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Microsoft Calls For $5B Investment In U.S. Education
Dupple sends this quote from ComputerWorld:
"Congress should invest $5 billion in the country's education system — particularly in math, science and technology education — over the next 10 years and pay for it with increased fees on high-skill immigration, a Microsoft executive said. The U.S. needs to push more resources into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education because technology companies are running into huge shortages of workers, said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel and executive vice president. With most U.S. industries relying heavily on IT systems, other companies will soon start to see those worker shortages as well, unless the country focuses more on STEM education, he said during a speech at the Brookings Institution Thursday.'We need to do something new,' he said. 'We need to try something different.'"
You know, normally I defend Bill Gates and MS, just because I feel *someone* should stand up against all the reflexive MS-bashing around here. But on this, I've got to call a spade a spade (and a scumbag ploy a scumbag ploy) and point out that this whole "it's for education" stageshow is nothing more than a cynical attempt on MS's part to get more H1-B visas (i.e. slavery licenses) so they can import cheap high-skilled labor rather than raise their salaries to hire U.S. workers. MS is basically pitching the idea of the government letting them buy a presumably unlimited number of H1-B visas (and even permanent green cards now too), and trying to cloak it with a bunch of "this will help the kids" education horseshit.
The whole H1-B visa program needs to be severely curtailed, NOT expanded. The idea of H1-B visas started out as a reasonable sounding idea. When we have critical shortages, we can give special visa exemptions for foreign workers. But, in practice in recent years, it's become nothing more than a way for big corps to skirt the free labor market and artificially suppress wages for skilled labor. You advertise a job at a ridiculously low wage, or with ridiculous requirements, and when no American worker responds or qualifies (because American programmers and engineers won't work for $30,000 a year and don't have 20+ years Java development experience), you run crying to Congress and the Labor Dept. that you need more H1-B visas to fill the "critical shortages of qualified workers." So then you can import foreigners willing to work for cheap, rather than raise wages to get American workers (who ARE out there, and ARE willing to work--just not for peanuts). And, to top it all off, you can cleverly skirt the "prevailing wage" provisions of the H1-B program by artificially keeping wages low, or defining the job so narrowly that there is no field to compare it to. Corporations for the win!
And, sadly, the whole scam has been backed (and consistently expanded) by both Republican and Democrats in this country--not surprisingly, since they're both just corporate subsidiaries at this point. And while people have been warning about abuses in the program for years, their complaints are consistently lost in the rain of cash the big corps are dumping on Washington before every election.
In short, fuck you Microsoft. You're not fooling me (and hopefully not anyone else).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
How the fuck did you create a 410 word post time stamped at the same exact time that the article was posted? I detect some tomfoolery here.
I'm calling bullshit.
The article says nothing about expanding H1-B visas. It says that the government should increase the price by around a factor of 4 for existing H1-B visas to pay for expanded education programs in US schools.
Expansion of education is not a ploy.
Students don't go into STEM not because it isn't being pushed enough, but because they know they'll get paid more in business fields. Plain and simple. Why waste 7-8 years getting a PhD in math only to discover no university or business will hire you for math or research? Oh, but the NYSE will happily hire you on as a quant if you go into corporate finance instead, and that's a four year BA.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Lots of supportless facts (coughs - assumptions) happening in that statement...
How the fuck did you create a 410 word post time stamped at the same exact time that the article was posted? I detect some tomfoolery here.
Grandparent is a subscriber, so he can see the article before it goes green and gets sent out to the unwashed masses.
Until the books are better priced you will not see anything. And throwing 'more money at the problem' actually makes it worse (as people have more cash and can buy more so prices go up).
By my estimate many of the books out there are costing as much as the class themselves. With very little changed from one revision to the next (usually rearranging the questions and answers). Or better yet using web material lockins for that rare occasion you can buy a used book (costing 50+ bucks just for web access).
This is the number one reason our schools are being crushed by debt. The books themselves. Some districts are facing multi million dollar bonds raisings just to cover the cost of books for the next 5 years.
A shortage of people willing to do on call shifts, midnight shifts, weekends, etc... in pressure cooker environments for $11.00 per hour.
because technology companies are running into huge shortages of workers,
No, that is not the issue. The issue is you, the employers, do not want to hire people above a certain age, people who might need a bit of training to get them up to speed or people you will have to pay what their skills are worth.
There are tons of people in the IT field, not just programming, who are either stuck where they're at or unemployed because of your deliberate actions to not hire them. Telling someone to upgrade their skills, which they do at their own expense, then be told, "Well, it's not EXACTLY what we're looking for", then whining you can't find anyone is the direct result of your actions.
You cannot expect every person you hire to have the EXACT experience you want, especially when you refuse to provide training. If all you want are experienced people but don't train anyone, then eventually you will run short/out of experienced people because no one was trained to replace them.
Start hiring people who are close to what you need, regardless of age, train them in the way YOU want them to be, and you your supposed shortage will magically disappear.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'm pretty sure they're pushing STEM inside the US...
So the solution is to make it MORE expensive to do business in the US?
If they don't let you bring the staff here, just open an office or send the work contract there.
At least if they immigrate, even temporarily, they might decide they like it here more.
Or we can just limit the available staff here, cause salary bidding wars, and price ourselves out of the market.
Slashdot seems to have its fair share of the sort of 'high skill STEM/IT/Tech' types that Mr. William H. Gates III is referring to a shortage of, so, I ask:
Is this a 'shortage' as in "Yup, damn headhunters won't stop calling and I'm turning down fairly attractive offers just for not being very attractive on a routine basis." or a 'shortage' as in "Cry, cry, we want CCNAs with a decade of experience to be begging when we offer them 30k/yr!"?
There're few STEM graduates because math is more difficult than history, not because there aren't enough investments in education. No matter how much money you spend, the average IQ of young americans won't change.
And increasing the fees on H-1B and/or green card visas will only make it more expensive for US companies to find the skills they need and - even worse - they will offer immigrants lower salaries to compensate for that.
You can also just go to /recent and post on articles not yet posted?
Slashdot Post: 10:12AM 400 word response: @10:21AM Your response: 10:19AM Someone is traveling back in time and not telling the rest of us.
If government will actually act because "we need to try something different" than the tea party is right.
If MS wants the U.S. to educate its workers, then perhaps MS needs to stop looking for ways to pay U.S. taxes.
Oh, that's right. MS just wants the other U.S. taxpayers to increase MS's profits. I forgot.
Apple should start paying its fair share of taxes, and maybe we'll have $5B to invest in education (education not.equal job training)
someone tried this, pumping two billion into "education", it all went and got spent on administration buildings, swimming pools, whatever else they could think of... except education. The entire state's SAT averages plummeted and they haven't been back up since.
Besides, it's all too easy calling for officials to spend other people's money to train more cheap, young people for positions nobody in their right mind would want themselves. If you're that all-fired for spending money, spend your own.
Oh, isn't that "economic"? Glad we cleared that up then.
Go hire and train this years graduates! That is all it will take to prime the pump and keep the student/worker training going.
I know of way too many people with STEM degrees who work outside their field because they could never get the "entry level" experience in the field.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
'We need to do something new,' he said. 'We need to try something different.'
Since education spending has tripled or quadrupled (depending on who you ask) over the past 30 years, and and educational outcomes have been virtually unchanged, yeah, dumping more money into a crumbling educational bureaucracy is really new and different. That'll probably work.
Until we do something about this, more money is not going to help any more than it already has:
graph
"technology companies are running into huge shortages of workers"
I've heard this shortage of workers again and again so much it is a bankrupted statement. I've heard back in 1980s about shortage of engineers, only to have engineers laid off in early 1990s. then again shortage of engineers in 1990s, only to have layoffs in early 2000s.
Perhaps there is a shortage of people with good skill mix of hardware and software skills. But from what I see, this has been discouraged. Going into engineering is fine with most people as long as you transition into management two or three years later, otherwise you are perceived as a loser. If you are not a millionaire by the time you are 30, you are perceived as a loser. Many engineers got interests in taking apart stuff (usually not much luck putting them back together) when they were children. Or the youngster hacking into computers or do phone phreaking (now regarded as terrorist activities). And young people experiment with chemistry kits (you old timers from 20th century remember they use to have these available). Many hands-on shop classes have been eliminated. Plus anything techie that is being built is done outside USA (i.e. iPhone, and I'm not sure if you can hack this thing either). Then having do all this plus considerable time with tech courses to what, getting employed in a diminishing industry? Of course if you are a super star then you will always have it great. But if it is like you either have to be really good or you will be scraping by (no in between i.e. middle class), then most people are going to do something else.
That's my Gripe Of The Month.
mfwright@batnet.com
I'm gonna go ahead and say what everyone is thinking but nobody wants to say.
