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Tech Sector Expansion Blunting U.S. Job Outsourcing
xzvf writes "BusinessWeek summarizes a new report from the American Electronics Association (now known as AeA) that they think mitigates the effect of outsourcing on IT employment. US demand for tech workers is through the roof, the highest it has been since the boom of the late 90s. The tech sector added some 150,000 new jobs 2006, and there are no signs that interest will flag in the near future. 'There is so much global demand for employees proficient in programming languages, engineering, and other skills demanding higher level technology knowledge that outsourcing can't meet all U.S. needs. "There would have been a lot more than 147,000 jobs created here, but our companies are having difficulty finding Americans with the background," says William Archey, president and chief executive of the AeA. One culprit is the dearth of U.S. engineering and computer science college graduates. Second, immigration caps have made it difficult for highly skilled foreign-born employees to obtain work visas. Congress has been debating whether to increase the numbers of foreign skilled workers allowed into the country under the H-1B visa program.' "
There's your problem. Most employers don't want to hire entry-level engineers. They figure they're just training you for your next job. It really sucks searching Monster and finding hundreds of 3-5 years-of-experience listings and zero entry-level listings.
The good news is that once you land your first gig, within a couple years you'll be sitting pretty. I haven't updated my resume in about a year and I get interview requests on a weekly basis. If you live in a good market, those same companies that stiffed you in the past will be all over you like stink on a monkey.
You harvest what you sow.
When you sow the message that the path to gleaming limos and the high life is through thug culture and pimping out your women, and not through intellectual pursuits or even good old-fashioned productivity and invention, then that's the kind of youngsters you breed. And the effect on the nation's future in advanced technology is then 100% predictable.
Cool high tech doesn't appear by magic out of nowhere. You have to be highly educated (or at least self-taught and highly motivated) to work at the advancing edge of technology, and that requires a large amount of skill and deep interest in the topic. The message delivered by the telly is that those things are extremely uncool, unhip, and frankly "really dull, man".
But it's a free country, right? So people can broadcast whatever they want, even messages that are contrary to our self-interest?
Sure. But eventually you lose that precious freedom if you forget that real wealth (not just money) comes from progress and invention, because you'll end up in servitude to those nations that understand that you have to safeguard your future freedoms too, not just your current-day ones. And that means making education and technology and being intelligent cool in the public eye.
There is a solution, and it's compatible with our current concepts of daily freedom. We need special interest group and lobbying corporations and a whole raft of think tanks to be giving the message of "tech and education is damn cool, and very profitable" to media, business, politicians, the to blessed public too, alongside the output of MTV and the RIAA delivering the message of self-destruction.
It *is* possible. But it will require some effort on our part.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Increasing the number of H1-B visas won't address an important additional problem that the summary doesn't mention: increasing unwillingness of foreign tech workers to come to the U.S. because they have no rights there. Granted, some of them may be coming from countries where they have fewer rights than American citizens do, but once they enter the U.S. they have no rights whatsoever: not habeas corpus, not due process, not anything.
I've worked in the U.S. in the past, but would be very unlikely to accept a position there since the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, whose passage makes clear that the government believes that no constitutional protections apply to non-citizens, as it explicitly suspends habeas corpus for non-citizens suspected (for any reason) of terrorism. Given that the constitution explicitly forbids congress from passing any law that suspends habeas corpus except in cases of invasion or insurrection there is no reasonable interpretation that can be put on this except that foreigners have no rights in America. All it takes is one baseless accusation of terrorist activity against you, and you're out of luck.
Given that this has actually happened, it is not at all unreasonable for foreigners to want to stay away.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Most of us burned int he dot com fiasco gave up. Myself and probably at least 20 friends all lost our jobs while some exec got rich with his golden parachute. We've all since moved on to other things, some, like myself, went back to school and switched careers. Others went blue collar so they could spend time with family. The truth of the matter is the industry is corrupt as hell. I still remember my companies President walking around the office bragging how he was going to sell the company, fire us all, and retire in Tahiti. I had multiple CEO's in a matter of 6 months, each one trying to pimp the company off to the highest bidder. They never wanted to build anything, make anything, or provide any security. It was, and still is, about a quick buck.
