America's Future Is In Software, Not Hardware

Oh yes, software by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 04:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

We can eat it, wear it, breathe it... What the hell kind of society will this be if everyone just writes software all day?

Re:Oh yes, software by jcreus · 2012-01-27 04:39 · Score: 5, Funny

Heaven?
Re:Oh yes, software by cfulmer · 2012-01-27 04:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

That's silly. Almost nobody is engaged in the production of food, yet it's plentiful and cheap. 100 years ago, well over 50% of the population of the US was engaged in agriculture; today, that number is around 2%.
The same forces that drove agricultural employment down have also driven manufacturing employment down. US manufacturing output, after adjusting for inflation, is the highest it's ever been (well, in 2007, it was the highest. It's in a dip right now b/c of the economy.) Meanwhile, manufacturing employment has been dropping steadily since the early '50s. That's only possible because US workers are far more productive than they were in the past.
As US manufacturing workers become more productive, more are freed up to do things which a less prosperous country could not afford to do, like developing software.
Re:Oh yes, software by russotto · 2012-01-27 04:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Let's suppose that some time in the next, I don't know, ten or twenty years, the combination of general purpose programmable robots and 3D printers allows you to do anything that might generally fall under the designation "manual labor" more cheaply with a machine than it costs to hire a person.
Not going to happen. It was happening, and then someone realized that there already are plenty of general-purpose programmable organic robots far more flexible than any mechanical implement likely to appear within the next 50 years. And that you can in fact maintain these robots far more cheaply than most Westerners think. Thus, Chinese manufacturing was born.
Re:Oh yes, software by Hatta · 2012-01-27 04:51 · Score: 5, Funny

This is such a fantasy, we might as well base our economy on Unicorn horns.

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Re:Oh yes, software by Pieroxy · 2012-01-27 04:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

In all fairness, there is a heck of a lot more value in software than in hardware. Hardware is now a commodity, nothing more.
And in other news, this is one of the very very rare piece of wisdom to make it up the front page of slashdot in a long time. It's like there was a disturbance in the force... Did you feel it too?

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Re:Oh yes, software by masternerdguy · 2012-01-27 04:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

With one problem: Our society believes that everyone has to work for their supper. The problem is that as production gets more efficient you don't need as many people. We're going to have some serious problems if we can't get it through our heads that we're going to make a world so efficient that eventually very few people will need to be employed.

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Re:Oh yes, software by Anthony+Mouse · 2012-01-27 05:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's not how it works.
Cheap labor impacts the rate at which machines replace humans for manual jobs, because it reduces the incentive to invest in developing those machines (since there are less savings to be had, so the margins on the machines are lower). But that investment has not been zeroed out by any means.
On top of that, we're talking about American jobs, so who cares what the Chinese are doing? You might as well throw them in the same class as the robots, in the sense that if there is {something} that will do the work cheaper than Americans, Americans had better find some other work to do.
And as time goes on, the number of jobs in that category continues to increase -- it wasn't that long ago that they put in those hand scanners at the grocery store that let you scan the items in your cart as you put them in and then do nothing more than swipe your credit card as you walk out the door. I'd bet a fair number of checkout clerks lost their jobs over that one.
Re:Oh yes, software by DrgnDancer · 2012-01-27 05:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

