dagblog - Comments for "Technology, Education, Opportunity and the H1B."

You don't need to find a

Donna Conroy — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 01:34:21 +0000

In reply to Technology, Education, Opportunity and the H1B.

You don't need to find a solution; IT professionals, along with the DOJ, already have.

The Department of Justice is recommending that Congress re-write H1-b law, requiring companies to seek local talent first and "to hire any equally or better qualified US workers who apply." They are concerned that "US workers...have been impermissibly replaced by H1-b visa holders and identify employers who may be engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against US workers."

I appeared on Dan Rather Reports 3 months ago, explaining how companies will go to any length, including breaking the law, to avoid hiring Americans for their US job openings. the link to the video is below.

We need the American public to get behind Durbin's bill, hopefully out in August, that will fix corporate visa programs. It will put Americans back to work and end the outsourcing of the "jobs of the future. Without adding to the deficit!

Donna Conroy, Director
Bright Future Jobs
http://brightfuturejobs.com/dan-rather-visa-loophole/

The time investment required

Dan Kervick — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:54:36 +0000

In reply to Technology, Education, Opportunity and the H1B.

The time investment required for education seems to work against using it as an acute response to unemployment.

Thank you. Unless Obama failed to take mathematics himself, its perfectly obvious that long-term investment in education is no solution to the unemployment emergency, just as long-term improvement in diet is no solution to an influenza epidemic. This is a case of Obama exploiting the unemployed as props for the sake of something he was going to do anyway.

It's funny, I had a

Desider — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 11:52:17 +0000

In reply to Technology, Education, Opportunity and the H1B.

It's funny, I had a conversation with a very successful real estate agent who was sponsoring someone to go get computer training. I was gob-smacked - why would you forego your own $300K/year profession to recommend a $40K/year programmer's job?

I think part of what people are missing is that the new reality has to include business and project skills. Even project management can be easily taught, but not everyone makes a good PM. Engineering management at least gets you above the class, but without strong engineering knowledge, an engineering manager can make some real crap decisions.

Engineering skills, programming, etc., can all be valuable if turned into serious money-making business. Short of that, they're commodity these days.

What's not commodity is teamwork, delivery, ingenuity, patentable ideas, first-to-market. Since so many of the competitors in the market are just seeking rent - contracts through name recognition, local access, insider connections.... - it's hard for any technical skill to impact the business relation, and thus no one wants to pay for it. Plus it's easy to find short-term help for tech solutions, or so common wisdom says.

And so much of the actual work being done is just me-too kind of stuff - just another iPhone or Android app, another bar code reader, another standard social media site. It's extremely hard to introduce quality into these commodity needs - no one will pay unless they see some value differentiation. And when college seniors can code them well enough to not need 10 year veterans, guess what else collapses.

About 5 years ago I started seeing predictions of "computer analysts" demand increasing while "computer programmer" demand decreased. I'm still convinced it will be field specific knowledge combined with programming/analysis skills that will be in demand long-term, and will retain pay differential, but it's not obvious whether business leaders have a great deal of vision at the moment.

Clearwire's collapse was one that amazed me - a company gaining new subscribers hand over fist, but they couldn't even manage to roll out their own cell phone. Kind of like newspapers turning into Reuters/AP churn with no internal value - relying on social media tricks and new platforms to save themselves from lack of innovation.

Somewhere in the 90's it became obvious you didn't have to pay a kid $100K to write just another database app. A million logistics packages out there now, why build your own new one? Search does well enough for most. In 2011 it's obvious that mobile apps are pretty simple (and that the phone networks still suck too badly for people to get too creative).

In short, the field is getting butchered by the M$ Office effect - if you have a good enough option, you don't re-create. All the fields where we've been putting in effort just don't have enough demand and growth potential to sustain much new unless there's a real demand for it. That might be in medicine, in energy, etc., if there's real promise. We've hit pretty much all the advantage in fast trading machines and seen their limitations.

Just as I fault liberals for constantly being nostalgic about manufacturing jobs, the 1990's have faded pretty quickly as well. We can talk about basic skills, but no one hires basic skills - they hire a specific exploitable skillset and lay it off or outsource it as quickly as they can. Our industrial policy has to recognize this just as it recognized the effects of cutthoat steel prices and outsourced China manufacturing in the last century. The answer isn't in more GE worship, and much as I'm loathe to accept it, I think it's closer to a Steve Jobs-like appreciation for value, logistics, design and delivery, appreciation for people's wants. Unfortunately, techies usually aren't driving the poor imagination of industry's overpaid CEOs, who are more interested in changing patent/trademark law and bribing Congressman for subsidies than in competing on quality. Unless techies come up with their own ingenuity in their own garages. But with so many garages foreclosed on....

[KGB - please send me an off-line note at my decader gmail account, would like to discuss a few items of mutual interest based on previous comments]

"What is it you want us to

Resistance — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 11:44:38 +0000

In reply to Technology, Education, Opportunity and the H1B.

"What is it you want us to do"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rw5MosKRm4

How can I love my country when it appears those in control of the counrty want to destoy me?

Yeah folks WIN THE FUTURE with BS PHd

Bullshite piled higher and deeper

"I'm Mad as Hell" and there is nothing we can do.

Enjoy your passion KGB ....PS Do you know how to imbed this youtube connection and could you give me a step by step instruction? The other day someone said I had to have a certain file ext. but I couldnt find one

It is not easy finding

Richard Day — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 07:14:43 +0000

In reply to Technology, Education, Opportunity and the H1B.

It is not easy finding solutions!

This really really really pisses me off.

I don't have the links handy but I have read several articles recently concerning the fact that no employers--no big employers--wish to hire anyone that is unemployed. Strange!

No give us somebody with low expectations or no expectations. Fuck the unemployed.

Thanks for the links and the blog!