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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 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.
I'm interested in Science and Technology. I'm fascinated and obsessed by it. But I left the programming field 6 years ago when I started losing projects to outsourcers charge 1/10th what I could charge.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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.
The federal government began an active campaign of destroying the citizen tech workers in the start of the 21st century, after huge economic downturn in 2001 and citizens had huge need for IT jobs. H1B has been system for destroying IT job market for U.S. techs since sept 11, even while noise made about dropping "caps", that was only a third of visas granted if "exempt" categories included. Caps were raised in 2000 to 195,000 from 115,000 and then "dropped" to 65,000 in 2004 BUT "exempt" categories used to pump up total granted number (reapplication, research, etc.)
Total H1B's granted:
2000: 355,000
2001: 331,206
2002: 370,490
2003: 360,498
2004: 387,147 (cap dropped to 65,000 BUT exempt categories pumped up)
2005: 407,917
Result: many IT people completely driven out of the IT industry, while in 2002, for example, 9 out of 10 new IT jobs taken by H1B holders.
There is ongoing huge problem with H1B workers being farmed out to other companies illegally, and visa holders illegally staying on to work elsewhere.
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
Because the people smart enough for it see it as a bad career. Why slave to make 80-100k a year with a Masters degree when you could be making 250-300k as a lawyer....
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
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.
'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.
Economics in a global age isn't about dividing up the current pie, it is about making new pies by farming out the baking to the country with the lowest labor costs.
FTFY.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Probably because many IT types would rather burn themselves alive than be a lawyer.
Our public education system does a terrible job at showing how math is relevant. I know I'm in the turned off crowd. Even having taken math all the way through AP Calculus in high school, I never had a teacher that could show me the relevance of trig or calculus. 9th grade geometry was about the most relevant thing I had as a teenager.
So here is something I always ask when people complain about H1B workers. You are going to compete against people from India/China/etc. no matter what you do. But would you rather have them in the US, where they have to compete against you while having the same cost of living as you, or while living in their home country where the cost of living is a fraction of that in the US?
Even better, a lot H1Bs go back home after a few years. However, during their time in the US they paid into the social security fund, a benefit they will never be able to claim. Unfair to them, but great for US citizens.
People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
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,
> 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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
And that is the problem. On some level, people replaced passion with monetary incentive. Now don't get me wrong -- I understand all too well the importance of incentives.
However, the greatest works in the arts and the sciences were the result of passionate people working on something because they felt a calling, not because they are worried about making a few grand more.
And I say this as someone who has been contemplating going back to school for a PhD because at the end of the day, I'm tired of the rat race. I had the chance to do it when I was younger, but I had my blinders on, and only cared about short term happiness (as measured by money, no less). Today, after having been through the grind, I just know that it's not worth it to give up your passions for short-term compromise because you will never be truly happy.
Watching American Idol and the likes and being good at work are not mutually exclusive.
Also, 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.
The problem is Americans are interested in money and fame. Being a coder isn't sexy. Being a business man selling technology, music, houses, etc. is.
Americans don't want to work to build something, they want to own it.
These problems are observable in the cultural values that are reflected in US media.
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
We're told from a young age we can do whatever, just be happy.
The middle class thinks it's rich, so they take out home equity loans and send their children to liberal arts colleges to study.
They don't want to study science because it's a tough market, but I'm willing to bet there is a glut of journalism majors in this country.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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
This. (sorry) I was doing pretty well performing programming and consultant work myself until the same thing happened to me. I even found RFPs out there that stated explicitly "Do not bother to apply if you are American". WTF? This despite the fact that these idiots look at nothing but the hourly rate, and when they get burned by the fact that most of those guys are 1/10th as productive, and also end up doing significant re-work because they didn't understand the requirements as well as I can.
I do still have some loyal customers, including a couple that came back when they realized that I was giving them a better value than the cheap-as-crap-found-them-on-the-web foreigners.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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.
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.
