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Victor G. Sommers writes "Daniel Soong, who lost his programming job to Indian offshore companies, is willing to relocate to India. 'It would be really interesting to work in Bangalore,' he says. 'But I was told, "Daniel, it is against the law for you to work here. You can come here on vacation, but you can't work here."' Indian officials have told him they don't hire Americans." An article in ComputerWorld talks about the possibility of getting more than you bargained for in outsourced code.
Well, duh... As a dutchman it's also not possible for me to relocate to the USA. Unless I prove that there's no way my skills can be found in the States.
That's common in many countries all around the world. As long as you aren't a citizien it is rather hard to get a job - not just because of possible prejudices but also simply because you are not allowed to!
The laws are probably similar to the US:
You can't immigrate to work unless you can prove that you can do a job that no one else in the country can do.
If it wasn't for this law, the US would be flooded (more so than now) with techs and doctors from all over asia.
alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"
USA is also a sovereign country. Let's do the same. It's about time we stop issuing visas to people who steal native born Americans' jobs.
Before some slashbot calls me a racist, let me tell you that I don't care if you are a black, white, hindu, christian, jew or a muslim. If you're American, I've got nothing against you. But if you think you should be able to just waltz in and have a job or study at one of our universities, think again.
of the two is the malware threat. Most countries have labor restrictions (when i went to an improv festival in Toronto, Canadian officials wanted to be certain I wasn't there to make $25 or so performing somewhere some night). But the risk of getting a little extra code in your outsourced project is something about which execs ought to be aware.
Terrycloth Lobster
Seriously: typical wage for Indian IT graduate: $200/month. Equivalent for US graduate: 10--20 times more.
It is almost redundant to say that Indian firms won't be hiring many Americans.
Curiously, my little firm is now subcontracting for Indian firms, so perhaps the rules can be bent a little for genius Belgians. C'est genial!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
With the exception of places like the EU, it is not unusual for foreigners to just pack up and grab a job someplace else. I doubt people will be surprised by this, considering that what happened three years ago today reminded people to tighten Visa restrictions. Who knows, it may have been much easier five years ago, but today that's just the way it is. Here in Ireland there are immigrants who are qualified doctors, but because they aren't allowed to work here as anything other than a fast food counter-person, their skills are totally wasted. It's not discrimination, it's just the way the world works.
Yup...
They should let Americans work at Indian conveinence stores!
That way, no matter where it is in the world, it'll be fucking impossible to get a big gulp and a chilli dog.
Hidden malware in offshore products raises concerns
Story by Mark Willoughby
SEPTEMBER 11, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - "You've go to be a little paranoid to survive in this business." -- Andrew S. Grove, chairman and founder, Intel Corp., ca. 1980
The extreme difficulty in discovering a back door hidden deep within a complex application, buried among numerous modules developed offshore in a global software marketplace, is forcing those assigned to protect sensitive national security information to take defensive actions.
The threat of hidden Trojan horses and back doors surfaced this summer when the governments of the U.S. and China announced plans to strengthen national security policies covering information processed by applications written in the global software marketplace. The private sector joined the fray with the August announcement of the File Signature Database, which will use hash values to protect software integrity from malicious additions (see story).
The National Security Agency's information assurance director, Daniel Wolf, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security's cybersecurity subcommittee in July, called for a federal lab that would "find malicious software routines that are designed to morph and burrow into critical applications." Separately, the State Council of the People's Republic of China in August directed all government ministries to buy only Chinese software in the next upgrade cycle in an effort to encourage the development of local software companies but also to protect sensitive government data.
Mark Willoughby, CISSP, is a 20-year IT industry veteran and journalist with degrees in computer science and journalism. For the past seven years, he has tracked security and risk management start-ups and is a managing consultant at MessagingGroup, a Denver-based content development specialist.
Steps taken so far
The simmering global paranoia is rooted in the realization that no simple solution exists today, experts say. It is virtually impossible to find unauthorized malware hidden deep within a sophisticated multitiered application with data normalization, messaging middleware and other modules originating from labs in a half-dozen countries.
Robert Lentz, the U.S. Defense Department's director of information assurance, said in a written statement, "The DoD currently is studying several aspects of software assurance. The DoD has a current software acquisition policy. The group studying software assurance is looking to supplement that policy with strengthened mechanisms to increase our confidence in the security of both foreign and domestic software products."
Input, a Chantilly, Va.- based technology research firm, says federal government spending on IT products and services will grow 8.5% yearly from 2003 to 2008, from $45.4 billion to $68.2 billion. Approximately half of that spending will be in areas in which the government would like to see stronger information assurance.
Incidents of back doors compromising sensitive national security information may never be known. That's not so in the private sector.
"There have been a number of cases where software was found with intentionally planted back doors," said Shawn Hernan, team leader for vulnerability handling at the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University. "Most of these were for providing support, although no such support option was given to commercial customers. It's happened in both proprietary and open-sourced software."
Hernan said discovering hidden malware is one of the most difficult tasks facing an assurance investigator. CERT doesn't track vulnerabilities by country of origin, he added.
Software engineering processes are only now beginning to focus on providing traceability in security code. Traceability, which would allow a given line of code or a software module to be tracked back to the developer, is viewed as the Holy Grail in combating hidden malware. Traceability is also an effectiv
Unlike the US, India, being a developing nation, with a very large economy has always had a dirth of jobs. There are a few hundred people to fill up a single job vacancy. Thus, India has *never* felt the need for foreign employees.
