The number of annual H-1B hires by Wipro and Infosys coupled with the corresponding average salary data reveal the extent of abuse in the current system. Indian developers are imported into the US to essentially provide an in-house alternative to offshoring, with pernicious consequences for the US economy and the high tech labor pool within the US. A small disclaimer- I'm not a bitter ex-developer who lost his job with a large US corporation in the recent past. In fact, I'm an internet dude in San Francisco, personally unaffected by these policies. I'm also convinced that Intel and other cutting edge companies absolutely need access to more brilliant tech minds through the H1-B program.
Let me point out a few obvious and unsettling problems that stem from Infosys and its ilk directly importing developers into the IT offices of US corporations. First and foremost, if the number of programmers in this country is a real issue (see excellent article linked at bottom) and one that you're serious about solving, then the consequences of underpaid H1-B developers is troublesome. When companies can replace US hires with H1-B consultants, not only do US developers become comparatively expensive, but the number of job openings is also reduced, artificially holding down IT salaries. The market's answer to a shortage in supply is higher prices- yet stagnant IT salaries remain an obstacle to the tech industry attracting more talent ("in computing and IT, wages have generally been stagnant for the past decade, according to the EPI"). Money can absolutely make IT more cool, but unless you land in a promising startup, you're better off pursuing a career in finance or attending business school.
In the context of a country burdened with stagnanet wages and a growing wealth gap, repressed IT salaires are even more distrubing. While IT automation allows corporations to significantly downsize and slash mid-level executives across the board, the IT developers directly responsible for these greater efficiencies can never expect to earn the same $300k salaries of the laid off executives. You might think that as high paying US middle management jobs are lost, equally attractive IT jobs might help stem the drain on US middle class incomes. But there are few signs that even the supposedly systemic shortages of programmers in a country where "software is eating the world" can lift IT salaries across the board, year over year, over a significant period of time. Ask yourself- why hasn't IT wage inflation, inevitable under the normal market conditions of a true shortage, reduced corporate profits by even one tenth of one percent over the past decade?
Just as troubling, US corporations can lean on H1-B consultants as a band-aid that lets them avoid the steps needed to actually address the underlying problems they see in the tech labor market. Despite record profits, how many corporations have revamped their technology department training and recruitment practices, or started offering better benefits and improved career paths to new IT hires? Why don't college-bound kids generally show even the slightest amout of excitement when asked about the promise of working in IT? The answer is simple- those jobs are no more attractive than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Exciting opportunities for advancement or higher pay or even the opportunity for mentorship from leaders in non-IT parts of the business? Good luck with that! Let's face it, beyond the opportunity to indulge your joy of coding on a daily basis, IT jobs still suck. H1-B programs let corporations avoid spending resources needed for real, substantial improvements.
Yes, high availability with ACID and 'eventual consistency' on reads. I never understood why an eventually consistent datastore could qualify as ACID because in the real world if you need ACID, then eventual consistency is never good enough.
It's good to see Google roll this service out separately from GAE but it's not as good as DynamoDB or data services from Parse and others.
Imagine a comment system. You’d fire one global query with eventual consistency guarantees for all comments in a thread and another one in parallel for only comments made by the signed in user. Merging the two gives you the best of both – great scalability and consistency where it matters.
> it's not as good as DynamoDB
DynamoDB’s transaction support is limited to incrementing counters and optimistic concurrency on a single item. Compared to Datastore, it looks like a toy.
Elon's comments have some validity, but there is a bit of grandstanding going on. Thermal runaway with lion batteries isn't a random event. It's very predictable and very preventable. 99% of lion batteries in use have a built in thermosensor so that they can charge correctly without exploding---because any lion battery will explode if charged too fast or if it goes into overvoltage.
So since all of the variables to prevent thermal runaway are know, it should make no difference how closely together they are placed. However in this case there is either a problem with the charging software---which isn't adequately performing and preventing the condition that is causing the batteries to overheat OR the batteries themselves (although in good working order) are not performing within the correct performance envelope that the software has been developed to use.
Screaming that placing the cells too close together is bogus. You laptop has cells placed equally close together as do all Tesla vehicles---and they can burn and explode just like the ones on the 787---yet that is a very rare occurrence. Because all of the charging parameters are known. Same applies to the Boeing batteries, but something is not performing according to plan.
In space, the parameters are completely different. Fire is the absolute worst case scenario in space and everything that can be done to mitigate the chance of one will be taken. Which is why the batteries on the SpaceX vehicles are spaced out they way they are. Yes, they know all of the parameters for the batteries, but the logistics of changing a battery in space are much different than those of an aircraft.
