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How to Keep America Competitive
pkbarbiedoll writes to tell us that in a recent Washington Post article, Bill Gates takes another look at the current state of affairs in computer science and education. According to Gates: "This issue has reached a crisis point. Computer science employment is growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually. But at the same time studies show that there is a dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees. The United States provides 65,000 temporary H-1B visas each year to make up this shortfall — not nearly enough to fill open technical positions. Permanent residency regulations compound this problem. Temporary employees wait five years or longer for a green card. During that time they can't change jobs, which limits their opportunities to contribute to their employer's success and overall economic growth."
In the third lecture of the intro course, the teacher discussed spending all night coding for labs and so forth, and mentioned that it would prepare us for real life.
After a quick google session, I never went to the class again.
I'm sure there are places where you aren't forced to stay late or bring your work home with you... But the trend of overworking in real life occupations CS degrees can lead to is very damaging to interest in this degree.
If I wanted to concentrate on a job over things like family and a social life, I would go to med school.
Some people prefer to work really late in "deep hack mode".
Others prefer 8-5 job and forget about the work when you leave.
It all depends upon your personality and the requirements of the job. And IF WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS IS CORRECT finding a job more in line with your personality should be easy.
If what the article says is correct.
Seems to me that the appropriate way of handling this issue would be for the US to encourage more students to take up CS as their degree, and do more to encourage smart, well-educated professionals to immigrate here - permanently. Temporary visas and the like seem to be band-aids rather than real solutions.
I don't care where they're from - this country can only do better to have more educated folks living in it.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
There's no shortage. Salaries are too low.
As the IEEE points out, relative engineering salaries have been declining since the 1970s.
What Gates is whining about is that there aren't enough people willing to learn the ins and outs of Microsoft's software and work around its problems in the field. What he wants are cheap janitors to clean up the Mess from Redmond.
Gates must have dropped out before taking Econ 101.
A labor shortfall in a free market ALWAYS results in higher wages which ends up drawing more people into the field. Once an employment saturation point is achieved, salaries decline and employment levels off.
H-1B visas artificially increase the labor supply while decreasing wage growth. This attempt to "makeup the shortfall" will only further depress CS enrollments. Why on earth would a prospective student go into CS if the money is not there, and labor is being imported to further drive down wages?
Gates is not a stupid man - he knows these economic rules, and lowering wages is the only reason to push for more H-1B visas.
-ted
The problem, as I see it, isn't that the government has been doing to little, but rather, doing too much. In classic economics, when there aren't enough workers to fill the roles, salaries and working conditions increase for the valued few. People see how well they're treated and desire these jobs, and go to college to learn how to do it.
In the current state, the government fills far too many of those jobs with foreign born workers, offering them no chance to become American citizens and forcing them to work for a fifth of what American workers cost. These foreigners are abused with long hours, and then sent back to where ever they came from either when they show discontent, or what citizenship is in their sights.
The solution is to make efforts to make these foreign workers into American workers, so they can compete the same way we do. Until that happens, the wage gap will continue to be wide, and the abuses will continue.
You will only have crap employees. Maybe it's time to start actually being competitive in hiring and lifestyle as well as being competitive in the marketplace; after all, full time employees in Europe and Japan enjoy the ability to buy a home, settle down in one place, and raise a family.
Either that or it's time for the United States to realize that economics is a form of warfare for rich countries- and get serious about winning economic wars with our peers instead of wasting money losing military wars with our inferiors. If so, we'll need to realize that the international corporation is effectively a double agent traitor or the arms dealer who sells to both sides- and treat those businesses accordingly.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
There was an article posted outside of a professor's door when I was in college a year and a half ago talking about Microsoft's problem with treating even its IT contractors right. Maybe the real reason that IT is "suffering" is that companies often don't treat their IT employees like real employees. My fiance's dad, for example, has been proven to be a strategic asset to his company, but when he had to switch jobs because the client's manager found out that he made more money than she did, his boss basically said "ain't my duty to lift a finger to find you work" until it became a possibility that a competitor might pick him up. Given his reputation, that's actually possible. Hell, the abuses that IT workers ranging from sysadmins to software engineers face at the hands of corporate bureaucrats is legendary, and many young people are turned off/scared of that! Who wants to get paid a modest salary for that, especially women? My fiance can't take the abuse from the corporate types over her which is part of the reason why she fully intends to say "fuck this industry" and become a stay at home mother coding in her spare time for fun and to teach her kids if they're interested.
And the thing is that people like Bill Gates don't even care that they are adding to this by calling for the dilution of wages even more, at the same time that many "good liberals" like Gates support high taxes, high regulations and other things that cut into the competitiveness of the average worker compared to foreign workers and reduce the wages of the domestic workers. Yes, I know I'm cynical.
