[IP] The vanishing American computer programmer

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: RE: [IP] The vanishing American computer programmer
From:    "Joe Pistritto" <jcp@jcphome.com>
Date:    Sat, July 14, 2007 8:06 pm
To:      dave@farber.net
         ip@v2.listbox.com
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Josh, thanks for being persistent and sending this along.

As someone who has a son just starting the CS program at UC Davis this fall
(and who was a hiring manager at Oracle and knows all about the "rigged ad"
way of avoiding hiring an American for an H-1B's job...) I'm hoping for no
expansion of H-1Bs anytime soon...

  -jcp-

PS: but there is a point there.   The "image" of the computer programming
industry in high schools is that there will be no jobs in the industry in 10
years.  Its not a surprise that high school students don't choose CS as a
career.  Only 1 or 2 of the students in my son's AP Computer Science classes
had any intention of pursuing the field even when they got good scores in
the classes.   This is a group of students the industry *shouldn't* be
losing, but is.  Anyone who has any association with higher education has
seen the enormous drop-off in entering students in CS programs. (not that
they weren't probably a bit too high before).  There's a little bit of a
recent upturn, but the field has lost a great deal of its attractiveness
over the last 10 years.



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