I agree. Problem is I could probably pay a H1B 1 standard deviation less than the average and still claim it's in the ball park when the government comes knocking

But most people congregate around the center, even if they are below average.

For example, during the dot-com bust, I could not find an internship because there was a lack of funding at several places. The place that I interned at the year before suspended their program temporarily.

Here's one idea: You might have to overpay or take someone more "average" than you are expecting. But, that is life.

While I agree that internships are a good thing (tm), they may be one of the first things to get cut.

I get what you are saying. But the problem is many companies do not want to pay what it takes to keep "Great Engineers (tm)."

I would agree, but the problem is that they make those of us who actually know what we are doing look bad.

Here's the problem with this analysis. It assumes that there's no skills transfer and that human beings are static and can't learn new things when given the proper resources. For example, is there any good reason why someone who programmed in Java can't pick up C#? Or, why are many CS classes have pencil-and-paper assignments. For example, an algorithm/data structure class is highly conceptual since a Binary Tree is conceptually the same regardless of what I implement it in - If I understand the theory I should be able to pick up syntax rather quick. The ability to think through problems should be the emphasis.

Secondly, wage is not a red herring. Many of us are contacted by Managers/HR/3rd party recruiters/etc. for jobs that may offer you a joke of a salary increase (i.e. why would I move to $BIGCITY with a family for a $5k increase in salary for basically the same job).

You couldn't be more incorrect.

Back 30 years ago when my parents graduated from College with math degrees, they had multiple job offers from big companies to do computer programming. They would get the necessary training to fill in any holes of knowledge they had.

Now, companies have given up on any sort of training programs like that.

Now companies want experience to get a job but you can't get a job without experience.

This couldn't be more true. You're job you have is most likely average, by definition.

This is a valid point. Perhaps the numbers are a bit overstated. But, the point in the article is still valid to an extent. Companies complain that they can't fill their run of the mill jobs with graduates. Secondly, at a time when underemployment/unemployment is higher than usual, and wages are flat, one should not have a problem finding "qualified" canidates.

And don't forget, the Net Neutrality debate. It would be in the interest of Google, Netflix and other companies that innovate to have decent connectivity to their customers.

This is the case. Whoever installs fiber should be able to milk it for the next few decades, just as the the phone/cable/power have milked their infrastructure for the last 100 years or more.

It's that and then HR doesn't understand the terminology they are recruiting for to begin with. So you have monkey's in HR using poorly written software.