A super rich capitalist wants to increase his profits by importing more cheap labor.
It will be news when a super rich capitalist says, "Sure, it costs a little more to hire American citizens, but I do that because I don't want to see this continued race to the bottom, with the level of economic inequality in this country soon to exceed that of Brazil."
It's a great foundation, and I think they're terrific. However, while Bill Gates is a big shareholder of Microsoft, and he is the owner of the Foundation, they don't appear to be related at all. That is, Microsoft's will is not expressed via the Foundation, which is a good thing. They're more concerned with at-risk children, and the welfare of the planet, which doesn't necessary align with Microsoft's business plan.
But, I went to the link, and it doesn't mention anything about training U.S. programmers to help the crisis. In fact, if you look here at this link, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/UnitedStates/ you'll see the only thing they're trying to do is make sure U.S. students graduate from high school:
"Significantly increasing the number of students who graduate from high school with the skills needed to succeed in college and work"
Which I find is terrific. I love that Bill and Melinda have really stepped up and helped.
However, I'm asking what Microsoft (not Bill Gates) is doing to help the situation. I would be interesting to see if they're spending more on H1-B lobbying, or actually spending money in the areas that I mentioned (or indeed any sort of Computer Science/Programmer training and encouragement). Do you know where we might find out how much is spent in those areas?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What you're talking about is a program that would produce mindless drones. We expose people to a multitude of content in school so that they are aware of things beyond the end of their nose.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This includes guys who were college buddies of Ray Ozzie and helped him with his CS homework. Yeah, I went to the University of Illinois and worked on the PLATO project as a system programmer.
And don't give me garbage about "keeping up on your skills" when the guys I've most closely worked with -- these obsolete aging engineers who "don't keep up on their skills" -- were doing 50K line Javascript web applications back in 1997 and couldn't get the mind-share among the "luminaries" who were all agog about Java -- and do we even need to talk about VB?
There has been a demographic collapse among young engineers because the prior generation of engineers couldn't afford to have children even if they could find a wife in one of the male saturated ghettos created by guys like you. The few young men sired by engineers are all-too-aware of what you've done to their fathers and they'll be better off going into real estate or moving out to a little plot of land in the country living an eco-friendly subsistence lifestyle.
You see they know they are from a culture that respects women's sovereignty to the point that arranged marriages are out of the question -- unlike the hoards you idiots are importing.
Well, sorry, you're obviously not idiots. You're probably suffering from a mild form of Aspergers to be so unaware of these profound social problems afflicting your subjects -- sort of like a "nobility" that just can't understand why their subjects don't eat cake and then try to guillotine them. My nephew has a fairly severe form of Aspergers but he can get along a lot better now that he is self-aware about it and the limitations it places on his judgement about human social relations. Sometimes reality makes one sound like a satirist but there is truth to what I'm saying here.
Seastead this.
I'm not in the US, nor a US citizen, but I thought the US companies wanted to send those jobs overseas anyway? Why should smart US students waste X years doing CS, graduate and then have their jobs outsourced or have to compete for jobs treated as "cheap labour" by companies (after all what's the H1-B thing really about)?
If the companies keep changing their minds, well too bad for them.
Meanwhile, it's supply and demand. Not enough applicants? Start offering higher salaries and better working conditions then - too bad you'd probably have to wait a while - try thinking longer term next time.
Otherwise I think they just want more silly people to rush into CS just to increase supply and keep prices down.
The real crisis is the shortage of people with competence and integrity, rather than a shortage of people who do Computer Science.
Mr.Gates can afford it. I've never heard of a job an American wont to for decent working conditions and decent pay.
... non sense. We've heard about a "nurse shortage" for about 80 years now. The fact is, rich hospitals and nursing homes don't want to pay the going rate for labor services. They'd like their own private supply of non-union, foreign 28 year olds (which other businesses wouldn't be allowed to steal).
All this nonsense about a "talent shortage" is just that
It's the same with microsoft. They could easily provide training to smart young college graduates or re-train mid-career folks. Sure, it'd take a couple of years to get them productive, but that's cost business has to pay to stay competitive.
Do that and watch the number of mortgage forecloses go up a few thousand percent as many white collar workers can no longer afford their homes. The housing market will die out putting builders out of work as a 10 year backlog of unsold homes hits the market with no takers. Auto workers will go out of work as the market for luxury cars and suv's dries up (but think of how this will help global warming!). Maybe in a few years things will level out, but the president that presides of this disaster will go down in history right next to Herbert Hoover.
"Well, the Capitalist answer is that the shortage in qualified applications should cause the average salary within the industry to rise correspondingly".
