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.""

Comments

I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[TodMinuit]

Microsoft is doing what they think is in their best interest. Their purpose isn't to justify your education, or try and boost the number of CS majors. Their purpose is not to give you, or anyone else, employment. Nor is that the purpose of any company.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Microsoft is doing what they think is in their best interest. Their purpose isn't to justify your education, or try and boost the number of CS majors. Their purpose is not to give you, or anyone else, employment. Nor is that the purpose of any company.

Exactly right! So why should we change our laws, written by representatives elected democratically, to help a bunch of sociopaths who are just out to get what they can regardless of the destruction they cause to the rest of society? I say we should be disbanding any corportion that doesn't have, as a part of it's charter, a duty to support the citizens of the country that is granting it incorporation papers. It's not worth the cost in lowered taxes to allow such sociopathic systems to incorporate.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[SatanicPuppy]

Typically short-sighted protectionist viewpoint.

Think about it this way...if all the competent people move here, where will all the work be? One of America's greatest advantages is that it's just a damn nice place to live. If you can move here (and thanks to our typically loose immigration laws, you probably can), you will, depriving your native country of your skill, and giving the pass along benefits to the rest of us...Skilled workers immigrating to a country is always a good thing.

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?

Sure Microsoft wants the cheap workers, but, you know what? They can go to where the cheap workers are if they want 'em that bad, and we really don't want that to happen.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[Watson Ladd]

Microsoft's issues relate more to management suffering from a massive case of NIH syndrome and an inability to realize mistakes. They could have taken OpenBSD, put in video card drivers and a new window manager, slapped it in a box and called it Vista for a fraction of the money they spent, and gotten a better product. But they didn't.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[The Bungi]

Every programmer out there who lived through the depression in our industry of 2001-2005

It wasn't a depression - it was a correction. The bubble burst on a million stupid overpriced and underdeveloped "products" created by "developers" who got $50K out of highschool because they knew how to spell "HTML". Frankly, I was happy to see them go back to whatever it was they were doing before.

Further, the "depression" wasn't specific to IT, nor was the IT industry the only one affected. You make it sound like you and your friends were the only ones who got shafted in 2001. And it ended in 2005? Give me a break, in most large to mid-sized markets the bloodletting was over by late 2002 to early 2003.

I'm sure you'll be gettin lots of karma tonight since the mods seem to like your "fuck Bill Gates" stance and seem to be modding down anyone who questions your wisdom. I do however wonder why no one on Slashdot finds some time to question the immigration policies of companies like IBM, who layoff thousands of American developers, sysadmins, project managers and analysts and then hire hundreds of thousands of Indians and chinese to come work in the US for wages that are significantly less than the ones dictated by H1-B rules. In some cases they even hire back their old employees through consulting body shops at two thirds the cost (without any benefits whatsoever and lower salary).

At least Microsoft doesn't screw immigrants like IBM and other companies do. But IBM is the darling of the open source crowd, so mum's the word. I don't expect to see many articles around here detailing that sort of thing.

In the meantime though, it's always fun to bash Microsoft while ignoring the real problems. Take a gander at that Wikipedia article, let go of your "the corporation exists to serve me" philosphy for a second and think about what hurts this country more.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[Eli Gottlieb]

Right, but none of that justifies H-1B visa slavery.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States had really free immigration laws. Millions came in because of how great America supposedly was (along with the lack of attempts at genocide) a great place to live. Then people got racist and tightened the immigration laws.

If we let skilled labor into the country, they should be able to compete on a level playing field with American workers. That means visas that let guest workers stay here while say... they look for a new job if fired. When unemployment insurance runs out, then go home.

Then we'll even see immigrant labor demanding equal wages for equal work, and the natives can celebrate.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[monopole]

a.) The US is a damn nice place to live because we have a large middle class and labor protections that men fought and died for (the 8 hour day and having weekends off didn't just happen, and they won't stay around if we don't fight for them). Generating an underclass of scab labor slowly destroys what makes this country a great place.

b.) Companies which renounce their US citizenships should be treated as such, no government contracts, no tax breaks, no protection military or legal. Microsoft doesn't want to hire Americans? How about all government agencies (federal to municipal) require ODF XML format and ban submissions in Word for any official business, and require strict conformance with standard WWW formats for web pages, and POSIX compliance for all APIs in use? How about revisiting antitrust?

