With rampant corporate off-shoring driving our young people away from careers in science and technology, it's only a matter of time before we lack the technical know-how to do these things.
Of course, NASA could always outsource the work to China...
I used to have a similar attitude about this but then I decided to actually think it through.
For instance, we are currently seeing a drop in college enrollments into science and technology programs. Surveys of incoming college freshmen indicate that there is a lot of concern about going into fields like Computer Science because of rampant off shoring.
So, ask yourself, is it good for the country to be driving our young people away from these types of careers? What do you think the overall economic impact will be of a sharp decline in the number of home-grown engineers? This is a helluva lot different than shipping some low-skilled factory job to China.
We are talking about people whose work often spawns entire industries....which in turn results in the creation of jobs for lots of other people.
I think we are now letting a handful of large corporations do serious long term damage to our economy so they can reap some very short-term gains.
Yeah, something isn't quite right about the argument we're hearing from the corporate suits on this.
If there is a huge demand for programmers, and the supply is SO limited that we need to import foreign workers, why the hell have salaries for programmers risen so little over the past five or six years? It's been a while since I've had an economics course but this argument would seem to break a law or two. I mean seriously, this alone should tell you that something is not right. It seems to me much more likely that corporations just don't like the idea of paying six figures for engineers, whether the market demands it or not. Maybe they think you should need to have an MBA to earn that kinda money. After all, everyone knows MBAs do most of the work at tech companies.
So, if you really need programmers, but you really really don't want to pay them what they're worth, importing cheap labor sounds like a pretty good idea. Of course, H1-B workers are supposed to be paid the prevailing wage but this just doesn't happen. Talk to anyone who works in an IT shop that uses them and they'll tell you that they make less money. Hell, just ask the people who are there on H1-Bs, they know they're getting ripped off.
What I really love is when companies that do this say, "well, we advertised that programming position and nobody responded for 2 months, so we had no other choice". Most of the time, this is bullshit. I used to work for a company that would advertise $85k for all senior level Java positions, even though the local average was around $100k for someone at that level. And then the managers at the company would feign dismay over the fact that they weren't getting any resumes. A couple of times I suggested that they just raise the salary to match the average market rate. Of course, each time I was told that "that's not in the budget".
It basically comes down to just that. A lot of US corporations have simply decided that cheap foreign labor is "in the budget", a fair wage for US workers is not.
Oh, gimme a break!
The same people who are bashing the story because it came from Fox will surf on over to cnn.com, or Reuters, and believe everything they read. (as if there's no bias there).
If there's one thing that's been disproven in this "Internet Age" it's the myth of an unbiased news media. Every news outlet puts a political slant on their reporting and if you can't see it, you're a fool. The best you can do is to read as much as possible from both sides and then try to figure it out for yourself.
What scares me about the global warming debate is that we're now seeing politics creeping into the scientific arena. I don't think anyone, on either side, knows for certain what is happening. There IS a lot of conflicting data and and I would be very suspicious of any "scientist" who claims to be certain one way or the other...and if you think the cows produce a lot of greenhouse gas, just do a little research into what is put into the atmosphere everytime a volcano erupts. There is an awful lot to consider and most of it is entirely out of our control.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about mysticism, but it would be very easy to argue that environmentalism is a religion for some.
With rampant corporate off-shoring driving our young people away from careers in science and technology, it's only a matter of time before we lack the technical know-how to do these things. Of course, NASA could always outsource the work to China...
For instance, we are currently seeing a drop in college enrollments into science and technology programs. Surveys of incoming college freshmen indicate that there is a lot of concern about going into fields like Computer Science because of rampant off shoring.
So, ask yourself, is it good for the country to be driving our young people away from these types of careers? What do you think the overall economic impact will be of a sharp decline in the number of home-grown engineers? This is a helluva lot different than shipping some low-skilled factory job to China.
We are talking about people whose work often spawns entire industries.
I think we are now letting a handful of large corporations do serious long term damage to our economy so they can reap some very short-term gains.
If there is a huge demand for programmers, and the supply is SO limited that we need to import foreign workers, why the hell have salaries for programmers risen so little over the past five or six years? It's been a while since I've had an economics course but this argument would seem to break a law or two. I mean seriously, this alone should tell you that something is not right. It seems to me much more likely that corporations just don't like the idea of paying six figures for engineers, whether the market demands it or not. Maybe they think you should need to have an MBA to earn that kinda money. After all, everyone knows MBAs do most of the work at tech companies.
So, if you really need programmers, but you really really don't want to pay them what they're worth, importing cheap labor sounds like a pretty good idea. Of course, H1-B workers are supposed to be paid the prevailing wage but this just doesn't happen. Talk to anyone who works in an IT shop that uses them and they'll tell you that they make less money. Hell, just ask the people who are there on H1-Bs, they know they're getting ripped off.
What I really love is when companies that do this say, "well, we advertised that programming position and nobody responded for 2 months, so we had no other choice". Most of the time, this is bullshit. I used to work for a company that would advertise $85k for all senior level Java positions, even though the local average was around $100k for someone at that level. And then the managers at the company would feign dismay over the fact that they weren't getting any resumes. A couple of times I suggested that they just raise the salary to match the average market rate. Of course, each time I was told that "that's not in the budget".
It basically comes down to just that. A lot of US corporations have simply decided that cheap foreign labor is "in the budget", a fair wage for US workers is not.
Oh, gimme a break! The same people who are bashing the story because it came from Fox will surf on over to cnn.com, or Reuters, and believe everything they read. (as if there's no bias there). If there's one thing that's been disproven in this "Internet Age" it's the myth of an unbiased news media. Every news outlet puts a political slant on their reporting and if you can't see it, you're a fool. The best you can do is to read as much as possible from both sides and then try to figure it out for yourself. What scares me about the global warming debate is that we're now seeing politics creeping into the scientific arena. I don't think anyone, on either side, knows for certain what is happening. There IS a lot of conflicting data and and I would be very suspicious of any "scientist" who claims to be certain one way or the other. ..and if you think the cows produce a lot of greenhouse gas, just do a little research into what is put into the atmosphere everytime a volcano erupts. There is an awful lot to consider and most of it is entirely out of our control.