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Bill Gates Speaks Out Against Immigration Policies
Jeian writes "None other than Bill Gates has spoken out against tighter immigration policies in the US. According to Gates, the US is losing skilled immigrants to other countries that are easier to immigrate to. Among his comments: "I personally witness the ill effects of these policies on an almost daily basis at Microsoft.""
Translation- I made billions in this industry, but if you try to work your way up from intern in my company to my level I'll fire you and replace you with somebody who spent 1/10th your cost growing up and getting an education, regardless of skill, because it's better for my bottom line.
With attitudes like this among our upper class, can anybody blame high school kids for not going into computer science?
Every programmer out there who lived through the depression in our industry of 2001-2005 is asking "Where was Bill with these jobs then?", and unfortunately the answer is Bangalore.
I suggest that to change this image, for every H-1b Microsoft hires, Bill Gates donates a $60,000 scholarship to an American high school student to study computer science, or a $50,000 scholarship to an unemployed American programmer to update their skillset and get a higher degree. Then maybe we'll believe what he says on this topic. Until then, he's just lobbying for the Cheap Labor crowd, which includes his own business.
My problem, I guess, is that I just can't bring myself to trust these folks any longer. They'll go for cheap over quality any day of the week- even when it means a 7 year delay in the next operating system only to have a bunch of GUI bells and whistles and no real new fixes or functionality.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Apparently he thinks people from America aren't as smart as people in other countries.
The mis-conception is understanable. Smart people in the US don't need Microsoft to get a foot in the US door, where as immigrants need anything they can take to get out of there plague ridden countries.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ouch!
Mr Gates did mention that 640K skilled immigrants ought to be enough for USA.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Bill Gates's public statements on immigration are about as credible as his public statements on Google's business plan. The man has a history of boldly lying when it suits his business interests. Why would anyone seriously consider his claims on this topic?
Microsoft is also a fond supporter of H1B visa immigrants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1B_visa/ From my own personal experience working as an IT recruiter in the past, H1B Java Developers with similar education and experience often would work for about 30% less than a US citizen.
The mantle of "hire the best, no matter the cost" has been assumed by Google. The good ones from MS all burned out long ago, and they aren't going back. The rest of the best in this country would cost MS too much to hire, or won't take any offer because they find MS to be unsavory.
Gates has to look overseas -- it's the only place he has left.
Among his comments: "I personally witness the ill effects of these policies on an almost daily basis at Microsoft.""
In other words, I think my employees suck.
According to Gates, the US is losing skilled immigrants to other countries that are easier to immigrate to.
Not to mention the US ban on human cloning. At this rate, with no immigrant labor, and no clone slaves, our future workforce is going to be heavily reliant on robots. And we all know how well that always turns out.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Why would he care where people immigrate to, as long as they work for Microsoft? Of course, outsourcing laws themselves need to be tightened. If nothing else, outsourced employees are not paying US income taxes and are neither protected by or obligated to any US laws. It's only fair to at least impose duties to cover their use of US public infrastructure that local companies pay for in taxes. Also if, say, Chinese government has any issues with MS software, corporate executables should be extradited to serve time in Chinese re-education camps, or whatever punishment is deemed appropriate by the local government. One should be required to follow SOME country's laws completely.
But raise the quota in a controlled fashion so we aren't flooded by H1Bs over the next couple years.
I've always said, I'd rather compete against the guy down the hall making an American wage, than someone in India, China, or Vietnam making 20 percent of what I'm making. Even if I can outperform that guy 5 to 1, it's hard to convince upper management of that. And yes, America has always benefited from the influx of restless talent from foreign shores. Our colleges need them, our startups need them, our Fortune 1000 companies need them. Now is not the time to encourage a brain drain going the other way.
Gates may be right. Im surprised Microsoft hasnt outsourced large amounts of its programming and customer service jobs yet. Gates basically saying theyll have no choice if they cant import the talent they need. Well paid immigrants keep money in our economy.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
hardly.
What could that post be trolling for?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm perplexed at Bill's thinking here. He apparently doesn't think US students are getting enough math and science or are going into that field. So his solution is to bring over endentured servents for a fraction of a US worker's salary to make up for the slack.
What's a smart college bound kid going to do? Go into math and science when he's competing against people that will always work for a lot less than he wants to make, or go into law and become an ambluance chasing attorney?
And to top it off: Bill wants a technical solution to this company's incomptence in hiring people and getting into markets. Bill your stock price is flat not due to that you don't have the best C++ coder that knows how to make recursive data structures, it is because your business model is outdated and you don't have anything exciting in the pipeline.
Course this is rational behavior for someone who can't continue to run his business: say "look our problem is X and if only you let me do Y I would still be making money in the stock market"
http://www.creativeclass.org/_flight_articles.shtm l
Richard Florida, author of "The Rise of the Creative Class" has written another book "The Flight of the Creative Class". The books are the result of his research on why some cities prosper better than others. He points out a couple of things: 1 - Some people are better for the economy than others. 2 - The people we need to drive the economy won't follow jobs to places they hate living. One of the reasons our economy has been so good is because we have been able to attract the best scientists, doctors and entrepreneurs from the rest of the world. If we drive these people away, it's our loss and we will suffer.
On a slightly different topic, I note that farmers in Colorado can't get the labor they need because of the tighter border control. Cutting our nose off to spite our face is truly clueless. We need these people.
How is stemming illegal immigration going to hurt Microsoft from issuing H1B visas? I have not heard about making it more difficult for legal immigrants, just illegal.
You can't expect business owners to be against a system that allows them to import what they perceive to be better-quality workers. It's not a popular stance, but I truly believe we're sowing the seeds of our own techie demise. Why?
1. Our educational system is getting progressively worse. Students do not come out of most American schools with a good grasp of math and science. IN developing countries like China and India, they're turning out well-educated workers all the time. We don't force students to study, and there's no consequence for failure. Worse yet, should you not graduate from college, you're stuck in a low-level service job for the rest of your life. Large companies won't even look at candidates with no degree anymore. (I've noticed this first-hand...there are way more underqualified college graduates in the corporate world than there were 10 years ago.)
2. We feel entitled to way more than we're actually worth. It really makes me angry when I see people with mediocre skills making the same or more than me, just because they're good negotiators and can game the system. Also, have you seen what entry-level students are demanding to be paid just out of school? News flash: even if you live in New York City, asking for $55K for an entry-level job is way out of line with reality. One of the reasons the outsourced and immigrant labor pool is attractive is cost. New grads in other countries don't demand insane salaries or complain because the work is difficult.
3. Right or wrong, American tech workers are often considered lazy and painted as having a bad attitude. Giving your life over to your job is stupid, but complaining every time you have to put in an extra hour or two is going to accelerate the trend offshore.
4. Our costs are way out of proportion with the rest of the world. If people would learn to use credit responsibly, live within their means and reduce their consumption, they wouldn't need 5-6% raises every year, or hop jobs every year for a 10% raise.
Gates may be using this to his advantage, but I can't say I disagree totally! You have two labor pools. One is addicted to flashy cars and gadgets, and costs an average of $80K a year per person. The other is smarter, happy to be working, and costs much less. If you were running Slashdot Software, Inc., which would you pick?
The border is simply an imaginary line enforced with real guns. Nations are cages. Borders divide people.
I imagine a day when any person can freely travel across the planet (not unlike freely travelling in your own country).
Why is it that corporations (money) has the freedom to travel anywhere they want, yet ordinary people aren't.
You want free trade? Then I want the right to sell my labour anywhere i choose.
It's alright for tech workers and engineers to have their wages depressed by opening up the borders meanwhile the MBAs, lawyers, physicians and such are under no such threat. If you're going to open up the floodgates at least make it equal opportunity.
I think a lot of the people here are looking at this from the wrong angle. He doesn't specifically target ONLY programmers, or ONLY network technicians. It seems his general idea is that most people coming into this country with very high skills in different fields posess the knowledge and intelligence to be a real great asset to the country, but are turned down because they are immigrants.
This same talk has recently been appearing in Canadian news papers, where a lot of scientists, doctors, lawyers, and IT people come to Canada or the U.S. in hopes of offering their knowledge to these two countries, but instead end up working at coffee shops, driving taxi's, or working cleaning jobs and night doing general jobs. If I`m not mistaken, this is what Bill Gates is trying to say.
Regardless of what his intentions are, I think what I`m talking about here is a legitimate issue which should be looked at, without worrying who is trying to get this idea across.
Me being an immigrant myself, I can tell you that is indeed a problem, with my father going throught different levels of school and universities in Poland, but ending up being a machine maintenance worker for some plant.
And why? Because he simply doesn't have the benefit of fluently speaking english, and Canada not recognizing his skills at all, which I think is a shame for both the country and my family, since we could both benefit from placing these people in the fields where they would be a lot more usefull.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Why are people up in arms over this .. he should be allowed to hire anyone he wants to.
.. higher per capita cell phones, cars, computers, etc. would be unsustainable even if the 5% unemployed people went to work in factories.
MS Windows is exported the world over. It's an international product. Should Linux be restricted to Finnish programmers? And Ipods to the British (where jonathan ive is from).
What's with people hysterical xenophobia?? No country can isolate itself and progress.
Cheaper labor increases corporate profits, but that money is stored as assets in financial institutions.The banks can give out many times the assets owned amount in loans that are used for things like energy harvesting, pharmaceuticals, housing, start-ups, building cars. Etc. Crap that improves quality of life.
All the stuff we have
No instead you would have people leaving comfy desk jobs to work hard labor in factories. Resulting in overall innovation reducing.
But whatever, I cant change xenophobia with logic and rationality.
Which do we really need here in the US? Do we really want highly skilled immigrants to fill highly skilled jobs, or do we want cheap labor that will do the jobs no one else wants to do? Are kids who grew up here complaining about losing construction/landscaping and migrant farm jobs to immigration?
We are all just people.
Wow, suddenly I almost feel like there should be stricter immigration laws!
The core of the issue is that the education system is broken in the USA and it would require to collect more taxes from businesses, from individuals to fix it. It's much easier to "import" better educated people from other coutries, which are willing to spend the money on traing their citizens. It also serves the splended great purpose to keep the American workforce more competitive, which is of course also benefits the profitability of the American companies.
Basically, Microsoft and Bill Gates pays less taxes, which are supposed to be paid for better quality education, in return he steals away money from those (usually less developed) countries which are willing to finance better quality education. The unlimited number of "imported" workers keep the American labour cheaper. As we can see, Mr. Gates and Microsoft (with other companies) benefits all the way at every single turn - it's always the other parties who pay the price.
I hope he will get the Nobel Prize for his unselfish philantrophy some day.
Every time I hear someone complain about the "desperate shortage of skilled programmers" I want to punch him in the face. To see how false this is, all one needs do is look at the extremely low percentage of recent comp-sci grads who can find work as programmers. The majority of them have to work in some semi-technical job such as tech support, or in some cases can't find jobs in the computer field at all. When I graduated, it took me 8 months to find a job, meanwhile the entire time so-called experts were claiming a desperate shortage of programmers and demanding an increase in the H-1B quota. The problem is that employers too often have ridiculously specific requirements. Ten years ago, a typical job ad would say something like "C++ programmer needed, with 2 years experience". Today, a typical ad requires "6 years Java experience in a commercial environment, 3 years J2EE web-based development, Swing, JSP, Servlets, EJB, XML, DOM/SAX, advanced knowledge of application servers (primarily Weblogic and WebSphere), Advanced knowledge of database connectivity and integration. (Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server). And when they can't find someone with /exactly/ the skills they're looking for, they complain about a labor shortage. They don't realize that a skilled C++ programmer could become productive in C# in a very short amount of time, because these are transferable skills. That would be like Chevy refusing to hire a skilled Ford mechanic. It just doesn't happen in any other field but ours. And if they absolutely /have/ to have someone who meets those exact requirements, then they could find him if they offered a high enough salary.
I think the US is the easiest country in the world to immigrate to.
...
...
And as soon as you're over the border be sure to visit your nearest
Bank of America branch and get yourself some real American plastic
courtesy of Mastercard *.
