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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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
If Microsoft wanted, it could announce that it is going to start their engineers at $200K/year and it would get more than enough qualified applicants. Or, it could hire marginally qualified applicants and train them in the technologies it wants. In fact, were Microsoft to start paying that rate, it would not take long before the market were flooded with qualified engineers. More people would switch to Computer Science and more universities would open up comp. sci departments.
The problem is not a shortage of American high-tech labor; it's a shortage of cheap American high-tech labor. Gates' concern is not that he can't find engineers in the U.S.; it's that it's cheaper for him to hire engineers elsewhere.
I suggest that the reason that fewer people are going into Computer Science is that they see how software companies treat their engineers. How many software engineers lost their jobs between 2001 and 2004? If the market for good engineers were as tight as Bill Gates suggests, those people should have been gobbled up in an instant. Heck, companies would have been hiring them, knowing that they'd be needed eventually.
When you class an immigrant worker as different, he or she loses all legal protections and is forced to work under whatever conditions his employer dictates. Apu doesn't make 100k a year(unless he's exceptionally lucky), he makes 50k because if he complains about it he goes back to Bangalore. He doesn't fight for a shorter work week or better conditions, because if he complains he goes back to Bangalore. Joe Seispack has the same problem. He works under whatever conditions his employer sets for him or he goes back home.
This is great for employers because they get cheap labor, it's great for politicians because these companies have more profits and can donate more to their campaigns, plus they get to blame economic hardship on immigrants instead of their own &#$% 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.
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