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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."
And by "qualifications", they mean, "willing to work for pennies"
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
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!
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...
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
I'm beginning to hate Slashdot!
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.