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Complaints Filed Over Firms Seeking H1-B Holders
Vicissidude writes "Since May, the Programmers Guild has filed 100 complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing several companies of advertising that they specifically want H-1B workers, a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act requires that U.S. jobs must be available to U.S. workers. The complaints stem from ads containing wording such as "We require candidates for H1B from India," and "We sponsor GC [green card] and we do prefer H1B holders," the Programmers Guild said. The Programmers Guild, looking for ads on major online job boards, has so far targeted only ads seeking computer programmers, the guild said. It plans to file 280 more complaints over the next six months."
InfoWorld has been running articles on this H-1B situation for a while. There's a special report on H-1B visas set up on the site.
Personally, one point that makes me skeptical is that I hear about this from the Programmer's Guild again and again. I'm not sure what the Programmer's Guild does, other than make a big stink about H-1B visas. Not that this is, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing -- but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
Breakfast served all day!
Yes, this has completely gone out of hand. Call it 'domestic outsourcing' if you will - the end result is the same: hardworking and highly skilled American engineers have a tougher time finding a job. The H2B visa was never meant as a carde blanche for companies to replace native qualified workers with cheaper immigrant workers. It's time to nip this in the butt once and for all - surely the companies greatly enjoy this situation and it won't change or even get worse if we let 'the free market decide'.
Yeah, nothing provides jobs like the artificial inflation of wages.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
And here I thought it was the country's responsibility to be loyal to the CEO's. They do make the biggest camapign contributions after all.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
N/T
The more you know, the less you understand.
Please explain for us non-Americans what H1-B is.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
And here I thought it was the country's responsibility to be loyal to the CEO's. They do make the biggest camapign contributions after all.
Loyalty is a two way street- a politician may be bought and paid for, but even he can't stop a bullet if you sabatoge the job market. These pirates masquarading as Americans these days on Wall Street don't seem to have the first clue about where their money comes from.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Your argument is specious - what's currently happening is 'artificial deflation of wages' and a lowering of the standard of living. Talk to your [non-CEO] working-class friends - they'll tell you their version of the 'gouging of the American work force'. At the same time cost go up all over the place... Wait, I know what your argument is going to be now: why don't we just go and invest in re-education? - LOL
In the dot-com rush of the late 1990s, yes, we needed H1-B workers because there plain simply was not enough workers. Not today. Today, any job posting made public gets hundreds of resumes. Jobs are getting filled quickly; people who have jobs in the tech field are working long hours for a fraction of what they would have made in the hight of the dot-com bubble. More and more companies are laying off workers; Sun just recently laid off 5000 workers. The US job market is weak and the H1-B workers just make it harder.
I know that this "job-tailoring" is done frequently in the industry as a way of getting the exact person you know. Just that if it fits this shoe, it's quite certainly illegal... kind of like saying you want someone who is/not specific race/disabled/etc.
I, for one, hope that the hiring managers who put up such job descriptions get fired, as it's part and parcel of the corruption. Just wish we could fire them for other similar "job-tailoring" activities.
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Big AG business doesnt want Americans.
The Programmer's Guild actually expects to force Congress and the Courts to obey the laws they've enacted? In what Perfect World is this?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not sure why these companies feel they have to actively seek out foreign visa workers like that, so blatantly discriminating. There are far more legal ways to achieve the goal of a free-market style cheap labor economy. For example, the obvious, an American worker is not intrinsically "worth" more than a foreign worker, so why not just offer the same starting salary to any entry-level candidate? Chances are the foreign visa worker will still see that as a decent offering and take the job, whereas the American worker may not. It really seems like the goal was to get qualified workers without having to offer the inflated salaries that domestic workers expect. Couldn't this sort of be established de facto by offering every candidate a salary comparable to what a visa worker would get, rather then de jure by hiring only visa workers?
Let them take the low paying and boring jobs. If you are an excellent programmer you WILL be in demand and you most likely wouldn't want the positions that advertise they want H1B's and GC holders. The people I do see this hurting is entry level candidates but even so if you can prove you are worth your salt you will find a nice job.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
If they are going to go after the H-1B program, maybe next they should set their sights on improving the GC process from what took, in some jurisdictions, up to 7 years, to something a lot more reasonable like 7 months, or why not 7 weeks? After all, the ridiculously lengthy GC process is just another point of abuse for foreign and hence American workers. To be fair, the process has already been "streamlined", where it now takes on average something around 3-4 years total. But, that's still far too long, and leaves people vulnerable. Perhaps the programmers guild would like to see this shortened so they they decrease the abuses and increases their membership?
It never ceases to amaze me how, globally, we have virtually free movement of capital, a moderately free movement of goods, but a heavily restricted movement of people. The three major components of the economy have dramatically different levels of restrictions depending on how the given component cuts between the wealthy and the working "classes".
Who wants a lightening fast immigration system? Not the employers...that's for sure. And yet, overall, that would arguably be best for the overall economy.
"It turns out the so-called free market isn't quite so free, if you're a worker bee".
They took err jeeerbs!! But seriously, the perception about H1-B holders being needed to supplement the supposed lack of American training is, to me, rather insulting. Maybe I have too high an estimation of myself and my peers, but it seems to me that the US is pretty rich with technical talent. Trying to dilute the marketplace with indentured servants certainly is not going to help us get paid our due, or motivate us to earn it.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
"But it's hard when Free Traitors keep bringing in people to compete with the people already here."
So in other words. The US is the only country that hires foreign skilled labour?
The IEEE , Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO and researhers such as Norm Matloff speak up against the H-1B abuse.
Lots of folks speak up against it.
The hired gun lobbyist Harris Miller loses to Jim Webb. Miller ran an unaplogetic pro H-1B and pro-outsourcing campaign. Seems the voters in Virginia don't like Harris Miller's record.
Heck, even Milton Friedman calls it a subsidy.
I hope everyone has their raincoats...
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
In America- we have this set of laws called the "Equal Opportunity Act". Bigotry of this sort shouldn't happen. It does because immigrants are easy to control and pay a fraction of the cost of an American.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You can yourself a Marxist? Marxism is internationalist, and in it one's loyality is to the international working class and not to one's own nation-state.
No, I don't argue in any way against raising the wages in other countries. That's the natural consequence of globalization - everything reaches equilibrium. The investments that US companies make into (relatively) high-paying jobs in, for example, India, spread more money around that economy. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Protectionism, on the other hand, is a short term solution that helps no one but the people at the top. To believe otherwise is to go against all of human history.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
How is going elsewhere cheating? Claiming 'supply and demand' as a description of an artificial scarcity is intellectually dishonest.
Sure, there are overpaid CEOs out there, but that fact has no bearing on the wages paid to programmers. We may as well bring the wages paid to assembly line workers into the mix. You claimed class warfare was being committed, and you're right, but it's you that's declaring it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Confiscate the assets of the businesses illegally lowering wages via violation of the law.
Seastead this.
If your post made any sense, I might react to it. Instead, I sit here baffled, wondering what in the hell you're blathering about.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the new name for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, H-1B is a "nonimmigrant classification used by an alien who will be employed temporarily in a specialty occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit and ability." Has anyone heard of one of these employees being sent home when their temporary service is over? And does "alien" mean like E.T. or the Predator?
I agree with you, but you said... "InfoWorld has been running articles on this H-1B situation for a while. [snip] if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?"
Other parties like, say, InfoWorld?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
If a company can spend less to hire someone from India / Mexico / wherever, why on earth should we stop them? Why should they be forced to pay more money to hire someone from the US? This is utterly against the spirit of the free market.
In a completely free market, eventually wages for everybody doing a particular sort of job would end up about the same: as companies send work where it's cheapest, the local economy grows and thrives and the wages there will rise. Now, many things conspire to make markets non-free: sometimes things as simple and nigh unto insurmountable as Geography, sometimes things as ugly as petty politics.
Argue if you want that a free market is evil/bad/wrong. But recognize that any sort of visas and such are barriers to entry, and what you describe ("wages should be high because the skills are rare") is diametrically opposed to that: you are artificially limiting the supply by political machinations, almost exactly in the same way a monopolist can limit the supply of the product they can sell, in order to drive the price up so they can make the most profit.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
should have been "temporary" oops
I thought socialism-in-one-country was no longer in fashion amongst Marxists!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
How is going elsewhere cheating?
It's increasing the supply without paying for it.
Claiming 'supply and demand' as a description of an artificial scarcity is intellectually dishonest.
Nothing artificial about this scarcity- historically corporations have always had to pay for training to get the skillsets they want. The fact that Americans aren't trained in the skillsets they want just shows that the corporations are no longer paying for the training.
Sure, there are overpaid CEOs out there,
I've never heard of one that wasn't. Well, that's not quite true- Les Schwab wasn't. But he actually understood that he had to train people in the skills he wanted- which is why he owns over 500 tire stores now and has to build 6 new ones a year to handle the promotions of highly skilled people.
but that fact has no bearing on the wages paid to programmers.
Bull- where do you think they get the extra money to pay themselves big? By cutting the wages of everybody else.
We may as well bring the wages paid to assembly line workers into the mix.
Absolutely, if there were any left. Face it, we ignored the problem while they all lost their jobs, now it's our turn.
You claimed class warfare was being committed, and you're right, but it's you that's declaring it.
I'm not the one laying people off to pay myself a larger salary.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I wish I had mod points. Parent is the first responder to mention the lock-in employers have over their H1-B employees. If the employee leaves the job (voluntarily or not), they must leave the country! To get back in, they have to apply for a new visa.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
If the choice is that or not working at all do you really need to ask?
Dave Chappelle said he'd rather people look at him and say that he's an "affirmative action hire" than "That nigger's homeless."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
About a decade ago, when I was fresh out of college and trying to find a programming job, one of the resources I used was the local employment office. While I was going over a list of jobs with the employment office guy, I noticed some jobs I thought I should try for and asked about them. The guy told me that I was wasting my time, that it was a dishonest company, and that I had no chance of getting hired. He explained to me how that particular company only wanted to hire an HB1 visa employee, and that they only listed the job with the employment office because the law requires that they must make an effort to hire an American first. Every American that applies for the job will be found wanting, and, their legal obligations satisified, the company will then proceed to hire an HB1 employee. I was willing to work anywhere at that time, so I tried anyway, and of course i did not get the job.
That's only one of the schemes I've encountered while looking for work. The job market can be a scummy place.
You need to retake Econ 150. That's not the "free market". This is the free market: everyone should be allowed to "cheat" by going anywhere -- except it's not cheating.
Depends on what you think the purpose of participating in an economy instead of just stealing from your neighbors is.
If a company can spend less to hire someone from India / Mexico / wherever, why on earth should we stop them?
Because economics has become warfare- and unless you want to be forced to worship Krishna, there's a reason why we have national sovereignity.
Why should they be forced to pay more money to hire someone from the US?
