Your exposition on H1B was much deeper than I expected. I knew the
reasoning was because they "can't find an American to work..." for peanuts.
My Linux (there - on-topic) journey with AI is a mixed bag, and that
disclaimer at the bottom is very wise: Gemini can make mistakes, so
double-check it
I needed a SQL query. I described what I needed to Gemini (only
Generative AI I can access from work), and in 10 seconds, it gave me the
perfect answer with a tutorial. Yay AI!
Then I needed a regex with grep. I described the problem to Gemini and
it gave me a solution. I tried it and it did not work. I told it that it
didn't work, it apologized and gave me the same solution. I literally
had a 15 minute argument with Gemini about its wrong answer. I asked it
if it had access to a Linux box to test the solution - LOL. Finally, it
gave me a piece of the right answer and I got it to work. So... did I
save time over searching the Interwebs? Maybe, maybe not.
So far, I'm getting about 60-70% accurate Linux answers from Gemini.
My colleagues that use Copilot report they are getting about the same
with their programming tasks. Copilot writes code in the same style as
the human, and makes mistakes in the same style.
So programming isn't dead yet. Getting there. Coding (at least where I
work) has been relegated to the status of factory assembly work.
Mindless, boring, and pretty low skill. What I learned about data
structures and such LAST CENTURY is now replaced by libraries the coders
include as they need them. I doubt seriously today programmers have any
clue about the math behind a binary search. I've had discussions about
database performance based on the number of records. Blank stares.
Getting replaced by someone using AI is the next logical step in driving
expenses downward.
Looking into my crystal ball, which is about as foggy as my brain, I
think the demand for Code Reviews and QA Testers will increase. Sure,
let AI code up an app based on a really good set of prompts, but ya
gotta test the hell out of it. Boundary conditions, erroneous user
input, network failures. Maybe I'm looking into an alternate future
where the mantra is "Don't let perfection get in the way of 'good enough.'"
As other have said, "I'm glad I'm retired." Well, not quite... four
years to go.
Regards,
George Toft
On 7/3/2025 5:39 PM, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
First, H1B workers have been getting abused for over a decade.
Every email I get from job shops is from someone with an Indian name and when I
talk to them, it’s really hard to understand them for their thick accents. The
Indian companies have pretty much taken over job placement in America, in large
part because from what I’ve heard, people pool their money to send someone over
here to set up a business. All it takes (!) is $250k deposited into an on-shore
American bank, a type of visa issued to people who say they’re here to start a
new business with said funds and who promise to hire at least 5 (or so?)
employees. The thing is, there are no restrictions on who they hire! So what
they do is use this as a way to funnel people from their little group back home
over to America. They set them up with H1B visas, bring them over here, and
work as a job shop to get them into places at whatever rates they can get.
When I talk to these guys, their first question is always, “What’s your rate
and availability, Mr. David? No matter what rate I say, they almost always come
back and say, “Oh, my, the client is only able to pay $22 or maybe $23 per
hour.” This is for a job req looking for for a “Senior Developer” with 10+
years of experience!
See, the only thing the Dept of Labor requires them to show is that they were
unable to hire any Americans for the position in order to justify hiring a
foreigner. DOL never asks WHY. So I think you know you’re working with one of
these cheap family-owned groups when they keep low-balling the rate because
they need to justify hiring their family members.
But the other side is AI. I think every job that relies predominantly on what
I’d call “analytical” skills will be mostly replaced by AI. Jobs that involve
some amount of physical labor, regardless of how much analytical skills are
needed, will take many years to be replaced.
Note that 100% of programming is analytical in nature, so this thing we call
“programming” is going to disappear pretty quickly. The only reason we do it is
because “coding” is an intermediate language we use to get stuff out of our
heads and into a form that can be studied and communicated to other humans.
Machines can’t make sense of it, so it’s a formal language that can be reduced
to binary files that execute tasks represented as lists of CPU instructions.
I’ll say it again: programming languages exist for the convenience of HUMAN
PROGRAMMERS. Without us in the loop, the “code” is extraneous. AI will go from
a high-level description and some interview questions directly to running code
that can be tweaked by the person creating the app.
Yes, this will eliminate a couple of million jobs by 2030. But it’s going to
create HUGE opportunities for a new kind of “creator” class of workers.
Frankly, I’m glad I’m retired and don’t have to rely on my programming skills
any more. But I’m eager to see what lies ahead.
-David Schwartz
On Jul 3, 2025, at 1:13 PM, George Toft via PLUG-discuss
<[email protected]> wrote:
I would like to add...
1. From a paper posted at work as required by the Department of Labor. Tata
Consultancy is providing H1B Visa workers to be Database Administrators for
$66K/year. Tata is well known to take 1/3 off the top, so that means H1B worker
gets $44K/year. That's $22/hr. In Phoenix. That is what we - as IT workers -
are competing with. My children with no college education make more than that.
2. Oh, it gets better with AI. I went to an all-day AI conference (it was
actually three days, but it made me physically ill, or maybe it was something I
ate). The presenters demonstrated how Generative AI can be used in social media
posts and on Instagram. The presenter admitted he hadn't made a post in six
months - he had AI generate a video of him talking, lip-synched to his
AI-generated voice, making hand gestures. He also demonstrated live how to get
ChatGPT to make LinkedIn posts that sound like him. And then, he told us how he
was able to avoid hiring an executive assistant by collaborating with three AI
Generalists for two days. So eight labor-days of AI Engineer salary was
expended to avoid the recurring annual cost of a person's job.
3. Microsoft laid off 6000 last quarter and announced 3000 more, with AI
stepping into many of the roles. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxl0w1w394o
4. Even in my own web-hosting, the host switched their live chat to a chatbot.
I had to migrate one of my sites from one type of account to another about two
months ago, and again on another site last week, and needed guidance both
times. In the first migration, a human on the chat helped me. On the second, it
was some Agentic AI. The chatbot was faster than the human and gave me perfect
answers, going so far as to weave in parts of my question in its answer. It
felt like it was straight out of ChatGPT. And that's a problem - the AI gave me
better customer service than the human.
Regards,
George Toft
On 7/2/2025 12:28 AM, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote:
I think H1B visas for programmers and engineers should be FROZEN for 5 years.
AI is going to be transforming both the programming world and many engineering
roles. As a result, I believe there are going to be more software people dumped
on the market over the next 5 years than we had after Y2k.
Unfortunately, most of these folks are going to be US Citizens rather than H1B
visa holders, for reasons I alluded to earlier.
Congress should block all further H1B hires and demand companies spend that
money on retraining their existing US workers rather than dump them into a
rapidly shrinking job market and replacing them with foreigners.
Unfortunately, most of the 25 wealthiest billionaires in America also happen to
run companies that have huge staffs of software and hardware engineers. So
given the current political climate, what’s the likelihood that there will be
any significant change in current policies?
-David Schwartz
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