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Debugging Indian Computer Programmers
Life as an immigrant programmer is full of culture shocks both minor and major (would you know the first time around how to dress when flying from Bombay to Pittsburgh via Los Angeles, in winter?), and much of the book is devoted to outlining some of the shocks that Indian programmers face, even in immigrant-happy America. Buying a car to rely on for daily transport -- on American highways, no less -- is just one of the things many programmers like Sivakumar have to face shortly after arriving; he explains that one of the reasons certain makes of car (chiefly Japanese) are popular among newly arrived H1-B workers is that their expected resale value is high. When your employment is at the mercy of a short-term visa, and the cooperation of a sponsoring company, similar logic informs all kinds of decisions.
The "Did I steal your job?" in the title is the real question raised by this book: Sivakumar rallies evidence that the answer is a resounding No. Despite the vitriol raised by H1-B visa holders (and the H1-B program itself), he argues that the immigrant workers drawing ire from many Americans (who see the immigrants as encroaching unfairly on "their" jobs) not only contribute real money -- billions of dollars -- to the U.S. economy, but are one of the reasons that the U.S. high-tech industry is as successful as it is and has been.
He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"Sivakumar's argument has three pillars. First, that high-tech immigrants (including H1-B holders) are one of the key ingredients in the continuing success of many American companies. These aren't foreign workers who simply happen to land jobs in the U.S.; each H1-B visa holder has at least 16 years (often more) of formal education, and an American company sponsoring his or her application. (That education usually comes "free" to U.S. taxpayers, he notes, not at the expense of public school budgets or student loan subsidies.) Sivakumar contrasts both the generous immigrant policies and world-leading software industry of the U.S. with the policies and software industries of Europe, which tend to be more restrictive and less successful, respectively.
The second part of his argument is that H1-B immigrants, though motivated by a desire to improve their own lives, end up contributing disproportionately to the U.S. economy -- something Americans should be happy about, not resentful. Indian programmers in particular end up spending much of their salary on necessary (and less necessary) material goods both for their personal use and as socially obligated gifts to family members, increasing the retail take of U.S. companies from AT&T to the local car dealer.
More significantly, H1-B workers, as legal immigrants to the U.S., have the dubious privilege of paying the same taxes as other Americans (and more than most), with a far smaller chance of reaping their benefits. Most are single, and send no children to the U.S. schools they help underwrite, and most will never collect on the Social Security system or medical-care systems their payroll taxes help prop up.
Third, Sivakumar points out that Indian immigrants are often among the inventive and entrepreneurial class which provides jobs in the first place, citing -- besides a litany of Indian company founders and inventors -- a Berkeley study showing that in the boom years of the 1990s, "ethnic Chinese and Indian immigrants started nearly 25% of the high-tech start-ups in [Silicon] Valley." That's nearly 3000 companies, employing on the order of 100,000 people. The market capitalization of Indian-founded or -run U.S.-based companies is nearly half a trillion dollars. Job creation is an economic complex that requires funding and expertise, and Indian and other immigrants contribute to -- not subtract from -- the creation of jobs for other Americans.
Sivakumar is polite, almost apologetic at times -- and more optimistic than some of the things he's experienced as a hired-gun programmer might lead you to expect. Though he maintains that the book is not an autobiography, many of the experiences in it are things he himself encountered; some of them are funny, others either frightening or simply sad. In particular, he makes note of one place that programmers and other tech workers are likely to run into "racially abusive" hostility -- namely, Internet message boards. As he puts it,
"You meet these people every day of your life, and they probably would smile at you at your workplace or even would greet you. They show their real face in those discussion forums. These online discussion forums are great tools for those who want to hide themselves from the public but would like to spew their venom."
Given the hostility faced online and (less often) in real life, sometimes Sivakumar's politeness goes what struck me as too far; I was surprised to read his conciliatory advice to Indians treated suspiciously on the basis of their skin color or accent in the panic-prone modern America to "please accept it," rather than to bristle. That might be pragmatic and sensible advice, but America will be a better place when it's unnecessary.
This book makes no pretense of being an authoritative work on cultural differences, but Sivakumar does delve into a few of the gaps between American and Indian aesthetics, habits, and mores. Sexually explicit entertainment is far more accessible in the U.S. than in much of the world, and in India in particular; he labels the usually short-lived exploration by some new immigrants of the seedier side of American entertainment "The X-Rated Movie Syndrome." On a different note, vegetarian food isn't easy to find in company cafeterias, which means for many Indian programmers one of many small barriers to acceptance by their coworkers, because they can't simply order off the menu at a company cafeteria.Even trivial aspects of daily life are sometimes imbued with cultural meaning: after being advised by a friend to "walk smart" (that is, confidently, not quietly or humbly) along company corridors, he writes "It sounded true to me, and I was prepared for my next American adventure. 'Alright, I am going to walk straight and smart as of tomorrow!' I tried recently only to have my colleagues comment that I walk like President Bush."
Despite a casual style and sometimes distracting use of jargon ("Dude" is funnier in the title than when it appears several times in the text), the content of Debugging is serious. Sivakumar and other immigrant programmers are not abstractions or hypotheticals: they're designing processors, programming systems of all scales, and bringing the results of high-end education worldwide to places like Palo Alto, New York and Austin. They're also facing an anti-immigrant backlash that ranges from merely spiteful (the usual) to actually violent (thankfully uncommon). Sivakumar's experience in the U.S. isn't wholly negative -- he's quick to point out otherwise -- but includes cavalier treatment from co-workers and landlords, and even harassment from a flag-waving driver gesturing obscenely (and blocking his car) on the streets of New Jersey. That's the sort of experience most light-skinned, native-born Americans are lucky not to face on a daily basis.
