CS Prof Decries America's 'Internal Brain Drain' 791
walterbyrd writes "Dr. Norman Matloff of the University of California-Davis computer science department argues that US citizens are avoiding 'Science Technology Engineering Math' (STEM) careers, because US citizens see those fields as being ruined by massive offshoring and inshoring. 'Despite widely publicized claims that foreign tech workers and scientists represent exceptional ability and are thus vital to American innovation, Matloff called that argument merely "a good sound byte for lobbyists" supporting industry proposals for higher visa caps. The data (PDF), on the other hand, indicate that those admitted are no more able, productive, or innovative than America's homegrown talent, he said.'"
So much better.... (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The laws of supply and demand still operate: If you want great STEM workers, then you need to pay for them. If you aren't getting as many as you'd like, increase the amount you're willing to pay them, or improve working conditions, until you get them.
That said, the reason that many US employers prefer foreign labor over US labor have nothing to do with the costs, and everything to do with foreign labor having less ability to go find another job when they get mistreated.
the problem is the reverse (Score:5, Interesting)
foreign geniuses come to study here, our colleges are well-respected, and are interested in setting up shops after college that could employ 100-300 americans in 5-10 years. but because of rabid anti-immigrant american hysteria, they are deluged with harrowing residency/ citizenship requirements that are intended to turn away seasonal farm workers, and are forced to go home, where those companies of the future grow instead
frankly, protectionism is moronic. even when packaged in the stilted round about way this stupid story packages it
go ahead and man the borders and prevent the poor immigrants if it makes you happy. but if you force the geniuses to go home after studying college in the usa, you are throwing away hundreds of thousands of jobs in the companies of the future
we are a nation of immigrants. we always have been, unless you are native american. so enough with the protectionist stupidity. no matter how lamely you package the failed ideology, its still a failed way of thinking that ultimately only hurts the usa
Re:Does it matter what reasoning lobbyists have? (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>they'll make up the words that sound as reasonably sounding to a regular Joe to make it sound like it is in his best interest.
This is why I quit the IEEE. In the early 2000s they kept sending-out newsletters about how we need the Government to allow more Visas for imported workers, and keep America competitive. And I believed them, until I stopped to think - "More workers == more competition when I go looking for a new job. Why would I want that???"
That's when I realized IEEE was lobbying for the Corporations, not the the electrical engineers they supposedly represented. So I quit renewing my membership.
Brains drained before career decisions made (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody is interested in science and technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Correction: all people are generally uninterested in science and technology. Americans are no worse than the rest of the world. In those countries in Asia where most of those H1Bs come from people are not interested either; they are interested in passing the test and getting the job. Tech jobs pay more than sweatshops, there is a tradition for test taking (especially in China), and their parents make them. Once they pass the test and get the job, they stop caring and become just like everybody else.
The USA has a culural bias against good education (Score:5, Interesting)
'Despite widely publicized claims that foreign tech workers and scientists represent exceptional ability and are thus vital to American innovation, Matloff called that argument merely "a good sound byte for lobbyists'
I hate to say this, but it's true -- sure, there are a few scholastic stars that come out of the USA education system, but the majority of students aren't being pushed (or pushing) themselves to excel. In fact, many do a little as possible to just barely cruise through high school, those that apply themselves and work hard are often teased and goaded for working hard -- and I'm not just talking about the traditional geeks, but that guy on the track team is also called out for sutyding too hard and missing out on the after-school party with the boys.
There's no stigma to not doing well in high school -- or even dropping out. Parents hold much of this responsibility - sure, public schools are lacking, but the drive to succeed in school comes from home. Many parents can't even be bothered to see that their elementary school students complete required homework - and they'll make excuses for it "Oh, that takes too much time, Sally needs time to play" -- for an hour long assignment that was assigned a week ago. Of course, when a parent doesn't have a high school education it's hard for him/her to see the value of a good education, and harder still to help instill good study habits when they don't know what a good study habit is.
In contrast, school in Japan (to use one example) is highly competitive - students know that if they don't do well in high school they aren't going to get into their college of choice (which means a high paying job), and may not even get into a college at all are are relegated to trade school. This pressure starts early in their school life - by 7th or 8th grade a student better be on a college track or he/she is not going to make it. The school hours are long, with Saturday schooldays not being unheard of. Parents in turn push their children to do well in school.
I'm not saying that the Japanese culture is better, but I am saying that it produces better students. If a culture pushes 80% of its kids to excel at school, they are going to produce many more scientists and engineers than one that pushes 10% of its kids to excel, even if it only has 1/3 the population. And that's just one country -- if the USA is importing some of the best and brightest students in the world, then those imports are going to make up a significant portion of USA talent.
Another Cause (Score:5, Interesting)
> US citizens see those fields as being ruined by massive offshoring and inshoring.
Another cause I have been researching -- increasing income concentration. While the common perception is that the high end of the software engineering pay scale is in the "rich" category, and hence are beneficiaries of increasing income concentration, the data speaks otherwise.
I have extracted the income data from the IRS-SOI going back to 1950. The increasing concentration since the mid-to-late 1970s (it started prior to Reagan -- initially caused by the falling dollar and the failure to adjust the tax brackets) has gone almost exclusively to the top 0.5%, and even there is skewed heavily upward. This has not only affected software engineers, but also entrepreneurs, small to medium enterprise executives, starting to mid-level investment bankers, and a whole host of others who fit the traditional perception of those who benefit from concentration.
