Allowing a reasonable number of well trained foreigners into the US is a very smart idea. Just think about how much it costs the US government to educate a single citizen. People are a cost on society until they are at least 18. Via H1B programs you can get people that another country has paid for to come and contribute.
That is more of an argument against having kids than increasing immigration. Also, a techie's K-12 education will not differ significantly in cost from the rest of the population.
Foreigners have made considerable contributions to technology in the US. The Manhattan project team had large numbers of refugees in it. Important parts of the team that put man on the moon came from the German rocket program. Andy Grove and a number of other high tech pioneers came from outside the US. Bringing in foreigners is smart.
Agreed.
It probably does make some impact on salaries in the short term, but the benefit is that by getting bright people into the US it helps keep the US as the world's leading developer of technology. So I'd argue that the overall effect is positive on salaries. There are, of course, abuses, as there is in any scheme, but overall the program is a good idea.
I've worked with many H-1B's in my career, good bad and intermediate. I do not buy the argument that they are necessarily any better than the "lazy American engineers".
It is interesting to note that a number of European countries, Germany especially, have picked up on the idea that H1B like visas are a good idea. I'm totally annoyed that my home country is notoriously difficult for educated people to emigrate to. Personally, it's one of the US's great strengths and more countries should behave in this way.
Perhaps if that was the case, I wouldn't dislike the H-1B program so much. It should be as easy for me to farm out my skills anywhere in the world, as it is for American companies to import technical talent. Of course, language barriers complicate things for many of us...
---------- lastly... I know this will draw flames from hell -- but have anyone considered that maybe H1B holders actually got better grades in school? There are so many people who think that college is just a place to have fun, drink beer, blah blah, and 2.5 is an acceptable GPA. well -- for most forigner students, unless you get 3.0 / 3.5, your scholarship gets cut and you can't pay for your schooling cuz you have no work permit. so it is quite often that forign students gets better grades than domestic students because they have no choice. if you were an employer, say both are "qualified" but one has a 1/2 point GPA advantage in core curriculum, who are you goint to choose? ----------
I've worked with H-1B workers and have seen varying qualities of work. Maybe they all have higher GPA's, but that does not reflect in the job performance.
Perhaps if the content faction saw enough of these, they wouldn't be trying so hard to outlaw computers as anything more than glorified TVs.
I, (insert name here), promise not to knowingly copy, transmit, view, or listen to any content produced or distributed by RIAA or MPAA companies on any computers I own or use.
Now I can use my computer exactly as I did before without some corporate lawyer breathing down my neck.
Notice I didn't use the verb enjoy, since that wouldn't apply to most of this content anyways.
"It hurts everyone by diminishing the incentive to invest in the creation of music...."
They invest in the creation of music ?
The hearing comes against a backdrop of frustration over the ongoing problem of piracy within the music industry. The RIAA said the number of arrests and indictments for music piracy are up 113 percent from 2000 to 2001; meanwhile, guilty pleas and convictions were up 203 percent and sight seizures up 170 percent for that same period.
Does this mean they'll spend the new IP tax on better lawyers for "piracy" defendants ? That should clear the problem right up.
Looks like it was a very interesting conference. One theme which especially disturbed me was the public/private partnerships involved (see the BCC section). A couple of scary examples from Florida would be its attempt to mine out its DMV records to marketers, and the use of subcontractors to "scrub" the voter roles for convicted felons (sorry, I have no specifics).
And now for the quote:
He was scathing about the claims of vendors of 100% accuracy, and of the ease with which John Cleese, in drag, had no difficulty getting through a facial recognition checkpoint.
Does anybody remember a Lyndon LaRouche infomercial about 10 years ago ? This promised to have manned space flight to Mars within about 10 years. I don't remember all the details, but the first step was to declare a national emergency, and suspend the constitution.
Anyways, it looks like John Ashcroft has been more successful than LL.
