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Microsoft Unveils "Elevate America"
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Feb 23, 2009 05:15 PM
from the we-really-need-some-good-pr-what-can-we-do dept.
from the we-really-need-some-good-pr-what-can-we-do dept.
nandemoari writes "In response to the current economic crisis, Microsoft Corp. has come out with a stimulus plan of their own. Their goal is to help a large group of individuals use their computers to land employment in ways other than to generate a compelling resume. The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."
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Volt Asks Temps To 'Vote" For Microsoft Pay Cut 412 comments
theodp writes "In an email sent Friday evening to its Microsoft temp workers, Volt Workforce Solutions asked the techies to 'vote' to agree to a 10% pay cut. From the email: 'We want to support you in continuing your assignment at Microsoft and respectfully ask that you respond by going to the upper left hand corner of this email under the "Vote" response option and select, "Accept'" by close of business Tuesday, March 3, 2009. By accepting you agree to the [-10%] pay adjustment in your pay rate.' Microsoft managed to keep the Feb. 20 email detailing plans to slash rates from leaking while it pitched its Elevate America initiative at the 2009 Winter Meeting of the National Governors Association, touting Microsoft skills as just the ticket to economic recovery."
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Clearly, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Clearly, (Score:5, Funny)
It's a trick. Get an axe.
Parent
Re:Clearly, (Score:5, Funny)
I hear they had 1400 [slashdot.org] employees working on this.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Here's some facts, you can thank me later. [getthefacts.com]
how much later?
Re:Clearly, (Score:5, Funny)
...right around the time the temperature in hell dips below 0 degrees.
Kelvin
Parent
Easy! (Score:5, Funny)
How does one get the temperature below 0 degrees Kelvin?
When jokes fly above the heads of unsuspecting slashdotters, the ensuing endothermic reaction has been shown to lower temperatures past 0 degrees K.
The "woosh"-ing sound means it's working!
Parent
Re:Clearly, (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Clearly, (Score:4, Funny)
HAHA! God forgot to check for integer overflows!
Parent
Re:Clearly, (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, they claim to be training Americans, but they're training them for jobs that are disappearing [nytimes.com] forever. [digg.com]
Parent
Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
Second: Microsoft's slump is probably due more to peoples' general (and increasing) dissatisfaction with Microsoft than anything else. But the economy will hurt them, too. Maybe a lot. After all, a 5-year-old PC can run Linux just fine. But try Vista on it. Nope, didn't think so.
I would be willing to bet that Microsoft's slump lasts longer than any slump for Intel or AMD or Google.
And IBM? Who cares? When was the last time YOU bought something from IBM?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, of course computer sales are in a slump. They were in a slump during the last big economic downturn, too. (Remember the "bubble"?) That doesn't mean much of anything.
And the jobs never did come back to America- it took 7 years for the number of jobs to be EQUAL to that before the crash, and during that time we imported just about as many workers as we gained jobs.
Second: Microsoft's slump is probably due more to peoples' general (and increasing) dissatisfaction with Micr
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of those jobs didn't leave the country, exactly - they vanished because they were never real in the first place. You can only continue employment on speculative investment for so long. Like right up until the bubble bursts.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think you can show causation here. Outsourcing had already begun; it wasn't caused by the "dot-com bubble".
I did look at the second link, which by the way was not a link to a story, but a link to a link to a story, which is very bad form. Regardless, quote: "Whose last big processor, the Nehalem
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
XBox 360 - Chipset made by IBM
Playstation 3 - Chipset made by IBM
Wii - Chipset made by IBM
I think most gamers care .....
Parent
That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)
SHHHH!!! You are going to mess up their plans! They are very large users of the H1-B visa program and they would like to justify their continued [ab]use of the program! After all, the firing of thousands in the US while claiming the are needs to expand the H1-B program in today's situation is a pretty questionable move on the surface. Now they have to do something to appease congress and fast!
Parent
Re:That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are very large users of the H1-B visa program
Supposed to say this?
