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I did work for a startup that was comprised of a development group of 6 of the most well educated people I have ever met. It didn't last long unfortunately. All of them doctorates.. many from prestigious programs from NYU (founder and CTO is one) and MIT.
None of them were immigrants.. all American. So while my observations in later companies don't back it up, I think the notion that there are not enough American high skilled workers is B.S. Sorry excuse to keep technology wages low.
PS> I credit that 10 month experience with that excellent group with massively helping me get my career on track. They were very good teachers (a few were professors).. pushed my thinking... pushed my skills... and never treated me as beneath them. Damn wish I could do that again...
Bringing in a glut of skilled tech workers from abroad raises the bar for the competition for meaningful tech jobs in the U.S. Yes, it is a competition; there is a limited number of meaningful tech jobs. At this point you need a C.S. degree from a top-tier university to get a meaningful programming job.
Yeah, I read that article. Now, consider the source. Hal Salzman did his undergrad at UC Santa Cruz (where Democrats are considered right-wing) and has grad work at Brandeis (to the left of Santa Cruz). Ask him ANY question and he'll respond "It's all Bush's fault... wait... what was the question?"
He has never spent one day -- not one single day -- in the recruiting department of an engineering firm or high tech company. His opinion on this carries no weight.
Instead - talk to hiring managers desperate for BSEE, MSEE software EE, solid-state physicists, semiconductor process engineers and the like.
Why is it that everything in your field of view needs to be brought to the killing floor of the left-right debate? I could have gone on and provided more evidence of a contrary point of view on this issue and that evidence would never be sufficient for you. For every bit of support for H1-B visa's there is a contrary note by those who don't support it's expansion.
I took the time to read from left to right on this subject, in doing so the pertinent facts seem to be pushed further into a murky space of political philosophies that allow for an acrobatic level of statistics usage. Some maintain as you have that the terms of the debate aren't in keeping with a realistic view of things, others join in on the fact of low pay being a natural attraction for employers, at some point one has to take into consideration the fact that much is at stake in this debate and thus allow for the emotional hyperbole on both sides.
Salzman isn't the only voice in the opposition camp, that group is a wide representation of American interests, ranging from right wing anti immigrant types to lefty anti business people. My guess is that like most of these hot button issues the truth is somewhere in between the extreme views. And the following comment of yours certainly falls into that which is nearer to the "right" of center.
"Lazy journalists lump R&D engineers & technical writers & manufacturing engineers & marketing engineers & IT guys & support engineers into one bucket and call it "tech", and then interview some liberal arts professor someplace & bait him to say their is no shortage of tech workers so they can publish an article and save their jobs."
This is the disingenuous part of your post that speaks more to a particular kind of anger rather than a genuine effort to arrive at the truth. This issue, like most of it's kind, can only be debated by allowing both sides the latitude to express their thoughts as concerned Americans, your assertions that business knows best is an insult to those who feel an obligation and a loyalty to our democracy over that of corporate interests.
In an apparent attempt to further obfuscate the truth you're concluding that none other than those in the hiring positions can adequately determine the facts of our national employment needs. This conveniently overlooks the fact that these job skill requirements are routinely published by none other than those same hiring folks, and that information can be passed on to those who do understand the situation as it relates to America's workers and their abilities. As the song says, "you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows".
I'm no expert in this field, I am simply an American citizen who is all too familiar with the excesses of modern day corporatism and their lack of allegiance to America. If financial compensation was on a world par workers wouldn't be travelling the globe in search of better money, for the most part this is the background set for the H1-B scenario, period. Nothing is all black or white, there are some skills that may require a foreign worker, but the numbers of these workers in the US suggests something else besides skill is required...
In one way, I think what you're saying can be possible. But in a different way, I think American demographics, especially workplace demographics, is very different and peculiar.our workforce is more global than our population. Effect even CEOs have been globalized. Take a look at Microsoft CEO. Once the structure is globalized, it looks even more toward its global missions and less toward American national interest. The multinational business community is basically renting the United States as a location for its headquarters and some of its operations.
At the same time, the most skill population has also become highly globalized. Many service sectors have become dominated by one ethnic group. Think of nail salons of the Vietnamese and construction businesses of Latinos and Hispanics. There's also healthcare and nursing where there is a tremendous Latino and Hispanic presence. And in many parts of Florida, you better speak some Spanish if you want to work in these fields. Take a look at Obama rally's. In today's America, it is the undocumented immigrants and their supporters who shout the loudest and Heckel Mr. Pres. People yell "but there have been deportations". And all that Obama could do was to smile and be polite and tell these people that he did exactly what they want it. And by the way, this is still Obama and the Democrats, who for the most part supported undocumented immigrants. And yet there rallies, this is the heckling that you get. The silent ones are American citizens. And you can just tell the discomfort in their facial expressions while they try to suppress it.
