Over the Hill at 35
takimag.com
takimag.com
My nephew, an avid basketball player, has been unemployed for three years, yet the NBA is bringing in basketball players from other countries!
This article makes the incorrect assumption that if two people have the same job title, they must have the same skills. I was initially surprised that a "leading authority on H-1B visas" would make this mistake, but it turns out he is a professor rather than someone with any experience in the software industry, which explains why his arguments are driven by statistics without any understanding of how the industry works.
Software firms are trading in their 35-year-olds for 25-year-olds as if they were aging matinée idols.” Countering them were a few retrograde souls who had been laboring under the juvenile illusion that US citizens’ interests should enjoy primacy in the calculations of US policy-makers.
It's hard to exactly gauge my moral response to this argument, but if you replaced "US citizen" with "white person" throughout that passage of text, you would come close. It's fundamentally evil to discriminate against people based solely upon the circumstances of their birth. This kind of protectionist jingoism isn't even in the best interests of actual US citizens.
I do think a nation should attempt to limit immigration when there are people in the country who can do the job (full disclosure: I'm American). If their skills are rusty, then train them. It's simply good social policy. The benefits of the nation (strong economy) should go to the citizens of that nation first.
Suffice it to say, I don't trust bureaucrats in DC to judge who can or can't do a given job over the judgment of actual employers whose bread and butter depends on it. And if you enable bureaucrats to keep people out of the country who can produce wealth, then the "benefits of the nation" will wither away. As a worker, let me worry about my own competence and ability to compete; as a consumer and as someone who needs the rest of the ecosystem for my job to exist in the first place, I want the best fucking semiconductor engineers in the world doing the work, not just some "rusty" guy deemed "good enough" to keep out a more qualified candidate by some uninvested bureaucrat, simply by the virtue that the better engineer happens to have been born in India.
Come now, this is just a rather poor slippery slope argument. One can act in his own interest without infringing on other's rights.
The economy doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is not random that the semiconductor jobs are in America vs another country. The people in this country have all contributed to the economy that supports these businesses. Thus Americans should be the first to benefit from the jobs we ourselves are responsible for creating.
"We ourselves" are responsible for creating those jobs? Give me a fucking break. Many immigrants are working hard in this country, and many American citizens are sitting on their entitled asses begging for a piece of the pie. It's not a matter of nationality that decides how responsible you are for the wealth of the country.
With this new definition we can more clearly see my point. If there are no qualified workers in this country, it makes sense to allow companies to bring in talent from abroad. The problem is companies are too cheap to tap into the talent that exists here. This is bad social policy for a myriad reasons. The wealth of a nations workers helps create an environment where companies can flourish. Bringing in talent from overseas when there are workers here that can do the job (with some training) is in fact a net-negative for the country as a whole. It's not a swap: were not sending away the "unqualified" American, the system still has to support him somehow. Now he'll either have a lower paying job or in the case of the story in the article, he'll a burden on the country's safety net. This is a net negative for the integrity of the country.
For equal or nearly equal qualifications (by my definition), the local worker deserves the job. Companies don't start in vacuums. Their tax dollars has supported these companies, created environments where they can flourish, created a healthy workforce that allowed the company to grow, etc. The nations workers deserve the benefit of their "investment". Extremely liberal immigration policies may be a net positive for the world, but its decidedly a net negative for the workers here.
>This is a nation of immigrants where, as often as not, immigrants are the ones creating the jobs in the first place
Of course, the ones that are creating jobs can be let in :). But for every entrepreneur immigrant there are many times more rank-and-file worker who's job could probably be done by someone locally (with training perhaps).
>It's not a matter of nationality that decides how responsible you are for the wealth of the country.
Yeah it is? As a citizen, I'm certainly more responsible for the wealth of this country than a non-citizen chosen at random.
Yes, hiring is imperfect. I don't see how we can improve it by having uninvested bureaucrats introduce nationalistic biases into the process.
> The problem is companies are too cheap to tap into the talent that exists here.
Not seeing it. The companies that pay the most and hire the best people regardless of nationality bring in as many foreigners as anyone else.
> Bringing in talent from overseas when there are workers here that can do the job (with some training) is in fact a net-negative for the country as a whole. It's not a swap: were not sending away the "unqualified" American, the system still has to support him somehow.
You're acting like "training" has no cost and no risk. You think it's better to take the risk of trying to "train" someone, rather than hire someone who already knows what he's doing? So companies should spend more money and hire less qualified candidates--out of nationalism?
> Now he'll either have a lower paying job or in the case of the story in the article
Good! Then he still has a job and a chance to contribute to the economy, and so does the immigrant. Everyone wins. If he wants a higher paying job, he can work to earn the qualifications for it, just like the immigrant did.
> Their tax dollars has supported these companies, created environments where they can flourish, created a healthy workforce that allowed the company to grow, etc. The nations workers deserve the benefit of their "investment".
