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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."
Feed your own?
Or deny another the opportunity to better their life by a huge order of magnitude?
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
So now that the economy sucks, and we have terrorism to cover our tracks, we're going to make a huge petition to throw a bunch of foreigners out of the country?
Mask it any way you want, but racism sucks.
Clearly time to trot out Dr Matloff again
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.html
there is no `tech boom', never was (not since 70s at least); it's a ploy to generate cheap labour, the H1-1 campaigns part of that
235,000 software engineers got together and slashdot didn't cover it? Who dropped the fucking ball here?!
IEEE-USA? Well bully for them! Did all 235,000 members send in their support or did a majority vote on this or did the publicity arm send this out on behalf of those people who are members?
[o]_O
Why don't we just make sure the competent folks get/keep their jobs instead of worrying about someone's country of origin? Heaven knows there are enough incompentent American programmers who are still employed....
What is your Slash Rating?
I've perused the listings at monster and dice and most seem to be head hunters looking for somebody that is proficient in everything from ADA to VB or somebody with 3+ years of professional .NET experience or 10 years of Java. Could the problem be that the people doing the hiring don't even know what they want so they let positions go unfilled?
I just read an article in last months Scientific American decrying the falling rate that unversities are turning out scientists and engineers. The falloff over the next ten years will leave a tremendous shortfall in the US as compared to Europe or Asia. It looks like the IEEE-USA is trying to leverage it's membership for economic and/or political gain.
The article mentions tighter limits on the number of H1-B visas granted to foreign nationals. Current H1-B holders won't be "thrown out" at all.
Finaly this issue is being talked about. I have been out of work for over a year because I cannot find a single job. In part this problem has been caused by H1B's taking the jobs that I am going for, no this is not speculation, I have witnessed it several times. Maybe in time I will have better luck, but first this problem needs to be taken care of.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Last week's paper version of EETimes had an article about the fact that 60% of EE/CompE/CS undergrads in the US today either flunk out or quit, which is a large reason that many companies are "outsourcing" to engineers coming from different countries these days. This is obviously a Catch-22 type situation, because within a university, the engineering college gets less of the yearly budget/alumni funds due to less engineering graduates, which possibly could have the effect of causing prospective college students to not want to attend that engineering college.
Sheesh! Any economist will tell you that frictional unemployment is 6%! What that means is if you have 100 workers and 100 jobs, at any given moment 6 of them will be unemployed (going to school, bumming around Europe, dropping a kid, "finding themselves", or just jerking off). Anything less than 6% indicates a shortage of workers!
You're using her as bait, Master!
... is not the competition, you have to just deal with that. The problem is for the HB1 workers... it's practically indentured servitude. It's difficult to leave the company you are supposed to work for. The company gains a level of control over the persons personal life that is anathema to the basic freedoms modern workers should expect.
-pyrrho
their inability to find work even when they hold advanced degrees and are skilled in Java or C++, the programming languages most in demand.
What about those foreigners who hold advanced degrees and are skilled in Java or C++ and can't get work because their own countries are poor and lack industry and they arn't allowed to work in the US? They have just as much right to work as anyone else and they and the companies who hire them shouldn't be punished by protectionist policies. This is the same mentality that lead to exorbiant tariffs on BC lumber (causing massive unemployment and immense damage to BC's economy). Protectionism just doesn't work and all the US will do is harm an already hurting tech industry.
I stole this Sig
The other thing to remeber is that proportionally just as many H1Bs have lost thier jobs, and they're in worse positions than the locals... In a lot of cases after they are let go, they have 10 days to leave the country.
--locust
Allowing a reasonable number of well trained foreigners into the US is a very smart idea. Just think about how much it costs the US government to educate a single citizen. People are a cost on society until they are at least 18. Via H1B programs you can get people that another country has paid for to come and contribute.
Foreigners have made considerable contributions to technology in the US. The Manhattan project team had large numbers of refugees in it. Important parts of the team that put man on the moon came from the German rocket program. Andy Grove and a number of other high tech pioneers came from outside the US. Bringing in foreigners is smart.
It probably does make some impact on salaries in the short term, but the benefit is that by getting bright people into the US it helps keep the US as the world's leading developer of technology. So I'd argue that the overall effect is positive on salaries. There are, of course, abuses, as there is in any scheme, but overall the program is a good idea.
It is interesting to note that a number of European countries, Germany especially, have picked up on the idea that H1B like visas are a good idea. I'm totally annoyed that my home country is notoriously difficult for educated people to emigrate to. Personally, it's one of the US's great strengths and more countries should behave in this way.
Finally, the US government even makes a profit on H1B processing. To get an H1B processed costs $1125. I've heard that the average processing time is in the order of fractions of an hour.
American's need to remember that immigration is part of this country - in many ways - immigration is this country. The only people that suffer are those that can't compete - welcome to capitalism.
You either bring Adit over here on an H1B, or send the software to India to be written by his company in Bangalore.
Either way, it's supply and demand, chumpolas - the service economy runs on Mexicans and other south american immigrants, mostly illegal.
Why would software be any different?
It's a global market, folks - if you want to keep your jobs and their 80K salaries, you've got to be better at something than your international competition, just like a steel manufacturer or anybody else who competes in the global economy.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
So, who's being the racist here?
You paint these displaced american workers as the racists, but that's not accurate (in most cases). I do think that there's racism here, but it's on the part of large corporations who exploit foreign labor because they can get away with paying ridiculously low wages.
When I was a subcontractor for IBM, I worked on the same floor as IBM India. IBM sponsored provided H1B sponsorship so that the IBM India developers could work in the US. I was shocked to learn that while I was being billed out at $100/hour, my equally-trained, equally-capable counterparts were being billed out at $20/hour. Keep in mind that we were all taking home a *fraction* of what we were billed out for (I was getting around $25/hour, I shudder to think of what IBM India contractors were making). Sure, you could quit, but then you've lost your H1B visa and are deported. In essence, it was endentured servitude.
It all comes down to supply & demand. US Corporations are increasing the supply of IT professionals in order to drive down the wage they can commmand. However, they are doing this through questionable (if not downright unethical) means. You end up with one group of exploited developers, and another group of displaced developers.
there are good reasons why people are not hiring: maybe the ECONOMY IS DOWN?
i mean -- let's think about this for a bit. the economy wasn't nearly recovered (companies have no money) and now the scandals from worldcom / enron (means all the execs are right now tighter than amish when comes to spending for capital equip and human resources) -- and you wonder why people are not hiring?
unless i missed something -- the unemployment rates does not track the difference between unemployed citizens and non-citizens -- i know plenty of former H1B people who are out of a job right now. moreover -- non-citizens who are out of a job for a long time leaves the country -- so i would not trust the statistics *anyway*.
lastly... I know this will draw flames from hell -- but have anyone considered that maybe H1B holders actually got better grades in school? There are so many people who think that college is just a place to have fun, drink beer, blah blah, and 2.5 is an acceptable GPA. well -- for most forigner students, unless you get 3.0 / 3.5, your scholarship gets cut and you can't pay for your schooling cuz you have no work permit. so it is quite often that forign students gets better grades than domestic students because they have no choice. if you were an employer, say both are "qualified" but one has a 1/2 point GPA advantage in core curriculum, who are you goint to choose?
this is a classic "i want to blame all my problems on other people" syndrom. quite discusting stuff. even more so that IEEE is supporting this sh*t.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
In short, legally and logically, it would be a very rare case where a local worker would lose his job to a H1 worker. H1 workers are hired only if the companies involved are not able to find qualified local candidates.
The job shortages in today's market is due to the prevailing bad economic climate. Let us not try to find scapegoats.
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McManes said IEEE-USA wants companies to rely on foreign nationals only when they cannot find qualified US citizens to fill jobs.
But wait! Isn't that already the law for H1B right now? My own H1B application went to great lengths to explain to the Dept of Labor that I was going to fulfill a jobposition that my company could not find an American worker for. Hence, I'm not grabbing anyone else's job.
The article already states that the number of H1B visas is down to something like 60k already, because companies can fill all job positions with US workers.
If this results in difficulties for extending my legitimite H1B next year, I'll be pissed. Let me prepare my cancellation of my IEEE membership...
<grub> Reading
The reality is, two years ago, you couldn't get enough US workers at even remotely sensible salaries, so H1Bs became a way to make US businesses viable in a global market. Now the recession's hit and companies can find US employees, the number of H1Bs are down 75% (160k-40k from the article). Those figures alone indicate that while there are some abuses (there will be in any system), by and large, H1Bs have worked as intended - to provide extra labour when labour is short.
The main problem with the IT industry is that a million and one idiots joined the industry on the promise of massive salaries. They didn't care about what they were doing, put relatively little effort in to getting more than the basic skills and just came for the money.
Once the economy tanked and layoffs started, some of them remained, filling the positions the "good" engineers should be taking. End result, a lot of "good" engineers can't find work because a lot of "bad" ones are still in the remaining jobs. This is settling out over time, but it's still an issue.
The same happens in whatever the boom industry is right before a recession. Look what happened to accountants and stock brokers at the end of the 80s. In time, it rights itself as the gold diggers leave in search of the next boom and the "good" people filter back in to the roles.
So, perhaps rather than go for the ultranationalistic, easy knee-jerk of "damn them immigrants!", which, granted, most societies tend to do during hard times, maybe looking closer to home makes more sense.
We still have MicroSkills and Laptop Training Solutions advertising all over the radio here (CA) about how IT is a growth industry and if you just do a six month course, you're entitled to a $60k job at the end of it. I'd imagine they're dumping vastly more than 20,000 extra workers in to an industry that they shouldn't be in.
And going back to the whole industries people shouldn't be in... It's been said by almost every expert on the dot.com economy that the recession was the best thing that could have happened as it's driving out those who shouldn't be in it. Yes, it's painful while those of us who should be in it wait for them to go and can't find work ourselves. Ultimately, though, the lean period's strengthening the industry, not harming it.
And, yes, I have been through it. Ten months out of work with a near dream resume behind me. Yet even after that, I still stand by the fact that the problems we're facing are a good thing. We were a bloated industry that needed to be forced to justify its existence. Blaming those sneaky foreigners really doesn't help things.
One final thought: Which would you prefer, "Half my office are foreigners on H1Bs rather than Americans" or "My office shut down and moved to India because we couldn't compete without a few H1Bs"?
This type of activity is pretty clueless. Two years ago the US was screaming out for every engineer it go lay its hands on.
Pandering to populist pressure might sound good tactics to politicians but it is a pretty short term gain. The intended beneficiaries are not going to thank you for it and the naturalized citizens are going to hate you for it.
