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.

[vikingcelt]

I am one Bay Area Conservative who is leaving. Before the housing market collapses totally we're going to sell the house and move. Soon. Three weeks at the most and we're gone from this wacko "liberal" "progressive" used to be my home (it's where I grew up....Brentwood, California in the Central Valley when it was a small farming community). It no longer feels like "home" in any way at all.

[Gritty]

Still defending clinton?... I can't seem to find a long-term NASDAQ chart

The Democrat Talking Points are blaming Bush for this awful economy. Note how far the NASDAQ had fallen by the time Bush took office on Jan 20, 2001!

This current Market should be labeled the "Clinton Crash". But, as usual, the Dims will shuck the blame so they can get re-elected to "fix" the problems they caused in the first place!

[Under the Radar]

Well, said, although you could have made your point better without screaming. ;-)

[Jim Robinson]

Hmmm... what date did Robert Rubin retire?

[rstevens]

Dumb Blue Collar!

How about those dumb TShirt workers of NYC, Boston, SF,LA etc. who are garbage collectors? Many are making 60-80K per year with no fear of being layed off or fired. These folks are set for life, like Firemen and Policemen, these folks never lose their jobs. Primarily because their customer base always increase every year.

To hell with a college degree or high tech positions, become a plumber, bricklayer, policeman or fireman, or look for a job in government.

[nanny]

"competition is to be better than your competitor not to cry foul and get the government to help whenever things don't go your way. "

I am not sure what you mean about crying foul and getting the government to help.

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. But why would an American go into engineering, knowing he would have to compete with these people. This H1B might have been a stop gap measure, but should have been purely temporary and only for a couple of years, if at all - instead corporations have turned the government into their own employment agency.

Now you could say corporation should not have to encourage education and should not encourage the government to do anything about education - but let's face it, corporations do support politicians and in order to get what they want. Why could they not have a conscience and want America to be a better place. Gosh, that sounds so naive - and I am not naive!

[Jorge]

It's now been two years since the technology sector began its long slide, triggering the worst economic slump to hit the Bay Area in memory.

Actually the tech sector began to crash back when Clinton/Gore DOJ went after Microsoft.
That's a lot longer than 2 years ago.

[Red Jones]

I'm working as consultant also.

[Timesink]

Karma's a bitch, ain't it?

[FormerLurker]

So in your opinion, should American workers have to go to India in order to find a job? Maybe we could simply immigrate there and wait for a local body shop to sell our soul to some US company looking for warm bodies from India....

[blueriver]

You dont have to be a bigot to realize that Math and Science education in America has gone to hell, and that for the most part, the best engineers, programmers and scientists no longer come from the U.S.

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. Foreigners are just cheaper. MUCH CHEAPER! The fact is that most software written by Indians is riddled with bugs.

[Red Jones]

In Matloff's research he cites some individual cases. He has one fellow who graduated from Yale in electrical engineering with 4.0 GPA. Then the fellow went and got a master's degree at a second ivy league school. The fellow was american born, but of asian descent. He spent 2 years looking for a job and found zero offers. This was during 1990's during the desperate shortage of people in that field. He never even got a chance to work after all those years of preparation and at the very best schools wtih straight A's.

Just 10 years ago the large majority of people doing software didn't even have a degree for it in that their degrees were non-software degrees and they migrated into it later in life. Like me, I studied non-computer related engineering and then I migrated into software and am self-taught. This is how most software people were just 10-15 years ago. Now, all of those people with that profile are not even given a chance.

And then, after those people work in the industry for some time it seems they will be thrown away in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Americans who have held these jobs successfully and then find their skills are not current are finding that if they do go to a technical institute which costs money and time to re-vamp their skills that their chances of making it again in the job market are small.

In India the government has built an excellent system of technical institutes partly to send people to america thus receiving the money from the US government that would otherwise go to social security and to receive the income stream that an immigrant to the US sends home for many years after arriving. In our own country we have not I believe at least built a system of technical institutes to develop our own talent that is as good as their's.

In India talented people are pushed into the technical institutes and developed. You test high on aptitude tests they funnel you into it. In america they don't push you into the technical institutes if you test out on aptitude tests as being talented. I've known guys who were not much better than street thugs being guided into technical institutes in america. Then we wonder why they fail.

As a country we don't even respect our own people. We build failure for them and then we blame them.

[Psycho_Runner]

Thank God for the Exodus. Traffic is alot lighter. Though the stupid drivers are still here. I was in high tech (telecom) and now I am in low tech (HVAC) Being in sales I have skills which I can take anywhere. The dirty little secret is layoffs are part of a free economy. This is what makes America so great. The flexibility of the work force to adapt and survive. If we were a communistic society like the democrats want, we would still have trades like a blacksmith on every corner instead of Starbucks.

[Psycho_Runner]

How come you and I are the only ones who remember this.

