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Microsoft Unveils "Elevate America"

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the we-really-need-some-good-pr-what-can-we-do dept.

nandemoari writes "In response to the current economic crisis, Microsoft Corp. has come out with a stimulus plan of their own. Their goal is to help a large group of individuals use their computers to land employment in ways other than to generate a compelling resume. The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."

13 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Clearly, by Ixtl · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's a trap.

    1. Re:Clearly, by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...right around the time the temperature in hell dips below 0 degrees.

      Kelvin

    2. Re:Clearly, by machine321 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I hear they had 1400 employees working on this.

  2. That's great... by qoncept · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's great, but aren't there already more people equipped with computer skills than the market needs? America doesn't need more job-qualified people (at least, that's not the big problem), it needs jobs to put those people in to.

    --
    Whale
    1. Re:That's great... by erroneus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      SHHHH!!! You are going to mess up their plans! They are very large users of the H1-B visa program and they would like to justify their continued [ab]use of the program! After all, the firing of thousands in the US while claiming the are needs to expand the H1-B program in today's situation is a pretty questionable move on the surface. Now they have to do something to appease congress and fast!

    2. Re:That's great... by mysticgoat · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I doubt greatly that English will be a reasonable choice for trade language into the next decade.

      No, I think English will be the common language for most of this century at least. Although the English that is commonly used ten years from now may be as foreign to our ears as the English of Shakespeare. English is evolving faster than it ever has before.

      For over a decade, there have been more people who have learned English as a second language (ESL) than there are native speakers of English. At this point in time, there may be more ESL speakers than sum of all the native speakers of English who ever lived. If we ar not at that point yet, we soon will be.

      We are also very close to the point where more communication in English is being done between ESL speakers than is being done between a native speaker of English and an ESL speaker. It is common in FOSS projects to find a Finn, a Brazilian, and a Japanese person using English in their correspondence while they fix a bug or develop a feature.

      Would someone who knows how to do it propose a Slashdot poll for me? Something like this:

      1. My native and only human language is English (don't count programming languages)
      2. My native language is English and I am fluent in one or more other languages
      3. My native language is not English, but outside of my family and friends, I use English for most of my communications
      4. My native language is not English, but I use English for most of my internet communications
      5. I read Slashdot in some other language than English (Babblefish is my friend)
      6. I only talk to Cowboy Neal because, well, he's The Cowboy Neal

      It would be neat to see this done every couple of years, see what the trend is.

  3. Come on.... by panoptical2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft is just grabbing the opportunity to train more devs and IT in advanced Microsoft products. After all, this is what ensures that companies use these products; that way, the companies don't have to pay for training.

    They also use this tactic with student/academia discounts, also.... (MSDNAA, anyone?)

  4. Yes, it is what you think by Onaga · · Score: 5, Informative

    At first, I was going to post about not berating Microsoft blindly. Then I RTFA... They have basic courses for free online, but anything past that is an advertisement for MS certs.

  5. its only MS Training by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    i see no Cisco training, Apache, MySql, etc
    but i do see training on Server2008 (woopee do)

    this is just a fluff/feelgood PR initative, when really they want 2 millon mcse's/advocates/salespeople who only know about a single vendors product and are therefore ill equipped for the modern diverse IT industry.

    there is more to IT than MS and a Mcse

  6. Nothing new here by Locke2005 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nigerian "Princes" have been using their computers to generate income for themselves for years now...

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  7. Your tax dollars at work by vonWoland · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The really brilliant part:

    Elevate America has two main offerings, one available immediately and one that will be provided in partnership with state governments

    Translation: MS will get money earmarked for retraining programs in order to flood the market with MS trained workers, depressing the wages of the latter and making their "TCO" so much more attractive.

    You have to admire a company that is able to screw us coming and going.

  8. Re:The special skill they want by moosesocks · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're going to be a xenophobe, you might as well come out and say it, rather than blaming all of our economic woes on foreigners.

    The number of H1B workers is a drop in the bucket in the context of the national economy.

    The number of H1-B visas that can be issued in a given year is limited to 65,000 by law.

    According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the total size of the American workforce was approximately 153.7 million last month (with unemployment at a troubling 11.6 million).

    An H1B worker is typically limited to a 6-year stay, unless the worker is applying for permanent residency. Assuming that all 65,000 workers stay each year, we have 390,000 H1B workers in the country at the present (I'd guess the actual number is somewhat less than that).

    At the very worst, H1-Bs might represent 0.25% of the national workforce.

    Microsoft employs 3,517 H1-B workers (the 3rd most of any American firm), out of 89,809 total employees, or just about 4%. This number might be a little high, although 4 percent doesn't strike me as being particularly alarming.

    Microsoft's recent round of layoffs (the first in the company's history) let go about 5,000 workers. Although I suppose these could have largely been avoided by eliminating all of the H1-B workers, that still leaves 1,500 workers, and assumes that every single H1-B worker was worthless to the company (which is somewhat doubtful).

    To summarize: Stop complaining about the H1-B workers. Although it's not a good idea to begin hiring foreign workers during a recession, the current crop of H1-B workers is simply too small to be having any substantial effect on the economy.

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  9. Easy! by RulerOf · · Score: 5, Funny

    How does one get the temperature below 0 degrees Kelvin?

    When jokes fly above the heads of unsuspecting slashdotters, the ensuing endothermic reaction has been shown to lower temperatures past 0 degrees K.

    The "woosh"-ing sound means it's working!

    --
    Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.