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President By Day, High-Tech Headhunter By Night
theodp writes "The White House is following up on an offer made by President Barack Obama this week to help find a job for an unemployed semiconductor engineer in Texas. The offer was made during a live online town hall after the ex-TI engineer's wife questioned the government's policy concerning H-1B visa workers. Obama asked for EE Darin Wedel's resume and said he would 'forward it to some of these companies that are telling me they can't find enough engineers in this field.' While grateful, patent-holder Wedel said the president's view on the job prospects for engineers in his field 'is definitely not what's happening in the real world.' Duke adjunct professor Vivek Wadhwa offered his frank take on 40-year-old Wedel's predicament: 'The No. 1 issue in the tech world is as people get older, they generally become more expensive. So if you're an employer who can hire a worker fresh out of college who is making $60,000 versus an older worker who is making $150,000, and the younger worker has skills that are fresher, who would you hire?' Coincidentally, Texas Instruments sought President Obama's help in reducing restrictions on the hiring of younger foreign workers in 2009, the same year it laid off Wedel."
So if you're an employer who can hire a worker fresh out of college who is making $60,000 versus an older worker who is making $150,000, and the younger worker has skills that are fresher, who would you hire
Dont the older ones come with experience?
As an example (though not valid in this case, but still shows the point), a more experienced person would know to avoid using floats to save monetary values,etc...
In the tech industry, as in management, the top spots are obviously fewer than entry level, so over time many people will stagnate when climbing the ladder
How often in the real world do you find yourself thinking. "Gee he's never really done this before in an applied, practical setting. That makes his skills fresher!" In my case that would be a big never.
So if you're an employer who can hire a CEO fresh out of college who is making $60,000 versus an older wanker who is making $15,000,000 , and the younger MBA has skills that are fresher, who would you hire?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
So if you're an employer who can hire a worker fresh out of college who is making $60,000 versus an older worker who is making $150,000, and the younger worker has skills that are fresher, who would you hire?
Fresher? Skills aren't vegetables. The older guy is also the wiser and more experienced. He knows the meta behind the skills, and what will work, and what won't. And if he's worth his titles, he has been constantly learning throughout his career. He knows how to be part of a team (even if he never grew into liking to "work with others"), and how to get things done.
The young guy is going to make a lot of mistakes. What he has is energy and drive, and fresh ideas. But too often, he'll work for 20 hours when an hour of thought would have led to a four hour solution that works better - a solution that would have occurred instantly to the old guy. He'll get the job done, but it won't have the eloquence that the older guy would have brought to the table. Many of his ideas will be naive, but through sheer force of will and energy, he'll make them work. But it'll be ten years before he has the experience to even come close to the depth and perception of the older engineer.
(Obviously, written by someone who's paid their dues for a couple of decades, and is still doing so.)
Check your premises.
I have seen that Germany will require foreign visa holders to be paid some premium over the going rate. It may have been 5% or so. This ensures foreign visa holders are not economic replacements, but have a specific skill that is in short supply.
That is what Obama asked for in his State of the Union. He can't do it on his own though, Congress must send him a new tax act to sign.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
What does "Fresher skills" even mean? The only skills I've seen someone fresh out of college have are coding skills. That's not the same as software development skills. That 45 year old developer that cut his teeth on C/C++ can pick up Ruby in a short time, but it's going to take the fresh college graduate years before he learns the skills he needs to work on a large development effort as a part of a team. Granted, there are exceptions to both rules. Sometimes the 45 year old doesn't want to learn anything new, and sometimes the college grad is some kind of programming god. But what I've usually seen happen is that the senior members of the team end up cleaning up after the junior members.
What is true, of course, is that the new college grad is often willing to work for more hours and less pay than the older guy. But then, the older guy never comes in hung over and rarely breaks his leg on a ski trip or while mountain biking (I've had both happen to 20-something year old employees). And he's less likely to job hop -- one thing managers tend to underestimate is the cost of losing an employee because of all of the institutional knowledge that leaves with them.
