Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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".
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...
I'm beginning to hate Slashdot!
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
Precisely. Why bring them here? You have them work right where they are, and pay them even less...
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!"
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
(Disclaimer: I do work for Google, and do occasionally provide input on the hiring of individual candidates, but I have no unusual insight into our nation-level hiring strategies. I'm not speaking for them in any official sense, just opining about what I've seen of the culture.)
Everything that I've see of Google's hiring practices indicates that their primary goal is acquiring the absolute best, most brilliant people possible. I'm sure at some point cost is a concern, but it's not a primary thing that drives the decision of whether to hire particular engineers.
Finding and hiring fantastic people is an astonishingly hard thing to do, and we invest substantial resources into doing it. We absolutely never have as many extremely-gifted candidates as we'd like, and probably never will. But every single hiring process discussion I've heard has been about "how can we find better candidates" or just "how can we find more candidates". I have definitely never heard anything even vaguely like "how can we find cheaper candidates".
If you posit that exceptionally talented engineers are equally distributed among all populations with access to at least a moderate level of technology, then probably about half of them in existence are non-American. (And even if you believe that they are unequally distributed, it's hard to dispute that at least some nontrivial number of them are non-American.) I believe that Google's interest is in getting access to that additional set of exceptionally talented engineers, not just getting more engineers of the same talent for less money.
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.
AFAIK, H1B visas have to be paid the same as other employees, and extensive documentation is required to show that this criteria is met.
Supposed to be, yes. In reality it almost never is. They cook the numbers as badly as any movie studio.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Oh yea... and the 2/3 burn rate doesn't reflect the fact that they tell me that Infosys pays them a salary but expects them to work 60 hours a week. When infosys commits to a deadline- they have to work even more sometimes (without extra compensation or time off). They are willing too since currently the wage differential is like making $200k a year. Once the rupee comes up enough, the dollar drops enough, and the wage inflation brings them close to parity, and they get a little older and wiser, they are not going to be as willing to kill themselves and give up their lives (sheesh- 4 of them to an apartment in some cases-- no life except cricket on the weekends).
Given that colleges are ending cs programs since americans are wisely concluding this field is stupid, I see a "perfect storm" in 4-6 years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"