Research | Transmosis

Arguments that the U.S. tech industry is suffering from a shortage of skilled local workers are “preposterous,” says Chase Norlin, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has called for Washington to reform the H-1B program. “It’s just another distraction mechanism that they’re using to avoid discussing the real issue, which is the exploitation of cheap foreign labour,” he said.

Posted by Chase Norlin | Apr 21, 2017 | Research

Trump’s visa order met with mixed reaction from U.S. tech Silicon Valley leaders have been locked in a tense standoff with U.S. President Donald Trump over his hard-line stance on immigration, but the tech industry appears to be embracing Mr. Trump’s latest efforts at immigration reform. An executive order dubbed “Buy American, Hire American” that Mr. Trump signed on Tuesday calls for federal agencies to review the H-1B program, which grants 65,000 temporary working visas to immigrants employed in select high-skilled fields such as technology and medicine, and another 20,000 to workers with graduate degrees from universities in the...

CompTIA 2017 TECNA DC FLY-IN

Posted by Chase Norlin | Feb 7, 2017 | Research

The Arizona Technology Council is once again participating in the annual 2017 CompTIA DC Fly-In organized by our national trade association TECNA (Technology Council’s of North America) and CompTIA. The Council would like technology company executives representing our member companies to join our President + CEO, Steve Zylstra in meetings with each of the Congressional delegation offices on Wednesday, February 15, 2017. In addition, there will be a dinner on Monday, February 13, 2017 at 6:30PM for the Arizona contingent, and informative panel sessions, followed by a reception and awards dinner on Tuesday, February 14, 2017. Also on Wednesday...

Robots will eliminate 6% of all US jobs by 2021, report says

Posted by Chase Norlin | Sep 27, 2016 | Research

Employees in fields such as customer service and transportation face a ‘disruptive tidal wave’ of automation in the not-too-distant future By 2021, robots will have eliminated 6% of all jobs in the US, starting with customer service representatives and eventually truck and taxi drivers. That’s just one cheery takeaway from a report released by market research company Forrester this week. These robots, or intelligent agents, represent a set of AI-powered systems that can understand human behavior and make decisions on our behalf. Current technologies in this field include virtual assistants like Alexa, Cortana, Siri andGoogle Now as well as...

McDonald’s CEO Wants Higher Wages to Kill Competition

Posted by Chase Norlin | Sep 14, 2016 | Research

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Trainee robot office manager Betty starts two month trial as artificial intelligence enters workplace

Posted by Chase Norlin | Jun 23, 2016 | Research

Team meetings will never be the same again for one work group who have taken on a humanoid staff member By: KIRSTIE MCCRUM A trainee office manager is set to begin a two month trial, but this is a new starter with a difference – because Betty is a ROBOT. The unusual colleague is about to launch her new career at The Transport Systems Catapult, based in Milton Keynes thanks to a team from the University of Birmingham. Betty will carry out tasks including patrolling the offices, assessing how many staff members are in the office outside working hours, monitoring...

Losing Ground In Flyover America——Wanting For Work, Buried In Debt, Part 4

Posted by Chase Norlin | Jun 5, 2016 | Research

By: David Stockman The flyover zones of America are wanting for work and buried in debt. That’s the legacy of three decades of Washington/Wall Street Bubble Finance. The latter has exported jobs, crushed the purchasing power of main street wages and showered the bicoastal elites with the windfalls of financialization. The graph below depicts the main street side of this great societal swindle at work. There are currently 126 million prime working age persons in the US between 25 and 54 years of age. That’s up from 121 million at the beginning of 2000. Yet even as this business cycle is rolling...

5 Powerful Resources For Finding Remote Work Opportunities

Posted by Chase Norlin | May 17, 2016 | Research

PowerToFly founders Katherine Zaleski (left) and Milena Berry (right) are a powerful force for women who want to work remotely. Photo by: Samantha Casolari. By: Kavi Guppta Let’s cut to the chase: remote work is becoming a viable option for people seeking jobs, and companies hoping to fill roles. In August of 2015, Gallup noted that 37-percent of the U.S. population identified with “telecommuting” or remote working. A variety of evidence shows that flexible work options like remote working helped to create a better workplace with happier and productive people. So where are all of those remote friendly jobs? As...

8 Tech Skills That Will Help You Land a Six-Figure Salary

Posted by Chase Norlin | May 9, 2016 | Research

By: Julie Bort According to job-hunting site Dice, employers are searching resumes for these words or phrases most frequently. In the tech industry, one day a skill is hot, the next it’s not. IT professionals spend a lot of their career learning, training, and trying to keep up. Job-hunting site Dice prides itself on helping IT pros navigate which skills to pursue. It just concluded an analysis of its database of 80,000-plus tech jobs from April 2015 through April 2016 to determine the fastest-growing skills based on job openings. We then crosschecked those skills against Dice’s annual-salary survey, published in February, which offered the average salary for jobs using those particular skills in 2015. The good news? All of them are part of jobs that command average salaries of over $110,000. No. 8: Cassandra, job openings up 32 percent, worth $147,811 Cassandra is a special kind of database called a NoSQL, which is part of the big-data trend. NoSQL databases can handle massive amounts of data, spread across cheaper, low-end servers. Cassandra was born at Facebook, but the company released it as a free and open-source project, and today it is used at companies including Apple, Comcast, Instagram, Spotify, eBay, Rackspace, and Netflix. No. 7: Hive, up 32 percent, worth $129,400 Hive is another skill in high demand as part of the big-data phenomenon, particularly a big-data tech called Hadoop. Hadoop is software to store all kinds of data across many low-cost computer servers. Hive provides...

The Ugly Truth About A $15 Minimum Wage

Posted by Chase Norlin | May 5, 2016 | Research

A $15 minimum wage will mean wiping out thousands of entry-level opportunities for people without many other options. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) By: Ed Rensi Mr. Rensi is the former president and chief executive officer of McDonald’s USA. The Service Employees International Union spent 2015 expanding its campaign for a $15 minimum wage to other industries. In recent nationwide protests, the union focused again on its original target: Fast food companies, and McDonald’s MCD +0.12% in particular. I worked for the company for three decades, and served as its USA President for 13 years. I can assure you that a...

How California’s minimum wage increase will add more robotic automation in logistics

Posted by Chase Norlin | May 4, 2016 | Blog, Research

A warehouse worker is shown here at Logistics Team in Industry. (Photo by Walt Mancini/Pasadena Star-News) By Kevin Smith California’s minimum wage hikes are going to force logistics firms with low-paid warehouse workers to invest more heavily in robotic technology, according to Inland Empire economist John Husing. Husing said most of Southern California’s warehouse employees who earn minimum wage are working part time. But the newly approved pay hikes that will boost the state’s current minimum wage of $10 per hour to $15 per hour by 2022 will still place financial pressures on logistics companies. And they’ll be looking...