If they don't want to fine- exile them, take their assets, and let them go live in the third world. There's no need to accept them as citizens in that case.
This is utterly against the spirit of the free market.
Fine with me. If the free market is that you stab your neighbors in the back to earn more money, then I have no use for it at all.
In a completely free market, eventually wages for everybody doing a particular sort of job would end up about the same: as companies send work where it's cheapest, the local economy grows and thrives and the wages there will rise.
And as soon as wages rise, the companies will move elsewhere, the artificial bubble will burst, and the country will be in worse poverty than when they started. That's what is happening here in the United States anyway.
Now, many things conspire to make markets non-free: sometimes things as simple and nigh unto insurmountable as Geography, sometimes things as ugly as petty politics.
And I say these things SHOULD- markets never did any good for anybody.
Argue if you want that a free market is evil/bad/wrong. But recognize that any sort of visas and such are barriers to entry, and what you describe ("wages should be high because the skills are rare") is diametrically opposed to that: you are artificially limiting the supply by political machinations, almost exactly in the same way a monopolist can limit the supply of the product they can sell, in order to drive the price up so they can make the most profit.
As well they should. That's how you build a local economy- by fiercely keeping out foreign competition.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Even though future employers may get a slap on the wrist for the way in which they advertise positi0ons, it will not (and can not) change their hiring policies. All this is going to do is be a waste of time for companies (ie interviewing/processing applications from unwanted candidates) and for the individual applying for the job (writing letters, e-mails, phone calls etc to a company that has no intent of hiring you).
Yes it does suck and is discriminatory, however in the land of free enterprise what can you do? Mandate they hire Americans? Easy solution for the company, off shore the jobs.
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
No, I don't argue in any way against raising the wages in other countries. That's the natural consequence of globalization - everything reaches equilibrium.
But that's not the case so far with globalization- so far everybody's poorer- and the equilibrium we're headed for is the $.33/day wages.
The investments that US companies make into (relatively) high-paying jobs in, for example, India, spread more money around that economy. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Except for it's not. India has more poor people than ever instead- and the farmers are committing suicide because they can't compete with the cheap subsidized to below cost of raising it food we're sending there.
Protectionism, on the other hand, is a short term solution that helps no one but the people at the top. To believe otherwise is to go against all of human history.
Take a good look at human history before protectionism- it was feudalism. A very small minority were rich, and most were poor. That's what no protectionism will get you.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
If the US wants to open the doors to everyone of any skill set immigrating to the US that's one thing. But H1B's are basically a direct attack on specific segments of highly skill labor. I would be more than happy to let 5 million people a year enter the US as long as they are representative of the entire spectrum of economic life. However, when H1B's drive down programmer wages but doctors and lawyers are basicly left alone there is a problem.
Tell us about the CEO who makes $480 million per year. I'm sure you not put that in your post if it was not true. Tell us who it is.
Actually, I'm more of a distributist- one of the first things I noticed hacking Marxism is the problem of centralization. I'm for DECENTRALIZATION. Inidividual neighborhoods should be able to declare war on each other and set tarriffs and sales taxes that don't apply to local businesses. Tribalism is what we evolved to be!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The one setup by Bill Clinton?
If it's a choice between that and becomeing homeless (like so many programmers I know over the last 5 years) then I'll take forced by law.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Also it is good to know there are minimum salary levels for the H1-B workers. A company can't hire a senior programmer from outside of US and pay 20k per year. This doesn't mean that some companies might not abuse the system and try different tricks to get cheaper work force but I really belive that the majority of H1-B workers came in US because companies couldn't find qualified people.
The truth is that there aren't many good programmers out there and there is still a lot of demand for them. I see many programmers coming for interviews at the company I work for and when someone good arrives (not very often) it is very difficult to get them as they already have several offers from other companies.
BTW I am also a H1-B worker and I'm payed a competitive salary and the company also pays a lot of legal fees for my H1-B and green card. Besides that I pay income taxes and spend all my money here in the US. America has a lot to win from the H1-B program.
Actually, most of them make a good deal more than that- when you include the bribes and stock options. Want one example? Warren Buffet.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Warren Buffet takes bribes? Really? Do you have any proof?
No, I don't argue in any way against raising the wages in other countries. That's the natural consequence of globalization - everything reaches equilibrium. The investments that US companies make into (relatively) high-paying jobs in, for example, India, spread more money around that economy. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Unfortunately, we can't afford the 20-100 year indefinite timespan necessary for globalization to actually bring about equilibrium. After all, you can count yourself sure that the corporations which hire Indian workers and H-1B workers don't want a free market any more than labor does: they just want cheap labor to make very cheap products they can sell for high prices. Ideologues like you are the only ones who actually want free markets - most people actually participating in the market don't.
THe language may not be so diplomatic, but the opinion is sound and the assessment is not only correct, but very astute.
this does not deserve flamebait/overrated mods and anyone who has moded it so is blatantly partisan.
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In my experience, H-1B workers aren't worth the effort. The government goes to great lengths to make sure your H-1B employee is paid commensurate with others in similar positions, and after the time and money wasted hiring lawyers and filing paperwork with the government, H-1B hiring is a fool's game. If I was legally permitted to ask whether a potential employee was on an H-1B I would never hire another such worker ever again. Why these companies are actively searching for visa workers is beyond my comprehension.
It's increasing the supply without paying for it.
I'd like to think of a reasonable reply to this one, but it's an emotionally charged lie. They pay for it, just not what you feel they should pay. Since the US isn't a centrally planned economy, your way doesn't work.
Nothing artificial about this scarcity- historically corporations have always had to pay for training to get the skillsets they want. The fact that Americans aren't trained in the skillsets they want just shows that the corporations are no longer paying for the training.
You're only responding to one word in my statement, and you've taken the sentence out of context. You posted about artificially restricting the supply of programmers by closing off the borders to restrict the source, then you called it supply and demand. There's no way for me to reply reasonably to such a logical misstep.
I've never heard of one that wasn't. Well, that's not quite true- Les Schwab wasn't. But he actually understood that he had to train people in the skills he wanted- which is why he owns over 500 tire stores now and has to build 6 new ones a year to handle the promotions of highly skilled people.
Rather than reply directly, I'll simply note you object to capitalism, since you apparently would like to place all competition on a level playing field of ignorance and force companies to grow all the skills they need. That's not how a free market economy works at all.
Bull- where do you think they get the extra money to pay themselves big? By cutting the wages of everybody else.
I don't consider it 'extra' money, and I don't consider wages a right. We have a deep philosophical difference on this point. I am committed to the concept of the free market. Occasionally, this leads to someone in a position of power taking advantage of the situation. Such is human nature. This doesn't lead me to tar my brush and paint the whole canvas the same color, because that's not the reality of the situation. CEOs, by and large, do an incredibly difficult job, and they are rewarded for it.
Absolutely, if there were any left. Face it, we ignored the problem while they all lost their jobs, now it's our turn.
There are plenty left, they just aren't being paid outrageous wages for jobs any monkey can do well. Programming isn't assembly line work. It won't be for some time, but when it is, it won't command the wages it does now. Such is the price of a dynamic economy. You and I have taken different tacks on this point - you choose to huddle into a shell and complain, and I choose to adapt. Time will show who wins this one.
I'm not the one laying people off to pay myself a larger salary.
That's another emotionally charged statement, but this time it's only a half-truth instead of an outright lie. It ignores all the business realities that go into such decisions. In a free market, it's not a company's responsibility to fade into obselescence while it protects a uselessly redundant or outmoded workforce.
Perhaps some day, you'll get the economy you desire. I sincerely hope not.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Gee, what about H1B CEOs?
Unfortunately, we can't afford the 20-100 year indefinite timespan necessary for globalization to actually bring about equilibrium. After all, you can count yourself sure that the corporations which hire Indian workers and H-1B workers don't want a free market any more than labor does: they just want cheap labor to make very cheap products they can sell for high prices. Ideologues like you are the only ones who actually want free markets - most people actually participating in the market don't.
20-100 years isn't indefinite, and it's also a statement without any factual backing whatsoever.
I didn't say everyone wanted a free market, I just said that's what it is. Naturally, business owners want as much for their dollar as they can get. Naturally, workers want as many dollars for their time as they can get. The middle ground is what constitutes the mechanisms of the market. Tipping it one way or the other serves no one in the end, so 'idealogues' like me keep things rolling the way they are for everyone.
Also, your claim of 'most people' not wanting a free market is once again unbacked.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
But let me say this. My dad is an award-winning economist (Jonathan Hughes Prize, actually) and he's a good man, and I've taken an introductory class myself, though it's been a while. Still, I know a few things. Economics is a science. It has laws. True, they are not as solid as the Laws Of Physics, but they're just as true. And the truth is that free markets, by and large, make peoples' lives better, not worse. Your rhetoric about how "markets never did any good for anybody" is extremism of the most ridiculous and absurd variety. What did help people then? Sustanance farming? People don't trade in a market , whether they're trading corn or computers or labor or lemons, unless both parties gain something. You may groan about your soul-sucking job, but the fact is that you'd be far worse off without it.
My father has argued that free trade is a fundamental human right: If someone in Cuba has something to sell me, and I want to buy it, what business has anyone stopping us? Anything else is simply coercing us. You argue "protectionism!" to build a strong local economy. Why must it be local? Are the people overseas less deserving of jobs, and the progress of the modern world? Ah, I am sure you will argue about "what progress?" and tell us of how they are so terribly exploited and make only sixty cents a day in a factory - but you have missed the alternative, that they were making the equivalent of thirty cents a day doing sustainence farming beforehand. Ah, you will say, but the companies, the evil companies of course, they are going to pass all the savings along to the CEOs, those rich evil bastards. In a truly free market, though, another company will gladly spring up doing the exact same thing, but NOT pay the CEOs a bunch of money, until the other company goes out of business (or changes).
Markets are not there to make your life better. They are there to make everybody's lives better. If it comes down to it, assuming you still have Free Will, you can always choose to exclude yourself - if you're willing to pay the price. But then- maybe the price is too high, maybe the government demands taxes or such beyond your ability to pay. But that's outside of the market. That's government.
Moreover, economics - many think it's the study of money. It's not. It's the study of choices. That's all a market is- a set of choices. People associate Economics with Money because Money is the easiest sort of choice to quantify, the easiest to measure, the easiest to analyze. Recognize that to economists, everything is a market unless it's coersion. You're not in favor of coersion for every little thing, are you? If you think people should have any sort of choice in anything they do, you are supporting a market. And I hope you're not aiming for totalitariansim in your politics, especially not intentionally. I'd like to think better of you than that.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Apparently you don't know much about Warren Buffet. He owns companies. He doesn't run them.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
If you're going to attack me with emotional rhetoric, at least attack me or my beliefs. Setting up strawmen isn't a sign of masterful debate.
