NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

Ajai Khattri wrote:
  > These two facts most likely limit how far foreign tech workers can
> advance.

There is also other points, some technical workers don't want to advance into 
managerial positions or regret that they did. My boss at IR wanted to be a 
technical manager, what happened is that he spend his entire time on emails, 
meetings, and PowerPoint presentations. What a waste of a brilliant firmware 
engineer.
I wouldn't want to be a manager running a department, but would like to be a 
project lead for a limited time. I also think it depends a lot on the company. 
Some companies have a much flatter management structure and focus on one 
industry. The problem at IR was that we were a software development team in a 
company that usually relates only to hunks of steel or 'real' product that can 
be stuffed in a box. We made software that was mainly downloaded off a web 
site. Upper management couldn't take it apart or stuff into a box, for them it 
was either uninteresting or they didn't even know it existed. I now work at 
Tyler Technologies and as the name says, it is a tech company. What a 
difference that makes. I think it is misleading to measure technical skill and 
knowledge by counting the number of promotions. And that applies to both 
foreign and domestic workers.
Also, foreign workers regardless of visa status cannot work in quite a few 
companies. As soon as government contracts are involved chances go way down. 
Even so much, that one gets excluded from study projects. When I was at CCSU I 
attended a course about production management. Part of the course was to 
manage a project at a local company. They make parts of jet engines that are 
used in commercial and military planes. From the 24 students 8 were 
non-US-citizens. Not only were we not allowed to take part in the project, we 
were even thrown out of class when a production manager talked about what the 
company does. I complained about that to the instructor, my wife who is an 
alumni of the same university wrote a nasty letter to the university 
president. The responses were prompt with written letter of regrets and the 
plea to keep the press out of this. It was not easy to go back to class the 
week after. The project work was canceled, which was unfortunate, but the 
instructor adjusted his plan very well and it was in the end the best and most 
challenging class I had, in fact it was the only class I considered worthy of 
a masters program.

David