VP Biden Briefs US Governors On H-1B Visas, IT, and Coding 225
theodp writes: Back in 2012, Computerworld blasted Vice President Joe Biden for his ignorance of the H-1B temporary work visa program. But Joe's got his H-1B story and he's sticking to it, characterizing the visa program earlier this month in a speech to the National Governors Association as "apprenticeships" of sorts that companies provide to foreign workers to expand the Information Technology industry only after proving there are no qualified Americans to fill the jobs. Biden said he also learned from his talks with tech's top CEOs that 200,000 of the jobs that companies provide each year to highly-skilled H-1B visa holders could in fact be done by Americans with no more than a two-year community college degree.
they can't find people who will work 60-80+ hours (Score:5, Informative)
they can't find people who will work 60-80+ hours for very low pay and the will to be in a place where they can't quit and will be big suck ups not to get fired.
It's not about skills it about this
On average, applications for H-1B workers in computer occupations were for wages $13,000 LESS then what USC get.
$13000 less and they get 60+ work weeks out of them as well.
they can't find people who will work 60-80+ hours (Score:4, Informative)
Hey, working 60+ hours per week is a bona fide occupational qualification for some jobs! These immigrants are just filling jobs that Americans don't want to do.
Another problem is that these companies tend to tailor H-1B job requirement statements to particular foreign candidates in such a way that essentially every US-based candidate who might see the posting would not qualify or would ignore it (for example, because of that pay disparity or the work week or other conditions listed in the job description).
Re: (Score:3)
Free market - they are filling jobs locals don't want to do for the money being offered - apparently it's only a one way free market - surprise, surprise, surprise. Using the car analogy Unions provide for lanes travelling in the other direction, from the top down to the bottom. Want change unionise and kill the H-1Bs.
Re: (Score:2)
Unions are an incredibly poor way to control abusive employer tactics unless workers in the bargaining unit are basically fungible -- and knowledge workers are not. A much better approach would be something like an online exchange for H-1B job postings, where US-based employees can register their interest for a job opening (along with their current and/or target salary) and see whether the job eventually goes to someone with permanent work authorization in the US and what the salary is, and perhaps see an
Re: (Score:2)
Want change unionise and kill the H-1Bs.
I like the way you think but killing migrant workers is still illegal in my state.
Re: (Score:3)
Hey, working 60+ hours per week is a bona fide occupational qualification for some jobs!
No, no it is not. It means that one person is doing the work of two, and a so-called "job creator" is expecting them to pick up the tab for their greed. Of course, it's possible that this supposed job creator cannot afford to hire enough people to get the work done, in which case they should go out of business so that someone who can fill the need and pay a living wage can fill the gap, or so that potential customers find another, more cost-effective solution which can be implemented while paying a living w
Re: (Score:2)
To clarify, both sentences in the first paragraph of my earlier comment were sarcastic. Working that many hours per week might be a BFOQ in rare instances of personal service work, and maybe (I personally doubt it) some operations jobs, but there is no way it would be accepted as a BFOQ for a development job.
Re: (Score:2)
To clarify, both sentences in the first paragraph of my earlier comment were sarcastic.
I find that I have a harder time detecting sarcasm online as I age. Perhaps it's all the times I've seen such sentiments promoted honestly.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, working 60+ hours per week is a bona fide occupational qualification for some jobs! These immigrants are just filling jobs that Americans don't want to do for the salaries that companies want to pay - and can get away with paying to H1B visa holders
FTFY
I can't count the number of times I've recently been approached by Indian service companies for contracts I would have taken if it weren't for the rates on offer.
I'm guessing they're keeping count of how many people turn down how many jobs/contracts and use this as justification to demand temporary visas.
If this happens to anyone else I suggest that when they say "Oh so you're not interested?" that instead of answering 'No' answer instead 'Yes but I want my rate of X per hour/day/year'.
