From the New York Times:
Tech Firms Take Lead in Lobbying on Immigration
By ERIC LIPTON and SOMINI SENGUPTA
WASHINGTON — The television advertisement that hit the airwaves in Florida last month featured the Republican Party’s rising star, Senator Marco Rubio, boasting about his get-tough plan for border security.
But most who watched the commercial, sponsored by a new group that calls itself Americans for a Conservative Direction, may be surprised to learn who bankrolled it: senior executives from Silicon Valley, like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, who run companies where the top employees donate mostly to Democrats.
The advertising blitz reflects the sophisticated lobbying campaign being waged by technology companies and their executives.
You know, having one red-blue sock puppet website for Republicans and one almost identical blue-red sock puppet website for Democrats isn't really that sophisticated. I've defended Zuckerberg in the past, but he just exudes weaseliness. Sophisticated he ain't.
Granted, Aaron Sorkin's and David Fincher's reasons offered in The Social Network for depicting the Zuck as a weasel weren't that convincing, but still, you've got to admit that there's something going on if two extremely talented middle-aged filmmakers feel inspired to make a fine movie about what a weasel you are when you are only 26-years-old.
There's something about Zuckerberg that inspires animus, so the more he becomes the face of Immigration Deform, the more trouble it's in. (By the way, the comments on the NYT article are ferocious, and they aren't even very ad hominem yet.)
They have managed to secure much of what they want in the landmark immigration bill now pending in Congress, provisions that would allow them to fill thousands of vacant jobs with foreign engineers. At the same time, they have openly encouraged lawmakers to make it harder for consulting companies in India and elsewhere to provide foreign workers temporarily to this country.
Those deals were worked out through what Senate negotiators acknowledged was extraordinary access by American technology companies to staff members who drafted the bill. The companies often learned about detailed provisions even before all the members of the so-called Gang of Eight senators who worked out the package were informed. ...
Now, along with other industry heavyweights, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the technology companies are trying to make sure the law gets passed — which explains the political-style television advertising campaign, sponsored by a group that has revealed no details about how much money it gets from its individual supporters.
What are the laws regarding obvious quid pro quos like these TV ads for Rubio and Lindsey Graham?
The industry also hopes to get more from the deal by working to remove some regulatory restrictions in the proposal, including on hiring foreign workers and firing Americans.
That should be FWD.us's motto: "Firing Americans since 2013."
... Rob Jesmer, a former top Republican Senate strategist who helps run the new Zuckerberg-backed nonprofit group that sponsored the Rubio ad, insisted that his organization’s push is based on the personal convictions of the executives who donated to the cause and who believe immigration laws need to be changed. Those convictions just happen to line up with what their corporations are lobbying for as well, he said.
“It will give a lot of people who are educated in this country who are already here a chance to remain in the United States,” Mr. Jesmer said, “and encourage entrepreneurs from all over the world to come to the United States and create jobs.”
No. It's a myth that these billionaire entrepreneurs are magnanimously bringing poor Asians to America to start companies to compete with them.
The reality is that billionaires just want code-fodder. The number of H-1B visa workers who will prove competition for the Zuckerbergs is negligible. You can see the evidence for that in a different NYT article this weekend:
From "Silicon Valley's Start-Up Machine" by Nathaniel Rich in the NYT Magazine about essayist Paul Graham's Y Combinator boot camp for entrepreneurs:
Several years ago, Paul Graham — whom everybody calls P.G. — began to film the interviews he and his partners held with prospective Y.C. inductees. When reviewing the footage, he focused on the interviews with start-ups that ultimately failed. Like any savvy marketing executive, he wanted to isolate patterns that portended ill, which he called “negative predictors.” He was already aware of a few — investors tended to be biased against older founders, for instance. “The cutoff in investors’ heads is 32,” Graham says. “After 32, they start to be a little skeptical.” And Graham knew that he had his own biases. “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said: ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’ ”
... But after ranking every Y.C. company by its valuation, Graham discovered a more significant correlation. “You have to go far down the list to find a C.E.O. with a strong foreign accent,” Graham told me. “Alarmingly far down — like 100th place.” I asked him to clarify. “You can sound like you’re from Russia,” he said, in the voice of an evil Soviet henchman. “It’s just fine, as long as everyone can understand you.”
This was bad news for Strikingly’s David Chen, who moved in 2005 from Guangzhou to the United States to attend high school at Houghton Academy, in upstate New York. He spoke English fluently but struggled to pronounce words like “build,” “mobile” and, most ominously, “strikingly.” Yet Chen had clearly established himself as the fledgling company’s impresario and spokesman. ...
One week before Demo Day, Graham told the Strikingly founders that Chen’s accent was too strong. The quiet, reserved Bao — who spoke less frequently than either of his partners despite being the group’s only native English speaker — would have to deliver the pitch instead. Bao denied that he was anxious, but as he tried to memorize the pitch, he grew even quieter than usual. “I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m comfortable with public speaking,” he admitted.
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116 comments:
The thing Zuckerberg doesn't get, ironically, is that the internet makes moot, the idea of sock puppets and his play to buy a policy. Buying laws and policies depend on the public being uncaring and not informed. Neither is true today, UKIP won big on that issue in the UK, heck even the FT had some article noting that the Italians are not really keen on "diversity" figuring that the Sistine Chapel and Dante means they don't need "cultural enrichment."
Zuck is pretty much out in the open here. Its not fifty years ago when billionaires could buy policy and make phony front organizations without being exposed.
Rather it is naked class warfare, that animates pretty much 95% of what is going on the West since WWII.
"Rather it is naked class warfare..."
Note the Communist tactic - mischaracterizing ethnic warfare as class warfare. Marx, Trotsky and a million others had the same motivation. "It's the Rothschilds' class that's a problem. Don't look at the Rothschilds' ethnicity."
These attempts at misdirection are the historical source of Communism and Socialism. I don't think that either of those ideologies would have come into existence without this phenomenon. It's always fun to spot it in the wild.
The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced. AS IF the US will succeed in training people to perform at these skills. White people study Art History or Women's Studies and expect to earn a middle class livelihood based on their communication skills, wit and, I suppose, charm. This world went out of existence in 2008. The tech industry is trying to retain its competitiveness because the poorly trained, self-entitled American workforce cannot get them their alone.
Code fodder, indeed, Sailer. I'd like to see you get behind the keyboard and demonstrate your superior IQ, before diminishing the skills of others.
Hey Steve, though you've been on a roll lately, you've also gotten into the habit of posting long excerpts from articles with very little commentary. Maybe people are more patient than me, but I need some incentive to read something, especially that long. Also, I think a lot of your visitors want to know what you think, not read something for 5 minutes with no clue where you're going. Just a suggestion.
Also, HIB immigrants integrate and become more American than the Americans - in that they value hard work,the English language, the purchase and maintenance of a homestead, and self-reliance much more than the self entitled and corpulent third generation offspring of Irish potato farmers.
"The peculiar strength of movies is that they end. In the 21st Century, watching a television series, playing a video game, or buying a cell phone is increasingly like enrolling in a cult contrived to consume several years of your life. In contrast, two hours and one minute after The Social Network starts, it’s over."
This was in one of the articles you linked to. It deserves to be quoted. Do you remember a time when kids used to be bored? When there was a shortage of entertainment? Now we have the opposite problem. I have friends who have "invested" years of their life in multiple MMORPGs, with nothing to show for it. The one I'm thinking of is also a big television series watcher. No kids or seemingly desire for them.
It is a major rule of thumb I have - never get involved with something highly addictive but no end-point, or practically no end-point. That rules out MMORPGs, and FPS membership in clans (because it's like having a group of alcoholic drinking buddies urging you to continuously waste your time).
Movies are good. I just watched District 9 for the first time the other night after reading about it here. Epic FPS games with some end-point are good. I have worked my way through some of the classics such as System Shock I & II, Deus Ex, Half Life, but not much else.
