[ale] New website for H1B [Slightly OT]

[tom hawks]

I usually try to out of discussions like these, but
what is wrong with trying to make as much money as
possible. Who wouldn't rather drive an X5 instead of a
Honda Accord. I like being able to afford a house in
town and not have to live in a mobile home somewhere.
I am sure that there are some people who truly do not
care one bit about money, but I bet it is very few. If
some of you have projects and need programmers and can
afford them, hire friends or people off this list who
need work. I always try to help people out if I can.
Why price the market down to $20 an hour.
Some people are bashing others but then at the same
time ask a lot of questions about stuff that really
could be answered with a little googling.

tom
--- "F. Grant Robertson"
<f.g.robertson at alexiongroup.com> wrote:
> I really resent that you consider me nationalistic
> and xenophobic just becuase I wish to be paid what I
> am actually worth. For the record, I never
> disparaged any foreign programmers.. I've worked
> with many and still call a great number of them
> friends.  
> 
> I'm about as serious a capitalist as you could
> possibly imagine, just ask anyone who knows me
> personaly. Whatever the future brings I'm sure I
> will find ways to exploit it to my own financial
> gain. If that means I stop programming, develop a
> network of offsore programmers and just play manager
> and liason so be it. If it means I develop skills or
> products that allow me to change my area of focus
> for more gain, so be that as well. I would however
> rather continue to make reasonable money writing
> code as it's not something I do entirely for profit,
> it's something I personaly enjoy and have worked
> hard to gain the skills necessary for making a
> living at it. There is a significant amount of
> personal satisfaction that comes from making a
> living at something you love.
> 
> I have no problem with offsore developers, and in
> the situation we faced between 1996-2000 I have no
> problem with a visa program which allows us to share
> our riches for the betterment of all parties.
> Unfortunately these conditions no longer exist, and
> under the current conditions I have absolutely zero
> support for allowing visas to be offered to people
> with skill sets that are available domesticly for
> reasonable rates, regardless of the equality of pay.
> 
> 
> And, just as an aside, I'm neither lazy or bitter..
> I'm simply pragmatic.
> 
> -Grant
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-admin at ale.org [mailto:ale-admin at ale.org]On
> Behalf Of George
> Carless
> Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 11:30 AM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: RE: [ale] New website for H1B [Slightly OT]
> 
> 
> I would have thought it would be clear that there
> are good and bad
> programmers everywhere - and, unfortunately, at all
> salary brackets: it's
> quite amazing how far some *very bad* programmers
> can get.  This is
> especially the case in a job climate where potential
> employers - and, more
> often, headhunters and the like - are more
> interested in "years on the
> job" and nebulous concepts of "experience" than they
> are in quality of
> work.  I am not saying that experience isn't an
> important thing -- far
> from it -- but I do think that there's a mistaken
> belief amongst those
> hiring that all of the traditional means of
> evaluating an applicant hold
> true for many developers; accordingly, the
> individual who has spent
> several years building his own servers, writing
> hobby code and getting too
> little sunlight is overlooked in favour of the guy
> who stumbled into
> development because he figured it'd make him money,
> can cut-and-paste some
> dodgy VB code and has a brace of MS certificates.
> 
> It might be noted, though, that this situation has
> come to light partly
> thanks to the dollar-chasing of the .com boom - a
> boom whose epicentre was
> the United States, and which has accordingly perhaps
> led to a glut of
> developers on the market - and developers of wildly
> differing skill-sets.
> I must say that I've encountered more dreadful code
> over here than I ever
> did back home, and more people passing themselves
> off as programmers when
> they didn't have so much as an understanding of a
> loop or a control
> structure.  But that's not to say that there aren't
> talented American
> coders (nor that there aren't useless Europeans),
> and I think it's
> foolhardy to get too embroiled in a discussion about
> the relative merits
> of American developers versus foreign ones -- any
> such discussion can only
> be shallow, at best.  By the same token, however, I
> think it's
> reprehensible to take a blanket "down with H1-Bs! 
> Up with Americans!"
> attitude, which simultaneously belittles many
> hard-working non-immigrant
> workers, and suggests chest-thumping xenophobia and
> nationalistic pride -
> never this country's finest feature, I'm afraid,
> despite all of its
> fabulous merits.
> 
> At any rate, I'm fairly convinced that most really
> *good* programmers over
> here *are* finding work, and - I'm afraid - that
> most of those whining
> about not being able to find work are in their
> position either because
> they're too proud to work at their actual reasonable
> market wage (after
> much moddicoddling at inflated boom prices), or
> because they're just *not
> very good*.  And the anti-h1 site recently posted
> was a fine example of
> the latter trait: it was poorly written, poorly
> coded, intellectually
> lacking and just generally rubbish.  And,
> incidentally, most of us H1-Bs
> are paying the same taxes as are the rest of you,
> but often without the
> concomitant job or lifestyle security (i.e. we're
> really screwed if we get
> fired), social security benefits, etc.  And often
> we're doing a lot of
> good for American companies - which in turn helps
> the economy, yadda yadda
> yadda.  And there are fairly strict guidelines to
> prevent H1-B workers
> from being paid at less than a fair rate, so
> generally we're neither
> "slave workers" nor providing unfair competition for
> American workers;
> indeed, I would suggest that some of you have a good
> hard think about why
> many reputable companies do go through the expense
> and hassle of bringing
> in H1-B workers, if there's such a ready supply of
> "equally talented"
> workers just out there in the community..
> 
> Before this gets too much longer, I would just say:
> yes, there are
> talented American programmers.  No, there is no
> universal 'difference'
> between American and non-American programmers,
> either in attitude or in
> ability.  But what's also true is that there are
> lazy, or bitter,
> developers both here and elsewhere, and that those
> people would do better
> to spend more time in learning how to write English,
> how to write code,
> and how to market themselves better - rather than in
> whining and in
> blaming "foreigners".
> 
> --George
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