Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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.
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
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!"?
You can also just go to /recent and post on articles not yet posted?
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.
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
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
...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!!
Maybe read the article?
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).
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.
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?
Considering we spend about 900 billion per year on education, more than any other industrialized country -- both in total and per capita maybe spending an extra 0.5 billion per year is just pissing in the ocean. We have doubled per capita inflation adjusted dollars since 1980 -- somehow spending an additional 0.01% is not likely to be a game changer.
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.
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.
'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
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!
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
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!
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*
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.
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.
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.........
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"?
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?
No it's not. Religion is a GLARING exception in a mind which might otherwise be consistently rational. It's a corruption of thought.
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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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.
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.