Re: (Score:2)
Though they do spend about 20 of those hours smoking and watching cricket matches.
2+2=? (Score:5, Insightful)
So perhaps he can reconcile those two concepts and explain why we allow H1Bs when we have MILLIONS of unemployed college grads?
Mr. Biden, I have a word of advice for you - CEOs lie. And not just a little, but as their primary (and sometimes only) qualification. You might not want to go around repeating the crap they spew to try to sway you to do their bidding. It just, y'know, make you look like a little like a Special Olympics winner, if you get my meaning.
Re:2+2=? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I hate to say give up, because I agree with you. The problem is that no-one cares about their tiny issues until AFTER an election. I personally am happy with a divided congress and a president that can't do anything. Hell, it hasn't hurt us for the past 6 years (actually 14-2). When government is barely keeping up, the people are moving ahead. Stop giving and vote to the middle. Start at home and divide the hell out of your local government. At least you won't have to worry about walking your dog after 6pm
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty sure you mean they can't hear you over the sound of contributions, and special interest groups that are pushing for "amnesty." Man if I knew I could become an american citizen by pissing on the rule of law, I would have stayed in the US and said fuck you.
Best statement ever (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So perhaps he can reconcile those two concepts and explain why we allow H1Bs when we have MILLIONS of unemployed college grads?
That one's easy, English majors who've never taken a Shakespeare course [wsj.com] aren't worth very much. Kids graduated thinking their piece of paper was worth something......turns out it's not worth much if you can't do anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Biden said he also learned from his talks with tech's top CEOs that 200,000 of the jobs that companies provide each year to highly-skilled H-1B visa holders could in fact be done by Americans with no more than a two-year community college degree
So perhaps he can reconcile those two concepts and explain why we allow H1Bs when we have MILLIONS of unemployed college grads?
Mr. Biden, I have a word of advice for you - CEOs lie. And not just a little, but as their primary (and sometimes only) qualification. You might not want to go around repeating the crap they spew to try to sway you to do their bidding. It just, y'know, make you look like a little like a Special Olympics winner, if you get my meaning.
You seem to have forgotten the primary (and sometimes only) qualification of politicians.
H-1b should not be used for lower-level workers (Score:4, Insightful)
Some places want them to fill lower-level rolls and low pay as it's much cheaper and they locked into the job.
Now maybe if there was say very high H-1b min wage say 100K + COL and forced OT pay (so they can't get the work 2-3 people out of 1 h-1b) that would get rid of a lot of the abuse of the system.
Re: (Score:2)
Some places want them to fill lower-level rolls
you'd actually want a kaiser for that, I think. no?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, I have faith that you can get fat enough to fill a Rolls without too much effort!
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you hate America? Go back to your wage slave job and serve your "job creator" masters before we fire you for something like taking vacation time that you've earned.
Re: (Score:2)
Some places want them to fill lower-level rolls and low pay as it's much cheaper and they locked into the job.
Now maybe if there was say very high H-1b min wage say 100K + COL and forced OT pay (so they can't get the work 2-3 people out of 1 h-1b) that would get rid of a lot of the abuse of the system.
Or just remove the system altogether and let market forces drive up (or keep where they're already at) salaries/rates until Americans actually want the jobs.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, imagine if they started using H-1B workers to replace middle and upper management. Those good old boys would rally together and end that in seconds.
What makes it work is the perception that whatever you're displacing whether it's IT or development is just a matter of following procedures, something anyone could do, so the smart company hires the cheapest people possible for the job. Go immediately to 4) $$PROFIT$$. Management, however, takes skill and insight and intuition and all those other things that are difficult to measure, so they can't possibly be replaced.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that the whole computer eco-system is built on the premise that whoever is buying doesn't have a clue what the fuck they are doing. Most of the niche and custom software (think PeopleSoft which comes as a set of basic HTML blocks and a database) is something that can be built much better for a company in less than 6 months by a team of dedicated and decent programmers.
