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Gates Calls for Increase in Tech Labor Supply
Randeep Igochyorjob writes "Reuters is reporting that
Bill Gates is asking for the removal of quotas for guest workers by removing the caps on non-immigrant alien workers. In a mild attempt at balance, buried near the end of the story, the article also says "Undersecretary of Commerce Phil Bond, a top Bush administration technology official, pointed out that the unemployment rate for engineers is above the national average." I'm wondering if raising wages might attract the "needed" workers from domestic sources or is Gate's request "necessary to remain competitive and innovative"."
Gates is doing this to try and save money. It's a pretty smart move considering the average salary in the US for coders is over $90k. In Canada it's more like $35k and that's CAD! I would love to go to the US and earn $65k USD per year. But I'm pretty sure I would have a hard time in Redmond, considering I am a PHP geek.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It's transparent -- companies know that U.S. software engineers are much cheaper than their foreign counterparts with the same degree of schooling. It used to be the case that U.S. engineers were better trained, but given the state of computer science education in the U.S. since the dot-com boom & bust, that is becoming less true.
I have found that the quality of the candidates that reach me (after our recruiters have filtered resumes!) for phone screens tends to be pretty pathetic. For example we generally pass 1 in 10 phone screens. Obviously we hold our candidates to high standards (wouldn't you?), but we certainly aren't looking for anything more than smarts, knows programming well (I've seen candidates misuse subclassing so many times) and can problem solve. This has nothing to do with salary because we can't even get to the phase where we'd tell them how much they'd get paid.
I'm not advocating any increases in immigration caps or anything, but I'm just pointing out that from a recruitment point of view the job market sucks.
...'cause I probably am, after thinking this one up.
Maybe he wants to import the tech intelligentsia of other countries in order to train them to be be knowledgable in, and advocates of, Microsoft software? Give them a contract that says they'll work in the US for five or ten years, then send them home.
Side benefits including being able to seed developing nations with pro-Microsoft software development houses,
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Wealthy business owners will always complain that labor isn't cheap enough or plentiful enough. This is just more of the same, and very predictable.
As almost anyone in the software development field can tell you, there is no shortage of software developers. There is, however, a shortage of companies willing to invest in their employees by properly training them. There is also a shortage of companies that advertise open positions with reasonable requirements.
Just hop on over to your favorite job site, and take a peek. "Candidate must have a BS in Computer Science, and 20 years of experience in the following technologies: C, C++, Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Perl, Fortran, SQL, Oracle, DB/2, SQL Server, Informix, stored procedures, COBOL, point-of-sale systems, grocery store management, garbage collection, be willing to travel frequently, and willing to divorce spouse if spouse demands too much time.
Companies can then use the excuse that nobody meets the required qualifications to show the need for more H-1B visas, or worse, offshore outsource the work.
"I'm wondering if raising wages might attract the "needed" workers from domestic sources"
Some work to do (and hence some jobs) would attract many of the out-of-work engineers in the US. If Gates wants to lift restrictions on non-immigrant workers, they must be cheaper than all those domestic engineers out of work?
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Legally H1Bs MUST be paid the prevailing wage. I'm not sure how much enforcement the DOL does on this, and despite horror stories from Sun Microsystems, this is in fact the law.
I know in my workplace which has both H1Bs and GC/citizens, the rate of pay is the same. In fact the H1Bs cost the company more because of the immigration and relocation costs. At least for my company I think we'd rather hire locals, but as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it turns out to be very difficult to hire locals - they just aren't up to the snuff. The nice thing about hiring foreign born talent is all the preselection has been done.
The US is about immigration and building a better life for everyone, I think the H1B program should be more focused on turning 'temporary' workers into permanent residents. I think the biggest flaw in the H1B is training all these foreign engineers then kicking them out after 6 years - why not keep them in the country, it just enriches everyone.
The biggest problem comes when H1Bs are treated like revolving door visas - this is where the salary undercut, the excessive overtime (we can fire you and kick you out of the country!) abuses come into play. If you build a future for these people in the country they take part of civics better and are more resistant to employer abuses.
