Slashdot Mirror
Questioning The IT Labor Shortage
spiel writes "There's a piece in today's NYT which points out the flaws in the arguments for increasing the number of H-1B visas. As one of those "older workers", this puts facts and figures behind what I have long believed." It's an interesing dicussion, although I suspect like most of things, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
I've got news for you. $50k is the median salary for a family in the U.S. That's right, if you have two children and earning $50k/year (sometimes that's with two earners together bring in that much, with latchkey kids who come home with no one to greet them or supervise them after school), you are very squarely in the middle class in the United States. Statistically, 50% of the families will be earning more than you, and 50% of the families will be earning less.
Comments about how $50,000 as a starting salary is "not enough for a US tech to survive" is the sort of things which cause the rest of the country to regard us as spoiled brats. And you know, perhaps they're right.
The New York Times did a case study of 4 "middle-class" families and how they worked to make ends meet, and what their dreams and aspirations were. It was entitled "The American Middle, Just Getting By", and it was published on August 1, 1999 (front page of section 3). I strongly recommend that techies either download it from the NY Times web page (for $2.50), or go to the library and look at it in the archives (which is better 'cause it's free and the NY Times archives doesn't have the color pictures that went with the story). It's guaranteed to give you a better perspective about how the rest of the country lives. Non U.S. techies I suspect will; also find it revealing.
INS requires that the employer pays at least 90% of prevailing wages for the position. So there definetely is NO sweatshop conditions here. You are in no way required to live in employer-provided housing (in fact, I don't know any employer that even offers housing!) and as far as being kicked out of the country when the visa expire, that is the whole point of being a temporary non-immigrant worker isn't it? So I really don't know what your point is.
Are there contracting companies abusing the H1B laws? Probably. But they are breaking the law (feel free to report them) and in now way represent the majority of the H1B workers. I understand it is tempting to look at some abuse and say H1B is bad, but you should know better.
As far as shortage of IT workers, well, you can argue that there is no such thing. But I would reply to you that there is a shortage of qualified IT workers. That's right. This field is fast changing. You have to keep your skills up to date.
Lastly, I'll just say this: slashdot is not a US-only website. People from all around the world read this stuff. And the biggoted comments you and others have been writing on here are disgusting. Should I judge all americans based on your one comment (like you seem to judge all H1Bs based on a few)?
When I look at people like Linus Torvalds and Abigail (Perl programmer) I am reminded that what built the USA was the willingness to accept the best and brightest from everywhere else.
Now here is my proposal:
Before people say I am crazy, think about it. Under this plan hiring an immigrant costs more. You have to pay a salary that competes with other employers, and you have to pay immigration fees as well as a sunk cost.
Your willingness to pay is sufficient proof that the person is good and you truly cannot be fill it with an American. As long as jobs go begging, the US is willing to skim the cream of the crop. Very little bureaucracy required. It just works...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I guess I'm confused as to what the issue is with older "balding" workers having it so tough. Why would an employer want to fire his most experienced employees for a kid?
Why indeed! Yet they do, all the time. It's real simple - they can pay you less, so there's more in the kitty for the manager to take home. After all, if you can't do the job in the time allotted because it was optimistic by a factor of 3 you'll probably work all night. I'll say mangement didn't listen to our estimates and go home. Except in rare cases, you'll find that nice manager home in bed while you're still debugging his greatest project victory.
They can also pump you up with promises about the groovy new stuff you'll learn, projects you'll do etc., and not knowing any better you'll believe them. That hype becomes part of your pay. When you're around a bit longer, you realize how many of those promises are empty and stop working 60 hr weeks. They don't like older workers for the same reason the Army doesn't want 30 yr old recruits - the older guy will question their orders instead of blindly obey.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
The last thing the IT industry needs is a union.
Unions are simply cartels. They drive up wages and benefits by restricting supply. This is great if you are one of the ones who get the jobs. It sucks, though, if you are one of those "cheap foreign" workers who is excluded.