Yet, the person buying doesn't have a clue what they are doing so they throw a few million at it and 2-3 years of H1B's and ov
Re: (Score:2)
AIUI the problem is that the H1B abusers advertise a position with a low-level job title but a high level set of requirements. In this way they can appear to be paying the prevailing wage for the "position" while actually paying a lot less than they would pay for a similarly skilled american.
4 year degrees have a lot theory & fluff / fil (Score:2, Insightful)
4 year degrees have a lot theory with big sides of fluff / filler classes.
While tech schools and community college have teachers who have been / still are working in a real work place doing IT work.
the 4 years places not so much.
Re:4 year degrees have a lot theory & fluff / (Score:5, Insightful)
The "4 years places" you speak of so lowly may not have professors doing IT work, but they have highly knowledgeable researchers who have done stuff you wouldn't even be able to grasp for years, often decades. They're just not the people I'd ask about IT.
Re: (Score:2)
4 year degrees have a lot theory with big sides of fluff / filler classes.
While tech schools and community college have teachers who have been / still are working in a real work place doing IT work.
the 4 years places not so much.
Can't say for today, but my 4 year school I went through in 6 years (co-op programs spread things out); and near the end, most of my seminars were taught by either domain experts or people taking a sabbatical from their day job to teach what they had learned.
The theory courses were what has kept me employed since... there's a difference between a real CS degree (being able to do the math and work the concepts) and being a code jockey. The second has a much lower glass ceiling.
Re: (Score:2)
that may be right I know this one guy is a coder and went to a state school and I am finding bugs in his code all the time.
Apprentice? (Score:2)
Highly Skilled? (Score:3)
Biden said he also learned from his talks with tech's top CEOs that 200,000 of the jobs that companies provide each year to highly-skilled H-1B visa holders could in fact be done by Americans with no more than a two-year community college degree.
How are they highly skilled if they could be replaced by 2 year community college degree holders? If any this just shows how much companies are abusing H1B's to get cheap foreign workers when they could be encouraging high school students to get these mythical 2 year community college degrees that are in such high demand.
Same lies told about Canadian TFWP (Score:3, Informative)
They said that they needed Temporary Foreign Workers and it would lead to full time jobs in Canada too.
And then the media got off their butts and figured out that it was really being used to provide cheap labour in Canadian restaurants instead of hiring local teens.
H1-B is a giant sucking sound of jobs being outsourced to India, and I don't mean native tribal lands here in North America.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, I'd be happy if we could open up code shops on Indian Reservations here and help get a lot of those kids out of their cycle of poverty and alcoholism.
Biden briefs governors. (Score:2)
Provide apprenticeships to highly skilled workers? (Score:3)
Something is a bit off.
If H-1B is for hiring foreign highly skilled worker -- people who have skills that just aren't available in the US workforce -- then how are they "apprentices"?
Isn't an apprentice someone who is learning the trade, not someone who is teaching it to the "master"?
Obamas insurance against impeachment :-) (Score:2)
There's only one thing you need to know about H-1B (Score:2)
There's only one thing you need to know about the H-1B program to see that it's not about providing skilled labor *here*: after 6-10 years of working the visa holder is kicked out of the country to make room for a less experienced visa holder.
If H-1B led automatically to a green card, then we'd be keeping the *most* expert workers here, rather than replacing them with less experienced ones. Change that *one* aspect of the program, and it's be an asset to the US as a nation.
Re: (Score:2)
MS does hire people with less then that.
Google is the one that wants people with masters / PHD's.
Re: (Score:2)
MS does hire people with less then that.
You're right, MS does. They also prospect people with no formal education in particular fields. One of my highschool buddies who went to University of Waterloo had 14 job offers from MS in his first year. He ended up joining them after he completed his PHD.
Re: (Score:2)
And about 1 in 1000 actors succeed and become movie stars.
It takes hard work, connections- and a lot of luck.