I think the only TV show I have fully watched through since being an adult has been the 1960s "The Prisoner". But that's only 17 episodes and a classic. And an early South Park season or two way back when, but that hardly counts.
I just had a look at a top 50 TV series list, and concluded that I'm probably not missing much. Then I looked at imdb's list, and saw a few that I wouldn't mind watching before I die. Death Note, House of Cards. Maybe Vikings (2013)?.
Oh, I lie. I've seen Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex. But that's more like a miniseries in length, equivalent in length to playing a typical FPS title. Some miniseries (and probably fairly iStevey in their appeal) worth watching are the two Alec Guiness spy series "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and "Smiley's People". They are great.
But these are kind of the exceptions that prove the rule.
The reality is that billionaires just want code-fodder.
Steve, you are thinking of software development of the early 90's. I don't think your understanding of how modern day software orgs operate is up-to-date.
Object oriented design has made it possible to rapidly develop software with fewer coders. Gone are days where thousands of C++ coders would work on a project for years and coding 24/7.
There are very few actual coders in any given modern day software dev teams. The majority of the staff are supporting members: Program managers, QA guys, code reviewers, usability testers, live site operations, artists, designers, deployment team, etc, that make up majority of the staff.
Now a days, more time is spend on the whiteboard discussing plans than actually coding anything.
The gang of eight has other agendas.
Steve is just pointing out what has long been know. The most successful entrepreneurs tend to be natives. Nothing new about this.
In the 19th century, Andrew Carnegie (from Scotland) was a justifiably famous immigrant entrepreneur. However, studies of 19th century steel making show that the vast majority of entrepreneur were old-line Americans (back then almost exclusively WASPs).
Tech isn't that different. Ever heard of Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Moore, etc.? All natives.
Sergey Brin (Google) is sometimes claimed as an exception. However, he came to the U.S. at the age of six. Not exactly an immigrant entrepreneur according to the current political definition of the phrase.
I would rank Vinod Khosla as America's foremost immigrant entrepreneur. He was a cofounder of Sun Microsystems and is a renowned VC.
I am somewhat amazed that anyone would defend the H-1B racket. Its a sleazy cheap labor, indentured servitude scheme. Quote from Wikipedia.
"If a foreign worker in H-1B status quits or is dismissed from the sponsoring employer, the worker must either apply for and be granted a change of status to another non-immigrant status, find another employer (subject to application for adjustment of status and/or change of visa), or leave the US."
There is a plausible argument for admitting modest number of immigrants with high-end STEM skills (I know quite a few). However, that's not what H-1B is all about. It's about importing tech workers without unique skills who can be paid below market wages and who locked into one employer.
19th century slave owners would have understood it immediately.
"What are the laws regarding obvious quid pro quos like these TV ads for Rubio and Lindsey Graham?"
Yes...."squid pro ro".
"The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced. AS IF the US will succeed in training people to perform at these skills. White people study Art History or Women's Studies and expect to earn a middle class livelihood based on their communication skills, wit and, I suppose, charm. This world went out of existence in 2008. The tech industry is trying to retain its competitiveness because the poorly trained, self-entitled American workforce cannot get them their alone."
Yawn- a tired strawman tactic. The only people who get degrees in thoses field are ditsy sorority girls and lesbians, respectively. Not exactly a huge portion of the American populace. At any university you will find far more young people enrolled in vocational tracks such as Business, Engineering, Education or Nursing than in the liberal arts. And most young people in the arts department are in respectable majors such as Biology, English or History. These people are usually smart enough to be trained for most generalized white collar jobs- whether the employers are willing to expend the effort is another issue.
All senators have been vetted and bought before they are (s)elected. The only issues they are allowed to vote their conscience are ones that the elite don't care about. This is the DC paradigm. Accept it and everything not only makes sense, but becomes eerily predictable.
Discussing politics outside of this paradigm, is an exercise in self-deception at best and disingenuous shilling at worst.
All true... to an extent.
We should be handing out green cards to folks if and *only if* they can meet a rigorous scoring criteria that weights the value they would add versus the resources they would consume.
Most of the folks that Zuck wants to hire would meet that scoring criteria, so he should be behind this plan.
"Note the Communist tactic - mischaracterizing ethnic warfare as class warfare. Marx, Trotsky and a million others had the same motivation. "It's the Rothschilds' class that's a problem. Don't look at the Rothschilds' ethnicity."
"These attempts at misdirection are the historical source of Communism and Socialism."
The Jews around these parts (and we're WAY over-represented) don't bother to correct you numbnuts anymore because you just aren't worth the time.
You're still wrong though.
Also, when the race war comes we (alt-right minded semites) will be siding with whichever large group isn't trying to herd us into camps. If it happens to be that the other guys gain our patronage thusly, so be it.
The Victimologist Elites are deluded and/or rotten folk but if they're the ones who are less likely to see working class hebrews as part of some sort of hive mind out to the get Teh White Peoples then we'd have to be dumber than donuts to stick to our guns in opposing them.
Hopefully it won't come to that. After all, we Jews punch well over our weight in the alt-rightosphere and hopefully have enough self respect to knock you antisemites in the teeth should the times come to require it. Until then, drag your shameful box of 2 digit ancestors over to str0mfront.
Steve,
"Granted, Aaron Sorkin's and David Fincher's reasons offered in The Social Network for depicting the Zuck as a weasel weren't that convincing, but still, you've got to admit that there's something going on if two extremely talented middle-aged filmmakers feel inspired to make a fine movie about what a weasel you are when you are only 26-years-old."
You're taking a different position here than you did your review of The Social Network, which you linked to above. In your review, you posited that the "something going on" was Aaron Sorkin's personal demons, plus his alleged resentment of how the Internet gave everyone a mic (an odd thing to resent, IMO, because the Internet offers -- for most amateur content producers -- no larger microphone than, say, public access TV or call-in talk radio did in the past. Real world celebrities are increasingly elbowing aside plucky unknowns online -- see, for example, how successful Hollywood actors and producers are now funding projects on Kickstarter.).
"No. It's a myth that these billionaire entrepreneurs are magnanimously bringing poor Asians to America to start companies to compete with them.
The reality is that billionaires just want code-fodder."
This is mostly, but not entirely true. Tech industry investors (a category which includes many current and former tech industry entrepreneurs), do sometimes want to bring over entrepreneurs whose companies they invest in, and some have run into visa issues with that. But those entrepreneurs, of course, aren't covered by H-1Bs.
This is the FT column (not article), by Christopher Caldwell that Whiskey alluded to. Caldwell is essentially the FT's equivalent of Ross Douthat. He made a few un-PC points in that column:
1) The one Whiskey mentioned, that you can't sell mass immigration to Italians on the grounds of cultural enrichment, given that the cultural achievements of Italy dwarf those of any immigrants' home county.
2) That third world immigration is problematic economically, because the immigrants often have lower levels of human capital and aren't able to earn as much or pay as much in taxes as natives.
3) That the polyglot residents of a future, multicultural Italy may balk at paying back the debts that previous generations of ethnic Italians incurred.
"Note the Communist tactic - mischaracterizing ethnic warfare as class warfare. Marx, Trotsky and a million others had the same motivation. "It's the Rothschilds' class that's a problem. Don't look at the Rothschilds' ethnicity.""
Note the fascist tactic: ignoring the facts. Look at the supporters of FWD.us. There are more gentile whites (many of them of German ancestry, judging by their names) than Jews.
zuckerberg is one of the creepiest, ugly looking penks ive ever seen. no joke at all. i cant stand looking at him.
facebook sucks anyway. it's a bastion of status seeking oneupmanship and passive aggressive behavior. facebook is responsible for killing my favourite means of conversation, AIM and MSN.