Students don't go into STEM because not everybody is smart enough to actually do well in it. Any asshole can get a Master Bullshit Artist degree and hide their inadequacy for long enough to make some money. If the engineering department is good enough; the MBAs won't even be terrible enough to sink the company!
OP: The U.S. needs to push more resources into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education because technology companies are running into huge shortages of workers, said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel and executive vice president.
Is it just me or, with 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, does this smell really funny?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
There is absolutely no shortage of qualified workers. There is shortage of corporate responsibility.
With corporations already shed responsibility for retirement and education they are now trying to shed responsibility for on-job job-specific training.
As a veteran of a tech sector, I had to escape into consulting/regulation side exactly because of this phenomena.
You are expected to upgrade/maintain your qualifications without any kind of time/money allowance from the employer, but then most corporations would not promote from within, so you are stuck at the same wage level. Then when you finally leave to get your promotion they expect to hire someone with exact qualifications you had, never mind the fact that you left because they didn't pay you enough.
Culture of promoting from within and investing in on-job training has to come back. You can't expect to perpetually suppress wages, not invest into your workers and have people willing to do it. Eventually people figure out this is bad field to work in and jump the ship.
one of the richest most greediest companies in the world telling one of the most corrupt government's in the world where to spend money, this is laughable. it is going to take a lot to overhaul the education system, and a lot more than throwing money at it, it is going to take a fundamental change in the people that run the educational system, plus the children getting educated need a better frame of mind,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
One of the great democratizing things that's happened with the rise of App Stores, free tools, computers so cheap they're effectively free, open access to information.. and access to virtual manufacturing tools - is that now you can start a company with little capital from just about anywhere.
Keep whining. Soon you won't be needed, and the technically minded can connect directly with those who want the goods and services produced by their skills.
Much like Napster and iTunes fortold the end of the multi-million dollar record deals, but enabled a whole generation of new musicians to make a decent living, access to cheap tools, social networking connections, kickstarter type operations, and virtual machine and manufacturing shops will be the end to the Bill Gates empires of the world.
Or maybe not, but I like to think the free market, like nature abhors a vacuum and while slow, will respond in kind.
I might be a little older now, but I'm not jaded yet.
..don't panic
Uh, the guy is correct on all his points...
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
STEM = stem cell = OMG murdering unborns
Or that could occur to the casual uninformed observer, anyway. Eg giving a nuclear buildout a name that can be pronounced "Whoops." What's wrong with the "3 Rs?" Too out-of-date I suppose.
...they've forgotten how it actually works.
If you can't find people to hire, you're not offering enough money. If designing widgets or software had an advantageous salary (relative to marketing or finance), people would go into this field.
If you have decent people but they need to work with a new technology, train them. Even if they just have potential or are pretty green, train them. I can't remember when this changed, but at some point companies just stopped training and decided that they would only hire pre-trained people or worse yet, support a gladiatorial culture where workers are expected to train themselves or get replaced with 20 year olds who "already know it".
You have to change the sclerotic culture of business so that it's not a class of financial engineers and marketers who are treated as an aristocracy while engineers and more general labor are treated as plebs. I had a telling conversation with my wife, a senior marketing executive, about this. She basically came out and said that engineers were only worth so much money, period, and if they couldn't be had for that figure then they needed to be imported. But sales and marketing executives have no such cap, and they need to be paid whatever it takes to hire the right person. And she works for a company where there would be no product without engineers!!
Everybody here keeps talking about $30K jobs and 20 years experience as a ploy to keep American "skilled" workers away, yet I've never seen it myself. Full disclosure, I'm on an H1B and I ONLY interview for jobs upwards of 90k and YET I hardly see any other American candidates. And it's not like I work on some exotic technologies, they're vanilla Java financial software stuff. I call BS on H1B as a source of cheap labor, I am NOT cheap labor nor are all my other friends who work with me.
Well, I'm going to defend Microsoft because of your reflex bashing. Oh wait, maybe they were right all along and now you FINALLY understand.
Maybe read the article?
I wouldn't mind more H1-B visas to fill jobs, so long as American workers are seriously considered first to fill the job rolls. Sadly, that's not always the case and the system is abused as you suggested in the name of corporate greed and profits. Some companies use a different ploy...they advertise a job with a decent salary, interview U.S. citizens for the job but with no intentions of hiring them. Then, they cry to congress that they need visas for workers who have the experience to fill these job rolls. It would be nice if there was a way to weed out the corruption in the system.
Recommendation #1:
Establish a new and supplemental allocation of 20,000 H-1B STEM visas to meet employersâ(TM) hiring needs and generate up to $200 million for new investments in the American STEM pipeline.
Linking H-1B to "STEM pipelines" will also help it survive political adversity.
Personally, I don't mind the presence of the H-1B. But it shouldn't be a indentured servant program because then, US workers can't compete with H-1B visa workers (it wouldn't be legal for US workers to work under similar conditions to those that H-1B visa workers experience, such as getting booted out of the country, if the company fires them).
The education system was De-funded after the Civil Rights/War protest of the 1960's - 1970's.
Texas Republicans are pushing an Education bill that espouses rote memorization over Critical Thinking skills.
Smart enough to operate the machines, and fill out the paperwork.
Why do all these so-called capitalists suddenly forget the laws of supply and demand when it comes to workers - if you _pay_ them more the supply will increase - remember the nursing shortage? the problem was none of the hopsitals wanted to pay the nurses what the market called for - these assholes just want an oversuplly of cheap, skilled labor - I hate these fuckers.
technology / IT needs a trades / tech school based Education.
That can cut out some of the college filler and fluff as well making the Education more hands on with less theory.
Be more open to working with people who don't have the time for a college time table.
Be quicker and cheap then college is today.
Work in to a continuing education plan better then college.
Yes, I have tons on experience and advanced degrees in STM. It is a buch of bull Mr MS. I'm not even picky about pay. I just want to get paid to do what I do and enjoy and went to school for. It's not complicated. But Australia is starting to look good.
Mr Engr in the US
Part of the plan includes increasing the fees for visas by about 4-5 times.
That said, I don't think even a $10000/year fee (It looks like it's $10k one-time being proposed?) is enough... The fee should be at least $20000/year to reduce the financial incentives for companies to use the visas.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
If we are going off anecdotal evidence, I consult with several companies hiring H1B and I only see 30k/year salaries being offered. I call BS on your unqualified implied generalization.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
The real problem is that many Americans can't admit to themselves that we've been shorting our education funding since at least the Reagan administration and now we're starting to pay for it. We've got a nation of undereducated idiots and we have the choice between importing skilled labor or exporting skilled jobs. Worse, they're all voting.
If this is indeed the case, then Bill is calling for more money to be spent to educate kids who will never be able to find work because of the H1-B workers have it all locked up.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Here in Oklahoma, we are desperately looking for programmers, engineers, and believe it or not: welders. Three local companies have Billboards up looking for welders, who are paid more than engineers!
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
History and trends apparently haven't driven this point home.
If what gives a great education is money, Camden, NJ (the poorest city in America) should have the most awesome education available since the amount of federal and state aid it gets per pupil is truly staggering.
Does money help? Sure. But it can't make up for parents who don't care, broken homes, etc.
If throwing money at education would solve the problem, it would be solved by now.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
7 digit UIDs have been around for a while, I've seen the GP post often lately, it's not like he just signed up for the account today as is usual for shillage. As was mentioned by another commenter, he's a subscriber. Subscribers see the articles before they're posted, and the time they will be posted is marked on it. Easy to have a relevant, non-troll FP when you're a subscriber.
As to EFF "astroturfer," since the Electronic Frontier Foundation is a true grassroots outfit, there is no such thing as "EFF astroturfing." Anyone who is concerned with freedom will be an EFF booster.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm a fairly high-level architect at Microsoft. I have interviewed a metric F-load of people, many of which are international candidates. If we could hire all domestic, we would, because the paperwork is way easier. But the most important thing is, the actual salary that we pay people (and all the paperwork and such) actually rarely figures into the hire / no-hire decision. For us, it's all about that person's skills and what they bring to the team.
I would be very, very happy to see the cost of H1Bs go way up, in order to fund tech education. Companies WILL pay the money. And the best part about that is, it doesn't give any company a competitive advantage over any other company -- it's a level playing-field. Often when I hear companies gripe about some change in laws, I use that to judge whether the griping is legitimate or not -- does a change in law favor one company (or one kind of company) more than other? But in this case, no, it doesn't. All tech companies that need to hire will face the same labor market.
H1B is not slavery. The majority of H1B workers are young and single, usually a few years out of college. H1B gives them an opportunity to come to the states and 1) gain really valuable experience, 2) make a decent amount of money. Most of the H1B workers I meet are Indian, Chinese, or Russian. They make very good money. Good money in US terms, and *fantastic* money by the cost-of-living of where they came from. If they don't like their work conditions, they can leave. Just like any other job on the planet. If they do, they still made a ton of money, and still have a gig with American Mega-Awesome Corp or whatever on their resume. That's hardly slavery.