Unfortunately for everyone but the capitalists, that turns out not to be the case. Please notice the critical obfuscating function performed in the quoted sentence by the word "should". That is, the average salary *should* rise if simplistic Economics 101 formulae about demand and supply held good in the real world. As it happens, they don't. A quick look at US business reveals that there must have been an appalling shortage of ambitious, self-centred, suit-wearing chair-warmers recently - because look where their average salaries have wound up! Someone put a rocket under those suckers, and believe me it wasn't "demand". It was the utter determination of managers (yes, we're talking about managers here) to make as much money as they possibly can while the sun shines. They are aided in this quest by the remarkable fact that everyone's salaries are decided by... well, what do you know - managers!
A couple of years ago, I had an interesting little chat with a director of a UK-based IT recruitment consultancy while we were both waiting for the next conference session to begin. Among other things, he let me know that all the companies he dealt with saw programmers as "very much like bricklayers", and none of them would dream of paying a programmer more than about $40K. When I asked what would happen if they couldn't find any takers, he said airily that his clients would simply defer their software projects until they could hire programmers at "the appropriate rate". In other words, the executives in question would rather eat their own lungs than pay a programmer more than a quarter of what they themselves get.
Quoting economic theory doesn't cut much ice, especially when it is directly contradicted by the observed facts. Unlike real sciences, economics is a big sheaf of educated guesswork, elegant models in search of an application, and clever people talking themselves into important jobs and big salaries. As someone once remarked, there is no economist so distinguished that you can't find another, equally distinguished, to call him a gold-plated liar. And as someone else noted, "if all the economists in the world were laid end to end it would be a very good thing".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Where are these 100,000 jobs that Mr. Gates claims appear annually? In what branch(es) of "computer science?" Application development? Database administration? Desktop support? R&D? All of these could fall under the umbrella of "computer science," but they require totally different skills and training. Here's something to consider: if a company eliminates 100 engineers from application development and adds 100 network admin jobs (for example), that's 100 unemployed engineers and 100 admin openings competing for qualified applicants. The amount of training required in a "computer science" sub-field makes jumping from one field to another prohibitive for the employee. Especially given that no one wants to go from a senior job in one branch to an entry-level job in another. This creates a lot of inefficiency in the employment market. So it may be not that our schools are inferior; it may be instead the labor market is changing so fast that the labor pool can't keep up.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
First in the very early 1990s, I was laid off and wound up selling boots in an army/navy store for a couple of years while the market recovered. At the time I was in my early twenties, so I consider that a reasonable outcome given my experience level and professional abilities at the time. This last downturn, from 2000 onward, I've survived well enough an remained employed in the field.
And based upon those experiences I say that there's a damn good reason people are avoiding computer science and other technical fields. The job market for this skill-set is far too volatile. I know of many people with excellent skills who can't find work. One programmer friend, who is absolutely top notch, can't find work because he is over fifty; pure age discrimination.
University students aren't unable or unwilling to learn technical skills, instead they're making a good long term bet that training up for a skill in a volatile market might well leave them unable to pay-off the mortgage on a good home, pay for their children's college tuition, or any number of other basic middle class expectations.
I would not recommend this career to anyone who wanted to work in industry. For those who love the science in computer science, then get at Ph.D and conduct research as a faculty member at a university. Get tenure. Otherwise, you'll just get screwed.
No, $60k in South Dakota would be fine. The problem is they want to pay $60k in Seattle, where the median home price is >$450k.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
And IF WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS IS CORRECT finding a job more in line with your personality should be easy.
I read it differently. Bill Gates wants more H1-B workers which he can, unofficially, work at those kind of hours. That creates a watermark in the marketplace, against which non-H1B workers need to compete for jobs. I bet if Microsoft improved working conditions and company policies (both stemming from the same dysfunctional root, most likely) they'd have plenty of folks beating a path to their door.
Folks I've known who figured Microsoft would be the right place to work straight out of college have all "gotten the hell out" after a year or two. And it's not all about the hours - Apple has a much lower turnover rate and a lower percentage of H1-B's despite inhuman hour requirements.
Part of it is cultural - the 80-hour salaried job at Microsoft might be nirvana to a particular H1-B workers, but unacceptable to a well-educated American. Not to mention a Frenchman.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Give me a break. Someone lacking the liberal arts education required up through a four-year program is a "mindless drone" who is unaware of "things beyond the end of their nose"?
Again, I agree these things are great to have, but it's a matter of prioritization. Do you really support holding all kinds of productive people off the market, dependent, deep in debt at an unnecessarily young age to avoid the horrors of insufficient Shakespeare appreciation?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Mabye if we realized that international corporations owe no loyalty to any country, not even the one that they are headquartered in, there'd be no reason for such a tag because America isn't the problem. The problem is that economics is profoundly nationalistic and a form of warfare- and we've got a bunch of people selling weapons to both sides.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Sorry, but it sounds like more of the same corprate blather to me.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
Industrialize software development. It's still a science right now and not an engineering practice.
