There is no job in the $40-$200k salary range which is so entirely specialized and mission critical that you can come up with such a specific set of completely objective criteria that you could possibly exclusively rank a pool of 100 candidates from one to twenty-five. It doesn't exist.
Of course, it doesn't exist. That's why companies don't rank based on objective criteria, and that's why H1B decisions (by extension) aren't based on objective criteria either.
To complete the worthlessness of your obnoxious post, you get exactly wrong my point about PhDs. I said PhDs, by default Americans, whose education represents significant public (American) investment.
No, you didn't get my point. My point is that more than half of the US Ph.D.'s in CS get awarded to foreigners. Yes, that represents a substantial US investment and these people need H1B's in order to work in the US if you don't want that investment to be lost.
You don't even bother arguing with the point
Indeed, because they are so hare-brained. Let's look at two of them:
Google, like other American corporations, wants to hire H1B "guest workers" because they're cheaper than citizens or fulltime residents.
There is not a shred of evidence that Google is paying H1B workers less than equally qualified Americans. Nor have you explained how companies are even supposed to be saving money this way relative to hiring equally qualified Americans. And you have failed to explain why, if Google really wanted to save money, they wouldn't just hire these people in their national subsidiaries (which is what they do when they can't get an H1B).
Guest workers subsidize their American work time by spending more time back home in their foreign country, which usually costs less to live in than the US.
How exactly are they supposed to do that? H1B visas are for full time jobs. Can you explain how someone hired on an H1B and living in, oh, Mountain View, Seattle, or New York, is supposed to save money by going to India for three weeks a year? People are lucky if they have the time to fly home to see their old relatives at all.
What country are you from? Because it's clear that country didn't get its money's worth educating you.
I'm a product of the US educational system. You can take that as an added reason for the US to have a need to go and hire from outside the US if you like.
I suppose you're now going to try and say that the programs aren't underpopulated but that the US still can't produce enough graduates.
You didn't read it carefully enough. "The US" hasn't been able to produce enough CS graduates, which is why it has been bringing in foreigners to fill its CS programs. So, CS programs are full, but only because 50% of its graduates are foreigners, foreigners that need H1B visas in order to work in the US computer industry when they graduate.
Note that even with foreign students, the number of CS graduates in the US is ridiculously small; the total number of grad students in CS is similar to each the total number in psychology or political science, fields which don't exactly have thriving commercial industries.
So, for the third time, according to whom?
Since you seem to be incapable of doing a Google search, here are the NSF numbers:
In 2004, total new CS grad students are made up of 3651 US residents and 4243 foreigners. CS enrollment declined 6.3% that year alone, a trend that's been going on for several years, and I suspect the figures for 2005, 2006, and 2007 are worse.
There is no shortage of qualified native born American scientists and technology workers--no matter how much you might wish it to be so.
Well, that's an unsupported assertion by you that flies in the fact of facts.
But even if you were right, so what? What economic, social, or moral imperative do these companies have to hire you instead of someone in India or China?
In a bookstore or grocery the company is negligent if they put the wrong price on something and then let it be sold as such. However obtaining items under such situations do not result in criminal prosecutions.
That's a good analogy. Not only that, in many situations, they are required to honor their prices.
It's primarily when software gets involved that companies weasel out of that again. "Oh, our web software displayed a priced of $1 for the Vaio Laptop? Well, we are too stupid to test our software and nobody can get this darned.ASP stuff working anyway, so we are justified to just charge the customer's credit card retroactively!"
On the other hand, if a slot machine has the fact that it costs one dollar to play prominently displayed, and you get ten dollars' worth of credit when you insert your dollar, it's painfully obvious to any reasonable person that the machine is messed up. The people playing most certainly should have reported the error, or at the very least, not exploited it.
I disagree. It may be immoral for them to have exploited the error, but it shouldn't be illegal or the user's responsibility.
Why shouldn't it be illegal? Because companies need to be responsible for ensuring that their software works correctly and they should not be permitted to shift that responsibility to users. So, in this case, the user benefited from the error. The more usual case is that the user gets hurt: his identity gets stolen, he gets injured, or his data gets lost.
The only way for companies to reduce the risk of that happening is to institute proper software quality control. If they can't even do that when their own money is at risk, they certainly aren't going to do it when someone else's money or livelihood is at risk.
Losing the $500k on faulty software is appropriate punishment for the casino. Let's hope it will encourage them to take software testing more seriously, for all their software.