* Offer not valid in some states and limited to fluent spanish speakers
with dark complexion. Citizens and natives need not apply.
We didn't forget you are funding La Raza, Gates.
Don't believe me?
Hear it directly from the horse's Mouth, here's your one-click proof link:
http://www.nclr.org/section/about/funding/ (National Council of La Raza "The Race")
And to add insult to injury, guess who else is funding the "greatest
Latino Civil Rights and Advocacy Organization:
U.S. Department of Commerce
U.S. Department of Education
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
U.S. Department of Labor
I am disgusted.
Gates is right to criticize US immigration policy, which causes a great deal of hardship for people who are fleeing desparate situations ( which, I might add, the US is not exactly an innocent bystander in ). But Gates is wrong to use economic arguments as the basis for his attacks ... the main argument is that it ( immigration policy ) is unethical. The reason why this is important comes to light when you ask the question, "What about unskilled migrants. Of course Gates, Dubya, and the rest of the establishment is fine to let them rot on the borders ( or be shot by redneck, self-appointed border police ), because there's no guarantee they'll contribute to profit-making in the short term. But skilled migrants who can contribute to profit-making immediately ... hell ... let them in, so they can increase the labour pool and decrease wages, quick!
First person here who can claim much more than 150+ plus of both sides of their family as US citizens gets a cookie, if West Coast/central US, drops to 100 years.
I'd be willing to bet pretty much everyone posting in this thread is the descendent of no more than 3-4 generations of immigrants on both sides of their families at most.
I like the whining people do about immigrants all the time, it really isnt new, look at newspapers in the 1840's/1860's/1880's/1900's etc and you'll see the same things that are in the news now about such things. the United States is a nation of immigrants.
Dear United States of America,
Please stop awarding high school diplomas to students who wouldn't recognize a quadratic equation if it walked up to them at a mall and screamed, "I am a quadratic equation!"
Signed,
Bill Gates
PS Don't bother recentering the SAT scores, you aren't fooling anyone.
I would suggest that people be encouraged to study an engineering discipline rather than comp.sci. Where I work (and also among my circle of friends/associates outside the workplace) we have both, and the difference is truly stark.
P-plate adventurer
The United States bears within the seeds of it's own destruction. By indoctrinating kids with the notion of having money instead of doing something worthwile, it will only promote the learning of parasitic, destructive and lucrative crafts like lawyer, salesman or MBA.
Exactly 50 years ago, in 1957, Sputnick was launched and shocked the USA in realizing that their Science education was not at par with the pinko soviet communists. Since those 50 years, the US has entered a downdrain spiral of falling into "easy" mind tricks, illustrated most eloquently by the extreme rise of religious people who, as a matter of faith, will outright reject science.
It's not for nothing that muslims countries are ass-backwards: their religion impedes Science, just as the christianity is impeding Science in the USA.
There is no way out, unless the USA will ditch it's anglo-saxon greedyness mindset, dump the religion in the garbage heap of History (shooting all evangelists in the head oughta do it, as well as compulsory mixed masturbation classes for boys and girls) and get it's ass back together properly.
In the meanwhile, enlightened countries in Europe will sit back and have a good laugh at the USA's self-destructive habits consume it in an orgy of god-dictated stupidity.
Congratulations. You have stopped a lot of people of the world from finding jobs and acted to reduce the wealth of America. Have a cookie!
Seems like no matter how much money he has his personality continues to show through, looking for the easiest way to make money, with the least amount of effort. Bill take those billions, and train the millions of poor children in America to run the future, you can afford it, just like you can afford American workers.
Lets build a wall, a thousand feet high all the way around our country, before its diluted in third world status. I am from Arizona and know the devistating effects on economy that these people cause. American workers cost more, we know it, and we deserve it.
If you have built castles in the sky, your work need not be lost. That is where they belong, now go out and build the fo
The job market for software people in 2001-2005 was little different from the job market in 1991-1995. What changed was that people entering the market during the boom thought the boom was normal.
I was part of interviews in 2004...trying to hire a software developer. A majority of "software developers" who applied couldn't write a goddamn recursive function in the language of their choice. 2001-2005 was not a "depression". It was the market returning to normal after a period where any warm body got three competing offers.
The cake is a pie
FTA:
The comments marked the latest attack on restrictive US immigration policies by the technology industry, which is facing a shortage of skilled workers even as demand for their skills is increasing.
If there is a smaller supply of workers and greater demands; that would equal a higher price paid for each worker. A lot of industries have taken a beating; and there is a surplus of workers. Companies can justify to pay crap for a skilled position because someone needs a job and will work for anything. So in essence companies can pay crap and choose the best of the best for little money. So, the market is turning around and you still want to pay shit for positions. Tough!!!!
Now; if someone is going to point to outsourcing because lack of labor supply; guess again. If a company is going to outsource to save money, it will be outsourced no matter what. It is economics; it will happen no matter what; due to the globalization of work forces. There are several countries that pay less per hour than US; due to a lower cost of living. We can debate this till the cows come home; and I still say tough.
I don't blame companies for cost cutting; but I do hold them accountable for putting together B.S. stories so they can get a cheaper supply of labor.
If Bill was really concerned that US kids are not getting taught right, why doesn't he open a computer college himself? That way he can rake in the money based on the MS brand, and he will have minons already brought into the MS way. I'll tell you why, those minons will want to be paid at non-immigrant wages. Money is the real reason for everything Bill said.
Maybe it is difficult, I'm not certian. I do know the US immigrates more people than all other countrys in the world combined. So its apparently worth the effort.
we revoke the citizenship of all immigrants and anyone decended from immigrants in the last four hundred years.
Wait....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This only goes just so far, though. Before long, all the people with the skills you need have heard about your business style and become hard to hire. That doesn't mean that there aren't an abundance of skilled employees that could fill your openings - it just means that they don't want to work for Microsoft.
So companies like Microsoft love the H1B program. They can employ immigrants far less expensively than American workers - under conditions that are indistinguishable from slavery.
But that's not what the linked article is about. We're talking about illegal immigrants here - what possible interest in this could Microsoft have - unless their business depends upon employing undocumented illegal aliens. What does Bill know that he's not talking about that would lead him to issue such a public statement?
not to have a skills-based, language-based, culture-based, and education-based system, nothing will ever get better.
However, Bill G is only saying this so he can convince them to issue his firm more H1-B, L-1, and L-2 visas so he can end run past the system and hire Ph.D. engineers for half the US prevailing wage.
Not that he doesn't have a point about how flawed our system is - he does.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's illegal to pay an H1-B employee less than an American citizen doing the same job. I'm sure there are ways around it but there are laws in place to make sure that companies don't use H1-B as a farm for cheap labour.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
The problem I have is the sub-culture that follows the MSFT style businesses don't really have a need for true science. I mean god, look at thedailywtf.com for examples of how "programmers" just don't get what the hell they are doing. Quick, dirty, and with a lot of buttons. That's the sort of software people come to expect, with absolutely no focus on what goes on behind the scenes.
We have a business culture where most of the people who program [or claim to design software] for a living couldn't explain, say, how a merge sort works. Worse yet, they couldn't easily find a description, learn it, and explain it. The net result being applications which fail in the field (hint: bugs in any other engineer discipline == killing people), consume far too many resources, and don't meet all of the user requirements to start with.
Take a good hard look at things like Vista, or heck even OpenOffice (for a good OSS target). Bloatware to the extreme, the result of rampant divergent design processes without care to optimization or proper resource management.
Why could I point and click applications with Win 3.11 and 4MB of ram, but now Vista requires a min of 1GB of ram, and a processor that is 200 times faster? Heck, you can run a decently tuned BSD or Linux distro with only 128MB of ram easily (with X, Gnome, etc). Why did a full featured word processor with spell/grammar checking fit nicely on an 80MB HD in the 80s and now Word takes a half gigabyte? etc...
As a whole, most end user applications are just not engineered to be engineered. They're quickly assembled and shoved out the door. Which pretty much annoys the fuck out of any true blue software engineer [who wants to take pride in what they are doing]. Net result, only uneducated non-engineers will want to work on the software because they don't know better [and/or don't care]. It'd be like running an art school where you only showcase musical performances that are off beat and out of tune. No serious musician would want to study there.
I don't think comp.sci is dying, I just think most hardcore scientists are not really caring to work for the likes of MSFT, they'd rather work for smaller companies where their input is actually valued and their contributions while commercial, are not solely aesthetic.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
If Microsoft wanted, it could announce that it is going to start their engineers at $200K/year and it would get more than enough qualified applicants. Or, it could hire marginally qualified applicants and train them in the technologies it wants. In fact, were Microsoft to start paying that rate, it would not take long before the market were flooded with qualified engineers. More people would switch to Computer Science and more universities would open up comp. sci departments.
The problem is not a shortage of American high-tech labor; it's a shortage of cheap American high-tech labor. Gates' concern is not that he can't find engineers in the U.S.; it's that it's cheaper for him to hire engineers elsewhere.
I suggest that the reason that fewer people are going into Computer Science is that they see how software companies treat their engineers. How many software engineers lost their jobs between 2001 and 2004? If the market for good engineers were as tight as Bill Gates suggests, those people should have been gobbled up in an instant. Heck, companies would have been hiring them, knowing that they'd be needed eventually.
Instead of arguing, whether immigrants are useful or detrimental overall, the right argument is based on Human Rights. I simply don't understand, how an American (except, perhaps, the Native Americans) can sleep at night rejecting the right to move to this country to someone else.
The same right his/her ancestors took for granted...
Oh, a common defense goes, my ancestors arrived legally. BS. If today's laws were the same as they were before and during the Ellis Island era, all of today's immigrants would've been legal too.
"Oh, but they are criminals," — goes another. No they are not — the only offense, most of them have committed is only violating the laws against immigration. The circular argument boils down to:
Frankly, I hold the following truth Self-Evident:
The need to keep out (real) criminals et al. is of no more consequence to the above statement, than the ban on yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is to the Freedom of Speech.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Who else is gonna date our fat women?
The big discussion about immigration is not keeping the skilled labor out, it's about keeping the illegals out. Both Bill Gates and just about everyone here has missed the point.
The illegals bring with them the all of the bad habits that made their home countries shit holes and is the reason they left. Now they are making the US (the South West in particular) into a bigger versions of _______. (That means "fill in the blank.")
Please bring on the skilled labor. These are the people who contribute to a society. But please keep out the filth. All they do is produce more filth.
As always, this has been my $0.02 worth.
c'mon, we all know it well but we are ashamed to admit it. Bill for President!
Unless you have ever tried to hire a senior developer, and have to wade through a hundred frogs before you find an 'almost' prince, you just dont know.
Disclamer: I worked for Microsoft.
The fact is, there are thousands of developers walking around, who think they are really, really good, and they have adopted an arrogance that keeps them from advancing their skills instead of playing it safe with one-two languages they are comfortable with. Every developer who has been in the game a long time, just assumes that they are a prodigy, which is why Microsoft and others prefer to hire kids just out of school who KNOW they dont really know anything, but are willing to learn.
The same is not true for H1s who get development jobs in America. First, they are usually quite good, if not great. They can be taught, because their ego's are not at risk.
There are people who apply for programing jobs at Microsoft, who have never coded outside of VB. And no, I didnt mean VB.NET, bitches.
V fuckin' B! And they want to change the world.
Far from displacing US workers, highly skilled foreign-born workers will continue to function as they always have: as job creators.
Do you really think Mr. Gates wants new software companies that compete with Microsoft? The same Bill Gates that's trying to kill Google and Wikipedia like he wiped out Netscape, Palm, OS/2, Correl, Caldera and so on and so forth? How can you believe what he has said, knowing his company's predatory past?
No, Mr. Gates is not interested in US job creation, he's interested in lower operating costs for M$. If he wanted to create jobs he's got all the money and position he needs. Instead his shadow hangs over every tech start up and has discouraged everyone, much to the detriment of his business model. His business model has always been to buy the "loss leader", or their employees, for substantially less than it would cost him to make his own product and then use it to crush all other competitors. Far from creating new jobs, his approach has destroyed existing jobs and discouraged tech investment which would create future work. Now, as people with any sense are avoiding tech like the outsource prone disaster it is, Mr. Gates finds himself unable to "innovate" cheaply.
