Top all-time · #1373
Norm Matloff
Personal blog · heather.cs.ucdavis.eduprogrammingdatascience
Norm Matloff writes Index of /, a personal blog at heather.cs.ucdavis.edu about programming, data and science. Since 2008, 54 different Hacker News readers have linked it 68 times, most often “The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto indentured labor.”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto indentured labor.9 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2012-03-14
- /~matloff/R/RProg.pdf3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-07-27
- /matloff.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-04-23
- Guide to Faster, Less Frustrating Debugging3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-10-23
- Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage 3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-02-27
- Programming on Parallel Machines: GPU, Multicore, Clusters and More3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-08-22
- /h1bwritings.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-04-20
- Introduction to the PuDB Python Debugging Tool2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-08-07
- /Mich.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-26
- Introduction to Linux Intel Assembly Language2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-10-26
What Hacker News says?
The typical response I hear to the idea of more widespread labor unions or AMA-like professional associations for programmers and network/systems/storage/database administrators is that if someone is really talented, they can negotiate a good salary, and that labor organizing together would just protect the lazy and the slackers. You hear this same thing when someone is lowballed a salary number, or has to put up wi…
Comment linking /h1b.html
on “How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages”Submitted Programming on Parallel Machines: GPU, Multicore, Clusters and More as a story · 165 points
HN discussionIllegal Immigration does have an affect on blue collar jobs. You can research this yourself, btw. There is a truckload of studies. https://www.nber.org/digest/may07/effects-immigration-africa... http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/EffOnMinoritie... https://www.c-span.org/video/?204714-1/illegal-immigration-a...
Comment linking /pub/Immigration/EffOnMinorities/MHReport.html
on “The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire”Submitted From Linear Models to Machine Learning (draft) [pdf] as a story · 151 points
HN discussionThanks for the link. It looks like he wrote for U of M Journal of Law Reform on this topic: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Mich.pdf . Until I read through it and cross check his sources I can't judge the validity of course, but after reading over the first two pages his arguments seem compelling. A link to a 2000 profile in Salon on him: https://web.archive.org/web/20150307053811/http://www.salon....
Comment linking /Mich.pdf
on “U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers”Submitted Introduction to Linux Intel Assembly Language as a story · 63 points
HN discussionThe WSJ article specifically mentions H-1B visas. The Wall Street Journal often editorializes in support of more guest workers. Professor Norm Matloff presents a detailed critique of the H-1B visa : http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html ... "The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto indentured labor." I'm not sure how lean, garage startups feel about Venture Capital's special access to guest workers…
Comment linking /h1b.html
on “Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups”Submitted R for Programmers as a story · 59 points
HN discussionMoreover, an internal report in the National Science Foundation, a key government agency, actually advocated the use of the H-1B program as a means of holding down PhD salaries, by flooding the job market with foreign students. The NSF added that the stagnation of salaries would push domestic students away from PhD study, which is exactly what has happened. Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan has also explicitly advocat…
Comment linking /h1b10min.html
on “Large Companies Game H-1B Visa Program”Submitted Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage as a story · 29 points
HN discussionA scholarly take on the guest worker visas from Civil Rights advocate Norm Matloff ... [ http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b10min.html ] ... major attraction for employers, especially in Silicon Valley, is the "handcuffed" status of H-1Bs ... There is no tech labor shortage. No study, other than those sponsored by the industry, has ever shown a shortage.
Comment linking /h1b10min.html
on “Gaming the H-1B system for good”Submitted Emacs: The Software Engineer's Swiss Army Knife (1997) as a story · 12 points
HN discussion> if I can't click on a line number If clicking isn't a hard requirement, I think there is something to be said for command line debuggers with well done interfaces. I spend a lot of my time in Python at the moment which doesn't usually require a debugger because of its restricted control flow, but every so often I find myself in need and I always gravitate to PUDB ( http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/pudb.html…
Comment linking /~matloff/pudb.html
on “Sublime Text 3 dev build 3128 released”Submitted Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage as a story · 11 points
HN discussionNorm Matloff discusses the issues on H-1B http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html ___ Bottom Line: there is no labor shortage and there's no need for special targeting of technology jobs.
Comment linking /h1b.html
on “IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers”Submitted Introduction to Linux Intel Assembly Language as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThere have been a number of studies that come to this basic conclusion. Please see Prof. Norm Matloff's pages (UC Davis) http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/ImmigAndComput... , http://www.tbp.org/pages/publications/Bent/Features/Su09Brow... which tacitly touches on the subject, many articles in the San Jose Murky News about engineers who can't find work (and who just so happen to be "older"), a Congression…
Comment linking /pub/Immigration/ImmigAndComputerIndustry/NYT.html
on “Yammer CEO won't hire anyone from Yahoo who doesn't quit in next 60 days”Submitted Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI googled the good doctor, and wow, you weren't kidding. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html He really does see the H1-B as some sort of Ragnarok for the American programmer.
Comment linking /h1b.html
on “Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors”Submitted Introduction to the PuDB Python Debugging Tool as a story · 5 points
HN discussionLooking at his personal website it seems like he might have other motivations http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html
Comment linking /matloff.html
on “Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors”Submitted The H-1B work visa is fundamentally about cheap, de facto indentured labor. as a story · 3 points
HN discussionEh... I wouldn't write off the author that easily. I had him as a professor at UC Davis. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/matloff.html
Comment linking /matloff.html
on “Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors”Submitted Algorithms to Z-Scores: Probabilistic and Statistical Modeling in Computer Science [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThere is no tech labor shortage. No study, other than those sponsored by the industry, has ever shown a shortage. Wages, both for new graduates and established professionals, have been stable in the engineering and programming fields. Starting salaries for new computer science graduates were up about 3% in Spring 2011, according to NACE; a 2011 DICE report, in spite of claiming a shortage, concedes that overall tech…
Comment linking /h1b10min.html
on “The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie”Submitted Guide to Faster, Less Frustrating Debugging as a story · 2 points
HN discussionProf. Norm Matloff at UC Davis has done the research on the H-1B situation and it boils down to this: wages, age discrimination, and (effectively) indentured labor. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/wel.html http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html Do you truly believe that when an industry writes legislation that they haven't left loopholes in the resulting laws large enough to navigate the Queen Elizabeth II through?
Comment linking /h1b.html
on “Blueseed: Visa-free startup platform on a ship 30 minutes from Silicon Valley”Submitted Immigration and the tech industry: As a labour shortage remedy, to save costs? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe final statement in the article engages in a fallacy that all members in a job market have the same level of mobility without consideration of individual factors, such as: * Potential age-bias for older workers ([1] is an example of the discussion related to this, without being exhaustive obviously) * Local job market (relevant and equivalent positions) * Physical mobility (family situation, value of house in mar…
Comment linking /h1b.html
on “Don’t mess with IBM”Submitted Resource: Norman Matloff's Unix Tutorial Center as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
