“Microsoft staff are openly questioning the value of diversity” (Quartz) quotes from an internal Microsoft discussion forum:
“Because women used to be actively prohibited from full-time employment many decades ago, there is now the misguided belief that women SHOULD work, and if women AREN’T working, there’s something wrong…. Many women simply aren’t cut out for the corporate rat race, so to speak, and that’s not because of ‘the patriarchy,’ it’s because men and women aren’t identical, and women are much more inclined to gain fulfillment elsewhere.”
James Damore was the Google heretic because he shared the company’s goal of increasing the number of women doing the dreary job of coding, but suggested that they go about the project in a different way. It seems that Microsoft is nurturing actual infidels who reject the entire religion of gender diversity. It is just one step from the above quote to the Harvard undergraduate who told us “I used to want to be an investment banker, but then I realized that I could just marry an investment banker.” (Presumably nobody could survive at the company after asking “Why would an intelligent person want to work 80 hours/week at Microsoft when having sex with two Microsoft employees can yield roughly the same spending power?”)
[Anecdote: Our suburb is packed with women who have elite professional degrees and yet work part-time or do no W-2 wage labor at all. These women worked full time for 5-10 years following the completion of their education and then, as suggested by the Microsoft infidel, decided to “gain fulfillment elsewhere”. Most of their current spending power is derived from the wages of someone else, either a current spouse or a person whom they sued for alimony and/or child support.]
Readers: Measured against the coastal elite pillars of faith, are these Microsoft programmers more severely deviant than were the Googlers who questioned the company’s diversity schemes?
Related:
- https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/03/07/google-shows-that-james-damore-and-econ-101-were-right/ (if a company wants more women, it needs to pay up)
> more severely deviant…?
In February, Nature (“International journal of science”) declared against the concept of male-female brain differences. So zeal in the faith has intensified since the Google heresy outbreak. The answer to your question is therefore Yes.
(At least one other heretic remains to be corrected.)
Why is creating software “dreary”, but spending hours strapped to a chair in a cramped, noisy metal box not?
Why is creating software dreary compared to flying? Revealed preference! People will spend money and time pursuing flying as a hobby (hence the existence of non-professional flight schools with rental aircraft). By contrast, most people refuse to learn to program even when it is free to do so, e.g., via home study or programs such as https://www.adadevelopersacademy.org/
Writing BASIC code for a home computer was considered a fun activity in the 1970s and some people did that in their leisure time. Writing a Java application in which nothing gets done without a 20-deep method call stack is apparently not fun. Employers would have to pay physician-level salaries to get enough Americans to do that (but, of course, they don’t have to, thanks to the miracle of H-1B and other immigration programs).
People will pay to read books about the experience of flying, e.g., https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/08/07/skyfaring-a-journey-with-a-pilot/ ; see also https://amzn.to/2IzCmJv for an earlier work that was popular enough to be made into a movie.
Apparently the consensus in the publishing industry is that nobody would buy or read a book about what it was like to be a Java programmer. If such a book came out, just imagine Hollywood trying to adapt it into a film!
Phil,
H-1B is not an immigration program, and that’s exactly the point: argue with your boss once and you may find yourself on a plane back to to your favorite sh**hole.
That’s why H-1B salaries are set in relation to the average US salary, something close to $65K pa. They are doing the jobs that no American would do. A friend of mine was sent back to India a few years ago since he was deemed too expensive for a major telecom: his billing rate was $25/hr.
M: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/us/what-are-h1b-visas.html says “Can the visas lead to permanent residence? Very often they do. Companies can choose to sponsor an H-1B worker for permanent residence. The green card applications are often approved, though they can take years to be issued.”
It seems that nobody keeps statistics on the percentage of H-1B visa holders who become permanent residents and then citizens. I personally know quite a few, but it seems that this is sold to citizens as some sort of guest worker program.
Back in 2016, the median wage was $80,000/year (see https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/16/salaries-have-risen-for-high-skilled-foreign-workers-in-u-s-on-h-1b-visas/ ). Working on the Facebook plantation would pay about $141,000 per year (save up 30 years of after-tax earnings by sleeping in the office and eating all meals in FB cafeterias and it would be enough to buy a house within a 30-minute drive!).
philg you’re quoting NYT which you’ve already stated is “fake news”?
Phil,
I think I didn’t explain the problem very well. The H-1B program does not guarantee anything and is not a legal path to citizenship as such. If you thought otherwise, I’d agree with baz: just stop reading the Fake News Times.
What H-1B visa promises is that a holder can apply for a Green Card while staying in the US, but only if their employer petitions for them (by claiming that they could not find a suitable US citizen to fill in the position). Something is better than nothing, so plenty of visa holders accept abuse for the chance of that application. People make sacrifices and count them towards a total cost of becoming a permanent resident, which has a de-facto cash value. (hope you knew that.) Then they leave their employer and start competing on an equal footing with other free people.