I would seriously love to see more American candidates. But where *are* they?? Most of the candidates from domestic CS programs are, frankly, very weak candidates. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions. (For example, the Brown CS program is excellent, and produces a steady stream of first-class CS students.) Most of the American candidates I interview know a little web programming, and maybe some Java, but are extremely weak on machine architecture, assembly programming, networking, performance analysis, and problem-solving abilities.
Has anyone thought about asking the kids what they want to learn? The most ineffective way of teaching is forced teaching, you can throw a million dollars of technology at a student but if they don't enjoy using it then it's a waste. I think we should segment the school system, take the kids who want a technical based education and put them in one stream with a lesser degree of emphasis placed on English and all the like courses and then just Vice Versa. Oh course this would start in grade 7 when kids are smart enough and old enough to make that decision for themselves.
I see no point in doing this STEM method to every student, it's a waste of money and effort. It should be applied to the kids who want it and then left at that.
Hey hey hey... let's try to keep religion out of this shall we? I presume that by "nation of undereducated idiots" that's what you're talking about.
You aren't going to be competing with an underpaid foreign national on a work visa at Lockheed fucking Martin or Raytheon or Stark Enterprises or whereever, now are you? But oh no, they're required to do random drug tests, so half of Slashdot is ineligible!
There is a way. It's called the congressional hearing. They have had those and nothing seems to come of it. In the end, they seem to end up becoming a political contribution drive.
'We need to do something new,' he said. 'We need to try something different.'
How about pay STEM people reasonable wages and offer reasonable benefits. I am sick of getting offers in the $30-$40k range to jump from my current position that currently pays over double that. I do get real offers now and then but probably 80% are the joke ones where they want people with 5 to 10+ years experience in a laundry list of not widely used technologies, want a minimum of a BS with a MS or PhD preferred, and expect you to start at $30k a year with 2 weeks vacation. I got a call from a recruiter the other day who thought I might be interested in some positions that ended up I laughing at because the offerings were absurd. She was shocked at the amount of money it would take to get me to change my job, even though it was only about a 10% increase over what I currently make. I have gotten offers for almost twice what I make but would have to move to places I don't want to live that cost over twice what it costs where I currently live so it would have been a net loss for me.
Time to offend someone
When we have critical shortages
The problem is, we know there has never been critical shortages in the tech industry. That was all bullshit. It really boiled down to these companies not wanting to pay fair market price. So the alternative was to flood the market to with more people thereby lowering the fair market price. Saying I can't hire a mechanic for $1/hr is not the same thing as suggesting there is a shortage of mechanics. Yet that's the entire basis for the H1B program.
Microsoft has a long history of firing workings while claiming there are none available so as to qualify them to re-hire lower paid foreign workers for the exact same job.
Fuck Microsoft.
Except they KNOW the money won't actually improve education. They will basically just buy more visas.
The real problem is that US students are competing with India and China students... Their population EACH is four times the US. If a similar "top 10%" of talent is equal to our students, there are 8 foreign students for 1 American competing for jobs. It's a numbers game.
The second problem is that American schools refuse to teach students the "job skills" portion of CS degrees. The game has always been that you get out of school and have to work really cheap... That was nice for companies that were hiring for a 10 year plan. In the new scheme, the foreign kids are coming from schools focused on producing programmers with years of real experience.
Lastly, there really aren't THAT many jobs in the high end STEM fields. Biology and chemistry are filled with PHd hopefuls doing most of the day-to-day work... At half pay. But there's no jobs when they actually GET the PHd. Engineering just plain isn't building anything... The old guys can barely keep their jobs. Computer Sciences don't really employ that many people. For a company like Apple or Microsoft with 100k workers, way less than half are actually programming... Most are service or sales jobs. So unless you really want to live on the east or west coast, there really isn't a return on investment for going with an insanely hard CS program. For the most part, jobs are supporting manufacturing or sales activities... The Financial and Siftware jobs are really the 10% tip of the iceberg.
Slashdot Post: 10:12AM
400 word response: @10:21AM
Your response: 10:19AM
Someone is traveling back in time and not telling the rest of us.
Like you think Slashcode can handle something as complex as time?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"because American programmers and engineers won't work for $30,000 a year and don't have 20+ years Java development experience" seriously? I have been interviewing candidates for Java development position with a salary of 100K+ and couldn't hire anyone after 3 months. All of those candidates were non-americans or asians.
I bet you if you advertise java developer position for $200K a year, all of the candidates will be non-americans or asians. Why? Because american students are busy in drugs and girls how come they become software engineers?
H1b programs has lots of problems I agree but its still too hard to find people with good skill set and if you add this constraint of american citizen, forget about about filling the position my friend.
If Microsoft's idea of "cheap labor" and "ridiculously low wage" and "ridiculous requirements" is over $135,000/year and top-notch benefits for someone from a mediocre US university with less than 3 years of work experience, pray tell: how do you call this "manipulating the labor market?" I make more money than many career lawyers who went to school and have been working much longer than I have. What more do you feel I deserve? Sense of entitlement much?
Sure, let's throw more money at the problem. Money solves all issues! We don't need brains, or make wise decisions. Just throw more money at it! How's that education working out for the Microsoft people lobbying Congress to do this? Not so well I see.
-> Sometimes, you just gotta break free from the shackles of proprietary code.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/public-school-spending-theres-a-chart-for-that/
We're spending 300% more than we were in 1970, yet, scores aren't going up.
India and China have better test takers and india coders suck and turn out poor code
I always got the impression that full time Indian employees made less money than American counterparts. That seems to be the feeling here too and is at the heart of the H1-B dissent. Does anyone know the typical entry salary for a foreign worker at MS, or the difference between them and Americans? I've never seen anyone present actual data that it is different.
wanna bet that if this money does start flowing that Microsoft will do everything it can to grab as much of it as possible??
(spend 48K on "dinners" get 4.8B in business)
(oh and to the folks trying to get a degree DREAMSPARK ---- best way to get MS stuff without paying for it LEGALLY
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
They get things like this passed because they have an asswad of liquid assets to lobby with. It won't surprise me when this goes through.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
The whole thing would be easy to fix. Just require the company to offer the workers 10% more then what the CEO earns (including bonuses and stock options). If they can't get a worker under those terms, then sure, import someone.
they'd give out 5 billion in free liscenes to students each year
oh wait then they would not have ANY sales
See, this is the kind of shit that makes me embarassed to admit that I'm an atheist. I'm worried that I'll get lumped in with people like you.
Look, the Catholic high school near me is giving a better education than the city public schools even though they're wasting student time every day on a bullshit mythology class. Where the fuck am I supposed to send my kids when they get old enough?
But, you know, "hurr religiooun durr". That attitude isn't counterproductive at all.
I work at Amazon. I had a co-worker who was an H1B. He owned a BMW, wore good clothes, and lived in an expensive part of Seattle. He was totally indistinguishable from any similarly experienced American developer, and he seemed to be doing fine.
The only problem I have with the H1-B program is that they set it up so people go home at the end of it. We're giving people great on-the-job training with good pay and then telling them to get out of the country.
get rid of minimums for Degrees and open up to non Degree classes.
I would seriously love to see more American candidates. But where *are* they??
We're over 40 and have been unemployed for more than 6 months; therefore, we are--by definition--not "qualified."
I have a degree in EE and I'll be finishing CS next year, but I'm desperately looking for something to get out of STEM. When I see students who don't understand a JMP instruction, or the concept that Object x has Method y which returns DataType z getting the job offers while I don't even get a call-back, my only conclusion is that it's your own fault.
From my perspective, it is obvious that employers like you don't WANT good quality. If you did, you'd hire the good people and not the idiots. *shrug*
Microsoft says we need to invest $500M/year for the next ten years ($5BN total) to create even more STEM graduates.
No, we need kids to walk out of 12th grade functioning at a 12th grade level in reading and math, college is the new high school, as reported in today's USA Today.
SAT scores are declining, college costs are soaring, and everyone seems to think that taking on massive student debt and waiting four years (or more) to enter the work force is the key to future success.
It is time to do something different, but creating more STEM graduates won't help last year's STEM graudates find a ob
Ken
Maybe $500B woud make a difference
You advertise a job at a ridiculously low wage, or with ridiculous requirements, and when no American worker responds or qualifies (because American programmers and engineers won't work for $30,000 a year and don't have 20+ years Java development experience), you run crying to Congress and the Labor Dept. that you need more H1-B visas to fill the "critical shortages of qualified workers.
I still get H1-B phony pitches. ColdFusion programmer jobs half-way across the country offering $35K a year. Yeah, I'm going to pounce right on that.
