If somebody were to tell me he/she was an ER nurse, or physical therapist, or 747 pilot; I have a good idea of what that person does day-in and day-out. I also have a good idea of that person's training.
But if somebody tells me that he/she has been working as a sysadmin, I really have no idea. Job titles in IT have always been meaningless. Some sysadmins work as helpdesk, some work as developers, some mainly support particular products, some manage an installation, there is really just no telling. Also, there is no standard training credentials for admins. The same is, pretty much, true of developers.
If an admin tells me that he/she supported windows and unix, does that mean 90% windows, and 10% unix, or the other way around?
Because IT workers are judged, almost exclusively, by their experience in an arbitrary list of products and technologies; and everybody has a different mix of products and technologies, the entire career field (for lack of better term) seems to work on system of pure slop. I wonder if it could be changed?
Two reasons, one is that some of us would like to have a chance of not being completely crushed during a high speed collision with some SUV.
I have been driving econo-boxes for 25 years. I have never been crushed by a SUV.
And second, occasionally you do need some passenger or cargo space, though since most households own at least two cars, you should be able to make do with a subcompact like a CRX plus a larger wagon or hatchback.
Next time you're stuck in traffic, look around - how many cars are really full? How many cars have nothing but one passenger.
Even after revising the 1985-2007 mpg estimates to make them comparable to the new 2008 mpg estimates, the 1989 Honda CRX-HF is rated at 41 city and 50 highway mpg.
After 20 years of technological innovation, and four years of sky-rocketing fuel costs, shouldn't a new car model get at least 41/50 mpg before that car is considered to be ecologically friendly? Yet greencar.com features the 2008 Nissan Rouge (22 city/27 highway mpg) as a "Top 2008 Fuel Economy Faves." The 2008 Nissan Rouge also has a sticker price of $19,250.
Seems to me that true economy cars been pulled from the market, and replaces with the new hybrids. Major car manufacturers want us to think that 30+ mpg is something miraculous, and requires an expensive, heavy, complicated, hard-to-maintain, hybrid.
In my opinion there is more to ecological friendliness than just mpg (although the present line-up fails at even that). Hybrids have huge batteries, and disposing of those batteries is never ecologically friendly. Then there is the ecological impact of manufacturing and shipping these huge, heavy, vehicles. Furthermore, recent road tests carried out by Auto Express show that hybrids often have worse CO2 emissions than standard autos.
To have a real impact on fuel consumption, and emissions, new vehicles need to be affordable. Hybrids are about the most expensive vehicles on the market. How can hybrids have a positive effect of the environment, if practically nobody can afford the beasts? Even if you can afford the steep sticker price, what about the cost of maintenance? Hybrids have two engines, and use a complicated system to charge their huge batteries. I hate to even think about the cost of maintenance and repair.
It used to be common that most fuel efficient cars also had the lowest sticker price, and lowest maintenance costs. The cars where simply smaller, lighter, and required more manual operations. With smaller, cheaper, parts, and a less complicated design, the cars were cheaper to maintain. When I bought my 1992 Ford Festiva, the 30/37 mpg rating was the least of my criteria, I was also concerned with sticker price, and maintenance costs.
Why can't we do as well now, as we did 16 to 35 years ago?
Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybridso A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7387432.stm
Hot Cars Best Gas Milage Welcome to hi-mpg.org. We are automotive enthusiasts and travel aficionados who also love the environment. We appreciate both form and function, all while striving to leave future generations a legacy of clean air, scenic grandeur and a continuum of natural resources. In addition: the freedom to drive. http://hi-mpg.org/best-cars-with-high-gas-mileage.phtml
Interesting article on businessweek.com. Ford is selling 65mpg cars in Europe, but not the US.
"Americans see hybrids as the darling," says Global Insight auto analyst Philip Gott, "and diesel as old-tech."
According to the article, the reason diesel fuel is more expensive in the US: "Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline."