I don't attack the worker side, because I'm part of it. I simply understand how both sides work, so I know how to play my role to its maximum advantage. I don't make CEO salaries, but I don't have CEO responsibilities. Someday, I may. Then your attack will be sensible.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that anyone can become the owner of a company. It's not an elite club with massive barriers - it's open to all and sundry who are willing to take the risks. That's not to say it's not a shark tank, because it is fiercely competitive. That's the nature of the willing. Asking everyone to play nice so you can get what you feel you're owed goes against human nature and current economic reality.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I am posting anonymously for obvious reasons...
A close friend at TI wishing to bring me into his team set up 2 full days of both technical and non-technical interviews. Going through the interview process everyone I encountered, all the way up through to the VP of the business unit, felt I was both technically competent and a great fit for the team.
My friend being the hiring manager had then informed me that he authorized the hire based on everyone's extremely positive feedback and had released it to HR for preparation of the offer letter.
The next day, my friend called to inform me that HR told him TI would not be able to hire me because I do not have a degree, and for them to break policy would be unfair to the H1-B candidates they had apparently had a quota for.
His entire team was dumbfounded, and the VP was prepared to attempt a few other avenues to push the hire through, but I told my friend that I was not interested in working with companies that have such insidious policies.
I hold nothing against my H1-B possessing colleagues, and in fact believe there are individuals far more capable than myself for certain research roles. However, being told that I could not have a job that I was found technically suitable for simply because there was an H1-B quota to fill for the unit has embittered me a bit.
Be not fooled my H1-B brethren. You are not wanted simply because there is a dearth of technologists in this land; no, you are the cheap labor for which the big corporations have lobbied Washington for so long.
... and in case you are wondering, I make six figures with my current employer, so there is no unemployment driven ire here.
For me H1-B worker is same as your (Great x N) grand dad, (unless your a native american or non us-citizen, )
They are also here to fulfil their american dream. Many of them are with Much talent but rather than talent they also have a good attitude towards their employees, unlike some us-citizen counterparts who always in demand of high salary.
Working as a programmer is not just about salary you also need to have a passion for it, if your just being a programmer just for the money i would never want to hire you.
http://iesucks.org
It never ceases to amaze me how, globally, we have virtually free movement of capital, a moderately free movement of goods, but a heavily restricted movement of people. The three major components of the economy have dramatically different levels of restrictions depending on how the given component cuts between the wealthy and the working "classes".
When production runs of goods end or get moved to slave labor countries, they dont complain as they dont have any intelligence to do so. When jobs get moved to slave labor countries in the guise of moved capital, expect people to (rightfully) "raise less corn and more Hell" as there is a lot more at stake. Never mind the lightning fast immigration system- I'm for having companies that H1B include all foreign assets in taxes, be required to consider and hire (under the same specs as the H1B) all 250m+ before touching any H1B quotas, and be required to pay for all costs of every displaced worker to transition if they have to displace perfectly good workers.
As with anything in this vein, I ask - why is it that the economy goes well if the middle class is being screwed (H1B/L1/Offshoring), but a cardinal sin to have the same middle class have any upper hand on any industry? The only thing free about the "Free Market" is the ability of large companies to freely exploit the middle class.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
I have seen companies hire a mix of citizens and H1B's (I think the law requires this above a certain quantity), and then fire the citizens they didn't like much when the project ramped down a bit. It was not that the citizens sucked, it is just that they were not top performers. In theory the H1B program is not meant to replace C citizens with A visa workers, but satisfy "skill shortages".
Another time they paid the H1B's only once every six months (the full amount though). The workers couldn't do anything about it because reporting it would have their sponsor put out of business, sending them back home.
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArti cle.jhtml?articleID=189500671
"Immigrant[1] engineers with H-1B visas may be earning up to 23 percent less on average than American engineers with similar jobs, according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. Salary data from Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) lends credence to arguments that lower compensation paid to H-1B workers suppresses the wages of other electronics professionals...."
[1] H-1B's are not immigrants. This may be a mis-wording.
Table-ized A.I.
Why won't you answer my question? Shall I assume that you concede a total rhetorical victory to me?
Do you have proof that Warren Buffet takes bribes? Who bribed him? What did Mr Buffet do in return for that bribe?
We don't have open borders.
Our closed border is the two-by-four used to wallop the H1-B guy who takes the American job for crummier working conditions (lower wages can fall into that set, but really, it might mean the same salary for much longer hours. More than one way to skin a cat.)
If we need more workers, increase naturalization quotas for countries we want to bring workers in from. Simple, not complex like our bizarre, byzantine alphabet soup immigration laws.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I don't know about other people, but I live in Norway and one of my dreams is to get a H-1B visa and work in the USA for 6-24 months to improve my english and have something nice on my resumé. Then I'd return to my own wonderful country with lots of experience and some great memories.
Harald
1) USA, by its nature, is a country of immigrants 2) USA is a society based primarily on concept of self-profit/selfishness. Flames welcome !
You say this like it's a bad thing. Because of our culture of self-profit/selfishness, we're the technological/economic/military powerhouse that most of the non-Marxist world envies.
I'd like to think of a reasonable reply to this one, but it's an emotionally charged lie. They pay for it, just not what you feel they should pay.
If they want to be a citizen of the United States and sell to US citizens, they should pay for what it takes to train an American for the job. If they don't want to be a citizen and don't want to sell in the United States, it's fine with me. They can leave. Permanently. With no assets and no hope of return without being shot.
Since the US isn't a centrally planned economy, your way doesn't work.
Who cares about centrally planned or not? I'm talking about defending the soverignity of our country against traitors.
You're only responding to one word in my statement, and you've taken the sentence out of context. You posted about artificially restricting the supply of programmers by closing off the borders to restrict the source, then you called it supply and demand. There's no way for me to reply reasonably to such a logical misstep.
We're in economic warfare. This is no time for logic- this is time for action.
Rather than reply directly, I'll simply note you object to capitalism, since you apparently would like to place all competition on a level playing field of ignorance and force companies to grow all the skills they need. That's not how a free market economy works at all.
Then I have no use for a free market economy, since it has no use for me.
I don't consider it 'extra' money, and I don't consider wages a right.
Then you're pro-slavery.
We have a deep philosophical difference on this point. I am committed to the concept of the free market.
Oh, so you're a brainwashed fool of a slave.
Occasionally, this leads to someone in a position of power taking advantage of the situation.
No, it always does. That's what you get for no regulation- feudalism.
Such is human nature. This doesn't lead me to tar my brush and paint the whole canvas the same color, because that's not the reality of the situation. CEOs, by and large, do an incredibly difficult job, and they are rewarded for it.
Yeah, it's incredibly hard going to five-martini "business lunches" and playing golf.
There are plenty left, they just aren't being paid outrageous wages for jobs any monkey can do well.
If $.33/hr is outrageous to you, just move your factory to Africa, right?
Programming isn't assembly line work. It won't be for some time, but when it is, it won't command the wages it does now. Such is the price of a dynamic economy.
In that case, I have no use for a "dynamic economy" either.
You and I have taken different tacks on this point - you choose to huddle into a shell and complain, and I choose to adapt. Time will show who wins this one.
Actually, no, I choose to return to real anything-goes capitalism- where we can kill those who offend us.
That's another emotionally charged statement, but this time it's only a half-truth instead of an outright lie. It ignores all the business realities that go into such decisions. In a free market, it's not a company's responsibility to fade into obselescence while it protects a uselessly redundant or outmoded workforce.
It once was- back when we truly had a free market instead of a free for all- but now, I say such companies deserve death. They no longer serve their society, so why should they be allowed to survive?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
While on an H1-B you pay all of the tax and social security but you do not add any of the costs. You can't claim wealthfare, you can't claim social security. Add that to the legal costs and most companies will only consider an H1B if they have no other choice. A few companies may try to get cheaper workers but for most H1-Bs it's simply a case of having no other choice if they want a skilled worker.
The government created a mechanism called "prevailing wage". If they actually made the prevailing wage something like 2x what a company could pay a citizen, the only time a company would hire a H1B is when the really couldn't find a citizen to work in that role. In my business - environmental chemistry - the "prevailing wage" is something around 2x what we can afford to pay a chemist. So we don't hire any H1B's. It is just too damn expensive. So if your average techie makes 80k a year, the government could make the prevailing wage $200k. Then the companies would have to choose between; a.) paying the person 2.5x what a citizen would make, b.) breaking federal laws which sends the VP's to jail for a good long time, or c.) not hiring H1B's. If there is a real talent shortage, a company would be willing (and able to pass along the cost) of an H1B. If there isn't a shortage, the government can make the economics so bad that it doesn't make sense to hire a non-citizen.
just my 2c.
...are not a function of the federal government. They are no where listed in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. And according to the 10th Amendment it is within the power of the states.
The ONLY thing Congress has to do with this is on the immigration side: "To establish an uniform rule of naturalization" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4a).
Dealing with hiring practices is not something the federal government should be involved in.
Libertas in infinitum
The H-1B visa is valid for only three years and can be extended only once (at least working for the same company - you might be able to start the whole process over from scratch for a different company). And yes, I know some people who had to leave the country as their H-1B expired.
You must just have skills that are outdated or some other deficiency holding you back because the job market is better than it has been in a LONG time.
Somehow I thought that the truth just diverged from the contents of your post at that point. Try the Midwest area of the Rust Belt (Ohio/Michigan), and you'll see things gone screwy. I'll take the "humanitarian megacorporation" days, and forced merit blinding and subsidy of universities.
It's tiring to see things being turned against the domestic populace without any regards to transitioning them in (or in the case of universities, jacking up tuition and for the first time I've seen it, a State funded school (The Ohio State University being a fine example) going closed). Unfortunately you will have to expand capacity, and if done well, you can get an admit rate that is at least the inverse of an Ivy or better.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
I didn't say everyone wanted a free market, I just said that's what it is. Naturally, business owners want as much for their dollar as they can get. Naturally, workers want as many dollars for their time as they can get. The middle ground is what constitutes the mechanisms of the market. Tipping it one way or the other serves no one in the end, so 'idealogues' like me keep things rolling the way they are for everyone.
.. corporations have limited liability allowing them to collect and centralize tremendous assets and market power, meanwhile they manipulate laws and cry out to "keep the markets free" to prevent the labor side of the equation from centralizing power in the same way through unions and collective bargaining. so no.. the market was left to itself in the guilded age and youve seen from my other post that it pushed the median income below $9000 a year in todays dollars before violent labor riots finally prompted the government to act out of fear of losing their power entirely.
idealogue is right.. its exactly what you are.
There is no "middle ground"
you obviously want that again, you seem to have a tremendous hatred for the middle class.
As a graduating economist I am incensed by your use of fallacy to support this argument you make. Either you have not progressed beyond intermediate level classes with simplistic models or you have been brainwashed by conservative media mouthpieces, or both.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Protectionism is bad idea, be it for good or jobs.
