Job market collapse has people packing

San Francisco Chronicle ^

[RCW2001]

Jobless and broke, Bryan Clouse sits among the dwindling possessions in his studio in San Francisco's Fillmore District getting ready to leave what he once thought was a computer nerd's promised land.

In a week, the 35-year-old programmer will load up a rented SUV and say goodbye to the city that has been his home for the past nine years. He will go to live with his grandparents in Brooklyn, Mich., a tiny town of brick storefronts and clapboard houses a few hours west of Detroit. There, with no rent to worry about, he will look for work.

[gcraig]

Digital anything is only for non safety related circuits.

I'll buy that in the nuke world, but in avionics it's digital everything. The only analog stuff is the old 8 day clock and the standby instruments that alot of pilots don't even remember how to fly (or that they got spoiled in flight training and didn't really learn how to fly them).

[Wonder Warthog]

"...buku bucks."

The correct term is "beaucoup bucks"--from Cajun Franglais.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Yes, I agree our education system is evidently not the greatest, but the government did step in and help by bending the laws. Why, if the government is going to be in charge of education, didn't they instead demand education."

Because then the "education majors" would actually need to know something about the subjects they teach. Most math education, physics education, and/or chemistry education majors DO NOT know sufficient about their topic areas to actually teach it effectively.

[gcraig]

Do you know WebSphere? AIX and Solaris UNIX? OS/390? Are you Java certified by Sun and IBM? Can you debug and profile distributed applications? Do you have experience in VisualAge for Java or WebSphere Studio? Can you write shell scripts for the UNIX korn shell, write, debug and deploy Enterprise Java Beans? Do you know MQSeries? Do you know SOAP, WSDL and UDDI? Do you know mainframe and distributed DB2? Do you know Oracle 8i?

I can get you a job paying good money in a Fortune 500 company right now if you know these things.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Are these facts or just your own personal biased opinion that you are stating as facts? Have you ever worked in high tech? American engineers have always been the best."

Unfortunately, those ARE the facts. Once upon a time American engineers WERE the best, BUT, today's American engineering students for the most part are so ill prepared in high school they simply can't cut it. In addition, most don't have the necessary work ethic to buckle down and study hard enough to overcome that deficit. My wife used to teach Petroleum Engineering at a major university, and she said that the foreign students were much better prepared than the Americans.

[blueriver]

If we were to make a national effort to develop the world's best cadre of such elite and talented people as is in fact in our nation's interest..

Why is it that everyone wants to come here to attend our colleges if our schools are so bad? I have a 3rd grader who gets one hour of homework every night. People need to realize that Americans are the most productive and competent workers in the world and stop repeating this mantra that our institutions and our workers are inferior. If India and China had such great institutions then why is it that those workers and students want to come to America?

[ComputationalComplexity]

The end game here is education, and the willingness of americans to work harder for less pay. Now noone wants to be paid less money for their work, or to lose their jobs, but if you don't compete then its all a bit socialist. Yes an indian H1B maybe willing to work a 60K/yr american job for 40K a year, but if American's were willing to accept the same pay AND they are better, then this issue wouldn't exist.

[blueriver]

Unfortunately, those ARE the facts. Once upon a time American engineers WERE the best, BUT, today's American engineering students for the most part are so ill prepared in high school they simply can't cut it.

This is such an outrageous statement. You can not possibly paint the entire nation of American engineers with one brush. It is naive of you to think that ALL American engineers and college students are incompetent and unable to cut it. JUST AMERICAN BASHING AT It's BEST.

[ComputationalComplexity]

No, all I'm saying is that this is pretty much a side effect of capitalism, the foreigners can do the same or better work for less pay, so we are at a disadvantage, the key here is to get a better education and a better work ethic. Complaining to the government is not the answer. Look at Europe, its Companies are not competitive with American companies, so they whine and the EU steps in with subsidies for them and tariffs for American products, but in the end, those companies are the ones that become bloated and inefficient. That is also why the EU will never be as advanced and powerful as the U.S. We need competition folks, there is just no way around it.

[Red Jones]

Why is it that everyone wants to come here to attend our colleges if our schools are so bad?

you make an excellent point. In grades 1-12 we are suffering. But at the university level our universities are recognized today as being very high quality compared to those of almost all other nations. A degree from an american university is much more valuable to an indian in india than a degree from an indian university in india. Their markets clamor for people who graduated from our universities.

