Shifting the burden of proof. These logical fallacies are out in force today. I guess that's why you posted AC. No, I'm not going to go prove each and every one of those jobs exist, because that's why we have the US Dept of Labor, etc, to collect this information. Go look it up, it's trivially easy.

You do realize only the new ones change the job pool, right? Durrr...

Also, close your mouth? Not all of us move our lips when we read and write, AC.

No, that hasn't been covered on /. extensively because it's just not true. Look it up. There were 40,000 CS degrees last year, and almost 4,000,000 openings in various engineering and IT fields. I'm pretty sure 2 orders of magnitude could be considered "a shortage".

And I'm not sure where you are working, but SW engineering salaries have quite literally exploded over the past 5 years or so. It's not at all uncommon to see $400-500k+ offers (including benefits) these days.

Well, now we see why you were arguing without facts - racism is at the root of a lot of these debates, huh?

Oh, that's just silly. VPs at many Bay Area companies aren't making $750k, and I'm pretty sure they aren't being outsourced or competing with H1-Bs. You aren't going to be offered $750k unless the job requires skills that are in such high demand and low supply they are practically unique - which is very rare in this industry.

And even more importantly - I assume you already have a job (I assume anyone claiming they should be paid in the top 0.01% of engineers isn't unemployed except by choice). So what good does that do to fill the hundreds of thousands of openings given a current 2-4% unemployment rage for software engineers? All it does is shift the job somewhere else. Doesn't solve the problem in the slightest.

Your point is yet another logical fallacy. So many on this topic today...

Calling someone a paid shill because you disagree with them is the lowest form of argumentative fallacy, usually reserved for anti-vax, tea partiers, and global warming deniers.

Nope, I haven't seen that. I and most of my friends and coworkers are getting constant calls from recruiters, and usually have 5 offers and a counteroffer within a couple weeks when looking around. And my company always has a half dozen open recs we are trying desperately to fill, and we pay the same - very competitive - salary whether you were born in the US or elsewhere.

The tech job market in the Bay Area is the best for employees that I have seen in my 25 years here. Good new college grads (which are rare) can make $150k, experienced developers $250k+, and architects $400-500k with bonuses (and that's not including stock options/grants). And WHY is that the case? Just because companies like throwing large amounts of money at employees? No, it's capitalism as usual, and when demand goes up but supply doesn't, prices go up as well.

I already answered this, but again to state FACTS vs your complete guessing: the software engineer unemployment rate in the SF Bay Area is now under 2%, and hiring growth was up 17% last year. There are something like 150,000 unfilled software engineering openings. And before you say "hire from outside of the Bay Area" - nationally it's still only 4%.

Either your company hires from the bottom of the barrel or you are writing from 2007. Clearly you are not at a Bay Area software company, because no one says "engineering firms" here, that's just bizarre.

The last 10 candidates we made offers to had multiple competing offers. I think we hired 3 of them, which was pretty damn good when you take into account these offers are in the $200k+ range, sometimes significantly more with bonuses and benefits. One was American born, one a Chinese citizen with a green card, and one Indian with an H-1B and a PhD from UC Berkeley. All had similar years of experience and were offered with ~5% of the same salary. The same is true of most of the highly competitive software companies here, so your "cheap labor" argument in this case is - utter bullshit.

Anyway, you need to provide some FACTS before you can hope to have a credible argument. Here are a few: the software engineer unemployment rate in the SF Bay Area is now under 2%, and hiring growth was up 17% last year. There are something like 150,000 unfilled software engineering openings. And before you say "hire from outside of the Bay Area" - nationally it's still only 4%.

The FACT is it's a huge growth industry in the US right now and there just aren't enough experienced software engineers in the US to fill the openings (nor are we educating nearly enough smart new developers to compensate).

If you were alive when your great great grandfather Herr Shultz tried to come over you'd have kicked his ass out and you wouldn't have even been born.

