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CS Prof Decries America's 'Internal Brain Drain'
walterbyrd writes "Dr. Norman Matloff of the University of California-Davis computer science department argues that US citizens are avoiding 'Science Technology Engineering Math' (STEM) careers, because US citizens see those fields as being ruined by massive offshoring and inshoring. 'Despite widely publicized claims that foreign tech workers and scientists represent exceptional ability and are thus vital to American innovation, Matloff called that argument merely "a good sound byte for lobbyists" supporting industry proposals for higher visa caps. The data (PDF), on the other hand, indicate that those admitted are no more able, productive, or innovative than America's homegrown talent, he said.'"
If it were all about talent, with 95% of the worlds population being from outside the US, we'd see more CEO's dumped for off shore replacements. Its about the money.
I think the real problem is, Americans just aren't interested in Science and Technology whatsoever.
I hear plenty of arguments from friends as to how "college is completely unnecessary". Yeah, have fun working at McDonalds for the next 60 years. Better to have problems finding a job than to have no skills at all.
Maybe if they would actually hire STEM people it would help. Ive been looking for a job for 6 months with a MS in Applied Math (signal processing / computational math) and a 3.65 GPA (not super impressive, but I give out my transcript anyway). Nowadays in America, you get MBA's and Finance majors getting all the high paying jobs, and an MBA is a notoriously easy degree to get. I know several people that laugh about how easy it was to get their MBA, because all they did was get drunk, skip class, and screw hookers all the time.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
The laws of supply and demand still operate: If you want great STEM workers, then you need to pay for them. If you aren't getting as many as you'd like, increase the amount you're willing to pay them, or improve working conditions, until you get them.
That said, the reason that many US employers prefer foreign labor over US labor have nothing to do with the costs, and everything to do with foreign labor having less ability to go find another job when they get mistreated.
I am officially gone from
Lobbyists have a motive,"To get people to do what they want", then they'll make up the words that sound as reasonably sounding to a regular Joe to make it sound like it is in his best interest. No matter how awful the thing someone wants to do, I'm sure they can always make a bullshit reason why it is in everyone's best interest. It doesn't matter they have a,"sound byte", they can do this stuff in their sleep.
God spoke to me.
Now, if you could just start a multi-billion dollar company and put your words into action.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Not to mention they can make 10x the money in the financial sector.
It's not about quality. Foreign workers are no better than Americans.
Corporations push for imported people, because it keeps overall US wages low. Else US engineers/scientists could demand $200,000 and get it. Having cheap imported workers keeps the salaries lower, and saves Microsoft, Lockheed, etc money.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
All those students who were staying away from STEM, instead enrolled in STEM, and there had been no offshoring/inshoring ?
They would just drive down their salary and youth would still stay away from STEM.
How do i know ? this is exactly what happened in my country in a duration of 20 years in regard to major technical disciplines. We had no inshoring/offshoring and so on.
In america's case, there is inshoring/offshoring, and the critical mass of people who drive down wages are produced by inshoring/offshoring, instead of the americans themselves flocking to those disciplines and driving down.
ALL the difference in between the two is, american universities had not made big bucks over students' enrollment fees during this process, like what happened in my country.
And from my experience, let me tell you ; there is no difference in between the two, from the perspective of us, the students/people/employees. (of course, unless you are an employee or owner of an education institution who was going to make big bucks over agonizing students' fees)
Read radical news here
That outcry sounds like "we have to pay too much salary, we have to get more competition an thus lower salaries."
See http://www.justsharethis.net/indian-ceos-list-in-big-u-s-companies/
And there are a bunch of immigrants in executive level roles in Yahoo, Google and Microsoft etc.
This space for rent.
foreign geniuses come to study here, our colleges are well-respected, and are interested in setting up shops after college that could employ 100-300 americans in 5-10 years. but because of rabid anti-immigrant american hysteria, they are deluged with harrowing residency/ citizenship requirements that are intended to turn away seasonal farm workers, and are forced to go home, where those companies of the future grow instead
frankly, protectionism is moronic. even when packaged in the stilted round about way this stupid story packages it
go ahead and man the borders and prevent the poor immigrants if it makes you happy. but if you force the geniuses to go home after studying college in the usa, you are throwing away hundreds of thousands of jobs in the companies of the future
we are a nation of immigrants. we always have been, unless you are native american. so enough with the protectionist stupidity. no matter how lamely you package the failed ideology, its still a failed way of thinking that ultimately only hurts the usa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I see this all the time. The bright kids today are going into law or the financial industry, because that's where all the money is. Why bother working your ass off in school studying hard subjects that involve math, when you can party your way through school, get a law degree or something in financial mumbo-jumbo, and make 3 times as much working for Merril Lynch? Not to mention not worrying about having your job shipped to India or China.
In any sane society this kind of imbalance would be corrected by the rulers. However in our current society the lawyers and the financial industry owns - oops I mean make "campaign contributions" and "lobbies" - the government, so they have all the power.
I can't really see anything good in the future for a society where a parasitic class, which produces nothing of value, is given such an overwhelming priority over the productive classes.
smoke pot?
Illiterate, innumerate 'Mericans !
Yours In Ufa,
Kilgore Trout
Dr. Matloff's assertion is utter crap! US students aren't pursuing "STEM" careers because one needs to pay a fortune in college tuition to make a mediocre salary. Why bother? Also, nerdy "STEM" careers aren't cool/trendy/whatever.
US culture doesn't value "STEM" careers. Why should US citizens go against their own culture?
Typical conservative POV:
1. American exceptionalism
2. American exceptionalism redux -- we're so freakin' awesome, God's chosen people etc
3. Strong on national defense
4. Self-reliance
5. Sloppy kisses for capitalism
6. Strong support for the average folk (working people who work for their money)
7. Everything that's wrong with this country starts and ends with liberals and they're the ones trying to tear it apart from the inside because the black filth of communism is pumping through their veins
Well, the reality is that America's not all that special. We're being torn apart from the inside in end-stage capitalism where we cease to exploit internal markets and are now cannibalizing ourselves to support the credit binge.
I would tend to think that a strong national defense begins with a strong national economy. We wouldn't need to be engaging in all these wars in the middle east if we didn't need their oil. Viable alternative power like solar and wind would do more to secure our nation than fleets of F-22's.
I understand why that sort of thing isn't happening. I just don't understand why these people are too blind to see it. Gay marriage is a threat to the American family? Fuck, no! Two parents having to work 60 hours a week to put food on the table is destroying the American family. Pay enough so that one job-holder can support a full-time parent who stays at home and you'll make one hell of a start towards saving the family. And how about some goddamn affordable health care? No, we can't have health care but we can ban abortion and that's being pro-life. Wait, what?
I just can't understand how myopic people are. It's like those seniors marching at the townhall meetings carrying signs saying "Government: hands off my medicare!"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Check out the big balls on Dr. Norman Matloff! It's great that he is brave enough to stand up and acknowledge the elephant in the room. I hope he manages to keep strong. He will doubtlessly be subjected to accusations of xenophobia, racism, etc. as a result of his speaking out. Meanwhile, Gates wants more 401's because "American schools suck."
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
I know that current policy communications massively favors the short, low-content, high-impact format known as "sound bite"... but really, compressing your message to 8 bits is just too much. You can't even get much (acoustic) noise out of one measly octet, let alone anything resembling spin, hype, or fearmongery.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Employers can treat immigrants almost like slaves. U.S. citizens can enjoy working alongside and with "slave" labor.
It's not all about top-notch brains. It's also about many not-so-clever brains at lesser salary. This was the reason why US companies hired foreign labor, and this is the reason why thanks to the H1B caps, companies are happy to go east to other countries.
Most CEOs (especially American CEOs) don't care about how well it will be for the company 10 years down the line. They care about the next quarter.
More and more jobs are global now in computer science. If there is a programming job, it can be had anywhere in this world, not just in America.
Plus, isn't America so well off thanks to migrants? Who invented your rockets and your bombs near in the past as 50 years ago? Who makes your microprocessors? Suddenly, you want to stop immigration and be protectionist?
This professor needs to stop dining and think a little.
OTOH, there's the big problem of Indian companies gobbling up H1B slots like it was property.. but that's a different problem. There's also the problem of poor quality labour --- programmers who can't code, thanks to sneaky HRs and those who undercut salary, fire the good programmers and hire the cheap ones. It looks good this quarter, but they'll soon find out. Again, this has nothing to do with migration.
Here, we have Biotech, Commerce students recruited into the CS industry. "Don't worry we'll train you in 4 weeks."
Why? Because we can sell this to the western company whose CEO is more than eager to pick up this plate because it's cheaper.
Imagine if a CS worker were hired in an airline as a pilot (Don't worry we'll train you in 4 weeks), or *shudder* as a surgeon. Quality programming is harder and needs more experience than all this.
In the end, the Indian programmers who actually studied CS and are good at what they do get a bad name on Slashdot and elsewhere, cause they're a part of the lot.
Banu
As far as I can tell brains are being drained well before anyone starts considering career choices. The sciences are losing, they have been for a good long time. US culture is being groomed away from hard work. We're about being "social" and "amused." I suspect too much focus for too long has been given to providing for a "better life for our children" that the value of maximum effort, and striving has been lost on the last two, probably three generations. Our predecessors have largely achieved their goals of eliminating backbreaking physical labor but no one bothered to keep the momentum of effort moving into the intellectual realm as we've transitioned away from manual labor. Asia knows that it must out think, out innovate to compete with the west and they've been relentless in their pursuit. Time is running out for the western world. Already it may be too late.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I think the real problem is, Americans aren't interested in Science and Technology careers that lead them to a lifetime of poverty for themselves and their families.
It's about the money. The rest is BS media hyped fantasy. When I can use my brain to become a doctor, lawyer, or financier or any high paying skill which can't be outsourced, why would I bother pursuing a career where my skills can, and inevitably will, be outsourced?
Anybody?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Math class is tough!
No worries. As a relatively recent Computer Science graduate from a respectable university with a high gpa I have been unable to find employment. Seems everyone wants experienced professionals with a masters degree, and/or security clearances however no one wants to give that experience or go through the clearance process. Needless to say it has been extremely frustrating. Nothing like giving away our jobs onshore to help benefit those off it.
Count me among the disenchanted.
Correction: all people are generally uninterested in science and technology. Americans are no worse than the rest of the world. In those countries in Asia where most of those H1Bs come from people are not interested either; they are interested in passing the test and getting the job. Tech jobs pay more than sweatshops, there is a tradition for test taking (especially in China), and their parents make them. Once they pass the test and get the job, they stop caring and become just like everybody else.
Most of the anecdotal yap I hear in England would be about top people leaving here to go make money in the US. It can't all be outward. Where are these people ending up? Does anyone have a story about an Indian leaving their call centre and making it big in the US?
(Parody)
Eat a child today! After all, he'll die of starvation out in Africa, so end his misery!
(/Parody)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Wow! I could not have said it better. A good sound byte by the lobbyists with lots of cash.
'Despite widely publicized claims that foreign tech workers and scientists represent exceptional ability and are thus vital to American innovation, Matloff called that argument merely "a good sound byte for lobbyists'
I hate to say this, but it's true -- sure, there are a few scholastic stars that come out of the USA education system, but the majority of students aren't being pushed (or pushing) themselves to excel. In fact, many do a little as possible to just barely cruise through high school, those that apply themselves and work hard are often teased and goaded for working hard -- and I'm not just talking about the traditional geeks, but that guy on the track team is also called out for sutyding too hard and missing out on the after-school party with the boys.
There's no stigma to not doing well in high school -- or even dropping out. Parents hold much of this responsibility - sure, public schools are lacking, but the drive to succeed in school comes from home. Many parents can't even be bothered to see that their elementary school students complete required homework - and they'll make excuses for it "Oh, that takes too much time, Sally needs time to play" -- for an hour long assignment that was assigned a week ago. Of course, when a parent doesn't have a high school education it's hard for him/her to see the value of a good education, and harder still to help instill good study habits when they don't know what a good study habit is.
In contrast, school in Japan (to use one example) is highly competitive - students know that if they don't do well in high school they aren't going to get into their college of choice (which means a high paying job), and may not even get into a college at all are are relegated to trade school. This pressure starts early in their school life - by 7th or 8th grade a student better be on a college track or he/she is not going to make it. The school hours are long, with Saturday schooldays not being unheard of. Parents in turn push their children to do well in school.
I'm not saying that the Japanese culture is better, but I am saying that it produces better students. If a culture pushes 80% of its kids to excel at school, they are going to produce many more scientists and engineers than one that pushes 10% of its kids to excel, even if it only has 1/3 the population. And that's just one country -- if the USA is importing some of the best and brightest students in the world, then those imports are going to make up a significant portion of USA talent.
and you would be closer. Yeah its not fun but many of use do cross forty regularly. Then after a few years these who do their best to not cross forty bitch that they aren't getting anywhere or getting good money and think its unfair I do. Nothing anyone can do can convince them of what the difference was because they don't want to hear it.
ESPN, NCAA, and Dancing with the Stars, are areas where most excel, ask them about yesterday's meeting and they would know less that what happened three weeks ago on American Idol
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Do you have citations for your numbers? Seem to be inflated by a lot at first look unless you're double counting extensions, company transfers etc. .
This space for rent.
"The data" is a BAD 150+ slide presentation which might be tolerable as a lecture background, but it is certainly nothing close to being as readable as is. Perhaps a link to an actual Paper? ;)
At least the article filename is interesting "an-internal-bra.html"...
Anyway, my personal experience at a US top-30 CS grad school can add a data point: The CS undergrads were mostly US students. Of those, even the best ones most often did not go on to grad school, since they could find a good and well-paying job without the grad school hassle. That left around 5 US students in our grad program along with several dozen Asian students and quite a few other of assorted ethnicity. From this I got the feeling (which agrees with what other people from the CS field either in academia or the workplace tell me) that there is a demand for CS workers, so US citizens get absorbed easily, and there is also a demand for highly skilled CS workers for which US citizens that go into the trouble of getting the extra skills are too few to fill it, thus foreigners are hired, who are probably not smarter than the good US students that could go to grad school but did not.
