Microsoft Resurrects the Title of President

theodp writes: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella promoted General Counsel Brad Smith to president and chief legal officer Friday, the first time Microsoft has had a company-wide president since 2002. Smith has been Microsoft's point person on convincing Congress of America's tech-worker shortage, an assertion that is disputed by others. At a 2012 forum on STEM education and immigration reform, Smith discussed "producing a crisis" to galvanize action on Microsoft's National Talent Strategy, which calls for increasing the number of H-1B visas to ostensibly make up for U.S. children's lack of CS-savvy. Coincidentally, a real national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis emerged shortly thereafter, thanks to the efforts of new deep-pocketed nonprofit organizations like Code.org (headed by Smith's next-door neighbor) and Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC. Smith is a Code.org Board member and a FWD.us 'Major Contributor'. "We took this idea of connecting immigration to education last fall," Smith explained to the Daily Princetonian in 2013, "and when I started in September, we were the only ones talking about it. To have the White House endorse it, to have it embodied in the Senate Bill, to have people in both houses of Congress supporting it means that potentially this is a magic moment for some important steps for education reform as well." While crying crisis wolf to further its agenda has worked well for Microsoft, a Federal judge recently overturned 'emergency' tech immigration changes enacted by Homeland Security in 2008, saying that "the 17-month duration of the STEM extension appears to have been adopted directly from the unanimous suggestions by Microsoft."

Comments

Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Another linkfest anti-education diatribe by Theodp. How much is theodp paying to get this garbage posted here?

Re:Oh no

[oh_my_080980980]

Brad Smith is that you....

come to JeBus

[turkeydance]

alrighty then. since Resurrects is in the terminology.... then religion is acceptable in discussion. yep, prior art.

Re:come to JeBus

[Required Snark]

The positions name should be "Divine Ruler". That would return Microsoft to the good old days when Gates ruled by divine right, whatever Microsoft decreed inevitably became the standard, and Linus was some obscure guy in a research position. A newly anointed leader is all that's required.

Re: come to JeBus

[Anonymous Coward]

But instead we get john Thompson that rules becsause he is black.

Re: come to JeBus

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife lost two babies from working too hard at Microsoft. The first time Gates seemed genuinely sorry, but the second time Thompson said he was happy because that meant she wouldn't be distracted at work.

Re: come to JeBus

[Anonymous Coward]

He said the same to me. He was so happy that my son died. He was very clear that he didn't want Microsoft employees to have children.

Re: come to JeBus

[Champaklal]

It's unbelievable. We all know it to be a humanitarian company. No one can ever say that on this planet, it's so cruel.

He said the same to me. He was so happy that my son died. He was very clear that he didn't want Microsoft employees to have children.

Re: come to JeBus

[Anonymous Coward]

He said the same to me. He was so happy that my son died. He was very clear that he didn't want Microsoft employees to have children.

Meh. Plenty of children in India. Not a problem.

Re: come to JeBus

[Anonymous Coward]

He said the same to me. He was so happy that my son died. He was very clear that he didn't want Microsoft employees to have children.

Meh. Plenty of children in India. Not a problem.

My start-up is addressing the "plenty of children in India" situation. Genocide by another name but equally effective at ridding the planet of billions of leaches. China is the next target along with assorted Third World countries. After all we are thinking of the children. [ maniacal laughter ]

Re: come to JeBus

[Coren22]

Forget to tick the post anonymously button?

Re: come to JeBus

[Champaklal]

I'm already anonymous. also, I'm not saying anything against MS.

About fucking time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile Tim Cook and the fruits are saying "and it magically does all those things"...

Time to get rude about cash people. Fuck the marketing department. You want real money? Act like you make a product people will buy.

Re:About fucking time.

[turkeydance]

FTMD....Marketing is the first to know and the first to go when it hits the fan.

Re: About fucking time.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Cook never said to me that he was happy my six week old son died like Satya Nadella did. I worked for Apple for nineteen years, but the past year at Microsoft I heard more insensitive crap than I did in the nearly twenty times as long as I was at Apple.

Re: About fucking time.

[Champaklal]

Surprisingly, I didn't hear anything. What was it that you heard? Are you sure it was Microsoft and not Amazon (i'm talking about last month when Amazon was in news for workers alleged they mistreated them)?

Could condense summary to "theodp writes"...

[jeffb (2.718)]

I'm detecting a certain sameness to the stuff that theodp has been posting. Anyone else notice it?

Re:Could condense summary to "theodp writes"...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm detecting a certain sameness to the stuff that theodp has been posting. Anyone else notice it?

Just what are you implying?

Re: Could condense summary to "theodp writes"...

[Anonymous Coward]

he's almost as bad as amimojo, or whatever its name is, and nerval's lobster. At least the linkfest isn't just a bunch of dice links masquerading as "news".

Don't prevent

[Anonymous Coward]

The Right to Rise.

Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

End protectionism now. Creating artificial labor shortages when there are tons of people willing to do the work is as bad as artificial subsidies on goods and commodities.

