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No Shortage In Tech Workers, Advocacy Groups Say

sabri writes To have a labor shortage or not to have, that's the question. According to the San Jose Mercury News: Last month, three tech advocacy groups launched a labor boycott against Infosys, IBM and the global staffing and consulting company ManpowerGroup, citing a "pattern of excluding U.S. workers from job openings on U.S soil." They say Manpower, for example, last year posted U.S. job openings in India but not in the United States." "It's getting pretty frustrating when you can't compete on salary for a skilled job," said Rich Hajinlian, a veteran computer programmer from the Boston area. "You hear references all the time that these big companies ... can't find skilled workers. I am a skilled worker."

401 comments

  1. Effect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    A labor boycott against tech companies that don't want to hire Americans? It's hard to see that as being effective.

    1. Re:Effect? by POed+Lib · · Score: 1

      The whole point is to get publicity. The labor boycott per se will do little. The publicity may do something. There is publicity about scabs stealing jobs, and this is gaining more and more press.

    2. Re:Effect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ineffective & it's not going to happens. First all american-qualified-workers move to India to find a job at an US company.

  2. it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The US is awash in certain kinds of skilled tech workers: Java programmers, web programmers, iOS app programmers, and more. It's not hard to find them, nor is there any kind of shortage.

    But for more complex work, the best qualified workers are from overseas. Go look in any US comp-sci graduate program, and try to find the Americans. Go ahead, I'll wait.

    Back? How many did you find? 10%? 20% And from my experience interviewing them, they are often not the cream of the crop. Don't get me wrong, there are some really top notch American students coming out of graduate programs, but that's the exception, not the rule. If you want a deep understanding of theory, rather than another Java coder, it's hard to find that in the US. Not impossible. Just hard.

    1. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'll call you on your trolling and bs. My wife works in the Comp Sci department at a major university and also works *with* people in the programs at others. Well over half the grad students in most programs are born and raised in the US, and many of the best candidates are from the US. This story is about outsourcing based on cost, not on 'deep understanding of theory'. If you're not trolling you're just woefully wrong.

    2. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The vast majority of tech companies are not looking for anyone who has more than a B.S. degree.

    3. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      As someone that has managed outsourcing to six different countries, you're wrong. The worst people I've hired here are better than the PhDs I've hired elsewhere. The only reason to outsource is because of the massive shortage of tech workers. I've only interviewed a single Java developer in person the past year despite having a full time recruiter, offering a $10k referral bonus, advertising nonstop on Craigslist, and even paying the ridiculous amount of money to advertise on monster.com. Offering low six figures a year here in the Seattle area can't even get people in the door.

    4. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The US is awash in certain kinds of skilled tech workers: Java programmers, web programmers, iOS app programmers, and more. It's not hard to find them, nor is there any kind of shortage.

      But for more complex work, the best qualified workers are from overseas. Go look in any US comp-sci graduate program, and try to find the Americans. Go ahead, I'll wait.

      Back? How many did you find? 10%? 20% And from my experience interviewing them, they are often not the cream of the crop. Don't get me wrong, there are some really top notch American students coming out of graduate programs, but that's the exception, not the rule. If you want a deep understanding of theory, rather than another Java coder, it's hard to find that in the US. Not impossible. Just hard.

      OK, so let's go with what you said about the dearth of Americans in comp-sci grad programs is true and that certain high-level skills are found only in people in those programs. How many people are we talking about in all the good schools grad programs? a few thousand? And how many jobs are there that REQUIRE the skills found only in the grad school programs? a few thousand, maybe?

      However, there are about 600,000 H1B workers in the USA. How many of these do you believe have the skills only found in comp-sci grad programs, or more to the point, how many of those don't have and don't need grad school comp-sci skills?

      My point is that while what you said is true, it has nothing to do with what the complaint is.
      The H1B program is designed to obtain the kinds of people you were talking about, but the program is in fact being used to hire an enormous numbers of very ordinary people whose main feature is they work for less money.

    5. Re: it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Octorian · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've been around such graduate departments before. Having a department of 50+ students where you can count the Americans on one hand actually seems exactly like what I remember.

    6. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Old+VMS+Junkie · · Score: 5, Informative

      "The only reason to outsource is because of the massive shortage of tech workers." I call bullshit grande. I'm living through an outsource right now and it's ALL ABOUT COST. The existing help desk, first level support, and second level support were shown the door and replaced with 50% off bargain employees from Elbonia and elsewhere. Competence had zero to do with it. Uptime of our apps has tanked, ticket queues are ballooning, the new support folks can't find their ass with both hands and a map... but they sure are cheaper.

    7. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More like some "degree" on a napkin. I once met 3 chinese post-grad students that did less for their doctorate than I did for my bachelors.

    8. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not that the new support staff is incompetent and useless. It's that your company's executives are incompetent and useless.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    9. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That is a common problem, nationwide today. When companies go bankrupt, it seldom has anything to do with the employees. That is especially true when there is no union to protect incompetent or lazy employees. Companies tank every day it seems - and management always cites problems caused by employees. That is true in high tech, low tech, and everything in between.

      We just experienced a takeover. Call it hostile, or not - fact is, management ran the company into the ground in a number of ways. A decade of neglect in maintenance resulted in a number of machines that require overhauls costing nearly half of their new purchase price. The new owners certainly don't WANT to spend that money, but they are spending.

      Quality control? The company's weakest point - we simply don't have people qualified to read micrometers or calipers. They find parts that don't guage, and immediately QC calls on maintenance and tooling to "fix it". Well - fuck me running - I can't fix an incompetent fool who can't read a precision measuring instrument! But, the new owners are almost as bad as the old - they won't HIRE qualified personnel to read those instruments! They seem to believe that a ten dollar employee off of the street can do the job of a thirty or fifty dollar trained and experienced person! The QC people aren't even the best of the people available - the jobs are put up for bid, and the people with the flappiest gums get the job. Bidding? Might as well just admit that nepotism rules, and not bother with the bidding process.

      To put things in perspective - the old owners had plants in 5 different states. Each of the other plants consistently lost money. Our plant consistently MADE MONEY, despite mismanagement. Quarter after quarter, the accountants posted profits from our plant. In effect, we carried four other money losing plants for years. The owners could never bring themselves to unload the money losers, instead taking the profits we earned to shore up the other plants. They followed that policy until bankruptcy put them out of the game completely.

      How much more incompetent can any group of managers be?

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    10. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "best qualified" doubt it.

      If you want the best qualified person, so does maybe 300 other companies. Do you really think there are 300 "best qualified" people? No, absolutely not. Instead of wanting to bid best offers for a job and going through the process to get them, rather the 300 companies have a set dollar value in mind, and look for the "best qualified" sucker who is willing to work for that wage.

    11. Re: it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Biff+Stu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The best and brightest US students go to the top schools--Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Berkeley, etc. At Podunk U, they need to recruit overseas to get the indentured servants, a.k.a. grad students, to do the research and teach the undergrads.

    12. Re: it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Try raising the salary you're offering.

    13. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >help desk, first level support, and second level support

      Since when are the people who fill these jobs considered "skilled technical workers"? For monkey work, of course you hire the cheapest monkeys.

    14. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by dkf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To put things in perspective - the old owners had plants in 5 different states. Each of the other plants consistently lost money. Our plant consistently MADE MONEY, despite mismanagement. Quarter after quarter, the accountants posted profits from our plant. In effect, we carried four other money losing plants for years. The owners could never bring themselves to unload the money losers, instead taking the profits we earned to shore up the other plants. They followed that policy until bankruptcy put them out of the game completely.

      Were any of those plants making key inputs for yours? If they were, and it wasn't practical to consolidate that function, then closing them down would have crippled you. Which individual plants make money is one thing, but where there's internal transfer of items between units of the business, the value attached to those items is fairly nominal in practice; it's the overall business that really makes the profit or the loss.

      Or maybe they're just incompetent fucks. That could be true too. Hard to say without the full facts, but the fact that bankruptcy hit is strongly indicative.

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    15. Re: it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The best and brightest US students go to the top schools

      Nonsense. Plenty of the best and brightest go to other schools, or don't go at all. Many of the people who go to the "top schools" have been brainwashed by our corporate culture into believing that it's the only way to be successful, and so they waste absurd amounts of money. The people there who just want a good education are few and far between.

    16. Re: it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think this comes more down to what you personally classify as "Americans", since you probably judged some Americans as Non-Americans.

    17. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Seriously? You want competent people and you advertise on Craigslist and Monster.com? No wonder you think there's a skills shortage...

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    18. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Millennium · · Score: 1

      It's unlikely for any company to get the "best qualified" in absolute terms, because every one of them is competing for the best qualified. But you go for the best qualified among whatever is available.

      But ultimately, that's not the only factor. You need someone who will provide a decent value for what they're asking. If the best qualified person is asking well over the value of their work, then you've got to take that into consideration as well. People who you cannot afford are essentially unavailable, and so you're back to looking for the best-qualified person who is.

    19. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by chrish · · Score: 1

      Look at it from the point of view of your executives.

      Getting rid of (err, sorry, out-sourcing) the support group massively reduces costs in one area by spreading the cost of downtime and whatnot across all the other areas in the company.

      One executive gets a huge bonus for reducing costs, and the other executives get slightly smaller huge bonuses because their efficiency has gone down. It's win-win for the exec who "owns" the support group.

      --
      - chrish
    20. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2

      No, none were making parts for us. The plant in Mississippi was kind of a sister plant to us - they made similar products, many of them going to the same customers. When that plant finally closed, their tools and equipment came to us, and we took over their production, in addition to our own. The products made on those machines weren't especially profitable, but we made some profit on them, whereas the management in Miss. consistently lost money on the same tools.

      The plant in St. Louis was intended to feed us metal parts, but it never did. Damned near half of everything they sent us was out of spec, we rejected the stuff, and bought from another supplier instead. That plant was a money hemorrhage. The other plants were totally unrelated to our production, and I can't really say what they did, how, or why - all I know is that every time anyone mentioned money, or raises, we got speeches about all the plants always losing money, blah blah blah.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    21. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't understand why more IT people don't unionize. The IT field is full of left wing liberal people, yet none of them are in unions. I'm in a union, OPEIU. (www.opeiu.org) IT in a union is great. Paid hourly, over time is time and a half, Sunday is double time. No one can stop you from unionizing.

    22. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      All true, but this dynamic only works for a short time. Since it amounts to sabotage of any real value in the company, it also counts on a business plan that involves unloading the company after a few years - either by selling it to another company or going public. The real enablers of this crap are the companies that buy such destroyed hulks - and/or the banks that hype their IPO's. My company just got spun off from a public company to a private equity firm. That's after a 400 million dollar writeoff (the public company was sold a bill of goods several years back). Anyway, we're one year in, and the IPO wheels are already turning. Improvements in the company's outlook? Well, there's now a vision of 'moving everything to the cloud'. No viable path to accomplishing that, but obviously these jokers think it's enough to hang an IPO off of.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    23. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually most of them.

      The real nitpick here is skilled americans that will work for peanuts...

    24. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Capt+James+McCarthy · · Score: 1

      "The only reason to outsource is because of the massive shortage of tech workers." I call bullshit grande. I'm living through an outsource right now and it's ALL ABOUT COST. The existing help desk, first level support, and second level support were shown the door and replaced with 50% off bargain employees from Elbonia and elsewhere. Competence had zero to do with it. Uptime of our apps has tanked, ticket queues are ballooning, the new support folks can't find their ass with both hands and a map... but they sure are cheaper.

      But wasn't ITIL the magic bullet to solve the inexperience issue that is always heard around help desk/tier support locations?

      --
      There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
    25. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by buddyglass · · Score: 1

      The US is awash in certain kinds of skilled tech workers: Java programmers, web programmers, iOS app programmers, and more. It's not hard to find them, nor is there any kind of shortage.

      My employer has had trouble hiring competent Android devs in a moderately tech-centric metro area outside California. As an Android guy myself I can say that I get 2-3 emails a week from local head hunters, so it seems like other employers are finding it challenging as well.

      But for more complex work, the best qualified workers are from overseas.

      Yes and no. Generally speaking the absolute best people in the world are probably not going to be U.S. citizens simply because the U.S. represents a minority share of the world's "really bright people". The U.S. share will far outstrip its share of the world population, but it's still going to be a minority. That said, if you limit the question only to the U.S. labor pool, it's not my experience that the very best developers are predominantly non-citizens.

      Go look in any US comp-sci graduate program, and try to find the Americans.

      My dept. was about 60/40 in favor of U.S. citizens, but that's just from memory and I can't find current stats. It looks like nationwide the split is approx. 55/45 in favor of permanent residents vs. temporary residents among graduate C.S. students. Link here (appendix table 2-21).

      I can't speak to the quality of perm. residents vs. temp. residents except to note that most employers aren't in the market for "cream of the crop" graduate students. Undeniably there are some that are. But most aren't, because those guys don't come cheap and are highly selective about what they're willing to work on (because they can afford to be), and a lot of companies just don't need someone with that level of theoretical "chops". At least, not badly enough to merit what they'd have to pay such a person to come work for them.

    26. Re: it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by buddyglass · · Score: 1

      Many of the people who go to the "top schools" have been brainwashed by our corporate culture into believing that it's the only way to be successful, and so they waste absurd amounts of money.

      If we're talking about Ph.D. students at top schools, which we seem to be, then those guys generally aren't going into a lot of debt to get their degrees. I was briefly a Ph.D. student in a top 15 C.S. dept.; my tuition was 100% covered and I got a $15k/yr stipend. This was 15 year ago. Not going to make you rich, and I might have struggled if I'd had a family, but as a single guy it was workable.

    27. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by buddyglass · · Score: 1

      Any argument about a "shortage" of labor will involve a cost component. If you're willing to pay $1M/year there's no shortage of competent developers to be had. Obviously it's not feasible for employers to pay that much. If a given industry sees the average salary of employees in similar positions increase steeply over time (relative to other professions) then one can make an argument that there's a labor shortage in that industry.

    28. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by buddyglass · · Score: 1

      Ooops. Left out the link. Here it is.

    29. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is cost. 100% cost. I have seen the contracts. I can hire 10 programmers from india for what it costs for 1 in the united states. Out of those 10 you probably will get 1 maybe 2 guys who know what they are doing. You can jettison the rest and eventually end up with an 'ok' crew. That usually takes 2-3 months.

      That is the trick to outsourcing. It means you hired contractors. You have to watch them like a hawk and make sure they are not screwing you over. They do not really care about your product as they can drop out of that company and move to another in a few hours. At some point in every contract their manager will treat you as a cost and will try to wring more money out of you. Even though they still have not delivered on even what they said they would in the contract.

      Some companies think oh you can hire contractors and they will just click in like normal employees. No they do not. They are doing contract work. Which means they follow their contracts. Sometimes you will get a good contractor and he will bend over backwards to make you happy. But most of the time you need 2-3 full time managers who are willing to work at 1AM 7 days a week watching them and reviewing the work.

      I hate every second of it. Think of dealing with office drama but only on the other side of the world. Blech.

      Out of all the contract work we have ever done in my office maybe 1-2 contracts were actually executed properly. Yet we keep doing it.

    30. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sound exactly like a tool crib slacker in an old Michigan firm. If parts don't gauge then it is tooling's responsibility to fix it. Something is wrong with the process and it needs to be fixed. How is a bottom-rung worker supposed to do that? How is QC, an oversight department with no direct control of the tooling supposed to fix the problem?

      Well - fuck me running - I can't fix an incompetent fool who can't read a precision measuring instrument!

      Did you consider the possibility that there really is something wrong with the part? Not everything is a false positive.

      we simply don't have people qualified to read micrometers or calipers

      So what? It isn't hard nor a skilled task. Train people to do it.

      They seem to believe that a ten dollar employee off of the street can do the job of a thirty or fifty dollar trained and experienced person!

      I'd imagine ten dollar employees can point fingers just as well as you can.

    31. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by bbsalem · · Score: 1

      Fuck executives and fuck people with MBAs and the accountants who feed them. Fuck them all and make them and the financial types, generally, work out in the fields picking vegetables! This class of people are useless parasites who do nothing useful. We need a Cultural Revolution for suits.

    32. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      I'll call you on your trolling and bs. My wife works in the Comp Sci department at a major university and also works *with* people in the programs at others. Well over half the grad students in most programs are born and raised in the US, and many of the best candidates are from the US. This story is about outsourcing based on cost, not on 'deep understanding of theory'. If you're not trolling you're just woefully wrong.

      Actually, you are both right, 60% is about cost, and 30% is about intelligence, and 10 % is the reluctance to train the dedicated and very capable employee.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    33. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone that has managed outsourcing to six different countries, you're wrong. The worst people I've hired here are better than the PhDs I've hired elsewhere. The only reason to outsource is because of the massive shortage of tech workers. I've only interviewed a single Java developer in person the past year despite having a full time recruiter, offering a $10k referral bonus, advertising nonstop on Craigslist, and even paying the ridiculous amount of money to advertise on monster.com. Offering low six figures a year here in the Seattle area can't even get people in the door.

      If you have a full-time recruiter and only seen 1 Java candidate in 12 months, then he/she isn't very good. Monster and CraigsList are a waste of money as all Java guys are employed and don't bother (or need) to read online job Ads. A competent technical recruiter with an extensive network should have filled this position within 1 month at the most.

      Now, if your compensation package isn't aligned with what the market will bear then no matter how good your recruiter is, you're asking them to put 5lbs of shit in a 2lb bag. I have no idea what Java guys go for in Seattle but if you're looking for a $130K guy and only willing to pay $100K, the best recruiter in the world can't do a damn thing.

    34. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Low six figures? that's your problem; as a java developer in the Seattle area I have loads of offers much higher amounts than that.

