[SGVLUG] What Bill's been vamping lately...

[Sean O'Donnell]

Well, there are over 90,000 tech jobs listed on Dice.com alone.

Fact is, there are far more jobs than qualified candidates in the 
states. Part of this is due to the backlash of offshore-outsourcing, and 
part of it is due to a dysfunctional education system. The rest can be 
blamed on disinterest, or misguided youth (aka: ipods, video games, and 
pizza, etc. etc). =p

When the offshore-outsourcing trend started, a huge number of Americans 
who lost jobs (or simply got worried), moved to entirely different 
fields, and the ones who were considering this field, quickly saw a bad 
short-term trend and thought it would be a long-term reality, so they 
bailed into other fields or studies as well.

Now, (some of) the companies see the low-quality products returned from 
such offshore ventures (particularly software/web development 
sweatshops), or have run into a number of other business operation 
problems by cutting such corners, and want to go-back to hiring 
Americans for 'quality' work.

People like Bill Gates only contributed to this, so it's kind of ironic 
to hear him say these things. Not that the shortage didn't exist before 
the trend started, but it sure didn't help resolve the issue.

However, all of this does stem back to the public education system, and 
lack of scientific/technological focus, regardless. Take a look at Los 
Alamos National Lab... 60%+ Foreign Nationals, working on highly 
classified and sensitive projects... *shrug*


Emerson, Tom (*IC) wrote:
>
> *Got this reference from another group:*
>
> *_http://www.kvue.com/news/local/stories/022108kvueutgates-cb.1490daa4.html_* 
>
>
> *[may wrap]*
>
> *I'm sure a few people may take exception to a couple of choice 
> phrases in the article, but that is just petty quibbling -- the bigger 
> issue is how realistic it is to claim there are "300,000 unfilled 
> technical jobs" in the U.S....*
>