>>>(In particular, their "Multimedia" sidebar, which has a couple cute >>>graphs showing a couple examples of this welfare.)
>>"Welfare?" That's hysterical. Every industrialized nation in the >>world invests in R&D, so that they can maintain economic and >>military advantages over other countries. Maybe you'd prefer that >>everywhere was some Third World shithole?
>What's hysterical is that you think the general welfare is a bad thing. >Polls show that many Americans favor "aid to the poor." But once you >phrase it as "welfare", it conjures images of arrogant black mothers >with 20 children, and they're far more against it.
You're completely ducking the point. And for the most part I do take a dim view of "corporate welfare" in addition to the spew-out-babies-to-get-free-money kind. I consider R&D to be a legitimate societal need. Many kinds of R&D wouldn't get done if the government didn't fund them, and we'd all be the poorer for it. R&D is inherently exploratory and prone to risk. Not every project is going to be of direct benefit to society. It is the aggregate act of ongoing research which is of benefit, as something always hits. You can't leave fundamental research solely to the beancounters in private corporations, because they're too timid to take that level of risk.
>But I'm not as mean-spirited as you, and so I don't say that.
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote: > Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> "Welfare?" That's hysterical. Every industrialized nation in the >> world invests in R&D, so that they can maintain economic and military >> advantages over other countries. Maybe you'd prefer that everywhere >> was some Third World shithole?
> Actually universities seem to do some research on their own. I'm sure > Harvard and others don't exclusively live on DARPA (and other) > grants. Also, not all research costs resources (except paying the > researchers, but professors are paid, and students are often free).
Why are you so sure? To say that universities, in general, keep going on "independent funding" is silly. Mostly they either get it from the government or from corporate partnerships.
> Lots of companies do research too, to maintain those advantages you > mention.
Define "lots." I would say far more gets done by universities.
> Actually I don't quite know what research in one nation has to do with > not being a shithole as you call it. Even without federally funded > research companies would have brought us technology.
How would you substantiate that claim? There is no recent alternate history to compare it to.
> And Third World shitholes can just as well use that research we have > in industrial countries and develop technology with it!
> Why are you so sure? To say that universities, in general, keep going > on "independent funding" is silly. Mostly they either get it from the > government or from corporate partnerships.
The latter seems fine.
>> Lots of companies do research too, to maintain those advantages you >> mention.
> Define "lots." I would say far more gets done by universities.
Most big companies in technical business (except maybe HP and Dell). Lots of small companies, too, that want an edge over the competition.
Sure, universities are probably more, but again, most of those people are employed professors, and they say "publish or perish" for a reason.
If a CS prof stopped doing research because DARPA doesn't pay for it, I would be surprised and disappointed. What more can you expect than being payed for all your work hours?
>> Actually I don't quite know what research in one nation has to do with >> not being a shithole as you call it. Even without federally funded >> research companies would have brought us technology.
> How would you substantiate that claim? There is no recent alternate > history to compare it to.
I think most important human inventions were made by private inventors/hobbyists, people at universities (even without grants) and companies. I may be wrong (so there's no substance).
>> And Third World shitholes can just as well use that research we have >> in industrial countries and develop technology with it!
> Technology transfer isn't a cakewalk.
-- No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelm...@web.de> writes: > I (German) have really trouble understanding blacks and indians here in the US, and I > don't consider myself racist
>> For example, could I incorporate myself in India, > Why do you want to work by the hour? > Be free-lance and work with fixed price, so you can bid any price you want.
Or even better, bid low and outsource the contract you get via your Indian incorporated company to Indian programmers.
You can have 10 projects going on simultaneously and the margin you make will give you a far greater income than if you worked on your own.
Plus, if the Indians get too expensive, you can move your jobs to Hungary or the Ukraine.
Svenne Krap <svenne.u2...@krap.dk> wrote: +--------------- | I don't know what your living expenses are in the US, but here you can | barely live for say 1200$ a month after taxes as a single person (I | figure it is not that different in the US). +---------------
*HAH!* We wish. $1200/month won't even pay my *rent*!! [And I'm getting a good deal, due to long tenancy...]
+--------------- | By the way, I go for around 100$ an hour (as an indepedant consultant, | not employee)... +---------------
A highly-experienced person can certainly still get that in the SF Bay area for short-term technical gigs, though you'll have to do some serious negotiation to have that hold up for longer-term work.
+--------------- | I would not take a paid job for less that say 40-45.000 dollars/year | before taxes (as I am danish there is not such things as | medical/dental/whatever benefits paied by an employer - the only | exception is pension payment). +---------------
Here fairly-hefty medical/dental/etc. benefits are considered standard for full-time employees, though of course independent consultants don't get any of that. The typical benefits package around here is ~30% of base salary, so if you think you're worth a $45K/yr salary you shouldn't price yourself at less than $31/hr (minimum).
