By Will Sturgeon, 30 June 2006 15:50
NEWS
Jim Goodnight, the outspoken CEO of software giant SAS, has said the UK and US governments must open their borders to skilled overseas IT workers in order to remain competitive and foster a culture of innovation.
Goodnight told silicon.com the IT industry is crying out for changes to immigration laws and added that SAS has slowed its hiring in the US in favour of growing its teams in India and China where he believes there is a rich pool of talent.
"The industry is screaming for help in this area," said Goodnight. "In the US we are not producing enough skills in science and maths and yet we're not allowed to bring in more than 65,000 people each year who have those skills."
"You want to talk about some of the stupid things Bush has done? Why restrict the best and the brightest people from coming into your country?"
Goodnight said the UK is suffering in the same way.
"It's absolutely foolhardiness at a time when we need these skills."
But increased immigration is only part of the solution, he said. In the long term Goodnight believes the UK and US must encourage more students to achieve skills in science and maths to address the growing skills shortage.
"The US is 16th in the world now in terms of how many kids graduate from high school, as a percentage," Goodnight told silicon.com. "Over a third of our kids in the US drop out of school before 12th grade. What value are they to society? They don't play, they don't fit in.
"Two-thirds of our prison population do not have a high school diploma. It seems pretty clear to me, do you want to educate your children or do you want to put them in jail?"
For more, read our full interview with SAS CEO Dr Goodnight.
Comments
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1. Philip Virgo
What skills shortage?
THe proboem is the lack of opportunity/incentive to maintain, upgrade and update the skills of our current indiginous ICT workforce.
That entails making personally funded training fully tax deductible and exempting those being training or educated at corporate expense from income tax and national insurance for the time they spend under training, including a proportion of the time spent on structured, supervised and assessed wrk experience - the most expensive part of any serious skills deveopment programme.
2. Eric the Disillusioned
I agree wholeheartedly about the education crisis - it's coming along nicely in the UK as well. However, handing out jobs to foreign workers is a nonsense 'whiteboard' solution. There is a big distinction between immigration and coming to a country to get a job (better known as economic migration). Immigration brings with it superb additional factors including a desire to improve the country to which one immigrates. Economic Migrancy is simple rapine. This idiot is a clear example as to why IT people are not yet ready to migrate to the top echelons - most plausible easy solution wins over planned strategy.
3. anonymous
Skills shortage? What skill shortage? I am 50 years old, have 25 years experience in programming and IT and have just completed a (self-study) MSc IT. Yet, I don't see a flood of job offers. Not even a trickle. In my opinion the problem is not that of a skill shortage but is instead rooted in the lack of understanding and appreciation regarding IT amongst UK directors and senior management.
Prejudice continues against older (and experienced) workforce. The demand is for young graduates. In reality a mix of staff will ensure the best performance.
UK companies have a poor record of supporting vocational training of their employees. Perhaps the fear is that once trained, the staff will leave for higher paid positions.
UK companies still insist on locating IT development in London. Outsourcing has proven that successful IT development is not dependant on geographic location. Why not consider “near-sourcing” and locating IT and technology development in University towns in the North East, Midlands or the West?
There is a lack of understanding on the motivation requirements of software development staff. Successful American IT companies allow development staff a small percentage of time to follow personal projects. Development staff enjoys the rewards of perusing interesting projects and the companies often benefit from the resulting work. By comparison UK companies follow a Dickensian approach to handling staff.
I have noted a general inability of UK companies to provide good quality management of IT projects and personnel. Misunderstanding of IT personnel is not helped by the portrayal of IT staff as cartoon stereotypes. The IT industry is coming of age and the expectations and needs of IT staff are now more mature.
4. Simon
At least the SAS guy recognises that there's a teching/training issue !
But there is not skills gap, the supposed gap is just something the employers latch onto to justify why they don't want to employ local talent and would rather import foreign (cheaper) people.
In part, the problem is down to employers who now seem to expect their ataff to come ready trained and fit for the job from day one. Similarly, they expect staff to magically stay up to date with no further training.
The government doesn't exactly help, with the whole system geared up to winning the next election rather than what's good for the country in the long term. Add in a good dose of disjointed thinking and you have a recipe for disaster.
As an example of disjointed thinking - how many people know that there is (effectively) a 100% tax on personally funded training ?
5. Mark Hosey
I've seen this type of argument for a number of occupations. Teaching is one that is often quoted as being short of maths and physics teachers and no doubt now IT teachers. Electronics engineering was another occupation as well as a number of other branches of engineering. On all occaisions there was no physical evidence of a shortage, no jobs adverts in papers or trade mags; no vacancies with job agencies; no head hunting. I don't doubt there are local shortages in some regions, e.g. the South East and in particular the London area but it's not a country wide crisis. My paranoia often leads me to believe CEO's employ this type of propoganda simply to supress wages and avoid training costs.
Anyway, I've noticed an evident and wide spread shortage of well qualified and skilled CEO's (judging by the state of a number of businesses which appear to be run by some who only have a tenuous grasp of the practicalities of economices and human nature) but I don't hear anybody saying well have to import a whole bunch of low salaried highly skilled CEO's from some other country.
So I'll say it.......
There is an obvious and wide spread shortage of well qualified, competent and skilled CEO's. Not only should we import more highly educated and cheaper models from over seas but I sincerely believe we should also trade in the ones we've already got! Especially the ones who can think of no better solution to their problems than to jump on the next available band wagon' the latest being the "Open borders to <occupation> workers" band wagon.
6. anonymous
Absolute nonsense. All you have to do to understand what use (or misuse) is being made of the American skilled labor visa quota is to take a stroll through an actual visa request database (where companies file for visas they want, listing type of worker and pay). Dozens and hundreds of applications by big bodyshops, for up to a hundred workers at a time are easy to find. So, there is no shortage of visas, just big players hogging the quota. http://www.h1b.info/lca_search.php
Between 2000 and now, hundreds of thousands of competent, productive American tech (and other) workers were let go. During those same years, hundreds of thousands of foreign workers were brought in to take their places. If American was so desperate for talent, why did they flush so much of their own down the toilet?
7. Richard
Watching webcasts of BloggerCon, (hosted by ZDNet) it was interesting that many of the people producing the innovative technologies and ideas were themselves "of mature years."
Similarly for the recent OnHollywood conference about emerging media.
Most were not working for those large companies which regularly whinge about a "skills crisis."
8. anonymous
Most IT jobs are not so specialized that they cant be filled by any hard worker with technical savvy. And most large companies are over-staffed enough so that they can lay off large numbers of good workers at any time.
Companies generally will hire the best and cheapest that is available, so of course over time foriegn labor will "out compete" the local labor until the local labor seeks other opportunities, and then you have situations where over half the "local" staff is foriegn born.
In any case, IT is a very desirable profession, it is a real shame that certain shops have this cultural divide, where half the staff is foriegn born but working on US soil, it lends to the perception that the US cant control its borders.