They are the largest user of the H1-B visa program
I'm being cheeky about it. But, I remember when they opened the office here in Vancouver how excited everyone was and then no one was being hired here but there was a lot of people coming in from abroad to work here. The problem is on paper it always looks better to move things offshore because the "operating effeciencies" but look what happens when things are moved, poorer quality, poorer service and no one cares. I'm inclined to blame the "Walmart/everything's disposable and cheaper to replace mentality".
Parent
depends on what you mean by computer skills (Score:4, Interesting)
Some areas have large surpluses, others have large deficits. One area I'm familiar with with a deficit is anything to do with data analysis, due to the huge piles of data companies like Google and Facebook are building up that they don't do nearly as much with as they could. If you can convince a company that you're both technically competent when it comes to data mining, machine learning, etc., and have knowledge in some area that relates to something to do with it (marketing/customer stuff, artificial intelligence, even just information visualization), there are plenty of jobs.
Actually, in general, the best bet seems to be to have two useful skill areas that intersect in some reasonable way; really cuts down the competition as compared to going up against people in one area or the other in isolation.
Parent
Re:That's great... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is still high demand for people with REAL computer skills: programmers, back-end Web Developers, and good front-end Web Developers, for that matter. Not to mention the hardware end of things (although I am not necessarily referring to the "classical" IT position).
And for the latest-and-greatest software tech, like Ruby and Python (and I will reluctantly include
Parent
Re:That's great... (Score:5, Interesting)
You're prediction of the demise of English as the World trade language is quite premature.
After all, the World speaks English not because of currency, but because of music and movies.
When the next Batman movie and T-Pain record come out in Farsi, then you can start talking about the "Death of English". And dubbing doesn't count. I speak Italian, but watching The Simpsons in la Lingua just isn't as good.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Slumdog Millionaire is, at least according to all the sources I've seen, in English and Hindi, which are the two languages "of the Union" in the Republic of India. If it had been set in, e.g., Iran or Afghanistan, it might have been in Farsi.
Re:That's great... (Score:4, Informative)
Another point pushing for English to be a dominant world language is the Internet... it was first developed in English speaking countries, and I would hazard a guess that most computer software is written using English. Written in English both as in the most common programming languages use English commands, and the code, comments and documentation are written in English. Being the "native" language of computing could do almost for pushing English as a dominant world language as simply having a large speaking base.
I personally think it would be more likely for a patois of Chinese (mostly Mandarin,) English and other languages to develop than for Mandarin to take over as the sole language of trade and international relations.
Parent
Re:That's great... (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt greatly that English will be a reasonable choice for trade language into the next decade.
No, I think English will be the common language for most of this century at least. Although the English that is commonly used ten years from now may be as foreign to our ears as the English of Shakespeare. English is evolving faster than it ever has before.
For over a decade, there have been more people who have learned English as a second language (ESL) than there are native speakers of English. At this point in time, there may be more ESL speakers than sum of all the native speakers of English who ever lived. If we ar not at that point yet, we soon will be.
We are also very close to the point where more communication in English is being done between ESL speakers than is being done between a native speaker of English and an ESL speaker. It is common in FOSS projects to find a Finn, a Brazilian, and a Japanese person using English in their correspondence while they fix a bug or develop a feature.
Would someone who knows how to do it propose a Slashdot poll for me? Something like this:
It would be neat to see this done every couple of years, see what the trend is.
Parent
Come on.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They also use this tactic with student/academia discounts, also.... (MSDNAA, anyone?)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is just grabbing the opportunity to train more devs and IT in advanced Microsoft products.
Yeah, my first thought when I read the summary was, "So Microsoft is teaching 'the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology,' huh? Does that include Linux administration?" Because seriously, that's a pretty important skill.
No, I'm not just being snarky or karma whoring. That's a really useful skill.
It's a secret plan (Score:4, Funny)
As it is, the problem isn't a lack of qualified individuals, but rather a lack of jobs for them. On the face of it, this looks like a complete failure of an idea. But they have a secret. You see, they will teach people to use only Microsoft technologies, and if everything goes right, these people will be unemployable in an IT environment. When the number of qualified IT people is lowered to the number of jobs, success!