The best hiring decision I made was bringing in a 50 year old developer to work on a project that had been developed by our young, bright team. The project was becoming unmaintainable, bugs were adding up and the team was falling behind. The senior guy helped rearchitect the software to make it not only more maintainable, but more scalable - the newly designed product was more easily scaled horizontally and it needed about 30% less hardware to run. Th funny thing is that since we were competing with startups, we were paying some of the younger team members more than the more senior guy.
this is a misrepresentation of what President Barack Obama actually said. he said he would *investigate*, by putting this guy's resume in front of companies and ask them the pointed question of why such skilled engineers are not being prioritised for jobs. he didn't say "i'll find you a job".
what was actually much more stunning to my mind was the fact that it appears that the U.S. has a President who is willing to say "I Don't Know The Answer Right Now". he did it incredibly subtly: he said something along the lines of "this is very interesting and i too would like to find out what the answer is", which is just... it takes my breath away that he could be that sensible.
i thought politicians were supposed to be ignorant, arrogant and had to pretend to have all the answers - or at least to be intelligent enough to give the impression of being arrogant. although i fully appreciate that in the case of George W. Bush (jr), his ultra-low IQ means that he really was genuinely ignorant ["if the president of Ireland needs anything, anything at all, he only has to ask, now excuse me i gotta go get a burger"].
As old people cost more to have health care.
I keep seeing this "older workers are more expensive".
I was so deperate for work that I was willing to take an entry level salary. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to express that because no one even bothered to interview me. Anyway, after several years of trying (and depleting all of my savings), I got the hint and left the profession.
So, as a hiring manager, I would say most media views on this really miss the mark. Reduced wages is not what motivates H1-B support (at least in my experience), because there is typically a legal cost to the company in supporting that hire, especially if they decide they want to get a green card and your want to retain them. The reality is simply this: finding good people in the tech sector is very hard. You see many candidates who claim to have the skills, but when you test the candidate they frequently disappoint. When you finally find a candidate that you feel would be a fit for the position, you don't want anything to stand in the way of hiring them, like their visa status.
The (older == wiser) || (older == expensive) versus (younger == cheaper) debate is kind of misrepresented too. What it frequent turns out to be is (older == set in their ways) versus ( younger == eager to learn). Now I'll be the first to say I've hired older candidates that were eager to learn new things and their prior experience typically makes that process go much faster and smoother than for younger candidates. But (my perception of) reality is that "older and more experienced" candidates typically come to the interview looking to do what they know rather looking to grow. Maybe some employers like that, but tech companies tend to prefer people who will grow with the company.
Speaking as a guy who just retired from running a tech company, yes, it is. In the EE realm, with which I am most familiar, the experienced guy has been through the FCC testing rigamarole and can just be sent off to do it without supervision -- and he'll come back with a product that passed, because he knew what the requirements were when he designed it.
The experienced guy knows all the suppliers; knows where to call for what components; knows to check for multiple sources and to avoid single source vulnerabilities if at all possible; has written in programming languages A..M and when presented with N, can learn it in very little time, whereas New EE Guy knows languages L,M and N and is absolutely clueless when it comes to maintaining product X's assembly code written in F, nor has he the depth needed to pick it up, and the product design with all its little foibles, that the experienced guy has.
The experienced guy has tons of product experience and puts that to work for you every time a new design is required. New EE guy will probably get caught asking your techs questions instead of educating them. The experienced guy knows that the GPL is a box of landmines, and that it must be avoided at all costs; New EE Guy is likely to walk around for quite some time proclaiming open source is great before he actually understands that the company needs to make money and needs to retain the technology to do so exclusively for as long as possible in order to to pay him.
The experienced EE can do a myriad of things; interview new hires (if you let HR do this, you're already half way to screwed, frankly) he can answer questions at any level from customer to any tier of technical support, he can actually *resolve* problems and in minutes because he's familiar with your products (if you kept him on... if he's experienced but a new hire to you, his benefit is he will learn them a lot faster.) The experienced guy probably even knows a lot about things he wasn't directly involved with, by a sort of office osmosis... people talk about the biz, especially if they're well compensated and treated well, and a synergy arises that New EE Guy simply can't roll into blind.
New EE guy has a limited number of tools in his "toolbox" and very little, if any, experience employing them. The experienced guy has enormous depth and is likely to solve any given problem faster, better, and more to the company's long term benefit than the New EE guy can.
