The vast majority of programmers I've worked with are young, male and either white or asian. Perhaps 2/3rds of the non-whites are indians and the rest are chinese. Most were OK developers, a few of each kind were brilliant and a few were not so hot. I haven't seen many blacks in programming positions. I saw few women in programming positions but the ones I worked with were generally good. There were few older programmers. By older, I mean more than 35 years old.
On slashdot, we've been round and round over age discrimination. Each time it comes up, there are 400-500 posts. Now M$ has drawn the ire of another class of people they are discriminating against. Except this time, it's a far more militant opposition. Whereas women and older workers will simply shut up, leave the programming field and find some other kind of work because of the difficulty of proving sex and age discrimination, black workers will persist, spurred on by past victories. This is in part due to the perception that racial discrimination is ugly. It is. But I see no philosophical difference between racial, sex or age discrimination. If anything, age should considered the uglist kind because it will eventually affect everyone. The basic rationalization I've gleaned from all the stuff that's been said is that somehow, the software business is different. Well, it'll be interesting to see how that shiboleth plays in this case.
I doubt that most hiring managers aggresively cull out black, female or older applicants but I've run into the situation where I'm in demand until they see me. Hiring managers tend to hire people most like themselves. If you aren't a young male of white or asian stock, you may be greeted with surprised looks when you show up for an interview.
That all having been said, I can't see the plaintiffs collecting 5bil or whatever. But if they succeed and obtain a substantial settlement, it will send a message.
... "throw it on the wall, see what sticks" policies...
Yeah, I've heard this sort of thing referred to as a "land grab". The net was started by the DoD. Now all these companies are getting on it, grabbing and sreaming, "mine!" like playground kids. These outfits don't care about the whole concept of the internet in general. They seem to want to turn the internet into a web of billboards.
All this forfeiture stuff is fallout from the drug war. That's where seizure of property without due process was pioneered. Once they got by with it there, the precedent was set. The corruption of law enforecement is inevitable because there is little accountability. It does no good to say forfeiture in the name of fighting drug traffic is OK but forfeiture to stop suspected intellectual property theft is not OK. This is another of the many reasons why the drug war is evil. It is corrupting our government at all levels.
I'm not sure how effective it really is even in the short run. I think just having 2 developers work together temporarily is more effective. I've worked in all conditions including war rooms, cubes and private offices. A private office is vastly superior most of the time. When the need arises, work in pairs. Cube farms and particularly war rooms are a form of indimidation and they work quite well; they intimidate people right out the door.
What is being discussed here is part of the Truth in Lending act. Chargebacks were set up as a protection for the consumer. Without them, credit cards might never have caught on. No one could forsee the problems which would eventually surface with online transactions because the internet didn't exist then. Get rid of chargebacks and people will not want to use credit cards.
... of what not to do. By pandering to power broker industry special interests and caving in to shrill tree huggers, California has created a powerful disincentive for any investment in power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. So, now everyone will have to get little generators. There are not as efficient as coal, gas or nuclear plants. They are loud. You have to keep them maintained and they pollute more. The environmentalists and NIMBYs have shot themselves in the foot. Only the electric power broker companies have done well and everyone else is paying dearly for this corporate welfare.
Even in places where "deregulation" hasn't been adopted, the reliability of the power grid ain't what it used to be. We experience power events regularly now. 10 years ago this was very unusual. The grid is far more fragile than it once was because of the virtual moratorium on new infrastructure and the growing demand. Well, people aren't going back to kerosene lanterns. They'll set up their own generators as the grid gets worse.
It makes my blood boil to watch this happen. Our power grid was once the envy of the world.
My, this really sounds stupid to consider coding and testing/debugging as two distinct tasks.
You betcha. Your reaction to avoid testing and debugging is wise my friend because testing don't get no respect. That's why people avoid testing. There's no glory to be had. Debugging is only one step up from testing. You can spend days spinning your wheels and then, in a 10 minute period, figure the whole thing out and push a fix. People just refuse to respect testing and debugging. Those activities are regarded as contemptable and those who perform them well are often relegated to a lower "caste".
... and you'll have little turnover. Lots of those ways have been discussed here.
Pay a competitive wage.
Give workers flexibility.
Give your workers good tools and provide a comfortable work atmosphere. Each worker should have an office with a door that closes.
Make certain each worker has interesting, challenging projects to work on.
Recognize and promote talent.
This is a pretty tall order for an employer but if you do this, people will be beating down your door to get a job at your company. I know. I've worked for such a company for 3 years. I've been very lucky. But now, they want to go public and to do so they are taking steps to improve the appearance of profitability. Toward this end, many of the perks we've enjoyed are being eliminated. Guess what? Turnover has spiked. By eliminating perks, they are giving people an incentive to investigate whether they can get a better deal somewhere else.
