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

The two are not mutually exclusive

[bartyboy]

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.

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[vfrex]

I was about to hit the trigger on the same title. The two are not mutually exclusive, and this article is flame bait.

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[Red Flayer]

For all we know they hired 10,000 janitors and have trouble finding programmers.

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. Could be used as more fuel for their arguments to increase the H1B visa cap.

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[Jeremy_Bee]

Thirded, (not a word I know). This article should be removed, it's junk.

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[eln]

Maybe they're having trouble because the best programmers know they can get hired anywhere they want and don't have the patience to deal with Google's ridiculously long and convoluted hiring process.

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[PCM2]

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.

Just remember, though -- while 9 women may not be able to make a baby in 1 month, they most certainly can make 9 babies in 9 months, while even the most talented woman would have a hard time producing more than 2.

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[dup_account]

OMG! Finally someone has a bright idea on how to fix this! Please mod up as insightful.

Also, I think them getting in on this side of the H1B argument goes against their "do no evil" policy. I may not seem so microly, but macroly it hurts everyone except those 70 people they want to hire.

Stupid question

[Verteiron]

Whichever one makes the larger campaign contribution.

Duh.

how about believing that this is a false dichotomy

[moderatorrater]

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."

Qualifications

[Pyramid]

And by "qualifications", they mean, "willing to work for pennies"

Re:Qualifications

[Pyramid]

No. I meant what I meant. Ph.D. or Devry graduate is irrelevant. Generally, most companies complaining they can't find qualified American candidates really mean, 'We can't find qualified native candidates for the paltry compesation we're offering". No wonder considering the cost of higher education these days.

I work at a huge company with plenty of H1B holders. The ratio of talented to useless slob H1B holders is roughly the same as "home grown" employees here. It's just that the H1B folks COST LESS.

Re:how about believing that this is a false dichot

[Otter]

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.