Boeing's fault in all of this is that something is not performing according to spec---and they knew that due to all of the battery swaps the Japanese airlines were doing. At that point they should have grounded and figured out the problem. But past Elon, others have already stepped up and criticized Boeings move to lions in the first place. Nickel cadmium batteries would have weighed 40 pounds more and have barely 1/1000th of a chance of thermal runaway that lithium ion batteries do. They don't charge as fast, but they are still well within the performance envelope needed by the 787.
It's just as easy to imagine Google getting undercut by a big company. Yahoo, here's your opening.
I always thought of free Google Apps as the company's brilliant play to control the fabric of the business internet. Can you name anything in the digital realm more important to businesses and organizations of all sizes than long-form communication (email) and content and information-driven collaboration?
Sadly for new users and for Google itself, the company's actions reveal a failure to recognize Apps as anything more than a collection of inter-related services ready for more aggressive monetization. Management fails to see the strategic benefit and leverage afforded by controlling the online fabric of every new business that starts operating as a small team. It's the type of short-term and profit-driven thinking that afflicts so many companies as they reach the complacency of scale.
"I agree, but some of his content will be a barrier for some people. I'm sure if the tone of the post was milder, most of the comments here would be supportive."
-- too typical a response
"Peppered throughout the post are cultural signs and signifiers that mark the author as an advocate for a fairly specific set of political and social beliefs."
-- completely irrelevant to assessing the facts of the case
As a white male, I'm very disappointed by how many in the HN community have responded to this story. The victim- and let me emphasize, this individual is a victim- has every right to feel and express any number of hostile feelings toward the perps involved and, furthermore, has the right to express his frustration at how racist behavior was openly exhibited in front of so many employees, with no consequences whatsoever. In fact, you have to wonder why none of his white colleagues stood up and objected to some of the more colorful remarks made in the presence of others. Is it really that difficult to understand why he might perceive all the whites in his office as a$$holes? His story isn't merely an indictment of a few managers, but of a culture (and yes, a white culture) that absolutely tolerated racism both at an individual and collective level. These incidents didn't only occur behind a closed door. Is or was this culture present in only one SF company?
After what this individual was subjected to, you have to be incredibly small minded to feel offended by the fact that his language reveals frustration or antagonism toward whites.
By the way, I've also seen racism exhibited toward Asian immigrants- not the rockstar programmers matriculated in the US- but recent immigrants holding lower level positions. Let's not pretend that racism doesn't exist in SF by brushing off depictions of racism as a consequence of intrinsic racism on the part of the accuser.
The existence of bingo cards is not an argument, even if patio has made it so easy for us to generate them. You may find the following article interesting: http://squid314.livejournal.com/329561.html
> This tendency reaches its most florid manifestation in the "ideological bingo games". See for example "Skeptical Sexist Bingo", feminist bingo, libertarian troll bingo, anti-Zionist bingo, pro-Zionist bingo, and so on. If you Google for these you can find thousands, which is too bad because every single person who makes one of these is going to Hell.
That article is a waste of time. It rails against poor arguments and a lack of insight with... poor arguments and a lack of insight. For umpteen pages. For some reason we're supposed to hear out people who start an argument with "I'm not racist but..."
If you find yourself saying "I'm not racist but..." you shouldn't be trying to justify yourself and come up with reasons why the other person should hear you out. You should immediately stop and think about what you're saying, because chances are that you are a bigot, and all the argument in the world isn't going to change that.
The existence of those sorts of bingo cards is because these arguments come up over and over again. It's a useful tool to help deal with bigots.
That article is one in a series. Perhaps I was wrong and it is not clear or well-argued without the context of the broader series to draw from. It's a shame because it is actually painstaking in its argumentation and attention to nuance, and by far the most insightful series of its kind that I've ever read.
When you say "chances are you are a bigot" you may technically be correct in the sense that from a random population of "I'm not a racist but" statements, more than 50% of them are said by bigots (in fact, I would probably estimate this much higher, as bigots say it more frequently, in my experience). As for my-literal-self, and almost everyone who is reading these comments (well educated, left-leaning startup enthusiasts), I have significant other evidence that I have to weigh against that proposition (i.e. my recollection of my lifetime's past events and explicit knowledge of my views and beliefs), so if I were ever inclined to use such a phrase I wouldn't actually be making a bigoted statement. Unfortunately, some people who are less thoughtful and less capable of a nuanced understanding of argumentation would immediately turn off their brains and assume whatever this counterfactual self said next was bigoted. People like that have bad rhetorical hygiene and arguing with them should be avoided if you don't want to contract memetically transmitted diseases.