No Americans want that job, time to bring in an H1-B!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
So the problem is the programs suck. I'm self taught and employed as a software engineer with exactly the skillset you mention: Java, Web Dev, Javascript, etc. I learn what I need for each job, and never needed to touch assembly or anything other than basic networking.
I'd love to get more into performance analysis.
Problem solving... that's not a CS problem. That's a fundamental ingenuity problem, and I see that as more of an issue of culture here in America than a school issue. Being able to think through problems was what ALLOWED ME to learn the CS I needed to be a good team member.
What are the qualifications do you expect in a candidate, and what salary range do you expect to pay?
Try throwing more money at the offers and you will see where *they* are. You can even take the "sly" approach and offer five times as much for the position, then scale back according to the candidates' skill/experience. If you scale back too much, however, you get a lot of interviews with skilled people and no new employees. But I guess you already know this.
We need to produce high-skill jobs to occupy high-skill graduates. And we need medium-skill and low-skill jobs to employ the people who aren't up to doing high-skill jobs.
In short, we need more jobs. And that means we have to get off of dependency on manufactured goods exported from near-slave-labor countries.
Gates is talking about slapping a band-aid on a gaping wound.
The age distribution in my team is probably something close to this: Ages 25-30: 5, 30-35: 20, 35-40: 30, 40-45: 35, 45-50: 18, 50-60: 4.
So, pretty close to a Gaussian distribution. I'd say of the people I interview, one third are over 40. And they usually do better than the younger candidates.
> From my perspective, it is obvious that employers like you don't WANT good quality
I really don't understand how you managed to distort what I said into this statement. You don't know anything about my team, my hiring qualifications, etc. You're really just doing your best to attack me, without knowing anything about what we do. Your statement that we don't want good quality is simply factually wrong.
I completely agree. "technology companies are running into huge shortages of [slave] workers." I'm not sure how funding education will convince US citizens to work for slave wages and compete with communist/fascist/dictatorship countries. I think it'll have the opposite effect. The newly educated people will learn to vote and end free trade with non-free countries.
I worked at Microsoft from 2004-2005. From my experience, the level of knowledge required to pass the interview does not match the level required for the job. Interviewing at Microsoft is ridiculously hard. However once you get in, the work is so simple it's boring. They have people with Masters degrees in Computer Science writing simple automated tests that junior developers at other companies would write.
There's no reason Microsoft couldn't hire most of the people they interview. There's no reason Microsoft couldn't train the people they need. There's no reason Microsoft needs to fire 10% of their workforce EVERY YEAR. The problem with Microsoft? They have stupid business practices. And given the ridiculous amount of politics at the company, it's easier to lobby Congress than change their culture for the better.
I say we keep the number of H1-Bs the same and raise the fee accordingly to still generate the $5 billion. If the fee is high enough, and the prevailing wisdom on /. is true that there is this pool of American talent that mysteriously can't get jobs MS wants to fill, a high fee will be enough to make hiring American cheaper/attractive.
Other considerations:
--If the plan is adopted as MS proposes, the downside is that restructuring will take a long time. We would have to identify how to fix the experience problem in our STEM education and recruitment problems (ie how do we bring the best candidates into STEM that go to other lucrative fields like business (finance), legal, etc.?). In the meantime, MS will just import a bunch of foreign labor to fill the gap and a bunch of mediocre CS majors won't get the jobs they believe they deserve.
--Economists would argue that imposing high fees is a tariff that creates DWL and reduces America's GDP. But who tf knows?
But, in practice in recent years, it's become nothing more than a way for big corps to skirt the free labor market and artificially suppress wages for skilled labor. You advertise a job at a ridiculously low wage, or with ridiculous requirements, and when no American worker responds or qualifies (because American programmers and engineers won't work for $30,000 ...
This hasn't just been the case in recent years, it has been the way the H1-B scheme has worked from the beginning. The place where I was working started doing this no sooner than the ink was dry on the H1-B legislation, more than 20 years ago.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
We already throw a fuck TON of money at education. We throw as much if not more than most of the world at our educational system, but the majority of that money doesn't make it directly to affecting the student.
Most of the money..is wasted on administration.
Most of the money is wasted through programs and promises to appease the teacher unions, which serve themselves instead of the students. Why is it so hard to fire a bad teacher? Heard the stories about teachers they can't fire, but can' use to teach, and they PAY them to sit in a room all day doing nothing? Really?
We have to get parents back to being interested in their kids education...my parents pushed prodded and well, at times kicked my ass through my educational years. Thanks God for them doing so....trouble is, you can't legislate that.
Culturally...we need to make being an educated person, that can think and be successful the ikon of youth's admiration and something they seek to emulate. Right now...you have foul mouthed thugs speaking into mike (not even musically mind you)...espousing crime and criminality as they way to be.
You have so many males today...that only think it is beneficial to try to be the pro athlete with all the money and glory...even though, that chances of that level are achieved only by a few more people than win a major lottery jackpot. Hell, that seems to be one of the reasons women are outnumbering men in graduating with higher degrees, etc. The other reason is targeted educational programs that helped to raise women...and they have worked, but they sadly have done this to the detriment of our young men in the US.
And sadly, one more thing we need to address in our schools...discipline.
Our teachers often spend more time trying to keep the class room from spilling over into anarchy, rather than imparting educated ideas. Maybe we need to think of education more as a privilege, than a 'right'.?
Why teach to the lowest common denominator? Why pay so much attention to troublemakers and the less inclined to learn at the expense of kids that have it mentally and want it??
Why not have different tracts for kids. As they get older...and need extra help...put them into classes that can cater to them. Maybe they can be put back in regular classes along the line...maybe not.
Kids that can't cut it mentally....and maybe those that won't behave...they get put more on a track for vocational education....they aren't going to do as much 'book learning'....so, why not teach them a skill that they can use to earn a living?
I'm just throwing ideas around out there...but something major has to be done. I don't think we can really fix the current system, too many special interests are ingrained in the educational system...and they won't let things change.
We need to make the focus of education in the US....education, and not all the programs and rules and special interests and administration that currently surrounds and leaches off the system to the detriment of our children.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Bull. Fucking. Shit. No way. First off, if talented cs people are in India / China / Eastern Europe, they deserve the jobs. Anything else is just inefficient economically, and impossible practically. Who is Microsoft going to hire? That psychology/english/politics major from the US? No, they need engineers. And the engineers just aren't coming from the US. Second, "slavery licenses" is grossly misused here. Microsoft pays 100K starting salary to virtually every developer, from what I understand. Even if they paid, what, 50% less, that's still a good salary. I find it offensive that you consider a 100 K job "slavery". Go to India / China. See how that is. To boot, Microsoft is right in both things they've said. Someone DOES need to back US education. Have you seen the state of it, or are you living under a rock? It's a miracle public-schooled Americans can write their own names. Hell, it's proof God exists (ok, I went too far on that one, but backspace is for wimps). Also, companies DO need more engineers. Even Microsoft is running a shortage. I have no data on Google, but given the number of startups and the increasing role of technology, the problem can't really get better. Meanwhile, what you're proposing is that we leave the tech industry stranded, and let the education system crumble. The only thing I don't like about Microsoft's idea is that they aren't investing this money themselves, but other than that, they couldn't be more on that ball here.
1. Willingness to work at any level required in a system. All the way from high-level languages and environments (HTML/JS, UI toolkits, SQL) down through middle-level languages (Java, C#, C/C++), down through assembly language (understanding machine architecture, compilers, assembly-level debugging). You don't have to *start* with those skills, but you need to be willing to *learn* them and be comfortable working at any level.
2. Willingness to learn any new problem. We usually look at your background, and ask you one programming question that is solidly in your "comfort zone," and then ask programming questions that are outside your comfort zone. The first question is designed to see how much you can talk about something that is comfortable and familiar to you (and also frankly to make you feel comfortable -- after all, hiring is *not* adversarial for us, we're trying to see if you can work with us to solve problems). Can you explain a solution well? Can you teach something to someone else? The programming problems that are outside of your comfort zone are all about seeing whether you are able and willing to apply yourself to something new. For example, if your background is in networking, I might ask you a graphics programming problem. Or vice-versa. The goal is not to be a jerk, the goal is to see whether you can apply yourself to something new.
3. Ability to identify the problem, its exceptional cases ("corner cases"), and to identify engineering trade-offs (memory vs. speed, etc.). Just being able to identify what an interviewer is asking, in a programming problem, is an important skill. Very often, candidates will focus on the wrong aspect of a problem. Or they will rush into a problem without understanding it, and will miss the forest for the trees. This is a really basic skill that anyone can develop, and it helps in all job interviews (and in all real-world problem-solving situations).