Yes, the experienced EE costs more for insurance, deserves (doesn't always get) higher compensation, should have accrued more vacation time, probably has kids... he or she costs more, all right, but you get so much more it's an obvious decision if the goal is for the company to do well in the long run.
If, however, the goal is to appease myopic beancounters about the upcoming quarter... yeah, that experienced guy is getting replaced by New EE Guy, the bottom line looks better for a few months, and future products will have to look after themselves. And looking at the state of today's US tech companies, with the notable exception of Apple... I can't say I'm surprised at all. By and large, they are reaping what they have sown.
Having said all that, companies still need New EE Guy. but not as a means to kick out some experienced fellow; you want the new guy hired ten years or more before the experienced guy is going to retire so he can learn FROM the experienced guy, and then, when Really Experienced Guy retires, New EE Guy isn't New EE Guy any more, he is Experienced Guy.
If you don't invest in the future, you won't fucking have a future. Company executives should inscribe that on a bat and beat the damned beancounters over the head with it on a regular basis. Figuratively speaking.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Then we have our interns from India. We asked one of them for help until we find someone and she said "Ok" went home, learned the relevant material over the weekend and came in Monday already swimming circles around me. Luckily for me the interns are very transient and never stay in one place for long. They're always looking for the better job, or going off to get married (their weddings are 2 month long deals) and the Job I have really needs someone that knows the inner workings of the company and how all our tables fit together.
I see a win-win if you propose to her :)
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Yes, exactly, precisely, perfectly on-target.
Beancounters see salary and associated costs, and nothing else. And that view rewards them next quarter after a replacement with many dollars. Later in the year, when the second hire has to be made, the beancounter's sole reaction will be to make sure it's the cheapest person they can find -- and there is no realization that the entire cost came from the beancounter's error in the first place.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And maybe the more experienced people indeed do have to consider lowering their sights.
Or maybe (just maybe) employers and government officials should stop stabbing them in the back ... because that is precisely what they've been doing. And as America's decline from the pre-eminent industrial power to another third-world outfit looking for a handout continues, you'll eventually begin to understand what I mean. Sometimes you do have to take care of your own.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This problem is not specific to the tech industry, and it isn't caused by any particular government policy. While it is true that the high allowance of H1B visas are adding fuel to the fire, tightening the restrictions won't put the fire out.
The older, more experienced workers who can't find jobs are absolutely worth the salary that they are requesting. However, there aren't very many businesses that actually need that level of experience and quality. The market for their products will bear a lower level of quality, and in fact the customers wouldn't be willing to buy if the price tag was higher even if the quality level more than made up for it. So the businesses don't need and can't justify the cost of top-tier talent.
Also, as everyone is aware, the total number of tech businesses only shrinks over time. This is a natural progression of the free market; the winners buy up the losers and centralize efforts, meaning that a smaller number of engineers is making products that serve a bigger market.
To put it simply: you only need one team of engineers to make the iPhone in order for everyone who could afford one to be able to have one. You also only need one team of developers to make a solid office suite in order for the whole world to be able to use it.
Yes, there is still some competition in the market. We will probably never reach a state of true global monopoly. However, there is a whole lot less competition than there used to be, and that shrinkage (though asymptotic) will continue. That is, in fact, how a free market is expected to work. The winners eliminate the competition and then establish monopolies or cartels, and the need for skilled labor plummets. So we can safely predict a supply of top-tier talent that is much greater than the demand.
In theory you can respond to this problem with government and/or union intervention. In practice the end result is never as good as the theory should be.
If we invent a new wildly disruptive technology we may create some young markets with lots of demand for laborers, but in these mature markets (like software development and computer engineering) it is better to recognize the reality and make plans accordingly. If you are young and looking to enter tech, either:
1) expect to move up to management, and build your skillset and all your career decisions around this expectation. Also, actively push this agenda on your employers.
-or-
2) Find a job with long-term prospects at a company with a reputation for retaining talent, and keep your costs of living nice and low as you invest as much as you can.
I'm sorry if both options are unappealing. I didn't create the world, I am just observing it.
Because shipping, cheap 3rd world labor and international communications didn't exist in the 50's? What kept corporations from leaving the U.S. in droves then, along with the rich when levied with a 91% marginal tax rate?