincerely hope this starts to become a bigger issue and the word gets out. Undoubtedly if other fields start getting hit, the politicians will start to feel the pressure.

Re:Pay as always is the answer

[dircha]

"Did you even read the article? There simply ARE NOT ENOUGH SKILLED IT WORKERS IN THE US!"

If the demand for skilled IT workers were higher than the supply, we would expect wages to be up. But adjusted wages are basically flat over something like the last 5 years.

The "problem" is that there is a shortage of supply of IT workers at the prices corporations want to pay.

By bringing in additional H1Bs who will be underpaid (yes, they are and will be), we disrupt the market forces which would otherwise tend to force IT wages up.

Claims that there are not enough skilled U.S. IT workers is just another case of the corporate propaganda and lobbying.

And of *course* foreign governments want more of their workers to have access to U.S. jobs. Why? Because those workers will funnel a significant amont of that money back into the economies of their countries of origin.

Just follow the money.

Lobbyists Lobbyists Lobbyists

[Tablizer]

They were saying this during the bottom-of-the-barrel tech bust in the early 2000's. I personally met a representative from Microsoft who claimed this at a San Diego university, and he was saying this to unemployed techies in the same goddam room. He quickly left when the question-and-answer session came.

What we really need

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Is for technically skilled people to have more children. Companies must embrace women and pregnancy, with daycare and . Only Darwin can help us here. They are the only way to increase the force of people capable and willing to be the next generation.

Re:What we really need

[Shajenko42]

And, since technical people tend to have fewer social skills and have a harder time finding mates, there needs to be a lottery amongst the non-technical people. Draw the "lucky" number, and you are required to marry a tech person.

The government will also be monitoring the bedrooms of these couples to ensure that the mandated sexual encounter per week is not avoided.

A tech shortage eh?

[Colin Smith]

The severe problem of supply of staff will lead to soaring salaries of course... Simple market economics, restricted supply and strong demand. What you say? Salaries are not soaring? Doesn't sound like much of a shortage to me then.

Open-source union?

[Tablizer]

The government seems to think it has to use tarrifs to protect the iron industry but actively participates in the lowering of wages in the IT field.

The reason for the difference?: UNIONS

You may complain about unions all you want, but without them your political ass is not powerful enough to compete with deep corporate pockets and armies of full-time lobbyists.

Perhaps we could form some kind of open-source union? Just a thought.

By the way, the Rand Corporation looked into general claims of tech/sci shortages in the late 90's, and found none. It is a scam.

VISAs harm Americans

[Toby The Economist]

VISAs are essentially an import tariff on employees.

Remember the steel import tariff Bush imposed a year or two back? the steel manufacturers were overjoyed - and rightly so; since imported steel now cost 45% more, they could raise their prices to match, and they made plenty of money out of it.

Who suffered? well, *EVERYONE ELSE*. All the companies who use steel had to pay 45% more. All their products (cars, construction materials for houses, etc) went up in price to compensate for their costs. You and I subsidized the steel industry, by Bush's decree.

Back to VISAs.

If you have demand for a skill-set and a shortfall in supply, wages go up.

Just like steel prices going up, when wages go up, final product prices go up.

So if you restrict the supply of programmers, software prices go up to compensate.

Who benefits? American programmers. They have fatter pay packets (which they notice), but most things they buy will be more expensive (which they won't notice). (Things are more expensive since the part of their cost which covers the price of the software used to make them has gone up).

So who pays? you and I, by Bush's decree.

No no no ...

[khasim]

The "solution" is to import cheap labour to further erode your citizens' desire to spend the time/money/effort getting those advanced technical degrees.

After all, why rack up so much debt from school when there will be someone else willing to do the same job for less because his school loans (if they exist) are a fraction of your's?

And isn't in the corporation's best interest to get the cheapest labour they can find?

So, the question becomes ... why, in his opinion, are Americans so much dumber than citizens in other countries?

I don't think we are. But I do believe that our government is too closely involved with business's desire to get the maximum benefit with the minimum investment. Fuck that. I want to see scholarships for advanced technical studies. Lots of them. Put your money where your mouth is. When 50% of the computer science majors can get out of school and pay off their debt within 5 years, THAT will be sufficient. Only then can he talk about how dumb Americans are.

