A Very Rare Moment of Honesty

Vivek Wadhwa of Duke University was interviewed on Morning Edition today (4/30/07).

He says that the "US is far ahead by any milestone" when asked about the quality of U.S. engineering graduates versus those from India and China.

In a not-so-indirect way, he thus acknowledges that behind the scenes company executives admit that Americans are the more capable workers (just too expensive), that H-1B visa is all about cheap labor, that companies like Microsoft are definitely gaming the system with their claims of worker shortages.

He says that "outsourcing R&D jobs is not good for the USA".

In closing, when asked "if you were a tech entrepreneur (starting up a new company), what would you do differently?" , he indicated he would act in his company's best interest and get the cheapest labor at the best quality (i.e., he would offshore jobs).

Quote:
"That's capitalism - the system rewards you for doing what's in your own interest. Bill Gates
interests as chairman of M$ are different than Bill Gates' interests as a philanthropist. He doesn't get paid to worry about US competitiveness and to worry about social issues as the chairman of M$".

(posted for AmericanProgrammer)