So you don't want Indian to come and take jobs in the US? Well think of the consequences:
- The company will outsource to India, and Indian worked cost far less when he Lives in India than in the US.
- If a worker offer a lower labor cost it's a gift to the american economy. The goods will be cheaper, the consumer will save money, invest in other sectors etc..
- If someone wishes a workvisa it means he intends to work, not live on welfare. The intent to work should be a plus for immigrants not a minus...
Protectionism is the most dangerous economic fallacy ever. Come on you're the US, you are liberals, don't fall for that old interventionnist trick.
\u262D = \u5350
Do you really know programmers that are homeless? That seems pretty hard for me to believe. I don't know where you are (I'm in Portland, Oregon)
Were- most of them ended up out in Newberg farming instead of programming. Had to move out of the expensive city.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What is the name of the company, its address, phone number, and the name of the person responsbile for posting the ad? This is the type of information that should be posted. Since sex offender databases list people who might be a danger to others, these types of companies should be listed in a public database that lists those who are a danger to the SAmerican standard of living.
Mandate they hire Americans?
Sure. Or you could have them have to interview every US worker first under realistic circumstances (read: the ones they give to H1-B's, and you'd have to demonstrate that you went through 200m+ interviews with the conditions being ones that were realistic - no "years of experience > years of skill/product existence" requirements) before even thinking of H1-B/L1's. Then have to hire by blood citizenship first, legal permament resident, and drop out all the H1-B's if the fixed quota is reached.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
How do you think he "earned" that much money? It's only by taking bribes to do what the powers that be want him to that any one man can earn money like that.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I am from the Midwest, I live in the Chicago area. Things are not screwy here at all, companies appear to be hiring like crazy and they are offering full benefits and high salaries.
What exactly did you mean about a OSU going closed? I went there (starting in '99) and the only problem I had was that there were too many damn people in CS who were only there because "that's were the money was". This ended up creating a huge shortage of classes that were available and I eventually got pissed off enough that I transferred out. The tuition never jumped considerably while I was there but it has been quit a while so I would be interested if thats the case.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
It just makes it more obvious of your endrun, especially when it's a job that's in a mainly english speaking country that has a lot of english speaking employees that are NOT doing translation work.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
In 1986, I got a job after graduating from Berkeley with a BS in EECS for $29,500/year. The last hire I made that I'd consider comparable was an Indian student from a state university with a masters. We hired him for $60K/year. I checked out this site for inflation rates:
http://eh.net/hmit/compare/
In short, a smart engineer with a college degree makes the same today as he did 20 years ago. Even back then, half engineers I graduated with were Indian or Chinese. It's no different today.
Sure, we engineers have to compete globally, which makes us poorer on average than doctors and lawyers. I's still rather be an engineer.
The first month after taking that first job, I was approached by communist picketers outside my workplace. They were pushing for unions, and higher wages. These Programmers Guild people are no different. It was a bad idea then, just as it is now.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Does he sound like a Marxist?
Actually, I'm a tribal distributist.
American Progressives SUPPORT Immigrant labor.....legal or not.
Ceaser Chaverez didn't. When you find out why, let me know. (hint, it has somthing to do with supporting UNIONS, which immigrant labor is against).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
In a truly free market, though, another company will gladly spring up doing the exact same thing, but NOT pay the CEOs a bunch of money, until the other company goes out of business (or changes).
...
Recognize that to economists, everything is a market unless it's coersion.
Unlike Marxist Hacker 42, who I don't think will be comfortable until there's blood in the streets, I'm not going to tell you I have no use for a free market. In fact, my goal would be for as many people as possible to make any rational trades they want, which is probably the outcome you're thinking of when you say "free market."
But you don't get there by removing all the rules. That Econ class should have taught you that all that happens when you remove all the rules is that people take advantage of disparities in bargaining power and information to coerce or fool other parties into non-rational transactions.
The CEO case is a perfect example. The CEOs hornswoggle or pay off the directors, who in turn do the same to the shareholders. Shareholders and employees are left holding the bag. Since there is no incentive for CEOs not to do this, as they profit much more handsomely than they could from simply doing good business, there is no incentive for a CEO to lead your "another company" into the picture.
Thus active public intervention is required to ensure a market where all parties who bargain and inform themselves to the best of their ability realize positive outcomes. The great failing of many people inclined toward a viewpoint informed by classical economics is that they fail to realize this -- effectively embracing a course which inevitably leads to feudalism, not free markets. In this specific situation, the public intervention needed is simply enforced regulation: if Americans won't take your job because you're offering a low salary at which they turn up their noses, that's fine, but actively excluding Americans in order to take advantage of the H-1Bs should be (and is) outlawed.
This is a case where the existing law makes sense and should be enforced, for the sake of a fair and free market.
I wish I had mod points. I was going to reply to the parent but you got the point across in a concise fashion. Well done.
Sure you can't have both. Which one do you think he advocates ?
\u262D = \u5350
I'm not american and have never lived in America. I'm not indian (looks like they are the primary H1B workers) and I'm not a programmer.
Wether H1B are "moral" or not, the issue should be that these companies might be simply violating the letter (and spirit) of the law that implements H1B visas.
They are stating in a public way that they prefer H1B workers? No problem there since everyone is entitled to their opinions. But if they are actively refusing to hire locals in favor of H1B, they are not even exploiting a loophole. They are simply breaking a law that states that H1B are only to be hired when local talent is not available.
Inmigration (as well as labor?) authorities should have a record of H1B sponsors. Number too high? Audit them and make them justify their H1B.
Of course, politicos are usually in the pockets of corporations, so I'm guessing there's not much chance of that.
In fact, given all the brouhaha that I'm seeing on CNN about illegal aliens in the US, I'm suprised that this issue hasn't come up (I know they are H1B are legal, but mobs usually don't care).
No sig
Actually, this kind of rule has some good logic behind it. It is intended to make it difficult for a person in some position of authority from just hiring friends and relatives - by specifiying duties, required skills and publishing that, you are (in theory at least) making the job open to others. It is also a useful way to help people to move around in an organization.
That bureaucracy and bureaucrats have found a way to use this to do almost exactly what it is intended to prohibit just shows how almost every rule can somehow be perverted - given time and enough people trying.
Want one example? Warren Buffet.
He makes 100k/year. He's richer than croesus because he owns a large stake in Berkshire Hathaway. Rule 1 of CEO ethics: if you started the company, you deserve whatever you can get.
Want a real example? Jack Welch. Of course, he's one of the rare ones that is worth what he's paid and more.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It's only by taking bribes to do what the powers that be want him to
Bitch, are you retarded?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The truth is that there aren't many good programmers out there and there is still a lot of demand for them.
You seem to be suggesting that companies be allowed to replace/substitute average citizen programmers with top-notch foreign guest workers. Regardless of whether this is "right" or not, it is not the premise that the H-1B program is supposed to be based on. Besides, how are average programmers going to get good with practice if all the jobs are given away to foreign workers? C-level citizens will be forever stuck at C-level because they are passed over for A-level foreign workers. Spot-shortages are necessary for people to transfer out of spot-gluts. This oppurtunity is taken away.
Another thing is that everybody has a different idea of what "best" is. Some companies value good factoring, others value fast copy-and-pasters, for example. A bigger pool allows them to pick people who fit their very specific, idiosyncratic views of what "good" is at the expense of citizens. It is like opening a new jewery store next to an existing one. Half the customers will go to the other store even if the average deals are the same.
Table-ized A.I.
Let them take the low paying and boring jobs. If you are an excellent programmer you WILL be in demand and...
Even if you really are the cream of the crop, it may still affect your wages. Suppose that before visa's, the mid-range was 60k and the top is 80k.
Now, after visas flood out the middle and lower it to 50k, the bean-counters with Excel at your company will say, "why are we paying this guy 80k when the average is 50k?" Remember that those who know your work the best are not the ones who decide your final salary. Thus, lowering the middle will trickle up to you. If/when the budget pressure mounts, the highest paid are often the most heavily scrutinized.
Table-ized A.I.
H status (H-1B) can be held for up to 6 years. That's 6 years in time actually spent in the U.S., snot including time on vacation outside the country. So potentially over 6 years on a regular H-1B.
Then come the exceptions.
If you have started the Immigrant (Green Card) process, depending how far along you are, you can continue to extend your H-1b past 6 years in 1 or 3 year jumps indefinately.
Oh, and I see people lose their H all the time. If the employer fires them, the alien gets a one way plane ticket home.
I guess $10/hr is a lot in Southern California these days:
.Net
t ails.aspx?IPath=ILK&jobcount=58&job_did=J8C4R35WD7 MFNJLKDPZ&sfascc=%22h1-b%22&dv=dv&jrdid=&lpage=3&s name=&CiBookMark=1&strcrit=QID%3DA6653224969589%3B st%3DA%3Buse%3DALL%3BrawWords%3D%22h1-b%22%3BCID%3 DUS%3BSID%3DALL%3BTID%3D0%3BENR%3DNO%3BDTP%3DDR3%3 BYDI%3DYES%3BIND%3DALL%3BPDQ%3DAll%3BJN%3DAll%3BPA YL%3D0%3BPAYH%3Dgt120%3BPOY%3DNO%3BETD%3DALL%3BRE% 3DALL%3BMGT%3DDC%3BSUP%3DDC%3BFRE%3D30%3BCHL%3DAL% 3BQS%3Dsid_unknown%3BSS%3DNO%3BTITL%3D0%3BJQT%3DRA D
Location:US-CA-Riverside
Base Pay:$10.00/Hour
Other Pay: Discussed upon Employment
Employee Type: Full-Time Employee
Industry: Merchandising
Retail
Recreation
Manages Others: no
Job Type: Marketing
Req'd Education: High School
Req'd Experience: Less Than 1 Year
Req'd Travel: Negligible
Relocation Covered: No
DESCRIPTION
We are looking for someone who can multi-task and is highly motivated to work in the marketing/E-Commerce department. You will be responsible creating and maintaining multiple websites including but not limited shopping carts & info sites.
Must be able to follow instructions and follow through. Must be willing to learn and work independently. English fluency is a must.
Company can sponsor OPT and H1-B Visa requirements.
*If you can't accept the listed base pay, please do not apply.
REQUIREMENTS
Requirements: (Things that you must know)
- Knowledge in HTML
- Knowledge in Photoshop (or other graphics editing software)
Advantages: (Things that are a plus)
- Knowledge in PHP
- Knowledge in Flash
- Knowledge in ASP
- Knowledge in
- Knowledge in MSSQL
- Knowledge in MySQL
- Ability to speak fluent Chinese
http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDe
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We should all be lawyers. Make 3X as much, and don't put up with any Bullsh!t.
In the future, everybody in the USA will earn their living suing one another.
A lost soul :) I grew up in a social-democrate country where liberal is used as an insult by all politic tendencies. Not very fun you know. Our liberal issues go faaar beyond questionning a federal-id.