Making it harder to hire non-US workers will simply force US companies to be even more aggressive in outsourcing programing overseas. The IEEE group was also complaining about that but guess what? There is absolutely nothing Congress can do to stop it, unless they want to start a huge trade war.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
My point is that it isn't as simple as saying "If we kick out all the foreigners we will all have jobs again". That is a racist attitude. I am fortunate to come from a country with a similar - if not better standard of living to the US, however those that are advocating "kicking out" H1B workers should remember that they were invited here, and in many cases they will be forced to return to countries with extremely poor standards of living.
I am really saddened by the response to this story here, I honestly thought that the geek community was above this kind of bigotry.
and let me tell you I am certainly not cheaper than others. I worked at a startup and, of course, this one went belly up. It took me less than 1 week(!) at the beginning of this year(!!), when times were the worst, to find a new job. I work at one of the largest Software Companies in the country and believe me, nobody gave a shit how much my salary is, they were just interested in my qualification. And the market is tough. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am pretty much known in my field (crypto & security), wrote papers and a book, worked for 10+ years in the industry and have a MS/CS from Germany. Without trying to sound arrogant, could it be that I was just more qualified than other candidates!? Does it occur to the people voting for this bill that there might be good education in other countries, too? Does it occur to them that me being here benefits the US? Just my $.02 ...
- Getting an H1B visa for an employee is not cheap, and a long and tedious process
- H1B workers have to be paid comparable wages ("prevailing wage" as they call it)
The only way to get "cheap foreign labor" is to hire programmers in another country (i.e. don't move them to the US, but make them work from their own country), which is specifically NOT what this whole issue is about.One of the problems with the H1B program is that the participants are essentially indentured servants--they do not enjoy the same job mobility freedoms of full citizens. This makes it easy to exploit them, whether for lower wages, increased hours, mowing the boss' lawn, etc. An insidious side effect of this is to hold back compensation for all tech workers.
So, I propose that H1B visa holders should have the right to change jobs at will, without losing their visa or resetting the clock on a permanent resident application. Maybe cap the number of at-will transfers at 3, but GIVE THEM SOME MOBILITY. If an employer is at risk of losing their H1B personnel, they will be forced to compensate them at the same level they do citizens. Then, any competition between citizens and H1B holders for jobs is on merit, rather than the structural ability to screw the H1B holder.
Remain calm! All is well!
sure.. to take one example there are a lot atheists and a lot of believers. One group at least is wrong.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I have to disagree with those of you who believe that the US Government's H1B Visa policy creates an artificial lack of jobs for American citizens. On the contrary, if you take a broader look at the tech labor pool, the only artificial situation is an overabundance of jobs (or inflation of wages) for US citizens due to the *restrictions* imposed by the Visa process.
We can't be good little libertarians one day and protectionists the next. In India and China there is a huge and rapidly growing pool of at least marginally qualified technical workers. It is simply inevitable that Americans such as us will come into competition with those people for the limited pool of technical positions globally. It's a simple macroeconmic principle that as the pool of labor grows, the prevalent wage drops. A scale back of the H1B program will only temporarily maintain the *existing* imbalance that favors us in America.
As painful as it is (of course I have a job so maybe I have no place to talk about pain) we as tech workers have to face the facts that 1) We work in a global industry 2) Our salaries are artificially inflated for us by national borders. The diffusion of workers to the U.S. is just a matter of time, and until we just admit this and liberalize employment of overseas labor, the whole industry in the US will be hurt by paying out excessive wages.
Rather than trying to lock out our tech brothers and sisters in India and China, we should be focusing on making sure that we are the best available labor pool for the job, regardless of national origin.
You may now flame me into obliviion.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
There's always the other side of the story...
<grub> Reading
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
First, the math:
If somebody wrote an article asserting that 235,000 members of the National Council of Teachers of English had sent a letter to Congress I'd have just let it pass. You can depend upon English teachers to never split an infinitive, but numbers sometimes escape them. Engineers, on the other hand, have no excuse: this was not 235,000 EE's, it was the US trade association to which they belong.
Second, the subject is moot
Despite the fact that Congress authorized up to 160,000 H-1B visas per year, the Globe article points out that only 40,000 were used last year, and only half of those were for IT jobs. Look at the job sites: again, and again, and again you will see "We will|do|can not sponsor H-1B applicants." Petitioning Congress to limit the number of H-1B visas when they're not being used is kind of beside the point.
Third, they're whining
C'mon--unemployment of 5.7%? That's hardly a catastrophe--and the numbers are deeply suspect. First, not every EE is a programmer (or works in IT). Second, not every programmer is an EE--and in point of fact a lot of EEs have little business attempting to program. Much like Computer Science curricula, EE programs focused on IT tend to focus on skills that aren't in demand--and ignore skills that are important to a lot of commercial programming. Databases don't fall within the purview of a EE program--but database programming is a big part of the IT job market. If a company brings in somebody from the Indian subcontinent on an H-1B visa to write stored procedures on Oracle, does an EE lose a job? Post hoc ergo propter hoc (logical fallacy of false cause).
Fourth, what solution do they propose?
Bleating to Congress is a lovely thing for the association's executives to do, in order to demonstrate to their members that the execs deserve to be paid. But what exactly do they propose? That we track down all of these people on H-1B visas and ship them home? With their husbands or wives, with their children? Even if those children, born in the U.S.A., are U.S. citizens?
A Word from the English Teachers:
Stand up, clear your throat, and recite with me:
jobs were everywhere and if you had any credentials at all, companies would fight about who got to give you $70k/yr to do 1.5hrs of work a day.
Wow, just think how much easier it would have been for them to just make everybody work a full day! Was this a tech boom, or just a waste-time-and-money boom?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Please don't construe this as xenophobic or racist, but there is a general perception, at least at companies like Oracle and Sun, that H1-B visas are prefered over citizens. Naturally this is illegal, but I and many others have seen it in practice. The reason, besides the fact that americans are generally lazier than people coming over with H1-Bs, is that H1-B rules give the company more power. I know of one company that regularly lays off 5% of their workforce, and 80% of their workforce is H1-B. Being laid off is a much bigger problem for the H1-B contingent because they will likely have to pack up and go home. The 5% layoff policy causes these people to work like dogs, seriously never taking even a weekend day off. I'm not kidding here. I know people who haven't had a saturday off in two years, all because they're scared of being in the bottom 5% and being shipped home. This is sick and wrong and bad for society. Companies are taking advantage of H1-B workers, it's not the H1-B workers that are the problem.
More likely, US workers are going to have to broaden their skills to include ones other than coding. There is more to being a programmer than just the coding, you know.
Breakfast served all day!
It's a global market, folks - if you want to keep your jobs and their 80K salaries,
You need to maintain profit margins, which means a higher top line overall. When nobody can afford your product because they are all making $20K a year, paying $10K in taxes and $11K in rent, then what?
OOPS.
Someone earlier said something about basic economics. Well, that's about as basic as it gets. A company MUST PAY their employees enough to afford to buy their product or THEY WILL GO OUT OF BUSINESS. PERIOD. It's like gravity, fellas. Can't get around it no matter how many accountants and lawyers you hire.
You cannot be pro freedom and oppose the employment of those from other countries. Its all about freedom of association. If I want to buy the programming services of someone from another country, why should I be stopped? I'm really being held hostage. At some point it begins to sound like organized crime where you are forced to use the "services" of one group "or else." As a free person, I should be able to deal economically with whomever I choose.
I think whats really happening here is that people have been so used to thinking that their talents are so special are now finding out that people all over the world are just as capable as they are.
Really, the difference in pay comes down to nothing more than being lucky enough to be born in the United States and speak English.
They'll try. But most companies don't have the maturity in specification and acceptance testing to allow in-house contracted services, let alone offshore. So they'll fail. Maybe then they'll hire local talent...
That is all.
I oppose H1Bs because they're less than you deserve.
You should just be able to come here and work. No deportations, no time limits, no bullshit.
Your company shouldn't be able to hold over you if you want something better when you're here. That should be your choice.
Of course, I'm a fan of totally open immigration as well...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
...but I will take whatever I can get ;-)
The people that I know who are senior Java developers are working on back-end code using J2EE.
There are no jobs for Java developers in the Denver area. Qwest pretty much took care of that.
I'd like to point everyone over to a news.com article that was posted about H-1B's. This article is a good summary, but to really understand it you should actually read the regulations that are in place. The INS website is a good place to start.
Myths:
It seems that the article is more sour grapes than anything else. Don't get me wrong - I don't dislike the United States, but I feel it's a better place to go on vacation than to actually live. Especially with the post-9/11 restrictions on the freedoms that actually made the country attractive in the first place.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
we own this country, it is ours, and all the benefits of ownership/citizenship should go to us citizens, and not foreigners.
When you use the term "we" and "us", are you referring to the indigenous people of North America?
Otherwise...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Bright spark, eh? You're confusing micro and macro economics.
Basically, if the world functioned as a single economic unit, there might be some truth in that. But it doesn't: restrictions on availability of goods (shipping), language, plus governments, get in the way.
In practice, though, all that happens is that the folks making $20K US in India look like millionaires.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Maybe I don't hangout in the right circle of programming frieds but besides seeing an impossible number of years worth of experience in new technology, I see crazy mixes of skills. I see jobs where they want some Unix C/C++ guru and then they want the person to also have experience with Visual Basic. I don't know about anyone else but the people I've meet that were really good in Unix didn't have any interest in learning VB. Other jobs I see they a great deal of Win32 C++ development and also want the person to have experience with COBOL on mainframes. Again I've worked with a few good Windows developers but most of them were too young to ever had been around a and all their experience revolved around PCs.
Tony
of course, i'm an american living overseas. less foreign workers living overseas means less work being done in america which means more taxes and income going into other countries besides america. like mine.
america was built on immigrants. einstein for instance. or linus torvald - on an h1-b visa. if america doesn't want them anymore then i'm sure they can work hard at building up other countries.
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The problem isn't that we, the technology industry, are actively seeking to fill jobs with people from other countries....Well, actually we are actively seeking people from other countries, but only because most American high school and college graduates can't tell the difference between geometry and calculus.
Science and mathematics are sorely lacking in this country's education system. We, as a nation, are more concerned with safe guarding "Under God" than making sure our children under the basic concepts of mathematics, biology, botany, chemistry, and physiology. We are more concerned with donating millions to erect a memorial for the 9/11 victims, but turn a deaf ear when our teachers and schools ask for money to buy books and supplies.
Sorry to say, but we should increase the visas; if only to ensure that our cable TV and Internet service won't be interrupted - that way we, as a nation, won't have to face the reality of our situation.