The shortage is with companies being too picky in hiring!
...one of those "underemployed" types with qualifications out the yingyang!
I know a half dozen types of Unix, but I don't know "X" Unx. Unless I lie and say I know "X" Unix, they won't even look at my resume! And knowing at least half a dozen flavours of Unix, I can probably pick up any reasonable type of Unix in a few weeks.
Or, if you know, say Java, C, Pascal and a few otehr langauges...and they are looking for C++, chances are, you can pick it up in a few weeks.
Companies are looking for too many "exact" matches since they have had the cream of the crop from the Dot-Busts period. Now that those who couldn't get jobs have moved on to something else, they are still too picky in recruiting...so although there is a surplus of techies, they can't find enough people to hire with the "exact" skill set they want. STOOOPPIIIDDDDD!!!!!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
We have what I would call an emerging tech state. Even way out here in the Bush, we have DSL and wifi, and have had it for quite some time. We also have favorable government, and many other incentives. Heck, we get a check for about $1,000 just for filling out a form, and no state income taxes. Most places don't have a sales tax, either.
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska
It's a strategic recruitment practise. You recruit those individuals from foreign countries who have the expertise to build state-of-the-art solutions. This deprives the host country of achieving critical mass and creating competing companies. Then you can apply a restrictive termination contract, so they can't continue that work if they wish to leave.
If they have a staff shortage maybe it's because people have made an ethical decision not to work for Microsoft.
I have heard rumours that Microsoft demands that game companies assign their "brightest graduates" to gameplay on their projects, and that Microsoft also demands that 3D accelerator chip developers assign their "brightest graduates" to DirectX development.
That has kept more than a couple of engineers away from the 3D industry.
no jobs? Thats bullcrap. I am one semester away from graduating with a masters in CS. With normal effort (applying through campus and through company websites) I have given about 6 interviews already this semester. I already have 2 offers and 2 interivews in the second round. And I am one of these foreigners who requires H1B. We don't get paid any less than an American employee, big companies, especially ones like Microsoft and Google pay everyone the same. If anything they have to pay more to sponsor visas (lawyers fees).
The dime a dozen Ameritrain, cram all you possibly can about pointing and clicking the night before the test Miscrosoft Certified System Engineer's?
Hey, if Microsoft was willing to certify them, Microsoft can keep them. Maybe then Microsoft will get around to learning the meaning of the word "accreditation". (Hint: the "credit" in "accreditation" is related more closely to "credibility" than to "credit card".)
It is a woman's prerogative to change other people's minds.
So, Bill Gates, richest man in the world (almost), who made his fortune with the help of American developers, now wants to bring a million Indians in to destroy the U.S. software industry as a job prospect for his own countrymen. What a guy! Let me add a few thoughts worth contemplating:
1. If Americans are supposedly so stupid compared to Indians, why exactly was it American engineers who developed the transistor (Bell Labs), the airplane (Wright Brothers), the light bulb (Thomas Edison), most of the foundation of modern computer science, the Unix operating system and the C language, Minix (upon which Linux was based), BSD, Java, the laser, the space shuttle, the satellite (yes, the Russians were first with the dog, but we leapfrogged them and our technology was much, much better -- also, Russia was stealing American technology throughout the cold war to help them compete), the nuclear submarine, the skyscraper, steel reinforced concrete, a vast number of modern medical procedures, the atomic and hydrogen bombs (those German physicists were aided by many American physicists and engineers), the atomic power plant, the Apollo Moon shot (most of the engineers were Americans, don't get started on Nazi rocket scientists...) and the personal computer? I could go on, but considering India's main claim to fame is the supposed invention of the number zero, and that it was a cruddy little third world country until the tech boom (and the technology WE GAVE THEM)... Well... You see my point. India's claim to have the best engineers in the world is pure hubris and fantasy.
