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US Senators Question Indian Firms Over H-1Bs
xzvf sends us a link to a BusinessWeek report on the campaign of two US senators to get answers to how H-1B work visas are actually being used. Yesterday Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) sent a letter (PDF) to nine Indian outsourcing firms that, among them, snapped up 30% of the H-1B visas issued last year. The senators want to know, among other things, whether the H-1B program is being used to enable the offshoring of American jobs. "Critics say outsourcing firms, including Infosys Technologies and Wipro, are using the visas to replace US employees with foreign workers, often cycling overseas staff through US training programs before sending them back into jobs at home."
Every time I've seen a company get a H-1B worker, someone else got the pink slip.
H-1B visas are a boon for employers. They not just have the power of a job, but the power to send people packing back to their homeland, so of course, H-1B people end up very docile shills, as they have a lot to lose.
What do they expect them to say???????????
Of course they will say what ever it takes to keep the contracts coming in.
D'OH!
No wonder America is in decline. Look at their leaders!
Hopefully you IT people can clarify this -- the outsource firms are bringing workers here on HB-1's and then *who* trains them? They do, or American companies do? Either way, I don't see how this makes sense instead of training the workers in India.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I'm sure that Indian outsourcing firms are the only companies that do this. IBM, Microsoft, and other U.S. high tech companies that cycle their overseas employees through the U.S. for training wouldn't do this too, would they? Nah. No need to ask the same questions of U.S. companies.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
HELLO!
IBM lays off Americans while at the same time they are investing billions in facilities in India. If that isn't obvious enough.
I worked at a big entertainment company who brought in plane loads of Indian workers for training. They sat in classrooms to learn how to support the systems that we developed. After 6 weeks of training, they were sent back to the homeland and a new batch were brough in; this continued until all workers were trained.
Then, after the training, the company would rotate these folks into roles like DBA, Software Dev'er and level 1 help desk support.
So yes, it is quite real. But the better question is what type of software gets built from a practice like this one?
Honestly, who is? So these firms exploit both, the Indian workers by taking a substantial part of their pay, and the american workers who might be a better fit for the jobs...
Staying one step ahead!
The solution to keeping jobs in the USA is to keep the best of the foreign talent here in the USA. We should be pinning a green card to anybody with an engineering, medical, or CS degree and encouraging them to stay, and bring their families, and start many JOB GENERATING BUSINESSES *here*. Reduce the incentives to go home. Reduce incentives to hire offshore (like onerous medical insurance costs, ahem), and in 10 years, you'll have a nice technopoly in the USA instead of India, China, Russia, etc.
How about this- if a company wants to hire from country X, then they can have one H-1B visa for each corresponding visa that country X issues to allow a US citizen to work in country X. Of course that visa MUST be used. The "prevailing wage" issue might be a sticky wicket, the wage in country X might be too low to attract interest. But if country X is not willing to hire non-citizens because their own people are looking for work, why should the US?
I am an Indian citizen and I absolutely support this inquiry. The companies mentioned here (WIPRO, Infosys, TCS etc) definitely exploit H1b. They apply H1b for their employees assuming they MAY have to send them to US and not based on existing work, at least thats how its is for around 2/3 of their cases. Also, these companies treat sending their employees to US (client base) as an incentive and send only 1 or 2 person in a group and rotate them so as to give a "chance" to all. But since H1b is not transferable, they would have applied for H1b for everyone in the group at the beginning of H1b fiscal year. Every WIPRO/Infosys employee knows this - Just ask around to validate
I really wish there was a limit of how many H1bs these companies can get...
I don't have anything against India or its citizens, but I do so hate having to call some place up with a problem only to struggle to communicate with some guy because; a) He probably doesn't speak English very well and can't truly understand a lot of what I say. b) Everything he knows comes from a script. c) His accent is so fucking thick that I can't understand a lot of what he says. I'd rather speak with a machine in most cases, so long as it's not voice activated...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Aside of the abuse to create cheap offshoring opportunities that hurt both, the US population and the US taxes, this creates a problem: H1Bs ain't a goodwill thing of the US, "generously" granting people from other countries the opportunity to live in the US. H1Bs are first and foremost to enable companies to hire good, qualified people from abroad. No company would go through the hassle of an H1B app to get a new janitor. What they try to hire is simply someone with a qualification or experience that you can't find in the US, or at the very least, not in enough quantity.
In other words, by leeching those H1Bs from the pool, those companies harm the US economy by creating a shortage of qualified workers. And I do see this as grounds for investigation and, if they're guilty of such a practice, applicable fines and punishments.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Can we blame the rampant piracy in Canada on them too?
(couldn't resist, no I don't mean to undermine what you said)
This is just posturing and attempting to look 'good' for the people back home. They really dont care as long as they get their taxes and payola.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wonder if these firms are bringing in people who are capable of properly scanning in or otherwise rectifying the 'upside-down' aspect of 1/3 of the pages in that PDF.
It helps when questioning whether we really need to import skilled technology workers, if you can make certain that you actually have some working for you to begin with.
It is well-known in the H-1B holder circle that, some of the ICC (Indian Consulting Companies) might have cheated and applied for H-1B visas when they do not yet have actual foreign employees to hold those visas. That contributes significantly to the fact that H1-B visas run out so fast every year. I certainly hope the Senators' investigation would turn up something, and those cheating companies receive appropriate punishment.
If we are truly interested in bring over qualified workers, then they should do the following: 1) limit H1Bs to those with graduate degrees from US institutions (subject irrelavent) only, but eliminate all numerical caps and 2) give a green card to each H1B recipiant.
How about the government make good on its claim that the H1B program is supposed to benefit the USA by only permitting US companies to hire H1Bs? Even if it can't stop the issue of American outsourcing companies hiring H1Bs for training, at least the American companies will be paying taxes, and may even encourage companies to stop hiding in Moldova or the Cayman Islands.
Even better, how about understanding how this brain drain thing is supposed to work, and replace H1B's for skilled workers with permanent residencies, rather than shipping trained people back to their home?
Before everyone jumps to concluding that bussiness is evil, capitalism is evil, blah blah blah. Remember where the moral responsibility and ultimate decision rests, it rests with society.
Example, if two patients are admitted to a hospital. The first is a guy that cut himself in his garage, and just needs a few stitches. The second is a gang member that was shot while commiting a crime, and is now in critical condition. The doctor, like a bussiness, isn't responsible for making the moral decision between the two patients, he can't choose to stitch up the regular joe while the gang member bleeds to death.
To bring that example back to work visa programs, they are only a bridge, a bridge between two radically disparate areas, and it's not the programs responsibity to dictate to society. But as we can see here, it's one hell of an indicator of a problem, that of how relativly bad one area is compared to how good another area is.
Instead of focusing on work visas, a symptom like bleeding is a symptom, we should address the cause of the problem. Or we could sling mud, twidle our thumbs, and the bleeding will stop upon exsanguation.
Why is his post marked "Troll"? He's talking about a very serious problem. It doesn't matter who these people are, where they're from, or what they look like. The basic truth is that it's damn near impossible to communicate with these people. And when they're in a job that requires a high degree of communication, we will have nothing but problems! It's especially bothersome when I'm paying a North American company damn good money for tech support, only to have them shuttle my problems off to somebody who my technicians can't even communicate with. I'd deal with some other company, except they all seem to use workers who can't speak English worth a damn.