Unless you have all three, you lose.
Your story is atypical.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Biden is talking coding?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Joe Biden is a bit of a buffoon, but that thing about firing a shotgun through a front door is taken out of context. He was referring to someone's question about hypothetical end of days where target ID rules likely aren't such a big deal.
Biden did actually advocated firing a warning shot through a window, which is illegal and presumably not during the end of days. Not very clever, Uncle Joe.
It's kind of like the Al Gore Internet stuff. I am not Al's biggest fan, but the guy never said anything about inventing the Internet. Al Gore was instrumental in getting the Federal Government to begin using the networks, particularly for check processing. He saved the taxpayers quite a bit of money by doing this. Gore was one of the first elected officials to really get what the Internet was going to do for society.
Re:Biden is talking coding?? (Score:4, Funny)
Don't pick on Joe. His job is really just being there so no one tries to kill the President. As long as Joe is number two man no one would dare.
Re: (Score:2)
Biden: What does this big shiny red button do? I guess I'll push it and find out. Hmm... Nothing is happening. I'll just keep pushing it.
Re:Biden is talking coding?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Al Gore, March 8, 1999, interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, "I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Al Gore, March 8, 1999, about 0.2 seconds later in the same interview "...I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system." Wired magazine yanked that quote out of context and it has never been the same since.
You may want to look up the "High Performance Computing Act of 1991", also known as the "Gore Bill". That's the one which, among other things, funded the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation, without which we wouldn't have all of the nice toys we enjoy today.
Don't take my word for it. Why not ask Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn [nettime.org], the computer science gurus who did get the Internet up and running? While they had been working on it for some time, the RFCs describing TCP and IP weren't published until 1981, and the "Flag Day" on which the old ARPANET switched to running on Internet Protocol was in 1983.
The internet was up and running before he ever got elected to any office
Al Gore was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1976 and was pushing the ideas of high speed telecommunications in his first term. Unless you are counting the 57 computers on ARPANET at that time as "The Internet" it looks like you may want to revise that statement.
He kept the tax money flowing to the right rich people and the kept the campaign contributions flowing right back.
That's what tax money does. Taxes pay for things like civilized society, or in this case The Internet. And Al Gore was the guy who paid the bills for the people who created the Internet. He also paid the bills for the initial development of Internet Explorer and letting AOL users onto Usenet, so he does have a lot to make up for, but when he said that he was the man behind much of the US government's support of computing and telecommunication research which led to the modern Internet, he was right.
Re: (Score:3)
While your post is relevant and contains useful and accurate information, you have to remember who you're talking to here. Some people are impervious to facts that don't align with their ideology, so you can cite facts as much as you want, you're wasting your time. You might as well try to convince a brick wall to not just stand there.
Re: (Score:2)
He's not wasting his time. This is the first time I've EVER seen a rebuttal to the common Al Gore "internet" quote, and it completely changed my perspective on the whole issue. I am now very thankful for Al Gore's involvement in the internet as a whole, and have significantly more respect for his future vision.
He's also been completely correct on global warming--a topic I did not accept as fact during his VP term.
Re: (Score:2)
Al Gore, March 8, 1999, interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, "I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Al Gore, March 8, 1999, about 0.2 seconds later in the same interview "...I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system." Wired magazine yanked that quote out of context and it has never been the same since.
Absolutely right. I always thought that was a bit unfair, but I didn't mind too much, because I believe Gore has always been insufficiently lambasted for his active advocacy of the Clipper chip [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Joe Biden knows less about coding than my daughter.
He knows less about coding than my Grandma who just now figured out this touch tone dialing thingy... (Forget the cell phone and that pesky "send" button..)
Hell, he probably knows less about coding than he knows about guns...
That's not saying much... Biden generally knows nothing (or perhaps cannot remember anything) about guns or any other subject he goes into public to talk about. He's an old guy who has lied for a living so long he knows no other way, and now he's loosing what was left of his mind and is struggling to keep his story straight enough to get though the curre
Re:Biden is talking coding?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Agree completely.
