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From: Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Whoops! The Atlantic Makes Trump Look EPIC In Cover Intended as a
 Smear
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2024 14:45:39 -0500
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On 10/30/2024 4:39 AM, D wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, 29 Oct 2024, Cryptoengineer wrote:
> 
>> On 10/29/2024 4:53 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>> On 10/28/2024 9:59 AM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Anyone who has done a honest study on illegal immigration in the 
>>>>>> US has
>>>>>> concluded that the American economy is DEPENDENT on the labor of
>>>>>> illegals.  Our economy would crash without them.
>>>
>>> This is likely true.  The food service and agricultural industries 
>>> depend on
>>> low-wage labour and much of that has been provided by immigrants 
>>> willing to
>>> take low-wage low-skill jobs.  When immigration started to go wrong 
>>> in the
>>> eighties and it became impossible for people to legally immigrate to 
>>> do this
>>> work, it began to be done by illegal immigrants.
>>>
>>> Traditionally there were a lot of people from Mexico who came to the 
>>> US to
>>> work the fields during harvest time, and who moved back to Mexico after
>>> the season was over.  That was disrupted long ago.
>>>
>>> People on the right hand side of the aisle will claim that citizens 
>>> would be
>>> taking these jobs if there were not illegal immigrants to fill them.  
>>> But the
>>> fact that in spite of all attempts to restrict immigration, citizens 
>>> still
>>> refuse to take these jobs, indicate that this is not the case.
>>>
>>>>> Nice try, nope.  Illegal immigrants allow employers to cut the 
>>>>> salaries
>>>>> of legal USA citizens.  I have seen it done many times in the
>>>>> engineering industry, especially software engineering.
>>>>
>>>> There are very few, if any, illegal immigrants in the software 
>>>> engineering
>>>> field.  There are a lot of legal immigrants in the software
>>>> engineering field, and federal law requires they be paid
>>>> the same as domestic engineers.
>>>
>>> This is referring to a different and just as severe immigration 
>>> problem. The
>>> US has a system called the H1-B visa which exists in order to allow 
>>> experts
>>> in their field to come to America for work.  This is for people who 
>>> really
>>> are experts, people who can't be replaced by American citizens 
>>> because there
>>> are so few people in the world able to do their job.  When it was set 
>>> up it
>>> was a good system.
>>>
>>> However, this system has been hijacked by a number of large companies 
>>> which
>>> have figured out how to game the system and which are using H1-Bs to 
>>> bring
>>> in moderately-skilled technical people and hold them hostage with the 
>>> threat
>>> of removing their visa.  This has caused a total disaster in the 
>>> software
>>> engineering field.  These people ARE legal immigrants, but if the 
>>> system was
>>> not broken, they would not be.  What is worse, because large 
>>> companies with
>>> huge legal departments are stuffing the box as soon as slots open up, 
>>> people
>>> who really are experts, the people for whom the system was intended, are
>>> unable to get the visas that Congress intended for them.
>>
>> As a recently-retired software engineer I can attest to this. Americans
>> would be laid off at the same time as H1-Bs were being brought in.
>>
>> https://www.epi.org/blog/tech-and-outsourcing-companies-continue-to- 
>> exploit-the-h-1b-visa-program-at-a-time-of-mass-layoffs-the-top-30- 
>> h-1b-employers-hired-34000-new-h-1b-workers-in-2022-and-laid-off-at- 
>> least-85000-workers/
>>
>> https://tinyurl.com/mr3zuvcs
>>
>> "Since employers aren’t required to test the U.S. labor market to see if
>> any workers are available before hiring an H-1B worker or pay their
>> H-1B workers a fair wage, employers have exploited the program. Rather
>> than turning to the H-1B program as a last resort when U.S. workers
>> cannot be found, most employers hire H-1B workers because they can be
>> underpaid and are de facto indentured to the employer. This is evidenced
>> by government data showing that technology companies continue to hire
>> H-1B workers in large numbers while significantly reducing the sizes of
>> their workforces."
>>
>> I saw this happening before my eyes. I eventually gave up and moved to
>> working for defense contractors, who paid worse, but were required to
>> hire US citizens.
>>
>> pt
> 
> This raises questions about the future job of programmers. Do you 
> believe that the field will be split into simple code-monkeys where 
> salaries with the help of AI, will decrease more and more over time, and 
> the "elite" who actually are the ones who develop new algorithms, tools 
> and AI that serve to reduce the salaries of the code-monkeys?

I have no idea and I am in the business of writing and selling software. 
  Programming is an odd profession, very few programmers actually have a 
programming degree.  My degree is in Mechanical Engineering, one of my 
programmers has a PhD in Chemical Engineering, and my other programmer 
has a double degree in Chemistry and Physics.

Most programmers that I have worked with had degrees in engineering but 
I can remember at least one guy with a degree in English.

Many of the elite programmers never graduated from college.  Bill Gates, 
Mark Zuckerberg, etc.

Lynn