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Fire_Wraith]

H-1Bs aren't a "free labor market" though. They're a distortion and an end run around the system, bringing in semi-indentured workers who are largely tied to one job, and unable to freely compete. Supposedly, they're only brought in at a much higher rate of pay than the going rate. In practice, most of them are brought in at the absolute minimum, working for Consulting firms that then contract out for work, so the H-1B isn't "replacing" a US worker at the consulting firm, but the Consulting firm sure as hell is contracting out to replace job duties formerly held by US workers. See the recent bits with Disney and SoCal Edison, for instance.

I'd much rather have skilled people just being sponsored for green cards, and then allowed to compete. But guess what - Microsoft and Facebook and all these companies aren't actually interested in that, they want H-1Bs. Gee, wonder why that could be.

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[tompaulco]

It's kind of odd that we have this huge shortage of STEM workers, while at the same time, we have tens of thousands of unemployed STEM workers and more getting laid off every day. If only there was some way of using unemployed STEM workers to cure the shortage of STEM workers. But I guess you can't cram a square peg into a square hole.

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

End protectionism now. Creating artificial labor shortages when there are tons of people willing to do the work is as bad as artificial subsidies on goods and commodities.

But people like Zuckerberg doesn't care about people willing to work, unless it's for less than $7.25 an hour (Federal minimum wage). He's an idiot. Even Henry Ford figured out in the early 1900's that wage-slave workers had to make enough money to be able to buy his product, otherwise he had no market.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

wage slaves arent buying what zuckerberg is selling. They're the product, if anything, and the buyers are advertisers. Mostly teenyboppers and idiots are the buyers of what the advertisers are selling...not facebook employees (hopefully)

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are those people? I haven't seen a qualified applicant in nearly six years.

While Satya is a complete asshole for saying he was glad I would have more time to concentrate on work after my wife and daughter died in a car accident, I will have to admit that he is correct that US universities aren't graduating enough people to meet demand.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

He went to my son's funeral and seemed sorry. Most of my coworkers here at Microsoft were happy when my son died because it meant I could return to working "hundreds" with them.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

return to working "hundreds"

For the readers here that don't live in Seattle, that typically means working 16 hours per day Mon-Thur and 12 hours per day Fri-Sun for a total of a hundred hours per week. That is standard for a Seattle-area startup.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

> Staya hates white people

He was so happy when my son passed away. I worked with him at Sun then moved to Microsoft to work for him about fifteen years later. While he did send flowers and a card to my wife, which was nice, he said to me that he was happy I wouldn't be distracted from work because my five week old son died. He is a horrible person.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

Hundreds here are the norm. Microsoft is very anti family, well anti white family. I haven't been allowed a day off in nearly a decade here at Microsoft, but my Indian coworkers get two weeks off every year t go back to India. For the whites at Microsoft, we are not allowed to take time off.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not just a Microsoft thing. Every startup I have worked for in the Seattle area has not allowed whites to take a day off, but they have all allowed Indians to take two or more weeks off at a time. Yes, tickets to India are expensive, but a vacation day once every few years would be nice for the rest of us.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the fault of you white people. After over twenty years at Microsoft, I have never seen a white person quit because their vacation was denied. On the other hand, I go back to India for three weeks each year.

I find it amusing that while we are allowed to take vacation days, most our white coworkers are not allowed to take a single day.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Indians here at Microsoft are so lazy. Most of them take two to three weeks off per year while us whites are not allowed to take any time off.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

most our white coworkers are not allowed to take a single day.

I think that is what sucks the most about working at Microsoft. Indians are treated so much better than whites. My Indian workers are allowed to take two to three weeks off per year, but I, like the vast majority of whites, am not allowed to take a single day off.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

When I worked for Satya and my twin daughters died both from a heart defect, he didn't seem glad. He seemed relieved. He was nice enough to come to the funeral, but telling my wife she was going to have to spend time alone since I was going to have to work a lot more was just cruel.

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... these companies (Google, Facebook) do sponsor green cards immediately. I will start at Google in October on an H-1B and Google *does* sponsor a green card. The only problem is that getting that green card takes *two years* and I'm a European with a PhD from a top US school. If I was an Indian with a masters it would take around 10. Drop the H-1B and guess how many qualified people would come: pretty much zero! You know why? No job is so good that I would wait two years for it to begin. Since Google requires you to tell your current employer that you're leaving when you accept their offer, it would require me to tell my current employer of my intention to leave *two years* before I would. How do you think my current employer would react to that? You think I would still be getting good projects?

In other words, you can drop the H-1B, but then you would need to fix green card processing, so it would take 2-3 months tops.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

And in europe we have 5 weeks a year off as standard...

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[pnutjam]

Zuck's product is FREE*, so anyone can afford it.

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that simple. I just graduated with a PhD from a top US school and will start at Google. I actually don't care if I work in the Mountain View, New York or Zurich office. I ended up choosing New York, because my wife happened to have a job there (works at a consulate, salary paid by a foreign government). If our visas don't work out, we will just move to Zurich. My team is even split between New York and Zurich, so I can keep doing my old job, the only thing that changes is the currency in which I receive my salary and the country that will get my taxes and the money I spend.