There is a fundamental question here: the casino installed faulty software and didn't test it; they should bear the full responsibility for that, no matter how obvious the fault may be to a user.
Um, your quote was that CS programs have been underpopulated for decades...
Not quite. Read it more carefully.
And, again I ask, according to whom?
Well, they are obvious to anybody who's actually trying to hire (like myself). But the NSF and lots of other organizations keep these stats. Go look it up; these aren't obscure or disputed facts.
And, again, your analytical skills are at a level that I cannot even begin to express.
What's there to analyze? The US job losses due to H1B limits are already happening and widespread. IBM, Google, etc. have labs all over the world. Microsoft just moved a lab to Vancouver. Apple has closed most of its R&D facilities and just outsources to China. Etc.
According to economic and demographic data; for example:
* IT jobs are very highly paid compared to other jobs, not just in the US but worldwide. * Companies are complaining about IT shortages worldwide. * The tech industry has been expanding, while CS enrollment has been declining strongly, so things are getting worse.
Limiting H1Bs is not going to get you a job or a higher salary, not only because the shortage is genuine, but because you're competing against Indians and Chinese no matter whether they work in the US or in India.
If you can't get an IT job in this market and you can demonstrate that you're technically reasonably competent, there's some problem with your application or interviews that causes people to reject you. Try to find out what it is; maybe see a career counselor at your old college.
who'd like to work for Google, while Google is looking for more H1B workers, who are cheaper.
Every SV firm I have worked at had the same hiring procedure: first, the technical people interview and make their selection, then HR works out the salary and visa issues. And for the people doing the hiring, only headcount matters, not actual salary--if they hire someone cheap, they don't get to spend the money on something else.
So, the notion that tech companies are specifically looking for cheap H1B labor simply doesn't square with reality.
It wants to tap the PhDs that Americans have invested in producing to make a less-valuable foreigner workforce more productive.
You really don't have a clue what's going on, do you? For several decades, the US hasn't been able to produce enough CS graduates; that's why about half the graduate students and half of Silicon Valley is foreign born. Without foreign-born graduate students, US computer science research could just shut down. The situation is even more dire now than it has been in past years, in part because of the visa restrictions and because of the way the US is being perceived in the rest of the world. Many computer science departments have seen enrollment drop by 30-50% over the span of a few years.
Foreign students study on student visas, but are usually paid for by US research grants. They need an H1B visa as a follow-up; if they don't get it, the expensive foreign-born Ph.D. that the US has invested in has to... leave. Of course, when they leave, they aren't going back to shoveling dirt or whatever you think people in other countries do, they either work for companies like Google in their home countries, or they start companies that compete with US companies.
All underwritten by foreigner labor, even though there are plenty of Americans available, though at a higher price.
The notion that US corporations look for foreign-born Ph.D.'s in order to save on labor costs is absolutely laughable and completely out of touch with reality. As is, for that matter, the notion that there are "plenty of" Americans available, at any price. For the most part, Americans don't dirty their hands with engineering or research, they become MBAs, JDs, and MDs.
You know, the way you think the world works makes a lot of sense, except that it completely conflicts with the facts:
* There is no evidence that Google pays H1B workers any less than US residents.
* There is no evidence that restricting H1B visas increases US salaries; in fact, there is no evidence that immigration has any significant effect on salaries at all, either way.
* Google isn't a US company, it's a worldwide company; if they can't bring someone in, they'll just hire the same person overseas, and for less money, too.
Not exactly. The Mythical Man Month teaches us that when you're having woman problems,
Trust me on this one: if you're having "woman problems", you do not what to use The Mythical Man Month as a guide. That's true regardless of whether your "woman problems" are the kind of "woman problems" a man has, or the kind of "woman problems" a woman has.
The lack of qualified candidates doesn't mean that Google can't hire people with less/no talent.
Even simpler, they can just hire the people overseas and save some money too: Google has development labs in India, China, and lots of other places.
Not being able to hire people on H1Bs makes Google slightly less attractive relative to international competitors for the top applicants, but it won't force them to hire Americans they didn't want to hire to begin with.
Google would probably dearly love to hire the 1 programmer of greater talent, but if they can't hire him, they have to settle for the 3 programmers of lesser talent. It's not as good, but it's still better than not growing at all (up to a point).
In any case, that has nothing to do with hiring from outside the US, because if Google can't hire people on H1Bs, the alternative is just to hire them directly in India, China, or Europe.
A friend of mine was offered a job by Google but couldn't get an H1B.
So, Google hired an American instead?
