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dcblogs writes:
John Holdren, who heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told a Senate committee Tuesday that China's R&D spending is growing by 20% to 25% a year, and will surpass U.S. R&D investment before 2022, an often-cited private sector estimate. The U.S., he said, is "in real danger" of being overtaken by China in R&D spending, he said. U.S R&D investments in 2011 was $429 billion, in that same year China spent $208 billion. President Obama, said Holdren, set a goal in 2009 of investing 3% of the nation's GDP in R&D, and the U.S. is near that level. But this analysis combines public and private sector R&D spending; when federal R&D spending is separated out, the picture is different. In a letter to the committee, MIT President Rafael Reif said that from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, federally-funded R&D averaged approximately 1.5% of GDP; by 2011, however, funding had fallen to 0.8% of GDP. "This declining benchmark should be a flashing yellow light for the nation," he wrote.
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dcblogs writes:
There’s an IT professional who, at this moment, is training offshore replacements, the people who are taking over the work. This IT pro is also a good writer, and has penned a short explanation about what life is now like: “As Americans, we maintain our pride and dignity as we are forced to train our H-1B replacements. We struggle with the reality of having no jobs, but yet we train our replacements without prejudice and hold our heads up high because we are ingrained with a work ethic to do our very best."
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dcblogs writes:
The 75 students in the 2014 Master of Science in Analytics class at North Carolina State University received, in total, 246 job offers from 55 employers, valued at $22.5 million in salaries and bonuses, which is 24% higher than last year's combined offers. But the problem ahead is admissions. There may not be enough master’s programs in analytics to meet demand. NC State has received nearly 800 applications for 85 seats. Its acceptance rate is now at 12.5%. Northwestern University's Master of Science in Analytics received 600 applications for 30 openings its September class. That's an acceptance rate of 6%
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dcblogs writes:
Southern California Edison is preparing to offshore IT jobs, the second major U.S. utility in the last year to do so. It will be cutting its staff, but it hasn’t said by how much. The utility is using at least two offshore outsourcing firms, according to government records. SCE’s management culture may be particularly primed for firing its IT workers. Following a workplace shooting in SCE’s IT offices in 2011, the utility conducted an independent audit of its organizational and management culture. One observation in this report, which was completed a year later, was that "employees perceive managers to be more concerned about how they 'look' from above, and less concerned about how they are viewed by their subordinates. This fosters an unhealthy culture and climate by sending a message to employees that it is more important to focus on how things look from the top than how they actually are down below."
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dcblogs writes:
A study of New York City's tech workforce found that 44% of jobs in the city's "tech ecosystem," or 128,000 jobs, "are accessible" to people without a Bachelor's degree. This eco-system includes both tech specific jobs and those jobs supported by tech. For instance, a technology specific job that doesn't require a Bachelor's degree might be a computer user support specialist, earning $28.80 an hour, according to this study. Tech industry jobs that do not require a four-year degree and may only need on-the-job training include customer services representatives, at $18.50 an hour, telecom line installer, $37.60 an hour, and sales representatives, $33.60 an hour. The study did not look at "who is actually sitting in those jobs and whether people are under-employed," said Kate Wittels, a director at HR&A Advisors, a real-estate and economic-development consulting firm, and report author.. Many people in the "accessible" non-degree jobs may indeed have degrees. For instance. About 75% of the 25 employees who work at New York Computer Help in Manhattan have a Bachelor's degree. Of those with Bachelor's degrees, about half have IT-related degrees.
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dcblogs writes:
The U.S. today (April 1) began accepting H-1B visa applications for the next fiscal year, with heavy demand expected. The visas will likely all be claimed by end of this week, and a major share of the H-1B visas will go to firms that use visa holders to displace U.S. workers. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data is very clear about who are the largest users of H-1B visas: Offshore outsourcing firms.The IT services firms among the top 20 H-1B users accounted for a little more than 50% of the annual base visa cap of 65,000. This is for initial visas approved in the 2013 fiscal year, not renewals. "The offshore outsourcing firms are once again getting the majority of the visas," said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "The program continues to promote the offshoring of high-wage American jobs."
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dcblogs writes:
Bill Gates and Alan Greenspan, in separate forums, offered outlooks and prescriptions for fixing jobs and income. Gates is concerned that graduates of U.S. secondary schools may not be able stay ahead of software automation. "These things are coming fast," said Gates, in an interview with the American Enterprise Institute "Twenty years from now labor demand for a lots of skill sets will be substantially lower, and I don't think people have that in their mental model." Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan believes one way to attack income inequity is to raise the H-1B cap. If the program were expanded, income wouldn't necessarily go down much, but it would go down enough to make an impact. Income inequality is a relative concept, he argued. People who are absolutely at the top of the scale in 1925, for instance, would be getting food stamps today, said Greenspan. "You don't have to necessarily bring up the bottom if you bring the top down."