The H1-B Visa program only allows 65,000 per year (which is insanely low considering there are over 500,000 open tech jobs that currently can't be filled with competent domestic workers). I can guarantee you the company I work for would pay the same for an American worker as a foreign H1-B worker, if we could actually fine ANY worker that we found competent to do the job...

Why should anyone take your word that this is the "norm"? Because it's absolutely NOT.

I work in tech with many foreign born coworkers and the only ones who have not tried as hard as humanly possible to get their green card and citizenship are the Europeans (because yes, being middle class German, British, French, etc will pretty much guarantee you comfortable retirement and health care). Not a single one of my Indian or Chinese coworkers have any interest in going back to their home country after making American tech salaries. They are the same as anyone else here, wanting to buy a house, raise a family, etc.

The only difference between 100 years ago and today is that many immigrants can actually MAKE enough money to send some back to their families. In fact that's often the case because (legal) immigration is now so picky we only accept those who can make upper middle class salaries... So, wow, is that so horrible to your sensibilities that not all modern immigrants are minimum wage workers who can barely support themselves?

If you seriously think the current American workforce can fill the positions that many of the H1-B Visas are taking, you have not been involved in any significant tech hiring in the last few years. My company is only moderately competitive and we have been almost totally unable to find competent engineers to hire in the last year...

Absolutely!

It's amazing that the same people who (actually, no - who's GRANDPARENTS or beyond) built themselves up as immigrants working hard are now claiming that we are letting "foreigners" come in and "take our jorbs!"

"Brain drain" aka immigration of the brightest and most motivated around the world is what always has and will drive American innovation. The myth of "American Exceptionalism" is that it is somehow based on being BORN on the North American Continent. That's absurd. It's based on people wanting to COME to the North American Continent because at some point in history we actually welcomed smart, motivated people who wanted to work hard to achieve their own dreams.

Actually, they already have very specific rules for captioning Internet streaming content that Netflix and all other streaming companies follow (the misunderstanding that Netflix "doesn't do captions" is totally wrong - the vasty majority of their content is captioned):

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/capt...

This lawsuit was trying to claim that those already extensive rules aren't enough and the ADA requires all content to be captioned. Luckily the courts didn't agree...

It's common for movies that are distributed in a country that generally doesn't speak the movie's language, of course. Though they are called subtitles in that case.

The actual FCC rule about whether captions are required for streaming depends on two things: when the content originally aired on TV and when the device displaying them was built/updated (so that devices that were built before the rules don't apply). It's actually pretty fair.

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/capt...

The lawsuit was basically an attempt by lawyers to apply the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) to Internet closed captions to argue that those reasonable FCC rules aren't enough, and they should "get money" from companies that are really trying as hard as they can to follow the actual rules...

Two words: Doran Martell.

There may be some stupid comments here, but the general discourse (as we are having now) is actually WAY above average for tech sites. And infinitely more intelligent than, say, the "CopBlock" Facebook page of which the comments are about 95% either images/memes of cops getting beat up or various statements related to killing cops.

And while I agree there is probably almost zero reason for a SWAT team going to a random anonymous tip, they are certainly needed for raiding known gang or drug operations. Basically, use appropriate force - when you think the criminals have automatic weapons, go in with automatic weapons. When the tip is anonymous and against a 22 year old with no criminal record, maybe a bit of discretion is in order.

Basically, the police don't seem to have any actual policies or playbooks for various situations (or if they do they ignore them), and instead are following the "let's use everything we have" strategy to way too many situations...

That's ok, at long as the 8th got the joke ;)

To include the somewhat overused quote from Ben Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Problem is, (to paraphrase) people prefer security over freedom, and so are giving up the latter left and right these days. The problem is, honestly, for the vast majority they will have (somewhat) increased security with no noticeable loss of freedoms. People only realized how bad things have become if they are one of those small minority whose rights are violated, wrongly prosecuted, or killed.