However, I know for a fact that a large number of Americans/Europeans (and even Russians in defense companies) regularly work on contract basis. I had a Russian neighbor long back, working in India on a 2 year contract with a defense company.
So people, before you start flaming, ponder over the fact that a law for hiring outside employees doesn't exist because there hasn't ever been a need for it. Now with the outsourcing, it may not be too long before the government comes up with an H-1 like plan.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
OK, I had accepted the fact that H1B's killed the IT job market for Americans. Competition and all that. That's just fine. Shit happens. But if Americans can't work in India, then let's kick the damn H1B's out of this country. I had NO IDEA that Americans couldn't get an Indian job. If that really is true (although no real good source was cited), I say fuck 'em and give 'em the boot until India wants to open up it's doors to American workers.
Our company is getting ready to send someone over to India to head up some outsourcing. He's British, but that should not be any significant difference. I haven't heard of any barrier for foreigners working in India. Anyone care to cite some relevant Indian law, rather than a few words at the tail end of an article?
Yeah, sure. Except that if the plans by the US Office of Homeland Security come through, I won't be able to fly over to the USA with my brand new EU passport without submitting my fingerprints and/or retinal scan with the visa. The new passports will, at the request of the beforementioned office, have to feature digital biometric information that will be fed to a federal database.
I will not submit to this.
I have to inject dull ol' reality into another 'The Indians Are Coming!' flap, but why exactly is it surprising that he can go to India on holiday and can't work there? Does he have a work visa for India? Are Indians allowed to work in the US with no visa?
I always figured the general pattern was that to work in country A, you need to be a citizen of country A or have a work permit issued by country A. Did this suddenly stop applying in the case of Americans wanting to work in India?
Other than that, well, it's a competitive marketplace. If other people are selling the same skills -- or what are percieved as the same skills -- cheaper, then he's got to change something.
Incidentally, I've known some terrible experiences with outsourcing to cheap countries and I think it's generally a false economy. But on the other hand, I think I'd rather have a disoriented and inexperienced Indian working for me than listen to this guy's whining.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
However, the SEI is introducing Team Process Software (TPS), which brings traceability of specific code modules to individual programmers, said Humphrey, a former IBM software engineering executive. Indian software companies and a few U.S. developers, notably Microsoft Corp., are aggressively implementing TPS.
To which my immediate reply was, "Did you remember to include the right cover on your TPS report?" :-)
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
the level of difficulty one has immigrating to the USA, even on the H1 visa program.
..don't panic
Here is a prime example of one of the main problems of free trade. Corporations are free to trade jobs off to some developing nation where wages are minimal but people are not allowed to move to where the jobs are. Perhaps someday we will negotiate trade agreements which guarantee a fair living standard for workers reguardless of where they live.
Get used to it. US workers cannot get jobs in Canada, Europe, Australia, etc. without first applying, and getting necessary work visas. To get a work visa, you must have an employer who has applied to get you in, and has demonstrated that there isn't local talent who could do the job you're being hired for.
Funny enough, that's pretty much the situation here (except for the illegal immigrants that is.) If you really want to work overseas, start applying for foreign citizenship/work permits.
More than that - when my wife moved here she was offered an opportunity for a fastrack work permit while she waited for her green card. Yes, up and up, through the INS.
That means she could have been working within a matter of months instead of the years it took to become a permanent resident, with no special specifications about the job needing to be met.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
If you know how to spell, use proper English, and can recognize that two stories are duplicates, you could probably be the editor of some tech news blog.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Oh, and I'm sure that the unemployed masses have the funds to sue corporations for giving preference to H1s.
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
1) I used to work writing gambling software (ethically, I knew it was going to fold). There is a rather attractive woman who lives in Marin and is rather wealthy who owns/runs a set of gambling web sites. Her dev team is in India. She's young, beautiful and rich.
2) I use Macromedia Director extensively on a mac. I have since 1987. I even worked on Director for about 4 years at Macromedia. Director MX for the mac was ported by a company in India. IT SUCKS ASS. A vast majority of "details" that make software great are gone. It is now just "usable" and annoying. I will saddly admit that the windoes version of Director MX is much more usable than the mac version. Whomever ported it, just doesn't get it. What really sucks is that this crappy ass port is what I have to use every day. Yeah. Woo. shoot me.
3) I used to contract for McGraw Hill in Carlsbad. We took a major project that was about to fail, developed and released the 4 CD set on time and budget for McGraw-Hill. After I left, under financial pressure, one of my co workers told me that things were about to change. This biz guy from a software firm in India come in to talk to the biz guys at McGraw-Hill and states "my programmers can write 1000 lines of code in a hour and they are pennies on the dollar." WHAT MORON measures productivity in "lines of code per hour?" Obviously, the business guys who don't understand programming. Last I hard, a lot of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill's development moved offshore to India.
Leaves alot to think about.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
It's not like I'm shocked that there's now a heated debate about Indian labor law among the various IANAIndianLaborLs here -- that's why we're here, right? -- but you may want to wait for someone in possession of even a single real fact to come along before drawing a conclusion.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Look how bad the working conditions are there!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
This situation did not come about until the institution of the H1-B and L-1 visa program. This program should be scrapped for the following reasons. 1.) Labor Shortage: The stated purpose of these programs was to fill a temporary shortage of american tech talent obviously this is no longer a shortage of American geeks to fill these jobs. 2.) Anti-Competitive: The way the H-1/L-1 visas are written the sponsored geek is can only be employed by the sponsoring corporation. If he/she is forbidden by law seek other employment employers do not have to compete for talented labor or worry about retention once these guys have been trained. This creates a type of indentured servitude and an artificially depreciated labor market. 3.) Lack Of Parity: There are no similar programs in the countries who are the major sources of imported labor. We should not open American labor markets while foriegn labor markets are protected. 4.) Tax Drain: The maximum time an H1/L1 visa holder can work in the US is 6 years. They have been assured by the Bush administration that they will still recieve Social Security benefits even though the current law says you must contribute for 10 years to be eligible.
