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More On the Disposable Tech Worker
Jim_Austin writes "At a press conference this week, in response to a question by a Science Careers reporter, Scott Corley, the Executive Director of immigration-reform group Compete America, argued that retraining workers doesn't make sense for IT companies. For the company, he argued, H-1B guest workers are a much better choice. 'It's not easy to retrain people,' Corley said. 'The further you get away from your education the less knowledge you have of the new technologies, and technology is always moving forward.'"
Don't throw your disposable tech workers in the trash. Recycle!
'The further you get away from your education the less knowledge you have of the new technologies
*cough*BULLSHIT*cough*
Does this guy think that the ONLY place you learn about new things is in school? Is he one of those pointy-haired bosses that doesn't think you know anything unless you have a "cert"?
Technology is always marching forward. EVERYONE needs to march along with it. In real-time. On the job. Constantly.
(That said, I'm an embedded engineer working in C. I'm "revolutionizing" this codeshop by showing them unit testing. And no Larry, just because we refer to them as "units" doesn't mean the blackbox testing we do is "unit-testing". WOOHOO for being on the cutting edge... of the 1970's...)
I'm in my late 40s and over the process of 25 years have re-trained myself at least four times to meet the changing nature of IT, and the fact that empires rise and fall.
Re-training is an essential part of a long IT career, not an option at all. To be honest, I paid for my own re-training because nothing concentrates the mind like putting a lot of money into essential skills and vocational training.
The reason why they want more H1-Bs is straightforward - its a lot cheaper. Not better. Cheaper.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Corley,
You are an idiot. You fail to grasp the difference between knowledge, skills, and experience. Training and education provide knowledge. The ability to apply that knowledge effectively is a skill. Repeatedly applying knowledge and skills creates a virtuous cycle called experience which increases productivity. Productivity is what increases the bottom line. Sometimes that might even take longer than a quarter...
You're a douche with no understanding of the real world.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
We would much rather pay the cost of having younger workers make the mistakes the older workers learned to avoid. This is the problem we see repeatedly. Younger workers buy into the "Oh look, new, shiny!" Older workers look at this "new" idea and say, "Didn't we try that 5 years ago? and 5 years before that? It didn't work either of those times either."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
For the company, he argued, H-1B guest workers are a much better choice.
Sure. Why not just take us all out back, put us against the wall, and shoot us? Real responsible attitude, corporate America. What a bunch of fucking jerks. Go ahead, loot and pillage the U.S., what the hell do you care anyway?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Statements like these are all the more reason aging tech workers like myself need to build their own businesses so they don't have to rely on the "good graces" of an employer.
Yep. It's always about money. If a company THINKS that it can get a cheaper worker to do the work that you do then that company will try to replace you.
From TFA:
Maybe they do. After all, SOMEONE has to work at the company providing the "guest workers". But there are really TWO issues here:
1. Are the "guest workers" driving down the pay of the workers that they're replacing?
2. WHAT jobs are being created by hiring "guest workers" that would NOT be created by hiring regular workers?
Again, TWO items:
1. WHAT are those jobs?
2. WHICH companies are trying to fill them?
He shouldn't have any problem showing tens-of-thousands of job openings that have been open for months IF WHAT HE CLAIMS IS CORRECT.
The thing is, they are not better. They are cheaper in the short run but bad for companies in the longer term. The problem is that the people making these decisions are insulated from the impact of them, so naturally the people who actually pay the cost of short term thinking take it upon themselves to try to do something about it.
> "The biggest slap in the face to all of us here is we have to train all of our replacements," said the IT worker.
I saw this happen in person, during a huge outsourcing of which I was one of the few survivors. This "training our replacements" thing... the problem is, it's difficult to quantify, the "trainers" have little motivation to comply, and the trainees don't have any way of knowing if they're receiving adequate training. So you cutover, and, well in our case it had all the elegance of driving a tour bus off a cliff. But I'm told that in many cases, if the outsourced team was good, things might trundle along for a little while on inertia. Until things start to go wrong, and you suddenly discover, you don't know exactly what has failed or where it's located.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Retaining knowledge of both software and business requirements is the 4th of Lehman's Laws of Software Development, Conservation of Familiarity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
And that law is from 1978. Such knowledge isn't even as recent as the 1980s (a lesson approaching 40 years in age, I was five at the time...), it should be basic guidance at this point in time.
Anyone that doesn't realize how important knowledge of the business and operations are is one that should be ignored completely.
Advice: Always seek to learn as much as possible about the business and how it operates/interacts with the external world. This is the secret to NOT being disposable. It's also a great way to meets VP and C-Level executives.
BlameBillCosby.com
Corporate America is DIVESTING from America.
They seem pretty happy to avail themselves of our extremely expensive military when they need their foreign assets protected. And they also seem happy to invest in lobbyists and campaign contributions.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
On one hand, it is normal business practice to maximize profits, though not necessarily for the benefit of the share holders. On the other hand, it is normal for the working class to sell their skill, ingenuity and labor in exchange for money (profit). Furthermore companies expect some amount of loyalty from the employees, valuing it only for so long as it benefits the company. The company on the other hand is under no obligation to have any loyalty to the employee.
This is a workable system so long as the required skill set changes slowly enough for employees to adapt and sustain themselves. This is still the case in certain industries like construction, home remodeling, etc. But in technology, new skill requirements pop up as fast as they can be invented and job experience greater than 3 years is irrelevant.
With the development of advanced IT management systems, as well as the outsourcing to lower paid foreign workers, American workers and their jobs are being eliminated. This is to be expected because it is normal to think that companies are always going to be trying to lower their expenses. The problem here is that this is creating an imbalance between the demand and supply of skils and labor.
The reason this is a problem is that it is eroding the middle class and it is middle class demand that is the source of economic activity. The reason 3rd World countries have stagnant economies and a lack of economic opportunity is there is no middle class and no middle class demand. Without a middle class and the money it has to spend, there's nobody to sell goods and services to. Sadly this is the direction that America is inexorably headed.
Today middle class jobs are being eliminated by outsourcing and advancing knowledge systems. We're not that far away from AI systems that will much, much further erode middle class jobs. It won't just be IT workers that will get it. it will be bankers, lawyers, workers in the insurance industry, etc.
IBM's Watson is now being used to invent new cuisines and is doing a pretty good job of it.
The demand for human labor and ingenuity is quickly being phased out as technology advances along with the issues of globalization. Therefore the fundamental premise that people can provide for themselves through the exchange of skill, ingenuity and labor is quickly being made obsolete, and this will fundamentally break our economic system. Futurists of the past would speculate that our society would become so rich that humans would only work because they wanted to and that we would have almost unlimited wealth and leisure time. But that isn't the way it's going is it? When there no longer is enough work to be had, there will a permanent underclass of poor in America, just as it is normal in the 3rd World.
For the company, he argued, H-1B guest workers are a much better choice. 'It's not easy to retrain people,' Corley said.
No doubt this is true - hiring cheap indentured laborers without rights is more profitable. Which is why they must be denied that option.
Corporations would employ sweat shops with child labor here*, if we let them. But we don't because while it would be profitable for the sweatshop operator, it would be bad for everybody else.
If the choice is retraining workers, and not having the workers they need, they will most definitely stop throwing away their workforce.
*Yes, I know they do that overseas.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age