Losing friends and neighbors to the terror attacks of 2001 isn't something that happened only to American citizens, and Sivakumar was touched by both; five residents of his New Jersey apartment complex were killed by those attacks, along with the wife of a friend. In this and other aspects of life in America, he justifiably considers himself a part of the U.S. high-tech economy, not a mere visitor, and uses the second person when talking about the American software industry specifically. If you're an American by birth, realize that Sivakumar is an American by choice (even if he has ties and loyalties to both India and Sri Lanka besides), whatever his visa status says.
This is also a funny book, in parts -- in particular, Sivakumar's experiences ordering lunch in an American company cafeteria made me laugh. (Pronouncing "milk" with an emphasis on the "l" rather than the "i" is a matter of spoken convention, after all, not a rule of nature -- but a short "i" will get you a carton of milk faster in an American company cafeteria). The author's graceful levity is welcome, and it helps to defuse the natural anger I felt at some of the odious treatment he describes.
The writing is understandable throughout, but Sivakumar is clearly a programmer writing, rather than a writer who happens to also be a programmer; much of the text is awkwardly phrased, and dotted with avoidable errors in spelling or diction. (One that stuck out: in more than one place, the name of fellow H1-B immigrant Linus Torvalds is rendered "Linus Travolds.") The chronology of Sivakumar's own story is not always clear, either; he mentions offhandedly at one point early on that "[b]y the way, my wife had come from India and joined me by then"; a clearer timeline would help in unifying the anecdotes which make up much of the book.
Sivakumar is also guilty in places of wielding the same kind of broad brush he sees being used to paint Indian programmers; he provides cultural sketches of several other groups that may be meant merely as casual observations rather than any sort of final word, but end up doing the same disservice as any other stereotype. (Of his first trip through customs, he says "That was the first time I ever talked to an African American. I never understood their accent even in the movies." This kind of glib generalization doesn't advance the cause of the book; often "they" are hard to characterize so blithely, no matter which "they" is at issue.)
However, take these complaints with a grain of salt: it would be easy to concentrate on the less-than-smooth delivery -- it just wouldn't be smart. If you let the presentation distract you too much from the content, you'll miss what the book's about, which is that "there is another side to the H1-B factor." While the book has some distracting flaws, they don't subtract from its logical conclusion: immigrant programmers in the U.S. are simply human beings trying to better themselves in what's supposed to be a free society, and adding immensely to U.S. prosperity -- and they're doing so despite hostility on several fronts. If you want to understand the not-so-simple phenomenon of Indian programmers in America, don't overlook that message.
You can purchase Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, Did I Steal Your Job? directly from Divine Tree. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
> He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small
> percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came
> during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or
> grandparents were immigrants too?"
Because nobody resents new immigrants like old immigrants.
Oh, there are exceptions of course but unfortunately they seem to prove the rule.
(my first first post posted)
...aren't most people compaining more about tech jobs being outsourced for $10/hr to programmers living in countries like India, rather than the Indian workers coming to the U.S. and earning a more typical salary?
There's a hell of a lot to know about India.
One detail that many Americans don't really understand, is that there are essentially three careers that are considered to be more desirable than all others: Doctor, Engineer, and Computer Programmer. In some circles, you are not successful if you are not, or don't have a son, in one of these professions. This concept is as foreign to Americans as the idea of arranged marriage (which is still very much alive among Indians, even those living and working in the US!).
There is a good reason India happens to be the place where the computer programming jobs go! In the US, it's looked at as something significantly less important than being one of the three top careers.
I'm getting a little tired of the "stole my job" complaints. All jobs are determined by the same market forces as everything else. If your job isn't in demand, you can do one of two things:
1.) Work for less (not a promising prospect).
2.) Change your job.
Sure it sucks to do the second, especially if you put a lot of time and energy into it, but if you're smart you can mold your experience to a new occupation.
Take my current job: network administration. Fairly simple task. The more I've read and the more people I've talked to, these kind of jobs are next to be outsourced. IT is going to become a "utility".
So what do I do? I'm currently studying for an MBA. I'm talking to people: "What does it take to become an IT manager? How about a director?" All the "maintenance" jobs in the world can move overseas, but you still need people back at home making the decisions. I'll become one of those.
Given the usual level of Slashdot reviews, this one is actually surprisingly good. It's the first one in awhile that I've actually been able to read all the way trhough!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The argument of the book seems to be that H1-B's are good for the economy because they pay taxes and buy stuff.
What that argument misses entirely is that if we had an unemployed US citizen in that same job, they would ALSO pay the SAME taxes and buy stuff, and NOT send money to a foreign country. "Because the immigrant came to the US, they had to buy a car!" So? Because the immigrant stole an American's job, that American couldn't buy a car! There is no net gain (and perhaps a net loss) to US Citizens from employing an immigrant.
The better argument for allowing immigrants to work here, and one that also appears to be in this book, is that the economy works better if we have the people who are best at doing a job do those jobs. If we can take the best and the brightest from other countries and have them work in our companies and produce better product for us, we should steal every single one of them we can get. If this means that Americans who are less qualified for those jobs have to do something else (like sell cars to our better-qualified immigrants), that's fine. Trying to protect the jobs of people who are not as good at them from people who are better at them, but happen to have been born somewhere else, just means we're paying someone more to do less. That's a sure way to criple an economy.
paintball
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Did they help pay for the existing infrastructure that they get to take advantage of?
If you grew up in the US, then that means that for the first 18-22 years of your life (at least) you weren't helping to pay for the infrastructure you took advantage of, either -- and, since you probably went to public school, you were taking much more advantage of it than they are.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Back in the dot com days, I worked for an internet porn company that got the bright idea of outsourcing a bunch of work to Russia. Turned out that it didn't work to well but they still wrote a bunch of code for us. Now, for all you people who talk about Perl being difficult to read, try this: I had to debug Perl code written in Russian.