Err.... welcome to globalization: you either have to keep darkie out with barbed wire (look at our Southern border vs. our Northern one) or accept that we're one world now, and poor forigners are often just as bright and twice as hard working as the children of the Imperium.
Immigration is THE issue of the next millenium.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Great... let's kick out the intligent, hard-workiking, law-abiding H1B workers, and yet do NOTHING about the stupid, lazy and criminal types that we give 'asylum' or 'student visas' to.
Note: it wasen't H1B visa holders hijacking planes on the 11th, and I haven't seen a H1B holder at the food-bank or getting a welfare check.
What we need to allow, it the open selling of US citizenship rights by US citizens to anybody who wants it. Out H1B friends could buy the citizenship from a willing seller for cash - there whould be a bunch of crack-whores lined up to sell their citizenship for a few bucks.
We'd get rid of a pest, and gain a good citizen.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
In fact, this is not a wild theory. Already, companies moving development offshore.
Even if we accept the (wrong) claim that H1 workers take away American jobs, consider this. Atleast, if H1 workers come here, some of the jobs will go to Americans. If not, ALL JOBS WILL GO TO FOREIGNERS. Which is better? Decide for yourself.
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True, true.... but there are a lot of american services companies which are developing those skills and running offshore firms to do the work, and thats working pretty damn well.
I've actually done this for a living at times, and it's not easy, but it's cheaper by far than employing yanks.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
Oh, a believer in the "solve-a-riddle-get-a-job" mindset. Microsoft hires that way. Everyone complains about their software problems. Maybe this is the cause.
I knew a lot of people in college that could solve these proof type problems pretty easy. They couldn't code worth shit. I know a lot of people that work now and can solve these types of problems. Their code tends to focus on solving one specific problem at the expense of leaving the larger scale part of the problem unanswered. Sounds like making a webserver that serves web pages, but really sucks in terms of security.
Often their code is not reusable in any fashion, and they have a hard time understanding something that is engineered to be reusable and scalable. And when they design a UI, using it is like....solving a proof!
Now, true, I don't know to what depth your questions go. Perhaps they are simpler than what I've encountered. (I did answer the question, anyway. Still didn't take the job.) I'd rather not work somewhere where everyone is trying to wear their brain on their sleeve to make sure everyone knows who is the dominant geek. I've been well paid and have not had to work in that kind of environment for a while. When I did work in that environment, I just couldn't take the hostility everyone turned on me when they realized they were outclassed. (Not that I consider myself a genius either.....everyone knows people that just don't "get it" and I had the unfortunate opportunity to have to work with some of those types.)
Skilled project management in the USA, programming in India, and longer development cycles.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
From the article: McManes said IEEE-USA wants companies to rely on foreign nationals only when they cannot find qualified US citizens to fill jobs.
In other words IEEE-USA wants exactly what the H1B program provides, via the INS regulations on how such a visa is obtained. If they know of instances where the law is being broken through the hiring of non-qualifying H1B workers, they should help the INS by providing them with these examples...
Interestingly enough, the H1A visa program (for foreign nurses) was discontinued for several years. It has been re-instated since, but the years when it was not available must have contributed to the current nursing shortage.
I decided I liked it here so I decided to start the road to naturalization. First step was to trade the TN visa (1 year renewable forever) for an H1-B visa (6 year) since TN is not supposed to be used for people who want to immegrate.
And suddenly now I'm the evil one, bent on destroying the american economy or something. Man, I should have stayed on the TN...
BTW, it's not the H1-B that "locks" people into their company like a slave; it's the Labour Certification that you need for a green card. If you change jobs and your new job isn't exactly the same as your old one, you have to restart the LC process from scratch. Here in California, it looks like it will take 3-4 years to get my LC complete. That's in addition to the 3 years it takes to get the green card once you have the LC...
Just in case anyone isn't aware of the individual implications of being a visa worker in the US,
You pay FICA, Social Security & all the other taxes, but are not allowed to collect unemployment or medicare or welfare.
If you lose your job, you have 60 days (15 officially) to get your stuff together and get out of the country unless you find a new job. Kind of hard in today's anti-immegrant climate.
In many ways, illegal immegrants have more rights than legal ones do.
Finally, it's funny how you never see anyone railing about all the immegrants from central and south america who work on the farms to help bring you cheap groceries...
Basically, if the world functioned as a single economic unit, there might be some truth in that.
There is truth in it, because it is the truth. It is an unavoidable, immutable, absolute law of economics. Period. End of story.
And I made no assertion that the world functions as a single economic unit, although all this talk of a "global marketplace" would seem to indicate that many do.
But it doesn't: restrictions on availability of goods (shipping), language, plus governments, get in the way.
Ok, so what we have, basically, is a restriction on the availability of a living wage for a larger and larger portion of a population. There are a lot of people out there who should have no trouble at all finding work who can't get a part-time job straightening clothes racks.
Sure they may work for less but open source apps are free, and they do pretty much everything I need. Why would I hire any more employees? Besides, my small business isn't in IT.
You Americans have two weeks holiday per year if you're lucky. You have a system where your company can fire you legally on the spot without having to explain anything to anyone. You have a bunch of politicians that are permanently trying to turn your country into the fourth reich.
No thanks!
We're seeing around 6% overall unemployment, but the unemployment rate among experienced developers is much higher than that. The government doesn't track unemployment on an industry-wide basis, but at every users group meeting during the past year a standard question has always been "how many people are unemployed," and the number is always 50% and up.
This survey doesn't mean a lot - the people who are working are often putting in very long hours and may not be able to attend these meetings, but it's a better datapoint than the state-wide statistics which didn't include me at all (since I was self-employed and ineligible for unemployment compensation), or friends who had exhausted their benefits, or other friends who accepted temporary jobs in grocery stores or department stores and are thus no longer "unemployed."
I've heard that the numbers in the metro Denver area may be around 25% in the "IT" sector, but that includes cable installers, telephone linemen, etc., in addition to the people who tend to read Slashdot. It's definitely high enough that a lot of good people have been unemployed for a very long time, and people who are working will be much more risk adverse than healthy for the industry.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
One has to look at the impact of visa holders on a broader level--companies didn't support the expansion of the program because they wanted to hire individual workers at cheap salaries. As a previous poster wrote, that would be illegal.
No, companies wanted the program expanded so that they could expand the pool of available labor, keeping overall labor expenses down.
Whether those marginal savings were used to fatten profits or remain competitive, I'll leave for those who can decipher Andersen's accounting tricks to discuss.
But, in a time when employment and wages are stagnant, or falling, it certainly is in workers' interested to tighten up the labor market, squeezing supply and increasing wages. Cutting back the visa program is one way to do that.
Of course, convincing all your former co-workers to get out of programming and open their own interior design firms would do that, too. (Heck, someone's gotta replace Martha "Slammer" Stewart.
Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
The last two companies I worked for hired foreign workers for programming positions. I don't know what they were paid. I don't care. I will say this, some of the brightest programmers and other IT technical people I've ever met (and certainly worked with) were Russian, Indian, Persian, or German (mostly Indian and Russian, tho).
They work harder and find few excuses and are so detail oriented that when compared with the other American workers there, put the Americans to shame. I, am American. I even found myself lazy compared to them.
The company only required 35 hours a week (my salary was $72 -- I was R&D). We had two hour lunches. They didn't hardly care much about being in-tune with their work, as I on the other hand, devoted my life to squeezing every last bit of performance out of whatever I could and reading trade magazines and buying every book on the shelf about programming out of my pocket. I game my all, but not all my hours.
They, gave all their hours (when not required to) and often did exemplary work in their projects. I must say, I see no harm in foreign workers. Americans (as I've seen but I haven't seen them all) are simply lazy when compared to them. Again, based on what I've seen which is by no means exhaustive. I'm proud to have met those people and watched 1 Indian and 1 Russian become and American citizen as a result of corporate sponsorship.
Thanks,
Me
An untrue statement. I speak from firsthand experience - I am a US citizen that was displaced by a H1-B visa holder. It happened to me. It has happened to friends and colleagues. There are loopholes galore - company A contracts out to company B that staffs with foreign immigrants on temporary visas.
AZspot
My girlfriend was not dropping a kid from June 2001 to April 2002.
My friend who does telecom sales has not been jerking off since October 2001, although his wife did do some sales (specifically, her car) to pay the mortgage.
And let me assure you that my boss from my second job hasn't "found himself" since December of last year.
So might I humbly suggest you keep your fucking mouth shut when you don't have the first clue you're talking about. People who lose their jobs tend to spend their time glued to their computer searching the listings, hitting job fairs or calling old contacts. It's not like losing your $15/hour job there in college where you can just call your parents and have them send you money.
I'm a skilled tech worker, but I only have 3 years of full-time professional experience. Right now, this makes me almost unemployable -- the HR bunnies just toss my resume into the bin when they see when I graduated. I was very lucky to get recommended by a friend to the job I have now. So don't talk to me about you mad computer skillz and how you can get a job at will because you're such a legendary hacker. And don't you fucking presume to tell me that it's not really bad out there, because I damn well know different.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Many of us don't have a problem with current H1B workers staying in the country... but we can't understand why additional workers are still being brought in while so many experienced programmers can't even get their resumes acknowledged.
This isn't even nationalistic - every damn time some idiot chirps up in one of the local user groups "Hi, I just moved to town and I'm looking for good places to find a job!" you can hear people grinding their teeth. Nothing can be done about that (esp. with Gov. Nero insisting that the state continues to be an IT powerhouse despite the collapse of both the IT and telco industries), but limiting immigration is one of the core elements of national soverignty.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I've heard of all that stuff before, except for the anticounterfeiting one. WTF???!!! The post you have above is worthy of 5 articles in major media. These are important issues and should be covered, but of course, like the HDTV bandwidth auction, got nary a peep out to the public.
... despite the fact that if any of those measures gets passed, or Microsoft is at all successful in its bid to eradicate open computing, there will be far more tech jobs lost in America than than ten times as many H1B visas could possibly account for.
Looks like someone either didn't want my criticism of the IEEE to be seen, or didn't like my criticism of Microsoft and their cohorts in Hollywood and D.C. In any event my post was modded down as off-topic
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The layoffs are not done on basis of citizenship. Its on qualification, performance and dedication.
When I was doing my Masters from Purdue, most of Masters students in Electrical and Computer Sciences were non Americans. I used to TA a undergrad class and have never found a foreign student get bad grades. Maybe its that they cant lose their scholarships that makes them work hard. But either way, they come out of school learning quite a lot.