Saying that bingo cards are a "useful tool" is doing a disservice to the word tool. They are, if not actively harmful, merely a form of entertainment, and no more a tool than Star Trek VI.
> "it is actually painstaking in its argumentation and attention to nuance"
No it's not. It doesn't follow anything through to a conclusion, it just berates people who attack strawmen, or who dismiss others' arguments out of hand, whether that dismissal is warranted or not.
Just taking the "I'm not racist but.." argument on that post: are you really saying that there is no other way to phrase your argument? It's guaranteed to cause a reaction in everybody with an opinion on the issue and it's somehow their fault for not giving your argument proper attention or missing a nuance somewhere?
And then you complain about bad rhetorical hygiene. State your case in a way that your audience can understand and engage with it, and you'll get a better response.
What conclusion were you looking for exactly? It was an empirical recounting of events, peppered with an analysis of why the events are so frustrating for the author. Did you expect The Essay That Ends Racism?
The existance and popularity of bingo cards can tell you how common certain responses are. It is also an attempt to draw your attention to how common the response are, and to mock common responses that fit a mould.
So yes, the existance of bingo cards helps back up the claim that this is "classic derailment".
I'm not really sure what that article is saying, maybe "Placeholder / bingo card arguments make it hard to have a rational intellegent debate/conversation". Which is technically true, it does make it hard to have an intelligent conversation.
However, in the vast majority of conversations about topics like this, the debate is not intelligent. The same old tied tropes and clichés come out. Many different people have commented "But he's racist too!" (on a recent post about gender at a tech conference many people dismissed the author for being angry).
I'm too cynical to even manage disappointment, sorry. HN is... well, it's very white. I'm not so much talking about the people who comment here, but for the most part we're discussing companies founded and run by white people, funded by all-white venture capital organisations, with a largely-white employee base. Given that, it's sadly not surprising that many commenters here have really fucked up views on racism because there's no reason why they wouldn't. It's not like there's even any way to tell 99% of the time because the subject hardly ever comes up.
To me it is a faith-induced form of ignorance - that because you have mastered one of the tiny, tiny subsets of all the world's technical knowledge, you believe yourself to have similar ability in other realms of knowledge as well. Morality and ability become one and the same, especially after the conditioning of hundreds or thousands of pissing matches in which you attempt to prove the same point, over and over: "I'm right and you're wrong." Logic becomes one's drug, because it lets you win and be powerful. Other flaws don't matter because you can avoid those discussions(if you're a white, straight cis male).
But really, it's relatively easy to find people who know a lot of things and can work through deep logic. "Big-picture" judgment and perspective is a lot harder to come by.
Regardless of how pissed off he may have been, you don't fight racism with more racism. All that does is exacerbate the situation and hurt your credibility. Calling someone a dumbwhite* might feel good but does nothing for your cause.
I've always believed the correct response to racism is to educate. Educate his coworkers on the origin and significance of his necklace and why they shouldn't equate the way he dresses with being a thug. And in this case, where it is systemic and tolerated, appeal to a higher authority such as HR and the court system.
A significant part of what you're missing is that the function of the actions of the racist manager is to rob the author of political power. Racism works in some pretty subtle subtle ways - by painting the author as 'that aggressive black guy', the manager has already clipped his wings.
You may have also missed this line: After years of arguments with white men (and white women), watching white men (and white women) move away from me when I start to talk about oppression (i.e. what life as a poor black queer is like), I know when to pick and chose my battles
Can you not see just how exhausting it would be to have to constantly explain and justify yourself?
It's not his responsibility to "fight racism", it's the responsibility of his employers to provide a non-racist workplace. Your "correct response" is of course ideal, but imagine how draining it would be for someone to attempt to change an corporate culture 200+ people. It's unfair to expect that from an someone whose only wants to not have to endure severe racism at their 9-5.
I agree it's not his responsibility (but explained why he should anyways in response to larrybobsf).
I also said that in this case, where it was systemic and tolerated, he made the right decision to escalate it to HR and the court system who actually have the power to do something about it.
Sure, only when it's your boss being racist, you don't have many other options than shut up or get fired. French white man here, apalled by 70% (yah, i did the math) of that whole thread. I don't care being called a colonialist because that's true, my country was a colonial empire, so was the UK, and so is the US now, with 200 years of history to catch up (irak anybody?). Laws against racism might be enforces, one day, in the US, who knows. It even happenned in moste European countries.