Now, if you're running a company and you don't want to provide all this stuff but at the same time you recognize that turnover will kill you, there is another option. Hire older workers. They have considerably less job mobility.:-)
... They just don't do much about it except badger users to free up licenses they don't "need". Even when they see what big green dollars this M$ stuff is costing them, they still fall in line and order more. So the decision is made to go Microsoft. Then later, when the true cost becomes known they start trying to cut back by doing things like denying licenses for home machines and now even test machines.
It's one thing for a company to peddle rentware if it's some high end CAD tool or something like that but a word processor, spreadsheet, etc.? I don't think so. Is the average home user going to spring for that? very doubtful
I predict old copies of Office 97 will be in demand. It may also twig people to try non microsoft alternatives.
The column at www.reason.com says they ought to confiscate the drivers licenses of every voter down in Palm Beach who claims to have been confused by the ballot. If that ballot confused them, driving will too. fsckin' A! I've voted in 7 presidential elections using old flip lever machines, punch card ballots, op scan ballots and touch-screen electronic ballots. The instructions were made clear. In the case of punch card and op scan, if you screw up and vote for 2 candidates instead of just one, you go get a new ballot - none of this devining the voter's intent stuff. Your vote will be tossed otherwise. Vote for the wrong one? Tough. You should have asked the poll workers. This hand recount is nonsense. Gore just doesn't want to concede. I don't care which one gets in; I voted Libertarian anyway. Mark my words: this crap will be used to exclude 3rd parties from the ballot.
As for online voting, I don't know whether the advantages would really materialize. The implimentation will likely be poor. It will be too easy to find out how individuals voted and too tempting to resist.
Do you know where all your license information is? I don't want to keep up with all that crap. Who does? It's a royal pain. Do you think VA beach is going to be able to come up with all that? It seems likely they'll come up short. This definitely sends a message.
Who says you have to telecommute every day? It's certainly not an all or nothing proposition. Yes, some discipline is necessary but why not start at 1pm if that is when you work best. I like working at night. How much sun do you usually see? It sounds like you could definitely use some vigorous exercise.
Distractions? Let's see. The guy beside me laughs maniacally at emails and sorta says words when he sneezes loud and frequently. The guy across the hall holds court. At any given time, he entertains 2 - 5 people with amusing anecdotes punctuated by boistrous laughter. To block that out, I put on my headphones and crank up the jams.
Of course people want to telecommute. Who the hell wants to sit in traffic? I can't believe all the people on the road every day HAVE to be there between 8 and 5 EVERY day. Telecommuting is an inexpensive way to cut our oil consumption and reduce pollution and traffic congestion. But every time these issues come to the fore do we hear anything about telecommuting? No. Instead it's build more roads or commuter trains or bus route expansion.
The reason is simple. Employers like to be able to pop their heads in your office and demand status updates. They think that if there isn't the constant threat of them walking in, you won't work hard. They don't trust workers. I've thought about this alot. I can't come up with any other compelling reason why telecommuting isn't being more widely adopted.
None of these politicians give a rat's ass whether DARE works or not. It's politically popular to spend money on this kind of activity. Heck, this is one of the few things with strong, bipartisan support. Many of them derive monetary benefit either directly or indirectly by supporting this stuff. It's real popular with law enforcement agencies. The drug war has swollen their staff.
These days, you can learn the hottest technologies on your PC at home, at virtually no cost. A programmer who has been out of work and hasn't even bothered as much as to learn Perl or Java does not seem to be a very attractive candidate, simply because they don't seem very motivated or interested in the job.
I can personally attest to the fact that companies will not hire you on the basis of course work or self paced home study. They want paid work experience. Been there, done that, been said no to! Read his paper more closely and you'll see that Matloff made this point.
Everytime we post an opening, we get lots of good resumes, more than we know what to do with. And yes, many are older guys. We've turned away some good candidates. We have never had any problems finding qualified people. But does that stop my company from paying lip service to this H1-B program? NO! They want to avoid paying us more by bringing in these artificially low paid serfs. But the southeast is a cheap pace to live. Silicon Valley is too expensive to live in. That is the crux of SV's employment problem.
All the evidence on both sides of this issue is anecdotal. So, we just go back and forth, hashing and rehashing but consider the following. The demographic bone pile of discraded techies is growing. They are bitter.They will not go away and they will not be quiet. This subject continues to air on slashdot because it is a gross inequity which begs attention. It will get worse before it gets better.