This isn't a half bad comment, especially for an Anonymous first poster. I see three essential problems with the ideas in the article:
1) As the parent said, you can't eat, wear, or live in software. It's a great business to be in, but I don't want everyone to be in it. I like food, I like fuel, I like a house... all of these things need to be made. They can be made elsewhere, but when we rely on China to make everything we use day to day, we give China the power to starve us, to make us homeless, to leave us without clothes. I'm not an isolationist, and I accept that we live in a global economy, but do we really want to abdicate *all* of our manufacturing to other countries? Having local producers limits energy needs, reduces pollution and makes sure we still have the capacity when something happens and China can no longer provide something for us. Look at what happened to hard drives when Thailand flooded.
2) Not everyone can write software. There, I said it. Not every American has the education, intelligence, drive, interest... whatever to be a producer of software or designer of systems. All of these people who want to "refocus" America on white collar, intellectual property type work places seem to overlook this fact. The country will quickly become a place when you are either an elite (a producer, seller, marketer, manager, or owner of some sort of high tech stuff or other, or old money) or a member of a servant class. The only non-white-collar jobs will be in retail sales, restaurants, etc. Maybe construction, so we all still have places to buy stuff.
3) Not all of these idea will even help all that much with software as a driving force of the economy. Or they they'll help the companies without really helping the US economy. Primarily I'm talking about the H1B stuff here. I'm not suggesting that we stop the H1B program. It's a good thing to try to bring the best and brightest of other nations over; often it's a good thing for both us and the country of origin. Many of these people go home after a while with the experience of having worked in or for some of the largest companies in the world. They carry back useful skills and experience. None the less, this should be a careful and limited program with safeguards in place to make it's not being abused and used to bring in cheap easily abuse-able labor. No one benefits from that (except the greedy bastards abusing the system).
Having said all of this, yes software needs to be a pillar of economic strength for this country. It's important and it's both a driver of our economy and a part of our overall power as a nation. Some of the reforms listed would be very good for the software industry. Finding the things that will help the software industry does not mean we should ignore manufacturing or agriculture, or any of the other pillars of our economy though.

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Re:Oh yes, software by fish_in_the_c · 2012-01-27 05:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

economies are based on the exchange of goods / services are only part of the economy if they produce goods, because wealth is a measure of accumulated material possessions. So if we all want to have more 'stuff' ... someone needs to do the work to make it.
The problem with our current economy is 70% of our jobs are in service not production. That is BAD, because basically we keep paying each other money ( aka wealth) that we did not create. It just moves around and the actual creation of wealth is being done overseas.

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âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Re:Oh yes, software by jeffmeden · 2012-01-27 05:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

In all fairness, there is a heck of a lot more value in software than in hardware. Hardware is now a commodity, nothing more.
And in other news, this is one of the very very rare piece of wisdom to make it up the front page of slashdot in a long time. It's like there was a disturbance in the force... Did you feel it too?
The problem is that in ten years we are going to be reading a headline like "America's future is in project management, not software"... Software jobs "belong here" just like advanced manufacturing jobs "belong here". And there is such a thing as "commodity software", just look at your favorite mobile device's app regurgitation orifice if you think that there is not a market for a thousand programs that really do the same thing. Really good software (just like really good hardware) should stand out from the crowd and that is what we should be encouraging ourselves to make. There is a reason the shiny little widgety things that sell well proclaim "Designed In california, made in [a place where environmental and labor laws are favorable]". It would say "Made in the USA" if we had the guts to actually put up with the production of the things we consume so much of.
No one is arguing about keeping *every* manufacturing job here, just like they shouldn't waste their wind trying to get every software job to stay here. We should focus on encouraging us to do what we are good at.
Re:Oh yes, software by cfulmer · 2012-01-27 05:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Oh, they'll be employed. But, many people will be employed doing things that we'd consider utterly frivolous today, just as today, people are employed doing things that our ancestors would have considered to be utterly frivolous. I have no idea what they will be, but people them will consider them valuable.
Examples of things our ancestors would have considered frivolous? Computer game design, professional "life coaches" & fitness instructors come to mind, but there are hundreds of such jobs if you think about it. Heck, there was a story on local news about a cat that got a knee-replacement -- there were 10 people involved in the surgery. Can you imagine anybody in the 1950s thinking "Oh, yes, our cat can't walk. Let's get him surgery."?
Re:Oh yes, software by JoeMerchant · 2012-01-27 05:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

You misunderstand the word software. The software that has the most value in the iPhone is iOS, by far, not any app you can find.
So, then, of the 300,000,000 U.S. Americans, how many can find gainful employment writing iOS, and iOS like, software? Far less than 1%, I'd guess.
Re:Oh yes, software by AdamThor · 2012-01-27 05:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

