Silicon Alley

Date: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 4:10 PM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

American programmers are told by companies that taking C++ or JAVA courses
at colleges won't qualify them for a job because they need to have several
years work experience. This isn't the case with H-1Bs however. Once they
move to Silicon Alley they learn how to program computers at ITM
(Information & Technology Management), located in a converted hair spray
warehouse.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1041318751108370.xml

Edison's cluster doesn't compute

Indian enclave transforms neighborhood into 'Silicon Alley'

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

BY MARY JO PATTERSON AND ROBERT GEBELOFF
Star-Ledger Staff

In the western corner of Edison Township, hard by Highland Park and
Piscataway, lives a large group of people who all speak the same language:
C++.

C++ -- for those who are not computer nerds -- is a computer programming
language commonly used in the corporate world.

Now, Edison is as varied a town as one can find in New Jersey, strategically
located to points north, south and west. Nonetheless, this neighborhood near
Rutgers University's Kilmer campus is home to a single, startlingly large
occupational cluster: More than a fourth of all employed adults in this
neighborhood work in computer or math occupations, the 2000 Census shows.

Other job clusters show up in the statewide data, but nothing like this. One
neighborhood in Washington Township, Burlington County, for example, has an
awful lot of farmers (one of every five employed adults.) One part of Jersey
City has a high concentration for people who work in financial service firms
(one in eight.) In the Ironbound section of Newark, construction workers
predominate (one in four).

Those things make sense. After all, 103,667 acres of land are being farmed
in Burlington County, at last count; Jersey City turned into Wall Street
West during the last decade; and the Portuguese who settled in Newark's
Ironbound traditionally joined the paving and other construction trades.

Other clusters make less sense. One piece of North Brunswick is home to an
unusually high concentration of architects. Go figure.

Most locals believe Edison's computer programmer phenomenon, which is new,
bubbled up with the Y2K problem, when American companies looked to India's
huge pool of computer talent for help.

Janardhan Gnanamurthy, a 41-year-old Indian computer professional, is
probably typical.

Highly educated, married and the father of two children, he has rented an
apartment here for the past three years. He is employed as a database
administrator for a New York City firm, and drives a Honda, like many Indian
computer programmers in the township. While he is an occasional reader of
computer magazines like "PC World" or "Computer Shopper," Gnanamurthy says
he is no bookworm: "I'm not a nerd as such, not any more," he said. "I like
dancing and partying and going out."

He also is a cosmopolitan sort who has lived in other parts of this country,
as well as the Mideast. But when it came time to finding a place to live in
New Jersey, he picked this neighborhood.

Why?

"Indians feel comfortable with Indians, whites with whites, Chinese with
Chinese," he said. "That's just the way it is. We all work together, but
like each other; we have our own networks."

It was around 1998 that the number of computer professionals living in the
area suddenly mushroomed, said Niraj Triverdi, news editor of "Mantram," a
glossy magazine based in Edison, aimed at a U.S. audience of highly educated
South Asians.

Most of the new arrivals were men who worked for Indian-owned software
firms, based in the U.S., doing contract work for Fortune 500 companies.
Many are married with small families, frequently with one child, he said.

Triverdi believes the Edison thing started with one programmer who landed in
one of the neighborhood's large apartment complexes, found it convenient,
and recommended it to a friend. The friend did the same thing, and so on.
While the neighborhood is family oriented -- two-thirds of all households
are occupied by married couples -- living conditions are quite Spartan. More
than 75 percent of the residents rent their homes, and nearly half of the
rental units contain one or fewer bedrooms. The median apartment size: 3.6
rooms.

"They are living there more out of social considerations, rather than what
is there," Triverdi said. "They go to Oak Tree Road in Iselin to shop, or
eat. To visit a temple, they go to Bridgewater."

In India, Edison is as well-known as San Jose, Calif., as a high-tech mecca,
said Satish Netala, a systems analyst. One afternoon recently, outside a
little strip mall in the neighborhood, he passed the time with Raju
Khandave, a computer programmer. The sidewalk outside the convenience store
is virtually the only place to hang out in the area, which consists mainly
of relatively new apartments.

Netala is living in a hotel while working for a client in New York City. He
plans to go home to India soon, but is not sure when. The original plan
called for him to "implement from offshore," he said.

More than half of the neighborhood's residents are foreign-born, and most
are not naturalized citizens. Although 63 percent of those come from
India -- many temporarily under the "H1B" visa program for specialty
occupations -- there also are smaller pockets of immigrants from China, the
Philippines and Colombia.

Many do not see Edison as a permanent home. For the computer programmers
among them, these are difficult times in a highly competitive field, and
many stand ready to relocate for a better job.

For those who want to brush up their skills or learn new technology, the
neighborhood even has a computer school.

ITM (Information & Technology Management), located in a converted hair spray
warehouse on Kilmer Road, offers courses in things like C & C++.

Or Microsoft Visual Basic.Net. Advanced Web Development (COM, DCOM, COM+,
MTS). Advanced Java. Socket Programming. SQL Server Developer/DBA. And so
on.

One Saturday, earlier this month, the building was humming with students who
work from Monday through Friday but want to keep up.

"They need to learn a new skill, but they can't stop working," said Anath
Rao, head of ITM. "It's a tough environment."

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