Are American high tech workers obsolete?

Hewitt Tech hewitt_tech at attbi.com
Tue Aug 13 14:50:07 EDT 2002


My other citizenship is Canadian. There certainly isn't any difference in
this regard. I was up in the Maritimes recently and visited with a
consultancy that wanted to hire me as a kind of sales rep. Their pitch was
"If you need some custom programming, we can do it cheaper because you pay
us in Canadian dollars". Ironically, a friend introduced me to another
business owner who out-sourced all his custom web stuff to an Albanian
custom programming company. They could do it for about $10 US/hour. So on it
goes...

-Alex

P.S. Perhaps we need to think about this in the same terms that we talk
about any other goods that come into the country. If you have an unfair
advantage because in some sense you subsidize the product, in this case
programming skills, you get hit with a tarrif that reflects your lower cost
of operation. This seems a bit strange in this case because we're really
talking about lower cost of living which in the case of for example Indian
programmers versus American (domestic) programmers is purely due to a lower
standard of living. One thing that would have greatly mitigated the H1-B
problem would have been issuing the H1-B visa people green cards. They would
then have a stronger tendency to stay in the U.S. with all the costs that
that implies.

----- Original Message -----
From: <bscott at ntisys.com>
To: "Greater NH Linux User Group" <discuss at gnhlug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: Are American high tech workers obsolete?


>
>   I find current American culture, in general, has a hard time looking
> beyond the immediate.  From people who drive dangerously on the road to
save
> two minutes of travel time, to people who want instant gratification for
> everything, to people who cook the books of major corporations, to those
who
> exploit the very enviornment we live in, many do not seem to be able to
look
> to the future.
>
>   (Of course, this is likely not limited to American culture; I simply
point
> to it because I live in it.  I'm not qualified to speak on the cultures of
> other nations.)
>
> --
> Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
> | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do
not |
> | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or
|
> | organization.  All information is provided without warranty of any kind.
|
>
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