In all fairness, there is a heck of a lot more value in software than in hardware.
You know why? Artificial scarcity. The more America decides to make it's economy around software, the more software patents we're going to need to set up and defend. Don't Copy That Floppy! I've got a patent on 1-click checkout nobody else can do it! Get used that, if you want an economy based on software.
And in other news, this is one of the very very rare piece of wisdom to make it up the front page of slashdot in a long time.
This is a terrible idea. Manufacturing requires tooling and raw materials. And at the end is a physical thing that needs to be sent to wherever it is needed. And that all got sent overseas! All software needs is a computer. Oh, sure, and the knowledge to program it. The USA has an advantage there today, but there's no reason for it to persist. We have a head start over the Chinese, but they're not stupid. They'll have to transition from their cheap labor model to a well-educated labor model to become a software power. That's coming.
Easier than trying to control ideas (which is all software is anyway), would be to abandon the free trade that has moved out all our manufacturing anyway. Objects are easier to control than ideas. Taxes on imports would bring manufacturing back, and would also cut the power of international corporations over our government. It would be a huge change, and not an easy one. I think we'd be healthier for it though.

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-- "Oh. This guy again."
Re:Oh yes, software by Osgeld · 2012-01-27 06:33 · Score: 3, Funny

"So a movie has no value?"
apparently you dont pay much attention to the movies you DO watch, glitery vampires marries a mall cop, who turns out to be adam sandler in drag, yea thats right up there with god dammed gold in terms of value
Re:Oh yes, software by Grishnakh · 2012-01-27 07:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

Oh please. H1-B has its problems to be sure, but you invalidate your entire argument when you claim that they make $30k; all the research shows H1-Bs usually cost about as much as Citizens do. The initial cost is actually more because of all the sponsorship fees and such, and because there's a lot of openings for these jobs (if there weren't, they wouldn't be coming here). Over time they probably end up getting somewhat less though, since they don't have the ability to change jobs quite as easily at citizens, and that part of the program absolutely should be changed.
Don't forget that a ton of foreign workers got their degrees right here in our own overpriced universities. Half the people in my EE classes in the 90s were foreigners, and that was undergrad; at the graduate level, almost all of them were foreigners.

Again with the visas by Anthony+Mouse · 2012-01-27 04:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

increasing H-1B visas for highly skilled coders

How is increasing the number of workers supposed to decrease the unemployment rate?

Re:Again with the visas by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 04:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

That is my concern. We have plenty of people ready, willing, and able to code here in the US. H-1Bs usually are gotten because the phrase "the US doesn't have enough skilled workers" usually means "we can't find a CISSP who will work in the Bay Area for $24,000/year." Couple that with "secret requirements", and it is just a lame end run by companies who want US dollars but are otherwise hostile to the nation.
Re:Again with the visas by alexandre_ganso · 2012-01-27 04:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

More skilled workers means that
- some of them will eventually be enterpreneurs
- it's easier to find people for specific fields of knowledge
More foreign people in that case actually means more jobs for the locals as well, as the economy around it grows.
Re:Again with the visas by anagama · 2012-01-27 04:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

It isn't just the tech industry under attack. Maybe someone can explain why Chinese contractors and workers are building bridges here?
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/us-bridges-roads-built-chinese-firms-14594513?tab=9482930?ion=1206853&playlist=14594944
I'm no "Red State USA1 FUCK YEAH" type of person, but maybe we should start looking into a little bit of economic nationalism. This is anathema to the multi-nationals that own our government though, so we'll just keep importing workers and exporting work till we look like any other third world economy, with a very few controlling all the wealth, and the rest of us eating dirt.

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What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Re:Again with the visas by The+Mister+Purple · 2012-01-27 04:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

Your error is believing that the companies astroturfing for more H1-Bs have any interest in your well being.

