binary braceros

Date: Monday, May 06, 2002 10:50 AM

*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***

Get the Facts on H-1B at www.ZaZona.com

All of you snot nosed kids that have ponytails and six-figure salaries
better watch out, because your H-1B replacement has probably already
arrived!

Jokes aside, I think the attitudes expressed in this article are very
common
in American companies today. At least the author admits that cutting
salaries and increasing working hours is the real reason to replace
American
workers with H-1Bs.

http://library.northernlight.com/PN20000113240000125.html?cb=13&sc=0#doc

Hate the Web Master? He, Too, Can Be Replaced

Irked by ponytailed Web masters with more attitude than ability who
command
six-figure salaries plus options? Jealous of journeyman programmers who
oh-so-casually double their day rates by defecting to competitors?
Stunned
by the C+ graduates with B.S. degrees from B- computer science programs
who
manage to snag $50,000-a-year starting salaries? You are not alone.

The good news is: It can't go on. The bad news is: It's your fault.
Really.
It's the tax on taking the path of least resistance. The millennial
reality
is that today's digital-development marketplace mimics the worst
excesses of
free agency in professional sports: Even known mediocrities demand--and
get--outrageous premiums. Organizations may loathe that reality, but who
deserves the blame? The most expensive wounds are always self-inflicted.

To add emotional insult to economic injury, few 40-plus managers with
children and mortgages are thrilled to pay top dollar--while bending
over
backward--to recruit and retain snotty Gen X propeller heads who think a
recession is something you skateboard around. Wounded managerial pride
and
premium labor pricing are a combustible combination. The situation
cannot
endure.

So there's a war going on. However, it extends far beyond the irritating
generational divide. This war is being waged against twin evils that
every
firm wants to eradicate: cost and dependence. Because the financial and
human capital costs associated with digital technologies--intranets,
extranets, e-commerce, data mining, ERP, etc.--are so high and rising
rapidly, organizations desperately need to manage them better. But cost
management is complicated because organizations have grown more
dependent on
the people who manage the digital media that the organizations have
grown
more dependent on. It's a vicious cycle.

For example, companies did themselves no favor by anointing "Web
masters"
and building e-commerce infrastructures around them. Over 25 years ago
software management guru Jerry Weinberg keenly observed, "If a
programmer is
indispensable, get rid of him as quickly as possible." That's not
counterintuitive cleverness; it's the essence of good management. To
this
day, Weinberg notes, that's the single piece of advice for which he
receives
the most thanks. Of course, each new generation of digital management
has to
painfully rediscover this truth on its own.

Consequently the 1990s' half-decade of the Web master actually
represents a
pathology of bad management, not a thoughtful embrace of technological
opportunity. Companies promoted the practice of indispensability at the
precise moment labor costs were surging to unprecedented highs. Sorry,
but
there is no computational innovation or digital developer that is ever
more
expensive than bad management.

That said, it's clear what the future will look like. Companies will do
whatever it takes to crack their cycle of digital dependence. Most will
continue to take the path of least resistance; a few will skillfully use
this as an opportunity to reinvent themselves. But make no mistake: The
goal
is to make the enterprise less safe for techies who earn as much as
executives a decade their senior. Internecine corporate warfare is never
pretty, but it can be fun to watch.

So expect increasing clamor for H1B visas to ensure the steady flow of
youngish, technically trainable, and cheap developers from overseas.
Fluency
in English ultimately matters less than fluency in Java, right? At least
that's what management fervently hopes. As the Internet globalizes at
ever
higher bandwidths, expect that nifty corporate wwwebfrastructure to be
crafted in either Bangalore or Budapest. Like Nike's Air Jordan's, the
designs will be done in the U.S., but the digital scutwork will be
performed
by binary braceros overseas.

The most provocative tomorrows will come when entrepreneurs pour their
ingenuity into figuring out how to automate Web mastery for the
managerial
masses. If data mining, customer-relationship management, and tech
support
software can be made as easy to use--and as reliable--as a spreadsheet,
then
just how many in-house gurus would a corporation need? Using cheaper Web
technologies to eliminate expensive Web technologists is precisely the
delicious irony that much of the baby boom's managerial generation hopes
to
savor before retirement.

After all, a century ago worried telephone company executives calculated
that everyone in America would have to become a telephone operator if Ma
Bell scaled up to reach out and touch the nation. In fact, that is
precisely
what happened: Instead of operators dialing numbers, we do. Automated
switches have created a nation of people who "program" the overwhelming
majority of the calls they make. When that becomes the design metaphor
for
managing the net-centric enterprise, the war is over. Those young
digital
whippersnappers who once swaggered to their desktops will be working
harder
for less money. And, really, isn't that what every executive wants?

MICHAEL SCHRAGE is co-director of the MIT Media Lab's e-markets
initiative
and author of Serious Play. He can be reached at
michael_schrage@fortunemail.com.

Copyright © 2000, Time Inc., all rights reserved.

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