Professional organization also provide higher incomes, stable work environments, and fair working conditions. Doctors don't make house calls anymore - there is a reason for that.
The medical profession will never devistated from a flood a guest workers - there is a reason for that as well.
Maybe IT workers should organize, not unionize
on
Should IT Unionize?
·
· Score: 1
Doctors don't belong to unions, but they have the very powerful AMA to protect their interests. Lawyers have a similar deal. It seems to me that if you don't organize, then there is nothing to keep the MNCs from stomping you into the ground.
Governments will want msft anyway, because msft will bribe them. So the ISO approval of OOXML gives the governments a good excuse. If goverments want msft "standards" then msft wins. What we think about ISO does not mean a damn thing.
Fuel prices quadrupled in the 1970s. Everybody was in a big panic about the oil shortage. For a short time, there was a big buzz about windmills and solar panels. Then Americans got over it, and went right back to the gaz-guzzlers.
Msie, apparently, has a firefox like drop-down box of search engines, and wikipedia, etc. But the msie drop-down menu does not include google. Ouuu what a burn! Also, if you highlight a street address, msie will take you to msft maps, not google maps.
Just one more reason to use firefox instead of msie. BTW: according to the same article, firefox installed base is up 6% to 19% while msie fell 6% to 73% of the installed base, or something like that.
As I understand it, COBOL development is very often done by 20-something year old guest workers, and offshore workers. These guys do not study COBOL in college, they learn it on the job.
I am surprised there is not an object-oriented extension to the bash shell.
It seems to me that languages often start out with a simple purpose, but as time goes on, the developers of the language try to make that language "all things to all people."
I don't think perl was originally intended to be an object-oriented application language. I think it was designed as more of a UNIX shell on steroids.
I wonder if tacked on object-oriented is a good idea in any language?
Today, you can do sysadmin stuff with php at the cli, but is it a good idea?
That means the h1b program does not bring in the best and brightest, it's just about cheap labor. Americans could do the same jobs, and the h1b program is just a scam that costs Americans their jobs. Correct?
>>Bringing more people into an economy grows that economy, opening up new job possibilities and business opportunities
Dead wrong. I know this for an irrefutable fact. I was there. Besides, look at the skyrocketing unemployment in the USA, while India, and China, are growing explosively. People, right now, are training their h1b replacements - you can not deny this.
The economy today is not the same as it was 200 years ago. The USA can not possibly absorb all the people who want to immigrate here. And the USA can not withstand the contiued job loses, due to so-called "guest workers."
Okay, let's take this open boarders idea to it logical conclusion.
No reason to stop at IT workers, what about accountants, actuaries, engineers, scientists, truck drivers, construction workers, post office workers, and so on. What about medical jobs? And why not government jobs, such as teachers or fire fighters. In fact, why not Hispanic police officers who start out on a work visa, then become citizens. I think there is a program that gives citizenship to illegals who agree to serve in the military - expand that program.
Add it all up, and you will probably find that over 75% of the jobs in the USA can be done by offshore workers. But let's conservatively estimate 50%, I think that is twice the unemployment rate that existed at the peak of the great depression.
Do you know what 50% unemployment would mean? Massive foreclosures, bankruptcies, bank failures. I mean on a scale that would make today's problems seem like a tea party. The economic disasters would then perpetuate themselves: there would be a run on banks, governments would not be able to pay unemployment benefits, it would go on and on.
So, what open boarders would basically mean is the complete destruction of the US economy. That is absolutely no exaggeration.
Sound impossible? It isn't. The USA only has about 5% of the world's population. A lot of people, in a lot of other countries would like to work here. With the USA debt and everything else, this would easily be enough to completely, and permanently destroy the the US economy.
So decide for yourself whether such open boarders are a good idea.
BTW: other countries do not have open boarders. The US has the generous immigration policies in the developed world.