2. If Bill G et al were REALLY concerned about producing more computer science graduates, they'd give kids a reason to enter the field instead of destroying their job prospects. But they're not. What they're concerned about is cheap, easy to exploit foreign labor. They don't care whether the foreigners are any good at programming at all; it isn't just IIT grads coming over, you know, it's the losers, too. And unlike Americans, they have lie-packed resumes that are impossible to doublecheck.
3. If these guys get their way and wipe out the computer science field for Americans, my people will figure out a new way to survive. We'll go into government, or civil service, or start our own local companies and bulletin boards, or turn to hacking like our Russian jobless counterparts.
4. I think it's very interesting that corporate America is so determined to wreck things for the very people who are best positioned to take revenge, whether it's by contributing to open-source and destroying the proprietary market, starting a company to directly compete, or going berserk and writing the next generation of viruses. It seems a little nuts to me, but then, nobody ever said suits had any common sense.
5. This ought to clear up the question of how committed Bill Gates et al are to "developers, developers, developers". I like the guy who suggested Bill G fuck himself with a cactus. That was perfect. My only gripe is, what about the poor cactus? I think he should use a cattle prod instead. It's the high-tech solution.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I went into Georgia Tech with the intent of being a CS major because I absolutely loved CS as a hobby, and figured a degree in CS would be a good way to make "mad money"
Right about my senior year of high school is when all the Indian programmers started taking American jobs.
I realized half way through my first year that there's no point in my doing CS, I despise higher-level mathematics, and I'll not make any significant money anyway.
So I'm switching schools and changing to Psychology, which I at least find *interesting* to study academically, and I'll probably make the same amount of money after graduation, anyway.
Let's see, standards went way up over the last 5 years because there was an over-supply of workers. Someone coming out of college during that time couldn't even find entry level work because of this. They were the ones telling all their friends not to get into computer science.
So, now employers are complaining because they have to compete for workers again and can't get the creme of the crop that they could 5 years ago. I say GOOD! Offering entry level jobs is a good thing, since that's the fresh blood that'll keep our industry going. WHEN we get a healthy entry level market again, THEN we'll see enrollments in computer science go up.
I've seen candidates misuse subclassing so many times
It's very sad, but most Object Oriented shops that I've seen don't really use subclassing or inheritance for their own classes. I worked at one shop that had 2000 classes at the com.foo.* level, with almost no subclassing... why? Because the build system didn't support directories very well. Their software is installed at 50% of Universities, so you've probably used it.
Refactoring? Sounds nice, but it's frequently seen as a waste of time by the decision makers.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
While industry may be dumbassed about recruiting, I think our practices are fairly good.
The proof's in the pudding. If your screening process isn't turning out good candidates, then something is wrong with your screening process.
Hiring managers review quite a bit of the resumes that come in the door, and ask recruiters to set up phone screens.
Our recruiters generally don't give filtering interviews or phone screens.
Why are you using recruiters? Seems like you're doing the work and they just make a couple calls.
But before you said:
after our recruiters have filtered resumes!
Right, but if your recruiters are filtering out any resumes (or if you use Peoplesoft's or some other buzzword screening program), so they are mostly analyzing for buzzwords and misunderstanding the technical issues. I was speaking to a recruiter (as an applicant) last week, and he asked if I knew about "filesystems such as NFS and NIS". NIS is not a filesystem-- he misphrased the question.
It all goes back to networking. People who know people who you know will almost always be a better candidate.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
...so it's only natural that Gates is complaining that there aren't enough really smart and talented techie people out there. eh.
...because you never know who you're dealing with.
Take me, for example. I combined some fairly standard academic CS fields (AI, language processing, etc) with Japanese. And, presto, the number of US-based competitors I had for some positions is in the double digits. And English/Japanese bilingual engineers aren't exactly suffering a crush of supply in Japan -- thats why they brought me over here. I probably have email addresses for half of the bilingual natural language researchers in the US, and the most common way people get hired is to start with someone you already know who does it and ask "Say, give me somebody". When the hiring dynamic works like that, you don't have to slice $10k off your salary and work EA-style hours to have a chance at getting the job for 3 years before it gets moved to Bangalore sans you.