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[wannasleep]

As much as I don't like Walmart, apparently, there are plenty of people who could get better stuff and pay more at other stores, but indeed they buy the crap from China. Three explanations: it is not so crappy, it is crap with a better quality/price ratio, or Americans are stupid. Which one?

For the same token, getting an H1-B is expensive and frustrating, but companies (usually run by Americans) still go through the hassle. Why? Maybe they can't really get the quality they are looking for, or, at least, not enough of it.

Finally, next time you use Google remember Sergey Brin, born in Russia. Next time you use Yahoo! remember Jarry Yang, born in Taiwan. If you happen to use YouTube remember that two of the three founders are from Germany and Taiwan. Ebay? Pierre Omydar from France. Want me to go on? Feel like checking out the founding fathers? Do you think that Alexander Hamilton was born in the USA? Should Columbus have stayed home? Or maybe do you want to simply understand that foreigners made a great contribution to this country. Whether you like it or not.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[BakaHoushi]

But (And I am not an economist) then wouldn't these companies then just pack their bags and move to a country where supporting its own people is not so valued?

I'm far from a communist or some advocate for overthrowing our government to give power to the workers (I'm for overthrowing the government because, let's face it, it's fun!). But this, I see, is the main flaw of capitalism.

A corporation exists for one purpose: To earn money. This, in itself, isn't really a bad thing. We need a lot of goods, and a corporation provides them. We get what we need, and the company profits. Everyone's (mostly) happy. But then comes the end of the financial year. Uh-oh. Retailer X made 1 million units of currency less than it did last year. We need to cut back and fire some employees to raise our stock prices.

Let's face it. In business, it's survival of the greediest. You head a company, and you have two options before you. One will net you X dollars, and has no damaging repercussions on your employees or the economy. However, some rather crude, dishonest, and dirty method will earn you 2X dollars at the expense of your employees (but your investors are very happy). What do you do?

If you didn't pick the option that makes the most money, sorry, the board of directors has just given you the boot and replaced you with someone who WILL make that choice.

This is a cynical and exaggerated example, I know, but it really does seem to me that the sad fact is, some people will do ANYTHING for money and power, and will go wherever they have to and hurt whoever they need to to change their yearly income from 4.5 billion to 5.4 billion.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[AJWM]

A corporation exists for one purpose: To earn money.

No, that's not quite right. A corporation exists to limit liability, specifically the liability of its owners for the deeds, misdeeds, or misadventures of the corporation. There are plenty of enterprises that exist to make money that are not corporations. And indeed, there are corporations that exist not to make money (e.g. non-profits).

This, in itself, isn't really a bad thing.

Well, yes it is. Oh, the making money part isn't inherently bad, it's the limitation on liability. Does funny things to the wiring in the brains of the board members and/or officers of the company. Because of this limitation on liability, the stockholders don't have much incentive to care how the company behaves, so long as it's profitable; worst case, they're out their investment, not facing personal impovrishment or jail time. Indeed, in most cases the real stockholders don't even know what they own, it's all indirect via investment funds, 401(k)s, and the like.

I'm not offering any easy solutions, I'm not sure there are any easy ones. But it's worth thinking about. Personal responsibility -- pay attention to what your 401(k) funds are doing, and vote whatever shares you personally own -- is a big part.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[mikael]

Microsoft already has research centers in Bangalore, Beijing and Cambridge,
not forgetting Redmond and Silicon Valley.

Microsoft have a policy of not employing software engineers over 30 - apparently, according to Bill Gates, a software engineers skills peak at age 26, and goes downhill from then on.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[troll -1]

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.

But is there really an inversely proportional relationship between cheap and quality? In other words do people from, say, India have less talent than Americans because they're willing to work for less?

