White House Outsources K-12 CS Education To Infosys Charity 88
theodp writes: In December, the White House praised the leadership of Code.org for their efforts to get more computer science into K-12 schools, which were bankrolled by $20 million in philanthropic contributions from the likes of Google, Microsoft, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Mark Zuckerberg. On Monday, it was announced that Infosys Foundation USA will be partnering with Code.org to bring CS education to millions of U.S. students. Infosys Foundation USA Chair Vandana Sikka, who joins execs from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon execs on Code.org's Board, is the spouse of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. The announcement from the tax-deductible charity comes as India-based Infosys finds itself scrutinized by U.S. Senators over allegations of H-1B visa program abuses.
Infosys, Really? (Score:3)
Even if their hearts were in the right place, why in the hell would they choose to partner with Infosys on this initiative? The company this group is using for their Code.org PR stunts to train more native IT professionals is basically synonymous with the H1-B program problems native IT professionals complain about. This decision just boggles my mind.
Re:Infosys, Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if their hearts were in the right place,
They aren't
why in the hell would they choose to partner with Infosys on this initiative?
See above
The company this group is using for their Code.org PR stunts to train more native IT professionals is basically synonymous with the H1-B program problems native IT professionals complain about. This decision just boggles my mind.
Note that the H1-B problems have only intensified under this administration. Now wonder why you asked these questions. They don't give one fuck about these kids' future.
Re:Infosys, Really? (Score:4, Informative)
It would be great if it were to accidentally succeed in its stated mission -- no one would complain -- but it's about H1-Bs now, not the future of America's children.
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Were there no American companies at all they could consider FIRST?!?!?!
Re:Infosys, Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but the request for bids specifically required the organization have 8 years of experience with Microsoft Office 2010, and they couldn't find any American companies that did.
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They just have poor english skills. They think that you want to hire a team with 8 man-years of experience with MS 2010.
And between the people making up the 100 person team, they do.
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It's amazing how right-wing somebody can be on most policies and STILL constantly be called a "communist" and "socialist". It shows the power of BS.
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Classification of political beliefs is a tricky issue, I will concede. But generally to most USA citizens, the USA "conservative" approach is to give companies what they ask for, and the companies want more visa workers.
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Many Conservatives also dislike foreigners, so would push for less H1-B. This isn't as clear cut an issue as business vs common man.
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why in the hell would they choose to partner with Infosys on this initiative?
Because Infosys stepped forward with the money in hand.
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why in the hell would they choose to partner with Infosys on this initiative?
Because Infosys stepped forward with the money in hand.
Why would they outsource healthcare.org to a company that didn't know what they were doing and charged (at least) 10 times what it should have cost, when there were US-based companies with the expertise who could have rolled it out faster and with far less issues? Because it is about greasing palms and returning favors.
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It's even worse, the company had already had gone over budget almost two billion in doing a database for the Canadian government. Not a great track record, but still chosen above tons of qualified companies in the US.
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It's even worse, the company had already had gone over budget almost two billion in doing a database for the Canadian government. Not a great track record, but still chosen above tons of qualified companies in the US.
That's consistent with the track record of most of these outsourcing companies. HCLA, for instance (Indian-based IT company), famously spent years writing the software for the Boeing Airbus. At the end it didn't work, failed FAA certification, and Boeing had to kick them out and hire a new team to do a re-write. HCLA has done the same on other projects.
You would think that at some point these companies (and government agencies) would figure out that they are wasting money on these low-bidder foreign comp
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Typical (Score:1)
Tone deaf politicians.
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Funny cause I have seen nothing in Romney or McCain that would be worse than Obama.
taught by your replacement (Score:2)
Free Markets 101 (Score:1, Insightful)
The US preaches free markets to the rest of the world, yet the IT programmers there seem to think they are entitled to a monopoly on jobs.
I thought free market capitalism was about open market and prices based on demand-supply.
Why are IT workers so threatened by this? Is it insecurity about their skills or ability to compete?
Re:Free Markets 101 (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing US workers can't compete on in price. In quality we're lightyears ahead of the average H1-B. IT "staff" actually grow in size when you H1-B in most cases because you need more people to do the same job. They still cost less though because you can pay them dirt and not have to worry about benefits.