It's funny that many people in Zurich would love to move to Mountain View. Google would love to send them there too, since salaries in Zurich are actually higher than in MTV. Thus, it costs Google more to keep a person on payroll in Zurich than in MTV. This is actually proof for you that there is a clear lack of talent at the higher end of the spectrum, since a company is willing to pay people more at a non-US location. Adding artificial costs for getting these people into a US office will just keep more of them employed overseas. The only effect of this is that an American company has to spend its profits abroad in order to pay for an employee, when the employee could be working in the US paying taxes and spending their money.

It's also very dangerous for the US to not have a clear path for top US graduates to stay in the country continuously after graduation. If they are forced to leave abroad even for a few months, there's a high chance they will enjoy wherever they went and stay there and not come back. This causes a brain drain problem.

The problem you're speaking of is that it's too easy to import the level of IT workers for which there is unemployment in the US. However, if you look at the people that are unemployed, then most of them would not be able to get hired by Google or Facebook, since there isn't actually enough engineers that can pass their interviews (both companies pretty much hire everyone that can pass their interview). The current problem is that the people for which there is a shortage has to compete with legions of drones for a small number of visas. It's too damn hard for them to immigrate. For example a green card takes about 2 years to get. The O-1 visa is very quick, but is not an option for recent PhD graduates.

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's kind of odd that we have this huge shortage of STEM workers, while at the same time, we have tens of thousands of unemployed STEM workers

It's a huge shortage of competent STEM workers. I get a slew of resumes every week from unqualified STEM workers who should damned well stay unemployed.

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

but i rote hello world gib $90k job plz

You know who gets replaced with an H1B?

Bitches.

Re: Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[Anonymous Coward]

As if it matters how many weeks off you get off. It is how many you can take that matters. After 12 years at Microsoft, I also get five weeks. I haven't had a day off in just over two years. The part that really sucks is that since I hit the max, Microsoft has taken over ten weeks of my vacation time.

Re:Whatever it takes to get more H1B's in

[tompaulco]

>It's kind of odd that we have this huge shortage of STEM workers, while at the same time, we have tens of thousands of unemployed STEM workers

It's a huge shortage of competent STEM workers. I get a slew of resumes every week from unqualified STEM workers who should damned well stay unemployed.

How do you know they are incompetent? Did you interview them? Or are you just going by the fact that they didn't meet your job requirements which specify expert level competency in three dozen different skillsets, some of which are on software written and used only at your company, and others of which require 10 years of programming in 5 year old languages? You see, most STEM workers in the U.S., would answer truthfully, but headhunting agencies in India will gladly lie to you about having all of those requirements, including the impossible ones.

A timely story by theodp

[Anonymous Coward]

But, the summary sounds just a wee bit similar to

this one.

And this one.

Oh, and there's this one.

Not to mention this one.

Maybe you missed this one?

Or how about this one?

Because Theodp doesn't have any sort of agenda, does he?

Nahhh...

Re:A timely story by theodp

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascinating, 3 mod points used to get this up so quickly from the hidden comments

One might wonder if there is an agenda at play here

Re:A timely story by theodp

[GrandCow]

Who gives a shit? I like the fact that companies are stressing how important learning to code is to kids in K-12. What agenda are you trying to imply other than "coding is good"? I support teaching children at least the basics of coding.

The only thing you could be pushing is that companies want more H1-B's so they can get cheap coders, but the fact that they're trying to get coding into basic education goes against exactly that.

Re:A timely story by theodp

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. Teaching more kinds to code means that in a few years, if all goes according to plan, there will be huge numbers of college graduates that decided to study programming. That means a larger supply of programmers, which means companies get to lower wages for programming jobs - resulting in "cheap coders".

Re:A timely story by theodp

[oh_my_080980980]

Wow Microsoft trolls are out in full force....

Re:A timely story by theodp

[oh_my_080980980]

Wow just wow. You don't understand how this works do you. In order to get the more H1B-Visas, Microsoft et.al., need to give the appearance that they give a rats ass about educating American to make up for this false shortage of workers. If you've read any of the article about the subject, it's the carrot to get Congress to increase H1B-Visas.

Re:A timely story by theodp

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your point? A stock broker talks about stocks, a Microsoft critic talks about Microsoft.

Re:A timely story by theodp

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to be a Microsoft Troll or Linux Zealot to find fault with theodp.

Re:A timely story by theodp

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no! Lets keep the kids dumb and unemployable to save our jerbs! Do you guys know how idiotic you sound?

Separate H1Bs

[Kwyj1b0]

As someone who has benefited from the STEM extension, it is strange that they are targeting this, instead of fixing the H1b issue.

I got my doctoral degree in STEM, and did not get my H1b in the lottery system the first time. If I was forced to leave, the US would have spent nearly half a million dollars on my education, and got one year of tax (not counting my research work, which is freely available to anyone) in return.

Like most people making use of the STEM extension, I am being paid as much or more than my US co-workers. This isn't a "consulting" gig where I am forced to work for my company at sub-standard wages under pain of getting kicked out of the US - STEM graduates have been educated in renowned US universities, and I had four job offers by the time I graduated.