It always amazes me that people act as though the interests of the foreign workers is irrelevant. It's all about me, me, me. We have it pretty damn good here. So what if foreign workers will drive down our wages a bit? It's drive up their wages a *lot.* That's why they're willing to come over here. More to the point, it'll benefit the rest of society because prices for IT services will be cheaper.
Something to think about, someday you may not want to work a 70 hour week, you may have a family, you may grey hair or be balding, do you want to be replaced by an undercutting youngster or foreigner?
If you do useful work, your employer (unless he's stupid) will continue to keep you on. If you act as though what you learned in college is all you need to know, then you deserve to be fired. If you know your stuff, why would your employer want to fire you? You've got 10 years of experience, you're a proven worker, and they don't have to train you in like they would a new person.
If the reason is that you are paid to much, well, maybe you're over-paid. It works both ways-- the fact that you're older than me doesn't mean that you should automatically get the best jobs at the best wages. If I can do the same job as you, and I'm willing to do it for less money, why shouldn't I get the job? And why shouldn't you accept the wage I'm willing to take to keep yours?
I guess I'm confused as to what the issue is with older "balding" workers having it so tough. Why would an employer want to fire his most experienced employees for a kid? Salary? Skills? Those things are both in your control. If you're not willing to put in the time to keep your skills current, then perhaps you don't deserve a big raise every year. But to demand an advantage in the workplace simply on the basis of age is unfair to us and the industry as a whole.
One problem I have with this article is the fact that it is using 1996 data. People from that period know that even back in 1996, the economy wasn't that great and finding jobs was hard. Also, the idea back then was that the quick path to riches was through the old MBA route. The only people in CS back then were the people who really, really loved the field.
... they will grab anyone who can produce code. They have products they want to get to market but can't, because they don't have to people. Maybe Intel and Microsoft don't have as much of a problem but I can guarantee you that small companies here are hurting because of the shortage.
Things are so very different today. The MBA is out, tech is in. Enrollments are up I'm sure, because my own college is operating beyond normal capacity (lots of part-time instructors). All the money seekers are in CS, so 2000 data is very different form 1996. Starting salaries for many college graduates I know are 60k+. This is in contrast to 1997 (when I last graduated) where the lucky ones were the ones who got ~40k salaries.
From my own experience, finding good people here (Boston, USA) is tough, especially if you're a small company. I've worked with companies that had 50% vacancies because they couldn't find people. They aren't even trying to hire college graduates now
Sadest part is that they are looking for people with the 'older' skills. C, C++, HTML and basic HTTP understanding would often go far in some of these places. They are willing to train. There just aren't enough good people to go around.
I work in an office that really needs my skills. However, because of a monumental array of "protective" immigration measures, it took me several months to secure the required papers, medical exams, and official approvals to even be able to work here; since she didn't already have a job with a French company, my wife isn't even allowed to do _any_ work by law (figure that Catch-22 out...) We are both well-educated and extremely capable individuals in our respective fields (I'm a computer scientist, she's a biochemist.) Yet, in the name of preserving jobs for French citizens, we're forced to either not work at all or constantly jump through administrative hoops until blue in the face. (My papers need to be renewed in one year, a process I do not look forward to.) Being an immigrant is a hard, often unrewarding process, and it takes some real guts to even think about it in the first place, much less do it.
I understand perfectly the logic behind such strict requirements for employment as a foreigner, and realize that we (Americans) use the exact same way of thinking. If a spot can be filled by a full citizen of a nation, then that citizen should have precedence to said job, right? The problem lies in the fact that the citizen isn't always the most qualified for the position; indeed, truly skilled and driven workers rarely complain about immigrants in the workplace (if anything, they thrive on the diversity it introduces.) It's the mediocre, the uninspired, the clock-puncher who worries about losing his or her job to somebody who actually wants to _work_. On that note, if there's anything they can tag to that potential replacement to discourage their hire, they'll do it. Immigrant. Woman. Kid. Dinosaur. Hispanic. This is FUD at it's purest, most base form. When faced with somebody who the weak worker _knows_ will be a better employee than themselves, the immediate reaction of that person is to find some way of discrediting or disqualifying that person. This results in bad hiring practices, discrimination, reduced productivity, and a less dynamic and exciting workplace overall.