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"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Feynman
Re:Again with the visas by TheGratefulNet · 2012-01-27 05:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

bullshit. every indian I know sends huge amounts of money BACK HOME.
and they often plan to return home, eventually; so the investment in them is sunk.
lose/lose for us americans.
I do not support the US pushing more and more toward software. software can be done remotely and that means we won't have a lot of local jobs, FOR ANYONE, if this continues on.
I work in software in the bay area. I'm local born and yet I can't find a job. when I go into interviews, I see many foreign faces and this is not at all a balanced system!
I know very well that almost all of them are overworked and underpaid. but they are more 'abusable' than native-born american citizens. we don't usually 'jump' when the bossman says; but overseas, they feel lucky to have ANY job. they ask 'how high' and bossman loves that shit.
our jobs are gone. MOSTLY due to software, in fact. if we brought hardware (manuf) back, I don't think you'd see the huge influx of people who want to work those jobs. and we'd also be more self sufficient WHEN the foreign goods' quality gets to the point where its impossible to rely on or use anymore.
if the president thinks 'software in the US' is any kind of key to our future, he's more lost-in-a-daze than I even thought possible.
someone's going to make coin from this; but it won't be you or me.

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Re:Again with the visas by alexandre_ganso · 2012-01-27 05:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

If you only consider "Sanjay-would-do-anything-and-is-grateful-for-any-job", then you are right.
They certainly send money home. And don't be fooled, they would bring their whole family to live with them, if they could.
But they spend money locally as well. They also buy ipads, toilet paper and food, like everybody else.
However, the discussion is not about them. Skilled workers are not necessarily those. Skilled workers, local or foreign, are the ones who can found startups, teach at universities and contribute with taxes. A lot of taxes.
Re:Again with the visas by MalleusEBHC · 2012-01-27 05:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

If you can't find a software development job in the Bay Area, the problem isn't foreigners, it's you. As a developer who just switched jobs in the past year, I can tell you that jobs are plentiful. Tech companies are doing well as a whole, and the success of the biggest employers (Google, Facebook, Apple) has put excellent pressure on the market, from an employee perspective. Yes, even considering their no poaching agreement, they're driving up wages across the valley.
Re:Again with the visas by phantomfive · 2012-01-27 06:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

I work in software in the bay area. I'm local born and yet I can't find a job.
There are two possible reasons for this.

A) You suck at programming.
B) You suck at finding a job.

If you aren't sending out at least 10 resumes a week, you aren't working hard to find a job. Job hunting is a three step process, if you are missing out on one of the steps, you're going to have trouble. The first is finding jobs to apply for. If you're applying for lots of jobs but not getting responses, then your resume is ugly. Keep modifying it until you get responses. Eventually you'll get it. The next step after that is to do well in interviews. It's a skill like any other; if you're doing lots of interviews but not getting hired, then improve your interview skills.

If you're doing all of the above and still not finding a job in the Bay Area, you might need to consider that you suck as a programmer. Improve your skill.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

What a load of bullshit. by bmo · 2012-01-27 04:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

We're already farming out software.

It's not as if anyone with the means, i.e., money, is trying to reverse the trend.

This doesn't even pass the bellylaugh test.

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BMO

Software will be outsourced just like hardware. by Kenja · 2012-01-27 04:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

It is far less expensive to have a group overseas develop software. Not better, just cheaper. The same economics apply, but unlike hardware there are zero tariffs or import taxes to pay (not that there are many for hardware).

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"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"

Re:Software will be outsourced just like hardware. by oneiros27 · 2012-01-27 04:58 · Score: 4, Interesting
I've heard some interesting arguments for putting QA overseas, but keeping the main development folks local.
Basically, the idea is:
- Your developers work their normal hours, and commit before they leave
- The nightly build runs
- The QA team (in a different time zone) does all of their necessary testing, and enters issues into your ticket systems (while the main developers are sleeping)
- The developers come in the next morning (not having pulled an all-nighter), and check to see what the QA group found while they slept / went to the movies / had a social life / etc.
I've never participated in something like this, so I don't know if it's a great idea on paper that sucks in real life, but it seems on the surface that it could be useful.
Of course, you could probably get similar effects by outsourcing to more than one place with sufficient offset in their time zones.
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Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Re:Software will be outsourced just like hardware. by Kenja · 2012-01-27 04:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

Yup. Interesting thing is that I often get hired afterwards to fix the stuff they outsourced. So... yay?