We techies can't stay mired in the industrial production mode where we're moderately skilled labor which is essentially fungible. Any tech position which fits that description will see its salary decline asymptotically to nothing, guaranteed. And don't expect the government or unions to protect you like they spent a lot of the last century protecting the guys at the GM plant or in textiles (by the way, any time you think you've got it rough, take a look at those guys) -- the economy is globalizing and you can either get on the train or get crushed by it. There are like fifty zillion different occupational specialties which we just can't bloody find enough people to do -- I know one employer who would throw $80,000 at someone capable of designing a UI in Arabic (and being able to work in the office efficiently) if he could just find that someone.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I've worked with enough knuckleheads from both sides of the world to suggest a different source for the problem. What we need is an increase in the average quality of code. If I can pay for an idiot from Bangalore or an idiot from good old USA, and either way there is a 50% chance that the code is going to suck and fail, and a 50% chance that the code will work... barely... but still suck then I'm better of paying for the cheapest idiot. If there were a way that I could guarantee good product then it would be worth almost any price. But a lot of things would have to change for that to happen:
It sounds its really hard to be in your position - you can see the problems, but since you aren't the Sr Software whatever, its somehow "not your place" to talk about or suggest solutions.
I agree that managers need to be more technically cogent of what they managing - a truely good manager takes the feedback and recognizes their own limitation. I can truly say i'm very lucky and my managers are both ex-techs and are also very dedicate to the concept of _management_ - mentoring and growing people, providing his team with the resources and things we _need_ to perform. It's great.
Bill Gates is right. There is a shortage of labor at the price he'd like to pay. Similarly, there's a shortage of $1/gal gasoline.
The 5.7% figure that is mentioned is the unemployment rate for those in the CS field. This number sounds low but unemployment rates don't convey the employment condition in a particular field because those who change lines of work no longer get counted. For older, unemployed programmers, this is their best option. They no longer count as unemployed programmers but as employed retail store clerks. I know dozens of ex-coworkers who've lost jobs in their 40s and 50s. I've read many posts on slashdot claiming only 2nd rate programmers and engineers are pushed out. Those expressing such opinions seem to think their own skills are of such high quality that they will be spared such a fate. I guarantee each of these ex-coworkers I've referred to entertained similar notions. At this time, no accurate assesment exists of the underemployment problem in the USA.
Electronic circuit design was my first career after college. I watched manufacturing being outsourced in the 80s. By the late 80s, it was clear that the engineering work would also be outsourced. I retooled myself to be a software developer and have been doing that for more than 10 years. Now, the same thing is happening to this line of work.
When these high paying jobs leave the USA, the incomes leave too. People with lower incomes eventually have to consume less. Tough times lie ahead for many Americans.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
It would be nice if they'd give the median salary instead, wouldn't it? I have a feeling that's a lot lower.
Beauty is just a light switch away.
On one hand, I will aggree that the hiring process of _most_ companies (not just large ones) is a sick joke. It's not just the bullshit requirements. (10 years experience with Windows 2000 or J2EE and the like.) It's that your average interview is just a bulshitting contest. The candidates are asked to prove one single skill: marketting. They're asked to market themselves to a PHB.
But on the other hand, the problem is simply that there aren't as many people who are mentally fit for the job.
I pretty much started myself from the nerd view point that programming is easy (and for that matter physics and maths are easy), and everyone even the janitor could do that if they wanted to. Enough years of working with other "programmers" just served to convince me of the exact opposite.
I've watched someone once try every single combination of "*", "&" and nothing on every single variable in a C program, until it stopped crashing. He never could understand pointers, and some 10 years later he still can't.
He moved to Java in the meantime, and it just illustrates that syntactic sugar can only do so much. His utter inability to understand the concept of a pointer still haunts him in Java. E.g., he has honest trouble understanding concepts like internalizing strings, or exactly how much is copied and how much is still modifiable when you pass an object as a parameter to a function.
He's by far not the only one. In fact, the majority of "idiots that know how to pad a resume" are far worse.