Nice try bozo. But any idiot can see that you are just playing the race card. My opinion of the h1b program has absolutely nothing what-so-ever to do with race. The h1b is a seriously bad program, and it is entirely un-needed.
Please note, there are about a dozen other other work visa programs.
Reality: If that were true then the typical H1-B would a Nobel prize winning scientist. The truth is, the typical H1-B is an average student, hired right out of college with only a four year degree. The typical H1-B is no more qualified than the US graduates who are not getting jobs. The H1-Bs are just cheaper. And because of the lottery nature of the H1-B process, employers do not even know who they are getting. So how do employers know that they are getting the best and brightest?
Also, isn't it funny that almost all of the "best and brightest" come from countries where people earn as little as $1 a day? If it's really about the "best and brightest" then why aren't there more European H1-Bs?
---
Myth: H1-Bs are needed because of the critical shortage of US technology workers
Reality: Serious academic studies clearly indicate that skills shortage is a myth.
> These studies done at Duke aren't alone in their assessment that there is in fact no skills shortage. They're backed up by other studies conducted by RAND Corporation, The Urban Institute and Stanford University, among others, all of which settle upon the same conclusion: There is no shortage of educated IT workers.
Myth: H1-Bs do compete unfairly, because H1-Bs are paid the prevailing wage
Reality:
> According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) as the measurement of U.S. wages, and the H-1B LCA disclosure data to measure H-1B wages, 90% of H-1B employers' prevailing wage claims for programmers were below the median U.S. wage for that occupation and location, with 62% of them falling in the bottom 25th percentile of U.S. wages, said Miano [founder of the Programmer's Guild].
> Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology (currently on leave) and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed to USCIS's most recent report to Congress, which shows that the medium wage in 2005 for new H-1B computing professionals was just $50,000 -- even lower than the entry-level wages that a newly graduated tech worker with a bachelor's degree and no experience would command.
According to the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service's (USCIS) annual report to Congress in 2005, the aggregate data for computing professionals lend support to the argument that the practice of paying H-1Bs below-market wages is quite common.
H1-Bs are hired at four different skill levels, "4" being the highest. But most H1-Bs are hired for the lowest "1" level jobs - regardless of what kind of work the H1-Bs actually do.
---
Myth: In the USA enrollment in technical disciplines is declining. Proof the USA needs to hire more foreign workers
Reality: This myth is designed to confuse cause and effect. Employers are not forced to hire offshore because enrollment is down. Rather, enrollment is down because of aggressive offshoring by employers. But even with enrollments down, there are still more than enough US workers.
> Due to both outsourcing and insourcing, many young people are concluding that technology is a bad place to invest their time," said Mark Thoma, a professor of economics at the University of Oregon in Eugene.
Slashdot Mirror
If somebody were to tell me he/she was an ER nurse, or physical therapist, or 747 pilot; I have a good idea of what that person does day-in and day-out. I also have a good idea of that person's training.
But if somebody tells me that he/she has been working as a sysadmin, I really have no idea. Job titles in IT have always been meaningless. Some sysadmins work as helpdesk, some work as developers, some mainly support particular products, some manage an installation, there is really just no telling. Also, there is no standard training credentials for admins. The same is, pretty much, true of developers.
If an admin tells me that he/she supported windows and unix, does that mean 90% windows, and 10% unix, or the other way around?
Because IT workers are judged, almost exclusively, by their experience in an arbitrary list of products and technologies; and everybody has a different mix of products and technologies, the entire career field (for lack of better term) seems to work on system of pure slop. I wonder if it could be changed?
I have been driving econo-boxes for 25 years. I have never been crushed by a SUV.
Next time you're stuck in traffic, look around - how many cars are really full? How many cars have nothing but one passenger.