Sure, there are some nationalistic people who want to keep foreign labor out at all costs, but those people are not libertarians in the first place.
No, and those who advocate H1-B aren't real Libertarians either.
To be logically consistent, Libertarians must advocate unrestricted immigration. Period. No H1-B visa stuff in which they are indentured; just let them in. Then they will get competitive salaries.
H1-B is corporate welfare. It is a program designed to provide businesses with artificially low labor costs. As you have pointed out, "It is certainly not a free-market situation." I have never read anything about the Libertarian party supporting H1-B but I certainly have read some misguided arguments from self described Libertarians in support of H1-B.
Companies want actual job experience and most won't consider someone who takes refresher courses. Political skills in the workplace ain't easily acquired. You don't exactly learn by making mistakes because you'll pay forever for them. MOst companies do not train. Mainframes are not dying technologies. They make superb webservers and they are reliable. I love computer work but I want an honest days pay for an honest days work and I want a life. At night, I teach people how to fight.
Every time H1-B stuff comes up, there are 400-500 posts. Experienced people claim older workers will get screwed. Less experienced people believe their skills are so great they will be spared. The difference between these two camps is the experienced people were at one time less experienced people.
You did not refute the top poster's claims. All you have done is offered contradiction as proof. It ain't.
An H1B holder can work for as many companies as they want, as long as they have a valid H1B approval for each of them.
H1Bs get approved for up to 3 years, with a possible extension for another 3 years - the total time should not exceed 6 years.
These points are both true but moot. H1-Bs who change jobs typically run out of time. Typically, they only get H1-B approval for 1 job. And the ugliest part of all is that a growing number of employers renege on their end of the bargain and these H1-Bs must return.
Now, you and the rest of the libertarian polyannas listen up.
This H1-B program is corporate welfare. There ain't no way this can be construed as a free market. Want a free labor market? Then, just give them all green cards and let them in! Who's for that? Don't all raise your hands at once.
Slashdot Mirror
"Boa, you are a lost 'un, ain't che?"
Yessir.
The vast majority of programmers I've worked with are young, male and either white or asian. Perhaps 2/3rds of the non-whites are indians and the rest are chinese. Most were OK developers, a few of each kind were brilliant and a few were not so hot. I haven't seen many blacks in programming positions. I saw few women in programming positions but the ones I worked with were generally good. There were few older programmers. By older, I mean more than 35 years old.
On slashdot, we've been round and round over age discrimination. Each time it comes up, there are 400-500 posts. Now M$ has drawn the ire of another class of people they are discriminating against. Except this time, it's a far more militant opposition. Whereas women and older workers will simply shut up, leave the programming field and find some other kind of work because of the difficulty of proving sex and age discrimination, black workers will persist, spurred on by past victories. This is in part due to the perception that racial discrimination is ugly. It is. But I see no philosophical difference between racial, sex or age discrimination. If anything, age should considered the uglist kind because it will eventually affect everyone. The basic rationalization I've gleaned from all the stuff that's been said is that somehow, the software business is different. Well, it'll be interesting to see how that shiboleth plays in this case.
I doubt that most hiring managers aggresively cull out black, female or older applicants but I've run into the situation where I'm in demand until they see me. Hiring managers tend to hire people most like themselves. If you aren't a young male of white or asian stock, you may be greeted with surprised looks when you show up for an interview.
That all having been said, I can't see the plaintiffs collecting 5bil or whatever. But if they succeed and obtain a substantial settlement, it will send a message.
... "throw it on the wall, see what sticks" policies ...
Yeah, I've heard this sort of thing referred to as a "land grab". The net was started by the DoD. Now all these companies are getting on it, grabbing and sreaming, "mine!" like playground kids. These outfits don't care about the whole concept of the internet in general. They seem to want to turn the internet into a web of billboards.
All this forfeiture stuff is fallout from the drug war. That's where seizure of property without due process was pioneered. Once they got by with it there, the precedent was set. The corruption of law enforecement is inevitable because there is little accountability. It does no good to say forfeiture in the name of fighting drug traffic is OK but forfeiture to stop suspected intellectual property theft is not OK. This is another of the many reasons why the drug war is evil. It is corrupting our government at all levels.
This sounds awfully unconstitutional to me, or at least worthy of a contest in court.
Anyone want to be the test case? Don't all raise your hands at once.
It means that the software's text-to-speech function won't read it aloud.
Oh, so blind people are SOL. That seems to run afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act. >:^|
I'm not sure how effective it really is even in the short run. I think just having 2 developers work together temporarily is more effective. I've worked in all conditions including war rooms, cubes and private offices. A private office is vastly superior most of the time. When the need arises, work in pairs. Cube farms and particularly war rooms are a form of indimidation and they work quite well; they intimidate people right out the door.
