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Allow me to ruin my karma... Maybe we could focus on retraining non-technical people to fill tech jobs. Or people with outdated skills, and clamp down on age d

by logn 14y ago

Allow me to ruin my karma... Maybe we could focus on retraining non-technical people to fill tech jobs. Or people with outdated skills, and clamp down on age discrimination. There's a lack of programmers and an abundance of food-service/sales workers. We should re-work high school in the US to focus on vocational work, such as programming or other skills such as industrial electrical work. And as we've just renewed unemployment benefits, doesn't this give government leverage to force people to learn things? We tell America that with new automation and technology comes the need to educate yourselves for the new jobs. Now we're going to add unlimited temporary workers to compete for these new jobs? But that's not the quick fix corporate America is lobbying for. They want masters/php grads to come in and be essentially locked in to working for them for at best an average salary. If we refuse to educate our public in useful skills, then I'll take unlimited H1Bs, as I'd rather have a vibrant work force in our country than a scattered remote one and see innovation and taxes go elsewhere. Granted, I'm all for comprehensive immigration reform. Let's do it comprehensively and let in a steady stream of people to fill all levels and variety of jobs. Let's let people live the American Dream and let them choose jobs or quit jobs or strike out on their own. That's what we're not giving H1B holders. And that's the competition we're giving ourselves.

fijal 14y ago
I have no idea about the work areas where I don't happen to work. Maybe retraining people for doing PHP stuff is actually a very good idea. Some company (I lost the link) recently posted "$5000 for a month-long training and we guarantee you'll get a $60k job offer or your money back" for RoR. However, there is a whole bunch of people who work in niche professions. I work in VMs. There is maybe a 100 people (maybe 200) who are even remotely in the area of dynamic language VMs. It takes years (sometimes tens of years) to be highly skilled and be able to deliver what some companies want. Right now, H1B is really the only viable option for such people to go to states and has a whole bunch of strange requirements, that should not apply. Do you really suggest a McDonalds-worker-trained-IT-professional can be competitive in such area? On the other hand, I can assure you that visa costs outweight importing people for average salary. It's really about shortage of skills (or shortage of good immigration policies) that drives those efforts, not the will to employ people for less-than-average money.
- logn 14y ago
  I think you might be overlooking the intelligence of your average server or bartender. I know people who are literally geniuses and decided to pursue liberal arts majors and masters only to find themselves 10 years later earning $2 above minimum wage working at a used bookstore. Another friend dropped out of a masters in statistics with overwhelming student debt to work as a picker at an Amazon warehouse (years later he's now an operations analyst of some sort). Take these people and train them, along with the McDonald's dropouts and years later you will have former burger-flippers ready to fill a variety of average coder slots along with the punk geniuses working on new compiler designs. Sure, this isn't a magic solution where we all learn and make 100k/year and fix all labour shortages. We need immigration, no doubt. But don't we need it for all careers, if not for the companies, then for what we want the American experience to be for newcomers?
- don_draper 14y ago
  >>Do you really suggest a McDonalds-worker-trained-IT-professional can be competitive in such area? I think there probably is a pool of US developers doing more mundane work that have the capacity and skills to do the type of work you do. And I think there are some baristas that could do what most HN readers think of as mundane IT work.
  - fijal 14y ago
    Great. So what's wrong? Is the job market rigged? Do you suggest niche specialists get underpaid?

by logn 14y ago

fijal 14y ago

I have no idea about the work areas where I don't happen to work. Maybe retraining people for doing PHP stuff is actually a very good idea. Some company (I lost the link) recently posted "$5000 for a month-long training and we guarantee you'll get a $60k job offer or your money back" for RoR. However, there is a whole bunch of people who work in niche professions. I work in VMs. There is maybe a 100 people (maybe 200) who are even remotely in the area of dynamic language VMs. It takes years (sometimes tens of years) to be highly skilled and be able to deliver what some companies want. Right now, H1B is really the only viable option for such people to go to states and has a whole bunch of strange requirements, that should not apply. Do you really suggest a McDonalds-worker-trained-IT-professional can be competitive in such area? On the other hand, I can assure you that visa costs outweight importing people for average salary. It's really about shortage of skills (or shortage of good immigration policies) that drives those efforts, not the will to employ people for less-than-average money.

logn 14y ago
I think you might be overlooking the intelligence of your average server or bartender. I know people who are literally geniuses and decided to pursue liberal arts majors and masters only to find themselves 10 years later earning $2 above minimum wage working at a used bookstore. Another friend dropped out of a masters in statistics with overwhelming student debt to work as a picker at an Amazon warehouse (years later he's now an operations analyst of some sort). Take these people and train them, along with the McDonald's dropouts and years later you will have former burger-flippers ready to fill a variety of average coder slots along with the punk geniuses working on new compiler designs. Sure, this isn't a magic solution where we all learn and make 100k/year and fix all labour shortages. We need immigration, no doubt. But don't we need it for all careers, if not for the companies, then for what we want the American experience to be for newcomers?
don_draper 14y ago
>>Do you really suggest a McDonalds-worker-trained-IT-professional can be competitive in such area? I think there probably is a pool of US developers doing more mundane work that have the capacity and skills to do the type of work you do. And I think there are some baristas that could do what most HN readers think of as mundane IT work.
- fijal 14y ago
  Great. So what's wrong? Is the job market rigged? Do you suggest niche specialists get underpaid?