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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.
...and Microsoft will do anything to solve this "crisis" except spend money on it.
...and meanwhile keep those cheap programmers coming from overseas, otherwise, where will the next version of Windows come from?
That's the government's job! (i.e. yours and mine)
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
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
I have no idea why there would be such a need for more workers, it's almost as if all the employed engineers are busy doing something else at work, like going to some website and posting comments or something... nah, that can't be it!
stuff |
Here's a thought:
What if there were no immigration quotas?
What if we let anyone and everyone except criminals, terrorists, and those incapable of working come in by just paying port fees, putting down a deposit for a return airplane or bus ticket, and showing they either had a job offer or had a month's worth of living expenses available? Give them all work-authorization cards.
In the first few years there would be a lot of wage-adjustments as certain markets like high-tech, manual-labor, and low-wage retail got flooded but in the long run I think it would be good for the overall economy. Instead of high-tech jobs going to India dragging down American wages, high-tech jobs would remain here at depressed wages but the American economy would benefit from the local employment. It would also give the few Americans who are truly lazy or underperforming a kick in the proverbial kiester if they want to stay employed.
So what if I and my fellow technocrats see wages drop to below $35,000 for starting college grads and proportionately lower for experienced programmers? If it means a more robust American economy and better cultural exchanges with the larger immigrant populations then I'm all for it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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."
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.
Let's see..
1) Absolutely KILL yourself in college with 35 hours a week of homework for ONE Database class while your friends are spending about 12 hours a week for all homework in all classes.
2) Pay $50,000 over 4 years just like they do.
3) Graduate into a low-status job when it comes to dating (I get a LOT more action from my $500 massage therapy training than I ever did from my CS degree-- MT is a female dominated field- you can't turn around without finding three or four who want to hang out and do tradeoffs and go to conferances- and MT work is like working out 8 hours a day so they tend to be fit and they tend to also be very nice people because they deal with the public a lot-- the pay is crap of course).
4) Start with a reasonably high salary-- but after a few years, it becomes clear you need to leave the field and project lead or manage (that's me these days) if you ever want to make "real" money.
5) Be managed by people who absolutely HATE that they have to have you- they view you as a COST.
6) Never ever be understood by management (either overworked when you are stupid or underworked once you smarten up). They'll replace you in a heartbeat with crappy but cheaper labor. I.e. NO JOB SECURITY. How can you buy a bloody house when you might be unemployeed for 7 months without notice.
7) And then-- at 55-- no more work. I've known so many who were just pushed out of the field. And you need the insurance you see. (Hence also my shift into manager+tech skills).
Corporations spent the 90's and the early 00's repeatedly teaching us that they have no loyalty to us and that they are going to hire people making $10,000 to replace us.
Okay-- WE GET IT. We are leaving the field. Young pups are not entering the field in the first place. And now they complain? Screw them. I hope they have severe problems and end up having to pay $150 an hour for 5 or 6 years to get people to enter the field again.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And IF WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS IS CORRECT finding a job more in line with your personality should be easy.
I read it differently. Bill Gates wants more H1-B workers which he can, unofficially, work at those kind of hours. That creates a watermark in the marketplace, against which non-H1B workers need to compete for jobs. I bet if Microsoft improved working conditions and company policies (both stemming from the same dysfunctional root, most likely) they'd have plenty of folks beating a path to their door.
Folks I've known who figured Microsoft would be the right place to work straight out of college have all "gotten the hell out" after a year or two. And it's not all about the hours - Apple has a much lower turnover rate and a lower percentage of H1-B's despite inhuman hour requirements.
Part of it is cultural - the 80-hour salaried job at Microsoft might be nirvana to a particular H1-B workers, but unacceptable to a well-educated American. Not to mention a Frenchman.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
What do we need to do in order to produce more IT professionals? Take a look at the list below for a few idea.
Here's my solution:
1) Poll all current welfare and permanent disability recipients. See how many are interested and capable of learning to perform IT work.
2) Instead of continuing to pump money into a system that only perpetuates poverty, educate the people who are both interested and capable. Get them a CNA or MCSE and help them get their first job. After the first paycheck, government assistance ends since at that point you should be a) getting paid and b) have health coverage.