You can get a working visa for India. I have a friend that works there. It's just like anywhere else in the world in that respect.
I expect this guy just got a tourist visa and turned up in India expecting to get employed, and the person told him he couldn't legally employ him, which would be true because he had the wrong type of visa.
Is there anywhere in the world where you can just turn up without a working visa and legally work? Not that I know.
I wish the Slashdot editors would just spend five minutes googling to check the validity of this type of thing before posting.
Disclaimers: I was born in India. However, my family moved to USA since I was 14. I consider myself American.
Fact #1: Americans (and others) can work in India
Fact #2: Lots of Americans (and others) do work in India
Fact #3: A Visitors visa is different from a Work visa (just like USA)
Fact #4: If you travel on visitors visa, you cannot change it to work visa unless you leave the country first. Basically you cannot transfer visas without changing your port of entry (guess what? just like the good ol' USA)
Fact #5: This guy traveled to India on a work visa and applied for a job
Fact #6: Following fact #4, he got denied a visa.
BTW, all these facts are responses to USA's visa policies. India has a repuation for treating citizen of outher countries the same way other countries treats it's citizens. For example, USA charges a fee for each applicant of a visa (may it be student, work or travel) to people from India. Guess what India does? They charge a fee to Americans who want a visa to India too. Nepal doesn't charge a fee for Indian citizens. So, India doesn't charge a fee to Nepalese citizens. So, that is it guys: tit-for-tat.
However, moving tech jobs offshore is bad, and so are H1B visas in todays economy. They were good during the boom days when we couldn't hire enough people.
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
H1-B visa? Anyone?
India working visa, anyone? Contact your local Indian embassy for details.
This story is bunk.
Actually from a little googling it looks like the rules says that "etry visas" or visas for a general long term entry is decided on a case by case basis. Also no work permits are required. Look at this link and scroll down to the "work permits" part.
Seems like they have reasonable migration policies.Moreover no restriction on Natural/Naturalised citizens in politics either. An former Italian is the opposition leader
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Of course we don't let them work here. We let them come here to go to school, then we send them back and they take our jobs there because why pay a lot of money for software when you can get it dirt cheap from India?
Now is a real bad time to be a programmer... especially a newly graduated one. Of course pointy-haired bosses don't see the value of in-house development. If they can save money now, they look good. It doesn't matter that the software they get doesn't work right and they have to spend more money to fix it, they saved the company money.
There are also security concerns... but I won't go there.
"Most of these were for providing support, ..."
Yeah; I usually do this. Any program more than a few dozen lines, and I start adding debugging hooks.
They're never "hidden", though. I always document them. Of course, I can't force users to read the documentation.
And I don't remove the debug hooks for a "release" version. When it's out at some customer's site and they call you asking what's wrong is when you REALLY need those hooks.
It's really handy to be able to be able to tell a user "Just add the following line to the config file, wait a bit, and tell me what it says."
I've worked on several projects where we added an HTTP interface, with the app listening on some port. All configurable, of course, but usually turned on by default. Then when a user called with a problem, if they are on the Net, we can ftp to that port, start typing GET commands, and learn about its state. This is a real back door, very easy to implement, and incredibly helpful when there are problems.
Of course, you do want to document them, so that the user can't accuse you of sneaking something in on them. And make sure there's a simple way to turn them on and off. If the app has a config file, a line like "HTTP-Port: N" does the job, with N=0 to disable the back door.
Then you can say "Well, I can't see what's wrong, because the HTTP port is turned off. Yes, I understand your security concerns. But I can't help you if your security won't let me talk to the program."
Usually this isn't much of a problem, since new users rarely notice that stuff, and leave the back door enabled. When their security folks discover it, it's really handy to be able to point to the fact that it's all documented in the manual and the sample config file. Then they say "Oh, yeah." turn it off, and don't bug you.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Uhh...US EOE laws forbid discrimination on the basis of national origin. So it would be illegal discrimination here.
Who cares about the last part of the clip, everyone knows that it's a pain in the ass to get a job in another country, unless your an executive or you live in the EU. (My personal experience alone with this is endless.)
The point is the first part. And I don't want to collectively diss the /. population, but if you guys would read BusinessWeek, The Economist, etc., in addition to all your damn computer magazines, then you'd be enlightened already about how the H1 visa problem is growing so fast in the States.
There are countless stories at countless firms about people who've been forced to train their outsourced replacements. It is a really big problem in this country.
I really don't give a f*ck if you want to outsource a job to India. But all that bullsh*t with Tata is a gross exploitation of a labor-law loophole. Generally, the law states that you can't lay someone off and replace that exact position within "X" amount of time (it varies by State, I believe, here in Illinois it's 1 year). So companies get around it by creating whole new departments and positions for companies like Tata to come in and rape your office space, replacing you with an H1-er.
Start reading other magazines, and you guys might actually be motivated to care about this instead of giving supposedly righteous comments about how obvious it is that it's difficult to obtain work visas in other countries.
Focus on the important stuff. Like the BEGINNING of the clip.
