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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Charles Hughes who wrote (11994)	9/30/1998 8:17:00 PM
From: Rusty Johnson	Respond to of 14631

Announcing a New Thread ... Work Visas - Pro and Con My fault. I was fired up when I read our legislators were fixing to raise the quota from 65,000 to 115,000 when Boeing is fixing to let 28,000 people go. They should have raised the quota a year ago. I thought the Mr. Smith URL was a good way to let your voice be heard. And I thought software people might have an interest. Unfortunately I was right again. Damn. I think I speak for Chaz when I say we are in no way opposed to work visas. My grandfather was born in Norway. And no ... we're not afraid of losing our jobs. (I've had over a dozen jobs ... can't keep one anyway. As a contractor I know from day one that I may get whacked.) Having bright people around only sharpens our own skills and keeps us on our toes. T. J. Rodgers makes all of the right points. We need all of the best and brightest minds in the world right here. That's why we allow 65,000 people temporary visas. But he should be directing his paper to the companies that abuse the privilege. He's preaching to the choir. And if HE's so damn good why hasn't he made ME any money. (I own CY stock.) Anyway now there is a new thread to vent. It's kind of a slow news month for IFMX anyway. Watch for a pop in a few weeks. Again I apologize for bringing the subject up on the wrong thread. In the meantime ... back to the topic at hand: Informix Joins Linux Fans news.com Linux ROCKS Baby! (Oops ... wrong thread.)

To: Charles Hughes who wrote (11994)	9/30/1998 8:28:00 PM
From: investorgal	Respond to of 14631

>>>You know, I heard IFMX has been farming work out overseas, rather than hire laid off American IFMX folks back. True or not? True. IFMX farmed out the support of the "older" versions of their product (5.x and earlier) to India. This was before all the layoffs. As far as I know, they haven't brought it back in-house.

To: Charles Hughes who wrote (11994)	10/1/1998 10:53:00 AM
From: Mark Finger	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14631

>>> Most major 4 year schools had CS or equivalent. >>In the 1960s? By the name Computer Science? Bullshit. 2 that I know >>of by name, by 1968 or 1969, had a PhD or masters program in CS >>explicitly. You name the rest. I sure can name one more. Kansas State had a program in the college of Arts and Sciences in 1968. I took 2 courses in that department besides the FORTRAN course I took in engineering. I do not know about MS/PhD, but the sure did have BS. My freshman roommate was majoring in it in 1968, and in 1971, I did add it temporarily as a 2nd major until I decided I did not want to work that hard as a senior. Further, in terms of producing people for industry, the bulk are BS and so you should count the number of BS programs, rather than just he MS/PhD. Obviously you have your very limited knowledge and world view. As far as using chem engineers as a comparison, the starting salaries of various degrees and profession have long been surveyed. I chose chem engineers because they are almost always in the top 3 positions in every survey, even when demand is lower (like in the early 80's). The C students may not be getting jobs in the field, but they still are paying well to get A&B students. Can you tell me what years starting salaries for CS graduates were higher than for ChE since 1965? As for your 30K example, you can find plenty of people now who can make 5 times that, either as senior people or as specialists in certain areas. For example, I sat next to a Tandem specialist who would make more than $200K if he wanted to work a full year. Currently, experienced SAP consultants can make $200K or more. At top software companies the top technical people (not managers) can make well into 6 figures, even before counting bonuses and options; they often have names like architect. There are far more of these well paying jobs than there were in the 60's. However, the averages are being swamped by the fact that there are tens of thousands of "tech support" positions that simply did not have corresponding equivalents in the 60's. These positions are now looking for CS graduates in the better ones, and trade school graduates for ones like Gateway, and that is what is dragging your average down. Before you call me "silly", answer this analysis. As for the "implying" comment, I believe that I have been taught to be inventive and innovative on a cultural basis, and have had the freedom in this country to try many alternate professions. This is the kind of experience that simply is not easily available in many country where movement between professions and classes is restricted. Europe is somewhat restricted in this, but India is very restrictive. Even more important than how easy it is to move is what this kind of freedom can mean in ways of thinking. In the US, there has always been opportunity for the person who thinks somewhat differently--the lone frontiersman. Further, we have a system that rewards those who can do things well and produce results; witness all the small startups that have really produced the software revolution. What I was trying to say is that the freedom to think "outside the box" that has generally been accepted in the US should give native born people an advantage because they have been immersed in such a culture from birth. Compare this to Japan or India where culture or class severely limit the amount that most people are allowed to deviate from standard expectations for their situation. I do not mean that all people from these countries cannot innovate, but rather they have larger barriers to overcome before they can compete on an equal footing. On the other hand, if I were looking for someone who was writing code for embedded chips for VCR's or microwaves, I sure would look outside the US, into some country where the cultural emphasis has been on conformance. For that I would be looking for someone who would be more interested in paying attention to detail rather than trying to innovate. I believe that I would find greater percentages of programmers in other countries that would meet those criteria than here in America. If you really want to look at the kind of programming that is going overseas, look at this area in particular. As for the comment about IFMX farming out overseas, what they actually did was move an existing R&D site that had been located for years in Singapore to India, and then moved additional work to the India site. No permanent positions were cut as a result of this move (because the work had previously been done at Lenexa before it was moved to India). New (and generally more interesting) work was given to the people involved. I personally knew a number of people in that department and they were not affected by the layoffs that hit my department. Further, at least one of the laid-off engineers was hired back at Lenexa, but by the time there were openings, most of the other people already had jobs. In particular, quite a few ended up at a start-up in the tools side of Data Warehousing. By the way, apparently you are exactly my age. I believe that I have similar "experience from that time". It appears that what you have are anecdotes and when you compare high end salaries to averages, that is where you make a fundamental math or statistical error. I hope you program better than you do statistical work.