I've helped people debug some stupidity like passing an integer variable as a parameter to a function, and expecting that they can just set the parameter to 0 inside the function, to get the variable outside the function set to zero. Then do it again, because the whole "call by value" concept went right above their head.
I've spent hours in a meeting with people who couldn't understand the concept of key-value pairs. I was already in a mood to bash some heads in, after seeing it go around in circles around "but why does that table have only two columns? What if we need a third property?"
Etc.
Basically there just aren't that many people who are even capable of being programmers, and even less who are capable of understanding design or security. If everyone stopped hiring "idiots that know how to pad a resume", some companies just wouldn't have any employees at all.
Which I guess is Bill Gates's point. There _is_ a shortage of people capable of doing the job.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
rather than a net drain thereon?
*sigh*
Do you really think we would have an open border if super-cheap labor was *draining* the economy?
It is because, with a naive surface examination such as yours, it looks like "them damn immigrants are just SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF AMERICA!!!" that policy makers pretend to be doing anything about it at all.
No. They really aren't sucking our lifeblood. In fact, they are part of the reason our economy works at all. If we suddenly started to enforce all the laws currently on the books... well, when the price of bread went to 5 bucks (and god help you if you want to make a salad) I'm sure there would be some changes, and fast.
On the counterpoint, it has already been said in sibling posts; high-wage jobs are what we *WANT* for _American_ workers. American workers don't send 1/2 their salary (after taxes) to far away places (in general). They buy homes, cars, take their kids to the doctor, mortgage their souls to MasterCard etc etc.
Now, I'm rather cynical here; I believe that we are a country made of immigrants, and it would be very hypocritical of me to demand a closed door policy. Sadly, others are not so 'open' in their thoughts, even though few Americans have more than a handful of generations behind them. I'm 4th Gen, myself. How about you, reader?
Cheers,
That is really disturbing. However as for myself and some friends who are juniors/seniors in CompSci trying to find internships this summer, I can tell you that every place we've seen so far hasn't even fielded us a competent interviewer.
A recent place I applied to sent me an email back and had me go to an unrelated-website to fill out a survey. The position was an internship in "Software Tools" at a local company that has some sizable projects, and the questions I was asked were things like:
"Experience with Cimpilers" (yes, Cimpilers)
"Proficient with spreadsheets"
So far every single place my friends and I have applied to has had some degree of this problem. The interviewers themselves are too fucking incompetent to recognize a good applicant if it came up and bit them in the ass.
It's no wonder that the best and easiest way to get a job is via "connections" with other people that could recommend you. The chances of getting through the fucktard HR-filtering process is itself an impediment.
MSFT stock options no longer have the same pull they did in the '90's? Finding it hard to bring in the employees when the new kid is the one that can promise its employees that their options will make them overnight millionares? Feeling the pressure to compete with the upstart operating systems but finding that the company just can't maintain a technological erection the way it could a decade ago? Is the problem that Microsoft just isn't really getting laid the way it used to? Maybe Ballmer wasn't really the infusion of corporate viagra that your company needed. Maybe you should go back to the old mistress for some advice on what to do when your company gets older and its ass gets flabby. Maybe that's the real problem here...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yep, so long as they have no pride in their work or any professional ethics, Bill will get them. I've been to university; I've seen the sort of people that apply to MS for work, and the sort that don't.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
"Lower the pay of US professionals to $50,000, Ballmer suggests, and it won't make sense for employers to put up with the hassle of doing business in theThird World. (Kent Hollenback, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to say what the company pays employees.) "
o ry445480235.asp
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/12/28/st
What a load of huey!
The Dubya regime has bent over backwards to facilitate employer hiring of illegal aliens. The net result is employers get really cheap labor, and the US taxpayers are subsidizing these employers. There isn't much money that these employers can kick into SS and Medicare for these illegal aliens, because they aren't really "here", and they aren't getting minimum wage. But a lot of states under financial pressure from the Feds "unfunded mandates" has brought their public health departments to the brink of bankruptcy.