"All techies should be forced to take at least 12 credits of business in college."
-SD
http://money.cnn.com/2003/09/11/news/economy/visa
First few lines are:
Visas vs. jobs
While many U.S. tech workers hate the H-1B program, studies suggest its impact is limited.
September 11, 2003: 12:14 PM EDT
By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money Staff Writer
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A U.S. visa program that allows aliens to temporarily work in technology and other high-paying industries is often blamed for taking American jobs and pushing wages lower. But two recent studies suggest this program might not be as awful as some critics think.
Okay - so the point of H1B's is to provide workers for a growing economy when we can't train our own people fast enough, right? (No local talent).
So when there IS an abundance of local talent (evidenced by the posting volume of /. posts) why aren't H1B's sent home? I have no problem with international workers being here, if they are filling a need that can't be filled locally.
To give an example of the way I think the H1B system is getting worked, the last job I worked at was an Informix 4GL shop. If you don't know what this is, it's the most insanely brain-dead programming language ever made. No features, no objects, hell you can't even pass arrays to functions. So what does this company do? Hires chinese H1B's who don't really know anything, for pennies. These guys were working REALLY cheap (like $8/hr) and the company had no intention of hiring any Americans because they wouldn't work for $8/hr. They had some scam running where a few of the american employees did work that cheap "officially" but got kickbacks for supporting the H1B program. I came into this company from a merger, and left shortly thereafter.
My current company is outsourcing to an Indian development firm who supposedly has 30 employees assigned to us. Our entire dev team here in the US is like 5 people, and we're doing the lion's share of the work!
So my opinion of outsourced and H1B employees is rather low, although I'll be the first to admit that there are probably lots of great foreign computer folks out there too. I just haven't seen any :)
The philosophy of market fundamentalism--the mantra of Fox, Wired, Rush, Gilder, Friedman and every zealous conservative and libertarian pundit--is doing an excellent job of encouraging business to turn its back on US employees. We'll see much, much more job flight in the short term until the brakes are applied to this savage anti-social approach.
Plainly this is what happens when you shatter the social contract and replace it with an ideology of dog-eat-dog. When times are good, it's nice to be able to bark, "Hands off my bone!" Not so nice, is it, when times are bad... Then, living under dog ideology isn't all it's cracked up to be, and you may come to see that millions and millions of your fellow Americans have been given the same raw deal.
For America, reeling under the destructiveness of this philosophy, a reordering of priorities is necessary. Increasing shareholder wealth may be the highest goal of a company; but it should never be the highest goal of a nation.
Above all, as you see jobs go to India, or elsewhere, and worry that it might be yours next, remember whose advice and guidance led you to this low hour. Remember also who made historically high profits from your labor in the 1990s, but now pleads the inability to continue your employment. And ask yourself if you can afford to subscribe to the politics of plutocrats who don't care if you and your family sink or swim.
I also work with people from Tata, and they do employ American citizens, to fill much the same sort of job responsibilities that my firm does.
[
Any government that is more concerned about their citizen's well-being than about corporation's well-being will block non-citizens from working.
;)
Any government that is more concerned about corporation's well-being than about their citizen's well-being will allow companies to hire non-citizens to their heart's content.
I think that's pretty cut and dried. I am certain someone will correct me shortly.
The number of 'native' people here is confined to mostly people who have property right to an 'indian' reservation. The rest of us are either from somewhere else or of people decended from somewhere else within the last 200 years. There are very few people who can claim their only lineage from the original east coast Pre-US colonies. Immigrants have brought business ideas, culture, and intelligence. A vast array of our scientists that have developed military materiel are immigrants. We tolerate them, right?
Even in our economic downturn, we still have a rather small unemployment rate. Our economy has always been cyclical, and now is no different than any other time, other than the industries most strongly affected. On an upswing companies hire as many people as they can, if they have a need for them, and they trim back when they have spent in excess of what their workforce can deliver, based on economic times. This is normal. It sucks, but as long as we allow the severe swings that we see, it'll remain this way.
When someone lives here, (s)he buys goods and services locally. This is money that isn't leaked out to foreign companies. Even the immigrant that sends money home for family ends up spending a lot here, since the cost of living is so high. I'd want to see raw figures collected by someone without a bias one way or the other before I would revise that thought.
Not all immigrants remain, but many do. Many find a much better life here than they have in other parts of the world. They see the salaries of their peers, and ultimately want that salary, or more of that lifestyle. They get addicted to pay-per-view and pizza delivery and cheap transportation. They become part of 'us'. I won't say that they all do, for many who come from countries as economically comparable per capita as the U.S. don't assimilate, but they have no reason to, either. Those from poorer countries become Americans. Their original culture doesn't disappear, but it all gets thrown in.
It's not nearly as clear of an issue as people make it out to be.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
My fiance' is presently working in the U.S. on an H1-B Visa. A quick refresher:
i ng .jobs.market.in.the.US.
H1-B visas are only granted to persons with the equivalent of a 4-year Bachellor's degree. Part of the application process involves going through a degree equivalency comparison by an accredited lawyer. My fiance' has a Masters' in Computer Science.
H1-B visa holders have a minimum salary stipulation. I believe the last time I checked it was $35,000 US. My fiance is being paid the same salary as the person that held her position before her, which is substantially higher than minimum.
The position she was hired for was unfilled for some time as the company could not find someone with her required database/programming/java skills locally (we reside in a small midwestern community of ~150,000 population including neighboring villages and suburbs.)