Alas, talking in public about things you know nothing about tends to make you look like an idiot.
Not that Biden needed "One More Thing" to help him look like an idiot - he's had that down for years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget about all those maned mars missions.
Re: (Score:2)
We just need TERM LIMITS for all Elected Federal offices. I figure give them 12 years in congress max. After that send them packing for home. This Strom Thurmond's 47 years, and Ted Kennedy's 40 years stuff has got to stop.
Re:Yay! Hopenchange! (Score:5, Insightful)
The jobs could in fact be done by Americans with no degrees at all. This cultural indoctrination that you must have a degree must end. I've been programming for 30 years as a profession and I have never had a degree, and I'll never submit to the immoral status quo by getting one. I have both the theory, the experience, and the necessary practical skills under my belt, and all without a single degree.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I am with you there. Our best employees are the ones that have not been through the debt claiming process of getting a degree. I personally find that the guys we have that went are way too comment happy. 8 lines of comment for a well named variable. The Cisco techs that we have comment access lists for port 80 traffic as "web server". IF you didn't post AC, I would love to talk more.
Appre (Score:5, Insightful)
Our best employees are the ones that have not been through the debt claiming process of getting a degree
Biden is insisting that the H-1B program must go on because it provides a sort of "apprenticeships" to foreigners
Well, I was from China, but am an American and I can speak with the view of a foreigner (the one from China) and that of an American and I can tell you that if America does not stop giving "apprenticeships" to foreigners one day there will be no more jobs for Americans
The old way of giving "apprenticeships" for "foreigners" was the way I got mine - When I landed on the soil of the USA I was a young refugee without a full secondary school education
I had my "apprenticeships" inside America because I had no place to go and after I graduated from college (with no debt, since I worked 3 jobs on the side - sometimes more than 3 jobs - while studying) I worked at American technology companies where I got further training.
After that I started my own companies, sold some of them, and re-invested what I got into other startup and made even more
In other words, while America provided "apprenticeships" for me this former "apprentice" stayed put in America and started businesses in America and created many job opportunities for other Americans
On the other hand, the way H-1B visa program works is that it provides "apprenticeships" for foreigners, and they got back to their own country, taking their skills with them, start up their own businesses in their own countries, create job opportunities for their own people, not Americans
Who loses in this game ?
The Americans
Who win ? The foreigners
Folks, especially you Americans out there --- please top the politicians, no matter from which political party they came from, from destroying America from the inside out
What Biden is doing is to cut out the innards of America and give it to the foreigners
Re:Appre (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't people coming here on H1-Bs, but their difficulty in turn that into a green card. The "apprentices" would mostly stay here if they could. And does anyone really want to argue that immigration of well-educated, highly-skilled engineers is bad for America?
All the focus on the political immigration debate seems to be on low-skilled workers, and the answers aren't so easy there. But anyone who can come here and work a job that pays $100k+? Keep em coming, I say.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think you understand what "community college" is. DeVry, UofP, etc. are not community colleges, they are for-profit diploma mills that employ far more salespeople than instructors. A two-year degree or certificate from your local CC carries far more weight than a for-profit degree, and is far far FAR cheaper.
Re: (Score:2)
Having taught at both a community college, and a couple of for-profit mills, I can absolutely say that the quality of instruction (and of the students themselves) is much higher at the mills.
You pay a high price for that, and it's absolutely true that the sales team is much larger and better treated than faculty. But as a teacher used to the Mills' "get it done" attitude, I constantly found myself stonewalled at the local CC. Even over things as simple as getting copies made or printers/computers repaired.
A
Re:Appre (Score:5, Insightful)
"Highly skilled" does not necessarily mean "highly in demand". Given that there are highly skilled Americans that can't find work, yes I will argue they're bad for America.