-Rob
----- Rob Warnock <r...@rpw3.org> 627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/> San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
israel wrote: > >> For example, could I incorporate myself in India,
> > Why do you want to work by the hour? > > Be free-lance and work with fixed price, so you can bid any price you want.
> Or even better, bid low and outsource the contract you get via your > Indian incorporated company to Indian programmers.
> You can have 10 projects going on simultaneously and the margin you make > will give you a far greater income than if you worked on your own.
> Plus, if the Indians get too expensive, you can move your jobs to > Hungary or the Ukraine.
If your business is finished and goes down the drain what will you outsource to Hungary and Ukraine?? The only thing left will be your poor self, which you can outsource to the highest bidder.
Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelm...@web.de> writes: > Actually universities seem to do some research on their own. I'm sure > Harvard and others don't exclusively live on DARPA (and other) grants.
Actually, such places do pretty much depend on DARPA (and other) grants. and have been in dire straights since the Cold War ended. Less research is getting done.
Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelm...@web.de> writes: > Maybe the Indians learn English from teachers with bad accents too? ;)
I think the Indian accent is charming. With that many native English speaking, isn't it natural that they have their own dialects of English? Your question is almost equivalent to asking if all Bavarian children learn German from teachers with bad accents! -- (espen)
>> From: "Alex Mizrahi" <udode...@users.sourceforge.net> >> i would like to have some remote, not so big, complex or urgent job >> in Common Lisp. since i live in Ukraine, fee could be surprisingly >> low as for USA/EU-living people. :)
> I live in California and would be willing to work for the legal minimum > wage, something like $5something/hour. I have 15 years Lisp programming > experience. Would you be willing to undercut my wage-bid?
Shzzz - are you serious! I wouldn't even get out of bed for $5 per hour. My minimum consulting rate is $80 per hour and if I'm working as an employee, its a minimum of $30 per hour + 15% super. I've been either employed or consulting without a period of unemployment for 15 years.
One thing I learnt early in my consulting days was that there was more of a danger of under selling yourself than over selling. I initially lost jobs because I wasn't charging enough and pospective employers thought I either wasn't serious or didn't have the necessary skills. At the time, this seemed counter intuitive, but now I realise that pricing yourself too cheap puts you in the 'amateur' class and prevents you from getting good jobs.
I think its a mis-conception to believe you have to be cheap in order to compete with cheap labour from India, western europe etc. In many cases, while the people doing the work get paid very little, there is some level of management/coordinator who charges quite high and just keeps the cream for themselves - something I find very exploitative and which I find somewhat annoying. This out sourcing of programming to 3rd world countries also doesn't seem to be paying off quite as well as some employers have hoped. In many cases, they have found cultural differences have led to misunderstandings wrt specifications and the additional coordination and handling of what is produced is eating up any savings made through outsourcing - plus usually its not as cheap as it looks because some middle layer is taking all the profits. In reality it just means two different groups being exploited and played off against each other for some 3rd parties gain.
Tim
-- Tim Cross The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Edi Weitz <spamt...@agharta.de> writes: > On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 08:20:31 -0700, rem6...@Yahoo.Com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
>> I'm as smart as any Hungarian guy.
> As smart as, say, Paul Erdös? Or John von Neumann?
With the sort of statement he made, I doubt if he even knows who Erdos is and if he does, lets find out what his erdos number is!
Tim
-- Tim Cross The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:25:00 +1000, Tim X <t...@spamto.devnul.com> wrote: > I think its a mis-conception to believe you have to be cheap in > order to compete with cheap labour from India, western europe etc.
Cheap labour in Western Europe? Hmmm - I hope this was a typo.
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq "spamt...@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Tim X <t...@spamto.devnul.com> wrote: > I initially > lost jobs because I wasn't charging enough and pospective employers > thought I either wasn't serious or didn't have the necessary > skills.
and it works the other way, too: I've read an article in a magazin (I think it was a German issue of Scientific American) about an experiment, which leads to the conclusion that if you get less income, you are less motivated and you don't think it is worth to do as much as you can for the job. So if you get $80 instead of $5 you are 16 times more productive for the company for which you are working :-) Ok, perhaps not that much more productive, but you get the idea.
Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelm...@web.de> writes: > Pascal Bourguignon wrote: >> English is the main language of India. There's no reason to believe >> an Indian would be less skilled at English than a North American. >> Often North Americans are less understandable than other (of British >> influence) English speakers...
> Maybe they are skilled, but sometimes you can read that they aren't > native (even though as you say their are legally). I (German) have > really trouble understanding blacks and indians here in the US, and I > don't consider myself racist (except that I dislike my own country > :D). English people are hard sometimes (when they use their very own > slang words), but otherwise quite clear, yes.
