Yes, they still employ 150,000 folks. However, the company is fundamentally addicted to H-1b/L-1 visas and has a lackluster recent record at serious technical innovation. For a company like HP to seriously thrive, they _must_ innovate. At this point, HP is more the preserve of bean counters than inventors.
Not necessarily in a world in which the US currency is the international currency of reserve. Prices get so distorted by trade relationships that the only folks in the US that really make it are: 1) folks with property 2) folks in positions protected from both trade and immigration.
Personally, I would have executed Ebers, Rigas and Ken Lay--I think their penalties were far too lax. China has executed folks for fraud at the level of $150,000--which is about the level of extra wages it has historically taken to pay a construction worker for additional deaths in their occupation.
Milken entered into the level of wealth in which he had the ability to influence the rules. He did not rise to that occasion. The book "Dean of Thieves" talks a bit about the Milken/Boesky miliue.
The thing you have to get here: in any criminal investigation of a wealthy person in the US, _everything_ is weighted _heavily_ in favor of the defendent. Now, the real crime of folks like Milken-and for that matter Martha Stewart, may be being jerks. Well, my response to that: if you want to be a jerk, don't accumulate so much money without learning some manners-and wise up and learn you _will_ be held to a higher standard and do some things that defend your position.
Yes, I know Milken funded a lot of things like various cell phone networks etc. I tend to think that junk bonds were a bad instrument for doing that-which tended to hide various aspects of the risk involved. I just don't see that the existance of Milken made any positive effect in my life-or those I care about. Milken has _pleanty_ of money with which to plead his case-and has done so very effectively. I remain unconvinced.
Shuttleworth has been funding the The School Tool Project to create better educational infrastructure. This is something that has the potential to significantly decrease operational costs for public schools in a variety of countries.
I think you are missing the entirity of the Milken operation. Insider trading was the charge they could pin on him-but that was like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion. Milken and his gang had their fingers in a lot of pies.
What I dislike here is the double standard. Basically we have corporations _whining_ because they can't figure out how to hire the right folks to protect their networkers(or are too cheap to do so). On the other hand, we have CEO's of major corporations running places like Enron and Anderson that are essentially criminal organizations--and getting a complete slap on the wrist. Look at Ken Lay, the worldcom CEO, Milken. These folks all get the best justice money can buy-the type of service the average hacker just can't afford. The damage a crooked CEO can do at the helm of a major corporation makes what hackers do _pale_ by comparison. I don't see hackers leading the US into a pointless war in which thousands of young americans die or are permanently disabled to protect oil interests. I don't see hackers promoting products like thimerosal that may be causing permanent disability in children(or buying crooked politicians to get preferential legislation). I don't see hackers getting a corrupt president elected by vote fraud to refuse to enforce immigration law so corporations can make more money.
If the corporate and governmental leaders want rule of law-they had better start by holding themselves accountable. Is is the corporate and governmental leaders that have created this state where the law is not taken seriously because they have exempted themselves from it.
However, L-1 visas were substantially expanded during this period--and there are various ways to use L-1 workers for the same purpose as H-1b workers. Also, a substantial number of H-1b workers are and were exempt from that cap. Also the 1998-2002 expansion was _so_ huge that it created a huge backlog.
It goes way beyond welfare dollars. Many professions in the US earn substantially more than their counterparts in other countries-even accounting for the differences in cost of living. That _was_ the case for programmers at one point-but H-1b/L-1 have largely changed that.
Also, social security is an especially good deal for someone that comes in and only works a few years in the US system.
Its a little trickier than that. US citizenship has _real_ value in the world scence. That means that lots of folks are willing to do unpleasant work to get a shot at US citizenship/permanent residency. Right now, the ways to do that are:
1) become an H-1b/L-1 IT worker
2) join the US military
3) become an a working illegal alien-and bide your time until the next amnesty.
Naked at Noon is a book by Krispin Sullivan on the importance of vitamin D. She goes into some detail on how to supplement with Vitamin D-which is fairly tricky.
