in silicon valley the operative metric now seems to be cost per line of code, regardless of other considerations. concerns about quality and experience seem to fall by the wayside. software management is still in its infancy. how many lines can you code by tomorrow? by friday evening? saturday midnight? sunday midnight? next sunday midnight?
all the while, be aware that h1-b new hires are arriving in your area by unending droves, day in and day out, year in and year out. why should a company keep you when they can easily and legally lay you off and hire an h1-b for half the cost? one third of the cost? someone who barely speaks engrish, can’t quit because their entire family lives in a mud hut in their home country, much less sue you for discrimination?
this is not your textbook software engineering environment with everyone bushy-tailed and rosy-cheeked and pinball machines in the dining cafeterias chanting lofty mantras about doing no harm or saving the rain forest while delivering the promised post-industrial nirvana. in practice, it is more like a fire ant hill and only those prepared to fight for decades at a very visceral level can keep their job until they retire. one wrong step and they are out of a job, in which case they are instantly in competition with h1-bs who can be offered the same job at 1/3 of the cost or less. h1-bs can be patient. they know the score. one of them, or one of their colleagues, is likely to get your job. in the current environment, all they need do is to be patient for a while...
in the silicon valley suburbs, entire neighborhoods of caucasian people have been replaced by indians and chinese. the caucasians go back to iowa, or sell their home equity and move to grass valley or phoenix or someplace like minden. the retail stores and clubs are full of the same. the silicon valley of 40 years ago is totally gone (although likewise that replaced an earlier local farming culture which is now not even remembered by anyone now).
removing h1-b would force companies to hire americans. there is a hidden reserve of unemployed americans who can do these jobs. what is lacking is the corporate morality to employ american. this has been subverted by the almighty quarterly report and polician subceptibility to corruption by silicon valley corporations.
imho.
H-1B and OPT may just be the transition point into universal CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering).
It’s only a question of time before computers start writing better software than most humans do.