Even after revising the 1985-2007 mpg estimates to make them comparable to the new 2008 mpg estimates, the 1989 Honda CRX-HF is rated at 41 city and 50 highway mpg.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/5263.shtml
After 20 years of technological innovation, and four years of sky-rocketing fuel costs, shouldn't a new car model get at least 41/50 mpg before that car is considered to be ecologically friendly? Yet greencar.com features the 2008 Nissan Rouge (22 city/27 highway mpg) as a "Top 2008 Fuel Economy Faves." The 2008 Nissan Rouge also has a sticker price of $19,250.
http://www.greencar.com/features/fuel-economy/
Seems to me that true economy cars been pulled from the market, and replaces with the new hybrids. Major car manufacturers want us to think that 30+ mpg is something miraculous, and requires an expensive, heavy, complicated, hard-to-maintain, hybrid.
In my opinion there is more to ecological friendliness than just mpg (although the present line-up fails at even that). Hybrids have huge batteries, and disposing of those batteries is never ecologically friendly. Then there is the ecological impact of manufacturing and shipping these huge, heavy, vehicles. Furthermore, recent road tests carried out by Auto Express show that hybrids often have worse CO2 emissions than standard autos.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3958376.ece
To have a real impact on fuel consumption, and emissions, new vehicles need to be affordable. Hybrids are about the most expensive vehicles on the market. How can hybrids have a positive effect of the environment, if practically nobody can afford the beasts? Even if you can afford the steep sticker price, what about the cost of maintenance? Hybrids have two engines, and use a complicated system to charge their huge batteries. I hate to even think about the cost of maintenance and repair.
It used to be common that most fuel efficient cars also had the lowest sticker price, and lowest maintenance costs. The cars where simply smaller, lighter, and required more manual operations. With smaller, cheaper, parts, and a less complicated design, the cars were cheaper to maintain. When I bought my 1992 Ford Festiva, the 30/37 mpg rating was the least of my criteria, I was also concerned with sticker price, and maintenance costs.
Why can't we do as well now, as we did 16 to 35 years ago?
1973 Honda Civic rated 35/40 mpg
1986 VW Golf Diesel rated 31/40 mpg *
1989 Geo Metro rated 43/51 mpg
1989 Honda CRX-HF rated 41/50 mpg
1992 Ford Festiva rated 30/37 mpg
* I got over 50mpg driving from Florida to New Jersey, while running the air conditioner.
Related:
57 mpg? That's so 20 years ago
Want to drive a cheap car that gets eye-popping mileage? In 1987 you could - and it wasn't even a hybrid.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/17/autos/honda_civic_hf/index.htm
Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybridso
A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7387432.stm
Hot Cars Best Gas Milage
Welcome to hi-mpg.org. We are automotive enthusiasts and travel aficionados who also love the environment. We appreciate both form and function, all while striving to leave future generations a legacy of clean air, scenic grandeur and a continuum of natural resources. In addition: the freedom to drive.
http://hi-mpg.org/best-cars-with-high-gas-mileage.phtml
Interesting article on businessweek.com. Ford is selling 65mpg cars in Europe, but not the US.
"Americans see hybrids as the darling," says Global Insight auto analyst Philip Gott, "and diesel as old-tech."
According to the article, the reason diesel fuel is more expensive in the US: "Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_37/b4099060491065.htm?ch...
Professional organization also provide higher incomes, stable work environments, and fair working conditions. Doctors don't make house calls anymore - there is a reason for that.
The medical profession will never devistated from a flood a guest workers - there is a reason for that as well.
Doctors don't belong to unions, but they have the very powerful AMA to protect their interests. Lawyers have a similar deal. It seems to me that if you don't organize, then there is nothing to keep the MNCs from stomping you into the ground.
Governments will want msft anyway, because msft will bribe them. So the ISO approval of OOXML gives the governments a good excuse. If goverments want msft "standards" then msft wins. What we think about ISO does not mean a damn thing.
ISO did not have to go along with MS's scam. ISO could have done the right thing. MS did not hurt ISO, ISO did it to themselves.
