UC Davis Study Concludes H-1B Workers Neither Best Nor Brightest

CowboyRobot writes "American companies are demanding more H-1B visas to ensure access to the best and brightest workforce, and outside the U.S. are similar claims of an IT worker shortage. Last month, European Commission VP Neelie Kroes bemoaned the growing digital skills gap that threatens European competitiveness. But a new study finds that imported IT talent is often less talented than U.S. workers. Critics of the H-1B program see it as a way for companies to keep IT wages low, to discriminate against experienced U.S. workers, and to avoid labor law obligations. In his examination of the presumed correlation between talent and salary, researcher Norman Matloff observes that Microsoft has been exaggerating how much it pays foreign workers. Citing past claims by the company that it pays foreign workers '$100,000 a year to start,' Matloff says the data shows that only 18% of workers with software engineering titles sponsored for green cards by Microsoft between 2006 and 2011 had salaries at or above $100,000."

Comments

Re:schadenfreude

[AlphaWolf_HK]

This isn't distorting the market.

Something you regularly hear on slashdot is that recruiters are saying that they can't find the IT talent they need, but they are just lying so they can get H-1B visa's because there is more IT talent in the US than demand.

This is wrong on so many levels. The term "IT talent" alone doesn't really mean much. A database admin isn't necessarily a network admin. A network admin isn't necessarily a web admin. A web admin isn't necessarily a programmer. A programmer doesn't necessarily know all there is to know about operating and maintaining large scale SAN's. Yes, there is some overlap between these, but not much. One thing about business is that you can say enterprise structures revolve heavily around active directory, yet most people you talk to on slashdot don't have the slightest clue on how to actually run an active directory infrastructure because it's "icky microsoft proprietary crap." Most nerds don't know, for example, how to manage a VMware ESXi 5.1 cluster with a Cisco Nexus 1000v virtual distributed switch (something very big these days, btw) or even any idea what a mezzanine card is.

These are the things businesses want, not "hey, look at me, I just built a neato kernel module."

Is there plenty of IT talent? Yeah. Is there IT talent that employers actually demand? Not so much. That's where H-1B visa's come in. Employers would rather find domestic talent than talent abroad because there is far less red tape to deal with and far less risk involved. However domestic talent is very limited. Majoring in IT, I am should probably be more concerned about H-1B visa's than anybody. Yet I am not. Unlike most in IT, I am aiming for what businesses are looking for (which also happens to be something I like) rather than just figuring that if I simply know how to build my own PC, magically somebody will want to hire me.

I've seen what recruiters have to go through to find talent. I've actually sat down with recruiters and they've told me how much of a pain in the ass it is to find what they're looking for (and they have somebody breathing down THEIR neck if they don't.) Yes you can have people out there talking up a storm about how much they can do, but most of them aren't worth a shit, so there's also the matter of separating the wheat from the chaff.

They still try to find local talent and will prefer it, but if they can expand their search abroad then there is so much more to choose from.

One thing I find highly ironic is that many on slashdot will act as though deporting illegal immigrants (or just calling them illegal to begin with) and denying them the ability to work is some sort of crime against humanity. This is ignoring the fact that illegal immigrants are far far FAR more likely to depend on the dole system and become a liability rather than an asset. Yet when it comes to H-1B workers, who are practically guaranteed to be an asset, they're mysteriously anti-immigrant.