    35. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by serbanp · · Score: 1

      However, there are about 600,000 H1B workers in the USA. How many of these do you believe have the skills only found in comp-sci grad programs, or more to the point, how many of those don't have and don't need grad school comp-sci skills?

      One thing I never understood is why so many posters on /. believe that Comp-Sci is the only highly technical field that matters. H1B visa holders are many times technically-educated people who have nothing to do with programming (i.e. Chemistry, Materials Physics, EE etc).

      The Sun does not revolve around IT, so why are we suggesting it does?

    36. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by breeze95 · · Score: 1

      The US is awash in certain kinds of skilled tech workers: Java programmers, web programmers, iOS app programmers, and more. It's not hard to find them, nor is there any kind of shortage.

      But for more complex work, the best qualified workers are from overseas. Go look in any US comp-sci graduate program, and try to find the Americans. Go ahead, I'll wait.

      Back? How many did you find? 10%? 20% And from my experience interviewing them, they are often not the cream of the crop. Don't get me wrong, there are some really top notch American students coming out of graduate programs, but that's the exception, not the rule. If you want a deep understanding of theory, rather than another Java coder, it's hard to find that in the US. Not impossible. Just hard.

      What does a "deep understanding of theory" have to do with lack of skilled tech workers? Your statement is too broad to the point that it makes you sound like a troll. Are you saying that all JAVA programmers, Web programmers, iOS developers or Android developers don't have a deep understanding of the theory underlining their tools? You sound like an older tech workers that looks down on new software tools, or you are not an American and is justifying H-1B's by disparaging Americans and their education. Either way, you are a troll.

    37. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by ahabswhale · · Score: 1

      Because the vast majority of all H1Bs go to IT jobs.

      https://www.aier.org/research/...

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    38. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by serbanp · · Score: 1

      I stand corrected. Thanks for the link.

    39. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by carys689 · · Score: 1

      The H1B program is designed to obtain the kinds of people you were talking about, but the program is in fact being used to hire an enormous numbers of very ordinary people whose main feature is they work for less money.

      What you say I believe to be true. Speaking from my own experience, covering the most recent 20 years or so, the vast majority of the so-called "computer science" people outsourced from overseas are "ordinary" software developers and the most practiced skill is Java and Java-related technologies. There is very little "theoretical" knowledge here.

    40. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by RyoShin · · Score: 1

      I wonder if we'll ever see a Corporate Mutiny. A situation wherein the employees want to do good work and make a good product/service, many can do decent work, but the CxOs and managers are hellbent are running it into the ground either through stupidity or expecting that golden parachute. Some combination of poor job market, location, and just being mad as hell causes the employees to essentially come to work and agree to completely disregard certain people/levels of management and continue about work in the way they see best, led by a small group who may or may not have been in leadership positions before.

      It might not be smooth, and it probably wouldn't work, but it would make for a hell of a story.

      If such a thing was attempted: Sure, the higher ups probably have the access to completely cut off their paychecks, but if all the non-managers left who would do the work? The company would quickly fold, turning it into an odd MAD situation.

    41. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

      "Did you consider the possibility that there really is something wrong with the part? Not everything is a false positive."

      "So what? It isn't hard nor a skilled task. Train people to do it."

      Well, DUHHHH! Maintenance and tooling has so many manhours available each week. They have so much work to do that they never catch up. You are suggesting that they have the added responsibility of TRAINING some clown off of the street how to do a moderately complex job? What world do you live in? It is the job of MANAGEMENT to hire and/or to train QUALIFIED PERSONNEL to perform QC tasks.

      It is never the responsibility of tooling to fix the fool who cannot read a caliper - that is the job of either HR or the clowns in charge of QC.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    42. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In your opinion, where should people advertise? I've used Craiglist and monster.com a lot, but I've also used theladders.com. All of the jobs on theladders.com are six figures or higher, and we still can't get people to apply. There just aren't any unemployed developers out there.

    43. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      If you're looking at any web site that is that general, then you're in the wrong area. Job ads are like any other ads: they're useless without doing some targeting.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    44. Re: it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meh, maybe to some extent, but the biggest common denominator in people who go to those "top" schools is that they come from money. The schools know that rich families are more likely to make big donations so they can pad their already obscene endowments. Of course they'll never admit that and they'll point to all the token full scholarship students who are there based on merit, but IMO, the quality of education is really not that much better. You might have better faculty at those schools but people only get as much out of college as they put into it. They don't hold your hand and tell your parents about your messy handwriting or whatnot.

    45. Re:it depends on what "skilled worker" means. by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      But hiring competent employees means paying them a fair wage... and we cant have that.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. 19,000 by Lehk228 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    there certainly is a shortage of tech workers in the US willing to work for 19,000/year

    --
    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    1. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But not elsewhere. So why in the wide wide world of sports would they hire American's? It just doesn't make any sense. It is not life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and a guaranteed 6 figure income. That is not how any of this works.

      It probably will not go over well in this venue, but I just don't see how people can get so worked up at companies for doing what's in the company's best interests. There's a reason they don't want to hire American's, and it's because they cost too much. The fact that people in other countries are lining up to do the same work for cheap is concrete proof that it isn't as difficult work as you think.

      I have a theory, just a theory mind you, but it makes sense to me, that people think we're still in the same circumstance we were in 20 years ago, when people who could operate and program computers well were genuinely hard to find. The only people back then with those skills were people who were honestly, genuinely interested in computers just for the sake of them, not for money, but because they were fucking cool. Now, everyone thinks they're cool and everyone who's left thinks they're a ticket to wealth. Sometimes they can be. But it ain't a sure thing. And now the rest of the world has caught up, and is demanding to be let into the pool, too. Welcome to the world everyone else has had to live in for quite a long time, now, and enjoy your stay here.

    2. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you are going to do business in America, then you need to hire Americans. Otherwise don't expect the benefit of doing business in our economy. Don't reap the rewards of safety and US government sponsorship if you aren't going to contribute to our economy by hiring local. Stop being leeches.

    3. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is bullshit. You don't get less jobs if you have more people in the market. They all got to eat and a room to live in. The idea is that a market has N jobs to offer is stupid. Its a market for crying out loud! Everyone sells something.

    4. Re:19,000 by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      The fact that people in other countries are lining up to do the same work for cheap is concrete proof that it isn't as difficult work as you think.

      Or, y'know, that cost-of-living varies by location and that salaries are a function of the relative strengths of the parties' positions (which are in part influenced by how difficult a job is; but only in part)...

      The people 'getting so worked up' are doing so because the company's best interests are directly at odds with their own, and if they had any lingering doubts about how the story ends, they can just ask those once-practically-middle-class manufacturing workers in rustbelt hellholes. Its...totally unshocking... how touchy people get when you threaten their continued economic viability.

    5. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Infosys, IBM and other big US companies aren't looking for skilled workers, they are looking for a bunch of monkeys which can perform a specific trick.
      If the trick isn't amusing to the audience anymore they are able to easily discard of them.
      Along with the minimum wage these (sometimes very skilled) workers are willing to work for, makes them very attractive.

      And big companies only think in terms of quantity when it comes to their employees, not being able to do some magic with just a few qualified people.

    6. Re:19,000 by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      what is needed is not violence against H1B workers, it's decent IT and programming unionization that is needed.

      with combined political clout to fight against the existence of the H1B program we would stand a chance of maintaining decent wages. Existing H1B workers should be offered the choice of Lawful Permanent Resident so they can stay if they want or return to their home country.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    7. Re:19,000 by Old+VMS+Junkie · · Score: 2

      DING DING DING DING DING! We have a winner. When you take someone who craps in a hole where they grew up, paltry wages seem like they hit the friggin' lottery.

    8. Re:19,000 by Duhavid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "company's best interests"

      Does that company want to sell it's product at "American" prices? Then it needs people ( customers, you know ) that *earn* "American" wages.

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
    9. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what is needed is not violence against H1B workers.

      I agree! (I'm the guy you're replying to) I'm not advocating violence. I'm merely predicting it.

      I really hope I'm wrong.

    10. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >going to do business in America, then you need to hire Americans
      m-muh free trade

    11. Re:19,000 by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Just like America and Europe were about 150 years ago.

      What some cynics in the West call our "race to the bottom", these dirt-floor nations with billions are rocketing upwards in quality, and no doubt length, of life, and they call it a boon, and a "finally, it's about time!" moment.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    12. Re:19,000 by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

      Sounds nice, but without explicit control over what American companies are allowed to do at/across the border, (and foreign companies the other way) it's not going to happen. Right now, the door is wide open in every way: Hire offshore and have the hires work here *or* there, keep your money offshore and avoid taxes with blissful ease, manufacture elsewhere, all the while you're paying off congress and whatever agencies are involved.

      Sure, corporations are people. Sociopaths. Psychopaths. Those kinds of people. Evil slimeballs, primarily. Exceptions are very rare, and will remain so, as long as being competitive means one company has to take advantage of the same things the next one over does.

      That's the way it works now. And unless you can forward larger envelopes to congress (directly, indirectly, or metaphorically) than big business can, or somehow make congress actually ethical and focused on the betterment of the country, this is only going to become more so. Money for election chests. Sweet land deals for cousin George. Fully paid fact finding junkets. Post-congress speaking deals. Guaranteed book advances, complete with ghostwriter, sales irrelevant. Well paid lobbyist positions, commentator positions, corporate vice presidential or other high paid positions... or money... or a sweet deal on a boat, or a house, or whatever, all for 2nd cousins of course. It's so corrupt and ingrained you can't possibly picture it until you've had an inside view (yes, I have.)

      Today, you want a great job? Start your own business. Are you really great at programming? Write a great program. Are you really great at electronics? Create a great device. The internet of things is rising, your opportunity is knocking. Real AI needs done (oooo, hard.) Are you really great at mechanicals? Create a wonderful mechanical thing. These are the *only* doors that remain open to technical people in general. Easy? Hell no. But there it is. Otherwise, change career tracks while you still can. Finance. Lawyers (it's the dark side, all right, but it's also a license to print money, especially with the extremely deep collection of bad law we have now.) Nursing -- medicine looks good right now, but doctors... not so sure.

      Otherwise, prepare to be lowballed, then fall (or be thrown) from the workforce segment you're qualified for as you age. Also, just as a PS, you'll note that above, the apologists consistently talk about who is learning what in school. The underlying message is clear: Once you're out of school and if you manage to improve yourself, you're not particularly hirable. They're not even looking at/for you.

      That's just the way it is. Be proactive and possibly suffer, or just definitely suffer. Choose.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    13. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Companies based in America should hire Americans because it benefits America (and Americans). If said companies would like to operate out of Europe, then sure, hire whoever you want. However, if your gonna operate your company out of America, and most likely use tax loopholes to avoid paying your share of taxes for the infrastructure, etc. that you use, then yeah, you should benefit America (and Americans) by preferring to hire Americans.

    14. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd easily work for $19,000/yr, but that's only because I haven't been able to score a job in a decade. I'm reaaaaaly bad at job searching. Since I can't find a job in the past decade, I've been making computer games in my spare time. I have 3 published titles now as of last week. I'm posting anonymously because I get lots of seething hate for when I solicit the Internet for a job at about minimum wage. It doesn't matter if grads from my school average $89,000/yr, and I have a lot more experience on them... If I can't get ANY job, the only thing I can think is to work for less. If you have a telecommute job for me, post an email to get a hold of you at. I can make iPhone/Android/Web games/aps primarily, but I can also do some general C/C++ code if you want.

      I'm also good at designing systems for the future. The last person to describe their start up in a tech incubator I surprised by telling him what he should be doing and that was what he figured was the optimal method.

    15. Re:19,000 by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      what about the power to tell your boss my license is on the line and I will not sign off on that buggy rushed POS code that your want out now.

    16. Re:19,000 by Kalium70 · · Score: 1

      The real problem here is that we simply do not need as many workers in the US as we used to, when adjusted for population growth. Many positions have been eliminated because of new inventions and technology, and we are not creating enough new jobs to take their place. The displaced workers are supposed to be able to support themselves, but there simply are not enough jobs. Consider this: Even if every job opening were filled with an unemployed person, two thirds of the unemployed would still be jobless.

    17. Re:19,000 by khallow · · Score: 1

      Does that company want to sell it's product at "American" prices? Then it needs people ( customers, you know ) that *earn* "American" wages.

      Those customers aren't going to be its employees. And it can always sell to the developing world.

    18. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This still doesn't address the issue of why everyone feels a company should be forced to hire American workers for a higher wage when they could get the same work done elsewhere, cheaper.

      This is simple to answer:

      for precisely the same reason that companies offer excessively high remuneration to executives rather than allowing competition to drive executive-level salaries down.

      Because that's exactly what happens: competition between executive of similar abilities does not drive their salaries down, it drives them up, even though you could get one who will perform approximately the same (if not better) for less by looking elsewhere.

      So why the fuck shouldn't that rule apply to all the staff, rather than just the sociopaths at the top?

    19. Re:19,000 by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But not elsewhere. So why in the wide wide world of sports would they hire American's? It just doesn't make any sense. It is not life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and a guaranteed 6 figure income. That is not how any of this works.

      How come all the shills in this thread defending hiring 3rd world workers for 1st world company jobs are all Anonymous Cowards? Are they all Social Media Strategists for ManPower and Infosys? Just asking.

      It probably will not go over well in this venue, but I just don't see how people can get so worked up at companies for doing what's in the company's best interests

      Well part of the issue is that often times it is clearly not in the company's best interest - certainly not in the long term, and even more often not if the company relies on any decent level of customer satisfaction to survive and compete.

      There's a reason they don't want to hire American's, and it's because they cost too much. The fact that people in other countries are lining up to do the same work for cheap is concrete proof that it isn't as difficult work as you think.

      And yet, clearly, they are NOT doing the same work. Sure, they're lining up - with worthless 3rd world degrees handed out from a corrupt system and paper qualifications that make them appear qualified while they can't figure out how to poor piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel.

      Recent labor statistics show that productivity in the US has dropped significantly in the last few years. Want to know why? American workers replaced with cheap labor. It's been happening for more than 5 years, but the results are now starting to be felt in the labor market as a whole.

      There is no getting around the fact that you can find skilled workers from anywhere, and you will find paper-qualified workers that are incompetent boobs from anywhere, but I've been in IT for a long time, and the fact is, if you want decent skills, you have to pay for it. Period.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    20. Re:19,000 by pete6677 · · Score: 1

      You must live in a terrible area. In any metro area with any amount of economic activity, you could definitely find a job within a decade even if you aren't the greatest.

    21. Re:19,000 by Duhavid · · Score: 1

      "Those customers aren't going to be its employees"

      That isn't what it looks like from where I sit.

      "And it can always sell to the developing world."

      Yes, but only at prices confirming to the developing world's wages.

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
    22. Re: 19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It must be that companies have a preference for American workers, as they've complained of a "shortage" since 1934.

    23. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      there certainly is a shortage of tech workers in the US willing to work for 19,000/year

      You can't hire a competent programmer in India or China for $19,000 a year either. There are skilled workers from those countries, but the ones who know what they are doing aren't really that much cheaper than their American counterparts.

      Of course, the PHBs (at IBM, in my case) think that all developers are equivalent, and are continually shocked when their master plans to lay off experienced American workers and replace them with new Indian tech-school grads result in missed deadlines and failed projects.

    24. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's decent IT and programming unionization that is needed.

      no, you don't need unions using political lobbying to artificially protect your high income just because you don't like that there is someone who can do the same job for cheaper. that is just artificial manipulation of the free market. if they can't do the job better then the company will be swiftly bitten on the ass for its poor decision.

      if you think you need unions to protect your wage then your work isnt worth what you think it is.

    25. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You aren't willing to relocate? You insist you must work remote?

      There's your problem...

    26. Re:19,000 by BrookHarty · · Score: 1

      >there certainly is a shortage of tech workers in the US willing to work for 19,000/year

      Up here in Seattle, there are blocks of apartment buildings manned by outsourcing companies like Mindtree where there are 3-5 Indian contractors living in each unit getting paid under 30k each. With houses going for 3-4K and 3 bedroom apartments going for 2K-2.5K, they have to have so many people living together to save money.

      I saw ATT Wireless replace an entire billing department with cheap overseas labor, VP gets a big fat bonus and leaves. Then department fucked up and was billed 1 million dollars a day for almost a month and they had to bring in very expensive contractors to fix the issues. Funny thing, this is happening all the time, the PHB outsources, collects a fat paycheck, moves on, and boom, issues appear.

      But I've also worked with NOC's from India and helped build one out. We pay 5K a month for 4 people for 24 hours watch our network and take tickets. There is no way we could afford that here. The problem I have is the NOC use to be a stepping stone for jr sysadmins to work their way up, and that stepping stone is largely vanishing.

    27. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "There's a reason they don't want to hire American's, and it's because they cost too much."

      I'm sorry, but 35K is not too much to expect. 19K is far below minimum wage.

    28. Re: 19,000 by GrantRobertson · · Score: 1

      "The fact that people in other countries are lining up to do the same work for cheap is concrete proof that it isn't as difficult work as you think."

      No, it is only concrete proof that $19,000 seems like a lot of money to someone who comes from a country, most of which lives in abject poverty. Now that Chinese factory workers are demanding better pay, Chinese companies are moving jobs back to the U.S. When poverty levels finally start to drop in India then Indian IT workers will start to demand better pay.

    29. Re:19,000 by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      They don't want to sell at "American" prices, they want to compete with developing nations directly. For American companies it's a race to the bottom.

