Possibly. If it were up to me, though, I'd probably want to exclude some of the lower-tier (yet still regionally accredited) schools. There are ALOT of schools that are accredited.
I just meant that if the choice is between "Big Tech" and "Big Oil" or "Big Defense", then I'm more comfortable with a president that's beholden to "Big Tech".
Actually I support Clinton's green card program because I'm worried other countries will "catch up" to the U.S. and become the major centers of innovation in the global economy, which would cause the aggregate standard of living in the U.S. to decrease. The U.S. currently benefits from "reverse brain drain". That is, more smart/productive people immigrate to the U.S. than emigrate from the U.S. If that trend ever reverses then the U.S. is well and truly screwed.
Honestly, I'd probably rather have someone who's towing the line for Silicon Valley than someone who's towing the line for whoever the Republicans are beholden to.
Simple solution: only give green cards to foreign students who graduate with STEM degrees from suitably well-accredited universities. At the far end of elitism you could restrict it to AAU members, but that would rule out a good number of decent state universities without a graduate research focus. I'm sure there's some other designation you could use that would exclude obvious diploma mills but include mid-tier state universities and other schools (e.g. Notre Dame) that aren't AAU members.
Disagree. Let's say I'm AT&T and I notice that one of my backbone connections is much more saturated than another. To the point where traffic over that connection is effectively bandwidth throttled. I collect some stats and notice that a disproportionate amount of traffic over that pipe is, say, Netflix, but not all. This has happened "organically" without my trying to charge Netflix and/or intentionally give them the shaft. Does the principle of net neutrality obligate me to upgrade that pipe when I might otherwise choose not to do so? Etc.
IMO most people don't dispute that. Including those in the field. About 45% of a child's IQ can be explained by genetics, and that figure rises to 75% by adulthood. Meaning you can influence a child's IQ up or down by tweaking his or her environment, but the effect is only temporary.
The general figure for the heritability of IQ, according to an authoritative American Psychological Association report, is 0.45 for children, and rises to around 0.75 for late teens and adults.[5][6] The heritability of IQ increases with age and reaches an asymptote at 18–20 years of age and continues at that level well into adulthood.[7] Recent studies suggest that family and parenting characteristics are not significant contributors to variation in IQ scores;[8] however, poor prenatal environment, malnutrition and disease can have deleterious effects.[9][10]
I can't imagine the "profit" from a markup on background-check services would be anything significant. It strains credulity to imagine that's the primary motivation behind the ordinance that Prop 1 would have replaced.
Full disclosure: I live in Austin and voted "Yes" on Prop 1. Two things I don't understand about your argument above:
First, how does requiring fingerprint-based background checks put money in the City's pocket?
Second, what is the actual cost (both in terms of "dollars" and "inconvenience") to implement fingerprint-based background checks? Is it really that much? Couldn't Uber and Lyft simply require prospective drivers to foot the cost for their own fingerprinting? That might shrink the pool of drivers, but Uber and Lyft would still get their cut.
I imagine it would, if they were small enough. First you just freeze hiring. This gets you some amount of reduction "for free" by way of attrition. Then you direct all your first line managers to stack rank their teams, and only give yearly cost-of-living raises to the top 75%. The idea here is that the "worst" bunch will eventually leave on their own as their pay decreases in real terms over time due to inflation. Can also offer voluntary retirement bonuses and hope some of the 60+ crowd takes the bait. Or potentially voluntary severance bonuses for people not near retirement age.
It occurs to me that it might be reasonable to blame Intel management. Not for having to lay people off, or for the total number of layoffs, but the fact that they had to make so many at once. Laying off 12,000 people in a matter of months means that, several months ago, you were probably employing more people than you needed and should have already laid some of them off. Ideally you'd be laying people off every year so that you can scale your workforce "gradually" and not have to do these mass layoffs that get reported in the news (and win you bad press).
Time magazine just did a big piece on this. I didn't read it, but I gather they had some non-religious science-y type folk talking about porn's adverse affects on the brain and/or actual sexual relationships with humans.
Not sure I agree with their conclusions, but I mention the research to point out that this isn't solely something being pushed by the religious right.
I'm on a mid-2012 MacBook Air that was customized w/ the best hardware available at the time. It's not so different than the current MacBook Air.
