San Diego Redevelopment: They Prey, We Pray

I admit I don't understand how the CCDC is funded completely and I don't know anything about how they choose what projects to allocate funds to, but I'd really like to understand the issue, so please correct me where needed. It's my understanding that the CCDC gets funding by increasing the property tax of a downtown area. It increases the property tax of an area by "removing blight," which might be a polite way of saying gentrification. One very basic question I have is, why should the money that's raised by improving one area go to gentrifying another area of San Diego? Couldn't individual neighborhoods establish their own redevelopment agencies with a similar goals as the CCDC, but for other areas of San Diego? Another question I have is, if my general understanding of CCDC (or redevelopment agencies in general) funding is correct, wouldn't removing all redevelopment agencies slow the overall gentrification of San Diego? If the increment money wasn't going to a redevelopment agency, wouldn't it go back to the State of CA and after that there's no way to know where it would get reallocated. Whether that's a good thing or not is probably a matter of political leanings. Lastly, at the very least I would love to see more money going to low income housing, however we need to make that happen. Thanks in advance to anyone who decides to answer my questions.
— April 13, 2011 1:41 p.m.

Are American Engineers in Short Supply?

I put the statement at the beginning of my post primarily to inform any potential readers of the inherent bias in my post. The last thing I want to do is shill. I'd be happy to prove my citizenship to anyone interested in verifying it as long as it's not too large a burden.
— March 11, 2011 1:41 p.m.

Are American Engineers in Short Supply?

Everyone has different work experiences. I don't blame H1B's for the long days I put in, I blame the competitive industry. I won't blame the H1B's when I am older and inevitably ageism takes its toll on my ability to find work, I'll blame the industry. Perhaps I'm a product of a different era where I don't expect corporations to look out for anything other than the bottom line and my expectations are set accordingly. A side note on long hours. Since you're the Silicon Valley Engineer, I'm surprised you haven't run across a startup, mid or large sized corporation that doesn't have a large pool of H1B employees where they still work their engineers to the bones. It happens every day in a lot of companies and even different professions where H1Bs are not even significant. I, unlike some people here it seems, accept that some industries are inherently demanding. If you're American born, and you want a safe haven from the pressure and grind of the industry you are in, I suggest working in defense.
— March 11, 2011 11:29 a.m.

Are American Engineers in Short Supply?

I understand that one man's experience doesn't create a truth, but since you asked (in your other post), every single foreign national I know who has a Masters had it before they were hired or they were hired as interns while they were grad students. As I explained before, and as you mentioned, there are many schools in other countries and it is hard enough to get noticed when you are from a middle tier school in the states. The layout on this page is horrific to the point where I am not going to go find the exact quote or who said it, but my defense of the educational path of foreign nationals was a response to someone claiming (paraphrasing here) that their educational paths were "easier" or somehow less relevant than US workers' paths. Please don't assume my beliefs beyond that as my opinions on the relevance of education in the workplace could merit an entirely separate discussion. I'm sorry I don't have time to directly respond to every single counterpoint you made (have to work my bones off to compete with those foreign "indentured slaves" and all ;) ), but I want to address two things quickly. Salaries for positions vary greatly and that has nothing to do with who is being hired. I only have my experiences to comment on, but depending on how people report their salary, bonus, stock options and other compensation to glassdoor.com, a range of 60k-100k for a base engineer is not out of the question. If you would like to have a conversation offline about my experiences with Qualcomm's compensation, I'd be happy to have that discussion with you privately. I am aware that Qualcomm uses third party contracting companies. This business arrangement is complicated and I admittedly don't know a lot about it. Perhaps the salaries you are looking at are what the contracting companies are paying the contractors and not what Qualcomm is paying the contracting companies? Perhaps the H1B is having a larger impact on contract employees compared to full-time employees? I can't give you any counter perspective on this beyond that I don't personally see Qualcomm actively attempting to replace full-timers with contractors, so if there is something happening in this space, I believe it to be isolated to that domain.
— March 11, 2011 9:41 a.m.

Are American Engineers in Short Supply?

My official title is "Senior Engineer." I graduated from UCSD in '04 and was hired at Qualcomm at the level "Engineer" in '05 after having worked for a small startup that was not paying me wages commiserate with my degree. I do not manage people and I do not have much interest in managing until my career demands it. I assure you that there is a good sized group of people who work at Qualcomm from UCSD. I bet if someone were to look through the statistics of which universities Qualcomm hires from most commonly, you'd see a range of schools from a lot of the top universities in the CS/CE/EE field.
— March 10, 2011 9:32 p.m.

Are American Engineers in Short Supply?