First, Social Security is pretty much the biggest service that you get from federal tax dollars, and education is the biggest you get from local tax dollars. If they don't take advantage of these, then they are paying a disproportionate share of taxes. Second, and more importantly, pretty much everyone is paying a (favorably) disproportionate share of taxes. The "My tax money payed for all these services" argument is a bit stupid when you consider that the top 5% of Americans pay over 50% of all the taxes. Unless you make more than $200,000 a year, you're disproportionately benefiting from services paid for by other peoples' tax money.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
My experience is that the Hostility to the H1B program is not directed towards the visa holders but towards the corporations using the program. The H1B program is used by corporations the way they use scabs and outsourcing, to drive down wages and job security by using a desparate population. The worst aspect of the H1B program is that it is not an imigration program but nearly a form of indentured servitude. The visa holder is often at the mercy of the sponsor, not free to switch jobs easily, and facing deportation once his visa expires. This may be used by corporations to hold down wages and dissent.
I'm very happy to see immigration of skilled workers as citizens, but I'm not happy to see the exploitation of guest workers as H1Bs.
As a light-skinned native-born American [and New Jersey native] let me just say that such driving and gesturing spans everyone!
[joking!]
Why should debugging Indian programmers be any different than the standard methods for any programmer?
Unless your 200 years old, there's lots of it you didn't pay for either.
If you travel to a different city or state, and use facilities paid for by that city/state, do you feel guilty? They're happy to have you, spending money at local businesses.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
I am in the same situation as the author. And sometimes a few things get on my nerves like nothing else. America is not the friendliest of nations as far as social life goes, its not like India where you know all your neighbors, and your social life (and social life does not mean hanging out in bars) makes you never feel lonely. Every programmer that comes to the USA goes through days when he/she feels that it is a curse to be so good. If it wasnt so, if I wasnt good at this, I could have so easily stayed back home and worked in anything. Its a misconception to think India does not have non-outsourced jobs. I came here because I was interested in technology, and I wanted to learn. I wouldnt mind living on $ 10/hr as long as I could afford to. We come here and try to understand the customs and accents and various other things about Americans (I know, I came to your country, not the other way, so I have to do the extra work). I had a bus-driver asking me what kind of education I had and from which filthy country I came from, when I asked him about a bus stop, and found out that I was on the wrong bus, and he had to take the bus to the side and let me get out (this was 3 weeks into my US adventure). Now, he may have been tired (although it was early morning) or maybe he didnt get laid the earlier night.. but its still not cool. I must add that these things are isolated incidents, and dont generally represent America. The idea is to forget trying to blame someone else for taking anything away from you.. that person has had so much taken away from him as well.
No, he's right, because at that point, he's talking to the Indians. They can either accept it, resent it, or leave, because unfortunately, that's the way it is.
But the reviewer is also right. America will be a better place when racism is gone. Talking to the Americans, I say, "Racism is morally wrong. It is harmful both to recipient and to the racist. Knock that *%^&* off!"
Indian : Dude, did I steal your job? American : Yeah, but it sucked anyways.
Everytime the subject of jobs comes up, and people whine and complain about not being able to find a job, they leave out the fact that they can't find a job where they currently live. Then they get all defensive about wanting to keep living where they currently are, and go on moaning about the supposed "bad job market" in the US.
While it may be true that there aren't jobs in their area, there ARE jobs other places in the US, if they're really serious about jobs. And I'm not saying to move out to the middle of no-where to some one-horse town with no other tech in sight.... I'm saying look around there are a lot more jobs out there than people think.
My company has fired 66% (~60000 let go) of the staff, yet we have brought in Indian contractors to do the same work. They stay for a few months to learn the work and then go back to India where the corporate masters can get away with paying them much lower wages.
I don't resent them. I resent the assholes I work for. I expect eventually I too will be replaced. So it is hard to be cheerful while training my future replacements.
Ironically many of those permanent employees my company has laid off where Indian as well. So they had their jobs taken by their own countrymen.
I have no problem with immigrants coming to work at my company full time and being paid a competitive wage. But I do have issues with the outsourcing.
... don't need to. The fact of the matter is that with the job boom in India, they get on-the-job training on positions that have been outsourced. Once they reach a level of expertise, they come here to take the jobs that have yet to be outsourced.
These jobs could have been filled by US citizens, but the fact of the matter is that employers don't want to spend the money to train them. What you end up with is a large group of unemployed CS grads with a lot of theoretical knowledge but no practical experience, and that will put you on the fast track for a manager's position at McDonalds.
I used to be a headhunter until recently (long story... graduated during the tech bust), and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the inclusion of H1s in this marketplace has lowered the standards of production and has lowered the wages and rates that American citizens can expect. Many managers have complained to me about the poorly documented crap that they have gotten from H1 shops, only to balk when they hear what the going rates are for American labor.
...or am I missing something?
Just read Yahoo newsgroups once in a while. Its mostly teenage punks who think crass racial jokes are funny to mix with current events.
And neo-nazis became popular when working class people started losing their job. Blame another race.
Nice thing about Slashdot is there is sane moderation. In yahoo, the majority of posters are crass and moderate up drivel, especially politically motivated posters. Sane moderation leads positive conversations. Insane moderation means you need to trod through each of the 10,000 messages individually to see if anyone has something good to say. Of course, when most people are saying,"Bush is retarded" or just posting obscenities, it gets old.
Slashdot isn't the best forum system that could be created, but its what we got now, and I'm thankful for it.
God spoke to me.
just my two cents, but what the heck is wrong with people?
Humans are Humans! We are almost all exactly the same! in fact, the "races" of human don't even fit the biological definition of race! It's a social contstruct.
Culture, well, that's different. Cultures are macro and micro - and at times it seems that there are larger cultural gulfs between city blocks then country borders.
Guess my "race", please.
After all, you slashdotters all look the same to me.
Mostly like ASCII.
