Patriotism in the Tech Venture

We were short a software engineer for most of today, but for the most fortunate of reasons:

Originally from Shanghai, our developer spent a lot of the day in front of a judge becoming a citizen!

It took him about 6 months of work and study, while he held a permanent green card. He is a highly experienced software engineer with an undergraduate computer science degree from a Chinese university and a Masters in computer science from an American university.

He didn’t have to become a citizen to continue working and succeeding here, but he chose to do so, despite the obstacles.

That’s pretty exciting in my book. I’ve started and run companies in other countries, so I say this from personal experience: America is a great place to live and work, continuing to attract the world’s brightest to our shores!

Now, how do we get more US college students to stick with STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Math) degrees and to pursue advanced STEM degrees?

From a recent GAO study:

“In  a  recent  international assessment of 15-year-old students, the U.S. ranked 28th in math literacy and 24th in science literacy.  Moreover, the U.S. ranks 20th  among all nations in the proportion of 24-year-olds who earn degrees in natural science or engineering.”

Those are rankings we need to improve. It is fantastic that we can import talent, like this employee, but we need more talent originating on our own shores!