Disclosure: I am a US born citizen working for Qualcomm. Competition is a bitch, but it's an undeniable positive force in technology. As long as entry into employment is based upon a fair comparison of previous accomplishments, I think competition for jobs should be allowed. It is by no means easier for a foreign national to complete the education necessary to get hired by Qualcomm than it is for a US National. In fact, most of the foreign nationals working for Qualcomm that I know have their Master's degree from a US University. It's my understanding that this is all but required in order to have an easier standard to compare candidates. So, unfortunately for US born engineers future and present, other countries have learned the importance of education in skilled labor. Also unfortunate for Americans is the perpetuated illusion that Americans have some unattainably high work ethic. We don't. In fact, if anything we have a misplaced sense of entitlement. There also seems to be an illusion that there is a large labor pool of skilled US laborers who are being displaced by foreign labor. That seems to be the exact opposite sentiment of this article by the UT: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/feb/12/wh… I think some of the points that people discuss about "indentured servitude" might actually hold water if they weren't almost completely fabricated. Does it make more sense that Qualcomm hires the largest percentage of foreign nationals from a few countries due to the extremely long naturalization time, (Green card wait times are based on the number of applicants from each country.) or does it make more sense that a small number of other countries are beginning to understand the importance of education and skilled labor? I think perhaps the most damning aspect of this argument is that Qualcomm average pay and benefits are competitive, if not at the high end, for San Diego for software engineers. Don't believe me? Go check glassdoor.com. Why aren't these "indentured servants" (which is a laughable phrase at this income level) having an effect on Qualcomm's compensation among its peers? I do agree that the naturalization process sucks. If you want to blame someone for having to stay at the same company for the naturalization process, I don't that entity is Qualcomm. Furthermore, I have not once heard of Qualcomm abusing this process to make their employees work hard and I can tell you that the people who don't have immigration issues hanging over their head work just as hard as those who do. Perhaps I'm the only one in this group, but I try to encourage people to apply for citizenship. I'd prefer the foreign nationals want to become citizens, so they can vote and take their rightful (if they want it) place in America's upper-middle class.
— March 10, 2011 9:55 a.m.

Will For-Profit Colleges Make Us Forget Subprime Mortgages?

Re: Visduh My fiancé got her Masters at National University and did all of her classes online. It's exactly like you said, there's no way to do it and have any kind of social life whatsoever. 100% of her time away from her full-time job was spent doing school work or studying. I'm not in her field (accounting), but it sure seemed to me as rigorous as any University experience I've ever had. On top of what seemed to be challenging material and exams, her classes were all mandatory with roll call and everything. For the record, we are not in the military, nor did she mention anything about her classmates being mostly military, but I suppose that could vary between fields. As for the article, I hope any universities using hard-selling techniques are revealed as such. I advocate education for people interested in going to college. We could probably do a better job in high school of teaching all students what to look for and what to avoid in higher education. In addition to falling for the hard selling techniques of questionable schools, there are thousands of students in very prestigious universities working hard for degrees that society has little or no practical use for.
— July 9, 2010 9:34 a.m.

Rockstar San Diego gaming manufacturer accused of shorting pay

This is not at all surprising for anyone in the industry and it shouldn't be surprising for anyone outside the industry. Look at what happened at Electronic Arts, for example. It was the same story. At the same time I don't feel sorry for the engineers at game houses at all. They are living their dreams, and the nature of their dream is a high pressure work environment. It goes with the territory. It's similar to how long hour, low paying residencies goes with working as a doctor.
— February 10, 2010 1:19 p.m.

San Diego mayor Sanders puts football above water

Did anyone catch the KPBS coverage of downtown redevelopment? If you didn't, a transcript is here: http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/jan/26/who-benefits… To me the article reflected a perception from the San Diego populace that is very apprehensive of sending more money to redevelopment if it will be used for a sports stadium. Faulconer never committed to voting no to a Charger stadium, but he did say that he was against funding it from the general fund. The article also gave me an interesting insight into how the CCDC actually collects funds and how the CCDC being funded doesn't /directly/ impact the general fund, although it's clear that there is some indirect influence. Coming back to your article, Don, my perception (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) is that the Sanders is facing a lot of justified resistance on the Chargers stadium from the people of San Diego. The people of San Diego know there's a water issue and they know there's a budget issue and they're pissed that the the Mayor is considering going forward with the Chargers nonsense. It seems to me that the Mayor and City Counsel have an investment in making Downtown succeed in addition to addressing the other major issues across the city. Lastly, if the CCDC does get an extension on funding, I'd realy like to see that money go to more social services. I've seen all the plans for development downtown and I think they're great for tourism and creating more public spaces and opportunities for business, but I also think it's time San Diego started taking care of its homeless people. The CCDC is capable of using additional money for that and I wish that it would.
— February 4, 2010 11:01 a.m.

San Diego, like U.S., sees 2 percent growth

If there is a future tidal wave of foreclosures that hit the market, which is a hugely debatable assumption, I think it will affect the pie chart by increasing the "finance" job portion of the pie. Assumed lower prices should increase buyer demand and necessity for jobs to keep the real estate gears moving. I wonder what this pie should look like. How would it need to look in order to have a more successful future for San Diego? What do other fiscally successful cities pie charts look like?
— January 7, 2010 8:56 a.m.