4. Ability to choose the right tool for the job. If I ask you a question about vector programming for high-performance graphics rendering and you start answering in JavaScript, you've already failed. Conversely, if I ask you to solve a database problem such as "How would you store and search the data for a geo mapping web site?" and you start answering by focusing on low-level concerns like STL templates vs. linked lists, then you obviously are not focused on the core of the problem, which is how to structure the data on disk and how to organize it for efficient queries. (I've had candidates do both of these things.)
5. Ability to communicate your thought processes. If you're working on a programming problem during an interview, then at least half of the interview is about *how* you approach (and maybe solve) a problem. Are you breaking a complex problem into smaller problems? (divide and conquer) Are you making something more complex than it actually needs to be? Can you identify an algorithm that you don't understand, but you understand how to use it? For example, I don't think I could invent the fast Fourier transform, but I think I could identify when to use it, during an interview. If I say to an interviewer, "Here is where I would convert this data from the time domain to the frequency domain, using an FFT library, and then I would use the frequency domain data in such-and-such a way to solve this problem," then that's good. You don't need to invent the FFT in order to apply it.
Unfortunately I'm not allowed to give any info on pay ranges. (I could be fired for doing so.) I will say this, though. The salary is decent, but not overwhelming (as tech jobs go), because the bonuses are huge. The bonuses and stock are where the real money comes from. If you perform well, your bonus could be as much as one third of your base salary. Your stock grant could be worth as much as your entire yearly salary. It's structured so that you are compensated for performance, rather than seniority.
Now, someone is going to attack me for saying that. "OMG, you're paying people
I was an H1-B "slave". Now I pay significantly more taxes than the average US citizen.
How many hours do you work per week?
In reference to living on the east or west coast... If you have to move to support yourself, then pack up and move. I don't care what you leave behind. If the well runs dry you go to where the damn water is.
We're reliving the 1930s. There are currency wars, trade wars, etc. That's not to say that it's not a good thing, even though it's recessionary. Huh?
Flash back to 1990s discussion with comm-school room-mate. Me: This NAFTA and Free Trade thing is a bad idea. Him: We need this to make the economy grow. Me: Then we're doomed because you can only grow until you have Free Trade agreements with the entire world. Him: Comm school profs are telling us this. You're just an undergrad, what do you know?
Flash forward again. What I think this really means is that there's an optimal level of trade. Free Trade isn't free. Unrestrained FT means that certain industries will concentrate in a particular nation, and they will monopolize that industry. The fundamental aspects of monopoly that you are taught in ECON 101 are at odds with the more "advanced" ideas regarding trade that are taught. Comparative advantage at the local level also doesn't scale to the global level--it just creates monopoly nation-states. No, abolishing nation-states doesn't solve this problem either, my dear libertarian friend.
Long story short, we will regress to the optimal level of trade; but it will be messy. Think of the economic boost from Free Trade agreements as the "party money" you get from selling your industry. Now we have to work to get that money back. Ironicly, the work of regaining industry will actually put people out of work in the near term, because it's initially recessionary.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yes, the programs suck. Or to be a little more precise about it, the CS programs are a confusing mixture of things. When you graduate, what are your goals? Do you want to be technology-focused, in the sense that you're involved in machine architecture? For example, working on parallel processing, power efficiency, networking protocols, etc. Or do you want to work at a higher level, where you are mainly applying existing technology to solving real-world problems (business, society, etc.)? These are both worthy pursuits, but many CS programs confuse the two.
I mainly look for CS students who also have a strong EE background. Someone who has been through a VLSI design course is very often a much better programmer (for my particular workplace) than someone who has spent a lot of time working on web sites.
Also, performance analysis is *always* a great way to learn more. Start with any good profiler, and let the data tell you where to go. You'll be amazed what you find. It really doesn't matter that much what particular profiler you use. The important part is to focus on measurement, rather than guessing. The real performance problems are rarely where you think they are. For example, in a lot of programs, basic string manipulation is often the bottleneck. It's tempting to think you can guess where the perf problems are, but after doing perf analysis for many years, I can't exaggerate how humbling perf work is. Even the most experienced engineers rarely guess correctly. To become a great engineer, simply accept some humility -- you don't know, until you measure. Measure, measure, measure. I like to think of this as the difference between "programming" and "engineering". You're not doing engineering until you're guiding your work based on measurement.
Don't forget the other end,that MS really wants the $5B to be spent on updating school computers to Windows 8.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Kids today aren't as often following their passions in school, as much as they're trying to figure out what will be a viable, paying career when they get out. Kids need to follow their passions in education, so when they get into the world of work, they're doing something they love and what they do is better because they're there doing it.
That said, before we go pouring money into the education system, I think it's time to ask: What should a graduate look like? What skills should they have?
Today's K12 system was designed to produce workers who were capable and rounded to fit into the Industrial Age. Industry is leaving the US, we're becoming an economy based on the Knowledge Age, and we need workers who are Knowledge Workers, not Industrial Workers.. (Unless, of course, industry is where their passion is, in which case they'll likely need to move abroad to use those skills and follow that passion.)
Maybe we should figure out what our K12 Public Schools should look like, in order to produce a viable Knowledge Worker before we invest heavily into our Public Education. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Proponent of Public Education. Currently there aren't any viable for-profit organizations who are able to regularly turn a profit for providing K12 education to the masses. I'm not sure why anyone would want to privatize something that's going to lose money. Even if they were, they would still need to figure out what sort of education system they were going to have if they're going to turn out viable Knowledge Workers from it.
We should plan, plan, consider, re-plan and plan a little more before we pour money into an endevor that will have a direct impact on the future of our children, our nation and our world.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
But where *are* they?? Most of the candidates from domestic CS programs are, frankly, very weak candidates...
I've done web programming using every platform that could be considered contemporary from the mid 90's forward, including node.js as of the last 48 hours. I made a mixed-real mode BIOS extension in assembly late last year. I've dealt with IP networks since windows 3.11 got an IP stack, including routers, switches, firewalls and cryptography of all sorts. I can't remember how many profilers I've used to tighten up performance of C/C++, Java, Perl, TCL, PHP and Javascript software, not to mention Oracle, Informix and SQL Server systems. I have software running on machine 'architectures' from ARM MCUs to PA/RISC and AS/400 enterprise servers and everything in between.
But you won't be hearing from me. No degree, you see. I need not apply as I'm not "qualified."
STEM is a ludicrously broad category. It includes all of science, all of engineering, plus mathematics, and if that weren't enough add the catch all of "technology." Some fields might have shortages. Friends who went into programming and are now in senior positions have complained about shortages of skilled programmers. Those of us who went on to get PhDs in the life sciences have mostly left science or are unemployed due to the collapse of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sectors plus the ever worsening funding crisis in academic science. We shouldn't be importing any scientists unless they're Nobel laureate/national academy level brilliant because there is no shortage at any other level. Any job posting for a PhD in any field of life sciences will have a hundred qualified and overqualified candidates applying and that's been going on for at least three years. As a result yes you do see $17 an hour jobs for PhD'd biochemists with five years post-PhD experience. Being a long-term unemployed PhD'd biochemist I've applied to a couple of them. As bad as it is for us, I am thankful I am not a PhD'd chemist. People with a fat stack of patents, 20 years experience, and who used to run research groups are now fighting over $10 an hour entry level technician jobs--glorified dishwashers in other words. Something like 60% of all recently graduated chemistry PhDs are unemployed. The remainder...well "employed" also includes things like stocking the shelves at the supermarket.
Programming =/= STEM, programming is only a small STEM subset.
MS got all sort of tax concessions from the states where they are located.
If corporation are people why don't they pay income tax the same way human beings have to?
I have a BS and MS in CS from one of the top 10 colleges in the US. For my BS, I had a scholarship from the University and I RA-ed throughout grad school which paid for the MS (incl. living expenses).
/.). Multiple companies have offered to get green cards for me and my friends from overseas. In fact, in some cases even if my friends didn't want to apply for whatever reason, the companies (MS and Google to be specific) kept pushing them to apply. Again, they would NOT do this if they wanted to underpay us. In fact, pretty much everywhere I've worked, they would have been happy to pay extra to expedite a Green Card for me if that were possible (it isn't because there are strict quotas).
As one of the much derided supposedly wage suppressing immigrants, allow me to point out a few things:
1. Not once was I made an offer below market wage or below what American citizens were being offered. If anything, I was made higher offers, as were many of my other international friends. In fact, I was almost always made an offer first and immigration status usually never came into the picture until I had indicated that I would accept. And I make way above what the average American makes - so I'm not the one suppressing your wages.
2. I have never been passed over for promotions or opportunities because of my immigration status, nor have any of my immigrant friends. Most people in the organizations I've worked in are simply unaware that I'm not a citizen.