Mid-2012:
2.0ghz Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 4000
8 GB DDR3 RAM
512 GB SSD
13.3" 1440 x 900 LED back-lit display
802.11n wireless
OS X 10.11.4
April 2016:
2.2ghz Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 6000
8 GB DDR3 RAM
512 GB SSD
13.3" 1440 x 900 LED back-lit display
802.11ac wireless
OS X 10.11.4
The CPU is a newer generation so is marginally faster. Maybe 20%. Graphics are 20-30% faster. The SSD has a better interface and is no doubt somewhat faster. Newer wireless standard. Same OS support (so far). Kind of amazing after 4 years.
There are plenty of people who are a net negative when you take their salary into account, but the really bad ones are a net negative even if they were working for free. I've only ever run into one or two of those but wow...it was a sight to behold.
"You're an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing." Possibly also, "We'd be a more productive team if you just stopped working altogether, even if the company keeps paying you. When you try to contribute it actually creates negative productivity."
Just hire some good-looking scantily clad dudes and call it a day. They'll probably be ignored, since 90% of the attendees are heterosexual males, but nobody could accuse M.S. of being unfair.
This may be a unique facet of Valley / Bay Area. I've worked at multiple startups outside that geography and there hasn't been an expectation that I work more than 40-45 hours/week.
People always bitch about H1Bs, ageism and offshoring, but I'm not sure I've *ever* been affected by any of them. And I'm not exactly a spring chicken anymore.
"Then the problem becomes that the US companies hires one H1B foreign coordinator who then coordinates with many other foreign subbordinates."
That's a different problem though. That's off-shoring. I was trying to solve the problem of "so-and-so was replaced by a H1B worker". For various reasons, companies would much rather have a H1B "on site" than work with some remote guy in Hyderabad unless the word is extremely rote.
An alternate approach (which would also boost wages at the low end) would be to subsidize domestic labor. Offer employers a tax credit for each person-year-equivalent that they employ a U.S. citizen. Basically pay them (in the form of a discount on their taxes) to hire domestic. Boost the employer portion of the payroll tax in order to remain revenue neutral.
I'd be fine with that. Alternately the government could remove the limit on H1Bs entirely, but levy a tax on them. Essentially a tariff on imported labor. You don't want the tariff set so high that there are zero H1Bs, but you also don't want employers to go nuts. If the average H1B costs $10k less than his domestic counterpart (taking into account all sources of cost, i.e. benefits, payroll taxes, etc.) then tax employers $8k/year for each H1B-employee-year equivalent.
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Who would that be? Gary Johnson?
Possibly. If it were up to me, though, I'd probably want to exclude some of the lower-tier (yet still regionally accredited) schools. There are ALOT of schools that are accredited.
I just meant that if the choice is between "Big Tech" and "Big Oil" or "Big Defense", then I'm more comfortable with a president that's beholden to "Big Tech".
Actually I support Clinton's green card program because I'm worried other countries will "catch up" to the U.S. and become the major centers of innovation in the global economy, which would cause the aggregate standard of living in the U.S. to decrease. The U.S. currently benefits from "reverse brain drain". That is, more smart/productive people immigrate to the U.S. than emigrate from the U.S. If that trend ever reverses then the U.S. is well and truly screwed.
Honestly, I'd probably rather have someone who's towing the line for Silicon Valley than someone who's towing the line for whoever the Republicans are beholden to.
Simple solution: only give green cards to foreign students who graduate with STEM degrees from suitably well-accredited universities. At the far end of elitism you could restrict it to AAU members, but that would rule out a good number of decent state universities without a graduate research focus. I'm sure there's some other designation you could use that would exclude obvious diploma mills but include mid-tier state universities and other schools (e.g. Notre Dame) that aren't AAU members.
Disagree. Let's say I'm AT&T and I notice that one of my backbone connections is much more saturated than another. To the point where traffic over that connection is effectively bandwidth throttled. I collect some stats and notice that a disproportionate amount of traffic over that pipe is, say, Netflix, but not all. This has happened "organically" without my trying to charge Netflix and/or intentionally give them the shaft. Does the principle of net neutrality obligate me to upgrade that pipe when I might otherwise choose not to do so? Etc.
See wiki:
I can't imagine the "profit" from a markup on background-check services would be anything significant. It strains credulity to imagine that's the primary motivation behind the ordinance that Prop 1 would have replaced.
Full disclosure: I live in Austin and voted "Yes" on Prop 1. Two things I don't understand about your argument above:
First, how does requiring fingerprint-based background checks put money in the City's pocket?
