Discussion

• the15th :

  Thank you so much for this post. I've seen very little about the bogus tech skills shortage except from a few fringe right-populist and anti-immigrant sites. As a recent computer science PhD grad, it means a lot to me to see a progressive blog that gets it.

  Posted on February 13, 2008 4:09 PM

• robert beal :

  The "nursing shortage" is pegged at 250,000 slots.

  There are 500,000 ex-nurses burnt out and disgusted by squeeze-the-turnip management tactics in the increasingly less lucrative health care labor sector.

  The corporate-statist response?

  a. Continue burden shifting and defunding community college and other accessible nursing programs.

  b. More visas for foreign nurses, which transfers the brain drain to less fortunate countries.

  Posted on February 13, 2008 9:54 PM

• maxpayne :

  Speaking of PHds, my wife graduated with one after first doing a Masters and even 10 years ago, most PHd students she met, while foreign born, actually couldn't understand the economic dysfunctionality that was unraveling. They would often tell her that their purpose of coming to America was to escape it not get it again. While there are bound to be a lot of yuppies in college currently doing their Masters/Phd/Doctorate, a lot of students doing graduate studies are trying to overcome "experience" shortages when applying for jobs. Case in point, a lot of job postings will say something like this:

  8 years experience (Bachelor's degree required)
  4 years experience (Master's degree required)

  Except for DoD and Financials, most businesses will not bother to overlook the number of years of "experience" no matter how qualified you really are. That would mean that if a job posting requires 4 years of PL/SQL experience for example and you only have 2 years even though you did the most challenging tasks and even worked with Oracle DBAs and obtained a thorough understanding of being both a developer and a DBA compared to one who's had 4 years experience but didn't have to learn the rigorous tasks, you would be in a lose-lose scenario. Ironically, only defense contractors bothered to look over years of experience and even went through the trouble of actually testing our skills and abilities which I assume they still do for the remaining American workers left to survive the outsourcing madness.

  Posted on February 13, 2008 9:56 PM

• maxpayne :

  P.S.: Thanks to increase in foreign visas, my wife who works as a program manager in a big bank has been forced to compete against these imports who hardly have an educational background experience anywhere close to her's time and again and each year the frequency goes up. The fact is she's sick and tired of having to put up with her bosses who are hell bent on replacing her with a foreign hack who can't speak good English, lacks the financial and accounting skills or experience, and will accept even a dog's salary !

  Posted on February 13, 2008 10:03 PM