Re: (Score:2)
"Highly skilled" does not necessarily mean "highly in demand". Given that there are highly skilled Americans that can't find work, yes I will argue they're bad for America.
This hasn't been my experience. It's hard to find qualified people - they've all got decent jobs already. It's the unskilled workers that are struggling with unemployment (and underemployment).
Re: (Score:2)
You know what that means? It means THE JOB YOU'RE OFFERING ISN'T DECENT!
Your problem is entirely due to your unwillingness or inability to make your company an attractive prospect. Fix that instead of whining about how people aren't stupid enough to accept your shit pay/conditions/etc.
Re: Appre (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish I could agree, but my experience with the most highly talented IT development talent from India counters this. The majority of those I talked with had a similar plan: come to the U.S., get 5 years of experience, head back to India to jump up in level (become directors or vp's).
I don't blame them. Move away from your family and culture for money? That's not an enticing long term plan. Instead, they move away for a relatively short time then head back to the family and culture they love to be even more
Re: (Score:3)
Might that still benefit the US another way? (Score:2)
No... The H1-B program is a way of making people more successful in their home country not to bring that knowledge and talent into the U.S. on a permanent basis.
As an outsider with no bias here, it occurs to me that the above is probably in the long-term interests of the US as well. India is a big place, with lots of people, many of whom today are struggling with things we take for granted in the West. Helping to improve things like education standards and technological advancement potentially develops a vast export market for US products and services in the future and/or a mutually advantageous trading partner.
People often look at international aid schemes as char
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem isn't people coming here on H1-Bs, but their difficulty in turn that into a green card. The "apprentices" would mostly stay here if they could. And does anyone really want to argue that immigration of well-educated, highly-skilled engineers is bad for America?
All the focus on the political immigration debate seems to be on low-skilled workers, and the answers aren't so easy there. But anyone who can come here and work a job that pays $100k+? Keep em coming, I say.
I work for a company that had at least three if not four H1-B workers (as programmers), and other than paperwork and a couple grand for the lawyer getting a green card was not a problem for them. That's an admittedly small sample size. What roadblocks have you seen?
Re: (Score:2)
50K to 100K too many H-1B visas;
500 to 380K too many H visas of all kinds;
32K to 139K too many L visas;
160K to 530K too many F visas;
170K to 330K too many J visas;
500 to 3K too many E3 visas;
2K to 10K too many M visas;
2K to 20K too many O visas;
200K to 400K too many green cards... for decades. And their standards are far too low, and they've never run proper background investigations on visa applicants. And they've never tracked
Re: (Score:2)
> On the other hand, the way H-1B visa program works is that it provides "apprenticeships" for foreigners, and they got back to their own country, taking their skills with them, start up their own businesses in their own countries, create job opportunities for their own people, not Americans
We did not invest in this person for 16 years in the public school system. This is better than an American leaving the US after her frist job and starting up the company you mention that employs foreigners. So honestl
Re: (Score:2)
16? We don't pay for people to go to college in this country (no matter how good an idea it is). You get your 12, your useless diploma, and then you pay up if you don't want a job where you either 1) wear a paper hat and a nametag or 2) wade through other people's shit all day.
Re: (Score:2)
Even with a good degree, a lot of times you still wade through people shit all day, just not literally.
Re: (Score:2)
> We don't pay for people to go to college in this country
Um, what? Assuming you are here in the US, then you are simply wrong. The government pays a very large percentage of the cost of public school tuition by subsidizing in various ways, and it pays a smaller but still substantial percentage of private school tuition by subsidizing in fewer various ways. So, pretty much just like K-12, except that percentage isn't 100%.
Re:Appre (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
This is not so insightful.
1- Foreigners who do come to America and then leave after a short period (a few years) do not take long-term jobs away from Americans. Clearly the jobs these undertake are like internships, post docs and other temp positions, these jobs are not meant as career jobs who would be of interest to an American.