      The irony is that for everyone else it's a race to the top. Developing nations want to improve quality so they can charge more. Countries like Germany already produce top notch stuff and can charge a premium for it, while remaining reasonably priced.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    30. Re:19,000 by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Protectionism doesn't work. What you need is to make sure that immigrants are paid the same as local workers, so the playing field is level. That way immigrants become productive members of society and contribute back to it, rather than just earning barely enough to live.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    31. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe the US should do fair trade just like China. For starters, all foreign ventures on US soil must be owned 51% or more by an American company. Any IP that might be considered usable by the US government gets overtly taken. Any IP usable by American companies gets handed over so the companies can run a third shift and sell those goods for dirt cheap.

      The people talking about "fair trade" are shills. China has insane protectionist measures in place. Fair trade is we doing the same. Incoming goods competing against domestic firms? Levy a 100% duty on them.

    32. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Write a great program." Unfortunately, those days seem to be over. All the software anyone needs has already been written. Most niches have vertical market packages which capture everything they need. With the economy of scale, vertical market packages need very few programmers to support entire industry sectors. I've researched this a lot over the past few years. There's no real entry point for someone building "great programs" from scratch. The app economy is now saturated. Pick any topic, and there will either be a lot of free apps or it will be a niche where you couldn't make enough money to be worth doing an app. Pick any industry - hospitality, medical, anything you can think of - and it will be dominated by vertical market vendors. There's no way to make a living writing a "great program" even if there was something left to write. I've tried to find a need and fill it for two years and have come up empty. I've asked people what software would make their lives better, and I have never gotten a coherent, focused answer that I could implement. The software industry is so mature that all the software people need has been written, or is so far at the margins that you couldn't make a living doing it. (Google Glass? Amazon Fire TV? Computer watches? What's new in the past year that anyone would pay for?) The copyright industry partners with big companies like Apple and Google for end-to-end DRM solutions, there is no entry point there (and those who do try to enter like Aero get destroyed). What "great program" could a software developer write these days? I've tried for years to think of an answer and can't.

    33. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Enjoy working unpaid weekends and being treated like a piece of refuse then I guess.

    34. Re:19,000 by Duhavid · · Score: 1

      In developing nations, sure they want to compete there.

      But they still want to charge amounts commensurate with American wages when selling here.
      Or why does the iPhone cost less than 200 to build, but they still charge 600 for them.
      If they were pricing for the developing nations, they would be less expensive.

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
    35. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Recent labor statistics show that productivity in the US has dropped significantly in the last few years.

      I looked at dozens of plots and they all say the US labor productivity is up and has been growing every year for a while, except fall 2008.

    36. Re:19,000 by ogdenk · · Score: 1

      But not elsewhere. So why in the wide wide world of sports would they hire American's? It just doesn't make any sense. It is not life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and a guaranteed 6 figure income. That is not how any of this works.

      There's one problem. $19,000/yr is *NOT* a living wage in the *ANYWHERE* in the US anymore. I've studied my whole life to get as good as I am at my craft. I shouldn't be forced to support a family of 5 on what basically amounts to minimum wage because some desperate Indian guy will do it for $8.00/hr.

      I don't expect 6 figures (and don't get anywhere near it) but being able to own a home and make car payments with a white collar position should be expected. $35,000 to $60,000/yr for skilled tech talent that is hard to find in my area is not an unreasonable demand and I shouldn't be threatened with outsourcing for simply wanting to feed my kids. I don't want wealth. I want an existence where I don't have to struggle to simply survive ALONG WITH the high-stress common in IT positions. We are not unskilled labor. We are highly trained. We deserve a living wage.

      In short, tailoring job ads so that ONLY an Indian guy would qualify and low-balling salary to the point where Americans could not AFFORD to take the position without living in a homeless shelter is a scumbag move. I sincerely hope folks doing such things choke on their f**king dinner.

      I'd say we need to unionize but the problem is that IT departments are so small they can be replaced on a whim (at least it looks easy on paper to bean counters).

    37. Re:19,000 by Xaedalus · · Score: 1

      I get what you're saying, Curunir, but I have to agree with OP because the men and women making these decisions are looking at the business like a game. And in that perspective, American workers do cost too much. To illustrate this, I'm going to give anecdotal evidence based on experience.

      I work with/for men and women who are VPs and product/program managers. Every single one of them has an MBA, and every single one of them knows the business aspect of our given technology field. They are all upper class white American Anglo-Saxon protestants who came from upper class/upper middle class families. They view our business as one big game--a very intricate, intriguing, and never-ending game. They take this game very seriously, and they pay attention to the technology and quality issues insofar as it advances the business. And business is all about profit, loss, and sustainability. Because they're all MBAs, they're all aware that every company and every business venture has a life cycle. If they happen to be employed for a company that's in the beginning half of its life-cycle, then they will make decisions that 1) grab maximum market share, 2) produce profit, and 3) reduce losses. Everything they do falls in those three criteria. If they determine that the company they are employed in has reached maturity and will start sliding towards dissolution, then they adjust their priorities to 1) Maximize profits, 2) cut costs, 3) Extend profitability. This turns their business into a cash cow that gets milked, taken over, disassembled, and outsourced. As such, they'll pay for American talent during the start-up phase, but once the business has reached maturity and maximum market share, that is when they lay off the American talent and get H1B's/talented college grads to come in for a third of the operating cost in terms of salary cap, to operate the business for as long as they can before the profits give out. It is how business works, and short of going very protectionist and starting trade wars, that will always be how it works. The worst is, if YOU were to be a business owner, you would have to fight against being seduced into that mindset.

      --
      Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
    38. Re:19,000 by Jawnn · · Score: 1

      If you are going to do business in America, then you need to hire Americans. Otherwise don't expect the benefit of doing business in our economy. Don't reap the rewards of safety and US government sponsorship if you aren't going to contribute to our economy by hiring local. Stop being leeches.

      Stopping talking like freakin' liberal, ya crybaby.
      You see, hiring Americans is un-American because this is 'murican free enterprise at it's finest, making glorious profits for anyone "willing to work hard to get ahead" (TM).

    39. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lawyers are suffering from the same glut you're talking about avoiding showing that you don't know shit regarding employment. Doctors aren't doing super hot either with the massive amounts of debt that they are required to take on these days, but at least they are legally protected from foreigners with fake credentials jumping overseas. Not everyone can run their own business, nor should everyone.

    40. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And amazingly there's still less need and more supply. Maybe when you figure that corporations are a ponzi scheme to funnel money to the wealthy, then you understand how the game is really run.

    41. Re:19,000 by khallow · · Score: 1

      That isn't what it looks like from where I sit.

      What makes your perception even remotely valid?

      Yes, but only at prices confirming to the developing world's wages.

      Which are growing at a rapid rate and for which there are a lot more people. Basically, the economy is moving from the developed world to the rest of the world.

    42. Re:19,000 by Duhavid · · Score: 1

      "What makes your perception even remotely valid?"

      Nice. What makes it invalid? What makes yours better?
      I see and hear about companies outsourcing( electronics, software ). I don't see the pricing for their products falling.
      I infer from this that they do intend to sell at the higher prices, in line with higher wages.

      "Which are growing at a rapid rate and for which there are a lot more people. Basically, the economy is moving from the developed world to the rest of the world."

      They are growing, but what I see and hear is that they are not in line with pay structures in America ( they don't have to be, cost of living is lower in the developing world )

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
    43. Re: 19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or put another way, there is a shortage of talented people willing to work for such little money (and put up with your corporate bullshit). Those people go do things were they can earn top dollar. They are not interested in your price-fixed salary chart.

    44. Re:19,000 by makq · · Score: 1

      All the software anyone needs has already been written.

      I would bet that 99.9% of software that people will need in the next 100 years and could get utility from has not yet been written. Not to mention upgrades to the software that currently does exist, and is pretty crappy.

    45. Re:19,000 by Dadoo · · Score: 1

      Nowhere was this more obvious than right here on Slashdot where, a few years ago, some woman (I don't remember her username) who owned a hosting company in the Bay Area was whining that college grads were expecting to get $60,000/yr. I'd be surprised if you could even eat for that kind of money, there.

      --
      Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
    46. Re:19,000 by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      This

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    47. Re:19,000 by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Fine. McDonald's for you.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    48. Re:19,000 by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      If they determine that the company they are employed in has reached maturity and will start sliding towards dissolution, then they adjust their priorities to 1) Maximize profits, 2) cut costs, 3) Extend profitability. This turns their business into a cash cow that gets milked, taken over, disassembled, and outsourced.

      That sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The company wouldn't be "sliding towards dissolution" if these management-out-of-a-book idiots hadn't gutted the company's core skills.

      People like to talk about sustainability a lot in ecological terms. Why do we never hear about it in business terms? Oh right. Because balance is hard to achieve and maintain. If you're an idiot chasing the latest fad in your glossy management magazine, you haven't got a prayer of finding and maintaining a profitable balance for any length of time, so you firmly believe that businesses have only two states: on the way up or on the way down. There is a third choice. Too bad American management is too incompetent to take that path.

    49. Re:19,000 by khallow · · Score: 1

      I see and hear about companies outsourcing( electronics, software ). I don't see the pricing for their products falling. I infer from this that they do intend to sell at the higher prices, in line with higher wages.

      Sounds like it's working for them then.

    50. Re:19,000 by Duhavid · · Score: 2

      Yeah, sure.
      But why can they sell for that price? Because enough people had it to spend and wanted it.
      Why did they have it to spend? Because they *made* enough money. Wages. Higher wages.
      Since these companies send the work overseas, fewer people here have that much money.

      The owners of America are basically encouraging wage arbitrage because they can pick up a good number more dollars doing it.

      But don't forget, markets work. As we ship more of the jobs overseas, the average wage here will fall. ( is this not what we are seeing? )
      ( we will ignore the pain of those who are losing their jobs, unimportant )
      The ability to spend will fall.
      Demand will fall. People will lose jobs due to layoffs, average wages fall some more,
      Places that used to do things here will ( to the extent possible ) decline in doing so.
      Wages will, in the longer term, adjust out to some kind of average.
      Prices here will have to fall in line with the wages. Again, in the longer term.
      Greed will cause the prices to be sticky for some period of time.
      And lower cost places will be chased when/if the wages in a particular place overseas begin to climb.
      Yes, factory build costs will make that sticky, but in the longer term, it will happen. ( and are we not seeing it? )
      Think we will be allowed to sell stuff ( free market, man ) in those overseas places when wages have averaged out? ( arent there already restrictions? )
      I don't think so. If you do, I'd like to know why you think that.

      So, yeah, it is "working" for them, by giving the shaft to the customers they sell to.
      Strikes me as stupid.

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
    51. Re:19,000 by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 1

      What I have always found funny about not hiring americans in america is that they don't seem to realize the worse off our personal economy is for the 'have nots' the less americans can afford to buy (even with insane debt). So the 'american market' constantly shrinks and we buy less vehicles, sugar wheatie puffs, and fancy cell phones because of that. Eventually the lack of good paying jobs for americans will gut the 'american market' for products and goods and we will look more like modern south african than the US of A.

      Heck if you look at the wealth distribution (by percentile) in the US the lower class, lower middle class, and middle class are all in serious decline and look more like each other than anything else. The upper middle class is stagnating and only the upper class is growing. Eventually all that will be left is that top 20% or ~62 million of ~313 million 'amercians' that can be sold to and everyone else will be starving (Especially with the heavy intent to kill welfare). I'm sure even that 20% will not be enough for those at the very top and they will gut the bottom of that group as well.

      --
      we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
    52. Re:19,000 by Shadow99_1 · · Score: 1

      They will milk us dry at higher prices and then simply stop selling to us when they cannot make enough money form us anymore. In the meantime they will try to do as they are now and start selling to countries like China (Though that has had extremely mixed results).

      However we are unlikely to ever see deflation as long as the many big businesses cause constant inflation to the prices of goods and services here. It doesn't matter that fewer and fewer americans can pay those increased prices. It's one of my issues with Kansian economics where inflation is good and deflation is bad, regardless of the people that actually make up the bulk of the economy by population.

      --
      we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
    53. Re:19,000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, yeah, it is "working" for them, by giving the shaft to the customers they sell to.
      Strikes me as stupid.

      No, this is really smart, because shafting customers is actually a good thing.

      The customers for these highly marked up products are not the poor Chinese factory workers. The customers are the rich snobs in the developed world. You WANT to shaft them, take as much money from them as possible, so that money can be put it back into circulation in the economy.

      This is actually right from the Progressive's playbook, with the difference being that instead of government forcefully taking money from the rich via taxes and such, you have private business take money from the rich via free market trade. We want the rich to pay for first class instead of coach. We want the rich to pay twice as much for that "green" car or house to make themselves feel good. We want their rich kids to blow through thousands a night partying to alleviate their loneliness and feelings of being unloved.

      The lesson for the middle class is that they should be very careful and refrain from spending, no matter how much it appears they're ahead of the game today and can afford the more expensive luxuries (stick with the economical pleasures, trolling slashdot for example ;p). Only encourage your richer bosses to spend, and then secretly enjoy the schadenfreude if/when they get shafted.

  4. Not to worry by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 0

    Soon the market for US based programmers will be flooded by a new wave of corporate-sponsored graduates fresh and ready to be burned out, thus driving programmer wages down to "competitive" levels.

    Thanks Google!

    1. Re:Not to worry by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Dear silly grad. your skills in C# are worthless.

      Want to make really good money? Learn how to manage an AS400 completely. There are incredibly few that can and there are a LARGE number of companies still using them. So you can demand $65.00 an hour.

      Hell my company pays a guy $160 an hour to come in for 10 hours a week to work on our systems. HE WORKS 10 HOURS A WEEK and takes home $1600.

      Those of you going into CS are morons, Supporting old tech that companies will not upgrade is where the real money is at.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Not to worry by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 0

      Soon the market for US based programmers will be flooded by a new wave of corporate-sponsored graduates fresh and ready to be burned out, thus driving programmer wages down to "competitive" levels.

      Thanks Google!

      Thanks, Obama!

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    3. Re:Not to worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those of you going into CS are morons, Supporting old tech that companies will not upgrade is where the real money is at.

      For certain values of morons.

      You're making the false assumption that people only do things because of money. I didn't get up this morning because of money. I'm certainly not going to work this afternoon because of money (although don't tell my boss that, because he already steals from my wages as it is and the New Zealand Labour Department refuse to do anything about it).

    4. Re:Not to worry by Nethead · · Score: 1

      My company just sent me to a week long IBM (Lotus) Domino server class. If I ever do the consulting thing again, that will really come in handy.

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
    5. Re: Not to worry by cyber-vandal · · Score: 2

      Funny but my skills in C# are far more valuable than my COBOL skills thanks to all the mainframe COBOL work being outsourced to India because people like me were too expensive.

    6. Re:Not to worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is a reason why old skills are expensive - because they are for jobs whose days are numbered. It is a large gamble on their part so they need to pay more for it.

    7. Re:Not to worry by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      Dear silly grad. your skills in C# are worthless.

      Want to make really good money? Learn how to manage an AS400 completely. There are incredibly few that can and there are a LARGE number of companies still using them. So you can demand $65.00 an hour.

      Hell my company pays a guy $160 an hour to come in for 10 hours a week to work on our systems. HE WORKS 10 HOURS A WEEK and takes home $1600.

      Those of you going into CS are morons, Supporting old tech that companies will not upgrade is where the real money is at.

      Until they do.

      At some point the cost of supporting the old will outweigh the cost of bringing in the new.

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    8. Re:Not to worry by Drethon · · Score: 1

      Around here the big money is going to people who can program Ada and understand DO-178b processes. Something not taught in any school I've been to.

    9. Re:Not to worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you learn to manage an AS/400 completely? You can't download the source. You can't load it in an emulator. You can't afford one. It's a closed platform. You could get expensive training (IBM will be happy to sell it to you, that's how they make money by creating these closed platforms and selling services like training), but after you were trained you would have no experience. You would not be able to get a job. No one would hire someone who had just completed an AS/400 course but had no experience with using one. Maintenance work on existing code requires the in-depth skills of an expert, not someone just out of a class. So ... ???

    10. Re:Not to worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My skills in C# are not worthless. I've used them as a way to get into BizTalk consulting. Being certified for BizTalk is currently a good way to name your price, much for the same reasons as your AS/400 example (worked with those too, but it's been a while).

      Also, "data warehousing" is a good buzzword to use right now, even if it just means you don't suck at designing database schemas and can write batch programs to manipulate, transform, and report on the data.

      You just have to know what's "in" right now in large businesses and be part of it. Then, once the teething problems are over, push it to the smaller businesses and watch the cash roll in.

    11. Re:Not to worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only 65/hour? Thats cheap. I charge 120 an hour for C#.

    12. Re:Not to worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly how do you learn to manage an AS400 completely if you aren't already in an IBM shop and being groomed for that? At best, you can read some books. Maybe pay for some timeshare access to a locked-down AS400 and write some trivial code (which isn't exactly comparable to whatever banking/utility/etc code you'd really use).

      There are a million-and-one Ruby, PHP, MySQL and Linux people because they could actually do it at home. There are very few AS400 managers, because the only way a new one is minted is when some company who runs IBM iron hires someone manage an AS400 despite knowing *absolutely nothing* about managing an AS400. And the American companies running mainframes were told by their McKinsey consultants to stop hiring 22-year-old graduates who knew nothing about AS400s. "Leave the training to some other company, then hire those workers".

    13. Re:Not to worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ummm .... company I worked at just got rid of the AS400. Shortly before that they got rid of their IT person. Bad side of the story, they replaced it with a half-baked VB application, and completely destroyed the scheduling.

  5. Not much sign of skill... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Our company bought several million dollars of IBM products and services a couple of years ago. No sign that any skilled tech went into either the development or support of that stuff. Their salesmen did a good job of blowing smoke into our VP's face though.

    1. Re:Not much sign of skill... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty sure IBM paid a hooker or two to do the blowing.