Read the letter. The GOP congressment chose to ignore Bussard-they'd rather spend _trillions_ protecting Middle Eastern oil supplies(from which they get a cut). Democrats would rather fail that use market incentives. The real looser here: the American people.
5% unemployment among skilled professionals is still dang high by historical standards. Oregon has recently had some of the highest unemployment in the US-and it was largely tech driven. A lot of skilled folks moved out of the area-or found the employment situation to be an enormous, life-destroying personal crisis.
Just FYI, I've _done_ your job of technical recruiting for a startup company-I had a very successful track record of recuiting when there really was a serious shortage of good developers. You just plain don't get good people by not empathizing with their situation-and your post shows an outstanding lack of empathy.
Frankly, I expect your company will be in serious problems in a few years.
>1. We were talking about jobs in non-profit >educational institutions. There are not >corporate-sponsored in any way. I suggest you look at who sits on their boards-and who provides much of their funding-and the political support for their governmental funding. The big factor though is that they largely compete for a similar skill set with the corporate world-who generally have more money.
>2. "Once an occupation gets special immigration >status". There is no such status in immigration >law. There is no such status recognised by the >Department of Labor. Please cite the relevant >Federal Register or statute. H-1b visas are contingent on specific types of employment-about half of which are IT related. The visas are contingent upon maintaining employment in that field-and with a particular employer.
>3. These wages are not "artificially lowered". I >suggest you pay more than cursory attention to >the Dept of Labor's job classifactions and wage >analysis, and how those figures are arrived at. >Short version : prevailing wage is based off two >things - job classification (per DOL >specifications) and what American citizens are >paid to do those jobs in that region. It is >specifically designed to avoid non-immigrant >workers from being able to depress the labor >market. When you grant upwards of 463,000 work visas in a profession with 3,000,000 US workers, you can't help but to affect markets. I suggest you consider the work of George Borjas at Harvard. I've seen the work the Fed submitted on this topic-it was _deeply_ flawed and lacking in the most basic intellectual integrity.
>The result of this is that there's lots of folks >in the US on H1b who are now trying to find other >jobs to keep status, and are being declined. They >are returning to their home countries. The total >number of H1b holders in the US has been steadily >declining over the past 3 years. Yes, and about 50% of them are getting green cards-that they wouldn't have gotten without their H-1b visas-and many of the rest are using other mechanisms like L-1 visas to continue to work in the US.
>It's fine if you want to blame everything on >those damn immigrants, but please don't delude >yourself into thinking your belief is either >rational or based on fact. Your sources are extremely biased and not at all representative of the work being done in this area. Also, I'm not blaming immigrants. It wasn't immigrants that paid congressmen hundreds of millions of dollars to produce an extremely biased piece of legislation. It wasn't immigrants who sold their office. Those are the folks that deserve the extreme punishment here. I genuinely hope that the former H-1b holders are treated fairly if/when this situation is resolved-and that the corporate interests and corrupt politicians involved here beat the brunt of the punishment involved.
Once an occupation gets special immigration status, US citizens have _ever_ incentive to vacate that occupation-which is what they've been doing in academia and these research jobs. These used to be done largely by Americans-and would again if wages weren't artificially lowered by corporate sponsored immigration practives.
RFA. Regardless of what is happening in the software industry, there are a lot of folks that want US green cards. If green cards were available at auction the cost would be substantial. An H-1b visa confers about a 50-50 shot at a green card. Basically these workers are willing to put in a substantial amount of unpaid labor to get the immigration status they want-which puts local talent at a comparative disadvantage. You'll _never_ develop a local talent pool on those terms-companies find it much easier to pay in immigration rights that cost them little than to pay in cash.
As I said it isn't 30K visa per year-it is 30K plus the H-1b visas that don't com under quota(figure another 10K or so) _plus_ the various L-1 visas. There are also a substantial-and growing number of L-1 visa holders. A few years ago, the number of L-1 visas issued was over 55,000-but that number has gone up as H-1b visas are less available. Plus we have H-1b workers that are converting to green cards-and folks that use chain migration practicess to work in IT. Bottom line, immigration is a bigger issue for US IT workers than outsourcing and the business cycle combined.