I think there should be a different H1b tracks for people who are hired "internally" i.e. the person is already in the US, and was educated here (people who currently benefit from the 17-month STEM extension), and the other type of H1b that I hear exists (where a company brings in people from overseas purely to do a job).

Re:Separate H1Bs

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the same boat together with two of my classmates of a STEM Ph.D. program of an Ivy League school. We didn't get selected in the H-1B lottery due to the ridiculous flood of people from consulting companies this year. The main problem seems to be that you have either the H-1B or the O-1. The requirements for the H-1B are set too low while the O-1 can not be obtained based on potential, only based on actual obtained results. This makes the O-1 almost impossible to fresh Ph.D.'s even from top schools.

The biggest problem with the H-1B is the lack of a separate quota for Ph.D.'s. There's the "advanced degree" quota, but it's enough to get a Master's to qualify. Based on some H-1B message boards, it seems like many people in India are exchanging recommendations for American diploma mill M.Sc. programs in order to qualify for the "advanced degree" quota. It would be nice if they actually required for the "advanced degree" quota that the university providing the degree belongs to some of the more selective accreditation organizations, so you would actually need to get a quality degree to qualify for it.

Even better would be to provide an immediate work permit visa for PhD's that had their degree payed for by the American tax payer. The standard for a funded PhD is set very high and paying for the degree and requiring the person to leave is simply stupid. One could of course argue that the US should not fund foreigners for Ph.D.'s, but this would be suicide for American universities, since the great funding situation is what attracts the smartest people in the world to the top schools making connections in the US and ultimately ending up as faculty over there.

Re: Separate H1Bs

[donscarletti]

In Australia for instance, someone with a local university degree in something useful can just apply for permanent residence as a "skilled migrant". H1B is a guest worker program however, it's for bringing people in to do a specific job at a specific company, not retaining talent in the country, so it's not a particularly good scheme in your case. So I think shutting down the 17 month system makes a bit of sense as it was a loophole to begin with. It's not that it should be a seperate stream, but it should be a seperate visa entirely, and should allow applicants to move between jobs, since they were hired locally anyway. If America doesn't have such a visa, that's fine, since many countries do.

Re:Separate H1Bs

[ganjadude]

why is the US government spending half a million on someone to go to school here when we have some groups here in america that have a 50% failure rate?

dont take this wrong, I am happy that you were able to get the education you did, however I just think that money (americans money) would be better spent on educating americans

Re:Separate H1Bs

[PolygamousRanchKid]

why is the US government spending half a million on someone to go to school here when we have some groups here in america that have a 50% failure rate? dont take this wrong, I am happy that you were able to get the education you did, however I just think that money (americans money) would be better spent on educating americans

Send that one to Donald Trump . . . he will make a field day out of that one for the rest of his campaign, however long that might last. Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton said she was "So, Sorry!", and that she "wasn't thinking" when she gave the guy half a million.

Re:Separate H1Bs

[ganjadude]

im sorry but.... what???

Re:Separate H1Bs

[PolygamousRanchKid]

im sorry but.... what???

"Get your lips away from the crack pipe" :-)

Re:Separate H1Bs

[Anonymous Coward]

I just think that money (americans money) would be better spent on educating americans

That sounds like throwing good money after bad.

Re:Separate H1Bs

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called basic research, which is what fuels most of the high-tech industry and is one of the things that the rest of the world would die to get their hands on. You fund the top research, so that your universities get to the top, get the best people, spin off the best startups, attract VC money etc. It's very much a game of reputation which you win by providing the best resources, i.e. reasonable salary and great labs. If the National Science Foundation or the Department of Defense would spend that same money on fixing all the impoverished high-schools, you would tank the US economy in a heartbeat, since you do need to focus funds at the cutting edge.

Another option is only educating Americans with that science funding, but it's not such a great idea, because basic research is very "brain dependent" and you would constrain yourself to a fraction of the world's population. This is also one of the areas where a university has absolutely zero incentive to choose a foreigner over an equally qualified American (since everyone in a PhD program gets paid the same), so the foreigners accepted do tend to be very good, i.e. they are not some cheap resource pulled in the replace locals.

The last time someone actually tried to purge a sizable chunk of the brain pool from universities was the Nazis in Germany. German universities were at the time the top institutions in the world. Jews were banned causing the top people to go to the US. This is what made American universities rise to the top, a place they have held ever since. The gap seems to only be growing, since especially in STEM fields, you do not need strong language skills, so universities are really able to recruit the top talent the world has to offer.

BTW, that half a million is mostly costs incurred by running a university lab, which gets divided by the number of grad students working in it.

Re:Separate H1Bs

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation needed. Foreign students pay the whole cost of their education in the US. They receive no financial aid from the tax payers and aren't eligible for scholarships where the funds were comingled with federal money, even if the money that was used to pay was separate.

Re:Separate H1Bs

[oh_my_080980980]

There is jackass. There are different Visa programs: O-1 and EB-1. How the fuck did the US government spend $500,000 on your education? Unless you are talking about research grants, in which case they would be available to other researchers, not just you. Move along troll.