[Gritty]

...what date did Robert Rubin retire?

The following are clips from Citicorp's official bio on Robert Rubin:

Mr. Rubin began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs & Company in New York City in 1966... Mr. Rubin was Vice-Chairman and Co-Chief Operating Officer from 1987-90, and served as Co-Senior Partner and Co-Chairman from 1990-92.

Mr. Rubin, long active in national and New York City public affairs, left the private sector in 1993 to join the Clinton Administration. Beginning with the President's inauguration, Mr. Rubin served in the White House as Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Directing the activities of the National Economic Council (NEC), Mr. Rubin guided the newly created NEC as it oversaw the Administration's domestic and international economic policymaking process, coordinated economic policy recommendations to the President, and monitored the implementation of the President's economic policy goals.

Upon the retirement of his predecessor, Lloyd Bentsen, Mr. Rubin was President Clinton's choice to serve as our nation's 70th Secretary of the Treasury. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn into office on January 10, 1995.

As Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Rubin played a leading role in many of the nation's most important policy debates. He was involved in balancing the federal budget; opening trade policy to further globalization;... He left Treasury on July 2, 1999.

Mr. Rubin joined Citigroup on October 26, 1999, where he participates in the strategic, managerial and operational matters of the company.

You can see Rubin is well connected and goes way back on Wall Street. He is a major player today and has been closely connected to the odd financial agreements Citicorp made with ENRON as well as the famous telephone call he made to try Treasury to get them off the investigative hook.

Naturally, "Honest Joe" Lieberman refused to bring him before the Senate committee investigating ENRON on these very deals.

It's also noteworthy that Jon Corzine (D-NJ) was the CEO of Goldman Saks.

[FormerLurker]

The fact is that most software written by Indians is riddled with bugs.

I HAVE seen a prime example of that. I've also seen some workers from India that were in fact pretty good at what they did. I definitely wouldn't say that they were superior to American engineers however. The ONLY advantage they have over American workers is that they work for less money, work longer hours without complaining, and can't quit.

[blueriver]

well, this is just my opinion(I'm working as a consultant), on average those "indentured servants" from india are significantly better than your average american software engineer.

Are you a foreigner on an H-1B Visa? How long have you worked in the industry? I have seen MANY incompetent foreigners and I have had the pleasure of working with many highly skilled and very competent Americans. Just know one thing. The very second the H-1B worker becomes an American citizen or holder of a green card - guess what happens? He/she becomes just another "incompetent" American worker that need not apply to the jobs that are FOR H-1B's ONLY. This has nothing to do with competency - don't flatter yourself so much.

[Major Matt Mason]

"Over the years, it started getting dirtier and stinkier."

Actually, if these folks are willing to travel to India, I'm sure they could find some IT work. I know of two large banks (Mellon and HSBC) that have sent IT work, and other lesser jobs, over to India because of the cheaper labor.

Speaking of dirty and stinky ;)...

[blueriver]

This is really the problem, our high schools are not turning out too many people who are competant in math and science, and the universities produce many engineers who are also not that good.... The H1B visa bring in exceptionally good workers.... not to cry foul and get the government to help whenever things don't go your way.

Now I know you are an H-1B. Incase you didn't know the government IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. Our schools are fine. Our Engineers are superior. WE JUST DON'T WANT TO GET PAID $20,000 a year like in India and China and we don't want to work 14 hours a day 7 days a week.

[Red Jones]

you really should read Matloff's research, I posted link to it somewhere above.

But you just said that we shouldn't cry to government every time things don't go our way. H1b is government intervention into the market. The big corporations have gone to the government and cried when things didn't go so well and gotten h1b passed which has destroyed the market.

You are right of course that it is not so easy to educate and develop valuable engineers. But sandbagging those who somehow get themselves developed successfully is not going to encourage it happening. This is what I mean, the current path we're on is government facilitated ethnic cleansing. I think we should be able to agree that we don't want that.

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.

We should also revolutionize our technical institutes. Our technical institutes are all privately owned and get their revenue from the fact that the students get scholarships and loans from government to attend. The scholarships should be based on aptitude, currently they are not. They actually take a lot of dumb people and put them into these institutes at government expense and then we wonder why it doesn't work out. I'm sure some of these scholarship decisions are made based on ethnic background. This is wrong. We are building failure.

Even hard opponents of H1b like myself and like professor matloff see a value for h1b. Matloff doesn't want to eliminate the program completely. He wants it dramatically scaled back and to reform it so that the foreign immigrants can switch jobs so that hot-heads like me can't call them 'indentured servants'. I would personally scale it back to only 30,000 or so visas per year and charge some nice fees so the corps will only bring in people who are known to be especially good.

A lot of americans could fit into jobs successfully that they are just not given the chance to work. A lot of american kids are growing up on ritalin when with a better regime running things could prepare them successfully for these types of careers.