I don't know if this translates to other science fields though...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
> US citizens see those fields as being ruined by massive offshoring and inshoring.
Another cause I have been researching -- increasing income concentration. While the common perception is that the high end of the software engineering pay scale is in the "rich" category, and hence are beneficiaries of increasing income concentration, the data speaks otherwise.
I have extracted the income data from the IRS-SOI going back to 1950. The increasing concentration since the mid-to-late 1970s (it started prior to Reagan -- initially caused by the falling dollar and the failure to adjust the tax brackets) has gone almost exclusively to the top 0.5%, and even there is skewed heavily upward. This has not only affected software engineers, but also entrepreneurs, small to medium enterprise executives, starting to mid-level investment bankers, and a whole host of others who fit the traditional perception of those who benefit from concentration.
The result, of course, is that anyone who has a sufficiently strong, broad skill set (like understanding engineering and business) has a significant financial motive to go to a fortune 500 and climb the corporate ladder. This is great for the Fortune 500s, as it increases the internal competition for promotion. It has, however, been harmful to smaller enterprises and high skill labor (like software engineers).
The complaints of a shortage of US engineers are not entirely unfounded, but it is our tax policy and the resulting shifts in income distribution -- not greater engineering skill in foreign countries -- that is causing it. Our talent can easily see where the money is and there is a direct impact on career path. For those from less advantaged countries, the engineer/entrepreneur payscale looks great, despite the fact that within our country it (along with everyone below the engineer/entrepreneur level, though I might argue that below P30 there is another factor at work -- but I digress) it has been relatively inhibited for the past 35 years or so.
Just another piece of the puzzle. Check out IRS-SOI -- great data to play with.
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Without law, you have Mafia economics, settling conflict with guns. Without investment advice, how do you get money for your good idea?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The data, on the other hand, indicate that those admitted are no more able, productive, or innovative than America's homegrown talent, he said.
He's missing one big benefit to bringing in foreign workers: they're cheaper. Compare someone educated in India over someone educated in the United States. The quality of the education might be the same, they may be just as skilled and know the exact same information. But, the American candidate may have anywhere from $30,000-100,000 in debt from his education, while the candidate from India may owe the equivalent of $10,000-15,000. The American candidate is going to demand a much higher salary so that he can both make enough money to both pay rent/bills and pay off his loans. The candidate from India will be more willing to work for a lower salary both because he owes less and comes from a place where money goes a lot further.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Though clearly he's right, because racism and nationalism are always the answer.
The truth is America isn't producing enough qualified programmers. The alternative to off-shoring? Is not having things made. Attracting more programmers has nothing to do with protecting them from foreign competition. It would require better work conditions (and I don't mean free soda and bags of chips), a clearer path into the field (let's be honest: a CS degree does not prepare one to code and spending 4 years on a signaling mechanism sucks) and a less hostile, defensive atmosphere. It's hard to find quality people overseas too; the problem isn't that we're letting to many skilled people in, it's that no one wants these jobs. "If you are smart enough to do the work, you're smart enough not to work here."
People like Code For America are doing something about these problems; this guy isn't. Trying to impose more barriers to trade is not useful. Not to mention that we have the internet now; not letting programmers into the US only drives whole projects off-shore and keeps immigrants from contributing to our vibrant, diverse entrepreneurial culture. Which, it turns out, was in large part built by immigrants in the first place. If you want more Americans hired, you should increase the ease of immigration, not make it harder; it would bring more entrepreneurs to our country, who in turn would employ more Americans. Some of them would become Americans themselves, thus strengthening our nation and increasing the number of skilled American programmers, which I think was the original point.
You can get a business/management degree from practically anywhere, then get employed with a pretty good salary for some chain store or franchise for good money. Not to offend those with those degrees, but the classes are also easier which means you have the time to work a job to help support yourself through school. When I was under the engineering department in college, I learned that the hours necessary for studying/homework were too much to work a job to pay my bills. The department's head adviser even told me that no one had graduated otherwise.
The alternative is to get into a technical program that will probably be at a bigger (read: more expensive) college with a $300/semester engineering fee where you're going to need a sponsor to finance your education and living expenses (be that a parent or spouse).
Just my personal experience, but I'd call this a financial issue.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I'm not saying that the Japanese culture is better, but I am saying that it produces better students.
It also produces unhappier ones. I'm sure corporate America would love to have Japan's school system. So which is more important, proficiency or happiness?
Just look at 1) what kind of people are getting paid the most: executives at investment banks/insurance groups; and 2) what job they do: screwing up everyone's life while getting away with hundreds of millions severance package untaxed. Now you get the idea.
Nowadays in America, you get MBA's and Finance majors getting all the high paying jobs, ....
My MBA from Georgia State has proven to be the most worthless waste of money and time I EVER did. It has done absolutely NOTHING for my job prospects and I actually have to leave it off of my resume to get any bites.
....and an MBA is a notoriously easy degree to get.
Depends on where you go to school. My managerial accounting, economics, statistics and quantitative analysis, and the operations classes were a bit much. The Business Law class was a bit more intense than it had to be: the lawyers who taught it had us doing things that law students have to do: I was frequently on law school study sites, for lack of a better term, in order to get my assignments done. But yeah, a lot of busy work - they were really hung up on working in teams to the point of being dogmatic about it. It was ridiculous: essays had to be written in teams.
Oh the thing the that really pissed me off was the "Organizational Behavior" class. The answer for everything was sensitivity training.(Yeah, someone who grew up thinking black people and women are inferior are going to change with a week of sensitivity training. Riiiiiiiggggghhhht.) All the tests were rote memorization of jargon. When I mentioned to the instructor that the class seemed to be nothing more than a vocabulary class, she got all pissed and said those terms were "concepts". Whatever, I shut up and got my 'B' - I hate memorizing shit.
The summary seems to indicate that the statements "foreign tech workers and scientists represent exceptional ability and are thus vital to American innovation" and "those admitted are no more able, productive, or innovative than America's homegrown talent" are in contradiction. This is not the case. American companies can be the most successful in the world by accumulating as much brainpower as possible. This is done by hiring both Americans AND foreigners. I.e, hire the best people for the job, giving advantage to those who will work for less. America and the West are going to have to sooner or later get over the fact that in a global economy, you can't get employment favoritism simply because you live in a certain country that you happen to think is "better" than other countries. You need to have higher productivity than those you are competing against, and unfortunately, higher American living costs might put you out of luck.
Is there seems to be an unwillingness to do any type of employee development.
I've seen job ads that require umteen years of experience in X, Y and Z. It's the old chicken and egg problem - how do you get the real world experience if no one is willing to hire you? This is a problem many college graduates or people looking to move up/change the directions of their careers.
I know, I know, some of you are going to ask, "Why invest time and money to train people, they are just going to leave?" How about making a less hostile work environment and paying fair market rates (or going out and paying a little more than that)? This even applies to your more senior people - many of them will be willing to jump ship if their voice isn't heard or aren't being challenged, or not being paid enough. Also, this is a very naive approach as many jobs in a lot of places fall under at-will employment. Manangement expects 100% loyalty, but wants the flexibility to fire under-performers and lay people off when revenues/profits are down. Therefore, the "they'll just quit ayways" is just a cop out for bad behaviour.
Lastly. I've seen/interviewed for positions that want BS degrees, prefer MS degrees, but basically amount to help desk positions. Then the employer is hostile to your salary range, and your long term career goals (i.e. possibility of moving into progect management or development or systems/network admin). Of course, they then complain about not finding qualified people - Duh, most people with the qualifications you'd like are either not going to apply (why work a help desk?), going to treat it as a foot in the door or going to want to be paid comiserate with experience.
There are people out there who have the education/experience and are willing to learn. However, it makes my blood boil when people claim there is an IT/Engineer/Science/Math worker shortage.
Agreed 100%. We live in a society where adjectives like "educated" and "intellectual" are used as epithets rather than compliments.
The long-term prognosis for such a society is grim, to say the least.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
The article is overwhelmingly shortsighed. Some of the people(just Indians, forget about Europeans who contributed so much) who would have been not been able to do what they did:
Don't forget a bunch of companies that have Indian CEOs and have had them as CEO and founders. Hotmail founder was India born...
Co-Founder of Sun.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla
Motorola CEO: http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/8/motorola-cellphone-ceo-sanjay-jha
Father of Pentium chip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Dham
A small incomplete list from Wiki:
Ajit Hutheesing : Founder, Chairman and CEO of International Capital Partners Inc
Ali Pabrai : Entrepreneur
Amar Bose : Founder of Bose Corporation
Sashi Reddi : Founder CEO, AppLabs (World's #1 Software Testing company)
Arjun Gupta : Silicon Valley venture capitalist
Ashwin Navin : Co-Founder and President of BitTorrent, Inc.
Bharat Desai : Founder of Syntel
Gagan Palrecha : Entrepreneur
Gurbaksh Chahal : Internet Entrepreneurs
Mukesh Chatter : Businessman
Lakireddy Bali Reddy : Landlord, restaurant owner,owns more than 1000 apartments in California
M.R. Rangaswami : Founder of Sand Hill Group and Corporate Eco Forum
Murugan Pal : Founder and CTO of SpikeSource
Narendra Patni: Founder of Patni Computer Systems
Naveen Jain : Founder of InfoSpace and Intelius
Pradeep Sindhu : Co-Founder and CTO of Juniper Networks
Preetish Nijhawan : Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies.
Ram Shriram : Co-Founder of Junglee.com and board member at Google
Rohini Srihari : Founder of Cymfony and Janya
Sameer Parekh : Founder of C2Net
Sanjiv Sidhu : Founder of i2 Technologies
Somen Banerjee: Founder of Chippendales
Suhas Patil: Founder of Cirrus Logic
Vivek Ranadive : Founder, Chairman and CEO of TIBCO Software
Vinod Gupta : Founder and Chairman of InfoUSA Inc.
Vinod Khosla : Co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Venture Capitalist
Ajay Bhatt : Co-Inventor of the USB. Chief Client Platform Architect at Intel
Ajit Varki : Physician-scientist
Amit Singhal : Google Fellow, the designation the company reserves for its elite master engineers in the area of "ranking algorithm".
Anil Dash : Blogger and technologist
Raj Reddy : Founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, winner of the Turing Award.
Arun Netravali : Scientist. Former President of Bell Labs. Former CTO of Lucent. A pioneer of digital technology including HDTV and MPEG4.
Arvind Rajaraman : Theoretical physicist and string theorist
Satya N. Atluri : Aerospace and mechanics
C. Kumar N. Patel : Developed the carbon dioxide laser, used as a cutting tool in surgery and industry.
Khem Shahani : Microbiologist who conducted pioneer research on probiotics, he discovered the DDS-1 strain of Lactobacillus acidophilus
Deepak Pandya : Neuroanatomist
Arjun Makhijani : Electrical and nuclear engineer who is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
George Sudarshan : Physicist, author - first to propose the existence of Tachyon
Kalpana Chawla : Female NASA Space Shuttle astronaut, and space shuttle mission specialist
Krishna Bharat : Principal Scientist at Google - Famous for creating Google News.
Jogesh Pati : Theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Krishan Sabnani : Engineer and Senior Vice President of the Networking Research Laboratory at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in New Jersey
Mahadev Satyanarayanan : Computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Pioneered research in mobile and pervasive computing
Mani Lal Bhaumik : Contributor excimer laser technology.
Narinder Singh Kapany : Engineer, called the "Father of Fiber Optics".
Noshir Gowadia : Design engineer
Om Malik : Technology journalist and blogger
Pramod Khargonek
1) McDonalds is not the only choice for those without a college education - far from it.
2) A huge, and growing, percentage of college graduates are working at jobs that do not require a college degrees. A college degree is no guarantee of a worthwhile career - far from it.
3) Costco is paying $19 an hour. That is way more than a lot of college graduates earn, even if they do have a job that requires a college education.
4) People who are highly skilled in trades such as welding, plumbing, heavy equipment, and so on, very often have jobs that are secure and well paid. In California, over 15 years ago, Golden Gate bus drivers were earning $80K a year. Letter carriers also earn very high salaries, and have very secure careers.
5) Except for health care, and maybe a few other career fields; a foreign degree is just as good as a US degree. So I hope you enjoy training your H-1B replacement, or having your job offshored. Yeah, that degree was sure worth it.
enough with the protectionist stupidity
Humans:
-Immigration takes months to process
-Subject to death: this implies basic needs like food, water, and safety
-Can be ruined by a lawsuit (not enough money to fight it, will have to settle, go to prison, etc.)
[Large] Corporations:
-Ability to transfer wealth in milliseconds across the globe
-Immortality: The same executives that crash a company into the ground are paid handsomely for it and start another one
-Enough money to fight court battles indefinitely, above the law
It's class warfare. Protectionism is needed as long as these vast inequalities between corporations and people exist. Let me know when the United States starts invoking the corporate death penalty and revokes corporate charters from lawbreaking executives.
Are these the same "brilliant" Japanese students who built a nuke plant that is melting down and are too fucking proud to accept outside help?
I don't see why we should emulate a culture that prizes subserviant little automatons.
Growing up, I dreamed of doing nothing but programming/coding.
Now? Not so much. I still program in my spare time or the rare instances my work requires it, but I never went to school for it.
My uncle is in that field, and the older I got the more he struggled for a decent job. I don't talk to him as often as I'd like, so I honestly don't have a clue what he does now.
So yes, thanks company XYZ for shipping your jobs overseas, but hey, you saved that $1, so what do you care.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Out of high school, there's no doubt that the US has been lagging these last few years. Going in a different direction though, I remember when I started grad school, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to compete against the "best and brightest" that were being sent from all over the world to my (well-regarded internationally) university. I figured out within the first week of classes that my fears were unfounded. Let's just say that there is such a thing as a stupid question, and there were a few different international students asking lots of them.