At work, I have seen many H1B workers work very hard. Maybe because they usually dont have a very firm financial base here or maybe they dont have much social ties and spend all their time at work. They eventually do a better job, aquire good skills and climb the company ladder. So employers do like them.
As for low pay, in the good old days of economic boom, I haven't seen H1Bs being paid less than their peers. I have seen them rise in the company hierarchy and do well. But now that the economy is turning bad, many employers not hiring H1Bs. I have seen people forced to work on salaries which don't compensate their skills. Because they if they dont have a job, they have to leave in 14 days. For most of them with kids at school and property, it is a very tough situation. So they take paycuts. Everyone is getting hit hard, but they are getting a bigger share of it.
So perhaps its not fair to blame them. Maybe we should take a leaf from their book and try to inculcate these qualities so that our managers dont find us dispensable.
Its not meeting someone on the inside that helps, but that they know by you being at the java/linux/perl/oracle users group that you have something like a commitment at making sure that your skills are updated. That you can work with others. That they can see your community contributions before they commit to seeing you. In short, you have already passed the "screening"...
--
Time is on my side
This reasoning is frequently trotted out to defend the practice of displacing American workers with cheaper foreign temporary visa holders. But it is disingenuous - in fact, H1-B is used to augment and support the offshore movement of jobs. Many corporations attempted to move entire systems application support with futile results. So, now a different approach is used - offshore staffing augmented by a "liason" team, predominately comprised of H1-B visa holders. Consequently, H1-B program enables offshore movement of programming jobs ...
AZspot
They may get a higher salary now at the cost of lost jobs and lost productivity for US firms. I couldn't care less, they can do what they want, as long as there's no "software import" restrictions.
The thay we see them will be the day US techies have lost the edge (because now they export lots more than they import).
unfinished: (adj.)
Was it a "waste time and money" boom or a "tech boom"? I'm going to say it doesn't matter. Seriously, what if they're one and the same?
Obviously, new web sites and e-commerce businesses went online at exponential rates in '99 and 2000. You had the whole "Y2K scare" which turned out to be a non-issue, too.
Nonetheless, it took lots of folks with technical skills to check that code and patch Y2K flaws. It took people with HTML, coding, and systems administration skills to run all those web sites.
Maybe they did turn out to be a complete waste of everyone's time -- but it doesn't change the fact that it required lots of tech-savvy people to make it all happen.
It was clearly a "boom" for people with the right technical skillsets - whether or not it proved to advance society as a whole in the long-run.
Oh, so people are useless because they have skills using FrontPage and an MCSE?
Come on, now. Only on Slashdot could that assertion be made. I'm sorry folks, but I've been unemployed since May, despite having over 10 years of computer experience. I *do* feel like I know what I'm doing when it comes to many aspects of computing. Nonetheless, I see *far* more opportunities available that say "MCSE preferred" than I do ALL of the Linux certifications put together.
I don't have an MCSE, because I, too, believed there were far too many "paper MCSEs" running around, and the whole thing disgusted me. Nonetheless, the days of the NT 4.0 based MCSE are over. The Win2K based version is much harder to earn, and companies do give it some weight in hiring decisions. I wish I had one - because maybe I'd be off of unemployement pay if I did.
I don't buy RMS' solution ("Get rid of the morons by turning the industry into a job-shop, making it so unprofitable that *only* people who love the profession will stay voluntarily").
But I sure as *heck* don't buy the IEEE's solution of "getting rid of all H1-B workers, regardless of competence, so that there will be jobs for citizen, regardless of *in*competence".
Most of the people who are out of work in the IT industry are out of work because they don't have the necessary skills for a reduced market size, where you actually have to be able to *do the work* in order to have a job.
These are the people who went into IT because they thought that that was their best opportunity for a big payday. They obtained their credentials by expending the minimum possible effort; no spending until 2-3AM, daily, in the computer lab for these people. And they are the same class of people who flooded the business schools, when an MBA was considered golden, and before that law schools, when a Juris Doctorate was considered golden, and medical schools, before that.
They are people who are chasing the money, rather than the profession, and they are involved only because of their love of money, not their love of the work.
And it's the same percentage of the pool of total workers, as it is the percentage of the H1-B workers... or non-H1-B workers.
Society would be much better off, if these people were to learn how to say "Would you like fries with that?", and stay out of jobs that put other people's livelihood, welfare, property, or lives at risk. Perhaps they could become cabinet ministers.
-- Terry
I've been a manager, and let me tell you, hiring an H-1B person was discouraged (albeit mildly), because of the delay in starting at the job, and the legal costs. We couldn't pay H-1Bs any less than citizens or permanent residents (green-card holders). As a manager I preferred to hire smart and outspoken people, not meek and obedient serfs as some here have implied managers want. The best people make waves, and you don't have to be born and raised in this country to do so.
Is the US economy better off for the H-1B program? Absolutely. Can there be too many foreign workers? Of course. I don't claim to know what the right number is, or even if the present numbers are too high or too low. The point is that individual experience cannot tell you that, only a detailed and unbiased study can. As individuals we should not extrapolate from our bitterness. As you long as people look for scapegoats among the powerless instead of considering the powerful ones actually responsible, there will always be this kind of crap bandied about.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
Actually, I did find a job (reread my post). But I know a lot of people who can't find work or are seriously underemployed (working at Peet's, etc). As such, I take issue with the inference that all unemployed people are just taking a few weeks off to lounge by the pool, esp. given that the people he sited wouldn't be included in the unemployment rate, anyhow.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
(* You either bring Adit over here on an H1B, or send the software to India to be written by his company in Bangalore. *)
I've had it with Adit!
PHB's really prefer visible butts in visible chairs and will pay a premium for them.
We don't let everybody in other profession over here, why techies? Why? because other professions protect their own profession via trade groups, etc.
Try to let auto mechanics and truck drivers come drifting over on planes and see what happens.
Groups who don't protect themselves politically are gonna get walked all over by those with other agendas, and that is exactly what happened.
I can't believe congress is allowing this during one of the worse tech-slumps ever.
(* if you want to keep your jobs and their 80K salaries *)
Who the heck is getting 80K? Lowering the asking price does not matter if you don't have a Crest Smile and the correct 30 acronyms on your resume.
F H1B!
Table-ized A.I.
To paraphrase P.J. O'Roarke, its not like the economy is a pizza and if I have too many slices you're left with just the box. If economics were a zero-sum game like that, then more immigrants would mean less jobs. Since, in fact, immigrants must spend their money on services and products made by natives, they create as many jobs as they fill.
Stephen Moore at the Cato Institute did an interesting study about the H1-B issue:
"...every additional high-tech worker brings to the United States about $110,000 of free human capital. An additional 50,000 H1-b immigrant visas is the equivalent of a $5.5 billion transfer of wealth from the citizens of foreign countries to the citizens of the United States. High-tech immigration is like reverse foreign aid."
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
(* I can't believe the number of posts I've read that assert that the author deserves a job over someone who is more qualified, more experienced and/or willing to work for less simply because "I iz an Americun" and the other applicant isn't. *)
Yeah, open up the borders and let everybody come rushing in to take the jobs of truck drivers, auto mechanics, doctors, store managers, hell even congress.
Let 'em all in!
Why just fuck US techies. Fuck all professions.
Equal Opportunity Fucking (EOF)
Table-ized A.I.
Not sure what it proves, but its a fact - on my Ph.D. graduation from a top program in the country, more then half of those graduating were foreighn students. Russia, China.. little bit of others ;-)
It is definitely MORE expensive for the university to hire foreign Ph.D. students - no fellowships for them, only university funds. They also make lousy TAs - for paying undergrads. I got my money from a U.S. government agency - thank you Uncle Sam - -that was your tax dollars..
Guess our qualifications outweighted that.
I am definitely paid more then most locals, and company wants to keep me around, and I do not see a line of engineers who can do my job - even now - outside the office..
BUt if I am not welcome - fine - I always wanted to try Australia - or maybe Germany..
Wonder what Saddam will pay? Yeah, I can do nukes
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Immigration is THE issue of the next millenium.
The next millennium is a long time away. If the human race makes it to there, then I don't think that there will be any such thing as "immigration" per se, unless we encounter extraterrestrial life.
Slashdot readers are tech people (some incompetent IT people who are now out of work). But it's bad form to simply say that you want to screw over some foreigner or that you want to be paid tons of money regardless of whether you're worth it. So to "protect" the poor foreign workers, you want their jobs to be given to you at higher pay? Yeaaah...
And of course, if someone gets fired, it's *never* their fault...
May we never see th
That's the wrong model. These jobs are created in the US because that's where the programmers want to live. Companies are competing for programmers internationally, and a US location is merely another benefit, like health care and stock options. If the US restricts the availability of that benefit, companies are still going to hire the same people, they are just going to work in different locations. If it were up to companies, they would dearly love to employ programmers in India, Asia, or Europe, where salaries and other costs are generally much lower than in, say, Silicon Valley or NYC.
And if it were up to foreign governments, they would like to see nothing more than to have the US restrict skill-based visas and immigration because the US, quite unfairly, takes advantage of the well-functioning social services and educational systems of other countries to replenish its own labor market. That's why California can get away with such an underfunded educational system and still have a high-tech industry.
The US really only has two choices: let foreign programmers into the country and derive the economic benefits in taxes from that, or see those jobs and programmers go overseas. In the era of global software companies and outsourcing, it is simply not possible to force companies to give programming jobs to Americans if they don't think it's in their interest.
If it's them or us, I vote us.
That's because you are a terrible person
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
One of the main reasons for this [alleged Java skills shortage] is that developers experience an initial decreased level of productivity when migrating from other languages such as COBOL and RAD/4GL to Java. The leap, in many cases, is just too demanding. "Due to the steep learning curve, less than 50% of the job market demand for efficient Java developers will be satisfied by 2003," says Gartner.
This is because Java sucks, simple.
It has a steep learning curve because of all the bogus OO hype crap like the cute but unrealistic animal, shape, and device driver examples that PHB's fall for.
The API's are screwy and OO methodologies are highly inconsistent from practicioner to practicioner. (If you disagree, then show me the fricken pattern of same-ness instead of just modding me down.)
They want more H1B's because Java sucks? Ironic. I would like to see that testonomy in a congressional hearing. What a hoot.
oop.ismad.com
Table-ized A.I.
Any economist will also tell you that people going to school or bumming around Europe are not considered "unemployed."
No shit, dumbass. If they were the unemployment rate in this country would be about 55% Not 6. Notice the person you are replying to said 'workers' not 'people'
Before the 90s boom, most economists were beginning to give up on the idea of a 4% unemployment rate as realistic. The only time the unemployment rate was anywhere near 2% was during WWII!
