Thomas Friedman grandiose horse's ass

[Robert Oak]

What about the IT worker?

Oh, the IT worker, that's all a bunch of nonsense. Show me a qualified software engineer today anywhere in America who is looking for a job and can't find one. Some of them may have had to move a little horizontally. But show me one person who really has qualifications, is an IT knowledge worker, and just cannot find a job. I don't believe that.

http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1397,1779721,00.asp

Look at this idiot spewing inaccuracies putting down engineers.

The unemployment rate of Masters and PhDs is at an all time high!

Somehow I doubt people with years of experience and degrees from MIT,
Stanford, Georgia Tech and so forth are going to look too kindly
on some idiot journalist implying they are incompetent and the current shafting on an entire complex and difficult career area
has nothing to do with a race to the bottom on wages. (which is what
is really going on).

[still_one]

1. I live and work in the Silicon valley in San Jose Califronia

and I have two words for Mr. Friedman:

Get F**ked

[Turbineguy]

2. Things are strange all over.

"The unemployment rate of Masters and PhDs is at an all time high!"

Well, we do not have too many of those in my Union, but the new mantra seems to be:

"Power to the stupid!"

[Robert Oak]

5. how bout brilliant people can be stupid too

:) Fact is this lie on how a high IQ/college education will give
one financial security is still being perpetuated. PhD's and Masters
need a union badly, a white collar union or at least some sort of organization that negotiates and protects.

[Warpy]

3. This nitwit needs to realize that not all IT people are 20

and that the older a worker is, the less likely s/he is able to find a job that has benefits. Employers not only think older workers make the place look shabby, they can only see an older worker needing health care down the road and causing the company insurance premiums to go up.

If you're over 50 and unemployed, you're fucked, no matter what your field is.

[Robert Oak]

6. try 35 in engineering, career shelf life of 10 years, pathetic n/t

[BlueEyedSon]

4. There should be a law, when a pundit, journalist or politician -

you know, someone in the public eye - lies three times in public.... JAIL.

[mattclearing]

8. That's dangerous.

You know it would be used selectively to silence people.

[Salviati]

7. "I don't believe that."

And this is the problem with people today. Too much emphasis on what they "believe" to be true, and not enough emphasis on what is actually true.

[Cha]

9. Ya can say that AGAIN,

matey! :toast:

[mcscajun]

10. "Some of them may have had to move a little horizontally."

And some of them may have had to move a lot, vertically.

You're a corporate manager, and you have a person with 20-30 years of experience in the IT field, and all the relevant skills. Now you have the opportunity to hire someone domestically* who's 25 years old, a brand-spanking-new up-to-date degree with all the relevant skills, and you can pick that person up for Half of what your present employee is making. Pop Quiz: What do you do when upper management is screaming at you to cut costs?

*Alternate scenario: Upper Management just cut a deal to "offshore" all the IT work to India. It'll cut IT costs by 2/3. (Maybe. Only time will tell...but you're instructed to begin "knowledge transition" and lay off most of your IT staff.)

Now, for extra credit: what does this newly unemployed person of 50+ years do after they get "laid off"? If you answered "gets another IT job across town", sorry, you don't get the extra credit. The jobs available are all looking for the skills this newly unemployed person has, and many more; however, they're only willing to pay that same half-salary. Oh, and there are 250-1000 other folks just like this one looking in vain for that same position.

Thomas L. Friedman is bought and paid for, and a proponent of uncontrolled globalization. He should get stuffed. I'm talking taxidermy here. He'll make a nice exhibit in the Museum of the 21st Century: Corporate Apologist.

[Robert Oak]

11. Sophie's choice

In order to keep their jobs, they must betray their staff.

Just a little addition: This psychological warfare technique
was used in concentration camps to divide the crowds and turn
them against themselves.

What does it do to a soul who must betray everything he believes
in order to survive and what would each individual do faced with that choice?

I'll go for a corporate pundit taxidermy museum. The cogs of the corporate propaganda machine. I'm sure one day they will have the same
credibility as Leni Riefenstahl.


One case in point on the 20-30 year vet versus the new college grad.
I've watched that over and over and frankly the one who is going to
get the job done better and faster is the 20-30 year vet. I wonder if
anyone has bothered to do a study on the bottom line development cycle and quality and bugs and revs for 1 senior engineer versus a new college grad? I doubt it.

I think that is taken verbatim and has no basis in fact.
and is probably false in terms of the bottom line dollar. I'm not talking about dead weight ancient skills IBM guy from the 80's or whatever, I'm talking about the 20-30 year engineer who is completely up on the latest RTOS in embedded Linux, the latest FPGA architecture and so forth...
most veteran engineers are in this later category and I honestly believe in terms of bottom line dollars this is some fallacy perpetuated by some insane "management methodology" that was endorsed in the 90's. Problem is those "great management styles" are a complete joke, yet were touted as great, simply because those companies were making money hand over fist. There is no correlation or comparison between the bloodsucking GE/Intel management mentality in terms of personnel/good work environment management. Technical strategy, yes there is a strong correlation between success and the right technical strategy, but personnel and project management strategy...I don't think so...
In the 1990's a technical corporation could fuck a football and still make money simply because of the computer revolution.

[sendero]

12. Dear Thomas Friedman...

... you are a stupid fucking moron. You know about as much about the IT industry as you do about the Middle East.

How in the world does a shit-for-brains fool such as yourself manage to get published in a major newpaper. Teach us that, because that is clearly the only fucking thing you know.

Idiot.

[thegreatwildebeest]

13. But you forgot...

But you forgot that Friedman has such a deliciously nuanced view from the inside of his many hotel rooms in various third world countries, hisbonding with the working class of Britain in Oxford, and his rolodex of various pr men, corporate cheerleaders, and autocrats. That's really why he knows as much as he does.

[idlisambar]

14. Dumbest New York Times columnist ever?

So basically people have to work harder.

Yeah. We all have to work harder, starting with ME :dunce:, because we're competing against a wider pool. But if you do work harder, there are going to be some incredible niches out there. Don't be surprised if your kid comes home from college and says, "Mom, dad, I want to be a search-engine optimizer when I grow up." And the parents think, "What the hell are you talking about?"

[oscar111]

15. MILTON friedman relative? eom

[ramapo]

16. The World is Flat - More Friedman nonsense

The Times Magazine published an excerpt of Friedman's new book last Sunday. The gist is that the U.S. worker has been busy jerking off while the Indian economy has exploded from the power of the harder working and better educated.

First, Friedman is an idiot in that he just realized that American jobs are endangered by "globalization". Where has he been the last five or six years?

If he had been paying attention he would understand that the IT industry has been decimated by cheap labor, either from offshore, or onshore, chiefly with H1-visa holders.

The H1 fiasco gave hundreds of thousands of foreign workers a foothold in the US while providing corporations a way to hold down and then lower wages. There is no doubt that qualified Americans have been pushed down the economic ladder by corporations eager to cut costs with foreign workers.

He is correct that there are also many Americans with a false sense of entitlement. But in many ways our society only gives lip service to education. It is often not rewarded.

Friedman is also correct to say that it is time for Americans to turn off the TV and actually do something productive with their lives. However he totally fails to recognize that many hard working, well educated, very qualified Americans have been screwed.