More or less what I discovered was that they were just as dumb and just as smart as the American students were. There were high achievers and low achievers. People who picked up things quickly, and people who just didn't understand no matter how much you explained things to them. Honestly, if I had to explain it in one sentence, I'd say that I came to the realization that they were normal people, just like everyone else. It was a rather humanizing moment, and it made working with them a lot easier, since I no longer put them on a pedestal, expecting them to know more or be more skilled than I was.
Not that the developers in India are any better. The developers in India are by in large crap. So are most American developers, and developers in any country you care to look for them. There just aren't enough good developers on Earth (much less great ones), and they're spread out in various places, surrounded by mediocre to bad talent.
The whole H1B program is half-assed, although the people who are afraid H1Bs take jobs away from Americans when they come here are mistaken. That doesn't happen until we send them back home. Competent programmers are net producers of jobs, not net consumers. That's why startups often locate in San Jose. They go were recruiting competency is easiest. Competent developers create new jobs; great ones create new industries.
The fact we kick out H1B workers after a few years is a tacit admission that the program doesn't for the most part bring to America skills and talent that America desperately needs. The program as structured is a technology transfer program that provides short term off-shoring windfalls for people at the top of the corporate feeding chain. If the program was designed to do what it is sold as doing, it would bring far fewer people in then keep them here as long as possible.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The overwhelming number of H1Bs, are ordinary people, doing ordinary jobs. Jobs that could, and should, be done by US workers. By "overwhelming" I would estimate well over 99%.
We already have the O-1 visa for truly exceptional. The O-1 visa has no limits. So why do we need the H1B for these so-called geniuses?
I don't see salary being the biggest deterrent. Companies just don't want to train entry level workers anymore. They rather just hire someone overseas with some experience.
If there is a clear path for students to transition from school to a stable career, you would see a big increase in enrollment, but US businesses are more focused on short term gains instead of investing in the future American workforce.
So yeah, I'm one of those "They TOOK UR JUUBS" guys. Unlike the stereotype, I'm not asian, I'm not from a poor background, I speak english w/o an accent and I don't associate in cultural ghettos like most minorities.
In my experience I've met quite a few people that are in the same boat. A lot of the times they are sorely lacking the skills that they're supposed to have to qualify under the H1-B program. There are two reasons why they're brought in then: cost and nepotism.
I've seen many different companies preferring to hire people of the same region as the manager. I heard it's often one big family coming to the US, but I chalked that off ass a bit too racist for me.
The H1-B program is designed to supplement american talent. People for instance that have the same qualifications but can bridge cultural/language gaps, for instance (that's meeee). The problem is there's no way to check if the qualifications are met or not. It's taken as face value. I can go to whothefuckknowswhere Institute of Technology and still qualify, even though my program was the equivalent to a Bachelor of Arts in Winword in american standards - as long as I have "official" documentation to claim this status.
With that said, here's the question that lingers. If there were no H1-B holders, would people see tech jobs as more attractive? I don't know, working stupid hours under inept management, ridiculous unpaid on-call hours and the pressure that you get don't seem all that attractive, independent of whether you consider job availability or jack thereof. The (wrong) assumption is that if it wasn't for H1-B holders, STEM jobs would pay more. Guess I can't prove my claims, but I'll hold on to my truthiness.
On a related note, it's fucked up how impossible it is to get a stupid green card if you're not willing to cheat the system. I've been living here for around 9 years now on a variety of different visas. L-2, F-1 and now H1-B. This is more than I have lived in my country of origin (well, if you discount the years that I was just a burden to my parents), and yet I can't stay... /rant
This professor hit the nail on the head, what American would want to work in technology after this video from US attorneys explaining how NOT to hire Americans for IT jobs? Here's the full video. And how much jail time did these attorneys get for sending millions of jobs overseas? None.
This is why I left CS. Videos like this and the job market full of fake job ads with fake software you MUST know how to use in order to be hired because companies have to run XX# of job ads in order to get H-1B visas to hire foreign workers. Couldn't find an IT American that knows Windows 10.3 and Microsoft Office Turbo Edition? Then here's your H1B visa's, hire some foreign programmers.
I went back to school and now I'm in the medical field, hopefully they don't start giving visas out to doctors.... aw crap
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I don't think that kids in Japan are pressured to do well in high school. Rather, most of their learning (to pass the college entrance exam) is done at "juku", cram schools that most attend after regular schools. Many kids start "juku" a few hours a week as soon as they start elementary school.
Saturday school was the norm until something like 10 years ago, then it was abolished countrywide (maybe not in private schools).
The other side is that once students get into college, they basically have a free ride. Very little work, almost impossible to fail. It's considered the lull between the hell of entrance exams and the hell of work. A lot of companies train new employees, so education isn't all that critical.
Does the Japanese system produce better students? Not if you define it in terms of desire to learn, flexibility of mind, or ability to synthesize information and present new viewpoints. In terms of learning how to do something and do it well, and giving 100% effort, then yes.
There's a reason my (Japanese) wife and I didn't want our kids to go to Japanese schools.
On the positive side, engineering and science is still seen as an attractive, respected career choice. The Japanese have a very high esteem for achievements gained through hard work, whereas the U.S. glorifies people who succeed through luck or through some innate ability (hence the scientists often being portrayed as bad guys).
Sure a few of them make that kind of money, and a few geeks become Accenture partners and CIOs and make that kind of money as well. But the average lawyer doesn't actually make that much.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Attorney_%2F_Lawyer/Salary/by_Practice_Area
And those numbers don't seem too far off from my personal experience either. I know a bunch of lawyers, and I make more than most of them. And I'm not even the highest paid geek I know either.
And I don't have a advanced degree either, so no MS or JD to pay for either, that counts as well.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I can't speak for GP, but since I became a contractor and then a consultant my income has shot up. I've only been doing it a couple of years and two contracts in, but I'm already comfortable asking for ~$1500/day doing a job I genuinely enjoy. Some of the offers I've had from financial instutions come with much higher daily rates, but I don't think I'd survive long in that environment!
Man, do I wish I had mod points today. You make a very interesting point compared to the random predictable noise in the rest of this comment thread...
I'm finishing up an electrical engineering degree in Sweden. Most of the engineering programs in this country are dominated by Chinese and Pakistani students. In some programs, there are ZERO Swedes enrolled. The view among young Swedes seems to be that, if they're going to pursue a difficult course of studies, then it may as well be something that they get well compensated for. Engineers are not particularly well compensated and thus many view it as a course of studies that demands a lot of hard work, i.e. many math and physics courses, and very little reward.
Stop this FAIR crap.
... Democrats and Republicans agree on something, it's generally bad for the American citizen. For years, both parties have put large incentives in place to off-shore jobs, and to bring in foreign workers who will work for peanuts in the hopes of gaining citizen-ship. Of course as soon as they do, they are laid off and another batch is imported. The Democrats did it because they want to improve the lives of foreigners, the Republican's do it to increase profits for the businesses incentivized to move off-shore. In both, the American's paying for these programs get fewer jobs, and see their salaries stagnant. The fact of the matter is, it is no longer viable to spend large amounts of time and money to get a degree, which both parties will make worthless.
As a PhD in physics, I've moved from career to career as I've watched careers off-shored, and US jobs disappear. The difference is I just move to what is "hot". Now I am in finance and last year received a bonus of over $150K for losing money. Yes - I lost money for my employer and made money due to the tax-payers bailing out the financial sector. Isn't American wonderful? I wised up - stop trying to "fix" things, and do what the CEO's do - look out for number one. Now when Congress gives itself money and their cronies, I get a cut. I figure that will never be "off-shored". :)
I'm quite honest in that I think the entire system is corrupt - but I can't change the system... So I might as well profit from it...
Of course, I wish someone had explained the system to me before I wasted 8+ years in graduate school getting a degree that wasn't worth the paper it was written on. But such is life.
We have one of the best university systems in the world. We train many Americans and foreign students in numerous fields. So why, when those same foreign students want to stay in America to help our economy, we kick them out. By restricting highly-skilled foreign workers from working in America, we are giving up the opportunity for them to help our own economy and start new businesses that will create many jobs.
Admittedly, I'm in canada, but I suspect the perception here is about the same.
I'm my current grad programme in CS, we have about 120 grad students, (about 60 MSc about 60 PhD), of whom around 75% are foreign - non first world, so I'm not counting US, EU students as 'foreign' for this purpose, since we all face the same problem. The vast majority of our undergrads are domestic students, while the vast majority of grads are foreign. The undergrads can walk out of here and get jobs that easily run 40-50k and usually a lot more than that. Grad student: 20k.
The foreign grad students have significantly changed the bar for academic excellence. We take the best and brightest from other places, and that means to succeed in grad school you have to be at their level. When foreign students were 10, 15% of the class it wasn't an issue. But now 8/10 of the people in my classes are going to be from the top 5% of wherever they're from, which means to have marks competitive with theirs you pretty much have to be top 5% here. So yes, our grads are just as good, because by swamping ourselves with foreign students we've raised the bar of excellence. I'm not sure that's good or bad. So then why do we need foreign talent? Because foreign talent has raised the bar, and now can only be filled with foreigners.
There are of course a lot of other issues. If you can learn to do math in-spite of the education system, you can do fine in STEM classes, but you probably won't actually learn to do it properly from the education system. Which makes it both hard, and scary to risk STEM as a career. It's also a lot of work, with a lot of debt, that may not pay off.
Professor Matloff is specifically opposed to 'flooding the market' with foreign STEM workers. That's missing a few basic problems of economics. First and foremost, those people already exist. If they come here they may keep salaries flat or drive them down, but if they stay home in India or China they would cost substantially less, and in the end make outsourcing even more viable. Bringing them here keeps the global costs of STEM work up, and rewards the best and brightest from their home countries with a chance at much more financially productive life (a good incentive to get your people to work). A simple look at http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp will tell you pretty quickly that STEM pays well, possibly even too much (compare petroleum engineer mid career to well... anything else. IMO petroleum engineering is not substantially harder to do than chemical engineering, yet it pays 50% more). It's not like we have suddenly driven the price of STEM below that of Drama degrees, the difference between the starting salary of drama and civil eng is about 8k, but and engineering degree only costs about 2k more than a drama degree (around here anyway), so if anything there is room there for some salary depreciation and STEM would still be the best paying place to be.
IMO what we need is an education system that actually teaches people something about how all this technology stuff they want and use works in high school, so they can choose to pursue that in detail when they get to university. Right now we have first years who don't know what electricity, the internet, a CPU, HTML, or quantum mechanics are. If I have to explain the difference between a CPU and the whole computer to a comp sci student is, they're in serious trouble (and yet some of that crowd can write doubly linked lists when they get here). We have kids who's understanding of electricity is 'some magically thing that is carried over wires and comes out of the wall'. How do you seriously expect them to be interested in designing new batteries or helping to develop new energy technology and so on if they don't even know what electricity is when they start in engineering degrees? That ignorance of basic science, and ignorance of basic technology principles (what is cryptography?) should not be things we teach only to that select few (around here about 15% of our un
So westerners are all technological dunces, and all the "best and brightest" tech minds come from India, right? I mean, that is what the lobbyists want us to believe, right?
Let's examine the evidence, shall we?
Of the following iconic tech companies, how many come from India? Apple, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, Google, eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Intel, Dell, HP, and I could go on. Other than staffing companies, what great tech companies were formed in India?
Care to count the number of Nobel prizes that have come from the USA, as opposed to India? As I understand it, there are high schools in the USA that have produced more Nobel prize winners than the entire nation of India. Certainly there are several US colleges that have produced more Nobel prize winners than the entire nation of India.
How many ground breaking tech breakthroughs have come from India in the last 200 years? Computers? Radio? TV? Radar? Nuclear power? Heavier than air flight? Light bulbs? Movies? Phonograph? Anything?
So where is the evidence that Indians are all the "best and brightest" and Americans are all stupid? Do you realise about 50% of Indians are illiterate, and that India has the worst slums in the world? And yet we need Indians because they are great tech geniuses and entrepreneurs.
here, ignorant 13 year old, educate yourself:
sergey brin employs how many americans? (russian immigrant who founded google, for the ignorant, like you)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin
jerry yang employs how many americans? (taiwanese immigrant who founded yahoo, for the ignorant, like you)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Yang_(entrepreneur)
pierre omidyar employs how many americans? (iranian born in france who founded ebay, for the ignorant, like you)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Omidyar
etc., etc.
those are just off the top of my head
educate yourself, then open your ignorant mouth. the world is full of enough morons as it is
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If those in-shored jobs pay enough for people to abandon their homeland and family it must pay quite good, isn't it? Could it be that the problem is entitlement attitudes of native-born Americans?
P.S. I'm one of those in-shored quite some time ago. I do not know of anyone in-shored along with me (out of several dozens by single company) who now does not earn in top 3% of income distribution.
Agreed 100%. We live in a society where adjectives like "educated" and "intellectual" are used as epithets rather than compliments.
Probably because the 'best and brightest' were responsible for most of America's great political disasters of the 20th century. It wasn't the kids who slacked off at school and got jobs stacking shelves who pushed America into the Vietnam War, for example.
However it might be time to consider unionizing CS workers. Many are being used as temp / short term hires to get a project done then released. This is how construction workers are treated and unionization has done well for them. I have never been a fan of unionization but times have changed.
i would rather deport to the middle of the ocean, rather than send one immigrant home
my loyalty is to america, the principles for which this great country stands, not america "i was born here so i'm entitled just because i breathe air"
i'll take 10,000 poor "brown people not speaking English" than one "american" like you in this country, any day
because in my book, i don't really consider you to be my countryman. because you've abandoned the principles that make this country great. you're not an american, according to me
so fuck you, you useless fuck
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Corporate america serves their OWN interests. Stop blaming the people who are trying to get ahead -that would be the immigrants. Put blame where it belongs- with those who are selling off American jobs. Made in Japan Made in Taiwan Made in Indonesia Made in India Assembled in Mexico Made in Honduras Made in USA may contains component made in China
There are several problems intertwined here. Motivated U.S. students are as good as those anywhere. However, they must overcome the following problems:
The combination of these factors makes STEM degrees less attractive than they ought to be...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Damn lack of mod points...