Look, I did a 2'nd round of BSCS in 1992-1993 (had a BS microbio already). At that time, I was mature enough that I was number 1 in all my classes. But right behind me were Indian's and Chinese. Why was that? Because they worked at it. When I was studying, so were they. I routinely saw American's cheating at their exams (one is now a high up manager in a mapping company). What did it say about Americans vs. other foreigners? That the foreigners wanted their degree while Americans treat it as a given. While you might be pissed that jobs are being taken away and sent to uneducated ppl in other nations (and that is the case), to denigrate those that came here (or to canada) and work their ass off is plain wrong. I have been impressed by the Indian and Chinese culture.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Every (American) company that I've ever seen employing H-1B workers would never stand for them being cycled through jobs and replaced this frequently. Typically, the Indian tech firms provide people who are vetted by the employer and then remain for the duration of their contract and/or their visa. There is no (sane) employer who would accept having contract employees swapped out frequently. Look at the cost of training they would stand to lose.
Unless of course, the American company is complicit in this arrangement. Probably with the intent of moving the work offshore once a suitable labor force has been run through training.
I say: Drag representatives of the US companies contracting for this support and ask them why they would allow the arrangement described in TFA in a contract.
Have gnu, will travel.
Been there, done that, been done.
Sanjay and Kumar come to the us working for a contractor. They are placed in American technology companies. Three months later, the US IT staff is laid off and all the jobs go to India.
The Indian IT companies use the American companies, through the IT staff, to train their employees.
First they on-shore the staff, then they off-shore the staff, then they off-shore the job. Nothing complex to get.
I worked at one of these firms in India before. The common practice there is to file for a H-1B visa in anticipation of future onsite trips. Many hundreds go unused. A number of my collegues got their visas stamped, but never travelled. Some were never intended to be used at all. The project manager told me they are just a backup in case of emergency situations (e.g., an onsite contractor might have to go back to India within short notice etc.) I think this is the main reason behind the recent inflation in number of H1-B applicants. This is certainly abuse of the H1-B program!
These companies should not be granted so many visas. If you want to increase competitiveness grant more visas to foreign students from top universities in the US. Giving out visas to these companies will only get you mediocre people who know nothing about computer science (yeah well, they know a lot about time sheets, status reports and how not to manage a team) - ofcourse there will be exceptions, but the largely the crowd that comes here aren't any super skilled programmers. They would just know a bit of their client's business and a few programs in some subsystem that is written in COBOL.
I am happy to have left that sweat shop in pursuit of my masters degree a couple of years ago. Never wanna go back to them! they do not do anything related to computer science there! it's all plain business. You are not allowed to fix ugly code if you feel like it - the client should be ready to pay for that too !! no smart ideas here please .. every solution to every possible problem is documented (hey we're a CMM level 5 company!) and no process that wassn't used before should ever be encouraged.
Trust me, tis nothing like cutting edge. Far from it. I laugh when Bangalore is called the silicon valley of the East!
These overseas folks are here principally because of a lack of skilled US citizens in critical areas. The ire being posted on this thread is largely misplaced. Instead of ranting about foreigners suckling "your" jobs out of this country, perhaps we should have better funded engineering education programs and engineering-related incentives for prospective college students so we have enough Americans to do the work? Banning the H1Bs will only make it harder to fill these vacancies, which helps no one.
Honestly, I've never understood the sense of entitlement some have about their IT jobs. If you're half as good as you say you are, you should have no problem landing your next gig.
> the outsource firms are bringing workers here on HB-1's and then *who* trains them? They do, or American companies do?
On the comments on Cringely's two recent IBM stories http://pbs.org/cringely, it was American IBMers training the very same Indians who were to take over their jobs. The Indians went back to India, and the Americans were fired (except of course, IBM's generously compensated CEO).
H1B's do depress wages. If the H1B's were not available, companies would pay more for skills in short supply, students would have more incentive to gain those skills, and the imbalance would be corrected. Using foreign labor to fill the gap allows companies to pay less (because supply is increased) and creates larger skill shortages in the future.
The government uses surveys to determine what "fair market wages" are for H1B's and enforces a salary floor. This has the effect of setting a ceiling for local workers. It is another story of government mucking with the free market and making it operate less efficiently (although one could certainly argue that in a real free market there would not be any restriction on foreign labor).
Still, it does help our economy to bring the best and brightest of other counties to work in this one. We just need to make sure there is a cost difference so that companies will only hire H1B's when it is truly necessary. How can the government determine the optimal number of foreign laborers to allow while providing an incentive for companies to hire local talent.
My proposal is to auction off the H1B slots. Hold a closed bid 2nd-price style auction. Every company that wants H1B workers will enter as many bids as they want at the price they are willing to pay for the slot. The top N bids all get H1B slots but they all pay the price of the N-1 bidder. After all of the bids are placed, the government would select N to maximize revenue. All of that money would go into the Federal budget and the companies that won would be free to fill their slot with whatever H1B person they wanted (they would still have to pay market wages for that person).
Wages for local talent would be driven up by the imbalance caused by the auction and new workers would have incentive to learn the in-demand skills. Companies get the top talent that they want. The government gets a new revenue stream. Everyone in this country wins.
most applicants of h1-b visa are indians. the indian companies are better equipped in searching and sorting out the right candidates needed for the job. they also provide extensive in-house training when they can't find a suitable candidate. the end result is that they can find suitable h1-b people while american companies cannot. e.g. infosys has 100k employees in india and has one of the world's largest training center. thus if they have a job requirement in USA, they can easily find a candidate from India who is better qualified than their counterpart in USA and/or is willing to work for lower salary (still meeting the minimum salary requirements for h1-b regulations). A typical American company cannot find an H1-B candidate that easily and it would settle for higher pay OR less qualified American worker.
Same thing happens elsewhere too. Hitachi imports more Japanese consultants then does IBM. SAP USA has more Germans on H1-B than Oracle has.
Like my precedent poster said, not to blame that
they're coming from India or China, because they are BETTER than americans, in general, the median is better, and they work harder.
It's all clearly explained in this video : http://youtube.com/watch?v=RHbGOCAtDjw
Look and think.
I've lost more jobs to L-1B visa workers over the years than I have H-1B.
L-1B workers are paid far lower wages even though they are doing the same work as their H-1B counterparts.
To my knowledge there is also no cap on the number of L-1B visas like there is on H-1B.
Personally, I don't really worry about it either way. I survived before IT, I've survived a few outsourcing layoffs, and I'll survive if IT completely goes away.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Unfortunately due to the H1-B quota being hit on the first day, only two of our three H1-B applications were accepted. This doesn't help anyone, it means that the remaining person has to work remotely for at least a year (and therefore their taxes go to a foreign government), and its a PITA for us and them. Who wins here?
Frankly, any US software engineer that is having trouble finding a job in this economic environment should look in the mirror to see what their likely problem is, rather than trying to blame the H1-B visa program.
Points for effort, but analogies don't work because people say "Whoa dude, but this *ISN'T* XYZ..."
Problem is really pretty simple: American Corporation fires Americans and hires cheaper Indians to please American Shareholders. American Shareholder feels smug and bugs Chinese-made Widescreen TV. American Congressmen purchased with cold hard cash won't do anything to stop it, and fired American employee re-elects him anyway. American Company and Country goes down the gurgler.
H1B Openness? Americans can't get the equivalent for India. Unlike America, The Indian Government looks after their workers.