Immigration of people who can support themselves is an inherently good thing for all western countries considering the demographic bomb we are sitting on. Most western countries including the US, even though Europes situation is considerably worse have birthrates that will barely sustain the current population without immigration, this leads to an "inverted" demographical pyramid were very few young people will have to support very many old people out of the workforce. That is, if we dont get immigrants that can help even out the numbers! Consider the following, what happens when: * large portions of the population starts to take money out of the markets through their retirement funds to actually live on the money? Markets will plumet and capital for both mature companies and startups will be harder to raise. * What happens when there are more retired people who pay no or very little in tax, instead of many young people who pay taxes? How do you support basic infrastructure in that case? I could go on.. The point being: western countries should embrace and welcome every immigrant that wants to come to their country to work and make a life, its probably the only thing that will save our economies 30 years from now..
If you have an H1-B visa you don't have to go home to get a green card. You can apply for permanent residency while in the US. To make sure you are successful just hire a good immigration lawyer and spend a lot of money on legal fees ($7000-to $10000 maybe even more)
For people living in the Bay Area I recommend Berry, Appleman and Leiden from San Francisco (www.usabal.com). Expensive, but the best. Their fees for one person start at $9000. A consultation costs $250.
As a former H1-B worker who returned home 2 years ago, I think the resentment has a lot to do with skin colour and being Indian.
How can I tell? Well, I never once faced any resentment at all, despite all the vitriol pointed at Indian immigrants.
But then again, I don't have dark skin and most people think I'm American until I speak. You see it all the time in Slashdot - it seems like it's OK to be racist towards Indians for "taking our jobs".
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
What infrastructure are they using that they're not paying for? If they drive on the roads, they pay gas tax. If they work they pay federal tax which also pays for roads. If they go to a hospital, they have to pay in cash, or their insurance (which they or their employer has to pay) pays for it. They won't use welfare, etc., but they will pay for it.
Yet they bring an education into the country. They have to pay high taxes. They contribute much more than they take. Compare this to the perennial welfare family.
I'm a bit sore about this - I'm a Canadian who lives in Canada and works in the U.S. I get challenged with this same logic all the time in the U.S., and it's crap. I use next to NO infrastructure here (don't live in the U.S.) but I pay full state and federal taxes and get absolutely no deductions, so I pay way more than the usual amount.
The real scam I pull is that I don't pay much Canadian tax at all, but I DO use the infrastructure there, including the big one: health care (even though I have U.S. health insurance through my employer - pays to have some when I'm on this side of the border). All Canada gets is the money I convert injected into the economy. But alas, both countries signed the tax treaty that way...
... I have to say that I largely agree with the culture shock that comes with moving to another country. Even for me, it was more different than I thought it would be. For one thing, I could never figure out how people knew I was Canadian simply when I talked (which I did eventually find out and for which I actually talk more in an American accent now). Things like auto and life insurance can be complicated because of the lack of insurance experience and medical history, respectively. It sucks to have to pay higher rates if you're from overseas because you have no insurance driving record.
Having worked mostly in Silicon Valley, I would say that the cultural environment is more conducive to immigrants there than other places. One Chinese fellow I knew, for example, never truly felt welcome when he worked in Texas but did say that the people there were generally nice. If you're from India or China, there are tons of resources and tons of community and social opportunities for you. YMMV in other places but big cities around big tech centers aren't typically a problem.
Probably the biggest problem that I had when I was in the United States is getting your green card. For those not in the know, the green card process requires that you remain with the same employer in the same type of position and move no further than 50 miles away from where your H-1B was approved. Then you wait and wait. You wait for state and federal labor certification, and then you actually apply for your green card after your priority date comes up (a date which is used to gate applications from countries with high immigrant volumes but from which Canadians are exempted). If you're laid off, fired, moved to another job function, or move, you have to start the process all over again. It takes 2-4 years, and in some cases people have their paperwork lost by the INS/BCIS and you are screwed at the end of your term and have to leave. Immediately. No wait periods.
To me, that's the biggest problem with the system. If you want people, have them stay. Facing a constant end game hurts folks economically, socially, mentally and otherwise. Stories of people leaving their leased cars at SFO and SJC and going back because they had no choice were very sad. Even worse, what does one do with the money they earned? In my case, because of the huge run-up in the Canadian dollar, all my money is "trapped" down there. Do I wait for the US dollar to rise back up to regular levels, or do I bring it back and hope it doesn't come back? That money could've also been spent in the United States, but gets spent outside. Not that beneficial for the US economy if you ask me.
Most of these issues would be addressed if people were simply granted conditional green cards at the time of their entry. A certified criminal background check and health check prior to border entry would allow them to stay without having to worry about the employer doing whatever they want to the employee and throwing them out at the end. That's not technically done today, and it would be smart for security and other reasons. The other aspect is to have the system funded by the immigrants themselves, i.e. you come in and you pay for the BCIS to process your application for $5k or $10k, rather than rely on tax money to fund a severely underfunded immigration processing system. If you're that important to be given a special visa to come in, then come in. Stay. Don't throw the person out later on. If these suggestions are ever implemented, you will see a big difference in the way that immigrant employees are treated and in the way they approach their work. Remove the threat and stress of leaving, and you'll have productive members of society, IT/Engineering workers or otherwise.
