Matloff and the tech industry have radically divergent views on how the H-1B program fits into global capitalism. To the industry, H-1B workers are critical to maintaining America's technological edge, and therefore to preserving high-paying jobs here.

But Matloff suggests the country is undermining its tech industry with guest workers. He points to the work of Vernon Briggs, a Cornell labor economist who believes the expanded H-1B program will dissuade American kids from coding careers -- because all the extra techies means wages won't rise.

And in a recent e-mail to his electronic flock, Matloff suggested that H-1B workers may play a more immediate role in the country's losing technology work. He distributed an article describing how H-1B workers tied to a worldwide consulting firm can provide a foothold into the United States for work done overseas. Another story Matloff sent around quoted an Indian software industry official as expecting the expanded H-1B program to help boost Indian software exports.

That's "another perverse effect of the H-1B program," Matloff wrote.

Matloff doesn't just blast the H-1B program and companies using it. He has a solution in mind, and Silicon Valley might do well to listen. As Matloff sees it, not all companies are using guest workers out of greed. Some simply believe they can't find qualified workers. And this is the rub: He thinks firms have developed a shortsighted attitude that programmers and other techies must come with experience in the latest, highly specific skills. That's why firms reject the vast majority of their candidates.

Matloff suggests hiring based on overall coding prowess instead, and letting techies learn on the job.

"Any competent programmer experienced in the C language (the standard for the past 15 years) can become productive in Java in a couple of weeks," he wrote in a recent essay for Forbes.

Tech-firm choosiness is costly -- Matloff writes that the average time it takes to fill a job in Silicon Valley is 3.7 months. That's forever in today's fast-paced economy. Matloff adds that the obsession with skills leads to pumped-up salaries for specialists and promotes job hopping, which can cause chaos for companies.

You'd think America's richest, most powerful firms wouldn't need the business advice of a computer scientist. But Matloff's analysis is shared in large part by Peter Cappelli, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Cappelli published a paper on the IT labor issue this summer, and agreed that hiring on the basis of a programmer's coding quality is key. But firms have been poor judges of programming talent, and then depend too heavily on résumés," Cappelli observes.

"In the absence of a good understanding as to what predicts jobs performance, employers rely on credentials, especially academic credentials, which are highly visible and easily contribute to bidding wars among competitors," Cappelli writes.

Cappelli sympathizes with companies that have trouble finding the IT talent they need, especially as technologies change rapidly. But rather than import techies, Cappelli concludes, the U.S. should concentrate on keeping so many domestic ones from leaving the field. He calls for better management for often-isolated coders, higher pay for top guns -- who are more than 10 times more productive than poor programmers -- and more retraining programs for veteran employees.

Matloff's ideas also are echoing in Silicon Valley. A few companies have even approached him asking for hiring advice. Matloff helped persuade one semiconductor firm to change its policy of considering only graduates with straight-A academic records.

With all his advocacy work, Matloff has become a hero of sorts for domestic techies. One of his fans is Terry Oldberg, a 60-year-old engineer who spent eight of the past 13 years unemployed.

"He was essentially a one-man opposition to the huge juggernaut of the business lobby," says Oldberg, also the chair of the Northern California chapter of the Programmers Guild. "He is truthful and very courageous."

Matloff now feels a responsibility to people like Oldberg, but he doesn't feel like a hero. He has never faced any heat from his university department for his activism. And although Matloff sends out as many as six e-mails a day commenting on news articles, he claims he gets this work done in a less than an hour a day.

He'd like to do more research on where older techies go after leaving the field and what happens to their pay. But he's careful not to burn out or lose sight of other priorities. He's determined to keep up his full-time professor duties, raise his 8-year-old daughter in Walnut Creek, Calif., and spend time with his wife, who just retired from a programming career.

And unlike some activists who develop a burning hate for their opponent, Matloff remains a geek at heart. He's out to reform tech firms, not destroy them. And he believes they'll ultimately see that the narrow way they hire and fire does not compute.

"I still believe that eventually they're going to see it's in their own best interests to broaden the way they hire," he says.

What's more, despite the lopsided H-1B vote, Matloff hasn't given up on Washington. He believes enough programmers may get hurt by the H-1B program that members of Congress themselves will feel the pinch -- perhaps the computer engineer daughter of a senator won't be able to find a job.

So he plans to keep consulting tech firms, talking to the press, updating his online paper and sending out e-mails. Rather than a hopeless dreamer, he sees himself as Jimmy Stewart-like, repeating his point against the odds until people believe.

"It's not 'Don Quixote,'" he insists. "It's 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'"

Recent Stories