I am a highly skilled IT person. I used to make a lot of money but have settled for less than a third of what I used to make simply to avoid being on call, working 18 hours a day and putting up with management that doesn't manage anything other than their own checkbooks. I would rather have a life, some self respect and dignity. Fuck IT. I'll never ever do that professionally again.
I wrote this essay on my personal blog here but will duplicate it in this thread: Most of the complaints about offshoring service jobs center around the lower quality of service received. When a customer and a customer support representative have a language or accent barrier, the experience is already swinging into the negative. While this is a valid concern, there are more backlashes to offshoring than thick accents. I'm going to tell a story of a young man with no experience and no degree. Through basic computer knowledge and motivation alone, he started out as a level 1 tech support representative for a big modem company. This was a placement through a contract job and when a bigger networking company bought the modem company, the contract ended. (Later, the whole Skokie, Illinois building was sold and support was moved.) From there, he got several other fortunate contract placements that built his resume and experience significantly. From Level 1 tech support, he grew up through higher technical positions, then low to middle management positions, and mid-level to high-level engineering roles. Over a decade later, he's doing well for himself as a systems engineer for a very stable internet services company. While the lack of formal training and education have held him back a couple times, employers found his on-the-job skills and real-world experience to be very valuable. He's also a blogger. In fact, he's writing this post. I am sure I am not the only example of someone whose success is wholly attributed to "climbing the ranks." A decade later, there are more computers, gadgets, and connectivity systems than ever and it would be a great breeding ground the next generation of engineers... Except for one thing: There's no ground level. Entry-level CSR positions are now overseas, so anyone attempting to get into this industry must go into debt for a college degree. Four years and $80,000 later, they have to hope they can land one of the few remaining positions in the tech industry without any real-world experience. From there, it's a long, hard road to the higher positions. And what of the higher positions? What happens when the engineers do not have the experience and history of "face time" with end users? Do the designers know what the people want? Is there some fundamental disconnect that happens when engineers and developers are so far removed from customers? If you ever dealt with Windows Vista's security center, you may know. If corporations continue to destroy the ground floor of the technology base, we will have no more American engineers. Please, tech companies, bring the technical support and entry-level jobs back to America. It shows loyalty to your consumer base, dedication to quality service, and most importantly, a logical path for career growth for the next generation of geeks.
Sadly, this is true.
A lot of companies offshore do have employees with fake resumes. I know people from several "top" offshoring companies with resumes that look good but are full of crap. In a lot of countries (including India), your ability is gauged to be proportional to the length of your resume - you will find people with 4-5 page resumes and it gets ridiculous. If you have several years of experience and/or are a PhD with a godawful number of publications, two or three pages. Else, just give me a page long resume and nothing more. Of course, I am in R&D and usually people are sometimes asked to submit their CVs, which can be as long as they like.
Secondly, these companies (HCL, TCS, Wipro, Infosys) hire engineers from all over the place. For instance, I know people who studied material sciences or marine engineering working as IT contractors or consultants. How much sense does it make? Of course, the reason they are hired is because you assume that having an engineering degree is representative of some level of analytical/quantitative skills. Which, of course, isn't always true because their hiring is a function of their academic performance. Once again, it boils down to the fact that academic performance != skill, which becomes especially true in an goal/achievement-oriented culture like India.
On top of this, a lot of companies are known to add people to more than one project at a time. So, while you are technically a part of the project, you do not really do much. At the end of the day, your resume mentions several projects over a frame of just a few years, but you haven't really deserve putting them there.
Add all this and you have the average resume from one of these companies looking way better than the average US kid. Any surprise then, that these kids aren't getting hired?
(I'm not saying that all of this is true for everybody; obviously there are exceptions and some are better/worse than others, but there is definitely a significant percentage of people for whom this is true.)