Now s=ure there are things more important than economics, such as freedom.... but how do you define economics? YOU have to stop thinking in term of the $, economic is about managing the well being of people. Their utility doesn't necesseraly reflect money. So when something it good for the economy, it means it's good for the common well being.
We want the same thing, more jobs, stable jobs; but do I think protectionism is the way to do that? Certainly not.
You do realize that all you are going to cause by trying to "protect" the jobs is outsourcing... so are you going to say, we also need to prevent companies from outsourcing... well the businesses will simply leave the country... aha you add, but we will prevent them from doing that. And very soon you are on the way to more and more state control and a dangerous spiral to serfdom.
The money you save consummers when you open your borders to goods and labors is going to be invested in other sectors, probably more advanced technologies. Now I agree with you on one thing, labor is not completely mobile and you can't say that the IT worker is going tomorrow to go in a completly different sector... but an affluence of cheap IT workers will also probably make this same sector grow extremly fast thus requiring more workers with advanced skills.... It is definitely true that a complete stop of protectionism - tomorrow - would cause a very harsh transition, it's like a battery, the systems have been separated so long that there is a very high difference. If you don't want a flood carefully open your gates, once it's done you have the benefits without the risk to the stability of the job market.
\u262D = \u5350
I was referring to your last paragraph, where you leveled your emotionally charged ad hominem attack.
I quoted true figures and pointed out the truth.. (also see any records from the union busting sweat shop ridden political machine dominated US guilded age) Just because I make the argument strongly does not mean it is "emotional rhetoric".. it means it is true and authoritative.
You quoted figures with no citation and pointed out your opinions regarding their meaning. Emotionally charging your arguments is no measure of authority.
I have no desire to engage in personal arguments over economic philosophy.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I give no credence to your education if the best arguments you can make based on it are filled with personal attacks. You obviously have no idea how to make a point (or possibly have no logical point to make) so I have no interest in dealing with you.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I guess I've been really fortunate - since I started coding professionally in 1989, I've not really had any time that I was unemployed where I didn't choose to take some time off. The vast majority of job changes for me have been "last day at old place on Friday, first day at new place on Monday". The last time that it wasn't was more than eight years ago. My last job change was this past April, and it was a total of about three weeks from the time I sent the resume to the time I was turning in notice at my then-current employer. The new place also offered me $10K/year more than what I was asking for [shrug]. Of course I didn't want to be rude and argue with them. :-)
I'm not disputing that some folks have problems, though. I've not personally experienced any real difficulty, but I also know a lot of comparably qualified people that seem to have a hard time finding work. I don't get it.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I like new toys, new science, new ideas. When the Chinese and Indians get going, they will have, what, 5 times the USA and EU population? I like that. I like all that many more smart people with their different and new ways of thinking, that many more brains working to make new devices. Look at it this way. It only takes a fixed number of people to design cell phones. Manufacture and distribution does require more people if you want to make and deliver more, but even that scales somewhat. If ten times the population wants ten times as many cell phones as nowdays, there will be a lot of smart people who will be designing something other than cell phones or any other current device.
I like the idea that they will be designing brand new things that we can't even dream of now. I want everyone on the earth to be well off and using their brains, rather than mired in poverty and barely scraping by. I want as many people as possible thinking about the future.
Infuriate left and right
What were the powers that be bribing him to do?
I've worked in the industry for quite some time now. Since 1991.
And it is very common to have many positions open you simply cannot fill. In the late 1990s it was even more true.
I remember at that time, see that one department, which was triple the size of most others fit onto a half-floor just like all the other departments. I asked the pertinent people and found that they could fit in that space because 2/3rds of their positions were unfilled.
I was not a hiring manager at the time, but I can say now that it very likely goes like this. You open a position. You get a lot of candidates. You interview the candidates and find none are suitable. You don't even talk money seriously with a candidate until after they pass the interview anyway. And then, the hiring manager doesn't care much anyway becuase it's not like he's paying out of his own pocket.
So, you never rejected anyone due to salary, and yet you still can't find anyone. It's natural then to say "if only we had a larger pool of candidates to draw from". And being able to draw from foreigners can help with this.
It's tough being picky about your candidates, but not being picky creates more problems in the long run.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So, industry claims that H1-B visas are needed because there are some skills which are just not available in the U.S. job market. The other side is that (1) yes, those skills are; and (2) even if they weren't, companies could hire Americans and train them.
The visas are obviously in high demand -- they disappear in an astonishingly short time after they become available every year.
IMO, the best way to approach this is to auction the H1-B visas off: If you have a position that you need filled, bid for an H1-B visa. If somebody else needs it more, they'll bid more and they'll win. Otherwise, if you need it more, you'll bid more and win.
The interesting thing is the feedback mechanism -- if the visas are going for $200,000 each, that's a pretty good indication that the job isn't availble in the US and it's really hard to train Americans to do it. But, on the other hand, if companies are just trying to save a few bucks, then the visas will go for a lot less, maybe $20,000. That would indicate that there are too many H1-B visas, and companies are just using them to get cheap labor. If the price is too high, that would indicate the need to raise the cap. Otherwise, it would indicate a need to lower it.+
Your thoughts are good in theory, but you can't have your cake and eat it too, or cell phone as it would be. Nobody will be able to afford any of these wonderful devices in the world you describe, including yourself.
I've been reading a lot of your comments, and you often have stuff of value to say. However, I think pulling Warren Buffett into the mix is really stretching things. Buffett is first and foremost an investor, and unlike a lot of the folks that are playing with stocks today, he's generally a long term investor who is *extremely* careful about where he puts his money and isn't interested in flipping stocks for the quick buck. He's earned the fortune he has by sound investing, and by making sure competent people are running his companies. He makes $100K per year as the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, lives in a very unpretentious home, and generally is the antithesis of the over-the-top CEOs we've seen in recent years.
:-) I don't count the $366 million that Bernie Ebbers got in improper loans from MCI, because Ebbers is a worthless criminal who will hopefully be spending a lot of time in jail for his efforts.
The ridiculously large CEO pay that you quoted is also fairly uncommon. The only two really big paydays that immediately come to mind are the $400 million package that Lee Raymond received when he left Exxon, and Michael Eisner's $576 million that he made largely through exercised stock options in 1998. Both were very unusual, and aren't really representative of average CEO pay at large companies. Even Carly Fiorina's $42 million severance package she got after she was done screwing HP raised a lot of eyebrows. She's still pretty hot, though.
Like I said, I often think you have stuff to say that's worth reading, but it hurts your arguments when you start slinging stuff like that around.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
What I love have been the companies that have interviewed me and have either been jerking me around (many of them) or, in one case, quite literally downright verbally abusive.
That is something that I do not care to put up with and, in the case of the abusive one, I didn't put up with it. The bad part was that interview was three hours away, so I not only wasted the time, but the travel costs.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
This is not stated correctly. GC needs to be in process for one year or immigration petition must be approved in order to get extensions beyond 6 years.
jump across American borders or tunnels nor evade IRS Taxes and enroll their kids for free education, but their contribution to Social Security is in Billions. They don't get FREE medical benefits, they have to pay for it. Internet Bloggers and News Networks must look at real problems America is facing rather than beating empty drums ;-)
What I love have been the companies that have interviewed me and have either been jerking me around (many of them) or, in one case, quite literally downright verbally abusive.
I refuse to put up with it, and if someone is verbally abusive to me I will not hesitate to quickly and loudly put them in their place before leaving immediately afterwards.
I had one company that I had *really* wanted to work at, and after a combination of five phone and in-person interviews, they said they wanted me to come in and interview yet again. I got fed up with it and told them, "thanks, but no - you have my resume and you've already talked to me enough to be able to determine whether you want me or not. I'm not spending my own money just to come down and talk to every manager that says he wants to speak to me." Two weeks later they offered me a job, but I'd already taken something with another company and I told them I wouldn't have accepted even if I hadn't. If they were going to screw with candidates like that, I figured nothing would be keeping them from doing the same once I was an employee.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Actually, there is no grace period. Theoreticaly H1B worker who lost the job should live US immidietaly.
Why not restrict H1Bs to students graduating from US universities. There are thousands of them, and they're already familiar with the culture and have similar training as Americans. They're also unlikely to work for significantly lower pay. Currently many international students head back to their home countries right after graduation, so the US gets no benefit of their education.
If standing up for *our* nation and *our* selves is racist, then so be it. Our family has been in America for several generations. I know people who have roots here even longer than I. I will, not for one minute, treat someone who hops on a boat or plane here to get a cheap job because its better than their 3rd world drudgery as an equal. It has nothing to do with race, it has to do with the fact that those of us here who have REAL ROOTS here should protect what we have helped to build.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
One of my favorite examples is in 1988. I was called by a recruiter looking for someone with at least 10 years of PC DOS experience. Giving impossible requirements and having a recruiter unable to fill it is another trick.
Fight Spammers!
I have no desire to engage in personal arguments over economic philosophy.
try my experience with a top 20 university education in economics.
And youre damn right i'd be pissed with someone bandying about fallacious BS in an attempt to exhonorate a greedy upperclass who are actively engineering the pillaging of those in the lower 95% of the income spectrum.
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> If a company can spend less to hire someone from India / Mexico / wherever, why on earth
> should we stop them? Why should they be forced to pay more money to hire someone from the
> US? This is utterly against the spirit of the free market.
The point you seem to be missing is that it's a *U.S.* company we're talking about here. They owe their success to the infrastructure upon which their business is based. It's our (all us citizens) tax money that pays for everything that enables their business to operate (roads, public works, and so on).
They can't have their cake and eat it too.
Now, the real trouble begins when we start talking about multi-nationals...
I give no credence to your education if the best arguments you can make based on it are filled with personal attacks.
telling the truth a personal attack? i called you an idealogue and that is precisely what you are.. that is directed at your opinions rather than you.. hence why i called you an idealogue rather than "doo doo head".
As for the rest of my post there were no personal attacks.. I suppose by your definition of "filled" the waiter can bring you a longneck with 1mm of beer at the bottom and you would consider it full?
You obviously have no idea how to make a point (or possibly have no logical point to make) so I have no interest in dealing with you.
my arent we an authority.. who died and made you god?
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Your posts do nothing but make accusations.
Much like republican mouthpieces, you sit there and accuse me of doing what you do.
In your posts you have levelled numerous ad hominem attacks; you have called me uneducated and emotionally unstable for astutely pointing out your habbits, accused me of lacking knowledge in economics, and called my points specious without so much as a single coherent counterpoint on which to base your assertions other than attacks on my person rather than my point.
you practice what is best called pseudointellectualism, and from now on whenever I see a post of yours spewing malinformed ideology I will debunk it.
I've taken the liberty of adding you to my foes list to make sure your posts catch my attention. Pseudointellectuals and sophists are the enemy of justice in this world and I simply will not have it so boldly bandied about.