3. MS is offering to pay for GREEN CARDS for their employees. If the argument here was wage suppression, why the hell would you get your employees Green Cards? Once you get a green card, you can work anywhere, thus undercutting the indentured labor argument that people often make (including normally astute people here on
4. If there are even 20 Sergey Brins, Vinod Dhams and Vinod Khoslas in every year's crop of immigrants, the US will come out ahead in terms of jobs created vs. jobs lost to immigrants. I suspect the number has traditionally been higher but might be lower now on account of the increasing prevalence of body-shoppers.
5. People claim that fewer Americans are studying STEM subjects and CS because of immigrants and wage suppression. This is simply utter crap. Go look at salary surveys and you'll find that engineering jobs consistently pay more than most non-STEM jobs, and even if you wanted to work on Wall Street, you are more likely to get hired if you were an engineer because you have domain knowledge which is in high demand on Wall Street and in business these days. CS graduates from my school were routinely offered over $100K after MS degrees (with a BS, it was usually somewhere between $80-100K, typically on the higher end of that range). Some CS majors were making more than McKinsey consultants or Goldman bankers straight out of college (the latter is only true if you look at the hourly wage).
The flaw in my argument that I'll readily admit: my sample is biased because most of the immigrants I know are the cream of the crop, and so my experience is likely not representative of the majority of immigrants, particularly in IT and those from India (I say this as an Indian).
All that said, there is undoubtedly wage suppression that happens but you might want to retrain your guns from the Microsoft to the Indian IT companies and the smaller IT consulting shops.
The bigger problem in IT and CS jobs is *age*. That's the elephant in the room. People don't lose their job because of immigrants, they lose it because IT companies don't like older employees.
So you worked at one group, for a year. I've worked in four different groups, for over fifteen years. I don't dispute your own experience, but generalizing to the entire company is irrational.
Thanks for the laughs. I haven't read such a bizarre thing since Time Cube Guy.
"We need to try something different." Because throwing money at a problem hoping that will fix it is such a novel idea.
Liberty in your lifetime
Oh, also, we usually have anywhere from 3 to 5 interns rotating through, and their ages are usually early 20s. Many of our interns like the position so much they come back for another internship, or they join us full-time after they finish their degree. Note that I'm talking about my particular group -- I'm not talking about the entire company.
It's not what you said, it's the attitude. Read the other comments. This sob-story about a lack of "qualified" candidates is a load of bull.
While it is true that I do not know/understand the peculiarities of your hiring requirements, I did qualify my statement with "From my perspective." I'll grant you that my perspective may have been distorted with the idiot managers I've had to deal with over the years and may not be applicable to you individually. But just like every candidate thinks they deserve the highest pay, every manager thinks the horror stories of the pointed-haired boss doesn't apply to him. If you're truly the exception, you'll be the first one I've met/known in over 20 years in STEM.
However, I stand by my statement (until proven otherwise) that you--and other STEM employers--are not serious about quality: If you were, you would have an acquisition plan. STEM employers have been complaining for years about a "shortage," so if you see the iceberg coming and deliberately refuse to turn the ship, the result is your own damn fault. /:) For example, tell me what skills sets you envision needing five years out, and what is your PLAN for ensuring that the needed skills are available? I'm not asking for hard numbers, just give me a vector. If you're like every single other STEM manager I've known, you don't know the answer to the first, and you have NO mitigation plan AT ALL. Except for waiting until the last second and then screaming about a shortage. And yes, I do have a few years of management experience, including building the talent and skills acquisition plans I'm requesting.
No it's not. Religion is a GLARING exception in a mind which might otherwise be consistently rational. It's a corruption of thought.
Just maybe Microsoft needs to start a training division for in-house candidates to teach the advanced concepts not available in a normal curriculum. If not yet qualified, candidates could be paid minimum wage until they graduate from the program. It's be a helluva lot cheaper than $5 billion.
This could be fixed fast and cheap at the business level as well as give Microsoft the first shot at acquiring skilled domestic talent.
Columbia.edu watered down curriculum is nothing more than MSE certification program for Microsoft talent at a price WallSt. wants to pay. This subsidized proposal should be viewed as just such a scam as well
I say that since you failed to impress me here http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3150999&cid=41490441
* This part from you only 'seals the deal' on my subject-line:
"So you worked at one group, for a year. I've worked in four different groups, for over fifteen years. I don't dispute your own experience, but generalizing to the entire company is irrational." - by bratmobile (550334) on Friday September 28, @01:14PM (#41490233)
Oh, I've "seen that game" before in the Fortune 100/500 for over 18++ yrs. now professionally - most of "your kind" surrounds themselves with "allies" in cliques by hiring those that will "make you look good" (@ their expense of course, while mgt. people "take the credit" - but for WHAT? B.S. & "meetings"?? LMAO!).
APK
P.S.=> Like I said - you had better HOPE I don't come along & TAKE YOUR JOB from you - based on your "evasive maneuvers" reply? You should HOPE I never decide to interview there, because I'd make it a POINT to take YOUR JOB, personally... lol!
... apk
Let me see! I sit e here atop this 60 bilion of yearly reveneue, and tell others to invest 5 billion over 5 years, so that I can get people to hire that are cheaper tahn foreigners? Riiiight!
-><- no
we're becoming an economy based on the Knowledge Age, and we need workers who are Knowledge Workers, not Industrial Workers.
No, the Knowledge Age is over. It peaked in the 1980 through the 00s, when huge numbers of people started using computers. But as the computers got better and became more interconnected, the steps that involved people became fewer and fewer. Computing has changed from "a computer on every desk" (once Microsoft's corporate goal) to giant data centers with almost nobody inside.
When you buy something on line, nowhere in the process does a human do any significant thinking. Along the way, a few humans take their orders from computers and move something from a shelf to a basket to a box to a truck. Humans are just hands for the machine. Computers think; humans work.
With educating humans, you have to put in too much effort per individual. It's hard to get computers to do a new task, but it scales. Once one computer has done something, many other computers can do the same thing.
Simply "knowing stuff" is far less important in the age of Google. Most of the information taught in schools is on line and available from a smartphone. Humans need to know the outline, but not the details of things.
In the last few years, it's become clear that, for many, perhaps most young people, higher education is a financial lose. The additional income isn't enough to pay off the heavy debt. That's a clear indication that the Knowledge Age is over.
Massive multi-paragraph response posted within the same minute as the story being posted, so as to ensure first post, and guide all comments afterwards.
I don't even care what you wrote, I stopped reading after the first few sentences. You're obviously extremely biased, and posting as shill for whatever agenda it is you're pushing.
tl;dr: Troll shill post fools most of slashdot once again. Seriously fellow /.ers, you're supposed to be the smart ones! How are you not seeing the fact that a massive, detailed post (with links yet) posted in the same minute as the story as horrendously suspicious, and obviously pre-prepared to guide the topic. This isn't rocket science here.
Not only that, the workers should be able to leave and go to work for other companies if they want. The new company can take over the fee in that case.
I don't know where you live but in most of the country IT unemployment is at about 2%. That's beyond full employment, so pretty much everyone who wants a job in IT and has relevant skills has a job. This is *after* we've been expanding H1-B visa programs for years and years with stories of woe. So I rate your post -1 fud.
In my humble opinion, you shouldn't be able to bring someone in from overseas (H1-B) for less than 8X minimum wage... at that point, you'll find a lot of people *could* be found locally, while avoiding the slave labor offset.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Education should be a right, not a privilege, of living in an advanced society. Kids shouldn't get thrown out and left without an education because they didn't fit in or were holding back other kids; they need to be trained to live in modern society, even if their stupid parents aren't doing their parts.
The answer is to have tiered education, the way the Germans do it. Kids that are troublemakers get put in special classes with other dolts, which are run by teachers trained to deal with them. They're not going to learn at the level of the smart kids, who are elsewhere in their own classes, but they'll learn something, even if it's discipline. The problem our country largely has is "mainstreaming": we want to treat everyone like equals, when they simply aren't. Parents get all pissed off when little Johnny gets held back a grade or put in a "special" class, so for decades we've been trying to stick all kids together in the same class, even when they don't learn at the same rate and some are troublemakers and need special attention. Get rid of mainstreaming and many of your problems will disappear.
Actually, there's a fair number of people who send their kids to Catholic schools who aren't even Catholic.
I went to Catholic middle school, and I really don't remember a lot of religious education. Maybe it's changed. I do remember having to go to Mass once in a while, but as middle-schoolers, we just sat there and didn't really know what was going on.
I fully agree and not just M$ though. I if there really was a shortage I would not be out of a job for 2 months and counting. I have seen several job offers for which I am 100% qualified remain unfilled for the past 7 months that I have been looking for a job. If there really was a shortage I would not be unemployed right now. Developer shortage indeed.
Side note: I suppose maybe me problem is that I am not a human... stupid captcha. I bet a computer would not have trouble reading a white image with white text. When will we reach the point that failing the captcha indicates you are a human?