Yes, it is what you think (Score:5, Informative)
At first, I was going to post about not berating Microsoft blindly. Then I RTFA... They have basic courses for free online, but anything past that is an advertisement for MS certs.
do this first (Score:5, Funny)
Can step #1 be teaching everybody in my office that Caps lock is not the same as shift?
Also that you need to turn on num-lock to use the numpad?
Seriously...what ever happened to requiring basic computer skills to get an office job?
And they're getting jobs where? (Score:3, Funny)
Will Microsoft also be relocating those 2 million people to India so they can actually find jobs with their new skills?
its only MS Training (Score:5, Informative)
i see no Cisco training, Apache, MySql, etc
but i do see training on Server2008 (woopee do)
this is just a fluff/feelgood PR initative, when really they want 2 millon mcse's/advocates/salespeople who only know about a single vendors product and are therefore ill equipped for the modern diverse IT industry.
there is more to IT than MS and a Mcse
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing new here (Score:5, Funny)
Lift America's Economy (Score:3, Funny)
... and install SilverLight!
The only problems solved here is Microsoft's (Score:4, Insightful)
So will these elevators be free? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cause I'm having a hard time justifying a $200 OS for my $300 laptop ... at least in the Real America that most of us live in.
Oh, and no takebacks on the Elevation, like they did with the firings of their staff and the pay they "overpaid" ...
BS (Score:4, Insightful)
It's time the geek stopped wallowing in his own FUD.
The Acer XP laptop [walmart.com] with an Atom CPU, a 9" screen, 1 GB RAM and a 160 GB HDD is $298 at Walmart.com.
In six months to a year the OS will be Win 7, the specs significantly better, and the price will still be cheaper than OEM Linux.
The lone Linux netbook?
A Dell Inspiron with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of Flash for $350.
"Not sold in stores."
Parent
Oh, so they'll be teaching them... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, so they'll be teaching them how to manage systems running real operating systems like AIX, Solaris, *BSD, and various flavors of Linux. Neat.
Good strategy for MS (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a good strategy for MS, much like what Apple had with school districts - teach as many people in ways that make them dependent on your proprietary technology as you can, and call it a public service.
In my opinion, the underlying problem in this economy is thus: The rich portion of the populace owns about as much as is possible before the economy collapses. Our market is based on speculation and expectation setting - on growth of money making schemes. But what happens when the players looking to take more resources run out of easy resources to grab? Collapse.
The poorer 3/4 of the country have spent about all they are going to spend, and have gone in about as deep a debt as is plasible. It no longer makes sense to lend more money, or leverage more resources in hopes of getting return from that process. The owning class already has already extracted as many resources as they easily can, and it would take death on the part of the poorest folks to free any more resources to grab.
The only way left to continue the desired cycle and free up credit would be to take resources from the rich, and give it to folks who would actually spend those resources in the process of just living day to day, which would open up the credit markets again, increase demand for products, and so on.
But we've seen what outrage occurs when that happens - the whole point of the market for the larger players is to extract more resources, not give money to the "undeserving!" So, we get schemes like those from Microsoft - push for further ownership of mindshare, and call it charity.
Ryan Fenton
Misleading introduction..! (Score:5, Insightful)
"...The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."
This would have been better and on point:
"...The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in using Microsoft technologies to perpetuate their proliferation while increasing dependence on such technologies at the same time."
Correction (Score:4, Insightful)
Hilarious (Score:3, Informative)
So they wan to help laid off workers, just not their own laid off workers?
Microsoft Bungles Severance, Asks Laid Off Workers for Money Back [eweek.com]
How Microsoft-esque
Your tax dollars at work (Score:5, Interesting)
Elevate America has two main offerings, one available immediately and one that will be provided in partnership with state governments
Translation: MS will get money earmarked for retraining programs in order to flood the market with MS trained workers, depressing the wages of the latter and making their "TCO" so much more attractive.
You have to admire a company that is able to screw us coming and going.