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"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Re:Software will be outsourced just like hardware. by goruka · 2012-01-27 05:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

Americans are too egocentric. There's nothing that makes you "the best" at programming software, and there's good and bad experiences with software teams anywhere in the world. As a foreigner, I led and completed several outsourced projects for clients in your country successfully. Doing your job well, so our clients trust us and recommend us to other american companies is the same here as well as everyone else, otherwise software industry here wouldn't thrive as much as it does, and we are not even as cheap as India. Add to that, that high qualty education here is either free or unexpensive, so there is a great amount of supply in highly skilled programmers.

It's all moot anyway.... by forkfail · 2012-01-27 04:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

... if we don't seriously fund education for the next generation, and stop thinking we can skimp on that commitment to pay for tax breaks for the rich and extended wars of choice.

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Check your premises.

Re:It's all moot anyway.... by Attila+Dimedici · 2012-01-27 04:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

Sorry, the problem with education in the U.S. has nothing to do with lack of funding.

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The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Re:It's all moot anyway.... by forkfail · 2012-01-27 05:17 · Score: 3, Interesting

In part, absolutely it does.
When we don't respect teachers, treat them like babysitters (and expect to pay them a salary consummate with that of a babysitter's), instead of hiring out truly intelligent, motivated folks for the job, and treating them like the professionals they are, we cripple our kid's education.
When we stuff 40 or more kids into the same class for budget reasons, there is no way that the quality of the education decreases.
When our textbooks are 30 years old, when they don't reflect recent history or innovations; when we don't have computer access, we are not preparing our kids for modern life and jobs.
All of these things lead us to solutions such as teaching towards tests, instead of real education. And often in buildings that are falling apart around our kid's ears.
And then to top it off, we cut pell grants and subsidized loans. We make college education a privilege for the rich, and thus, we limit the scale of the net we throw for those who might truly become of value to society based upon their merit and value as an educated member of society, limiting their potential, and thus limiting our societies potential.
Throwing money at the problem won't fix all that ails it. But it sure will go a darn long way.

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Check your premises.

Re:Defunding DARPA is a good idea by cfulmer · 2012-01-27 04:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

Says the man posting to a computer on a network whoich started as a DARPA project.

Even less tangible than software by gmuslera · 2012-01-27 04:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

Seems that the future of USA is in trivial patents, copyrighting culture, making that lasting forever and pushing that to the rest of the world. Why develop if you already get paid if someone anywhere tries to use common sense to solve a problem in the only possible way?

America's future can be in both by Karmashock · 2012-01-27 04:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

We just need to do away with old labor intensive methods of manufacturing.

If we mechanize enough then the labor costs become irrelevant and we can bring the manufacturing home.

To that end, we should invest heavily in additive manufacturing and other technologies that will let us leap frog the competition while rendering their cheap labor irrelevant.

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Re:visas for highly skilled coders by cfulmer · 2012-01-27 04:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

Should be "You must pay this person slightly above the going rate for software developers where you are," thus taking away the incentive to bring in foreign workers only because they're cheaper, and leaving the incentive to bring them in when you can't find a domestic worker to do the same thing.

Ya know what? by rsilvergun · 2012-01-27 04:54 · Score: 3, Funny

There's only four things we do better than anyone else:

music
movies
microcode
high-speed pizza delivery

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Germany - USA by Teun · 2012-01-27 04:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

How is it the Germans have a very solid manufacturing base and exporting even to China?
Is it because workers are treated better or is it because they are cheaper?

How is it that The Netherlands is the world's 2nd. largest exporter of agricultural products in value after the US, is it because the country is so blessed with it's climate and available space?

I'm convinced the USofA can be a profitable exporter of manufactered goods and produce providing their managers start looking at the long term instead of just this quarters profits.

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"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."

