The vanishing American computer programmer]

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [IP] The vanishing American computer programmer
From:    "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
Date:    Sun, July 15, 2007 2:12 pm
To:      dave () farber net
Cc:      "Frankston Bob" <bobf () frankston com>
         "Joe Pistritto" <jcp () jcphome com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm sympathetic to the issue, but I worry that simplifying the debate on
outsourcing of intellectual production to the H1-B issue is silly, for
the following reason.

Bits cross boundaries quite easily.   If we make it hard for programmers
to work here in the US, they can work in Finland, Estonia, Bangalore,
Taiwan, etc. (non-oil-rich countries who must live on their wits) just
as easily - and companies will move more of their infrastructure (HR,
Finance, ...) to those countries.   Is there an architecture of laptops
that prevents code written in Estonia from running on machines
manufactured in China, to specs created in Taiwan, and carried by
students in inner city American high schools?

In the fantasies of intellectual property lawyers, we might create a new
set of synthetic intellectual property rights that would create friction
on all those steps.  But the payments that would result would not go
into development projects (such as education) in America.   They would
go into Sanford Weill's pocket.   And as the NYTimes says today, he
believes he is special enough to deserve it.

David Farber wrote:
> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> Subject: RE: [IP] The vanishing American computer programmer
> From:    "Joe Pistritto" <jcp () jcphome com>
> Date:    Sat, July 14, 2007 8:06 pm
> To:      dave () farber net
>          ip () v2 listbox com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Josh, thanks for being persistent and sending this along.
>
> As someone who has a son just starting the CS program at UC Davis this fall
> (and who was a hiring manager at Oracle and knows all about the "rigged ad"
> way of avoiding hiring an American for an H-1B's job...) I'm hoping for no
> expansion of H-1Bs anytime soon...
>
>   -jcp-
>
> PS: but there is a point there.   The "image" of the computer programming
> industry in high schools is that there will be no jobs in the industry
in 10
> years.  Its not a surprise that high school students don't choose CS as a
> career.  Only 1 or 2 of the students in my son's AP Computer Science
classes
> had any intention of pursuing the field even when they got good scores in
> the classes.   This is a group of students the industry *shouldn't* be
> losing, but is.  Anyone who has any association with higher education has
> seen the enormous drop-off in entering students in CS programs. (not that
> they weren't probably a bit too high before).  There's a little bit of a
> recent upturn, but the field has lost a great deal of its attractiveness
> over the last 10 years.
>
>
>
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