Re:Separate H1Bs

[Anonymous Coward]

Read my earlier comment: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8002709&cid=50516169

You are very wrong about the O-1 or EB-1. The O-1 and EB-1 are for people that have already established themselves as being one of the top researchers in their field. The audience for those visas are tenure track professors at top schools not recent PhD graduates. Therefore, you will have to spend time as a postdoc (typically 5 years) before you become eligible for those visas.

In other words, those visas are not an option for PhD graduates that want to go into industry. They're forced to go through the H-1B visa lottery. I hope you don't think it's a good idea to send PhDs from top US schools abroad after graduation to work until they obtain the credentials required for the O-1 or EB-1 and then magically hope they would come back, when during those 5 years or so, they've probably founded a family and have established a home abroad.

You also don't seem understand the costs. I got a PhD in math from an Ivy League school and my salary, travel grants, health insurance added up already to around 150k. There are some BS costs on top of that like "tuition", which is the university paying itself. Technically, my advisor's grant money being put in university coffers to cover my tuition. If that is taken into account the final total is around 250k. If you're a PhD student in natural sciences, the total bill would include the money required to run your lab divided by the number of grad students that worked in it. That will easily get you up to 500k.

Re:Separate H1Bs

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mixing with undergraduate scholarships. Federal grant money can be used to pay for foreign graduate students and can even be used to pay for research going on abroad. We sent part of our large MURI grant to our collaborators in Europe. Scholarships paid from the university's endowment can be used to fund graduates and undergraduates alike.

Re:Separate H1Bs

[Kwyj1b0]

There is jackass. There are different Visa programs: O-1 and EB-1. How the fuck did the US government spend $500,000 on your education? Unless you are talking about research grants, in which case they would be available to other researchers, not just you. Move along troll.

O-1 is an extremely hard category to get a visa under. EB-1 is not a visa, it is a permanent residence stream (which is what my employer can file for my green card under, IF they choose). Again, EB-1 is extremely hard to get a green card under - it is for exceptional researchers who are presented as such valuable resources that the country would suffer a significant loss if they weren't allowed to remain (hint, most Ph.D. holders are not, despite what their lawyers might argue).

As for who was eligible for the money - yes, the money was available to my advisor to spend on anyone he chose. He chose to spend it on me because he felt my contributions were valuable. The fact that it could have potentially gone to someone else: why is that relevant?

And how did they spent nearly half a million on me? I got a stipend, a tuition waiver, health insurance, travel reimbursement, the occasional computers/software, and full pay in summers for 6 years. So that is nearly $50,000 per year (I was in an expensive state, my initial stipend was over $2k a month) that is shown to the funding agency (NSF). On top of that, there is a university overhead: For every $1 my advisor could spend, the funding agency would have to give $1.5-$1.75, while the university skimmed off the top. That adds up fast, and I rounded up.

Proposal: The Auction System.

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper way to address this claimed "shortage" is to create an auction system for the tech worker visas, similar to the taxicab medallion system. The number of visa medallions offered will start at the current number of H1-Bs and employers will bid for them. Let Google, Microsoft and others put their money where their mouths are and shell out for those "needed" tech workers that they cannot seem to find here in America. In every year where the average bid for a visa medallion exceeds the $150K the number of slots will be increased by 2.5% or conversely in every year where not all of the slots are sold, the number available for next year will be reduced by 2.5%. In no event shall visa medallions be offered for less than 100K. The tech visa system is designed to provide critical workers to American companies, not as a tool for wage arbitrage against American workers which is what the current system has become, more or less. If getting skilled workers is so damn important to American companies then let them prove it by showing all of us the money. Until then they should STFU about not being able to find tech workers.

Re:Proposal: The Auction System.

[theodp]

Funny you should suggest this. From Microsoft "Bait and Switch" Could Mean a Huge Increase in Foreign Tech Workers: "The company proposed a novel workaround: If the federal government would raise the H1-B cap by 20,000 additional visas and make available an equal number of additional green cards, Microsoft said it would be willing to pay nearly four times the usual fees, handing over $10,000 per H-1B visa and $15,000 per green card. It called its proposal the National Talent Strategy because the additional revenue-more than $500 million annually-would be used to fund STEM education programs around the country...With the coalition in its corner, Microsoft approached a bipartisan group of senators to craft what would become the Immigration Innovation, or "I-Squared" Act. And that's where the alleged "lobbying malpractice" came in. The act, as promised, would boost the caps on visas and green cards and use the fees to pay for STEM education. But in a crucial difference that has angered some of Microsoft's would-be allies, the bill would nearly quintuple the number of available visas-raising the cap to 300,000-and charge companies far less for them: as little as $1,825 apiece. Microsoft, which helped draft the bill, appeared pleased with the end result. "Today's introduction in the Senate of the bipartisan Immigration Innovation Act is a major step forward," Brad Smith, the company's general counsel and executive vice president said in a January press release issued by Compete America, a coalition of tech companies such as Microsoft and outsourcing firms such as Deloitte. "Microsoft strongly supports this legislation and urges Congress to send broader immigration reform that includes these solutions to the President's desk this year."

Re:Proposal: The Auction System.