The moral: Buy Indian Rupees and invest in China. America is going down.
I dunno about you, but I'd be 'training' them as ineptly as I could legally get away with, without getting fired. Training your replacement when you don't have somewhere else to go sucks ass.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
The truth is that the entire H1-B visa program is intentionally used to provide cheap labor from overseas.
This is less true of L-1 and L-2 visas, except for firms engaged in active outsourcing.
If they would just make it easy (as in FAST, 6 months max time) to have people with legitimate Ph.D's move here - without any right of having their "family" move here, other than a spouse - the program might work.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One way to stop abuse is to give H1B only to students who have studied in the US or allow them to apply for green card directly instead of waiting for x number of years on H1B.
make a special visa for lawyers tied to H-1B conditions.
that senators need to write and ask an OUTSOURCING COMPANY if they are using the US visas they applied for to outsource US jobs.
It seems the brain drain has already happened in the senate.
... The problem is with outsourcing - thats where most of our jobs are going, NOT H1-Bs. And there's a big difference. H1B visas are the primary method for skilled workers to MOVE to the USA for good. This means that they come here to raise a family - they bring their knowledge and use it towards making America, their newly chosen homeland better. Then they take their savings and spend it IN America - which helps keep our internal economy running. Now outsourcing on the other hand, takes money out of America and keeps it there. Lets not mix these two up.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
It's easy to bitch when you're losing out, but look at the bugger picture. Why should highly paid tech workers feel they should have protection yet are willing to let factory workers get screwed so that they can enjoy low-cost products?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
H1B's are being abused. I know, part of my job is visa fraud.
There are companies in the US with all Indians being paid less than the going rate that are undercutting other companies playing by the rules.
The intent of H1B tech visas was not to enable the importation of low cost labor, but that is how it being using in many cases. Microsoft, Cisco and Intel benefit from getting the cream from the H1B's and are using the law the way it was intended, but the vast majority petitioners are bringing in under qualified and underpaid people to fill jobs that could easily be filled at home.
Increasing the numbers is not going to create more qualified applicants from the Indian labor pool, it is only going to increase fraud.
As an American software engineer on a team that may be as high as 30% H-1B workers (from several different countries) I have no problem with the program. They are all skilled workers and good people. I should also note that they are directly employed by my company.
I had to work with someone from Infosys (who was here on an H-1B) and it was horrible. I can't say that they were providing skilled labor to the US because the results of their labor didn't demonstrate much skill.
My company is always having problems finding skilled engineers (I should know, I interview enough people and have to reject so many of them) that we are happy to hire them from any country when we find them. This is a proper use of the visa, not simply using it as a benefit or to train people or to ship less skilled workers over.
I agree.
On a positive note though, over 100,000 visa holders are going home this year, and another 100,000+ in each of the next two years.
There were 190,000 visas issued in each of the years 2001, 2002, 2003, before the limit went back down to 65,000. THIS is the single reason why all of the H1-B visas were used up in one single day.
300,000+ H1-Bs is a VERY significant number of the IT unemployed. So this might look good, unless Congress changes things.
Unfortunately, Congress is debating RIGHT NOW on increasing this limit. The current proposals are to bump the number back up to 195,000; either directly, or indirectly through a new quota system.
If you don't want to repeat the years after the dot-com bust, you need to fax or write (preferrably not email) your representatives in Congress RIGHT NOW. That means this week. Otherwise, there's a very good chance that this limit will change upwards, as there's a lot of money driving the issue.
Also, the people driving the lobbying efforts have stated that if they don't get this passed this year, it won't get changed next year, as that's a major election year.
Why restrict H-1B to programmers? Let's open it up to Doctors, Lawyers, Nurses, Police, Firemen and salesmen. Why prefer one professional skill over another? Should increased supply of labor only affect wages for computer people? Why should Bill Gates get a subsidy?
He's right! That's what I wanted to say, but my 'n' key is broken, so it would have come out as: "We do ot eed ay more sad iggers!" Thank you!!!!!11!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'm glad to see this topic getting some attention. On paper it seems hard to argue that anyone isn't getting a good deal because the US company gets work done, the H1B worker gets higher wages than they could in their own country, and the oursourcing company gets a substantial cut of the difference for providing the resource. The odd man out here is the US worker and this is where the government needs to step up and at least make sure everything is kept clean.
US workers just need to understand that employers do pay more for higher quality. US workers have an automatic edge in communication (native English), and in many cases education. In IT, think of a university degree (US) vs vocational school training in a broad survey of IT skills. It takes a while in the workplace for an Indian IT worker to catch up in those areas.
What isn't always clean is the treatment of the H1B worker. I've worked with a lot of Indian H1Bs and I can't tell you how many times I've heard the following story: "I wanted to come work in the US, make money, and go back to India with a pile of cash and buy a place of my own, then once I got to the US I wanted to stay. My employer knows that an H1B is 6 years of holding a green card as a carrot in front of me where he charges high wages for my skills and pays me low wages. During that time I have to do what he wants, work where he wants, or else I will be sent back to India."
To me It seems the first couple of years is payback for the sponsorship for the work visa, but 6 years is closer to indentured servitude. In most cases the worker is qualified for the green card much before that 6 years is up and the consulting company will purposefully delay the processing to make sure that worker cannot leave. It's immigration policy, which is designed to protect the american worker, but there's tons of room for abuse, and big multi-nationals make sure the system works for them, NOT the individual workers involved... which includes both the US and Indian worker in this case.
American educational systems have many issues, and often times I see new hires recieving training on the job that should have been a prerequisite for hire.
That being said, there is a tremendous disadvantage for experienced American IT workers in the marketplace. The reason I see newbies getting trained on the job for things they should have known beforehand is because so many companies pass over quality applicants for cheaper hires.
Case in point: One of my employers cut costs by laying off almost all internal tech support workers... then hiring receptionist level people into the positions. When a remote location called the newbies with an issue that was not covered on one of their bulleted help sheets they ended up waiting several days for a call back from one of the few experienced techs that remained. One retail location that I know of waited three days with 50% of their POS terminals down before someone called them back who knew how to walk them through setting up a simple switch (ie: plugging in a few cat5 cables) until on-site could get to them. I handled many of these complaints.
There is a glut of talented American IT workers. You don't see many of them because they have had to change fields.
Maybe some people feel a sense of entitlement... but many more are pissed about this issue because they are tired of being screwed after spending their time gaining valuable education and experience that has made them essentially unemployable. This is doubly true for anyone over 40.
Regards.
Unless you're an American Indian, the 300 million+ inhabitants of the U.S. are immigrants or had immigrant parents. It's the country of immigrants and they came because they were freer to make a life in the U.S. than the countries they left. Anybody who's driven across the U.S. knows that it's still relatively empty. True statistic: if half of the entire population of the rest of the world immigrated to the U.S., the population density would still be less than England (which itself still has a lot of countryside.) Anti-immigration policy is massively stupid and leads directly to outsourcing; it helps to keep out the best minds, who will boost some other country's economy, while doing little to stop the influx of the least educated from Mexico. (They too should be able to become citizens, but not at the expense of programmers and PhDs in the hard sciences.)
They're not nearly so docile now that H1 transfers are _relatively_ easy to do. Many startup employers here in Silicon Valley don't want to deal with H-1B's anymore because the legal expenses/hassles really add up, but will still hire them for difficult to fill positions. I personally have hired for permanent positions about 10 H-1Bs over the past 10 years--always at competitive wages and never to replace a current employee (it is very hard to find highly skilled embedded/networking software engineers).
