Demand for H-1B Visas Continues to Rise in 2018

Continued massive growth by the giant high-tech companies in Silicon Valley brings with it commensurate demand for trained software engineers (as well as housing shortages and high prices, traffic jams, and other problems). The U.S. doesn’t produce enough STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) trained people, so the tech companies are forced to cast a wider net by hiring foreigners, using the mechanism of H-1B visas. Many of these H-1B hires are from India, and of those many are provided by well-compensated outsourcing firms such as Infosys, Tech Mahindra, and WiPro.

The situation in 2018 is similar to the one in 2017, with the important difference that now President Trump is now involved. He does things in strange and wonderful ways, and the America First plank in his election platform may bode ill to the H-1B visa program. Plus, he is at odds with the leaders of the giant high-tech companies. So anything can happen.

While the H-1B visa program may enable well-educated (especially in technology) individuals to enter the U.S. and earn considerably more than they could in their native countries, some of them are dissatisfied with the layers of bureaucracy that prevent them from advancing. However, there are two outstanding exceptions to this (both natives of India), namely Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (who joined Microsoft in 1992 and became its CEO in 2014) and Google Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai (who joined Google in 2004 and became its CEO in 2015 when its now-parent Alphabet Inc. was created).

One Less Big Tech Company to Pile Into Already-Overcrowded Silicon Valley

The good news today is that Amazon will NOT locate its second headquarters (with up to 50,000 people) in the Bay area. So San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo will get his wish. This is a welcome change from past practices by Silicon Valley cities, when city councils have welcomed large, tax-paying companies despite the downsides of their new presence.

Every day Silicon Valley denizens read about high-and-rising house prices and apartment rental rates, traffic jams and ever-longer commutes, and other phenomena caused by the irrational decision-makers at the likes of Adobe, Amazon, Facebook, and Google … AND local city council members with dollar signs in their eyes. We have lobbied for regionalization to spread the employees and economic benefits more evenly across the country, for thoughtful consideration of ALL aspects of the situation (including housing and traffic flow), for thoughtful consideration of ALL aspects of the situation (including housing and traffic flow), and to grow their Silicon Valley operations at sensible rates.

Bitcoin Nonsense

While there may well be a need for more effective ways to conduct financial transactions than the ones that have been used during the past decades, it is not clear that Bitcoin and similar “cryptocurrencies” are better alternatives.

The creation of these cryptocurrencies by running super-supercomputers is an illogical idea for starters, a bad joke dreamed up by super-geeks. Worse, this process wastes energy and damages the environment. Bitcoin “miners” seem to be accurately named because they behave like coal miners, and the coal-burning electrical generation needed to produce Bitcoins et al causes global warming and harms humans and other living organisms. Even the amounts of paper and energy being used just to report on Bitcoins are enormous. Our own collection of newspaper clippings and computer file that were the background of this post far exceeded those for any other post we have written. And we puzzled over what historical event or literature provided the best model. Was it the Dutch tulip craze in the 1630s? Or The Emperor’s New Clothes of 1837? Or something else?

Watching the action suggests that most of the people who are engaged in buying and selling Bitcoin and the like have a gambling addition, and can only hope that mere mortals don’t get too carried away with the excitement … which is amplified by today’s reporting in newspapers and TV.