Out of Work? Losing Your Home? Hungry? (Score:4, Funny)
Am I wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
But didn't Microsoft just cut their workforce? http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=11561 [zdnet.com]
I am sure it wasn't all in the US, but still one hand saying hey lets help American workers get the skills they need to get a job, and then cutting thousands of workers seems to be a bit conflicting in their messaging...
A Reactive Attack on Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
Several posters have mused that Microsoft's strategy is to flood the market with MSCEs and grow the market for themselves.
My general impression is that we've been hearing about organizations switching to Open Source solutions during the economic downturn due to lower costs.
Could this be Microsoft feeling threatened and reacting by counter-attacking?
Microsoft *is* big and is not going to die soon, that much is certain. But what's important is whether the trend is going up or down, and by how much. Being big just helps you control that (to some extent).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
2 million more arrogant pricks who don't know what they're doing.
There, fixed that for you.
Re:Just what the world needs (Score:5, Funny)
You don't think Minesweeper and Solitaire are going to play themselves, do you?
Parent
Re:The special skill they want (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to be a xenophobe, you might as well come out and say it, rather than blaming all of our economic woes on foreigners.
The number of H1B workers is a drop in the bucket in the context of the national economy.
The number of H1-B visas that can be issued in a given year is limited [wikipedia.org] to 65,000 by law.
According [bls.gov] to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the total size of the American workforce was approximately 153.7 million last month (with unemployment at a troubling 11.6 million).
An H1B worker is typically limited to a 6-year stay, unless the worker is applying for permanent residency. Assuming that all 65,000 workers stay each year, we have 390,000 H1B workers in the country at the present (I'd guess the actual number is somewhat less than that).
At the very worst, H1-Bs might represent 0.25% of the national workforce.
Microsoft employs 3,517 H1-B workers (the 3rd most of any American firm), out of 89,809 total employees, or just about 4%. This number might be a little high, although 4 percent doesn't strike me as being particularly alarming.
Microsoft's recent round of layoffs (the first in the company's history) let go about 5,000 workers. Although I suppose these could have largely been avoided by eliminating all of the H1-B workers, that still leaves 1,500 workers, and assumes that every single H1-B worker was worthless to the company (which is somewhat doubtful).
To summarize: Stop complaining about the H1-B workers. Although it's not a good idea to begin hiring foreign workers during a recession, the current crop of H1-B workers is simply too small to be having any substantial effect on the economy.
Parent
Re:MS in the resume is bad for you (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit.
Most interesting jobs are for people who can drive any car - whether it's a Toyota or a Renault.
We're a 50-50 linux shop (a big bank), and if you "I DON'T DO WINDOWS", we regard you as the same dogmatic crowd as "I'M SCARED OF LINUX, IT HAS A COMMAND LINE". The clueless crowd we don't hire.
If you're a professional systems engineer, you can manage anything (and code and script on it).
If you're dogmatic about a product, you're putting your religious beliefs (those that tack 'good' and 'evil' labels on things such as Microsoft, GNU or the open-source community) before the interests of your employer, and we wouldn't touch you with a 10-meter pole.
Best advice I can give is be ambivalent - get the fact you're a techie across. If you can sell yourself as an a-religious techie, you'll be in more demand.
Make a potential employer understand you'll do what is best for him, and you won't let your decisions for him be dictated either by your fear of one thing or religious dogma favoring the other.
Parent
Re:MS in the resume is bad for you (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the OP was suggesting that you create your CV full of Linux skills, and then watch as the recruiters direct you to Linux jobs.
If you have, say, AS/400 mentioned once, as an aside, in a small paragraph, using a tiny font, as a insignificant part of your first job, that you never even touched but the company once had an AS/400, I can guarantee you will get recruiters calling about whether your AS/400 skills are up to date enough to be a sysadmin!
Remove all traces of MS from your CV and you will get only interesting jobs - embedded, mobile, Linux. You won't get called for the crowd of MS vb.net jobs that are out there. You don't have to mention anything about hating Microsoft either! (and you get bonus points when you turn up to the interview and can do Windows too).
Parent