One additional comment about Zuckerberg -- I caught this Facebook commercial on TV tonight, during some awful late night movie on Comedy Central. This is really an awful, annoying commercial. Zuck himself is in it.
It doesn't seem like a good sign that Facebook has to buy TV ads, but if they're going to do it, why not pay up and hire Fincher to direct one? They'd get a better commercial, and some extra press for hiring the director of The Social Network to do it.
Hey Steve....out of the blue...Wennerstrom in Girl with the Dragon tattoo sounds like the media portrayal of Romney
Maybe there were more reasons for this book to become all big and powerful in the last 4 years
I'm reading the kindle preview for jollies right now
"You're taking a different position here than you did your review of The Social Network,"
Yup.
The Zuck's been working hard to prove my defense of him wrong.
The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced. AS IF the US will succeed in training people to perform at these skills. White people study Art History or Women's Studies and expect to earn a middle class livelihood based on their communication skills, wit and, I suppose, charm. This world went out of existence in 2008. The tech industry is trying to retain its competitiveness because the poorly trained, self-entitled American workforce cannot get them their alone.
Every single word of this is a lie, as is easy proven by a Google search (which will pass primarily through computer programs designed and written by American and European white guys) for "STEM unemployment."
What do you do for a living, Anonymous? Are you certain there isn't some hungry person in a hut somewhere around the world -- or perhaps a team of three or eight people -- who could be trained to do your job almost as well as you for a dollar less? If so, your employers and your political leaders have a pink slip with your name on it too, you lazy, self-entitled loser.
can we predict the Jewish influence extrapolated from IQ and put these conspiracy theories to bed or take them seriously because they are a liability or an asset we need to get serious about before proceeding
really annoying comments system
To the anonymous commenter who wrote: "Note the Communist tactic - mischaracterizing ethnic warfare as class warfare."
I would put it the other way around: "Note the Capitalist (or, better, the Corporatist) tactic - mischaracterizing class warfare as ethnic warfare."
Divide and conquer is the maxim they rule by.
This is a lot worse than the Koch Brothers but where's the loud mainstream criticism?
Last year, when the billionaires were plowing money into "gay marriage" initiatives in ME, WA, MN and MD, it got no mainstream notice and they were out-spending by 2, 3, 4, 11, 14 times to 1 for gay marriage opponents. The bills still passed by narrow margins, 51-49, 52-48 and the widest was 54-46. Clearly, without the billionaires, "gay marriage" would still have gone down in the most liberal states, even after almost 20 years of completely one-sided media and cultural indoctrination for it.
What might be the true "values" of these people, from Gates to Zuckerberg to whoever? They have to be pretty crappy people at heart.
The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced.
A preposterous lie. You are simply refusing to pay the market rate.
... But after ranking every Y.C. company by its valuation, Graham discovered a more significant correlation. “You have to go far down the list to find a C.E.O. with a strong foreign accent,” Graham told me. “Alarmingly far down — like 100th place.” I asked him to clarify. “You can sound like you’re from Russia,” he said, in the voice of an evil Soviet henchman. “It’s just fine, as long as everyone can understand you.”
I don't understand this. Is the reason foreigners aren't high on the list their poor accents? Or it is their lack of talent?
If it is the former, I think it's a weak case against mass immigration. Perhaps it's even a case in favor of immigrants--they are discriminated against by superficial, parochial Americans; Americans need to be more welcoming of immigrants, look past their accents, fund more ESL programs.
The tech industry is trying to retain its competitiveness because the poorly trained, self-entitled American workforce cannot get them their alone.
Code fodder, indeed, Sailer. I'd like to see you get behind the keyboard and demonstrate your superior IQ, before diminishing the skills of others.
Is it plausible that we are unable to find enough coders among a 300 million-strong nation of immigrants?
Zuck is pretty much out in the open here. Its not fifty years ago when billionaires could buy policy and make phony front organizations without being exposed.
Why do you refer to him by a term of endearment? Do you know him? Do you feel affection for him?
The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced.
What is the evidence of this?
We should be handing out green cards to folks if and *only if* they can meet a rigorous scoring criteria that weights the value they would add versus the resources they would consume.
Most of the folks that Zuck wants to hire would meet that scoring criteria, so he should be behind this plan.
Almost no one would meet that criteria. It's very difficult to overcome the fact that immigrants diminish per capita land, natural resources, and voting rights.
And most young people in the arts department are in respectable majors such as Biology, English or History. These people are usually smart enough to be trained for most generalized white collar jobs- whether the employers are willing to expend the effort is another issue.
They are probably smart enough to be trained as coders as well.
"It is a major rule of thumb I have - never get involved with something highly addictive but no end-point, or practically no end-point."
Hey nerds - why you think ppl DanfromDC and I love sports so much? 27 outs in baseball, 60 mins in hockey and football, 40 mins college hoops. And wait - I can wager on the outcomes? Hoo boy.
On your second point regarding kids v. TV serials, I have no evidence, but there is probably correlation. We are living in the golden age of serial television. Several of my more high IQ friends have foregone reproduction but are totally into the likes of "breaking bad", "mad men" and "game of thrones". I am sure its coincidence, but not having to raise kids allows energy for much more artistic pursuits. We're all gay (and childless) now!
Has anyone been posting anti-Zuckmitic pieces on facebook? It would be interesting to see if they allow free-flowing discussion. How supportive is FB willing to be of free speech and social networking if they don't like the speech?
When FB censors and witch-hunts political speech, maybe enough people will think it's 'creepy' and recognize that facebook users aren't their customers. FB users are the product.
Zee bug already looks funny and therefore creepy, it wouldn't be hard to spread awareness that Zee Berge wants to flood America with aliens because lithe, blonde WASPs didn't let him penis them. He probably does not consciously realize that he's subverting the host society because he's programmed that way. Perhaps conscious restraint on his part could prevent a social immune response.
After all that Americans have done for that motherzucker, it is not waahnti-Semitic to expect some reciprocity.
I love this quote:
"... Jesmer... insisted that his organization’s push is based on the personal convictions of the executives who donated to the cause and who believe immigration laws need to be changed. Those convictions just happen to line up with what their corporations are lobbying for as well, he said."
When you put it that way, it sounds so convincing!
What transparent sleaze. Jesmer's line couldn't buy ice from Eskimos. More effort is required!
He spoke English fluently but struggled to pronounce words like “build,” “mobile” and, most ominously, “strikingly.”
In that case, he does not speak English fluently.
Pronunciation is the foremost indicator of fluency.
"Look at the supporters of FWD.us. There are more gentile whites (many of them of German ancestry, judging by their names) than Jews."
Why should I look at its supporters when I can look at its leaders?
"the initiative is led by principal Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and its president is Joe Green, a close friend and confidante of Zuckerberg."
It seems that Zuckerberg took the initiative to found this group.
Note the fascist tactic: ignoring the facts. Look at the supporters of FWD.us. There are more gentile whites (many of them of German ancestry, judging by their names) than Jews.
And why are these the relevant facts? And how does this have anything to do with "class"?
I see a bunch of hyperindividualist criminals. What happened to the moral system that is supposed to keep them in check? Do you have a list of names of those responsible for the dismantling of that?
Class conflict is pointless unless the classes are genetically differentiated. That's what Thomas Frank failed to grasp in What's the Matter with Kansas? Less-affluent Whites have no interest in sticking it to rich Whites who share their genetic structures.
The earlier commenter was right that class conflict is a tool of the Marxists. Re-read your Trotsky. Marxists create and use class conflict to foster a permanent revolution, while anti-Marxists like Robert Owen and John Dewey sought to foster class collaboration and harmony.
There are very few actual coders in any given modern day software dev teams. The majority of the staff are supporting members: Program managers, QA guys, code reviewers, usability testers, live site operations, artists, designers, deployment team, etc, that make up majority of the staff.
