Techno-coolies or brilliant competitors

Joel Kotkin joins the ranks of racist Progressives, labeling Indian back office workers "techno-coolies:"

[T]he big [high-tech] firms have shown a very weak record of hiring minorities and women. And not surprisingly, firms also are notoriously skittish about revealing their diversity data. A San Jose Mercury report found that the numbers of Hispanics and African Americans employees in Silicon Valley tech companies, already far below their percentage in the population, has actually been declining in recent years. ... Another technique is the outsourcing of labor to lower paid foreign workers, the so called “techno-coolies.”

To repeat the famous quote from Shawshank Redemption: How can he be so obtuse? In one paragraph, he complains because not enough blacks and Hispanics are being hired, and in the next paragraph he complains because high-tech firms are hiring too many Asians and Indians.

I grow very tired of people who have no familiarity with Silicon Valley, who likely have never set foot on the floor of a Silicon Valley engineering department, criticizing the hiring of immigrant Indian, Asian, and Eastern European immigrant engineers, many of whom are some of the most gifted technical workers that software companies have.

As I have written before: to many on the Left, Asian diversity is not real diversity. The Left insults Asians and Indians as newcomers and now as techno-coolies. Kotkin needs to ask himself one simple question: Why is hiring immigrant Hispanic workers a good thing, but hiring immigrant Asian and Indian workers not?

Kotkin goes on to criticize high-tech firms for showing preference for younger workers and for not being union shops:

Some of this also reflects a preference for hiring younger employees at the expense of older software and engineering workers, many of whom own homes and have families in the area. ... The good news for the bosses has been that employees are rarely in the way. Unlike the aerospace, autos or oil industries, the Valley has faced little pressure from organized labor, which has freed them to hire and fire at their preference.

Look, Joel, I am a 60 year old white software engineer. If my company can identify a 30 year old Indian geek who can do my job as well or better than I can and who will work for a lot less, well, that's reality, dude. Why should we think that the knees and shoulders of individuals give out more and more as they grow older, but that brains do not? Are you suggesting, Joel, that my company allot a certain number of software jobs for old white guys, not on the basis of their having more talent, but simply because they are old white guys? Preference based on age is just as much economic insanity as preference based on gender or race. As for unions, the absence of unions is one of the great advantages of Silicon Valley, preventing it from becoming sclerotic and failing like the steel and automobile industries.

And if you cannot understand all this, well, that's why you just don't get Silicon Valley. There is incredible opportunity here, but the competition is brutal. And it is the brutal competition that keeps the Valley humming along. We don't want to become Detroit, thank you.