Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2012 23:53:40 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: illustration of the age issue To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Here's a Dice.com article that illustrates the age issue well: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/071712-tech-job-survey-260950.html A quote: Asked for experience preference, corporate hiring managers most frequently say IT pros with two to five years in the workforce, followed by those with six to 10 years’ experience. Competition is fierce when companies are all chasing the same talent, making positions hard-to-fill. Six to 10 years' experience. What age are we talking about? Typically this would be an age range of 28-34. This is even younger than the age 35 cutoff I use. Nothing new, of course. I've been pointing out for years that job ads typically ask for 3-7 years of experience or whatever. But it's interesting to see some survey data, not just individual job ads. At any rate, when you hear claims, such as above, that Competition is fierce when companies are all chasing the same talent, making positions hard-to-fill the way to read them is Competition is fierce when companies are all chasing the same YOUNG talent, making positions hard-to-fill The other issue brought up is training. I know that issue is popular in certain circles in DC, but as I've said many times, it is a NON-issue. Any competent programmer can learn a new programming language or OS etc., ON HIS/HER OWN, ON THE JOB, without formal training. This used to be standard operating procedure, expected of everybody, before the advent of H-1B. One wants to have a go-to person to consult with on the occasional "gotchas," but self-learning is fine. And of course, self-learning is still standard procedure for those of us who teach software development and use it in our research. Look at the new graduates, supposed hired because "only they" know the new languages. (Dice.com is for experienced people, but the industry lobbyists frequently say only new grads have the skills they need.) As I've pointed out before, how can it be that only new grads can learn these new languages, when they are learning them from old professors like me? No one "trains" me. Note by the way that I used the word "competent" above. It's been a while since I've made this disclaimer, so it's about time to state here that I have never advocated hiring the weak. A poor programmer not only is less productive but also actually slows down the rest of the team. As I often tell my students, I would not want to ride on an airplane whose control software was written by weak engineers. Norm