Re:Germany - USA by NeutronCowboy · 2012-01-27 05:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

One major difference I can tell you that exists between the US and Germany: scope of thinking. And no, not long-term vs short-term. It's about what people consider success, and what people strive for in business. I'll illustrate it with two small business stories.
Scene: Munich, Germany. 300 year old apartment building with a shop on the ground floor. The shop is a custom boot maker.... who got started about 300 years ago. It's still the same shop, it still makes custom boots, and it has been family owned ever since it got started. Not always the same family, but it's a family business, and doing well enough to support a family for the last 300 years. The current owner has no interest in expanding, of offering funky colors, outsourcing manufacturing to China, or to establish a brand and open branded stores. He just wants to make boots and support his family doing so. Heck, he still works with custom-built wooden boot molds to make his boots, some of which are as old as the shop.
Scene: Silicon Valley, USA. A friend is starting an online business. It's very niche, but it's pretty much the only one of its kind, with pretty much a monopoly on the market and an owner who knows the market like the back of her hand. She is talking to one of her friends, who is an architect at a very large, very successful, pre-IPO startup. Who proceeds to tell her that unless she is going to take on loans and VCs and try to take over the world in the next two years, she is just engaging in a hobby and might as well call it quits.
Guess who is going to be around in a hundred years? My money's on the bootmaker.

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Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.

Re:Defunding DARPA is a good idea by SuricouRaven · 2012-01-27 05:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

But they could have evolved in a very different way. Imagine if, for example, it had been invented by a cable TV company - quite possible, as they already control a physical infrastructure that they could build upon. What would it look like then? For a start, server and client would not be equal: There would be no need for them to build it that way, and it would be more efficient to rely on centralised server equipment at their offices. There would be no need for the end-user machines to talk to each other - they only need to talk to the servers, so probably wouldn't even have globally routable addresses. Web browsing and email would still end up working exactly the same, but it'd also be far less democratic: You couldn't easily send files to a friend without going through a server run by your ISP (Which would probably have all manner of filtering), you couldn't run your own webserver or mailserver without paying very high business rates, you couldn't host your own multiplayer games, and you couldn't get involved in network software development at all without buying some multi-thousand-dollar equipment usually purchased only by the service providers. It'd also be far more assymetric, and have anti-copying measures built in, and likely only allow you to connect the equipment your service provider has explicitly deemed acceptable - like the US phone system was back before the big breakup, when you couldn't buy a phone but had to lease an approved model from the service provider.

Or perhaps the internet would originate in academia, where... well, it'd look much as it does today, really. Because that is where historically our internet came from: Born of the military, adopted and raised by academic institutions, and set loose upon the world like a sheltered teenager suddenly invited to the wrong type of party.

What this announcement REALLY means? by PortHaven · 2012-01-27 05:34 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'll tell you...

It's time to jump ship and get out of IT. It's about to crash. No, I don't mean .com style. I mean industry/career-wise.

I'll explain...throughout modern history, there is a tendency to tout a career choice or field as a long-term career. The truth is, it almost always fails to be and is usually done at the peak of that career's value.

There was a time that being a butcher was an excllent local career choice. Until suddenly, no one went to the local butcher as the big grocery store became the supplier (this mainly due to the advent of the automobile which made such travel inconsequential).

In the 70's there was talk of electrical engineering being the field to be. Manufacturing of electronics. In fact, IBM let Microsoft own DOS because HARDWARE was the place to be. Then that all became automated and outsourced, suddenly you can buy an entire computer for less than the operating system. How things have changed.

The two big ones mentioned now is healthcare (in particular, nursing) and software.

Let's look at nursing as I believe it's ahead of the IT curve right now. I have been amazed by how many friends I have who are back in school pursuing nursing degrees. At least 6, and I don't have that many friends. LOL

My wife is a nurse. Let me give you some insights on that career path. Her hospital won't hire any nurse without prior experience. Is this unusual? Nope, come to find out that few are. I've met a number or recently graduated nurses. They've done their four years. Made the grade. Taken on the debt with the thought that they were entering a field in which they'd be guaranteed a job and not have to worry about unemployment. It wasn't a glamorous career, it's dirty, messy and hard work. But at least they'd always have a job, right?