Immigrants pay taxes, immigrants provide a healthy workforce, and immigrants provide demand just as much as native-born workers.
> Yeah it is? As a citizen, I'm certainly more responsible for the wealth of this country than a non-citizen chosen at random.
We're not choosing at random, though. As the rhetorical employer, I'm choosing between a better engineer who happens to be from India, and a worse engineer who I'll have to try and "train", because he hasn't bothered to put in the same work as the Indian to gain the qualifications ahead of time.
Are you working to create wealth in this country? Then you're responsible for the wealth of this country. The color of passport is as irrelevant as the color of your skin. And when you're hiring people, hiring the best qualified worker who can produce the most with your company means that whoever you hire will be the one contributing the most possible to the wealth of your company and hence the wealth of your country.
The point you're missing is that a citizen here has paid taxes all his life, and his parents, and so forth. This is the investment I refer to. Those who are already here are responsible for what the country is today, and all its business-supporting policies. When someone is out of work for whatever reason, they have a reasonable expectation that they will benefit from this investment in their country with an opportunity to be placed at a job they are "qualified" for. The local person does deserve the job, for all these reasons.
You're taking a very corporate-centric view here. From the perspective of the corporation, of course they want the worker that will be the cheapest to do the job. That is why those "uninvested bureaucrat" are the ones that are tasked with creating policies that protect the "investment" of the American worker. It is not the case that the best interest of the corporation is always inline with the best interest of the nation, or even that own corporations long term interest. This is exactly why these external entities create these policies.
Potentially; one could be a naturalized citizen, or a child of immigrants, or poor enough not to be a net positive contributor to federal revenue.
An H-1B making $100,000 a year, incidentally, pays more taxes over the original three-year term of their visa than most American citizens in their 20's have ever paid in their lives. Not just directly, but indirectly in terms of the profits generated by their productivity, which are subject to both corporate tax and, when and if paid out to shareholders, individual tax, as well as any appropriate sales or excise taxes for the sale of whatever products that immigrant has a hand in creating.
It's a rather poisonous social contract that a citizen gets prejudicial hiring preferences in exchange for his taxes, even if he doesn't pay them, while an immigrant can be effectively required to pay much more in tax for no comparable benefit.
> Those who are already here are responsible for what the country is today, and all its business-supporting policies. When someone is out of work for whatever reason, they have a reasonable expectation that they will benefit from this investment in their country with an opportunity to be placed at a job they are "qualified" for.
The fact that a given individual belongs to an arbitrarily defined class of people does not give that individual any credit for what that class of people has collectively done. You can take that same argument and use it to justify racial segregation. ("White men are responsible for what the country is today, and all its business-supporting policies, so when a white man is out of work, he has a reasonable expectation he will benefit from his race's investment in his country.")
> You're taking a very corporate-centric view here.
No, I'm taking an individual-centric view, which is the only sensible moral alternative to the pseudo-racist bullshit you're spouting. Once you're done explaining how your argument doesn't justify Jim Crow, you can get around to explaining how governments are magically better at corporations at hiring engineers.
You're taking a very limited view of "investment" here. The point is everyone is responsible for the efficient operation of a nation. From the CEO's to the janitors. The country could not function without either of them, so they all contribute in important ways.
>The fact that a given individual belongs to an arbitrarily defined class of people does not give that individual any credit for what that class of people has collectively done.
The boundaries of a nation are not arbitrarily defined. This isn't a grouping of people based on hair color. National boundaries have real importance. Each worker, each person who is doing their part in a society is party responsible for its successes. The groundskeeper at a park should in fact be proud to be American when we launch the space shuttle. There's nothing illogical about it.
>You can take that same argument and use it to justify racial segregation.
Bullshit. The country prospered in part because of slavery. Your focus on dollar amounts is extremely short sighted.
>No, I'm taking an individual-centric view
The problem is an individual-centric view does not capture all the important interactions in the system. The nation is a very important unit. It may not be ideal, but the fact is we do operate along national lines. Trying to argue that we should ignore it just doesn't work.
>you can get around to explaining how governments are magically better at corporations at hiring engineers.
Like I said, corporations are only capable of operating with self-interest in mind. Laissez-faire capitalism doesn't work, every government regulation in existence is an acknowledgment of this. Making regulations for hiring foreign workers is no different.
The country prospered in part because of immigrants.
> The point is everyone is responsible for the efficient operation of a nation.
A citizen who contributes nothing is responsible for "the efficient operation of a nation", but an immigrant who works his ass off isn't? Immigrants designed that moon rocket you're bragging about.
Citizenship is arbitrarily defined, by the way, in the sense that countries can arbitrarily set whatever citizenship laws they want.
And you'd rather they weren't allowed to do either.