We're the only industry where the person who designs the product also works on creating it. This is a collosal mistake for the exact reason this article points out - there are not enough skilled hands to squander on the unskilled aspects of development.
The architect should never create class diagrams. The developer should never change the architecture. The Programmer should *never* change a method signature or add a new method or class.
Then the architects can be masters, the developers bachelors, and the programmers high school graduates.
*That*, my friends will cause an explosion in the quality of software development. If the developer has to design to the method level and get it right, reuse will become the way of life, not just a novelty. Typing can be learned in high school, as can method level programming.
If programmers are simply tackling a string of homework assignments from their point of view of simplicity (here's a problem method, fill it in) they can be more like carpenters and less like jacks of all trades.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
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The amount of money you get does not equal the amount of time spent unlike other careers
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You age sooner than a super model, you're considered "over the hill" after the age of 40 if you're still doing technical work.
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You seldom get paid to keep yourself current, some companies do, others do not. Most of the time, you are stuck with a technology segment while the world around you changes every 5 years. It was a hard time for me to move from Mainframe programming to UNIX/C, and it is going to be another hard time for me if I ever decide to move to Web/AJAX/Java development.
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Your job is in jeopardy to be outsourced or being forced adjusted for cheaper labor.
... and you can't take overtime because you're considered "a manager".
Really, who wants to deal with this crap? I'm sorry, but until conditions do not improve, it's going to be a tough sale to college students to go for CS's. People asks me about it and this is what I say: It is lot's of fun if you like it but at the end, you're better of going to business, med or become a lawyer if you want to get the moolah". Personally, I moved from software development to technical pre-sales and I could not be happier. I sometimes wondered if I should've gone for an MBA rather than my MS in CS. Oh well..Vi havas e-poston.
Yes it is a thorny issue. H1B has its upsides and down as any other matter. I, for one, was the holder of those highly coveted 65,000 H1B visas at one time in the past. If I do not have single dime in the dot com boom time in the silicon valley to my name right now, I owe it to that H1B> I came here from Canada, without knowing much, or heck, nothing, about what H1B entails. I was placed in Atlanta GA, at the time where all those people in Silicon Valley, who were making obscene amounts of money on IPOs, were farming their low level, day-to-day operations to where I worked. I was stuck with this company, Syntel, one of the biggest abusers of H1B visa, because the owner/CEO (they are publicly traded) was indian and had a large pool of available candidates. I met with some of these people. Some were sharp and US should be happy to have them in the workforce here but some others I have met were really the bottom of barrel.
US does not have a good system to justify these people. Most "engineers" these H1B abusing companies bring in, are/were brought in to, first learn than contribute to the projects they were supposed to be assisting from the get go. And nobody was saying anything. Mainly because, they needed to fill the desks with warm bodies. In my opinion, lots of these highly coveted H1B positions did not do any good to US economy but was a boon to the abusers of these visa holders, such as Syntel, Tata etc. They were able to fill up their coffers without much effort.
H1B to permanent residency was a good promise as long as it floated. But in my case, less than 3 months before my, so-called, labor certification got approved by the dept. of labor, I got canned by the second company who held my visa and I found myself, facing deportation. Fortunately, I had a girlfriend at the time, wife now, who is a US citizen and we had to take our marriage plans way in advance. So, if these people are really useful and contributing in the positions they hold, I think US should do something to speed up this process and should not hold them tied to the employers. Otherwise, DOL, should have a possibility to can the visas of some and send them back. And before the approval of H1B visas, I think something as substantial as a degree from an accredited foreign college should be a requirement to prevent the abuser companies, bringing in the riff-raff as experts.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
There is no need for the government to intervene by importing desperate labor from either India via the H-1B visa or Mexico via an open-border policy. The free market, by itself and without government intervention, will fix the shortage or surplus. Wages rise, and the shortage disappears. Wages fall, and layoffs occur -- thus fixing the surplus.
Washington does not intervene to fix the labor surplus (which is leading to massive layoffs) in Detroit. Why should Washington intervene to fix a labor shortage?
If Microsoft paid the market wage for computer programmers, then plenty of programmers with the "right" skills would apply for Microsoft jobs. The problem is that Microsoft refuses to pay the market wage. The market wage is not what Microsoft management considers to be the right wage. The market wage (and the market working conditions) is the wage (and quality of working conditions) at which the supply of labor meets the demand for that labor. The market wage is the intersection point of the labor-demand curve and the labor-supply curve.
The bottom line is that Microsoft (and many other American companies) refuse to pay the market wage. So, they want government to intervene in the free market so that Microsoft can pay below-market-wage salaries.
