05 Apr 2012, 8:34 pm
05 Apr 2012, 9:38 pm
05 Apr 2012, 9:50 pm
05 Apr 2012, 10:04 pm
From what I've read, you just need to be a foreigner who will be willing to come here on one of the VISA programs, and be willing to take half or less pay than an American for American jobs. Many companies will even train cheap foreign labor to steal American jobs.
Sorry for the rant, but I have relatives who are hurting over this. 
06 Apr 2012, 1:20 pm
questor wrote:
From what I've read, you just need to be a foreigner who will be willing to come here on one of the VISA programs, and be willing to take half or less pay than an American for American jobs. Many companies will even train cheap foreign labor to steal American jobs.
Sorry for the rant, but I have relatives who are hurting over this.
Sorry for the rant, but I have relatives who are hurting over this.
Jobs are not property. They are the result of a voluntary contractual relation. A job cannot be stolen because no one owns it.
ruveyn
07 Apr 2012, 3:42 pm
09 Apr 2012, 1:02 am
ruveyn wrote:
questor wrote:
From what I've read, you just need to be a foreigner who will be willing to come here on one of the VISA programs, and be willing to take half or less pay than an American for American jobs. Many companies will even train cheap foreign labor to steal American jobs.
Sorry for the rant, but I have relatives who are hurting over this.
Sorry for the rant, but I have relatives who are hurting over this.
Jobs are not property. They are the result of a voluntary contractual relation. A job cannot be stolen because no one owns it.
ruveyn
Agreed. Further, there may arguably be an economic/job market cost associated with outsourcing, but there is almost certainly not one associated with importing workers.
To the OP, finish your degree. Most job postings claim to demand a degree, but in my experience less than half in our industry put a lot of weight on it, *assuming* you have several years in the industry and can demonstrate talent (when you are interviewed they will ask you questions that will tax your knowledge of things like C++ structure, algorithms, etc - your answers to these questions will weigh heaviest on whether you are offered the job and the questions are rarely easy unless you are John Carmack). In my experience this has changed significantly from ~2004, at that time interviews were a lot easier and involved fewer challenging algorithmic questions. You can certainly get a job at a place like Barclays Capital and make 150-200k with no degree if you can ace these challenges and *all* of the interviewers like you.
It's more likely though that you're in a situation where you don't have the experience, and you're not yet equipped to take on problems like "optimize occlusion culling in a game engine" with nothing but a pencil and paper. If that's the case, and you have nothing but an associate's degree in this market, don't even bother applying for jobs because you're not going to get one. At a minimum, get the bachelor's. The market sucks right now anyway so there's no better time to do it.
09 Apr 2012, 7:59 am
10 Apr 2012, 9:08 am
10 Apr 2012, 12:56 pm
AngelKnight
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10 Apr 2012, 1:46 pm
10 Apr 2012, 4:07 pm
AspieRogue wrote:
If you're wanting to be a programmer, then you don't necessarily need a B.S.. However, if you're going to be a Software Engineer then you most certainly do need a BS in computer science to actually get hired by a software company. Web development has less stringent requirements than actually developing software since it uses software written by others and tends to use fairly high level languages.
Funny... I don't have a degree yet I got work as a Software Engineer for a software company when I lived in the USA. I also got a job working as a Senior Architect...
In short, no... you DO NOT *need* a degree, but when starting out it does open doors that are otherwise hard to open unless you are something special or have worked to open via other means (contact networks... family...).
Funny thing is, that having worked with people who have degree's, masters degree's and doctorates AND having been in the position several times to interview such individuals, many of the best programmers out there have been college drop outs who have worked hard and continued learning on their own dime in their own time... also some of the worst programmers I have encountered have had comp sci degree's but no actual talent beyond passing exams and doing coursework.... or they think that just because they finished college/uni that they have finished education and have everything they need in the industry...
However, my advice for what it's worth? Get a degree...
it saves a lot of pain in the first few years...
10 Apr 2012, 6:26 pm
The US labour market is far more rigid today than it was 20 or even 10 years ago. Suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret. The former will last for four years, whereas the latter may last for the rest of you life. 
10 Apr 2012, 8:48 pm
Moridin8 wrote:
AspieRogue wrote:
If you're wanting to be a programmer, then you don't necessarily need a B.S.. However, if you're going to be a Software Engineer then you most certainly do need a BS in computer science to actually get hired by a software company. Web development has less stringent requirements than actually developing software since it uses software written by others and tends to use fairly high level languages.
Funny... I don't have a degree yet I got work as a Software Engineer for a software company when I lived in the USA. I also got a job working as a Senior Architect...
In short, no... you DO NOT *need* a degree, but when starting out it does open doors that are otherwise hard to open unless you are something special or have worked to open via other means (contact networks... family...).
Funny thing is, that having worked with people who have degree's, masters degree's and doctorates AND having been in the position several times to interview such individuals, many of the best programmers out there have been college drop outs who have worked hard and continued learning on their own dime in their own time... also some of the worst programmers I have encountered have had comp sci degree's but no actual talent beyond passing exams and doing coursework.... or they think that just because they finished college/uni that they have finished education and have everything they need in the industry...
However, my advice for what it's worth? Get a degree...
it saves a lot of pain in the first few years...If you have years of experience as a programmer and a hefty portfolio of original c0de, then you could easily get hired without a degree. But in today's job market, it can really help if you're goal is to write large-scale software packages rather than just program websites or test c0de.
11 Apr 2012, 10:47 am
11 Apr 2012, 11:24 am
