Posted on 09/14/2012 5:34:35 PM PDT by llevrok
SEATTLE -- Several high-tech companies, including Microsoft, say there's a brain drain in America.
They're worried about a shortage of qualified high-tech workers, and now they're asking Congress for help.
Microsoft alone employs 45,000 people in the United States and tens of thousands more worldwide. Officials from Microsoft and a host of other powerful companies say America isn't producing enough homegrown math and science experts and current laws prevent them from recruiting the best of those experts from overseas.
Microsoft owns 120 satellite offices around the world, but it's in the United States where most of the company's innovation takes place. Despite that, company officials say there's a brain drain in this country.
"We not only have a jobs problem in this country, we have a skills problem," said Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith.
Microsoft and several other companies claim they're not finding enough qualified high-tech workers to fill their jobs, and the key word is qualified.
"We simply don't have an adequate supply of workers here in America with the specialized computer science skills and engineering research skills we need to get the work done," said Microsoft vice president of general counsel Karen Jones.
What the company now wants is immigration reform to eliminate green card quotas. Green cards allow foreign nationals to work in the country, and right now the maximum number per country, per year is set at 9,800.
That means for India, which has a population of 1.1 billion and a desirable high-tech workforce, only 9,800 nationals can receive an American green card each year.
Microsoft thinks the limits are flawed.
"If we don't have a system that allows us to bring the talent we need, we as a company, we as a country, are really going to miss out," Jones said.
Microsoft wants Congress to pass a law called the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, which would eliminate the ceiling on the number of green cards the United States issues.
India graduates more Engineers than America graduates all degrees.
There is good money to be made if you’re an Anglo in the tech business and can communicate well with foreigners. But the plain truth is that American born kids don’t want to do the math and the teachers don’t want to teach the math.
Indians here on H1B visas make more than double the average salary in New Jersey and that’s to start. That isn’t “cheap”.
And Linux code programming is mostly done by foreigners so don’t think you’re promoting the USofA with LINUX.
>>>>>>
Why??
Don’t they have keyboards in China and India?
Good reason for everyone to switch to Linux.
>>>>>>
To be honest that is not a kind of immigrants I could anticipate that much.
“Officials from Microsoft and a host of other powerful companies say America isn’t producing enough homegrown math and science experts and current laws prevent them from recruiting the best of those experts from overseas.”
I remember Bill Gates complaining about how Americans weren’t going to school for computers anymore - AFTER he pressured Congress to let him import more Asian coolies (threatening to move work to Vancouver, or Asia itself, if they weren’t allowed in). What a POS...
We are already importing tech workers we don’t need; the owners want CHEAP labor (not necessarily skilled). A friend of mine that was a programmer ended up with a Homeland Security job at the airport because nobody wants to pay American workers (and they still want those nasty things called “weekends” and “vacation”)...
Redfog wants Microsoft to stop supporting queer marriages and public schools.
“I’m an American who gets the feeling I work in a third world country everyday I show up at the office. I know for a fact we have Americans who can do these jobs.”
The same thing has spread to accounting; I work with an external auditor (one of the big firms), and of the four people I work with one was imported from the Philippines (young, no CPA, getting $60K), one was imported from India, one was imported from Canada (she says the process took five years, but she would return to Canada if Obama loses his re-election bid), and the last one is an American.
America has plenty of accountants that would love to have those jobs; in fact, the Americans that USED TO have those jobs would love to have them back.
What do people with an MIS degree do? Design access control limits, company IT policies or manage projects?
For me the solution has been to move up the food chain. To plan and manage these projects, and also to hire my own lower cost developers to develop products that I conceive, fund and manage.
However, tonight I'm on my own time, so I'm going to dive into some hobby programming in Walter Bright's amazingly wonderful 'D' programming language (on Linux, of course!)
At the end of the day I can still run circles around the offshore developers. The reason is because I'm still focused on being a craftsman, while they are all focused on moving up into management to impress the girls (and potential future in-laws).
I know an engineer that is watching the same trend in those fields, and he feels secure in his job because his command of English allows him to prepare reports that Asians can’t, and also because they are more drone-like (without improvisation/imagination - which can’t be taught).
It is telling that the IT talent from around the world still want to come here; it is in stark contrast to much of the Hispanic immigrants, who are often illiterate IN SPANISH.
Or hire the Asians and Eastern Europeans who have been working IT here long enough to get residency.
“What do people with an MIS degree do? Design access control limits, company IT policies or manage projects?”
Management, Information Systems (MIS). Believe it or not, they become the managers of the Computer Science (CS) graduates.
It’s totally nuts.
“Hispanic immigrants, who are often illiterate IN SPANISH.”
I know a landscaping contractor. He says that not only do these Hispanics not speak Spanish, they can’t count past three. He’s not kidding.
The other day I was in a bar with a buddy who is from Mexico, and speaks Spanish well. He was listening in on a conversation between two wetbacks. He said they were using mostly nonsensical words, and had no grammatical structure at all. He said it sounded like maybe they were mimicking other people at the bar, and mixing it with a little Spanish.
I think they are the ones that come up with policies requiring passwords to have 10 character passwords with at least one each of the following types of characters: Upper,lower,specials,numbers. They must expire every 30 days and you can't reuse any 3 characters in the previous password. Oh, and to help you remember all of the different passwords you have to maintain any program or website that uses a password will expire after they detect 10 minutes of inactivity.
Spanglish?
I have a theory as to why their math is limited; in soccer tournaments you receive three points for a win, one point for a tie, and zero for a loss. I don’t know if they’ve ever had to add up to more than 3x3 (as the first rounds usually consist of three games).
Actually, some of my resources in Argentina have better English language skills than most of my US resources. It'll all work out in the long run, though, as wages here in the US balance out with the rest of the world.
Then if you do manage to elude/pass security and make your way up to a building, the place is locked tighter than a drum. Strangers absolutely cannot get in.
If you do have a pass and a ligitimate reason to be there, only when they are done looking you over via camera, will the door magically open and let you in a few feet to the next locked dfoor. Even getting in the door is no permission to go any further. There are many more security checkpoints that will stop you in your tracks from, going anywhere they don't want you. If they give you even so much as a pencil, they will stand at the door and collect it back before you leave. Once outside, you cannot get back in.
There is no way to apply for a job in person. They only look at applications that have been submitted on-line. You want to find out what jobs are available? Good luck, they don't tell you. Unless you have an inside track, you're out of luck. The security at MicroSoft makes our Secret Service look like amateurs.
We need a populist conservative option in politics. I'm sick of being presented the choice of a Communist versus a corporatist.
Most of the Hispanic immigration in my area is not from the “Southern Cone” (very European, and better-educated); they are from the Andes to the north and Mexico. In those countries, the better-educated now can often make a living there, and it is part of the lower class that emigrates.
When I worked in Vancouver Canada, I noticed that all the (Indian) taxi drivers were engineer grads too. A case of not enough chiefs and too many ......
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