Re: Free Markets 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no free market. Companies want free markets to drive wages down but they want protection for their products. Capital can move easily, labor cannot. If by 'can't compete' you mean 'can't live on a couple of dollars per day' then yes, the US economy doesn't work like that.
As to skills, people in other countries run about the same distribution of really smart and total idiots as anywhere else all other things being equal. However, rampant cheating and resume inflating are accepted in certain cultures, accepted by certain outsourcing companies, and that results in a supply of labor that ought not be in the market at all.
One free market principle is that participants have access to accurate information, and of course corporations go to great lengths to make sure you don't.
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This.
"Free market" means no copyrights and patents too.
Re:Free Markets 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe IT workers aren't all dumb enough to worship the free market?
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It's not insecurity about skills at all. In fact, they often have far superior skills and abilities. The problem is price. I'm not personally willing to spend 80-90 hours a week programming at $24,000 per year with no benefits. My skills and abilities are worth far more than that. The problem is, companies will often move to the lowest bidder in an effort to cut costs wherever they can without paying mind to the drop in quality as a direct result. Companies that do this often nearly always regret their deci
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By law, H1-B's earn at least $60K.
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Not true ... In the train I bump into many IT H1-B's and one of them was a Sr. Java Arch with over 10+ years of work based experience. If not on H1-B would be making about $130~150k but he was make $32k of course the company billing was an entirely different story.
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I have a bridge to sell (Score:2)
By law, H1-B's earn at least $60K.
By law, H1-Bs can only come for jobs that cannot be filled with the local work force. By law, they cannot replace working locals. But shit, guess what happens? Do you think H1-B visa holders are actually compensated fairly by Infosys and the like?
I have a bridge to sell, and a bottle of snake oil to boot. Let me know if you are interested.
Re:Free Markets 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
I realize that some H1-B workers are able subsequently to immigrate, but it's a separate route and it's not the program's intention. It's good to have a program that lets highly specialized advisors in -- it ensures knowledge and skills transfer from the broader world, but H1-B is not primarily used for that. The program would have more value if it had higher standards for quality, not larger quantity. As it stands, it's simply an attack on labour, one that cloaks itself in the language of freedom and immigration while providing neither.
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The free market ends at the national border. You're talking about globalism, and globalism has done nothing but harm to the wages in the US. So yes, we are entitled to a monopoly on jobs, because we live here.
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The US preaches free markets to the rest of the world, yet the IT programmers there seem to think they are entitled to a monopoly on jobs.
I thought free market capitalism was about open market and prices based on demand-supply.
Why are IT workers so threatened by this? Is it insecurity about their skills or ability to compete?
Why won't India allow Walmart to open stores in India?
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The US preaches free markets to the rest of the world, yet the IT programmers there seem to think they are entitled to a monopoly on jobs. I thought free market capitalism was about open market and prices based on demand-supply. Why are IT workers so threatened by this? Is it insecurity about their skills or ability to compete?
Why won't India allow Walmart to open stores in India?
Stop trying to make sense to these sock puppets. It is like trying to teach math to a coconut.
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"its not a matter of where he grips it, its a matter of weight ratios!"
oh, sorry. wrong thread. carry on.
Re: Free Markets 101 (Score:1)
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The US preaches free markets to the rest of the world, yet the IT programmers there seem to think they are entitled to a monopoly on jobs.
I thought free market capitalism was about open market and prices based on demand-supply.
Why are IT workers so threatened by this? Is it insecurity about their skills or ability to compete?
Because we're singled out.
There's no H1B equivalent for doctors or lawyers or HVAC techs of college professors. Just programmers.
It's primarily because we're not organized. Grant 50,000 work visas for teachers and see what the unions do about it.
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I thought free market capitalism was about open market and prices based on demand-supply.
The H1-B program is not a free market. It should be scrapped, and replaced with a much broader immigration program for skilled foreigners, with a clear path to citizenship. Then the immigrants can compete on a fair and level playing field, change employers at will, and have all the same workplace rights and protections as citizens. Competition is fine. A two-tiered labor force is not.
