Sometimes I guess I just don't understand..[RANT]

[Christopher_Arm]

No I have come to this decision a long time ago it seems from my standpoint.

I graduated from a college where I had low math scores in calculus and differential equations so when my undergraduate counselor spoke with me he told me I 'd be better suited as a lawyer, or as a psychologist.

What I did since I was lazy and discouraged at that time in my life was to redouble my efforts, practically live at the library and get tutoring and apply more disciplined time at study and concentrating on what I was doing as I paid my way through college and it was on my dollar and it paid off and I graduate with my peers in Computer Science. I beat every obstacle that stood in my way that said you can't do this and I rose in my field over time.

Then I came to find the academic world and the corporate word of IT were like night and day. And the expectations of the latter were far greater so I strove to be the best and adapt and learn in regards to the technology and I became quite adept over the years in programming and the logic that goes into scaled projects.

With that said in my tenure I have noticed as a black man in the United States working in New York City no less that I have maybe seen three programmers in my ten years of working that are minorities( black, latino). And even looking back about nine years or so when I first started out before the year 2000 maybe in 1998, I saw more causcasians occupying the roles of analysis, programming, network engineering, consulting, and the majority were managers.

Now the playing field has changed considerably after the dot.com bubble burst.

And of those the majority who have come to dominate the field are predominantly Russian,Middle Eastern, East Indian or Pakistani, and or Asian respectively Japanese or Chinese.

And I have come to find that from my own opinions cultivated over time ( informed or speculative) that America has long since lost its competitive edge in producing students in the inner cities who excel in the areas of math and the sciences to have those equal areas of opportunity open to them. And as a result this is locked away from them. Such as the realm of computer science. And if you have no edge to compete then what right do you have to complain ?

And those who have emigrated here have seized those opportunities and made the fullest use of them so this can not be begrudged because they are good at what they do technically. And they speak with the expertise that is largely absent in higher circles of management and clients which is occupied by other ethnicities( which are largely dominated by circles of whites, blacks and latinos in my workplace).And they have earned a respect that is seldom accorded and they fill a void in this country.

However, I think is fair to say that outsourcing such as it is exists today it the least of our worries as it seems the subset of non-immigrants able to compete in their own nation with all of the advantages over their overseas counterparts do not seem to be able to cut the mustard. Or even open the refrigerator to get to the mustard.

And so I represent a small representative of what is essentially almost non-existent. A generation of american born students who applied themselves after a fashion to be fairly competent in information technology and speak in the language of the information age so as to open doors for themselves.

But now I savor my victory over adversity less as it is now less about merit and effort spent at working harder and smarter and more about social networks and politicking. It is about those who dodge accountability and those who takes the bullet for someone 's else failures. It is about back stabbing and people who steal code from the web instead of innovate or do themselves to get faster results. Rather than the alternative of working and understanding what it took to produce said results.

It is about not caring how those results were obtained but merely that the results are present. It is about being only as good at your latest project as opposed to sleepless night spent working and doing your best and being told from someone who has no technical proficiency but all of the authority that you aren't good enough to measure up. It is about people who get certified with Microsoft via Prometric or who have 3.6 GPA'S graduating college that can not perform when they are assigned a task as well as the non-certified person who has a 2.7 GPA and yet employers use that are a criteria/wedge to pre-empt and select a small pool of programmers for a job. And yet those are the people chosen and hired nonetheless.