I wonder if better paid Americans really do produce better products? If so, I wonder what it is about Americans that makes them better and why there's not a market for such talent.

I work for a company as an administrator for a 2000+ Linux cluster. We hire a lot of people from India and Eastern Europe. Should we fire them because they're not American?

There seems to be a hint of racism in your argument. I really don't know, perhaps we are better off being isolationist. But maybe you need to make the argument against free trade and diminishing borders in broader economic terms rather than in just citing Microsoft's delayed release of Vista.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[AJWM]

Microsoft have a policy of not employing software engineers over 30 - apparently, according to Bill Gates, a software engineers skills peak at age 26, and goes downhill from then on.

The real reason is that any older than that, and the engineers have enough real world experience to see what utter crap Microsoft's development practices really are, and not put up with them. MSFT needs to get them early so they can be properly indoctrinated. That they're also cheaper and willing to work longer hours (no family to spend time with) is bonus.

There's a reason that the address of Microsoft HQ is "One Microsoft Way", and not "street" or "boulevard" or such.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[ScrewMaster]

The GP doesn't understand that protectionism is not, in and of itself, evil. In fact, much of the current ills facing our society are due to a lack of it, as you say. This idea that everyone should be free to sell anything they want, anywhere in the world, for any price is simply wrong. When you operate that way, the net result is invariably an entropic transfer of wealth, from areas of highest concentration (the United States) to areas of lesser concentration (Japan, India, China, Korea, Taiwan, etc.) That's been the history of the United States since we stopped bothering to collect tariffs on imported goods. Ironically, it was the advent of the personal income tax and eventually withholding, that lessened the Federal Government's dependence upon that tariff structure and allowed the present state of affairs to come about.

Look, what China and India are doing to the United States are nothing more than what Japan (an erstwhile ally) pioneered decades ago. It's called dumping, it's supposedly illegal and anticompetitive, yet it's happening on a scale that tiny Japan could never have managed. China is dumping goods with the express intent of destroying domestic manufacturing while transferring massive quantities of U.S. dollars into its coffers, and India is doing the same thing with intellectual capital. Both nations are attempting to decimate our ability to create wealth, by going after the businesses that manufacture goods, and the very people capable of designing those goods.

One of my fellow engineers came to work the other day with an expensive-looking set of screw and nutdrivers, in a nice solid case. Made in China of course. He paid two dollars for it. $2.00. No way in hell did that Chinese manufacturer make a profit on that, even if he did pay his workers in rice. But it's sure hard for any domestic producer to compete with that, is it not? If we had a brain in our heads we'd be pushing for our Government to start tariffing the hell out of Chinese imports, to give our own people a chance. I'd have been willing to pay the thirty or forty bucks that screwdriver set was really worth.

Any MBA foolish enough to believe that we'll be able to keep feeding Indian workers peanuts forever is, well, a fool. They're competing with American workers for jobs, and because they'll work for a fraction of a typical American's salary and are frequently highly-qualified they're getting those jobs. That's great, I guess ... but when there are no more U.S. citizens capable of doing that work, the price will go up, there will be nobody left to compete with them, and we'll be that much less an independent nation.

The Founders would be proud, I'm sure. No, not really ... in reality, they're turning over in their graves.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[Phisbut]

what do you know of Microsoft's development practices - beyond "they write crappy bloated software" - I'm talking about what a software engineer would see and deal with daily? What methodologies do they use?

This is something I definitely wouldn't want to deal with.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[AJWM]

A corporation exists to do things that are difficult or impossible for individuals to accomplish. It provides the legal structure for teamwork. Part of that is limiting the liability

There exist other structures for organizations that wish to accomplish things beyond the ability of an individual. The corporation is the only one that limits liability. QED.

It may be cynical, but it's not misleading.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[mpaque]

Microsoft have a policy of not employing software engineers over 30 - apparently, according to Bill Gates, a software engineers skills peak at age 26, and goes downhill from then on.