The non free way no longer makes money for anyone who's not a M$ vassal, and increasingly, those are feeling the squeeze too. Fortunately, free software continues to provide users what they need and profits for those who would compete fairly. IBM, Google, and just about everyone but M$ is sick of M$.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"I personally witness the ill effects of these policies on an almost daily basis at Microsoft." ...when I have to pay high salaries and keep people around after they get old enough to be a net drain on our health plan....
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
When I interviewed there, I only saw one native-born software engineer. Now, I'm certainly not xenophobic. I didn't mind that they all had accents. I was just disappointed that they thought that "stl::" was a valid C++ namespace. I didn't get the job, of course. Was it because I didn't have an accent or was it because I don't write linked-lists in C anymore? I'll never know.
Father Guido Sarducci's 5 minute university for Economics: "Ya got Supply, ya got Demand, they meet; that's Price!"
I know that this is an exercise in reductionism, but I think it's worthwhile because it illustrates the point that Bill's motivations are suspect here. On the High Moral Ground of Keeping America Great, Bill stands, looking to bring in highly skilled individuals who are probably prepared to work for less and soften the whole market.
Bill's been talking a lot about this lately and so has /.:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/26/15Maybe his numbers don't add up? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224204&cid=18
Anyone find comparative salary numbers for H-1B workers out there? There's a lot of noise when I Google it and I'm not coming up with anything useful. You find stuff like:
For engineering and IT jobs that remain in the US, fewer are filled by Americans. US firms have learned that they can pay foreigners on H-1B and L-1 work visas lower salaries, force their American employees to train their foreign replacements, and then discharge their American workers.Can't find any stats to back it up though. As a Canadian, I'd like to have a sense of impact of skilled immigration on salary markets, simply because the American experience will broadly define the North American experience. Is Bill just trying to 'in-source' (bring the cheaper labour to the market instead of shipping the market to the cheaper labour)?
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
I'm surprised that people have not mentioned this topic. With the scope of projects being larger now than ever before, skills such as ability to communicate well and the ability to work well with difficult co-workers are grossly important. You can teach someone a new computer language in weeks or even days, but how long does it take to train someone how to be socially adept in the USA?
And on a daily basis too. She bought a computer with Vista on it.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
A lot of people put a lot of good faith effort in their careers. In the USA, higher education is not subsidized like is in other countries, it can be damn expensive. I paid for my degree out of pocket, now I feel it's a mistake, not really worth anything.
After all that effort, all that money, all that working 60 hours a week for slave wages to get experience; some techies feel they have earned the right to earn more than the janitor.
Also, some of us have worked in IT so long, that it really isn't realistic to change career fields.
But, then other's here will argue: "F.U. man! Why should you get all the breaks?"
There is really only one think to do: get out of technology. Read the writing on the wall, it's not getting better, it's getting worse. Those who have managed to hold on to good jobs will refute this - I say just wait for it.
What people get paid has to accord with the value they produce, you can't just pull a salary out of the air. Programming jobs already pay pretty well, even for $200K I can't believe there are many physicians who have any programming skills who would leave the practice of medicine for that.
The other cost/benefit is for the purchaser of IT. If I have an IT project that'll save me $1 million and it costs $500K, I'll do it, but if it costs $2 million obviously I won't. You can't just arbitrarily raise IT prices, if laptops were $10,000 how many do you think would sell?
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but it's plain to me that the USA benefits from every skilled immigrant who comes here. I can't believe some of these posters are in the IT workforce at all, where the hell are they working where they aren't dealing every day with Indians and Chinese and Russians and other immigrants? We wouldn't have an IT industry at all without them.
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
Well said.
People need to put this in perspective. Immigrants aren't people who are coming to steal your job and cash a welfare check. Immigrants are people who are MOVING TO ANOTHER FUCKING CITY. How criminal. Off with their heads.
...these days to fix all the security problems designed into their products? Its not that they are leaving the country, or even not coming here, they are just getting too smart to take such a thankless job anymore. I'm really not trying to be flame bait but I really do know lots of immigrants who would never work there by choice. They are not dumb or despite and are free to make up their own minds.
in their careers. And those people have families, and big expenses. And it isn't fair to just suddenly pull the rug out from under them so bill gates can earn another billion.
As to the poor people in other countries, here's an idea: fix your own damn county instead of piggy-backing on the USA.
The USdollar is worth 45 Rs +-2 Rs on the exchange rate. But IMF and others have calculated that on the Purchase Power Parity basis, just 10 Rs buys in India what a dollar buys in USA. Adjusted for this, and the cheap labour for other services, and the inherant aversion for the Indian middle class to do blue collar work, leave alone menial labour, US has lost its attraction. You can raise back the H1B quota back to 120,000 from the present 65,000 like it was till 2000. But unless Mr Gates offers domestic servants, he is not going to get that many applicants from India.
[*FN1] If you are married when you file the dependants form, both get green card at the same time. If you get married after green card, spouse waits for as long as 7 years to get one.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ah, spring must be just around the corner. I can tell when Bill Gates goes whining to congress for more H1-Bs. In a couple months, he'll whine about how the US isn't graduating enough engineers and programmers. Then he'll point to news stories about him decrying the lack of qualified US citizens and say, "See. We need more H1-Bs." As more H1-Bs flood the job market, wages fall and demand for US citizens falls. These are demanding curricula and historically, enrollments have tracked demand for graduates. The students understand this.
One poster repeated the claim which has been touted by many, including Bill Gates, that if we don't import these workers, the jobs will be outsourced. What difference does it make?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
We have all seen what $billions and thousnds of programmers can create!
It is called Vista. Who here really thinks that it is any kind of advanvcement of "state-of-the art"?
Moron! It starts at the top; and the rot continues all the way down. H1B's or not, the rot is clear through!
One good silver lining in this whole issue is that India is a democracy. It cant keep its currency low like China or cap the pay and extract blood from its workers. Indian infotech worker salaries are sky rocketing, considering the productivity, other costs and exchange rate, India will soon stop being such a great source of cheap intellectual labour. Even if we raise the H1B quota back to 120,000 like it used to be till 2000, we will not be getting top talent from India. Now a days it is very difficult to persuade IIT/IIM grads to settle in USA. My classmate is so furious with the insulting treatment by our (I was an Indian now I am an American to clarify the us/them for you) cosulate in Chennai, India when he applied for a two week tourist visa, he said he would never set his foot again in USA. We might get 120K applicants from India, they will be of such poor quality companies will quickly sour on them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Inasmuch as Bill is calling for admitting more skilled immigrants and fewer unskilled immigrants, it's a step in the right direction.
Let's make an analogy between Harvard U. and the United States.
Harvard is extremely selective about who is admitted. As a result it has a stellar reputation. Imagine how quickly Harvard would go downhill if it started admitting high-school dropouts.
Similarly, because so many people want to emigrate to the U.S., it could be extremely selective about who it admits. For example, it could require immigrants to have a master's degree.
Instead, the U.S. isn't picky at all about who it lets in. Anyone with a pair of legs can walk across the border. The U.S. imports poverty, when it could instead import success and wealth. As a result, the social safety net has been strained beyond the breaking point in some places: more than 70 California emergency rooms have closed. And the number of Americans killed by illegal immigrants is far higher than the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Imagine how much schools, hospitals, and crime statistics would improve, and property values go up, if the U.S. were selective about immigrants.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
The other option is to lock everything down, and say "No new immigrants." What happens then? Do you think wages will go through the roof, and jobs will grow on trees? Or do you think more companies will send the jobs to where the workers are?
...
They tried that. It was called "outsourcing". Results:
- Administering a project across large timezone and cultural differences causes problems that eat up a bunch of the savings. Schedules slip, quality slips,
- There is also a limited supply of skilled talent "over there". After a while the good ones are busy and you're hiring the not-so-good ones. Meanwhile, what you have to pay to get the good ones (and the ones you later find are not-so-good) climbs. (Invisible hand at work.) Move to another country and try again? The people you're dealing with are already doing that. (India, for instance, is now sub-outsourcing to places like China.)
- Once they've gotten a good grasp of your products, processes, and IP, some of that talent jumps ship and starts their own company. Often just as your project is ALMOST done. Now THEY'RE hiring the cheap labor and coming out with a product that may be competitive with you. They're doing it under the over-there IP regime. If they're up against you one-on-one you're stuck with trying to out-compete somebody who knows the people, politics, and culture of the region and is on-site, while you've got the mess they left you with and your remaining workers. Or you can try to go after them in court - in their country's courts, staffed by their country's people, under their country's laws.
These are just three problems. There are others.
Net result is that outsourcing proved not to be such a great idea. But a lot of big companies took big hits, small companies went under, and venture capital went down the drain figuring that out. (And it's still not fully absorbed.) How much it saves (if any) and at what risk is still up in the air somewhat.
So now, after much of the talent over here was "downsized", we have things starting back up. Re-hire the dumped talent? HAH! Much cheaper to lobby for more H1Bs. Then you get much of the cost benefit of the lower price of workers from afar. But they're working here, where management can watch them, where they'll have to go back to the old country, not across the street, to open up in competition, and where you can kick 'em out if they complain about anything.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
On the topic of bloatware: sorry, this is Slashdot, so I feel the need to undercut your low points.
I could point and click applications with AmigaOS and
And so it begins, I'm sure...
If there's one thing about the current job market, it's that there's a lot of speculation and not much info to back it up. We keep hearing about how tight the labor market is. How there aren't enough students entering CS. But we keep getting turned down when we apply for some job. What's going on? We can only guess, because so many businesses do all they can to make their hiring decisions as opaque as possible.
1. There's "no consequence for failure"? Where've you been? There's all kinds of consequences for all sorts of failures, and possibly not enough of them are related to the quality of our education. Instead there are such things as failing to be on an H1B because one is a citizen, and failing to guess which notes were the right ones to hit in the personality part of a job interview. You feel that students should be forced to study, as if learning is somehow a disagreeable and tiresome chore? Don't throw me in that briar patch! But I wonder about your world view, with statements like that.
2. I too wonder whenever I hear of some web page hack without even a college degree making ridiculous pay. There's something wrong with what businesses value. Then you say 55K in NYC is reasonable? 55K is decent pay in a lot of places, but I'm not so sure in NYC. I don't know NYC well enough to really know, but I'd be surprised if one can find anything to rent for less than $1000/month.
3. Lazy? Define it please. It seems that the way businesses define it, "lazy" = "not willing to work more than 40 hours/week". Quite a few job descriptions I've read have this little nugget in their requirements: "able to complete projects on time and within budget". Sounds like that's code for "will work lots of extra overtime for no pay to meet the schedule no matter how insane it is". Maybe we're not lazy, maybe businesses are too cheap and greedy. Throughout history, a lot of generals have blamed their defeats on the cowardice or incompetence of the soldiers.
4. Dude, we're a pretty smart bunch around here. I've been criticized by my boss for the very thing you say is a virtue, that being living within my means. My boss wasn't happy that I had NOT bought a new car. He wanted the best, smartest employees he could find, except he wanted them to be financial idiots. He may have been wrongheaded, but I believe he was at least being honest that time. Too many managers have a difficult time telling the difference between an employee and a slave. They think they can ask things of their underlings they should not ask of anyone. Why do you think sexual harassment is the 3rd rail of management, so to speak? And just look at the fine example set by Scooter Libby's bosses. And lastly, it's a little hard to swallow your "live within your means" homily when the boss doesn't need to bother with that. Do as I say, not as I do, eh?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
He said 655360 immigrants, plus 393216 Extended immigrants. Also, he is still factoring large prime numbers....
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Translation- I made billions in this industry, but if you try to work your way up from intern in my company to my level I'll fire you and replace you with somebody who spent 1/10th your cost growing up and getting an education, regardless of skill, because it's better for my bottom line.