This is the same concept as illegals crossing the border: they make better employees, inexpensive and not too demanding. The H-1B and illegal immigration are two instances of prostituting the US citizenship for cold cash, where the profits are privatized while the expenses are socialized.
M, I do not get this system either. My HB1 coworker – buddy would not work for as low rate as one I agree to work for, and it is significantly higher anything that is mentioned in this post. On the other hand there are some exempt HB1 people that work through Indian company or Indian affiliates that are in totally different situation, more safe but poorly paid and with higher probability to be eventually sent back. . Go figure.
M: I knew that the H-1B program ultimately required an employer to sponsor someone for a Green Card, but I thought that nearly all of the H-1B workers are able to make this happen. The worker is indentured during the sponsorship period so it is a huge win for the employer compared to an American worker who might quit at any time for higher pay, etc. The H-1B holder, once he or she becomes a citizen, is then able to bring in relatives, e.g., parents, who get Green Cards. Once the relatives show up, they’re automatically and immediately entitled to welfare (e.g., means-tested public housing, means-tested Obamacare health insurance or Medicaid, food stamps, Obamaphone, etc.). https://www.masslegalhelp.org/income-benefits/food-stamps-for-legal-permanent-residents explains that there may be a waiting period for food stamps (SNAP). Also, the best part: Will SNAP hurt my chances of getting a green card or becoming a citizen? No. SNAP will not affect your chances of becoming a US citizen, nor do they hurt the chances of getting a green card. SNAP is not “cash assistance benefits”.
Phil:
I am sorry but that was not my point. A foreigner can get a labor certification from a US company while living abroad. Those companies who want to employ foreign talent are able to do so without sponsoring an H-1B visa.
Also if you are talented you can get an immigrant visa without any direct sponsorship based on an official list of your achievements plus an endorsement from, say, the US National Academy of Sciences (if you happen to be Dr Einstein). These are called EB-1 and EB-2. The wait list is at most 6 weeks for EB-1 and there is no annual quota. All your geniuses can safely move to the States within a year. So, who has to wait for 10 years for their labor certification to clear?
I do understand and share your concern about the chain migration, but this is in no way specific to the H-1B program, so I tried to leave it out of this discussion.
M: You wrote “H-1B is not an immigration program”.
H-1B brings people to the U.S., right?
Once they are here they can apply for asylum like anyone else and then stay permanently, right?
Once they are here, more typically their employer will sponsor them for a Green Card and then they will become citizens, right?
I’m having a tough time understanding why this doesn’t qualify as “an immigration program” if the de facto result is foreigners becoming permanent U.S. residents and then citizens. Is it like us saying that someone is not “on welfare” because they don’t get cash assistance, but only free housing, free health care, free food, and free smartphone?
One can come to the US on a tourist visa and then apply for asylum? So?
I might listen to you more attentively once my colleagues in Shanghai stop pinging me asking for an advice of how to ship their 8-month pregnant wives to New York for a couple months (obviously for sightseeing).
Ahem. .. The whole point of the H-1B program is to get leverage: promise your prospective employees to help them in getting a green card, kick them out if they don’t behave or ask for too much, keep them waiting (and working for 40% of the billing rate) for up to 10-12 years before their application comes through.
I said H-1B is not an immigration program since there are no legal guarantees. What part of *legal* should I clarify? The system is not broken, it works as expected: profits are privatized and expenses are socialized.
It feels like you totally understand exactly what I’ve been saying. 🙂
As pointed out in the Danish documentary series Brainwash, in countries rated by the U.N. to be the most gender equal and free, women tend to work in jobs like nursing, part time in the a.m., while men tend to work full time in jobs like engineering.
Since the cradle to grave welfare system lets you live a simple but comfortable life without doing much work, these counties are the perfect lab for figuring out what people really want to do.
Women in Sweden are still oppressed due to powerful stereotype field force as an expert on women equality states:
The main reason for this imbalance is that traditional gender stereotypes prevail, despite decades of legislation designed to even things out, says Ms Lundeteg.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39900449
Anonymous –
In Sweden, the most feminist-progressive country in the world, women still don’t choose to work the same jobs as men. Perhaps the women there are unaware of this unconscious bias against themselves and need to be better educated on what they should really prefer. And if they then fail to fall in line, compulsory full-time work in engineering should teach them a thing or two.
Sam,
The other day I briefly touched on the subject with a well-to-do millennial American woman working in Stockholm. When I used an argument similar to yours, she pointed me to the article above claiming that the stereotype force field emanates from the surrounding Swedish male population despite legislation and other measures to “even the playing field” resulting in continuing inequality and female oppression thus making women sacrifice glorious corporate carriers for less glamorous occupations.
No re-education is needed, her alma mater has already done a very good job.