Hi Lizzie, RE: "The lower school system is not as good as overseas lower school systems. I definitely realize this. "
I don't think you do realize it. Here's why:
Because you also said, "I don't believe US lower education is substandard compared to india or china."
We are one year behind in our lower grade schools.
Fortunately, we are pretty far ahead in universities. For now.
First thing I did in my first month in college, was find out what 'high school' courses foreign students took, when, what exactly was taught when.
My main competition in CS wasn't so much the Asian countries, but India. Our lower grade school system is one year behind India in mathematics. We need to fix this.
And India's lower grade schools have stepped it up even further, since then. I'm telling you, we are seriously falling behind in the lower grade schools, right smack in the face of global competition. This is not good.
The good news is: our universities are extremely good. Much better. But guess what?
But how long does that last, when 55% of engineering consists of foreign students and we aren't letting enough in to fill the next recovery cycles?
Meanwhile, the percentage of Asian students coming here has dropped by 75% between 1996 and 1999 (boom years too, so no excuse exists!)
And you've got a Congress that struggles with how to make "policy in real time." They tend to do a lot of long studies before they take action.
RE: "OK- true, but can you see that the real issue is that students have no incentive to embark on a difficult field that has no payoff?"
There's lots of opportunity in engineering:
Which industry recently had 4 out of 5 recent companies go public?
It sure wasn't a law firm, not a hospital, not retail store, not an insurance company, not an auto company, not a financial firm, not even biotech.
It was hightech.
Hightech has the best opportunites, and is the most innovative.
Sure, there are some industries that have matured - database industry, but there's lots of new technologies coming online and so many more inventions to be created in a variety of hightech areas. VoIP and wireless are the #1 priorites for many IT people at some large companies this year. I also think hightech is going to drive a lot of the biotech inventions - it costs $75M to launch a biotech company (vaccines, Rx, etc.), while it only costs a few million to launch a hightech device company. There's always new innovations - just read the Red Herring, Mercury, CNN, etc.
To keep this on topic, here's some stuff about chip innovations:
businessweek.com whole new world of chips
businessweek.com chip innovation
businessweek.com
RE: " What are Fiorina and Barrett talking about anyway? They way they put it, you'd think every engineering graduate has multiple offers or something and that our economy is absorbing all the NCGs in engineering we produce."
You're thinking short-term. They are thinking long-term.
Our lower gradeschools need to be globally on par. And RND at universities needs to fuel new innovations.
Second issue is the future supply. It's going to get tight. We only produce around 300k students per year. During the Clinton years, he grew jobs by 300k/month. Businesses are coming back online.
RE: " Of the approx 30 recent graduates we had at my startup company in 01, only 5 or 6 have managed to retain employment in the field of software engineering."
Were these all 2000 and 2001 graduates?
After a near-Depression like downturn in the stock market, quite a few from that graduating batch got wipped out. Many have left the field to other fields. Many were also dotcommers.
We have no pipeline.
There's going to be a huge shortage of people -- especially when people start to retire. And there aren't too many advanced people seeking entry level work.
RE: " quality standards have been lowered in order to support this ideal of cheap offshore R&D."
I agree some subsector industries are experiencing training adjustments.
RE: "A glaring example of this is Dell's support center"
Have you used it? I did. I didn't have a problem. A bit formulistic, but pretty good. I also liked HP's TS by IM during September.
I will say though, HP's TS has gotten a bit annoying lately (they ask you the same question over and over because they are multitasking on other customers in instant messaging and forget about your case).
RE: "Microsoft R&D"
Because I worked at Microsoft, never felt it was all that appropriate to discuss too much here. It's one thing to post about a company one is a shareholder. The good news is Microsoft has recently changed their opinion about online posting and apparently are okay with it.
So, to finally clear the air on some confusion: from one post you said Microsoft has offshored their entire development. This is untrue. They have not offshored their entire development teams. Microsoft is not Oracle.
On another note, just off the top of my head (have no time to proofread this so bear with me), I can get into an indepth discussion on the differences between heuristics and algorithms, but to keep it as short as possible, which country is good at creating mathematical concepts, meanwhile which country is good at heurisic development?
Oracle is to India (algorithms); as other types of development are to USA (heuristics).
How many developers here use binary tree (algorithm) vs a fast link list to a hash table (heuristics)? Fast heuristics for a local minima or a perfect algorithm solution that consumes time - maybe this decision simply depends upon the kind of software be developed. Do we solve for the latest access, under a set of conditions, heuristics, or do we go for the kill by creating the perfect global solution for conditions that takes a lot of time that may never be used?
America is to heuristics, speed, and cache, as India is to binary tree Algorithms and the perfect answer to all global conditions. But so many applications require heuristics. Databases require algorithms.
Said probably much too simply, India is to algorithms, as America is to heuristics.
