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Tech at Night: As usual, Republicans are right and Democrats have an alternate agenda in the Senate

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 9th, 2013 at 02:30 AM  | 

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Tech at Night

A lot of conservatives seem to be getting behind a Hatch-Rubio bill to increase immigration for skilled individuals. No wonder Harry Reid wants to block it for partisan reasons. Have to put politics over anything else. Can’t let Republicans do a good thing.

Though I think the Senate priorities are pretty messed up. Jay Rockefeller is talking about workforce standards in the context of cybersecurity legislation. Talk about using any excuse to grow government. At least guys like John Thune recognize the need for the government and private business to work together against foreign Internet threats.

I mean, we can’t rely solely on NSA doing its best to do the right thing on its own.

Here’s the right position on Pandora: not yet more regulation, but deregulation of music licensing. Time we ended irrelevant regulations based in an era when terrestrial radio was king, regulations hearkening back before 8 track, before cassettes, CDs, iPods, and Sirius.

Remember when two of the top wireless competitors merging was supposed to be the worst thing in the world? I guess the Obamanauts changed their minds on T-Mobile/MetroPCS. Or maybe it was about sticking it to AT&T all along, since AT&T is hated by the Net Neuties.

No, phone SIM unlocking isn’t rightfully about DMCA issues or circumvention of copyright, but it is about people trying to evade their contractual obligations when buying a subsidized phone. To regulate this would be unfair.

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  • edintexas

    “…NSA doing its (sic) best to do the right thing…” This Administration can’t resist disclosing things the intelligence community is doing. Disclosing information like this, or the “Stuxnet virus” are of great help to our enemies in compiling estimates of capabilities.

  • Next93

    If the immigration bill you’re talking about is the new H1-B visa program, I have to say that I disagree with you.

    Why are we even considering importing 40,000 *more* foreign engineers for short-term contract work at a time when engineering salaries have risen by less than 3% since 2000? And it’s going to get worse; I’ve never seen such downward pressure on engineering pay rates as I’ve seen in the past few months.

    The original program was supposed to raise funds to encourage US students to go into science, engineering, and math; the actual result has been just the opposite. Kids aren’t exactly eager to enter the most difficult program that most school offer, knowing that they’ll never be able to make more than what a brand-new college grad from Mumbai will work for, which means that they’ll be priced out of the market if they want to pay back their student loans or reach an age where they need health insurance.

    If we keep importing engineers, rather than letting free market forces
    work, we’re going to find ourselves with no domestic engineering
    students. We’ll be in the same position as the 3rd world companies
    who’ve lost all ability to locally grow, process, or distribute their
    own food because the locals can’t compete with the supply of free food
    coming from the US.

    The H1-B program is more about crony capitalism than about national security. It was put in place to keep a few Silicon Valley concerns from having to deal with being on the losing side of the supply and demand equation in regard to engineering salaries. And, yes, I’ll be honest and say that I’m one of the people who was poised to be on the winning side of that equation; it took me years of education and decades of continuing study and experience to get here, and I have to say that I’m a little bitter that a few well-connected billionaires got my own government to take that away with the stroke of a pen.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Trade barriers to labor are no more free markets at work than trade barriers to goods and services.

    I reject the build-a-wall-around-America model of tariffs and restricted immigration of smart and wealthy people.

  • bgmacaw

    The funny thing is that an expanded H1-B program may not bring in the desired tech workers. Why? Because of increasing regulation and taxation the US is becoming a less attractive place to work. This is especially true in California and some other states who’re trying to squeeze every tax dollar they can out of their productive population.

    Plus, in many tech professions it’s becoming possible to work on projects remotely from India or wherever. At my company we currently have IT team members working from India, Ireland and Poland. We’ve even had 3 people move back to India from the US who continued to work for us.

  • bgmacaw

    Part of the problem, which you kind of noted, is the cost of a US college technical degree education vs. that in India and most of the rest of the world. Due to the increasing costs of college and the crushing weight of college debt, it’s no surprise that young people realize that the ROI isn’t what it used to be. Once again, this is primarily caused by government interfering in the marketplace.

    Also, companies may hire that “brand-new college grad from Mumbai” and find out that he/she doesn’t cut it. I’ve seen this time and time again. For a while, most of the consulting work I did was correcting mistakes made by cut-rate “engineers” with masters degrees in IT. I think many companies are getting smarter and have realized that they have to hire proven talent, not the cheapest ‘talent’, if they want things done right.

  • Next93

    What you’re saying makes sense, and I wish it was reality, but I’m not seeing it happen.

    The “hiring” managers probably agree with you, but they’re not the ones controlling the process. As always, the bean counters are firmly in control.

    These days, there’s a program on the HR server that won’t allow a candidate to be considered if his/her salary rate exceeds the pre-determined (“cheapest possible”) rate. I’ve talked several times to one local hiring manager who knows I can do what he needs done, but he’s had to hire “cheaper” (read “H1-B”) candidates – twice. I finally told him to give me a call once his HR department has finished running through every person in India who will work for less than me. I figure I should hear back in about 5,000 years.