Intelligent, capable individuals don't complain about immigrants and immigration. They understand that with immigrants come new ways of thinking, new talents and abilities, new cultural experiences, and the unique opportunity to learn a great deal about a place that they will very likely never visit in person. Weak, selfish people see immigrants as a threat to their cushy, do-nothing jobs, and as such, want nothing to do with them. It's as simple as that.
I'm only experiencing the smallest sliver of the discrimination that most immigrants go through, but it's already increased my respect for other immigrants tenfold. People who are strong enough to leave their native country, whether voluntarily or even more so as refugees, deserve a far higher degree of respect than they receive.
An American AC In Paris
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Instead of giving foreign workers H1Bs, which bind them to a company, why not give them green cards? That way, they don't have to worry about working for slave wages and companies will have to pay prevailing wage. Competition for jobs will be based on capability then, not nationality.
There's actually a petition going around supporting this, signed by luminaries including non other than Linus Torvalds himself. You can find the link at:www.immigrationreform.com.
Then again, why would the US want to import the smartest and brightest of the world's talent?
One of the things which this guy's analysis leaves out is there are many different types of "I/T Workers", and what might be true for one class of techies might not be true for others. There's a big difference between someone who is a systems programmer, an SAP R/3 or Oracle Financials Business Programmer, an Oracle DBA, or a Web HTML/Code Fusion/PHP jockey.
So when we talk about there being plenty of "older programmers" in the U.S., do they have the right skill set? Are they willing to learn the latest stuff? It doesn't help if we have a lot of mainframe programmers, for example. I remember one fellow in particular who thought that $30,000 for a web server that ran on an IBM mainframe was cheap, and wasn't it cool that he could put his project web page on the mainframe? I didn't have the heart to tell him that that much money would have purchased several cheap Unix/Linux boxes for which Apache would be free.
I also think that the issue of "ageism" is a red herring. (The "I can run a web server on a mainframe guy" wasn't over 30.) There are plenty of younger programmers who don't know what the heck they are doing; there are also plenty of really smart people who happy to be fairly light in their years (take Linus Torvalds, for example; he's well under 30). Similarly, there are plenty of older folks who stuck in the mud, not willing to learn anything new beyond the Cobol of their youth, and there are also those folks who might be chronologically young, but who are always willing to learn the latest stuff, and who have the benefit of learning certain lessons the hard way, and whose hard-earned experience is extremely valuable. It works both ways.
Speaking as someone who has been on both sides of the management/technical fence, it's not so easy to find competent engineers. Sure you can pay more money, but that isn't necessarily going to do it. In the Silicon Valley, companies are paying huge amounts of money for engineers, and from what I can tell, they still have large numbers of positions going unfilled.
As for me as a purely technical engineer, I'm not particularly worried about having foreigners compete with me for jobs. There will always be a need for really good, competent engineers. The real risk comes to those who just know how to do HTML, or just know how to futz with Microsoft Front Page, and who calls him or herself "an I/T worker". When the oversupply of I/T workers hits (and it will --- give it 5 or 10 years), those folks will be out of a job, because if you're still only doing HTML jockeying when you're 45, you have rocks for brains if you think that your seniority means that you deserve more money than the someone fresh out of college who can do the same thing. Companies pay people for what their jobs are worth, not just because they've warmed the same seat in a company for 15 years. (Or at least, they should. The reason why many engineers I know dislike unions is because they haven't figured out that this seniority pay thing is abhorrent to most engineers. That concept might work for the Teamsters, but not for engineers.)