I am all for immigration -- legal immigration, only. Depending upon which official is asked (and how politically correct) the number of illegal aliens in the USA is somewhere between 12 and 28 million. And while millions of illegal aliens slip across our borders, they are breaking our laws (sometimes with what they bring with them). In the mean time, persons seeking legal immigration into the USA are forced to wait years (and sometimes a decade or more) for their chance to emmigrate here.
Illegal aliens do not pass through a modern Ellis Island, and the rates of pneumonia, TB, and other diseases have skyrocketed in all the border states, as well as any jurisdiction where illegals congregate. The only way these illegal aliens can remain in the USA undetected is through identity theft and bogus identification. There is no way that Dubya or the DHS can assure the real American citizens that violent criminals, drug pushers, agents/sappers of foreign governments, or terrorists are not among those that slip across our borders.
The ever increasing clammor amongst politicians and employers for more cheaper labor reminds me of the rationale used to justify slavery in this country 150 years ago. IMHO, the Republican Party has long ago fallen from the grace they achieved in their opposition to slavery. The more politically correct term these days is "wage-slavery", and it is alive and well. How many people today don't have (and cannot afford) health insurance, let alone having both parents working only to just barely get by? Nearly all those things most necessary for survival and betterment in the USA do not get counted in the CPI (Consumer Price Index) -- things like health care, housing, heating, and higher education have been increasing at nearly double digit rates. When was the last time that the minimum wage went up, let alone at a rate that actually keeps up with the real rate of inflation?
I work for a fortune 500 companies, and I see all types of things. I also worked 7 years as a consultant, so I saw one or two things there. It is not a vanishing work force MS is caring about. It is a cheap workforce. I also would be willing to bet if you looked at the majority of the tech people that have been laid off for a significant time. They are individuals with lots of experience. I know when I noticed the end of consulting, as I knew it. I could get no one to hire me due to the salary I made. I had to fib and say I made 30 grand less, just to get the interviews. I ended up taking a 40k cut just to get a job. I see now companies post "Entry Level" positions with things like 7 years of c++ experience, 3 years of .Net experience, for 32k. They already have a person in India that will take the job, but they have to post it here for a certain number of weeks to get that person here.
That is what this is about. There are plenty of tech people that cannot get a job. They could be bringing in more college hires. This is about two things.
1) Money. They want to pay less for more. Thank you Walmart LOL.
2) They want people they can work until they fall over and will not go to human resources or sue.
In my opinion
Either that, or a department just had someone quit, and they're attempting to replace her with another person with her exact skillset, right down to any certifications and experience she may have gained while working there. Take the skills of the person who left, roll it back to when she started, use that as the requirements, and they'd be no worse off. The last person worked out fine with that level of knowledge, right? But they want a drop-in replacement. They're likely to be looking for a long time using that reasoning.
Exactly. This is happening to me right now. I'm transferring to another department, so my current department is trying to find a replacement for me. But they want a drop-in replacement who won't take long to come up to speed, so they have a bunch of skills that they require--all skills I developed while on this job. Before I started in this position (after being transferred from yet another position in the company, which was totally different), I knew almost nothing of the work they did here. I claimed to know C programming, but it was fairly basic, and I really didn't know much C++ at all. After several years in this position, I've developed my knowledge in many areas, and greatly improved my C and C++ skills (partly why I got the new job I'm going to).
But of course, for my replacement, they aren't looking for someone entry-level, as I was when I started here. So they're grilling interviewees on a lot of the things I know, because they want someone who's at my current level of knowledge. Of course, they're having a lot of trouble finding someone with this particular combination of skills.
The big problem, at least for us, isn't just plain stupidity, at least not by my direct managers. The problem is that, even though we've had staffing problems for a long time, and they're getting worse with some key people leaving the group, upper management expects them to meet the same (impossible) schedule regardless of any changes in personnel. So of course the managers here want someone who requires as little training time as possible, or else they'll personally look bad when they don't meet their schedules.
I blame it all on upper management. They think that everyone below them is just a peon, and that anyone can do anyone else's job with no training, as long as they have the right skillset (and if they need training, they can take a 1-day class and become instant experts).