>> http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html >> English enjoys associate status but is the most important >> language >> for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is >> the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; >> there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, >> Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, >> Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular >> variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but >> is not an official language.
> Well, in Germany about everybody learns 5-10 years of English. Have > you heard their accents though? Seriously, it's not pretty (though I > can understand most people; but I grew up with with that accent). > Maybe the Indians learn English from teachers with bad accents too? ;)
I think there are a couple of points missing in all of this. My experience when studying comp sci at university was that nearly 90% of the post graduate students where either from India or China. I also found that while all the Indian students had an accent, they were easy to understand and their english was very good. Where were all the non-india/chinese etc post grads? As udnergrads, the mix was pretty much the reverse - only about 10 to 20% were indian or chinese.
The point which seems to be over looked to some degree is the number of Indians who have adequate IT skills - certainly as adequate as many of the Austsralian/American/English programmers I've known who program in VB, Java or C. In fact, many of them have been very talented (well, I've yet to meet a truely talented VB programmer). Moving programming jobs off-shore doesn't quite mean the same as moving a manufacturing job to Mexico or Indonesia or china or india as the skill sets required are much higher and more defficult to obtain. What I'm wondering is if the shift to India is due to cheaper wages or was it due to an over priced labour market in the US which developed because of a shortage in the pool of skilled labour available? Is it possible that programmers in the US/Australia have contributed to the situation by not putting in the same effort to become as knowledgable and experienced as they could?
One final bit on language and difficulties of understanding - I think it was Oscar Wild who said, when visiting the US, something along the lines of "Its so nice to be here - we have so much in common, with the exception of english"
Point being we have to be very careful about the importance of being able to speak english well. While it is certainly one of the most (if not the most) widely spoken language, its not the only language spoken and many software companies are marketing globally - the ability of staff to speak english may not be that important or that much of a benefit.
Tim
-- Tim Cross The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
> Is it possible > that programmers in the US/Australia have contributed to the situation > by not putting in the same effort to become as knowledgable and > experienced as they could?
Yes, that's what I have been trying to say. Outsourcing is at least partially a result of lack of skill and knowledge on the american side. The competition is not (only) in price, it is more often than not in the ability to get the job done on time and with good quality.
In the past, american software industry had a clear and hard-to-overcome advantage of much easier and cheaper access to the expensive equipment. This is not an issue anymore; and american programmers have to compete with smart, knowledgeable and willing to work engineers from just about any country in the world.
Better skills matter to a much greater extent than lower price of labour.
> and it works the other way, too: I've read an article in a magazin (I think > it was a German issue of Scientific American) about an experiment, which > leads to the conclusion that if you get less income, you are less motivated > and you don't think it is worth to do as much as you can for the job. So if > you get $80 instead of $5 you are 16 times more productive for the company > for which you are working :-) Ok, perhaps not that much more productive, > but you get the idea.
Is the 16 times factor including or in addition to the 20 times productivity boost for using Common Lisp? ;-)
Marc (a poor low cost western european Lisper ;-) (My name is even Hungarian!)
>>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <tayss_te...@yahoo.com> writes:
[...] TJG> What's hysterical is that you think the general welfare is a TJG> bad thing. [...]
I suspect you didn't do this on purpose, and I realize I am on thin ice as a non-native speaker, but might I point out that "general welfare" is only percieved as synonymous with "wealth transfer through government coercion" because of an Orwellian corruption of language. Who, afterall, can be against "general welfare"? (and, say, support general ill-being!?). I think we are losing our ability to talk and reason about these things because the very tools we'd use to communicate are getting destroyed by propaganda.
Alex Mizrahi wrote: > no, because at any time i can work as C++ or PHP programmer at least for > 1.5-2$ per hour. :)
That's pretty low. I was told that in Moscow, a good programmer or electrical engineer has to be paid about $1,000 - $2,000 per month. Are Ukrainians so much cheaper?
I noticed that you reacted very belligerently to suggestions and criticism by others in this thread. However, I'm going to say this anyway. Your web site alone puts you in the "unemployable" pile in the eyes of most potential employers.
While you had 15 years of mostly free time, have you considered creating your own product and perhaps selling it?
Bulent Murtezaoglu wrote: > >>>>> "TJG" == Tayssir John Gabbour <tayss_te...@yahoo.com> writes: > [...] > TJG> What's hysterical is that you think the general welfare is a > TJG> bad thing. [...]
> I suspect you didn't do this on purpose, and I realize I am on thin > ice as a non-native speaker, but might I point out that "general > welfare" is only percieved as synonymous with "wealth transfer > through government coercion" because of an Orwellian corruption of > language. Who, afterall, can be against "general welfare"? (and, > say, support general ill-being!?). I think we are losing our > ability to talk and reason about these things because the very > tools we'd use to communicate are getting destroyed by propaganda.