What is happening in the United States today is something new and novel. We may have had it sometime back in human history. Maybe Rome. The US has become a society of individuals who come from drastically different backgrounds, who are or were enemies of one another, who seek a piece of the pie in our capitalist system.socially and culturally, there is much less that bond the US society together. To be an American means to be yourself. Everyone is a free agent, negotiating with the corporate system, expensive education system, etc. thanks to a lot of left-wing politics, the traditional family and community model has been replaced by a difference seeking model of individual expression. The rich party while the poor multiply. The rich is a global Rich. The poor are a community filled with tensions of all sorts.
It is funny that liberals talk about Scandinavian economic models and social democracy. Scandinavian societies are based primarily a homogeneous population. It isn't the Scandinavian governance model that creates the compassion and the shared understanding their population. Is the opposite. Its the egalitarian and culture of Scandinavian countries that made possible the Scandinavian economic and social model. liberals have created a soil that is to the very opposite of the one that nurtures Scandinavian happiness. This is why I think that's progressivism today is a collection of logically incompatible and unrealistic dreams that ultimately please nobody.
You mentioned that the American worker is somehow going to wake up. But who exactly are these American workers. Where exactly are these American workers? I think that American society is just too fragmented and divided that it is difficult for any group to start a dominant and change making movements. This is like a grid lock. I believe that any dramatic incidents will not happen until this gridlock has a breakthrough. And who knows what and when that is going to be. History has long proven that trying to bring a large group of very different people under one cause when that cause is as selfish as class interests is nearly impossible. Ethnic cultural and nationalistic differences almost always trump class solidarity.perhaps this is the bitter outcome of years of left wing politics aimed at destroying cultural and social hegemonies. One day these hegemonies will be gone. But what replace them is going to be another hegemonic structure. Liberals are just beginning to slowly taste the bitterness of their own making. The conservatives seek to hold onto the social structure of the past. But by embracing global capitalism, they have planted the seeds of their own social and cultural destruction.
You've made some excellent observations here, and I agree with most of what you say. As to the question of who are those who may eventually "wake up", I would say that things change, and the changes in America are never a done deal. We are already a diverse bunch, but that said, we are still a country of nationals that have historically put aside our differences in order to arrest any advances on our security.
It is and always was the specific spoils of our democracy that has afforded us the decent society we have in contrast to those in other parts of the world, foreigners don't arrive here seeking to raise the living standards of their bosses or to give rise to the US GDP, their presence is evidence of little more than their drive to succeed on a personal level, just like the American worker. However, if the presence of foreign labor expands the scenario of a too wide spread of interests that will become the dominant cause of American labor apathy you describe.
In light of these facts, myself and other Americans are left to wonder where OUR opportunities will be when the official line is to open our doors to the entire world in deference to OUR own interests. It's great to think of our world as an open and inviting place for all, but this is not the shared vision of so many foreign nations who export their best labor because they have failed to create a real competitive edge over that of American labor standards tied to that level of decent living conditions.
Nail salons ran by Vietnamese and the presence of Latinos in the construction trades has been the result of American business interests being served by the hiring of cheaper labor and the fact of an entrepreneurial spirit common to Asians in general and leaves us to question their "need" to be here for the fact of our doing these things for ourselves for hundreds of years.
When you point out the nationality of Microsoft's CEO and imply a "new" "global" paradigm in American business please consider that this is a nation OF immigrants, and the names of our populace have as much if not more diversity than most the world and always has.
I simply don't care to address the stupidity of party politics relative to H1-B, both parties as you and I have agreed are without merit when the interests of the average American are considered. We already have a ton of foreign nationals here, the question facing us is one of sovereignty, or more to the point, who will rule America? Some are in the corporate worship mode, and some are in the anti corporate mode, but in the end the middle view will prevail, and that view will obviously include many of the foreigners already here. Some of us have a long heritage here, and some don't, one's position on this can be altered by that fact.
I do read every post here on CD forums that I have an interest in, I have never put anyone on ignore, and I have learned from the thoughts of others as much as I've tried to proselytize others with my own observations, on that note, thanks for your contribution.
You've made some excellent observations here, and I agree with most of what you say. As to the question of who are those who may eventually "wake up", I would say that things change, and the changes in America are never a done deal. We are already a diverse bunch, but that said, we are still a country of nationals that have historically put aside our differences in order to arrest any advances on our security.
