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White House Outsources K-12 CS Education To Infosys Charity
theodp writes: In December, the White House praised the leadership of Code.org for their efforts to get more computer science into K-12 schools, which were bankrolled by $20 million in philanthropic contributions from the likes of Google, Microsoft, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Mark Zuckerberg. On Monday, it was announced that Infosys Foundation USA will be partnering with Code.org to bring CS education to millions of U.S. students. Infosys Foundation USA Chair Vandana Sikka, who joins execs from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon execs on Code.org's Board, is the spouse of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. The announcement from the tax-deductible charity comes as India-based Infosys finds itself scrutinized by U.S. Senators over allegations of H-1B visa program abuses.
Even if their hearts were in the right place, why in the hell would they choose to partner with Infosys on this initiative? The company this group is using for their Code.org PR stunts to train more native IT professionals is basically synonymous with the H1-B program problems native IT professionals complain about. This decision just boggles my mind.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The only thing US workers can't compete on in price. In quality we're lightyears ahead of the average H1-B. IT "staff" actually grow in size when you H1-B in most cases because you need more people to do the same job. They still cost less though because you can pay them dirt and not have to worry about benefits.
There is no free market. Companies want free markets to drive wages down but they want protection for their products. Capital can move easily, labor cannot. If by 'can't compete' you mean 'can't live on a couple of dollars per day' then yes, the US economy doesn't work like that.
As to skills, people in other countries run about the same distribution of really smart and total idiots as anywhere else all other things being equal. However, rampant cheating and resume inflating are accepted in certain cultures, accepted by certain outsourcing companies, and that results in a supply of labor that ought not be in the market at all.
One free market principle is that participants have access to accurate information, and of course corporations go to great lengths to make sure you don't.
Maybe IT workers aren't all dumb enough to worship the free market?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It's not insecurity about skills at all. In fact, they often have far superior skills and abilities. The problem is price. I'm not personally willing to spend 80-90 hours a week programming at $24,000 per year with no benefits. My skills and abilities are worth far more than that. The problem is, companies will often move to the lowest bidder in an effort to cut costs wherever they can without paying mind to the drop in quality as a direct result. Companies that do this often nearly always regret their decisions or aren't around long enough to regret said decisions.
A "free market" for labour would mean immigration, not temporary work visas with strict conditions. H1-Bs shift power from labour to management. Management is not asking for an immigration fast-path for highly skilled professionals -- they are asking for temporary permits. H1-B workers, while obviously benefitting from the program, are not seeing the kind of benefit they would if they could immigrate and if they could be hired permanently and progress in their careers in the US. The economy as a whole benefits much less from H1-Bs than it does from skilled immigration. H1-B holders who subsequently start new enterprises aren't doing so in America.
I realize that some H1-B workers are able subsequently to immigrate, but it's a separate route and it's not the program's intention. It's good to have a program that lets highly specialized advisors in -- it ensures knowledge and skills transfer from the broader world, but H1-B is not primarily used for that. The program would have more value if it had higher standards for quality, not larger quantity. As it stands, it's simply an attack on labour, one that cloaks itself in the language of freedom and immigration while providing neither.
Not true ... In the train I bump into many IT H1-B's and one of them was a Sr. Java Arch with over 10+ years of work based experience. If not on H1-B would be making about $130~150k but he was make $32k of course the company billing was an entirely different story.
The US preaches free markets to the rest of the world
Let me stop you right there from continuing with this stupid-as-shit line of thinking. Certain interest groups in the US preach free markets to the world. That doesn't imply "The US preaches free markets" or whatever shit else these interest groups try to peddle.
, yet the IT programmers there seem to think they are entitled to a monopoly on jobs.
Like almost anywhere else. You don't see engineering in general (and IT in particular) being offshored en-mass in, say, Japan and Germany, do you? I've never been in Germany, but I have been in Japan. So I can claim with some certainty that what I'm saying here holds.
There is also the rule of the law. The law says that H1-B visas are for jobs where companies have a hard time filling in with local talent (be them US workers, or foreign workers with a permanent residence status.)
It is not a replacement of US citizens and legal residents with temporary visa workers to lower costs. That is a violation of the law. In any other country, that would warrant an immediate investigation by a department of labor. Not here, and that is stupid.
And people thinking that we should not investigate (when every other country would), those people are either stupid, obtuse or disingenuous.
I thought free market capitalism was about open market and prices based on demand-supply.
And it is... within the definintion/demarcation of an economy. Any nation that does not treat its economy as a national asset of strategic value is an stupid nation that deserves whatever gets coming.
Look at China, India, Japan, Germany, and so on. They all have specific protections in place according to whatever they consider strategic or vital.
It is only in the US that private enterprises (and politicians in their pockets) who do not think that way. As long as profit is made, the nation as a whole can go screw itself.
Why are IT workers so threatened by this? Is it insecurity about their skills or ability to compete?
Do you understand the meaning of "begging the question"?
There is no competition when locals are being replaced without even giving a chance to compete, being replaced completely and unilaterally with cheaper labor in contradiction of what the law says.
And this just doesn't affect US citizens. It also affects legal residences. I've seen with my own eyes India workers with permanent resident status getting replaced with H1-B visas. So it is not just a question of talent and competition. It is a disingenuous violation of the law.
Not only that, the H1-B abuse is heavily slanted towards India workers and consulting firms? Why?
If we are going to get inundated and replaced by H1-B workers, let them be more diverse, from Russia, China, Africa, and LATAM, not just India. This is the biggest problem I have with abuses of the H1-B program. It artificially skews one of most profitable segments of our economy towards a specific foreign nationality.
The country as it is has a history of racial segmentation. There is no need to make that problem even worse.
If this is such a pressing issue, they need to start turning some of the Disney stars into developers (whoops, sorry, I mean "coders," that's the trending buzz word).
All these people should have their own prime time shows about the exciting life of a software developer. The basics of CLIs and text editors on multiple operating systems. How to use version control. How to write unit tests and pass continuous integration. How to help QA your own dog food. How to diplomatically interface with folks in other departments. How to write documentation. How to triage trouble tickets. How to train your own replacement.
Oh, wait! None of that's sexy. Kids wouldn't tune in to shows like that because it isn't what most of them want to do, any more than most kids wanted to do in decades past. The ones who really are interested in development will pursue this path on their own, as many of us did. We don't and won't have any lack of competent workers, because some percentage of us will always be nerds who love this stuff. We do have a surplus of companies who want to save every last penny by farming jobs out to H-1Bs, and we do have a corresponding surplus of unemployed competent Americans.
We're at a point where entry-level tech support jobs are routinely requiring a bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent, junior analyst jobs are requiring an MBA or foreign equivalent, etc. Companies are quick to complain that there are no qualified local workers, because they can't find an American with a four-year degree who knows Linux + Solaris + J2EE + Servlets + IIS + SAP + Oracle + 10 years with Sharepoint, and is willing to work 70 hours a week for $35,000 per year. Meanwhile they have a guy from Bangalore whose resume claims he does precisely all of that, and maybe they won't check out all of his qualifications if he's willing to share a room at Extended Stay America with 5 of his peers for a year or two, wink wink nod nod.
The market is already saturated, and will be for some years to come. Where's the federal push to create more tradesmen (plumbers, electricians, mechanics, carpenters)? To create more lawyers, or accountants, or any other career path? I'm growing weary of this idea that every child in America must be a developer^Wcoder. It serves no purpose but to suppress salaries across the board and even further encourage the H-1B loophole.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!