The fee should be at least $20000/year to reduce the financial incentives for companies to use the visas.
The fee should be used to cover tuition fees at state colleges and universities where USD20000 would allow a student to pay their tuition and fees for the full four years. That alone would encourage more high school graduates and working adults to pursue academic study in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. In fact, I propose that higher education be 100% taxpayer-funded with the premise that graduates would earn higher incomes allowing them to payback their subsidized post-secondary education over the course of their careers. No tax increases would be necessary because every graduate in theory would be employed upon graduation if the STEM shortage is real.
I don't agree that we need to throw metric assloads of money at the issue, we simply need to revert education to classical education instead of what we have done for the last 50+ years in forcing schools to teach workplace education. Politicians broke our education system when they forced all schools to teach to "standards testing" instead of teaching people to "think!"
The fix does not require tremendous amounts of cash as you suggest, simply a different method of education and curriculum changes that correspond.
We also need to get government grants out of schools that support political agendas. Sex education is a waste of your tax money, plain and simple. Why are we not making people accountable for their actions, which in turn reduces sex among minors. Are you ignorant enough to believe that in 1800s minors were not experimenting with sex? Hell, they probably experimented as much or more than kids today. The difference is that if you knocked someone up you started work and supported your family. If you wanted to go to college, you kept it in your pants (or were extremely careful flailing it around), the nanny state did not try and fix things for you.
There is a tremendous amount of information regarding how our education system has been changed, and not for the better. Thisis a good place to start, as is this. It does not take billions to fix, it takes reverting the politician's changes and going back to the system that worked for well over 2,000 years.
Nothing positive happens with the current shitbags in politics either, time to wake up and start getting these assholes out of office and in to jails where they belong. Better yet, since they are treasonous I think we toss them in to exile and let them fend for themselves. I'm sure North Korea would take in some new "happy citizens"
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I just reread your post and apologize for misreading, you and I seem to agree.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Many people don't want to live like fucking nomads chasing after jobs their whole life. Moving around every few years without putting down roots gets old really fast unless you specifically enjoy that sort of lifestyle as opposed to being forced into it. That sort of thing is ideal for young single people, but if you have a family moving around too much takes a definite toll. (your kids don't make long-term friendships or have any sense of stability) Also, lots of companies don't want to help pay for relocation these days.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
But on this, I've got to call a spade a spade (and a scumbag ploy a scumbag ploy) and point out that this whole "it's for education" stageshow is nothing more than a cynical attempt on MS's part to get more H1-B visas (i.e. slavery licenses) so they can import cheap high-skilled labor rather than raise their salaries to hire U.S. workers.
If you'd actually knew how much people working on H1-B visas at Microsoft get paid, you'd understand the silliness of this statement.
Hey. Here's an idea. Instead of calling on the government to solve the problem, why doesn't Microsoft and the Gates Foundation setup full-ride scholarships in math and science and engineering?
I also find it interesting that Microsoft is calling for the government to provide more education dollars... when Microsoft deliberately sets up shell corporations in other countries to avoid paying federal income taxes, and also goes to the extreme of setting up shell corporations in other states to avoid paying state income taxes.
This when Washington state is trying to figure out how to cover a $1.5 billion budget shortfall in its education budget.
I mean, SERIOUSLY???
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You really want to solve the issue with H1-B Visa's easy...
1) Any employer hiring them MUST pay them no less than 20% above the median income for that job. If the scope is set so narrow that it can not be defined, the pay is set at $400,000 per year (increases with inflation). If they are needing skilled labor and can't find it here, they should have no trouble paying more for an overseas person to come here to fill the void, not less.
2) After a period of no more than 3 months, the company has 2 choices, they can either return the person back to their country of origin or they must pay to have them made into an American citizen. Even if the employ decides to leave the company during that time, the company is obligated to pay for their nationalization. If they are willing to keep them, they are willing to compete with others to keep him with them and the employ should not feel bound to them with on way to escape.
3) Before applying for the visa's the company must submit their request for review from a certified 3rd party who checks to see if they can not find a eligible candidate or if the company is not offering prevailing compensation in which case they are told to go fuck themselves. The expenses for this group will be paid for by the company seeking the visa and will be watched over by committee elected directly by the people with weighted voting.
This would solve most of these issues real quick with the visa's.
Very nice!
This is largely what I was kind of thinking about...but expressed in a bit more concise terms!!
The mainstreaming thing...is it.
But, the second you try to even touch this...you'll see busing, segregation and racial arguments start to fly like crazy...even if it has nothing to do with race.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What you say does not contradict that Microsoft wants more H1Bs to reduce their labor costs. It's simple supply and demand. By adding people to the job market, H1B visa workers will depress wages. While Microsoft is willing to pay more than market average, they will still benefit from a lower market average.
Chris Mesterharm
" Most of the American candidates I interview know a little web programming, and maybe some Java, but are extremely weak on machine architecture, assembly programming, networking, performance analysis, and problem-solving abilities. "
College isn't supposed to train you for a certain programming language, its supposed to train you to think. Your job should be willing to train you for the specifics of your task. You should hire competent people and train them in the technologies you want them to use. Most of the schools in India,etc aren't as interested in training students to think they are interested in training them to do a specific task.
There used to be a time when companies expected to have to train their workers, now they all want someone else to do the training and just want a hire someone who already knows how to do everything.
I'm a software developer at Microsoft. I'm also a foreigner, working on an L-1 visa (and know a bunch of people working on H-1B).
First of all, I can confirm that indeed there's no discernible difference in the way I'm treated (promoted, paid, not asked to work overtime etc) because of my visa. The compensation, when you account for all the bonuses, is above market average. And Microsoft sponsors my green card application right away - which wouldn't even make sense if they wanted to keep me in my present status. So that "slave worker" argument that you've replied to is clear BS.
On the other hand, regarding this:
H1B is not slavery ... If they don't like their work conditions, they can leave. Just like any other job on the planet.
The problem is that if you leave on H-1B, your visa also terminates effective immediately (unless you're in late stages of green card application). Technically, you're required to vacate the country immediately. Many people overstay in practice while looking for another job, but that's a violation.
Now, yes, you could try finding another company that's willing to sponsor a new H-1B application for you, and secure a job position there before leaving. This is not particularly easy, however, and certainly puts H-1B workers in a disadvantaged position compared to local workers, which in turn means that they have less leverage against any potential abuses by employeer, be it low compensation, overtime, or something else (since they always have that threat of being kicked them out right there and then hanging over their heads).
Now, Microsoft doesn't use this potential to abuse its H-1B employees, which is definitely a good thing. But, in general, the potential for such abuse is inherent in the system, and there has been plenty of evidence of other companies abusing it that way.
But you won't be hearing from me. No degree, you see. I need not apply as I'm not "qualified."
You can pretty much ignore the degree requirements when applying. I don't have any degree, and they didn't have any problem with that.
When I was a student, my classmate was leaning towards a business degree instead of engineering because of a BIGGER PAY CHECK for Business Careers vs Engineering Careers. The question for STEM is, 'How can we even the Pay Check for the Engineering Careers? Example: 5 Million Dollar Bonus, 45 Million Dollar Bonus, etc.' Most kids now days use smart phones which is an advanced form of Mobile Computer/PC. Our form of government was influenced from Europe and the Roman Empire. We again have to look to Europe for advanced forms of Educational methods.
> But you won't be hearing from me. No degree, you see. I need not apply as I'm not "qualified."
I interview candidates that don't have degrees. *I* don't have a degree, and Microsoft has hired me, trained me, and promoted me. It's not a barrier.
If you actually read what I wrote, I never said a degree was required. Degree programs are the most common path, but hardly the only path.
Hmm, sorry I don't see it.
Most of the American candidates I interview know a little web programming, and maybe some Java, but are extremely weak on machine architecture, assembly programming, networking, performance analysis, and problem-solving abilities.
I believe I'm proficient in all of the above areas and so were all of my peers back in college, if they graduated. Now the only job I can find is in web design. I feel like a rocket scientist working on children's toys. And I guess the days of on-site training are gone, huh? Just bitch about the education system enough, and let the public foot the bill for training your employees. Sounds right to me.
If they do, they still made a ton of money, and still have a gig with American Mega-Awesome Corp or whatever on their resume.
A ton of money? Hahaha, I doubt that, but again you don't provide salaries so I can't say for sure. And I don't give a fuck about your resume padding bullshit, I know from experience that that means nothing.
I would seriously love to see more American candidates. But where *are* they?
With unemployment the way it is, I find this incredibly hard to believe. Either your expectations are too high or your salaries are too low. Or maybe your recruiters just blow. Or maybe all hip young college kids wouldn't be caught dead working for Microsoft, the grumpy 'ol grandpa of the tech world /throw_chair. Or maybe you are a shill just blowing smoke.