    2. Re:Not much sign of skill... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IBM Global Services was awesome when we hired them. Every person I dealt with was competent. Of course they charged us an average of $250k per employee per year so it was very expensive. We tried hiring locally, but even here in Seattle, it's very hard to hire an entire team of developers because there just aren't any good ones that are looking for a job. I've had six jobs in the fifteen years I've lived here, and none took more than two weeks to find. There is a massive shortage.

    3. Re:Not much sign of skill... by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      IBM and Oracle et al. are known to "butter up" their customers. Bribery works for politicians and it works in the private sector, with the same result: Expensive useless bullshit that kicks merit and fairness in the nuts.

    4. Re:Not much sign of skill... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, and then when the shit doesn't work, they tell the VP that his staff is deficient and they need a bunch of consultants at absurd prices.

    5. Re:Not much sign of skill... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Our company bought several million dollars of IBM products and services a couple of years ago. No sign that any skilled tech went into either the development or support of that stuff. Their salesmen did a good job of blowing smoke into our VP's face though.

      Saying you bought something from a big vendor is like saying you bought something from a grocery store. Some of it will be of the highest quality, most will be mid quality, some of it will be "quick sale" / clearance items and should be labeled as such, some of it will be complete crap. Without specifics its difficult to assess such broad generalized statements.

      On a side note: You need to communicate this to your management team. If $millions was spent and you aren't getting getting an ROI out of it, management WILL have a discussion with vendor sales representatives and vendor executives to get the most out of their investment.

  6. Keywords by masterofthumbs · · Score: 1

    Skilled worker [that costs too much for their profit margins].

  7. if facebook/google/et al wants to hire me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i'll happily work there. let's start the bidding at $300k/year, do I hear $350k?

  8. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What about the large number of job descriptions that are written up that essentially no single individual could fill? You know what I mean, postings that have 15 required disparate skills, with 5+ years experience in each?

    Then these companies use the lack of qualified applicants as an excuse to go shopping overseas. Let's face it, the number of companies pulling this kind of stunt FAR outweigh the number of "think they're super-awesome and really aren't" employees.

  9. The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To employ people for $5,000 and sell products to people who make $80,000.

    They do not see the fundamental problem.

    It will resolve itself. Wages in china and india are up to $5,000 now and still doubling every 2-4 years (lower wages doubling faster).

    Of course, that leaves the problem of robotics- which right now- today- can do work for less than poverty level wages in most of the world- and are only getting better an cheaper.

    Robot repair jobs are two orders of magnitude less (1 worker and robots replaces 1000 workers). Automated procedures is replacing most of the thinking jobs.

    The only jobs left will be "creative" jobs. Where the creative part of your jobs is less than half of your job- look for outsourcing. And about, oh, at least half of the global population isn't well suited for creative jobs since they are (by definition) below average intelligence.

    Either a free stuff utopia or some kind of really terrible future is just down the road.
    Hopefully after I'm dead of course.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    1. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by blue+trane · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Free stuff utopia. Government provides a basic income to all who want it, financed at zero cost through the Fed. Biz pays whatever low wages it wants so there's no wage-price spiral. Challenges stimulate individuals to innovate disruptively on their own without having to work for a business (unless they want to). Standards of living rise faster, there is more leisure time, and poverty is eliminated.

    2. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's probably how it will work in many places that aren't the United States, yes.

    3. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Livius · · Score: 1

      Creativity is not related to intelligence.

      But you probably do need above average creativity to make a living from it, so that still leaves half the planet without career options.

    4. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      Who says that the free stuff "utopia" is not the terrible future.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    5. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Government provides a basic income to all who want it"

      The money has to come from somewhere - namely taxes on the people who do work. When there are less people earning money there is less money tax. When there is less money to tax, the solution is to borrow and print. Ask Germany how that works out in the end.

    6. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, if you try to explain to the average person how close we are to mass unemployment with just one breakthrough in AI they generally shrug or say "yeah, but a computer can't do my job."

      If our economy doesn't want to change, then I'm just going to be sure to make it "onto the ark". The global economy is not going to correct itself IMO. It would require such a large commitment to fundamental change from everybody that I expect the current trend to continue. If people don't want the system that oppresses them to change--I don't see a reason to be on the side of the oppressed.

    7. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by aralin · · Score: 2

      I'm sorry to say, but if I am to automate some jobs, I will probably start with the creative ones. In most creative works, those can be distilled to sequences of elements from a fairly small set (notes, words), there are reasonable constraints to limit the possible space, those rules can be deduced by a neural networks, the results can be easily tested.

      If you want to keep your job, pick one with fairly simple procedure but large space of ever changing exceptions with few discernible patterns.

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    8. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by superdude72 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And about, oh, at least half of the global population isn't well suited for creative jobs since they are (by definition) below average intelligence.

      I wouldn't equate falling below the 50th percentile in IQ with inability to do anything but the most menial work. First, because I don't think intelligence should be defined that narrowly, and second, because it's fucking insulting. The vast majority of workers displaced by technology are not incapable of doing other work. They just lost a game of musical chairs, and there are huge obstacles for anyone trying to get back in the game.

    9. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That actually sounds quite simple. Just off the top of your head, could you distill a small set of elements to show how you'd automate (just for example) how one would sculpt music?

      Or perhaps dance anger?

      Oh.

    10. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

      Who says that the free stuff "utopia" is not the terrible future.

      The term you are looking for is "distopia". See: 1984, Animal Farm, Hunger Games, Brave New World, and Agenda 21, for starters.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    11. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by khallow · · Score: 1

      In most creative works, those can be distilled to sequences of elements from a fairly small set (notes, words), there are reasonable constraints to limit the possible space, those rules can be deduced by a neural networks, the results can be easily tested.

      Give it a try then, if it's so easy to do.

    12. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by ArhcAngel · · Score: 1

      So...something like this?

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    13. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The future is scooby-doo. Hundreds of high-tech people trying to scam out a living because it's the only way to make one.

    14. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by blue+trane · · Score: 1

      1) Comparing the US to the Weimar Republic is ridiculous. Germany had just lost a world war. To the US! If you've just lost a world war, and have to make onerous reparation payments, then worry about hyperinflation. Consider that after WWII, the US instead of demanding reparations gave money to Germany and Italy (as well as the Allies) with the Marshall Plan.

      2) Saying taxes fund the government is like saying deposits fund bank lending. In fact banks are highly leveraged, and roll over their funding daily. Then you have shadow banks that don't even have regular deposits, yet they manage to create money and roll over their funding. Government can use the same tactic, especially with the Fed which by law returns interest to the Treasury. Taxes aren't needed to fund the government.

    15. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by blue+trane · · Score: 1

      The goal of business, of course, is to make the individual subservient to the corporation. Even what you do on your own time has to conform to company policy. "Company Man!"

      The solution is more welfare, enough to provide a decent standard of living, then let biz pay what it wants. So if you want to enter the market you can; if you don't want to play that game, you're free to innovate on your own, and enter challenges.

    16. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by sdinfoserv · · Score: 1

      The problem is that soon there are no longer $80K jobs for people to buy the crap from. 'Creative Jobs' ... you mean like all the jobs for psyc, soc and liberal arts majors? In case you're not paying attention, liberal arts degrees that cost and SUV a year can't cash flow. All those kids bought a useless piece of paper. They're working at MickeyD's and living an mommies basement trying to figure out how to make a loan payment

    17. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Even what you do on your own time has to conform to company policy.

      I don't know who you have worked for. I haver never seen this outside of not competing with my employer while working for him. This is an obvious one.

      No the goal of business is to turn a profit. The individual is "subservient" as long as he is being paid. Subservient meaning performing the work he is being paid for. When he or she is done for the day, go home and do whatever you want. I have only had one boss ever act like he "owned" me. And I got fired from that job. Oh well. I was working on leaving but in the post 9/11 and post dot bomb that was a bit difficult. Oh well consulted for 4 years. ''

    18. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by antifoidulus · · Score: 1

      You should read "Player Piano" by Vonnegut if you haven't already. While some things like really rich engineers and of course the obligatory 50's reference to a computer with a massive # of vacuum tubes didn't come to pass, his depiction of what we do with the "excess" people is spot on. The basics are that they either go into the Army or join the "Reaks and Recs", basically a gang of workers that isn't needed, but gets employed by the government to do meaningless jobs so they can "earn" a paycheck. Honestly it's the most accurate prediction of modern society I have seen in any book that was written more than 50 years ago.

    19. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by aralin · · Score: 1
      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    20. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      There were experiments on paying everyone a basic payment conducted in some US and Canadian Towns in the 60s and 70s. It worked on a small scale then. There was a small decline in average hours worked but mostly in people working lots of hours. It wasn't politically acceptable though.

      Probably wouldn't work these days when wages and conditions are worse and there are so many special welfare entitlements like health, housings, disability etc.

      A robot won't displace 1000 workers. The US manufacturing industry has already shifted to high skilled manufacturing. You will get robots replacing machinists but they are doing machining to high precisions. So you need a skilled worker for every few machines to sample the output for accuracy, checking wear on the tools, organising calibration and maintenance. You replace several machinists with one higher skilled operator, who gets paid 4 times as much, but still works shifts because the get a return on the capital investment int he German robots you need to operate them 24/7. The parts then get shipped off to a low wage area to be assembled into stuff that is shipped back into the US market.

      The big change will come to white collar jobs, where people are already paying massive tuitions fees to get well paying ones. All of the jobs shuffling paper, ticking boxes, talking to people will be automated. Even things like dealing with legal documents, case law searches, medical diagnostic trees can be automated to work better than skilled professionals at a fraction of the cost.

    21. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      You have a point but it's really more about terminology.

      There are many different kinds of intelligence. I think being "creative" is one of them. And there are many different kinds of "creativity". A person who is really creative at painting won't be creative as a lawyer (finding new ways to apply existing law) or an advertising executive (thinking of something "fresh" to penetrate the noise" or as a writer.

      But a lot of smart people don't create as much as they do analyze. Their jobs are at risk.

      And a lot of people can create an idea now and then, but given a shortage of jobs, standards would be very high.

      And ordinary manual labor (even telemarketing) is going the way of the dodo now.

      I've seen estimates of 2/3 of fast food jobs being gone within 15 years. And the jobs that remain will basically be loading supplies into robots. (i.e. automated drink machine, automated cooking machines, automated kiosk or voice recognition ordering machines-- even automated delivery and unloading to storage of bulk supplies.)

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    22. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      Interesting.

      So do you think that you could replace a good advertising executive with an automated process?

      Or a creative lawyer who thinks of new ways to argue existing laws?

      Isn't dealing with ever changing exceptions being creative?

      ----

      One thing about the ever changing exceptions is that companies are eliminating those by eliminating options and reducing the domain space (or eliminating it entirely).

      For example with customer service menu trees and automated websites (and even automated chatbots).

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    23. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      For example, drug use of course but increasingly also

      smoking
      drinking alcohol

      Less common but more common by the year.
      engaging in risky sports.
      going on a vacation where you can't be reached by cell phone.
      Saying something unpopular that "reflects badly on the company" even tho you did it on your own time.
      being unreachable outside of working hours for more than a short period.
      taking certain prescription drugs.
      not taking certain prescription drugs (blood tests better show their presence).

      etc.

      I'm sure you can think of more now.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    24. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      A robot doesn't replace 1000 workers.

      A group of robots supported by a few human workers replace 1000 workers. They cost 1/3 the price, don't make mistakes, don't get sick, etc.

      Other machinists don't agree with you on the replacement aspect.
      http://www.goiam.org/publicati...

      http://motherboard.vice.com/bl...
      "That's according to a 2013 Oxford study, which was highlighted in this week's Economist cover story. That study attempted to tally up the number of jobs that were susceptible to automization, and, surprise, a huge number were. Creative and skilled jobs done by humans were the most secureâ"think pastors, editors, and dentistsâ"but just about any rote task at all is now up for automation. Machinists, typists, even retail jobs, are predicted to disappear. "

      And that's not even addressing the 3d printing aspects.

      When you replace several machinists, you have a few good ones out of the 12 you let go- and you take the one who is willing to work 24/7 for $10 to $15 bucks an hour.

      I think they are off on "editing"-- it's partially being automated, partially being crowdsourced, and what's left- they just have stopped doing. I've seen "howlers" in professionally published (not self published) paper and hard back books increasingly over the last 10 years.

      Agree with you entirely on the white-collar jobs which are not 90%+ creative. Jobs with less creativity will be combined and the creative parts done by consultants or designed out.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    25. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      No things like pastors, editors, dentists, certain lawyers, ad executives, project management, inventors, certain freelance artists, etc.

      Of course some creativity won't be worth keeping so it will be designed out when the process is automated.

      Example: I was on a project in 2009. Rewrite the purchase order system. It turned out to be hugely complicated because every form on the P.O. form was overloaded and when we finished there were actually 31 ways to create P.O.s. Which meant a big project, budget, etc. And there was a lot of political power in each department that prevented any of us lower than them from changing or simplifying it.

      So the executives bought a new PO program that had one way of doing things and said, "This is the only way to do it now". And that was that. All the "creativity" was out- and there was one way to do P.O.'s. It didn't have complete coverage- a few things had to be done manually or as attachments (to explain to approvers what was the PO was for in better detail than supported). But mostly, all the complexity of the system was cut away so it could be replaced with a $5000ish/year product that came off the shelf.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    26. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      "So far, neural networks have succeeded in imitating distinct musical styles, but truly original compositions have remained elusive. Miranda is tackling that problem with an orchestra of virtual musicians â" called agents â" that interact to compose original music. "

      "The ChaoSynth "soundscapes," often accompanied by Miranda on the piano, have won awards for being "musical" despite the unearthly sound of their individual parts. While pleasing when blended in composition, the everyday sounds fit no known category when isolated. "

      Sounds like it still needs work.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    27. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by aralin · · Score: 1

      Lawyer is different, it is a huge rule book with huge list of exceptions (different cases, case development, evidence). That is one of the professions that would be the hardest to automate, in general sense. But I am absolutely certain I could automate some of the DA pre-trial proceedings and since 95% of case never go to trial... I could likely get rid of at least 50% of lawyers in the long run. It is not about automating every single detail. It is about doing enough to reduce the number of jobs to minimum.

      As for ad execs? If Mad Men is any sort of insight, yeah, I could automate a good number of those jobs. Probably 2 out of 3 easily. The important distinction from musicians in such creative professions is that there are many people working in those without any real talent or creativity.

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    28. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by aralin · · Score: 1

      But I don't need truly original sound. I just need yet another fucking boy band. The mistake is in trying to automate originality, instead of automating for average or good enough. People think that you need to get the 100% when automating and it is not true. I'll take the 80% anytime. Because the savings are still incredible.

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    29. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      I think this has already happened. Most "creative" movies, TV shows and advertising are so derivative and trite that they could have been written by a hacked up Eliza bot.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    30. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Salgat · · Score: 2

      This is why outsourcing is a good thing; it systematically eliminates poverty throughout the world. I'm an American but outsourcing has allowed family in China to have a chance at being middle class. I guess what it comes down to is that as long as people out there are seriously benefiting from this, maybe it's a good thing. Yes people lose their $80,000/year jobs, but on the same hand hundreds of millions in impoverished nations are building a strong middle class and enjoying a life where they might have a chance to not be poor.

    31. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by StikyPad · · Score: 1

      Indeed. We need to start talking about what our world should look like when people don't need to work.

    32. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by blue+trane · · Score: 1

      A coworker was fired for refusing to work overtime. Isn't that infringing on what you want to do outside of the contracted workday?

      And there are many examples in the news of employers firing people for social media posts.

      Employers want robots. So let's give it to them. Have government provide a basic income, and hold challenges to automate jobs. Win-win.

    33. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by blue+trane · · Score: 1

      So, back the free stuff utopia. I believe most people are by nature curious and want to explore and be creative, so knowledge will advance, which is the real goal.

    34. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by StikyPad · · Score: 1

      At some point costs (labor requirements) will be so low that an entire population doesn't need to work full-time, or even anything approaching full time, in order to meet them. This is most clearly visible when looking at the amount of money we spend on food -- costs have decreased so dramatically that food costs as a percent of income are lower than income taxes in most cases. So what happens when the costs of other goods and services decrease accordingly? What happens when we don't have to pay people to create those goods and services, because they're created by machines? When grain is harvested by self-driving combines, and transported to market on self-driving trucks, and vended by automated machines? Because all of the other parts of the supply chain have already been automated -- those are the few that remain. The costs of goods and services will approach zero, even if they never quite get there.

      We currently accommodate this through unemployment -- reducing the size of the workforce and making people compete for available positions instead of lowering the time per individual. We leave it up to individuals to either re-task or retire. And reductions in the workforce are sustainable -- up to about 1 worker per family. After that it starts to fall apart.

      Automation is happening all around us, but we keep our collective heads in the sand because *our* jobs haven't yet been obsoleted, and because we fail to imagine a day when that could happen. I'm not saying it will be a utopia by any means. On the contrary, I don't think humans are generally wired to be happy and content, and we will always find things to be unhappy about. What I am saying is that we need to plan in order to avoid the dystopia that will necessarily ensue from massive unemployment and the lack of a societal model to accommodate it.

      Of course, we can't even execute an effective, collective plans for more concrete "when not if" scenarios like natural events, so I'm not holding my breath for realistic plans to address near-zero cost existence.

    35. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When supply outstrips any possible demand we could derive then there isn't an issue of borrow and print. We're literally almost to a point where we could make more than we could ever consume globally.

    36. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      Right now, 85 people take in the same income as 3.5 billion other human workers.

      Extend that trend forward 20 years to world with extensive automation and perhaps 400 people taking in the same income as 7.5 billion other human beings while another 1 billion making "decent" incomes still (the rest of the 3 billionis people being children, disabled, and senior citizens).