You're right. In fact, "the general welfare" is in the first line of the US Constitution. However, now it invokes images of welfare mothers breeding like rabbits (by implication black); a racist political PR tool.
I did use the term "welfare" on purpose actually, because it's sadly funny. ;) Many programmers call themselves "libertarian," which in the US means an extreme free-market type. But we above all benefitted from government subsidies, and ideologically we claim we have a RIGHT to it and no one could use it better. Poor nations are "shitholes", and tech subsidies are the only things holding the US back from extreme poverty.
I think people should take the nice subsidies and use them responsibly. ;) Tech is neutral but can have wonderful uses. One good first step is to stop lying to ourselves on the internet.
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote: > I did use the term "welfare" on purpose actually, because it's sadly > funny. ;) Many programmers call themselves "libertarian," which in the > US means an extreme free-market type. But we above all benefitted from > government subsidies, and ideologically we claim we have a RIGHT to it > and no one could use it better. Poor nations are "shitholes", and tech > subsidies are the only things holding the US back from extreme poverty.
If subsidies are the only way that keeps programmers in employment, then there is no hope for the USA. This is about the same as just putting all programmers in the government, where they can collect nice money from the taxpayers. Doesn't make sense to me. Why not pay subsidies to minimum-wage employees instead, so they can maybe even *live* on three of these jobs? Why not subsidize whatever? Why not just subsidize *everybody*? Oh wait, then we could maybe just let people keep their tax money in the first place...
(sidenote: I'm actually for a small general distribution; everybody gets a fixed amount of money from the government, which shifts some money from the rich to all those minimum-wage workers. In return there are no other welfare systems, no subsidies of any kind etc.)
-- No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Frank Buss wrote: > and it works the other way, too: I've read an article in a magazin (I think > it was a German issue of Scientific American) about an experiment, which > leads to the conclusion that if you get less income, you are less motivated > and you don't think it is worth to do as much as you can for the job. So if > you get $80 instead of $5 you are 16 times more productive for the company > for which you are working :-) Ok, perhaps not that much more productive, > but you get the idea.
Tell that to the people who employ students. I'm not really motivated working for $10/h. If someone would employ me for $25, I'd really try to do most excellent work (because I would think I'm treated fairly).
Why is it that once you graduate (even though you don't know anything more than before and still have the same experience level) you are able to charge 5 times what you earned before?? (well, it seems like in Germany you don't even get IT jobs at all anymore, but the people who do earn way more than $10/h)
-- No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
israel wrote: >Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelm...@web.de> writes:
>>I (German) have really trouble understanding blacks and indians here in the US, and I >>don't consider myself racist
>Of course you dont...
That is not fair. People in certain parts of the USA have *very* heavy accents. I will never forget the black movers when I was moved from San Francisco to North Carolina at age 11. I was watching something on TV. The mover asked me, "Dyawannabeawrassler?" Only because I was watching TV, and some guy in spandex was giving some other guy a body slam in a ring, did I figure it out. A wrestler! "wrassler" == wrestler. Lotsa things went like that. I had to think really really hard for awhile to understand certain people.
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote: > Tell that to the people who employ students.
So you are a student then? That would explain a number of things about the debates we've had.
> I'm not really motivated working for $10/h. If someone would employ > me for $25, I'd really try to do most excellent work (because I would > think I'm treated fairly).
You could try poverty as a motivator. :-) Of course my poverty is self-inflicted. I am very purist about wanting to do exactly my own thing in the programming and game design depts. So rather than put energy into getting paid a lot of money to solve other people's problems, I do these "dumb jobs" that pay little. I come close to having $0 all the time. When you actually want to *eat*, and, say, $12/hour is going to enable you to *eat*, you'll tough it out and do what you gotta do. I must admit though, $15/hour is my threshold of motivation. Really the only reason I've take $12/hour from my landlord is because it made him happy. Having him remain lenient about my debts has *tremendous* value, so it's actually worth a lot more than $12/hour. Anyone else, if it's less than $15/hour, I'm not interested. And my attention isn't going to be kept for less than $20/hour.
Remember too I'm only talking about "stupid jobs." I'm not talking computer money. Perhaps if you want to get paid more than $10/hour, you should try stupid jobs? Sure, lotsa stupid jobs only pay $10/hour or less and that's a ripoff. But there are stupid jobs that pay better.
> Why is it that once you graduate (even though you don't know anything > more than before and still have the same experience level) you are > able to charge 5 times what you earned before?? > (well, it seems like in Germany you don't even get IT jobs at all > anymore, but the people who do earn way more than $10/h)
"In life, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate."