Are you kidding? They just hired him overseas. Google is actually saving some money overall because overseas salaries are lower than California's. The US is losing talent and tax revenue, and US engineers are now competing against a lower salary level.
So, why did they try to get an H1B for him in the first place then? He wanted that. It's another part of an offer to attract talent. But if the US just closes the border to talented overseas computer scientists, they'll have to work overseas. Of course, they still compete with Americans in the labor market, and at lower salaries.
Google isn't lying: the restrictions on H1Bs hurt hiring in the US. But like many tech companies, Google has lots of international locations where they can and do hire, so they can still go on hiring binges.
People like to talk about "freezing the assets of terrorists" or "people who support insurgents". Who could object to that? Why wouldn't you want to freeze the assets of terrorists or people who support insurgents? I certainly support that.
The problem is that this debate is framed incorrectly. What legislation like this is really about is giving the executive branch the power to simply declare that someone is a terrorist or supports insurgents, without due process and without benefit of a trial.
So, what the administration really wants is the power to determine unilaterally, without meaningful legal oversight or possibility for redress, to deprive citizens of property and possibly liberty.
Republicans: you're always complaining about bureaucracy and intrusive government. You're seeing the most intrusive government being created by your party. Worse, you're destroying the foundations on which this country was founded, the separation of powers. It would be wrong to call this "unprecendented" (after all, the US Constitution co-existed happily with slavery and racial inequality for many years), but you are moving in the wrong direction. Reign in your party, and deliver what you promise: smaller, less intrusive government. Strengthen the separation of powers, reduce government expenses (starting with the military), get government out of our bedrooms, and get the church out of government.
Like the dozens of different base versions of Windows that are in use and the hundreds of different customizations by system vendors? And let's not forget the dozens of install and packaging formats that exist on Windows.
The only real difference is that MySQL AB gets to charge a bunch of money to the developers of proprietary products that use the software.
No, that's not the "only" real difference. In fact, dual-licensed software is generally not developed by users and for users, it's developed by a company with commercial interests that drive what goes in and what doesn't. And contributors have to sign over their contributions to the company.
I don't know what the FSF position on it is, but I think dual licensing is a bad idea. I think the FSF would be well advised to refuse to let people use the GPL name for dual licensing purposes.
For Microsoft to push 14+ new members into a standards body of previously 7 members just to get their agenda passed is evil; standards bodies are supposed to be based on unbiased expert opinions, not short-term commercial interests. Some bias can't be avoided, but one doesn't have to create it artificially.
I think ANSI should remove authorization from INCITS to make recommendations, since INCITS has demonstrated that they can't be trusted.
Given that California has a Republican governor, I think it's pretty middle of the road politically. Californians are perhaps socially a bit more liberal than other states, but fiscally more conservative (or at least would like to be).
Don't get too excited about this: it's just the HotSpot VM and javac; those aren't very useful by themselves, and there are several good open source VM's and javac's already.
The important bits are the libraries and they're still missing.
Linux... thinks? Artificial intelligence in the Linux kernel? Where?
ZFS is effective because it crosses the lines set by conventional wisdom.
ZFS is more effective than its layered Linux equivalents? Where has that been shown, other than in Sun press releases and marketing hype?
Siracusa ultimately believes that the ability to achieve such a break is more likely to emerge within an authoritative, top-down organization than from a grass-roots, fractious community such as Linux.
Oh, I get it: he is referring to the "break" where companies like Sun periodically have to throw out their systems because they have become too bloated and unwieldy. Yes, Sun is quite familiar with that kind of "break": NeWS, NFS, SunOS, SunView, AWT,... That must be why Sun keeps getting their butt kicked by open source.
Too bad he can't move to Soviet Russia anymore; they sure achieved a lot of similar "breaks" through an "authoritative, top-down organization", too; maybe North Korea will still take him in. As for me, I prefer the layered and free market approach of Linux.
but I don't think this ever prevented anyone from working with him.
Lots of people have given up in frustration on the Linux kernel, over issues such as architecture, extensibility, and C++ compatibility. Most of the contributions to the Linux kernel seem to be in the areas of drivers, file systems, performance improvements, and bug fixes. And as the Bitkeeper/git goings-on show, Linus is at the limit of what he can handle even in terms of maintenance.
But I don't think that's such a bad thing. If the Linux kernel were better architected and if Linus were less abrasive, it would become too easy to add crap to it. You can see that in Windows, Macintosh, and Solaris. In Linux, a lot of that stuff needs to be implemented in userland because everybody knows that there's no way it's going to go into the kernel, and that usually turns out to be a better choice.