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dcblogs writes:
The White House is urging tech workers, or "geeks," to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and said having the coverage will give them the "freedom and security" to start their own businesses. "There is strong evidence that when affordable healthcare isn't exclusively tied to employment, in more instances people choose to start their own companies," wrote White House CTO Todd Park in a post to launch its #GeeksGetCovered campaign.Bruce Bachenheimer, a professor of management at Pace University and director of its Entrepreneurship Lab, said the effort is part of a broader appeal by the White House to get younger and healthier people to sign-up for Obamacare, and is in the same vein as President Obama's recent appearance on Between Two Ferns,
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dcblogs writes:
President Barack Obama's fiscal 2015 budget plan would increase federal R&D spending by 1.2% over this year, if Congress approves. The Computing Research Association, in a blog post, called the budget request "underwhelming for science." John Holdren, White House senior adviser on science and technology policy, said that research spending on science and technology "is doing better than might have been expected" given budget constraints. But Holdren added that the U.S. is getting more R&D competition. "It is true that China, for example, has been increasing its investments at a very high rate and is now sitting at about half the investment of the United States," said Holdren. "That gap will narrow further if China continues to boost its investments in that way."
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dcblogs writes:
IBM is laying off U.S. employees this week as part of a $1B restructuring, and is apparently trying keep the exact number of cuts secret. The Alliance@IBM, the main source of layoff information at IBM, says the company has stopped including in its resource action documents, given to cut employees, the number of employees selected for a job cut. The union calls it a “disturbing development.” Meanwhile, two days prior to the layoffs, NY Gov. Cuomo announced that it reached a new minimum staffing level agreement with IBM to "maintain 3,100 high-tech jobs in the Hudson Valley and surrounding areas.” The governor’s office did not say how many IBM jobs are now there, but others put estimate it at around 7,000. Lee Conrad, a national coordinator for the Alliance, said the governor's announcement raises some questions for workers and the region. "Yes, you're trying to protect 3,100 jobs but what about the other 3,900 jobs?" The Alliance estimates that anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 U.S. workers could be impacted by the latest round of layoffs. IBM says it has more than 3,000 open positions in the U.S., and says the cuts are part of a "rebalancing" as it shifts investments into new areas of technology, such as cognitive computing.
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dcblogs writes:
California is facing its worst drought in more than 100 years, and one with no end in sight. But it is offering Silicon Valley opportunities. In one project, the East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland used customized usage reports developed by WaterSmart Software that report a customer's water use against average use for similar sized households. It uses a form of peer pressure to change behavior. A just concluded year-long pilot showed a 5% reduction in water usage. The utility said the reporting system could "go a long way" toward helping the state meet its goal of a reducing water usage by 20% per capita statewide. In other tech related activities, the organizer of a water-tech focused hackathon, Hack the Drought is hoping this effort leads to new water conserving approaches. Overall, water tech supporters are working to bring more investor attention to this market. Imagine H2O, a non-profit, holds annual water tech contests and then helps with access to venture funding. The effort is focused on "trying to address the market failure in the water sector," Scott Bryan, the chief operating officer of Imagine H2O.
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dcblogs writes:
The personal history of Satya Nadella, Microsoft's new CEO, may draw him into the immigration debate over visas. His background, born in Hyderabad, earning advanced degrees in the U.S., exemplifies the type of STEM expertise that Microsoft's cites for visa liberalization. Microsoft has long argued that U.S. schools do not produce enough computer science grads. Said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, "We have imported people, in part, because when we started the 1980s, we didn't have the capacity in our higher education institutions to produce the degrees that would be needed to take these new jobs." But Microsoft's assertions of a skills shortage have long been disputed. "Microsoft's lobbyists and executives have played the leading role in misinforming the public and policymakers about how the H-1B and L-1 visa programs are used in practice," says Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. What is certain is that Indian community in Silicon Valley is "bursting with pride" over Microsoft's new CEO, reports the LA Times.
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dcblogs writes:
President Barack Obama urged Congress to increase federal research funding or risk the U.S. technology lead to China and Europe. "This is an edge America cannot surrender," said Obama, in his State of the Union speech. The National Science Foundation budget bill approved this month by Congress set aside $7.1 billion, well below the president's request. The approved budget is only about 2.4% over FY 2012 spending, according to an analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). When inflation if factored, it represents a real-dollar decline of 3% from 2012. Overall, defense R&D spending will decline by $8.4 billion, or 11.2%, from fiscal year 2012 levels, according to the AAAS. On the same day the Obama delivered his speech, the Pentagon was warning lawmakers, at a hearing, about China. "From the perspective of technological superiority, the Department of Defense is being challenged in ways I have not seen for many years," said Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense.
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dcblogs writes:
Detroit, a city in bankruptcy and dealing with a shrinking population, hopes to turn itself around with the help of 50,000 employment-based green cards. In exchange for the visa, an immigrant would be required to "live and work" in Detroit for an undetermined length of time. The visas would be made available under the EB-2 visa category, a visa for advanced degree professionals or those deemed with "exceptional ability" in the sciences, arts and business. The proposal was made by Michigan's governor, Rick Snyder. Daniel Costa, an immigration policy analyst at Economic Policy Institute, said Snyder would have more credibility on the issue if he were doing more to help workers in Detroit. In 2011, the state cut jobless benefits by six weeks to 20. "I also think the federal government should be offering people in the U.S. some money and land in Detroit if they'll move there," said Costa, or "just offer it to people across the country who have advanced degrees."
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dcblogs writes:
The employer with the most IT job postings last year was Amazon.com, with 16,146 ads, exceeding most other IT firms by a wide margin, according to a report by trade group CompTIA using data from Burning Glass Technologies in Boston, which analyzes online job postings from approximately 32,000 jobs sites. The runners-up in 2013 U.S. job postings were Accenture, at 14,240 and Deloitte, at 13,077 job ads. Best Buy posted 10,725 IT job ads, ahead of IBM at 10,221. Best Buy's hiring was attributed to its computer support business.