A particulary scary note in the EFF article was all the provisions labelled DOES NOT SUNSET. This is compounded by the fact that the sunset date is December 31, 2005 and recent congressional trends to pass outrageous legislation nearly unanimously. On top of this, you have recent public opinion (baaa, baaa). From the newhouse article:
---
In fact, since Sept. 11, pollsters have tracked a dramatic shift in public attitudes about government and privacy. In a national survey March 28, pollster John Zogby found 55 percent in favor of allowing police to search their purses, handbags, backpacks or packages at random anywhere, while 48 percent would allow their cars to be searched, 36 percent would allow their mail to be searched and 26 percent said they would not object to having telephone conversations monitored by authorities.
----
Maybe 2004 will be LL's year (unless he's dead - I don't remember).
--- A grass-roots group called DigitalConsumer.org, which did not exist a month ago, claims to have signed up 24,000 members who have sent off 80,000 faxes to their elected representatives. ---
That comes out to a mean of 3 1/3 letters / user. 2 sentators, 1 representative, plus somebody else who got 1/3 of a letter.
Client I think it's time the antivirus companies step up to the plate for the average consumer, and add blocking/filtering to the AV clients. Maybe it's overkill, but if you could tag these popup downloads as a potential virus (or at least unauthorized use of your computer) the world would be a better place. Or, create some add-ons to mozilla which filter popups against a database (ala the defunct spamcop) popupcop?
On Windows, client side proxies like WebWasher and Proxomitron do a fine job of getting rid of this crap.
And shortage for actually qualified and competent tech people is still true, and will be true in near future. Big headlines for tech slump hide the fact that even now it is often difficult to find good enough people, esp. programmers (and related, system architects etc). There are lots of people who claim they have the skills, but who shouldn't have been hired in the first place... and their crying is now obfuscating the scenery.
I'm not saying it's easy to find a job, even if you are qualified right now, but it's often more of a problem of supply and demand meeting, not least because of floood of "fake" candidates, 20 year old dotcom CEOs, "programmers" who self-taught javascript in 2 days etc. etc..
I know I'm going further off-topic here, but as an actual qualified developer still looking for work, I thought this required a reply.
Yes, from what I've heard there are lots of bad resumes (ie: blatant lies instead of major exaggerations) floating around. On the other hand, a lot of places float bad job ads:
1. Lots of "testing the waters" ads advertising for a fake position.
2. Going through multiple headhunters which all end up posting for the same position on the same job boards.
Even the suposedly legitimate postings have some major problems. Every one of them is overspecified, which in turn leads to resume perjury.
1. Companies are scared-to-death that somebody will actually learn something on the job and leave for another place. The industry is really shooting itself in the foot here because that makes the search process more difficult for everyone and the cost of a new candidate goes up.
2. Related technologies and general development skill never seem to enter into the specs.
3. Most places don't like to see any wrinkled faces in software development.
If the industry is unable to find qualified workers, it's the fault of the industry and no one else.
By my calculations, each TV show is 0 minutes out of 30 (or 60). I count the time I'm looking at that goddamned logo in the LR corner as commercial time.
Wasn't this measure intended to stop "video pirates" ? If it works, the TV networks don't need DRM, the DMCA, CBDTPA, etc. If it doesn't, then GET YOUR BRAND OUT OF MY FACE. Sheesh! It's just like somebody's standing next to the TV mooning me.
Check out this story on Sonic Blue. Like TiVo, but with more aggressive anti-commercial features and the ability to send copies of recorded shows to friends. Includes a brief mention of the bill formerly known as SSSCA.
Dear God I could have used something like this in college. I could have studied and/or slept. I suppose a shotgun would have worked too, but I didn't want to spend all my money on ammo.
Feinstein is one of my senators. While I agree with her on a lot of the more traditional social issues, she's on the wrong side of this and H-1Bs.
I'll be voting against her in the next primary (I think she's up for re-election in 2004). In the general election, I'll probably vote Green for her seat. I'll be damned if I vote Republican.
It seems that every down business cycle leads to massive layoffs and further deterioration of employee conditions (mostly wages), while the up cycles are marked by businesses screaming about a lack of "qualified" workers and demanding a raise in the H-1B cap.