      For the most part- once the wealth reaches the top- it stops. It doesn't come back down. It's not even spent. It's put into long term bonds. Bonds have to be paid for with taxes. So bonds are really just another way for the wealthiest to extract more income from the rest of society.

      How do you run a society without taxing the people who hold all the money?
      How do you execute an economy when most of the wealth is all piled up on the opposite side from the consuming part.

      In the face of ubiquitous automation, the very concept of money breaks down. Because "money" is just a token representing hours of your life. If no one needs your labor- the hours of your life have no value monetarily.

      Which means no food- no entertainment- no medical care-- i.e. nothing to lose.

      How do you run a world where 60% of the adult humans have nothing to lose?

      North Korea has shown us one way of doing this. The other way is violent bloody revolutions which redistribute the wealth so the game can start over again.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    37. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by roman_mir · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Have government provide a basic income

      - government doesn't have anything "to provide", it can only take away from somebody in order to subsidise somebody else, it doesn't produce anything and has nothing to give to anybody for free. If you are talking about government stealing even more resources from those, who are already being stolen from in order to provide bread and circuses to those, who are already on welfare anyway, then all you will achieve will be more corruption, even less production, as those producing, will be moving their productive capacity out of the country even faster.

    38. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "get rid of at least 50% of lawyers in the long run"

      crossing fingers.. please, pleeeeeeease...

    39. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by psithurism · · Score: 1

      There were experiments on paying everyone a basic payment conducted in some US and Canadian Towns in the 60s and 70s. It worked

      According to other people, all such experiments failed miserably.

      It wasn't politically acceptable though.

      Yes, everyone construes the results based on their political ideology, but that includes you. Point out some specific examples and maybe we'll take an interest.

      A robot won't displace 1000 workers

      You can't stress that point enough these days. Cleaning, gardening, construction, landscaping, etc are not going away for the foreseeable future. Manufacturing even seems to be approaching a limit.

      All of the jobs shuffling paper, ticking boxes, talking to people will be automated. Even things like...

      Ahahaha! Don't we all wish! My grandparents predicted this would happen. I doubt it though. Every time I see a 'ticking boxes' job get automated, the replaced human has to be moved to verify the input, and a new hire is needed to audit the output. If the output is contentious, then all interested parties will need to hire new humans on both ends of the box ticker bot. I hate shuffling papers and ticking boxes, and though our tools continue to improve, I feel like I'm going to be ticking boxes, or paying someone to do it for the rest of my life (40years or so).

    40. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by volmtech · · Score: 1

      You have to sure only citizens are eligible. Super sealed borders will be necessary because who wants to look at all those sad faced immigrants who aren't getting free stuff. Many jobs will only be fill by coercion, cleaning septic tanks is not very challenging, I do know that. Now putting them in an area with a high water table is very challenging. Digging the hole big enough and getting the tank dropped in before hole fills with water and the sides start collapsing is intense.

    41. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would equate it with an inability to do anything but the most menial half of the work. First, intelligence is a pretty narrow quantity with pretty broad applicability to problem solving (indeed, it is a measure of the capacity for solving problems, particularly novel problems; performing tasks is not problem solving). Second, it is pretty fucking insulting to imply that someone in the lower half can perform the same work as someone in the upper half, just like it would be insulting to say a child can do everything an adult can do, or that a scrawny runt can do everything an olympic athlete can do, or that an illiterate Afghan villager can do everything Noam Chomsky can do. We are not all equal, neither in potential, nor talent, nor skill, nor experience. Period.

      Certainly there will be work that is suitable for the lower half, even when robots replace them in their current jobs. But in the long run, there will be fewer and fewer jobs available to people on the shallow end of the pool. Robots will mature to the point where they can do most of the jobs that do not require actual intelligence. We could use them for jobs requiring intelligence, too, but that would be opening a can of worms we do not need to open here on Earth. Thus, we will presumably render only a majority of people obsolete, not the whole species. And that will leave some jobs for the ones on the new shallow end. Prostitution comes to mind, and will probably stay relevant long after robots have matured to the point where they can do that job, too.

      For the moment, robots have very limited versatility compared to "disposable" humans (e.g. Americans), so there will be plenty of menial tasks to do. Indeed, most tasks done in the world are menial. One could commend the US for daring to discard the notion of being protective of its citizens, except there has been an utter failure to realize the advantages or even be consistent about it (e.g. the aversion to immigration of lower wage workers). Oh, well. Anyway, it's more than a game. Musical chairs is reality. And that can be a huge obstacle, indeed.

    42. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only jobs left will be "creative" jobs.

      Try "outsourcing" your plumber when your pipes burst at 3 am. Care to call Indian plumber support?

      What about "outsourcing" your auto mechanic when your ball bearings wear out and you get that g-r-i-n-d-i-n-g noise whenever you hit 30 mph?

    43. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In most creative works, those can be distilled to sequences of elements from a fairly small set (notes, words), there are reasonable constraints to limit the possible space, those rules can be deduced by a neural networks, the results can be easily tested.

      Give it a try then, if it's so easy to do.

      They do, and then they hire folks like me at 4x the price to clean up the mess the "cheaper" outsourced labor caused.

    44. Re:The goal of 1st world countries by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      A little late to the party but worth calling attention to.

      Yes... there are a few trade jobs which can't be easily automated or outsourced.

      They depend on a robust middle class to support their current wages.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  10. Are you really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "It's getting pretty frustrating when you can't compete on salary for a skilled job,"

    What? I could quit my job by burning bridges in such a manner that the flames would be seen and felt in the Heavens themselves, then immediately argue a 50-75% increase in pay.

    "You hear references all the time that these big companies ... can't find skilled workers. I am a skilled worker."

    Are you? Are you really? Because for the past decade, it's been nigh on impossible to retain programmers who want exponentially more money. Because they'll get it.

    Why for all love would you be looking at Manpower, "for example"? Where in the name of the Dark Gods your professional network? Jesus. I'm a charisma-incompetent, socially-inept recluse, and I but need to whistle to land interviews.

    1. Re:Are you really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You work for the NSA ,right?

    2. Re:Are you really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're modest, too.

  11. I've seen this in too many companies... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not all H-1Bs are bad. I have seen talent from Europe and the UK brought in because they are just fscking phenomenal. Their specialization was extremely important. However, these days, H-1B workers are just hauled in because they are cheap, easy to kick around, and disappear when done, such as a company that changes the developers out every 89 days.

    One place I worked at hired a lot of H-1Bs, and the reason for it is that "Americans sabotage and sue, foreign workers can be trusted far more. Ever see a H-1B tie us up in courts?" Every place I have seen that has H-1Bs has bragged about their quality above native talent. Cognitive dissonance? Same companies that brag about that have at best a mediocre end product.

    The ironic thing is that this cheapness causes damage in ways that the management drones don't even think about. I've worked with H-1Bs who were copying entire source code trees onto removable media. As soon as they went home, all that code would be theirs to do whatsoever they wanted. The CAD files and formula timings? All theirs to use, free of charge once they got home. As soon as they left US soil, NDAs didn't apply to them.

    1. Re:I've seen this in too many companies... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      the [alleged] reason for it is that "Americans sabotage and sue, foreign workers can be trusted far more. Ever see a H-1B tie us up in courts?"

      The flip-side is try to sue an ex-H-1B who is in India. Doable, yes, easy, no. You'll probably have to hire both a US lawyer and an Indian lawyer, and maybe fly witnesses to Indian courts.

      I've seen a company only pay their H-1B workers every six months. The visa workers didn't balk because such risked getting them booted home. The "indentured servants" comparison has some merit.

      As far as the work quality: mixed, just like US citizens.

    2. Re:I've seen this in too many companies... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      One place I worked at hired a lot of H-1Bs, and the reason for it is that "Americans sabotage and sue, foreign workers can be trusted far more. Ever see a H-1B tie us up in courts?"

      That's because the employee protection laws are too weak. People end up having to sue to avoid being screwed over. If the laws were in place there would be less need as everyone would know where they stood and companies would just do the right thing by default most of the time.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  12. pay em what they're worth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've got no problem with immigrants that are "taking american jobs" if they are more skilled. I do however, have a problem if they are being paid substantially less than me. If they are that good they should be paid at least as much if not more than their american counter parts.

    That would solve the "shortage" really quick.

    1. Re:pay em what they're worth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Generally they are getting paid the same, yes there are a few firms that abuse the process. Where I work here they get paid the exact same rate as the rest of us, in fact they cost the company considerably more as they also have to pay the visa costs, transport costs and they provide a 6 week accommodation costs while they find themselves more permanent accommodation. Most companies don't abuse this process.

    2. Re:pay em what they're worth by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 1

      Thats really not realistic as a public policy position, however. It would be much easier politically to kill the H1B program than it would be to do wage controls. Thats why killing the H1B program is what must happen. We dont need it, all it is doing is putting hard working American IT workers out on the street. I think what we need to do is create PACs and such to advocate for abolishment of the H1B program and to do battle with Mark Fuckerberg and other anti-american worker jackasses.

    3. Re:pay em what they're worth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think it would be better to frame the argument as an either / or.

      Either wage control or kill the program.

      Things work better in the public sphere when you give the illusion of a choice.

    4. Re:pay em what they're worth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well it might not be "realistic" but it's what we do in Sweden. Since EU we have contractors (mostly in construction but the theory is the same) willing to work in Sweden for less than a Swedish contractor will demand. Since the union realised that this would become a "race to the bottom" they stipulated that any foreign company that wants to work in Sweden have to pay thier workers the same wage as Swedish workers get (while working in Sweden). So the contractors are still free to come to Sweden and bid low on a contract and even take out lower wages for administrators/management who is still in thier home country but for the actual workes in Sweden they have to pay union wages.

      But then again we can have it this way because of powerful unions. In the US I guess it would have to be by state law which would make it less flexible.

    5. Re:pay em what they're worth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got no problem with immigrants that are "taking american jobs" if they are more skilled. I do however, have a problem if they are being paid substantially less than me.

      If they're willing to work for less than you, then you may over-value your skill set. The US is a nation of immigrants, and immigrants have always been our best and most creative people. Someone on an H1-B is not an immigrant. He's an outsourced job given temporary residence to be in the same timezone as his supervisor.

      If these foreign workers really are that good, then we should do everything we can, as a nation, to get them and keep them. Instead, we're bringing them here for school, maybe giving them a few years to learn the newest technology developments, then sending them back home.

    6. Re:pay em what they're worth by Whorhay · · Score: 1

      Actually that is already baked into the H1B program. In theory the H1B employee has to be paid the going market rate for such great talent. The problem is that companies that are abusing this program and paying less than the market value strong arm the workers. If the worker tries to seek corrective action they get kicked out and a new minion is brought in. Under our legal system the rest of us can't file a lawsuit to correct the situation because we likely wouldn't be found to have legal standing, as we weren't H1B workers being treated unfairly.

  13. some considerations. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm from EU.
    Several times I worked with pakistan/indian development teams and I found them unsatisfactory.
    Most of times I had to skill them not only in basic programming but in base mathematical notions as well.
    All of them were hired by US and EU bosses as "computer geniuses" only because what they talked could hardly be understood.

    Customer care and tech support now are outsourced in India or other countries as well, but the level of incompetency they offer is almost unbelievable.

     

  14. Re:Two sides to every issue by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

    Also, a foreigner is less likely to job-hop for a better salary after a year.

    Um, yeah; especially if their visa doesn't allow them to.

  15. Have you actually tried hiring these days? by psperl · · Score: 2

    As far as I'm concerned there's a shortage. I've been trying to hire developers for multiple high-compensation positions in NYC. Truly smart/capable/motivated people are not looking for jobs. They are already employed.

    Don't get me wrong, there are many people looking who think they're qualified. I just don't agree. I'm not even looking for particular skills or experience. Just people who are genuinely into technology.

    1. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > They are already employed.

      And even if they aren't, by the time you get them in for an interview, they've already got another job. Here on the Eastside of Seattle, it's nearly impossible to find developers. We're offering 10% more than Microsoft or Expedia, which are in neighboring buildings, but we still can't find developers. We had nineteen open positions as of a year ago, and only three are filled. Those were by friends of existing employees. There just aren't any good out of work developers.

    2. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      Well pushing tech, tech, tech to everybody and their grandmother does create a glut of workers, but it does not necessarily get you any more truly competent workers (or get you any more people interested in anything other than the salary). In fact the glut of incompetence might actually ruin a few ones with potential.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    3. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Try hiring folks in the bay area to telecommute.

    4. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd take it if it wasn't in NYC.

      I'm employed. I think I'm talented. Might not be, but I do get alot of calls from people I used to work with wondering if I'd come over to work with them. In fact, my current employer just made the mistake of giving me a technology to own that I *hate* and it outside my chosen field of specialty (information security, for some reason the CISO owns making apps deploy on personal devices). I've been spending 30% of my time not working on making the organization more business friendly secured, but rather trying to deploy apps.

      I got a call from someone over the weekend doing what the other 70% of my job is and not having to end each day in frustration with one of the 4 companies involved in trying to deploy these apps. I'm super considering it. Same pay, better work.

      Point of the story: If you pile crap on a talented and motivated employee, they will go elsewhere.

    5. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by psperl · · Score: 1

      Exactly. The only positions I've filled recently were by internal referral.

    6. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      At first I hated you but then I read your last line and I agree 100%. I'm a "Truly smart/capable/motivated" person but I'm unemployed. _NOBODY_ will hire someone who is unemployed so I'm stuck. And US corporations are missing out on my high IQ and much higher than average tenacity and attention to detail and quality.

      I'm a true geek- most of my interests are science and tech. I have a BSEE and most of the other students didn't really care. I was one of maybe 5 who do.

      But that said I have a great problem with how HR and hiring is done. They make a huge list of experience requirements. News flash- we geeks figure stuff out fast! I just taught myself Visual Basic (quickly). All I need is a goal and I figure things out (well).

      I'm in the Philly area...

      What technologies are you hiring for?

    7. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You and everyone else saying they can't find people, post your actual jobs offers and we'll tell you why we don't want to work for you or how you could improve the ad to find us.

    8. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of the last 5 programmers we hired/given offers to, at least 3 were unemployed at the time. 1 turned us down/demanded more than we were willing to pay by 2%, 1 quit within 1 month and took him over 6 months to find another job. The last is still here, but is basically threatening to quit every time he has to do anything he doesn't like.

      Not claiming anything about you, but I'm sure others have run into the same pattern. Of course more likely is it just sucks to work where I am.

    9. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "10% more than Microsoft" likely isn't particularly competitive. Their headhunters regularly call me. I've yet to be impressed - most of their offers would be a significant pay cut. Most of you would probably call me a backend engineer (from kernel drivers up through large-scale modeling & simulation software).

        I'm 31, currently on the east coast -- but not in the NYC inflated salary/cost-of-living area. For me, personally, my magic number is around $150k, with reasonable benefits, and not working burnout 80hr weeks. Anything less than that automatically hits the trash bin. Anything above that gets rated by how interesting the work is, and not particularly by the specific salary amount.

      My guess is that you're either probably failing hard at marketing your job as being interesting, looking for people who are way more competent than necessary to execute that specific job, or severely out of touch on salary. Failing that, your location is probably not superb and you fail the "can I live where I want to live and commute to your location in less than X minutes" test. That's a bit harder to fix, I've seen several corporations either fail or get bought out because they didn't realize quite how much their office location mattered and could never find talent that wanted to live in that area.

    10. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amen to this.

      In a slightly more entrepreneurial vein, anyone want to put together a consultancy to teach corporations how to recruit devs? I bet there's significant amounts of money there.

    11. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would a skilled technologist want to work for any company that wasn't a collective of friends with similar aims? They can probably implement whatever shitty web service you're trying to provide, by themselves, in a week's work, and not have to support a horde of leeching MBAs and slave traders that probably wasted their time and treated them like subhuman shit some time in the last 3-5 years when they applied for a position which was advertised but not actually funded at the time, or advertised but only to justify a H-1b hire?

      For my part, I have felt pretty much open disdain from most quarters in the labor market since "the recession". If it came right down to it I think I'd rather retain my dignity and be homeless than subject myself to that again.

      Fortunately, I've had several of my own projects turn out to be quite successful over the last few years since I left the open labor market and make well more than I could working as a technonegro on any of the big plantations.

    12. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But that said I have a great problem with how HR and hiring is done. They make a huge list of experience requirements. News flash- we geeks figure stuff out fast! I just taught myself Visual Basic (quickly). All I need is a goal and I figure things out (well).

      In my experience, ordinary people (non-geeks) are totally incapable of learning. They can be trained to do specific tasks but will never figure things out on their own. HR and hiring managers only know how to hire ordinary people and cannot comprehend anyone else. You will fail every interview if you say you can "figure stuff out fast" because the interviewers will assume you are lying.

    13. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have to call BS on that one. I live in Austin, and when I needed decent programmers for a startup business, I went to a couple nearby colleges and talked with the CS faculty. After the profs asked for students who were interested in their classes, I got a list of names of students, then approached them about a job request part-time.

      Yes, they were untested and were college students, but when I offered them more than the minimum wage and the ability to code from home, I got the talent I needed.

      I would say it took some time to get things going, but I ended up with a dev team that was very solid and whose code quality was as good as any other non-NASA organization.

      To boot, the cost and aggravation it took me was very little. I've seen what it takes to get a H-1B (unless you had connections), and even with paying the college students far more than minimum wage part-time, I made out far better than other places that went the offshoring/outsourcing route. College students are diamonds in the rough.

      Just look around. Check the local schools and colleges. Don't expect Infosys or Tata to fly in your talent on a silver platter.