In the end, I have no respect for Microsoft as a place to work. Same as Apple, Google, HP, the list goes on. You're all in the business of burning out talent as fast as possible, and discarding them for the next crop of young, hopefully foreign (read: cheap), workers. And this H1B ploy is just too obvious.
I completely agree. And that's what my team does. We hire bright people who are willing to learn. Existing knowledge about a specialized field is a benefit, but it's not the most important thing.
Sometimes specialized knowledge is a requirement, but that's the exception, not the rule.
I'm glad your experience has been a positive one.
> But, in general, the potential for such abuse is inherent in the system, and there has been plenty of evidence of other companies abusing it that way.
Agreed. Personally, if I had control over things, I would eliminate all H1B limits, and allow American companies to hire as many immigrants as they wanted, while requiring these companies to pay up for INS fees and domestic training and education. Skilled immigrants increase the competitiveness of American companies, and they often become naturalized citizens, anyway. I would drop the requirement that the visa terminate, as well. I'm more than happy to have skilled immigrants come to America, permanently, as full citizens with all rights. The more the merrier.
You need less dumb people.
- Microsoft
For serious though, throwing money at education is hardly a solution. Changing the culture is. When you start rewarding your best and brightest, you will probably find that more will try to achieve that. The current cultural enviroment isn't exactly promoting science and education.
Nobody's mind is consistently rational, not even yours, and the sooner you accept that, the quicker you'll be able to get along with the rest of the world.
"Sex education is a waste of your tax money, plain and simple. Why are we not making people accountable for their actions, which in turn reduces sex among minors."
If you know that putting the condom on makes your girlfriend not to become pregnant, you chances to become father are lower. If you two happen to think that she can not get pregnant if she jumps on one leg after the sex, then you two are bound to become parents.
Technical part of sex is pure biology. This is what these things are, this is how it works. The only one politicizing it who insist on not telling kids how stuff work so that they can become pregnant and therefore be punished.
I'd add to pwizard2 that the pay in those locations isn't that great either. Sure you get paid $90k, but rent is $2k a month... It sounds great, but add in $700 for gas and 2 hour commute each way and its practically "indenture meant". You'd have a better standard of living in Michigan on $50k than Silicon Valkey or Boston on $90k.
Again, I was getting at that being part if the "trap" in that sure a fresh grad can live like that, but when they expect a family (work to live, not live to work) those jobs are boat anchors.
So what are some of these job postings where you can't find any Americans? I know more than a few who are qualified by your description, but who knows if they'll be weeded out before even talking to a real person at Microsoft with applicable domain knowledge.
I would seriously love to see more American candidates. But where *are* they?? Most of the candidates from domestic CS programs
Ummm...most of us are over 30 and not still a kid in college. That's sort of how the whole experience and wisdom thing works.
If you can't find what you're looking for it's because you're looking in all the wrong places.
Where is it in the article any word is said about Gill Gates?? He doesn't work for MS anymore not for a long time now. I do agree with the rest of your rant though.
Jack of all trades,master of none
https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=7&jid=89023&jlang=EN
https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=8&jid=86473&jlang=EN
https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=5&jid=77083&jlang=EN
https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=3&jid=85919&jlang=EN
Some of those positions are more specialized than others. For example, for working on compiler technology, there is a requirement for deep experience in compilers. The others are more flexible.
I'm a recent US college graduate that's now working at Microsoft. My starting salary was a bit under $100K plus benefits and potential bonus. This is my first job out of college. It's not a salary issue.
The only problem I have with the H1-B program is that they set it up so people go home at the end of it.
Not really. H-1B is an "implied intent" visa, which means that you can have intent to immigrate - i.e. you can apply for green card while working in the country on H-1B, and they don't immediately kick you out (which they do if you're on visitor visa - as that requires to not have intent to immigrate to be valid). So it all depends on whether you get sponsorship for it. I don't know about Amazon, but Microsoft, for example, will sponsor pretty much every H1-B and L-1 employee for green card.
This is just a ploy to help get more copies of Win8 sold. Shortly after it gets approved they'll get others to push for a huge tablet rollout in schools. MS will then go in with a deal they can't refuse for Win8 tablets. The bonus is they will then have to buy more Office licenses and quite a few more Win servers to manage them.
So. An easy way to get an increase in sales in the short term and secure Win8 market share in the long term.
While schools are playing with tablets as small individual projects MS has no chance but once it becomes a large scale deployment that goes out to tender MS can muscle their way in and force everything to be MS. That's effectively the way it worked here in NSW Australia for the 1 laptop per child project. MS made a killing on it and turned every high school student above yr 9 into a walking advertisement for Win 7.
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
Fundamentally, testing is only as useful as what is tested - if you think students should be learning other things, then change the curriculum and test those things - e.g. test applications more on math tests. It was quite depressing to see my calculus students struggle with the algebra I parts of questions rather than how to do the calculus once the algebra was set up last spring.
Err, actually he proposed that they raise the price on the visas.
Perhaps if you worked on your reading comprehension a bit you would catch details like this.
pay for it with increased fees on high-skill immigration
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The BIGGEST LAUGH I am seeing is YOU trying to justify offshoring for labor @ Microsoft - since I know, firsthand of a great many HIGHLY SKILLED programmers the United States has already from DECADES of working in this field, hands-on. There's LOADS of them, & yes, they are U.S. Citizens (born & bred).
Now - I read this article today @ "the Register" regarding it:
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Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa Plus $15K for green cards â" other companies could buy in, as well':
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/28/microsoft_immigration_proposal/
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* The entire business practice of offshoring ALLOWS you & other companies to set wages that are UNREASONABLE for job postings (which is WHY you're not getting native labor going for them imo), & allows you to field cheaper labor via offshoring @ the SAME TIME.
The same trick gets pulled endlessly, & it's very "transparent"/easily seen through - & gets OLD, fast! Nobody can tell me that the ENTIRE NATURE of corporate bodies isn't "profit", because THAT IS WHAT THEY DO, however, profiting that way? Is cutting off your nose, to spite your face!
Major corporations, even ones I am a "fan" of like Microsoft, are shooting this nation in the foot by doing the above, no questions asked (since when you take away good jobs with good disposable income, folks live "hand-to-mouth"/"paycheck-to-paycheck" & do better on unemployment than they can working @ times even).
APK
P.S.=> I know 1 thing: I've gone to school in the Computer Sciences & saw GREAT TALENT in U.S. students (as good as any I saw from foreign students or better), so, nobody can tell me "The U.S.A. lacks talent & skills in computing", since I know it's UTTER BULLSHIT!
... apk
How about Microsoft spend $5 Billion of their own "money", by providing all educational institutions with free software, including their entire catalogue* and operating systems.
*without forcing them to use a particular derision^HH revision of the OS, so if they prefer Win7, they don't have to use any botched attempts at a "new improved interface"
They'll still have business and regular consumers to sell their crap to.
Education should be a right, not a privilege, of living in an advanced society. Kids shouldn't get thrown out and left without an education because they didn't fit in or were holding back other kids; they need to be trained to live in modern society, even if their stupid parents aren't doing their parts.
The answer is to have tiered education, the way the Germans do it. Kids that are troublemakers get put in special classes with other dolts, which are run by teachers trained to deal with them. They're not going to learn at the level of the smart kids, who are elsewhere in their own classes, but they'll learn something, even if it's discipline. The problem our country largely has is "mainstreaming": we want to treat everyone like equals, when they simply aren't. Parents get all pissed off when little Johnny gets held back a grade or put in a "special" class, so for decades we've been trying to stick all kids together in the same class, even when they don't learn at the same rate and some are troublemakers and need special attention. Get rid of mainstreaming and many of your problems will disappear.
Education cannot be a right. Assuming we're not talking about home schooled kids, education requires something from a teacher or the people funding the teacher. You cannot have a right that takes or requires something from another person. Unless you also believe in slavery and forcing others to do things for you. I agree with your thoughts on tiered education. Putting all kids together, regardless of ability and behavior problems, holds the more talented and better behaved kids back. Robert
In my mind, that seems to be the problem... too much STEM and not enough time to be truly creative. Gone are the art, music, drama and gym classes.. disappearing is the recess that grades 1-6 need... And now they're thinking that kids should be in class 8-10 hours a day??
The brain needs time to decompress from strictly analytic modes to ones that don't have rules and boundaries, like art and physical expression. Personally, I don't think I'd have as much focus in algebra class if I didn't have a gym class in the daily mix. Much like new studies that show modest physical output increases the mental alacrity of elderly folk, I've witnessed, first-hand, how a bit of exercise (pushups, stretching, quick bike ride) can make me feel fresh again, and I might actually solve a problem (or find a creative workaround) I was having while working on the computer.
Plus, more exercise at a younger age might be the start of a good habit that influences one for a lifetime.
No sig for you! Come back one year!