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?"

Comments

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Or because of a lack of real talent to recruit, they had to hire 10,000 PoS programmers instead of 3000 good ones, hence high payroll and emplyee overhead expenses. Surely the people at Google have read The Mythical Man Month and are smart enough to know that 3 programmers of lesser talent do not in any way equal 1 programmer of greater talent. Just as 9 women can't make a baby in 1 month, adding more people to a project rarely speeds it up and almost always slows it down.

Google lies

[athloi]

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.

Re:how about believing that this is a false dichot

[TheRaven64]

You don't have to believe that American programmers are incompetent. Google want to hire the top n% (for the sake of argument, let's pretend n=1). A significant proportion of this group may be in the US, but I can't believe that they all are. Of those that are, a great many are likely to already have jobs and not want to move. Once Google have hired all of the developers who are American, in the top 1%, and unemployed, or willing to change jobs, then they have to move on to people who only match two of the three. They can't do much about the last one. If you're not willing to work for Google then they could try offering more money / benefits, but that won't work for everyone. They have to compromise one of the other two requirements. Either they recruit non-Americans, or they recruit Americans in the top 2%, then the top 3%, etc.

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.

Re:Qualifications

[TheRaven64]

Last I checked, PhDs were not affected by H1B caps (at least, not those from all countries of origin), since there were other visa programs available for those with advanced degrees.

Re:Qualifications

[Anonymous Coward]

I am here on an H1b visa. I was hired right after getting M.Sc. degree in computer science 3 years before. I work as an SDET. Right now I earn $84400 / year after one promotion. Americans that work with me earn comparable amount of money. Lukasz

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[spencerogden]

FWIW, the Google interview process I was involved with was much quicker than I expected. 3 phone interviews and an on site in the span of about a month. From first contact to job offer was about 6 weeks. It is surprising how quickly their workforce is growing.

Re:Qualifications

[bertramwooster]

There are 65,000 H1B slots available per year for foreign workers. There are an additional 20,000 H1B slots for workers who have a MS or PhD degree from a US university. For the H1B visa starting Oct 1, 2007, the application process started on April 2, 2007. By April 4 more than 150,000 applications were received and the INS stopped accepting new applications. It turned out the MS/PhD slots were available for a couple more weeks, but out of the remaining 130,000+ people whose application got in before April 4, 50% were rejected on a random basis.

I know this, because I'm graduating with a PhD this summer. Since I plan to join a non-profit research institute, I will not be subject to the H1B cap, but most other similarly qualified people are.