In the interim, the rate was between 5 and 7, IIRC
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Easily solved if you don't have their H1-B's dependant on keeping a job.
I mean, if they're living here they gotta spend money to eat, live, etc. Does it really matter if they decide to quit their job and just hang out?
how can you get an H1-b for yourself? Did you get it from the VCs or what?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think that the H1-B visa program has a bad effect on the future of the US as a world technology leader.
While one can argue with that the effect of having qualified H1-B employees in the US is good for the economic strength of the nation, I feel that this is likely to be a short term effect. Other nations that currently export their best talent to the US are working hard to develop programs to keep this talent at home.
In the meantime the lack of economic incentive for homegrown US technical talent due to salaries being depressed by the availability of a large labor pool (supply/demand) is causing the best/brightest to pursue other opportuniites. This has an effect both on the current labor pool, and the future ability to develop homegrown technical talent because of the decay of the educational infrastructure that results when students are not interested in a field.
As talent exporting countries develop ways to provide opportunities at home, the H1-B pool will dry up, and the American educational system will NOT have the means to to provide the needed talent, while universities abroad that have been supplying the US with talent will now be fueling thier native economies, and the US will not have the trained talent to keep up.
Policy makers are doing the country a great disservice by bowing to business demands that are notoriously governed by quarterly profit statements, rather than considering the longer term need to educate its citizens to compete with the rest of the world.
There was a debate on slashdot about globalization and unions a year ago, alot of the high tech upper class posters on slashdot claimed globalization was good and would help them, that americans would always have jobs.
Well, things are changing, the economy is not all that great anymore and now its hard to get a job.
Whats the solution? Well the first thing we can do
RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE
If we are going to have globalization we must have a global minimum wage, this wage. This wage must be high enough so anyone from any country can make a living and survive on it.
I'm surprised we havent raised the minimum wage here in the USA, $6 an hour? You cant live off $6 an hour! We need liveable wages, we need fair treatment of workers in all countries.
All workers should be of equal value, value should be based on the job done not the country you are from, you should get paid the same if you are in pakistan as you would if you were in the USA.
This is the ONLY and I mean ONLY way, that we can have globalization work, without us all losing our jobs here in the USA.
I mean why hire us, people in china and pakistan will work for pennies and can live off of pennies, our standard of living will eventually be lower than theirs because we cant live off of pennies in fact we wont even have a job.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
My fiance' moved to the US from Sweden about five months ago. With a Masters' degree from one of Europe's most prestigious CompSci/Engineering universities, a Sun java certification, and several years' proven experience with some of Europe's largest IT consulting firms doing SQL programming, PHP/ASP scripting, Java & Linux development - We had one hell of a time finding an employer in the US to sponsor her.
Nearly all of the firms with listings in our area flatly stated that they would not sponsor. Most of them print this in their ads. The reasons are simple:
1. $1,000 sponsorship fee, paid to US Government
2. $1,000 15-day H1B premium processing fee, payable by employee. If you don't chose this option, paperwork takes 3-5 months.
3. $130 filing fee.
4. An absolute blizzard of paperwork. We were unable to find an immigration attorney in our city that even understood the process. (South Bend, Indiana) - We ended up retaining a high-caliber immigration specialist from Houston TX. Their fee? $1,750.
It's safe to say that none but the Fortune 1000 are willing to tackle the expense or have the expertise in handling the daunting forms.
We finally found a local company willing to sponsor her, a local health care facility. They were very excited to get her, offered to hire her on the spot and reimbursed half her expenses. Why? *drumroll* - The position went unfilled for nearly five months as they were unable to find a qualified person locally.
She is most certainly not being taken advantage of, having been offered a salary very much in line with her duties and educational background.
Say what you will about the H1-B, but we can certainly tell you - It's alot harder to get sponsored than you think.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
This would appear to spell doom for Ferrari, Lamborghini, DeBeers, Moet et Chandon--and Freightliner, Terex, and Boeing. In fact, it would appear to spell doom for any company making a "luxury" good or any kind of capital equipment. It is simply not the case--an enormous number of companies produce goods that their employees can never hope to be able to afford. This does not mean that Pratt & Whitney is running a sweatshop--just that they make big-ticket capital items that are not sold at the mall.
Simple historical fact:
What is an historical fact is that over time any job with specialized technical knowledge will be automated to the point that less-expensive workers can do it. The classic economic case study is typesetting: from the time of Gutenberg until the early 1880s type was set by hand. It was a time-consuming process that required real skill--a capable, quick typesetter could make good money. When Ottmar Mergenthaler introduced his Linotype machine (which made it possible for anybody who could use a keyboard to set better type in a fraction of the time) approximately 90% of typesetters lost their jobs. More or less overnight.
Programming computers is a specialized task that requires expert knowledge. Guess what? The natural response of any businessman will be to try to find a cheaper solution. Some are looking overseas (such as Bangalore), others are importing workers on temp visas. The long-term trend will be to simpler and simpler computer systems that require less skilled talent--and talent with less skill. A good case in point is in small accounting systems: ten years ago there were a lot of people writing accounting systems for small companies. Nowadays those companies buy QuickBooks, or go upscale to buy Solomon or Best. The marketplace for single-user PC accounting software development is essentially gone.
Some people recognize this...
...and learn new skills. Nobody is looking for a programmer to write a G/L package in FoxPro anymore. But there are people looking for programmers to write GIS software; and people looking for programmers to write Palm OS or WinCE software; and people looking for programmers to write Web software; and so on. And the programmers who continue to focus on learning those skills, and learning to work in new markets, and learning to adapt to a changing marketplace will thrive.
Those who do not--who just expect the same skills in the same industry to last them a lifetime--will ultimately be left with nothing to do but whine to Congress about H1Bs taking their jobs.
It would cost more to leave the USA than it would cost to just hire american workers!
Lets see building new offices means hiring a huge workforce to build these offices, and the cost of running both offices at the same time for a while will get expensive until they close the american offices down.
Lets not forget, that hiring people in other countries means the people in those countries will have absolutely no loyalty at all.
Microsoft will have no way to keep their great programmers from leaving them and going next door to Corel, because in these countries, there wont be a retirement plan, they wont get any benifits, they'll just go whereever the gold is, whoever pays the best.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Three Reasons for H1B:
1) The hottest theme in technology is "replaceable engineers". That is, you lose someone, you can pick up where they left off in a couple days. To do this, you need a big pool of applicants.
2) Hold down American wage earners. Don't read me the text of the bill--it's bullshit. H1B holds salary and demand down for all technology workers in America, that's just a fact.
3) Brain Drain. Rather than have these people work in their own country, and possibly come up with a novel or inventive idea before the USA, god forbid start a company making something cool, bring them over here and "own" their work.
Don't tell me about improvements to the economy. I would gladly let a lot of people into America--on one condition: You can't cherry pick. You get cops, doctors, pilots, politicians, bankers, hookers, engineers. THAT would be incredible for the economy, and be fair across the board.
The most annoying thing about H1B is the proof it provides as to exactly how corrupt America is.
My brother was one of the last workers at a big-name Aeospace facility that was being shut down. This company was a huge proponent of H1B--"We can't get enough engineers! Look at all the jobs we have unfilled on the website!".
They had over 500 positions open for a year and a half while they lobbied for H1B, and they never interviewed or hired a single person; in fact they were laying off. It's all a scam.
Thanks for asking.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Maybe we should hire overseas CEO'S and managers to flood the market with those folks and pay them a middle income wage instead of 6 figures a year.
Also, I look forward to working in Europe at some point in the next few years. If we make it difficult for their nationals to work here, then it will become more difficult for Americans to work abroad.
This thread reminds me of this joke...
Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE
IN JAPAN) for 6 a.m. While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was
perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG).
He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA), designer jeans (MADE
IN SINGAPORE) and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA). After cooking his
breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA) he sat down
with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO) to see how much he could
spend today. After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the
radio (MADE IN INDIA) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) and
continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB. At the end
of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to
relax for a while. He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL) poured
himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on
his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can't find a good
paying job in.....AMERICA.....
Cheers
Could we ask 40 Helens?
The main purpose of permanent residency status is to allow someone to live and work in the U.S. without fear of being deported on a whim (such as losing your job on an H1B visa, for example). If someone wants to, they can get U.S. citizenship -- but that requires a committment to be a full-fledged American. Often giving up one's birth citizenship is encouraged (though not often actually required), since it's hard to be a full-fledged American if you still consider yourself a citizen of a foreign country. Not everyone wants to make that committment, and permanent residency status allows those who don't to avoid it while still enjoying 80% or so of the benefits of citizenship.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Put yourself in the company's position
You're not in business to provide job opportunities to earnest, diligent folk who have been working hard to get vendor certifications. You are in business to sell a product, perform a service, move material from point A to point B, or otherwise earn a buck. And--as you have noticed--earning a buck is not easy these days, for you or your prospective employer. What does the company do?
Any reasonable business manager--any competent business manager--is going to 1) seriously question why anybody needs to be hired at all, and 2) if somebody simply must be hired, look/wait for candidates with years of real experience. That's not prejudice or foolishness--it's called 'mitigating risk.' (Five syllables that can also be expressed in the acronym CYA.)
So when a manager sees a resume from somebody with two or three years of experience developing database applications, and two or three years experience developing with Java, he or she will invariably pick that resume over one with a lot of vendor certificates, but no experience. That's enormously frustrating when you're young--but it is a fact of life.
Two points:
First, yes--experience is more valuable than reading about the subject in a book. An oft-cited statistic (although I think it must be exaggerated) is that 70% of IT projects fail. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not--what's important is that IT managers believe it. In consequence they have come to really value "full life-cycle experience"--starting on a new project, working through design, development, deployment, and perhaps into a second release. Why? Because it indicates that you are less likely than most to paint yourself into a logical corner. You are less likely to quit when the project bogs down. You are more likely to contribute to a successful team. In hockey they keep a statistic called the on-ice scoring differential: there are players who never rack up a lot of points, but the teams with a lot of high-differential guys always seem to win. If you have gone full life-cycle on two or three projects you may not be the star player--but chances are your team will score. You simply don't (and can't) get that from a book--or from a training class. You get that from experience--either from working with a good team and a good tech lead, or from hard experience working for a bozo.