If you read job ads, you'll notice a large number of them contain requirements that applicants have an unrealistically long list of highly specialized buzzwords in their experience, but they aren't willing to pay for it. From my experience, most companies don't need that long list of buzzwords (which is one reason why they aren't willing to pay more), as long as you have a few fundamental skills, but the list persists because many managers are dreamers and the ones who aren't are afraid that they don't know what they need or that people will lie on their resumes so if they ask for the 10 times more than they need and get only 10% of what they ask for, they're still ahead.
To solve this fundamental problem, you need to train managers and hiring managers to figure out what they *really* need instead of listening to the fad-of-the-day sales hype department. How on earth are you going to do that?
Another set of problems has in many fields (e.g. Oracle admins, Unix admins, SAP, etc), you can have all the training and certificates in the world, but until you have *years* of real world experience you won't get anywhere. Open source operating systems and languages and the ability for people to gain experience on their own time without spending a fortune has helped. But since it's not real world experience, so unless an employer is *willing to take a chance on you*, you're SOL. Apprenticeships go a long way to solving this problem, but they aren't wide spread and if they exists they're usually only available to students and not people out in the field (e.g. COBOL programmers with 30 years experience), so this limits the growth. And even in the case of student apprenticeships, they really aren't emphasized, so most students tend to ignore them (why should I waste one year if I could earn money sooner?). No idea how to fix this cultural issue.
Relating to the COBOL programmer example, it's not fashionable in the US to be continuously learning, but technology is a field where it is a must.
Finally, it has to do with the american culture. In countries like India, China, Korea, and Japan, if you say "My son is a star athlete and an accomplished actor", the natural response is "He must have failed in science and technology.". In the US, if you say "My son had the highest mark in the Math Olympiad and won a scholarship to MIT", the natural response is "He must have failed in sports and fitness and has no business sense." Dilbert cartoons only worsen the belief that programming jobs aren't anything to be proud of and that the life of a programmer is boring and purely political.
Things have improved dramatically on this front in the last 10 years, but there's still a strong cultural bias in the US towards jocks and entertainment stars instead of the sciences. But until this changes, you won't see people lining up to be programs. It's just not culturally fashionable.
If they want to know why, all they have to do is look at the career possibilities.
#1) Unneeded: IT is seen (By the C-Level executives) as expensive, overpriced, overstaffed, and overhead. It is one of the first departments to get hit with layoffs when times get tough.
#2) No promotion/raise: The only way I have gotten a promotion or a raise is to change jobs. 5 years of working for a company, working to better the systems and protect the company assets. When the Manager moved up (to the GM spot) I put in for the position. I am told that I am not qualified. Strange, you would think that 10 years management experience, PM classes and 2 years towards a MBA would qualify me.
#3) Respect: When problems occur, IT is the first to get blamed Do I even need to explain this one?
#4) Cost Cutting: IT is the only field I have ever worked where you can and do get asked to take a pay cut while doubling your work load.
#5) Knowledge and training == 0: This is one of the few fields where people are paid for what they know, only to have the critical decisions made without their input. How many of us have been overridden by a C-Level Exec? Ex: "I have decided that we will be a MS Windows shop from now on. I need you to replace those 8 old HP9000 oracle servers with this new quad processor Windows server." --- Real example!
#6) Education: Most realize that after 4 years in college, they enter the workforce 7 years behind the curve. Experience is everything!
the basic problem with your points are the assumption that we MUST churn out more IT, to the detriment of all other employment fields.
1- and if the answer is none?
2- how many people recieved health insurance with the first paycheck? often there is a 30-90-180days before health insurance starts.
3- there is no savings at point of beginning.... it is YEARS down the line if it works. Investment cannot come from savings which follow years later.
4- perhaps the correlation is not, the existance of music and art makes people math smart, but rather, math smart people are also people who appreciate music and art.
this is akin to saying, people who know how to swim are wet.. so throw a non-swimmer in a pool and they will/can swim..
5- how the hell do you do that with the NCLB? seriously, one of the reason some other countries do so very well on standardized testing, is that they DROP underperforming students from educational programs, leaving the mid to reasonably behind for testing and highschool.. they leave children out.... some kids are that stupid.
6- physics? to graduate from highschool everyone should have a semester of chem II and physics? it's not practical.. not everyone needs these classes.
7- here I'll agree with you. The most important argument and flaw in the system I see.
8- here I'll agree with you almost wholeheartedly.. it's not a philosphy, it's an unfunded federal mandate.. a major distinction. To keep getting the federal dollars for school systems, schools must get 100% of their kids in line, and to do so- they get no additional money where needed- they just lose funding &control in some cases, of their own educational program.. The result has not been dumbing down of an entire curriculum, it's been the refocusing of the entire curriculum to being 'program the kids to pass the standardized test'
First step is, balancing the need of more IT professionals vs. other professions.
