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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (46547)	5/10/2001 11:25:23 AM
From: Pink Minion	Respond to of 70976

>> Software Engineers in India and China are every bit as good as our domestic versions. True, but I'll second his comment that there is a big difference between "Engineer" and programmer. Anybody who can compile "Hello World" can get a job as a programmer even if 90 percent of what they write is junk.

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (46547)	5/10/2001 11:48:35 AM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Software Engineers in India and China are every bit as good as our domestic versions. I am not a software engineer but I was/am an IC design engineer that has had to train counter parts from other countries as we shifted IC R&D to their country for tax considerations. We'd invent it then ship the product line to Singapore and then get preferential tax treatment for sending them jobs. Over the 20 years I did this, the job level transfered went from assembly & test (pure manual labor) to R&D IC design engineer. As of late 1998, there was NO COMPETITION between top US educated R&D engineers and those in Singapore for designing ICs but that might have been the level of mentoring available and they might have closed the gap already. They were well matched for manufacturing engineering as they had many years experience and developed their own set of mentors to train others. For software engineers, one of my best friends is one and he was one of those "top 100 students" in all of India and he came over here for better opportunity. They have some darned good ones over there, but I still think the best come here as there is more to work with here. The "critical mass of talent" that exists in the Silicon Valley is concentrated here for a very real reason. With new technology that they will invent, perhaps holographic teleconferencing, this concentration of talent might be a thing of the past in 50 years. It actually makes me think investment in Incline Village, NV and other nice places in low tax states will pay off.... On a statistical basis, I'd expect China and India to turn out more brilliant minds than the US in the years ahead and they will be even more competition as their own industries grow. It will be interesting to see if the US will still lead in 50 years? Perhaps it will be with biotechnology and quantum or bio computing? Kirk

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (46547)	5/10/2001 5:05:42 PM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Cary, Although I have not personally ventured far beyond the "Hello World" stage, I am well aware of the distinction between programmers and software engineers, which is much more than a semantic one, as the wages of the former may be one half to one fifth of the latter. I deliberately stayed with the software engineer metaphor in order to be consistent with your post 46512, which worried that software engineer salaries, not programmer salaries, could decline to retail clerk wages if such jobs continue to move overseas. I did not use the terms as synonyms and I attempt to avoid hyperbole in order to pursue realistic scenarios and constructive dialog. In response to your post regarding the sagacity of President DoGood's advisers, I do not doubt their wisdom or good intentions. But it has been my experience that the beneficiaries of such social welfare programs are frequently too proud to accept the safety nets that are afforded them, and would prefer merely to practice their traditional crafts with dignity and be free of the buggering competition from abroad. Therefore, I think your policy recommendation may be highly unpopular with the group that it is intended to benefit and could be ineffectual to the extent that compliance is voluntary. President DoGood knows that it is always easiest to build group cohesion through a perceived common foreign enemy and is concerned about the lingering resentment that is building in the world against his country and the fragility of the coalition supporting free trade within his own country. As between the paradoxically parallel desires of second and third born southern Indian sons of the soil who have no choice but to leave the village and fully enter the modern world, and his Silicon Valley constituency who desperately want to maintain their affluent life styles while practicing the only skills they know, President DoGood is sympathetic to both, recognizes that he is a highly imperfect and impotent arbiter, and suspects that the former impulse may be nobler and more enduring than the latter. As usual in such situations, he remembers the voice of his mother repeating the phrase he has heard since he was a baby, "Let nature take its course." He smiles as he contemplates that perhaps he has the power not to choose, but to let the market decide who wins and who loses. Why should he make the futile attempt to obstruct the clear signals of the free market and disturb incentives toward change and progress? He asks you to please consider rewriting his next speech. Sam