The United States long has been a magnet for talented foreign students, many of whom enrich the work force for good after graduation. Testifying before Congress earlier this month, Microsoft founder Bill Gates rightly emphasized not only the urgent need to better educate American students in math, science, engineering and more, but also the need to issue more than the current 65,000 H1-B visas annually for scientists, engineers, computer programmers and other professionals. Microsoft, he said, has 3,000 technical jobs going begging for skilled workers in the United States.“Even though it may not be realistic, I don’t think there should be any limit,” Gates said.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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32 Comments
Bill what the hell are you going to do with all that money?
There is no shortage of tech workers. What there is a shortage of is tech workers who will live 10 to an apartment and work for McDonald’s wages.
I have worked with a lot of foreign tech workers. Many had Masters degrees from their home country, and most were so poorly skilled technically that the rest of us had to constantly clean up their messes.
If Bill wanted to fill those 3000 jobs, all he needs to do is pay American workers what the market demands. Amazing that someone who has benefited so much from a market economy wants to go crying to Uncle Sam for help when it doesn’t work to his advantage.
Wiseman,He is giving most of it away to charity. In 2005, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation paid $1.5B in grants and has paid over $13.3B since it started. Most of this has come from the Gates’.
Walt, you are mistaken.There is a shortage of skilled tech workers, and the salaries offered for those positions are very good. With a quick web search, I saw many openings at Microsoft with pay starting in the $60’s. This seems like a lot more than ‘McDonalds wages.’
Walt, actually you are mistaken. The foreign workers in the US are being paid the prevailing market wage. There truly is a shortage.
Guys, I’ve worked in software development for over 20 years – there is no shortage. It’s all a manufactured crisis.
Now personally, I like Bill Gates. I think he’s done a lot of good stuff for the industry. But he is trying to get the government to intervene in the job market here simply to cut the bottom line. Another thing to consider is that US citizens are basically free agents – they can leave a job if someone offers them a better deal. H1B workers are in effect indentured workers – they can’t leave their sponsoring employer even if they have to work 90 hour weeks.
Bill – I don’t have the URLs with me at the moment, but there have been many articles in the trade press about the conditions that H1B workers work under, including lower than industry wages and substandard housing.
Walt,Incorrect again. There are provision by which an H1B worker can leave there employer.
Gotta agree with Walt here.We don’t need to import workers. We need to insist that US employers obey market forces within the United States.
Walt,
What are you talking about??? There is a huge shortage of Techs…
There is a shortage of techs willing to put up with the substandard treatment most companies dish out!
H1B’s are often willing to put up with it just to come here…
Not entirely certain where I stand on this, as I know there seems to be a shortage, at the same time just out of college and working my first full time job right now doing web development. Getting this job was easy enough, the pay seemed to be on par with other offerings, so I’m thinking their maybe a shortage of people as I had my new job start the Monday after graduation.
However, my passion is videogames. To which I’ve worked on my own during my time at school, and now pursue it with my free time after work.
I suppose the type of technically skilled person would matter. If you are talking Web Design/Software, the Employer will usually ask for the usual proficiencies in CSS, Dreamweaver, Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop etc or whatever their particular needs are.
I think what Bill Gates was addressing was higher on the food chain of professionals; scientists, engineers, computer programmers.
This is a harder category to fill because of the very technical fields they are dealing with. Education and experience being paramount for qualifications.
Sorry,should have qualified what I do a little better. It is web application development using primarily Java technologies (Hibernate, Spring) and Oracle for the database backend. I do a little CSS, however we do have a multimedia person who handles most of the interface work for us. As for my undergraduate research I did research in robotic vision. Liked doing that so much that I bought a Lego Mindstorm and the Mindstorm camera and mess around with that home.
I agree Republican, Gates was referring to the more scientific jobs. He is saying there is a shortage of people vocationally trained to do programming.Hence the US shortage due to poor educational foundations in math, science, and physics.
left out an important word -’He is NOT saying there is a shortage of people vocationally trained to do programming.’