There is this, also emoticons (sic?), what else?
Fuel prices quadrupled in the 1970s. Everybody was in a big panic about the oil shortage. For a short time, there was a big buzz about windmills and solar panels. Then Americans got over it, and went right back to the gaz-guzzlers.
Msie, apparently, has a firefox like drop-down box of search engines, and wikipedia, etc. But the msie drop-down menu does not include google. Ouuu what a burn! Also, if you highlight a street address, msie will take you to msft maps, not google maps.
Just one more reason to use firefox instead of msie. BTW: according to the same article, firefox installed base is up 6% to 19% while msie fell 6% to 73% of the installed base, or something like that.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/08/27/microsoft-google-browsers-cx_vmb_0827ie.html?feed=rss_technology
> Really? You believe that a company be forced to support its product on hardware it was never intended to run on?
This has nothing to do with forcing Apple to support anything. Rather, it is just about allowing people to own what they buy.
That is probably the biggest issue facing tech workers.
I know where McCain stands. McCain wants to rip the lid off any kind of a guest worker cap.
I get the idea that Obama wants to do the same, but Obama is not as brazen about it.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Infosec is also less likely to be taken over by offshore guest workers. Or, at least, I would think so.
So, unlike every other US IT worker, you won't be training your replacement within two years. I guess that's something to be happy about.
As I understand it, COBOL development is very often done by 20-something year old guest workers, and offshore workers. These guys do not study COBOL in college, they learn it on the job.
I am surprised there is not an object-oriented extension to the bash shell.
It seems to me that languages often start out with a simple purpose, but as time goes on, the developers of the language try to make that language "all things to all people."
I don't think perl was originally intended to be an object-oriented application language. I think it was designed as more of a UNIX shell on steroids.
I wonder if tacked on object-oriented is a good idea in any language?
Today, you can do sysadmin stuff with php at the cli, but is it a good idea?
New O'Reily book: "Python for Unix and Linux System Administration" should be out September 2, 2008.
http://www.amazon.com/Python-Unix-Linux-System-Administration/dp/0596515820/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219235379&sr=8-1
Just thought I'd mention it.
It seems to me, that for the most part, these technologies make websites slow, annoying, buggy, and browser incompatible.
The primary purpose of these technologies seems to be either advertisements, or looky-what-I-can-do.
That means the h1b program does not bring in the best and brightest, it's just about cheap labor. Americans could do the same jobs, and the h1b program is just a scam that costs Americans their jobs. Correct?
>>Bringing more people into an economy grows that economy, opening up new job possibilities and business opportunities
Dead wrong. I know this for an irrefutable fact. I was there. Besides, look at the skyrocketing unemployment in the USA, while India, and China, are growing explosively. People, right now, are training their h1b replacements - you can not deny this.
The economy today is not the same as it was 200 years ago. The USA can not possibly absorb all the people who want to immigrate here. And the USA can not withstand the contiued job loses, due to so-called "guest workers."
According this back-door legislation, the shortage of tech workers was so sever, that it constituted a national emergency.
But, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:
August 06, 2008
Almost 50,000 IT positions lost in last 12 months
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/06/Bureau-of-Labor-Statistics-reports-big-drop-in-tech-jobs_1.html
Okay, let's take this open boarders idea to it logical conclusion.
No reason to stop at IT workers, what about accountants, actuaries, engineers, scientists, truck drivers, construction workers, post office workers, and so on. What about medical jobs? And why not government jobs, such as teachers or fire fighters. In fact, why not Hispanic police officers who start out on a work visa, then become citizens. I think there is a program that gives citizenship to illegals who agree to serve in the military - expand that program.
Add it all up, and you will probably find that over 75% of the jobs in the USA can be done by offshore workers. But let's conservatively estimate 50%, I think that is twice the unemployment rate that existed at the peak of the great depression.