Do you have any evidence to support your claim? To date I don't believe Microsoft has ever laid off American talent for any reason even though we heavily recruit abroad. I'm sitting here as a relative new-hire at Microsoft and the position I was hired for (software developer) was open for months. I can also tell you that at my previous company talent shortage was one of the biggest impedements to growing the business. I'm not naive and I know that business owners would love to flood the talent pool to lower costs, but all I've seen around here is a huge demand for talent with nowhere near the number of qualified people. If anything, we're looking for international talent so that we *don't* lower the quality bar and hire whoever we can locally. In the end this is better for the U.S. Besides, I personally enjoy being around people who are far better educated than the average American.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
This is more amusing than inflammatory... AlQuaida.com is the name of a satirical german website. But I suppose not amusing in a '5' sort of way.
The mantle of "hire the best, no matter the cost" has been assumed by Google.
You do know that Google has a huge development center in India, right?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
http://alt1040.com/uploads/bill-gates-1983.jpg
Every time I hear someone complain about the "desperate shortage of skilled programmers" I want to punch him in the face. To see how false this is, all one needs do is look at the extremely low percentage of recent comp-sci grads who can find work as programmers.
Yup, and I've interviewed some of those students, and I'll tell you why there's a shortage: lack of talent. Of course my sample is biased, I've only had experience from top universities. The problem is that you don't have to be super smart to get a CS degree, and there aren't a lot of smart people going into software development for whatever reason (e.g. it pays a lot more to go into medicine or law).
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Your concern is totally orthogonal to the issue.
The problem is not disallowing people to move to the US - the problem stems from sending them back to their own country at the employer's discretion thus allowing the employers to dictate unfair employment terms.
If the H1B could freely negotiate for higher pay and better benefits without fears of being sent back, the competition problem would be eliminated - the game would then be considered fair.
Until then, it's unfair to everyone with the employer being the only beneficiary.
With Vista available for downgrading US computers, clueless staff are expected to have a nightmare clicking furiously on UAC prompts... apparently for every Vista sold, one job will be created for supporting the user!
8 5065,00.htm
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,392
Millions of Indians were used in the beta testing for Vista, maybe Gates feels he needs them all to improve Vista uptake in the US!
With Dell pushing Vista aggressively, and removing escape routes like Linux or XP; support lines for Vista will soon hog the internet tubes... maybe Gates' idea of Vista support is one Indian sitting next to every American Vista user, advising him / her on the right choice for every alert:
Today is Thursday: Allow / Cancel?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You seem to have confused the word "wrong", as in "morally offensive", with the words "bad for me".
You say that if wealth were spread more evenly around the world and people got jobs they deserved, that would be a wrong thing. Is that "wrong" as in morally offensive, or "wrong", as in bad for you, personally? Because you have noticed that where you are born has a lot to do with how much you make, but you seem to think that is a good thing. Aristocrats used to feel the same way about what family you were born into, instead of which country.
Remember that people in other countries are people too. Many of the Founders were Englishmen, who would have to apply for work permits to make a living here these days. What do you think that does to their RPMs?
Oh! He admitted it
NT
http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/
(Evil Empire is just what we call them...)
Exactly. I am an American that grew up outside the U.S. (South America) and so I have seen how the moderately wealthy live in third world countries. And you are exactly right. If you can get a "good" job in a third world country you are far better off to stay there than to come to the United States. Quite frankly, that's unfortunate for the United States.
Part of the reason that the United States is as powerful as it has become is that we have skimmed the best and brightest from every nation for generations. People are people the world over, and most foreigners have the added advantage of being truly driven. They know that if they don't make the grade, don't get into the right school, and don't get that nice job that they are well and truly screwed and they and their children are likely to spend forever cleaning other people's houses. Most Americans don't have that kind of drive. America "needs" these people.
Besides, I can compete with Appu and his brother if they live down the street and have a mortgage. Competing with Appu's cousins Bangalore is an entirely different prospect.
but how long does it take to train someone how to be socially adept in the USA?
;)
Well, judging from Cmdr Taco's Slashdot experience, at least 10+ years. And counting.
You obviously have no experience with immigration, because the US isn't a particulary easy to immigrate to. First off crossing the border and getting a Mastercard doesn't count as immigration. In fact, even if you are here legally you can be hassled at the bank, DMV, etc... My wife was refused a bank card (LaSalle bank in Illinois FYI) although she is here legally. She was refused a driver's license in Georgia and told she was here illegaly. Even after we called their bluff (they threatened to phone homeland security) they still wouldn't give her the license. Now we're in Albama and I am busy putting together all the paperwork I need for an Alabama driver's license which will say "Foreign National" on it. After all, we foreigners in Alabama are presumed to be here illegaly unless we can prove otherwise. Read up on it.
I could go on about how I pay medicare but can never collect it, taxed but can not vote in virtually any election (remember that Revolutionary War thing about taxation and representation), etc... but I think you get the idea. Needless to say we are unlikely to be staying once the wife's visa expires.
"America cannot maintain its innovation leadership if it does not
educate world-class innovators and train its workforce to use
innovations effectively. Unfortunately, available data suggest
that we are failing to do so especially in our high schools."
He is right on this one.
It is not clear if he talks about lack of education of candidate-workers for his company or or about the education of his national consumers.
A software company complaining that they cannot find workforce? They better reorganize and globalize.
Yeah it was modded insightful I suspect that's because it makes some people feel better than those "other" people. That's why it's consistently modded up every time. It's simplistic even if it has a grain of truth. The post above with a +3:insightful has a more balanced outlook on the whole issue.
Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.
They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.
Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity. Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.
And here we are in 2006 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.
Addendum - if you want to play the "multi-culturalism" card, and say that that is value in different cultures, then why not include "traditional American" culture as one that needs protecting? Moving to the USA and assimilating is a "culture" too. Running away from one's own place of origin, but not wanting to assimilate with their destination is just stupid.
Actually, that's the beginning of an interesting idea.
We could have the same citizenship requirements for everyone. And I mean EVERYONE. Including those born in France and Mexico and Jamaica... and those born in the USA.
Then see how easy or how hard we decide to make it to become a citizen.
As I understand the H1Bs were generally created for tech workers - to fast track applications. US employers were taking advantage of loopholes in H1B regulations and paying the employees less and being able to employ them for either 3 or 6 year periods if the contract is renewed.
I've been thinking of working in the US in a non-tech field. I looked around on the Visa for employment section of unitedstatesvisas.gov and looks like I would qualify under the Employment Third Preference (E3) qulification. I assume the H1B were setup under the E3 policy. Do persons getting a Visa not under the H1B status earn similar compensation to American citizens? Mostly looking for a quick answer from someone with experience and/or who has knowledge of the information. Digging through all the documentation (which I will do if I'm serious) would I'm sure take a couple of days.
You are still debating the utilitarian argument, which is wrong... Your argument is wrong in itself too, of course — nobody owes you a living, no matter how much you invested in yourself. But that's irrelevant to my original point: Freedom of Migration is just as unalienable as all other means of Pursuing Happiness.
Which part of the "Right, which your own ancestors took for granted" was so hard for you to understand?
Unless you are a pure Native American, your own Irish/Jewish/Italian/German/Dutch/etc. [great-...-]grand-parents chose to come here instead of fixing "their own damn countries". But today's Mexican/Chinese/Ukrainian/Guatemalan/Vietnamese/et c. can not?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Here's the thing about IT jobs. In most large to medium sized companies, they're probably 30% to 50% fluff. Like DOT workers, there's always a lot more "supervisors" than "guys diggin' the hole".
... we get to work ever increasing workloads, ridiculous timelines, and basically work ourselves into an early grave.
That's at once the wonderful and horrible thing about capitalism: everyone needs a job, even the unskilled, the incapable. This is not a recent phenomena, it's ALWAYS been this way. If you're a programmer and you work on a team just try and tell me it ain't true. There's always 2 or 3 guys who bust ass around the clock, and there are 5, 6, or 20 guys bullshittn' all day.
At least in the company where I work, Americans are not getting the fluff jobs, we're getting the "diggin' the hole" jobs. The reason is that these H1B guys come over willing to work for around $45 or $50k a year via some shaddy-ass contracting company. They've all got MULTIPLE masters degrees from universities, most often in Hyderbad (hope I'm spelling it correctly).
I don't know how smart these guys really are. I CAN'T TELL because most of the time the language barrier entials between 30% and 50% data loss in spoken conversation, with maybe a 5% to 10% gain using written communication like IM or email. Maybe they really are all super geniuses, but with that language barrier, I know for a fact most couldn't hack it in an entry level CS course at the local community college.
Maybe it's that language barrier, but my gut tells me it might be, perhaps "easier" to obtain graduate degrees from Indian universities. Or maybe these guys are just straight up lying about their education, I mean what are the chances of an employer's HR department calling an Indian university to verify the degree of a contractor, literally someone ELSE'S employee?
slim to none.
Either way, upper management doesn't care anyhow, they just filled a $120k/year seat for $50k/year and no benefits.
So these guys come in, and for as smart as they might or might not be, they're pieces that don't fit into the puzzle. Our development teams can't communicate effectively with them, we can't get them to solve problems for us. So, they ride a barstool or hang around the water cooler, and those of us who haven't been replaced (out of necessity -- SOMEONE has to dig the hole)
Frankly, it could just as easily go the other way. We could be working our H1-B folks into the ground while the American staff goofs. I've just never seen that in real life, but hell, I hear about it all the time, specially on slashdot. Maybe it's the industry I'm in, if I were in the business of building web applications based on java using "popular templating engine X", maybe it'd more likely to go the other way. I don't know.
From my perspective, these people are stealing our cheese. The only thing they're enabling is for cheap-ass companies to fill the inevitable number of slacker jobs in any organization with people working for less than half the going rate for locals. Don't kid yourself, this is a VERY BAD THING for our society.
Whatever you may think of the slackers in your organization, know that by and large, they use the money they make do to meaningful things outisde the office; to raise families, and take care of aging parents, etc. These are things that our societal safety net has to catch otherwise.
I have nothing against the people who come here on H1-B's, they're doing what everyone in the world does, just trying to make a living. The bottom line is, that Americans aren't "unwilling or unable" to do the work that we're bringing these people in to do, it's that we're not even being offered the opportunity to in a lot of cases. In our own country.
The madness must stop.
Either that or I should just breakdown and start learning Hindi now, to avoid the rush in about 10 years when that's where all the GOOD jobs have gone.
When job reqs get that specific, it means that there already someone with exactly the same qualifications working for them, most likely an H1B and or someone with F1-practical-training waiting to become H1B. These adverts are crafted to reduce or reject other applicants, not to select any.
- 2011.pdf
Good news, everyone! The Department of Labor has addressed this, and employers no longer need to pretend that they tried to hire someone that was already in the US.
The Department of Labor has published it's strategic 5 Year Plan.
http://www.dol.gov/_sec/stratplan/strat_plan_2006
Under Performance Goal 2H, "Address worker shortages through the Foreign Labor Certification Program", we find:
"H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."
Isn't that special? I could bring in a new hire H1-B at what DOL thinks are the prevailing wages for Engineers, a whole 40K/year in Silicon Valley (Level 1 Engineer, DOL stats!), and I can use them to displace overpriced US college grads. Pretty slick. Of course the displaced workers can be retrained to something more appropriate.
Repeat after me:
"Do you want fries with that?"
First of all Americans are the hardest working people in the world. And every year we are increasing the hours in the average work week.
So I would agrue that Americans do have that drive, although not under the threat of ending up as a house cleaner. Americans are instead motivated by money, profit, and most of all materialism. Americans are some of the hardest working people in the world, espically compared to Europe and such places where they just stop in the middle of the day for nap time, or take 2 months off in the summer... And its not because we care about ending up with a shitty job. Even well off Americans will work hard because we want more money so we can buy more *stuff*. Or there are a lot of people out there who just want to have more than the other guys, or people who just like seeing big green numbers on the bottom line.