This guy did the right thing : stand up and talk. Obviously he cares more about telling "the world" than being patted on the shoulder. In other words, he somewhat did it the "black panthers" way, and as much as I like Martin Luther King and gandi, i don't believe you gain rights without fighting. For real.
Why that reaction of mine ? Cause it remembers me an episode of my youth, when i xas living with my Commando father (yeah, like your marines) in africa, and was the only white guy who stood up for a Malgache girl who was being bashed by a bunch of white guys, everyday on our way to school. I got beaten in front of the whole bus for about 15 minutes by the bunch of white racists guys. The driver, a black guy from Cameroon came to me the next day, and told me that he was glad i had to loose some teeth, because otherwise he would have lost his job.
So : racists are punks, a nuisance. I don't care about educating them. There are laws for them. I will fight them if i can, and yes, i hate them all :) (but i do like heavy metal, perl and javascript, yeas i do)
The employee in the hostile work environment doesn't say that he said "Dumbwhite" - it's an internal response and doesn't indicate that he's fighting racism with racism. Objectively based on the incident presented, it's a simple statement of fact that the co-worker, is dumb, white and a .
It's not the job of members of minority groups to educate members of majority groups on their culture. People who aren't members of minority cultures should make an effort to self-educate and work against the grain of systemic discrimination.
Regardless of where he said it, "dumbwhite*" is a phrase with racist intent. Objectively based, "fucking black people" is just a reference to people with a dark skin color but in the context of the English language we all know what it means.
I agree it's not his job to educate, and he shouldn't have to. But in reality, most racists are not going to educate themselves. If they did, they probably wouldn't be racists. So if he actually wants to see a positive change and stop Steve from making racist comments, his best bet is to try and educate Steve himself.
This article might just do that. The article itself already talks about how Steve was completely dismissing everything he had to say. But in written form with a semi-anonymous target, the article will likely filter back to the company and to Steve. In written form, the author gets to say everything he wants to say and why. If Steve reads it, in all likelihood he will dismiss it, but it may also provide a nugget around which he may start to see what he was doing.
There are several definitions of racist talk, one is essentially "making references to someone's race and implying everyone in that group is the same (in some attribute)". Lots of people like this definition because it's nice and simple and it means black people in the USA can be racist to white people if they say things like "Dumbwhite".
There's another definition, which is talk that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern USA life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist talk is talk that re-enforced that imbalance. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means you can't just do s/white/black/g and make it just as racist.
So no, it's more racist to say "dumbblack" than "dumbwhite"
I tend to agree with you regarding the relevance of the author's politics to the kernel of the story, but that relevance and the author's overall credibility is an elephant gleefully pooping all over the room, so we might as well not ignore it.
When you read between the lines, doesn't this story imply that programmers who eschew object-oriented programming practices suffer from mild derangement?
So what- are you saying that any company that builds products with a strong secondary market or longer shelf life than the category norm should be exempt from maximizing recycle-ability?
The spirit of Tim O'Reilly, Steve Jobs, and other great innovators of that generation, whose worldviews were shaped by counterculture values and the human rights movement of the 1960's are truly vanishing from silicon valley. Welcome to the new spirit of online innovation, a culture driven by pure commercialism and dreams of higher profits for all.
I've come to expect nothing less from the Hacker News community than what's reflected by the general tone of the comments in this post.
1. Unless it's an issue related to net neutrality or 'geek rights', let's bend over backward to give corporate America the benefit of the doubt; after all, as aspiring entrepreneurs, can't you sympathize with behavior intended to maximize net revenue?
2. Apple is being victimized by outside parties that fail to comprehend the importance of slaughtering all ideals and standards at the temple of Apple design whims (if a screw requires an extra 2mm of space, there's absolutely no environmental trade-off worthy of discussion or debate).
3. Let's not jump too quickly to question authority, especially when it involves Apple or any tech flavor of the month because you should assume their motives are pure.
This may sound counter intuitive, but you have far more to lose by staying than by moving on. In fact you face a couple significant risks that increase the longer you're there.
First, the founders may sense your lack of "enthusiasm" and realize that your chances of leaving are high. To protect the company's reputation from the public vote of no confidence implicit in your quitting, they may decide to take the initiative and fire you. Yes, this type of behavior is underhanded but it's more common than you may think. Imagine trying to explain to a hiring manager that you were fired because you planned to quit. Unfortunately, no one will believe you.