From my own experience, what I have seen is not what this article promises. I'm sure some are well educated and can do their jobs just fine. I've seen this, but the majority of what I've seen leaves much to be desired. That said, I've been to India (Mumbai), for my employer, to train and work with one of the companies we use for outsourcing. We also have a bunch of employees here in the office, on visas. For the most part, I would say the people we end up with in the office can do their job reasonably well. However, these are not the people who end up doing the bulk of the work. These are the star pupils of whatever company we are currently dealing with. Those sent to make the company look good. When it comes down to doing the work, it is done by the cheapest person they can get their hands on in India. The description above makes it sound as though the companies are all out there to better the US market, what better intrest could they have? Well, money in the pockets of the owners is really what it comes down to. I've yet to see an exception to that rule, whether companies here or there. While in India, several of the people who I trained had quit before I even left. Originally we were not even told about this. It wasn't until I started noticing faces missing that we got an answer. Within a week of returning to the states, most of the rest of the group had left. The turnover is crazy, it's a market of paying the lowest you can hoping the person won't get a better offer and leave. What this all results is in really crappy coding. There wasn't much point in my trip to India since just about everybody left. Our software is incredibly complicated, so the new people coming on don't really have the expertise needed to do the job right. Lesson learned there at least (on my part and hopefully my employers). While they may have a lot of years of education, from my personal experience, they don't know how to apply it. Now that is going to be true regardless of whether the person is fresh out of school here or there. But instead of investing the time to train up our local workforce, we spend the time to train up a workforce that is only here to temporarily help us. Where is the long term benefit in that? I'm not secretly venemous like the article implies is a situation that abounds. However, I'm not greatly pleased to see half my company is now staffed with foreign workers who may be gone tomorrow. Even if they are doing an excellent job, that knowledge leaves our hands in an instant. The jobs we mostly hire for in the office (from overseas anyway) are designers. They don't do the coding. That gets shipped back to the inexperienced office in Mumbai. My job has been basically reduced to Newbie Coder Hand Holder. And when I'm finally getting some people to the point where they understand what I expect from their coding they might suddenly disappear, to be replaced by another fresh out of school no experienc employee. This must be great for India, I'm training their workforce. I don't hold it against the Indians I've met. They are trying to earn a living like everybody else. It's my employer that wants to take advantage of the cheap labor and is convinced it can be done just as well as we could do in house (that is one thing I don't believe will ever be true). Also I blame the companies in India who are out to make a quick buck and don't care so much about the result. I definitely feel that many of the programmers I've seen are somewhat exploited in their low pay and it shows by the lack of company loyalty (the turnover). It is unfortunate that those Indians employed in the US have to face what they do at times. When it happens, I don't think it is right, but they must also understand the environment they are coming into. They ARE the most visible result of some disturbing changes. This whole shift to outsourcing has caused me nothing but more work. Perhaps if it worked as advertised (less work in house, better results, cost savings) people might not be so resentful of it.
Once they become leads or managers they favor other Indian programmers. If you're under lead who also has a couple Indian reports, in 80% of the cases it's time for you to move on, because your career growth is over.
It's cultural, and it's unfortunate.
You should set a target: the US graduates 200,000 more engineers and scientists in six years than it did this year, or every member of congress is executed. Hanged. Badly. Slowly.
Now don't get me wrong, I had a whale of a time in the US. I was treated very well, well paid (none of this $70K shit), and generally had a productive, exciting time; but most of my productive co-workers were Chinese and Indian guys, smart and genuinely enthused about what we were making and who our product would help. Crappy english, sure, some of them - and some of them, particularly the Indians, better english speakers than native me (or is that I?). All the time I, and all these smart foreigners worked in the US, Slashdot, Congress and other crapass "thinkers" (ahem) slandered us. They said we were dumb, they said we were uneducated, or spoke bad english, they said we'd work for slave labo[u]r rates, they said (frankly) we were inferior. And all the time the US trade gap grew and grew, more and more skilled jobs moved to India and China, more and more the US economy slipped into a whole from which it seems determined never to emerge.
Let's face it. The average H1B worker moved away from his family, from everything he knew to work in the US, to maintain an ecomomy whose own managers seemed determined to outsource it, to be slandered and deprecated by third-rate journalists and racist politicians. Sure, he made more money than he'd make in Bangalore or Shanghai, but the difference is less and less (particularly compared with the cost of living in the Research Triangle or the Silicon Valley) each year. Now that the tech recession has come for everyone he's probably moved back to Shanghai or Bangalore (unwelcome, filthy terrist foreigned slanty-eyed bastard that he is, in the US). Whose economy do you thing he's helping? Into whose business do his smarts flow?
The US economy (and to a marginally lesser extent the EU economy too) holds a gun to its own head. Both have squandered the promise of the new economy. Foreign workers are one less, not one more, bullet in the revolver.
With engineering and science, at it highest levels, moved east - what do the US and Europe actually _make_? Can you really expect to run two of the world's largest economic blocks on missles, movies, and life insurance?
Now that ~is~ an odd misspelling.
But you know, every day in North America someone either mispronounces or misspells Linus Travolta.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
My own problem with the H1-B program isn't that it allows foreign competition into the U.S. labor market; the problem is that software engineers have been singled out among other professions. Additionally, the program is not reciprocal. Do the countries that H1-B's come from have similarly generous guest worker programs? Not that I know of. Also, by depressing salaries in the American software industry and making jobs more competitive to get, fewer Americans are going into the software field.
Again, the problem isn't that competition from foreign workers is inherently unfair; the problem is that a particular profession has essentially been targeted for an across the board salary cut through legislation.
Hello, I must be going. I'm here to say I cannot stay, I must be going.
haha, what type of cryptic var names and comments would you download?
//Passes word to da Hizzie, Returns fo shizzle in my nizzle
function gottaRunDisInDaHizzle($word)
Are the functions like:
and doesnt Karma exsists regardless of Dharma. Right?
He raises a lot of fair questions, but you know, there are answers.
He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"
Well what happened back then was a bit different. The problem I and a lot of people have with the visa program is:
1. It targets a very narrow kind of vocation. Do you think 100 years ago native steelworkers wouldn't complain if immigrants were allowed in--but only steelworkers? Targeting IT only is unfair in that people in the workforce outside IT don't have to face the problems it causes.
2. It's predicated on what is quite simply, a lie. Companies are supposed to be able to pick visa candidates when they can't find domestic workers with that skill. We all know they don't. There is no skillset that you can find in a foreign worker that you won't find domestically. Whether you agree or disagree on the matter, I think most people will agree they don't enjoy watching others break the law.