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H1-Bs are an end-run around the local labor market. Corporations want the benefit of the comfort and infrastructure the US provides, but don't want to pay the natural market labor costs for highly-skilled developers native to the US.
Free market capitalism works pretty well in many cases, but there are always necessary constraints and conditions. For instance, the free market breaks down when corporations get too large and powerful. Thus, anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws. The free market is notoriously
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Because we've seen the work of those H1-B workers. Somehow, companies keep hiring them even though it's clear to most of us that they are NOT getting their money's worth. The issue is exacerbated by the fact that much of those salaries are being sent somewhere else, instead of being spent at home, so other businesses suffer, too.
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But not all the variables are under our control. The cost of living is lower in many other countries in part because they have de-facto slaves, for example. Somebody else can take my job but I cannot do the equivalent and just move to live in a slaved up country so that I have a maid etc.
Visa workers come here, work long isolated hours for 5 years, and then retire back home as a rich person because their cost of living is so much lower. They have options I don't. It's not a "free" market because the flow o
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I cannot do the equivalent and just move to live in a slaved up country so that I have a maid etc.
Why not?
Visa workers come here, work long isolated hours for 5 years, and then retire back home as a rich person because their cost of living is so much lower. They have options I don't.
Really, there's very little preventing you from amassing your fortune here in America, then moving to a developing country where you can buy a mansion, staff, and decent security (which you will likely want) for a few thousand dollars a year. For a few thousand more dollars, you can buy yourself the favor of the local population, by honoring the local leadership, building infrastructure, and/or investing in local businesses. Be a guest at weddings, and offer lavish $20 gifts. Visit the local bars, a
You Don't Know What You Are Talking About (Score:4, Insightful)
The US preaches free markets to the rest of the world
Let me stop you right there from continuing with this stupid-as-shit line of thinking. Certain interest groups in the US preach free markets to the world. That doesn't imply "The US preaches free markets" or whatever shit else these interest groups try to peddle.
, yet the IT programmers there seem to think they are entitled to a monopoly on jobs.
Like almost anywhere else. You don't see engineering in general (and IT in particular) being offshored en-mass in, say, Japan and Germany, do you? I've never been in Germany, but I have been in Japan. So I can claim with some certainty that what I'm saying here holds.
There is also the rule of the law. The law says that H1-B visas are for jobs where companies have a hard time filling in with local talent (be them US workers, or foreign workers with a permanent residence status.)
It is not a replacement of US citizens and legal residents with temporary visa workers to lower costs. That is a violation of the law. In any other country, that would warrant an immediate investigation by a department of labor. Not here, and that is stupid.
And people thinking that we should not investigate (when every other country would), those people are either stupid, obtuse or disingenuous.
I thought free market capitalism was about open market and prices based on demand-supply.
And it is... within the definintion/demarcation of an economy. Any nation that does not treat its economy as a national asset of strategic value is an stupid nation that deserves whatever gets coming.
Look at China, India, Japan, Germany, and so on. They all have specific protections in place according to whatever they consider strategic or vital.
It is only in the US that private enterprises (and politicians in their pockets) who do not think that way. As long as profit is made, the nation as a whole can go screw itself.
Why are IT workers so threatened by this? Is it insecurity about their skills or ability to compete?
Do you understand the meaning of "begging the question"?
There is no competition when locals are being replaced without even giving a chance to compete, being replaced completely and unilaterally with cheaper labor in contradiction of what the law says.
And this just doesn't affect US citizens. It also affects legal residences. I've seen with my own eyes India workers with permanent resident status getting replaced with H1-B visas. So it is not just a question of talent and competition. It is a disingenuous violation of the law.
Not only that, the H1-B abuse is heavily slanted towards India workers and consulting firms? Why?
If we are going to get inundated and replaced by H1-B workers, let them be more diverse, from Russia, China, Africa, and LATAM, not just India. This is the biggest problem I have with abuses of the H1-B program. It artificially skews one of most profitable segments of our economy towards a specific foreign nationality.
The country as it is has a history of racial segmentation. There is no need to make that problem even worse.