Holy shit! How did I miss all those folks in the six startups I have been in the last 12 years? Even in the established high-tech companies I have worked in I don't recall there being any artists or designers.
Ohhh, do you happen to think that only social networking and games companies are high-tech companies?
These people are usually smart enough to be trained for most generalized white collar jobs- whether the employers are willing to expend the effort is another issue.
Sigh, a tired old strawman. The positions that the modern high tech industry requires are not generalized white collar positions.
They require people with IQs two to three SDs above the mean and enormous amounts of conscientiousness.
Just to work in QA or support you need at least two SDs above the mean, and to work on and understand the software, the hardware and the systems you need to be three SDs above the mean, IMO.
There is, in fact, a limited supply of such people in America and you simply cannot train someone who is 1SD above the mean to understand, eg, race conditions, the differences between user and kernel mode, multiple levels of protocols or the differences between hardware description languages (like Verilog) and programming languages like C or C++.
Some Israelis don't seem to like Zuckerberg.
Two dynamics that are rarely mentioned when discussing H1-B:
1) Since IT departments have become extremely foreignized, there is now a strong bias among hiring managers to favor their own (i.e. other Indians, Chinese or Russian) over white natives.
2) This foreignization has steered away natives who might have otherwise chosen IT as a career path. In fact, I believe any upper-middle class parent who currently works in the corporate world will (rightly) steer his child away from IT career because he will have first-hand knowledge of how low-status the IT department has become for a white native.
Both of these trends will only worsen in the future if the H1B cap is doubled.
If someone made a montage of the two sites, and then put it out, it might go a long way towards convincing Americans that A. The democrats and republicans are controlled by the same big (huge) money interests, and B. They think you're a bunch of mouth-breathing idiots.
Attaching zuckerberg's face to the pro-immigration campaign, and especially pinning him up next to Rubio, may inadvertently be the best thing to happen this year for thos that want to keep U.S. population under half a billion in our lifetimes.
And yes, the comments on the NYT article were 95% dead on the fact that big companies are just using this to lower wages and push out older tech workers.
"The tech industry is trying to retain its competitiveness because the poorly trained, self-entitled American workforce cannot get them their alone."
(That should be "there alone", Mr. Indian IQ. I make those errors sometimes so I'll spot you a few typos. But you wouldn't believe how badly some Indian programmers write English. Makes you wonder if their code is as bad.)
I think H1-B Indians, in particular, have developed a psychological defense to put up with their situation, a form of denial: "I'm not a cheapest-labour wage slave, I'm a genius saving the planet! All the poor folk I know back in India say so!"
Damn. I just don't see how we can beat those evil Soviets to the Moon unless we import a few million entry-level programmers from Bangladesh.
so now will you admit that immigration is a tool of the rich, and that the liberal dogma that promotes mass immigration is also a tool of the rich? American liberalism is for and by the rich. Admit it.
Now admit that GOP/conservative low tax/low reg/anti-union dogma is ALSO for and by the rich.
Admit that the core agenda of both sides is for and by the rich.
Admit it.
The media is for and by the rich.
The think tanks are for and by the rich.
K Street ... academia ...Hollywood ...etc etc etc ...all for and by the rich.
All large scale centralized institutions are for and by the rich.
Admit the reality of our world....
"(By the way, the comments on the NYT article are ferocious, and they aren't even very ad hominem yet.)"
Given that the Nytimes comments section is usually unreadable: filled with the most moral posturing, ignorant-and-proud-of it, throughtless comments imaginable, this is the first sign of hope I have for the country in weeks.
"1) Since IT departments have become extremely foreignized, there is now a strong bias among hiring managers to favor their own (i.e. other Indians, Chinese or Russian) over white natives."
This is very true and it has happened in some engineering departments of major companies as well. A few managers start an immigration pipeline of their co-ethnics, using the H1-B/Greencard process, and pretty soon it makes the family reunification pipeline look slow.
The real desirability of the H1-B is that it is the first step to US citizenship. (Yeah, it wasn't intended that way, but that's how it is treated. Once you're here it is often easier for your company to get a greencard for you when your H1-B runs out than to hire someone to replace you; why would any company do a complete hiring cycle for a tech position, throwing away all the "current context" known by an H1-B, when they can avoid the hiring effort with a small amount of paperwork?)
US citizenship is worth a great deal. If you are Indian, for instance, it seems to be a big factor in your marriage-availability announcement.
This has also happened in some US Computer Science departments. There are senior faculty operating immigration pipelines. You look at all their PhD students and not one is from the US. A US student would not likely fit naturally into the group. If nothing else, many of these faculty members have weak leadership and interpersonal skills, by the standards of modern US students. The power of controlling the path to US citizenship compensates somewhat for this among the students they do have.
(That should be "there alone", Mr. Indian IQ. I make those errors sometimes so I'll spot you a few typos. But you wouldn't believe how badly some Indian programmers write English. Makes you wonder if their code is as bad.)
I work with Indians, so yes, I would believe how bad their English at times. I also work with Chinese and Koreans and white Americans.
The major impact is in understanding what is needed.
Their coding tends to be no worse than that of other people.
Object oriented design has made it possible to rapidly develop software with fewer coders.
Then why are software companies claiming we need more skilled coders? Oh yeah, because they're lying liars. I forgot for a second there.
Actually, OO is part of the problem here. The great promise of OO was that it would make it possible to build a computer program the way you build a car in a factory, by assembling lots of pre-manufactured parts. Each "object" would be self-contained and only accessible through its inputs and outputs, so it could be used and reused by programmers without them needing to know how it worked internally. The guy (or robot) who bolts the left-front wheel onto a car doesn't need to know how the bolts were made or how strong they are; he just bolts them on like he was trained to do.
You'd still need a few geniuses to put all the parts together into a working whole, just as a car company needs a few geniuses to design the car and the factory line, but the rest could be done by people with very little skill who could be trained to do one small part well. So a software company could have Bob and Carl (or more likely Ravi and Amir) working in different cubicles, even different countries, each coding a different object that does one simple task, and those objects and a million others can be assembled together into a great hulking beast, and voila: Windows Vista!
The awesome thing, if you're a CEO or a pointy-haired manager, is that Ravi and Amir only have to be able to write short bits of code that take input ABC and turn it into XYZ; they don't have to be capable of anything as complex as a tic-tac-toe game. So like factory workers in the pre-union days, they can be hired cheaply from a large pool of semi-qualified applicants and trained quickly, and replaced just as quickly if they get uppity.
That's why Java got so much buzz and corporate backing (without which it probably would have been nothing more than an academic curiosity) -- it enforces OO encapsulation. Other languages such as Perl offer OO, but Java doesn't give you a choice. That makes it the dream language for the PHM who just wants his room full of coders to follow the specs and perform their assigned sub-tasks, and doesn't want some guy saying, "But I can make this run 20% faster if I break Ravi's object open and talk to this part of it directly."
That was the idea, but OO never really lived up to its promise (although a lot of it is certainly being done, and sometimes done well). Paul Graham has written about the problems with it, but my take is that programming turns out to be more like painting than like assembling a car. Strict OO is like paint-by-numbers: if you follow the rules and paint each shape according to the number on it, ignoring the rest and carefully filling in that shape, you will indeed end up with a finished product that looks like the picture on the box. But you wouldn't ever call it well-crafted art. OO programs that are built factory-style by large teams are like that: they work, but you wouldn't call them well-crafted.
Oh, here's the other best part to the above: to most computer programmers, joining a union ranks right above self-dentistry on their list of appealing tasks. So there's virtually no chance that American programmers will unionize and fight their industry's leaders' sweatshop mentality the way factory workers once did. Heck, I know we should, yet the idea just leaves me cold.