    14. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Failing that, your location is probably not superb and you fail the "can I live where I want to live and commute to your location in less than X minutes" test. That's a bit harder to fix, I've seen several corporations either fail or get bought out because they didn't realize quite how much their office location mattered and could never find talent that wanted to live in that area.

      I don't know how many other people think like this, but I'd be willing to move to any first-world country for a job... except the US. Hell, I don't speak any language except English and I'd take a job on the European mainland over a job in the US. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but I'd be very surprised if I was the only one who feels like this.

      On a more local scale, that's a big one to me, too - not just the amount of time I'd spend commuting, but the actual location, too - are you in an industrial area? That's probably going to be pretty boring, with limited options for eating or meeting up with friends who work with other companies, etc. The huge Apple & Google Campuses have similar issues for me as well (not that I've ever worked there - just imagining) - too removed from the rest of the city and its people.

    15. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like sucks to work at your company, and you need to pay a premium to make up for it.

    16. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by ArhcAngel · · Score: 2

      Your comment and the first response kinda paints the picture. NYC and Seattle. Two places I have no desire to live. The cost of living in NYC would mean I'd have to double my current salary to maintain my current standard of living and it's too crowded. Seattle is nice but again it costs more to live there and...winter. The reason companies can't find skilled workers in the US is they aren't looking in the US they're looking on the East and West coast.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    17. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most of you would probably call me a backend engineer (from kernel drivers up through large-scale modeling & simulation software).

      You're living my dream. Sadly, if you've any trace of a disability, nobody wants to hear from you.

    18. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interviewers do not want someone who can "figure stuff out fast" they want someone who follows orders and figures out what they are told to figure out. You are a liability, a danger, an accident off the tracks.

      You need to make your own goals. If you let others set them for you, they will.

    19. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How many people have embedded systems experience? You're in a niche of a niche. Of course people will be hard to find.

      I know C (or used to, before C jobs disappeared and I had to move on), the GNU toolchain, Linux - but have no embedded systems experience. I thought about getting some, but gave up on that specialization because all the jobs I saw required deep, long-term experience with hardware I had never heard of before. Even if I could learn to program the Raspberry Pi or something, these jobs had other hardware I didn't have any experience with. So even if I knew embedded systems, I would not have the required experience.

      I'm a long-time UNIX and C programmer, but outside of embedded systems, demand for UNIX programmers has disappeared. People either want embedded systems programmers, or system administrators. I'm a programmer, so I had to move on to Java. I had deep, in-depth C skills that I can barely remember these days.

      Would you train me? Nah, didn't think so. You want someone who will already be productive.

    20. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The shortage is people who want to live in NY/NJ, San Fran/Silicon Valley, Chicago, and the MD-VA-DC area. These are crowded, high cost of living areas. I would rather get out of the computer field, get a trailer somewhere, and work at Harbor Freight than move to any of these areas. And I'm the person you want to hire. The moral of this story is that companies need to think outside the box of the half-dozen or so highest cost of living and most crowded areas in the USA. Then they will find people. Kind of so simple and obvious I have to wonder why companies don't try opening branches in other places.

    21. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And this is the key. You were willing to train and hired people who wanted to learn. Soon enough you had a competent team. Any seasoned developer can program in any language, If you know how to program, the language is just syntax. Companies on the other hand tend to want to hire only someone with 100 years of experience with the exact version of the development tools the company uses, has 10 years of industry experience and somehow is familiar with that internally developed procurement app. In short, they effectively are only willing to hire their own employees. Anyone else is "unqualified".

    22. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      Then you're not paying enough. The only way to have open positions for a long time is to not have a high enough value proposition.

    23. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As far as I'm concerned there's a shortage. I've been trying to hire developers for multiple high-compensation positions in NYC. Truly smart/capable/motivated people are not looking for jobs. They are already employed.

      Don't get me wrong, there are many people looking who think they're qualified. I just don't agree. I'm not even looking for particular skills or experience. Just people who are genuinely into technology.

      If the people you want are already employed then you have to give them a reason to leave their current job. It could be an increase in pay and/or perks such as work-from-home, casual dress code, bonuses, and so on. You're competing for talent - give people incentives or your positions will go unfilled.

    24. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by currently_awake · · Score: 1

      The H1B program is causing the skills shortage. They hire imports because it's cheaper. They won't hire and train local talent because the job is now filled. Locals won't train for that job because it's filled. The import will eventually go home leaving a hole, and the cycle repeats. So long as you have H1B visas the skills shortage will NEVER go away.

    25. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How does any of that relate to what the parent post said?

      All I heard was "Wahhh, Wahhh, Wahhh! Aspergers, Autodidact, Passion! Wahhh, Wahhh, Wahhh, fear of rejection!"

      I don't expect he gets laid very often because the expression "you miss 100% of the balls you don't swing at" applies here. Employers aren't going to find you through live journal or blogger. Put yourself out there and demonstrate talent through your activities and meeting people.

      It's ok, I'm a neckbeard too. I'm not judging you, but if you're as talented as you say and you're in that predicament it's probably due to lack of social interaction, online presence, and extroverted activities. I'm definitely projecting above but when I actually make myself visible to prospective employers(hint: they're hiding in plain sight until you do something awesome, then they're just in plain sight) and then I'm beating them off with sticks.

      If your self-assessment is accurate, you need to move to an economic hub, put yourself out more, and worry about being exploited not unemployed.

    26. Re:Have you actually tried hiring these days? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      You might consider doing job training for that problem.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  16. No matter what degrees and skill sets you have by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... the world doesn't owe you a living. Even if you have all the right stuff now, and supplement that with at-home study sessions to keep your skill set reasonably up to date (e.g., with the server-side latest libraries for JS) it won't necessarily be enough to get a job you'll be proud of ten years from now.

    The woman who chatted online with Obama about her out-of-work husband who was a semiconductor engineer, doesn't get it. People need to actively manage their own careers, through twists and turns in the global economy, labor market, and business and technological trends; unlike the so-called "greatest generation" that reached adulthood in the decade after WW II, it's not enough to get a degree or two, get hired by a reputable company, and be a good company player for the next 30 or 40 years. That period was probably an aberration.

    I don't necessarily agree with FB, Google, and Microsoft on their recommendations for H1-B policies, but Americans working in the tech. field should have a personal job strategy that does not depend on either the continuance, expansion, or shrinking of that program. It should be irrelevant to where they're headed.

    1. Re:No matter what degrees and skill sets you have by Duhavid · · Score: 1

      Yes, you should have a career strategy. And it should be a good one.
      But seriously, we need to

      A, do our jobs
      B, keep our skills up to date
      C, manage this career, guessing properly about where things are going next and figuring out how to chase it without letting down the side on A and B.

      And woe betide you if you dare add recreation and / or family to this.

      And *everyone* needs to do this. I think most are going to do an average job on this.

      And how do you know? The guys that get to choose what the twists and turns are going to be, they don't communicate reliably.

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
    2. Re:No matter what degrees and skill sets you have by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You say workers need to manage their own careers, but it's not possible to have a career in a field that has only short-term temporary work. From three- and six-month contracts to limited-time H-1B visas, software development is turning into a field where there is no career path any longer. Stay current with skills? You can't get a job unless you have experience with skills. Again, the industry itself churns so much that skills are quickly obsolete, and only those with experience get hired. I can go learn anything, but without experience I can't get a job doing it. Work on open source? Does that really help anyone but the few "name" people? Would an employer look at the fact that I've added some patches or wrote documentation to a small open-source project, or created a tiny project of my own, as something worthwhile? (The answer is no: I put a gigantic sample of my own coding on my web site because I kept hearing that the one thing employers don't know is if candidates can actually write code. No one even bothered downloading or looking at my sample.) So, no one owes me anything, sure, but all I hear is there's a "shortage" by people who want to hire. Don't they owe it to themselves to hire people who could do the jobs they need done? More and more people will be abandoning the software field as a career becomes increasingly impossible. Don't companies owe it to themselves to have the talent they need?

    3. Re:No matter what degrees and skill sets you have by MaxVT · · Score: 1

      > Would an employer look at the fact that I've added some patches or wrote documentation to a small open-source project, or created a tiny project of my own, as something worthwhile?

      Yes, that's a question I was asking from time to time when I interviewed others, and almost no one has ever contributed to open source or put some code up for the public to see. There's only that much code you could write and we can discuss in half an hour, but if I look at a sizeable repo I'll have a much better idea of your code organization, documentation, API design chops, obvious bugs etc.

  17. Re: Two sides to every issue by Octorian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With many of these odd job descriptions you speak of, I suspect many of them are cases where said company has already identified the specific individual they want to get an H-1B visa for. So this is essentially a copy of their unique resume. They just need to publicly post the job to fulfill a legal requirement before they can get them the visa.

  18. When they say 'skilled' they mean 'cheap' by lusid1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Word substitution is a common ESL problem.

  19. /. article about a /. article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't see why this was recycled by the submitter and editor; it was adequately covered a month ago. Attempts by these "advocacy groups" to unionize tech workers just aren't being met with any interest.

  20. So post the info here. by khasim · · Score: 2

    I've been trying to hire developers for multiple high-compensation positions in NYC.

    So post it here.

    Truly smart/capable/motivated people are not looking for jobs. They are already employed.

    Yes. Usually. So you have to offer them something MORE than they have at their current job to make them willing to take a risk on a new job.

    I'm not even looking for particular skills or experience. Just people who are genuinely into technology.

    Yeah. You might want to re-evaluate your criteria.

    At least narrow it down to whether you're looking for a programmer or a CCIE. Is this about writing drivers? Or programming EPROM chips? Or iPhone games? Or encryption? SatNav?

    1. Re:So post the info here. by psperl · · Score: 2

      I think you've missed the point. There is no glut of competent workers. There is no conspiracy by large tech firms to drive down wages by hiring incompetent foreigners or off-shoring. The "foreigners" or H1-B's that I've got employed are the elite of their respective countries, and are paid based on their skill. You could call it a tragedy that they are working for me and not helping their home country compete in the international market.

      Not all businesses allow you to post jobs to Slashdot, although I suppose I could lobby to change that internally. I'm also fully aware I need to entice people away, but if they aren't looking I can't entice them. I'm a happy employee myself, I'm not periodically checking to see if anyone has any enticing offers for me.

      You're statement about narrowing my search is also part of the problem with this industry. A good engineer can work on almost anything. Hiring by keyword does not make success.

    2. Re:So post the info here. by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 1

      If you have jobs, we're all ears. A lot of us are unemployed yet highly capable software engineers. Do you have an email to send my resume?

    3. Re:So post the info here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you will find it is more a case of "a lot of you are unemployed yet THINK you are highly capable software engineers". There are plenty of jobs out there in the field, if you are struggling to find a job chances are pretty high the problem is you. The amount of people I interview that I would not hire as a junior programmer yet claim 10 years+ experience as a senior developer is staggering, I am not sure how they managed to get such inflated opinions of there skills, but it is a serious issue.

    4. Re:So post the info here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If a position can remain unfilled in search of a qualified applicant indefinitely, there is no position. The organization does not actually need that labor input. If the organization will not continue to evolve without additional labor input, the organization will pay market rate or fail. This lamenting is masturbatory self-importance of someone who does not need additional staff, evidenced by the fact that they haven't hired them. They might like to pay less for more talented staff if they could find them, but they're not going to.

    5. Re:So post the info here. by khasim · · Score: 1

      I think you've missed the point.

      I think I nailed the point. YOU claim that YOU cannot find people to hire for a position that YOU cannot identify or even characterize. Is it programming? Is it networking?

      There is no glut of competent workers.

      Any yet YOU cannot characterize the position that YOU claim YOU have open except:

      I'm not even looking for particular skills or experience. Just people who are genuinely into technology.

      So you will train people who are not currently qualified ... but there isn't anyone who is qualified.

      Not all businesses allow you to post jobs to Slashdot, although I suppose I could lobby to change that internally.

      If you're running the ad on Dice or someplace then post a LINK to that posting.

      You are quick to claim that you cannot find qualified people (even though you'd train someone who was not qualified) but rather reticent to post any information about the opening you claim to have.

      That's suspicious.

      You're statement about narrowing my search is also part of the problem with this industry. A good engineer can work on almost anything.

      No. A good automotive engineer CANNOT design a bridge as well as a good civil engineer. And neither of those are electrical engineers.

      And someone looking for a programmer would NOT have any problem stating that AND what language(s).

    6. Re:So post the info here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, it's more a case of greedy shitbag execs always being willing to pay less for more, and always whining that they aren't getting it.

      If you are a capable developer who has not found luck with the job market, just fuck these guys and go do your own thing. Hell, find a couple friends in a similar situation, rip off their thing, and do it better. You only need venture capital for a software startup if you're going to be carrying dead weight. Live cheap until you find something that works.

    7. Re:So post the info here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >If you're running the ad on Dice or someplace then post a LINK to that posting.

      He doesn't need to post anything. If he's paying a premium over Microsoft for developers, that's easily $120-140k, which is pretty damn comfortable even in Seattle. (Doesn't even tempt me, by the way.) That puts paid to the claim that the big companies only want H1-Bs for the low wages. Hell, Facebook, Google, Twitter are all hiring and they all pay very well. Why aren't these so-called "skilled Americans" applying there?

    8. Re:So post the info here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not all businesses allow you to post jobs to Slashdot, although I suppose I could lobby to change that internally.

      So it is entirely your company's fault, yet you blame others because your own company sucks rocks?

      How mature and adult. What amazing "innovation" and "progress."

      No glut, no conspiracy, just good old-fashioned arrogance and ivory towers.

      The world out there is the problem, run back inside, shut the door!

    9. Re:So post the info here. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      You know I see you continuing to bloviate, but I don't see any links to your job ads and I don't see any hard descriptions of the skill sets you are looking for or for the job you are trying to fill.

      Seriously man, time to put up or shut up.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    10. Re:So post the info here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not all businesses allow you to post jobs to Slashdot, although I suppose I could lobby to change that internally. I'm also fully aware I need to entice people away, but if they aren't looking I can't entice them. I'm a happy employee myself, I'm not periodically checking to see if anyone has any enticing offers for me.

      Everyone has their price. Even the most content employee can be wooed away of you make it worth their while. You really need to a) define what you're seeking from a hard and soft skills perspective; b) create an incentive package which, at the least, will be sufficient to start the dialog with potential candidates; and, c) seek the services of a competent, proven, technical recruiter. On this latter point I don't mean a keyword searching monkey - I mean a genuine, experience recruiter who has an extensive network and track record of success.

      Do these three things and you'll get your positions filled. If not, all you can do is wait for the next technology slump.

    11. Re:So post the info here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "There is no conspiracy by large tech firms to drive down wages by hiring incompetent foreigners or off-shoring. The "foreigners" or H1-B's that I've got employed are the elite of their respective countries, and are paid based on their skill".

      haha - of course they are - you must be from Infosys trolling slashdot. If they're that good they usually have citizenship, they're not over on H1-B visa's.

  21. Re:Two sides to every issue by jacobsm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Total BS. I'd take a American IT worker with an inflated ego over a corporate bean counter any day. I've been in the IT field since 1979, and trust me, I'm an expert in my speciality. They might be able to replace me with someone and pay then 1/2 of what I make, but they're not going to get my skillset.

    Knowing what to do when things are going along swimmingly is easy. When the shit hits the fan, getting the corporate mainframe back running in minutes rather than hours, or G-d forbid days is worth every penny they pay me. I know it, the people who've been working with me for *mumble* years know it.

    A bean counter, I doubt it.

  22. Re:Two sides to every issue by Old+VMS+Junkie · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah, and the American workers laid off to be replaced by outsourcers at 1/3 the price, that's the workers' fault too. Capitalism will always leverage poverty and when you can hire someone who thinks that having a flush toilet is a luxury over someone who expects a decent wage, you can pretty much count on the switch being made.

  23. Re:Two sides to every issue by Cryacin · · Score: 3, Informative

    I came across a very interesting thing. It seems that for several of the large corps that I consult to, their biggest problem with onshore Indian resources (read resources in India) is job hopping. They do it more than the west. I call shenanigans from a shill.

    --
    Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
  24. Re: Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Which means that they are flaunting the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.

  25. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    s/American/Indian/g

  26. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    1/3 the wage for 1/20 the functionality.

    I see management issues driving this rather than true economics. First, managers count dollars per headcount, totally ignoring dollars per successful project. Second, if management has more people reporting to them then management uses it as justification for promotions for themselves. Third, it's slave labor that management can abuse, force to work unpaid hours, and can't escape to a better job. Abuse is far easier than skill and results.

  27. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's interesting, but irrelevant. GP's point was that H1-Bs in America currently have two options: 1) Remain at current sponsoring employer or 2) go home, because quitting means immediate revocation of their visa. Having to return to your home country does kinda put a damper on one's ability to job hop...

  28. Re:Two sides to every issue by war4peace · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Total BS. I'd take a American IT worker with an inflated ego over a corporate bean counter any day. I've been in the IT field since 1979, and trust me, I'm an expert in my speciality. They might be able to replace me with someone and pay then 1/2 of what I make, but they're not going to get my skillset.

    Do you realize you just confirmed what GP's saying?

    "Trust me, I'm THAT good".
    "No foreigner has my skillset".
    "I'm an expert".

    Seen quite a few people with exactly those statements who were smashed from a skillset perspective by some guy whose name one needs half a day to spell properly (e.g. Kumar Bheemasandralakshminarayana).
    Never say never.