[Anonymous Coward]

A better idea would just be to split up the H-1B quota per calendar month with a slight concentration of visas around summer months when students graduate. Each month just rank the offered salaries of the applicants and pick the number allowed by the quota off the top. You would probably require some normalization factor based on location. Top employers would quickly outbid outsourcing companies and the salaries offered to H-1Bs would end up higher than what is paid to the local market.

Meet Brad Smith

[Anonymous Coward]

Our new scapegoat.

Re:Meet Brad Smith

[Tablizer]

I've learned the hard way that scapegoats are in big demand. Just remember to leave your self worth at the door.

Re: Meet Brad Smith

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he isn't anti tech like their CEO. Yes, you can make lawyer jokes, but he is an improvement.

I thought they resurrected a president

[Anonymous Coward]

and if they could, Teddy Roosevelt please.

lol, sure...

[Type44Q]

Smith has been Microsoft's point person on convincing Congress of America's tech-worker shortage, an assertion that is disputed by others

It's an assertion that's been proven to be utter horseshit. FTFY, BTW.

Re:lol, sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

> that's been proven to be utter horseshit.

How is it horseshit when there aren't enough developers out there to fill anywhere near the number of jobs? I work for a company that makes recruiting software, and the number of applicants per position for dev jobs is only a fraction of what it is for others. Also, dev positions are open on average nearly six times as long as the average position. As we found when looking for a senior Java dev with 5+ years experience, we didn't get a single applicant with experience in nine months of advertising. Not a one.

Re:lol, sure...

[rfengr]

"I work for a company that makes recruiting software, and the number of applicants per position for dev jobs is only a fraction of what it is for others." Sounds like the software you write is shit.

Whoop Dee Doo

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I think I speak for many of us when I say, "Who gives a shit?"

So they renamed or reshuffled some titles for the goobers at the top, so fucking what?

If they hadn't put out a press release that slashdot promptly regurgitated, I'd have never known anything had happened.

"Stuff that matters" indeed.

At least they're relevant, even if biased.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if there is some bias, at least those submissions are relevant to technology. We should be thankful that they're at least about software and the software industry. There's a Slashdot imitation site, called SoylentNews, which has a particular user (gewg_) who repeatedly submits extremely biased, far-left submissions. These often link to sketchy articles and sites that even fellow lefties think are way too questionable, and not to be taken seriously. Even worse, most of these submissions have absolutely nothing to do with science or technology or computing or software or hardware or mathematics or anything useful like that. They're typically 100% political in nature, and they're often about some police officers somewhere who had to reasonably defend themselves from attacks perpetrated by violent criminals. For whatever reason, the editors over there end up promoting those shitty, disreputable submissions to the front page of the SoylentNews site. At least we haven't seen anything as bad as that happen here. I'll take these possibly-biased submissions that are at least on-topic any day over those awful ones at SoylentNews that are about some petty and irrelevant political matter.

Re:At least they're relevant, even if biased.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why Slashdot was started! So the rest of us could get away from the biased articles at that corporate machine SoylentNews.

Re:At least they're relevant, even if biased.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your pathetic attempt at humor or sarcasm aside, it is actually quite sad that SoylentNews routinely manages to maintain lower standards than even Slashdot does.

Re:At least they're relevant, even if biased.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now SN is a place for a rather small, but not too small, group of techies to hang out. It doesn't have a strong charter for content, or if it does somewhere, it isn't being followed. Everyone maintaining the site or editing submissions is a volunteer. (I am a random poster at both sites, not an editor or maintainer).

Did he have an onion tied to his belt, though?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's critical we know.

sucks to be Scott Charney, I guess...

[xeno]

After all that bluster about security and privacy, ten years of "Trustworthy Computing" and Scott Charney poised to head to some White House role as the voice of Microsoft, it's all fallen apart. Scott's sidelined, TwC effectively disbanded and it's security and privacy groups laid off or rolled into the Windows group, and all the new hot noise and hubub is about sending Brad to grow the army of sheltered Satya-style bro-grammers to churn out even more shit code. So much for the idea of BETTER products; We'll just brace for MORE of the same minimally-tested, designed-by-assumption, cloud-based/bing-telemetry-sucking, insecure dreck. Woohoo.

The H1B debate is irrelevant; when the direction and mission of the enterprise is so fundamentally disorganized, orthagonal to real-world business use cases, and requires dismantling national labor legal structures, the "need" for more tech workers to get there is a nonsequitur. Microsoft is looking at Google in 2015, with the same curious lack of understanding as IBM looked at Microsoft in the 1990's -- not understanding the landscape itself had changed, and vigourosly agitating for more mainframe system programmers. More H1Bs would make the same difference to Microsoft now as IBM then.

So you agree with GP?

[Anonymous Coward]

GP didn't say the market was free, they said there was an artificial labor shortage. Which is true, rhetoric and a lack of pay is causing the shortage. Mostly the rhetoric.

You may not like how they said it... *not the same AC*

Re:So you agree with GP?

[Fire_Wraith]

I don't, but the reason I don't agree is because they're proposing a Manichean view, whereas the actual reality is far more nuanced than that. The tech moguls don't want a truly free market, but nor do they want the current one either. Instead, they want the "best" of both worlds.