What about something like Project Blueseed? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueseed
The idea is to have a seastead 12 miles off the coast of San Fran and thus out of US territorial waters where foreign workers for tech companies would live and work. It would be 30 minutes by ferry to San Fran and they would only be in the US for short periods of time for meetings and such:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Blueseed_map.jpg
facebook sucks anyway. it's a bastion of status seeking oneupmanship and passive aggressive behavior. facebook is responsible for killing my favourite means of conversation, AIM and MSN.
I quit using it about a year ago, and this morning was talking to a guy who's about to. He said he got started using it to keep up on what his friends were doing, but the ease of re-posting other people's notes and links (or whatever their jargon for that stuff is) has cluttered it up with so much junk that he never sees actual info from his friends anymore. It's all just "retweets" of jokes and urban legends and "if you don't click this you hate veterans" nonsense. It sounds like email 10-15 years ago, when most people were new to the Internet and would pass along every chain letter or joke they got to everyone in their address book.
All the social media sites and blogs still don't compare to the ease of back-and-forth discussion and high signal-to-noise ratio that we had with Usenet 20+ years ago. Google Reader, subscribed to some good blogs, is the closest I've come, but now even that's going away.
"The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced."
What is the evidence of this?
There is no evidence, because there can't be any evidence, because it's impossible.
The amount of "demand" is defined as the amount that is supplied at the market-clearing price. An imbalance is impossible.
When the nameless commenter speaks of "demand", he means something different. He means the amount that would be demanded if the price were different. It's a merely hypothetical demand, i.e., a want or desire or, better still, a wish.
They require people with IQs two to three SDs above the mean and enormous amounts of conscientiousness.
Just to work in QA or support you need at least two SDs above the mean, and to work on and understand the software, the hardware and the systems you need to be three SDs above the mean, IMO.
There is, in fact, a limited supply of such people in America and you simply cannot train someone who is 1SD above the mean to understand, eg, race conditions, the differences between user and kernel mode, multiple levels of protocols or the differences between hardware description languages (like Verilog) and programming languages like C or C++.
I read a lot of stupid stuff on the web, but this comment is clearly 2 or 3 SD of stupidity above the mean stupid web comment.
If one has structured their company such that QA/Support people need to have IQs of 130+, the CTO needs to be fired fast & w/extreme prejudice.
Same goes for software engineers. For core design stuff, depending on the app, you may need a sprinkling of rock star engineers, but if they are doing their job, they get all the arcane/hard stuff well encapsulated so that the larger group of engineers can be working on the business layer rather than mired in generic issues of protocols, poor/ambiguous/obscure usage of language constructs and so forth.
And most companies end up following these practices because the ones who don't go out of business (unless they are doing government work).
This isn't complicated: if American programmers are so lazy or stupid or non-existent or whatever we're accusing them of today, there's absolutely nothing to stop Zuckerberg from relocating Facebook to India or Bangladesh or wherever the great IT people are being grown on trees now. I'm sure the Indian government could find a large patch of empty land on which he could build his new corporate headquarters, and then he could hire all the brilliant Indians he wants without paying for a single H-1B processing fee or international airline ticket.
Then just redirect facebook.com to facebook.in, and FB can really soar without any American immigration restrictions or badly-trained American programmers holding it back anymore.
Radical Centrist,
Certainly it's true that the rich can and usually do work toward their self-interest and usually they're quite bright enough to identify what it is that IS in their self-interest.
Average Joe (average socioeconomically and IQ-wise) is also motivated by self-interest, thinks he is voting for his self-interest, but is not bright enough to recognize nor ambitious enough to investigate what truly does or does not benefit him.
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are both bright (about business) and rich and altruistic, yet they haven't a clue about how to improve the lot of those not rich and not bright, but they sure do get a lot of praise for their efforts, and that praise does nothing but get in the way of other answers.
Just to work in QA or support you need at least two SDs above the mean, and to work on and understand the software, the hardware and the systems you need to be three SDs above the mean, IMO.
There is, in fact, a limited supply of such people in America....
This time, you are right, but that "limited supply" includes almost 5 million White Americans and maybe 6 million Americans total. If you want more of them to work for you, you will need to pay the market price for their services.
Am I the only person Internet problems right now. I just posted this at Ann Althouse's blog. I'll post it again.
David Davenport said...
Has any body else noticed that many web sites, including drudgereport, Amazon.com, youtube.com, and lots of others are blocked right now? 1.52 PM EST 5 May 13.
Blogspot is one of the few sites that is available.
5/5/13, 12:54 PM
Look out, Steve! If THEY can block Drudgereport and Amazon, THEY can make you disappear forwever!
Anonymous said: Also, HIB immigrants integrate and become more American than the Americans - in that they value hard work,the English language, the purchase and maintenance of a homestead, and self-reliance much more than the self entitled and corpulent third generation offspring of Irish potato farmers.
Home ownership and getting to work on time? That's what it means to be an American? I'm a renter, so I guess it's high time I renounce my citizenship and abjure the bonds of national affection that such citizenship once implied.
Value the English language? Truer words have never been spoken anonymously. H1B Americans are universally known for their inimitable conversation skills, expertly written reports, and infectious love of impromptu literary discussions.
-The Judean People's Front
"They are probably smart enough to be trained as coders as well." - Businesses aren't spending appreciable amounts of money to train new workers, so that would tend to suggest a labor glut.
"Anonymous said...
Code fodder, indeed, Sailer. I'd like to see you get behind the keyboard and demonstrate your superior IQ, before diminishing the skills of others."
I've seen some of what passes for India's best and brightest - those people whom Fahreed Zakharia (or whatever - I can not be bothered to spell that prick's name correctly) assures us America can not do without. These particular specimens were tenured faculty members an American state university - a university founded and built by Americans of a previous generation, entirely without the help of sons of mother India. I was not impressed.
"What are the laws regarding obvious quid pro quos like these TV ads for Rubio and Lindsey Graham?"
Or in the case of Lindsey Graham - a quid pro queer.
H1B loving anon @ 9:41,
Why all the hate for the Irish? Still smarting from a schoolyard insult? Did a tougher, funnier Irish kid steal your girl in junior high school? Were you raped by off-duty firemen? WTF?
Warts and all, they've given us some of our best writers, bravest soldiers, and most talented performers. While thankfully rare these days, the Irish haters on this site are f*cking retards.
-The Judean People's Front
"rob said...
When FB censors and witch-hunts political speech, maybe enough people will think it's 'creepy' and recognize that facebook users aren't their customers. FB users are the product."
An excellent summary of the Face Book business model. This needs to be emphasized. Tell this to everyone you know who uses Face Book: You aren't their customer. You're their product.
The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced. AS IF the US will succeed in training people to perform at these skills.
Half of Americans who get a STEM degree are unable to find work in STEM jobs. The notion that there exists a shortage of people with technical skills in this country is a lie, plain and simple.
I think H1-B Indians, in particular, have developed a psychological defense to put up with their situation, a form of denial: "I'm not a cheapest-labour wage slave, I'm a genius saving the planet! All the poor folk I know back in India say so!"
Yes. All the Indians I've met here in the US working in tech have utter contempt for Americans and a comically exaggerated opinion of their own intellectual abilities.
"...you've got to admit that there's something going on if two extremely talented middle-aged filmmakers feel inspired to make a fine movie about what a weasel you are when you are only 26-years-old."
SOCIAL NETWORK is really Sorkin's movie. Fincher provided the technical finesse(and he is a master director), but the vision is entirely Sorkin's. Sorkin provided the blueprint, and Fincher just carried out the plan.
The strange thing about Fincher is he has a powerful style but almost no personality. He can do dazzling stuff but almost always to serve the vision or idea of others than to define his own. I think maybe ALIEN3 is the only exception.