I think you'd do a lot better training welfare recipients/disabled types in medical technician training.
IT training requires a lot more mental capacity & attitude than some people have.
blood draw tech, orderlies, nurses assistants, dental assistants, etc.. a slot where life saving is not key...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
We may possibly get an overall monetary benefit as a country from offshoring, but you have to ask, who is getting that benefit?
The overall net shift of wealth in America due to offshoring:
Some part of it gets transferred to each of:
Possibly the country as a whole might be getting a net benefit. Not have to pay money for higher wages to Americans can be seen as "net benefit" since we aren't paying our own workers more money. Maybe that is seen as a "wasteful" cost. My main beef here anyway is that any net benefit gained mainly goes to the rich. The class of "the rich" in America are mostly made up by groups (B) and (C). Jobless people and waiters (the 'recycled') are not often a part of buying consumers getting a benefit in group (C). So, it's really a net loss in economic wealth for a large group of (A) people. Like other economic theory proposed by Conservatives and Libertarians (e.g. trickle down economics), it's mostly an excluse to justify a massive shift of middle-class wealth to the hands of a few.
Of course job recycling is nothing new in the economy. A decline of something like horse buggy whip production has traditionally always been replaced by something like automobile production. I would have disagreed 100 years ago with attempting to halt technological progress, as I absolutely do now. I'm not a Luddite trying to stop technological progress, it's the lifeblood of economic growth. But the difference now from 100 years ago is that by removing a high-tech job now from the American workforce, we AREN'T replacing it with a higher paying job in a newer technological field. All other previous economic cycles had somewhere higher to grow to. The off-shoring process now replaces skilled jobs in America with lower paying and/or less skilled jobs chiefly characterized by the fact that they simply cannot be easily off-shored (being a barber, a waiter, etc).
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, however, there is. -Berra
There are two problems with the teaching of math and science in school today.
One is that most teachers understand neither. They learned to do math the same way we are teaching it - by rote. This leaves them with no actual understanding of math, just a larger arsenal of mathematical tools to apply to problems. It's not really mathematics, it's computation. They didn't learn to actually perform scientific experiments, although they can explain every step of the scientific method to you and grade your essay without a cheat sheet. So what they are teaching is really not math and science, but the appreciation of math and science.
The other is that even the teachers who do know something are hog-tied by the regulations. The instructor must follow the curriculum and must make sure all students pass standardized testing. When a child doesn't want to learn, the instructor is blamed and has to put their effort into the problem - I'm not implying that such students should simply be ignored and left to fall by the wayside, but it's horribly unfair to support these children at the expense of others.
Actually, if you want to talk about money, THAT is an issue that should be raised. I know this is a confrontational belief, but I think we need to stop spending so much money supporting "special needs" students. We spend multiples of the money spent on the average student on students who simply will never come up to the level of children we are therefore neglecting. I think that this is simply wrong. Today we have the technology to detect many developmental disabilities before birth and a parent has the choice to have the child or not. Thus, I feel it is wrong to force others to shoulder the load. If you want to have that child, and be responsible for it, that is fine with me. Your beliefs or your heart may require it. But to then expect me to shoulder the burden is quite frankly unconscionable. And to penalize other people's children, well, that's downright mean and quite selfish.
The sad truth however is that the educational system is not about educating children to the best of our ability. It's about producing good little drones that will go and do as they are told. Unfortunately, this trend's ever-increasing prevalence has produced a nation of sheep who, for the most part, are utterly incapable of putting their brain to the purposes for which it was intended.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My mother in law is a Biology teacher with a background in Microbiology and Genetics. She has been asked to leave both private and public schools for the crime of failing honors students who don't learn the material. I've never sat in her class, but the criticism has never been that she is a poor teacher. Rather, it is that she will not lower her standards enough. She will allow any student to retake any test, with the provision that the new grade completely replaces the old. You can retake test one 5 times, until you have it completely memorized. Still, students fail.
Is the proposed solution to provide additional tutoring (she stays late after school every day willing to tutor kids who need it)? Is it encouraging only people willing to do their homework to take honors classes? No, the proposed solution is to reduce standards on the top level classes so kids with dreams of becoming a doctor do not feel discouraged. When parents and administrators value grades above learning, everyone loses. My mother in law will be looking for a new job at a school that will not expect her to pass people who are not willing to learn the material.
Atanamis
I work in IT and have for nigh on 20 years. At this point in time I would not recommend that anyone consider a career in the field.
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There are two main reasons: crappy pay and sweatshop conditions. I do not believe there is any other industry in North America where you are expected to have a degree, work in excess of 40 hours a week on a regular basis and do it all as a regular employee making $40K.
Consider the following exerpt from the BC Employment Standards Act.