Second, you can get experience--valuable experience that will help you get a better job next time. The woods are full of non-profits that don't have a web page--or have a web page that truly stinks. They can all use a much more interactive web site--give them a data-driven web site (perhaps using SlashCode, so it is self-maintaining) and you have a showpiece. If you have done something particularly clever (like making it data-driven, so it is self-maintaining) you can turn your interview into a show-and-tell: here's a site I developed, and here's what's happening under the hood. When conversation in the interview turns to maintaining state or ensuring secure access, you can draw an analogy to how you solved the problem already for North Coast Therapeutic Riding or somebody else. (And, I might add, make the world a better place at the same time.)
About this time last year I was hip-deep in the second round of proposals for a big job: a little under $75,000 for the first phase, with a probable follow-on for another $25,000--plus some vigorish on the equipment and server software. Nothing huge--but a nice bit of work that would let me hire a couple of friends, and build a relationship with a big brokerage house that would likely be the source of more work down the road. We won the job--and were set to start on September 17.
Except, on September 11th, the World Trade Center collapsed. And the brokerage firm that was funding the project collapsed with it. My project, and my cash flow for 6 months, collapsed with it. I did not whine, I did not write letters to Congress blaming my troubles on H-1Bs. I called old clients, I picked up dribs and drabs, I networked like crazy, I hustled my cakes. I just landed a very sweet gig recently--but I had to give up a chunk of money on my typical day rate to get it. I'm still not whining--I spent some of my time over the past year developing new skills (FreeBSD) and improving others (GIS applications, Apache). I developed web sites for two non-profits, and helped a third network their offices. I gained experience.
You're evidently a young person--and you're faced with the conundrum we all had to face: how do you get experience when nobody will hire you? You have to find people who will give you a chance--sometimes by taking a pay cut, sometimes by working for free. Some day you'll wake up and discover that you really have been there, and done that, and that all of a sudden you're the most experienced person in the office. It will come, but only with time, effort, and hustle. And no whining.
When ever you post to online resume services be sure to include key words. Most companies have programs run through the resumes for specific keywords and throw out the rest. So when applying to a job online just add a bunch of keywords at the bottom of the resume that correspond to the job description. It will atleast get you past the first stage.
(* Having or not having a tech job relies very much on whether you are qualified or not. If you are good at what you do, you will have no trouble finding a good job. *)
I don't think this is the case. Interviews and actual work are *not* the same thing. I don't interview very well because of my geeky personality, but do good work.
It is usually the BS-artists who get hiring priority in my observation.
Table-ized A.I.
The LAW has NO allowance for salary as a factor in opening the job to the H1B program. It is the LAW that if an American worker can do the task, the job is, like it or not, simply not open to H1B sponsorship. Companies are required to attest to that fact when they file a sponsorship. Too bad lies are the currency of modern America.
Yeah, and where is the enforcement?
"Proving" what wages should be for a complex mesh of skills is like mowing the lawn with tweezers.
Table-ized A.I.
The fact that you somehow got moderated up means there are a lot of Slashdot readers smoking crack!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Why not just give citizenship to anyone skilled enough to be remotely recruited!? Just let them be citizens if they like, they have already proven their value to the economy. Would you have a problem with that?
If the USA was really genuinely interested in adding these workers to the talent pool, then the proper thing to do would be to grant them citizenship at the same time. H1-B visas have a number of characteristics which unduely hurt the rights of the workers and for whatever reason, founded or not, cause problems when it's layoff time. To tell someone who's been in a country for 5 years - paying taxes, I might add - that they have 10 days to leave? That seems very extreme.
If the USA is not willing to grant these people citizenship, then it should be asked why. That will be more revealing than anything else, I think. North America is unique in that it's modern form is completely the work of relatively recent immigrants, in some way, shape, or form. The demographics in Canada and the USA will change drastically over the next few years as immigration is going to be needed to provide the next generation of consumers. People just aren't having kids the way they used to in Canada, and it plays out in the USA as well. Immigration is the only alternative.
That said, they do guarantee employers access to intellectual capital - people - at a market rate without relocating to another country. Many american corporations, particularly call-centers and the like, relocate to Canada because it much easier to get an affordable educated workforce, and the phone systems are largely integrated. Do not assume that by denying a H1-B a job, you necessarily provide one to an american worker at twice the rate of pay. At some point, it's cheaper to move operations. This doesn't mean some sweatshop in India either, as many people seem to assume. There is a signifigant advantage to relocating operations in Canada (very close, great exchange rate - chop salaries by 45%!, native english speakers, etc etc). Same can be said for Ireland, Scotland, England, etc.
The issue is complicated. I have a EE degree, and have never had a problem finding work if I was willing to accept the salary the market was willing to bear, and be willing to move where the jobs are. Anyone with a EE degree who can't find work has another superset of circumstances working against them, IMHO. Welcome to the new economy, (tm) (r) (c).
My $0.02 (cdn)
..don't panic
Exactly who pushed congress for the H1-B visa expansion? Technology company OWNERS and MANAGERS!
By the late 90's many HR people in corporate America were complaining that tech employees were very expensive. CEOs realized that the only way to decrease the cost of technology employees was to increase the supply. Many of these companies told congress that there was a technology worker shortage in this country. Congress believed that if they didn't allow the workers to come here, the companies would go offshore.
So what did congress do? Congress extended the H1-B visa program. A classic case of the tail wagging the dog.
-ted
A prospective employer likes your resume, applies for an H1B visa for you. If/when it's granted, you get to enter the USA.
What you don't see is that behind the scenes, the employer has to show:
1) they advertised the position and no suitably qualified American citizen applied;
2) the pay scale is equal to the going rate for the advertised position;
3) that the position has been advertised for sufficiently long time that any interested citizen can apply.
Once the H1B is granted, it is valid for a maximum of 6 years, after which the worker has to exit the US for 1 year, then repeat the process.
During the worker's 6 years of H1B, a green card can be applied for. This requires:
a) Labor Certification - i.e. proving the job was advertised and still no qualified citizen wants it. Dept of Labor also checks that H1B is being paid the going rate, not slave wages;
b) Petition for Alien Worker - where the employer begs the INS for permission to apply for a green card.
c) Filing for the Green Card, and possibly for a temp work permit if the H1B visa will soon expire;
d) get to your local INS office very early in the morning complete the final paperwork and to get a stamp in your passport. You need to take along two very specific photos (head/shoulders, 3/4 face, right ear showing, not too much hair, etc), and if the INS official disapproves of them, you have to get new ones.
I think I may have missed a step between b) and c), but I'm not sure.
The major criterion in H1B and Green Card apps is that the position has to be advertised, at a fair salary, and there were no qualified citizens that wanted the job . If an H1B is going for a green card and a qualified citizen applies during the advertisement stage, the H1B is out and the citizen gets the job.
Here in Oklahoma Labor Cert can take 30-45 days, the Petition for an Alien Worker can take 18 months, and the Green card app take a further 2 years or so.
Humorous side note: my 10yo daughter, wearing long hair and a dress, was standing right in front of the INS official and even so was marked on the final app as a boy... We didn't notice until the plastic card arrived. The same official also stamped my passport with a temporary visa stamp that expired the previous day instead of [now+1 year], because someone had altered the date stamp and hadn't put it back... Fortunately I caught that one while the official was processing my wife's papers.
What line of work did you choose? I've been in engineering almost 5 years and I'm interested in ideas for other fields to look at since this one really seems to suck.
Also, what about emigrating to someplace like Europe? I hear engineers there have a much higher status. Anyone done this?
3)The reason there is a shortage of engineers going through school is that the smart people realize that there is no future in it, and choose to study something else, or like me, once they see what is going on, choose to leave the field and take another line of work that has a future, pays better and doesn't have mountains of H1B's waiting to take your job away if you dont agree to work for peanuts.
So much for Americans being better at the three Ms. Indians are catching up in Music, Movies, and Microcode.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The rule that non-citizens must inform the INS of their location within 10 days of any move is now being enforced. Once the Department of Homeland Security gets cranked up, all that data will be in a tracking system. Entry and exit from the US will soon be correlated with visa status and tax reporting from employers. And all this will soon be tied in with the new national driver's license system.
In a year or two, anybody who has overstayed a visa and gets pulled over for speeding will go to jail, then out of the US.
There are 1 million programmers in the U.S., according to the last census data. Just like there are one million police officers, and one million people in prisons.
We are talking 20% of the IT workforce here.
(Not that I agree with the idea of limiting H1-B visas, but at least be honest about the numbers).
-- Terry
This is obviously an infected issue, by far, and it needs to be resolve to the satisfaction of the american tech workers, in one way or another. Just ignoring it is dumb and will lead to even more problems in the future.
/dev/.com and /dev/chapter11 so jobs are tight and I have a good job here. My girlfriend is in the process of getting over here instead (with all what that means) and I don't want to give up a very good chance I have here to make some good money. After a few years we would like to move to the states.
But I would like to point out a different scenario than many of the posters here have pointed out. I am not living in a poor country, and I won't work for a low wage. If I would get a job it would be because of what I know and what I can do.
I am also not interested in comming to america and bringing my 20 people family with me, nor am I interested in working the states for a few years and then leave. Nor I am trying to make my fortune.
So why would I like to come to the states then? Simply because I have happen to fall in love with an American girl. Jupp, good old "does not compute" love. I would blend in in american society, everyone would think that I am from Minnesota (like my GF) for various reasons which I leave up to the reader. I have no ill intent and would simply like to spend my life with the one I love, and for that I need a job to stay in the states.
As it has happened, the economy is still fscking
I am aware of the fact that I can apply for an alien spouse visa after we are married, so I would have a fairly good chance of getting to work in the states if there would be a job comming up.
I just wanted to show a different side to it all.
Yes there is being a country and managed the flow of knowledge and jobs.
Let me give you a VERY CLEAR example of how this works. In the early 20th century the car industry was owned and dominated by the US. But then years passed. Now the car industry is owned by the Europeans, namely the German, French and Japanese. On a global and local level add up where the cars come from and about 66% of all cars will come from those countries. The Americans have only two car makers left Ford and GM and one of them looks very unhealthy indeed (GM).
Sure the car makers have car building plants in the US, but only if the conditions are good. If the conditions are not good then the car makers pick up and move production elsewhere. However, the one place where the car makers will always build cars is in their home country, which is Germany, France and Japan.
My point is that in this global world having backassed imigration policies hurts the country in the long run. And this is where the problem is. Immigration is a long term issue, but politics are short term based.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Competence or excellence is not intrinsic to any nationality. As somebody who considers himself an elite geek I feel significant more affinity to a skilled 'foreigner' than to a mediocre or incompetent of my own nationality/race. Indeed in the past I've recruited Indian contractors to work on my team. They show the same spread as British engineers some are inept, the majority are competent, some are good or great.