It is and always was the specific spoils of our democracy that has afforded us the decent society we have in contrast to those in other parts of the world, foreigners don't arrive here seeking to raise the living standards of their bosses or to give rise to the US GDP, their presence is evidence of little more than their drive to succeed on a personal level, just like the American worker. However, if the presence of foreign labor expands the scenario of a too wide spread of interests that will become the dominant cause of American labor apathy you describe.
In light of these facts, myself and other Americans are left to wonder where OUR opportunities will be when the official line is to open our doors to the entire world in deference to OUR own interests. It's great to think of our world as an open and inviting place for all, but this is not the shared vision of so many foreign nations who export their best labor because they have failed to create a real competitive edge over that of American labor standards tied to that level of decent living conditions.
Nail salons ran by Vietnamese and the presence of Latinos in the construction trades has been the result of American business interests being served by the hiring of cheaper labor and the fact of an entrepreneurial spirit common to Asians in general and leaves us to question their "need" to be here for the fact of our doing these things for ourselves for hundreds of years.
When you point out the nationality of Microsoft's CEO and imply a "new" "global" paradigm in American business please consider that this is a nation OF immigrants, and the names of our populace have as much if not more diversity than most the world and always has.
I simply don't care to address the stupidity of party politics relative to H1-B, both parties as you and I have agreed are without merit when the interests of the average American are considered. We already have a ton of foreign nationals here, the question facing us is one of sovereignty, or more to the point, who will rule America? Some are in the corporate worship mode, and some are in the anti corporate mode, but in the end the middle view will prevail, and that view will obviously include many of the foreigners already here. Some of us have a long heritage here, and some don't, one's position on this can be altered by that fact.
I do read every post here on CD forums that I have an interest in, I have never put anyone on ignore, and I have learned from the thoughts of others as much as I've tried to proselytize others with my own observations, on that note, thanks for your contribution.
I'd like to point out that the drive to use cheaper labor doesn't explain everything about h1b visas and an internationalizing workforce. The matter of the fact is that when companies seek the best, some of it will go to foreign workers. Any countries own people aren't always the best than others. That alone will lead to many amercians being displaced. This is why europe and even Canada have rules taht prioritize citizens. We do not have such rules. We have a large number of international students who join the labor market upon graduation. Many of them are hardworking and focus on marketable skills. This gives these people an edge, while amercians goof around, join protests, and major in art history. Few foreigners grew up being told by hippie parents that they could do what they love. Most foreigners are realistic about social competition. After all, those who are here left their homeland for a different country. They are Here for opportunities and a better life, whether it's real or perceived. Companies don't have to actively see foreigners. Any job pool today has a significant number of foreigners.
This actually goes back further go changes in higher education. Science labs and graduate programs have long favored international students as teaching and research assistants. Lots of amercians would tell you that they are one of the only amercians in their program, as faculty prefer foreign students who are hard working. This goes to the change of higher education from nurturing students to grant driven research. Faculty hire students to work for these grant projects. Employment and tenure are increasingly measured by money projects, not by facultys teaching. How much time does a faculty member spend on education is questionable. In fact, most research university faculty see teaching as secondary, if not punishment. Faculty, including lefties, got used to cheap labor supply and autonomy of lifestyle. They played along with the corporatisation of higher education. Basic classes are taught by teaching assistants who no longer want collective bargaining power. Instead, faculty choose a few exciting topics and enjoy teaching their political views and hobbies in class. Science labs, in particular, have long operated like businesses. No one cares what happens in the college classroom. University administration has ballooned with lavish salaries and pointless positions. Today administrators see students as customers, credits as commodity, and faculty as the enemy. It's not about education. It's about selling credits, increasing enrollment, efficiency, and top down decison making. In fact, in the humanities, faculty know how terrible the job market is, but they just kept admitting students at graduate levels, collapsing an even more saturated market. Many of these students spent years in ivy tower, only to find that the only jobs available at adjuncts without benefits. And the faculty? They turned around and said "you chose gender studies remember?"
In these 20 years, banks and colleges essentially worked together. Colleges admissions simply fueled the student loans industry, who now sees the undocumented immigrants as the next target to be indebted. The corporate right isn't going to build a racist border wall as msnbc tells us. They see undocumented immigrants as a basic necessity of American capitalism in the 21st century, much like nafta and the free trade agreements being negotiated today.