Do you know what 50% unemployment would mean? Massive foreclosures, bankruptcies, bank failures. I mean on a scale that would make today's problems seem like a tea party. The economic disasters would then perpetuate themselves: there would be a run on banks, governments would not be able to pay unemployment benefits, it would go on and on.
So, what open boarders would basically mean is the complete destruction of the US economy. That is absolutely no exaggeration.
Sound impossible? It isn't. The USA only has about 5% of the world's population. A lot of people, in a lot of other countries would like to work here. With the USA debt and everything else, this would easily be enough to completely, and permanently destroy the the US economy.
So decide for yourself whether such open boarders are a good idea.
BTW: other countries do not have open boarders. The US has the generous immigration policies in the developed world.
Nice try bozo. But any idiot can see that you are just playing the race card. My opinion of the h1b program has absolutely nothing what-so-ever to do with race. The h1b is a seriously bad program, and it is entirely un-needed.
Please note, there are about a dozen other other work visa programs.
> she failed to see how an increased labor supply could result in wage depression for engineers and computer workers.
What about the basic laws of supply and demand?
Myth: H1-Bs are the "best and brightest"
Reality: If that were true then the typical H1-B would a Nobel prize winning scientist. The truth is, the typical H1-B is an average student, hired right out of college with only a four year degree. The typical H1-B is no more qualified than the US graduates who are not getting jobs. The H1-Bs are just cheaper. And because of the lottery nature of the H1-B process, employers do not even know who they are getting. So how do employers know that they are getting the best and brightest?
Also, isn't it funny that almost all of the "best and brightest" come from countries where people earn as little as $1 a day? If it's really about the "best and brightest" then why aren't there more European H1-Bs?
---
Myth: H1-Bs are needed because of the critical shortage of US technology workers
Reality: Serious academic studies clearly indicate that skills shortage is a myth.
> These studies done at Duke aren't alone in their assessment that there is in fact no skills shortage. They're backed up by other studies conducted by RAND Corporation, The Urban Institute and Stanford University, among others, all of which settle upon the same conclusion: There is no shortage of educated IT workers.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1081923#PaperDownload
This according to a well researched article at baselinemag.com:
http://tinyurl.com/yoy2rw
---
Myth: H1-Bs do compete unfairly, because H1-Bs are paid the prevailing wage
Reality:
> According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) as the measurement of U.S. wages, and the H-1B LCA disclosure data to measure H-1B wages, 90% of H-1B employers' prevailing wage claims for programmers were below the median U.S. wage for that occupation and location, with 62% of them falling in the bottom 25th percentile of U.S. wages, said Miano [founder of the Programmer's Guild].
> Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology (currently on leave) and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed to USCIS's most recent report to Congress, which shows that the medium wage in 2005 for new H-1B computing professionals was just $50,000 -- even lower than the entry-level wages that a newly graduated tech worker with a bachelor's degree and no experience would command.
http://tinyurl.com/4bvwyh
According to the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service's (USCIS) annual report to Congress in 2005, the aggregate data for computing professionals lend support to the argument that the practice of paying H-1Bs below-market wages is quite common.
http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp187.html
H1-Bs are hired at four different skill levels, "4" being the highest. But most H1-Bs are hired for the lowest "1" level jobs - regardless of what kind of work the H1-Bs actually do.
---
Myth: In the USA enrollment in technical disciplines is declining. Proof the USA needs to hire more foreign workers
Reality: This myth is designed to confuse cause and effect. Employers are not forced to hire offshore because enrollment is down. Rather, enrollment is down because of aggressive offshoring by employers. But even with enrollments down, there are still more than enough US workers.
> Due to both outsourcing and insourcing, many young people are concluding that technology is a bad place to invest their time," said Mark Thoma, a professor of economics at the University of Oregon in Eugene.
http://tinyurl.com/4bvwyh
---
Myth: Critics of the H1-B program are xenophobic
Reality: This "argument" is nothing but name calling. These allegations are offered without any s