Re:No no no ...

[jsebrech]

When 50% of the computer science majors can get out of school and pay off their debt within 5 years, THAT will be sufficient.

But why should they be in debt in the first place? A full-time student in my country doesn't pay more than 500 euro per year for pretty much anything they'd want to study. If they can't even afford that, they pay less (some pay pretty much nothing). Capability of learning a skill or trade has nothing to do with financial solvency, so it's pointless to have an education system that couples the two. Better to have everyone pay into an education system at their level of ability, and have everyone take out of it based on their need and inherent abilities.

like we need more h1b's in the US?

[poopie]

Summary: US Kids are dumb, lazy, and fat and only interested in video games and lighting their farts on fire. Jobs in the US are leaving the country. Employers are moving their hiring to China, India, Brazil, Eastern Europe. Skilled workers in the US are having a hard time gettings or keeping jobs and the US companies' salary increases aren't even tracking the cost of living increases in the US.

Proposed solution: Bring in more foreign workers to compete for the few jobs that haven't been outsourced or moved overseas?!? Have them bring their extended families with them into the US. WTF! I'm not trying to be protectionist, but... we need to improve education in the US and we need to make sure that there will be good jobs for our kids when they grow up.

I know a lot of US companies now that only hire about 1 person in the US for every 20 they hire. Do you really think it's because they're aren't any qualified workers in the US!?

Could we see a day when our kids will be leaving the US to go to China and India to look for jobs and we'll be complaining about those countries limiting US foreign workers? I believe so...

H1Bs... Yeah, That'll Do It...

[Greyfox]

You're getting as mixed a bag with H1Bs as you are with US IT workers. In IT you can make a salary well over the national average and it's a lot easier to get your foot in the door than it is with medicine or law. I've met some very talented H1Bs and I've had to clean up after some who were complete idiots. The trick isn't so much in the volume of smart people, the trick is in your HR Department's ability to filter out the folks who are only in it for the money.

Real motivations

[div_2n]

To gauge Robert Cresanti's comments, it is important to first grasp where he comes from. So who is Robert Cresanti? He is a former Vice President of Public Policy for the BSA. Yes, that BSA. Before that, he was the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the ITAA.

Why is this important? Both of these are groups that are all about the interests of big corporations. The BSA, in particular, protects those interests without regard for anyone in its path. So when someone of this mindset says they need to import more workers, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where he's coming from. There are two basic ways that companies in the US could increase the number of qualified workers. One is to increase salaries significantly enough to entice capable students of pursuing a career in IT. The second is to import workers from other countries often willing to work for the same or less.

For government, the two basic ways are to increase educational funding to lower the barrier for students to pursue higher education in IT and the second is to ease restrictions on workers from other countries to work in the US.

The second option is the quickest and "cheapest" solution from both a private and government perspective. The fact that he is promoting this as a solution shows that he thinks short term and not long term. It also means he thinks from the perspective of what is best for big business and not the American worker. This isn't totally surprising considering where he comes from and who got him in his position.

Re:GREED!

[Spiked_Three]

Well give credit to the American consumer as well.

We have no hesitation looking to find cheaper versions of products we want, ignoring quality. And at the same time we enjoy constantly griping about not being paid enough.

The quality of products produced by US workers has also declined. The quality factor alone is no longer significantly different. So given a choice of poor quality work from both inside or outside, which are you going to pick? The lower cost of course. That is not greed on the part of businesses. It is common sense.

K-12 education

[bcrowell]

I teach the three-semester calculus-based freshman physics sequence to a lot of engineering majors to a community college. A lot of these people are intelligent enough to learn the material, but flunk out of physics because of their weak backgrounds. It's not uncommon to look at their transcripts and see them having started their community college careers by taking Math 20, which is basic arithmetic. It's extremely difficult to start from that level, and then work your way up to the level of competence required of an engineer. In addition, many of them have really weak language skills; sometimes this is because they're immigrants, but other times it's because they entered college with a sixth-grade reading level. Some of them also just don't seem to have put education very high on their list of priorities.