Fincher is equally adept at making a 'fascist' film like FIGHT CLUB as well a liberal Judeo-centric film like SOCIAL NETWORK. He's a professional who will fulfill any vision with an almost unmatched expertise. Because he's mainly a technical director who serves other people's personalities and visions, Fincherism isn't as recognizable as Linklaterism or Tarantinoism, though in terms of pure technical mastery, Fincher is at the top, his equals being only Spielberg and Johnny To.
Some people were fooled into seeing SOCIAL NETWORK as a critical look at Zuckerberg when it's really an apologia for Jewish power. And in the end, it turns out the weasel is really a puppy who acted rude ONLY BECAUSE the world is filled with too many people who just don't love or appreciate a bright kid like him. Oh boo hoo, poor baby.
So, if Jews act like a**holes, don't hate them. Just try to understand them and hug them because Jews are never evil at heart but only acting out of wounded pride in a world that is still too 'antisemitic'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXt-KqvrSh0
Sorkin through 'Zuckerberg'--maybe it should be called Sorkerberg--says Winklevii are suing Zuck because "for the first time in their lives, things didn't work out the way they were supposed to for them."
This is, of course, projection on a grand scale. Jews are now so used to getting everything their way that it's not enough for them to disagree/debate with their opponents; they must use their entire media and financial muscle to destroy--and I mean really destroy--anyone who won't bend over to Jewish power(and gay power).
Jews have all the privilege but insist that we never discuss their privilege, and if we do, we are in effect blacklisted from the media, politics, or other places of power.
These Jews who are always used to getting things their way make themselves out to be the underdog up against the privileged wasp order, but then, this is just another example of Jews getting everything their way. They have the privilege to insist that they have no privilege and to silence us from taking notice of their privilege.
SOCIAL NETWORK is one of the vilest and most dishonest films I've seen, but the unanimous praise among critics means that most are indeed brainwashed or cowardly.
Just to work in QA or support you need at least two SDs above the mean
Ha hah. Leaving aside the fact that you don't actually "need" any such thing, the reality is that only a tiny fraction of H1B's go to people with IQ's at the level you describe.
I read the outraged comments under the NYT article. What a bunch of hypocrites: they were all fine with mass immigration as long as it is working-class people getting screwed.
Now they're all howling because middle-class jobs are on the line.
Oh well, I guess this is what we need to wake people up. Finally some middle-class folks are getting interested in the fight against open borders.
"Two dynamics that are rarely mentioned when discussing H1-B:
1) Since IT departments have become extremely foreignized, there is now a strong bias among hiring managers to favor their own (i.e. other Indians, Chinese or Russian) over white natives.
2) This foreignization has steered away natives who might have otherwise chosen IT as a career path. In fact, I believe any upper-middle class parent who currently works in the corporate world will (rightly) steer his child away from IT career because he will have first-hand knowledge of how low-status the IT department has become for a white native.
Both of these trends will only worsen in the future if the H1B cap is doubled."
Check, megadittoes, +100 or whatever other salutation of total approval is appropriate. This is exactly what I see out there. BTW I have seen exactly the same thing in Canada, so this is a more generalized tendency of business than it is a specifically American phenomenon, although the H1-B thing has made it much worse.
AIPAC also employes a bipartisan lobbying strategy.
AIPAC-Americans...
@anon 5/4/13, 10:30 PM
> The majority of the staff are supporting members:
Eh wot? Where do you work? Steve, your understanding is just fine.
Just to work in QA or support you need at least two SDs above the mean
What are entry level salaries for people with this qualification in these kinds of job?
Yes. All the Indians I've met here in the US working in tech have utter contempt for Americans and a comically exaggerated opinion of their own intellectual abilities.
I've witnessed some of this contempt as well. It's really quite astonishing, given that the targets of the contempt are the very people who have extended hospitality to these arrivals from the subcontinent.
While thankfully rare these days, the Irish haters on this site are f*cking retards.
Well, they are a wee bit ethnocentric and racist toward other Europeans, which can be problematic.
"The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced."
What is the evidence of this?
There is no evidence, because there can't be any evidence, because it's impossible.
The amount of "demand" is defined as the amount that is supplied at the market-clearing price. An imbalance is impossible.
When the nameless commenter speaks of "demand", he means something different. He means the amount that would be demanded if the price were different. It's a merely hypothetical demand, i.e., a want or desire or, better still, a wish.
I think we are on the same side, ben, but your answer is a little too glib. Let the OP tell us what the current price is (I doubt he knows it even) and then what he believes the price should be.
>Admit the reality of our world....<
Whom are you addressing?
Most here are way ahead of you, RC.
These aren't Tea Party sign-carriers or Occupiers.
Your website ain't bad, but let me tell you something. You act a little bigger than your britches sometimes.
Get your mind right and direct your firepower at a specific target. Buckshot in our general direction won't cut it.
1) Since IT departments have become extremely foreignized, there is now a strong bias among hiring managers to favor their own (i.e. other Indians, Chinese or Russian) over white natives.
Apple probably don't call it their IT Department (more like Engineering) but I am told that Apple is dominated by Indians.
Actually, all over Silly Valley you will see Engineering groups with lots of Indians and Chinese and few whites.
"Oh, here's the other best part to the above: to most computer programmers, joining a union ranks right above self-dentistry on their list of appealing tasks."
Smart guys enter "professions", not unions. You can't practice law unless you're a member of a bar association. CPAs, MDs, physical engineers - that's whom programmers should imitate.
The IT world already has lots of certifications. It just has to create more of them, make them tougher, and bribe politicians into barring entry into the field for those who fail. Public safety could be used as an argument. I'm sure some software-bug-caused deadly accidents could be dug up for this purpose. What's physical engineers' excuse for operating cartels? Probably public safety.
Once a cartel (or a guild) is created, the difficulty of the tests can be used to control the supply of labor and through it the pay level.
1) Since IT departments have become extremely foreignized, there is now a strong bias among hiring managers to favor their own (i.e. other Indians, Chinese or Russian) over white natives.
I think that's because whites don't apply to those jobs, which causes companies to import more immigrants, which causes even fewer whites to apply. Vicious circle.
Tell this to everyone you know who uses Face Book: You aren't their customer. You're their product.
Yep. Posting on Facebook is kinda like paying $20 for a shirt with a beer advertisement on it. They should be paying you.
I read the outraged comments under the NYT article. What a bunch of hypocrites: they were all fine with mass immigration as long as it is working-class people getting screwed.
Now they're all howling because middle-class jobs are on the line.
Oh well, I guess this is what we need to wake people up. Finally some middle-class folks are getting interested in the fight against open borders.
Given that print media is bankrupt, how long before some bright entrepreneur decides to buy the NY Times and replace the expensive writers with a bunch of cheap talent from India. India has produced many literary stars and probably has far more good writers than good programmers
The supply of Americans capable of doing this work vs. the demand is imbalanced. AS IF the US will succeed in training people to perform at these skills.
Here's another of the many stupid things about this claim that's never mentioned: these programming jobs only exist because a bunch of American and European white guys already created the operating systems, databases, programming languages, and development suites with which new programs can be created and supported. And suddenly these same guys aren't skilled enough to use them? Good grief.
And oh, by the way, as I've mentioned before, many of these guys created these things for fun in their spare time. They had that spare time because they were working at good-paying programming jobs, or they were in college working toward a degree that would get them a good-paying programming job. Take away those jobs and send them to work at McDonald's with a second job delivering pizza to make ends meet, and when are they going to do their hobby programming so you can have a cool web browser and lots of web sites to browse?
"Note the fascist tactic: ignoring the facts."
Here are the facts, the "immigrantion reform" have overwhelming support from an organisation named La Raza (La Raza is not Spanish for "the class"). It has everything to do with race, as the elections have shown, race is all that matters - all except for one group that is. That group is expected to do the polite thing and only think in terms of class.
The IT world already has lots of certifications.
