Obama on the "shortage" of high-tech workers in America:“what industry tells me is that they don’t have enough (domestic) highly skilled engineers”
“the word that we’re getting is that somebody (a domestic engineer) in a high-tech field should be able to find something right away”
Dave Sirota
disagrees (and writes about other trends unhelpful to high-tech labor).
Interesting that Obama couches his response with "what industry tells me" and "the word that we're getting". That's weasel-speak, the words you hear from a Wall Street Democrat.
posted by Quiddity at 2/06/2012 08:10:00 AM
I only have some anecdotes, not data, but the medium-sized aerospace supplier near LAX that I consult to desperately needs additional qualified software engineers - with fairly standard backgrounds, mostly C/C++ and Linux - and is having trouble finding them.
And they're offering a rather nice salary, starting in the high 5-digits with a promise of rapid increases if performance justifies.
So I really doubt that there are many decent software engineers out there who can't find jobs. The supply falls far short of demand. Given that, I don't see any good reason not to let software developers from other countries contribute their efforts, and reap the rewards.
Sure, there may be some not-so-swift software types out there who might have gotten a job but for a more talented foreigner being available. But that's a feature, not a bug. A sub-par engineer can actually retard a product's development, and no-one benefits from that.
Steve Jobs told him at a dinner they shared with other California tech moguls sometime shortly before his death that a lack of available engineers was the prime reason that Apples's manufacturing was abroad.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504577003763659779448.html
But it's bigger than just educated workers, the entire manufacturing chain in China is growing and hungry for opportunities
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all
Meanwhile, in this country it's a race to the bottom.