In the past I've been offered better paid positions in London and the US with H1B however I declined, the work was boring. I'm motivated by doing interesting/challenging work. I don't want to spend all day doing CRUD, I find it boring and unmotivating. That is why I work on this project (www.kitv.co.uk). AIH earn 30K UKP (~45K USD/EUR), a good salary for a UK provincial Software Engineer, enough to keep me supplied with toys. However that is dwarfed by what I could earn in the London or the USA.
It appears to me that many US IT professional have priced themselves out of the market, it's a economics 101 issue. I'm forced to wonder what motivated these individuals complaining about the H1B issue to be IT Professionals in the first place. It sounds financial to me, the people that respond, "it's a good career/money/opportunity" to the question "why did you choose computing ?" and not "I like to hack/play/mess with computers". They have no a passion for the subject, no geeky-ness, and as a result will only ever be mediocre, at best. In my mind that is the give away clue, they are complaining about their own limitations.
Since my layoff, recruiters and potential employers are all talking about salary cuts--some as large as 50%!--if I'm to have any hope of finding a job. Somehow, I have to cover a $43k set of bills with $24k-34k.
My house is for sale right now for exactly this reason...All the positions I'm looking at are posting up for significantly less than I'm used to getting--and I'm not one of these overpaid six-figure salary people. Even if I get re-employed tomorrow, chances are I can't afford my house, food, and student loans for the (tops) $34,000 being offered as a "competitive" salary. Something has to give, and Uncle Sam isn't in the mood to forgive my college debts just yet.
One recruiter came out and said it like this: While they can't legally REPLACE American's in the same position with an H1-B, what they can do is eliminate the position and create a new one with a different title but essentially the same responsibilities. Unethical as hell, but easy enough to get away with. End result?
Tech workers who made $40-45k last year and got laid off are competing for jobs with guys who will do it for $22,500 just so they can get into the country.
Which leads to this question: Do the benefits to the company engaging in this unethical practice outweigh (dollars only, no moral judgement...yet) the damage done to the economy by the decrease in buying power for Americans (and the H1-B's lack of buying power to start with based on his slave salary?)
When conceived, H1-B was a good idea. At the time, there was a perceived shortage in the marketplace which led to positions that went unfilled due to lack of qualified applicants. Having a project not get finished because you couldn't find somebody to do the work in time (and thus, it can't be sold to make a profit) can kill a company just as fast as paying $200k per year for your developers and $75k for helpdesk people. But that was then.
Now positions are filled before they're announced, if they're even announced. The ones that are getting advertised are for people with 10 years Windows 95 experience, and 20 years of Java. Nowadays, we don't need more tech workers, we honestly (right now) need less.
I'm definitely in favor of a drastic reduction in the number of NEW H1-B visas issued. We don't need any more new high-skilled non-citizens depressing wages and taking jobs that would otherwise go to an out-of-work American. Don't think of it as "protectionism" or "racism", because its neither of those things. Its like a bus. There's a fixed number of seats. Once those seats are full, the driver can't let any more passengers on.
Well, sorry folks, this bus is full. You'll have to wait for the next one.
[/soapbox]
Who did what now?
Here in the uk - this mantra was repeated every day by the CBI and other employers groups. We then put in a minimum wage and ... unemployment and inflation continue to fall. Even the CBI now agrees that they were mistaken.
Sorry.
By this time next year you'll see Australian Holden Monaros re-badged as Ponitiac GTOs for sale in the US, while you'll also see Holden Utes rebadged as El Caminos for sale there too.
All because the US dollar is so high that such imports are more viable than making those cars locally.
Typing error.... Yeah I realized that after I hit submit... But thanks for point that out.
I wanted to highlight that a ver large chunk of the car market is owned by the European car makers. And then I added Japan for further effect, but forgot to remove the European bit...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Matloff implicitly assumes that there is some fixed number of US jobs and that the US has some say in the matter who gets them. But those programming jobs don't belong to the US. The foreign programmers are not going to take up knitting if they can't work in the US. They will either work for the same company in a different country, or they will end up competing against the US company, having much lower salaries and overhead.
> The language in Bangalore center of the software
> industry in India is Kanada
Language sample: G'day Comrade! Let's have some vodka and back bacon, eh?
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
How can you be an H1B worker if you have your own company? I thought H1Bs had to have a sponsor company and that they could only work for the company that sponsored them?
Anonymous posts are filtered.
back off your rush-bo influenced consumerism starbucks-fueled angst, k?
how much debt do you have? hrm? how much time to you owe to the company to pay it off? do you have a retirement plan? what happens to your health care coverage when you get fired because you just became too expensive?
techs need a union, especially the lower-on-the-totem pole ones - the sysadmins, the DB programmers, the MSCE types - they are all workers. Skilled Labor.
They need protection. Sorry you bought into the lies, but businesses and owners will never look out for you. as you said, they are interested in their bottom line.
since they wont look out for you, or us, we must look out for each other.
... hi bingo
You remind me of Kevin Cline's character in "A Fish Called Wanda"
How do you go about agreeing with the guy, and then berate him for correcting someone else??? It's obvious to you and me, but it wasn't to the original poster, HENCE the need to correct him with OBVIOUS information. Pretty fucking novel idea, huh?
Secondly, you didn't bother to ask him under what circumstances he thought 2% was reachable. Maybe he was talking theory, or in times of war.
Point is: How the fuck would you know if don't bother asking for people's insight, and instead default to berating anyone who didn't make thier conclusions the same way you did?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
80k?!
I'd be happy to find a 35k job! Quit the hyperbole, real people are trying to find jobs.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
You totally misread my comment.
I agree that the term "tech boom" implies that lots of technical people were needed to accomplish lots of technical work. If that was in fact the case (and I strongly suspect it was, though I wasn't really involved personally), and all these technical people were working tons of overtime because not enough of them could be found to do all the work that needed to be done, then I would agree that it was a tech boom.
However, the post I was responding to painted a different picture. It suggested a situation where all these tech companies simply had tons of money to burn, so they hired all these people at $70k/year to work 1.5 hour days. That isn't a tech boom, it's a bunch of morons throwing money away. In that situation it makes sense that when the Venture Capital ran out, the company would either fold or realize that, "Hey, we could make some of these people work real work days and fire the rest. That would reduce our headcount by like 80%."
My comment was in no way related to the advancement of or value to society of the work done, simply a question of how much work was actually being done compared to time and money thrown away on toys and playtime, looking at it from an employers perspective.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I point out the correct information, but I'm the dumbass?
Well, no one had said anything incorrect, so if you were 'correcting' him, yes it would make you a dumbass.
Then I suppose under more extreme circumstances 2% would be reachable, right?
Yeh, I suppose But I don't think I would ever want to see those 'extreme' circumstances. Inflation would be insane.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Hey - whatever pal. It just so happens my family and their needs take precedence over my feelings about Microsoft's product line.
In an ideal world, sure - we'd all be supporting Unix servers that don't crash. Reality is a bit different, though. Companies are willing to pay people to keep their Win-based systems alive and running. I can't, however, find a single person willing to hire me (at any price) to help run a Linux-based environment. If I could, I'd do it.
(Incidently, I live in the Midwest.... I think the Linux scene is much stronger on the coasts, or maybe even in Chicago, where IBM pushed it really hard for a while. But here in St. Louis, Missouri - Linux is really only seen where a Windows admin. snuck it in the back-door of a company and secretly swapped a Windows server out with it. That and a few small ISPs who don't seem to be hiring any administrators.)
Never mind, I apparently misread the original posters post.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ah, ok. I see what you're driving at now. That's a very valid point, too. I think the truth was probably somewhere in the middle. Certainly, there were companies with "free money" to squander because their stock became ultra-valuable overnight.
I don't doubt there were people getting $70K a year to show up for work only when they felt like it. If they could convince an employer they were so valuable, they should get whatever they wanted - then it probably happened.
Still, being in I.T. through the whole thing myself, I saw much more of the opposite happening. People I knew got paid pretty big salaries for their skills, but they still had actual work to do when they accepted a job.
I think in most cases, it wasn't so much a problem of hiring people that weren't really working, just because you had the cash to burn.
I think it was more a matter of overbuilding a computer infrastructure in anticipation of a large (and increasing) flow of customers that didn't pan out. The I.T. guys put in all the hours to build it, but the people never came to use the results.
When they scaled back (or died off), all those I.T. works were out of jobs.
Hi!
First, let me apologize for leaping to the conclusion that you are young--very sorry about that. Second, perhaps you might disabuse me of another notion: my sense is that zillions of kids straight out of college got jobs writing CGI/Perl applications--and when the dot-com bust happened, they ended up on the street. Where, one might imagine, it is a buyer's market. It may well be that H-1Bs are part and parcel of the same crowd (he's a kid, and he's here on an H-1B visa). Are you competing in the job marketplace against H-1Bs--or the dot-com dropouts?
Another thought for you: I'm an independent. Sometimes I'll take a fixed-bid job; frequently I'll do a "fixed budget" job. If I'm onsite at the clients inevitably somebody will ask how in the world I can stand the stress of never knowing where my next job will come from. My reply is that the difference between a "permanent" employee and a temp is that the temp knows that he is only on the payroll for the next three months. I'm not just being glib--I've watched lots of people in permanent positions spend chunks of their careers working at the same version level of the same technology. A former client had a wonderful question: does he have five years of experience--or one year of experience five times? Think of the people you know who are maintaining a project they wrote three or four years ago, that are not using the current version of the technology.
My buddy Charlie (who posted a comment in this thread earlier) works for a Major Media Company--well known for its rodent mascot. Charlie has worked for a number of companies in New York City--and he's always been a permanent employee. He's pretty up front: he works with the current version of technology, or he's gone. (I'm about a hundred miles due west of New York City, and I find New Yorkers entertaining--they have this wonderfully blunt way of asserting that kind of thing.)
Even though Charlie's a permanent employee, he effectively approaches his job like a temp--he participates in beta tests, he develops code at home, he volunteers for the pilot projects, he is always looking to try something new. So if/when the bubble bursts and he has to look for a job, he can claim experience with .NET and SQL Server 2000 and Windows XP and all the rest--because he's made the effort to stay current. On the other hand, there's a guy down the hall from him who is still working in VB 3.0--16-bit VB. Who had better be on his knees every morning in fervent prayer that Mickey is still making money, because if he ever has to look for a new job, he is going to have a lousy looking resume.
My point:
Even if you're a "permanent" employee, you only have a job for the next three months. And in this day and age, when "corporate loyalty" means "we'll give you a t-shirt when we need you to attend a rally in 'support' of our executives, right before we fire you" you have to be looking out for your own interests. Which means looking forward to pick the technologies that will be in demand, and thinking about how you can develop those skills.
