>>> There are enough stoopid Americans out there. This takes us back to Chaz, Mgmt. has indicated that they would rather take better educated foreign persons (basic education) for less money than lazy, dumb Americans. <<<
I don't think that's it. E.G.:
1. In many places the Americans are laid off who created the software, chip designs, etc, and the cheaper foreign replacements do maintenance programming, which takes much less skill and which you can do cheaper. No new software is written at that company, and the new owners suck it dry and discard it. They take the money back overseas to fund their own new development, having destroyed their American competition in this way.
They do send in some good people, for the Americans to train. They serve as knowledge sponges, and when the day comes to compete with us directly from some other base those people will do it.
2. A huge percentage of the h1Bs will be used for physical therapists. Want to explain how being lazy and stupid works into that scenario? Bad massages?
3. Many of the replacement workers get funneled into jobs like network administrator. This is not a high skill job. I don't know if you have ever asked yourself whether the American engineers are overawed by these workers, whether we feel they can measure up to us, but I will tell you for free the answer is no. Of course you would probably go with the management line.
There are exceptions to all the above. My best friend happens to be a foreign worker - from France. His skill level is tremendous. He works 65 hour weeks. He also gets paid a lot of money, by his French firm, and gets French benefits, which are better than ours. I have no problem with workers like him. My brothers-in-law are Chinese, and are IEEE's. I brought them here, helped them get educated, and they are now American Citizens. I have no problem with that either, obviously. All of them now make more than average for their fields.
4. "This takes us back to Chaz,...for less money than lazy, dumb
Americans."
Dear me, that's pretty personal. Well, if I must defend myself, let me just say I had the best PSAT's at my school, John, albeit it was no fancy prep school. I won scholarships I never had to use, and went into computers young rather than getting a phD in something because I loved the work, and the government wanted me to (during the cold war, they needed programmers, remember?) I work 6 days a week most weeks, 10+ hours a day, and am currently taking 9 hours of classes, as per my usual ongoing study level. And I do several seminars and conferences a year. I am a typical middle aged American software engineer. When we started out you wouldn't even be allowed to touch a computer unless you were in the top 2%, and they made you take a test to prove it (before affirmative action made that illegal.) Computers then being upwards of $10MM each, they didn't hire anyone substandard. If you are my age or older and have been doing this since the beginning then you would also at least measure up to my standard.
None of this would keep me from being replaced in a heartbeat by a cheaper, younger foreign worker or younger, less skilled American worker as soon as primitive cost/benefit analysis dictated it. That's why I and many like me are contractors, so we always can expect the axe to fall.
These lazy, dumb American engineers getting replaced you are talking about are mostly middle aged, educated when American schools were at their all time peak of quality, in the 1950's and 1960's. These were the engineers that invented the operating system, the parallel computer, who put a man on the moon, who invented satellite communications, computerized cars, laser grocery checkouts, and the things you are using today to read my message.
They are generally being replaced by folks with poor English skills (American or not, overall SAT scores having tanked by 350 points, unadjusted, since 1966), work habits you are far from understanding, and thin programming background. Why?
Money. And incompetence. Management is no longer capable of managing new software development, and they see the smart things as repurposing, recycling, and acquiring, for which you don't need the best talent. In my view, it's American technical management that needs to be replaced. Way too many MBAs, and few technical chops there.
We are losing primacy in the software business in exactly the same way we lost the TV manufacturing business, most of the computer hardware business, the satellite launch business, and soon, the phone manufacturing business. You can't expect America to continue to prosper when American management and finance keep selling out one industry after another. We have no EC or ASEAN to protect us. We protect them.
At the very least my taxes should not be used to educate my foreign replacement. If companies want cheap replacements, they should train them with their own funds.
POI: Survey after survey has shown that Americans work longer hours, with less vacation, than any other industrialized nation. Fact.
Smart managers, doing what is best? No. Witless chumps.
Cheers,
Chaz
P.S. Most of the people who agree with me on this write private email to me. Why? They have so little power in their companies now they must fear being fired for telling the truth. Is that American? |
