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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.'"
Same goes for marketers. No matter how awful your product is, they can find "some study, somewhere" that has something vaguely positive to say. For instance, I'm not sure if you caught it recently, but Lucky Charms was being touted as a health food.
God spoke to me.
Computer science/programming
Computer science != programming. Programming does not require a degree. I've been doing it since I was 7, and by Highschool I was fairly competent. Through my computer science degree I didn't learn to much more about programming, but I gained the mathematical and theoretical background to actually understand what I was doing, and more importantly, extend what has already been done.
This was my point exactly in an earlier post, though I did not say it as eloquently as you. I have a MS in math and I can't find work. I apply to numerous jobs, I try to do everything Im supposed to do including following up, sending transcripts, etc. but I never get a call back. When I peer over to the other side of the wall (i.e. finance/MBA jobs) Im seeing more of them and higher pay. Finance isn't easy but its easier than math and finance produces nothing, whereas at least math can be used to build bridges that won't collapse, compute the most efficient design for wings, etc.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Uh yeah, so things have changed since the economic downturn and there is a growing body of evidence that suggests a Law degree is about as valuable as a BS in the Arts. Unless you can graduate in the top 10% of your class and are at a prestigious university, you will not be hired as a lawyer these days.
Law firms folded like stacks of cards during the economic downturn but these institutions of higher learning have continued to sell the idea that getting a JD will make you big bucks right out of school. There are even reports of major law programs manipulating their employment numbers by hiring former students to be over-educated paper clerk.
So after three years of law school you're saddled with 150k debt and no means of paying it back....sound investment!
If you want a return on investment, go get an MBA :P
Blog source so take it for what it's worth,
not an exact match, but close enough for government work
http://www.uscis.gov/files/pressrelease/H-1BPetiRecApp_040403.pdf
http://www.uscis.gov/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h1b_fy05_characteristics.pdf
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
That's a bit of hyperbole. In Austin, TX, with a healthy tech community, a dev right out of college makes around $60k a year, depending on the industry. A teacher right out of college makes around $30k, and only gets to $60k after a decade or so.
In "a decade or so" the dev is unemployable due to ageism thus $0 and the teacher is making $60k....
First decade the dev is ahead, second decade they're even, more than 3 decades and the teacher makes more lifetime income.
Moral of the story, if you plan to retire in 5 years be a dev, if you plan to retire at age 70, be a teacher...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yeah, teachers don't spend any time to plan classes, mark tests/assignments, keep up with their field, assist students outside of class time, etc.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
In America, we make new pies (i.e. increase our GDP) so that the wealthiest .001 percent can have more pie, NOT so that you, Mr. Peasant, can have any pie. You can eat cowflops, or whatever it is you peasants eat. Pie is for the rich.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
This shows just how little of the "new pies" the working man has gotten over the last thirty years. In fact, not only has the bottom twenty percent not gotten ANY of the new pie, they have had some of their original pie stolen as well.
Your argument that wealth is not static and traded only apples if the new wealth is distributed equitably. If all of the newly created wealth goes to the top .001 percent, then does it even matter to the rest of us that new wealth was created? No, because, even though we created all of that wealth, we get none of it. The rich do not create wealth, they steal it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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?