The Yin and Yang of Hour of Code & Immigration Reform

theodp writes "The weeklong Hour of Code kicks off tomorrow, with Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates doing their part to address a declared nationwide CS crisis by ostensibly teaching the nation's schoolchildren how to code. But a recent NY Times Op-Ed by economist Paul Collier criticizing Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC as self-serving advocacy (echoing earlier criticism) serves as a reminder that Zuckerberg and Gates' Code.org and Hour of Code involvement is the Yin to their H-1B visa lobbying Yang. The two efforts have been inextricably linked together for Congress, if not for the public. And while Zuckerberg argues it's 'the right thing to do', Collier argues that there are also downsides to the tech giants' plans to shift more bright, young, enterprising people from the poorest countries to the richest. 'An open door for the talented would help Facebook's bottom line,' Collier concludes, 'but not the bottom billion.'"

Comments

There are plenty of American coders

[Anonymous Coward]

They just don't want to play American wages.

Re: Two of the most immoral people

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually up until the point of the gates foundation, Bill Gates was the ultimate Scrooge. He gae away not one penny, it wasn't until he was called out on that very fact that the Gates foudration was formed.

Even much of the supposedly altruistic efforts also seem to have an angle:
http://m.slashdot.org/story/171367

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/31/bill-gates-corporate-profit-vs-humanity.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Philanthropy

Re:Two of the most immoral people

[king neckbeard]

MS had already engaged in some serious antitrust behavior circa 1990, before they were anywhere near the behemoth they are today.

what a load of crap, Windows may not have been the most secure system but against the horrible burden of IBM and the infancy and general lack of usability of GNU/Linux, Windows was the obvious choice and a choice made by people who were indeed free to choose. To this day some people would rather pretend they were completely helpless and at the mercy of big bad Microsoft than admit they made a poor choice.

Have you considered that the lack of viable competition might have been the result of robust set of anti-competitive practices? Also, by grossly oversimplifying things like you did, you forget that things weren't all that simple. MS was strong-arming OEMs if they dared to install competing OS's or browsers, and they ignored standards in IE while actively breaking compatibility of plugins.