Well, every nurse I've met who has graduated in the past year is still trying to find a job. That's right, they've sent out resumes to dozens of hospitals. No job. As I said, my wife's hospital will only hire you if you've got a number of years of experience. Right now there are enough nursese floating around many regions that hospitals don't want to hire and train a new nurse.

Oh and yes, there are many nurse positions in certain cities and regions. Where they hired highly-paid travel nurses.

But that's changing, and it's also largely because of seasonal clientelle numbers. They don't want to add full time permanent staff. So they bring in an expensive travel nurses to cover 2-3 months when they're more likely to have higher number of patients (summer for accidents) and (holidays for heart attacks).

http://nursinglink.monster.com/benefits/articles/193-why-cant-new-nurses-find-jobs

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-07-09-1Anurses09_ST_N.htm

I expect the IT industry to soon follow the same slope...

I have experience with this by SmallFurryCreature · 2012-01-27 05:50 · Score: 3, Interesting

Or rather I have experience with cleaning up afterwards.

I seen it all and NEVER in a good way.

One project saw the creation of a game platform completly outsourced to India with just the content created locally. Delays ran into a year and a half (and in the online game industry that is roughly a century) and when it was done there were HUGE mistakes that took ages to fix. The code was piss poor with gigantic performance issues and a setup requirement that consisted of very specific product versions often not available anymore for download.

The "problem" was simple, the Indian developers could code but had absolutely no eye for quality beyond making it work for a single scripted demo.

I have gotten finished web projects from China with chinese comments in the code and every page of a website being its own page, so the menu code was copy pasted in every single page rather then an include. And the menu code had evolved over time so even search and replace couldn't fix it. Spend more on fixing that then it would have cost to develop it from scratch. But hey! Cheap chinese coders!

As for QA itself... I have seen tests being done by Russians where they completely failed to catch obvious bugs making you wonder what the fuck they tested. Well, the answer became clear, they tested they could run it and labelled anything that didn't work as "oh that probably wasn't finished yet so lets not do it"...

Are Russians, Indians and Chinese incompetetent and stupid?

YES, those that work in those kind of firms are. You see, why would ANY competent person work in one of these places? Russia, China, India, they got their own software industry, only the rejects from their own industry would work for foreigners for minimum wages. The idea that you can get the elilte of developing countries working in sweat shops is beyond insane.

The simple fact is that software development is something you buy around the world so WHY would a company that can deliver quality charge a far lower price just because it is located somewhere else? Since when is capatilism about charging the lowest price you can rather then charging as much as market is willing to bear?

If someone sells you software development at dump prices, that is probably a good indication of what you should do with the resulting code.

--

MMO Quests are like orgasms:

You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

Jobs are a necessary evil by DanielRavenNest · 2012-01-27 06:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

The article assumes more jobs are a good thing. That is a last century concept. How many people actually want to work all day? Most people do it to get the things they really want: food, a decent home, etc. The job itself is a necessary evil, and if they could get the things they wanted without it, they would. We should aim for productivity so insanely high that people don't *have* to work for a living, just like the rich do now. Then the people who actually enjoy doing whatever it takes can take care of the remaining work.

This is the direction society has been heading in since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and obviously still has a way to go to reach that goal. Once places like India and China get developed enough, corporations will inevitably look for cheap labor elsewhere. These days that is mostly Africa, and a few other spots. Once *those* get developed, there will be no cheap labor left, and corporations will inevitably pursue automation. Who will buy their stuff then, when people get put out of work by automation? Either prices will fall due to competition, or governments will tax the remaining workers and businesses enough to pay basic subsistence for everyone else.

The alternate route is "home fabrication". Your robot gardener grows the food, the garage machine shop builds "stuff" based on downloaded plans. You still have to do a little work that can't be automated, but can otherwise goof off. It beats commuting and sitting in an office for 10 hours a day. I hope one of the above futures arrives sooner rather than later.