And dont forget its not just the current immigrants who are driven. Today's Americans are the products of immigrants 100 year ago who were driven, or even the Puritans 300 years ago (with their Puritan work ethic..idle hands lead to sin etc etc), and the work ethic they had has definatly been passed down to some extent.
In fact, I would argue that the motivation for Americans is greater than the immigrants'. A lot of people here would not be content to live in say South America and employ 2 servants and work 9-5 and live confortably. Americans want fancy cars, fancy TVs, a big bank account, and a big house. And there are a lot of Americans who will work their ass off to get what they want, and if they cant work enough they will take on massive debt, while at the same time if they cut their hours down and lived modestly within their means they would be very confortable. Materialism is one of the most powerful forces in this world.
Disclosure: I am an American college student majoring in Computer Science. America has been lucky that for years we have attracted the best and brightest from all over the world and for many different industries. Over the past 30 years America has developed a distinct competitive advantage in the design and production of high-skilled products - particularly computer technology. Emerging economies are learning about the lucrative nature of the computer software, internet services, and in some cases computer hardware industries. Currently, the vast majority of major companies in these industries and promising startups are found only in America. However, this superiority may come to an end sooner than we think, and it's not because Silicon Valley is becoming less innovative. It's because American children are losing interest in science, math and engineering. Across the world, in China and India, more and more college students are entering these fields whereas in America students are rapidly leaving. We need to continue to maintain our leadership in technology as it is a core part of our national interest - both economically and perhaps even in a national security viewpoint. To do this, we have to continue to be the #1 destination for the best and brightest all over the world. Microsoft, Google, Apple and the like don't want to hire foreign workers because they can pay them less - they simply want great talent and in my experience do not discriminate based on nationality. An end to this artificial limit on H1B visas will allow the next great tech company to be born and grown here - helping our economy. As an American, I want our nation to continue to lead the world in technology. To do that, we must have the people who lead, the best and brightest from all over the world, lead here.
I am another Apu, who works in Bangalore for one of the "American" companies.I earn about a third of what an US guy would earn for the same job.But I am much better off than him, because my cost of living is much less.
I cannot be fired by the company on whim (labor laws are stringent in India).I am doing what I love to do, I am highly respected by my American and Indian counterparts and peers and my kids go to the best school, and life is great.I have conceptualized and created products ; and filed patents for this "American" company; which made a lot of money out of me.
All this , when I am in my own country as a first rate citizen, among my own people, with all my democratic rights and where brown complexion of my skin doesnt hamper my life and career.Airport security does look at me suspiciously, the supermarket checkout lady doesnt frown at me
I can move to US any day I like and earn $150K+. Give me one reason I should even consider movong to the US
The "skilled" guys here who *do* want to go to US to *settle* are generally the average to less than average guy.The US is actually an *easier* place for them.
How is this not just an attempt at artificially devaluing the price that skilled labor is worth by importing additional labor which thus offsets the value the existing labor force can demand?
America has been lucky that for years we have attracted the best and brightest from all over the world and for many different industries. Over the past 30 years America has developed a distinct competitive advantage in the design and production of high-skilled products - particularly computer technology. Emerging economies are learning about the lucrative nature of the computer software, internet services, and in some cases computer hardware industries.
Currently, the vast majority of major companies in these industries and promising startups are found only in America. However, this superiority may come to an end sooner than we think, and it's not because Silicon Valley is becoming less innovative. It's because American children are losing interest in science, math and engineering. Across the world, in China and India, more and more college students are entering these fields whereas in America students are rapidly leaving. We need to continue to maintain our leadership in technology as it is a core part of our national interest - both economically and perhaps even in a national security viewpoint. To do this, we have to continue to be the #1 destination for the best and brightest all over the world.
Microsoft, Google, Apple and the like don't want to hire foreign workers because they can pay them less - they simply want great talent and in my experience do not discriminate based on nationality. An end to this artificial limit on H1B visas will allow the next great tech company to be born and grown here - helping our economy.
As an American, I want our nation to continue to lead the world in technology. To do that, we must have the people who lead, the best and brightest from all over the world, lead here.
This is total crap, read between the lines, he and other corps wants CHEAP labor. If there is such a demand, why are colleges churning out comp sci graduates with no jobs? What does corporate America have against Americans? Good freakin grief, when I was laid off back in 2001, I couldn't get a damn job, however all I heard was how corps were whining about not having enough "qualified" people, and how we need to import more damn Indians and such. What the hell was I? I needed a job too and corporate America let me an thousands of native born Americans down, for this I will NEVER forget, that's why I use free, reduced price, or Open Source software, and advise clients to do so too. So what, I'm a tiny flea, but it's still less money in their pockets...
If Kerry was the answer, it must have been a stupid question.
The UN - The largest "political" cause of death.
Mod me down if you must, but I think Gates may have a fettish for young Indian boys or the like. He keeps yammering on and on about visa workers and "skilled immigrants". It seems more than a business issue at this point. Next you know he'll be found on a sailboat to India wearing astronaut diapers.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm not sure if boycotts would work or not for the companies that use illegal labor. I'm curious how much money it would take to get an American to bend over 2000 times a day in the hot sun to pick strawberries. I'm guessing it would probably take well over $10/hr. However, it would force the industry to try even harder into engineering expensive complicated machinery to automating some of the process of crop labor. Prices would go up for everyone but American laborers would get paid more, but is the average American going to want to pay more for this? If they did Wal-Mart wouldn't being making the mad money they are now, even with the fact Wal-Mart treats legal Americans like crap, people continue to shop there.
And about H1-B Visa Workers, here is an article I came across written several years ago: Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage.
We need to start putting some kind of law that forces companies that are headquartered in the US to pay an wage equivalent to the minimum wage here in America. Although if a company has enough workers overseas it still may be worth the extra overseas/communication costs to pay people overseas that an American minimum wage. Although then companies might start to move their HQ elsewhere.
I've been wondering what industry is next to ship out of the US, and some banks have already started to ship some of their financial dept overseas. Until then try hard not to buy stuff from companies that do this (Nike, Gap, Smuckers, Wal-Mart...), although the problem is its in so many industries and so many products its almost impossible to boycott them all. I try to buy off-brands, so-so-brands and brands I know that are US based (the few there are) and spread the money across many companies, although lots of off-brands are by the name-brands so you can never know where your money is going.
Instead of focusing so much on scholarships, Micro$hit could stop outsourcing everything to India. There are plenty of people in America who would be happy to have the work.
As an aspiring Appu, I can confirm this.
I got myself a masters degree in Robotics from one of the top CS schools in the US. I was on a J-1 visa though and I had to return to my home country for two years. Once I came back I joined one of the largest Software Services Outsourcing companies here.
I want to go back to the US. I want to go back because cutting edge Robotics work happens there. I can and want to be part of shaping things to come. Here I just churn pages and pages of code (not even Robotics related). But American Immigration policy means that I can only go back as Apu PackofSix working for a H1 hiring firm paying me peanuts and requiring me to churn more code for years before I can "earn" my Independence and work on what I want to without restriction.
However, in the current company, I come across hundreds of individuals who are no longer enamored by going off the live in the "Land of opportunities". They'd rather work for this company and visit the US and Europe on short term assignments on what are called "On-Site Opportunities", earn extra cash in Dollars/Euros come back here and spend in Rupees and live like kings. The motivations are myriad and varied:
* Family
* Friends
* Better Standard of Living (paid servants for cheap)
* Higher Social status on account of being in the High earning bracket
* Food, Festivals, Culture
* A sense of belonging!
In the last couple of years, I have also come across quite a few individuals who had gone off to live in the US back in the late 90s, now coming back. Some of them are already American Citizens, but they choose to come back! Go Figure.
I would argue that it is not particularly Bill's interest to hire "cheap" H1B labor, but that by flooding the market with highly skilled and trained labor, the U.S. market for that labor goes down.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
So true. MOD parent up.
Bill Gates is saying that American will not be able to train enough people in Computer Science and/or Engineering. That's what he means. He's saying that if we change our immigration policies to make it harder to get in, we'll keep out those we don't want (read: people without education) and those we do want (read: people with education). I'm not saying we don't want people without education, I'm just saying if we clamp down on immigration due to the problem (which may be a perceived one, I don't know or care) we will also lose those who have skills that will benefit America (well, Corporate America).
I still think the South Park episode does a great job of explaining this problem. ("Goobacks" Season 8 Episode 6)
MEF
Picking fruit and digging ditches isn't hard work. It's machine's work. We designed and engineer machines to do these tasks. The fact that a human can also do these tasks instead of doing something else is pointless. That's the problem with people thinking we need illegal immigration. We don't. We need automation. We need advanced engineering and innovation. The technology is rapidely approaching that even cars can drive themselves, i'm pretty sure they could pick fruit and dig ditches.
"pushing papers" is a lot more stressful than you think. When your entire mind has to be devoted to a task and you have the stress of several bosses, things are a lot different then if you can just do something that doesn't require a lot of stress.
If I recall it correctly, on the MS job application form it states that "3 years of experience in the field counts as 1 year of higher education".
As regards Cheap vs Quality -- the sense that if something is more expensive, it is neccessarily better, is what drives luxuries business, and is, unfortunately, by no means true. We do get the perception of cheap unskilled Indian (pick your choice of non-US country here) IT labour... and we were reading the same horror stories about US companies during the Internet bubble.
You need to get out more. If they were anywhere near being able to machine-pick the fruit that is now hand-picked, they would do it. It's not doable, or at least not doable cheaper. Even if you could build a $1,000,000 machine to paint houses, it doesn't make much sense when you could spent 1/10th of the price on 100 years worth of human-done paint jobs.
Stressful work != Hard work
You take a person and you let them do hard physical work for a year. I'm talking about the kind of work that you know will leave you a broken husk once you're in your 60s. Then you give them a year of stressful paper pushing. Then you let them choose what they want to do the rest of their life. Care to wager?
You mean someone more qualified to do the job will do it for cheaper? Welcome to capitalism. You made the system, you exported it around the world. Now you live with the mess you made. Oh sorry, whilst the USA made it's fortune on foreign labor it didn't realize that it was digging its own middle class workers' grave? Well, tough. You wanted competition, you wanted free markets. You called us communists when we objected, and now you've got no-one left to blame but yourselves.
I read the title as "Bill Gates Speaks Out Against Immigration...".
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Sssh, stop pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of anti-immigration laws in the USA, it upsets the natives. They built this system, now they can live with it. Obviously, being born in the USA makes you entitled to better opportunities than the rest of us...
It's the new global economy, we don't /have/ to employ people directly here in America. It makes more sense, since then workers will spend money on our local economy. But ostensibly the foreign workers send most of their money back home anyway (but who doesn't have an H1B buddy with an awesome home entertainment system and doesn't eat out all the time?). But our policymakers don't have a very good track record of making sense, so I'm not terribly worried about our economy, we'll managed to scrape by.
/cheapest foreign scientists and engineers available from around the world, you're better off spinning out your R&D center onto foreign soil as a foreign entity. It seems much easier to have the few US citizens you have emigrate or become non-technical project managers, than to put up all the walls and proxies you need for your US scientists and non-US scientists to collaborate without incurring US gov't fines.
What does suck are the export controls imposed by the EAR (Dept. of Commerce) and ITAR (Dept. of Defense). It pretty much means that any transfer of engineering technical data / discussion must be approved. For US companies, they basically need to employ a full time "Export Compliance Officer" that serves as a proxy to either ensure all technical communication (which now needs to be done in paper) is utterly devoid of "sensitive" technical information, or that we apply for a specific license from the DOC and/or DOD to talk or send source code on things like encryption algorithms (which are showing up EVERYWHERE now that proper security and authentication are important).
Basically, we've had to pigeonhole all of our foreign workers (even H1Bs, permanent residents and US citizens are typically all right) into their own office spaces and file and network servers locked off from everyone else. If the project they're working on contains "sensitive data", they're pretty much only allowed to contribute code to it, but can't even really access the repository with their own code.