Brain, Republican
I think there is a shortage of certin areas of technolgoy.. I think there is a shortage of “1st level” guys, i.e. the guys who answer the phone…. I think there is also a shortage of “highly skilled” individuals, system programers, application programers, etc… lots and lots of new graduates are going “web” and programing in web languages.
There is not a shortage of tech workers, only a shortage of tech workers willing to work for dirt cheap wages.
Do a google on Dr. Norm Matloff and you can read his research on H1-B and the myth of a programmer shortage. It’s all about cheap labor.
Programming, manufacturing, and every other job is going to be done by the people willing to work for the cheapest amount possible. It is what keeps costs down. I am sorry to say but if I was running a business and I could pay a legal immigrant $10 an hour to build a widget, or pay an American $20 to build the same widget which do you think I would pay? The American worker wants FMLA, vacation, sick days, time off for the dentist, discounts, and healthcare, and of course some sort of retirement plan. The immigrant wants to provide for his family and due to his lifestyle can do so on a much lower payscale, thereby making it possible for USA citizens to buy my widgets at a cheaper price. Capitalism at it’s finest.
You are exactly right Wayreth. Capitalism is what drives illegal immigration. Just pure basic capitalism.
Its all about wage busting. Its already been argued that there will be no stopping “off shoring” which will move your job to the lowest wage alternative. However, it is said that there are some jobs that cannot be “off shored.” Those are our jobs. Those are what me must keep.
What jobs are you referring to Dave? Anything can be done off shore or at a cheaper wage. Even doctors and lawyers are replaceable to a certain extent.
Dave,
i must agree…
There will always be high tech jobs that require local high-skilled people…
Thats where certifications and degrees come into place.
Wayreth,
you simply can not replace an onsite tech at a company. There will always need to be someone to touch equipment locally…
touch equipment
What Bill wants, the gov still listens and I don’t know why.
Competition is worth having in everything. The gov for years denied consumers a choice on PC software.
Job seekers demand he chooses Americans first. I’m glad some in the gov don’t want expansion of H1-B visas.
He could open a training program in Cuba, then those citizens would be wet foot/dry foot boaters, they hit dry land, instant citizen.
He and Microsoft don’t deserve the world license or federal purchases for their computer systems.
It was always threat of lawsuit other people didn’t design OS and what computer manufacturer would install it. Softies were hammering manufacturers with threats of not getting Intel processors.
He’s made enough and I for one don’t ever plan on upgrading past XP. Still running one computer with Win 2000.
I believe Microsoft tech’s created spyware in 2000, because on their online help sites, the Explorer 2000 stopped working but instantly there was a $60 spyware removal program, pretty package, professional looking website suggested by microsoft techs.
When they want to sell new OS, Microsoft messes up the Explorer browser. I don’t use it anymore, not since 2000.
Firefox, Opera and an older Netscape browers. I don’t get spyware or shut downs.
Microsoft overchared business to enrich themselves. Ruined competiton and had federal protection. Sue Microsoft, better have very deep pockets. Lawsuits take a long time against them.
Go Google because Gates said he was going to surpass them.
I can’t wait until we see the end of Microsoft in our lifetime. Hopefully next ten years.
Only Xbox systems and games, the occasional OS roll outs is what is making the company go. They don’t make gadgets worth buying.
I don’t buy micrsoft, it only comes with the computer.
Computer and TV are going to merge in the future, some have already. We won’t have to buy PC software, just add a hard drive to the TV.
I still haven’t purchased a DVR yet. I’ll never own cable.
Put cell phone technology in the TV clicker. I have no idea why that hasn’t been created.
We have enough home grown smart folks, the need for as many foreigners isn’t real. We need some, but not as many Gates wants.
“Walt, you are mistaken.There is a shortage of skilled tech workers, and the salaries offered for those positions are very good. With a quick web search, I saw many openings at Microsoft with pay starting in the $60’s. This seems like a lot more than ‘McDonalds wages.’”
Hold on! Yes $60,000 is good pay in a place like Wichita or Tulsa. However in the places where high tech operates like Sunnyvale California and Seattle Washington, $60,000 won’t hardly rent you a decent apartment. And you can forget owning a home in those areas for that kind of pay! A house in Wichita that can be had for $80,000 would cost upwards of $450,000 in those areas! So NO, that is NOT good pay!