    On a more general note, more often than not people substitute a thick accent with lack of intelligence. "He can't speak English very well therefore he's dumb". They couldn't be further from the truth.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  29. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I was talking with a friend who just retired from a tech job. He was tired of dealing with people who didn't know how to efficiently troubleshoot. He told me of one problem where a worker had replaced a part with a similar one built to different specs, and that caused the problem. The two workers had been troubleshooting the wrong piece of equipment of three pieces. After asking why they were working on the wrong piece, he scanned the two other pieces, and instantly noticed an incorrectly colored part. The two other workers were amazed, and asked him how he could troubleshoot so quickly. He replied that they were working on the assumption that the most complicated possible cause of the problem was the problem. He was operating on the assumption that one should first check the simple things.

    I'm sure his company will miss his skills. (Good luck, Norm!)

  30. There's a Ferrari shortage too... by MetricT · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't buy a Ferrari for $100, by the same logic, that means there *must* be a Ferrari shortage! Something must be done!!!

    Hint: reward good people, and you won't have problems finding good people. The problem is these miserly capitalist/MBA types who feel tech types are getting all "uppity" for wanting a decent salary for their 4 year STEM degree and often 2-6 years of grad school to boot, because doing that takes away from their quarterly bonus.

    1. Re:There's a Ferrari shortage too... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I can't buy a Ferrari for $100, by the same logic, that means there *must* be a Ferrari shortage! Something must be done!!!

      I can agree to that!

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  31. Temporary Foreign Workers by MacroSlopp · · Score: 2

    I live in Canada, and we're going through something similar with a 'temporary foreign workers program'. Workers are brought in from other countries because people aren't willing to work for the salaries that the employers deem affordable... that's not how a free market works... is it?
    The Canadian government has been put on the spot to the point, that they actually have to act on behalf of Canadian WORKERS, rather than employers.

    Keeping fighting to keep this issue current and in the news. It's terrible for the workers, it's terrible for your country, and in the long run it's terrible for the employers.

    At the risk of sounding like a HR/CEO cliche, the most valuable asset for a tech company is its people. Also, quantity does not equal quality.
    Cliches are sometimes based in truth.

    1. Re:Temporary Foreign Workers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Canada, the tech firms are facing such a glut of workers that they don't even bother to respond to nearly all applicants. Heck, most of them can't even put together a coherent hiring program and present it to the good quality candidates who show up at the UWaterloo Engineering Career Fair! Its pretty much the same deal everywhere, HR people are so overwhelmed with resumes that they aren't even capable of distinguishing the good from the bad. Top grads don't even get their resumes read by the employers.

  32. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    5+ years with heavy Win9 and Java 8 experience required to apply.
    With the lack of qualified domestic applicants we are forced to go shopping overseas and need more H-1B's
    Sure...
    The corporate bull shit machine is running full speed !
    Believe that shit then I've got a bridge to sell cheap, it collects tolls and will make you rich!

  33. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's probably more like HR incompetence than any company conspiracy theory. HR don't understand tech. Recruiters don't understand tech. Having them both looking for and vetting candidates prior to giving the resumes to the team leaders is often counter productive.

    I've been on both sides of coin many times and every time dealing with HR and or recruiters is incredibly frustrating.

    Right now we're hiring. Truth is we probably get 6 times the number of H1B applicants compared to US applicants. Many US applicants don't want to relocate, or have several years experience and just-aren't-good. It's rare that we actually get any US applicants coming out of university. There's a good chance that one of the six H1B applicants is good, motivated, hardworking and smart... hence we tend to hire more of them. Most of them have multiple masters degrees, usually completed in US universities.

  34. Re:Two sides to every issue by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    easy to get multiple masters degrees when you don't have to pay for them or need skills other then being able to cram for tests

  35. Re:Two sides to every issue by Lumpy · · Score: 2

    Gotta love rules that almost enforce a form of slavery.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  36. It's all about the $$$ by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 1

    After reading the " How often should I change jobs " thread yesterday and noted most do so to keep asking for ever increasing pay, it isn't shocking to realize the big companies have turned to outside skills at a fraction of the cost of an American worker.

    Why would they hire you at $100k + / year when they can pick someone up on a work visa, with the same skills, for half of that ? Especially for short term projects ? If they have the skills, how do you compete against someone willing to do the work at a fraction of the pay ?

    Companies are under pressure to keep cutting costs and they have cut so much the only thing they have left is the labor pool.

    It won't be long before American skills are just too expensive to consider for those companies who have the option to utilize outside labor. If you think unemployment is bad now, wait till they quit hiring locally because you won't / can't work for what your replacement is more than happy to get.

    Not sure how to fix it either. Cost of living here is a lot higher than it is in ( insert your favorite country here ) so, as long as they have the skills, they will get the jobs instead of the guy who has had six jobs in the past three years and is demanding insane compensation and will likely jump ship in six months anyway.

  37. Re:Two sides to every issue by sabri · · Score: 4, Informative

    H1-Bs in America currently have two options: 1) Remain at current sponsoring employer or 2) go home, because quitting means immediate revocation of their visa.

    2B: Hop to an employer that is willing to sponsor a change in their H1-B.

    From Wikipedia:

    Despite a limit on length of stay, no requirement exists that the individual remain for any period in the job the visa was originally issued for. This is known as H-1B portability or transfer, provided the new employer sponsors another H-1B visa

    From the employees perspective, there is one problem with this: once an employer has started the permanent residency (greencard) process, it is a bad idea to move because you'll be starting all over again.

    --
    I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
  38. Not somuch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The relevant observation is that the bean counters deciding on hiring don't know, in many cases, what skills
    are actually needed and have no idea how to look for evidence of someone who learns fast and thinks on
    his feet. When a "skill" means "claimed experience with version X of program Y", you miss the more
    important issues of "knowing 6 or 8 programs that do what program Y does, knows how they work, how to
    build new ones...". Such a person is much more likely to be able to work with version X+1, X+2 ... of
    program Y, or with whatever replaces program Y later.

    I've seen far too much of the lack of such capabilities, and too much of people with evident
    independent thinking skills being missed, to doubt the problem is real.

    I should add that it is much harder to get useful stuff from a guy whose English is incorrect
    and/or difficult to understand. (Of course I'd tend also to mark down the ungrammatical
    sich as the above's "substitute a thick accent with lack of intelligence". One may
    "take a thick accent as an indication of lack of intelligence", but the former usage is
    marginally unintelligible. He who can't speak good English may or may not be unintelligent.
    He is likely to be unintelligible.
        (Numerous Americans are not good with English and numerous Indians I have known are
    excellent at it by the way. However poor grasp of the language combined with an accent
    that is hard to parse, or habits of poor enunciation, make it hard to work with someone...
    hard enough I think such folks should not be hired in the first place.)

    1. Re:Not somuch by war4peace · · Score: 2

      Well structured comment, but there's one tiny thing that you (and most companies, for that matter) didn't consider.
      Most companies (actually ALL companies I have information about) make the same big mistake: they mix cultures together in teams. It's a bad decision. of course, they're trying to be "politically correct" and shooting themselves in the foot in the process.

      Something happened by mistake in our company during a reorg. Two large development teams were reorganized with developers being moved from one team to another. Incidentally, most Indian employees were clumped together in a team while US- and Romania-based were clumped together in another. Everybody expected a dip in performance while the dust settled, but, surprisingly for most, there was a sizeable boost in performance seen almost immediately. Luckily, the group director was an Indian born and raised in the USA, so he was able to efficiently deal with both cultures and everything was moving to and fro through him.

      Some might yell "boo racism" but it has nothing to do with that. It's all about work culture as well as communication issues between different cultures due to idiosyncrasies and language barriers et caetera. There are many culturally-specific differences that can make or break a work relationship, starting with how you shake hands, which hand you use to eat french fries, how you point out someone else's mistake and ending with how you greet a female co-worker.

      Random example: You could greet an American female colleague with "hello, gorgeous" with very little chance she'd be offended. You never ever should greet an Indian female co-worker the same way.

      So yeah, it's a "pick your poison" kind of thing: either clump similar cultures together and risk being accused of racism, or mix them up and end up with a clusterfuck of low productivity due to cultural clashes.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    2. Re:Not somuch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Random example: You could greet an American female colleague with "hello, gorgeous" with very little chance she'd be offended.

      I think you need to perform more field experiments on that one.

    3. Re:Not somuch by rhazz · · Score: 2

      You could greet an American female colleague with "hello, gorgeous" with very little chance she'd be offended.

      I am not an American, but my assumption is that you work in a strip club.

    4. Re:Not somuch by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Fortune 100 IT company. But we don't have sticks stuck up our asses, at least not in our LoB.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    5. Re:Not somuch by JimFive · · Score: 1

      Random example: You could greet an American female colleague with "hello, gorgeous" with very little chance she'd be offended. You never ever should greet an Indian female co-worker the same way.

      Actually, the American colleague will also be offended, she just won't raise a big fuss about it.
      --
      JimFive

      --
      Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
  39. Re:Two sides to every issue by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1

    Keep
    It
    Simple
    Stupid

    It works.

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  40. Re: Two sides to every issue by m00sh · · Score: 3, Informative

    With many of these odd job descriptions you speak of, I suspect many of them are cases where said company has already identified the specific individual they want to get an H-1B visa for. So this is essentially a copy of their unique resume. They just need to publicly post the job to fulfill a legal requirement before they can get them the visa.

    It is not for H1B, it is after the H1B to get the green card. There is a step called employment verification or something like that.

    Basically, it's a step to get someone off H1B status and into a permanent resident of the US.

  41. Re: Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Accent isn't the issue, but the assumption that a H1B is going to be of the same quality at a lower price, which is hogwash because it's an assumption that all things are equal. I'm a senior-level developer (at least according to my past job titles), and I've recommended really brilliant H1B candidates. OTOH, I've had H1B candidates tell me that you can instantiate abstract classes and JavaScript has protected and private methods. Meanwhile, I've worked alongside a number of talented US-born developers, and I've interviewed US-born candidates who didn't know how to create an array. The moral of the story is talent is irrespective of your county of origin, and so is ignorance; sadly, the decision makers (along with most of /.) can't see the difference.

  42. IBM research model: foreign temps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From what I hear, IBM's research model for physics is this: very few tenured/permanent researchers, and a whole lot of foreign postdocs and temp workers. Why don't they hire american physicists? Because americans require a higher wage. Not because they're better, but because foreigners are trapped by the rules of the program, and even if not, would otherwise work for less anyway (coming from 3rd world, or otherwise non-american economic levels). In my experience in physics grad school, foreigners and americans are pretty much on par in skill, but there are more americans [http://www.aip.org/statistics/data-graphics/astronomy-phds-awarded-citizenship-classes-1983-through-2012] at these levels. There are a lot of very good people both foreign and local, so, given roughly equal abilities and many more americans, you'd think IBM would be hiring more americans, but no.

    Anyone who thinks IBM/Google/Apple are being honest and forthright has a severe case of amnesia and should review the recent antitrust/collusion to keep wages low. http://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-steve-jobs-brutally-callous-response-after-getting-a-google-employee-fired/ :)

  43. Ban need degree and ban degree for X school by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Ban need degree and ban degree for X school.

    also if you want have more Hb1's then get rid of student loans.

    also medical care for all

    1. Re:Ban need degree and ban degree for X school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ban need degree and ban degree for X school.

      also if you want have more Hb1's then get rid of student loans.

      also medical care for all

      So I'm guessing you got a BA in Underwater Basket Weaving (summa cum laude!) from Bob's School of Typewriter Repair ... and a good bit of student debt?

      You're post is exactly why those requirements are there :/

    2. Re:Ban need degree and ban degree for X school by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

      those requirements are there so they can only people from the U of India so they can clam that we can't find an US worker.

      Also CS is not IT and people with IT skills and or an NON CS degree / just want to tech / trade schools get pass over and the few CS people that do make fail the tech test.

  44. Green Card Irony by Required+Snark · · Score: 2
    For the1H-B workers, the irony is that as soon as they get their green card, or even eventual citizenship. they face the same job discrimination faced by US residents. As soon as you have a stake in the US, they don't want you as a skilled worker.

    American capitalism hates American workers. They put greed above all, even the sustainability of the US economy. Why the hell are we putting up with this?

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
    1. Re: Green Card Irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      American capitalism hates *expensive* workers.

      FTFY

    2. Re:Green Card Irony by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      For the1H-B workers, the irony is that as soon as they get their green card, or even eventual citizenship. they face the same job discrimination faced by US residents. As soon as you have a stake in the US, they don't want you as a skilled worker.

      American capitalism hates American workers. They put greed above all, even the sustainability of the US economy. Why the hell are we putting up with this?

      Assuming the pimping company lets them stay in the US (or west) long enough to qualify for said green card or citizenship.

      We are putting up with this because we've been brought up on the capitalism is wonderful bandwagon and are afraid to get off.

      Unionize.

      And yes, I know how many people are choking on that word.

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    3. Re:Green Card Irony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're calling out fascism, not capitalism.
      Otherwise, I agree with you.

  45. Re:Two sides to every issue by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 1

    While it is true that businesses create job descriptions specifically designed to eliminate American workers, it is *also* true that plenty of American IT workers think they are super-awesome and really aren't.

    Yes, I've seen lots of these folks. It's not just "American IT workers", though, this phenomenon knows no nationality bounds.

    --
    "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
    --- Jerry Garcia
  46. remove health care from jobs by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    so they don't have to pay for the added cost of health care that is not needed with temps / Hb1's

  47. Re: Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Which means that they are flaunting the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
    I think you mean 'flouting.'

  48. Re: Two sides to every issue by BonThomme · · Score: 5, Funny

    and yet there's no shortage of English majors...

  49. Define "Shortage" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For most companies it is shortage in finding PhD workers with 5+ years experience to have them fixing hugs in a 12hours a day job with semi decent salary.

    Do you know a lot of US tech workers that would accept this position? If they have these qualifications they shoot for an exec job in Google.

  50. Re:Two sides to every issue by pete6677 · · Score: 1

    While there certainly are H1Bs from various nations who are very talented and capable, they are not the ones that will be willing to work for peanuts. Someone who is good at what they do and in demand is smart enough to know they can make more money and will demand first world pay. The H1Bs that will work for peanuts are either low-skilled or just don't have much experience and will leave your cheapass company just as soon as someone else offers them a little more money which won't take long. Any way you slice it, top talent requires top pay. Companies that just want cheap labor will be forever surprised when their projects are constantly behind schedule and low quality.

  51. Re: Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep, they did this at my old employer (out in the open): tell the guy to write down absolutely every skill of his he can think up, and let the supervisor and the lawyer with experience with this sort of thing work out what's too far-fetched for them to include in the job listing.

  52. Re:Two sides to every issue by exomondo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A bean counter, I doubt it.

    I think understanding that downtime costs money is exactly the thing a "bean counter" would know.

  53. Re: Two sides to every issue by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    Basically, it's a step to get someone off H1B status and into a permanent resident of the US.

    This makes no sense. Why would an employer want a permanent resident instead of an H1B? A permanent resident can quit and go work elsewhere, and is no better than hiring a US citizen. But an H1B visa is tied to a specific company, so if they quit their job, or are fired, they are sent back to where they came from, at their own expense. As an employer, I love H1Bs, because I can make them work long hours on tight deadlines, and if they complain I can threaten to send them back to Bangalore. Also, since H1Bs have to be paid the same as US citizens, I can use them as an excuse to hold down salaries across the board. If a US citizen employee starts whining about wanting a raise, I can tell him that if I give him a raise, I will be legally required to give the same raise to all of the H1Bs, and since there isn't enough money in the budget for that, it mean no raise for you! Heh, heh.

  54. Living in Colorado, and yes, there is a shortage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe CO is a bubble, but from what I see there is a MASSVE shortage of people. My company tried for almost a year to find good tech people. Begged, scrounged, tried to poach, nada. The jobs may not be the best paying, ~$120k/year, but that's pretty decent I think. 6/10 applicants are Indians, 2/10 are chinese and 2/10 are American. I've been involved in some of the interviewing, searching, hiring, ...

    Out of those,
    The Chinese folks seem to have their ducks in a row. They ain't great on the innovation part and you have to spent a LOT of time steering them, but at least they work hard.

    The Indians spend most of their time emailing management about how awesome they (the Indians) are, rather than doing any actual work.

    The Americans seem to be stuck in the glory days of post-WWII when America didn't have any real competition (rest of the world was smoldering ashes) so they now seem allergic to the concept of hard work. Ladies and Gentlemen, office/IT/tech work does not mean you don't have to WORK! and no, you are not harder workers than the rest of the world or more innovative or more irreplacable. Get off your asses!, > 2 hrs of real work a day is NOT asking too much. Crist, walk around and all you see is facebook or amazon accounts on people's machines.

    It's awful! It took a full year to finally find just a couple good people. We also picked up some fresh grads and interns (looking towards the future), but greenhornes take several years to spin up.

    You know the funny/frustrating part? The resume's of 9/10 of those above will be about 80% the same. Everyone thinks they have unique skills, but honestly, you don't. Showing that you can actually work hard sets you apart, but precious few people actually go that route.

    No, I'm not management. I'm just another tech geek. Lest you think otherwise, all that above applies to management as much as it does to workers.
    Yes, I'm anonymous because I have coworkers who browse here and I don't want to get hassled.

    Hate it if you want, ignore it if you want, agree with it if you want, that's what I see in my corner of the US.

  55. Re:Two sides to every issue by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It also filters out workers unwilling to lie.

  56. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  57. Let Me Translate::::: by JimSadler · · Score: 1

    The companies complain that they don't like the expense of hiring skilled workers. In a way that demonstrates equality as they also hate paying for unskilled workers. So one way or another they want to import workers who will work and eat cat food and sleep in a ditch. Then the companies complain that nobody loves them. When someone doesn't want to play nice only fools play nice in return.

  58. What about the AMDC solution? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unions-2.0 are the obvious solution. HOWEVER the author of Analogous Models & Digital Computing seems to suggest the existence of a more disruptive technical solution to the problem. Rumor is the first edition will be withdrawn as work on the second edition has started.