The net result of all this is that at my school, the total number of students who start the calc-based physics sequence every year is something like 300, and the number who finish it is roughly 30. (Some of the loss is from students who transfer before finishing, and or students who fail calculus, etc.)

There's a pretty simple solution to the problem, which is to set higher standards in math, English, and science in K-12; enforce those standards with standardized tests; and refuse to promote kids to the next grade if they can't demonstrate that they've mastered the material. Our present system is especially harmful to people who come from working-class backgrounds. They go to lousy public schools, and they and their parents get the impression that they're getting a good education. Then they arrive in college, and find out just how much they've been screwed over by our educational system.

Of course, Slashdot's readership is disproportionately composed of tech workers who are U.S. citizens, so I'm sure there will be plenty of people howling about the damn immigrants coming in and taking away our jobs. I'm none of their ancestors were immigrants. But seriously, would you rather compete for jobs against a coder who immigrated from India, and is expecting U.S.-level pay, or a coder who is still in India, and is therefore available for 1/4 of what you'd cost? If there's a problem, it's that H-1B visas don't necessarily lead to any opportunity to remain permanently in the U.S.

Re:Fix it by making salaries go up by limiting H1-

[felix rayman]

People don't make major choices about their broad vocations simply on money.

The hell they don't.

Best Alternative: Economic Law of Supply & De

[reporter]

Shortages and surpluses of labor are normal -- and powerful -- forces in a free market. A shortage corrects the underpricing of labor, and surpluses correct the overpricing of labor. If a company cannot find enough information-technology (IT) workers at a salary of $80,000, then that salary is below the equilibrium market price at which supply meets demand. So, the company is underpricing its labor and must increase the salary (and must improve working conditions) to get more labor. There is plenty of labor at the right price.

There is no need for the government to "fix" shortages by importing desperate labor in the form of H-1B workers or illegal aliens. When the government "fixes" a shortage, the government is damaging the normal operation of the free market. The free market works fine without government intervention.

Regrettably, most politicians (and some journals like the "Wall Street Journal") cater to certain segments of the population and outright lie about how economic laws work. For example, many Republicans favor big agri-businesses and claim that the American economy will be irreparably damaged unless Washington allows illegal aliens to pick fruits and vegetables. Many Democrats favor ethnic pressure groups like La Raza and make an identical claim.

Journals like the "Wall Street Journal" use an even sneakier strategy. The Journal repeatedly claims that increasing the American population is wonderful because doing so increases the wealth of the nation via increasing human capital. To a point, this claim is true. Consider an economy of exactly one person. That economy is pathetically poor because one person, regardless of how smart she is, cannot be equally skilled in all areas of work. Here, when I refer to wealth, I am referring to wealth per capita (i.e., GDP per capita), also known as personal wealth. If the 1-person economy grew into a 2-person economy, we can easily imagine that the wealth doubles or triples: one person is tending the vegetable garden while the other person is protecting the grass hut from wild animals.

However, consider an economy with 100 million people. If we doubled the size of this economy, then its wealth does not double. The wealth increases by substantially less than 1 percent. After a certain population size, each doubling of the population brings a rapidly decreasing percentage gain in the wealth.

The game that the WSJ plays is to ignore this concept of diminishing returns. Further, the WSJ deceptively says that doubling the population doubles the total weath (i.e., the total GDP, not the GDP per capita). Though that statement is true, it does nothing for the actual wealth that you experience. What you experience is GDP per capita, not total GDP.

Finally, there is a trade-off between (for example) a 0.1% increase in personal wealth (i.e., GDP per capita) and annoyances (e.g., pollution) created by a doubling of the American population.

By the way, identical comments about diminishing returns apply to global trade. Onces a global free market reaches a certain size, it captures most of the advantages of a large amount of human capital. The USA loses almost nothing by restricting our free trade to only free markets, which includes (at the moment) only Western nations. We should slam our markets shut to non-free markets like India, China, and Mexico. The tiny percentage gain in personal wealth (i.e., the GDP per capita) that we get by including India, China, and Mexico is completely offset by their damaging impact on Americans in the unskilled-labor market. China indirectly erodes the quality of life for Americans in the unskilled-labor market.