The real culprit here is twofold:
1. The L-1 Visa. The L-1 has *substantially* lower pay requirements. These are the job-stealing visas.
2. Corporate greed and government inaction. CEO's just see their programming expense as a budget line item to be reduced, like finding a cheaper widget supplier. Government inaction is self-explanitory. They are closing the door too slowly.
H1-B's are typically attracting highly educated Western Europeans to the U.S. for a number of reasons. Salaries that are 1.5 to 2x higher than back home (not 5-8x as compared to India), A significant other in the states (grin) or a sense of adventure and desire to try the U.S. for a while. I find it baffling that in the wake of the articles regarding Teller's passing that we're questioning the H1-B situation. Post WWII, alot of our brainpower came from Western Europe. Highly skilled, highly educated persons who desire to become U.S. citizens and melt into the pot are what strengthens the U.S.
It.is.the.L-1.visa.that.is.killing.the.programm
PERIOD.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Please listen to an Honest Indians defence I cannot believe that C I O could publish such a stupid article !!!! IT IS NOT ILLEGAL FOR EXPATS TO WORK IN INDIA ! How do I know this , Well we set up a company makin watches in collaboration with a jap company. The jap company being the majority shareholder sends two japanese managers. All the japanese company had to do was get a WORK PERMIT, Which believe me is a piece of cake compared to the shit we go through to get a h1b or even a student visa. All major US companies and mnc's who set up base in India have a number of managers who are actually expats. In fact the CEO odf Coke India etc. etc are US citizens. In fact articles in indian business magazines have pointed out that there is a recent trend even among Indian companies to hire expat managers. And if u think that they hire only coats, That also is not true. Many Indian software comanies also hire techies although they have to be *highly specialized* However if some of u nice unemployed people want to shift to India, Think of what you are going 2 put urself through. A TechWorker in India with all the qualifications of Daniel Soong may have to work for as low as 200-300$. Believe me thats what my friends here earn! All of u who think that bannin the h1b is the answer may be sadly mistaken. Outsourcing may be a more serious problem than H1B and also realize that artificially creating hurdles rarely solves problems. The companies who are outsorcin 2 India are the ones that are doing this out of desperation alias economic recession. Note that america could not really prevent a lot of manfacturing activities 2 be shifted to bases like China, Malaysia. Banning the h1b also will not prevent the long term ousourcing phenomena.
In this age's global economy, the reality is that the US economic model is growing beyond the US's borders. Multi-national corportations are shopping around for the best deal. Particularly when the US economy is struggling, many of these companies will define 'best' deal as the cheapest. Other posters have pointed out that you get what you pay for. Maybe eventually the companies that outsource will realize that their savings on paper are costing them more than they realize.
In the meantime, technical folks that lived large during the boom times have to realize that people offshore have also realized there's money to be made in technology. Their price is lower, so the jobs go offshore. Those of us here in the US have to either lower our prices or convince employers that we provide more value than the cheaper offshore workers.
In other news, blue-collar workers have been arguing for years that we need to close our borders to foreign products, or tarrif the hell out of them. Now, suddenly, white collar jobs are being lost as well & people are shouting "Close the borders!" "Get rid of the H1-B's!" "Save MY job!"
Sorry, dude. Thats the way it works. Change careers. Develop new skills. Start your own business that hires only 3+ generation Americans. But if you choose to drive a foreign car, or watch an off-shore made television, or insert example here of products built outside the US that were/are more expensive when built here, you're living a double-standard. It can't work both ways. Pick your economic system: protectionism or a free market.
It seems to me that globalization is making Americans more wealthy to the tune of $500 billion a year.
A Trade Deficit means we continue to import more than we export, that is, spend more than we produce.
This is a cycle most of you are more familiar referring to as DEBT, in this case, foreign debt. The cycle is hard to stop once it gets rolling, and once foreign debtors no longer believe us credit-worthy, they can refuse us credit and cripple our economy.
Read this for a better understanding of the situation. Economists have been warning about this for years, and now that our core software industries are packing up for India, things look even more bleak. Considering how every government official in America has chosen to ignore this problem, including every president since Reagan, I can't see us addressing it in time to really help.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
However, I noted that Indian companies are building on these small projects, much the way that any start-up takes small steps before landing the "big" clients. In time, Indian workers will have significant knowledge of North American & European standards, procedures, and business cultures, as well as a proven track record. Then, Indian companies will be able to take on essentially any work that "developed" countries do.
My professor agreed, but said we could take comfort in that we would all be retired in 20 years. But I'll only be 49, and what about future generations? He said the answer was to climb to the top of the "skills" food chain. Bioinformatics and biotech were 2 of his examples.
So, that being said, what are our options, here in the so-called developed world? What are the next big skilled areas? Instead of fighting to keep jobs in our countries, what can we do to stake out competitive advantages? What can we learn to do before anyone else can jump in? How do we stay ahead of the curve?
And, perhaps more importantly, what options do people who just aren't university material have?
-- SYS 64738 --
In order to work in India, you need a work permit. Not knowing exactly the procedure for obtaining a work permit in India, I can only speculate that one will normally be issued only for jobs/diciplines for which there is no qualified native applicants.
That's the same way it works in the USA. In order for foreigners to get a work permit (a H1-B visa), the prospective employer must:
The H1-B visa is temporary (expires after 3 years, can be renewed for a grand total of 6 years). This is kind of unique - not many other countries have this restriction.
Finally, a H1-B visa is tied to a particular employer (which some other countries do, but not all), so the holder cannot change jobs without going through this process again.