That can't be a real engineer, then. A person who wants to become an engineer has to take and pass the Fundamentals of Engineering/Engineer in Training examination, a seriously difficult exam (all day, about 8 hours) that requires knowledge at the Bachelor Degree level. The exam is often taken after the graduate has been in the workforce for a year or so. After passing the FE/EIT, the prospective engineer has to work several years (typically 4-5 years) in an Engineering position that the state board finds acceptable, and then must pass another exam, the Professional Engineers Examination, before they are credentialed as an Engineer.

You just don't find many people at age 26 in the engineering community that have acquired a Professional Engineer's license, and, to be blunt, I wouldn't consider them to be at the peak of their profession for many years after that.

Now, if you are looking for a coding drone who can type out reams of C++ really fast to a predefined specification, well, that's different. That's a skill more analogous to a construction laborer than to an engineer. Being able to set forms really quickly doesn't make one qualified to design a bridge.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[tbo]

I'm not offering any easy solutions, I'm not sure there are any easy ones.

Oh no, your solution is quite easy--eliminate the "corporate veil" and all that--it's just that it's misguided. What you're advocating would eliminate the ability of average people to own stock, and make it the exclusive province of those rich enough to afford all kinds of liability insurance and legal "firewalls" between them and their portfolios.

Think about it--if you're an average joe interested in buying a few shares of company X, how much time would it take you to ferret out any of X's wrongdoings? Even if you knew what to look for and somehow had access to all of the company's records, how long would it take you to sort through all of it? It's basically impossible unless you hire an army of lawyers and accountants, and that's only worth doing if you're planning to invest so much that you can afford take the hit on checking out the company. Even then, you'd probably still want to buy insurance in case you missed something.

Take me as an example. I have a small (2-4k) investment in two gold royalties companies. These companies don't operate mines themselves, but rather buy and sell royalty rights to other mines. They have no direct control over mine operations, but do help fund the development of new and existing mines. Do any of the mines from which they receive royalties do unethical things? Do those mines employ child labor or dump toxic chemicals or prop up evil dictators? I hope not, but I don't actually know. What's more, there's no practical way for me to find out. These royalties companies regularly acquire and sell interests in various mines, many of which are located in different countries, so it's hard to keep up to date. Most of the individual mines don't have websites, and, even if they did and were up to nefarious deeds, I doubt they'd show pictures of children working in cyanide gold leach pools. If one of the companies I own stock in is ethical, and the other is not, I would of course like to transfer my investment to the ethical company, but how can I possibly find out which is which? If I was faced with the possibility of criminal responsibility for the actions of others that were beyond my control and knowledge, I'd have to just exit the stock market. Most other small investors would have to do the same. Big investors would clean up, being the only ones who could stick around.

The logical response would be that companies should hire auditors and external accountants who could provide assurances to investors. Of course, if we have external verification of the company's ethics, why not just directly regulate rather than making investors liable? Bam, you're back to our present-day system, with all its inherent flaws and virtues. The system is not fundamentally broken--it just needs some fine-tuning.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[Omestes]

Wow. Thank you for that. You must be the most hated /.er, btw.

I agree mostly. But some degree of corporation will always be necessary in the modern world. Sure it should be regulated to ensure it remains beneficial to its host society, and it should be taxed so it is forced to support the culture which allowed it to strive and be profitable.

On the other hand we, for some odd reason, have a double standard when it comes to corporations, we legally treat them as individuals, but also treat them as pure capitalist constructs. The boards and leaders of these corporations should be held culpable for their actions, as well as the corporate entity itself.

Oddly I think the libertarians have some degree of a point when they want the economy to be free from government. But I see this in a positive sense, corporations should be divorced from government in the same way religion ought to be, it has no influence over government, but government can still touch its harmful practices. Of course Mr. Gates likes immigration, he benefits from it, but due to our system he has more of a voice than you or me, or most other /.ers or lay public.

Oddly, to go back more OT, I think Mr. Gates is confused. I haven't seen much initiative to reduce legal immigration, and if there is it too is misguided since it is already well night impossible for skilled immigrants to come to the US, especially those from Europe, and other developed nations.

