[ale] H1B -- What To Do

[Malcolm Silberman]

There is another dynamic coming into play that you should be aware of. Tons
of projects are being shipped off-shore. As an example we get our coding
done in India from anywhere between $10 to $30 per hour. On this side the
skill set required is not hard-core programmers but rather integration
experts, project managers and the like.

The quality of the work is often quite high, and as good as I have
encountered here in the US. The projects all seem to come in at or under
budget and clients are satisfied. The biggest challenge is in the same old
project management issues we have always faced. Technologies such as chat,
forums, bug tracking all make this type of development model fairy workable.

Whether H1B's are disappearing or not - factor this often unseen dynamic on
the developer economy. There is little that government imposition can do,
and retraining in core languages may not be the approach to take. However,
opportunities at a co-ordination and control level seem to be relevant.
(Obviously a core understanding of software languages is still needed).

Malcolm



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