Regardless of your age, you do not want to work for companies that believe this.
Welcome back.
The advantage that more time on this Earth brings in terms of communication and understanding. "People skills, dammit."
These guys were programming assembly at the same age we started programming in BASIC (or Python/Ruby or whatever kids start programming in nowadays). I've never heard one of them complaining about how confusing pointers are, or wondering why is it that, although their structure is clearly X bytes big, allocating Y consumes more than X*Y memory.
Age in engineering is a completely irrelevant topic. Sure, old timers are more unlikely to adopt Node.js as their framework, but in general they don't because of the right reasons, not just because they are being backwards.
I'm over 35. I work at Google. I got my job when I was over 35. I've interviewed people over 35. Very few of the applicants I've met and/or interviewed have been extended an offer. None of it has anything to do with age. It all comes down to one thing:
There are a shocking number of people who work as programmers who cannot actually program.
The industry as a whole is crying out for people who can get shit done. If you can do that age is no barrier. Ageism, at least as far as programmers go, seems to be used as an excuse by those unable or unwilling to get a job as to why they can't get a job.
EDIT: the fact that this is Google I think makes my point rather than detracts from it. If at 35 with no particularly amazing background I can get hired at a top-tier employer, why not any employer?
You can argue that lower-tier employers are more biased but in my experience they're also less selective (or at least they select for different traits).
Life being risky if you're over 35 is a regular topic of conversation in my circles. Vivek Wadhwa (IIRC) even had data showing that salary plateaus and then drops after 40.
I'm sick and tired of these thinly-veiled-fascist stories that lay blame on Indians, Chinese, Arabs, Mexicans, Muslims, women, young people, martians etc, just because the dude that wrote the story is a big fat loser.
Learn new skills, keep networking, get with the program, learn to compete or deal with it. I'm no genius but my salary did not plateau at age 40.
But. The discussion here is about the general trend in the industry; nobody disputes that there are companies like Google (and probably Microsoft, Intel) which value experience and expertise. Do you think that across the board in our industry, older folks do not find it harder to get hired?
Third, when did you last switch jobs? I ask this only to find out if you really easily found a job, or you just think you might be able to find one.
The reality is that industry is dying to find people that can get shit done, as Cletus said. It doesn't fucking matter what you look like, your age, whether you have testicles or an ovary or neither like Data from STTNG.
My last gig was with a giant software company. BigCo management announced that my product would be canned in mid-Jan, effective March 31. Within 2 weeks of their announcement I had 4 opportunities (not counting internal opportunities) of which I chose the best one, starting in 10 days.
I'm not doing anything special, but life is good :-)
I thought the "keep skill sharp, network, deliver the goods" advice was just BS. But it seems to be good.
Yes, I did notice in almost all profiles in news articles of the older unemployed people that those individuals had let their skills seriously rust. Good to hear some first information.
My manager at Google was exactly like this, by the way. Once, after a few drinks at a party, he mused on how he would achieve greatness, striding over the bodies of burnt-out twentysomethings.
(Before you raise an obvious objection: yes, the code was in a shambles, before it even launched. But code quality has rarely been a crucial factor in career success in the Valley, as far as I can tell.)
When do you think was the last time the author actually spoke to a 60-year-old?
The reason to hire younger people is that they're theoretically cheaper if you assume their output is the same as a more experienced person.
Fortunately, not true for the judicial branch.
I've always wondered how big an effect this has on these stories about old engineers finding it hard to find work. The older you are, the more likely your last position had a significant project management component that makes you sound like a PHB.
Some different perspectives on the issue:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/the-study-of...
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2011/11/29/th...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/29/1040695/-Andrew-Sul...
The software profession is plagued by HR practices formulated by people who have zero understanding of software production. They think hiring 25 year olds is cheaper than hiring 45 year olds because they assume the output is the same while the cost is less.
Reality is a lot more complicated by that, and in terms of factors that determine the return for a given dollar in salary, age is is a complete wash. I don't think you can generalize on age at all.
As for H1B visas, we should get rid of the quotas. I've worked with 20-something Indian programmers. All have been good people. If they beat me out for a job, then so be it. I think companies that don't recognize the value of older engineers are shooting themselves in the foot, but that's their right to do so.
Cool. But this article was in no way racist or sexist, right?
:-)
If you can't deal with this because you're a grumpy old white man, I suggest that instead of writing little passive-aggressive blog articles, you should really go fsck yourself.
Also, grumpy old white men are staggeringly over-represented in terms of responsibility for the technology "beachgeek" is most likely using. If he can't deal, I'd suggest he write something for Takimag that would explain...unless of course, "fsck yourself" is the best he can do...
The racism may come from the concept citizens should have privileges and companies should not be able to hire the most effective workers available. I have mixed feelings about that because it can lead to unsustainable situations in either extreme. You have to issue immigrant work visas with care.