Re:I made billions- but you'll be replaced

[BendingSpoons]

Do those mines employ child labor or dump toxic chemicals or prop up evil dictators? I hope not, but I don't actually know. What's more, there's no practical way for me to find out.

I think what you mean to say is "I don't care enough to try to find out." I don't disagree with the central thrust of your post. Shareholders shouldn't face liability for their corporation's actions. However, I can't believe that a publicly traded company has no mechanism for finding out which companies they're dealing with. What you're really saying is that it's not worth the hassle to find out if your stock money has a little blood on it.

Here is what I saw when I read your post: "I invest in GoldCo. GoldCo may or may not deal with some of the worst, exploitative elements of humanity. However, it would be quite an undertaking to find out what sort of mining companies GoldCo deals with, and then look to some NGOs to find out these mining companies' reputations. And I'm just trying to make a little money here." That mentality is a complete abdication of social responsibility. That sort of apathy, that unwillingness to see where your money is actually coming from, enables some horrible activities when it transfers to a large scale.

I'm not trying to beat you down with a burst of self-righteousness here. I just think that stockholders wield a bit more power, and have access to more information, than you give them credit for.

640,000 immigrants

[biocute]

Mr Gates did mention that 640K skilled immigrants ought to be enough for USA.

tell us what you really think

[illegalcortex]

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?

Just for the record....

[canipeal]

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.

Can't compete with Google

[smose]

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.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

the future

[User 956]

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.

Re:the future

[Gryle]

Better get your Old Glory insurance policy quick then!

How does this make math a good career choice?

[Anonymous Coward]

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"

Re:How does this make math a good career choice?

[LibertineR]

A smart college kid would choose a career based on what they love to do, rather than on money, or they just are not a smart kid to begin with. It makes no sense to destroy your life doing something you dont want to do, because the odds are, you will suck at it and be a failure anyway.

Do what you love, or suck at anything else. You could end up being better than others, but never as good as you could be at the thing you love to do.

Re:How does this make math a good career choice?

[aeoo]

Bingo.

Money is irrelevant. Money is only relevant when you love 2 things more or less equally and there is a large difference in income between them.

If you hate plumbing and you get into plumbing to make money...yea, you'll be a shit plumber who will make his own life miserable and lives around them as well! And in the end probably get a bum rep and never get another plumbing contract.

Do what you love. It's the only thing that makes sense. The same is true after you're hired. You gotta do what you love regardless of what management tells you to do, because following orders against your nature won't help neither you nor your management.

Re:How does this make math a good career choice?

[rmckeethen]

Money is irrelevant. Money is only relevant when you love 2 things more or less equally and there is a large difference in income between them.

Bzzt! Wrong answer. You go to the back of the line... ;-)

Don't kid yourself on this subject -- money is *always* relevant in any business decision, most especially your choice of careers. As someone who's been on the other side of the tracks, I can tell you that poverty does indeed suck. The only people who think differently are usually the ones who've never known what it means to be poor. You might love janitorial work, but I guarentee you that your family isn't going to love the sacrifices they'd have to make if you changed careers.

After a few years, I've come to see that the real trick in life is to find a career that fits both your aptitude and your financial needs. Ignoring either factor, or choosing a career based only on money or only on aptitude, is the surest path to unhappiness. If you want true career satisfaction, find something you're good at, and make sure it pays!

here we have it

[phaetonic]

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.

Fuck him

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

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.

Re:There's lots of evidence on this

[f0dder]

Anyone who has ever attended college only need look at where the graduation ceremonies are held. Engineers get dinky basketball gymnasium. Business gets school coliseum.

Re:There's lots of evidence on this

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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.

Sorry, but whoever told you that is the granddaddy of all liars. Farmers in Colorado (and other states) can't get the labor they need because they refuse to pay a living wage for that labor and accept the inflation in food prices that comes from paying a living wage. The border control isn't any tighter- border patrol agents who actually use guns to enforce the border get sent to jail, and the National Guard troops we've sent there don't have any ammo. If anything, the border control is LOOSER than it was in the 1990s.

Shortage myth

[Supercooldude]

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.