What do I mean? Well, they want the ability to pay lower wages, if not third world wages, without actually having to move their operations lock stock and barrel to India or wherever else, and thus having to pay either in the short or long term for the other costs that would incur. In short, they want to have their cake and eat it too, and make the rest of us foot the bill, effectively.

So, no, I disagree that a fully free labor market is the exact opposite, because that completely ignores the fact that there are other things that a country like the US provides, and you can't completely divorce the labor market from that. I absolutely do believe that we should allow for immigration of the best and brightest - but that's not cheap, and what these companies really care about is getting access to the cheapest possible worker, over whom they have the largest possible control.

Re:So you agree with GP?

[tompaulco]

Even if they offload the job to another country, the inconvenience of it is not worth the price. A country I was talking to recently is paying a company in India the equivalent of $75k per year for a developer. In the U.S. depending where you are, you can get a developer for less than that. After you add in benefits, it certainly exceeds that amount, but there is the hidden cost of having to deal with someone halfway around the world, who works different hours, speaks a different language, has a different culture and work ethic, is difficult to ascertain or vet their skill set, cannot be easily held accountable for project milestones, or work completion, difficult to control or manage overtime or immediate response scenarios, etc, etc.

Re:So you agree with GP?

[Maxo-Texas]

And they want to sell their products in captive markets protected by the government making importing the products from elsewhere where they sell it cheaper (or even give it away free in some cases) illegal.

They'll stop when they've pumped the wealth out of the richer companies and no one can afford to pay any more.

When you promote a lawyer to President ...

[whoever57]

When you promote a lawyer to President, you are no longer a tech company. What you are saying is that technology is not longer your highest priority.

Re:When you promote a lawyer to President ...

[Z00L00K]

That's quite interesting and also explains the changes we have seen lately - transition from a company providing a necessity to a company that spies on the users.

Re: When you promote a lawyer to President ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering white engineers here aren't allowed vacation time, we haven't been an engineering company in many years.

Re:When you promote a lawyer to President ...

[Anonymous Coward]

>technology is not longer your highest priority.
Like it has ever been for microsoft.
They have always create crap.

In the beginning they invested in marketing to sell crap to stupid people.
Now they invest in lawyers to help them steal private data from stupid people.

Re: When you promote a lawyer to President ...

[Anonymous Coward]

As if appointing John Thompson to the chairman of the board because he is black us any better. I'd rather have a competent lawyer than an incompetent political guy. Microsoft gave up on technology long ago.

Re:When you promote a lawyer to President ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A lawyer that likes technology is better than their current CEO that has an MBA and hates technology.

Re:When you promote a lawyer to President ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But how will that person ever be able to live with all that president envy that you yanks seem to have?

Remember, that your president envy is really monarchy envy. You may have kicked out the rule of monarchs, but you still insist on putting your president in a palace and ensure that he's an entirely unreachable and remote as any monarch.

Re:When you promote a lawyer to President ...

[__aaclcg7560]

When you promote a Marketing hack to President, you are no longer a tech company. What you are saying is that technology is not longer your highest priority.

FTFY - Dogbert Correctness Committee

Take it to India

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you just take Microshit to India.

Re:Take it to India

[Tablizer]

Do they offer B1H's over there?

John Thompson is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The real ruler of Microsoft. As he has said many times, he doesn't think Mivrosoft should hire based upon ability but instead based on race.

Interesting because it isn't...

[Anonymous Coward]

John Thompson that isn't the President. Bill Gates picked him to run Microsoft because he is black.

smart move

[Anonymous Coward]

on nadella's part... 'promoting' a future scapegoat for the win10 mess.

Hopefully Smith is more human than..

[Anonymous Coward]

Nadella. Satya told me three years ago that after my wife and daughter died that he was happy I would be able to concentrate on work more. I have been very angry for years that he was that mercenary.

Sociopath in Chief

[Anonymous Coward]

I graduated with a 3.7 GPA in 2013 in CS, at a good school. My resume has been in their bank for over a year now, multiple applications, and not one single email from a recruiter. The guy basically just wants the 4.0 indian graduate student, with the narrow tech stack experience, on the cheap, rather than just pay someone like me a living wage to ramp up to what is needed.

Fuck him, and fuck his disingenuous, publicize-the-costs attitude towards education.

none of the articles are about technology

[gl4ss]

it's ALL about USA POLITICS, mostly immigration politics.

usa immagration policies ARE NOT TECH NEWS. and extremely boring for someone who has no interest in moving to USA. like, wtf, is this news for nerds or news for "I wanna move to USA from Calcutta" ? da fuq?

Re:none of the articles are about technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Older people who are struggling to find work blame immigrants, legal and illegal, for their troubles. This is happening in IT as well as other fields. That's why the Republican candidates for POTUS keep talking about building a huge wall between the USA and Mexico; some like Scott Walker say we also need one between USA and Canada (!).

Losers who refuse to take charge of their own lives.

Microsoft is Dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

No zombie president will change this.