Support SETI@home
When foreign workers work from foreign countries, the language barrier and time lag make the project very difficult to manage. The added costs more than offset the savings, which is why companies have been returning to inshoring over the past few years.
Having the H1B's in this country makes them available again, but still cheaper than American workers due to their lifestyle preferences and expectations. Also, if they are foreign-educated then they don't have nearly the debt that American workers have.
So, reducing the H1B's makes the job market better for American technical workers.
It *is* possible that restricting the importing of tech talent will foster technical innovation in foreign countries, thus introducing new competing products on the market...but I can't see that as a bad thing.
only in America is working over 40 hours a badge of honor. The Germans seem to be doing pretty well with their 30 hour work weeks and their 2 months paid vacation every year. We Americans often confuse competence with numbers of hours worked.
Agree wholeheartedly. Somehow managers (MBA's) have sold workers on the idea that they are just another commodity/expense, rather than human beings. Therefore, for a worker to advance or seem valuable, they should work for less, or work extra for free, etc.
I'ts as if the workers believe they are owners, but without the ownership.
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx
The truth is that this is all about the hard capitalist reality. But if it is important for the USA to retain at least some technical capability, we need find a way to bring wages down in the near term. To do that we need to find a way to reduce systemic costs for workers so that they can accept lower wages. For example
(Note the conundrum, soft forms of socialism like in China and Germany is the best way to compete in a capitalist world.)
But, with lower wages for the workers, you'll have to shift the tax burden to corporations and individuals that profit from lower wages for workers, which, of course, is impossible in the USA. So, there's nothing that can be done. American workers will continue to migrate to those jobs that pay well.
I have a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MS in Computer Software Engineering. I want to come work at your company. 100K to start would be OK. Let's be friends!
PS: Full disclosure: I have citizenship. Is the engineering department cool with that sort of thing? Or is it a strike against me?
The single biggest problem is not education for 'STEM'. It is the careers people choose.
Think of it this way.
Think back to your high school class... the last time you were in a reasonable cross-section of society. What percentage are really talented... let's be super generous and say the top 15%
Ideally... you want a distribution like this.
85-100% (doctors, lawyers, engineers...)
75-85% (nurses, teachers, tech admin, business grads)
75 (admin jobs, service sector...)
What we have due to a variety of circumstances is that this ideal is being thrown out of whack. Some jobs are competing globally. Others are protected at home or paid by the government.
So what happens is those who can be engineers become lawyers or financial people. Others 'work below' their ability and get jobs in the 75-85% range. This forces those displaced people in the 75% range... and this pushes those people out of the job market... and that leaves a large number of skilled positions unfilled.
This is almost universally true across the western world. Shortage of high-end talent, but with high unemployment. They keep trying to address it from the educational perspective. But it won't solve it... not unless you can get the 75 of your society to be capable of doing high end work... and that's not happening.
I always say that a society rises and falls by how it values its engineers. Not that there's anything particularly holy about engineers. We are just a good measure of the work distribution in society. It is hard work and needs among the best in society. If your top people are not entering it because it is easier to get a job in a bureaucracy or protected profession... your private sector wealth generation will eventually collapse.
As that work moves to other societies (india/china) then those societies rise.
The cases you list are interesting, but they say very little (almost nothing) about what happens "in general". What you're doing, listing a number of foreign born people who made good in the US, is known as a casuistic approach. E.g. you look at a small number of cherry-picked cases.
Now that's not a bad approach when you want to get a feel for what *can* happen, but the sample you present here is *totally* un-representative for the total population of forein-born engineers. Meaning that it does not allow you to reach any useful conclusions about the population of foreign-born engineers at all.
If you want to draw conclusions about that population, you need to take a representative sample of that population (or even a census) and study that.
Now that's what the author of the original presentation supposedly (I didn't check his sampling method) did. For people who don't have his dataset (i.e. his readers) he summarised his data using a linear regression model, the coefficients of which are on page 73 of his presentation, and which I have copied for you.
The model is like:
Salary = const. + coefficient_age x age + coef_age_x_age x age x age + coef_MS x I_MS + coef_PHD x I_PHD + coef_highCOL x I_highCOL + coef_origF1nonlC x I_origF1nonlC + coef_origF1chn x I_origF1chn + coef_origF1ind x I_origF1ind
If we trust the author to handle the mechanics of datacollection and model estimation correctly, this means that he took a representative dataset of wages and explanatory variables like age, degree obtained, location, indications of foreignership, and indications of coming from China or India, and he has checked that there are no other variables in his dataset that have a significant explanatory value (e.g school where graduated).
The model coefficients he presents are:
factor beta, marg. err.
const. -2640 +/- 18429
age 3369 +/- 865
age x age -33 +/- 10
MS 9948 +/- 2177
PhD 22667 +/- 4509
highCOL 8692 +/- 1917
origF1nonIC 4479 +/- 3847
origF1chn -6190 +/- 5632
origF1ind -978 +/- 5571
non-ICs paid > avg., about 0.5 MS eect Chinese paid
This sums up several aspects of the data as the author notes. In my comments below I have taken the liberty of translating some of the factors (i.e. whether or not you're foreign, Chinese, Indian), into years of career development for easier comparison.
(1) in general, salary level increases with age, but being too old has a negative effect (the term for age squared is negative)
(2) people with PhD's reliably get into jobs where they earn substantially more than those with MS degrees.
(3) in general, foreign-born engineers earn a salary comparable to that of US borns 2 years their junior
(4) but not if you're Chinese, then your salary is likely to lag that of your peers by 3 years.
(5) if you're Indian, your salary lags that of US borns by about 1/2 year
This is how his dataset looks.
In particular, all other things being equal, Chinese and Indians really do work for lower pay than native engineers or other foreigners (e.g. Europeans). No doubt about that. And that holds for the total population he surveyed (which ought to be the total population of foreign-born engineers in CS and EE).
This squarely supports the thesis that US companies are using F1B visa simply as a negotiating tool to lower people's salaries, in view of the fact that engineers salaries have flat-lined over the past 10 or so years (meaning there can't be a serious shortage). Ok?
Are these the same "brilliant" Japanese students who built a nuke plant that is melting down and are too fucking proud to accept outside help?
It's a little early to declare Fukishima as an engineering disaster - the plant survived the shaking from a 9.0 quake when it was designed to withstand a 7.9 quake. I haven't seen any reference to what size Tsunami it was designed to withstand. It will be interesting to find out what the tsunami spec was (if any) and how both the earthquake and tsunami specs were determined.
Engineers don't control funding - engineers are happy to design to any safety spec, but more safety comes at a cost, and neither government nor industry have unlimited funds. If society demanded absolute safety, cars would look like tanks, be restricted to 5mph, and would have built-in life support to keep occupants alive just in case the car drives into a lake. Oh, and would cost $200,000, but might save 40,000 lives/year.
You don't need to look overseas to see nuclear dangers - California has 2 coastal plans designed to withstand a 7.0 and 7.5 quake, and a 7.5 or greater quake is very likely to strike in the next 30 years. Oh, and in one of the plants the seismic supports were installed backwards, and in the other plant one of the reactor vessels were installed backwards -- and those *are* engineering mistakes.
Being highly competitive is discriminatory and racist. American education excels at what it is designed for: making people feel good about themselves.
I think the real problem is, Americans aren't interested in Science and Technology careers that lead them to a lifetime of poverty for themselves and their families.
Science and Technology careers lead to a lifetime of poverty?
Let's compare stats. Here we have have an undergraduate business program, hyped as being in the top 20 undergraduate business programs:
http://dyson.cornell.edu/undergrad/careers.php#placement
Here we have an undergraduate engineering program, also hyped as being highly ranked, at the same university, for the same year:
Computer Science: http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/upload/pgcs09.pdf
Electrical Engineering: http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/upload/pgece09.pdf
Take a look at the 8-year reports for the different engineering majors:
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/postgrad_reports.cfm
Undergrad CS majors are making 50% more than the undergrad business majors, and their 8 year trend is upward, not downward.
I started University in 1995, and graduated in 2000. It terms of timing it could not have been worse.
I have always been into computers, and all though high school was involved with them. When I went to University it seemed to be the natural thing to do. Also looking backwards it seemed to be a highly sought after career in many big corporations and universities. On top of that, the future seemed really bright, with lots of innovation, and people that were capable making money in heaps... However we all know how that ends... The Dot Com Bubble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
Basically in 2000 the entire bottom fell out. Now on top of that over the next 10 years you export just about every entry level job to India. Not exactly a rosy picture. Had I known what I do now, I would never have gone into CS. Sure I may have still taken a bunch of courses, out of personal interest, but I would have likely leaned more towards some other science with the intent to use computers as a useful tool that I was interested in. As it is, I graduated CS, and I work in government in CS (sort of), and it isn't so bad, but life didn't exactly turn out how I thought it might when I was in school in the late 90's.
Nah. Settling conflict with guns is for the low rung of the ladder. I think organized crime has found it to be much more profitable and safer to influence the political system, just like the businessmen---but I repeat myself.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx
I think there is fairly strong correlation between sucking at something and complaining about people taking away jobs.
Terry Childs.
Sure, he was a jerk about making sure everyone knew how good he was. That was not a crime. But if he had posted in public the usernames and passwords to a government-owned system, he would have been charged with a crime. Yet, his bosses did exactly that during his trial, but Childs is now in prison, while his former bosses are sitting pretty, at taxpayers' expense.
And you want me to work in I.T.? Piss on you.
I believe the researcher's point was that we don't need as many H1B workers because they clearly are not the creme de la creme as based on his analysis of the wages they are paid and other data, and the aim of the H1B program was to bring in highly skilled and specialized workers who could not be found here (in the US). The data he presents suggests that employers are using the H1B program more as a means of getting cheap labor than as a means to get the best and brightest with the rarest skill sets.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I love foreign genius. I'd love another Elon Musk to come to the USA and set up shop.
The reality is different. The IT campus for my company has 750 workers. 310 have come from India within the last 7 years. They are smart, diligent workers with good educations. Many of them have Masters degrees in comp sci or EE. The company has put them to work testing business systems and maintaining Websites. They are essentially indentured servants until they get their Green Cards, which is now a 5-10 year process if you are from India or China. None of them are geniuses and none of them are trying to start the Next Big Thing. They are focused on keeping their jobs so that they don't get shipped home.
This. One of my best friends is a lawyer. He makes a bit less than I do, has a crushing load of student debt (still), and it took him 3 years to really find a job (he had a few short term gigs in there, but it took him 3 years to find a permanent "real" job). On top of all of that, he's doing completely uninteresting work in real estate law, while I spend most of my days playing with big iron HPC systems.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Jobs lost at Location A are jobs gained at Location B. Once Location B loses its competitiveness, the jobs will goes to Location C. Progressively, the economic advantage of Locations A, B & C will all converge at a point of peaceful coexistence. As an outsider unaffected by outsourcing one way or another, I can only arrive at the conclusion that this is a good thing. It spreads the wealth, knowledge and other economic benefits from the richer to the poorer countries until an equilibrium is reached. Ideally, in 50 years time, we will have progressed from our presently petty national and racial boundaries to international unions such as the EU. Isn't all this just another facet of the "free market" that all western countries hunger for?
but i wonder why you think that's the only topic that can be talked about
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The here today gone tomorrow tech ventures. Nothing like changing jobs every 1-3 years which isn't as bad as the 100 hour work weeks and wearing 4 to 6 hats where the stress costs me a marriage.
I left high tech 20 years ago with 20 years experience and 2 degrees under my crispy belt to discover peaceful bliss running my own tech lite business. I do my own projects when I need a tech challenge fix. No more deadline fever with impossible demands from a-holes promoted via the peter principle.
we want to make 5 years of employment in the usa mandatory after schooling as a condition for coming here in the first place. 4,000-5,000 of those students won't amount to anything impressive, but 4 or 5 of them will create 40,000-50,000 american jobs. the problem with your "entrepreneurial" visa idea is that you are assuming there exists some sort of criteria for identifying who can actually be a successful entrepreneur. no, there is no such criteria. you can't identify whose idea will work and whose won't. so bring them all, and keep them all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When the economy tightens up it's inevitable people start blaming foreigners. Respectfully, the Dr. doesn't know what he's talking about. I work in a highly-skilled CS-related field in the U.S. and I can tell you that most of the graduates I see coming out of U.S. CS programs in the last few years are borderline retarded. I don't know what's going on in these programs --- I'm from a foreign country where we have proper universities that actually teach CS to CS students --- but I think they're taking too many elective credits in swimming and international relations.
Think about it: off-shoring would have been a total failure if people with educations from third-world universities weren't capable of making quality software using .NET, or whatever bullshit is going on in the business IT environment. But apparently they *can* do, so whether it's quantity over quality that's behind it --- who knows.
Kids nowadays just want to diddle their iPhones all day, and unfortunately there's still a lot of jobs out there that allow you to do that; it's getting better ever day though :)
That's not true everywhere in the US. I went to a fairly upper crust High School in the US and people who didn't work hard academically and weren't planning to go into either Science/Engineering, Business, Law, or Medicine were generally considered to be losers who didn't have their shit together.
I make that much in cash, plus my benefits and a rather generous bonus plan and a solid 401k match.
Plus I don't have to deal with 8th graders *shudder*.
It is any surprise that the basis for a movie about harnessing the power of the brain involves someone going to work on Wall Street (Limitless) versus the science or software industry? Something that Hollywood gets, the money is now made in Wall Street, not Silicon Valley. Even the number of incoming lawyers is decreasing in this country.
Combine this with the education system in most states being a complete disaster and you the cycle is complete.
- California (as an example) refuses to expand the community college system to offer basic 4 year degrees. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the state college system had nominal fees barely above community college levels and so anyone could get a degree for a fairly low amount of money. Now, the prices have skyrocketed to where it's not worth getting a degree unless you are sure that there is a payoff. $5000+ a quarter at UC schools prices any college education out of the realm of the average worker or the under-employed who is looking for a second career to potentially train into. Also, they have limited acceptance to local residents(foreigners are still accepted from anywhere of course), which means you are stuck with one of 2 or 3 possible choices. Which are full for the next 2-3 years as I speak.
