Article: Downsizing jobs, outsourcing lives
"I like all of the handwaving about outsourcing." Note, Chuck, that I didn't say anything about outsourcing. I am specifically against H and L visas, which in effect "insource" foreign labor. Yes, if programming becomes a commodity then it's going to go to where the lowest bidder is. That's my primary argument against pushbutton programming, and the reason I'm always calling for a rebellion against the dumbing down of the industry. When a job is outsourced, it's because the foreign company getting the business has spent the time and money to put together the necessary infrastructure - anything from a steel mill to an auto assembly plant to a programming sweatshop. But the H and L visas are not about outsourcing, they're about bringing in foreign labor to supplant American workers on American infrastructure. And in the programming industry in particular, much of that infrastructure (configuration of networks and so on) was probably built by the workers being displaced! So there's a real difference here. Visas are one thing, outsourcing another. Joe
"I like all of the handwaving about outsourcing." Note, Chuck, that I didn't say anything about outsourcing. I am specifically against H and L visas, which in effect "insource" foreign labor. Yes, if programming becomes a commodity then it's going to go to where the lowest bidder is. That's my primary argument against pushbutton programming, and the reason I'm always calling for a rebellion against the dumbing down of the industry. When a job is outsourced, it's because the foreign company getting the business has spent the time and money to put together the necessary infrastructure - anything from a steel mill to an auto assembly plant to a programming sweatshop. But the H and L visas are not about outsourcing, they're about bringing in foreign labor to supplant American workers on American infrastructure. And in the programming industry in particular, much of that infrastructure (configuration of networks and so on) was probably built by the workers being displaced! So there's a real difference here. Visas are one thing, outsourcing another. Joe
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