Think about other engineering fields too - America is the heuristic experts across the board - development, fluid mechanics and even metallurgy. Here's another example of heuristics: want brown sugar packed? Press hard, but step back and shift it a bit - that's heuristics. Other countries have a school system which would encourage them to keep pressing and pressing to no avail. Some worry about epsilon, while we toss it out and just get the job done with heuristics. Kraegzig (SP?) freaks out everyone other than USA. Want fluid mechanics? Again, look at our heuristics. Look at the simplex method problem recently solved, and then look at which country implements traffic controls.
America is great when RND hits the pavement. But the pipeline needs to be filled.
On another note, Bill Gates is not Larry Ellison. Gates is an engineer first and foremost so I'd guess you pretty much would insult the engineer in him if you incorrectly assume an engineer is not important. After receiving an Arthur Anderson report that said we should try to get more efficient by turning software development into a factory, Gates essentially said no, engineers have feelings. And look where Arthur Anderson is today, and look where Microsoft is today. If you don't care about your engineers you can kiss goodbye your company. Engineers are not cogs in a wheel. They are creative artists. Something I don't believe Ellison fully understands at the top, and frankly, something any engineer can sense. When you enter Microsoft, you know a developer is extremely important. Gates was resistant to opening up overseas development centers simply because he likes proximity, to be able to walk to a building and informally ask the development team questions.
But with the growth in China and India, if you want revenue contracts, you had better also have a presence over there, and I think it took Gates awhile to realize this, compared to Intel. Foreign countries are not like the USA. For a person to even do business overseas, you have to have an overseas relationship, a presence, maybe even with the families who has the contracts.
Intel is having so much success with their sales in India and China because they placed development teams in there from the onset and built up their relationships and products to meet the country's needs. You need to be with your customers.
Just spoke with about half a dozen different divisions at Microsoft, and am seeing no signs of offshoring. Sure, Welsh really needs to create a Welsh version of Windows in Welsh. I mean, how many people speak Welsh in the USA? Sure, there needs to be a lot of pure research centers over the world - because different school systems produce different competitive edges and there is not enough in the USA when you look at this over a continuum of time, not your snapshot of one downturn. And I can think of one group (that's notoriously been mentioned publicly, from a cost standpoint) that needs to get more people around the world for some strong reasons that go way beyond costs.
RE: " who can't even manage to release a service pack within a 2 year window."
And when did Microsoft change their entire release procedures to certify vendor products? The two years is a result of this procedure.
RE: "Microsoft will probably implode before they accept the fact that they are 1/4 of the engineering powerhouse they were in 98 (when they had R&D in Bellevue and released products soup to nuts in 9 mos routinely)."
First of all, R&D was never in Bellevue. Technical support was. Is that where your contacts are, if at all?
RE: "I can't imagine anybody exceptional choosing a career where management is completely cost driven and not trying to hire the best people, to build the best products that they can."
Microsoft has always been one of the best paying companies in hightech. And continues to be. And their criteria for hiring is to go for the top talent. They would get at least 5,000 resumes for one job opening. VCs get 6,000 business plans and fund 12 of them.
Your odds are 12Xs higher for raising VC capital on Sand Hill than getting a job at Microsoft.
RE: "I think companies that try to bypass the best products"
Companies that ignore the markets they are selling to, will fail. Developers need to be in every country they are selling to.
RE: " This will happen soon to Intel, unless they *really believe* that their indian design center can crank out an opteron competitor."
Says the AMD investor. By the way, I don't think you are very current on what Intel has done where.
RE: " Fine- this doesn't have anything to do with importing engineers from Bangalore at Bangalore pricing and dumping on the US engineering workforce afaic. We have an immigration program, and it seems to work."
Our immigration system broke because Congress was not responding to our needs fast enough, at least in startup land they weren't. While Congress thinks about policy, the world has already changed faster than they can take action due to the slower nature of government, so the boom sucks every single breathing person and a huge hiring shortage ensued during the boom.
You've at least acknowledged that I had to hire overseas because it's challenging to hire an undergrad NCG with absolutely 0 experience at $105k out of Stanford, especially when they don't like the accelerating cost of homes!!! And all the experienced people already were employed. This was what it was like during the boom.
RE: " Presumably these peole - the immigrants starting companies- came through the standard immigration channel. If the govt wants to encourage this activity of foreigners starting companies, they can set up a fund or something... I don't know."
But then I'd complain and say, "I want to compete against them, why is the fund only for them?"
I'm not afraid of global competition, and don't think you should be. I think we all have to be more aware of global competition, but different countries have different strengths. And as long as we always keep creating more in the innovation pipeline, we'll be fine.
RE: "But it has nothing to do with my point which is purely centered around Fiorina and Barrett making an artificial case that US engineers are unprepared and untrained"
I think they're thinking the really innovative scientists - ground breaking new areas, truly very new innovative industries, nanotechnology, etc. etc.
