235,000 Software Engineers Can't Be Wrong, Right?

jgeelan writes "The Boston Globe has carried a report on how 235,000 engineers and computer scientistsl are calling on Congress to study the impact of the country's H1-B visa program, the recession, and the outsourcing of jobs overseas on the unemployment rate of engineers and other information technology professionals. It's an issue that's bubbling on discussion sites all over America too, though in one case developers (Java developers in this instance) seem completely unable to agree on whether H1-B is really a contributing factor or not."

Comments

various points

[br00tus]

First off the bat, if you'e of the mind that eveything is not copacetic then I have a message for you about the IEEE-USA - the membership pushed to deal with H1-B abuses and so forth a few years ago, but the IEEE's corporate sponsors effectively quashed out this movement coming from the membership. So keep this in mind with the IEEE. I'm not saying IEEE, ACM, USENIX and so forth don't need a reform element within them, but be aware that there are other groups like the Programmers Guild that you won't have to fight and pressure the group itself to take action. IEEE-USA would not be doing this unless there was an uproar from the membership, who, as many /. articles have been posted about, are being layed off, and are having the industry-wide salaries and per-hour rates lowered for the first time in a decade. This problem has to be met with on many fronts, and while you concentrate on one, be aware that there are other people working in solidarity with you via other methods.

How many replies here say "they want to throw H1-Bs out, they want to throw H1-Bs out". I haven't seen any serious proposal to throw H1-Bs out, nor does Congressional Representative Tancredo's bill have to do with this. 195,000 H1-Bs can come in every year, a cap that was raised just recently, and many people want to lower that number at least to what it was a few years ago, especially with so many experienced people having their wages cut or being unemployed. Legally, H1-Bs must be the prevailing rate, but every study has shown they are paid below the prevailing rate, even the government reports say this - thus they are lowering the bill rate even though legally this is not supposed to happen. Also, the money paid for an H1-B visa is supposed to go for worker training but Bush wants to use the money instead to bring in more H1-Bs and have their paperwork done faster. This is not about the H1-Bs who are here, this is about the H1-Bs the ITAA wants to come in tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and next year.

I should also note that Harris Miller of the ITAA who is mentioned in the article is pure evil. Since this all affects my WALLET I pay very close attention to this. A lot of posters here admit they are H1-Bs. For some reason they feel compelled to fight against us to keep the door open for more H1-Bs. I don't know why they want to do this as it just lessens their chance for getting a green card, I really can't perceive why they're doing it at all, but it does make me understand why some people want to throw them all out. At least many of the people were honest that they were H1-Bs, thus, a lot of the comments you see here and moderation has a big agenda behind it. As does mine - I'm looking out for my interests, who isn't? I don't know why they're obsessed with keeping the H1-B visa cap high since they're already in, as it just pisses us off against all H1-Bs and lowers their chance for a green card. Maybe they're just stupid.

H1-Bs aren't the only issue of importance although it's up there. FLSA, section 1706, there are many issues which we should be thinking about. Doctors and Lawyers are smart, they have professional associations like the AMA and ABA, virtually every profession is organized in some fashion, with IT workers though, I guess everyone prefers playing Warcraft III and thinking they're a supergenius. When they survive the first and maybe second round of layoffs, they say those people were dead wood and all of this doesn't matter to them, the world's greatest programmer. But then the profession-wide salary and hourly bill rate drops. Suddenly those 60 hour weeks and 24/7 oncall are for less money - factoring in inflation, a bit less. The ITAA has been fighting to drive down our wages for years and they don't even know it, dumbasses like them will have to learn the hard way. They think the only people who worry about this are people who were paid $100k to write HTML, the reality is that the people most concerned about this are usually very competent in their particular field. Only an idiot doesn't worry about their bill rate and lets themselves get walked all over by the ITAA (funded by Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc.)

In closing, as usual I find many of the postings regarding this issue sickening and repugnant. At least most of the posters admit they are H1-Bs, the fact that their side is posted so much and modded up so high is testament to how large this problem is. Read Norm Matloff's "Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage" to learn more, it covers all the bases. And as I said, H1-B is not the only issue - FLSA, section 1706, there's a lot of things to think about.

Here's my web page on these topics. Reading the replies here has me nauseated, BUT, there are a mass of people who think as I do, and we communicate and are helping organize things like discussed in this article, so knowing that gives me hope. We need every person on board to help us move this forward. The ITAA is coming to take money out of your pocket, only by joining together and organizing can we fight this. Also, people usually reply to my posts replying to things I never said, when I say organize they start listing why they don't like unions. Where did I say unions? I said organize together and fight for your own common interests like every other damned profession. The ITAA (Microsoft, IBM, Intel etc.) are an organization attacking us, so what's so odd about organizing to defend ourselves from the ITAA, if we're all alone and isolated they'll just pick us off one at a time. Organize means organize how YOU want to - if you want a guild, join a guild, if you want a union, join Washtech/CWA, if you want a professional association, join a good one, or join IEEE and stir up a ruckus in their old-line, do nothing, corporate-sponsored meetings. A lot of people are stupid - they don't want to be in a union so they get up and shout that no IT person is allowed to be in a union. Uh, no, that means that's what you don't want in your particular situation right now. I personally do not want a union, I like the professional associations and guilds more, but I'm not going to be a little sycophantic lapdog for my manager and condemn unions - if someone wants to be try to form a union, more power to them - right now, telecommunications, government and aerospace has a lot of unionized IT people and I would personally love to see it spread to BODY SHOPS. But by and large, aside from body shops, I am going for the association/guild route. But I am not going to condemn anyone who wants a union, I only condemn the lapdogs and sycophants for the ITAA.