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The first month after taking that first job, I was approached by communist picketers outside my workplace. They were pushing for unions, and higher wages. These Programmers Guild people are no different. It was a bad idea then, just as it is now.
Right now big companies have Congress by the balls. That is not capitalism, but political bribary. We need to balance that out with something, and unions or trade groups (PACs) are the only way I know of. As voters we don't have the granularity of control to pick and choose various smaller issues. This allows a lot of leeway for corporate influence to take over the political decision process.
Thus, unions are not communists, just balancers. Sure, they got too powerful in the 40's and 50's, but the pendulum has swung to Inc's since.
Table-ized A.I.
You are very welcome to have my software job....I would rather be out cutting grass in nice weather or something else.
Seems right out of Office Space movie
Table-ized A.I.
It's a very common one among those who have studied what happened in the Pacific Northwest between 1830-1833
I really want to see where this is going, given the fact that I live in the PNW.
Then why have they been failing for 40 years? Why did they fail the Kalapayu 170 years ago?
Interesting, what are these Kalapayu you speak of?
Tell that to the Kalapayu, if you can find any. Oh yeah- most of them died off because their economic competitors brought Malaria to Oregon.
According to Google, they never existed. I'll just assume you mean the Kalapuya. By the way, most authoritative sources describe the disease that swept through the Kalapuya from 1830 to 1833 as a fever, not as malaria. Granted there are some that say malaria, but it is far from conclusive. Oh, and don't forget the smallpox of 1782 to 1783 while you're going there.
My people had the Salmon, the Hazelnut, the Wild Sunflower, Wapato and Camas, long before your "free market" ever existed. We should have protected it better. Now, we just have slavery.
If you're claiming to be one of the Kalapuya, you'd think you could spell it correctly. You've managed to screw it up twice. Now, I could see there being variances in spelling, but you'd think Google would have heard about your spelling.
Let them invent their own technology, create their own progress, just as we did.
Interesting. Now, maybe I'm misinterpreting your implications, but here goes: Above you are complaining that my people came and killed most of your people off. So who is this "we" you speak of? You didn't invent your own technology. My people brought your people the wheel, guns, and horseback riding, among other things.
Well, let's see- work 32 hours hunting and gathering vs 40-60 hours in a factory- which is more free?
Work 32 hours a week living in a hut that's too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer, buggy all year and lacks privacy, or work 40-60 hours a week and have my own insulated house, heater, air conditioning, a car, TV, etc. Gee, which one would I pick???
I'm for decentralization- no government, no money, no TRADE.
Exactly how will this lessen suffering and injustice? People die faster? What if I'm the only guy in town who knows about willow bark tea? How do you force me to give it to you? Would you expect it out of the goodness of my own heart? You still have trade, because I would expect you to supply me with what I needed out of the goodness of your heart.
There is *always* trade unless an individual can provide for everything he/she needs and never needs to ask someone else for help. If you really want to delve into it, all human relationships are an exercise in trade.
Oh go sod yourself and your "top 20" university education in Economics. If you really want us to be impressed, link to your Google Scholar page and your peer reviews. Then we might be impressed. But your ranting and amazing felicity for calling everyone who disagrees with you a 'republican shill' makes me doubt your credentials.
Go somewhere random
Resist the temptation to bother arguing with Marxist Hacker 42; he simply doesn't get it and never will. What he wants is no trade, not even local - but yet he still thinks the Internet can continue to exist under these conditions. Also he seems to not understand that it is human nature to trade.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Ah, I am sure you will argue about "what progress?" and tell us of how they are so terribly exploited and make only sixty cents a day in a factory - but you have missed the alternative, that they were making the equivalent of thirty cents a day doing sustainence farming beforehand.
To me, companies in a country that have laws providing minimal standards to block heinous working conditions should not be able to dodge these laws by seeking workers in countries without these minimal standards. This minimal shield should be provided everywhere the company is allowed to do business. And it is exploitation by the company in the country that profits from providing conditions below these minimal standards. Even if it improves the lives of those in the other country by some iota below the minimal shield. Because they certainly pay far less when they can find workers that will work for pennies for many hours under harsh conditions because such a minimal shield isn't in place for them. Surely a 'free economy' cannot be so free as to ignore minimal quality labor conditions for every worker? Outsourcing to gain profit by dodging minimal labor shielding should be illegal!
s/live/leave/
Here are some facts:
1. Mandarin is just the spoken part of the Chinese language
2. Hindi is not the only dialect in India
What cake are you referring to? Why should more people doing more and better work make the world a poorer place?
Infuriate left and right
I just happen to live in a very broadly multicultural area that also just happens to be fairly dense in high-tech and medium-tech businesses. I had a fellow from India explain some of this stuff to me. Up here people typically just obtain their citizenship and apply for work like everyone else, on equal terms. In the states where he had previously worked as well as many of his college mates, the attitude is to fly people over on a work visa, then the employers use that non-resident status as a cattle prod. He told me he was often afraid of being fired and exiled back to India for no valid reason, other than the company trying to pressure him into working longer hours. The work visa then becomes the slave driver's whip.
So the guy moved up north to the land of beavers, poutine and warm busty women. Sure, it took a little work to get the papers done but now he's a permanent citizen just like me, and he works the same job, gets the same pay, enjoys the same benefits and pays the same ridiculously high taxes as everyone else. We don't throw around many work visas because frankly, if you're going to work in Canada, you might as well live here too and keep the money recirculating (and re-taxing) in our system.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Amusingly, you complain about your credibility being attacked when someone suggests you actually cite publications that you refer to, and decry people questioning you when the only "source" you give is, "a top 20 university degree in economics". That's ... how can we put it, rather vague. Instead you return straight to your 'republican' attacks, or, in this case, Fox News. No wonder people are questioning your credibility.
oh look another one caves to the troll and falls in line.. it's really pathetic.
I put forth points, he put forth no counterpoints and instead chose to attack me.. of course after accusing me of doing what he was about to do before hand so as to cast off all blame.
It has been the tactic used by the bush administration and their cronies for the past 6 years and everyone who reads slashdot knows it, but funny how anyone can slip it by you when it doesnt involve the patriot act.
I really dont care about the point I was making anymore.. the fact that two people have come forward in support of this really disappointing to me.
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Good point. On paper (and in practice) a truely free market is wickedly efficient. It drives down the cost of a good or service to the lowest price it could possibly be produced. And that, I would argue, is exactly why The Company (any company) really doesn't like the free market, even if they all pay lip-service to it. Every business wants to be a monopoly. That way they can name their prices and have the best control of their expenditures.
Add in a good dose of politics and you get, effectively, the same practice: Cartels. OPEC, SIIA... they may not do it out in the open, but businesses that compete against each other often argue together to get regulations and favors from their government. No business spends their money when they can spend someone elses (I'd argue that this is a lemma of my above point).
Back on-topic, though, H1-B visas aren't the problem. Foriegn workers aren't the problem. In fact, America needs foriegn workers. Half the successful businesses in Silicon Valley were started by immigrants. In fact, the current US foriegn policy keeps a lot of the best and brightest out, forcing them to live under oppression in their country of origin (I'm referring to the Islamic world). The problem is a system that is unfairly balanced to help The Cartel get cheap labor, rather than forcing the bits and pieces of said cartel to compete on the free market for labor. This leads to collusion (as noted in previous comments above in detail) that circumvents the protections put in place to attempt to keep the monopolistic tendencies of The Comapny in check.
As for your points on Bush and the Patriot Act? Classifying me as a Republican shill or patsy is laughable for it showing off your US-centric perspective. I can't find one remark in my replies that comes close to implying I am American - in fact I live a good 9,000+ miles from the nearest US city.
I also challenge you to point out one comment of mine that 'comes forward in support of [ad hominem attacks]'. As I said above, good debating occurs neither from these attacks, nor from your pointing out of same to free you from a request to actually show sources.
This scheme is typcial I saw this ALL OVER Denver, CO. You also see it rampant in the back of all the IT trade magazines. All those jobs yo usee listed are specifically targeted at H1-B's not AMERICANS. Granted I have worked with more H1-B people than I can count on my fingers and toes. Many were useless lied like hell on their resumes and didn't know the skills they were hired for. But, there also were some that knew their stuff and there are some I have become friends with. The problem is there is no level playing field. What everyone doens't understand is this is ALL about globalization. As Bush said "The New World Order". It's all about tearing down the borders of countries. Look at the "amnesty" program for the Illigal immagrants from mexico. The say they do the jobs ameircans don't want to do. Really? Those will be the only jobs we have left when corporations outsource all the really good jobs for $hit pay. But we as Americans won't be able to do those jobs because they will already be taken by people who will work for pennies.
Here is my suggestion:
All the hispanics from mexico should do something about their country! You don't like the wages you get paid do something about it! Fight for it in YOUR country! We Americans paid for our freedoms and rights in OUR BLOOD! We fought our American Revolution for it! The Mexican people might want to think about their own Revlolution to change their corrupt country!
The same goes for people in other countries. If you don't like the jobs/wages in your country DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT - Fight for it in YOUR country.
It is true we Americans need to get off of our lazy @$$E$ and take on our own government AGAIN because they have gotten so far out of control it's not funny. We need to do it NOW or we won't have any rights left to fight them with. Our politicians are just as corrupt as those in many other countries. Fortunately our founding fathers had insight enough to lay down some rights that give us the power to LEGALLY fight for our rights. But how many Americans don't? Many! The two party system is outdated we need more third parties, this is the ONLY way we will be able to send the message we are SICK AND TIRED of the status quo! You can't just "throw the bums out" without third parties. Who will replace the current BUMS? Yup more bums - Democrats and Republicans - they are all bad!
Think about this long and hard folks the powers that be don't give a raging rats @$$ about you they only care about money and power. Be it be the poloticians or the corporations.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
But there is a dynamic at work here, namely that since "American" firms have invested so much (money, resources, strategy, time, etc....) in offshore vendors and importing NIV programmers they have created a defacto dependency on the paradigm. As they've chased Americans out of the field, in preference of a cheaper foreign factory approach, they now are much more reliant upon foreign engineers and programmers. Most of my colleagues have moved on to other career fields or they simply are hanging on as SMEs, marking the days to retirement. It's no wonder that computer and engineering student enrollments are declining -- there'll always be young Americans who answer to a calling despite potential career conditions and ramifications (i.e., see teaching), but statistics are now bearing out that the majority will pursue a more fruitful career path, both in terms of short term financial reward and long term job stability.
Ironically, or comically, or tragically (depending on your particular perspective!), from what I understand from conversing with friends who are directing such offshore/NIV programmer teams, the offshore vendors don't seem to acknowledge the great gift bestowed upon them. Instead, they've fouled it up, focused entirely on short term profits, managing their operations like multi-level marketing schemes. Shuffling workers to maintain a subserviant force, yet failing and leaving core systems of our largest companies in a sordid state of disrepair.
