Microsoft: Give us better staff

The fact is; India has a better CS education system than most US universities. I was just reading an article on TOI where they don't even bother posting lists of open seats at university exams for CS anymore, they are always filled. There is something about coming from a poorer country that makes people work harder to get out, or get ahead, whatever the case may be. The bulk of CS grads in the US, if we can call it that, are not nearly enough for all the work out there, and in many cases they are just not good enough, even with the degree. And many more still just don't give a shit about anything important anyway. When you take the time to learn a skill and make good use of it, and it's a valuable skill, guess what? You're going to get work, and lots of it. Even marginal IT folks manage to keep employed, there is tons of work out there. THIS is why H1B is so very important to the large tech players; they really do need more and better applicants. And India is a top spot to get them. Period.

Anyway, I work with mostly NRI folks, and I enjoy it greatly. The Indian people I come into contact with are very knowledgable, friendly, and mostly smell fine. ;) So, when you throw out a lackluster generalization like you did, expect a post from me, or someone just like me. The real deal is that, if these Indian coders were crap, why are they still there? If they are making less money, while still authoring great code, why do I keep getting hired? I'm not even that great of a programmer, I just tend not to fuck up enterprises to newsworthy levels, so they keep me around. And while I'm around, it's good to have other people that have a quality work attitude and knowledge of the craft. Most of the people I've met that complain a lot, are typically just shitty, angry, lazy, stupid assholes who wouldn't pick up a book to save their wretched lives. And, yeah, they are mostly white, American, males. The very angriest kind. But then, inbreds usually are. Right, UK? You know what I'm talkin' 'bout.

School's out, dufus.

@Mark 85 - Often a company's hiring woes and inability to attract top flight talent is because the word on the street is they are lousy place to work. Slurp has used the much reviled 'stack ranking' for years and it has apparently alienated employees and made them only able to attract second tier talent. Anyone who can avoid working for them will; there are better places to work.

Microsoft doesn't actually want better staff. Better staff means that they will be critical of the managers, and may even stage some sort of "revolt" against them. Not like The Crimson Permanent Assurance, which would be absolutely excellent, but something like that.

I myself have worked at Microsoft as a temp. The last time I worked there, I was bawled out over code that I didn't even write. Upon pointing out to my manager that I didn't write it, and the author of said code was seated next to him, he then proceeded to bawl me out over things that he had never mentioned he wanted done. Yep, that's Microsoft! Repeatedly the worst place I've ever worked. If you really do have serious skills, Microsoft is not the place for you.

No, Microsoft needs to have a CEO from the outside. Clean out the idiots, and fire the managers who hired them. If a CEO has the balls to play Styx's Renegade at the company meeting and follow through, that's the fellow they need.

Re: Avast there!

> is it a case of "Take all you can, give nothing back"? I'm sure I've heard that before, now where was it?

I think it was before the French revolution. Or was it the first American one?

Re: Avast there!

It is indirectly paid as a tax on the economy as a form of personal taxation.

Frankly, it does not matter if it is let's say Germany or Sweden which pays bursaries and has free higher education for its cittizens or it is USA where the student pays for most of the cost or UK which is somewhere in between. The student after that pays this out of student loans which form a tax on his/her salary or the general population pays tax which funds it. It is a form of tax one way or another.

The problem Microsoft has specifically in USA is that as CS matures and moves forward as a field of study the cost of educating a student fully (which in a mature field means MSc or higher) is starting to become so high that their starting salaries are unable to pay back the loan form of financing the education.

This is a common problem across USA education system - by the time you graduate at MSc or above from one of the more difficult disciplines you have accrued a level of debt which you cannot repay until your mid-40-es. This is artificially offset for some areas like Math, Physics, Chemistry and to a lesser extent Biology with grants which allows a student to get to MSc level without accruing unsurvivable debt on scholarships. CS - nope, none of that at present, very few scholarships and grants to go around.

MSFT, Google, F**book, etc can fix this by providing grants and scholarships (it is even tax deductible activity for them). The system is well established - USA Army and Navy run a fairly well honed version of that. However, being the lazy b***rds they are, they want Uncle Sam to fix it instead.

Actually, in Windows like in any other OS you can still program in plain C (or other decent languages to learn) using text-only I/O. It's just most students will find it "boring", and most teachers as well wants to jump on the latest fashionable technology - even if it will be dead in two years.

@Curious - upvoted for 'code katas' because I really like that. That could be both a starting point and a fallback position.

Re: Cost of Education versus Return through Employment

You don't even need fully free higher education - you just need affordable higher education for most citizens (and help those who can't access it). Let people pay enough to understand the value of what they are allowed to access - but not so high they need loans to access it.

Re: Cost of Education versus Return through Employment

...universal childcare...

As a tax payer without children, under your system, can I have a universal no childcare tax break so I'm not subsidising your breeding habits and lack of family budgeting and logistics planning?

"Who's going to look after you when you get old?" Probably not your children, as they'll all be CS majors at Microsoft or teaching Indians that, yes they can haz all teh codez.

Re: As a recent cs grad

Your university is patently incorrect and doing its students a gross disservice.

The demand in the industry in the EU and UK in particular for *good* developers far outstrips supply and really great developers that also have lots of experience and can work in 'architecture' type roles can pretty much name their own salary. To clarify, not referring to web UI type development.

No amount of outsourcing changes this as it quickly becomes apparent that the persons the job has been outsourced to cannot do the job without significant oversight and resources from a more competent developer somewhere else. Typically you will hear something like 'Why not give it to the team in X country?'. Answer: 'They can't do it'.

On the flip side, demand for network engineers has fallen off a cliff in the last 10 years with the advent of software described networking, cloud services and the like and this is coming from someone that used to work in networks. Most dedicated network engineers at my workplace either (a) old and retiring, (b) have been made redundant or (c) moved onto another role if they have the skill for it.

Network security sure, though information security is a broader subject with more potential and again, not much there wrt network security specifically. Penetration testing is at the low end of the food chain and to get hired as an 'information security analyst', you need an information security degree and substantial experience.

I fear the real reason the university does not recommend it is because hard (as in high level) programming courses are just not being taught in many top end universities and I sadly say this as a graduate from one such university. There is not much demand for the type of programming we were taught when I graduated, that is true.

It is true do not bother if you do not enjoy it - you will not get ahead, be proactive in your learning, learn things in your own time and move far ahead of what was taught at uni, which again is barely scratching the surface, without a desire to do so.

Take this as you will, but personally I'd do some searching on available jobs, their salary and number of open positions before you make a far reaching decision that will impact your entire professional career.