What is being discussed here is part of the Truth in Lending act. Chargebacks were set up as a protection for the consumer. Without them, credit cards might never have caught on. No one could forsee the problems which would eventually surface with online transactions because the internet didn't exist then. Get rid of chargebacks and people will not want to use credit cards.
... of what not to do. By pandering to power broker industry special interests and caving in to shrill tree huggers, California has created a powerful disincentive for any investment in power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. So, now everyone will have to get little generators. There are not as efficient as coal, gas or nuclear plants. They are loud. You have to keep them maintained and they pollute more. The environmentalists and NIMBYs have shot themselves in the foot. Only the electric power broker companies have done well and everyone else is paying dearly for this corporate welfare.
Even in places where "deregulation" hasn't been adopted, the reliability of the power grid ain't what it used to be. We experience power events regularly now. 10 years ago this was very unusual. The grid is far more fragile than it once was because of the virtual moratorium on new infrastructure and the growing demand. Well, people aren't going back to kerosene lanterns. They'll set up their own generators as the grid gets worse.
It makes my blood boil to watch this happen. Our power grid was once the envy of the world.
My, this really sounds stupid to consider coding and testing/debugging as two distinct tasks.
You betcha. Your reaction to avoid testing and debugging is wise my friend because testing don't get no respect. That's why people avoid testing. There's no glory to be had. Debugging is only one step up from testing. You can spend days spinning your wheels and then, in a 10 minute period, figure the whole thing out and push a fix. People just refuse to respect testing and debugging. Those activities are regarded as contemptable and those who perform them well are often relegated to a lower "caste".
... and you'll have little turnover. Lots of those ways have been discussed here.
:-)
Pay a competitive wage.
Give workers flexibility.
Give your workers good tools and provide a comfortable work atmosphere. Each worker should have an office with a door that closes.
Make certain each worker has interesting, challenging projects to work on.
Recognize and promote talent.
This is a pretty tall order for an employer but if you do this, people will be beating down your door to get a job at your company. I know. I've worked for such a company for 3 years. I've been very lucky. But now, they want to go public and to do so they are taking steps to improve the appearance of profitability. Toward this end, many of the perks we've enjoyed are being eliminated. Guess what? Turnover has spiked. By eliminating perks, they are giving people an incentive to investigate whether they can get a better deal somewhere else.
Now, if you're running a company and you don't want to provide all this stuff but at the same time you recognize that turnover will kill you, there is another option. Hire older workers. They have considerably less job mobility.
... They just don't do much about it except badger users to free up licenses they don't "need". Even when they see what big green dollars this M$ stuff is costing them, they still fall in line and order more. So the decision is made to go Microsoft. Then later, when the true cost becomes known they start trying to cut back by doing things like denying licenses for home machines and now even test machines.
It's one thing for a company to peddle rentware if it's some high end CAD tool or something like that but a word processor, spreadsheet, etc.? I don't think so. Is the average home user going to spring for that? very doubtful
I predict old copies of Office 97 will be in demand. It may also twig people to try non microsoft alternatives.
The column at www.reason.com says they ought to confiscate the drivers licenses of every voter down in Palm Beach who claims to have been confused by the ballot. If that ballot confused them, driving will too. fsckin' A! I've voted in 7 presidential elections using old flip lever machines, punch card ballots, op scan ballots and touch-screen electronic ballots. The instructions were made clear. In the case of punch card and op scan, if you screw up and vote for 2 candidates instead of just one, you go get a new ballot - none of this devining the voter's intent stuff. Your vote will be tossed otherwise. Vote for the wrong one? Tough. You should have asked the poll workers. This hand recount is nonsense. Gore just doesn't want to concede. I don't care which one gets in; I voted Libertarian anyway. Mark my words: this crap will be used to exclude 3rd parties from the ballot.
As for online voting, I don't know whether the advantages would really materialize. The implimentation will likely be poor. It will be too easy to find out how individuals voted and too tempting to resist.
Do you know where all your license information is? I don't want to keep up with all that crap. Who does? It's a royal pain. Do you think VA beach is going to be able to come up with all that? It seems likely they'll come up short. This definitely sends a message.
Arrrrrrr Matey. They're Piiiiirates!
Yessir.
Who says you have to telecommute every day? It's certainly not an all or nothing proposition. Yes, some discipline is necessary but why not start at 1pm if that is when you work best. I like working at night. How much sun do you usually see? It sounds like you could definitely use some vigorous exercise.