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you're indian, right?
lets turn it around and see how you like it. suppose the shoe was on the other foot and your country was allowing 'cheap foreign labor' to enter the country and take jobs from locals. I know, its laughable - your country can't even give reliable electricity or sanitation to most of its citizens, but lets suppose you were the tech advanced country and we were the third world.
you study for years, you pay your dues and you are invested in your country. you want to grow old there and liv
Don't put computer science in a box (Score:2)
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The use of information technology in areas of language, mathematics, science is fundamental to the way problems are approached in the real world and should be integrated into the curriculum in all subject areas.
Good point. When I was in high school (1980s) we weren't required to learn how to use a slide rule (although I owned one because nerd). Maybe now we shouldn't teach calculator and instead integrate Matlab or Mathematica into the learning process? A CS course should teach fundamentals, not functional programming or other highly abstracted languages. But applying computers as a tool to solve problems is an entirely different animal these days.
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Same Infosys (Score:2)
This infosys:
http://www.computerworld.com/a... [computerworld.com]
http://www.computerworld.com/a... [computerworld.com]
?
That title is incredibly misleading. (Score:2)
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Are you serious or just trolling?
The US Department of Education [ed.gov] is part of the executive branch of the Federal government with a very big budget.
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The presence of a Department of Education does not mean the Federal Government runs the education system. Public Health, Safety (police), and Education are the sovereign domain of the States.
The Federal government can only attach conditions to grant money offered to the States. What those conditions can be are extremely limited, and States are not obligated to take the money. What is being described in the article is well outside the limits for the conditions. Obama is just declaring h
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Much of what the federal government does is attaching strings to money, money taken under the threat of force from the residents of those states. Minimum drinking age is one example. If the states refuses, which is its right, no federal highway funds. The feds already took the money from the incomes of the people of the state, which means the state has to make a lot of money magically appear, or relent to the fed's unlawful edicts. Guess which option wins?
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Did you manage to read past "InfoSys"? (Score:2)
If you did you would see that this is partnership with InfoSys Foundation. InfoSys is actually donating millions to be part of this non-profit effort. Secondly, they're helping Code.Org and not leading the effort.
Should have outsourced to Disney (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is such a pressing issue, they need to start turning some of the Disney stars into developers (whoops, sorry, I mean "coders," that's the trending buzz word).
All these people [wikia.com] should have their own prime time shows about the exciting life of a software developer. The basics of CLIs and text editors on multiple operating systems. How to use version control. How to write unit tests and pass continuous integration. How to help QA your own dog food. How to diplomatically interface with folks in other departments. How to write documentation. How to triage trouble tickets. How to train your own replacement [slashdot.org].
Oh, wait! None of that's sexy. Kids wouldn't tune in to shows like that because it isn't what most of them want to do, any more than most kids wanted to do in decades past. The ones who really are interested in development will pursue this path on their own, as many of us did. We don't and won't have any lack of competent workers, because some percentage of us will always be nerds who love this stuff. We do have a surplus of companies who want to save every last penny by farming jobs out to H-1Bs, and we do have a corresponding surplus of unemployed competent Americans.
We're at a point where entry-level tech support jobs are routinely requiring a bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent, junior analyst jobs are requiring an MBA or foreign equivalent, etc. Companies are quick to complain that there are no qualified local workers, because they can't find an American with a four-year degree who knows Linux + Solaris + J2EE + Servlets + IIS + SAP + Oracle + 10 years with Sharepoint, and is willing to work 70 hours a week for $35,000 per year. Meanwhile they have a guy from Bangalore whose resume claims he does precisely all of that, and maybe they won't check out all of his qualifications if he's willing to share a room at Extended Stay America with 5 of his peers for a year or two, wink wink nod nod.
The market is already saturated, and will be for some years to come. Where's the federal push to create more tradesmen (plumbers, electricians, mechanics, carpenters)? To create more lawyers, or accountants, or any other career path? I'm growing weary of this idea that every child in America must be a developer^Wcoder. It serves no purpose but to suppress salaries across the board and even further encourage the H-1B loophole.
Fix HR practices. (Score:2)