The result, of course, is that anyone who has a sufficiently strong, broad skill set (like understanding engineering and business) has a significant financial motive to go to a fortune 500 and climb the corporate ladder. This is great for the Fortune 500s, as it increases the internal competition for promotion. It has, however, been harmful to smaller enterprises and high skill labor (like software engineers).
The complaints of a shortage of US engineers are not entirely unfounded, but it is our tax policy and the resulting shifts in income distribution -- not greater engineering skill in foreign countries -- that is causing it. Our talent can easily see where the money is and there is a direct impact on career path. For those from less advantaged countries, the engineer/entrepreneur payscale looks great, despite the fact that within our country it (along with everyone below the engineer/entrepreneur level, though I might argue that below P30 there is another factor at work -- but I digress) it has been relatively inhibited for the past 35 years or so.
Just another piece of the puzzle. Check out IRS-SOI -- great data to play with.
We should have got rid of all these.. right? (Score:4, Interesting)
The article is overwhelmingly shortsighed. Some of the people(just Indians, forget about Europeans who contributed so much) who would have been not been able to do what they did:
Don't forget a bunch of companies that have Indian CEOs and have had them as CEO and founders. Hotmail founder was India born...
Co-Founder of Sun.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla [wikipedia.org]
Motorola CEO: http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/8/motorola-cellphone-ceo-sanjay-jha [businessinsider.com]
Father of Pentium chip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Dham [wikipedia.org]
A small incomplete list from Wiki:
Ajit Hutheesing : Founder, Chairman and CEO of International Capital Partners Inc
Ali Pabrai : Entrepreneur
Amar Bose : Founder of Bose Corporation
Sashi Reddi : Founder CEO, AppLabs (World's #1 Software Testing company)
Arjun Gupta : Silicon Valley venture capitalist
Ashwin Navin : Co-Founder and President of BitTorrent, Inc.
Bharat Desai : Founder of Syntel
Gagan Palrecha : Entrepreneur
Gurbaksh Chahal : Internet Entrepreneurs
Mukesh Chatter : Businessman
Lakireddy Bali Reddy : Landlord, restaurant owner,owns more than 1000 apartments in California
M.R. Rangaswami : Founder of Sand Hill Group and Corporate Eco Forum
Murugan Pal : Founder and CTO of SpikeSource
Narendra Patni: Founder of Patni Computer Systems
Naveen Jain : Founder of InfoSpace and Intelius
Pradeep Sindhu : Co-Founder and CTO of Juniper Networks
Preetish Nijhawan : Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies.
Ram Shriram : Co-Founder of Junglee.com and board member at Google
Rohini Srihari : Founder of Cymfony and Janya
Sameer Parekh : Founder of C2Net
Sanjiv Sidhu : Founder of i2 Technologies
Somen Banerjee: Founder of Chippendales
Suhas Patil: Founder of Cirrus Logic
Vivek Ranadive : Founder, Chairman and CEO of TIBCO Software
Vinod Gupta : Founder and Chairman of InfoUSA Inc.
Vinod Khosla : Co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Venture Capitalist
Ajay Bhatt : Co-Inventor of the USB. Chief Client Platform Architect at Intel
Ajit Varki : Physician-scientist
Amit Singhal : Google Fellow, the designation the company reserves for its elite master engineers in the area of "ranking algorithm".
Anil Dash : Blogger and technologist
Raj Reddy : Founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, winner of the Turing Award.
Arun Netravali : Scientist. Former President of Bell Labs. Former CTO of Lucent. A pioneer of digital technology including HDTV and MPEG4.
Arvind Rajaraman : Theoretical physicist and string theorist
Satya N. Atluri : Aerospace and mechanics
C. Kumar N. Patel : Developed the carbon dioxide laser, used as a cutting tool in surgery and industry.
Khem Shahani : Microbiologist who conducted pioneer research on probiotics, he discovered the DDS-1 strain of Lactobacillus acidophilus
Deepak Pandya : Neuroanatomist
Arjun Makhijani : Electrical and nuclear engineer who is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
George Sudarshan : Physicist, author - first to propose the existence of Tachyon
Kalpana Chawla : Female NASA Space Shuttle astronaut, and space shuttle mission specialist
Krishna Bharat : Principal Scientist at Google - Famous for creating Google News.
Jogesh Pati : Theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Krishan Sabnani : Engineer and Senior Vice President of the Networking Research Laboratory at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in New Jersey
Mahadev Satyanarayanan : Computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Pioneered research in mobile and pervasive computing
Mani Lal Bhaumik : Contributor excimer laser technology.
Narinder Singh Kapany : Engineer, called the "Father of Fiber Optics".
Noshir Gowadia : Design engineer
Om Malik : Technology journalist and blogger
Pramod Khargonek
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
This. (sorry) I was doing pretty well performing programming and consultant work myself until the same thing happened to me. I even found RFPs out there that stated explicitly "Do not bother to apply if you are American". WTF? This despite the fact that these idiots look at nothing but the hourly rate, and when they get burned by the fact that most of those guys are 1/10th as productive, and also end up doing significant re-work because they didn't understand the requirements as well as I can.
I do still have some loyal customers, including a couple that came back when they realized that I was giving them a better value than the cheap-as-crap-found-them-on-the-web foreigners.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
No, you do that. I favor government policy that counters the outrageous power the ultra rich have over politics. The answer to regulatory capture is not fewer regulations, it is less regulatory capture. One good way to keep money out of politics is to take it away from the ultra rich. Let's have a 90% marginal tax rate on a billion dollar income. Adam Smith noted that free markets require regulations in order to stay free, and I agree. A "free market" with no regulations will become the playground of the rich, and completely unfree, in very short order. The government is not the only extra-market force at work in the world.