I also tend to believe they realize our grade-schools have fallen behind.
Our universites are ahead, and they'd like to keep it that way, which means revamping school.
RE: "while their real objective is to import "good enough" less skilled workers from Bangalore and pay them 1/5 US engineering salaries."
Lizzie, this is simply not true. If they didn't care about American wages, they would say screw America and let's just offshore to Bangalore at 1/5 USA pay (by the way, it costs more than 1/3 not 1/5). Like Oracle does. Tell me who at Oracle is coming up with the next innovative engineering idea? Oracle is cost-centric - it's driven by bankers not engineers. And maybe that's okay, for that particular industry sector which is mature.
But for s/c industry, there's so much more stuff to develop, and they want to see new innovation.
Innovation is always our trump card. Without innovation, you become cost-based.
New innovation, higher margins, higher wages. New innovation often comes from hardcore PhD scientists.
New innovation, higher margins, higher wages. It's as simple as that.
" But most campus recruiters are echoing the same thing, these past few years have been the worst recruiting seasons in YEARS. For all disciplines including engineering."
No one was hiring over the past two years. This is changing and salaries are going up this year. I think your news might be a bit old. Either that, or it's in the database area, which is an area I personally would get out of.
Salaries are now beginning to go up in the Valley.
RE: "Their interest in the immigration visas isn't about wages, their concern is legitimately about getting the best PhD hardcore scientist here, rather than see them go to Europe and other countries. Don't you see the concern here? Yes indeed- I see the concern, but I don't believe the claim that immigration visas are not about wages. I think they are all about wages. And I don't think offshoring works as well as close-in R&D, so Fiorina and Barrett would *rather not* do it but they will if they have to."
Lizzie, Barrett's desire to improve education here is about creating new stuff for Intel's innovation pipeline. I mean, what is after communications? Hello? There are barely 5,000 PhD students working on new innovations in the school system here, and to be shared by every company - IBM, Dow Chemical, etc. etc.
Just look at how many companies there are on Nasdaq and please try to tell me we will have enough, once this downturn is over? You are looking at this from a snapshot in time, during a snapshot of a downturn, not a continuum of time. So when labor gets tight, and if Intel doesn't come up with whatever is after communications, due to a complete lack of people in the pipeline, then are you going to say, "geez, maybe you were right!" Yikes, no thank you
RE: "Right now they feel they have to, but they are lobbying to get this immigration plan going so they won't have to in the future."
They better get it, otherwise we all lose here. Retirees need immigration to fuel the companies they invest in. Again, this is not a snapshot view during a recession, but over a continuum of time.
RE: " OK- let me ask you a question. What do you think will happen to engineering if this immigration plan passes and Intel can hire from anywhere and bring them here at will with no immigration concerns. Do you think salaries will go up or down? Do you think it will create an incentive for US citizens to study engineering or no? Do you think it will be GOOD for enrollment in US universities or no? "
I'm getting a bit scared about the USA and about what it's going to be like 40 years from now. It's not like I want to move to China when I'm old. Who wants to eat Civet cat?
Here's what I think:
- something is spooky about Chinese Asian enrollment dropping by 75% between 1996 and 1999. we need to increase our own supply of students due to this decrease.
- we need to revamp our lower gradeschool, to increase our own supply of students that feed the universities
- we need to increase RND to get more phd's to create more innovation and to meet future demand (again, this isn't a snapshot view and assumes existing phd's will be in the next upcoming labor shortage!)
- when we have the best universities attracting the best talent so we create new companies here. this means we create jobs.
- we create jobs, then more people will want to go into engineering.
- we create higher wage jobs thru new innovations, not rehashing the same stuff.
- if we institute protectionism, we lose our competitive edge, we go downhill. short-term gain creates long-term pain. look no further than how communism fell apart. protectionism is like communism. we don't want to head there with protectionism. the thing that would turn people off the most, would be if we aren't competitive. we need to embrace global competition and get competitive.
- RND in schools creates a plethora of high margin innovations but universities need funding, our country is not funding RND at the same rate it used to, and this needs to be fixed. The Internet was based upon Unversity of IL-Champagne technology, I believe. Google was from Stanford? What's next? RND anyone?
Look at the horrible condition vaccines are with respect to this Avian Flu? When was the last decent vaccine created? Polio vaccine? When was that - the 1950s! I see biotech vaccine entrepreneurs, who should be hooked up with all the tools a proper university's RND center offers! Not putting wacko stuff in their freezers. Egads.
RE: "You once mentioned that you saw a 2-tier society developing, as do I. I think this immigration plan is the kind of thing that causes it. "
A two-tier society develops if you do not fund RND for new innovations. And if you don't continue the pipeline supply of PhDs.
Salaries are now beginning to go up in the Valley.
Regards,
Amy J |
