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Microsoft Says H-1B Workers Among Those Losing Jobs
CWmike notes that after a US Senator urged Microsoft to lay off H-1B workers first, Microsoft says it is cutting a 'significant number' of foreign workers as part of the layoff it announced last week. But experts say there is nothing in the law requiring a company to cut the jobs of H-1B workers before US workers. David Kussin, an immigration attorney, said, 'In fact, the law is very well designed to say that you have to treat H-1Bs the same as US citizens in all regards.' Another H-1B critic, UC Davis professor Norman Matloff, said the Senator's letter would help their fight. 'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first — and they won't state this — then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"
I don't see why they should pay more for your services when someone is willing to do it for less. The company is the one suffering if they are missing adequate skill sets for what the task demands. I really don't understand why a company should "hire locally" first when its not in its best interest to do so.
I mean if you do not see why a company should pay more for my services when someone is willing to do it for less, then I would like to see the following:
Microsoft should outsource management or hire H-1B visa personnel for management positions as well. It will be cheaper for the company too. How about that?
That is so true. The university i am working in (somewhere in new england) has a bunch of foreign grad students. I would say that about 80% of them are foreigners. I am myself a postdoc and a foreigner, all but 2 postdocs are foreigners. Americans should see the things straight: without foreigners research in the US would take a big hit. I do not understand those xenophobic republicans bitching about us. There is nobody to replace us. The foreign postdocs got hired because there was no american up to our job. Not surprising as few get a PhD anyway. Of course getting a green card is awfully hard and guess what, people do not really like being treated like disposable toilet paper.
There should not be workers here on visas. Especially for high-tech jobs.
Give them full legal residency and give them the option to stay instead of sending them home after 6 years and perpetuating the "shortage".
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Here I was thinking that our society is supposed to be built on competition
Ah, the dog eat dog extreme of the far right. Eventually people will wake up and realize that it's no better than the "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" extreme of the far left.
I wasn't advocating for a socialist solution. I was bemoaning the fact that the Michael Dell's of the world grew up with all of the advantages that the United States offers and can't even bother to employ American workers to answer their goddamn tech support numbers. They've taken all of the advantages that American society offered while contributing as little as possible in return. You may respect that but I don't -- and it's this extreme that business has shifted to in the last few decades that has emboldened the far-left into seeking further expansions of the nanny state that will eventually erode our competitiveness on the global stage.
Read up about welfare capitalism sometime. Read up about the CEOs of yesteryear that sought a square deal for their workers and in so doing helped to create a market for their products. Everybody won to a certain extent. Now we've traded that all away for the cheapest labor or the cheapest stamped plastic POS product that breaks every 12 months.
why should a company be forced into 'purchasing' the less skilled labor?
At no point in my post did I advocate for forcing anybody into doing anything. I was bemoaning what we've become -- not advocating for any specific solution. So nice way to distract from my underlying point.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Ok, done (several decades ago, actually), still the same "problem" though ('cos, well, nothing's changed, that's the point, it always was a requirement of an H1B and pretty much all the employment visas that the holder get the same pay and benefits as a citizen for the same job.)
H1Bs are popular amongst employers not because they're easy to abuse (the amount of bureaucracy involved takes care of any "benefits" you might have in having someone for which a firing has worse consequences than an ordinary citizen) but because they make it relatively easy to get very, very, skilled people from overseas.
Being able to hire good people means being able to do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to, which means being able to survive as a business and employ more people, citizens included. What would be good though would be to replace H1Bs with an expanded green card program, so fear of losing one's job does not factor into the equation, and so people who want to work in America because they want to be a part of this country aren't discriminated against over those who just want to take the money and run.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
People look at me like I'm a friggen lepper when I say I don't shop at WalMart sans crisis.
Buying import crap (literal meaning) is almost unavoidable in some cases. In other cases you can find import crap (figurative) that is better made. I do try to buy American/Canadian especially for food products (often cheaper, always seasonal), and my art supplies tend to be from the UK or Germany. Where I do willingly stoop to Chinese knock-off quality is glassware for the kids chemistry set, and even then I buy the higher end. My personal glassware is all "proper" German and American glass. I try to buy at least American owned company computer components.
But to quit rambling:
Country of origin is not always a choice, but is one often enough that the consumer *should* pay attention. In addition to steering money to American companies, often the build quality is so much better that you will not be needing to replace that POS a year or so down the road. (My German(?) built toaster is serviceable for contact wear, is your Chinese one?
-nB
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I worked at Microsoft in Redmond with H1B work status for four years. In 2007, I left MS because I found a job opportunity that was better for my family. (This new job happened to be back in my country.)
I can't comment about the overall H1B program in the US, or the overall US labour market, or even on any new changes at MS over the past year, but I do definitely know about the experiences of H1B employees in the developer and testing roles at MS.
I (and all other non-US-citizen employees) were treated exactly the same as every other employee. We had the same job descriptions and responsibilities as other employees and the same opportunities for promotion. We were integrated in teams that included US citizens, other H1B-status workers, and people with other immigration statuses. We were certainly paid the same as any other employee with a similar job and similar experience.
I also know that Microsoft has very high hiring standards for developer and tester roles. I was not in a management/lead position, but I occasionally reviewed resumes and took part in interviewing applicants. Interviews were tough all-day affairs, including questions that required the use of logic, math, programming, and testing methodologies. The point wasn't to see if the applicant could regurgitate the knowledge, but to view his or her thinking process, creativity, and problem solving abilities as they tried to come up with a solution, and handle complications or restrictions that the interviewer throws at the candidate after they come up with an initial solution.
During the time I was there, my group and most others were always trying to hire more people. The major bottleneck was waiting to get any resumes for candidates that seemed worth interviewing. Most interviews ended with frustration that the candidate wasn't up to standards. Just because you applied to MS and didn't get a job or even an interview is not proof that Microsoft didn't need to look outside the US to find candidates up to their standards.
So, you might have valid criticisms about the quality of Microsoft software, but MS really does have very high standards for their employees, and employees with H1B status are treated the same as any other full-time employee there.
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
You seem to think that medical doctors would be able to set arbitrarily high prices and people would have no choice but to pay them. That would not happen because people have a choice about which doctor to go to.
If doctors were making insane amounts of money then more people would become doctors, which means more competition and lower prices. So, medical doctors would not necessarily be the richest people in the world by any stretch of the imagination.
However, in a pure market system there would be people that could not get care (as there are now) because they are unable to pay the market price. Free markets maximize overall wealth (barring externalities), not the number of products sold or people served.
If this is unacceptable, which it may very well be in this case, then that is your argument for why health care should not be subject to the free market, NOT because doctors might get rich.
You'd better be damn careful that what you replace it with actually is better. Doctors must be paid enough to get the best people. I sure as hell don't want to be under the knife of some second rate surgeon kept on by some government bureaucracy.