Judy Estrin, long-time Internet architect and entrepreneur, has written a new book, Closing the Innovation Gap, in which she criticizes the Silicon Valley investment community for putting their money into companies that are more likely to have short-term ROI. It is hard to argue with the SV investment community's philosophy, especially given the continually weakening economy. These types of companies have generally low startup costs (because they can be created on the web using open-source software) and can show immediate revenues (because they're ad-sponsored). Other companies are less likely to be funded, even though an argument might be made for the importance of their existence (e.g. anti-unwanted traffic, which helps these companies conduct business).
I've had discussions with some friends of mine on similar topics. I sense that some of the old Internet guard yearns for the days when they were the darlings of the investors and/or research funders. Part of the difference between now and then (especially back in the 1960s) was that there was generally more optimism in the US as a whole, particularly with regards to technical advancement. I also think there is a sense that that aspect of Internet development is done, but more work is needed on applications and services.
There's more to the book. JE weighs in on the "shortage of qualified tech workers" debate, on the side of those who want to see visa caps raised to allow more non-citizens to fill US tech jobs. I'm disappointed to see this – certainly, she must be aware of the many talented people who've lost jobs and struggle to find jobs, while people enter the US on work visas due to a supposed shortage. I'm concerned that there will be increases in visa caps after the November election – McCain and Obama both support them, and the number of respected tech pioneers/entrepreneurs/veterans who advocate them continues to grow.
I've had discussions with some friends of mine on similar topics. I sense that some of the old Internet guard yearns for the days when they were the darlings of the investors and/or research funders. Part of the difference between now and then (especially back in the 1960s) was that there was generally more optimism in the US as a whole, particularly with regards to technical advancement. I also think there is a sense that that aspect of Internet development is done, but more work is needed on applications and services.
There's more to the book. JE weighs in on the "shortage of qualified tech workers" debate, on the side of those who want to see visa caps raised to allow more non-citizens to fill US tech jobs. I'm disappointed to see this – certainly, she must be aware of the many talented people who've lost jobs and struggle to find jobs, while people enter the US on work visas due to a supposed shortage. I'm concerned that there will be increases in visa caps after the November election – McCain and Obama both support them, and the number of respected tech pioneers/entrepreneurs/veterans who advocate them continues to grow.
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I can only speak to my own field (software) – I have seen far too many jobs lost by arguably qualified people (the very people that our so-called "tech leaders" claim we lack), with an attendant increase in visa-sponsored workers, to buy into the notion that we somehow need these people. At least if we need these people, let's have an open and transparent process that determines whether someone is qualified to do a particular job. Perhaps the argument could be made that we need to attract and retain foreigners who have a rare and unique specialty, such as someone who's recently done groundbreaking energy efficiency work, but the current visa caps are more than adequate for this. I don't buy that visa caps need to be raised to bring in additional iPhone engineers, for example. Find an unemployed embedded systems engineer, let them retrain themselves on the current mobile phone technology, and compete fairly for the job.
Edited at 2008-09-21 04:19 am (UTC)
Clearly Judy Estrin is either [a] part of the problem due to her socio-economic status (true enough) or [b] has been bought off to say what she's said.
The Rand report is, by the way, largely focused on academia and, to a lesser extent, research jobs.
FWIW, there are older (software) engineers who don't need retraining. They can retrain themselves by studying up on the technologies. All I'm asking is that they get a chance to compete for jobs that are now going to visa holders in an open and transparent manner.
There is a real skill mismatch out there. It isn't a question of retraining within a field. There are serious shortages in optical systems engineers and in communications systems engineers, for example, and a software engineer isn't going to learn to do those jobs by reading a book. (And they aren't going to go to immigrants either, due to security requirements.)
Also, I'm not claiming that a software engineer can be retrained in a few weeks to be an optics engineer, but clearly a C programmer can be retrained to be a Java programmer in a few weeks (provided that s/he is given a fair, straightforward assessment of the job they're expected to do). This isn't happening. The fact that there are possible shortages of other types of engineers should be part of the discussion; representatives from the other engineering branches should complain that a disproportionate number of visas are going to people who are not needed. If you look at some of the reports produced by Norm Matloff, even the US Labor Department is suspicious of the large number of visas going to computer-related workers from just one country (India). A lot of these folks are database administrators, Java programmers, and so forth, not engineers with a rare, high-level specialty.
You might find this op-ed by Jane Harmon (congresscritter from So. Cal.) interesting:
At any rate, I can only speak to my field (software) as well. But the fact that a disproportionate number of visas are going to one engineering subfield should be enough to raise eyebrows.