The de-facto industry definition of qualified seems to be as follows:
1. The worker must meet around 6-12 skill sets exactly ("I want a 5 bedroom house. It must be blue with white trim. The curtains are beige..."). Companies hate it when a worker learns something on the job. 1.1 Lying about #1 on your resume is sometimes OK. 2. The worker must be easy to intimidate. Usually that means under 40. 3. The worker usually should not be black or latino or female. 4. The worker must not leave until the next layoff.
H1-B's, from my experience tend to meet 1.1, 2, 3 and 4. Having workked with H1-B and other contractors, as well as employees, the overall quality of work of their work is about average or maybe slightly below par (keep in mind I'm averaging over people of vastly different competencies, and I probably don't have a statistically significant sample).
I don't blame immigrants who want to take advantages of economic opportunities they might not enjoy at home. Neither do I blame the industry. I consider them as a whole to be, if not malicious, then focused entirely on profits and completely unconcerned about their workers, technical or otherwise. However, I don't expect anything better of them.
I DO blame government, which is supposed to represent my interests as an American citizen. To put a hole in immigration policy for the purpose of making it harder for me to find employment is unforgivable. FWIW, I've written to all my elected representatives on this but don't expect anything to come of this.
If the US didn't tax expatriates, and if other countries (at least the ones I've looked at) didn't have the audacity to actually favor citizens in hiring practices, then maybe I'd try my hand overseas. Until such time, don't talk to me about competitiveness and the global marketplace.
My son is going to start college next year. While I would be flattered to have him follow in my footsteps, I will try to dissuade him from pursuing a BS in computer science. I don't know if there will be enough quality employment in his career to justify the investment.
Slashdot Mirror
Allowing a reasonable number of well trained foreigners into the US is a very smart idea. Just think about how much it costs the US government to educate a single citizen. People are a cost on society until they are at least 18. Via H1B programs you can get people that another country has paid for to come and contribute.
...
That is more of an argument against having kids than increasing immigration. Also, a techie's K-12 education will not differ significantly in cost from the rest of the population.
Foreigners have made considerable contributions to technology in the US. The Manhattan project team had large numbers of refugees in it. Important parts of the team that put man on the moon came from the German rocket program. Andy Grove and a number of other high tech pioneers came from outside the US. Bringing in foreigners is smart.
Agreed.
It probably does make some impact on salaries in the short term, but the benefit is that by getting bright people into the US it helps keep the US as the world's leading developer of technology. So I'd argue that the overall effect is positive on salaries. There are, of course, abuses, as there is in any scheme, but overall the program is a good idea.
I've worked with many H-1B's in my career, good bad and intermediate. I do not buy the argument that they are necessarily any better than the "lazy American engineers".
It is interesting to note that a number of European countries, Germany especially, have picked up on the idea that H1B like visas are a good idea. I'm totally annoyed that my home country is notoriously difficult for educated people to emigrate to. Personally, it's one of the US's great strengths and more countries should behave in this way.
Perhaps if that was the case, I wouldn't dislike the H-1B program so much. It should be as easy for me to farm out my skills anywhere in the world, as it is for American companies to import technical talent. Of course, language barriers complicate things for many of us
----------
lastly... I know this will draw flames from hell -- but have anyone considered that maybe H1B holders actually got better grades in school? There are so many people who think that college is just a place to have fun, drink beer, blah blah, and 2.5 is an acceptable GPA. well -- for most forigner students, unless you get 3.0 / 3.5, your scholarship gets cut and you can't pay for your schooling cuz you have no work permit. so it is quite often that forign students gets better grades than domestic students because they have no choice. if you were an employer, say both are "qualified" but one has a 1/2 point GPA advantage in core curriculum, who are you goint to choose?
----------
I've worked with H-1B workers and have seen varying qualities of work. Maybe they all have higher GPA's, but that does not reflect in the job performance.
Perhaps if the content faction saw enough of these, they wouldn't be trying so hard to outlaw computers as anything more than glorified TVs.
I, (insert name here), promise not to knowingly copy, transmit, view, or listen to any content produced or distributed by RIAA or MPAA companies on any computers I own or use.
Now I can use my computer exactly as I did before without some corporate lawyer breathing down my neck.