Universities are terribly behind in responding to the niche skills economy. Faculty don't want to learn new things. Political correctness has taken over the university and has ironically grown in the administration. Students are forced to take liberal politics classes their loans pay for. They hate it. Tax payers hate it. the public sees administrative ballooning a lesser evil than socialist curricula. Instead of defending education, tax payers are now on the side of corporatizing universities, hoping that these universities would then teach useful skills. our universities today are a weird mix of liberal bullies and executive administrations, neither of whom is looking after the interest of students. As a young American, you either sit in classrooms where no marketable skills are taught, or in for profit campuses where quality means nothing. University ads today look like motivational marketing of fitness clubs. It's all convenient, online, study while parenting, and enjoy those fancy student centers of ceiling to floor windows. But, all that is paid by banks who seek returns from young people.
So how could americans today possess the qualifications corporations seek? They didn't get to see the professor much at all. They couldn't understand the accents of teaching assistants. They were yelled at by someone angry at Scott Walker. They spent hours learning feminism and racism while students in India learned every programming language. Their parents tell them to do what they love. Failing programs are exactly in need of enrollment.
Corporations are soaked in talented individuals. There is no need to train anyone. You better be prepared yourself. Meanwhile, faculty tell you education isn't for job seeking. It's for democracy. So here you are, working as a barista at Starbucks. Where is democracy? Where the hell is that democracy that people told you about? I think as a society, america must admit that it is lying to its young generation. It sees young peope are cows to milk for those who already have gotten theirs, be in bankers or priviledged professors. Everyone in the system is looking after just their own interests. They have only the power to care for themselves.
The decline of the United States began four decades ago. When we gave up producing and went shopping. When we spent and borrowed. When we went way over on bitter social issues and forgot about economic issues. When we saw the fall of communism not as the victory of freedom but labor arbitrage. When we started silly wars that backfired. When we became complacent and loosened, thinking that no body could ever surpass and destroy us.
When one feels the need to reach a bit in order to make a point I'm of the opinion that doing so makes another point, and that would be the obvious tendency to overstate one's case.
"So how could americans today possess the qualifications corporations seek? They didn't get to see the professor much at all. They couldn't understand the accents of teaching assistants. They were yelled at by someone angry at Scott Walker. They spent hours learning feminism and racism while students in India learned every programming language. Their parents tell them to do what they love. Failing programs are exactly in need of enrollment."
I know a fair amount of college grads who have met and exceeded the employment criteria needed to get high paying jobs, I worked for twenty years with some of the brightest engineers in their respective fields. Some were foreigners and did as well as their American counterparts, the niche skills (which I spoke to in earlier posts) now required are simply a component of a new ploy to create a "shortage" in certain fields. The ton of evidence required to support the notion of foreign labor being a circumvention of higher pay is there for any and all to see, I'll leave the perusal of such evidence and the subsequent conclusions to those who want to see both sides to this problem.
When you castigate the American student as a type of Bozo who majors in art history and "goofs around" I'm going to assume a deeper resentment of America and it's citizenry may be the driving force in your twisted view of the university system that on the one hand is characterized by you as a totally deficient system, and on the other an institution that is more than adequate to the task of educating the foreign student, because of their, "foreign-ness??? My God man, our universities are the citadel of world wide higher education, why would the foreign student be here if it's the uber liberal bastion of industrialized silliness you claim it to be?
America is a troubled nation today for the fact of it's economic stratification that allows for a lopsided concentration of wealth to become a new norm, not because our universities have done any injustice to the student body. All workers across the world need to have sustainable work, but that work cannot be amassed in a few nations to the exclusion of others, that is a big part of what has gone wrong not just in America but the world over. We need to ask ourselves why the people in India can't seem to arrive at a better spread of benefit for their citizens, we need to look at China and ask why we are subsidizing their grip on the worker, and we need to ask the questions that address OUR problems, we the people, and not just the "problems" of corporate employment "needs".
We have a huge number of people here that are fast becoming permanently unemployed, if we are to allow the foreign worker a place at the table we also need to consider our own countrymen at the very least. Especially given the fact of so much vitriol regarding the American unemployed complete with the sermonizing here on Cd despite the fact that we have too many people chasing too few jobs. That fact is at the core here, not the need for education, or bootstrap willpower, nor is it the fault of ceiling to floor windows paid for by banks, or any of the other supposed maladies you've assigned a blame to.
Your observations of our democracy and it's apparent gutted out role for the citizenry is a very real fundamental problem for us all, and that has led me to ask the obvious question of who rules America? In the book by William Domhoff with the title, Who Rules America Now, he lays out a clear view of the systematic way in which the real rulers have structured the entire university system, the monetary system, the legislative system, and other institutional systems tailored to produce a certain outcome. I won't post further on this issue for the fact that the H1-B visa program is administered within that institutional framework Domhoff spoke of, and it's intent follows that regimen of scripted outcomes.