Given these restrictions, only a small percentage of American companies (usually mid-size companies that otherwise have troubles finding qualified personel) are willing to sponsor H1-B visas for foreign workers.
In a country of ~250 million people, an influx of 150-200 thousand legal (H1-B) immigrant workers per year is nothing - indeed, a much lower percentage than other western countries (including my native Norway).
Of course, illegal immigration is much larger, and a different problem alltogether. Too bad some of the less intelligent elements of this society is unable to distinguish the (modest) number of legal immigrants from the (huge) number of illegal immigrants.
The process of getting a permanent residency ("green card") -- remember, the H1-B is only temporary -- is even harder, and many more steps are involved (including INS, the department of labor, and a handful of other agencies -- all of which are understaffed and overwhelmed).
I was personally on a H1-B visa for nearly the allowed 6 years -- it took me that long to apply for (and receive) a green card. I am in a field where there is still a lot of demand for labor, and I am from a country for which parts of the application/qualification process goes quicker than for most. (Yes, the processing time of one of the agencies involved in the serialized green card application process depends on where you are from).
Re: Outsourcing to India in general, I can only say: Tough. The USA is getting what it asked for - a more globalized economy. If the US gets easier access to foreign markets, then foreign countries get easier access to the US market as well. Indian-produced goods and services (whether managed by US companies or not) can enter the US market more freely, just like US goods and services have already entered other markets more freely.
The bad news for industrialized countries is that this will level the global playing field w.r.t. salaries, standards of living, etc. The good news for the developing word is the same. All the same, it means further concentration of power an money in the hands of large, multinational corporations, whether they be incorporated in the USA or elsewhere.
What's more lets shine a light on the crux of the matter. Economic downturns always bring heightened nationalism, immigrant bashing, and typically self-destructive policies on trade and immigration. Given the current political climate and the significance of today's date only heightens that sense of national pride. This, in my opinion, is a dangerous position to be in. This is the kind of climate that breeds "Brown Shirts".
I think the important distinction that must be drawn is the fundamental difference between H1B type workers and immigrants. In my opinion, an immigrant is someone actively pursuing citizenship and should be considered an "American". As the descendant of Scots, Irish, and French Canadians I've heard the stories of persecution and discrimination my great grandparents underwent during the Great Depression because they were "stealing" jobs from "real" Americans.
In my opinion, the hiring policy, this man ran in to is just plain wrong regardless of legality. Does this mean that the US should adopt a similar policy? I don't think so, I believe the outcome would not impart a favorable change on the state of the economy. If my company lost all its H1B's we would be in serious trouble. I'm pretty confident we could not fill the vacant jobs with "real" americans, even in today's job market. Of course, I could be wrong.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
I mean we let people from all over come here and work. Ummmmm, except we don't.
u rJ ob.htm- 10-03.htm
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Um, YES we do!
The H-1 and L-1 Visa programs were invented specifically for this reason. In the US, we have no standard like those I've read about in Australia and elsewhere. Well, we have some regulations, but recently they've gone completely unenforced. If a company in this country can hire someone from overseas to do a job for which they're currently paying an American worker, and pay that worker half or less what the American makes, the company is under no pressure not to hire the foreign worker. It's happening for real. In the REAL world.
http://www.rescueamericanjobs.org/
http://www.local6.com/money/2381343/detail.html
http://www.thenetworkadministrator.com/LosingYo
http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2003/L1_bill_7
Further, US jobs now are being sent TO other countries. By some estimates, 2 million plus jobs in the next few years. Than't a HUGE chunk of the IT sector.
http://www.cio.com/archive/090103/backlash.html (accoring to this article, the number is like 10% of IT jobs)
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/947478.asp?cp1=1
http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/030722_ibm
http://comment.cio.com/comments/13404.html
The reason this is a story here, is because a good number of us work in the IT sector. This has HUGE implications for us.
Consider the fact that many colleges around the nation are scaling back IT programs (my stepmother teaches various IT classes at a local college) and thike about what that means for those of us who spent money on educations or who have been relying on our IT experience as means to acquire jobs.
The economy and job prospects have been bad enough just dealing with the economic slowdown without having to deal with the jobs that are still there going away from the US (I know, I was unemployed for the greater portion of 2002, and I'm only employed now because I new the guy who ran the IT department for the company I work for now).
In many countries in the EU and also in Australia, they cannot hire a non-citizen unless they CANNOT find a qualified candidate who IS a citizen. The US government needs to step up and implement some similar legislation. Even if you think about this from a lawmakers perspective, an American who makes $50,000 a year pays a whole lot more than an unemployed American and the foreigner who takes his job for $30,000. They'll see a WHOLE LOT less than that from the unemployed American and the job that's no longer in the US! Even the companies that do use outsourcing are killing their own market. How many computers or programs or Coke ayr you going to buy when you're unemployed, and can the foreigner who's making half of what you were making pick up the slack? I don't think so...
Anyway, I'm done...
Are you sure it's not because you're an incompetent hack?
Many people are sure - because their company hires a bunch of H1Bs, uses their higher-paid US workers to TRAIN them to do jobs equivalent to the US workers', then fires the US workers.
Happens all the time in Silicon Valley - both in big and small companies. Occasionally a large company (Sun was one) gets so blatant about it - dumping whole departments - that they get sued.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You really didn't understand the article from the SBA website, did you? IAAE (I Am An Economist), and it boils down to this -- what can a foreigner do with a US dollar? The only thing that he or she can do is buy US-produced goods and services. When he or she does that, it increases demand for US production which stimulates the US economy and causes the GDP to rise.