Then, along comes the WSJ to deceptively talk about total wealth (i.e., the total GDP) in absolute numbers, say, an increase in total GDP of $15 billion dollars. $15 billion is an eye-popping number. However, divide that number of the number of Americans to get the GDP per capita, and you see only an increase of $50. Is $50 worth destroying the quality of life for Americans in the unskilled-labor market?

Re:Big Picture is Missing - No Studies

[Lemmy Caution]

I'm inside academia right now, and my impression of what employers want is driven largely by what I hear industry representatives say. They want our undergrads to come out of the university ready to work with specific skills. They want graduate research to focus on applications, rather than basic research. There are various weasel words for these requests, but they are pretty apparent.

I don't blame them for wanting these things: its in their naked self-interest. But we shouldn't necessarily play along.

Re:Big Picture is Missing - No Studies

[mabhatter654]

I'd argue that a "kid" out of school nowdays, particularly in tech, is shouldered with more responsibility than a 5-10 vet was 20 years ago...

The trouble is that employers don't KNOW what they want. How many play the "jack of all trades" card with new recruits. We need somebody that can do 1/2 of 4 different jobs because that's what the last guy we laid off after 20 years was doing.... but they don't want to PAY for somebody really good at just ONE of them. That's where American Workers differ from those in every other country! While Americans should be more disciplined and professional at their careers, that's not what employers want and pay for. Even in say Michigan versus Arkansas, I do more different kinds of work than my counterpart at our other plant, even though he has a higher position than I do... but the other plant is "more profitable" so they "deserve" the extra staff to have "unique" positions, the rest of us need to suck up and make the company money. I've switched "vocations" more than once in my short career because that's what the company needed because they changed focus, grew, or layed off too many people... that's what MOST American companies expect now. The job is EXTREMELY rare where they will say we need a C++ coder to ONLY do C++, and not expect you to do user documentation, training, product research etc. And that's where the H1Bs excel.. but that's dishonesty on the part of the companies... more than dishonesty, it's business laziness... the owners of most companies really have no clue what their customers WANT. Most American business owners "fell" into the job... and they don't have the skills to grow a business.. they don't know how to hire IT staff, they don't know how to hire Engineers, they don't know how to hire marketing.. and they don't want to LEARN!!! So they complain about not having enough "ready made" employees... but they can't sit down an write out detailed job descriptions about what they want those "highly skilled" employees to do.

So, what?

[Kadin2048]

It is the artificial imposition of borders and boundaries that you would like to have that impede such travel that hamper any kind of free market.

Reality is: tech-monkey skills are cheap and easy to acquire, as witnessed by a hundred million perfectly-qualified folks in China, Korea, India etc. IT skills in the US are vastly overpriced, if anything or otherwise the free market wouldn't be moving the demand for these skills away from the US.

So what's your point?

Do we have any hard evidence that having a free market, where Indian or Chinese programmers were favored over American ones -- however 'overpriced' the Americans might be -- helps America? We seem to be taking on premise that a completely free market helps the First World, but I'm not sure why this is. The WSJ crowd never seems to explain exactly the reasoning and evidence for this claim; it's treated as holy writ, beyond all question. And if there's one thing that I really dislike, it's claims that aren't allowed to be questioned.

So what if Americans are "overpriced" compared to workers in areas where basic working conditions aren't guaranteed? That's not a level playing field; it simply guarantees that if Americans want to compete, we have to drop to that level. Why should we allow this? If it doesn't help our economy, why are we implementing economic policies that help China and India, at our workers and our economy's expense?

Simply saying that 'so-and-so doesn't facilitate a free market,' doesn't automatically make it a bad thing. Maybe we don't want a completely free market, if it means we're going to have to compete directly with countries that treat their workers as disposable units. We need to think about the ultimate effects of our economic policies on our citizens, in the long term, and back it up with convincing evidence and research instead of just polemics.

I'm open to both arguments here but convinced of neither; there seem to be a shortage of factual arguments when it comes to foreign and domestic economic policy, and I don't think that helps anything.