The following provisions do not apply to high technology professionals:
Part 4 [Hours of Work and Overtime] , other than section 39 of the Act;
Part 5 [Statutory Holidays] of the Act.
( http://www.labour.gov.bc.ca/esb/hightech/regulat.
Section 39 is a single sentence:
Despite any provision of this Part, an employer must not require or directly or indirectly allow an employee to work excessive hours or hours detrimental to the employee's health or safety
( http://www.qp.gov.bc.ca/statreg/stat/E/96113_01.h
In summary, high tech employers can demand as many hours as they want, do not have to pay overtime, and do not have to pay stats. They are, however, prevented from (knowingly) working their employees to death. Thanks Liberals!
I'll say that I have encountered few potential employers that try to exploit these rules to the fullest (EA does have a very large presence here) but I think the fact that these are what the government considers to be the Standard clearly illustrates the sweatshop nature of the industry.
As for pay. Consider an average high tech worker (Nigel) and an average government employee (Elmer):
Both graduate from high school:
Nigel goes to college (-30K/yr)
Elmer goes to work for the govt (+40K/yr)
For the sake of comparing apples to apples, they are both reasonably frugal and banking 25% of their income (obviously kids or lifestyle will impact this but it is a wash if you assume they can somehow afford to have the same lifestyle)
After 4 years, Nigel graduates.
Now Nigel and Elmer are both 23.
If Elmer has 46K in his RRSP. He's gotten a few raises (COL + seniority) so his income up to about 45K.
Nigel on the other hand is 120K in debt and, if he is lucky, finds a 40K job.
Another 5 years:
Elmer and Nigel meet up for their 29th birthdays
Elmer is sticking with the plan: he now has about 140K for retirement and he's making 50K.
Nigel is also making 50K and he's paid down about 40K of his student debt so he is only 80K in the hole.
Another 9 years:
By age 38, Nigel has paid off his student debt and is making slightly more than Elmer (if he is lucky). Elmer, on the other hand, could retire tomorrow but he might as well max up that government pension. Besides, at this point, Elmer has so much vacation and seniority that he never has to be there when things are busy so why quit?
So why don't more government employees retire at 45? The answer is pretty obvious if you consider the difference between the lifestyle of a student and a 20 year old with a $40K salary and a month vacation.
If I had it to do over, I would go the civil service route for sure. As for Mr. Gates, if he wants to find more IT workers, he should start by looking inside his wallet: I suspect that's where most of those "qualified professionals" are hiding.
You're absolutely right, age discrimination is rampant and a huge problem for the workers.
If there were really a huge labor shortage, employers wouldn't be able to afford to discriminate against people like you.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Oh god, not this again.
Jesus christ, people, those prospective CS students aren't idiots. They see the falling salaries and increased outsourcing, and they're going into something that will pay better. I'd advise my son to do the same.
Bringing in more temporary foreign workers is obviously going to make this worse. Continued or increased downward pressure (via cheaper labor) on software engineering salaries is going to reduce the motivation to get a CS degree here.
If those foreign workers were going to stay, they'd want the same wages we do. They're not though, and who can blame them. They get to underbid us, take the money home in a few years to a wildly different economy, and live like kings (or at least extremely comfortably relative to their friends neighbors that didn't serve time in the US engineering market). I'd do the same thing if I was in their position.
So if we're going to pay for those foreign skilled workers in terms of economic impact, let's keep them. That is, let them work here only while they're in the (hopefully expedited if they're really in such critical demand) process of becoming citizens. Now that guy probably contributes to our economy for the rest of his career. Of course since it will cost these guys just as much to live here and send their kids to college as it costs us, your big company doesn't get cheap engineers this way; but that's not supposed to be the point, right?
> This issue has reached a crisis point.
If the demand for software developers is high, then the wages should increase. If the wages increase, then more people will enter the field. It's called a free market. Look it up.
The reason why everyone is leaving the software field, from college students to middle-aged professionals is that the demand for software engineers is at an all time low due to outsourcing. Outsourcing --> firing existing engineers and lower wages --> college students waking up and choosing a different field.
No one is going to enter a field that they know will not provide a means of living for 50 years. Most C.S. students in America and Britain are from India and China, and most of them plan to go back after getting the degree because that's where the jobs are.
H-1B visas should have never been granted in the first place. It only encourages a brain drain in the U.S. H-1B visas also allow employers to greatly abuse their foreign employees. It's a scam to serve politicians and their corporate pimps.
Stop bitching and moaning about there not being enough qualified professional software developers. Developing software correctly is hard. It takes decades to become truly good at it. And I personally know of a dozen highly qualified professionals who have left the field all together because of outsourcing. Treat developers like crap and what do you expect? It's not like being a developer is considered a sexy job, and it won't get you laid. So the stability and income were the only thing drawing people into the field. Now that they are gone for good, the people are also leaving.