Second, what is the actual cost (both in terms of "dollars" and "inconvenience") to implement fingerprint-based background checks? Is it really that much? Couldn't Uber and Lyft simply require prospective drivers to foot the cost for their own fingerprinting? That might shrink the pool of drivers, but Uber and Lyft would still get their cut.
It's certainly possible my tune will change. Then again maybe not; I don't work in the Bay Area, and it seems to be a hotbed for this kind of thing.
I'm about to turn 41 and have been working in tech since I was 24. To my knowledge I have never experienced ageism.
I imagine it would, if they were small enough. First you just freeze hiring. This gets you some amount of reduction "for free" by way of attrition. Then you direct all your first line managers to stack rank their teams, and only give yearly cost-of-living raises to the top 75%. The idea here is that the "worst" bunch will eventually leave on their own as their pay decreases in real terms over time due to inflation. Can also offer voluntary retirement bonuses and hope some of the 60+ crowd takes the bait. Or potentially voluntary severance bonuses for people not near retirement age.
It occurs to me that it might be reasonable to blame Intel management. Not for having to lay people off, or for the total number of layoffs, but the fact that they had to make so many at once. Laying off 12,000 people in a matter of months means that, several months ago, you were probably employing more people than you needed and should have already laid some of them off. Ideally you'd be laying people off every year so that you can scale your workforce "gradually" and not have to do these mass layoffs that get reported in the news (and win you bad press).
Time magazine just did a big piece on this. I didn't read it, but I gather they had some non-religious science-y type folk talking about porn's adverse affects on the brain and/or actual sexual relationships with humans.
Not sure I agree with their conclusions, but I mention the research to point out that this isn't solely something being pushed by the religious right.
I'm on a mid-2012 MacBook Air that was customized w/ the best hardware available at the time. It's not so different than the current MacBook Air.
Mid-2012:
2.0ghz Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 4000
8 GB DDR3 RAM
512 GB SSD
13.3" 1440 x 900 LED back-lit display
802.11n wireless
OS X 10.11.4
April 2016:
2.2ghz Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 6000
8 GB DDR3 RAM
512 GB SSD
13.3" 1440 x 900 LED back-lit display
802.11ac wireless
OS X 10.11.4
The CPU is a newer generation so is marginally faster. Maybe 20%. Graphics are 20-30% faster. The SSD has a better interface and is no doubt somewhat faster. Newer wireless standard. Same OS support (so far). Kind of amazing after 4 years.
There are plenty of people who are a net negative when you take their salary into account, but the really bad ones are a net negative even if they were working for free. I've only ever run into one or two of those but wow...it was a sight to behold.
"You're an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing." Possibly also, "We'd be a more productive team if you just stopped working altogether, even if the company keeps paying you. When you try to contribute it actually creates negative productivity."
Just hire some good-looking scantily clad dudes and call it a day. They'll probably be ignored, since 90% of the attendees are heterosexual males, but nobody could accuse M.S. of being unfair.
This may be a unique facet of Valley / Bay Area. I've worked at multiple startups outside that geography and there hasn't been an expectation that I work more than 40-45 hours/week.
I haven't felt it, aside from my IRA taking a big hit. Then again I'm in tech and located in another hub (not Northern California).
Maybe you're in the wrong profession / geography?
People always bitch about H1Bs, ageism and offshoring, but I'm not sure I've *ever* been affected by any of them. And I'm not exactly a spring chicken anymore.
"Then the problem becomes that the US companies hires one H1B foreign coordinator who then coordinates with many other foreign subbordinates."
That's a different problem though. That's off-shoring. I was trying to solve the problem of "so-and-so was replaced by a H1B worker". For various reasons, companies would much rather have a H1B "on site" than work with some remote guy in Hyderabad unless the word is extremely rote.
An alternate approach (which would also boost wages at the low end) would be to subsidize domestic labor. Offer employers a tax credit for each person-year-equivalent that they employ a U.S. citizen. Basically pay them (in the form of a discount on their taxes) to hire domestic. Boost the employer portion of the payroll tax in order to remain revenue neutral.
Awesome! Thanks for there response, and for the positive effect you're having. Fewer bugs makes me happy.
I'd be fine with that. Alternately the government could remove the limit on H1Bs entirely, but levy a tax on them. Essentially a tariff on imported labor. You don't want the tariff set so high that there are zero H1Bs, but you also don't want employers to go nuts. If the average H1B costs $10k less than his domestic counterpart (taking into account all sources of cost, i.e. benefits, payroll taxes, etc.) then tax employers $8k/year for each H1B-employee-year equivalent.