The prevailing wage laws are useless-and rarely enforced. The corporate stooge in the presidency is refusing to enforce _any_ immigration laws against employers because it would trouble his donors.
I discussed this in detail in this article. The combination of offshoring, issues with the business cycle and corporate sponsored immigration policy is deadly. Just in case you thought the H-1b issue was over, there are _still_ over 65,000 visas per year being issued(the ones at major universities are exempt from the cap)-about half of which are for IT workers. On top of that there are L-1 visas that are specified in trade agreements like the recent Singapore Chile Free Trade Act that lock the US into substantial numbers of L-1 visas. An industry that is creating no jobs for Americans has no need for these visas.
You also have stuff like Rhino that makes Javascript a _compiled_ language. You also have a.NET Jscript compiler. So, Javascript _can_ be a compiled language.
Automated Fabrication
on
Fab
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
A few years I read Automated Fabrication by Marshall Burns. The point that he made was that these machines are very similar to fax machines in the early 60's-they exist, and are being used, but are clunky and unreliable compared to where they will be in a few decades.
I'm the parent of two young children. Frankly, a lot of the more recent stuff from Disney or for that matter Dreamworks strikes me as a bit offensive compared to the stuff from Ghibli. It isn't just a question of artistry-it is a question of values.
We have a lot of unemployed techies in the US and UK-a situation created by predatory, corporate sponsored immigration policies like H-1b/L-1(in the US). Prolonged unemployment for folks that have seriously devoted themselves to their career is very disturbing-and many such individuals will adopt radically different belief systems-some of which will be violent.
I wrote about this phenomena in an article on ecoterrorism I wrote in 2003. The idiotic "leaders" that have created this situation-and are like Bush so arrogant as to taunt folks are to blame for this situation. If we have any degree of economic upturn, I expect to see significantly more reactions of this type.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they still employ 150,000 folks. However, the company is fundamentally addicted to H-1b/L-1 visas and has a lackluster recent record at serious technical innovation. For a company like HP to seriously thrive, they _must_ innovate. At this point, HP is more the preserve of bean counters than inventors.
Not necessarily in a world in which the US currency is the international currency of reserve. Prices get so distorted by trade relationships that the only folks in the US that really make it are:
1) folks with property
2) folks in positions protected from both trade and immigration.
I favor the death penalty-but I agree the higher issue:
Whatever society's stiffest penalty is, it should be applied to extreme corporate crime.
I honestly think that executing folks like Ken Lay, Fastrow and Bernie Ebbers would do wonders for the US.
Personally, I would have executed Ebers, Rigas and Ken Lay--I think their penalties were far too lax. China has executed folks for fraud at the level of $150,000--which is about the level of extra wages it has historically taken to pay a construction worker for additional deaths in their occupation.
Milken entered into the level of wealth in which he had the ability to influence the rules. He did not rise to that occasion. The book "Dean of Thieves" talks a bit about the Milken/Boesky miliue.
The thing you have to get here: in any criminal investigation of a wealthy person in the US, _everything_ is weighted _heavily_ in favor of the defendent. Now, the real crime of folks like Milken-and for that matter Martha Stewart, may be being jerks. Well, my response to that: if you want to be a jerk, don't accumulate so much money without learning some manners-and wise up and learn you _will_ be held to a higher standard and do some things that defend your position.
Yes, I know Milken funded a lot of things like various cell phone networks etc. I tend to think that junk bonds were a bad instrument for doing that-which tended to hide various aspects of the risk involved. I just don't see that the existance of Milken made any positive effect in my life-or those I care about. Milken has _pleanty_ of money with which to plead his case-and has done so very effectively. I remain unconvinced.
Shuttleworth has been funding the The School Tool Project to create better educational infrastructure. This is something that has the potential to significantly decrease operational costs for public schools in a variety of countries.
