The idea behind Code Anthem is compelling: take tests to rank your programming ability in specific languages against that of other programmers and receive an objective numerical score as to your skills relative to your peers, to establish credibility and augment your resume/CV. If you are looking to hire, you’ll have access to hard data beyond potentially padded work histories.

Supports Java and C# at the moment but more languages will be added. Everyone is looking for ways to differentiate themselves to employers and it’s hard to see a downside to taking the assessments; at invite-only beta at the moment.

One thing that is attractive about computer programming or web development as a career is that you can acquire many of the skills that you need to do it professionally without first convincing someone to hire you so that you can get work experience. Entry level software jobs are something that you can create yourself.

Creating and executing your own projects is a way to display your talents for any future employer. Obviously breaking into the industry still won’t be easy if your work is of poor quality, but having no formal work experience doesn’t have to be a strict barrier to entry, as it would be in many industries.

Lou Franco over at Atalasoft has an excellent list of seven ways to get software work experience without having to actually be hired by anyone.

Here’s an argument, from Vivek Wadhwa over at Techchrunch, that to increase the number of H-1B visas in the United States would be a way to spur economic growth, and actually add jobs. Sounds counter-intuitive, but the idea is that immigrants to the US actually create more jobs than fill existing positions.

Xenophobes will claim that immigrants take jobs away and blame them for everything that is wrong in their lives and in America. But as TechCrunch wrote last week, skilled immigrants create more jobs than they take away. That is a fact. My research team documented that one quarter of all technology and engineering startups nationwide from 1995 to 2005 were started by immigrants. In Boston, it was 31%, in New York, 44%, and in Silicon Valley an astonishing 52%. In 2005, these immigrant founded companies employed 450,000 workers. Add it up. That’s far more than all the tech workers we gave green cards to in that period.

In an economic downturn, during a time of rapid change, new businesses are vitally important to the US. They are nimbler, probably better able to create or exploit niche tech advances, and behave like they have less to lose than entrenched purveyors of the status quo. I’ve known a few 1st generation Americans who behaved like that too. (You could make a case that the same holds true of 1st gen immigrants anywhere I suppose, but I’d argue that it’s even more true in the relative free-for-all that is the US economy.)
This is not about carving the pie into more slices. Growth is about increasing the size of the pie, and a disproportionate number of supremely motivated new immigrants would help with exactly that in starting new businesses. I believe Mr. Wadhwa convinced me.