“I agree Republican, Gates was referring to the more scientific jobs. He is saying there is a shortage of people vocationally trained to do programming.Hence the US shortage due to poor educational foundations in math, science, and physics.”
Americans have always sucked at math and science. We just don’t like it. We were even too dumb to learn the Metric system on the 1970s even though it is an easy system. Even NASA will tell you that as about 80% of their scientist were foreign born! We need to let the smart people become Americans so we can have more doctors and scientist.
“I believe Microsoft tech’s created spyware in 2000, because on their online help sites, the Explorer 2000 stopped working but instantly there was a $60 spyware removal program, pretty package, professional looking website suggested by microsoft techs.”
Microsoft didn’t create spyware, but in their attempt to make IE more programatically accessible, it made spyware much easier. In turn, tying IE to the OS made IE more vulnerable to other malware also.
As for selling anti-spyware software, I see nothing wrong with it as there are plenty of free alternatives. Using Firefox is pretty good, and as for Windows being the only choice, Linux has been around for sometime, though it certainly isn’t the ‘easiest’ OS to use for the average user. Of course, one could use a Mac, but in my opinion the Mac is overpriced for what is gotten with it.
Kev,FYIMedian household income in Wichita is $39.9K and in Seattle it is $45.7K. The median house value in Wichita is $78.9 vs $259.6k in Seattle.(all 2000 data, from http://www.city-data.com)
Yep! Close the borders, bring back all manufacturing jobs lost to overseas, change the dictionary to reflect only words with an english history and ignore foreign speaking people.
Damn, there are some idiots here.
Do we need to import smart people to become doctors and scientists because we cannot domestically produce them?
Or, a better question is, how many do we need to import?
Intel was cofounded by Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Andrew Groves. Two American natives and one Hungarian.
Microsoft was founded by two American natives, Bill Gates, and Paul Allen.
Apple was founded by two American natives, Steve Wozniak and Steven Jobs.
Google was founded by a Soviet emigree, Sergey Brinn, and an American native Larry Page, and its CEO is an American native, Eric Schmidt.
Oracle was founded by American-native Larry Ellison.
One of my high school compatriots (two years ahead of me), an American native, was the President of 3Com.
Our public education system needs transformation in math, science and technology. The Kansas creationism/ID vs. evolutionism flap was a tangential red herring that took the public eye off crucial matters in math and science education.
For example, why don’t our schools have IT-expert teachers showing elementary and middle-school students how computer systems work? Computer science is NOT a NEW field. It goes back to George Babbage in the 19th century. In the 1950’s a few top research universities created CS degree programs. By the late 1970s hundreds of universities and colleges offered either CS-degree programs, or else math or electrical engineering degree programs with CS concentration. We had broadly-marketed PCs a quarter-century ago. So why don’t we have CS-expert people teaching kids in our schools?
For the most part, in 2007, elementary and middle schools are having middle-aged non-CS-knowledgeable teachers thinking they can “teach” kids how to use computers. The kids would be far better off being given 2 hours a day to figure out on their own how to use computers. This is because they are digital natives. They don’t know a time in which PCs didn’t exist. We spend so much money on education. How about spending $100/year, amortized over 6 years, handing out laptops to all 4th graders, and building a free Wi-Fi network for them to tap into?
Our math-teaching system is atrocious. We have math-phobic elementary-ed degreed people trying to teach “pre-algebra”. And even “algebra I”. How bad is their teaching? Really bad: last year, the Kansas Board of Regents for our state universities, disqualified middle school algebra I as a core-curriculum-qualifying mathematics course for admission.
I know of a KU math-degree graduate whose smart son flunked Algebra 101 at KU, and is retaking the course. He’s not a dimwit or a slacker. He got “B+”s in Algebra II and Trigonometry in a local high school. That used to mean you were ready to take calculus. Struggle, yes. But not have to retake High School algebra.