Nearly all the H-1B candidates I've ever hired wanted to use it as a path to citizenship--not what H-1B was intended for, but good for the country (at least in my opinion).
I have on occasion reluctantly dealt with contracting outfits that sent us foreign workers (presumably also on H-1B)--these guys did seem like they might be getting screwed by their agency--though they were probably hoping some client would hire them away so they could stay in the US permanently too.
Tens of thousands of the best and brightest engineers in China, India (& the rest of the world) would love to come to the US--permanently. It will only harm the US if we don't at least allow some of the best of the best do so.
If US corporations really wanted the best talent of the world, they would be supporting GREEN CARD applicants and trying to find the best foreign students to cultivate. Or they would US students directly by scholarships and grants. No, they do not want US citizens. Full citizens have too many rights and demands. They want disposable workers which is what an H1-B is for them. Eventually they get to send the person home and ARE NOT OBLIGATED BY A PENSION. It's all about destroying the entire concept of pensions. It's all about corporate greed and short-sighted behaviour not what is good for the country. Bill Gates and his Foundation are taking dollars and stealing your future with one hand, and giving a few pennies back with the other and this apparently makes them saints to the people fooled by their PR.
There is always the story of some company needing a "critical" position filled and no one in America can fill it; and this is used to justify why they outsource.
There are a couple of problems with this assertion. One, 99% of all cases of outsourcing are for positions that any country have plenty of qualified people for the positions. Phone support cheifly, but even more intense jobs like software development. Most of the time, the outsourcing is for something that you know for a fact there's tons of people to do... web programming... they aren't breaking any ground.
Besides, even if... the saying "If it can't be found in Los Angeles, it doesn't exist" is so true; to include skills and human feats. From some kid highly experienced with drive-bys with assault rifles, to an 3D FX guru working for MGM FX studios who programs his own renderer on the fly for each movie FX.
You gonna tell me, that in Los Angeles, there's NO ONE qualified or able to do any job a managers tiny brain can concoct? Man, that is bull and you all know it. Infact, you can practically go to any major world city and it would be exactly the same thing. Paris, Moscow, Shainghai, Tokyo, New York City, London, Cairo...
Secondly, are you looking for "qualified" or "able"? The two are very different, and the two are not indicative of the other in the slightest. Fact is, regardless of formal credentials, you can go anywhere and readily find "practicing able" people. I'm not talking about "On The Job Training" either. If the law permitted, I bet I can go to any US highschool and find enough software developers to start my own company in any field of interest. I'm very confident I can do this. It's one of the reasons FOSS is so high-quality, because we don't care about anything but the ability of the person... if he's 12 years old, or a 40 year old cryptographer working for the NSA for the past 20 years.... a well done patch is going to get accepted in total disregard to any formalized, claimed, proposed "credentials". Simply... "He's right, and this works. Congratulations."
But, even if you were looking for specific accredited credentials. Most of this tech crap spawned in America. It's kinda hard to believe that India (who doesn't have Microsoft, ATI, Nvidia, INTEL, Xerox, Zenith, Apple, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Boeing, Lockeheed Martin, a government space program,.... etc etc etc etc...) would have ANY one trained in a technology completely unknown/practiced/implemented by American Engineers.
So, any time I hear "well, there aren't anyone around that can do the job", they are liars. Not even lazy, they are plain lairs to even announce such a stupid idea.
hmmmm I seem to have lost my job 3 years ago to WIPRO. They came in and were going to just do a little software development for some older no longer supported apps. Then came some WIPRO Unix administrators then some ORACLE DBA's. next thing you know massive layoffs and many jobs are being done overseas. Although the company swears that they had to lay off everyone because of lack of funds and that WIPRO was the only answer to survive. Worked out well for them!! 3 years later the Unix admins are back and so is part of the oracle team. I think all the developers held a grudge and only 1 or 2 came back.. WIPRO is gone from what I hear only 1 or 2 of them are there still since a 12 hour delay and a language barrier to get anything done turned out to be a not so good of an idea... They had to sell the company and the CEO ran with his tail between his legs. HMMM who saw that coming!!!
MISSING - Sig file. 2 years old black and white and very funny. If found please email me.
In every outsourcing arrangement I've seen, the Indian 'resource' that replaces the American worker is significantly lacking in talent. I've seen two of these outsourcing deals first hand in two major US companies. In both cases, the Indian staff providing support was probably 50% as "smart/valuable" as the American worker being displaced. I would characterize these guys as having the skills of a "computer clerk". They know the syntax of some programming language, how to run a compiler against the code, how to copy and paste code, and how to get a program to work by trial and error. I have not seen one person with deep technical skills. The reason some of these arrangements work is that there's typically one or two key people left behind trying to manage the support staff that is doing the day-to-day work. These key people end up having to hand-hold the staff in India. In addition to those key people from the company, a project manager is brought in from one of the Indian companies. This is where the H1-Bs are going in a lot of cases. These visas are being used to bring in the Indian project manager that is enabling the outsourcing.
I don't see these arrangements working out long term unless the skill level on the Indian workforce is improved. There is no question that the cost of maintenance is reduced. But I would argue that in most cases so does the value that a company gets out of a system. If the indian companies get to do development work, the system that is being maintained is just a house of cards waiting to crumble.
Why is it that we don't see the next Google, Apple, Linux coming out of India? Why don't we see major indian software companies competing in the global market? If the talent is there, why aren't they creating the next breakthrough product and make millions/billions in the process?
How about we just require that H1Bs get paid 1.5 to 2 times the prevailing wage. This would stop companies from hiring them to save money over local workers. It would mean that if a company hired them, they really needed them.
The problem would go away if people could get a green card pretty much at the same time they got a tech job.
The reason why is these employees would be subject to market conditions and they could leave this job for one that paid more.
Companies would hate this because h1-b's are essentially indentured servants. If you mouth off, you're fired. As soon as you're fired, you're sent back to the 3rd world.
Well, yeah.
so whats wrong with reducing costs, and improving bottom line. A company has an obligation to its shareholders to make profits.
I too am an Indian citizen, and (hear! hear!) I am in the USA on H1-B visa. I am undoing my moderation just to get this out.
The big companies mentioned hear are _not_ sweatshops. (I am not saying that there is no sweatshop in India, but not the big ones.)
As far as the economics work, these companies actually prefer to have more people working from offshore rather than onsite. Reason is the margins. A person working from offshore gives them more margins than a person working at client site at, say, the USA. If you do not agree to this, please do your calculations - I am not going to explain it.
The reasons these companies take most of the share are:
1. Size - we are talking about companies employing more than 50000+ people. Naturally, they will have more number of visa holders among the available pool.
2. Client requirements - most of the clients in the USA still prefer a sizable number of outsourced workers to be working from onsite. So, most of the cases, the indian companies do not have a choice, and have to provide necessary numbers in order to keep the project.
Bottomline - these companies prefer offshore work more than onsite, it contributes more to the margins resulting in better net profit, it not more revenues. But it does not play out that way for various reasons.
I am not justifying the huge numbers here, but before jumping to conclusion that these companies are sweatshops, see the other side too.
