Comments on Roberto Mello: Bill Gates, Immigration, Competitiveness and... Pu...

Here's a recent article I saw of which I was remin...

2007-02-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a recent article I saw of which I was reminded when I read your post. It makes the claim that the vast majority of applicants for a typical software engineering position can't write code at all:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html

My own experience has been similar. I wonder how much better those CS graduate interviewees could have been had they had a "no training wheels" class like the one taught by that Dr. Allan.

Robert Oak's argument against raising the H1-B cap...

2007-02-27T06:26:00.000-07:00

Robert Oak's argument against raising the H1-B cap would have been a lot more believable to me if he had not focused so much on the "over 100k a year" argument.

As it is, it just sounds like a strawman rant to me. What I would like to have seen is how well Microsoft pays their H1-Bs, in comparison with their American workers.

What I can say as someone trying to hie in the software industry, I have a hard time finding good talent in the current tech boom.

Maybe it's a good thing for the overall global economy if the H1-B cap is not raised, or even reduced. The engineers who are currently coming to the U.S. to study and stay will go back to their countries of origin and work the very American companies they would work for here. Except they will leave those companies and start companies of their own in their countries of origin, instead of starting them in the U.S.

That will force American companies to improve in order to compete.

Bill Gates also recently got in trouble when speak...

2007-02-26T23:26:00.000-07:00

Bill Gates also recently got in trouble when speaking about H1-B Visas:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070226-8924.html