Re:Shortage myth

[Philodoxx]

And every time I hear somebody complaining about graduating with a CS (or equivalent) degree and complaining about not being able to find a job I want to punch him in the face. Accredited does not equal skilled! Some of the people in my graduating class are complete morons but they still have a piece of paper that says they are just as skilled as I am.

Re:Shortage myth

[tignom]

Every time I hear someone complain about the "desperate shortage of skilled programmers", I cringe. It's true, there is a desperate shortage of skilled programmers, but there's always a glut of mediocre/decent/good programmers. That's what nobody pays attention to in this whole debate.

It's easy to find programmers to fill positions, especially if you pay well. But it's very difficult to recruit the really talented people. And there's a huge difference. I know talented programmers who are easily three times as productive as their middle-of-the-road peers. The bad programmers are actually counterproductive - you could do their work in less time than it takes to manage them. Everyone wants the talented people, and there's more than enough companies willing to pay for them. But outside the dot-bomb, there just haven't been enough of these people to go around.

I believe Bill Gates when he says he needs H1B workers to fill all the job openings Microsoft lists. But that's not because there aren't enough native programmers here in the US. It's because there aren't enough people here who are up to his standards.

A small number of H1B programmers are necessary to fill very specific niches and won't affect domestic hiring or pay scales, but we're bringing in way more than that to create a larger pool of top talent. And that means less talented American programmers either take pay cuts or get forced out of the field. It's not just supply and demand. It's supply, demand and quality.

Re:Cheap labor vs Skilled labor

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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?

We want cheap highly skilled labor to prevent having to actually pay for the society in which we live.

Are kids who grew up here complaining about losing construction/landscaping and migrant farm jobs to immigration?

Some are. I really do not like that the way I learned to work (picking strawberries, cane berries, and doing landscaping) will not be available to my son because a bunch of illegal immigrants took all of those jobs long ago. Without such jobs, he may not be able to afford to go to college. It's all tied together.

Depression my ass

[ucblockhead]

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.

Re:Cheap labor vs Skilled labor

[Tackhead]

> 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?

Which is what makes US immigration policy so infuriating.

Apu Packofsix wants to come over from Bangalore and write software. He can come as an H-1B, he can't change jobs while he's here, and his H-1B expires in three years. Then he can renew once, and he can stay for three more years, after which he has to go home. Since he's making between $50K-100K, his employer might like to keep him around, but his employer isn't in the business of breaking the law. So - he's only got six years here, he never puts down roots, and after six years of making $20K/year in taxes off him, he gets kicked out.

Jose Seispack, on the other hand, sneaks across the border in the dead of night. Makes $3/hour picking berries. Has an "anchor baby" at the earliest possible opportunity. Stays indefinitely, sneaking back across the border within a few months, should he be so unfortunate as to be caught and deported. Consumes about $10K/year in government services, indefinitely.

Joe Sixpack? Well, Apu was forced to go back home after his six years were up. So when Apu starts his consulting operation in Bangalore, guess what happens to Joe Sixpack's engineering career?

Thanks, Politicians. Thanks a fuck of a lot.

I'll grant that a population consisting of a lot of highly-educated engineers is lot harder to rule than a nation of xenophobic Joe Sixpacks and happy-to-get-$3/hour Jose Seispacks, but that's about the only win I see for the government: There's no other conceivable rationale (economically or in terms of tax revenue) behind the current system of discouraging a few hundred thousand highly-skilled workers from coming to America, while simultaneously encouraging millions of low-skilled workers to show up.

Maybe it's time for Atlas to shrug. If America doesn't want its high-tech immigrants, maybe they should take the hint and all go home, where they'll at least be allowed to be productive. And if America doesn't want its own high-tech citizens either, maybe we should take the hint and go where the action is.

The problem isn't just in the computer industry: does anyone seriously think the next generation of biotechnicians and gene-hackers is going to come from America's educational system? Anyone? Bueller?

What science?

[tomstdenis]

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

Shortage of *cheap* labor

[cfulmer]

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.