So anyway, if you're working developing on anything interesting, such as high performance computing or improving encryption devices or better phased-array antennas or vehicle guidance systems, AND you want to take advantage of the best
The way I see it, the effect of EAR and ITAR will be to provide job security for American engineers and scientists in the short run, but in the long run our engineering/scientific capability will either flounder here all on its own, or move entirely outside our borders where they can more easily collaborate in the global intellectual community (very much the opposite of the US technological superiority that the EAR and ITAR try to preserve).
So really, it's us American workers who should be worried about our government's policy screwing us over, not the H1B workers.
So this means that the raise in immigrant quota is meant to get the mexican housemaids required by indian IT workers. If Gates reads this, the american geeks will be in trouble :-/
There are convicted monopolists. And I'm having fun reading the "reasonable" comment in pidgeon english. Very impressive goobacks. Which is only part of the problem with H1B's. If Microsoft wants more people from foreign countries it is their absolute right to leave the protection of America and stake their future on India or Asscrack China. You don't get to have your cake and fuck it too. Not even in this country.
Is that supposed to be a joke? Call me when USA guarantees cheap health care, decent vacation time and working hours policies, personal safety and privacy.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
For every potential Microsoft employee they lose through immigration, they also avoid 600+ crazed crackhead niggers with handguns. A fair trade.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
I'm sure a lot people would more than love to, if only the US and other developed countries could stop wrecking their countries' economy through unfair trade and destablizing their governments in all kinds of pretext, by means of unscrupulous arms trade, CIA-backed coups, and blatant military intervention.
Very few people are born a Sinbad the Sailor. It's always a hard decision to leave their birth place for an unfamiliar country, where discrimination is expected and effort to earn a decent life is at least a few times more than the locals. The immigrants also have families they hate to leave behind, but has to bid farewell to, for the oppotunity to support them by working hard in another country.
As to the poor locals fear of immigrants, here's an idea: fix your "democratic" government through your votes so that the poor countries could have a chance to develop their own economy.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
That's sucktastic, sorry to hear about your bad luck. Though keep in mind working for big companies does suck. When I was at AMD about the biggest perk was flying around in coach and the occasional free gear. Working for a small company now and it's much better. Less "office space" type feel to it, and my input is actually valued from time to time [as opposed to NEVER].
:-) ).
People wanting to work for the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Adobe, AMD, Intel, etc... should think twice. If you have any sort of character you'll learn that a decent salary (and in my case AMD was paying decent bank) isn't the be-all of existence, and that self-respect is worth a lot more. Let the indians run MSFT if they want. They'll sort out that they're getting H1B jobs not because of talent but because they're not likely to demand pay. The shit software they produce will get side-stepped by the OSS world and problem solved. If companies like MSFT don't want to hire based on merit [e.g. someone who can showcase their talents] that's their own prerogative.
As a side note, one good way of landing quality jobs is to have a nice OSS portfolio. Bonus points for getting your software used everywhere. In my case, I lucked out, a crypto firm was using my libraries for a while, then noticed I lived in the area (6km away from their office) and that I was just grad'ing from college. So they offered me a job (while I was in Rennes, France on other business
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I take it that you're an American, that has never been to a foreign country other than Canada and a handful of Western European countries?
I suggest that you try traveling to countries like Brazil, Mexico and China, and I don't mean Copacabana and Cancun. Talk with Campesinos, Minibus drivers and other people that work hours just as long as Americans, but spend those hours in factories, fields and hot and steamy buses, as opposed to air conditioned offices.
If you think Americans won't do hard physical work, you need to explain the millions that are doing it. I've worked both areas. The parent (gp?) is right, we work and work hard. Don't project.
Bringing up the illegal hiring of illegal immigrants isn't a good argument. Otherwise, you can include criminals of all stripes in statistics. Ain't how it's done.
Hey A. Coward Troll, You post as AS from inside of IBM? He's right about IBM and you know it. Everything he said about IBM is correct. I lost my programming job there 5 years ago only to have it offered back as a contract laborer at 1/2 my former wages, no bennies. No thanks.
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
That's a very small part of the reason compated to the fact that the US aristocracy has been prepared to spend a huge amount of the country's imcome on war, while spending hardly anything on the welfare of its population. If the US were surviving on skimming the best and brightest then it would be a world leader in technology, and it isn't. I have almost nothing in my house designed, invented, or built in the US. I'm falling down with Japanese and Chinese items and internationally created software.
As far as I can see, the US could vanish overnight and the impact on "the best and brightest" would be minimal
My, how pompous of you to proclaim his arguments wrong and then shove your opinions as being some sort of truth.
"Freedom of Migration is just as unalienable as all other means of Pursuing Happiness."
Only if it works both ways. It doesn't. Mexico? None . None at all. PLUS, they arrest and deport Central Americans and are starting a fence on their southern border.
Besides, you don't get to define "unalienable" rights.
Just because you're losing the argument, doesn't mean you can invoke racism. ...
There should be a variation on Godwin's lawy
If the the "open borders" folks invoke "racism", they lose the argument.
There is no job an American won't do for decent wages and decent working condidtions.
Before some one gets personal.
I Use Linux and not Windows. But I do believe that now a days many people in this world and most people in USA have computers is to a large extent due to Microsoft.
Based on what I understand is that Bill Gates is not asking to offer Citizenship to Illegal Immigrants who have broken local immigrations laws. I dont know how many of them are there..
What his point is that
1-Make Immigration Laws clear and don't let trailer park grown up high school graduates decide who to let in and who not to.
2-If USA work force cannot meet he requirements then Companies should be allowed to bring in as many qualified workers as needed.
3-Companies pay all the taxes and fines all the time when ever some thing good(taxes)bad(fines) happens. After all that they don't owe any one any livelihood .
4- If USA don't bring that qualified workforce sitting out there any where then we may loose the technological edge then at one point US Citizens might be looking for Immigration to China or Eastern Europe, Russia..........
5 Since we are too busy watching Britney Spears shave her head or new ways of making pot or getting obese......
Man, I should try the "menial labor is beneath me" trick on my wife. I can't afford a servant, but a break would be nice.
Thankfully, we also have a comfortable couch.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
You surely are American. As you believe, your country is the best in the world and your people is the best in the world and all that shit.
I have not seen any more hard working people than Indians (or other people from the middle east). They are very stubborn and they would work 12 or 13 hours a day (if not more) for more than 30 years in order to get some money. I am not Indian, I am Mexican. And I have a cousin who married an American and they are living in the USA now. One of the things she told me is that she was impressed how lazy Americans are, she told me some stories about theirs children school and other.
Of course Americans work harder than say, Britons. I live in Britain now and OMG they ARE lazy. I would *love* to work here because they just dont work =o).
But you should also see how Latin Americans break their asses. As with lots of Americans (not everyone of course) you have a view of your country and your government has made you believe it is the best but you cant do better as you have never gone out of your little hole.
Britons have it the other way around, They are always whining about their government and country, but they do not know how good they live as some of them have also never go out.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Protecting and Promoting American Manufactures and Enterprise is as American as Alexander Hamilton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_hamilton) and his "Report on Manufactures" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Manufactur es). While he may be more concerned about trade depenedence on China than Britain today, his analysis is still useful today.
"... but they are generally the poor who either have to do it or starve (and sometimes starve anyway).."
Sorry, but most construction workers I know....who do heavy physical labor make more money than most software engineers I know. I know several high school diploma construction workers who make six figures....and that is very common in large population areas....
Why, with all this "They'll work for cheaper" talk are most of the people in the top U.S. school's graduate programs, NOT American? I'm at Stanford right now, and most of my friends from MIT, Berkely, CMU, and here are non-americans.
Obviously there isn't pay involved (we all are getting paid the same amount). And there is no visa troubles (students are automatically granted a visa when accepted).
So, think about this when you start ranting about "stealing jobs from Americans because they work for less".
Sorry...I have been to almost every nation on the planet...and the idea that Latin America doesn't have lazy people by the million makes me laugh. Here's a tip....manning your taxi 12 hours a day while playing dominoes with the other cabbies doesn't qualify as "hard work" just because you do it for 12 hours.
Try again....
You are obviously not from Mexico or further down south. For those people immigration is
as easy as talking a walk over the border, stopping by at the Bank of America for that credit
card before getting that application for dole in. No border patrol left to speak of, no
need to show ID and after a while they're eligible to stay.
I am not saying it's easy to go through the _regular_ immigration process for the rest of the
fairer skinned immigrants because I know it's not. Instead of griping that immigration is so
hard on you, you should be asking yourself this question: why are the making it so easy for
the Campesinos? Why are they making it so incredible hard for all the others?
On the other hand if tighter immigration policy means Microsoft will suffer...
It's the simple truth.
Graduating with a degree in CS does not mean you are skilled. The very rare student who is skilled is often hunted down and offered an internship which leads to a job before they have graduated. All those crappy students who I wouldn't hire in a million years are the ones applying for jobs. The ones who can't handle fizzbuzz. The ones who don't understand pointers, or recursion, or what comes after F when counting in hex. I have yet to see a single application from a competant recent CS grad. Universities are typically acting as community colleges, just teaching people enough java to be lowest common denominator code monkies. The rare students who are good are good in spite of their classes, not because of them, and as I said, they are getting jobs offered to them before they graduate, they are not looking for jobs.
Oooh! Moral outrage!
You want fries with that?
>>There is a sea change in the attitude of the next generation of Appus. ------- I just do not agree with this and this is not right. I am also an appu i.e. an Indian. I want to migrate to the US and that is my intention. Unlike many other Indians who keep saying that Lifestyle is better in India and never go back from the US - Hipocracy, I accept the fact that I intend to immigrate. Of course I do love my country. If one talks so much about attitude and better lifestyle in India, why dont you and brother go back to India, since oppurtunities are great there and you can afford maids? Accept it - US lifestyle is better in India. As a matter of fact over the years more and more people have migrated and there is no change in attitude. Make no mistake, qualitify of life is definitely better in US than India penny by penny The argument that 10RS will buy equalent stuff to a dollar is an invalid argument. Take the complete picture. In India, quality of life is shit for middle class earning crowd compared to the big wigs, politicians and stars in the film industry. Middle class Indians are taxed to death and no infrastructre like roads, water etc are built. India, has more money than any country in Asia put together. But the political system in corrupt and politicians eat all the money even in the 21st century, lead a royal life and leave the country to dogs without developing anything for the common man. In US too political system is not entirely perfect, they waste money on Iraq and other countries, but at least they first built a solid infrastrure for their own country unlike India. All the argument that next generations of Indians going back and not interested in US is a fake and invalid argument. Today Chennai, Banaglore, and every nook and corner all people want to migrate. 10 years ago, only people in the core natural science sector were migrating to US. Today, you can see people with different backgrounds, political science, law, nutrition etc etc etc come to the US. Why? If you dont do science and engineering in India, you will be a pauper and will not get any job. US still provides jobs ($50k per year at least) once you graduate from the US. My second Point. For all those Americans arguing against H1-Bs - Just all of you are insecure and dont believe in your ability. It is just plain ignorance. I read several people arguing against this. One person has written that Microsoft wants to make only money and "it does not give jobs for Americans who have spent 1000s of dollars in education, but gives jobs to people from India and other countries who spent nothing or meagre amount and enjoyed life and suddenly came here and made gazillion dollars" -- what are you talking about. People in developing countries struggle everyday to get quality education. Education is not free and subsidized for many people like in the US. Many parents struggle, take loans and educate their kids. After going through tough time it is still not free to come to the US. We did not just sit inside a plane and land inside US and start making money. 2 - 3 years of hard work paying US lots and lots of money for visa, immigration, admissions, GRE, Toefl and all bullshit. No federal grants, aid nothing and after all this struggle if we want a job - lack of H1B's - what crap and the Americans who argue about this are ignorant. American kids get all sorts of resources spoon fed - aid, scholarships, money etc etc , big cars to drive around and still many of them flunk in their education. They only to party and have sex. and they want heft paying jobs and whine against immigrant. Common prove your self. Its a competitive world. Dont sit and act like cry babies. With all the wealth if you cannot educate your self and get yourself a good job, you dont have to right to stop immigrants from getting a job. In short - I support bill gates argument (even though I am not a supporter of Microsoft business policies) and encourage increasing H1Bs!. Bring it On! :)
So when he becomes president eventually who thinks the US government will have an open standards and general software policy that makes it easier for Federal adoption of Free Software?