Fully half of the UC and Cal State system is clogged with idiots getting degrees in worthless stuff like political science, ethnic studies, and religion. People who want real degrees can't get in because of the sheer number of useless degrees still offered that only lead to either teaching the same if you are lucky enough, or a job answering phones since it's useless in the workplace now. If you look at India(as an example), there's virtually no wasted space. All of the schools offer a few basic degrees and little filler. Even if you could get in past the waiting list into one of your local schools, the programs are all full.
To add insult to injury, colleges in many other countries are affordable or are nearly free. For those stuck here in the U.S., even the cheapest options are impossible to afford while the rest of the world essentially floods in and displaces our workers with ones that paid almost nothing for their degrees.
Your only option then is private schools. But at $20K+ a year, that's impossible short of a scholarship. Re-training is impossible unless you have money already. Catch-22.
- The employers also feel that they can demand ever-increasing skills at ever-decreasing wages, pretty much because they can get away with it. Why not if all of these fortune 100 companies can do it? There's always some worker from overseas who can do the job for $30K a year. Or some starving ex-employee in their 50s who will work for intern wages. It's now affecting computer fields as well, where jobs have split into two fields - high end database and critical programmers and everyone else who is just a wage-slave in a cubicle or at a workbench. Jobs that used to pay 40-60K a year are now being offered for $12 an hour. With no benefits, 401K, or perks.
Fact: You can make more money and get better benefits working for In-and-Out Burger than from most jobs these days that require a BS degree. If you have a Masters, you're still in good shape, but that also is quickly eroding.
The only way to solve it it to slam the doors shut, kick out the temporary visa workers, and force companies to hire only U.S. workers(or those few with permanent visas of course). Note - most OTHER nations do this sort of thing already and help protect their industry.
I believe a lot of what you referring to is called drive and work ethic. This has little bearing on how "bright" or intelligent you really are. By comparison - my brother has 30 IQ points less than myself, but he works a hell of a lot harder. Also, I am not saying we shouldn't push our kids - but have you taken a look at the suicide rates in Japan. Finally, you can also take a look at the original post and see that foreign workers have stifled "creative thinking" ability.
... I'm serious all this talk about work is not SOUND ANALYSIS it is more typical american faith based moralizing. The fact that your post got modded insightful is disturbing enough and just lends credence to the stereotype of ignorance of many americans. Lets have more real scientific analysis and less moral blathering.
I got a better historical hypothesis : Capitalism over the long term creates unsustainable societies, given that most people in the world are average. Average jobs keep being destroyed by technological displacement or moved to cheaper countries, thereby having available jobs and their livable wage pushed downward so that only a smaller percentage of the population can do 'economically competitive' work. Over time work at a livable wage that is available gets further out of reach for the common man. Partially due to technological disruption and societies ability to do more with less most people end up doing jobs that produce nothing (finance/service sector) or busywork like expanding university into an education 'industry' to keep people employed/money moving around.
Just because people are employed and money is shuffling does not mean they are doing things that are intelligent or that have long term value for the world at all. What actually is going on in 'the economy' matters much more then just having people create needless work.
This is the problem with anecdotal analysis, it doesn't do serious analysis it blusters its way to the conclusion it wants.
Most of these debates against STEM workers on a Visa ignore the realities; surveys conducted by US citizens often lack any mention about the immigration hassle for both the employee and employer. For any normal company looking to hire someone on H1B
a) H1B quota is limited to about 60- 80K per year. At the time of employment if the quota is full the guy cannot be hired.
b) H1B visa is expensive, costs about 3-5K apart from the lawyer fees to apply for the visa.
c) A company has to fill out a lot of paperwork, including evidence of due diligence done to find a equivalent US person.
d) A couple of immigration officers could visit the place of work for inspection.
e) Has to pay similar wages as would pay to a US person.
f) Visa only given in 3 year increments after which all the above steps should be repeated, with no guarantee of approval.
These steps just to state that it is not easy to hire a H1B employee, there is a lot of disincentive. Many job posting now-a-days state No H1B visa provided. Now there are companies that abuse this system, they are in a minority.
Coming to the H1B workers, with already so much disincentive against him, he
a) Can be terminated as any employee would be, but he has a fixed number of days with in which he has to find a job or liquidate everything and leave this country. If you take a person who does his MS here and works for a company for 5 years, he has already been in the US for 7 years in the prime of his/her life, now one fine day he has to sell everything and go back, add family and kids to this equation and things are way lot messier. So losing a job for a H1B can be many more times stressful, maybe this causes them to go that extra mile at work ?
b) Pays all taxes like a US person, but if he leaves he mostly forfeits all his Social security/medicare taxes.
c) Every renewal of the visa is stressful as you never know what the USCIS might ask, and if your company is willing to part with that information. If not then again out of the country. Most of the H1B rules are subject to interpretation, so there is a lot of Grey area. No one really knows how a rule might be interpreted in their case.
d) Most of the H1B's (esp from India and China) have to wait for 5 - 15 years to get a green card( permanent residency). So for that amount of time everything hangs in limbo.
e) Because of the limitations, changing jobs are difficult is H1B's and they cannot start any business on their own. Cannot work in any security-sensitive jobs.
Life is not easy for those on H1B either, esp one's who came here for college and have acclimatized to this country.
With this much amount of additional work, there is a lot of disincentive already in the system against a H1B. There will always be abusers and yes not all people on H1B are Super Smart. But does a workforce only need super smart people ? not some well educated/trained hard working people who can follow the vision of these super smart folks ?
The problem that I see is that the people with H1B's are stuck, so as a homegrown, I have to compete with someone who cant shop around for a better job. Now that guy might be working well below his skillset for some mid grade job, but I have to compete with his skills, and his inability to ask for a proper wage. He can't switch jobs in a reasonable fashion unless he's can prove he's a total rockstar, and then he's still underpaid.
From a corporate view there is no reason to raise wages if you can still get indentured servants instead of employees.
My take is that I don't mind competing with foreign nationals, as long as they are free to compete for a wage. Sure, they'll take some of the better paying jobs, but we'll be getting competent people rising to the top.
Tech wages can never rise while a significant chunk of tech workers are unable to negotiate for better wages.
In fact, there are tons of Americans going to school for these things. They just can't get jobs afterwards, and no it's not because of the H1B visas being given out, it's because so many damn students are getting advanced STEM degrees.. there's just too many of them.
Here's a good article about that:
http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/
By the way, you can't fault a company for trying to cut losses by giving a job overseas. Those jobs don't belong to anybody but the person giving them out, they are the ones putting their money on the line to create a business, and they have no obligation to hire someone just because they are from the U.S.
Fault administrations who have made hiring in the U.S. a huge liability.
Definitely wouldn't recommend the Japanese system... If you want to learn about it, read "Shutting Out The Sun" by Michael Zielenziger. It's a pretty frightening description of a culture where any kind of exceptionalism is aggressively discouraged. It's only when an exceptional person escapes Japan (e.g. to a US university) that they are allowed to grow intellectually. The saying goes, "the nail that sticks out gets hammered".
A much better place to look is Europe, the Scandinavian countries in particular. Finland seems to always show up near the top when it comes to educational results even though people there spend much less time in school than in the US.
I saw the product of the Japanese educational system firsthand: that students enrolled in a college for studying foreign languages, despite already having about 6 years of English education prior to their enrollment, could barely hold a conversation. But they did know how to take tests and use electronic dictionaries very well.
The Japanese system is built on the relentless accumulation of facts for the purpose of taking a test. Once you pass the test, it's of no use.
Furthermore, given the demise of the lifelong employed "salaryman," many youth are abandoning college. Why work so hard when an economy that's been in the hole for two decades won't guarantee a stable job? They see their parents and relatives completely burnt out from their nonstop work ethic and ask, "Is it worth it?"
Except Japan is having the same kinds of issues the US is having:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/may2007/gb20070517_814046.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/10/08/f-dale-tokyo-lost.html
...Dr. Norman Matloff didn't think it was a problem that many US tech students couldn't find jobs...
:|
..it only became a problem when students wised up and stopped entering/paying for tech college degrees,,,, since they already knew their chances of finding a job.
It's very difficult to address this subject at all without sounding like "those damn foreigners are stealing our jobs!!!",,, but if US universities knew which side their bread was buttered on, they'd have come out against US companies offshoring a long time ago.
[-end-]
> The data, on the other hand, indicate that those admitted are no more able, productive, or innovative than America's homegrown talent, he said.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In any discussion about H1Bs, somebody posts a comment like this. I am very sceptical that there is any truth to these article.
Okay, let's see the actual ad, post a link please. If there is no ad, then why not? Even if the ad was taken down, it should be cached.
Does your ad include a salary range? If not, why not? How do we know that you are actually offering the salary that you claim?
that no one wants these jobs. "If you are smart enough to do the work, you're smart enough not to work here."
I doubt that. Maybe it is "on one wants these jobs at that price". So raise the price. We have no doubling the cost of gasoline when we need to, double the price of programming.
Trying to impose more barriers to trade ... Not to mention that we have the internet now; not letting programmers into the US only drives whole projects off-shore
I don't think you understand how tariffs work. Once the project is offshore then what? You can't use it without paying a large tariff on the transactions.
If you want more Americans hired, you should increase the ease of immigration, not make it harder; it would bring more entrepreneurs to our country, who in turn would employ more Americans.
This is silly. Adding to the labor pool depresses wages. There is nothing magic about labor as contrasted with any other good, increase the supply you decrease the price.
In contrast, school in Japan (to use one example) is highly competitive - students know that if they don't do well in high school they aren't going to get into their college of choice (which means a high paying job), and may not even get into a college at all are are relegated to trade school. This pressure starts early in their school life - by 7th or 8th grade a student better be on a college track or he/she is not going to make it. The school hours are long, with Saturday schooldays not being unheard of. Parents in turn push their children to do well in school.
And then they go out into a forest and hang themselves.
Comment of the year
Cases in agreement:
1) one of my junior relatives (female) had planned to get her degree in engineering. After one term of actual college engineering classes she decided that she hated engineering. I think she went into psychology instead.
2) back in 2004 I was back in school taking some CS classes. Something close to 70% of all the grad students were foreign, and about 40% of those were female. These students were above all pragmatists, who knew that their future standard of living depended on making the sacrifices. There was not a single US born female grad student in CS - I asked the head of the department.
Oddly enough, more than half of the math faculty were female, and perhaps 1/3 of the CS faculty. But again, I did not see any female grad students in math - but I did not ask about that department so I don't know for sure.
IMHO the K-12 educational system in the US not only suppresses bright students in general, it also is very effective at communicating the teachers' own dislike and blockage against math and other 'hard' disciplines (that blockage was proven in studies as far back as the 1970s.) The mental discipline that is required to think analytically is of negative value during the K-12 experience - or at least it used to be. I'd love to be proved wrong as far as the present day.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I never met superior foreign engineering students in my M.E. degree. Not one. I met a lot of talent from across the globe but the class leaders weren't from China, India, Pakistan, Korea, etc. They actually were most often from students who had a parent that was already an engineer and thus they had a huge head start on the rest of the class, whether in Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, Machine Design, etc. Most of those students were Americans because their parent worked at Boeing, Northrup, Lockhead, etc. Ultimately, the talent was spread out and the top students tended to team together to ensure they were the class leaders, regardless of cultural differences.
Managers are given huge leeway in negotiating salaries for new hires, including signing bonuses, relocation, stock options, etc. New hires represent a huge gamble, so the return on that investment is really hard to assure.
Managers are given very little leeway in giving out salary increases, cash bonuses, stock options, etc. (unless you are at the top, funny enough). Existing employees are a known commodity, those bonuses are based on much better understood performance.
So long as the dogma in HR/management that permeates corporate USA continues to fail to reward proven the winners in their own ranks less than they can be rewarded for jumping ship we will continue to have loyalty problems, which inevitably drives the vicious cycle of companies not hiring for the long term (i.e. the harsh experience hurdle new grads face), and employees feeling the need to job surf just to get the raises and bonuses they feel they deserve.
...of offering a 4-year degree in plumbing, HVAC, or any of the other typical CC degrees? Does Burger Barn really need a fry chef with a Bachelor of French Fries?
It's not just the money, but the the number of skills. New computer degree graduates are facing an uphill battle to get jobs with no experience and unless they lie they are going to not get work. So this knowledge is passed on to high school students who decide to go for a degree that can get a foot in the door immediately after graduation.
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html
Interestingly enough as a kid I was teased, made fun of, insulted and shunned for being smart. It ended up strengthening my resolve because I had such contempt for these people. They literally screwed around all the time, were disrespectful unjustifiably, many got pregnant or impregnated someone, and many simply drank/smoked/chewed too much. And thought THEY were cool? I just dropped totally out of the social structure in high school and did my own thing. It paid off in a way, as I am an almost graduated grad student and I don't miss a single one of them.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
After reading this prescient book from 1995:
http://www.vdare.com/alien_nation/
it started to dawn on me that nearly all the socioeconomic problems we in the U.S. face today* can be traced to the failings of the 1965 immigration reform. We shouldn't even have special niche programs like H1B; we should be putting those who really do have in-demand skills and qualifications at the front of the line for normal immigration visas and encouraging them to become citizens, but instead because of quirks of the 1965 reform unskilled Latin Americans will _always_ be at the head of the line--for the sole reason that they were "first out of the gate" to immigrate in large numbers post-1965--unless the law is amended. And good luck with that since so many are already here that they're a powerful special-interest lobby.