This is hard for him to accept. It is hard for his parents to have to pay for him to retake a high school course that evaluated his performance in the subject as “very good”. It is hard for taxpayers to subsidize remedial education for a student who could have, with proper high school education, been capable of taking, and at least passing calculus in his first semester at KU.
I took an 11 year old student under my wing who was given problems in finding the areas of triangles. He was supposed to memorize the formula A of a triangle = 1/2 altitude x base length. He had learned Area of a square being its (identical) length times width, and Arel of a rectangle being length times width. But he had not been taught the equivalence of this area to height x base of a parallelogram (much less WHY), nor the a triangle being one half of a parallelogram and thus having one-half the area of a parallelogram. If he had been taught this, he would have realized “Aha! I get it. This makes sense.”
No, he was being trained to MEMORIZE A FORMULA that had NO EXPLANATION, without UNDERSTANDING how that formula was derived from basic principles. Midde school “math” is NOT MATHEMATICS.
As a sixth grader, my tutee couldn’t determine whether 15/8 was less than 1, between 1 and 2, or greater than 2.
You might think, “Maybe he’s not very smart”. But his Stanford Achievement Test gave him a 99th percentile in mathematics in 5th grade. Let me assure you, that any student with a 95th percentile aptitude in mathematics can be taught that a fraction is a division operation and be taught to do long division of 8 into 15.
Anyway, today he’s studying geometry in 8th grade. Which means he will be able to take AP calculus in 11th grade, or 10th, if he takes a summer pre-calc course at WSU the summer after 9th grade.
My student did well in a recent multi-school middle-school geometry contest. But he had to “fudge” by giving the answers “they wanted” when nearly half of the answers “they wanted” were incorrect, according to actual Euclidean geometry principles. This notion of, “Well, this isn’t really right, but you can later UNLEARN the little errors we want you to commit,” is REALLY BAD.
I didn’t get to take geometry until 10th grade. Could I have done it in 8th grade, if the school system was set up for this? Yes. Public education RETARDS SMART KIDS. As a result, we have to import people who are receiving better math and science education in THIRD WORLD countries.
My student got a 27 on the ACT Math. That’s basically the average of East High IB programme 11th graders, and a bit above the average of Independent School and Collegiate 11th graders. But my student did this in 8TH GRADE. It required special teaching that his regular classes didn’t provide, for him to accompish this.
The problem isn’t a shortage of innately talented AMERICAN-NATIVE KIDS. The problem is a school system run by anti-math-and-science-prejudiced ADULTS.
Until our school leaders get behind a campaign to transform math and science education, we’ll have to import several hundred thousands a year of mathematicians, scientists, engineers and CS technologists for America to remain competitive. Which choice do we want to make?
Do we need to import smart people to become doctors and scientists because we cannot domestically produce them?
Or, a better question is, how many do we need to import?
Intel was cofounded by Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce and Andrew Groves. Two American natives and one Hungarian.
Microsoft was founded by two American natives, Bill Gates, and Paul Allen.
Apple was founded by two American natives, Steve Wozniak and Steven Jobs.
Google was founded by a Soviet emigree, Sergey Brinn, and an American native Larry Page, and its CEO is an American native, Eric Schmidt.
Oracle was founded by American-native Larry Ellison.
One of my high school compatriots (two years ahead of me), an American native, was the President of 3Com.
Our public education system needs transformation in math, science and technology. The Kansas creationism/ID vs. evolutionism flap was a tangential red herring that took the public eye off crucial matters in math and science education.
For example, why don’t our schools have IT-expert teachers showing elementary and middle-school students how computer systems work? Computer science is NOT a NEW field. It goes back to George Babbage in the 19th century. In the 1950’s a few top research universities created CS degree programs. By the late 1970s hundreds of universities and colleges offered either CS-degree programs, or else math or electrical engineering degree programs with CS concentration. We had broadly-marketed PCs a quarter-century ago. So why don’t we have CS-expert people teaching kids in our schools?
