"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
Trust Gates to try to blame the American public for causing this "problem". According to Bill Gates and his Strong American Schools and Skills Commission cohorts, we are a nation of drooling idiots who weren't smart enough to keep our jobs during the dot-com bust, and aren't able to handle anything much above simple arithmetic when we graduate from high school. In reality, the only "problem" was the public relations fiasco suffered by Gates and other tech company CEO's when forced to confront the fact that the disappearance of IT workers and graduates was part of an elaborate plan to drastically lower labor costs. If you can downsize an entire generation of IT workers and scare their kids from any sort of technical career fields, it will be easier to contract the work out to lower-paid H-1B or L-1 visa workers, or offshore the jobs to lower cost overseas labor markets altogether. From Gates' point of view, things probably couldn't be better.A widespread shortage of information technology (IT) graduates across North America is forcing Microsoft Corp. and other software companies to look to developing countries such as China to meet their needs, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says.
“When we want to hire lots of software engineers, there is a shortage in North America—a pretty significant shortage,” Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We have this tough problem: If you can’t get the engineers, then you have to have those other jobs be [relocated to] where the engineers are.”
....younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative. But he adds there is a lot they don't know and can't know until they gain experience. So he says his company recruits aggressively for fresh talent on university campuses and for highly experienced engineers from within the industry. One is not at the expense of the other, he insists. For him, it is all about hiring the best and brightest—age and nationality are not important. He acknowledges that the vast majority of Microsoft hires are young, but that is because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with.In other words, Microsoft needs an almost endless supply of college graduates, and needs a black hole to shovel the older workers into when they start demanding pay raises.
Labels: Bill Gates, education, H-1Bs, L-1s, Microsoft, offshoring
I was "downsized" unequivocally because of my salary. I was still an important contributor considering my replacements (replacements, plural) often emailed me to ask what to do.
The fucking companies today are only after the immediate bottom line and couldn't care less about talent let alone people. The NYSE rules!!!1!!
Gates is shining everyone. The talent is out there, but expect decent "American" salaries as opposed to those who will work for a pittance.
Very much deserved Jill, you got it goin' on big time.
http://ornerybastard.blogspot.com/2008/02/there-are-some-nice-folks-out-there.html
I don't envy the young bodies. They are competing with Indian workers advertising at 4 and 5 an hour on Craigslist. Bleah.