Foreigners putting their dollars into dollar-denominated investments only puts off the problem. At some point, the foreigner must use the dollars to buy US-produced goods and services. Doing anything else means that US consumers have gotten a whole lot of real goods and services for the price of printing a bunch of green paper or transferring a few electrons.
A trade imbalance is not like your PERSONAL debt. It doesn't mean the same thing, so don't try to apply your intuition about personal debts to a trade deficit.
--Paul
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a citizen of a NAFTA country may work in a professional occupation in another NAFTA country if the applicant meet certain requirements.
American professionals may easily work in Canada, for example, and vice versa.Anybody want a peanut?
Only in the U.S. will this be tolerated
You haven't seen bizarre immigration rules/enforcement until you've lived in Canada.
In Canada you can show up at the border without any documents and claim refugee status. Not only will you gain entry after filing out forms for about 45 minutes, but you will be legally allowed to work until your hearing.
Of course nobody bothers to even show up for the hearing since there is no deportation enforcement. At most you will receive a letter in the mail telling you that you must leave the country. Nobody will contact you to find out if you actually do leave the country.
Then there are the cases where the "refugee" decides to make a living via B&E, armed robbery, etc., despite being able to work legally. Even if they are caught, their lack of compliance to basic laws of society cannot be used against them in the hearing that they will not attend that produces results that nobody pays attention to.
I think the answer is a little bit of all of the above. In general, I am a proponent of the H1B program, but I do have some serious reservations. Most of the H1B's I work with are very intelligent people that would be difficult to replace even in the current job market. I believe the root of this problem is our educational system in the states, but thats a whole other debate.
I've been looking for a good Oracle DBA job for a while now and its been difficult. I'm not very happy where I am. In this situation, the H1B program definitely hinders my search, but I really don't think by all that much. Most people who oppose the H1B program talk about just this kind of scenario and their argument has merit. However, the biggest problem I have with the H1B program is the way some employers abuse the hell out of the process. My division has been undergoing constant layoffs for over two years and during this process our managment has really been treating us very poorly, but it pales in comparison to the way the H1B's are treated. More than a few have received veiled threats that they will do what they are asked or they could be laid off and promptly kicked out of the country. They've forced people in to very long hours, constantly cut benefits, in general become hostile. The consensus among most of the H1B's is to keep their mouth shut and do what is asked. It is in this regard that I think the system needs an overhaul. I do not, however, know the solution.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
1. Before you start beating up on Indians, remember that it's American managers that do the outsourcing, and the ones that benefit the most.
2. If the Tata company didn't hire him in US because he was American, he could (and should) take legal recourse.
3. You can work in India as an American. Thousands of other Americans do, even in high tech jobs. You need to :
a. Get a job in an Indian company. Like Intel
b. Apply for a 'business visa for employment at your local Indian embassy/consulate
And go.
The economy sucks, but that doesn't mean you put the blame on other people who like you are trying to work for a living.
I read constantly about stories like this, and the older thread about about how a secret memo shows that IBM are planning to move huge quantities of their best jobs out of the US and into India over the next few years.
The central issue for me that links these stories is not so much the relocation of manufacturing and productive jobs from the core of an empire to peripheral client states. This has happened before (Roman Empire, United Kingdom, and so on) and will happen again.
No, for me the real issue is one of freedom of movement for labour versus freedom of movement for capital. Because of their many advantages, corporations are "gaming" the international political system to produce labour arbitrage. They have lobbied hard for their right to move capital between countries at will. What we have now is globalization that serves corporations, not globalization that serves people.
This is the fundamental ideological underpinning of this discourse. Corporations and politicians have structured a political system that implicitly and irrevocably favours the movement of capital over labour. Why should this be so? Could it be different? These are questions that need to be addressed. Different political movements are examining them in different ways.
Meanwhile, for ordinary people who, for the most part, have no greater or more fundamental asset to offer than their labour, their options are a lot more restricted. US companies send jobs south into Mexico with minimal regulation because of NAFTA, but Mexican people are not equally free to move their bodies north into the US. This unequal treatment creates the exploitative arbitrage that the corporations milk for profits.
This also explains a fundamental difference between the USA, NAFTA, and the European Union project. I've noticed most Americans really don't "get" the EU because their expectations are constrained by NAFTA and the halting of the US expansion within North America.
At its core the EU project is very simple, but very powerful. It holds out the promise of regional improvement by granting freedom of access to a unified market for both capital and labour. As it expands, relentlessly it seems, it allows poorer countries to join, once they restructure their political, legal, and social systems to bring them into some degree of harmony with the EU consensus. In return for this social transformation, all the citizens of member countries can enjoy free and unfettered movement throughout all other EU countries (admittedly and annoyingly, several EU countries impose different temporary restrictions on some new member country citizens). In essence it's very similar to the freedom of movement that US citizens enjoy throughout all 50 States.
This is a powerful lure. For all the talk of "old Europe" and "new Europe", the former Soviet Bloc countries are not clamouring to create bilateral trade agreements with the US... they are fighting tooth and nail to join the EU, and so submit their trade relations with non-EU countries to the fiat of Brussels. This yearning for EU membership has produced and is producing massive social and political change across eastern Europe.
However, it seems that the US project has stalled at its current borders. I don't see the US engaged in a determined effort to expand south, to create a distributed American citizenship that would be a beacon for social progress and political aspirations throughout the Americas and the world. Immigration isn't any sort of answer: it's tedious, socially disruptive, and over-regulated. Try opening the floodgates, as the EU has done for its member countries, and within a few decades the improvements in both old and new member States will be enormous and unprecedented.