AZspot
Not that I think you would care, but you do know that Hinduism is one of the few non-proselytizing religions of the world, right (along with Buddhism and some others)? Simply put, these religions do not force others to "convert" to their religion or follow their methods of worship. This is unlike Christianity and Islam, which are proselytizing religions.
So, what is more likely and already occurring (see external links or do a simple Google search for missionary activities in Asia/Africac) is Indian Hindus being forced to convert to Christianity and Islam, rather than the other way around.
I don't care much for any religion any way (agnostic/atheist), but I know enough about major world religions to recognize when somebody's just spouting BS/propaganda.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Lets not get sidetracked from the main topic. The main issue being discussed here is about how companies misuse the H1B quota to get cheap labour. Well the main culprit here are small Consultant companies, whose main aim is to get as many people from india and fill high paying jobs for less.They profit from just being able to sponsor employees using the H1b. Some of these companies have 100% Indian hires who work for less.The consultant charges much higher rate from the company and profits from not paying the employee(usally 40% or less).
I have personally attended some of their interviews(when I looked for jobs after college) but looks like most of these companies are run by Indians themselves(GC holders) and hire only Indians(Not policy but profitable-$$ for them).
Our company is on the top fortune 100 , and we outsource small projects to these consultants just because they work for less and a temp position cannot be filled any better. And as always they are uaully indians who apply through a consultant.
H1B hiring rules and practices should be made more stricter and priority given to companies that really needs a forign worker just for his skills and not just to replace a local worker.
My reactions were much the same. I expect professional behavior. If you don't have it, you don't have me.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
US Jobs for US citizens, UK Sites for UK Surfers, Chinese search engines for chinese internet users, Belgian newspapers for belgian citizens ...
All to themselves.
Sounds like back in 1830s isnt it ?
What will the new internet startups, which are created by paying higher amounts of wages to american citizens do, when other countries get annoyed with this mercantilist approach in us, and start barring their citizens from using u.s. sites ?
Who will they sell the products ? Who will they serve information and ads ?
Back to the same u.s. citizens i assume. Then it is really back to 1830s, as the market will shrink and only the big will be able to cope with it.
Get logical. Mercantilism always barred trade and expansion. Internet has not been the way it is because of 'anything for themselves'.
Read radical news here
Free markets evolve into cartels. The big fish band together to squeeze everyone else out, and then set prices according to their own whim.
And don't give me any crap about honest businessmen. All businessmen, especially those who work for publicly-traded corporations, have a responsibility to the bottom line and nothing more. That kind of amoral outlook on life means that you have no problem cozying up to dictators and autocrats, because it helps the bottom line not to have to deal with troublesome workers and community groups and whatnot.
An utterly free and unregulated market is subject to wild swings in price that inherently hurt the small operators in that market. Even the NYSE - high temple of the economy - has brakes in place on its electronic trading systems. Too much activity, up OR down makes the system slow down, until it shuts itself down.
Coersion! OMG!!!! Evil!!!! In the heart of Capitalism!!!!!!1!!!1
I would rather have my government protect me and mine from the ravages of an unregulated economy. After all, things like the FDA and the police are coersions as well. They restrict choices - everything from "no, you can't sell radium salts as a cure for goiters" to "no, you can't make an armed withdrawal from that bank".
Coersion is a fact of life in any government system. It's the only way to enforce minimal civility - because not everyone behaves in a decent and moral fasion on their own.
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
Let's see...
Used a made-up term for free trade - check
Proper capitalization for the Destruction of the Middle Class - check
Advocate trying CEOs for treason without knowing what treason really is - check
Put the important words in ALL CAPS - check
Twisted isolated incidents into an indictment of the entire system - check
Excellent job! Your manifesto is complete!
-h-
Warren Buffett? His annual salary is $100,000. His typical yearly compensation from Berkshire Hathaway is $300,000. He's a perennial pick for the "Most Underpaid CEO in America". Pick a different target.
-h-
1 - The price of competent it work NEVER goes down.
Not only it does not go down, but with phletora of very cheap, UNRELIABLE foreign labor, outsourcing and telecommuting, its value and sometimes rate rises. But definitely one thing about it benefits much from this ; the JOB SECURITY
Employers do the mistake of relying on cheap, unreliable immigrant personnel, outsourcing and telecommuting do this mistake AT MOST TWICE.
The third time, they seek out to find reliable people. Once they find it, they stick to them like hell. You wouldnt except the extent of tolerance, understanding and freedom you get on job related matters, once you land on such a position.
Furthermore, the fact that such a market, an opportunity to do overseas jobs, for ANY it professional that is on the internet, means that YOU WILL NEVER BE OUT OF A JOB, and thats flat.
So youve been fired from a local it position. They handed it over to a foreigner. So what ? Go home, get on the net, post 'im available' to a job board.
You DEFINITELY wont be getting hordes of $20.000 budget jobs, and you neither are going to go for $50-100 jobs. You will be getting small jobs, but periodically.
Once you sit and do the math, you will discover that you are getting more in terms of hours spent/wage paid this way.
If you work as hard as you would work in a local office, there is no reason you wouldnt make the same money.
Read radical news here
The trend now is towards L1B visas. These were something the US originally lobbied for, to allow Americans working for US multinationals to work abroad. But it works both ways. If a multinational company has operations in the US, they can move employees to their US locations under an L1B visa as an intracompany transfer.
L1B visas offer many advantages for the employer:
There's a requirement that the employee had to be employed by the company for a year before coming to the US, and they're supposed to have "specialized knowledge", but that's about it.
So this has become a favorite tool of body shops; hire in India, make them work in a call center for a year, then send them to the US to work cheap.
Pool 1: American workers.
Pool 2: American workers + foreign workers.
I'm not saying foreign workers are more likely to be suitable by percentage.
But pool 2 is bigger than pool 1 and includes pool 1 as a subset, so if you have exhausted all candidates already from pool 1, moving on to pool 2 (and fighting politically for the ability to do so) is natural.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Just hiring any pair of hands is not useful in the area I'm in. I need qualified people who can do their own work without a lot of hand-holding. If I hire unqualified people, I just end up making more work for the existing people, trying to help the unqualified people deal with being over their heads.
.com crunch), not having enough people means you just work the existing workers harder. Ironically, this raises productivity, which then Alan Greenspan (who I respect in most ways) misinterprets as some kind of natural/beneficial increase in the productivity of the workforce, instead of overworking people.
As anyone in the tech industry knows (esp. in the
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Economics is a science. It has laws.
That is not entirely true. A lot of it deals with human behavior, which is psychology, still a dark-grey art.
Further, free trade does not guarentee equality nor stability. It may maximize the *average* purchasing power, but the distribution can be very uneven and also it can create a lot of turmoil. Economists are sometimes naive this way, thinking a higher average score in their models is the only way to measure.
No respected economist has ever claimed that free trade provides fairly even distribution and stability that I know of. Most accounts seem to show free trade benefiting wealthy investors far more than others because they make money no matter where your job goes in the world.
Further, there is no guarentee it won't result in lousy jobs. Maybe the US's comparative avantage is marketing and minpulation because science brains are becomming a cheap global commodity. If you are not an expert marketer, you are hosed. Walmart greeters may end up being paid more than programmers and all us greeters can afford a Hummer. Joy!
Table-ized A.I.
And people wonder why Bush suddenly sent the National Guard to the southern border and is hot and bothered to get a "Guest Worker" bill passed. [You know, use non-citizen workers to build it - use the Guard to protect them from American protesters - and then circumvent Longshoremen Union and Teamsters Union by using Mexican shipping ports and foreign truck drivers.]
[Are the people overseas less deserving of jobs, and the progress of the modern world?] Let them invent their own technology, create their own progress, just as we did.
Amen! There is an underlying assumption that the US *must* be the dumping ground for cheap labor and products, that the only way for a country to raise up is be a US parasite. This is hogwash. Our trade deficit is at risk of a huge bubble poppage because of this parasite mentality. Other countries can encourage consumption and local businesses to prime their own pump.
Table-ized A.I.
Yo, Krugman Junior, I really don't want to hear how good you are, or how bad Fox News/Bush/The Loch Ness Monster is. Just provide your credentials and a link to your Google Scholar page, and preferably some peer reviews so we laymen can get a sense of what your peers think about you. Then we can make up our own minds and be suitably impressed about your "top 20" education.
Until then, quit tooting your own horn.
Go somewhere random
geez really? what the hell was he/she saying?
:)
you don't give much hope to the people that have a hard time just getting interviews
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
RTFA, look at the wages
l eClass_060623.wmve s.pdf
http://www.forthecause.us/ftc-video-CNN-WarOnMidd
http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1305appendic
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
people should be able to see this
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
That's very true. There were a LOT of Indians at my last apartment complex and they all seemed friendly people. It was like a small Indian community I guess. The family above us had a jumping kid and they apologized for him, we were just amused. They also offered me dinner when their sink pipe had broken and leaked in my kitchen.
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
I worked at a mortgage company and that WAS Office Space, though it wasn't even related to my degree or interests so I lost on both counts.
simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
You know.. for the past 5 months I have been replying to and debunking the posts of morons like him with full explanation.. I'm getting sick and tired of it. The fact is he does not deserve the dignity of my attention.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Actually, you're more of a lunatic. Seriously, get some help.
Welcome to America, Americans need not apply.
I hope the Programmers Guild sues the fuckers so far into bankruptcy the corporate officers have have their social security checks garnished--forever.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The only person who doesn't have money to buy these cheaper goods are people in the affected industry. These people comprise a laughably small percentage of America's economy. So yeah, some industry gets un-protected and consequently the price of the goods produced by that industry fall to the world price. This of course reduces local supply, which had previously been artificially inflated by the higher price guaranteed by the protectionist economy. Since the "local supply" is a bunch of local companies, the people working for those local companies get the axe. It's true.
But how were those workers getting paid in the first place? Their salaries were siphoned from the US consumer, who was effectively told to pay a higher price than everyone else in the world for an equivalent good or service just because of the government's protectionist policies.
Since everyone here is so concerned about IT, let's move away from that for a moment and look at sugar. Sugar is a protected commodity in the US, and American consumers pay a higher price for sugar than the prevailing world price as result of that -- the amount of extra money paid by consumers per year is several billion dollars. This amounts to you losing 50 or so dollars of your hard-earned income every year to prop up an industry comprised mostly of suppliers that would be unable to compete in the global marketplace.
Now, 50 dollars per person isn't much... not enough to get the laws repealed. But consider: the essential issue here is that the suppliers of sugar in the US only supply as much as they do because of the inflated price (law of supply), and would supply less if there were no protectionism (with the remainder of local demand being satisfied by international suppliers that are currently "protected" out of the US market place).