3. It's predicated on an insulting lie. Simply put, they say that you American coders and sysadmins and DB admins reading this just aren't good enough to fill the jobs.
4. The author's claim that the visa workers spend their salaries on the economy as an advantage doesn't fly. A domestic worker will almost always spend a higher percentage of their salary in the local economy. A visa worker sending money back to their country is from an economic standpoint, very harmful to us, for reasons any economist will be able to tell you.
5. The idea that down the road we'll benefit kind of misses the whole point. We don't all compromise an immortal hivemind. The guy who just lost his job to a visa holder can't eat or pay rent with his future hopes.
If the program was run honestly, across various career fields, and only used when there truly was a need, people would have a lot fewer troubles with it.
It seems as if the thrust of the book is about the treatment of individual immigrants and their experiences. It addresses, what sounds to me like, the standard xenophobic and racist reactions you get from (for lack of a better term) assholes. While this is certainly interesting, what I am more interested in is the debate over policy WRT immigration. I have never held against anyone who was trying to better themselves, immigrated to this country or took what opportunity came along. I have always maintained that I'd do the same thing if I was in their shoes.
That being said, there is a larger issue here. At what rate can this country absorb immigrants of various economic and educational levels? I realize that some people like to believe that since we have always been a nation of immigrants, we should not restrict new immigration, as it is unfair to those who want to come now.
That's fine and dandy, but there is a practical limitation on immigration. First of all, if the US can get educated workers while India foots the bill for their education, what incentive is there in US society to create an educated domestic workforce? If this country does not have the educated workforce needed to innovate, how will these industries remain competitive as places like India and China increase the capabilities of their domestic infrastructure?
This nation isn't some social darwinist's or anarcho-capitalist's wet dream of an experiment, it's a nation built on a set of principles regarding the defense of rights and the freedom to exercise those rights. The defense of rights requires wealth, in other words, democracy and freedom are expensive. The best way to insure optimum levels of freedom and the ability of citizens to defend their rights is through good-paying jobs. Much as a recent study showed that the most effective (and largest dollar amount) foreign aid was foreign workers who sent money home, the best way to maintain the principles of this country is to insure that anyone willing to work can find a good-paying job. And I better not see those utterly rediculous unemployment numbers, job growth isn't anywhere near handling the issue of underemployment in the US.
While I wouldn't hold the author in any sense accountable for taking someone else's job (wouldn't you do the same?), I do hold our political leaders accountable for creating a system that puts US citizens in line behind another country's citizens. That is what happens if visa programs are too open or if wage arbitration through outsourcing is allowed to happen. You can claim that it's simply a matter of economics, that we must compete with people who don't pay for the same defense of rights that we do in the US, but that's illogical. I don't hold an idea that we should simply subsidize uncompetitive workforces or business practices, but the rapid changes in our modern economy can easily produce income volatility for the average family that was unheard of 50 years ago. Communities and families don't handle change nearly as easily as multi-national corporations. So what are the choices? Do we create a welfare state that "smoothes out" the rough edges of a global economy? Do we export only the tools to create wealth and severely restrict the import of people?
Take the same set of arguments and apply them to illegal immigration. Wouldn't a more expensive labor force for menial tasks provide a larger incentive to automate those tasks? Wouldn't that automation and innovation also help to create good-paying jobs? Isn't automation the most sustainable growth? The largest danger I see from guest worker programs, visa programs and illegal immigration is the creation of second-class citizens. That is a danger to the principles and long-term stability of this nation.
I might pose this question to the author: What would he do if he still resided in India and saw that the Indian government was putting the interests of US citizens ahead of Indian citizens and the bulk of any benefit from the arrangement was going to the wealthiest of Indians?
After all, won't the offspring of anyone immigrating to this country face these same problems as any native US citizen would?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
I've recently moved from Atlanta, GA to New York. Back in Atlanta, it wasn't uncommon to have an office with a few Indian developers, but they were a very small minority.
The small consulting company I work at now is owned by a British ex-pat and the office is about 75% foreign born. Working with a diverse crowd is a great learning experience. Not only are you exposed to interesting cultures, but also some different ways of doing things. Plus, I've recently been to some of the best Indian restaurants I would have never found on my own.
For those rednecks out there that act like idiots to our guests, you are rude and stupid. We are a nation of immigrants. My great grandfathers came from Spain and Croatia in the 19th century. They had a dream of making a better life for my family and succeeded. The diversity of our nation fuels innovation. Compare the motivation of most immigrants to many 3rd, 4th, or more generation Americans, they are excited to have an opportunity... I find it inspirational. Fact of the matter is, America needs to remain competitive.
Don't blame someone else for your own lazy self. The world has changed, go change with it.
As somebody on the H1-B going to get his green card tomorrow morning, I feel like I should throw my $.02 Canadian in.
Others in this thread posted that H1-B != immigrant, and they're right to say so. But the H1-B visa lets you have "dual intent," which is when you're here not as an immigrant but allowed to pursue immigrant status. That's the main reason I switched from the NAFTA TN-1 visa, which doesn't allow this. So while technically your status says you aren't an immigrant, you can still have every intention of immigrating under the H1-B program.
I don't send the money I make out of the country, not unless you count me paying off my old car in Canada, now thankfully done, or making payments on my student loans. Other than that what I make stays in this country: paying others, investing, etc. I think I have to pay all the same fees a "normal" person does: Social Security, Medicare, income tax, and all that good stuff. Even when I bought a retirement present for the old man, it was from an American retailer and shipped back to the old country.
I like to think I contribute something to the country and the people that have been so good to me over the past 5+ years I've been here. I've had more than a couple of offers to go back home, some more lucrative than what I have here, but here I feel like I'm doing some good.