I think you are missing the entirity of the Milken operation. Insider trading was the charge they could pin on him-but that was like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion. Milken and his gang had their fingers in a lot of pies.
What I dislike here is the double standard. Basically we have corporations _whining_ because they can't figure out how to hire the right folks to protect their networkers(or are too cheap to do so). On the other hand, we have CEO's of major corporations running places like Enron and Anderson that are essentially criminal organizations--and getting a complete slap on the wrist. Look at Ken Lay, the worldcom CEO, Milken. These folks all get the best justice money can buy-the type of service the average hacker just can't afford. The damage a crooked CEO can do at the helm of a major corporation makes what hackers do _pale_ by comparison. I don't see hackers leading the US into a pointless war in which thousands of young americans die or are permanently disabled to protect oil interests. I don't see hackers promoting products like thimerosal that may be causing permanent disability in children(or buying crooked politicians to get preferential legislation). I don't see hackers getting a corrupt president elected by vote fraud to refuse to enforce immigration law so corporations can make more money.
If the corporate and governmental leaders want rule of law-they had better start by holding themselves accountable. Is is the corporate and governmental leaders that have created this state where the law is not taken seriously because they have exempted themselves from it.
However, L-1 visas were substantially expanded during this period--and there are various ways to use L-1 workers for the same purpose as H-1b workers. Also, a substantial number of H-1b workers are and were exempt from that cap. Also the 1998-2002 expansion was _so_ huge that it created a huge backlog.
Here's the thing: if you have some professions that are protected and some that aren't:
citizens gravitate towards those that are.
It goes way beyond welfare dollars. Many professions in the US earn substantially more than their counterparts in other countries-even accounting for the differences in cost of living. That _was_ the case for programmers at one point-but H-1b/L-1 have largely changed that.
Also, social security is an especially good deal for someone that comes in and only works a few years in the US system.
Its a little trickier than that. US citizenship has _real_ value in the world scence. That means that lots of folks are willing to do unpleasant work to get a shot at US citizenship/permanent residency. Right now, the ways to do that are:
1) become an H-1b/L-1 IT worker
2) join the US military
3) become an a working illegal alien-and bide your time until the next amnesty.
1) How many of these ads are actually real?
2) What do these jobs mean in terms of disposable income?
Naked at Noon is a book by Krispin Sullivan on the importance of vitamin D. She goes into some detail on how to supplement with Vitamin D-which is fairly tricky.
There is _no_ evidence that Bussard _ever_ tried to use this for anything not related to making Fusion happen.
Read the letter. The GOP congressment chose to ignore Bussard-they'd rather spend _trillions_ protecting Middle Eastern oil supplies(from which they get a cut). Democrats would rather fail that use market incentives. The real looser here: the American people.
5% unemployment among skilled professionals is still dang high by historical standards. Oregon has recently had some of the highest unemployment in the US-and it was largely tech driven. A lot of skilled folks moved out of the area-or found the employment situation to be an enormous, life-destroying personal crisis.
Just FYI, I've _done_ your job of technical recruiting for a startup company-I had a very successful track record of recuiting when there really was a serious shortage of good developers. You just plain don't get good people by not empathizing with their situation-and your post shows an outstanding lack of empathy.
Frankly, I expect your company will be in serious problems in a few years.
>1. We were talking about jobs in non-profit >educational institutions. There are not >corporate-sponsored in any way.
I suggest you look at who sits on their boards-and who provides much of their funding-and the political support for their governmental funding. The big factor though is that they largely compete for a similar skill set with the corporate world-who generally have more money.
>2. "Once an occupation gets special immigration >status". There is no such status in immigration >law. There is no such status recognised by the >Department of Labor. Please cite the relevant >Federal Register or statute.
H-1b visas are contingent on specific types of employment-about half of which are IT related. The visas are contingent upon maintaining employment in that field-and with a particular employer.