Notice I didn't use the verb enjoy, since that wouldn't apply to most of this content anyways.
You've all seen this one:
..."
"It hurts everyone by diminishing the incentive to invest in the creation of music.
They invest in the creation of music ?
The hearing comes against a backdrop of frustration over the ongoing problem of piracy within the music industry. The RIAA said the number of arrests and indictments for music piracy are up 113 percent from 2000 to 2001; meanwhile, guilty pleas and convictions were up 203 percent and sight seizures up 170 percent for that same period.
Does this mean they'll spend the new IP tax on better lawyers for "piracy" defendants ? That should clear the problem right up.
Yup. You heard that right. Frequent-flying geeks to the rescue.
Wow! You bite the heads off enough chickens and you get super powers!
Looks like it was a very interesting conference. One theme which especially disturbed me was the public/private partnerships involved (see the BCC section). A couple of scary examples from Florida would be its attempt to mine out its DMV records to marketers, and the use of subcontractors to "scrub" the voter roles for convicted felons (sorry, I have no specifics).
And now for the quote:
He was scathing about the claims of vendors of 100% accuracy, and of the ease with which John Cleese, in drag, had no difficulty getting through a facial recognition checkpoint.
I'm glad to see he's still getting work.
Does anybody remember a Lyndon LaRouche infomercial about 10 years ago ? This promised to have manned space flight to Mars within about 10 years. I don't remember all the details, but the first step was to declare a national emergency, and suspend the constitution. Anyways, it looks like John Ashcroft has been more successful than LL. A particulary scary note in the EFF article was all the provisions labelled DOES NOT SUNSET. This is compounded by the fact that the sunset date is December 31, 2005 and recent congressional trends to pass outrageous legislation nearly unanimously. On top of this, you have recent public opinion (baaa, baaa). From the newhouse article: --- In fact, since Sept. 11, pollsters have tracked a dramatic shift in public attitudes about government and privacy. In a national survey March 28, pollster John Zogby found 55 percent in favor of allowing police to search their purses, handbags, backpacks or packages at random anywhere, while 48 percent would allow their cars to be searched, 36 percent would allow their mail to be searched and 26 percent said they would not object to having telephone conversations monitored by authorities. ---- Maybe 2004 will be LL's year (unless he's dead - I don't remember).
This reminds of a line from the first movie. Something along the lines of "Nonsense. Anyone is free to purchase shares in our company!"
---
A grass-roots group called DigitalConsumer.org, which did not exist a month ago, claims to have signed up 24,000 members who have sent off 80,000 faxes to their elected representatives.
---
That comes out to a mean of 3 1/3 letters / user. 2 sentators, 1 representative, plus somebody else who got 1/3 of a letter.
I have a question for everyone.
When did the Mac stop sucking ?
I've developed applications from OS 6.x to 8.5, and most of the toolbox functionality was a joke.
Also, don't forget all those programs that rely on the Web control and need IE to function.
Like Visual Studio. Sheesh.
Client I think it's time the antivirus companies step up to the plate for the average consumer, and add blocking/filtering to the AV clients. Maybe it's overkill, but if you could tag these popup downloads as a potential virus (or at least unauthorized use of your computer) the world would be a better place. Or, create some add-ons to mozilla which filter popups against a database (ala the defunct spamcop) popupcop?
On Windows, client side proxies like WebWasher and Proxomitron do a fine job of getting rid of this crap.
And shortage for actually qualified and competent tech people is still true, and will be true in near future. Big headlines for tech slump hide the fact that even now it is often difficult to find good enough people, esp. programmers (and related, system architects etc). There are lots of people who claim they have the skills, but who shouldn't have been hired in the first place... and their crying is now obfuscating the scenery.
I'm not saying it's easy to find a job, even if you are qualified right now, but it's often more of a problem of supply and demand meeting, not least because of floood of "fake" candidates, 20 year old dotcom CEOs, "programmers" who self-taught javascript in 2 days etc. etc..
I know I'm going further off-topic here, but as an actual qualified developer still looking for work, I thought this required a reply.