Utilitarian is the wrong approach

[mi]

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:

1. They are bad people.
2. Why, what's wrong with them?
3. They break our laws!
4. Which laws?
5. Ones, designed to keep them out.
6. Why do we design such laws?
7. Because they are bad people. [Go back to 1]

Frankly, I hold the following truth Self-Evident:

Anyone has the right to live, where he/she can afford to and work for anyone, who would hire him/her.

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.

Re:Cheap labor vs Skilled labor

[Eskarel]

The problem actually has nothing to do with sending skilled immigrants home or letting unskilled immigrants in. It comes from classifying immigrants as different than everyone else.

When you class an immigrant worker as different, he or she loses all legal protections and is forced to work under whatever conditions his employer dictates. Apu doesn't make 100k a year(unless he's exceptionally lucky), he makes 50k because if he complains about it he goes back to Bangalore. He doesn't fight for a shorter work week or better conditions, because if he complains he goes back to Bangalore. Joe Seispack has the same problem. He works under whatever conditions his employer sets for him or he goes back home.

This is great for employers because they get cheap labor, it's great for politicians because these companies have more profits and can donate more to their campaigns, plus they get to blame economic hardship on immigrants instead of their own &#$% ups.

It sucks for the government(as opposed to politicians) because there is less tax revenue, and it definitely sucks for you because it means that you can't compete. You can't even offer to work for whatever Apu is getting because the company doesn't believe(quite rightly probably) that you'd be willing to work for peanunts for 6 years, and wont' hire you.

Personally I reckon just open up the damned borders, it's not like the government really provides many services anyway, and without the threat of deportation over their heads the immigrants would probably want to work for the same wages as you or I, and with the same conditions as you or I. Apu might not be willing to work 80 hours a week for half of the industry standard just so he can stay in the US long enough to maybe, just maybe get his citizenship, and we'd go back to employing people based on their qualificiations.

Re: Apu wants to be in Bangalore now a days

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Both me and my brother are Appus. There is a sea change in the attitude of the next generation of Appus. They dont want to come to USA on a permanent basis. Till about 2000, they (now I am an American, so I call them they) would given an arm and a leg to come to USA slog for six years, get employers to sponsor them for green cards (most employers do) and run back to India to get a bride before filing I-480 [*FN1]. That was then and now not many want to come. Main reason: domestic help. In India their salaries have gone up not the wages for servant maids. They live like little Kings there, usually employing a cook, a maid and a driver. Most Indian middle class employs servant maids. We were barely middle class growing up, still we had one maid to do the floors, dishes and wash clothes. Most middle class grows up believing it is beneath their diginity to do housework. Till about 2000 these girls see the shiny cars and air-conditioned carpeted homes and got married to H1Bs. Only after landing here they realize, unlike Indian families in India with airconditioned homes and shiny cars, the American household does NOT employ an army of servants. They reported back and the next generation of Indian women are extremely reluctant to marry H1Bs. So H1Bs would rather stay in India.

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.

Re:Cheap labor vs Skilled labor

[AJWM]

Technically you may be correct. However, said baby, being a US citizen, cannot be deported. While the INS -- ICE, now -- may be legally justified in separating an infant from its parents and kicking them out of the country, putting the infant in the care of social services, I doubt you can show many cases where it actually happens. And I'm sure you could find judges willing to pass injunctions against such deportations.

It changes nothing legally.

"Legally", alas, rarely has much to do with it.

Re:Specific job requirements

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

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.

I do not think that word means what you think

[krysith]

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?

Re: Apu wants to be in Bangalore now a days

[illegalcortex]

First of all Americans are the hardest working people in the world.

The fact that you could write that sentence betrays how little most Americans know of "hard" work. Yeah, we'll put in 80 hours at the office. Pushing PAPER. You don't see a lot of Americans putting in 80 hours picking fruit, cleaning toilets or digging ditches. 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 think the same is true about just about any people, anywhere. So since most Americans are in no danger of starving, they're also in no danger of getting near any hard work.

Re: Apu wants to be in Bangalore now a days

[illegalcortex]

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?