There are several other bad practices on H1B's. I don't understand how a SINGLE person can apply for more than ONE H1'B ? I know people who applied for three H1B's and he got all three of them!! Software consultancies are processing the H1B's by taking a fees, you don't have to work at all for them. Therefore, I would recommend for a more strong laws to control these and other widely prevailing malpractices like fake resumes, consultancies taking more than 50% of the actual pays, etc. etc. I would be surprise if the US governments and senators don't know all these loopholes and how it is being exploited.
I am a US citizen and a former Microsoft employee. I am very glad to see that these senators are investigating the H-1B visa program. Microsoft makes use of this program and is always very vocal about increasing its role. I hope they will have a chance to investigate how Microsoft uses the H-1B and L visa programs and what sort of work environment that creates here in the US.
I worked at Microsoft from January 2001 until May 2007 as a software design engineer at the corporate headquarters in Redmond, WA. Most of Microsoft's products, such as Windows, Office, Exchange, and SQL Server are developed here in Redmond. If you walk through the halls where the programmers are working, you will see that the majority of the workers are not from the US.
While at Microsoft, I interviewed job candidates for programming positions. Microsoft HR provided screened resumes, and my team interviewed and made hiring decisions. Microsoft HR publicly states that they make "diverse hiring" a goal. Race and nationality never are and never have been factors in my hiring decisions, but I was very rarely presented with American candidates, which is strange given that we are in America. Almost every candidate was a foreign worker. The positions we were trying to fill are not very unique that we needed to look outside the US - these were typical programming and testing positions. Microsoft has thousands of such positions, and the job functions performed by foreign programmers do not differ from those of American programmers.
In some of Microsoft's product development divisions, including one that I worked in for 5 years, foreign workers also participate in the hiring process as interviewers. Some teams are comprised almost entirely of foreign workers, mostly from India or China, from the bottom up through several levels of management. It is to a point now that many foreign workers are the ones conducting the job interviews and making the hiring decisions here in Redmond.
Being an American on a team with mostly H-1B visaholders is discouraging at times. As an American you want to live your life, work hard, and make your workplace the best it can be. Your coworkers are more concerned about navigating their way through the immigration system and ensuring that they keep their visa sponsor happy.
I don't have any ill-will towards H-1B workers, rather I feel sorry for them because of the leverage that their employer has over their lives as their visa sponsor. My gut feeling is that employers like Microsoft are either directly abusing the H-1B program or indirectly benefiting from its abuse. The program allows them to hire thousands of employees and relocate them to a place where they have no citizenship and can have their sponsorship revoked at any time. This naturally makes them more attractive to hire than an American who is already here and trying to get a job. Without the sponsorship component of the visa, this would not be possible.
Parent's post basically goes: I am an Indian citizen and I absolutely support this inquiry. The companies mentioned here (WIPRO, Infosys, TCS etc) definitely exploit H1b... And it gets modded informative!! Can someone please point out the information in the post?. The post itself is fine, and contains some anecdotal evidence (the rest of the post) but still it gets modded up -- for towing the line!
Now if you look at the history of parent's posts he's usually been ignored by the mods, or modded "Troll" (for totally non-offensive posts) etc. The reason? Most of his posts seem supportive, or mildly supportive of Microsoft. Of course, you have to be a troll if you support MS.
It's become really clear to me that
- hardcore anti MS
- hardcore anti DRM (even legit uses of it included -- ppl should be free to pirate any shit they want to -- everything should just be based on trust)
- hardcore pro Apple
- hardcore anti outsourcing, especially if its India/Indians in getting the jobs
- etc..
Screw you guys, I'm going home..There's the "We got to the moon first, so we must be better" argument. But that ignores the fact that 99.9% of engineers in the USA had nothing to do with that.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You are right, this has been studied. IT and EE H-1Bs on average earn significantly less than people employed in the same occupations. This is true even when you control for geographic locations and occupation cathegories (as narrow as the OES survey will allow). Here is a link to the only such study that I am aware of:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1305.html
I have worked very heavily with many Indians (and am about marry one). I have liked their ethics at school, work, and home. Not all are brilliant CSer/SE, but they make up for it with hard work. one , who was a student of mine (I trained all over the USA at one time), had an interesting comment. He noticed that I liked the indians (even if their accent is the hardest for me), and told me so. But then pointed out that what I was seeing was the best that India had to offer. He went on to say that back in India, the vast majority of the coders have less than a 2 yr. degree. And in fact, their 2 year degrees are far less than ours. Based on some who have come from India, I tend to agree. I have seen a few be good, but I have seen more be pretty bad. But I do hope that they straighten out the H1B. I would like for the good coders to remain here in the states.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You are right. As an H1B, you are definitely second-class, and it's horribly high risk. Should your position be terminated for any reason, legally you and your family must leave the country immediately - and I mean the same day. The logistics escape me. There used to be an unofficial 10 day grace period to leave the country, but the "terrorism" crackdown eroded even that.
So, buying a house is extremely high risk. You pay social security, but cannot benefit from it. Your spouse cannot work. You are tied to one employer, who has complete leverage over you. Even with a benevolent employer, it is no fun.
In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible. - Ursula Le Guin
Last year, I took an undergraduate Labor Economics seminar and wrote a paper on H-1B program's impact on domestic labor force. You can find it here:
http://panic.berkeley.edu/~akopps/paper/paper.pdf
I looked at the correlation between the relative supply of H-1B workers and the wages of IT workers. Surprisingly, I found no significant correlation between the presence of H-1B workers and labor market outcomes. However, surprisingly, if you look at the impact at the impact on the wages of only male workers, then there is a slight but a very clear (statistically significant) 'impact' on their earnings. Even more surprisingly, if you also look at the correlation between the earnings of female domestic workers and the relative supply of H-1B workers, then there is a POSITIVE impact on their earnings.
Of course, I concede that there could be a A LOT of problems with the methodology I used and with the data employed in this study. My methodology was basically constrained by whatever data I had access to. However, if we assume for a moment that the data and methodology were more or less reliable, then I suspect that what's happening is that the IT labor market is somewhat segregated by genders (someone needs to test this hypothesis). E.g. the female workers tend to be employed in occupations that are complimentary to occupations that are dominated by male workers (e.g. QA, testing, etc). If this assumption is correct, then the H-1B workers (who are predominantly male) might indeed depress the earnings of male domestic workers a little bit, but at the same time the increase supply of male workers boots the demand for occupations that tend to employ female IT workers. So, if you look at the overall effect on earnings, there is no relationship, but there is clearly something going on once you break down the earnings data by genders.
I was originally on a H1-B visa (still in the US on a different visa).
I can tell you that I am paid well above market rates. In addition to that my employer picked up the bill for relocating my family and possessions (not a cheap exercise). If a US worker had been available, even at an extreme salary premium to market rates, it would have been cheaper to hire locally.
Certainly go ahead and fix any loopholes that are allowing exploitation of the system, but don't get that confused with companies that are properly using these visas. Blocking legitimate use just hurts US companies.
You should also recognize that H1-B is a non-immigrant visa. It is valid for a maximum of 6 years and then the person has to go home. I have never understood that. It just encourages outsourcing (we still can't find any decent local talent and you are great at the job so just keep doing it from your home country)!
Whatever you do with visas it does not help fix the crumbling under-funded education system that is preventing a sufficient local supply of talent. The "free market system" isn't going to drive a solution if the bulk of your population can't afford the education that is a pre-requisite to supplying the IT market with labor.
In my home country anyone, no matter what the financial means of their family, can be educated at a great university (assuming you pass the competitive entrance tests). If you don't have the means to pay the government steps up and funds the bulk of your position. They will even fund most of your living costs if needed! You have a small, very manageable, "inflation-only" loan at the end of the process. That loan only has to be repaid once you are earning a proper salary.
Since I have been here I have, at times, been involved in hiring. I have seen very few decent resumes from the US even after going out and intentionally searching for them. Yes we are offering great pay and projects - the supply just isn't there no matter what incentives are being offered. Certainly I did come across a fair whack of people that did no preparation for the interview and couldn't answer basic coding questions if their life depended on it.
No, every time an H1B visa is issued, God kills a kitten.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Same here. Three of us got replaced by 10 Indians on H1Bs. The firm that placed them there made some slick presentation of how 10 of them were cheaper than three of us. We had to train them to replace us. But it turned out they couldn't handle it, because not long after we were let go, they ramped up to 16, at more than what they were paying us to do it. I'm pretty sure this is what the placement firm planned all along, but they had to come in with a sale presentation that made them appear cheaper. Paul
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
They should just auction the visas. Then companies could bid on them up to the value the worker really has. Although I think that they should just have an unlimited number personally.
And there's also the reality of high level industrial espionage, and how much cheaper it is to steal R&D rather than develop it in-country over yonder someplace. And you also have the added benefit of having stealth agents in place in case of any incidents in the future that might require some pro active "action" or sabotage to take place. Family still resident overseas is a great inducement for someone to play ball with the intel services of said foreign nation when they get that little phone call in the middle of the night.
Note: I am not a neocon or a xenophobe, far from it, but I am a realist and a long time student of both past and contemporary history and high stakes geopolitics. I am not saying all H1Bs et all are all part time spooks, but how many do you think there might be, given the sheer worth of the latest high tech access in academia and critical infrastructure business? 2? 20? 2000? 20,000? Feeling lucky? And to make it worse, US companies are paying for the privilege, and all the short sighted Cxx people and clueless "investors" think that by selling off the crown jewels somehow that will work out in the long run.
No, it will not. It makes a very tiny number of already rich people even more money, and that's it. There are no other benefits to it. If the way they insist to do business with outsourcing entire industries and insourcing en masse including the flood of illegals was working as they said 20 years ago, we would still be the largest creditor nation, we would still be exporting just as much of a *variety* of goods, we wouldn't have lost industry after industry, we wouldn't be facing all these huge deficits in everything from pensions to healthcare, etc etc, etc.
Every single thing they said back then has been proven incorrect, disastrously so, so what are we to believe what they are saying now is any less untruthful or inaccurate? It's the same liars and conmen still pushing this fairy tale economic system, which should be classed as the biggest fraud ever committed, and qualifies as a total war on the middle class in the US, both blue and white collar. And if one can follow even just the most base headlines in the economic markets, there are any number of more shoes to drop, and soon. The handwriting, as they say, is on the wall and it is in BOLD AND ALL CAPS.
People with no knowledge of history shouldnt get moderator points, lest they mod facts down as flamebait.
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Their should definitely be more protections for H1B workers though, they should not have to live in fear anymore than an American should. Perhaps a complaint system could be created that would be government controller ensuring that the companies they work for would not know.
Better yet, we could just get rid of them. Problem solved, no new programs required.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Bloody indians. I see more of them on my train everyday. They are the second most populous nation in the world.
IT is a very, very fast field. Stalling for 4-6 years for what you propose to take effect means losing the edge on all fronts of it. Already indians have a massive software presence. What you said would just detoriate u.s. position further, and add more countries next to india that are ahead of u.s. or will get ahead of u.s. in volume and later in quality. Maybe you dont know but pay rates for indian developers are also rising - as the cheap labor in that market has also became somewhat saturated.
Read radical news here
good morning. business has been always about business. not only in i.t., but in all fields of business and trade. if you were trying to do "science" in a non r&d unit, you were not fit for that position at all.
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Yup, been there too. But when GE asked me to train my replacement I walked. Fsck GE!
...or at a low enough salary.it seems to me that new generation i.t. workers in the u.s. have expected the initially skyrocketing pay rates of the early 70s and 80s to be valid for their own generations too, DESPITE the increasing supply of i.t. workers from WITHIN the united states. hence, their wage expectancy have remained high, instead of adjusting to the high supply situation, disproportionate with their qualifications.
hence when an american company seeks someone for a position from within the u.s., they find candidates that demand much in contrast of their qualification and position in question. hence, they try to import someone from abroad who would accept more reasonable payrate for that position, leading to complaints that "not enough skilled workers" and "employers not willing to pay enough" complaints at the same time.
lets face it - we are not in 70s, or 80s anymore, and even not in 90s.
whence do i know - we are having EXACTLY the same issue here in turkey, but in ALL fields of engineering, sciences and such.
at early 80s, and 90s, there was a huge need for people in any technical field. countless new universities, technical schools and the like were founded at all levels, and the capacities of the existing ones were increased.
people who enrolled in these thought that the wave would ride the same years later. it has not came to pass like that - now there are zillions of qualified workers in all fields, but there are not enough jobs to give them. hence, we have an inflation of skilled workers here, which leads to drastic drops in wages and still high unemployment.
downside is, in a free market, one shouldnt decide on past. one should envision future - hence when enrolling in a program one should think how is it gonna be 10 years later, not how it is today. noone gave guarantees to those enrolling in colleges that they would be guaranteed the wages and positions they wanted, and noone has to do it either. in a free market, you invest and get your ROI or do not get it.
Read radical news here
Let's see: They can do as good a job for less money? Yeah, they get the job then. Happens in every sector. Cheap wages and outsourcing have come for all kinds of industries whilst you engineer/software nerds said NOTHING, did NOTHING. You bought cheap imported cars, food, etc, and put your fellow citizens out of work. Now they're coming for your jobs and you get all hissy. Tough. Call me when you want to start practicing what you preach. Until then enjoy the monster you created.
Great Deal for IBM, they don't have to pay American wages or Benefits like medical.
Since the jobs are going to India, that's less money spent in our economy.
Yes, I hear we don't have enough college people in Computer Science Majors.
Actually there's lots of talent, but now they are going into other careers.
Jobs are very competitive. And why would college students want to enter a field where
they're competing with a country offering to do their job for slave wages.
Politicians love that soft money from special interest groups. I call this a race to the bottom. Someday we will lose our technology edge. Lets see how our government responds.
accurately describes the relationship between your salary and your peers
You can't tell a subcontractor that they have to keep specific individuals working on the contract for your company unless you want to risk being legally found to be the "real" employer of that individual. Service levels, schedules, costs and penalties for failing to meet one of those terms are all you can dictate.
The closest you can come to controlling who the subcontractor keeps on your contract is to have terms that require them to obtain approval when someone (generally only a "key" person) is replaced and even then you can't permanently deny approval.
Companies that produce products:
- hire highly skilled workers locally
- sponsor H1-B visa for skilled workers from outside US to work in the US
- transfer jobs from US to their own subsidiary to reduce expenses if skills-cost ratio makes business sense
- transfer jobs to contract-companies for short term contracts or if subsidiary is more expensive
- so far, can't find any fault. But then, they also
- hire consultants from other companies that have in-turn brought people over to US by sponsoring H1B visa. (This is where the problem begins and exactly where the senate is focusing. Kudos to the senate).
Contract companies:
- are multinational and so can issue H-1B visa for someone from outside US to work in the US.
- usually place consultants into parent-companies. Actual work gets performed in the US. These workers get totally screwed by the contract-companies. They get paid less than those H1-B workers directly hired by the parent-company. The parent-companies do not pay much attention to this difference officially ("well... it is not our business.. it is internal business between the consultant and his employer...") Some good managers actually do care and they take immediate action. Some smart H1-B workers know this and renegotiate their positions as well. These contract-companies make unethical and irresponsible use of the H1-B program.
- By hoarding H1B permits, they make it impossible for other, usually smaller companies sponsor H1B for really skilled workers when such a talent is really not available in the US
I am not going to debate who is more skillful (a citizen, a permanent resident, H1-B-worker sponsored by the parent-company or the H-1B-worker sponsored by the contract-company). That is a different topic of discussion.
The truth is there is usually a big difference between two H1B-workers working in the same parent-company in adjacent cubicles in the US, but then their employers/sponsors are different. I have never come across any difference in salary levels between a local worker and a H1B worker sponsored by the same employer of the local worker.
For the duration the work is performed in the US, the wages must be the same as what the parent-company would pay. Unfortuatenly, the contract-company usually takes a lion's share and the H1B-worker gets screwed. Like I said, only the good managers notice this and negotiate the contract before hiring the consultant. Many are somewhat ignorant or don't care enough to confront the contract-company (deadlines to meet or real shortage of workers.. whatever excuse it might be).
US$100k is a nice wage but not spectacular in New York or the Silican Valley due to the high cost of living in those areas. A similar position making US$70k someplace like Atlanta might result in more disposable income, however.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
This is a good economic idea but a horrible societal idea.
/. before, but go fuck yourself.
Take their best people away and keep them. How will those countries ever build up?
The first world has been practicing this idea forever and there's a latent reverse colonialism in that idea where we plunder the most valuable assets of other countries, built up by their own meager resources, only to deprive those other societies of them in their prime years.
I have never said this on
All have used H1-B visa contractors to force out American workers, not to mention skirt ever-so-carefully around the WARN regulations and 'shave the grey' once again. StorageTek was busted for this one, sure would be nice to see SUN get socked in the yarbles for the rapine of StorageTek. Also would be nice to see EDS shown up for the electronic sweatshop they are.
These companies are just the big fish. There are numerous smaller companies with even more nefarious modus operandii. What they often do is to hire Indian workers as H1-Bs, and then farm them out to American companies. The role of the middleman is simply to act as an incorporated company that applies for H1-B visas. Note that nowhere in the process is a match between skills and job requirements sought.
These middle-men (called "contractors", counter to the use of the same phrase in American parlance) will often take a chunk of the paycheck. This is also why you will see conflicting reports about whether H1-B workers are paid equal to or less than their American counterparts (the company pays equally; not all employees receive that entire amount.)
Because of this misuse, there are a lot of folks I know who, despite their U.S.-earned Masters and Doctoral degrees, are being denied the possibility of working with a U.S. company, typically those that they have already interned at, and demonstrated their capability as well as irreplaceability w.r.t. the requirements of a particular job.
I totally support an upper limit on the number of H1-B workers a company can hire, expressed as a percentage of the U.S. workers currently on their payroll.
Maddox has something to say about illegal aliens. Specifically:
Get some balls people. If you're too chicken shit and you can't cut it, then maybe it's you who doesn't deserve to live in America.
I think I agree. There'd be fewer illegal aliens if the US would just let the people work here legally. It's not really so bad that they're stealing someone's shitty wal-mart job away from them, and at some point, they'll quickly see that $6 an hour goes nowhere and want more money anyways. Unlike people born here, they don't suck the life out of the country for 18 years while they get "edumacated" for free. They come here with hands ready to work right now.
Think of this: All those factory jobs the US lost to Mexico, China, etc might have stayed if you let more immigrants in. If those factories stayed you'd have a lot more people in the US with better jobs, because you can't have unskilled labour throughout the factory, quite a few skilled trades people, managers, marketers, salesmen, etc have to exist there as well. Those are good, solid, well paying jobs you let another country steal from you in the name of slowing the tide of immigration.
Nuts, I say, absolutely nuts.
Thank God I live in Canada where almost everyone is an immigrant. Immigrants are what made Canada the great country it is. And we have a lot more services for these people to "leech" from than the US, including such modern wonders as free health care and real, honest to god, welfare.
sent a letter (PDF) to nine Indian outsourcing firms...The senators want to know, among other things, whether the H-1B program is being used to enable the offshoring of American jobs.
If they give an honest answer, I'll pour curry onto my balls, and bite them off for YouTube.
Table-ized A.I.
americans u have always a career path! u too can become burger flipping managers at mcdonalds! indians won't take that job away from u, be thankful to us. u can have it. see your future is secure there is always mcdonals whre u can work.
Nobody said anything about skin color or even said the things you accused us of. I wont address the inaccuracies made in your post since they are not relevant, but do note I take great historical exception to your claims.
The point is simple. We, as Americans, wish to save our skins. I harbor no ill will towards you or your breatheren. We simply want to maintain our economic security. That probably means denying Indians a chance at an American job. It has nothing to do with hate or ignorance. It is merely looking out for ourselves.
Labour cost are like all economic elements(precious metals, currencies) Preventing importation of labour and outsurcing drives labour costs for businesses ARTIFICIALLY high. Labor costs should be free floating and be determined by international rates like gold , oil e.t.c ...YES I am one of those seeking entry into US on a h1b.
"Drawing closer to world domination, keystroke by keystroke."
The outsourcing question is not about cost savings at all. Its about pure greed. The people who make decisions don't care about anything else except how much money they can stuff into their pockets. They don't care that they are destroying a countries work force because they have enough money to leave if things get bad. The concept of national pride and decency tend to go away when you can do and get away with anything you please. If people don't start opening their eyes and recognizing this it will be too late and these individuals will rape and plunder our country and then leave when it suddenly gains third world status taking their money and treasures with them.
curry boyz ruulsz!
I worked in Boise Idaho on a project for Albertsons and I can without doubt say that WIPRO abuses the H1B system. They pull villagers that have never used a PC before and send them to boot camp and have them gobble up all H1bs and then rotate them in and out on projects. Also from there they sneak over to Canada and get other work permits/visas etc. The hole thing is a mess and a nightmare as there is no accountability. Some of them get credit cards, run it up and take off back to india. I was born/raised in the US and they keep nagging me to join their company not on my talent but because i have no visa issue... why so they can deploy me anywhere they want and bill their client like crazy!. Thats all they care about... they will take anyone with a heartbeat that can get a visa and throw them on projects just to run a bill up for the client. Infosys is no different. No matter what you do,,, you can not compete... get all the training, schooling, experience ,certs you want but a cheap h1b that was thrown through a bootcamp and just knows the basics will always get the job before you because they are cheaper.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out. I'd rather see the youth of this country inherit the economic freedoms of their parents than to have their futures ruined by a bunch of opportunist mercenaries. America owes you nothing. You don't make this a better place.
You can argue all day long as to whether outsourcing or H1-B Visa programs are "good for America" but you might want to ask yourself is it good for you, Joe Programmer / Developer / Scientist. There was a time in our country when people said "What is good for GM is good for America."
There is a shortage of skill IT workers at the moment but there is absolutely no shortage of smart people in the US. Because of the shake down after 2000 and 2001 in the IT industry a lot of folks left the market and a lot of kids stopped enrolling in IT curriculum. Smart people who are looking for a paying profession do not want to spend the energy to get an education in a discipline that has an unknown future due to the threat of foreign labor whether real or simply perceived. If the pay is excellent and the future bright for a discipline then people will make the investment from an academic and work experience set prospective. Some people will always go into a field because they enjoy the work regardless of the pay. But for many other kids who are facing high tuition loans, an extremely over-inflated housing market you have to ask the question. Why should a young, smart person take the chance on IT if he or she perceives their job will job be "outsourced to India?" Bill Gates was asked this exact question when he went around college campuses a few years ago telling people to get an education in Computer Science and IT related fields.
This is simply supply and demand. There is more demand (jobs) than supply (workers) at the moment and companies don't want the wages to go back up to the pre-2001 levels when life was extremely good for an IT worker. So, to hold down your pay companies are supplementing the market with other strategies. It is in their right to do so there are consequences if they choose to outsource projects. There are a lot of hidden costs and many, many risks to outsourcing. But, bringing workers over on a H1-B is low risk because the company manages that individual on site just like any other employee. And there are many levels of middle men making money along the way on this H1-B worker. The other benefit the company gets is an individual who does not participate in free market economics since they can not easily shop around for another H1-B sponsor and demand and receive more money. They are locked into their employer and the employer knows this. This again keeps the supply and the demand low which reduces costs for companies due to reducing in salary as well as reduced turn over.
If you want to change this then people must organize and spend money on lobbyists to protect our interests. The companies are spending millions protecting their interests and Washington sets the policies.
How many of you get spam daily touting a "xxx position for a direct client"
Answer the following
H1 Status
Rate
Willing to relocate
You get the email 5 minutes after they call demanding you send your resume ASAP and want to know to the minute when they will get only to never hear from them again.
I now know which senator to forward the emails to
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
cheers, http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
And in many cases, at the university level, instructors/professors who insist that students do good work are getting punished because actually failing students reduces retention (keeping students around) which is the prime motivator in many universities.
Guess who, penrodyn!-))
/. and get back to work or you'll be on the next boat to Bangalore.
Now quit posting to
Here's a clever trick one company I worked for performed:
1. Place an advert for a job on Monster.com, a newspaper and Craigslist.
2. Collect all of the resumes submitted for that position, reject them all for _some_ reason. This is supposed to be required in order to be compliant with the law.
3. Hire an H1b at a lower wage.
The whole structure of H1B's is designed to force the cost of American labor down thereby dismantling the middle class.
No one in the US with those skills? Why don't I believe you?
Obviously you do. Otherwise you would hire a US citizen to do the work!
I've been coding for money for 41 years. I've done paradigm shifts from assembler to FORTRAN and COBOL, then Algol, thence to Pascal and C, had an unproductive affair on the side with LISP (really hard shift unless you can embed yourself in a live LISP culture, IMHO), thence to C++, picked up Perl & Python, currently working on growing a functional head using Erlang.
I'd already done the interpreted dance with UCSD Pascal, *and* the train-a-code-monkey dance with COBOL, so I just skipped Java.
I fundamentally didn't care whether or not Sun could survive MS, or not. Now we have MS with a (fully-export) standards-compliant C++, life is good. Thanks, Gosling and Sutter. Life is good.
Not knowing java is probably a somewhat expensive expression of taste. But it's *good* taste!
None, zero, zilch, zip of this continuing education was paid for by my employers of the moment, who had about as much loyalty to me as I had to them. A fact which I understood, accepted, and dealt with. Go ye and do likewise.
--
phunctor
Dear Sir with the agenda to justify Outsourcing, A recent Duke University study proved that you are dealing with myths. There IS NO Shortage of IT talent in the US. Considering only Native-Born American citizens, there are more than enough highly-skilled workers in the United States to satisfy the current and future demands. Instead, the main reason for outsourcing is TO SAVE MONEY. Companies are not doing it to get access to talent--they already have it here but they don't want to pay for it. Having managed several outsourcing projects over the year, I can also confirm that the vaunted technical ability of all Indians is a myth. There are many, many Indians who are terrible, sloppy programmers. I know because I have had to rewrite their code too many damn times to count. In companies with experience outsourcing, they never expect any quality from the offshore teams. They cannot provide it.
Under current law, presence in the United States without valid status is a civil violation, not a criminal act.
Hence, their presence in the U.S. is not criminal, and they are not criminals.
Please educate yourself on matters that you wish to discuss.
There are plenty of skilled Americans, but guess what? Anyone who is any good already got a job, and multiple offers lined up.
Hiring a citizen is never a problem, outbidding Google or Microsoft to hire a citizen who can do the work is the issue here...
With 300,000,000 people in the US and 6,000,000,000 in the rest of the World, that works out to 95% of the brains belonging to non-citizens. In other words, statistically, the absolute majority of smart people are foreign.
GP is correct, if you are an American without a job, you either live in the wrong area, or you just aren't as good as you think you are
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
The spin. The CANARD. The wool they pull over your eyes.
This all relates to companies hiring illegal mexicans.
The Greedy companies main expense is the worker. Hiring illegals and Indians helps their stock & bottom line.
We was having good jobs before dem Indians came wid there poor English ayand there thick accsaints
Or you're not covering the expenses for them to get to you for the interview.
Or you're not offering to relocate them.
Or you're not advertising the position in enough places and ways.
Or you're not including a name, voice telephone number and e-mail address in your ads.
Or, like M$, HP, Ill-Begotten Monstosities, Bank of India.., you've got a bad reputation, so those who are bright have learned about you and stay clear. To overcome that, you're going to have to apologize for past misbehavior, start paying and otherwise treating current employees very well for a time in order to retain them, and hope that people forgive you.
Interestingly, amongst all this shortage whining, help-wanted print advertising is down to less than a third of what it was in 1987, according to the Conference Board, which has been tracking it since the 1950s. Unfortunately, there's no pre-depression base-line for on-line help-wanted advertising to tell whether it's above or below pre-depression levels.
You point out something else, important, meadandale. There's far too much body shopping and far too little hiring. If you tell someone you only want them to work for you for a month or 3 months or 18 months, they're going to need a lot higher hourly rate.
People have caught on that body shoppers cut total compensation by not paying for vacation, bench time, education/training, pensions, etc., and that total life-time compensation for bodies shopped is a lot lower than for those with real jobs.
You might have gotten away with upping the hourly by 10% or 20% and cutting total benes, etc., by 80% back in 1999, but not since 2002. The word is out. People know that if they're not getting paid vacation, paid down-times, training, etc., they need to cover those things out of their hourly pay, so the hourly pay needs to be closer to double what it would be for a FTP employee.
And people are wise to the fact that some body shoppers try to scam people into believing it's long-term employment, then suddenly pull the rug out from under. They need some security, some means of restoring the balance so that if you do jerk them around, they'll have enough t tide them over until a real job comes along.
Hey, when US is insisting on all the countries to accept free trade agreements and WTO policies(which are beneficial to US corps), you have to open up your job market. Whatever money we are earning in india is eventually going back to the US corps in terms of our spendings. There is no reason to feel that US is magnanimous in providing this idiotic H1B visa which is nothing but a contract, in fact markets like India deserve much more.