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There is no job in the $40-$200k salary range which is so entirely specialized and mission critical that you can come up with such a specific set of completely objective criteria that you could possibly exclusively rank a pool of 100 candidates from one to twenty-five. It doesn't exist.
Of course, it doesn't exist. That's why companies don't rank based on objective criteria, and that's why H1B decisions (by extension) aren't based on objective criteria either.
No, you didn't get my point. My point is that more than half of the US Ph.D.'s in CS get awarded to foreigners. Yes, that represents a substantial US investment and these people need H1B's in order to work in the US if you don't want that investment to be lost.
You don't even bother arguing with the point
Indeed, because they are so hare-brained. Let's look at two of them:
There is not a shred of evidence that Google is paying H1B workers less than equally qualified Americans. Nor have you explained how companies are even supposed to be saving money this way relative to hiring equally qualified Americans. And you have failed to explain why, if Google really wanted to save money, they wouldn't just hire these people in their national subsidiaries (which is what they do when they can't get an H1B).
How exactly are they supposed to do that? H1B visas are for full time jobs. Can you explain how someone hired on an H1B and living in, oh, Mountain View, Seattle, or New York, is supposed to save money by going to India for three weeks a year? People are lucky if they have the time to fly home to see their old relatives at all.
What country are you from? Because it's clear that country didn't get its money's worth educating you.
I'm a product of the US educational system. You can take that as an added reason for the US to have a need to go and hire from outside the US if you like.
I suppose you're now going to try and say that the programs aren't underpopulated but that the US still can't produce enough graduates.
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You didn't read it carefully enough. "The US" hasn't been able to produce enough CS graduates, which is why it has been bringing in foreigners to fill its CS programs. So, CS programs are full, but only because 50% of its graduates are foreigners, foreigners that need H1B visas in order to work in the US computer industry when they graduate.
Note that even with foreign students, the number of CS graduates in the US is ridiculously small; the total number of grad students in CS is similar to each the total number in psychology or political science, fields which don't exactly have thriving commercial industries.
So, for the third time, according to whom?
Since you seem to be incapable of doing a Google search, here are the NSF numbers:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06321/
In 2004, total new CS grad students are made up of 3651 US residents and 4243 foreigners. CS enrollment declined 6.3% that year alone, a trend that's been going on for several years, and I suspect the figures for 2005, 2006, and 2007 are worse.
Here's a nice graph:
http://www.nafsa.org/_/Image/_/presidents_graph.g
Here's a comparison with other nations:
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/science_undergrad_in
Here is undergraduate CS majors over time:
http://www.computer.org/portal/cms_docs_computer/
There is no shortage of qualified native born American scientists and technology workers--no matter how much you might wish it to be so.
Well, that's an unsupported assertion by you that flies in the fact of facts.
But even if you were right, so what? What economic, social, or moral imperative do these companies have to hire you instead of someone in India or China?
In a bookstore or grocery the company is negligent if they put the wrong price on something and then let it be sold as such. However obtaining items under such situations do not result in criminal prosecutions.
.ASP stuff working anyway, so we are justified to just charge the customer's credit card retroactively!"
That's a good analogy. Not only that, in many situations, they are required to honor their prices.
It's primarily when software gets involved that companies weasel out of that again. "Oh, our web software displayed a priced of $1 for the Vaio Laptop? Well, we are too stupid to test our software and nobody can get this darned
On the other hand, if a slot machine has the fact that it costs one dollar to play prominently displayed, and you get ten dollars' worth of credit when you insert your dollar, it's painfully obvious to any reasonable person that the machine is messed up. The people playing most certainly should have reported the error, or at the very least, not exploited it.
I disagree. It may be immoral for them to have exploited the error, but it shouldn't be illegal or the user's responsibility.
Why shouldn't it be illegal? Because companies need to be responsible for ensuring that their software works correctly and they should not be permitted to shift that responsibility to users. So, in this case, the user benefited from the error. The more usual case is that the user gets hurt: his identity gets stolen, he gets injured, or his data gets lost.
The only way for companies to reduce the risk of that happening is to institute proper software quality control. If they can't even do that when their own money is at risk, they certainly aren't going to do it when someone else's money or livelihood is at risk.
Losing the $500k on faulty software is appropriate punishment for the casino. Let's hope it will encourage them to take software testing more seriously, for all their software.