>3. These wages are not "artificially lowered". I >suggest you pay more than cursory attention to >the Dept of Labor's job classifactions and wage >analysis, and how those figures are arrived at. >Short version : prevailing wage is based off two >things - job classification (per DOL >specifications) and what American citizens are >paid to do those jobs in that region. It is >specifically designed to avoid non-immigrant >workers from being able to depress the labor >market.
When you grant upwards of 463,000 work visas in a profession with 3,000,000 US workers, you can't help but to affect markets. I suggest you consider the work of George Borjas at Harvard. I've seen the work the Fed submitted on this topic-it was _deeply_ flawed and lacking in the most basic intellectual integrity.
>The result of this is that there's lots of folks >in the US on H1b who are now trying to find other >jobs to keep status, and are being declined. They >are returning to their home countries. The total >number of H1b holders in the US has been steadily >declining over the past 3 years.
Yes, and about 50% of them are getting green cards-that they wouldn't have gotten without their H-1b visas-and many of the rest are using other mechanisms like L-1 visas to continue to work in the US.
>It's fine if you want to blame everything on >those damn immigrants, but please don't delude >yourself into thinking your belief is either >rational or based on fact.
Your sources are extremely biased and not at all representative of the work being done in this area. Also, I'm not blaming immigrants. It wasn't immigrants that paid congressmen hundreds of millions of dollars to produce an extremely biased piece of legislation. It wasn't immigrants who sold their office. Those are the folks that deserve the extreme punishment here. I genuinely hope that the former H-1b holders are treated fairly if/when this situation is resolved-and that the corporate interests and corrupt politicians involved here beat the brunt of the punishment involved.
Once an occupation gets special immigration status, US citizens have _ever_ incentive to vacate that occupation-which is what they've been doing in academia and these research jobs. These used to be done largely by Americans-and would again if wages weren't artificially lowered by corporate sponsored immigration practives.
As I said it isn't 30K visa per year-it is 30K plus the H-1b visas that don't com under quota(figure another 10K or so) _plus_ the various L-1 visas. There are also a substantial-and growing number of L-1 visa holders. A few years ago, the number of L-1 visas issued was over 55,000-but that number has gone up as H-1b visas are less available. Plus we have H-1b workers that are converting to green cards-and folks that use chain migration practicess to work in IT. Bottom line, immigration is a bigger issue for US IT workers than outsourcing and the business cycle combined.
The prevailing wage laws are useless-and rarely enforced. The corporate stooge in the presidency is refusing to enforce _any_ immigration laws against employers because it would trouble his donors.
I discussed this in detail in this article. The combination of offshoring, issues with the business cycle and corporate sponsored immigration policy is deadly. Just in case you thought the H-1b issue was over, there are _still_ over 65,000 visas per year being issued(the ones at major universities are exempt from the cap)-about half of which are for IT workers. On top of that there are L-1 visas that are specified in trade agreements like the recent Singapore Chile Free Trade Act that lock the US into substantial numbers of L-1 visas. An industry that is creating no jobs for Americans has no need for these visas.
You also have stuff like Rhino that makes Javascript a _compiled_ language. You also have a .NET Jscript compiler. So, Javascript _can_ be a compiled language.
A few years I read Automated Fabrication by Marshall Burns. The point that he made was that these machines are very similar to fax machines in the early 60's-they exist, and are being used, but are clunky and unreliable compared to where they will be in a few decades.
I'm the parent of two young children. Frankly, a lot of the more recent stuff from Disney or for that matter Dreamworks strikes me as a bit offensive compared to the stuff from Ghibli. It isn't just a question of artistry-it is a question of values.
We have a lot of unemployed techies in the US and UK-a situation created by predatory, corporate sponsored immigration policies like H-1b/L-1(in the US). Prolonged unemployment for folks that have seriously devoted themselves to their career is very disturbing-and many such individuals will adopt radically different belief systems-some of which will be violent.
I wrote about this phenomena in an
article on ecoterrorism I wrote in 2003. The idiotic "leaders" that have created this situation-and are like Bush so arrogant as to taunt folks are to blame for this situation. If we have any degree of economic upturn, I expect to see significantly more reactions of this type.