As far as keeping America competitive, it's already too late. The software industry has gone the way of manufacturing, and like manufacturing it ain't coming back. The only thing America has left is the service industry, and when you think of America, you think of good service, right?
One last rant. The society that controls the infrastructure of the Internet and other computer based technologies will be the superpower of this century. The only question is whether that country will be India or China. File that under national security.
There's plenty of unemployed people right here in the US that are fully qualified to fill these positions. If these corporations would simply pay market rates - and stop the discrimination and abuse - they'd be able to fill every empty seat with experienced employees.
On a level playing field, this is what they'd have to do. Treat the employees right or they'll go work for someone else. But these corporations don't want to play by the rules. Forget those nasty federal and state laws about discrimination and fair labor standards; they'll just pay off some politicians to create a special category of employees and call it H1B. Very handy; now they can import foreigners and use them essentially as slave labor. Yes, slave labor. If you can't quit or change jobs what would YOU call it?
Why am I not surprised that they want to expand this practice? The constant crying about "We need to be competitive" should be a warning sign.
I've got a better idea: these corporations should bring themselves into FULL compliance with all federal and state labor laws and pay their employees according to the prevailing market rate. And if they can't do this and remain competitive, their business plan isn't workable and they should either fix the problems or shut down.
Let's see now; Microsoft has a long history of legal problems because of the way they treat their employees. Now they need to increase the number of imported indentured servants to remain competitive. Nothing new here; same old story.
Why do we allow this to continue?
In the jobs I've held so far, I've brought knowledge from my education and from books only to be disallowed from using it because the boss doesn't know how to use it, has no way of verifying that I'm using it correctly, and is terrified of having to find another employee who knows it too. And yet, I don't know any other way to get the job done, so I end up using the knowledge I have anyway. This makes me "disobedient." When the books and the evidence show that I am right, this makes my situation even worse. No boss likes to be proved wrong.
I have never had my IQ officially tested, but I would estimate it to be in the range of yours. One thing I have learned is that the only way to get along at a job is to not always be right. Even if you were always right, other people do not understand that to be possible. They make mistakes (and try to hide them). If you never get caught in a mistake, that proves that you are better at hiding them. That means, the smarter you are, the less reliable others hold you to be.
My boss asked me questions about watts to BTUs. I answered, and made a chart of it also converting to tons (because the AC was in tons, half the equipment was in Watts, and half was in BTUs). I had the answer and spreadsheet to him in under 5 minutes. He spend the next 2 hours calling multiple people to check my work. I have made frequency calculations and such that are very complicated in his presence, which he then contacts the vendors to verify the conversion factors. Am I annoyed? I was at first. However, realizing that many people answer questions they do not know the answer to as if they were an expert, I do not blame him. It is not now, nor ever was personal. It's because he's a manager, and he has been fed bad info before by others. It's his ass on the line if I give him bad info, so he'll check it until he's confident with me or the information he requested. However, after taunting me when I answered "I don't know" a few times, he's realized that I will give the accurate answer, even if the only accurate answer I am capable of is "I don't know."
It isn't personal when people think you are a moron. Look around you, everyone else is, so they would be a moron to presume that you weren't. You have to be personalble. You have to accept that you will have to prove yourself repeatedly. Don't ever be condescending. No one is ever open to an idea after they become defensive. I had a boss that didn't like me. He never listened to me. I made a really nice report "proving" that there was a simple way to save about $5,000,000 per year in communications cost. He never gave it a serious look, but I gave it to him in a bright folder. He'd have to take it out every once in a while to show me he was considering it. He'd look pretty damned stupid if I were to show it to his boss and his boss liked it (of course, that'd get me fired). So it was in his office for 6 months with him having to look at the bright folder every once in a while. But that's an example of one of the things you have to do to win them over. Don't preach. Don't lecture. Give them options and let them decide. Even if the choice is wrong, don't fight it. They are the boss. They will always win.
Learn to love Alaska
The point is to test your ability to think on your feet.
No, the point is to get a good candidate for the job. The ability to think fast does not necessarily indicate a good developer.
If you can code it off the cuff in the allowed time, you've exhibited a basic level of competence.
And you've just pissed off the 20 year veteran asking him to prove that he knows what he's been doing for the last 20 years. Even if you ask a harder question, it's still insulting and tells you nothing other than his ability to think fast.
The resume is enough to exhibit a basic level of competence unless you're hiring straight out of college. You want to know whether they really worked at their previous company, at that position, doing what they wrote they did. A background check will catch those first two items. Less insulting and more useful questions can determine the third.
And BTW, I've heard your argument a hundred times.
Well, aren't you special...