Unfortunately, these are created more for the companies than for the techs. Cisco certification, for instance, is about limiting the ability of freelancers to compete with Cisco's own techs, so they can keep their prices for support work high. Microsoft's MSCE is the same way -- it keeps independents from competing with Microsoft's support techs. It protects the companies, not the workers; so it wouldn't keep Microsoft, for instance, from bringing in a bunch of Indian techs for half-price, pushing them through an MSCE program, and making a much bigger cut on their work.
You make a good point about forming something like guilds, though, if they were controlled by the techs. There have been some attempts at that -- there's a BSD certification group, for instance -- but it seems like they're mostly ignored unless they have a big corporation pushing them and convincing people they're necessary. I've done Cisco work, but some people wouldn't hire me because I'm not certified. But I've also worked with various flavors of Linux and BSD, different database/web/email/dns servers, and several different programming languages, and no one ever asked me if I was certified in any of them. If there's not a big company charging a lot for a certification, clients don't think it's important. I'm not sure what it would take for a bottom-up guild to change that.
I think that's because whites don't apply to those jobs, which causes companies to import more immigrants, which causes even fewer whites to apply. Vicious circle.
But where did the circle start? Silicon Valley was a whitopia not that long ago. The big IP corps would have us believed that the white people just up and quit for some reason, and they put want ads in the newspaper and no one showed up, so they were forced to start looking overseas.
That's stupid on the face of it, of course. What happened is that people were lost to attrition as in any business -- retirement, moving away, starting one's own business -- and they found a cheaper replacement from overseas. Over time, wages stagnate or drop, and Americans get the message that they aren't wanted there, so they stop applying.
It's like any other industry: the slaughterhouses didn't just fire all the white guys who were making a middle-class wage and replace them with illegal aliens the next day. It happens over time, person by person, or by opening a new factory in one town and staffing it with illegals, then a few years later closing a factory full of Americans in another town that just isn't profitable anymore for some reason.
"I think that's because whites don't apply to those jobs, which causes companies to import more immigrants, which causes even fewer whites to apply. Vicious circle."
What I've seen is a vicious circle of another sort. Megacorp, a hodgepodge of multiculturalism, various ethnic pipelining schemes, various managers trying to move up by shaving off one more half-percent this quarter, with the company impaled on a bed of government minority-preference, equal opportunity, and affirmative action laws, becomes a place in which native-born American citizens just don't want to work.
If nothing else they know the AA laws will probably bias the company to "visible minorities" over themselves in low-touch areas like IT. If you're lucky Megacorp doesn't spend much of its time unpleasantly haranguing you about the evils of living while white.
Pretty soon an area with a number of these companies becomes a place in which native-born Americans just don't want to live.
It's just unpleasant, like riding a bus in a questionable neighborhood, though without the threat of violence. It's often the little things that build up that make people say "I just don't need this, this isn't home, this is the LA airport!"
It's probably a natural reaction when people share an area but don't share all the mutual little social behaviors.
Things like people brushing their teeth in the break room sink and spitting great gobs into the bathroom sinks. (A sign I spotted on the bathroom wall of the UC Berkeley computer science department a year or two ago, "Please no spitting in the sink.")
I think the boardroom-level elites have little idea how much many Americans dislike working in this environment and are increasingly just not willing to do it. Even a lot of the immigrants that work for Megacorp don't like it. But that's ok, the corp knows there are plenty more waiting somewhere in the world... "Engineering and IT types are like towels, use'em up, wring-em out, and throw them away!"
Oh, yeah, that attitude will attract native Americans. They're experienced enough with all this BS to spot it. I almost feel sorry for the poor immigrant-flavor-of-the-month who aren't. No wonder they need to keep telling themselves that they are not desperate, they are desperately needed.
The Radical Centrist said: Admit the reality of our world....
Hunsdon said: Wow, that never, you know, would have occurred to us without your helpful post. Pithy, yet profound. My gosh, it's a dessert topping AND a floor wax!
You make me like Whiskey.
Anonydroid, 1:18 PM: After all, we Jews punch well over our weight in the alt-rightosphere and hopefully have enough self respect to knock you antisemites in the teeth should the times come to require it.
Hunsdon said: Punching well above your weight class is a metaphor. It's not really about fighting. What did Moshe Dayan say when asked what explained his great military success?
As far as the famed verbal faculty, and the ability to construct steel trap logical arguments, in all honesty I'm not seeing much of that, either.
Half of Americans who get a STEM degree are unable to find work in STEM jobs. The notion that there exists a shortage of people with technical skills in this country is a lie, plain and simple.
Well we're talking about computers not ALL STEM so it's quite possible there's a shortage, but that doesn't justify importing slave labor from India. Instead yucky zucky should dip into his own hyper-deep pockets to incentivize the best and brightest Americans to learn computers. He should recruit them straight out of high school so they needn't waste and money time getting any degree and enriching useless professors. Fewer jobs in academia means more high IQ Americans will have to get a real job, preferably in programming.
I think H1-B Indians, in particular, have developed a psychological defense to put up with their situation, a form of denial: "I'm not a cheapest-labour wage slave, I'm a genius saving the planet! All the poor folk I know back in India say so!"
It isn't so much denial as it is guilt for invading another people's territory followed by a rationalization of the act.
Don't disparage Lindsay Graham! Men have thought Graham was finished: he has gone down many times before. Does he cry and go soft, ask others for help? No, he takes it into his own hands, hardens up, and comes from behind.
You're disgusted just cuz you read that? Well, I thought it.
Instead yucky zucky should dip into his own hyper-deep pockets to incentivize the best and brightest Americans to learn computers. He should recruit them straight out of high school so they needn't waste and money time getting any degree and enriching useless professors.
Exactly. I know I've said this before, but anyone over the age of 14 with a bit of math/logic aptitude (we're talking 110 IQ here, not 2-3 SD like some nitwit claimed) can learn to program in a couple of months -- not to a Paul Graham's level, of course, but plenty well to fill these code factory jobs we're talking about. Which means they could even be trained in the specific language the company needs, with all their best-practices built-in from the start (no arguing over proper indentation and variable naming!).
As always:
1.) There is no such thing as a labor shortage, only an unwillingness to pay a competitive wage.
2.) If there were a shortage, this particular one could be eliminated within a year using American workers if the employers wished it.
3.) It's about cheap wages, period.
rob said: Don't disparage Lindsay Graham! Men have thought Graham was finished: he has gone down many times before. Does he cry and go soft, ask others for help? No, he takes it into his own hands, hardens up, and comes from behind.
You're a very bad man anonymous rob. Well, it could be worse... I would've vomited had you included the term lordosis in your description of the good senator.
-The Judean People's Front
"Yes. All the Indians I've met here in the US working in tech have utter contempt for Americans and a comically exaggerated opinion of their own intellectual abilities.
I've witnessed some of this contempt as well. It's really quite astonishing, given that the targets of the contempt are the very people who have extended hospitality to these arrivals from the subcontinent."
I actually did talk to one Indian at work who considered himself sort of a white nationalist because he said white people are about the only people to create decent countries.
It isn't so much denial as it is guilt for invading another people's territory followed by a rationalization of the act.
I doubt they feel guilty; they were invited here, they didn't invade as Britain did to India. And they're not taking away jobs from working Americans, only the cognitive elite.
Don't get me wrong; I'm anti-immigration, but placing the blame on the poor harworking immigrants instead of on the true villains who invite them is exactly the kind of diversion opportunists like zuckerberg were hoping you'd be duped into.
It isn't so much denial as it is guilt for invading another people's territory followed by a rationalization of the act.
I doubt they feel guilty; they were invited here, they didn't invade as Britain did to India. And they're not taking away jobs from working Americans, only the cognitive elite.
Don't get me wrong; I'm anti-immigration, but placing the blame on the poor harworking immigrants instead of on the true villains who invite them is exactly the kind of diversion opportunists like zuckerberg were hoping you'd be duped into.