Anyway that's enough out of me. To any and all Americans reading, let me just add...thanks for the opportunity. Nice place you have here. :)
when you consider that the top 5% of Americans pay over 50% of all the taxes
Isn't that because the top 5% of Americans hold 90% of the country's wealth?
It isn't quite that bad, though it is a figure higher than 50%. Additionally, the top 5% of Americans earn more than 50% of income generated in this country (not much more, but it is more). The latter figure is not to be confused with TAXABLE income, of which the top 5% earn less than 50% of.
So, try this with me. I'm Russian by origin, and I have lived in the US for the past 10 years. I look like your average white American, I speak with no accent, and largely as a direct result of that I experience no discrimination in my daily life.
That breaks whenever I have to deal with the authorities with regards to my H1-B and related paperwork, because I am very quickly and rudely reminded that I am apparently a "second-rate human" simply by virtue of having been born in a different country. I have to stand in long lines in order to be able to get a visa simply to re-enter the country after I've visited my aging parents, I have to go through humiliating "look straight into the camera" and "place your thumb squarely on the glass" procedures upon arriving in the US, and if a promotion opportunity comes up, I have to turn it down since it's too much of a pain in the ass to modify my job status. If I'm ever arrested for whatever reason, even if I just happened to be at a wrong place at the wrong time, I do not qualify for a free lawyer (even though I pay all the same taxes), and it's a crime for me to be in posession of a firearm even if I live in a neighborhood where armed robbery is routine. Oh, and I can be deported if I do not carry my passport with me at all times, or if I fail to notify the authorities of a change of address when I change apartments.
This makes me wonder -- we all get indignant when a government somewhere discriminates based on race or religion. Apartheid was boycotted for discriminating against blacks, and when some country somewhere makes Christianity illegal, everyone goes running for the nearest soapbox. However, everyone expects their government to discriminate against someone who just happens to have been born outside the imaginary political borders of their fiefdom, unless they go through the meaningless procedure of raising a hand and reciting the pledge after finding a desperate enough partner for a quick green-card marriage.
What's the moral justification in that? Why is it wrong to discriminate based on the color of skin, but perfectly fine based on the birthplace? I realize that there are political reasons to do this, but it amazes me that so few people have any moral trouble denying the same rights that they have to someone who happened to grow up in a different geographical spot than they did.
Think about it.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Immigration is the only chance for the USA to keep its leading position in the world in all domains including IT.
Indeed. I work in the Physics & Astronomy department at a large (c. 20,000 students) university. Most of the grad students are foreign. All of the postdocs are foreign, either on H1-B visas or on J-1 visas. If it wasn't for all of these foreigners, the department would have no active research program whatsoever.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The key is that they are willing to work longer. This does not mean they are indentured servants.
The point I was making was to show that H1Bs are attractive to employers for reasons beyond a simple cash equation. If cash were the only issue, why not just get interns to do the job? They cost a lot less and work part-time, so there's no need for benefits.
And to address the question of abuse, you have to look at each case and ask if the individual involved got the deal they signed up for. In the case of many J1s I know, the answer is yes -- the wage, costs, and living conditions were fairly presented to them before they agreed to the position and before they bought tickets and paid applicable fees. In the case of the kids from Virginia, they did not get the deal they were promised, and all the ones I met in late-June left the hotel and arranged different J1 jobs as soon as they got their Social Security Numbers.
Everyone I know here on an H1B got exactly what they signed up for, and in some cases a better deal. They are making good money, saving cash for their return (of 12 H1Bs I know from central Europe, all but one are planning to return home after their three years), and gaining the kind of experience they simply couldn't get at home.
At the same time, they are contributing to the companies where they work and to their communities. I don't see exploitaion, and I don't see how this is anything but a win-win situation.
"By most accounts that shortage no longer exists."
Exactly. It is just one prong of a multipronged fork being used to drive down labor costs in the U.S. It is part of class warfare, and I know half of the readers just freaked when I used those two dirty words, but the fact is class warfare exists, it is happening and the class that is winning the war is doing such a good job most American's refuse to believe there even is such a thing.
The multiple prongs of class warfare:
- Offshoring jobs to China, India or any other place that with cheap labor and no regulation
- Allow a flood of illegal immigrants across the border to take all the menial jobs
- H1B visas to allow a flood of legal immigrants for all the skilled jobs. H1B visa workers lead the way in racking up huge quantities of uncompensated overtime that helps insure everyone else has to do the same.
- Bust unions at every opportunity and strive to drain them of their power and relevance. If you can't bust them, close all the unionized factories and ship the jobs offshore.
The fact is U.S. labor is overpriced and of declining quality(badly educated, badly motivated, etc) so in a globalized economy all of these hammers are seen as necessary by the class that is winning class warfare. Of course the irony is any one were to look closely at the wealthy who are winning class warfare you realize they are badly educated, have bad judgement, are often crooks(think Enron etc.), and are devoid of morales and scuples. They are just as much to blame for America's decline, but since they are rich and powerful they don't get to suffer for it while everyone in the working class does.
@de_machina
Have you ever considered that maybe those foreign workers are simply *better*?
If you accept that the inherent genetic traits for making an excellent programmer are distributed equally among all humans, regardless of culture and national origin, then yes the foreign programmers who make it to the USA are generally better than American-born programmers.
There is a bell-curve of programming skills for every country. India has 900 million people, the USA has 250 million. That means of the best 0.1% of the population, there are going to be almost four times as many brilliant Indian programmers than American.
If your corporation wants to hire the best programmers available AND there are few restrictions for hiring the best people from anywhere in the world, then yes there are going to be more Indian and Chinese programmers working in the best American corporate IT positions in the USA. This will remain so as long as the best programmers in the world are ready, willing, and eager to relocate to the USA.