3) Increase funding for science and math teachers from elementary school to high school. We can use the money that we're saving from the public assistance programs to fund this.
4) Increase funding for music and art. While most people don't realize this, there is a strong connection between math and music as well as science and art in the human brain. Researchers are still trying to work out exactly what it is, but studies show that there is definitely a link for most people.
5) Raise instead of lower the requirements in order to graduate high school. One of my friends has a daughter who just started high school this year. The only math requirements for her to graduate are two semesters of math. What this means is that they're only required to take and pass Pre-Algebra I & II. Since most everyone on here are IT pros of some kind, I'm sure you're aware that this doesn't cut it for college. Algebra I & II, Geometry, and Trig should be the minimum requirements, IMHO.
6) As a corollary to #5, we need to raise the requirements for science as well. Her school district only requires two semesters of science. What this really means is that you take a semester of earth science and you take health class. IMHO, you should take Biology I & II, Chemestry I & II, Anatomy & Physiology, and Physics.
7) They do require 8 semesters of English, however, I can tell you that what passes for papers in many of these classes is laughable. I have a friend who teaches freshman & sophomore composition at a local university. The level of literacy among these kids is...horrific. I've helped her grade papers and seen things like an entire 3 page paper that was a single run on sentence. These kids do not know the difference between things like "to", "too", and "two". I cannot count the number of times I've seen someone write something like "I'm going two the store." "There", "their", and "they're" is another one that they don't seem to be aware of. Then there are the kids that write papers like they send IM and text messages, "UR 4 real?"
8) Ditch "no child left behind" philosophy. This blatantly ignores the fact that some of the kids *need* to be left behind. If they cannot keep pace in a regular classroom, they need to be sent to remedial classes until they are on a par with their peers. Keeping them in the regular classrooms has a negative effect on the kids who do their work and keep up. All this has done is resulted in a dumbing down of the entire curriculum. Here in Dallas, the school district recently published an article proclaiming their pride in the fact that only 25% of the graduates last year were functionally illiterate. They're proud of this figure because it's down from 33% last year. That means 1 in 4 high school graduates cannot read and write well enough to fill out a job application at Wal-mart. They cannot add and subtract well enough to make change for a dollar. That is absolutely shameful and how anyone in their right mind can take pride in that is beyond me.
2 cents,
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
everything to do with ID'ing yourself as in the x-th percentile of intelligence
Unfortunately this is not true. I'm in the 99.9th percentile as far as intelligence (at least according to the Triple Nine Society) but I only have a Bachelor's degree and a not-very-good GPA, which is enough to keep me from going to a good graduate school. Why is my GPA so low? Because schools don't measure intelligence.
When I was in elementary school I began to realize that there is a "sweet spot" for intelligence in school. Since then I've seen more and more evidence of it. As a student's intelligence approaches the sweet spot from below, the student gets higher and higher grades. But if intelligence continues to increase past that, grades begin to go back down. (Of course there are other factors besides intelligence that can cause low grades, but the main idea is valid.) This is why "gifted" programs work -- "gifted" students actually get better grades in harder courses because the standard courses bore them to death. But even "gifted" programs have a "sweet spot" beyond which your intelligence starts to work against you. (I put "gifted" in quotes because it presupposes someone doing the gifting.)
After ten years I am considering leaving the computer field. 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.
My mother is a math teacher. Her students always complain to her, "Why do we have to learn this stuff? We'll never have to use it!" Sadly, I find myself siding with the students: if you go to the trouble to learn, say, differential equations, you won't be able to use them because you won't be able to find a boss who understands them enough to allow you to use them.
Intelligence is an asset when you use it against the natural world. But it seems to be an enormous liability in society. So don't go thinking that employers want intelligence. They don't. They want obedience. And that is what schools really measure: people whose intelligence is below the "sweet spot" can't understand orders well enough to obey them, but people whose intelligence is above that point understand their orders too well and tend to question them, and that isn't wanted either.
That is why employers are in a quandary with engineering. Engineering demands intelligence and intelligence doesn't work well with obedience. Some of this is due to American culture, too, where, in spite of the school system, people are raised with the ideas of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which is why many employers prefer to outsource to cultures where obedience to authority is a more important and accepted part of life.
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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.
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 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!