H1B

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On Saturday 31 May 2003 11:09 am, Patrick R. McManus wrote:
> Just browsing my linux mailboxes this morning (representing perhaps 12
> or 18 hours of mail) I've come across the following 'foreigners' who
> have contributed more to creating the linux industry than most anybody
> on this list. Some of these people work for american companies. Some
> of them even work in America. The horror!
>
> linus torvalds - finland
> alan cox  - british
> andrew morton (vm, ext3, etc..) - austrailian
> alexey kuznetsov (network stack) - russian
> david woodhouse (mtd) - british

<SNIP>

> We (americans) are not independent of the world. And I don't want to
> be. When the computer industry resorts to protectionism for its
> workforce (a typical pattern for recently emerging industry that is no
> longer emerging) is when it gets remarkably uninteresting and its time
> to question what we're doing.

A couple of points.

- I don't really see xenophobia entering into the equasion anywhere.  
Certainly there is some protectionism by some people.  That's not my angle 
though.  More on that later.

- Nobody is talking about international companies being bad, or US companies 
working with foreign companies, or foreign highly trained specialists working 
with/for US companies.

- Most of the people you mentioned were not employed by US companies, let 
alone employed by US companies at rediculously low salaries to replace US 
workers.

The main behavior that is being mentioned is specifically employing dirt cheap 
offshore labor and importing dirt cheap labor to the us, not as a way of 
bringing in expertise, but as a way of getting work done cheaply.

You may call it protectionism, but here's the difference:  Every report I have 
read (and I look for them) has shown that the majority of projects sent to 
these offshore consulting companies and job shops have lead to disappointment 
because:

- Communication gaps on both sides have caused poor fitness to purpose.

- There is very little opportunity for changing specs once the contracts are 
signed.  This makes sense from a B2B point of view, but that's SO not the way 
IT is done here. Specs change very late in the game.  It is a balance between 
a better final product vs development time vs bugs.  But that's how things 
are done in most US companies.

- The resultant source code is usually not written with maintainablility or 
malleability in mind, making version 1.1 an interesting proposition.

There has been a trend for the last couple of years of management thinking 
quarter-to-quarter without regard for the long-term health of the company, 
because the management will be gliding off to another company on their golden 
parachutes by then anyway.  Paying low prices for inferior work is one 
example of this.

This kind of behavior is bad for the companies, bad for the country.  It's not 
(mostly) about xenophobia or protectionism for personal gain.  It's (mostly) 
about trying to get company management and owners from practices that lead to 
their personal gain at the expense of the economy and the well-being of the 
country.

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DDDD   David Kramer                           http://thekramers.net
DK KD  
DKK D  Gravity is a harsh mistress!
DK KD                                                    - The Tick
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