The feeling of guilt is fleeting and quickly moves to rationalization. You do wrong to a people when you flood them with alien peoples and alien cultures and displace them from their jobs and their homeland. Everyone is aware of what is happening in America (except many ethnic Americans).
Subcontinentals, although they are not exactly spearheading the process, are willing participants in and beneficiaries of it. That would engender a feeling of guilt in any moral person, unless some justification could be found. The two most common justifications I have seen are that (1) ethnic Americans deserve what they are getting because they are bad people (this is the partial relevance of all the guilt mongering and pathologic historical narratives that dominate today), or (2) ethnic Americans actually benefit because subcontinentals are so smart and are good engineers, good doctors, etc.
The mass immigration of the last 50 years is magnitudes more destructive to the indigenous people of the United States than the British administration of India was to the indigenous people there.
As always:
1.) There is no such thing as a labor shortage, only an unwillingness to pay a competitive wage.
2.) If there were a shortage, this particular one could be eliminated within a year using American workers if the employers wished it.
3.) It's about cheap wages, period.
No, it's about preventing the rise of Nazism in the United States. The anti-Americans see their opportunity to wipe out ethnic Americans as an effective political force forever and they are going full bore for it.
I actually did talk to one Indian at work who considered himself sort of a white nationalist because he said white people are about the only people to create decent countries.
He would be an exception, in my experience. Ask him if he respects white people, their culture, their intellects. Not just "some white people."
The Legendary Linda said: Don't get me wrong; I'm anti-immigration, but placing the blame on the poor harworking immigrants . . . .
Hunsdon: Yup. It's easy to understand why someone from most anywhere would want to move to America; it's hard to understand why we let them let them in. (The repetition of "let them" was intentional.)
Code fodder, indeed, Sailer. I'd like to see you get behind the keyboard and demonstrate your superior IQ, before diminishing the skills of others.
Which is why of course China and India dominate the world of software while the poor old US of A lags behind desperately trying to pick up the crumbs.
The Legendary Linda said: I doubt they feel guilty; they were invited here
True.
The Legendary Linda said: ...they're not taking away jobs from working Americans, only the cognitive elite.
All Americans who must work for a living ARE working Americans. There is no IQ cutoff.
The Legendary Linda said: ...placing the blame on the poor harworking immigrants instead of on the true villains who invite them is exactly the kind of diversion opportunists like zuckerberg were hoping you'd be duped into.
Fair enough point. The lion's share of the blame belongs to those who create the incentive structure, not those who respond to it. I don't hate immigrants, I just want them to stay home.
Attacking the little people just makes the restrictionist cause look mean spirited.
-The Judean People's Front
The Legendary Linda said: I doubt they feel guilty; they were invited here
True.
It's not that simple. Those who were "invited" had the way opened for them by plutocrats, racial supremacist groups, and venal politicians in a political system that has become imposing and inaccessible to the common man.
The Legendary Linda said: ...they're not taking away jobs from working Americans, only the cognitive elite.
False. H1-Bs and illegal immigrants (such as those who overstay tourist visas) do take jobs away from a much broader spectrum of Americans. Many IT jobs (tech support, even some programming) are not "cognitive elite" jobs.
it's hard to understand why we let them let them in. (The repetition of "let them" was intentional.)
Nice nuance.
7:54 Anon said:It's not that simple. Those who were "invited" had the way opened for them by plutocrats, racial supremacist groups, and venal politicians in a political system that has become imposing and inaccessible to the common man.
I didn't say that we invited them. In their eyes, an invitation by our hostile elite is still an invitation.
If a con-artist feigns ownership of another's home and cheaply sells it to a stranger, the con-artist is the real enemy. The buyer is just taking a deal that is too sweet to pass up. This is true whether the buyer is an amoral opportunist or an honest man.
-The Judean People's Front
With cons like this....
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/05/05/the-big-five-americas-make-or-break-challenges/#disqus_thread
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/05/05/niall-ferguson-briefly-humbled-by-dead-gay-economist/#disqus_thread
Homos say if you don't support 'gay marriage', you're suffering from a (homo)phobia and 'less evolved'. Does Mead demand that the gay community and Jewish media(that pushes homo propaganda) apologize to us?
Of course not. He's too busy bending over to homos because they got the big money and are closest allies of the Jewish elites.
Liberals routinely denigrate conservatives as hating women(even waging war on them), being 'paranoid', having no regard for life(because conservatives believe in gun rights), and hating immigrants(because conservatives believe in the rule of law when it comes to borders), etc.
And Jewish neocons have said that Muslims don't care about their children.
But I don't see Mead calling such attitudes 'ugly' or saying that homos, Jews, and neocons should apologize.
Mead is a gutless running dog of homos and Zionists who fund him.
If a con-artist feigns ownership of another's home and cheaply sells it to a stranger, the con-artist is the real enemy. The buyer is just taking a deal that is too sweet to pass up. This is true whether the buyer is an amoral opportunist or an honest man.
Your analogy is inapposite. If the stranger is part of an ongoing buy-sell (or even a one-shot) arrangement and knows the house belongs to someone other than the con-artist, the buyer is complicit and immoral. There is a degree of that dynamic involved in the immigration situation--which is one of the reasons that foreigners feel the need to disparage Americans as lazy and undeserving or to see themselves as saving us.
Anon Said:Your analogy is inapposite. If the stranger is part of an ongoing buy-sell (or even a one-shot) arrangement and knows the house belongs to someone other than the con-artist, the buyer is complicit and immoral. There is a degree of that dynamic involved in the immigration situation--which is one of the reasons that foreigners feel the need to disparage Americans as lazy and undeserving or to see themselves as saving us.
You may be correct when it comes to the worst, most resentful H1B "cyber coolies" but I have yet to meet a dishwasher from Jalisco that sees himself as America's savior. In my experience, the run of the mill H1B types are not nearly as nasty as their employers, but then again I've never actually worked with them.
-The Judean People's Front
Your analogy is inapposite. If the stranger is part of an ongoing buy-sell (or even a one-shot) arrangement and knows the house belongs to someone other than the con-artist, the buyer is complicit and immoral. There is a degree of that dynamic involved in the immigration situation--which is one of the reasons that foreigners feel the need to disparage Americans as lazy and undeserving or to see themselves as saving us.
But Americans ARE lazy. It's just more obvious if one comes from a culture that values hard work.
But Americans ARE lazy. It's just more obvious if one comes from a culture that values hard work.
Right. The people who make up one of the most productive cultures in the world are "lazy." It's hard to think of a more hardworking group than Americans. Maybe Germans would be an exception.
You may be correct when it comes to the worst, most resentful H1B "cyber coolies" but I have yet to meet a dishwasher from Jalisco that sees himself as America's savior.
The observation of hostility (contempt, chauvinism, hatred, entitlement) was made with a view primarily toward subcontinentals and mongoloids.
I haven't witnessed it to the same degree among Mexican laborers, but there may be something there as well, perhaps more a sense of entitlement.
One explanation for a difference may be that Mexican immigrants don't see themselves as coming here to permanently occupy our territory. I think subcontinentals and mongoloids arrive more in a take, take, take and conquest/colonization mode.
But Americans ARE lazy. It's just more obvious if one comes from a culture that values hard work.
Ha, hah. Yes, I'm sure that somebody coming from a "culture that values hard work" such as India must be aghast at the "laziness" of Americans.
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Wow, I definitely never imagined seeing Zuckerberg entangled in something like that, especially being that as you mentioned, most of the top employees at these major firms, donate to Democrats. I'm going to have to look more into this and perhaps do a write-up on my own blog over at http://www.pennystockdream.com where I've done some things covering Zuckerberg and Facebook in the past. Like you, I had mostly been a defender but this one here isn't looking too good :/
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