[Themaintainers] Why does the IRS need $80 billion? Just look at its cafeteria.

[Varun Adibhatla]

Thank you for sharing this. It’s equally eye opening and eye watering :(
This story reinforces my bias towards creating a class of Maintainer VISA
to invite a class of high skilled immigrants to improve the nation's
critical infrastructure.

Existing government workers are heroic and their efforts to keep the
existing infrastructure running ought to be applauded every single day.
However, we need to face certain harsh truths.
a) The workforce is aging rapidly and b) Aggregating technical talent at a
scale necessary to upgrade the nation's digital and physical infrastructure
is a VERY HARD problem!
Ref: Tech Talent for 21st century government (Partnership for Public
Service -
https://ourpublicservice.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tech-Talent-for-21st-Century-Government.pdf
)

We need to reframe skilled immigration as a pipeline of American strength
vs something that is threatening (unfounded)
Today, this pipeline is largely being built by a constellation of big
tech + finance + management consulting industrial complex that has
perfected the dark arts of financial engineering + inflating costs.
(Reminds me of the *giant sucking sound* quote Ross Perot used to critique
the neo-liberal agenda of weakening the American middle class except this
time, it's our taxes. )

Recruiting "high-skilled" talent from outside American shores is not
anachronistic - the country was built on the skilled labor of immigrants.
Ref1: "From AIDS to COVID-19, America’s Medical System Has a Long History
of Relying on Filipino Nurses to Fight on the Frontlines" (TIME) -
https://time.com/6051754/history-filipino-nurses-us/
Ref2: US Cadet Nurse Corps (VOX) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw8a8n7ZAZg

If pathways of opportunity that combined immigration with public interest
technology were created in a way that supported economically challenged
communities,  I'm convinced that large swaths of the global south would
organize themselves to power through so-called "1930s tech" (some of it was
quite elegant actually) to work towards fixing this country’s proverbial
and literal leaks, cracks, holes, and delays.

I am a sucker for what Richard Rorty calls "Achieving your country"  i.e.
cultivating the necessary national pride goosebumps that motivates people
to seek to improve their community and nation.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achieving_Our_Country
My college years in India were spent white knuckling through learning Java
and C++ in uninspiring ways mixed in with a healthy dose of delusion of
"making it to the USA - the ultimate passport to economic progress".

The African Doctor  is a great movie that captures the story of an
Immigrant doctor arriving in France to serve a community's needs, first
seen with suspicion and then applauded as a hero of the community.
Watching it, I fantasized about how a small army of high skilled immigrants
who learnt COBOL and other programming languages of an era bygone  to
perform the necessary work to emancipate us from this wicked obsolescence.
https://youtu.be/F2UZe8FNsck

A typical billboard near our home in India shows the immense and latent
talent that lies waiting outside this nation's shores and committing
themselves to learn the most obtuse tech in the most uninspiring ways for a
chance to "live among us".
[image: image.png]

Varun

On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 8:27 AM David Eddy <deddy at davideddy.com> wrote:

> Camille -
>
> On Aug 09, 2022, at 1:07 PM, Camille Acey <connect at camilleacey.com> wrote:
>
> (e.g. COBOL is sturdy legacy tech that has withstood the test of time!)
>
>
> Please do a service to the world of software maintenance & do NOT
> perpetuate the myth that old COBOL is a significant portion of the IRS’s
> challenges.
>
>
> Foundation of IRS systems were written when THE choice of languages was
> pretty much Assembler (maybe with some Algol & FORTRAN).  COBOL didn’t
> enter the market until mid to late ‘60s or so.
>
>
> The technology dates to the 1970s
>
>
> Nonesense… try 1930s with EAM / card punch / plug board processing.
>
>
> IRS is obviously saddled with very unique challenges… Capital Hill law
> makers that makes pretzel twisting look like straight-line thinking & major
> volume issues.
>
> -David
>
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