You don't quite understand how the concept of "work" is necessary for social order, or more specifically social control.
The purpose of technology is to eliminate work, yet people work more today than ever before. This is not coincidental.
The future you are proposing - a future where all manual labor is eliminated - would result in chaos of epic proportions. Just take a walk through a major public housing project where the dumbest members of society live and do nothing all day but eat fried chicken, play stolen video games, and dream about the latest and greatest cell phone. Oh, and sell, deal, and have gun battles over drugs.
The problem is that while YOU believe in egalitarianism, the ruling powers realize it is a lie. The only possible way your future could survive is with a vast eugenics program that prevents the reproduction of the violent and retarded, and strong controls regarding parenting and education.
Only under those circumstances could you trust your entire population with pure, unrestricted leisure.
Most people are slaves, self determination is impossible for them. They NEED someone to tell them what to do, otherwise they turn into animals.
Those are the people that must be eliminated from society for your dream to be fullfilled.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Perhaps you don't know much about the business side of medicine in this country.
True, many people do become physicians because they have a vocation, but I think even a fair number of those would gladly switch careers to make $200K+ that would essentially be hassle-free, as compared to what physicians now go through in this country thanks to our draconian insurance industry and legal environment.
If you look at liberals in Hollywood, DC and of course Redmond you will find one common theme, "it's ok for ME to do the things that it takes to become famous, successful, and wealthy, but not for you; pee on!"
Look at Pelosi, she got her fortune through investing in Oil commodities, now she's trying to force big oil companies to pay a heavier tax if they make billions.
So now we got the geeky liberal SOB Gates doing the same thing, "I can make billions and the whole world must bow at my feet, but anyone else in the US that expects to do what I did, screw you!"
You seem to be talking about "Microsoft Hiring Policies" while Gates is talking about the "United States Immigration Policies".
I believe these are different problems.
There is a difference between Microsoft being an attractive place to work and the US allowing people to work here.
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
If you're going to post in the thread, probably best to read the whole thing. Then you would have seen where I wrote There are a lot of Americans that do hard work, but they are generally the poor who either have to do it or starve (and sometimes starve anyway). I never said NO Americans work hard. But you have to admit that number is a very low minority. If you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t10.htm), you can see a breakdown of the ~140 million American workers. Management, professional and Sales and Office make up 87 million alone. Unfortunately, they don't have a breakdown of "physically demanding" work. But even in the millions, that's a small minority of the 140 million workers total.
Once again, though, I have to restate my original point. The original poster claimed Americans are the hardest working people in the world. A small minority of Americans do or have ever done hard work. In comparison, many other countries have workforces where the majority of the work done is hard work. Therefore, such a claim that somehow Americans are harder workers is fairly outrageous.
I also posted in my followup that I believe Americans are CAPABLE of hard work just like any other people. It all depends on how badly they need the money. And yes, there are jobs that involve dangerous and backbreaking work that pay outrageous sums (crab boats, for example). But to claim that that tiny minority is somehow representing a huge majority is just bad logic.
As far as projecting - that's laughable. I grew up on a livestock farm with a father who also did construction. Believe me, I know what hard work is.
In conclusion, "we" (all Americans) DON'T work hard when you average out the difficulty of all jobs done by Americans across the workforce. However, we (any American) CAN work hard if we have no other choice.
(BTW, I don't know where that comment about illegal hiring of illegal immigrants came from. Seems like a strawman you are trying to set up, since I never even mentioned it in any way.)
While I don't like the somehow bigoted tone of the post, I do agree that there is a kernel of truth. A very interesting book that touches on this is Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. It's set in a world where automation has replaced all jobs other than intellectual labor. Public assistance covers everyone and allows the vast masses of unemployed to live right on the boundary between middle class and poor.
I call BS. So according to you, most grads are grossly incompetent and don't even know what recursion is? Where in the world do you recruit from, because it sure doesn't sound like any college I've ever heard of. Most grads are very competent, and although they lack experience they can pick things up very quickly.
The whole thread is about utilitarian approach ("immigration is beneficial" vs. "no it is not") being wrong. He could debate the Human Rights approach I put forward, or he could debate my rejection of the utilitarian, but instead he chose to argue, that it is not beneficial — it is irrelevant... Even if it were detrimental, Human Rights trump those considerations.
No, a Right does not have to be recognized everywhere to be valid. It may be legal in Tututustan to own slaves, for example. That would not deprive Tututustanis from Right To Liberty, and will not make it legal to hold them as slaves.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"I personally witness the ill effects of these policies on an almost daily basis at Microsoft."
Bullshit!...you have caused far more ill effects with outsourcing!. You hire immigrants because you can pay them less..period. There are plenty of qualified people in the US you could hire. Or are you too concerned that these people might want a fair wage?
Why don't you STFU! Fix your operating system, fire Ballmer and get a real leader in your company.
I'm originally from Portugal but I've living in Denmark for more than one year now. From what I've read regarding USA worker rights, they're nowhere near those offered in Scandinavia, and in some cases, in other European countries too.
How many hours do you work per week in the USA? Anywhere near 37?
How many weeks of paid vacation do you have? Anywhere near 5?
How long is parental leave? Only for the mother, right? From what I've read, parental leave really sucks in the USA.
Do you have, for all practical purposes, a 2.5 days weekend in the USA?
I really don't understand how you can be speaking seriously regarding those issues, but since your posting history doesn't seem trollish, I'm giving you the benefit of doubt. Please enlighten me.
Those reasons may be the most valid in the world, but that doesn't change the basic fact that Scandinavian countries (and Portugal too, for that matter) are much safer than the USA.
PS: Some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_hours#United
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
It's one thing to say that it's too hard for a skilled IT worker from India to come over here and get his green card or citizenship, and maybe that has some merit. However, that has absolutely nothing to do with the national debate over immigration which is focused on trying to grant amnesty to low-skilled illegal aliens who work under the table. While person A has spent money and probably years working through the immigration system legally to come over here, person B crossed on foot and they want to give him clemency and social security benefits.
rewrite the Constitution?
The 14th Amendment is very clear that all individuals born or naturalized in the US and subject to US jurisdiction are citizens. Citizenship can be revoked, and is not extended to children of foreign diplomats (since they are not subject to US jurisdiction).
Changing that definition would take a Constitutional Amendment. Are you prepared for the long fight against people like me explaining how this would mean that you would have to add the procedure of applying for citizenship of your children and how unpleasent this can be (my son was born in Indonesia, so I had to apply for his citizenship through the embassy)?
More government is *not* what we need. A more sane immigration policy which doesn't create a vast market for illegal immigrants is what we need.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Allowing H1B temporary immigrants to work below local market rates really isn't free market capitalism because: H1B was a 6 year visa. If you knew that you could work in a country where you'd make 3 times your home salary but where cost of living was 3 times your home cost of living, you might be able to plug away for a few years, living as cheaply as possible in the low-rent district then take the money and run. U.S. born citizens really don't have this option. If labor had the mobility of jobs, you would rea;;u have a free world market. People would seek places where the demand for their skills gives an optimal salary*quality of life/cost of living ratio. I can tell you right now that silicon valley would not be the place. -- tnargime B1H na
I know there are a lot of people who say that the 14th Amendment doesn't really mean what it says, about the only requirements being that one is born or naturalized in the US and subject to US juridiction (i.e. power of our courts). Such people selectively miscite Congressional record to "clarify" the Amendment that they want to undermine. We shouldn't support such Know-Nothings.
Furthermore, a strict reading of such a bill might allow a non-citizen to be elected President of the US (the Constitution only mentions being born here). So much for not amending the Constitution.
A better Amendment would be to change the requirements for becoming President from being born in the US to being a birthright citizen. Why should my son, a US citizen from birth (and a citizen of no other country) be barred from becoming president simply because of the location of his birth?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
extending diplomatic immunity to the children of illegal aliens. No jurisdiction, no citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Then they could stay here as long as they want, become drug smugglers, organized criminals, and we would just have to put up with it.
Unless you had a Constitutional Amendment in mind....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Today and Indian engineer would need a salary far closer to realistic US levels for it to make economical sense at all. And in fact, last time I hired in India, several of the candidates I interviewed were Indians that had moved back from the US exactly because things had gotten to the point where they could get a higher standard of living in India than in the US even though they took significant hits in terms of salary.
There are other potential sources of significant immigration for engineering jobs, such as China, but the language barriers are much more significant.
How about the reason that immigration is destroying the country, the culture, and the environment in a futile effort to help a relatively insignificant number of people.
1 393887069 video if you have any doubts about just how little help even the most liberal immigration policy would have towards the betterment of third world populations, or how insane it would be to allow everyone who wanted to immigrate.
Watch this http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=587165141
Absolutely. And here's a solution- hire the out-of-work American HTML "programmers" to revamp the immigration system. Change the law to eliminate non-tourist non-immigrant visas, and replace it with a global green card quota. The web site submission CGI would be easy:
If quota>#greencards issued then if Backgroundcheck>minimumscore then IssueGreenCardOnPrintableHTMLScreen.
Anybody should be able to apply for a green card from any browser in the world, and get an answer within a few minutes and the ability to print the green card *before* they apply for work in the United States. Tune quota and minimum background check as needed to keep America safe and wages high.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So the real dilemma here isn't whether Americans are lazy or not - it is why your Mexican cousin married the lazy American. I'm sure it is because she wanted to show the lazy Americans how to get off their lazy American asses and do hard work, right? :)
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Clearly you have never been to France the country practically shuts down over the summer - well everywhere except the beaches!
Their thirty-five hour week isn't a critisism of course, more something for us Brits to aspire too! ;-)
Agreed. For all it's faults - of which there are many - this is still a "green and pleasant land". The fact that the main political parties are generally hard to tell apart indicates to me that we really don't have any significant problems, we like to pretend we do (the usual mantra, Schools, Hospitals etc), but really lets get a sense of perspective!
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
Why I am not packing my bags to go back to India : The other poster listed the advantages. The advantages of USA are, of course, clear air and water, largely honest and ethical population/politics/governance. And less competitive system for my children. I slogged my balls off in my high school and junior college to get into IIT. I want my kids to have a less stressful life.
Education is free in USA You are completely wrong about it. Only primary and secondary education is free in USA. College costs money man, big money. Average tuition in Govt universities are around 9000$ a year and private colleges charge, get this, 40,000$ a year. College grad in USA gets 50K salary, but only 25% of Americans have the money to go to college. In India higher education is subsidized like nobody's business. All I had to do is to get through the entrance examn. My annual tuition fees to IIT was, get this 200 Rs. Those days a dollar was 12 rupees. Even that was waived because my dad was making less than 500 Rs a month. Only 40% of Indians finish high school. But those who pass Secondary School Certificate Exam, 80% of them go to college. It is YOU who got free/subsidized college education competing with Americans who spent between 40,000$ to 160,000$ to get a degree.
Common prove your self. Its a competitive world. Dont sit and act like cry babies. Well, Zathura, I have news for you. The average Indian is illiterate. The average female literacy rate in BIMARU states is less than 15%. India churns out about 200,000 engineering grads a year. I estimate about 2,000 are world class and about 15,000 are comparable to average US educated engineer. The rest are fluff. They might want to come to USA and work on a H1B. But they wont make grade.
you dont have to right to stop immigrants from getting a job. Well, buddy, America is MY country now, and I wont let you spoil it like you spoiled India. An average American will do a better job than an average Indian. The top Indian will definitely outclass an average American, and unfortunately the top Indians dont want to come here and only the second and third class Indians are willing to come here. And the only thing the second and third class Indians compete with us is on pay, salary and benefits. I have fired IIT grads for under performance. OK? Dont think it is all clear sailing once you get a H1B and land here. I, and my fellow Americans, will be the bosses and if you dont deliver more than what I am paying you, you will be on a Chicago-Mumbai flight before you could say, "Aishwarya Roy".
