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"will give lead to eventual loss of technology leadership itself" I'm not convinced that you're using the correct tense here. Consider -- what technology do w

"will give lead to eventual loss of technology leadership itself" I'm not convinced that you're using the correct tense here. Consider -- what technology do we develop here in the US now? Most of the world's major high-tech fabrication is now in Taiwan and Korea -- including AMD's. Most of our manufactured products, from tents to designer clothing, are made overseas. It's gotten to the point where "made in America" is unique enough to be a selling point! "I think what the Gates foundation is doing, spending on education to increase the supply of more highly qualified people within the US, in the future, is definitely a move in the right direction." I agree. We've been dumbing down our education system, and ever since the tech bubble burst, there's been less interest in technology related education. Andy Grove among others started the H1b thing, and it backfired badly -- the PR that it generated when combined with the bubble bursting discouraged a lot of people from pursuing the tech industry in general, which reinforced the talent deficit problem. Some might argue that it CREATED the talent deficit.

skowmunk 16y ago
Don't shortchange the US. US is still the world's largest generator of patents. A123, Tesla, SpaceX, Amgen, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Medtronic all these are in the US, not to mention most of the biggest companies in the world. The problem is all those patents are definitely turning into profits, quite a lot of which does get distributed to Americans directly or indirectly, but definitely not by generating enough jobs to keep everybody employed. May be the number of patents that are being produced has to be increased, to generate enough jobs to overcome the producctivty gains caused by new technology? Of course, for that to happen, there should be the ability to produce still more patents, for which in turn the bottlneck is people, that is, qualified people.
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  "May be the number of patents that are being produced has to be increased, to generate enough jobs to overcome the producctivty gains caused by new technology?" What productivity gains? So far as I can tell, it doesn't take any less time to get anything done, yet people spend more time not doing it. Especially in IT, where it seems that the primary goal of the next generation of developers is to find ways to create as much accidental complexity as possible so as to keep their seats warm as long as possible...
  - skowmunk 16y ago
    hmm, somehow it seems, your view is based on a blind skepticism of new technology than facts. I could be wrong, and wouldn't mind being proven wrong if its based on reason, lets see. Can you list some things that take more time now than before? Things that take more effort now than before?
geebee 16y ago
I'd be interested in hearing Grove's thoughts on the H1B in light of his recent comments on the decline of tech in the US. It's easy to be cynical about Grove and the other people who supported this program, but one thing I realize early was that the H1B looks incredibly different depending on who is using it. Intel probably just figured it was a way to hire people out of Stanford and Berkeley's engineering grad schools, and why on earth wouldn't you let someone do that? Other people, the ones who saw the body shops at work (or were part of those heavily coerced "knowledge transfer" programs) couldn't understand why anyone was defending the program at all. Honestly, I do think that this program played a substantial role in the erosion of interest in graduate level science and engineering people who grew up in the US - not because it allowed talented people to come here (that is a good thing), but because it was expanded to such a scale that it allowed companies to hire people at all levels of the talent spectrum at wages that weren't competitive with other options outside tech (law, medicine, MBA). I think it was difficult to detect this at first, because there was of course some inertia (older Americans still in the field, takes a while for younger Americans to change their behavior and start avoiding sci/eng grad programs). The problem is, there is inertia on the other side - if wages do improve, it'll take a long time for young Americans to respond the new market signals. I hate this, because I had so many good friends in grad school who were from overseas, but it really disturbed me that kids who had grown up in California (or even the US) were almost totally absent from graduate engineering in a school called "The University of California"). The presence of international students is a great thing, but not when the levels of US citizens starts to drop to dangerous lows. And while Grove and others described this as a kind of crisis, they never really connected it with wage erosion or potential displacement from the visa programs. I think this is a hidden factor that will become far more pronounced when demand for engineers from Asia increases. It's already happening, of course, but the US still gets to keep a lot of the talent that came here for grad school. I think we should compete for this talent, of course, but I also think we should realize that will will not be a top tech power if we don't produce and sustain a healthy flow of engineering and science talent from our own population. So far, this isn't controversial - the disagreement comes from the extent to which visa programs add rather than displace.

skowmunk 16y ago

Don't shortchange the US. US is still the world's largest generator of patents. A123, Tesla, SpaceX, Amgen, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Medtronic all these are in the US, not to mention most of the biggest companies in the world. The problem is all those patents are definitely turning into profits, quite a lot of which does get distributed to Americans directly or indirectly, but definitely not by generating enough jobs to keep everybody employed. May be the number of patents that are being produced has to be increased, to generate enough jobs to overcome the producctivty gains caused by new technology? Of course, for that to happen, there should be the ability to produce still more patents, for which in turn the bottlneck is people, that is, qualified people.

Tamerlin 16y ago
"May be the number of patents that are being produced has to be increased, to generate enough jobs to overcome the producctivty gains caused by new technology?" What productivity gains? So far as I can tell, it doesn't take any less time to get anything done, yet people spend more time not doing it. Especially in IT, where it seems that the primary goal of the next generation of developers is to find ways to create as much accidental complexity as possible so as to keep their seats warm as long as possible...
- skowmunk 16y ago
  hmm, somehow it seems, your view is based on a blind skepticism of new technology than facts. I could be wrong, and wouldn't mind being proven wrong if its based on reason, lets see. Can you list some things that take more time now than before? Things that take more effort now than before?

geebee 16y ago

I'd be interested in hearing Grove's thoughts on the H1B in light of his recent comments on the decline of tech in the US. It's easy to be cynical about Grove and the other people who supported this program, but one thing I realize early was that the H1B looks incredibly different depending on who is using it. Intel probably just figured it was a way to hire people out of Stanford and Berkeley's engineering grad schools, and why on earth wouldn't you let someone do that? Other people, the ones who saw the body shops at work (or were part of those heavily coerced "knowledge transfer" programs) couldn't understand why anyone was defending the program at all. Honestly, I do think that this program played a substantial role in the erosion of interest in graduate level science and engineering people who grew up in the US - not because it allowed talented people to come here (that is a good thing), but because it was expanded to such a scale that it allowed companies to hire people at all levels of the talent spectrum at wages that weren't competitive with other options outside tech (law, medicine, MBA). I think it was difficult to detect this at first, because there was of course some inertia (older Americans still in the field, takes a while for younger Americans to change their behavior and start avoiding sci/eng grad programs). The problem is, there is inertia on the other side - if wages do improve, it'll take a long time for young Americans to respond the new market signals. I hate this, because I had so many good friends in grad school who were from overseas, but it really disturbed me that kids who had grown up in California (or even the US) were almost totally absent from graduate engineering in a school called "The University of California"). The presence of international students is a great thing, but not when the levels of US citizens starts to drop to dangerous lows. And while Grove and others described this as a kind of crisis, they never really connected it with wage erosion or potential displacement from the visa programs. I think this is a hidden factor that will become far more pronounced when demand for engineers from Asia increases. It's already happening, of course, but the US still gets to keep a lot of the talent that came here for grad school. I think we should compete for this talent, of course, but I also think we should realize that will will not be a top tech power if we don't produce and sustain a healthy flow of engineering and science talent from our own population. So far, this isn't controversial - the disagreement comes from the extent to which visa programs add rather than displace.