If this policy were overturned today, everyone in the US would have more spending money, except for the sugar people -- lots of them would be out of a job. You can bet they'd complain about that, but would you? You're not in sugar, after all, and sugar is hardly an essential sector for the US. You'd have more money to spend as a result of them losing their jobs.
What you need to realize here is that most people in the US are not in IT, and they do not care about your job or your job security. If they are paying higher prices for your services than your international competitors, they are losing money. This means they don't have extra spending power to buy the things they want.
So your little response: "Yes, but what good are 'cheap goods' when you don't have any money to buy them with?" is silly, because if all of IT gets outsourced tomorrow and cheaper prices ensue, everyone in the US that doesn't work in IT (most of the US) will have more money to buy cheaper goods.
Just like sugar.
Do you understand how this reasoning works?
Your little retort is a non-starter, unless somehow everything in the US were outsourced in favor of cheaper international producers. But that's not possible, for a number of reasons. The most obvious is specialisation: the US does some things better (read: cheaper) than other places do, and these sectors will never be shipped overseas, because to do so would cost more, not less. The second reason is foreign exchange markets. To buy a good shipped overseas, you must first obtain the local currency. So if you want to buy goods produced in Mexico, for example, you must use dollars to buy pesos, and the increased demand in pesos will drive the value of the peso up relative to the dollar, making Mexican goods more expensive for American consumers. The more this occurs, the more dependence there is on Mexican products, the more expensive those products become, until -- get this -- it becomes cheaper to just produce them locally.
And you can bet your ass that in an unregulated market, someone somewhere is going to try to take advantage of that to make money. Ergo, a factory opens up in the US as soon as that happens.
But it is my decision as a hiring manager. And I know why I did it.
As I pointed out before, it's not like I pay the salaries of my hires. It isn't even in my regular budget. Only HR really cares, and again, we don't even talk money until after we've decided whether we want a candidate or not anyway.
I exhausted all candidates that applied for the position. And the position was widely posted and the postings of the company I work for are widely watched, at rare times even appearing in the regular news. It's not my job to go find candidates who decide to hide in a corner instead of applying for available positions. It's the recruiting department's, and they have sent me monster and hotjobs resumes in the past, so I guess they look there.
I have interviewed over 30 candidates for a position before. I've looked at a hundred candidates for a position before.
There's no satisfying you. You'll believe what you want to believe. All I can hope is some day you're on the other side of the table and have to make the same decisions I do. We'll see what you do then.
Only 1 person of the 5 who work for me is an H1-B worker.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
What's the difference between qualified and suitable? I don't understand that.
---EXAMPLE ONLY. THIS DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A JOB POSTING---
I need a candidate with experience in embedded systems operating system development, driver development and hardware bringup. Must be able to use the suitable diagnostic equipment. Knowledgable in embedded systems issues related to consumer electronics.
Knowledgable in intraboard and interboard communications systems.
Knowledgable in power management for embedded systems.
2-3 years experience in embedded systems required.
(In acknowledgement of the regular way this stuff works, the last 3 are really somewhat flexible, we'd need 2 out of 3 basically. Candidates know this and still apply without filling all the requirements and we consider them even though they don't fill all the requirements)
Also, even though they might think they fit the descriptions, we generally will not interview "comms people" (although I get their resumes from the recruiters). These are people with phone or router experience instead of consumer electronics. They are technically embedded systems, but I've found their priorities are so different and their experience is completely orthagonal to what is useful for me, most notably in the power management area.
Got anything for me? I have to warn I'm somewhat picky too. I've interviewed over 30 candidates for a position before, so just finding a couple doesn't mean they are good enough. I'm not going to hire people who don't really know what they are doing, they'll just slow down the excellent people I already have.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I think you read too many of your own feelings into the post.
2-3 years was a minimum, not a maximum. I probably should have written it as just "2 years".
I should have put battery-powered on the "consumer electronics" thingy. But yes, it's very specialized. And I didn't say I wouldn't intterview people who have general experience. I said we generally won't interview people who have only telecoms experience (in their embedded experience). I've interviewed a lot of them, and found they're just not what I'm looking for. So I save myself some trouble.
I didn't have a tons of experience in these areas when I was hired. And I've interviewed plenty of people who don't meet all the criteria. I even write that in my post that we consider people who don't meet all the criteria.
I tried to do everything I could to defuse comments like your own, you ignore what I wrote and argue about what I already clarified anyway.
If you talked to my boss and my bosses boss, you might not complain about my choosiness so much. I have the best team in my division, and everyone acknowledges it. One of the people I hired was in a testing/qualification position, and I still hired him because he seemed to have what it takes. And I was right. So I don't feel like I'm narrowing the field too much. Of course, I could be wrong.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
More than I can afford to hire the wrong person.
As I said twice already, hiring the wrong person reduces the efficacy of my current employees. Leaving the position unfilled for a while doesn't hurt me, just not help. That's a net gain. Besides, if I fill the position with the wrong person, it takes time to fire them and get the right one. In the meantime, I maybe could have found the right guy (or woman). I'm not really allowed to go a long time without hiring a person, even if I felt I could manage the load. Oddly, I'm also pressured to request more job openings even if I don't feel I need them. I don't know why, perhaps my chain of command is trying to bulk up to look more important?
I have trained several people. Two of my employees are college hires with little experience in production-level software at all, let alone in embedded areas. Another had less than 1 year of experience out of college, but in the embedded area. Another applied for the position despite not quite meeting all the requirements and was hired. He had about 5 years experience in testing/qualification and had bringup experience. The other two met the qualifications pretty much to a T. One of these last two is my only H1-B employee of the six.
One of the six is very good, the rest are great. I'm not going say which, to preserve a little anonymity. Every one of them still had to learn quite a bit in their positions, you generally do not find people ready to hit the ground running.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
"Why not just say a minimum of 5 years? That would increase the probability of finding someone who meet the technical requirements."
It would not. It would increase the probability of an individual candidate meeting the technical requirements. But I'd get far fewer candidates, which is the problem I expressed in the post you are replying to (several levels down now). So I need to give a smaller number so I get more candidates to look at.
"There are plenty of embedded systems that are not comsumer, but are battery operated. In any case, I don't see why not having experience with battery-operated systems is a key issue for a software team, even if they are going to build a battery-operated system."
Yeah, I know. However, in my experience, those people don't know the stuff I need. I work with a bunch of people who design laptops, and they don't really save power in the way I need people to save power. I could explain it all, but I'm not going to. Suffice to say there are things that makers of larger battery powered devices (like cars or laptops) don't know and I need them to know.
"This sounds rather subjective. What were they missing that others were not?"
It's completely subjective.
For starters, the vast majority of them have never actually brought up an embedded system or written drivers for it. They make a system by buying a reference board (or perhaps getting one their company already uses) and run a config script for VXWorks to adapt it to the hardware. Anyone can do that. I need people who can bring up a new board and write the drivers for it and truly adapt the OS.
The other thing they are missing is any kind of power management knowledge. Routers are built for maximum performance, not for min power usage. Telecoms (phone switching) are even less concerned with power. As long as their device doesn't overheat, they don't care how much power it uses.
"Perhaps you do. But it's usually hard to trace a company's performance back to the quality of a particular team. Are the inferior teams generating less money for the company?"
I agree with your sentiment. But just because you can get away with hiring worse people is no excuse to. And yes, my people are helping the company make money directly. My people have been able to do more with less hardware than other teams. And when you have a competitive price environment, being able to make a device with less expensive hardware in it is a big advantage in turning a profit.
And when my group consistently delivers on time and with high quality, my team becomes the go to team. My team and myself were directly responsible for the software for the largest-selling product my company made in the last year and the year before. And so when it came time to who was going to be responsible for the software for the likely best-selling product for my company this year, we were chosen again.
I figure I'm doing something right.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I'm sure there are gaming-specific skills, but I'd imagine a lot of the constraints on the code are not so domain-specific. Too many employers want somebody who has just left the exact position being hired for, and nothing else. As a former co-worker put it, "Have you used this kind of screwdriver before?" (I write good software. I'm particularly good at complex and mathematical algorithms, but I've done it for various domains. I don't know if gaming could use my skills, but I wouldn't have looked in a gaming-specific market.)
how do you propose we actually reach people, if not through those web sites?
If you're looking for a software engineer, look where the software engineers are, rather than where the people who want to work in your field are. Same thing if you wanted to buy a new coffee machine for your break room, I suppose you might find a vendor who specializes in providing coffee machines to the gaming industry, but your coffee needs aren't all that different from any other office, just ask for bids from canteen companies, and the one you choose will be able to find your address, and find the outlet and plumbing in your break room just fine. You'll probably be happier if you choose the vendor who has a selection of herbal teas (if that's what you want) or the right roast of coffee or a machine that makes cappucino, rather than looking for a vendor who has already sold coffee machines to other gaming companies.
- David Chesler
Thanks, I knew that, but just didn't fully explain. I really was not trying to get involved in the whole immigrant process here.
$75k-125k+ salary per year and full benefits.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
We can't hire professionals fast enough (programmers, artists, animators). The years allocations of H1B's vanish in the first two months of the year. There are simply not enough Americans to fill the posts. So what are our options?
One of those options it to look into offshore development. The people exist to fill the seats, but unfortunately they are in other countries and we can't bring them here. So one option is to take the job to them. What does this mean? It means that Americans are still not getting the job. But it also means that not only is that one programming job going overseas, but so is the management, the HR dept, the IT support dept, the purchases of computers, the building, the air con maintenance guy, the DSL bill.
But most damaging is the expertise on how to put it all together. Frequently in this industry (I make games) teams split off from their parent companies and go it alone. When those offshore companies lose teams, those teams are now total losses to the American economy: we are basically funding other nations to develop a technology industry.
I'm British. I wasn't trained here in the states. I came here because I was good. If I were to have to go back to the UK, I would keep doing what I'm doing, just with less sunshine and less money. Better that I'm here paying US taxes and contributing to the US economy and keeping the US Industry paramount.
The programmers guild is unknowingly helping the very wealthy individuals move expertise and experience to places where it can be employed for less money.
The H1 visa program enables talented, amibitious hard-working people from all around the world to pursue the American dream. The U.S. in return gets these highly trained and skilled brains for no cost at all. It is really sad to see some dubious companies preying on the needs of unsuspecting and eager foreigners who only want to work and earn a decent living here. It is even more sad to see organized groups use the devious schemes as examples to bad mouth the H1 visa program. Do they ever thank the thousands of folks who have contributed immensely to the economy? If H1B was indeed only to hire cheap labor, has anyone wondered why we don't see foreign architects, accountants, lawyers, professors, health care workers etc in the same numbers as IT professionals since it is allowed by law? Considering a 5% unemployment rate, 65,000 is less than 0.45% of the total unemployed. What the U.S. should be worried about is not the few jobs that go to these brilliant foreign talent but the day when these people do not wish to come to the U.S. anymore!
BostonGCVictim