*: increasing economic stratification (rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, middle class shrinking), decline in inflation-adjusted wages (an average worker in the 70s had more buying power than an average worker today), high unemployment in the African-American community, etc., all trace back convincingly to post-1965 mass immigration, and the book _Alien Nation_ details the evidence. Even the recent housing bubble which set off the banking crisis and current recession has our immigration-driven population explosion and cheap immigrant construction labor as a significant component (though the book obviously doesn't detail this, having been published in 1995). In a few decades, native-born Americans will be about 25% of the U.S. population; will the culture of that day have anything in common with our own--will it descend from our culture and inherit its good points, or replace it and retain nothing of what we and our parents built? These are all interesting issues.
"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson
I used to bemoan the level of effort of students, until I realized that that's how it has always been, and likely always will be.
Most people just aren't scholars or engineers. The bright ones will always pursue knowledge--on their own, if necessary.
I don't think the Japanese emphasis on school produces more bright people, even if they are educated (which is good, to be sure). But until I met my first overeducated person, I didn't understand what that term meant! These days I'm not so concerned about it.
expandfairuse.org
More than half of STEM assistant professors in the US are foreign born (up from about one in ten, 40 years ago). Compare this to the general population of STEM workers, where only about 20 percent are foreign born. If we assume that professors are admitted to university faculties on the basis of sheer ability, this indicates that foreigners are actually *underrepresented* in the general H1B population.
"No offence, but the Dakotas, are not exactly a tech hot-spot."
They were showing some metaphorical hot tech sparks a couple decades ago. Some of them relocated, but even they aren't what they were.
Route 128 (Digital Equipment Corp., Data General...), Minneapolis-St. Paul (a couple medical product firms, Control Data Corp., Unisys, and CDC spin-offs Cray, MPI, ICEM Inc., Citigroup), Dayton (NCR), the NC Research Triangle, Cincinnati (Milacron, SDRC, Wright/GE), Columbus, Cleveland (SOHIO super-computing center now part of BP), Kansas City (United, Sprint, Bendix/Allied Signal), St. Louis (lots of small engineering firms), Chicago, Rochester, Atlanta (remember GT STRUDL?, Scientific Atlanta, Marconi Avionics), Houston, Hampton, Indianapolis, Tampa, and a lot of other locations that were showing some tech promise in the 1980s are essentially dead, now.
Austin and Dallas, which struggled from the early 1980s through the 1990s to fan the sparks into flame, seem to be barely hanging on but with more net destruction than creation.
San Diego was showing a little promise, in the 1980s and late 1990s, in software, embedded software/hardware, biotech, web-weavers, but that was smashed by the cross-border bodyshopping and off-shoring. We've had certified geniuses struggling to hang on, teaching the guest-workers for several years, now.
In the 1980s, the total cost to employ a person was about twice their pre-extortion salary. In this case that'd be $60K+$60K, for a total cost of $120K... thus giving yet another demonstration that one of the effects of bodyshopping, including cross-border bodyshopping, has been to drive down total compensation.
If you are a doctor or consultant or prostitute who is in demand, you raise your rates. You do the same work for more pay. You don't need to produce more, just produce better results.
There are two ways to increase profit; either produce more low profit widgets or services, or produce less widgets or services but a higher profit margin on each good or service sold.
Better results do scale because a better results increase something else. E.g. a healthier patient is more productive.
You're argument needs a bit of refinement. It is actually a complex issue, e.g. you can ask the question "what is a better result."
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
What this brainiac doesn't get is that the "reason" we aren't pursuing "STEM" career-paths in college, has nothing to do with "potentially" better applicants being shipped in. Instead it has everything to do with the fact that APPLICANTS ARE BEING SHIPPED IN, WHILE JOBS ARE BEING SHIPPED OUT!!!
More and more it seems that you cannot go to college without taking out student loans. If I am going to borrow up to $50,000.00 a year to go to college, I want to know two things: 1) Is this really the field I want to spend the next 20 years in (because it is likely that I will be paying those financial aid loans off for that long)?, and 2) Will there be employment in that field that will allow me a decent living (while paying my financial aid loans off) when I get out of school in 4 to 6 years?
With out-sourcing and inshoring moving up the corporate ladders, the likelyhood of finding such employment becomes more and more finite. With that knowledge in mind, unless you are a mathaholic, software whiz or total computer-freak, the option of borrowing up to 300k on training for a job-class that may soon be unavailable to you seems somewhat less than intelligent.
-Oz
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/38e2u3s23jer/2
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It is vastly preferable to have a field of employment completely destroyed by foreign competition than it is to make endemic the principle of groupism against which the founding stock Americans have relatively poor evolutionary learning.
The solution isn't to limit immigration so much as it is to kick these companies (meaning their executives, boards and major stockholders) out of the US so they can go live in the shit they're importing to the US.
And don't let them back in when they come begging.
Yes, I realize that means most of the Fortune 500 gets kicked out of the US.
Seastead this.
I don't think you know what epithet means.
Oddly enough, I can't find any new BMWs in my area for less than ten thousand dollars. I am also unable to secure gold coins at less than three hundred dollars per ounce. I feel that the US government should intervene in this market and force outside suppliers who are not protected by US law to supply me with the goods I need so I can resell gold and BMWs on the US market.
Maybe, just maybe, you should consider paying the prevailing wage for the skillsets you need to hire. Stop whining, accept the realities of the market, and compete! Personal responsibility for the win! Stop asking the government for a handout!
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
AFAIK, the seawall at the Fukishima plant was 6 meters and the tsunami they faced was 8 meters. Naturally, I gained this information from elsewhere on Slashdot, so I wouldn't know.
Overseas workers (and rural Midwest workers) are not, as a group, significantly more or less skilled or productive than their urban US counterparts. However, they don't have to be: just by being as good, they provide considerably more value, because the cost of labor is lower. This is where the real problem for urban US workers is: they aren't any better, yet they demand more, and that is why they cannot compete.
Or at least, that's how the corporate world sees it, and are they wrong? You can talk about ideology and economic-slash-political aesthetics, but how do you refute the math? Do this last, and you'll end offshoring. Otherwise, the businesses will continue pointing out that this is what they do to survive: they get the best value for their labor dollars, and that just isn't to be found in the urban US.
If we can't produce enough bananas to meet internal demand, we just import them.
If we can't produce enough scientists and mathematicians, why is it a bad thing when we import them?
Don't forget that we imported German scientists to build the first atomic bombs. Its not a new phenomenon, and its not a bad thing.
"Economics in a global age isn't about dividing up the current pie, it is about making new pies."
Remember that cross-border bodyshopping got its big boost after the B-school bozos had been ignoring our advice about date formats for a couple decades, and then went into a panic. They looked around and we refused to pull their cans out of the fire they'd made. But then they found a bunch of people in India, who'd been handicapped for decades using obsolete COBOL on obsolete computers, and this gave them the chance to stick with their obsolete ways a little longer instead of reforming. While we (the general plural US STEM worker) had gone from unstructured, to structured to object-oriented design and programming they'd stuck with ways and tools that were obsolete in the early 1970s.
But it gave them a foot in the door with the B-school bozos. And they were cheap, and very pliant, extremely willing to nod and go along with whatever insanity was proposed. So, the B-school bozos thought, "Hey! Having more of these yes-men would be great! And they're cheap!"
Meanwhile, we (the general plural US STEM worker) were learning our 10th or 14th programming language, and our 4th or 5th DBMS, on our 11th or 12th operating system, using the 4th or 5th methodological approach. But we were declared "unqualified". Go figure!
It's the market stupid!
Yes, it is evil when an executive says there's a "talent shortage" when there is not one; when, on the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence that there's been a surplus for several decades (well, only in the sense that one could say there's either, because the markets have been distorted).
Yes, it is evil for a recruiter to say that an able and willing US citizen job candidate is "unqualified".
Yes, it is evil for a recruiter to generate false pretexts on which to declare an able and willing US citizen candidate to be "unqualified".
Yes, it is evil to demand, at below-market prices, a mathematician/ physicist/ engineer/ software developer, and then whine about it instead of ponying up to hire a mathematician, physicist, engineer, and software developer at market prices to do the work together.
Yes, it is evil to remove moderate and high quality products from retail shelves and replace them with over-priced cheap garbage, and fraudulently representing it as being as good as the higher-quality products that are no longer available to US consumers.
Yes, it is evil to try to deceive US citizen students into investing time and effort into preparation for a "life-long career" in a field which dumps people at age 30 or 35, when you've already publicly confessed that you're out to drive down compensation.
Be honest. Confess. Repent. Sin no more, neither by initiating force nor fraud.
I can see one reason why natives are less inclined to study CS. They see these professors spending more time on political [psuedo] science studies than teaching CS and say "No thanks".
If Dr. Knuth started doing these studies I would burn all his books I collected over the years and cherish so much, and never bother about him ever.
CS wasn't the highly sought after subject by natives for a long time than the invention of offshoring. As for number of patents and publications being one of the indicators of brilliance, I say he doesn't understand the valley only few miles from his base. For the record, I have tool little respect for one-click or otherwise patents anyway and the startup I work for doesn't have the dough to do the patent process.
I and many of immigrants I know came with an equivalent of MS and never felt we have to pursue a PhD because in most start ups there are four or five non-PhD's for every one of them and more than half of these PhD's are non CS. Why do I waste my time and money doing stupid PhD and have to live in miserable conditions? I had that option back in my home country.
If they relocate the worker from India, they should just as eagerly relocate the worker from Sopchoppy. If they give an internship to the student from Ghana, they should just as eagerly give internships to students from Chillicothe or Massapequa. If they fly in someone from IIT to an interview, they should be just as likely to fly someone in from Virginia Tech.
Even new immigrants like Sona Shah, suddenly have had employers and recruiters refuse to talk with them once they were naturalized. She had the good fortune to have the opportunity to demonstrate it to congressional staffers.
"The sad fact is that in a level world, American workers at all levels will have to compete without any artificial barriers. What is wrong with that?"
Let's see should I take Organic Chemistry and all that _wonderful_ Science, or Education?
The horrible torture of taking Organic Chemistry won't do me a bit of good but the Education degree will most likely land me a job right away.
And he says there is a brain drain? I don't think so.
Right. Longitudinal studies show that, historically, individual US tax-victims move from income quintile to quintile through various parts of their life-times, and different members of the same family are in different income quintiles, and don't necessarily land in the same quintiles in corresponding phases of their life-times.
It's more rapid than you depict. Even over periods of just 10 years, many people tend to move to a neighboring income quintile, and slightly lower percentages move 2 quintiles or more. Some move up; others move down.
Let's see if I can trim this down to a copyright-allowable 200 words while recommending that you read the sources cited: "Among those whose incomes were in the bottom 20% in 1979, 86% were in some higher income bracket by 1988... 14% of 'the poor' were still in the bottom quintile a decade later... 15% had risen all the way to the top quintile by 1988, & 40% of 'the poor' of 1979 were now in the top 2 quintiles... only 2.8% of the population studied were continuously 'poor'." --- Thomas Sowell 1993 "What's News?" in _Is Reality Optional?_ pg 24
"Even those in the top quintile [top 20% of annual income] are not really wealthy. Their median household net worth is less than $150K." --- Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko 1996 _The Millionaire Next Door_ pp 2-3
"there are 39M people in the bottom 20% of households, but 64M people in the top 20% of households..." --- Thomas Sowell 2000 _Basic Economics_ pp134-136 (Top quintile households tend to have multiple earners, so the per capita income isn't quite so high.)
"A major study at the University of Michigan has followed... tens of thousands of (individuals) over a period of decades. Among individuals who are actively in the labor force, only 5% of those who were in the bottom 20% in income in 1975 were still there in 1991... 29% of those in the bottom quintile in 1975 had risen to the top quintile by 1991. More than half of those in the bottom quintile in 1975 had been in the top quintile at some point during those years." --- Thomas Sowell 2008 _Economic Facts & Fallacies_ pp145-146 and 2010 _Intellectuals & Society_ pg38 (citing W. Michael Cox & Richard Alm "By Our Own BootStraps: Economic Opportunity & the Dynamics of Income Distribution" Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Annual Report 1995 pp8, 14)
That's not what concerns me. What concerns me is the hundreds of thousands of bright, creative, industrious, knowledgeable US citizen STEM workers who have always engaged in continuous learning who, before H-1B (and before the explosion of F, J, L, and E-3 visas), were in the top 3 quintiles who are now in the bottom quintile, with no means to dig themselves out, while the US federal and state governments are actively working against them.
Your argument is that with the arrival of essentially free energy, there'll be so much overflowing abundance that we'll all have more than we need.
The problem is that's been true since the invention of the iron plow, but there's still hunger in the world. Most famines aren't caused by blight or drought, but by politics. Aid workers routinely complain that their cargo shipments of food and supplies are confiscated and horded by the local authorities. This allows whoever's in charge locally to control who gets relief -- thereby securing their loyalty -- or to "deny aid and comfort to the rebels."
I think you're overlooking a basic tenet of human psychology. It's better to be a poor king over desperate subjects -- and therefore an asolute Lord and Master -- than to be a rich king among rich subjects -- and thus be relegated to a mere "First Among Equals." (Thanks, Thomas More).
I remember reading an article about a city doctor in the Third World who got himself demoted to the countryside. He arrived at a village shot through with diseases that all came back to the same cause -- not enough clean water. He learned the village used to have a system of canals that supplied plenty of clean water, but that the government had filled them all in during one of the many dam projects during the 60s. The village was supposed to have been tied into the new water network, but somehow that had never happened.
This doctor, who must have been bucking for sainthood, took something like three years and a shovel, and dug out the old canals by hand. Finally, with the next rainy season, the canals flooded, and for the first time in a generation, the village was overflowing with clean water. No babies would die for stupid reasons this year. Word of what the man had done shot through the area.
The bulldozers from the local authorities arrived almost immediately. It took them less than a day to fill the canals back in with mud. The doctor was summoned to a meeting with the local governor, and the doctor welcomed the chance to rail against the incompetence that had destroyed the work of three years.
He didn't get the chance. He arrived at the meeting and was placed under arrest. It was made extremely clear that it he picked up one more shovelful of dirt, he'd finish his career in prison. "If you need anything," he was told, "you come to us."