There is a fundamental question here: the casino installed faulty software and didn't test it; they should bear the full responsibility for that, no matter how obvious the fault may be to a user.
Um, your quote was that CS programs have been underpopulated for decades...
Not quite. Read it more carefully.
And, again I ask, according to whom?
Well, they are obvious to anybody who's actually trying to hire (like myself). But the NSF and lots of other organizations keep these stats. Go look it up; these aren't obscure or disputed facts.
And, again, your analytical skills are at a level that I cannot even begin to express.
What's there to analyze? The US job losses due to H1B limits are already happening and widespread. IBM, Google, etc. have labs all over the world. Microsoft just moved a lab to Vancouver. Apple has closed most of its R&D facilities and just outsources to China. Etc.
According to whom?
According to economic and demographic data; for example:
* IT jobs are very highly paid compared to other jobs, not just in the US but worldwide.
* Companies are complaining about IT shortages worldwide.
* The tech industry has been expanding, while CS enrollment has been declining strongly, so things are getting worse.
Limiting H1Bs is not going to get you a job or a higher salary, not only because the shortage is genuine, but because you're competing against Indians and Chinese no matter whether they work in the US or in India.
If you can't get an IT job in this market and you can demonstrate that you're technically reasonably competent, there's some problem with your application or interviews that causes people to reject you. Try to find out what it is; maybe see a career counselor at your old college.
who'd like to work for Google, while Google is looking for more H1B workers, who are cheaper.
Every SV firm I have worked at had the same hiring procedure: first, the technical people interview and make their selection, then HR works out the salary and visa issues. And for the people doing the hiring, only headcount matters, not actual salary--if they hire someone cheap, they don't get to spend the money on something else.
So, the notion that tech companies are specifically looking for cheap H1B labor simply doesn't square with reality.
It wants to tap the PhDs that Americans have invested in producing to make a less-valuable foreigner workforce more productive.
You really don't have a clue what's going on, do you? For several decades, the US hasn't been able to produce enough CS graduates; that's why about half the graduate students and half of Silicon Valley is foreign born. Without foreign-born graduate students, US computer science research could just shut down. The situation is even more dire now than it has been in past years, in part because of the visa restrictions and because of the way the US is being perceived in the rest of the world. Many computer science departments have seen enrollment drop by 30-50% over the span of a few years.
Foreign students study on student visas, but are usually paid for by US research grants. They need an H1B visa as a follow-up; if they don't get it, the expensive foreign-born Ph.D. that the US has invested in has to... leave. Of course, when they leave, they aren't going back to shoveling dirt or whatever you think people in other countries do, they either work for companies like Google in their home countries, or they start companies that compete with US companies.
All underwritten by foreigner labor, even though there are plenty of Americans available, though at a higher price.
The notion that US corporations look for foreign-born Ph.D.'s in order to save on labor costs is absolutely laughable and completely out of touch with reality. As is, for that matter, the notion that there are "plenty of" Americans available, at any price. For the most part, Americans don't dirty their hands with engineering or research, they become MBAs, JDs, and MDs.
You know, the way you think the world works makes a lot of sense, except that it completely conflicts with the facts:
* There is no evidence that Google pays H1B workers any less than US residents.
* There is no evidence that restricting H1B visas increases US salaries; in fact, there is no evidence that immigration has any significant effect on salaries at all, either way.
* Google isn't a US company, it's a worldwide company; if they can't bring someone in, they'll just hire the same person overseas, and for less money, too.
Not exactly. The Mythical Man Month teaches us that when you're having woman problems,
Trust me on this one: if you're having "woman problems", you do not what to use The Mythical Man Month as a guide. That's true regardless of whether your "woman problems" are the kind of "woman problems" a man has, or the kind of "woman problems" a woman has.
The lack of qualified candidates doesn't mean that Google can't hire people with less/no talent.
Even simpler, they can just hire the people overseas and save some money too: Google has development labs in India, China, and lots of other places.
Not being able to hire people on H1Bs makes Google slightly less attractive relative to international competitors for the top applicants, but it won't force them to hire Americans they didn't want to hire to begin with.
Google would probably dearly love to hire the 1 programmer of greater talent, but if they can't hire him, they have to settle for the 3 programmers of lesser talent. It's not as good, but it's still better than not growing at all (up to a point).
In any case, that has nothing to do with hiring from outside the US, because if Google can't hire people on H1Bs, the alternative is just to hire them directly in India, China, or Europe.
A friend of mine was offered a job by Google but couldn't get an H1B.