One thing Matloff found in his research is that americans dominate undergraduate engineering programs inside of america. But foreigners dominate the graduate programs at those same universities. The Wall Street Journal/Republican/globalist types always like to say that americans are unfit because few americans study these subjects at american grad schools. Heck, few americans do that because the market punishes them for it. The foreigners in those programs are mostly people who can't legally work in our country, but they can legally go to the university's grad schools. That's why they're there. It has nothing to do with foreigners being inherently better at stuff like that.

People also gotto realize, in India they identify talented people and nurture them. Our school systems don't do that. You get a good education in america if you live in an upper income community and we never take talented people and put them into special programs like they do in India. That un-democratic and un-pc impulse grates against our educational establishment. So, when Indians come over here to fill jobs we are frequently seeing the elite of India competing against run-of-the-mill americans. Many of america's talented people who have aptitude for high level high-tech simply slip through the fingers of our educational system while in India they don't let that happen.

[ComputationalComplexity]

I agree, tis the education structure, too many of our students are going to the liberal arts. Why I'm sure English and Philosophy are interesting subjects, but these fields are not what is hold society together. The only way to stop the flow of foreign tech workers is to be better than them. Hopefully more people will understand this and at least try to improve our school system.

[ComputationalComplexity]

I'm an american student in an Ivy league institution, I've been in the consulting business for the last 3 years, and worked in the industry for the last 5.

[blueriver]

Yes an indian H1B maybe willing to work a 60K/yr american job for 40K a year, but if American's were willing to accept the same pay AND they are better, then this issue wouldn't exist.

Do you know how much Doctors are paid in Turkey? Guess what, we can bring in millions of Doctors from other countries and all of a sudden doctors in this country would only get paid $20,000 a year. I imagine there is not one field that couldn't benefit from an increase in workers. Heck, why not bring in workers from every profession and then everyone will get paid the minimum wage in America.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

"I know it's a matter of personal taste, but my one side-trip to San Francisco left me underwhelmed. Dirty streets, stumbling bums, with a few nice vistas as a backdrop."
<br Welcome to Marxist Utopia...

[Russell Scott]

How a state that elected Ronald Reagan, could become a liberal wasteland of Gray slime, is hard to grasp.

[ComputationalComplexity]

"Our schools are fine. Our Engineers are superior. WE JUST DON'T WANT TO GET PAID $20,000 a year "

I wish, look at an average software development team, I'm willing to bet that any given team of say 10 programmers are at most 50% operational at any given time. The reason is because most American Hi-tech workers did not receive formal training, many learned on the job. While its good for maintenance and small software projects, large scale development require a bit more talent. In collge, I've noticed that a lot of comp sci majors were very incomptetant and were only looking to get rich(this was during the boom). So in effect, a large fraction of American hi-tech workers are in fact very unskilled in their profession, add that to the need for high pay, and we have a problem on our hands.

[ComputationalComplexity]

"If we were to make a national effort to develop the world's best cadre of such elite and talented people as is in fact in our nation's interest, then here is how we should proceed. All schools in america should test out the kids on aptitude tests to identify between ages 12 and 16 the kids who have talent, that is who test in top 1-2% of their peers on such tests. These kids we should invite to special schools where they are with kids like themselves, where they are given intensive and high quality elite educations in math, computers, software, hardware, engineering, physics. If we were to do this, then probably 90% of the kids who test out in this category would be male. They would also not necessarilly be evenly distributed as to race. THis makes it politically unacceptable to our school people to do, but that is part of the problem. " I totally agree your opinion. But you know the PC crowd will never let it happen.

[Red Jones]

But don't you see? as matloff has concluded, with h1b policies of today the young american will be severely discouraged over time from studying engineering in college. Matloff said that 94% of students in undergraduate computer related programs today are american and that there's been a very large increase in such students recently as well. But the only reason these young americans are in those programs is because they genuinely believe it will lead to opportunity. When the younger generations finally realize the opportunity is shut off with h1b, that the deck is stacked, that a career that lasts for decades is very unlikely in those fields, then they will stop studying those things. As a nation we are shooting ourselves in the foot with h1b big-time.

[ComputationalComplexity]

Dude, I know about 90% of the software development tools you just mentioned, but then again, I'm bringing home a 6 figured salary and going to grad school at the same time, so give it to Fugitive for pity's sake.

[blueriver]

The only way to stop the flow of foreign tech workers is to be better than them.

NOT TRUE. Being better has nothing to do with it. Americans have to be willing to work for $10,000 - $20,000 a year. That is the salary that a software engineer makes in India. The H-1B program is a stepping stone for corporations to move the work to India and China. Is it any wonder that Americans are no longer interested in spending four years in college to enter this profession?