John
P.S. Moving your family from St. Louis to the New York area might be nuts--but just a thought: DB2 experience is a very valuable thing in the NY Metro area. JM
If you increase the wages of those earning minimum wage you will find that the companies that employ them will tend to look for ways to get the job done with fewer employees. They're not just going to accept the increase in minimum wage and take a cut in their profit.
They are already doing that. so hows raising the minimum wage going to change this? companies already are trying to replace us with machines and workers from other countries to save money.
One of two things will happen:
# They will reduce their workforce. So those that remain will earn more, but you'll have more people unemployed. This will happen if they are in a market that doesn't allow them much room to increase their price due to competition.
# If they can, they will increase what they charge to their customers in order to cover the increase in minimum wage. In that case, the buck is passed to all of the economy, creating pressures on inflation. I need not explain the problems caused by inflation.
Would you rather luxury items cost more, or would you prefer to not even be able to pay your rent? Let the prices for things go up, I dont care, I'm trying to survive not worry about prices of things like computers, or a mc donalds hamburger, because if mc donalds raises the prices they'll simply be replaced by smaller more competitive companies.
That depends on what you define as "easy." If you mean that those that are educated and have a vast amount of technical experience but all they do is sit in the office and write programs and go to meetings while coal miners are stuck 250 feet under the ground, sure. No thats comparing the working class with the working class, programmers are no diffrent than coal miners, I'm talking about management, CEOS, those guys dont write programs, all they do is go to meetings and boss people around, and all it took for them to get where they are, is writing a business plan and knowing the right people in order to get capital. Its not hard work to be bill gates or even an upper level manager.
I agree many (not all) CEOs are paid too much. That said, you'd be surprised how LITTLE you could increase all the employee's salaries by taking it from the high-paid executives. That's the same logic whereby many liberals say, "Hey, let's just take the wealth of the richest 1000 people in the country." It turns out that ends up being enough to run the government for like a month or two. Or if you distributed Bill Gates' WORTH (not all of it is cash, not by a longshot) to every American, each American would only get about $175.
So you are a conservative? You talk about what liberals say, but the whole working class will say the same thing, not just the liberals but even conservatives, poor people demand fair wages because its a class issue, not a political issue. Not all conservatives are rich. If you limit the amount of money a CEO can make, you'd have enough money to raise the minimum wage, We arent talking about running the government here. We arent talking about taking 100 percent of all the wealth from the richest people, we are talking about fair wages. And fair treatment of all classes. Currently, the top 1000 richest people have all the advantages of society, America is such a great place to these people because they have everything! I'm not asking for them to give all their money away, What I'm saying is everyone should be able to survive, its cruel for a person who works hard, to be barely surviving, not be able to afford healthcare, have kids which dont even have the chance to get educated due to the high costs of private schools and lack of government funding of public schools (20 billion for public schools yet 350 billion for the military is alittle bit off balance if you ask me)
What we need for america to work, and for all the classes to get along, is for each class to have the same basic chance at success, everyone has a right to a good education, everyone should have healthcare, everyone should be able to retire and we know the 401k and stock market gamble retirement just cant work due to dishonesty.
You mention distributing bill gates worth, thats a socialist concept, of course its done in the wrong way, you dont do something stupid, like throw money into the hands of the people, you tax the rich in order to give the poor the oppurtunity to be rich, or else the rich will stay rich, and the poor will have no chance at ever being anything but poor, giving them a hopeless exsistance, creating class warfare. This kinda thing is what happened to blacks in the USA, and this is why there was the civil rights movement, fair treatment is required, its not optional but REQUIRED, this means the wages should be fair, everyone should be able to get a good education, money shouldnt determine this, everyone should be able to get medical care.
If the worlds richest companies were forced to pay taxes (currently they avoid paying taxes) the tax money should NOT and WOULD not be given directly to the people, it would be used to fund the school system, healthcare system, to help the workers who actually build these companies.
The majority of the people working for Microsoft, they want to be able to retire, they WANT social security, they WANT healthcare, they WANT good public schools, they dont want to be forced to rely on microsofts stock which tells them if they can or cant retire, they do not want to trust bill gates when it comes to their life savings.
#
In the end, the best way to earn more money is to better yourself. If you're working at McDonald's at minimum wage and you're not studying, be it in high school or college, then you've chosen the easy, low-income route. Don't cry to the government to give you raises when you didn't choose to finish your education.
You just dont get it, its not currently a fair route. A rich kid, who may be less intelligent, but who has gone to private schools and has a better education, a kid who does not have to worry about bills, survival, or the struggle, can focus on being successful and moving up the ladder from their birth, they'll have their parents pay for them to go to harvard, where they can continue to gather knowledge without worryinng about how to pay for it all, you see, money buys success for alot of people. People who dont have money have to work twice as hard to be successful, if you didnt get a proper education, its up to you to educate yourself up to the level required and you can forget about going to harvard, community college for you, you have to slowly work your way to transfering to a good college. Lets not forget that all during this time, you wont have rich parents paying for you, you'll have to work full time while getting your education, this means you wont be able to focus 100 percent like a person who doesnt have to worry about bills, survival, rent, food, etc, you cannot focus 100 percent on being successful, if you are focusing 50 percent on survival.
Do the math, and you'll see why its much harder for a poor person to be successful and the goal should be to make it so no matter how much money you have, everyone has an equal chance.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If you increase the wages of those earning minimum wage you will find that the companies that employ them will tend to look for ways to get the job done with fewer employees. They're not just going to accept the increase in minimum wage and take a cut in their profit. .
They are already doing that. so hows raising the minimum wage going to change this? companies already are trying to replace us with machines and workers from other countries to save money.
One of two things will happen:
# They will reduce their workforce. So those that remain will earn more, but you'll have more people unemployed. This will happen if they are in a market that doesn't allow them much room to increase their price due to competition.
# If they can, they will increase what they charge to their customers in order to cover the increase in minimum wage. In that case, the buck is passed to all of the economy, creating pressures on inflation. I need not explain the problems caused by inflation.
Would you rather luxury items cost more, or would you prefer to not even be able to pay your rent? Let the prices for things go up, I dont care, I'm trying to survive not worry about prices of things like computers, or a mc donalds hamburger, because if mc donalds raises the prices they'll simply be replaced by smaller more competitive companies.
That depends on what you define as "easy." If you mean that those that are educated and have a vast amount of technical experience but all they do is sit in the office and write programs and go to meetings while coal miners are stuck 250 feet under the ground, sure. No thats comparing the working class with the working class, programmers are no diffrent than coal miners, I'm talking about management, CEOS, those guys dont write programs, all they do is go to meetings and boss people around, and all it took for them to get where they are, is writing a business plan and knowing the right people in order to get capital. Its not hard work to be bill gates or even an upper level manager.
I agree many (not all) CEOs are paid too much. That said, you'd be surprised how LITTLE you could increase all the employee's salaries by taking it from the high-paid executives. That's the same logic whereby many liberals say, "Hey, let's just take the wealth of the richest 1000 people in the country." It turns out that ends up being enough to run the government for like a month or two. Or if you distributed Bill Gates' WORTH (not all of it is cash, not by a longshot) to every American, each American would only get about $175.
So you are a conservative? You talk about what liberals say, but the whole working class will say the same thing, not just the liberals but even conservatives, poor people demand fair wages because its a class issue, not a political issue. Not all conservatives are rich. If you limit the amount of money a CEO can make, you'd have enough money to raise the minimum wage, We arent talking about running the government here. We arent talking about taking 100 percent of all the wealth from the richest people, we are talking about fair wages. And fair treatment of all classes. Currently, the top 1000 richest people have all the advantages of society, America is such a great place to these people because they have everything! I'm not asking for them to give all their money away, What I'm saying is everyone should be able to survive, its cruel for a person who works hard, to be barely surviving, not be able to afford healthcare, have kids which dont even have the chance to get educated due to the high costs of private schools and lack of government funding of public schools (20 billion for public schools yet 350 billion for the military is alittle bit off balance if you ask me)
What we need for america to work, and for all the classes to get along, is for each class to have the same basic chance at success, everyone has a right to a good education, everyone should have healthcare, everyone should be able to retire and we know the 401k and stock market gamble retirement just cant work due to dishonesty.
You mention distributing bill gates worth, thats a socialist concept, of course its done in the wrong way, you dont do something stupid, like throw money into the hands of the people, you tax the rich in order to give the poor the oppurtunity to be rich, or else the rich will stay rich, and the poor will have no chance at ever being anything but poor, giving them a hopeless exsistance, creating class warfare. This kinda thing is what happened to blacks in the USA, and this is why there was the civil rights movement, fair treatment is required, its not optional but REQUIRED, this means the wages should be fair, everyone should be able to get a good education, money shouldnt determine this, everyone should be able to get medical care.
If the worlds richest companies were forced to pay taxes (currently they avoid paying taxes) the tax money should NOT and WOULD not be given directly to the people, it would be used to fund the school system, healthcare system, to help the workers who actually build these companies.
The majority of the people working for Microsoft, they want to be able to retire, they WANT social security, they WANT healthcare, they WANT good public schools, they dont want to be forced to rely on microsofts stock which tells them if they can or cant retire, they do not want to trust bill gates when it comes to their life savings.
#
In the end, the best way to earn more money is to better yourself. If you're working at McDonald's at minimum wage and you're not studying, be it in high school or college, then you've chosen the easy, low-income route. Don't cry to the government to give you raises when you didn't choose to finish your education.
You just dont get it, its not currently a fair route. A rich kid, who may be less intelligent, but who has gone to private schools and has a better education, a kid who does not have to worry about bills, survival, or the struggle, can focus on being successful and moving up the ladder from their birth, they'll have their parents pay for them to go to harvard, where they can continue to gather knowledge without worryinng about how to pay for it all, you see, money buys success for alot of people. People who dont have money have to work twice as hard to be successful, if you didnt get a proper education, its up to you to educate yourself up to the level required and you can forget about going to harvard, community college for you, you have to slowly work your way to transfering to a good college. Lets not forget that all during this time, you wont have rich parents paying for you, you'll have to work full time while getting your education, this means you wont be able to focus 100 percent like a person who doesnt have to worry about bills, survival, rent, food, etc, you cannot focus 100 percent on being successful, if you are focusing 50 percent on survival.
Do the math, and you'll see why its much harder for a poor person to be successful and the goal should be to make it so no matter how much money you have, everyone has an equal chance.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac