🚀 go-pugleaf

Rising from fathoms unknown to the minds of men,
smanes@NOSPAM.HEREmagpie.com (Steve Manes) intoned (and nyc.general
quaked):
>>I have never known a time when one or more investment banks haven't
>>had hiring freezes.  Merrill Lynch was particularly badly hurt by the
>>collapse of the Russian good-faith debt market.  The condition of
>>Merrill Lynch is not indicative of the state of NYC investment banks.
>
>Do you have a clue about how the international investment market
>works?   They're _all_ in the same bed because they all have
>significant financial investments in foreign countries, especially in
>countries like Russia where buy-in was cheap and the promises of
>profits were huge.

I've worked four years in emerging markets (South America and Russia),
so I think I have a pretty good grasp.  Certainly, all of the major
investment banks have foreign currency denominated investments and, as
a result, got beaten up pretty badly.  This is usually diluted by a
solid hedge strategy in dollar call options.  The reason the Russia
crash was so bad was that the big, supposedly sound institutions that
issued the options were given permission by the government to default
on contracts with foreign "profiteers" for hundreds of billions of
dollars.

Three months before the crash, I was working for a small investment
firm that traded entirely in good faith Russian debt.  They had a
bigger hedge than their long position and still wound up going belly
up during the drop.

>>"Merrill Lynch is laying off 5% of its workforce" is only anecdotally
>>related to the argument that native-born programmers are getting
>>pushed out of jobs because of special-need visas and even less related
>>to the idea that "IBM Is Importing Low Wage Employes To Avoid Paying
>>American A Decent Wage!"
>
>And if you'll read back in this thread you'll see that this point had
>nothing to do with foreign vs. "native born" programmers.  On that
>point, if you remember, we agreed.

A good deal of the confusion here is that I've been arguing against
the position that, "The market for jobs is so bad that we should stop
importing programmers."  Obviously, this was not your position.  I was
unaware of that.

>>I would consider compelling a documentable citation that demonstrates
>>either that the current market downturn has caused a dramatic shift in
>>the number of technical jobs available in New York
>
>You're back-pedaling again.  I said that the current market situation
>has caused a dramatic reduction in the number of technical jobs in
>NYC's financial market.  That's a fact supported by every financial
>trade publication and every head hunter I've spoken with since August.
>You're pissing upwind with this contention.

I'm just setting up the parameters of proof.  Being willing to listen
to contraindicative evidence is not backpedaling.  It's a cornerstone
of rational debate.  I'm willing to be persuaded that you're right,
but haven't found your argument terribly compelling.

Of course, I don't know if we are arguing two different cases.
Clearly, the market has tightened.  I just don't think it's a big deal
or outside of the purview of the normal business cycle of programming
jobs.  I've had three students looking for entry-to-two-years
programming jobs and myself looking for a senior developer job.  The
number of interviews and financial industry interviews was
high-normal.  Three of us found jobs within two weeks.  I sat with
three of the recruiters who have gotten me positions in the past.  The
consensus was that there are plenty of financial-industry jobs out
there and that this was just business as usual.

--Elocutus
===
"Part of the secret of success in life is 
to eat what you like and let the food fight
it out inside."  --Mark Twain