Distractions? Let's see. The guy beside me laughs maniacally at emails and sorta says words when he sneezes loud and frequently. The guy across the hall holds court. At any given time, he entertains 2 - 5 people with amusing anecdotes punctuated by boistrous laughter. To block that out, I put on my headphones and crank up the jams.
Of course people want to telecommute. Who the hell wants to sit in traffic? I can't believe all the people on the road every day HAVE to be there between 8 and 5 EVERY day. Telecommuting is an inexpensive way to cut our oil consumption and reduce pollution and traffic congestion. But every time these issues come to the fore do we hear anything about telecommuting? No. Instead it's build more roads or commuter trains or bus route expansion.
The reason is simple. Employers like to be able to pop their heads in your office and demand status updates. They think that if there isn't the constant threat of them walking in, you won't work hard. They don't trust workers. I've thought about this alot. I can't come up with any other compelling reason why telecommuting isn't being more widely adopted.
None of these politicians give a rat's ass whether DARE works or not. It's politically popular to spend money on this kind of activity. Heck, this is one of the few things with strong, bipartisan support. Many of them derive monetary benefit either directly or indirectly by supporting this stuff. It's real popular with law enforcement agencies. The drug war has swollen their staff.
These days, you can learn the hottest technologies on your PC at home, at virtually no cost. A programmer who has been out of work and hasn't even bothered as much as to learn Perl or Java does not seem to be a very attractive candidate, simply because they don't seem very motivated or interested in the job.
I can personally attest to the fact that companies will not hire you on the basis of course work or self paced home study. They want paid work experience. Been there, done that, been said no to! Read his paper more closely and you'll see that Matloff made this point.
Everytime we post an opening, we get lots of good resumes, more than we know what to do with. And yes, many are older guys. We've turned away some good candidates. We have never had any problems finding qualified people. But does that stop my company from paying lip service to this H1-B program? NO! They want to avoid paying us more by bringing in these artificially low paid serfs. But the southeast is a cheap pace to live. Silicon Valley is too expensive to live in. That is the crux of SV's employment problem.
All the evidence on both sides of this issue is anecdotal. So, we just go back and forth, hashing and rehashing but consider the following. The demographic bone pile of discraded techies is growing. They are bitter.They will not go away and they will not be quiet. This subject continues to air on slashdot because it is a gross inequity which begs attention. It will get worse before it gets better.
Sure, there are some nationalistic people who want to keep foreign labor out at all costs, but those people are not libertarians in the first place.
No, and those who advocate H1-B aren't real Libertarians either.
To be logically consistent, Libertarians must advocate unrestricted immigration. Period. No H1-B visa stuff in which they are indentured; just let them in. Then they will get competitive salaries.
H1-B is corporate welfare. It is a program designed to provide businesses with artificially low labor costs. As you have pointed out, "It is certainly not a free-market situation." I have never read anything about the Libertarian party supporting H1-B but I certainly have read some misguided arguments from self described Libertarians in support of H1-B.
Companies want actual job experience and most won't consider someone who takes refresher courses. Political skills in the workplace ain't easily acquired. You don't exactly learn by making mistakes because you'll pay forever for them. MOst companies do not train. Mainframes are not dying technologies. They make superb webservers and they are reliable. I love computer work but I want an honest days pay for an honest days work and I want a life. At night, I teach people how to fight.
Every time H1-B stuff comes up, there are 400-500 posts. Experienced people claim older workers will get screwed. Less experienced people believe their skills are so great they will be spared. The difference between these two camps is the experienced people were at one time less experienced people.
commie?
So you prefer corporate tyranny?
What brought the ungluing of Communist regimes to a head? A labor union led by a polish dockworker.
It makes no difference whether it's state tyranny or corporate tyranny, it's still tyranny.
This story is drug war propaganda planted to drum up business for drug testing outfits.
You did not refute the top poster's claims. All you have done is offered contradiction as proof. It ain't.
An H1B holder can work for as many companies as they want, as long as they have a valid H1B approval for each of them.
H1Bs get approved for up to 3 years, with a possible extension for another 3 years - the total time should not exceed 6 years.
These points are both true but moot. H1-Bs who change jobs typically run out of time. Typically, they only get H1-B approval for 1 job. And the ugliest part of all is that a growing number of employers renege on their end of the bargain and these H1-Bs must return.
Now, you and the rest of the libertarian polyannas listen up.
This H1-B program is corporate welfare. There ain't no way this can be construed as a free market. Want a free labor market? Then, just give them all green cards and let them in! Who's for that? Don't all raise your hands at once.