Let's suppose we finally get free energy, universal assemblers, Star Trek replicators -- what makes you think there's a chance in Hell that these tools will be allowed to actually threaten the status quo, short of armed and bloody revolution?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
"Produces better students"?
I'm not arguing that academically, the Japanese system may be more rigorous, however, rote and memorization are one thing, but good engineers for places like startups where traits like imagination, ingenuity, curiousity are necessary, these students will lack those skills. They may work well for Sony, but not for the next Facebook, Twitter, etc.
There is a whole different issue with those coming from India that scramble their way up the ranks. Twenty years in the industry (yeah, ok, call me an old, knuckle dragging curmudgeon), colleagues from ten years ago were competetive, smart and out going. They were the type to want to start companies and make a difference here in the US. These days? It isn't the case. It is more about making a paycheck to advance one's lot in their home country rather than about reinvesting here in the states. Having worked with several in the last five years, it was more about ego, position, and power rather than intellectual advancement and getting things done for the company.
Todays world of H1s, etc. bear no resemblance to the early years of the program.
That is not necessary. We don't need a lot of excellent students. We only a few excellent students: there isn't enough demand for a lot of them. And there are plenty of excellent American students who are interested in their field of study and do very well in it. They are certainly more than enough to satisfy America's requirements. So much so that most who get a Ph.D. end up disappointed and "underemployed".
Great! And the Japanese who don't make the cut are very, very disillusioned with life. In Japan, like the U.S., there is an excess of individuals with excellent academic credentials, who compose an underclass of overeducated but poor Ph.D.s.
Giving every person who has an F visa, once he finishes a degree (or master's degree or even doctor's degree) a green card, would only add to the surplus... and continue to drive down compensation and employment opportunities for able and willing US citizens, something that's supposed to be prohibited in the current law.
Of course, if, instead of handing out hundreds of thousands of F visas each year to nearly everyone who applies, we conducted proper background investigations on every one, and then picked the truly "best and brightest" 10K, scattered among our 4K universities (just think of all the money US tax-victims would save by repurposing the many "outer erewhon student cultural centers" on every campus), and then from those who completed their degrees picked the top 50-100 of those for 10-month guest-work visas, and then gave a green card to the best 1 or 2 of those each year, that wouldn't be a problem. Those would be reasonable numbers.
The problem is on the front-end with those excessive student visas, and then with the 19 or so different kinds of guest-work visas, each one of which is excessive, and then that excess comes flowing into the green card (permanent residency) application process, which feeds in turn into excessive applications for citizenship.
IOW, we need to greatly reduce the numbers of student visas, reduce the numbers and time limits of OPT, generally reduce the numbers of refugee visas most of the time, greatly reduce the priority given to "family reunification" in the visa system, seriously reduce the numbers and shorten the time-limits of guest-work visas, reduce the numbers of green cards, eliminate the stupid diversity lottery visas, all to get the whole visa system down to reasonable proportions that can be conscientiously managed, greatly reduce visa over-stays, and stop worsening US job markets and exacerbating the existing problems from over-population and over-crowding.
they are no more productive than I am, but they get paid a fraction of what I get paid, hence their desirability
Loser talk.
Actually, General Electric designed those reactors. http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/13/6256121-general-electric-designed-reactors-in-fukushima-have-23-sisters-in-us
In other news, "my recruiter lied to me!" If you htink you have it bad, talk to anyone who's ever served in the military.
There's no evil when a job moves from a richer to a poorer country. If I'm in the richer country I may be pissed, but that's just me being greedy and selfish.
Yes, it is evil to remove moderate and high quality products from retail shelves and replace them with over-priced cheap garbage, and fraudulently representing it as being as good as the higher-quality products that are no longer available to US consumers
Did you know, this was the exact complaint many were making during the industrial revolution? Amazing the number of Luddites on /. these days.
Yes, it is evil to try to deceive US citizen students into investing time and effort into preparation for a "life-long career" in a field which dumps people at age 30 or 35, when you've already publicly confessed that you're out to drive down compensation.
Here we agree. US education is the next bubble that needs to pop - every time we raise federal tutition assistance the universities raise tuitions by the sameamount, and those not getting a chech from the government get screwed.
Yes, universities lie just like any other business, but they're in a position of trust, and these days the lie costs many students a decade worth of debt.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We need to change the way we regulate businesses, perhaps implementing subsidies to help them navigate the regulation process on a level playing field. There is no reason that proper regulations can't be set and enforced without favoring the rich. We have regulations against murder, murder can be profitable, and yet somehow we haven't had murderers capture most, if any, police forces.
Even without regulations at all, the playing field is automatically tilted towards the rich. This is a bad thing. Money can capture more than just regulations, look up "deep capture." Without regulations, money will dominate all areas of society and we will have two classes, the ultra rich, and the serfs. The ultra rich are the primary drivers behind deregulation: if regulation is such a boon to the rich, why are they all against it?
The ultra rich will attempt to dominate and control any institution or group that they feel has any power over them. Without government to stop them, they will succeed. Based on my debates with you in the past, I can only conclude this is the outcome you desire. To me, it seems you worship power and hierarchy, and given the opportunity you would do just as the ultra rich do now. You don't want them stopped because you want to be them.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Back around southern California I knew who all the fake jobs were, because they demanded so much bullshit in their requirements when in-fact every IT position is more about having the internal equilibrium and capacity to learn as you go and be on-par within a couple weeks to a month.
So, I would send them practically a 4-page Resume of a natural non-existent man (because he exists but hasn't been birthed and born into reality).
No phone calls to him, despite him being perfectly qualified.
Even put a country flag on his Resume so they knew where he was coming from.
Fancy that.
I would not go for a CS degree if I could roll back time. Then again I am not sure what I would recommend a freshman to major in today with the job market.
From the development side 90% of the time you are coordinating requirements with your offshore teams. 10% is panic coding to fix or add missing requirements at the last minute, usually weekends or during an important family event.
Late night and early web conferences with India or China is not suitable for a family life.
America does not value intelligence. We have a bunch of cost cutters in corporate America who just see you has HC in an excel spreadsheet.
I made more money in tax year 2000 then in 2010.
My friends in infrastucture have it worse. 100+ systems per admin. Escalations all the time and lost weekends.
I think of leaving the field all the time but the job market in general is horrible.
I loved Math and Science and enjoyed programming but it is just not valued.
Over 75% of my wife's MBA class were mid 30 engineers or IT workers looking to get out of their fields. One chemical engineer said the effort vs pay was not worth the stress and he tapped out of the field at 38 years old.
This professor is correct on all points.
Good luck.
HAHA NO. NAME SOME YOU OR YOUR FRIENDS WORKED AT BEFORE OR DURRING COLLEGE.
>>1) McDonalds is not the only choice for those without a college education - far from it.
HAHA NO. MOST JOBS REQUIRE A PUBLIC LIBRARY AND A WILLING STUDY: EVERYTHING ELSE IS CLOSED INTELLECT AND ACCELERATED WORK EXPERIENCE.
>>2) A huge, and growing, percentage of college graduates are working at jobs that do not require a college degrees. A college degree is no guarantee of a worthwhile career - far from it.
HAHA NO. THAT IS A TYPICAL JOB WHERE THEY IMPORT MASS NON-USA PROPERTY TO SELL IN MASS TO OVERPAY THEIR UNSKILLED LABOR WHILE LIQUIFYING COMPETITORS AROUND THEM JUST LONG ENOUGH FOR OTHERS TO BECOME BANKRUPT WHERE THEY THEN RAISE THEIR PRICES AFTERWARDS. SEE WALMART, HOME DEPOT, AND RADIO SHACK.
>>3) Costco is paying $19 an hour. That is way more than a lot of college graduates earn, even if they do have a job that requires a college education.
HAHA NO. I WAS PASSED-UP ON A COUPLE OF THOSE TRADES BECAUSE I DIDN"T "KNOW THE PEOPLE" AND DIDN"T HAVE FAVORABLE POLITICS. SOME JOBS ARE UNION WHEN NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT IT.
>>4) People who are highly skilled in trades such as welding, plumbing, heavy equipment, and so on, very often have jobs that are secure and well paid. In California, over 15 years ago, Golden Gate bus drivers were earning $80K a year. Letter carriers also earn very high salaries, and have very secure careers.
HAHA NO. ALL FOREIGNERS ARE BEING FORCED TO GET NEW CREDS AT UNIVERSITIES IN AMERICA, NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE COMPLIANT OR OTHER BUT JUST AS JOB SECURITY FOR AMERICAN PROFESSORS. JUST LIKE COSTCO...
>>5) Except for health care, and maybe a few other career fields; a foreign degree is just as good as a US degree. So I hope you enjoy training your H-1B replacement, or having your job offshored. Yeah, that degree was sure worth it.
HAHA NO. YOU WORKED LANDSCAPING BECAUSE IT"S THE WORK EXPERIENCE YOU WERE PROBABLY BORN INTO OR BROUGHT INTO BY THE "PEOPLE YOU KNEW." SO, THE PROFESSOR WHO NEVER HAD A JOB IS NOW TRYING TO FORECAST HOW YOU SHOULD DO YOUR JOB, AND YOU GET TO PAY FOR IT RATHER THAN FIGURE OUT YOURSELF HOW TO DO YOUR JOB BETTER THAN BEFORE.
>>Don't you think it rather depends on the person? Let's say I'm going to start a landscaping business. Do you think I should blow $50,000 and 4 years on a degree in something, or should I put together a business plan and buy some equipment?
HAHA NO. YOU WERE PUSHED AT A DEGREE BECAUSE SOME BASTARD CONVINCED YOUR IGNORANT GRANDFATHER THAT MAYBE IT WOULD MAKE IT MORE EFFICIENT, BUT IT ONLY HELPS GOVERNMENT COLLECT TAXES MORE EFFICIENTLY AS YOU HAVE NO CHOICE NOW BUT INCORPORATE.
>>Granted, courses like accounting 101 will help out any business owner - but those can be taken anywhere, even online.
HAHA NO. YOU NEVER BEEN TO COLLEGE BEFORE THAT, SO WHAT IS VALUABLE TO YOU? YOUR FRIEND ALREADY "KNEW THE PEOPLE" BEFORE NEEDING TO ENTER COLLEGE, BUT SOCIALIZE IS ALL IT GOT YOU TO MEET OTHERS THAT YOU CAN CALL ON THE PHONE ABOUT WHAT THEY DID WITH THEIR AHHEM "CAREER" THAT SOMEHOW YOU ONLY GOT TO LIVE IN A "CAR REAR."
>>I went to college and feel that the rest of the "college experience" was valuable to me. But while I was in college, one of my friends was making $60k/year managing a stockyard, and this is in the mid 90s. I came out of school with over $40k in debt - he had a house.
HAHA NO. YOUR SUFFICIENCY WAS DEPENDENT ON AN ECONOMY BEING MANIPULATED AT THE RIGHT MOMENT TO RISE FOR THE POWERS-THAT-BE. YOU ATE BREADCRUMBS THAT FELL FROM SOMEONE ELSE"S TABLE. THINK OF ALL THE PEOPLE THAT DIDN"T EVEN GET IN THE DOOR. YOU DIDN"T CREATE A BUSINESS: YOU DIDN"T EVEN MAKE WORK FOR ANYONE, BUT GRAB WORK SOMEONE ELSE CREATED FOR YOU. LOTS OF UNIVERSITIES TRY TO DO THAT, MOSTLY FROM LAWYERS PUSHING LIABILITIES THROUGH LEGISLATURE, TO CREATE FAKE INDUSTRY. THAT"S WHY DEJURE JOBS ARE BEING ISOLATED, PARTICULARLY FARMING BECAUSE GOOD FOOD QUALITY DISCHARGES PHARMACIES AND MODERN PSYCHIATRY (RULING DRUG DEALERS).
>>Sure, 15+ years on I now make more than he does, my debt is paid off, and he's still doing the same thing, and he is back to square one if the place ever closes. But he was never going to be an engineer, no matter how much schooling he had. He's doing pretty well, he got into the real estate market almost a decade before me, and his house is 1/3 paid off.
In short, different strokes for different folks...
Once initiation of force and fraud are condoned, all reliability and agreements and contracts are null and meaningless. Anyone can be cheated and his goods or work taken without recourse. Incentives to be productive are greatly reduced.
Unfortunately, what we have is a lot of initiation of force and fraud. We have governments carrying out extortions on some and subsidizing some (often including those extorted; and then there are the VAT kick-backs to some). We have frauds like this "talent shortage" horse-hockey, and the "prevailing wage" fraud, and the "qualified"/ "unqualified"/ "disqualified" fraud, and the "willing" (to work at below market compensation and reduced conditions) fraud, and the "best and brightest" fraud, and the bodyshopping/ temp/ contingent/ consulting/ contract fraud (misrepresenting compensation, especially likely life-time total earnings to be the same as they would be for real employment when they are actually much less).
Off-shoring comes in multiple varieties, too. It can be intra-firm or it can be off-shore out-sourcing.
Some people call the use/abuse of guest-work visas to be "in-shoring", while others reserve the term for moving work that had been off-shored back to a domestic out-sourcing operation, or entirely back in-house. I tend to stay away from that term because I see no way to eliminate the ambiguity.
Some use the term "near-shoring" for off-shoring, e.g. from the USA to Canada or Mexico.
There are people with the skills to do worthwhile work all around the USA eager to be relocated. Before H-1B, the employers were able and willing to relocate that talent to where they wanted them... sometimes repeatedly. Before H-1B, employes were able and willing to invest in new-hire and retained employee training. Now, employers are able but unwilling to train or relocate US citizens even just a few hundred miles.
The numbers of H-1B and L-1 visas going to people born in India and Red China are much higher than those born in the UK and Europe. OTOH, it may well be a higher or lower percentage of the population of India or Red China applying for these visas than the percentages for people in the UK and Europe. Or it may be just that the over-populations of India and Red China are so much higher that it results in very excessive numbers of visa applicants.
Meanwhile, people are leaving both Ireland and Detroit in search of a way to make a living. I just read several articles to the effect that the population within the Detroit city limits is below what it was in 1910. (And the city poobahs of Detroit and Youngstown are very proud of their programs to demolish abandoned homes while taxes and regulation discourage new construction.)