By the way, consider the enormous hassle that it is to learn a completely different language. And be glad that it is the Chinese programmers who must master English to get the IT job in global corporation instead of you having to master Chinese language to get the IT job in the global corporation.
The worst aspect of the H1B program is that it is not an imigration program but nearly a form of indentured servitude.
EXACTLY. If these people have the kind of skill to be necessary in the US work force, let them imigrate. Let them become Americans. Forcing them into these indentured servitute rolls and then putting them next to highly educated free Americans pisses us off. We should be pissed of FOR these people though, not AT them. H1B is an abomination. It's a way for a company to wield dramatic unnatural power over their employees and it should be stopped.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
Buses in the US are slow because they are not a public transportation service but a marketing ploy to get you to buy cars.
The same people that ripped out as much of your railways as they could are making very sure that buses will NEVER be an efficient way to go to work in the US.
So instead of being able to catch some sleep, or read a book, newspaper, or technical documentation, or chat with your co-traveller you are wellcome to loose a big chunk of your life driving to and from work.
Try this:
look at the number of miles on your car
discount 20% that you actually used because it was: far away, you had lots of heavy luggadge, your car was packed full.
discount an additional 20% for the days where
your drove to work, and then had to visit many different clients, and even an efficient public stransport system wouldn't fit the complexity of your travel path
divide the rest by 20 (the effective average speed of a car in cities)
divide the rest by 16
This is the number of DAYS of your life that big car manufacture has stolen from you.
Taking pride in something assumes you have a legitimate reason to take some of the credit for making it happen. So, what did you do to become an American? (not your family, not your ancestors, but YOU) If you were just born here (like me) then you really shouldn't be taking pride in it because it happened automatically without any effort on your part.
The only people with the right to take pride in being Americans are immigrants. For the majority of the rest of us Americans, the ones who are citizens by birth, the most we can lay claim to is that we are glad to be (not proud to be) Americans.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
It sounds like the author admits there are cultural differences between indians and americans. Obviously, these aren't genetic differences, but cultural ones.
In general, I've never met a more pleasant set of people, but there is this problem I have with the class structure of Indians.
One Indian told me "You know, the untouchables are inferior because otherwise they would no longer be untouchable." Now, I'm sure there are a lot of Americans that feel that way to their favorite racial group too, but I've noticed a lot of class structure in Indians.
A lot of the so called elite class, such as Brahmans, feel they are vastly more capable than they really are. One Brahman I know told me when he was twelve he was giving religious ceremonies to people 5 times his age. If that won't give you an inflated self-confidence, I don't know what will.
In addition, I've seen a lot of Indians "roll over," agreeing to things they never should. Now, I know a lot of Americans that do these things too, so it isn't unusual, but the number that are willing to is so high that it changes the workplace. Bosses that listen to a bunch of people always agreeing with them, when they are wrong, actually weakens the work environment and removes individuality, freedom, and to some extent the ability to compete. True, it has the advantage of getting the wood behind one arrow, but I can't stand anyone cleaning up anyone else's shit.
That having been said, I can't really generate anything but a great respect for almost all of these people. I can sense what a wonderful place it must be to live in India, where you can walk into your neighbor's home not being concerned about intruding, but just to sit down and have a cup of coffee or something. These people are certainly more socially adept and understanding than I am, and I respect them for it.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
They do, in fact, use 50% of tax dollars. Those tax dollars support the socioeconomic system which raised them to the top 5%, and without which most of them would either a) never have reached that level or b) had their throats cut.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
The company I work for has many H1b people. They're great people. Smart, educated and competent. However, we cheated to hire most of them. What happens is Jim, Manager of Software(as an example) wants to hire Bob the code jockey from China, so he tells HR that.
... but nobody will ever see it. We're not a big company, nobody ever looks at that part of our web site. It might also appear in a local newspaper or something. I'm not sure.
HR runs it past the immigration lawyer and they write up a job description which specifies exactly Bob's years of education, exactly Bob's project experience and probably Bob's shoe color and zodiac sign. They then post that job description at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leopard". Oh. They also post it on our web site
Some time later, they regrettably couldn't fill the job with anyone local, so they hire Bob. No, this isn't speculation. I've seen it happen a dozen times in the past few years. It's a science now. It's not just Bob from China, either. There are assorted European countries we hit up too and one place in the Middle East.
Again, I like most of the people we hire this way, but it's a mockery of the process...and I strongly suspect a lot of companies do it the same way. Find H1b candidate first, fail to fill position with existing worker second, click the 'import' button.
That is why you can be out-compited in price (i.e. salary).
Most US of A people eat too much, drive too much, use cars that use too much petrol, don't care about energy efficency and buy stuff like there is no tomorrow (did you check your trade deficit?).
Many Indians in relatively well off positions don't mind to ride crowded public transport, certainly eat more sensibly and certainly do not have the same attitude to extreme weather (USians have this habit of having the aircon or heating 24x7 to freezing or boling temperatures in badly isolated houses).
The above is the tip of the iceberg, I mantain that workers in rich countries could change their habits, keep a very decent standard of life and become more competitive price-wise in a ferocious international job market (if you think Indians are bad news wait for Vietnamese, Cambodians and Filipinos, who are all highly entreprenurial and talented people willing to work for even less. When one has walked the slums of Ho Chi Minh City or Manila one understands why western workers are becoming an overpriced luxury).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I think giving up my freedom and putting my life on the line for 12 years with crappy pay in the military probably fits the bill.
So yes, I have pride in being an American.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
If all our computer hardware had to be made in the US, you and I wouldn't be having this discussion right now.
grep -ri 'should work'
You are mad at H1B visa holders. These guys came here legally. They are earning wages legally. Would you rather prefer guys like those involved in 9/11 or the illegal immigrants whom our government is considering giving citizenship to? The crime rate amongst the H1B holder is almost zero. Lets accept the fact that they are better for the US society.
I know the world exists because I exist.