2- Foreigners who come to America, get some training and then leave are *good* for America. These people will know and like America, will speak english, will have a network of fri
College is useful for most ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The jobs could in fact be done by Americans with no degrees at all. This cultural indoctrination that you must have a degree must end ...
In my 30 years of programming experience I have rarely seen a job advertisement that did not say 4-year degree or equivalent, equivalent as in on the job experience, as your experience suggests.
... I've been programming for 30 years as a profession and I have never had a degree, and I'll never submit to the immoral status quo by getting one. I have both the theory, the experience, and the necessary practical skills under my belt, and all without a single degree.
Some of the best programmers I know never finished college. However they are **extremely** rare. They will read and figure out college level material over a broad set of topics on their own time on their own initiative, a broad set of topics comparable to those found in a typical degree program. However most of the self taught do not seem to be that self motivated, they may study some topics that are of interest to them but they will not have the broad understanding that the former or the formally trained typically have. Many of the formally trained are no more intelligent nor any more self motivated, but they had external motivations compelling them to study things that they had little interest in. The odd thing about many of the less interesting topics is that they often have unforeseen application to problems you eventually encounter and/or they are actually more important than you knew.
That said, there are also many in college who really have no interest in programming and are just there to get their "ticket punched", to get a piece of paper. They did not enter the program because of any inherent interest in programming and engineering, rather someone told them it was a good career path. Such individuals do not turn out to be the better programmers either. In contrast those with an inherent interest in programming often go far beyond the work required for class and use the incredible resources found at a university to study things that otherwise would have been beyond their resources.
So if a person has the time and resources to attend college they would do a great disservice to themselves to skip it due to some political position. You get out of college what you put in, and you will have access to resources and people you probably could not find anywhere else. And that includes likeminded peers. Its one thing to collaborate on code over the internet, its another thing to sit side by side staring at the same screen trying to puzzle something out and walking around campus bouncing ideas around. Plus there is also ready access to individuals studying other necessary disciplines. The density of useful knowledge and experience is quite high among fellow students at a university, its just a matter of finding people with genuine interests in their respective fields rather than the ticket punchers.
Re: (Score:3)
count me in as one of those rare ones. I never finished college (transferred a bunch of times and lost credits so at grad time, I thought I had enough but actually didn't; got a job offer, took it and never finished school). but I've been working in the industry since the early 80's and consider myself to be completely competitive with actual degree-holders.
its hard to get experience without a degree; but one short-cut is to go to a co-op or intern-based school (for me, it was northeastern in boston) and
Re: (Score:2)
That is exactly what happened to me. I started college never having seen a computer. I hung around the Computation Center, watched the Giant Electronic Brains and got to know the people, which included some of the computer industry's pioneers. I learned to program by auditing classes and writing code for the Stanford Time-Sharing System. The administrator of the AI Project didn't have a pay schedule for an undergraduate, so he had to treat me as a first-year grad student. I did graduate, but not with a
Re: (Score:2)
That's great, but you cannot ignore that it reduces the wage you can command on average in the market. Wages are prices controlled by supply and demand, and fewer opportunities are open to you because you have no degree. Yes, you can say those employers are ignorant, but it doesn't really matter.
Re: (Score:2)
too smart to go to college (Score:5, Interesting)
This cultural indoctrination that you must have a degree must end. I've been programming for 30 years as a profession and I have never had a degree
And I've worked with enough people who were so smart at 18 years old that they decided they didn't need to go to college that I've decided the requirement of a degree has some merit.
Some of these people really are great at syntax and terminology, and a few of them are actually good at coding certain things, but mostly, they do things the hard way, they organize their projects around data when it is process that better defines what they're trying to accomplish, the write overly complex solutions to simple problems, they saddle their employer with unnecessary technology, and there are certain classes of problems that they simply can not solve at all. For one, why do they think it's funny that they don't know math, and that a solution involving guessing, approximation and unreasonable process limitation is an acceptable alternative to algebra?