Again, "IT workers" are not the same thing as material scientists, solid-state physicists, microprocessor architects, penetration engineers, and the like. We have a massive talent shortage of skilled design engineers and scientists who can develop products for the future. No one questions this.
When one feels the need to reach a bit in order to make a point I'm of the opinion that doing so makes another point, and that would be the obvious tendency to overstate one's case.
"So how could americans today possess the qualifications corporations seek? They didn't get to see the professor much at all. They couldn't understand the accents of teaching assistants. They were yelled at by someone angry at Scott Walker. They spent hours learning feminism and racism while students in India learned every programming language. Their parents tell them to do what they love. Failing programs are exactly in need of enrollment."
I know a fair amount of college grads who have met and exceeded the employment criteria needed to get high paying jobs, I worked for twenty years with some of the brightest engineers in their respective fields. Some were foreigners and did as well as their American counterparts, the niche skills (which I spoke to in earlier posts) now required are simply a component of a new ploy to create a "shortage" in certain fields. The ton of evidence required to support the notion of foreign labor being a circumvention of higher pay is there for any and all to see, I'll leave the perusal of such evidence and the subsequent conclusions to those who want to see both sides to this problem.
When you castigate the American student as a type of Bozo who majors in art history and "goofs around" I'm going to assume a deeper resentment of America and it's citizenry may be the driving force in your twisted view of the university system that on the one hand is characterized by you as a totally deficient system, and on the other an institution that is more than adequate to the task of educating the foreign student, because of their, "foreign-ness??? My God man, our universities are the citadel of world wide higher education, why would the foreign student be here if it's the uber liberal bastion of industrialized silliness you claim it to be?
America is a troubled nation today for the fact of it's economic stratification that allows for a lopsided concentration of wealth to become a new norm, not because our universities have done any injustice to the student body. All workers across the world need to have sustainable work, but that work cannot be amassed in a few nations to the exclusion of others, that is a big part of what has gone wrong not just in America but the world over. We need to ask ourselves why the people in India can't seem to arrive at a better spread of benefit for their citizens, we need to look at China and ask why we are subsidizing their grip on the worker, and we need to ask the questions that address OUR problems, we the people, and not just the "problems" of corporate employment "needs".
We have a huge number of people here that are fast becoming permanently unemployed, if we are to allow the foreign worker a place at the table we also need to consider our own countrymen at the very least. Especially given the fact of so much vitriol regarding the American unemployed complete with the sermonizing here on Cd despite the fact that we have too many people chasing too few jobs. That fact is at the core here, not the need for education, or bootstrap willpower, nor is it the fault of ceiling to floor windows paid for by banks, or any of the other supposed maladies you've assigned a blame to.
Your observations of our democracy and it's apparent gutted out role for the citizenry is a very real fundamental problem for us all, and that has led me to ask the obvious question of who rules America? In the book by William Domhoff with the title, Who Rules America Now, he lays out a clear view of the systematic way in which the real rulers have structured the entire university system, the monetary system, the legislative system, and other institutional systems tailored to produce a certain outcome. I won't post further on this issue for the fact that the H1-B visa program is administered within that institutional framework Domhoff spoke of, and it's intent follows that regimen of scripted outcomes.
I don't quite agree with the points that we ought to structure the society based on what we want and not the needs of employers. After all employers and their needs not only supply the vast majority of the jobs and us opportunities and wealth but also signal economic trends of our future. It is rhetorically tempting to say that this is a society for people not business. But people are sometimes ignorant, lazy, greedy, complacent, disinterested, Etc. Most people do not have professional and technical expertise that keeps our trains running and our electricity going.even experts are so only in their narrow field.
I don't believe that people coming together and discuss things would necessarily yield good results. Our differences and gaps are a source of constant tensions and disagreements. It's nice to say that the people decide and that people are always right. That is political rhetoric not reality.democracy does not trump economics. It cannot be isolated from the laws of economics. The problem I see with the political left is that it is often all emotional, often moral. It fails to account for human nature. Another post says that research shows conservatives are happier. I gather that this is because conservatives are more at peace with human nature wheras Liberals are constantly trying to make other people do what they don't want to do. Liberals have an uphill battle.
I'd like to point out that the drive to use cheaper labor doesn't explain everything about h1b visas and an internationalizing workforce. The matter of the fact is that when companies seek the best, some of it will go to foreign workers. Any countries own people aren't always the best than others. That alone will lead to many amercians being displaced. This is why europe and even Canada have rules taht prioritize citizens. We do not have such rules. We have a large number of international students who join the labor market upon graduation. Many of them are hardworking and focus on marketable skills. This gives these people an edge, while amercians goof around, join protests, and major in art history.
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