American workers not "best in the world." In fact, we're actually kind of bad.

Granted, the time frame when I was dealing with these folks was a pre-smart phone age, but I'm still not convinced it would help some of them.

 

This is a threadjack to the overall point, but computer programming is very easily outsourced. Was just talking about this with a friend who is in semiconductor manufacturing. I was telling him I think my son will end up going into software/programming, and he suggested we steer him toward hardware/materials because that can't be outsourced as easily. But in programming, yeah, you're competing against the entire world with no geographical or language restraints.

 

I don't know. American manufacturing has had such a prolonged death knell over the last few decades that it might have scared off an entire generation. Sure, some bank tellers are gone but a lot of Rust Belt cities these days (to make the most pretentious metaphor this week) are living monuments to a post-Industrial Age. It's as if... uh, downtown Newark was dotted with graves of bank employees fallen to the forces of new technology.

 

I expect better from a man of your searing intellect, Dick.

 

Trolly troll troll.

 

Of course it can be. But, tech companies are begging for more H-1B visas in order to bring in more developers, engineers and programmers.

We're trying to bring in these folks from India, not send jobs there.

And, it's a true skill. If you're better at it than other, you will be in demand.

Basic programming jobs can be outsourced easily. If all you aspire to is to learn basic skills, don't go into programming. If you can be really good at it, you'll never lack a job.

 

You're the troll around here, Dick, and everyone knows it.

 

Troll.

 

Fraud.
Poseur.

 

And that's because American companies want to pay rates of indentured servitude, about a third of what they'd have to pay American workers. There's no shortage of workers in those jobs. There's a shortage of workers who want to work for the rates that a young Indian male with no family will accept just to get over here.

Anyway we are getting really off the point of the article now, but that H1B thing is rich companies crying poor.

 

Troll.

 

Well, that goes to the heart of the immigration debate. Immigrants will pick lettuce longer and cheaper than natives too.

But, big companies are poaching the best programmers from one another. They are paying big salaries and bonuses to the best programmers. And, many of the graduates from India's top schools to have better skills than the average American programmer. That they're willing to work harder, longer, and cheaper is a bonus.

And, if it was so easy to simply outsource these jobs, we wouldn't need visas for them. We'd just have them stay where they are.