In short, they suck at problem solving. That's not a surprise since the first adult problem they faced, they took a shortcut.
Re: (Score:2)
I went back and got a degree after 25 years. It's not the *degree*, it's the *education* that matters, and I got a lot more out of the education than my younger peers. This was a new perspective on things I was already familiar with, and I was able to connect a lot of dots I wouldn't have been able to when I was eighteen. I could immediately see what stuff was good for, and I discovered a number of things that would solve commonplace problems I'd seen occur over and over again, even with personnel wit adv
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yeah. The real excuse is that those locals get paid too much and are too difficult to intimidate, but that can't be made public.
$18k a year for 6 day work weeks. (Score:2)
You can make more working full time at min wage (in a non tech job) and if you hit OT you get payed more.
Who offered that shit pay?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The brother-in-law waited tables for four years to get his two-year degree.
Now he's maybe the third best waiter at the local Steak House and they take most of his tax refund each year as his annual student loan payment.
Re: (Score:2)
"Apprenticeships"...."two-year community college degree"....rofl. Good news everyone, your Software Engineering / Computer Science degrees were silently downgraded during the night to trade-school status, meaning you are now no better off that our Information Technology 'plumber' friends. That 4-year / 5-year bachelors of science / arts program you soldiered through? Doesn't matter anymore.
But don't worry...our Electrical Engineering 'electrician' and Mechanical Engineering 'mechanics' friends will be joining you soon.
A friend of mine was a microwave engineer for a company that made military communications and countermeasures gear. He could not convince his family that he did not work on ovens. I haven't checked with him in awhile -- maybe "microwave engineers" do work on ovens now.
Re: (Score:2)
But before you find yourself right in the middle of an empathy-fueled moment, remember how good four years at Microsoft looks on a resume in one's home country.
That's correct... right to the head of the line at the Call Center.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm for unlimited work visas. I'm afraid neither of Indians who want to live and work here nor Mexicans who want to live and work here. I see both as positive for this is the land of opportunity and freedom.
Re: (Score:2)
> If we're going to open up our southern border...
The problem with H1-Bs is not that they "feruhners". The problem with H1-Bs is that they are an underclass that's at the mercy of the company that imported them. They are even lower on the totem pole than underpaid undocumented Mexicans.
If you are an H1-B, ICE knows exactly where to find you if you get too "uppity".
Re: (Score:2)
is it racist for EVERY OTHER COUNTRY, when they look after their own, first; and then (maybe) give jobs to foreigners?
no, its not. its called 'common sense'; something that the US is lacking (and the parent poster, too, apparently)
Re: (Score:2)
Sigh. Poe's law once again.
I was illustrating the absurdity of racism charges against opponents of illegal immigration.
Quayle, Gore, Cheney, Biden (Score:2)
The only logical explanation is the Presidents are assured a statistically more likely term of service without an assassination attempt.
Surely, McCain didn't pick Palin for the Alaskan electoral college.
Re: (Score:3)
There is an old Republican tactic where you run someone that seems more moderate as President to capture the swing voters but then you run an attack dog as Vice President to appeal to the extremists in your party and keep them voting.
Politics is theatre remember.
Re: (Score:2)
Why, because the Republicans - so notoriously unfriendly to business - would have cracked down and decreased H1Bs? Not bloody likely. At best, knowing today's Republican party, they would have upped H1B quotas but stipulated "no Mexicans" to assuage the Arizona contingent.
Note that I say this as someone who is a GOP apostate but nonetheless is technically one of the approximately four registered Republicans in the greater Seattle area. Today's GOP sadly fails to understand that, given the rest of their pro-
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to post this exact idea. If these jobs are really in such high demand, the salaries will reflect that.
It may not help the situation on the high end (e.g. H1B making $150k, instead of the industry average $200k for a given position) but it would certainly eliminate the problem on the cheap end
Re: (Score:2)