So, Google hired an American instead?
Are you kidding? They just hired him overseas. Google is actually saving some money overall because overseas salaries are lower than California's. The US is losing talent and tax revenue, and US engineers are now competing against a lower salary level.
So, why did they try to get an H1B for him in the first place then? He wanted that. It's another part of an offer to attract talent. But if the US just closes the border to talented overseas computer scientists, they'll have to work overseas. Of course, they still compete with Americans in the labor market, and at lower salaries.
Google isn't lying: the restrictions on H1Bs hurt hiring in the US. But like many tech companies, Google has lots of international locations where they can and do hire, so they can still go on hiring binges.
People like to talk about "freezing the assets of terrorists" or "people who support insurgents". Who could object to that? Why wouldn't you want to freeze the assets of terrorists or people who support insurgents? I certainly support that.
The problem is that this debate is framed incorrectly. What legislation like this is really about is giving the executive branch the power to simply declare that someone is a terrorist or supports insurgents, without due process and without benefit of a trial.
So, what the administration really wants is the power to determine unilaterally, without meaningful legal oversight or possibility for redress, to deprive citizens of property and possibly liberty.
Republicans: you're always complaining about bureaucracy and intrusive government. You're seeing the most intrusive government being created by your party. Worse, you're destroying the foundations on which this country was founded, the separation of powers. It would be wrong to call this "unprecendented" (after all, the US Constitution co-existed happily with slavery and racial inequality for many years), but you are moving in the wrong direction. Reign in your party, and deliver what you promise: smaller, less intrusive government. Strengthen the separation of powers, reduce government expenses (starting with the military), get government out of our bedrooms, and get the church out of government.
Like the dozens of different base versions of Windows that are in use and the hundreds of different customizations by system vendors? And let's not forget the dozens of install and packaging formats that exist on Windows.
The only real difference is that MySQL AB gets to charge a bunch of money to the developers of proprietary products that use the software.
No, that's not the "only" real difference. In fact, dual-licensed software is generally not developed by users and for users, it's developed by a company with commercial interests that drive what goes in and what doesn't. And contributors have to sign over their contributions to the company.
I don't know what the FSF position on it is, but I think dual licensing is a bad idea. I think the FSF would be well advised to refuse to let people use the GPL name for dual licensing purposes.
Well, they'll be able to use it for that... and for blackmailing political opponents.
Actually, given that MySQL is dual-licensed, it's questionable whether it even is free software.
For Microsoft to push 14+ new members into a standards body of previously 7 members just to get their agenda passed is evil; standards bodies are supposed to be based on unbiased expert opinions, not short-term commercial interests. Some bias can't be avoided, but one doesn't have to create it artificially.
I think ANSI should remove authorization from INCITS to make recommendations, since INCITS has demonstrated that they can't be trusted.
Given that California has a Republican governor, I think it's pretty middle of the road politically. Californians are perhaps socially a bit more liberal than other states, but fiscally more conservative (or at least would like to be).
Don't get too excited about this: it's just the HotSpot VM and javac; those aren't very useful by themselves, and there are several good open source VM's and javac's already.
The important bits are the libraries and they're still missing.
Linux... thinks? Artificial intelligence in the Linux kernel? Where?
ZFS is more effective than its layered Linux equivalents? Where has that been shown, other than in Sun press releases and marketing hype?
Oh, I get it: he is referring to the "break" where companies like Sun periodically have to throw out their systems because they have become too bloated and unwieldy. Yes, Sun is quite familiar with that kind of "break": NeWS, NFS, SunOS, SunView, AWT,
Too bad he can't move to Soviet Russia anymore; they sure achieved a lot of similar "breaks" through an "authoritative, top-down organization", too; maybe North Korea will still take him in. As for me, I prefer the layered and free market approach of Linux.
but I don't think this ever prevented anyone from working with him.
Lots of people have given up in frustration on the Linux kernel, over issues such as architecture, extensibility, and C++ compatibility. Most of the contributions to the Linux kernel seem to be in the areas of drivers, file systems, performance improvements, and bug fixes. And as the Bitkeeper/git goings-on show, Linus is at the limit of what he can handle even in terms of maintenance.
But I don't think that's such a bad thing. If the Linux kernel were better architected and if Linus were less abrasive, it would become too easy to add crap to it. You can see that in Windows, Macintosh, and Solaris. In Linux, a lot of that stuff needs to be implemented in userland because everybody knows that there's no way it's going to go into the kernel, and that usually turns out to be a better choice.