Yes, from what I've heard there are lots of bad resumes (ie: blatant lies instead of major exaggerations) floating around. On the other hand, a lot of places float bad job ads:
1. Lots of "testing the waters" ads advertising for a fake position.
2. Going through multiple headhunters which all end up posting for the same position on the same job boards.
Even the suposedly legitimate postings have some major problems. Every one of them is overspecified, which in turn leads to resume perjury.
1. Companies are scared-to-death that somebody will actually learn something on the job and leave for another place. The industry is really shooting itself in the foot here because that makes the search process more difficult for everyone and the cost of a new candidate goes up.
2. Related technologies and general development skill never seem to enter into the specs.
3. Most places don't like to see any wrinkled faces in software development.
If the industry is unable to find qualified workers, it's the fault of the industry and no one else.
(er, renamed the phbbbt-CA, or whatever)
CBDTPA. An easy way to remember this is ass the Hollywood asswipe bill: CBPTPA.
By my calculations, each TV show is 0 minutes out of 30 (or 60). I count the time I'm looking at that goddamned logo in the LR corner as commercial time.
Wasn't this measure intended to stop "video pirates" ? If it works, the TV networks don't need DRM, the DMCA, CBDTPA, etc. If it doesn't, then GET YOUR BRAND OUT OF MY FACE. Sheesh! It's just like somebody's standing next to the TV mooning me.
Check out this story on Sonic Blue. Like TiVo, but with more aggressive anti-commercial features and the ability to send copies of recorded shows to friends. Includes a brief mention of the bill formerly known as SSSCA.
I'd buy one if I had money and/or a job. sigh.
Just keep repeating the term "RIAA/MPAA tax".
webwasher and proxomitron do a good job of cleaning the marketing carbuncles off of a lot of sites. W/O webwasher, the onion would crash my browser.
Dear God I could have used something like this in college. I could have studied and/or slept. I suppose a shotgun would have worked too, but I didn't want to spend all my money on ammo.
Feinstein is one of my senators. While I agree with her on a lot of the more traditional social issues, she's on the wrong side of this and H-1Bs.
I'll be voting against her in the next primary (I think she's up for re-election in 2004). In the general election, I'll probably vote Green for her seat. I'll be damned if I vote Republican.
Excellent post.
..."). Companies hate it when a worker learns something on the job.
It seems that every down business cycle leads to massive layoffs and further deterioration of employee conditions (mostly wages), while the up cycles are marked by businesses screaming about a lack of "qualified" workers and demanding a raise in the H-1B cap.
The de-facto industry definition of qualified seems to be as follows:
1. The worker must meet around 6-12 skill sets exactly ("I want a 5 bedroom house. It must be blue with white trim. The curtains are beige
1.1 Lying about #1 on your resume is sometimes OK.
2. The worker must be easy to intimidate. Usually that means under 40.
3. The worker usually should not be black or latino or female.
4. The worker must not leave until the next layoff.
H1-B's, from my experience tend to meet 1.1, 2, 3 and 4. Having workked with H1-B and other contractors, as well as employees, the overall quality of work of their work is about average or maybe slightly below par (keep in mind I'm averaging over people of vastly different competencies, and I probably don't have a statistically significant sample).
I don't blame immigrants who want to take advantages of economic opportunities they might not enjoy at home. Neither do I blame the industry. I consider them as a whole to be, if not malicious, then focused entirely on profits and completely unconcerned about their workers, technical or otherwise. However, I don't expect anything better of them.
I DO blame government, which is supposed to represent my interests as an American citizen. To put a hole in immigration policy for the purpose of making it harder for me to find employment is unforgivable. FWIW, I've written to all my elected representatives on this but don't expect anything to come of this.
If the US didn't tax expatriates, and if other countries (at least the ones I've looked at) didn't have the audacity to actually favor citizens in hiring practices, then maybe I'd try my hand overseas. Until such time, don't talk to me about competitiveness and the global marketplace.
My son is going to start college next year. While I would be flattered to have him follow in my footsteps, I will try to dissuade him from pursuing a BS in computer science. I don't know if there will be enough quality employment in his career to justify the investment.
- cranky.