Letters to the Editor
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I got out of pure software quite a while ago
If you are still in a pure software development role (ie, your work does not require extremely deep subject knowledge of anything other than software development), I don't think there's really much you should be complaining about. The long-term trend is ALWAYS toward cheaper labor, and pure programming skills are becoming a cheaper & cheaper commodity. Whether we put limits on immigration or not, programming is becoming more of a trade than a profession. It sucks, but that's the way it is. Business is about making profits for investors & owners, not about paying great salaries to tons of American whiners with a sense of entitlement.
Personally, I think one needs to learn something and/or utilize skills that foreigners are horrible at & will continue to be horrible at, which previous posters have mentioned as well. Obviously, Chinese workers typically have the worst English skills I've ever seen (in a professional environment), and while Indians are better, they're generally nowhere near fluent native English speakers.
Right now I'm in the quantitative finance field... I'm becoming more of a manager now than I ever was before, but my programming skills have been quite useful here as well as in pure software development. Because doing well in this field is about understanding American markets and American investor, creditor, and borrower behaviour (things that practically only come thru experience working in America), I think I'm pretty safe for now.
Of course, you can always come up with a great product and start your own company and secure your own future. I've done that a couple times, with varying levels of success. Sure, the risk is high, but the rewards are way higher than getting a degree in CS. I don't understand why people feel that they should be entitled to a cushy career for their entire lives just because they graduated college with a CS degree and have worked in the field for years.
Life is competitive. Deal with it! There are a limited number of resources in this world. 5 billion people live in poverty. 1 billion are rich. There's no way 6 billion people can all be rich, but of those 5 billion poor people, I'm sure a huge quantity of them are better at what you do than you are. So why do you think you should get to keep making beaucoup bucks forever? In the end, you're stealing from the rest of the world by maintaining high salaries here and paying crap everywhere else.
Would you want to pay 3-4x as much for your basic, nothing special pair of shoes? That's what it would cost if people got paid American wages to make shoes. Why should American companies have to pay inflated wages for programmers? Their customers don't want to have to pay inflated costs for their services!
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and as a quick followup...
Just in case you think I'm some hard-ass capitalist, I've voted Democrat ever since I was able to vote! But just because I vote Democrat doesn't mean I should be blind to historical trends and broader market forces. If you want to tell me that the model of business -> profits is broken, go ahead! But that's how it works right now, and unless you and some huge group of other people can convince the government that business should be about more than just making money, this whole conversation is completely pointless. You can waste 10 years in a futile attempt to change the ways of business, or you can accept that that's the way it's going to be for a long time, and suck in your gut, and be a little more proactive about your future.
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It's about age, not nationality
The industry is ageist and MS is among the worst, so you have to understand that 20 years of experience means you are all used up as far as they're concerned, not a hot commodity. No one cares about your GPA after 2 years either, much less 20. Gates is not complaining about a lack of 40-something software developers, he's complaining about a lack of naive 20-somethings that will slave away 24/7 until they burn out and get replaced.
Due to the terrible job market between, say, 2001-2003 (when this year's grads were starting school) none of them went anywhere near computer science. Add to that Google, who at least here in Silicon Valley is a huge vortex sucking up the best and brightest, and he's absolutely honest in saying he can't find what he's looking for.
So the real question is, will shutting down the H1B force MS to hire older workers or just go overseas? Business and economics aren't my forte but I suspect the latter.
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boo hoo
"Foreign H-1B programmers earn, on average, $13,000 less than U.S. workers, according to the Occupational Employment Statistics program of the U.S. Department of Labor. Often, because these foreign hires are recent graduates, they earn entry-level salaries, making it cheaper to hire them than someone like Besser, with 20 years experience."
It is a shame that Besser has done nothing with his 20 years of experience to make himself more valuable to employers than an entry level employee. But what does that have to do with knocking down artificial barriers to the free flow of labor? If I can hire an Indian or a Chinese or a Canadian or an Idahoan to do a job for less money than a Californian, then I would be a fucking moron to hire the Californian.
It's not personal, it's business. If you can't understand the distinction, then maybe you might be a pussy. Or at least not quite ready to eat at the grown-up table.
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Why Americans need to learn more about the larger world
My earlier letter evoked a comparison between cheap labor and abolished slavery. The sad fact is that an American janitor earns more today than an electrical engineer based in India, when dollars are converted to rupees. Just tell me who the slave is. The truth is that average American Joes have been having a piggyback ride on innovators and knowledge leaders who make the US competitive, and the wakeup call from the Senate is for them. Picture the other scenario where American capital will flee the US for everything except the very high-tech work. It is happening, and US workers have to deal with it. They can whine to their Congressmen, but the truth is that US gains more from global trade than other nations and the shoe is only now beginning to pinch. Congressmen will know this sooner or later (Most probably do already). They may make the right noises to get some votes, the politicians that they are, but when the cows come home, they know the score.
It is best that US workers realise that workers are the same everywhere. If slavery is illegal, so is discrimination. By discriminating against workers from another country, you buy into inequality. I do have solutions to help everybody in the game, but we'll keep it for some other day.
-JW