Degrees http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoEduStats.html (from US DoEducation's National Center for Education Statistics annual Digest of Education Statistics)
Employment/Unemployment in a selection of industries http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoIndustries.html (from BLS)
Employment/Unemployment in a sampling of occupations http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoOccupation.html (from BLS, and NACE press releases)
I've worked with people from Germany and Poland who were educated abroad and I had no problem with that. I've also worked with people from VietNam, Thailand, Guatemala, Poland, India, England, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Republic of China, Red China, Malaysia, France, Republic of Congo, Jamaica, Somalia at one time or another who had been educated or were being educated in the USA and, with very few exceptions, had no problem with that or them. I enjoy picking up scraps of languages and information about different cultures and history and economics.
My objections are to
There are a few under-achievers, from families with cultures which do not value academic achievement, or who have been given incentives by the government not to value academic achievement, but the majority of students are being pushed or pushing themselves to excell.
"U.S. engineers... [are] more creative, excelled in problem solving, risk taking, networking and [have] strong analytical skills..."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200707.html#20070702
"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'. Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues. Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so. If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200801.html#20080104
"Dynamic" US engineers vs. "transactional" foreign engineers.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051213
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051227
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200601.html#20060110
"the mean literacy test score for U.S. adults (272) was 2 points above the mean for all adults in the 20 country survey (270)... Larger, statistically significant, literacy gaps between us and them unfold when you separate immigrant from native-born test takers, as is done in 17 high income countries surveyed by ETS. U.S. natives scored 8 points above the average native of the 17 high income countries. U.S. immigrants scored 16 points below the average immigrant in the 17 countries." --- Edwin S. Rubenstein 2005-12-22 _V Dare_ "The stupid American? Think again"
http://www.vdare.com/rubenstein/051222_nd.htm
"I've mentioned the TIMSS test, for instance, which showed that if [Colorado, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming] -- none of which has a substantial under-class -- had been treated as separate nations, each of them would have been out-scored only by Singapore (professor David Berliner, 'Our Schools Versus Theirs', Washington Post, 2001 January 28)... This [both the TIMSS and PISA tests] once again shows, tragically, that the U.S.A. is not doing enough to bring up the educational performance of its under-class. But if one takes the white score as 'main-stream', the U.S.A. would rank 7th out of 27, instead of 18th."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200603.html#20060317
http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/readings/timssroped.html
"while our average test scores are mediocre, the U.S.A. is a leader with respect to the gap between our best and worst performers. Our best and brightest are equal to, or better than, those of other advanced countries. Our worst rank, well, among the worst anywhere. For several reasons, immigrants exert more of a downward test score drag here than in other advanced countries. First, they account for a larger share of the population. Only 7 of the 27 OECD countries have larger foreign born population shares than the U.S.A. Second -- and more importantly -- our immigrants do poorly on standardized tests compared to the immigrant populations of other advanced countries. The U.S.A. ranked 18th out of the 20
Even former cross-border bodyshopper Vivek Wadhwa admitted that "by every measure" US engineers are better, and the reason the guest-workers are used and abused is that they're cheap:
"U.S. engineers... [are] more creative, excelled in problem solving, risk taking, networking and [have] strong analytical skills..."
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200707.html#20070702
"Dozens of employers asked to compare American engineers to their much-vaunted colleagues from India and [Red China] agreed that 'in education, training, quality of work, you name it, in every which way, Americans are better'. Even the best schools in those countries 'don't hold a candle to our best schools.', he continues. Newly hired American university graduates 'become productive within 30 days or so. If you hire a graduate of an Indian university, it takes between 3 and 6 months for them to become productive.'"
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200801.html#20080104
"Dynamic" US engineers vs. "transactional" foreign engineers.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051213
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200512.html#20051227
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ200601.html#20060110
"The United States is still pumping out tremendous numbers of new Ph.D.s in the sciences -- more, in fact, than our economy can presently absorb, as there is a well-reported dearth of jobs for newly-minted science Ph.D.s. The same is true in engineering: According to a recent National Science Foundation report, the number of engineers graduating from U.S. schools will continue to grow into the foreseeable future, out-stripping the number of available jobs..." --- 2005 Summer _New Atlantis_ "How We Measure Up"
2009-01-08: Cheap Science
Studies carried out from the 1990s through 2010 by researchers from Columbia U, Computing Research Association (CRA), Duke U, Georgetown U, Harvard U, National Research Council of the NAS, RAND Corporation, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers U, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Stanford U, SUNY Buffalo, UC Davis, UPenn Wharton School, Urban Institute, and US Dept. of Education Office of Education Research & Improvement have reported that the USA has continually been producing more US citizen STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) workers than we've been employing in these fields.
In testimony to the House Science and Technology Committee, Harold Salzman reported that we've been producing as many as 3 times the numbers of STEM workers as we've been employing in these fields.
"Unemployment rates are available and plotted in Figure 6 for chemists, recent mathematics PhDs, and recent biomedical PhDs and MDs. Although not fully comparable in population or time period, these 3 rates, when compared to the overall U.S. unemployment rate, suggest a general increase or leveling in the 1990s, while the general unemployment rate was falling substantially. Rising unemployment in one sector, while the overall economy is doing well, is a strong indicator of developing surpluses of workers, not shortages. Hence, neither earnings patterns nor unemployment patterns indicate an S&E shortage in the data we are able to find." --- William P. Butz, Gabrielle A. Bloom, Mihal E. Gross, Terrene K. Kelly, Aaron Kofner, Helga E. Rippen 2002-11-12 "Is There a Shortage of Scientists and Engineers? How Would We Know?" _RAND Science and Technology Issue Paper_
2009-10-28: "U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever, according to a study released on Oct. 28 by a group of academics..."
2010-06-14 Beryl Lieff Benderly _Miller-McCune_ http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/ The Real Science Gap Is a Shortage of Employment Opportunities
* 2010-12-24: "AT&T is getting about 50K applications a month, or around 30 for each person it hires on average, Mr. Smith says." (James R. Hagerty & Joe Light _Wall Street Journal_ "Job ads rising as economy warms up")
* 2010-12-24: Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System receives 10K applications per month (Eileen Ambrose _Baltimore Sun_/_Grand Forks Herald_)
* 2011-02-03: Google received 75K job applications last week.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ01NoShortage.html more corroboration and citations.
When John Deere was considering off-shoring, they set up a separate facility, connected via satellite links, on their property, manned by guest-workers, so they could test the set-up. They couldn't have done that without the ready supply of guest-workers.
Guest-workers and foreign students also ease knowledge transfer. They learn US academic state of the art and research methods, and even production methods, and take them back with them. Of course, other guest-workers and green card grantees also take defense secrets with them from time to time, while others (who went from F to H-1B to green card to naturalization without being spotted) have been known to try to bomb NY, NY, and they've added to the numbers of illegal aliens in the USA.
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ09FacilitatingOffShoring.html more on how visas facilitate off-shoring
I've got a few better ideas... just off the top of my head:
Eliminate (or at least greatly reduce) the socialism, the initiated force and fraud.
Stop giving away US intellectual property and national security secrets.
Charge the full reasonable costs for running a background investigation on every visa applicant (and incremental investigations on those applying for change of status).
Charge the full reasonable costs for education while verbally (non-coercively) persuading people of the merits of being charitable (i.e. making scholarship donations).
Encourage spying on and hacking of governments and government officials who have declared their enmity for the USA and its citizens by offering small rewards for information which enhances US security (e.g. reveals measures and counter-measures they are taking to give them an advantage or reduce the US advantage in defense) and encourages those government officials to respect individual rights (e.g. outing instances of initiation of force and fraud).
Charge the full reasonable costs for inspecting in-coming cargoes for safety and honesty in labeling and respect for intellectual property rights.
Stop creating artificial incentives in the tax and education and transportation and regulatory systems to encourage bodyshopping (both domestic and across borders) and otherwise harm the productive.
Stop subsidies for agriculture and VAT kick-backs.
Lower privacy violation by government by eliminating income extortion and replacing it with taxes on the states in proportion to population (i.e. repeal the 16th amendment, and, for safety against federal abuses and favoritism amongst states, repeal the 17th amendment), get the federal government out of education and 90% of transportation (those inter-state navigable waterways), and put a reasonable hard cap on import tariffs at below 10% (while allowing up to 100% penalties in cases where reciprocity has been violated).
Eliminate the unconstitutional systemic cost-increasing Socialist Insecurity abomination, Medicare, Medicaid and National Socialist Health Care Perversion/Obamacare/PPACA/HCERA, which discourage employing people.
And give out only so many visas as can be reasonably managed, i.e. as will allow ensuring that 99.99% of visa grantees leave by the time their visas expire.
"reduce systemic costs... (socialized) college Socialized medicine (socialized transportation socialized housing)"
Hi there ! I know what you need to increase your self-esteem. I heard that you could get any degree you might need. Give them a call: Inside USA . : 1 - 8 4 5 - 7 0 9 - 8 0 4 4 Outside USA.: + 1 - 8 4 5 - 7 0 9 - 8 0 4 4 Just leave your name and phone # (with your country code) and they will get back to you ASAP. I m sure that ordering a diploma is a great idea, isn t it? -- I wonder how many people fall for this and what do they get.
I work in CS not far from CNA headquarters. When I graduated in 2001 I was going to apply at CNA and was warned (thank God) by a fellow CS graduate not to because this corporation recycles their CS dept every 5-6 years. Sure enough, every 5-6 years the CS people from CNA I see on the train are no longer there because of CNA layoffs due to outsourcing or just plain cheapness (can hire new grads for less).
My company views CS employees (just like a lot of other companies) as commodities. I am thankful every day that I have a CPA and accounting degree to fall back on. The last layoff here the IT department was hit twice as hard as the rest of the departments. Some of the other departments were not even touched. We lost people with valuable skills but have not replaced them. Of course, the workload has not decreased.
Funny how they don't tell you this in college. Also funny how this article does not mention this. Reality stinks but someone needs to tell CS students about the reality of the workplace. Their job is a commodity, corporations increasingly look to short term consulting to fill needs (and when things go wrong gripe about the full time CS employees), and raises (if they happen at all) are few and far between.
"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagan
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
Ajit Hutheesing (Forward Caste) : Founder, Chairman and CEO of International Capital Partners Inc
Ali Pabrai (Forward Caste): Entrepreneur
Amar Bose (Forward Caste): Founder of Bose Corporation
Sashi Reddi (Forward Caste): Founder CEO, AppLabs (World's #1 Software Testing company)
Arjun Gupta (Forward Caste): Silicon Valley venture capitalist
Ashwin Navin (Forward Caste): Co-Founder and President of BitTorrent, Inc.
Bharat Desai (Forward Caste): Founder of Syntel
Gagan Palrecha (Forward Caste): Entrepreneur
Gurbaksh Chahal (Forward Caste): Internet Entrepreneurs
Mukesh Chatter (Forward Caste): Businessman
Lakireddy Bali Reddy (Forward Caste): Landlord, restaurant owner,owns more than 1000 apartments in California
M.R. Rangaswami (Forward Caste): Founder of Sand Hill Group and Corporate Eco Forum
Murugan Pal (Forward Caste): Founder and CTO of SpikeSource
Narendra Patni (Forward Caste): Founder of Patni Computer Systems
Naveen Jain (Forward Caste): Founder of InfoSpace and Intelius
Pradeep Sindhu (Forward Caste): Co-Founder and CTO of Juniper Networks
Preetish Nijhawan (Forward Caste): Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies.
Ram Shriram (Forward Caste): Co-Founder of Junglee.com and board member at Google
Rohini Srihari (Forward Caste): Founder of Cymfony and Janya
Sameer Parekh (Forward Caste): Founder of C2Net
Sanjiv Sidhu (Forward Caste): Founder of i2 Technologies
Somen Banerjee (Forward Caste): Founder of Chippendales
Suhas Patil (Forward Caste): Founder of Cirrus Logic
Vivek Ranadive (Forward Caste): Founder, Chairman and CEO of TIBCO Software
Vinod Gupta (Forward Caste): Founder and Chairman of InfoUSA Inc.
Vinod Khosla (Forward Caste): Co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Venture Capitalist
Ajay Bhatt (Forward Caste): Co-Inventor of the USB. Chief Client Platform Architect at Intel
Ajit Varki (Forward Caste): Physician-scientist
Amit Singhal (Forward Caste): Google Fellow, the designation the company reserves for its elite master engineers in the area of "ranking algorithm".
Anil Dash (Forward Caste): Blogger and technologist
Raj Reddy (Forward Caste): Founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, winner of the Turing Award.
Arun Netravali (Forward Caste): Scientist. Former President of Bell Labs. Former CTO of Lucent. A pioneer of digital technology including HDTV and MPEG4.
Arvind Rajaraman (Forward Caste): Theoretical physicist and string theorist
Satya N. Atluri (Forward Caste): Aerospace and mechanics
C. Kumar N. Patel (Forward Caste): Developed the carbon dioxide laser, used as a cutting tool in surgery and industry.
Khem Shahani (Forward Caste): Microbiologist who conducted pioneer research on probiotics, he discovered the DDS-1 strain of Lactobacillus acidophilus
Deepak Pandya (Forward Caste): Neuroanatomist
Arjun Makhijani (Forward Caste): Electrical and nuclear engineer who is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
George Sudarshan (Forward Caste): Physicist, author - first to propose the existence of Tachyon
Kalpana Chawla (Forward Caste): Female NASA Space Shuttle astronaut, and space shuttle mission specialist
Krishna Bharat (Forward Caste): Principal Scientist at Google - Famous for creating Google News.
Jogesh Pati (Forward Caste): Theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Krishan Sabnani (Forward Caste): Engineer and Senior Vice President of the Networking Research Laboratory at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in New Jersey
Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Forward Caste): Computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Pioneered research in mobile and pervasive computing
Mani Lal Bhaumik (Forward Caste):
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran