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Which Google Should Congress Believe?
theodp writes "In Congressional testimony last month, Google's VP of People Operations told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration that, due to limits on the number of H-1B visas, Google is regularly unable to pursue highly qualified candidates. But as Google stock tumbled in after hours trading Wednesday, Google's CEO blamed disappointing profits on a hiring binge and promised Wall Street analysts that the company would keep a careful eye on headcount in the future. So which Google should Congress believe?"
The lack of qualified candidates doesn't mean that Google can't hire people with less/no talent.
For all we know they hired 10,000 janitors and have trouble finding programmers.
Whichever one makes the larger campaign contribution.
Duh.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Seriously, just because Google says they hired too many people doesn't mean that they don't also believe there's a shortage of qualified people because of immigration. There are a lot of other jobs at Google that don't involve development, and their statement to wall street might make sense if you view it as, "yeah, we hired too many people, including under-qualified developers."
I'm pretty sure they're still allowed to hire as many Americans as they want. They were in front of congress saying they couldn't hire all the foreigners they wanted due to current immigration law. Seems to me to be apples and oranges.
And by "qualifications", they mean, "willing to work for pennies"
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
Hire a few capable workers or hire a ton of incapable workers.
It most certainly is not wise, but perhaps that's what Google is doing here - Hiring a ton of incapable/unqualified workers.
I didn't realize IT companies weren't allowed to hire American workers.
Google spent oodles of boodle hiring the entire kit and caboodle while the managers went feudal.
If they think congress will buy both stories, they lost their noodles!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Maybe they couldn't get the smart A+ guys, and hired two A- guys to compensate?
I'm not defending Google here, I'm just pointing out that the two statements are not totally contradictory. Technically, all the google blog said is "There exist candidates that we can't hire (but would like to) because of immigration laws".
The first one. Wait! No, that second guy. I don't know! Third base!
The one that isn't evil, duh!
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Google is evil, congress is evil, BUSH is evil. I dunno why anyone would believe anything any of 'em say.
I don't see the conflict: Google hires a bunch of people and complains they can't get everyone they want, later decides hiring a bunch of people was a bad idea. So?
But they should only believe the evil Microsoft. ;)
Hee!
Dog is my co-pilot.
Or maybe use google fights?
If I hired mostly unqualified people I'd have a dent in my profits too. And I'd be complaining about the difficulty in finding qualified people. The original submitter mistakenly thinks this is either/or when there's nothing mutually exclusive about both claims.
While that's theoretically true, it's funny to see everyone here rushing to embrace the "American programmers are incompetent! We need more immigrants, now!" position if that's what it takes to defend Google's honor.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Google should be punished for not being able to predict the future.
Lack of highly qualified employees?
That's what happens when you mass-hire Stanford frat boys straight from the classes. The highly qualified programmers have programmed applications in the real world for a number of years and not just applied what-I-just-learned in non-real-world environments.
Have to resort to overseas? Well, good for you, Google. Get screwed both ways, I hope you get as many foreign developers on your projects as possible. Might as well start the outsourcing.
Whom are you quoting here? Can we, please, have a link to anything like this and the evidence of it being "embraced by everyone here"?
We do. American programmers are qualified alright on average, but there aren't enough of them.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
There is no shortage of IT workers, especially good ones, but companies make more profit off of young workers and foreign workers they can treat like slaves. See To H1-B or not to H-1B?. And in the minds of many experienced project managers, quality of worker's intelligence and experience are more important than having 10,000 interchangable drones as Google seems to want. See Smart and Gets Things Done.
technical writing / development
Like any public company - Google's learning to deal with keeping a steady growth in-order to keep its stock healthy. While they may have hired too many people recently - those are too many VERY WELL PAID people compared to what they could get for the same money if they could bring in H1-B workers. The H1-B worker is looking to come to America and start a new life - he/she is willing to sacrifice a few years worth of inferior pay inorder to get settled with a Greencard.
So yes, Google CEO blamed their hiring binge - what he really meant was "We're paying too much in wages and salaries - more than we'd like to anyway".
_Vishal www.squad9.com
Hirgin binge could be happening by gutting employees of other companies... cough.... cough... yahoo. Which means that there are few companies fighting for the same employees but unable to fill all the positions they have available -- the highly qualified ones. So both statements (the one to the Congress and the one to the shareholders) can easily be true.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I'm beginning to hate Slashdot!
The two are NOT mutually exclusive. Who publishes this shit on /.?
Mind that that was a Google project mixed with Stanford exclusivity. Otherwise well explained.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
From Google's perspective, getting non-Americans who are still in the top 1% is obviously better, since it means they don't have to lower their hiring standards. The difference between the top 1% and the top 2% might not be huge. The top 2% might be able to do everything the top 1% can do, just take a bit longer. If this is the case, then Google are going to need more of them. They might only need 9 from the top 1% for every 10 from the top 2%, for example. If this is the case, then the majority of the top talent could still be American, Google could still need more non-American developers, and they might have hired more people than they wanted to.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Of course both are the same Google - and its not talking out of both sides of its billion-dollar mouth. If Google could hire more H1B workers in its "hiring spree", then it would cost less, and therefore profits on the same (or even somewhat less) revenue would be higher.
Google, like other American corporations, wants to hire H1B "guest workers" because they're cheaper than citizens or fulltime residents. Guest workers subsidize their American work time by spending more time back home in their foreign country, which usually costs less to live in than the US. So they can ask for lower pay than their American competition, who have to live here full time. With our higher cost labor protections, environmental protections, and overall higher quality of life - for most everyone - with its higher cost.
So Google wants to build its brand and infrastructure on the vast, longterm American investment in the Internet and creating most of its indexed content. It wants to tap the PhDs that Americans have invested in producing to make a less-valuable foreigner workforce more productive. And it wants to charge American corporate customers the money with which it pays them, while pitching expensive equity to mostly American investors. All underwritten by foreigner labor, even though there are plenty of Americans available, though at a higher price.
I'm not surprised: that's business. It's also kinda evil.
--
make install -not war
Actually, I'm going to say that American programmers are generally not going to fit the needs of google. In the job market I'm in right now, there's a shortage of developers of any kind, not just good ones. This can lead to developers not getting as much education as they would have otherwise gotten. However, I also know a programmer from Russia who's getting a master's degree to be able to get a work visa (he's already got an educational one). When he's done, he'll fit the profile of a google developer better than I do.
This isn't to say that foreigners are better than americans, it's to say that foreigners will generally fit the profile of a google developer better. Even if you assume they're equal, Google, with its requirements of advanced mathematics on its search algorithms, will need to hire from a much larger pool to get the qualification they're looking for. It's not a prejudice against Americans, just an understanding of the trends that both groups are going through.
Ironically, if more work visas become available, less immigrants might get advanced degrees. It may be counter productive in the end.
One of the Americans was a friend, and not an applicant answering an ad.
Nothing wrong with foreign born labor. But I find it sad that this country doesn't seem to be producing engineers the way it used to.
I know that Slashdot is a second home for all the protectionists who fear competition and hate the idea that foreigners should get a shot at jobs they (usually fancifully) imagine would go to them, but I'll say this anyway: why on earth should Congress have any say in who a fully private company chooses to hire, let alone in what citizenship its employees need to have? To read this submission one would think it were a given that politicians should have a say in such matters, as if companies based in the United States had some sort of obligation beyond paying taxes and obeying the law to others with American citizenship, but what is the basis for this belief?
"American companies should give their jobs to Americans!" is a nice bit of populist sloganeering, but underneath it lies nothing more than xenophobia and an overblown sense of entitlement as far as I can tell: if Google can make more money by hiring foreigners - whether because they're cheaper or they're just better than most American candidates - then that is its prerogative as a profit-maximizing entity, and those who don't like it are free to start their own firms running on other principles. Google doesn't owe any of us a living, and the predictable wave of support for this instance of Congressional meddling in affairs beyond its rightful oversight is especially hypocritical in view of the usual "live free or die" rhetoric common on here when it comes to matters of intellectual property, state surveillance and the like: Slashdotters are perfect examples of the fair-weather libertarians who give libertarianism such a bad reputation - protectionists, statists and foreigner-haters who only care about "freedom" interpreted as ripping off entertainment companies, taking drugs, dodging taxes and (mostly fantasizing about) engaging in kinky sex.
So which Google should Congress believe?"
The one under oath, rather than the one issuing a press release.
N/T
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Is this a new era for Google of "Do as much harm as you think you can hide", like other companies I could mention?
Note to Google top managers: If you are adversarial, you are showing that you are incompetent.
But since you're insisting on having a thoughtful discussion of this instead: I submitted a story a few weeks ago on what I thought was an interesting response to Google -- auction off H1-Bs. If the issue is *really* ultra-specialized positions that can't be properly filled with Americans, then let the people who need them the most put their money behind that need. It makes no sense to have this huge vat of interchangeable first-come-first served visas.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It's possible for there to be "not enough H1Bs" and "too many people hired" if the company simply hired more people outside of the US. Google has offices in Europe and Asia - perhaps they increased the staffing there because they couldn't get the people they wanted in the US.
"Brown University? We have one of those in Providence!" -- Outside Providence
I wonder if they can't set up a satellite office/company in a country that is more friendly in terms of worker visas (Cananda or maybe Google's own island-country) and then "out-source" all their development to that other "Google" company.
If you think about it....allowing more H-1 visas would actually help to save more American jobs as those foreign hi-tech workers will live here and buy things, eat at restaurants locally (it's not like they will be flying back to their country of origin just to grab a bite to eat), buy services (phone, TV, etc.) locally as well as pay American income and sales taxes which gets pumped right back into the community.
If not, companies will have no choice but to out-source or move those specific projects overseas if they can not find enough qualified workers locally, and that means the govt loses on tax income.
I think the investors have it right.
Say you hired 10000 programmers but you let them sit around without producing anything. That is more spending and no growth. What the investors are saying is "stop doing that". Makes sense to me.
A lot of speculators out there expecting amazing things from google. If google can't deliver they take their money elsewhere, no one is punishing anyone.
Dear United States Congress,
I'm finding that I'm unable to pursue high quality search results.
I propose that Google's patented search technologies be licensed to foreign competitors at fixed rates (far below the current market value).
This may affect Google's ability to earn profits, but all I care about is getting high quality search results.
Thank you,
A Concerned Citizen
Time and time again you guys use utterly crappy logic! Whether or not Google can hire the people Google desires has no bearing on if they are hiring at all. If anything they are hiring two or more people to replace that one person they really need. This egg carton has more than one space for an egg!
Google wanted to hire cheap H-1B people, instead they had to hire US Engineers. That is the reason for the salary costs that Wall Street was so concerned about.
Microsoft is bypassing the whole H1B CF by building a satellite facility right over the border in Vancouver. Canada likes money.
Google need only hire as many wonks as it needs in the Great White North. Canada has very liberal immigration policies compared to the US. All you really need is a job offer, English and French language skills, no criminal record. Weighted salaries are about the same as the US but you needed worry about bottlenecks and shortages either.
How is this a serious question? As a business owner, my business is expanding. I'm seeking qualified individuals from within the USA and from overseas. Good talent is hard to find. I am also hiring 2 low-end employees for each 1 high-end educated employee desired. The two I do hire will only produce .75 of the expected output of 1 good employee. This sucks.
It saddens me to say this but work ethic is sorely lacking in America today. The college professors I interact with on a daily basis confirm that the kids entering college today have not recieved a proper education, their brains are mush. THey aren't stupid, they just have never been challenged and grown and developed their brains. They can tell you about Global Warming, yet nothing about American History. They have been seriously ripped off by an educational system that has constantly lowered standards in order to get everyone passing the standardized tests.
To a large extent, kids these days are seriously lacking critical thinking skills. You want proof? Well, lets just watch the replies to this post and see how this gets moderated.
-joel
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Google is being entirely consistent. In one case, they argued that there should be more H1-Bs so that they can hire more qualified people. The other, came in response to questions from analysts that wanted to know why Google's net profits only increased $204m (to $925) while gross profits rose $1.41b to $3.87b. Quick math will show that the gross grew by a much larger percentage than the net. Analysts have gotten so used to Google thoroughly beating expectations that when their net results only met expectations, they wanted an explanation. Google gave it to them, saying that they hired lots of people. Nowhere did they say that they hired too many people or that they shouldn't have hired those people.
The two messages can be combined to give the message that Google wants to hire even more people which will hurt their numbers in the near term but lead to a healthier and more profitable company in the future. There's nothing inconsistent about that message.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Remember this gem?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU
sfw.. presentation on how to get around hiring US workers..
...so google hired an infinite number of monkeys instead.
I'm torn between two options:
(the humorous option) "You just think there's some big conspiracy to keep you down because you're an arrogant substandard programmer who thinks you deserve to be paid six figures"
and
(the honest option) "Yeah... I know exactly how you feel."
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I can't believe no one has figured this out. The two statements do not contradict each other.
There is a labor shortage in the IT field. That means companies have to pay each worker more $$$ to attract and keep workers. So google hired a bunch of people during this labor shortage, causing them to shell out lots and lots o' cash. If they could import some foreign workers, this would have helped relieve the labor shortage, which means they could have hired the same number of workers for a lot less.
labor shortage does not necessarily equal unable to hire anyone. It just means they cost a lot more.
Why can't the story submitter figure this out?
'nuff sed
It looks like much of the hiring was done in the marketing area, according to Advertising Age: Google's Hiring of Ad Folk Blamed for Missed Earnings Expectations
What Google is probably talking about in Congress is their trouble hiring engineering talent from other countries. Before you all start bashing marketing - Google is in great need of good marketers at this time. The engineers have done great work (obviously) to date. But have you ever noticed how many really cool features and applications Google has that only geeks know about? Google could do a lot better getting the word out to the larger public that there is more to their company than just search, maps, and GMail. They could use some good marketers.
At any rate, hiring engineering talent is probably a bit of a different challenge than hiring marketing talent.
That said, I'm a Google stockholder and I think they've been careless in their hiring and acquisitions. Their claim that they've been making only superb hires is dubious at best.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Which Google shoudl Congress believe? Neither one. I wouldn't trust Google as far as I could throw them, since they choose to install their crapware malware/spyware-style, piggy-backing on the install programs of unrelated software, with the options to install Google Toolbar and Google Desktop (a truly awful program) *pre-checked*. My mom keeps asking me why Google crapware keeps getting installed on her computer; it's because she installs other software and accepts the default settings, which included installing Google crawpware. Drive-By installs.
Google == Enron. Google's stock price is way overvalued, they provide zero guidannce for their investors, do not offer detailed breakdown of their revenue. Smoke and mirrors.
You have? That's called "anecdotal evidence". Anyway, those people you met (whoever "certified" them) are already gainfully employed, aren't they? Which means, if Google were to hire them, their current employer would'be short. Which just reaffirms, what I said: "There are qualified programmers, we just don't have enough of them". And I like that personally as a programmer (although Google chose not to hire me for some reason after 3 interviews).
But I feel sad for the foreigners, who — through their talent and/or hardwork — deserve no worse a job, than I can get, but are restricted by America's protectionism...
It is far easier for Google et al. to hire these people than to fight for visas... Google opened an East Coast office just to get access to wider job-market, for example. They don't have a recruiting post in every little town, but they certainly are looking among those already in the States. There simply aren't enough people... Unemployment is "too low".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Hospitals are facing a massive shortage in RNs. There are plenty of qualified candidates. Hospitals spend massive amounts on staffing services (with everyone getting their cut), while their nurses have to do double shifts with too many patients. The stress chases off RNs, so the hospital spends more money on staffing services and the bureaucracy that comes with. It's a vicious cycle, one we're beginning to see in the tech sector. They offer crap wages and benefits so they need to go abroad, making the wages and benefits even crappier. The only people that benefit are the "VP of People" that has to fill out the paperwork.
I went to a pretty good Uni, but maybe 20% of my CS class has programming jobs now (myself not one of them). The prospect of going to work somewhere to make widgets while dealing with the shit from an MBA boss that thinks programming is Office macros, all for crappy pay. Simple economics. Competence in this industry is rewarded with a dead end job and shit pay driven down by the visas. Notice how few visas they request for MBAs. They run HR so they just pay themselves more at the expense of the people actually making shit for the company. Until the nerds of the world (or at least SV) revolt against the useless HR people I'm not going anywhere near the industry.
Role/Responsibilities/Rewards
Management = crappy powerpoint presentations = good money, career advancement, golf on weekdays
Programming/engineering = making the stuff that pays for everyone's mortgage = crap money, dead end job, cubicle farm, overtime
Tough choice.
I love how they say the H1s are based on market salaries. H1s alter the job market by increasing the supply of applicants, reducing the "market rate."
I don't see many actual racist comments on slashdot that aren't modded down beneath everyone's threshold. Perhaps you are confusing resentment over one's job being lost to someone else with racism.
examples:
"Man, I lost my job to some guy in india. Now people I still know at the company complain about 12 hour delays in communications as well as overhead of having to do everything via emails with no face to face." = a complaint that is not racist
"Man, those pakis ought to go back to their mud shacks" = racist
AFAIK, H1B visas have to be paid the same as other employees, and extensive documentation is required to show that this criteria is met.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Google has been opening up offices in Prague, Australia etc etc. So they could be on a hiring binge while still not hiring enough in the USA. That gives them a lot of benefit of the doubt though...
Its always in these companies interests to have a larger pool to pick from, so that they can get more qualified workers cheaper.
Couldn't they just hire the foreign workers in another country, leave them there, and have them collaborate over the internet?
Isn't that what Google makes possible.
I don't see the problem, if they really want talent.
Google is supposed to have as one of it's principals "do no evil". Bah! They have become just another big money-grubbing corporation run by the accountants. If they WANTED the BEST talent of the world, they would be supporting higher immigration quotas. Push Congress that across the board we need more entry into the US of skilled people. You know the old-fashioned way of doing things where people fill out a form, and they are allowed to emigrate here and find a job. INSTEAD we have the exclusive promotion of a guest worker program that is tied to a specific company. If you lose your job you get deported. Why is NOBODY publicly pointing out the truth in what they are after? Cheap workers!! Why are the majority of applicants listed as skill-level 1 (out of 4) if they are after the best & brightest? Because they are lying! Bah!
Google's main search engine doesn't take that many people to implement, extend, and run. About 50-60 smart people really make Google search go. A few hundred more take care of the software systems that support search. It's not that big an operation.
Most of the new hires at Google aren't on the search engine technology side of the business. Take a look at Google's job openings. Only a few of those jobs are anywhere close to the guts of the search engines.
So google says it could not hire highly qualified engineers due to h1-b visa issues. One could read this as "We're at the point where the people we want to hire are from XYZ country, and those are the highest qualified applicants. Those applicants which are not 'highly qualified' do not require visas."
I as a US based engineer am being told that I am not qualified. Or that b/c I require a higher salary (being based in the US), have a higher TCO.
Google continues hiring engineers to work on a collection of "gee whiz" projects that don't make them any money. Some pundits like to say there is greater scheme behind the madness, but I think it a lack of direction plain and simple. They got lucky with their search engine and the add revenue it provides, but the majority of the projects as I said, don't make any money. Are the projects neat? Sure. Yet Google remains a one-trick pony for all practical purposes and it is just a matter of time before wall street figures that out and their stock corrects. It is also interesting to note the frantic pace at which the founders are selling off their stock; I think it's because they know they will eventually be found out.
"The mitigating factor is that the typical H1-B immigrant is not carrying the historical debt load that the US Government has saddled the typical American with"
Um what the fuck are you talking about? Apart from legal judgments, I can't think of an instance where the government saddles anyone with any kind of debt.
People saddle themselves with debt. Stop blaming shit on the government already, your stupid fucking act is getting real old.
YOU did it to YOURSELF and now you want to bitch. Sorry sister, no fucking way do you get to pooch your life and get a pass because you pick a notorious anti government website. You did it, now fucking own up to it.
God I hate you blame-everyone-else-for-my-personal-failings motherfuckers. It's no wonder you're homeless, you're a fucking loser.
"We do. American programmers are qualified alright on average, but there aren't enough of them."
Generally, when you have something that everybody wants and it's too cheap, it creates a shortage.
The natural economic solution to this is to raise the price of American programmers until the shortage resolves itself.
Easy. Believe the non-evil twin.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
+1, Truth
Can you cite some examples of the specific users who flew into a frothing racist rage regarding immigrant workers and then cheerlead when in the case of Google?
I think what you are seeing here is a case of people with own individual opinions being blended together to form what appears to be an irreconcilable platform. There's no clash in the statements when it comes from different people. Sort of like how Americans are pro-war and anti-war. Americans can be pro-war and anti-war because the individuals that compose it can pick either direction.
When this story hit /., I had promised myself that I would not read it and spoil my Friday. I am an H1, and like every other H1 story out in the media, this will also have tons of comments telling me that:
/. comments about us being hired just for being cheap foreign labor.
/. community, which prides itself on being a community of generally sane, smart people (after all, we believe in FOSS, right), plays into the hands of Lou Dobbs or that idiotic article from information week that someone quoted above. Why can we realize FUD as being so when it comes to Microsoft but fail to do the exact same thing when it comes to matters of hating on aliens. Why is it that when it comes to illegal immigration, the illegals are "just good people who are trying to get on with their lives" but when it comes to someone you might have to compete with for a job, low-blows fly thick and fast.
1. I am an inferior code monkey.
2. I am cheap foreign inferior code monkey.
3. I should live here, pay taxes here, buy a car, buy a house, generally contribute to the economy here, but at the end of the day, being a cheap, foreign code monkey, go back to whatever "Bumfuckistan" I came from.
But then again, I thought I should do my part and try to at least respond to all the jingoist, and sometimes borderline racist people here. I say that because I counter them every day at work. Not to say that everyone here is like that. Most of my friends are americans, and good friends at that. My girlfriend is too. I am no stranger to the culture. And I like it just fine here. I did my higher education here. Paid through the nose for out-of-state tution. Now I am working to make that back, and have a good life in general.
Going back to some of the comments, I do know I make more than some of my counterparts (American citizens). I know this because from time to time, I would be involved with hirings and am aware of the various PO's for some people. I find it very annoying to hear time and again on
What I don't get is why the
I just wanted to write "yet another reply" to all these comments to make myself feel like I did something constructive. Now, I suppose I can get back to being a cheap, code monkey again.
Google was unable to hire sufficient numbers of qualified (i.e. third world minimum wage) programmers. As a result, they were forced to employ overpaid local talent who spent most of their day posting snotty remarks on /.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's something lots of us can't imagine on our own, so it helps to hear it from you.
I, for one, am all for both cracking down hard on illegal immigrants while simultaneously making it much easier for people to come into the US legally. I especially think the H1 program should be expanded.
An American, before all else, should be known as a person who is fair, competitive on a level playing field, and glad to have other people becoming hard-working, excellence-minded Americans. This is whether people consider themselves "just American" or Indian-American, Chinese-American, German-American, or whatever. This is not how we're known right now, and it's because too many people in this country would rather slide by on the accomplishments of our ancestors than contribute to keeping America the shining beacon for hard-working, honest people worldwide that it should be.
BTW, "Bumfuckistan" is just damn funny. I don't mean to disrespect the countries in central Asia by saying that it's funny, but it just is. From someone in a smallish city in a "fly-over state", it's much the same egotism I see that you are seeing. But both terms I find humorous.
Hate to say it, but most people are willing to change jobs for competitive offers.
This also assumes something that seems to be the trend lately. For new hires, if you aren't there now, you will therefore never get there, so you're out. Forget that if you brought the top 2% in or even the top 20% in, breathing the same air as the top 1%, those people are probably pretty likely to elevate pretty well in the ranks by observation and exposure to that expertise.
Nowadays if you want to expand or change specialization, your best bet is a lateral transfer or a new daring project.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
is why Americans are so against H1B visas. You're getting skilled labour for free!!
Take my friend who works for Microsoft. Canada spent twenty years subsidizing his education (and other things like health care). They paid for all his schooling, they paid 50% of his university education and gave him thousands of dollars worth of interest free loans. So lets tally it up:
Total Cost to Americans: $0
Profit: >$100 000 in taxes paid (he's been working for a few years)
You can never have enough smart, ambitious people!!!!!!
That was my first reply to you. Ever.
No wonder you're a fucking bum, you're stupid and a loser.
Tramp said:"I am also convinced that you have some intellectual ability of your own."
You are correct. Sadly, the same cannot be said about you.
Bum said: "It has become clear, over the last six months, that you do not like the topics which I choose."
No bum, the only thing that's clear is that more than one person thinks your posts are what you smell like, garbage. Take that as evidence of the quality of your input.
Loser said: "It has also become clear, over the last six months, that you will never relent in your demonstrated goal to follow up nearly everything which I post"
LISTEN UP YOU STUPID FUCKING HOBO I'VE NEVER RESPONDED TO A SINGLE POST OF YOURS BEFORE. What kind of fucking idiot are you that you spew out that steaming pile of a post, the whole time thinking I'm someone I'm not.
Vagrant said: "It is also clear that you have not made a single original post of your own "
Nope. That's you assuming I'm one of the other people who hates you. You're wrong bag man (but not about the hating you part, that's new today though, and totally on you).
Derelict said: "Wouldn't you like to make Slashdot a better place?"
Yes, but cutting off your hands so you can't type is illegal, so that's out.
Maybe you could kill yourself and make Slashdot better for both of us? I'd toss some coins on your grave if you did. (and by toss coins, I mean "take a steaming dump")
How's that for my thoughts, you fucking vagabond?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It doesn't really matter who you are. The content of your post tells me that this is obviously NOT the first time you've posted in response to me or, if it is, you certainly haven't missed reading nearly everything I've written over the last six months. It gladdens me to no end to know that you take such a deliberate daily interest in the things that I have to write. Somewhere, at some point, what I have learned just may make it through your haze of ignorance.
Thank you for visiting Slashdot, yet again, to post a followup to my writings.
I am convinced that you are not a stalker. I am also convinced that you have some intellectual ability of your own.
It has become clear, over the last six months, that you do not like the topics which I choose. It has also become clear, over the last six months, that you do not like what I have to say about those topics. It has also become clear, over the last six months, that you will never relent in your demonstrated goal to follow up nearly everything which I post with an anonymous reply filled with derision, scorn, disdain, challenge, and vitriol. It is also clear that you have not made a single original post of your own but, rather, you exist only by coattailing on thoughts which I express.
So here's your big chance: Sign up for an account, watch the front page, and post some original material or original thoughts of your own. Then e-mail to me a link to your particular post and I will make an honest and sincere effort to demonstrate for you what a constructive, and perhaps even a constructively critical, response would look like. Through a possible miracle it may happen that we could reach some sort of reasonable discourse rather than you simply following every post that I make with more of your challenges, disdain, scorn, derision, and vitriol.
Wouldn't you like to make Slashdot a better place? I sure would. Here's your chance to demonstrate that you have any capacity at all to express your own thoughts.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
All the talk of "do no evil" means nothing to your typical control freak manager. And as these back-stabbing jerks find each other they team up to "protect" each other from the bad normal people. Over time, the bad drives out the good - and another corporation started by starry-eyed college graduates becomes a nest of scum-sucking criminals.
Against that background, their push for more H1B employees is no surprise. The push is on for higher profits, the greatest expense they have is payroll. Can't cut back on staffing, so they'd like to cut back on the size of the worker's paychecks. The H1B program is perfect for them; nice cheap foreign workers - and those workers are virtually slaves to the corporation due to the terms of that program. Control freaks are happy, bean counters are happy - the stock holders are happy, too.
I see some people here saying that there is really a shortage of qualified workers - that's just plain wrong. I live here in Silicon Valley and I know many, many well-qualified and very experienced IT workers who are unemployed and looking for work. If Google or any other company in the valley made a good faith effort to hire local talent they'd have no problem finding all the people they need. In other words, THE SHORTAGE OF SKILLED WORKERS DOES NOT EXIST. It's just the lie they tell so that they can enslave a few more foreign workers that'll work long hours for very little money - under conditions that would be illegal if they weren't H1B workers.
"Do no evil" sounds good - but "Make more money" is the rule they really follow.
A friend of mine was offered a job by Google but couldn't get an H1B.
So, Google hired an American instead?
Are you kidding? They just hired him overseas. Google is actually saving some money overall because overseas salaries are lower than California's. The US is losing talent and tax revenue, and US engineers are now competing against a lower salary level.
So, why did they try to get an H1B for him in the first place then? He wanted that. It's another part of an offer to attract talent. But if the US just closes the border to talented overseas computer scientists, they'll have to work overseas. Of course, they still compete with Americans in the labor market, and at lower salaries.
Google isn't lying: the restrictions on H1Bs hurt hiring in the US. But like many tech companies, Google has lots of international locations where they can and do hire, so they can still go on hiring binges.
Google would probably dearly love to hire the 1 programmer of greater talent, but if they can't hire him, they have to settle for the 3 programmers of lesser talent. It's not as good, but it's still better than not growing at all (up to a point).
In any case, that has nothing to do with hiring from outside the US, because if Google can't hire people on H1Bs, the alternative is just to hire them directly in India, China, or Europe.
The lack of qualified candidates doesn't mean that Google can't hire people with less/no talent.
Even simpler, they can just hire the people overseas and save some money too: Google has development labs in India, China, and lots of other places.
Not being able to hire people on H1Bs makes Google slightly less attractive relative to international competitors for the top applicants, but it won't force them to hire Americans they didn't want to hire to begin with.
They enjoyed their smaller cities where you don't fight a 2-hour backup in the morning for a 15-minute drive.
Ah, I see you have tried to get to Google's offices in Santa Monica. :-)
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
There are plenty of American IT workers who would kill to get a job at Google, and
be just as good as anyone else they may consider from outside the country.
It's pure greed on Google's part - trying to manipulate the Laws to favor them and
not us American workers. 65,000 H1B's is Plenty to cover highly specific skills that
just don't exist here. The real facts are that they just don't want to pay more then
25,000 a year for Skilled programmers - thats the real reason.
I would watch these proceedings with great interest.
. . . where we (-erm, the "slashdot community") concluded (and I agree. . . ) that half of America's grad students and faculty are foreign, not because America is losing technical leadership, but because they're coming here because that's where the funding and facilities are.
Well, it's the same with these tech jobs. Only - we're preventing these students from making the transition from academia into the professional sector, because of these protectionist work rules. I'm as vocal an opponent as anyone to H1B expansion. But they're either going to work here, in the US, for American companies, or they're going to go back to their home company with a Masters or PhD, and work for a foreign company.
If they stay here - they spend a good chunk of their income here. They pay taxes here. And the American company, remains competetive.
If they go back home, they take that knowledge and expertise with them, and a foreign company uses it as an economic club against us. Or the American company shuts down domestic operations, and opens up an overseas R&D branch - which is not as bad, but is still a death-knell for American competitiveness and American jobs.
What I'd really like to see are some feel-good provisions on beefing up enforcement against abuses of the H1B system, since these abuses are rampant. Unfortunately, nobody currently in government seems interested in cracking down on any kind of law enforcement towards employers these days.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Is the assumption that it's hard to find qualified candidates in the US? Or is it the assumption that it's hard to find *cheap* qualified candidates in the US. I think that Google wants cheap labor and is pouting that the government is not giving it to them. And they seem to be doing just fine otherwise, so they should stop bitching and find ways to get the most of their US talent pool. Or, do what Microsoft did and build a huge campus in Canada.
Everyone should note, there is a difference between a hiring binge and the ability not to pursue qualified candidates. Google could be hiring in mass to make up for lack of qualified applicants within the US.
Not having the opportunity to recruit qualified applicants from booming tech-regions like India, may have forced Google to hire two or three under-qualified individuals to make up for this. This maybe an effort that is striving to increase productivity to keep ahead of the competition.
So the question, which Google should the Congress believe, is not a fair question to ask.
Mod this post up, insightful. We're dealing with a serious structural issue, and he or she pinned it.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Do you know that a lot of employees at google bike to work ? Not the majority for sure but some even 'walk' to work.
The ones with the worse commutes are the ones that want to live in San Francisco and ready to waste 2-4 hs in traffic every day.
The Bay area is a very nice place to live and is really nothing live the overcrowded NY area.
-R
"The content of your post tells me that this is obviously NOT the first time you've posted in response to me or, if it is, you certainly haven't missed reading nearly everything I've written over the last six months."
No you stupid fucking twat, it means that I've seen a handful of your posts and they were unequivocally trash. That is all.
"It gladdens me to no end to know that you take such a deliberate daily interest in the things that I have to write"
No you fucking twat, I've seen a handful of your posts and they were trash. I am able to make such a determination because I chose to use a sufficient sample size and didn't have to read every...
WTF am I doing you're a fucking bum. You won't understand anyway.
"Somewhere, at some point, what I have learned just may make it through your haze of ignorance."
Frankly, I'm glad I'm ignorant of how to suck dick for crack, sleep in my own waste, and leech from society while making the world a far worse place by my presence. Why do you think I'd want you to teach me about those things?
"Here's your chance to demonstrate that you have any capacity at all to express your own thoughts"
I'd like you to step out into traffic. How is that for expressing my own thoughts?
You're obviously a bum because you're stupid. Do us all a favor and put yourself out of my misery.
It wants to tap the PhDs that Americans have invested in producing to make a less-valuable foreigner workforce more productive.
You really don't have a clue what's going on, do you? For several decades, the US hasn't been able to produce enough CS graduates; that's why about half the graduate students and half of Silicon Valley is foreign born. Without foreign-born graduate students, US computer science research could just shut down. The situation is even more dire now than it has been in past years, in part because of the visa restrictions and because of the way the US is being perceived in the rest of the world. Many computer science departments have seen enrollment drop by 30-50% over the span of a few years.
Foreign students study on student visas, but are usually paid for by US research grants. They need an H1B visa as a follow-up; if they don't get it, the expensive foreign-born Ph.D. that the US has invested in has to... leave. Of course, when they leave, they aren't going back to shoveling dirt or whatever you think people in other countries do, they either work for companies like Google in their home countries, or they start companies that compete with US companies.
All underwritten by foreigner labor, even though there are plenty of Americans available, though at a higher price.
The notion that US corporations look for foreign-born Ph.D.'s in order to save on labor costs is absolutely laughable and completely out of touch with reality. As is, for that matter, the notion that there are "plenty of" Americans available, at any price. For the most part, Americans don't dirty their hands with engineering or research, they become MBAs, JDs, and MDs.
Have you thought about taking a nap? You'll give yourself an ulcer if you keep that up.
Thank you for visiting Slashdot, yet again, to post a followup to my writings.
I am convinced that you are not a stalker. I am also convinced that you have some intellectual ability of your own.
It has become clear, over the last six months, that you do not like the topics which I choose. It has also become clear, over the last six months, that you do not like what I have to say about those topics. It has also become clear, over the last six months, that you will never relent in your demonstrated goal to follow up nearly everything which I post with an anonymous reply filled with derision, scorn, disdain, challenge, and vitriol. It is also clear that you have not made a single original post of your own but, rather, you exist only by coattailing on thoughts which I express.
So here's your big chance: Sign up for an account, watch the front page, and post some original material or original thoughts of your own. Then e-mail to me a link to your particular post and I will make an honest and sincere effort to demonstrate for you what a constructive, and perhaps even a constructively critical, response would look like. Through a possible miracle it may happen that we could reach some sort of reasonable discourse rather than you simply following every post that I make with more of your challenges, disdain, scorn, derision, and vitriol.
Wouldn't you like to make Slashdot a better place? I sure would. Here's your chance to demonstrate that you have any capacity at all to express your own thoughts.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Seeing as those two statements are not mutually exclusive? Perhaps they spent more money hiring because they could not spend less money getting better skills offshore?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
But I feel sad for the foreigners, who -- through their talent and/or hardwork -- deserve no worse a job, than I can get, but are restricted by America's protectionism...
Why do foreign workers have a right to work in the US? I don't have a right to work in .de, so why is it different for someone else?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It's a vicious cycle, one we're beginning to see in the tech sector. They offer crap wages and benefits so they need to go abroad, making the wages and benefits even crappier.
Lesson from the nursing sector: stop treating your staff like crap and they'll be happier.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It's a vicious cycle, one we're beginning to see in the tech sector.
I would categorically state this has been the case for quite sometime with both the tech sector and the RN field.
The problem is that saying "We want more 'A' programmers at 'C' prices" will not go over well politically; for that is not what the H1B program is sold as. Thus, they play with the language to imply that Americans are poorly educated, and the public sucks it all in. It is simply clever lobbying, plain and simple, and developers have insufficient counter-lobbying influence.
Table-ized A.I.
As a result, they were forced to employ overpaid local talent who spent most of their day posting snotty remarks on /.
Indian developers post snotty remarks for 1/3 the cost of an American, and with 3 times the snot.
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings
Sure, #6 says "You can make money without being evil", but it doesn't say that Google will itself refrain from evil.
Once you go public, you answer to the shareholders, who are usually more interested in money than morals.
The unemployment rate is way down
Yes, but software development is highly cyclical because during recessions, existing software continues to work without programmers around (or a handful for occasional maintenence). Companies cut down staff to just the here-and-now employees. The H1B program may be a way to flatten the demand cycle if it was used like interest rate adjustements. If they cut off H1B's during a recession, it may make things easier for unemployed Americans.
Table-ized A.I.
It has nothing to do with American programmers being incompetent (as a group they're certainly not). It's a numbers game. The unemployment rate for programmers is amazingly low - 2.4%. (As a comparison, the overall population's unemployment rate is double that, and is still considered to be low by historical standards.)
There simply aren't as many talented developers actively looking for jobs as there are jobs to be filled.
Hiring more people != Hiring more people to work in the US.
Sigh... Running out of H1B's doesn't mean Google can't hire any more people. It just means they can't hire any more people from outside the US to work inside the US. You may have noticed Google's non-US offices are growing rather dramatically.... Every one of those folks *not* brought to the US is lost income taxes for the US, not to mention the benefits of having those folks spending some of their earnings in the US (gee, what's the net effect of having someone do the same job in their home country instead of coming to the US to do the job... you think it is a employment gain?!), not to mention this putting Google further and further outside the reach of US labor laws, and of course this also reduces the interest in the best and the brightest coming to the US.
It's a brilliant plan. Keep up the good work guys. We don't want any more of those really smart people coming to work here in the US. It might make it harder for some lazy idiot to get a job.
sigs are a waste of space
By bureaucrats, for bureaucrats. Just tear down the damn borders already. All of them. Europe is making baby steps. Why does the rest of the world maintain this tribal animalism?
What?
... Therefore Google can hire outside the USA.
Next?
Why isn't Google handing out Green Cards at the door to entering foreign workers? I'll tell you why, because then Google has no carrot to keep the worker dancing on the hot plate. That's what it's all about. All else is spin and marketing. I love it when people start waxing poetic about bringing the brightest minds and mixing them into the American melting pot. The fresh smell of such horse-hockey being dealt out just makes me teary-eyed. You think that 3-year guest worker program is the equivalent of an Ellis Island right in the middle of Silicon Valley. HAHAHAHA!
My girlfriend has an advanced degree from Yale and is originally from the Philippines. She says that the other US visa types you're referring to are called F1 and J1, both normally provided by academic institutions, both allowing the holder to work.
According to her:
The F1 visa type is a "student visa." She says many people exploit this visa by enrolling in community colleges while working in fields unrelated to their area of study.
The J1 visa type is typically reserved for specialized research, training, teaching, scholarships, and so forth.
My girlfriend has a J1 visa and can work within the US so long as her occupational field is related to her academic field.
There are theoretical loopholes in the J1 visa and F1 visa types that would allow her to work at a company such as Google for an extended period of time without an H1B. Here's what would have to basically happen: My girlfriend would have to convince Yale that working at Google would enhance her academic research in order to keep her J1 visa sponsorship and Google would have to hire her as an employee under the J1 visa which Yale would then supply.
According to her, this is not an impossible, nor far fetched scenario. This is exactly how many people like her work legally without an H1B in the United States.
If her J1 expires she will be unable to work within the US unless she attains an H1B visa type. If Yale is interested in hiring her, they can assist her in acquiring an H1B by acting as her sponsor. This sponsorship would otherwise have to be provided by a company or other organization interested in employing her.
Alternatively, his friends could have gone to work for Google in the truly civilized parts of the world: in either Kirkland or Seattle, or in Pittsburgh, or in Boulder, or in any of thirty or so cities around the world.
And any country that is corrupt or breeds people like rabbits or just wishes to evict some ethnic group should just be able to export their problems?
Neither countries nor their citizens should not be allowed of the hook. Countries and people can earn privileges of being able to visit or work here. Just because people mess up their home so bad they do not want to live in it, that does not entitle them to do the same here. Thing what would happen if we had a border with Haiti. If the only reason was racism then all the countries that place restrictions are also racist. Perhaps we should invade them to set things right(or left if that is your inclination). Until those in power of countries not meeting our standards reform. America and Canada should be the refuge of those who complement our ideals and who we deem worthy. I do not think a country wanting money from tourists or investors is by itself enough for us to want to reciprocate.
Trust me - I see this done (hence not logging in!!)
You hire HB1s as "engineers" - which make 25-35% (min) less than your "senior engineers"
hell - at one point all our H1Bs were "junior" and made MUCH less than our actual developers.
Also - we had one SVP who simply lied. He got away with it. He would put 135 on the visa apps, but the engineers were only making 75.
Everybody has a right to work for whoever would hire them.
Yes, Germany's laws on the subject are worse than ours. So?..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Everybody has a right to work for whoever would hire them.
Based on what reasoning?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"