For the most part, in 2007, elementary and middle schools are having middle-aged non-CS-knowledgeable teachers thinking they can “teach” kids how to use computers. The kids would be far better off being given 2 hours a day to figure out on their own how to use computers. This is because they are digital natives. They don’t know a time in which PCs didn’t exist. We spend so much money on education. How about spending $100/year, amortized over 6 years, handing out laptops to all 4th graders, and building a free Wi-Fi network for them to tap into?
Our math-teaching system is atrocious. We have math-phobic elementary-ed degreed people trying to teach “pre-algebra”. And even “algebra I”. How bad is their teaching? Really bad: last year, the Kansas Board of Regents for our state universities, disqualified middle school algebra I as a core-curriculum-qualifying mathematics course for admission.
I know of a KU math-degree graduate whose smart son flunked Algebra 101 at KU, and is retaking the course. He’s not a dimwit or a slacker. He got “B+”s in Algebra II and Trigonometry in a local high school. That used to mean you were ready to take calculus. Struggle, yes. But not have to retake High School algebra.
This is hard for him to accept. It is hard for his parents to have to pay for him to retake a high school course that evaluated his performance in the subject as “very good”. It is hard for taxpayers to subsidize remedial education for a student who could have, with proper high school education, been capable of taking, and at least passing calculus in his first semester at KU.
I took an 11 year old student under my wing who was given problems in finding the areas of triangles. He was supposed to memorize the formula A of a triangle = 1/2 altitude x base length. He had learned Area of a square being its (identical) length times width, and Arel of a rectangle being length times width. But he had not been taught the equivalence of this area to height x base of a parallelogram (much less WHY), nor the a triangle being one half of a parallelogram and thus having one-half the area of a parallelogram. If he had been taught this, he would have realized “Aha! I get it. This makes sense.”
No, he was being trained to MEMORIZE A FORMULA that had NO EXPLANATION, without UNDERSTANDING how that formula was derived from basic principles. Midde school “math” is NOT MATHEMATICS.
As a sixth grader, my tutee couldn’t determine whether 15/8 was less than 1, between 1 and 2, or greater than 2.
You might think, “Maybe he’s not very smart”. But his Stanford Achievement Test gave him a 99th percentile in mathematics in 5th grade. Let me assure you, that any student with a 95th percentile aptitude in mathematics can be taught that a fraction is a division operation and be taught to do long division of 8 into 15.
Anyway, today he’s studying geometry in 8th grade. Which means he will be able to take AP calculus in 11th grade, or 10th, if he takes a summer pre-calc course at WSU the summer after 9th grade.
My student did well in a recent multi-school middle-school geometry contest. But he had to “fudge” by giving the answers “they wanted” when nearly half of the answers “they wanted” were incorrect, according to actual Euclidean geometry principles. This notion of, “Well, this isn’t really right, but you can later UNLEARN the little errors we want you to commit,” is REALLY BAD.
I didn’t get to take real Euclidean geometry until 10th grade. Could I have done it in 8th grade, if the school system was set up for this? Yes. Public education RETARDS SMART KIDS. As a result, we have to import people who are receiving better math and science education in THIRD WORLD countries.
My student got a 27 on the ACT Math. That’s basically the average of East High IB programme 11th graders, and a bit above the average of Independent School and Collegiate 11th graders. But my student did this in 8TH GRADE. It required special teaching that his regular classes didn’t provide, for him to accompish this.
The problem isn’t a shortage of innately talented AMERICAN-NATIVE KIDS. The problem is a school system run by anti-math-and-science-prejudiced ADULTS.
Until our school leaders get behind a campaign to transform math and science education, we’ll have to import several hundred thousands a year of mathematicians, scientists, engineers and CS technologists for America to remain competitive. Which choice do we want to make?
On Mac vs. Wintel, they have competing advantages and disadvantages. I own both. Mac’s Unix system per se is less vulnerable to hackers. It doesn’t crash nearly as often. It’s easier for non-techies to use (but is popular at MIT, so don’t think techies don’t like Macs). The new Intel-duo Macs can run both Mac and Wintel software, fast enough in the latter case that most people won’t really notice the difference. Amortize the cost over 5-6 years. My next purchase will be a Mac.