But that's a fantasy. People today in the poorer countries of Central America, so close to the US, nonetheless know explicitly that their relation to the US and the member States within can never be based on equality and access, but will instead be permanently structured as clientist an
Da Blog
Concept A: H1-B people take jobs from Americans
While this is true, it is neither the fault of the H1-B foreigners who take the jobs nor the Americans who lose them. Most of the H1-B foreigners were educated an universities here in the US. Back at the beginning of the CS/IT boom, there weren't enough qualified people, so employers petitioned the government to expand visa programs so that they could hire the foreign students that were available in universities here. Once employees started leaving for start-ups employers realized that because of their visa restrictions, most H1-B employees would not or could not leave. So they petitioned Congress again to expand the program. They got what they wanted, and American workers are now paying the price.
Concept B: Outsourcing is taking jobs from Americans
While this is also true, did you expect something different? Corporations are there to make profits for their shareholders. If I tell a corporation that my company in India/China/Eastern Europe can complete the same work their in-house American IT department does for half the cost, no MBA-carrying CEO would ever turn me down. Even if I lied and it's only 2/3, that's reduced operating costs by millions or dollars, thus increasing the return for shareholders.
All of this happened decades ago in agriculture, 20-25 years ago in the textiles industry (remember the by clothes made in the USA campaigns??), 20 years to present in the manufacturing industries (auto, steel, toys, etc.), 5-10 years in semi-conductor and IC manufacturing, and 3-5 years in the call-center industry. Were you naive enough to think it wouldn't happen to us?
Concept C: Foreign workers are less-apt than Americans
This is pure ego run amuck! Since the 80's, every foreign country has been improving their educational systems (most of which are now better than ours), and churning out qualified computer scientists, electrical engineers, and computer engineers. It was only a matter of time before corporations sought to tap into that resource. Why hire a bunch of Americans from average underfunded party schools when you can hire better educated and cheaper foreigners from the best schools in India, China, Czech Republic, etc.? That's capitalism at its best.
I'm all for altruism and idealism, but the reality is that these decisions are driven by $$$, and nothing else. If we want to keep CS/IT jobs here in the USA, we need to create more value for less money. Otherwise, we WILL follow the same path as the industries I mentioned above.
Well, there's always miners. Mining jobs are among the highest-paying jobs in the country (U.S.). Support mining and miners in your community, for not only do miners provide the raw materials (avg. is 45,000lbs/year of newly mined minerals for each American) for everything from basic infrastructure, agriculture, communications, power generation, etc. to luxury goods, but the money we spend in the community, from equipment to services to goods, helps everyone. I know it isn't perfect, but you have to admit that countries with abundant natural resources are the richer nations.
I'm relatively secure in my job discovering mineral deposits, knowing that for at least the next hundred years or more, we'll still need everything from gravel to gold, and that we'll need someone to find those deposits, and mine them.
-cp-
I used to work at a major network hardware company. They had outsorced a large chunk of QA work to some contractors in India -- some script-writing, some regression tests, and other sundry tasks. Without necessarily making any broad generalizations about Indian contractors or foreign contracting in general, let me share my experiences and impressions with you, in the hopes that you won't make the same mistake that my company made.
1. Time zone: I was on the East Coast (EST/EDT). I beleive that India was about 12 hours away from us, give or take. This meant that basically anything you asked them to do took at least 1 full working day, since by the time I got into work, they were in bed. You can just imagine the problems this caused when deadlines or other time-critical matters were involved.
2. Language: Again, without making any broad generalizations... Their English sucked. It was nearly impossible to communicate with them on the phone and their written English was less than acceptible. Also, based on serveral very frustrating experiences with the whole group, I concluded that their comprehention of written English was equally poor. We finally found a guy there who could understand English well enough to explain things to the rest of the group, but even then, my confidence level was quite low.
3. Work Ethic/Product: Both the group in question and several other Indians I've worked with since then have had some similar issues w/r/t how they worked and what they produced. Again, not to generalize... If you give them very clear, step-by-step instructions to perform a discrete task, they generally will perform the task quite thoroughly. However, if the procedure requires any deviation from the norm or any creativity or synthesis, you're better off doing it yourself, because they'll never figure it out.
We also had problems getting them to listen to anyone other than management -- they basically ignored team lead's, including myself.
In their defense, I understand that the education system in India teaches them to work this way; it has a large focus on rote memorization and obeyance of authority. That's great, and it seems to work for them. However, that's not how we work in the US, and folks who have gone to US (or European or Chinese) schools and worked with others of the similar ilk will get very frustrated trying to mesh with thinking processes that are polar opposites of their own. Furthermore, I find this thinking process thoroughly unproductive and pretty much useless in an Engineer.
Now, I'm just waiting for someone to write back flaming me for being some kind of racist, so let me state once more that I am relating my personal experiences with certain Indians. I went to grad school with several amazingly talented Indians whom I would choose to work with in a heartbeat. I'm not trying to reinforce any sterotypes or discriminatory policies.
What I am trying to say is caveat emptor. If a thing seems too good to be true, it probably is. Sure, you can get engineering labor abroad for 10 cents on the dollar. But in many cases, you get what you pay for.
And finally, there are countless qualified engineers in AMERICA who need jobs. If a foreign individual or group has skills you can't find here, then fine, bring them here. But in the long run, you hurting yourself, your company, and your fellow Americans by trying to save a buck abroad. It ain't worth it.