How did that Zathura's post get +2 insightful rating instead of -2 troll?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Think how quickly WINE would gain compatibility with legacy Windows applications if Microsoft put their resources behind it--implemented their secret APIs, implemented the stuff the WINE folks don't dare touch for IP reasons.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Illegal immigration is the illegal entry of the country, regardless of how easy the process they bypassed is. If its easy to immigrate, but we know you're here and you pay taxes, I don't see a problem with it.
Nah... at the end he ended being a total jerk, they divorced and the motherfucker wont even sign in some papers to let the guys go to Mexico, something that they really like because they like to see their grandmother, their uncles (me =oP) and they love Mexico's beaches.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I worked in San Diego in the early nineties. The employment market was worse there in 1990-1991 when all the defense contractors started laying of people due to the "peace dividend" then anything I've seen post-2000. 2001-2005 was little different than 1992-1995. (Speaking as someone who actively looked for programming work in both time periods.)
The cake is a pie
and create more brain drain in other countries!
Marx's big error to me was that he took things in too big of bites. Communism works best when linked with tribalism and small villages. In other words, situations where you can hunt down and kill the committee that took away your tractor.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So what's the downside?
The problem with this argument is that there is no inherent value in what a programmer does -- the value is completely dependent on what the market is willing to bear, which depends on the cost of production. For example, if MS did what I suggested, MS Vista might go up to $400 a pop, and fewer copies would be sold.
My point was that the "We can't find any qualified Americans to do these jobs, so we're forced overseas or to hire H1B visaholders" argument implies that they would hire Americans if only they could. But, they can, just at a higher price than going overseas. So, the argument is about pricing -- they're really saying "it's more cost effective for us to hire H1B visaholders or go overseas than it is to hire Americans."
Frankly, they're right: Microsoft could do what I suggest, but their higher prices would kill their market share. My point is that they should be honest about it, not that they shouldn't do it.
no, he said 640k was enough memory for any PC
Ask Me About... The 80's!
There's a fairly fundamental difference between working hard and spending more time in the office.
A few years ago I was working (in the UK) with a couple of other development offices, one in the US, and one in the Netherlands.
By far the Americans spent the most time in the office, they would be in at 7 in the morning, I'd check my mails the next day and they'd been having meetings and asking questions well into the early evening.
The Dutch office by contrast was 9 to 5, by which I mean that, en masse, they were in at 9, and left at 5 regardless of what was going on.
I was once in a conference call with both groups which started to run over, and the Dutch team leader simply cut in and said "It's 5pm, we're leaving now, we'll pick this up tomorrow" rendering the American manager completely speechless.
The thing was, though they were doing pretty much two variations on the same bit of software, the Dutch guys were continually getting further and further ahead of schedule, whilst the Americans were falling further and further behind.
This may or may not be indicitive of general working practices in these countries, but it certainly taught me not to confuse work with time spent at work...
None other than Bill Gates has spoken out against tighter immigration policies in the US.
None other? I'm pretty sure other people have also spoken out against tighter immigration policies in the US.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
No matter what Gates' motives and Microsoft's practices, the fact is: America was built on, by and for immigrants. Maybe that's unfashionable, now y'all got mortgages to pay. But it'sw a fact nevertheless, and I don't remember being taught that the Founding Fathers put a use-by date on the Truths that they saw as Self-evident. PS: I'm a Brit and I live in the UK, so my grasp of US history is a bit shaky. But the basic truth of what I've written is just that: TRUTH.
SEN. KENNEDY: Just one additional point. In the H1-B there are provisions in there where they pay a fee into a fund so that they train Americans and upgrade their skills as a part of the H1-B. Let me just finally ask you this. You've given a number of recommendations on competitiveness and immigration and others, in education. What's your - just if you could summarize your sense of urgency, how much time do we have? I mean, what's the framework, where would you say, as somebody that's obviously thought about this a good deal, has specific recommendations, and is familiar with these forces in other parts of the world, what guidance can you give to us about the sense of urgency? I think for all of us who deal with education think every day that's gone by with a lost child, for a child to lose that opportunity for learning is a day that probably can't be recaptured. There's a sense of urgency in terms of education as years go back and we lose these opportunities. What's your sense just in terms of the country, the competitiveness, and what's happening in other parts of the world?
BILL GATES: Yeah, I think both of these are incredibly urgent issues. Education, because as you say, it takes a long time, and so you've got to get started now improving the teachers and trying out the new incentive systems - even if it's going to take decades, the sooner you get going the better.
In the immigration case it's much more of an acute crisis in that the message is clearly here today that you come to the U.S., go to these great universities, and you go back and not only take your very high paying job, but also all the jobs around it back to another country. And other rich countries are stepping up and showing the flexibility of trying to benefit from the way we're turning these people away. In every way this country benefits by having these very high paid jobs here in this country.
And so if you talk to a student who's in school today, going to graduate in June, they're seeing that they cannot apply until they get their degree, and by the time they get their degree, all those visas are gone. If somebody is here on an H1-B, if you're from India, say, with a bachelor's degree, the current backlog would have you wait decades before you could get a green card, and during that time your family can't work, there are limits in terms of how you can change your job. There was one calculation done that the fastest way you'd get a green card is to have a child who becomes a United States citizen, and then your child sponsors you to become a U.S. citizen, and that's because there's more than 21 years in some of these backlogs.
So, this is an acute crisis. And it's a thing, as you say, there are fees paid, and Microsoft makes no complaint about those fees. We end up paying a lot more to somebody who comes in for these jobs from overseas than we do to somebody domestically. We have every reason - we have 3,000 open jobs right now. We're hiring the people domestically, everyone that we can. In fact, there's a great competition, this wage rate continues to go up, as it should.
And the wage rate for this type of skill set is not that different in other countries. It's escalated very rapidly in India and China. And particularly if you include the tax cost and the infrastructure cost that we pay to support this kid of job in those countries, this is not about saving a ton of money for a top engineer, this is about being able to put them here in this country where the other skill sets around them are the best in the world, and there's not a shortage in those other skill sets. And India and China haven't yet - and it will take them a long time before they're as good at the management, testing, marketing elements that go around those engineers.
So, this is an acute crisis and one that in terms of the taxes these people will pay, the fees that get paid around them is fiscally accretive to the United States immediately in terms of what happens. So, to me it's a very clear one with basically no downside that I can see whatsoever.
Lukasz Anforowicz
Hikipedia - a free database of hi
At least 300K unemployed engineers in N California, that would be my guess. The bureau of
labor statistics says there are 400K fewer jobs in the bay area alone
than there were in year 2000. The population is almost the same, so that means about 400K are unemployed and maybe
3 out of 4 these unemployed used to work in tech industry.
At least 30% of the the engineers I know personally have been unemployed 5 out of the past 6 years.
Most are broke or living off home equity mortgages or menials jobs at Sears.
We should be stopping H1Bs and L1s rather than letting more in.
But the way the congress works is this: A lot of executives donate campaign money to congressmen
in return for them to increase visas (See how Jack Abrahmhoff got Indian Casinos and executives
from Saipan's sweatshops to influence votes, this is the same thing only with executives from tech.)
Big company gets 1,000 more engineers for $50K less wages per year and
lays off 1,000 American engineers who are highly paid. Big executive gets $10M bonus for
laying off high paid Americans and donates another $1M to congressmen
to increase immigration. Totally corrupted congress we have here in the USA.
If you are an American engineer, get retrained in another field as you won't have
a job for long.
The immigration has a lot of other bad effects too. When you apply for a job in Silicon
Valley, a chines manager won't hire you unless you are chines. An Indian manager
won't hire you unless you are Indian. A Muslim manager won't hire you unless you are
Muslim. Of course, an American manager has to hire minority immigrants or he can be sued
for discrimination.
Even my American-Indian friends are afraid that the wages will continue to drop and
unemployment will increase as the engineering market gets flooded with immigrants.
(Reposted, account being moderated as "flamebait" by an Ann Coulter's bitch)
Though fucking noogies.
The United States bears within the seeds of it's own destruction. By indoctrinating kids with the notion of having money instead of doing something worthwile, it will only promote the learning of parasitic, destructive and lucrative crafts like lawyer, salesman or MBA.
Exactly 50 years ago, in 1957, Sputnick was launched and shocked the USA in realizing that their Science education was not at par with the pinko soviet communists. Since those 50 years, the US has entered a downdrain spiral of falling into "easy" mind tricks, illustrated most eloquently by the extreme rise of religious people who, as a matter of faith, will outright reject science.
It's not for nothing that muslims countries are ass-backwards: their religion impedes Science, just as the christianity is impeding Science in the USA.
There is no way out, unless the USA will ditch it's anglo-saxon greedyness mindset, dump the religion in the garbage heap of History (shooting all evangelists in the head oughta do it, as well as compulsory mixed masturbation classes for boys and girls) and get it's ass back together properly.
In the meanwhile, enlightened countries in Europe will sit back and have a good laugh at the USA's self-destructive habits consume it in an orgy of god-dictated stupidity.
I, for one, want the highly skilled and intelligent people to move to America. Every time increasingly strict immigration laws turn away someone with valuable skills and intelligence, we lose what they could have added to our country.
Gates can take his case to Washington, although i think he's not in touch with the reality of the situation. At this rate, i don't think any one would take this field due to the current perception that there IS NO JOB opportunity at all ( or career advancement) . It is kind of odd that in the 21st century, technological jobs are not the " jobs of the future" any more. One is better off being a doctor ( due to the shift in the general population's age; and the demand for consumers in that field starts to grow as the population gets older), than being in the tech field . Currently at " ground zero", based upon what I have seen in the past few years as a college student, enrollment in the general computer sciences field ( IT, MIS, CS, SE , CE, CIS, ect) have taken a distinct nose dive. Classes used to be around 20 students or so , have now dwindled down to classes of 8 students or less. The current Java class that I am in, only sports 4 students.... 4 students including me. If that doesn't ring warning bells in the minds of CIOs and such, then i don't know what will. The current campus perception is " Don't take a major in that field since it isn't worth your time and money to do so ". Even if you do manage to graduate in this field with a degree in hand ( as what I've seen from my older peers who have graduated last year) , this does NOT guarantee that you will get a STEADY job. The field is littered with barriers that can easily block out anyone with a 4 year degree in hand. Many employers expect " experience" in a field that does not have many "entry" ( junior position type jobs) jobs at all. So how does one go about getting experience if there are NO entry level jobs? Even more so HR expects that the current newly graduated student is to have a whole array of certifications in hand the moment that they graduate. If they don't have one of the acronyms they're suddenly " unqualified" unfit to do the job. Apparently spending thousands of dollars only satisfies one of the hurdles, college students still need to spend thousands of dollars more to earn their certifications. The most unrecognized issue that I have viewed from many proponents of outsourcing ( including H-1b usage) is the human costs that are not realized in the immediate future. Although there are benefits in the short run, there are hidden costs associated with these trends. As an IT college student from a 4 year institution( currently in my 3rd year ) , the effects of outsourcing can be noted on the campus easily. It's a microcosm of the domino/butterfly effect. When people hear "X amount of jobs outsourced to a different country in type Y field, such signals serve to be a warning beacon: "Do not enter into this field for there is a bleak outlook on this future for job Y." This type of thinking has gutted the amount of enrollment for sciences across the board. At the moment there are "labor shortages" in the IT market, which doesn't surprise me since the market has created the notion that the supply far outstrips the demand in the minds of many collegiate apprentices. Even though there are "labor shortages" in the IT market, enrollment remains quite sub-par since many constantly hear "company A has moved Z amount of jobs offshore," or "Why can't I get a reasonable standard of living vs. other non-tech majors." Then one would look up type of company and then generalize that "it's a tech company, if they're outsourcing their knowledge, it is therefore useless for me to pursue a career in this field." At this rate, the rigors of taking a scientific/ tech degree will soon disappear as many will shift on to jobs that are not technologically centric. Thus, in a way, outsourcing is a slow quicksand that if this is not regulated carefully, will have a frightening consequence for the future.