Have you ever heard of the "prisoners dilemma"? You are part of what I see is a growing problem in modern society, people willing to give up their time, rights and dignity for the sake of making fewer and fewer gains. Slowly over time, companies simply asked people to do more for less. Those "scared" of losing their job, or unwilling to grant themselves any dignity, begged to be worked as slaves until today. If everyone worked as you did, our society would be nothing more than servants to an upper echelon-- and America is more and more like that every day.
Shall we work more than think? Work more than play? Work more than speak?
I'm glad that you are doing well for yourself, but you are only valued so long as you continue to sell away your time and energy for less and less return. Just like in the prisoners dilemma you are hurting both yourself and others by devaluing your time in such a manner. The world would be a much more equitable place for everyone if your greed did not blind your sensibilities.
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
Unfortunately 6 years ago was about the peak of this experimentation. I know people who have managed those types of teams and most of them ultimately failed. The language barrier and time difference make it difficult to manage an outsourced team effectively and achieve the desired results. Many companies that tried this have moved back to local talent. Testing, on the other hand, has been seen to be fairly effective when outsourced. The time difference is actually a benefit in that case. Programmers here write code by day and ship it off. Then Indian testers test the code and product when it is night here. Then programmers here arrive in the morning with their code tested.
I say ship them back. I see your point and can agree with it to an extent. Here is one; why bring them over in the first place? Let company A outsource to india/china/etc. After many delays, language barriers, garbage coding practices, and having to wait 24 hours for a reply to a simple question, company A will come back to the US and outsource work to a company in North Dakota with low costs of operations and immediate response to questions. The only game to play here is the time zone game.
H1Bs are a waste of time. I have three of them here in my department and none of them can think their way out of a wet paper sack with neon signs written in their own language pointing to the exit. Is there talent that the US should bring over...yes! Most, probably 95-98% should be shipped back to ratville and asked never to return. If the H1B is not a genius, goto 1:
Just my two cents on H1Bs.
"The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
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
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.
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
Im not saying Law isn't necessary. Unfortunately with Lawyers you have rich people getting off the hook for blatant criminal acts, ridiculous lawsuits over unprovable mental injury, ridiculous punitive damages for nothing, and patent trolling, all extremely non-productive for a society. Also, with finance you have people who are ridiculously rich by stealing from the lower classes through credit, insider trading, legalized fraud (think goldman sachs selling facebook stock), forex scams, etc. Insider trading is more common than people think. Just because financiers have money to give you for your idea doesn't mean they got it by being productive.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
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
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
Welcome to the concept of capitalism!
Welcome to the concept of capitalism!
All the customer support is in India, now all the IT, research and programming is too. At some point all these highly qualified Indians are going to get together and realise they can cut the expensive USA out of the loop entirely and develop and sell products at a fraction of the cost.
The country with the currently-lower labor costs will buy more pies as their wages rise. It's a race to the top.
Americans are people, Indians are people, and there's no evil if a job goes to an Indian instead of an American. Of course, I'd like to see jobs stay in America, but that's my selfish greed talking, not any kind of moral high ground.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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
That's why I use a mail forwarding service in India and a Skype number with a +91 country code. As a bonus, I don't have to proofread my resume, people are delighted by my ability to speak and understand English without a foreign accent, and I can pretend it's 2AM when people call me.
-Dave Snyder aka "Sanjay Mohapatra"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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?
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.
You sir really have no idea what it's like in Austin or as an UTCS graduate. I literally have to beat the recruiters off now with my formal education and experience.
I might not make as much money as you, but I never had to masturbate a recruiter either.
No, you do that. I favor government policy that counters the outrageous power the ultra rich have over politics. The answer to regulatory capture is not fewer regulations, it is less regulatory capture. One good way to keep money out of politics is to take it away from the ultra rich. Let's have a 90% marginal tax rate on a billion dollar income. Adam Smith noted that free markets require regulations in order to stay free, and I agree. A "free market" with no regulations will become the playground of the rich, and completely unfree, in very short order. The government is not the only extra-market force at work in the world.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton