I have been a high-tech worker since I taught myself programming back in the 1970’s after building a computer kit in the Navy. At that time, I was an electronics technician, maintaining and repairing communications and radar systems aboard ship. After reading articles in magazines about “microcomputers”, I decided to purchase one and see what it was all about. Then, after building it and learning “machine language” (there were no high-level languages for that system yet), and discovering what this small, inexpensive, affordable-on-a-sailor’s-salary system could do, I was awestruck.
If I could put this cheapie system on my desk and do things I had never dreamed of doing, I had to get into this industry after being honorably discharged.
During my time at NAS Brunswick in Maine, I joined a local computer club. By this time, I had obtained several high-level languages for my system and had created several of my own programs. One was published in a computer hobbyist magazine: it was a digital chip tester that also used a wire-wrapped board that was connected to the computer. Little did I know that there were companies doing that work – it wasn’t naivete: I just didn’t have a “window” into the larger industry.
One of the members of that computer club was a manager at an automated chip test company in Massachusetts. When he found out that I was going to be able to leave the Navy, he offered me both a job and relocation from Maine to NH. I joined his company and was put to work writing software for one of their chip testing systems.
And here’s where I came face-to-face with the problem facing too many engineers in America: a manager told me that I was a “troublemaker” because I kept insisting that there “must be a better way” to run our chip-testing systems. I even demonstrated a software routine that I had written that sped up the tester without losing accuracy. His reaction was anger: I had not asked him before making the change.
Eventually, I had no choice but to leave that company. I joined a chip-testing start-up in Massachusetts, writing low-level device-driver interfaces from their proprietary hardware to their test language. But again, after demonstrating both a way to do a self-test of their own hardware to verify it worked, and a method to self-calibrate the system prior to running tests on chips, I found myself in trouble again. And this was even after doing everything I had been tasked to do and to deliver it on time.
Again, I had to leave the company. My next venture was another company in Massachusetts – and this was the first time I encountered an H1-B worker. This gentleman was from India, spoke mostly perfect English, and seemed like a nice guy. All went well until I found out that he had been taking some of my code and claiming it was his, even changing the code headers by removing my name and placing his there. I complained to my manager, but he said that the H1-B worker couldn’t have been doing that: he had 2 Master’s degrees in software engineering, and I only had a lowly Bachelor’s degree, so it was obvious to him that the work must have been his.
I discovered that the high-tech industry in Massachusetts (and elsewhere) was being flooded by H1-B workers from overseas, and most of them had multiple Master’s degrees in various engineering disciplines. I also discovered that these H1-B workers were charging half (or less) of what American engineers were being paid, a prime reason for their employment. In some cases – many of which were in the news (e.g., Disney), the American engineers were told to train their H1-B counterparts, and then the Americans were laid off.
During this same time, Microsoft, Apple, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, and a huge number of other companies were laying off American engineers in favor of hiring H1-B workers. American engineers complained, but nobody listened. The H1-B workers were cheaper.
But they were not better. In some cases, it took several H1-B workers to do the job that one American engineer had been doing. In other cases, H1-B workers from overseas sent their code to American companies, and Americans had to examine and re-engineer some of that code because it was bug-ridden or didn’t work properly.
The problem wasn’t H1-B workers. The problem was that Americans became discouraged from engineering because American companies chose H1-B engineers over American engineers. So, fewer and fewer American students chose engineering as a career path. Why pick the more challenging subjects – applied math, physics, electronics – when it was easier to select a “studies” curriculum and get a quick degree without much work?
Seeing that American companies were hiring from overseas, American universities reduced their engineering curricula to the point where their university graduates were simply less qualified than their H1-B competitors.
Meanwhile, H1-B students overseas were learning from the mistakes of their predecessors. They were getting better, being more productive, and starting to lead the path toward excellence. When they got here, they were easily as productive as American engineers. As much as I resented how I had been treated in the past by H1-B engineers, I had to grudgingly admit that H1-B engineers were becoming competitive and, in some areas, superior to their American counterparts.
A big reason for this has already been widely published in the press if one cares to look. The emphasis in grade school has moved away from math and the sciences and emphasis on subjects requiring competence. Why? Because math is racist (remember the controversy over “1+1”?) We use feel-good grading so nobody ever fails – and without grades, none are compelled to learn. Teachers lecture students on how “the patriarchy” is the reason that POCs “will never succeed.” Boys are infected with “toxic masculinity”. And innumerable other excuses allow students to forgo the legitimate learning process.
American schools, both K-12 and at the college/university level, have walked away from their students and their responsibility to bring up the next generation. Schools have allowed political expedience to destroy education, and the result has been at least two generations of “children” who are barely capable of being baristas after spending tens of thousands of dollars to get a “studies” degree.
We did this to ourselves. We allowed control of school curriculums to be decided by union activists, both in grade schools and higher education, most of whom are progressive liberals and who used their political beliefs to determine what our children were taught, how they were treated, and how they were prepared (or not prepared) for their future. In too many cases, children were led away from the ability to think on their own, and instead taught what to think.
Recently, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk stated that Americans have become stupid and lazy and that America needs more H1-B immigrants to succeed in leading the world toward newer and better technologies. Although it hurts me as an American engineer to hear this, I cannot wholly disagree. Over the years, H1-B engineers have corrected the mistakes of their predecessors and have become both competitive and – in some cases – much better than their American counterparts.
If America wishes to prove Vivek and Elon wrong, it must take back control over grade schools and colleges and return our curriculums to classic education: math, science, and grading systems that encourage competition. We’re at least 20 years behind where we should be, so we had better get started now.
Late Edit:
I am what’s known in my industry as a “graybeard.” My expertise is in embedded systems, especially those running Linux. My experience with Linux began in 1994 when I was instrumental in post-ship support for the first commercially packaged Linux distribution named Yggdrasil. Since then, I have been writing device drivers, embedded applications, and implementing “board support packages”: the code that enables the Linux kernel to run on new hardware platforms.
Though I’m definitely old enough to be “retired,” I’m currently under contract – again – with a company that wants to port their hardware from one embedded hardware platform to another running a completely different processor. As a Yocto developer for over 10 years and having experience with both processors, I was interviewed via Microsoft Teams and was hired almost immediately.
I still get phone calls and emails several times a week asking about my availability.
Don’t ask how old I am, but think on this: why am I getting so many job requests at my age? You’d think there were younger folks available, but according to the contract agencies I work thru… no. People with my job skills are few and far between, and finding someone qualified to do this work isn’t easy – unless you’re willing to hire a H1-B worker.