Second, you're part of a sinking ship and as the tech lead there's no way to separate your reputation from it. The longer you stay, the longer you expose your personal brand to the failure at large.
My last advice is the most important because it should guide all of your career decisions. Do not let fear suppress your better judgement. Step back from the reasons you listed for staying at the company and you'll realize that fear is the commonality. Fear isn't your friend. It will mislead you.
However, the bean counters and glad-handers who stand between you and a paycheck often ask difficult but irrelevant question, and if you don't worry about explaining yourself to them, you make it much harder to get that paycheck.
You get a lot farther with the ability to solve real-world problems and MBA-appropriate skills than with just the ability to solve real-world problems, if only because there is such high demand for technically inclined people with people skills and business skills.
More than call centers, this industry reminds me of the meatpacking industry. Warehouse workers fill a crucial step in a larger fulfillment model that unnecessarily imposes harsh conditions on its workforce. The writer mentions picking 500 items during her last morning on the job, which probably represents anywhere from 200 to 300 orders (assuming the average book or dildo order is small). Over a 5 hour period, that represents 40 to 60 orders per hour, picked at real hourly cost of perhaps $14. In other words, a slower picking rate and higher wages might cost consumers several extra dimes per order. It's reasonable to say that passing this additional cost to consumers would have a trivial impact on shopper's wallets, while fueling a strong wealth creation effect in the community where the warehouse is located as its workers can actually afford to spend their way into a middle class lifestyle.
Likewise, the meatpacking industry is infamous for its brutal working conditions and low wages. It has bred many low income, working poor communities plighted by gangs, crime, and despair. The solution to righting the industry and its communities is obvious- pay employees real, middle class wages. But the industry has been fighting a race to the bottom, as the wholesalers of meat products will obviously pick the meatpacking company that can sell at the lowest cost. Because better wages would only increase the price supermarkets pay for meat by several cents per pound, one meatpacking company CEO has openly called for imposing higher wage levels across the entire industry (easier than done). The introduction of higher wages would boost local economies and in aggregate that contributes to the nation's prosperity.
The industries are examples of capitalism at its most efficient and of capitalism utterly failing society as well.
Let me point out a few obvious and unsettling problems that stem from Infosys and its ilk directly importing developers into the IT offices of US corporations. First and foremost, if the number of programmers in this country is a real issue (see excellent article linked at bottom) and one that you're serious about solving, then the consequences of underpaid H1-B developers is troublesome. When companies can replace US hires with H1-B consultants, not only do US developers become comparatively expensive, but the number of job openings is also reduced, artificially holding down IT salaries. The market's answer to a shortage in supply is higher prices- yet stagnant IT salaries remain an obstacle to the tech industry attracting more talent ("in computing and IT, wages have generally been stagnant for the past decade, according to the EPI"). Money can absolutely make IT more cool, but unless you land in a promising startup, you're better off pursuing a career in finance or attending business school.
In the context of a country burdened with stagnanet wages and a growing wealth gap, repressed IT salaires are even more distrubing. While IT automation allows corporations to significantly downsize and slash mid-level executives across the board, the IT developers directly responsible for these greater efficiencies can never expect to earn the same $300k salaries of the laid off executives. You might think that as high paying US middle management jobs are lost, equally attractive IT jobs might help stem the drain on US middle class incomes. But there are few signs that even the supposedly systemic shortages of programmers in a country where "software is eating the world" can lift IT salaries across the board, year over year, over a significant period of time. Ask yourself- why hasn't IT wage inflation, inevitable under the normal market conditions of a true shortage, reduced corporate profits by even one tenth of one percent over the past decade?
Just as troubling, US corporations can lean on H1-B consultants as a band-aid that lets them avoid the steps needed to actually address the underlying problems they see in the tech labor market. Despite record profits, how many corporations have revamped their technology department training and recruitment practices, or started offering better benefits and improved career paths to new IT hires? Why don't college-bound kids generally show even the slightest amout of excitement when asked about the promise of working in IT? The answer is simple- those jobs are no more attractive than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Exciting opportunities for advancement or higher pay or even the opportunity for mentorship from leaders in non-IT parts of the business? Good luck with that! Let's face it, beyond the opportunity to indulge your joy of coding on a daily basis, IT jobs still suck. H1-B programs let corporations avoid spending resources needed for real, substantial improvements.
Is there actually a STEM shortage?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...