Re:Jobs are a necessary evil by Grishnakh · 2012-01-27 06:46 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well, it depends how far into the future you go. Garbage collection should be pretty easy to automate really. Right now, my garbage is collected by a big truck that drives along the street and uses a mechanical arm to pick up each container and dump it in the back. The recyclables have a separate truck. We already have driverless cars almost working; making a driverless garbage truck should be easy. Now, if you're talking about dumping out each wastebasket, that can be done with robots; remember the Jetsons had a robotic housekeeper. Obviously, that's much farther into the future than the automated garbage truck, but it's still possible (remember too, back in the 80s, everyone thought we'd have robots like this in just a decade or two; remember the crappy movie "Runaway"?).
Law enforcement, too, can be automated with robots (this one's even farther ahead than the garbage-collecting robot). Remember THX-1148? Their cops were all robots. And really, society would be much better off with robotic cops too; the human ones do a terrible job, and can't be trusted. Just look at all the police brutality cases, and how the US government is censoring any journalism or video of these. Also look at Singapore: a lot of their cops are Gurkha soldiers from Nepal, because they have a reputation for impartiality, unlike any local people who would be expected to side with their ethnic faction. But most places don't have the practical ability to outsource their policing to impartial outsiders the way a small but very rich city-state can.

Re:Not if theyr'e H-1Bs. by Space+cowboy · 2012-01-27 06:20 · Score: 5, Interesting

Yes, but an H1-B visa allows you to convert to a green-card after 3 years. It takes a while (took me another 2 years, but hey, the same company that gave me an H1B also paid for the green card, so that was fine by me).

I'm from the UK, I didn't come to the US for anything much more than the sunny CA weather and the money... The company that now employs me bought my (small) company, and one of the conditions of sale was to relocate to the Bay Area. They really didn't have to twist my arm *too* much, but there's nothing inherently superior or overly-wonderful about the software industry in the US compared to anywhere else.

There's a few very large and successful companies (more so than elsewhere) and a whole slew of smaller ones (which is the same as anywhere). On the other hand you have to offset:

- the "police state" trend (even the cops here are far more aggressive than back home, how the cop who shot a handcuffed man in the head on the BART in Oakland didn't go down for murder I'll never know)
- the TSA. One thing to say: WTF!
- the fact that there's no universal health system to speak of. Only when I'd lost the NHS did I truly understand what a blessing it is. I get a great health-plan from my employer, but given that healthcare is tied to your employer over here, that's like having a lifesaver vest that dissolves in water... Oh, and it's more expensive than the *real* lifesaver vest. Another WTF! moment
- the fact that education is so expensive over here. I'm not talking about the "best of the best", even the lowly state schools are ridiculously expensive. My wife (a JD/MBA) has only recently finished paying off her student loans and she's getting towards the harsh end of the 30-40 range. I went to one of the "best of the best" colleges in London (Imperial College, for Physics) and it cost me a grand total of £2500 over 3 years. They paid me £17,000/year to do a PhD, not the other way around.
- a minor niggle : the low number of public holidays - ones actually *observed* by companies :) and the measly vacation grant.

Now I've worked off the "golden handcuffs" my employer placed on me, the last stock options are vesting this year, and the housing market is getting to the point where my currently-underwater house is getting back to the black, I think by the end of the year it'll be good to sell. My soon-to-be-born son will be American but have English citizenship by birthright, so I'm thinking we ought to move back to the UK in the next 2-3 years (before school becomes an issue).

I've paid well over half a million dollars in taxes into the US economy over the last 7 years or so. I'm probably the sort of person the US would like to keep (at least from a fiscal perspective), but the country is on such a destructive spiral, that I can't see any way it'll be a good place to raise a child and retire in. It'll take some sweet-talking to convince my wife (who loves the Bay Area), but I honestly think the US is not a good long term strategy for me and mine.

I've been asked if I was ever going to apply for US citizenship, and I used to joke that the UK citizenship was my fall-back option. Now I don't think of it as a joke.

I'll miss the weather.

Simon.

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