I am selling my MSFT stock, had enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I picked up Microsoft stock when Windows 7 was coming out, because I really thought it was a good OS and would take the world by storm. Now Windows 10 is here, and full of spyware. Plus Microsoft is back-porting that nonsense to Windows 7. I have no faith in this company any more. Actions speak louder than words, Nadella and Smith.

Re:I am selling my MSFT stock, had enough

[iampiti]

It's a pity that people haven't reacted to Win 10 with the same intensity as they did to the announcement of the required always-on connectivity to use the new Xbox. Maybe that way they'd get scared and release a decent Windows OS again.
Maybe the fact that Xbox has a ver close replacement (Ps4 runs most of the same games) had something to do with that backtrack. In contrast, with Windows there exists no almost equivalent replacement and by what I mean a OS that runs the same software. Older Windows versions count to a degree because they will be abandoned shortly, and Wine and ReactOS aren't still compatible enough

Microsoft still on a losing track

[Anonymous Coward]

I really do not think the changes Microsoft has made has done much to instill better leadership in the company. I still see a belief that Microsoft knows best and the end user seems to take a back seat in directing policy, development and culture. Its obvious that the top directs the company and the rest follow. Windows 10 may be free but its not really free. Office is a cash cow but its also becoming so splintered its worse then all the Windows versions that have come out over the years. Then you have the constant name changing of services and redundant ones like Outlook. Oh what's in a name? Well it really depends on many things with Microsoft. Windows 10 could have been a solid return to stableness for Microsoft after a horrible Windows 8 release. But instead they blew the privacy problems, they have nagged too much to users about upgrading and have even downloaded Windows 10 files without even asking the user if its OK. The real question is why Microsoft is working so hard to get Windows 10 on every device? Something free should not be forced upon end users. Flags go up when I see the way Microsoft is handling Windows 10 upgrades.

How to remove it easily... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

TO REMOVE THE BOGUS OPTIONAL TELEMETRY HOTFIXES MANUALLY:

Open command prompt
Type powershell
issue these commands

---

TO SEE WHAT ONES ARE INSTALLED:

get-hotfix -id KB3035583, KB2952664,KB2976978,KB3021917,KB3044374,KB2990214

---

TO UNINSTALL THEM (these for sure, per url next below):

wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583
wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664
wusa /uninstall /kb:2976978
wusa /uninstall /kb:3021917
wusa /uninstall /kb:3044374
wusa /uninstall /kb:2990214

per http://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/...

---

DESCRIPTIONS OF EACH (these uninstalled properly):

KB3068708 (Telemetry)
KB3075249 (Telemetry)
KB3080149 (Telemetry)

KB3022345 (Telemetry)
KB2977759 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)
KB3021917 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparatioon + Telemetry)
KB3035583 (Windows 10 upgrade preparation)

---

I GOT "NOT INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER" ON THESE INITIALLY SINCE I HAD IE11 installed (PROBABLY ONES FOR IE9/10/11 &/or Windows 10 (I use Win7 here)):

KB3075249
KB3080149
KB2505438
* KB2670838 (See IE 9/10/11 notes below)
KB3044374
KB2990214 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)
KB2505438 (Although it claims to fix performance issues, it often breaks fonts)
KB2976978 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation)

---

I GOT "NOT INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER" ON THESE (*PRIOR* TO PULLING KB2670838):

* KB2670838 (This update often breaks AERO on Windows 7 and makes some fonts on websites fuzzy. A Windows 7 specific update only
                        (do not install IE10 or 11 otherwise it will be bundled with them, IE9 is the max version you should install to avoid this).

THESE RE-APPEAR AFTER UNINSTALLING IE11 RIGHT ON RESTARTING & CHECKING WINDOWS UPDATE:

* KB2952664 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
* KB3021917 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
* KB3068708 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)
* KB3092627 (Windows 10 Upgrade preparation prior to IE9/10/11 install)

---

run cmd as administrator

sc stop Diagtrack
sc delete Diagtrack

---

*Task Scheduler Library:

Everything under "Application Experience"
Everything under "Autochk"
Everything under "Customer Experience Improvement Program"
Under "Disk Diagnostic" only the "Microsoft-Windows-DiskDiagnosticDataCollector"
Under "Maintenance" "WinSAT"
"Media Center" and click the "status" column, then select all non-disabled entries and disable them.

---

*services.msc:

"Remote Registry" to "Disabled" instead of "Manual".

---

IMPORTANT ONE IS GROUP POLICY (gpedit.msc):

Go to Control Panel, Administrative Templates, System
Internet Communication Management, Internet Communication Settings

ENABLE (to turn it on, it is a disabler)

"Turn off Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program"

(IF YOU HAVE Windows "home" (less than Pro models), export the section of the registry involved from a Pro system & merge the .reg file you exported - should work well enough to do the job here for those of you using that lesser model of Windows)

APK

P.S.=> ... & "VOILA" - you're done, & it works to remove that spy stuff from Windows 7/8/10... apk

Legal Discovery Protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...promoted General Counsel Brad Smith to president and chief legal officer Friday..."

Sounds like they're trying to find way to ensure that *all* corporate decision making is covered by 'attorney client privilege'.