  59. Re: Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >While there certainly are H1Bs from various nations who are very talented and capable, they are not the ones that will be willing to work for peanuts.

    Except if there is something other than money that drives the immigration. In most cases it is the promise of a better life that drives someone from India to move to the US for peanuts. And trust me, even life on an H1B is better than life in India in a lot of cases. Of course, YMMV.

  60. Labor shortage? We just don't want to pay people. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Posting anonymously because it wouldn't be prudent to put my name on this. It reminds me of an e-mail I got a few months ago. We're apparently concerned about a labor shortage, but I really think there's just a shortage of people who are willing to work for what we're willing to pay new hires.

    At , our solutions support clients in a rapidly changing world of . In order to stay dependable, responsive and relevant, we must always look for opportunities to grow and to prepare for the future.

    Over the past few years, we identified the importance of strengthening our existing service operations and product offerings internationally. In doing so, it became clear that growing our employee base in other countries would be critical to achieving this international strength. We spent many months searching for the best country to pilot these efforts, and that search led us to the great country of . In late 2013, we conducted a successful pilot program with 27 team members, and based on excellent results, made the decision to establish on January 1, 2014. We are pleased to announce the opening of our first international service center in with a team of dedicated and motivated employees who are proud to join the team. The office is owned by and will operate just like our offices in the United States, producing innovative solutions for clients. This gives us a significant advantage over our competitors, many of which simply outsource to resources in other countries that are not true members of their company.

    Our presence in provides us with several additional competitive advantages: It addresses our concern about the predicted labor shortage in the US resulting from changing demographics. It will allow us to speed our billing process and reach a zero backlog every day. It will help us in supporting our international emergency management clients who currently span 25 countries. It will allow us to extend our processing capabilities across more hours of the day to better serve the 24-7 needs of our clients.

    is committed to our operations in the United States. Our intent is to profitably grow our organization into a recognized multinational company that will provide even more career opportunities for our team members. You can expect to meet many of our team members as they visit our offices in the upcoming months. We ask you welcome them with open arms and help them to learn our business. This is an exciting time to be part of the team, and I thank you for all that you do.

  61. H1B for Executive Management too.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let them outsource the CEO position of IBM. If they are going to outsource the technical positions - cut the CEO's pay to $10K - no stock options, no stock grants, no Gulfstream, no.... This certainly would return value to the shareholders. They could even get a dividend increase off the deal.

  62. H1B workers can be quite good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I work at a large fortune 500 company that employs H1-B workers. Our FTE (full-time employee) developer ratio to H1-B contractor ratio is 35% to 65%. Management has some idea that changing the balance to 40% to 60% is going to make a big difference. (Really, this is what one of our execs told us.)

    Now, the way our biggest contractor (TCS - Tata Consultancy Services) does business with us is that their managers look to see who the high performers are on their end, and they send them over to the US to be the on-shore 3rd-party resource. And the people we work with over here are paragons of competence. They are indeed high-performers. This means the lower performers stay off-shore, and they work under the direction of the on-shore contractors. The effect of this is that the 3p contractor shows up front to management the cream of the 3p company's programmers, and he (or she) who is onshore is able to adjust anything that is not quite right from the off-shore developers--especially when integrating all their work with what everyone else is doing.

    So, us full-time employees are in a role of facilitating the contractors. We not only go to meetings but also have to be on call for production maintenance, which eats into our time. And we are all on 3 or 4 "agile" projects at a time. At the end of the day, we don't get a lot of coding done, and our managers think we suck compare to the 3p contractors.

    And the 3p contractors on shore are worked like bonded laborers. Each day is a 12 hour day for them, and they do it year after year. And they get some bad health problems because of it. A friend of mine who is a 3p on shore contractor, from India, he and his wife are both software developers at my company. They are newly married, and their work schedule, the stress they endure, has resulted in reproductive problems. (Yeah, there's probably a few jokes in here, but when you see it up front, it's no joking matter. It's no picnic for the H1B visa holders over here. They are literally worked to death at my work place.)

    As for us FTEs, we're expected to put in 50+ hours a week, at any time of day or night. We get weekends off (unless we have a production issue or deployment), and we have pretty good benefits. But there is no freaking way you can not advance in your career and not move into management. Your tech leads where I am are expected to not be hands-on developers. They are expected to be business domain experts, knowledgeable of the IT infrastructure, and be present and accounted for at all meetings. No time for FTEs to do development, and it is usual that an employee with little coding experience (and sometimes none) makes it to tech lead.

  63. pay em what they're worth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is an illusion that most Indian IT workers are better than US citizens. 98% of them come with Bogus IT degrees paayiing corruption, have poor people skill, egoistic without substance and ignorant of fundamentals of maths and science, got the degree with rote memorisation without any creativity and the list goes on. Those from IITs are the best and there not in thousands who many come to USA. If all IITans come here, our economy will prosper. Most top notch universities in the US recurit them for their graduate studies by paying them scholarship, aair fare and so on. Comapnies like Infosys inflate the charges to the companies first by low ball figures but in reality most companies end up paying too much - suckers. For exanple Inforsys will charge for 6 people who live in a single room and have 1 car they share , but Infosys charges companies for one room per operson thus for a total of 6 rooms, and 6 cars one per person. So, if you actually verify and add the actual costs, it is much higher than the US companies think they are paying. They will quote the time difference to charge over time but they don't pay over time to their employees. Employee moral is poor. But Infosys and ohters have found is Ameicans are knaive and stupid as most boses do no have deep thinking capacity. Most Indians have very bad programming skills and all they want is to make quick money. You can say, they are now practising the American Greedy mentality exhibited by most US companies. US is already a third world country and loosing economically, unless people vote these political crooks from office. But most of you never vote, so don't cry wolf. Also, most IT degree holders in US also are not the best programmers. About 10-20% are the best, rest are just gas. The wolf is aready in.

  64. Re: Two sides to every issue by m00sh · · Score: 2

    Basically, it's a step to get someone off H1B status and into a permanent resident of the US.

    This makes no sense. Why would an employer want a permanent resident instead of an H1B? A permanent resident can quit and go work elsewhere, and is no better than hiring a US citizen. But an H1B visa is tied to a specific company, so if they quit their job, or are fired, they are sent back to where they came from, at their own expense. As an employer, I love H1Bs, because I can make them work long hours on tight deadlines, and if they complain I can threaten to send them back to Bangalore. Also, since H1Bs have to be paid the same as US citizens, I can use them as an excuse to hold down salaries across the board. If a US citizen employee starts whining about wanting a raise, I can tell him that if I give him a raise, I will be legally required to give the same raise to all of the H1Bs, and since there isn't enough money in the budget for that, it mean no raise for you! Heh, heh.

    The law was changed over 15 years ago to allow the same H1B to be used when changing jobs.

  65. Re: Two sides to every issue by Cyberax · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Employers are not slaveowners. While it's not a trivial thing, an H1B visa owner can transfer to another job. And most probably will, if an employer refuses to start Green Card processing. And contrary to Slashdot's opinion, lots of employers in IT are not bottom-feeding scum and they actually want to help people to relocate to the US without fear of being forced to move in case of visa expiration.

  66. Reality failure, prepare for non-existence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Rajiv Dabhadkar, Director of NOSTOPS, a national tech advocacy organization in India, is supporting the boycott. Dabhadkar explained, "Indian employers exhibit a strong preference for local talent for jobs in India--why don’t companies in the U.S. do the same? This will protect the Indian foreign workers from the accusation of displacing Americans. Indians were not put on this earth to displace Americans, but Manpower's recruiting efforts show this is their plan.

    panic: reality fail

    The Brahmin just core dumped. This is more like "Hindus for hamburgers made from 100 percent Brahmin Bull Beef"

    This is the biggest crock of South Hoboken Institute of Technology going. It's a close second to "ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil" and just above "because the people have got to know )whether( their president's a crook..."

    Dabhadkar-ji, Does the Indian have a government debt to GDP ratio of near or over 100 percent? Does the Indian government sell debt instruments to foreigners? Nark nahi! It's only the good old USA that can have her eeeenturnal affayrss (.ru accent) influenced by holders of US debt. Samaj gaye?

  67. Spot Shortages versus Spot Surpluses by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    I will agree there are spot shortages in specific technologies, but if we fill the spot shortages with imported labor, then citizen techies in spot surpluses won't get a chance to move into new areas.

    I had that problem in that I was a dBASE/FoxPro/Clipper (xBase) developer in the mid 90's, and I tried to move into VB/Delphi when it was clear xBase was "out of style". I was still able to get some xBase gigs but couldn't get into VB/Delphi gigs because they insisted on paid experience in VB/Delphi, and often went overseas to get it. I even was willing to accept less money to start. (Eventually I skipped desktop stuff and targeted web because the dot-com boom was broiling and pulled me in.)

  68. My Secret Sucess Formula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    3 page resume of technical buzz word crap, conference presentations, and management saved them X dollars.
    When recruiter calls -- you are very busy on contract work, maybe avail in 6 months, but likely they will expand work. Even if this is bull they go crazy after you explain to them "yeah I have done a lot of that work before. and throw in some buzz words. Don't sound too interested, but sound reluctantly to go for interview, but it has to be local (say a starbucks) because you are very busy.

    Show up casual upscale (you work from home) no effort to look like to an interview, but wear a nice expensive watch and park your nice car (rent a BMW 5, Mercedes or audio A8 -- no 3 series) near the coffee shop.

    During the interview you tell them you have consulting business and you have been doing this for years. (in my case it all true) that you work from home and the cleint pays you well for quick turn around work. Be ballsy and say "we have our own A-team" of sorts that you are used to working with to get the job done fast.

    When they ask what your current work is tell them you have a strict NDA and you know it is weird but it is what it is. and provide them an industry, no name.

    They will ask for a salary rate. Tell them what you are "being paid" (what you want). They will say that is a bit high for what they do. So you go, "yeah that's because we are quick turn around for contract work" "you can hire a some of the young kids out of school, but this stuff you really got to know what you are doing" "I've seen this go south before", etc.

    By the time you are done, they will want your contact info to build heir list of preferred candidates (that they never tell people). Several weeks later you can call them casually asking if there is work a few months out to compare offers. --

    You will get hired this way. Never tell them you are looking for work or are unemployed. One recruiter once told me 'we never hire people who are unemployed because they tend to be from the bottom of the bunch.'

      Yes this really works. You think they would be the wiser. -- They are not it is about social engineering the recruiter to get them excited to talk their client to look at you.

  69. Targeted Actions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's Jury pool control time. People who convict natives for bias assaults against H1B visa holders will need to be taught a lesson.

  70. Re:Two sides to every issue by firex726 · · Score: 1

    Basically happened to iOS development when it was first publicly released. Within the first six months you saw jobs requiring 5+ years of experience.

  71. Re:Two sides to every issue by penguinoid · · Score: 1

    1/3 the wage for 1/20 the functionality.

    You wish. If that were so, outsourcing would be an old, obsolete fad. Truth is, people who live in poorer countries are sometimes more skilled yet willing to work harder at a lower wage.

    Sure, there is also a correlation between poverty and lower education, but the real problem is that the idiot beancounters want to hire the cheapest foreigners, to show the greatest cost savings to make up for the bad press and coordination problems outsourcing will involve. Throw in some communications problems and jealousy/anger, and we can declare them nearly worthless.

    On the bright side, outsourcing is an excellent form of foreign aid that combines the "give a man a fish" and "teach a man to fish" paradigms. All else being equal, it should promote worldwide equality. Oddly enough, the privileged don't like that (yes, this includes me on both counts).

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  72. Have you actually tried hiring these days? by AaronW · · Score: 1

    We're having the same problem. Trying to find an experienced embedded boot loader developer is next to impossible. I'm currently swamped and anytime we find someone who's decent we're one of many companies making offers. Certain skill sets are damned near impossible to find, like someone who is good at understanding both software and hardware, people who can work on the Linux kernel, or the GCC toolchain, U-Boot, UEFI, etc. I could care less about IT people, but good software developers who understand low-level stuff are hard to find. A vast majority of those I interview seem incompetent when pressed with some C programming problems or when asked about CPU archecture, stuff they should know from a decent CS or CE degree. I have to work on everything just about everything, from CPU related stuff to SATA, USB, high-speed networking, NAND flash, eMMC/SD, etc.

    --
    This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
  73. Free market by BillyBiset · · Score: 1

    Everybody here is assuming an experienced worker that can't find a job willing to pay what he expects to make and is pissed at companies hiring foreigners is somehow undoubtedly a great engineer being pushed away by a "bean counter" driven job market. Yet the people landing the jobs "can't find their asses" and will somehow doom the company hiring them.

    In my experience, great professionals can come from anywhere.

    Any company willing to hire based on cost of labor rather than skills (which along with enthusiasm should translate roughly into return on that cost) will get exactly that, cheap labor without any assurance of quality.

    I've seen great programmers, product, project management and design professionals from abroad that can deal with all of the complexities associated with a technological product with skills comparable to the best in their fields.

    So, my recommendation is: don't worry about cheap labor, if you are skilled and enthusiastic about work, you'll become indispensable in your job. If you are skilled and easy to work with, people will hire you on the spot. If a potential employer is more interested in monetary cost rather than quality of the work you can output, you probably don't want to work for them.

    Disclosure: I work in the US on an L-1 Visa, I'm from Argentina and I have the pleasure to work with great local professionals as well as very unskilled ones, the same goes for my coworkers abroad, I just don't find any consistency on either side.

    1. Re:Free market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "you'll become indispensable in your job" - might want to rethink that advice - I was one of those indispensable workers (key employee of small company) and got fired anyway because the new management didn't care - being indispensable is irrelevant in today's world of management by mangers who set the dollar amount of the bonus they want, and fire people until it becomes possible

  74. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Should know. Usually as a consultant I have had to remind them of that.

  75. And you aren't going to find anyone either Sherlok by eclectro · · Score: 1

    I've been trying to hire developers for multiple high-compensation positions in NYC

    At an average wage of $70K for a STEM candidate (or are you offering less?), it will be impossible to find someone for your position - even an H1B candidate. Because apartments are starting at $2500/month for barely a closet space (if you can find one) in NYC. And most people want better than that. Even the people you want to drag in from overseas will need to find a place to live

    You don't have a STEM problem, you have a housing problem.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  76. This guy is a "skilled IT worker"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out the LinkedIn profile of this Rich Hajinlian guy from TFA and tell me you don't catch a whiff of BS here. I mean, "Developed and copyrighted a thread pool interface wrapper" is one of his biggest accomplishments? The rest of his work history is equally sketchy.

  77. Re:Two sides to every issue by Maintenance+Goof · · Score: 1

    I love the ones where they want five years of experience with a product that has existed for less than two years!

  78. Re: Two sides to every issue by tlambert · · Score: 1

    The law was changed over 15 years ago to allow the same H1B to be used when changing jobs.

    You can transfer an H1-B, but the employer who currently holds it has to approve the transfer. The employer holding it can refuse to perform a transfer, and prevent the operation.

    The law you refer to assumes cooperation between the parties.

    It's occasionally found for some companies to basically hold "H1-B" and "Green Card Application" hostages to work at lower wages. I've worked at a couple of companies which I later found out employed this tactic, and I've seen several contracting agencies that contract for work, H1-B in workers, and then take up to 70% "commission" on the contract wages on top of everything else.

  79. Re:Two sides to every issue by tlambert · · Score: 1

    H1-Bs in America currently have two options: 1) Remain at current sponsoring employer or 2) go home, because quitting means immediate revocation of their visa.

    2B: Hop to an employer that is willing to sponsor a change in their H1-B.

    From Wikipedia:

    Despite a limit on length of stay, no requirement exists that the individual remain for any period in the job the visa was originally issued for. This is known as H-1B portability or transfer, provided the new employer sponsors another H-1B visa

    From the employees perspective, there is one problem with this: once an employer has started the permanent residency (greencard) process, it is a bad idea to move because you'll be starting all over again.

    A take-over is easier than a reapplication for a new visa, if the current visa limit is exhausted (which it constantly is), so unless this happens at the start of a year, and you have all the ducks in a row before tendering notice, you are likely going home as soon as you give notice to the current visa sponsor.

    A take-over is allowed, but voluntary on the part of the original sponsor, who may be, er, a "little spiteful"...

  80. I simply haven't seen it by mcrbids · · Score: 1

    I'm a partner in a small software company. We employ 8 developers, 26 total staff. Our wages are midline, our benefits excellent, and our work environment is superb. I haven't seen *any* benefit from the H1B's.

    And we've tried!

    We really need people who can code. We have problems to solve, we need programmers to code answers to the problems. We really don't care about education credentials - if you can code, write reasonable answers to solve real problems, we're interested in you. We took a look at the H1B visa thing, and we were consistently disappointed. Gorgeous, impressive resumes for people with Masters or (gasp) even PHDs in computer science who couldn't write a SQL statement, recursive algorithm, or even factor a number. "Write me a function that replaces the word "apples" with "oranges" in a given input string was met with blank stares.

    I don't know what they do, but I'm not interested in finding out. But if you want to live in NorCal and want a decent job at a small, securely growing software company... PM me!

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    1. Re:I simply haven't seen it by bzipitidoo · · Score: 1

      want to live in NorCal

      Huge problem. Few can afford to move there, even fewer want to. Do you allow telecommuting? If you don't, why not? You're asking for programmers. If any job can be done remotely, that one can.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
    2. Re:I simply haven't seen it by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      I'm afraid this might disqualify me from consideration, but I can't seem to figure out how to send a PM in Slashdot. I don't suppose someone might either give me a nudge, or you'd do me the favor of using my contact info? Thanks.

  81. FWIW, Washtech is a CWA union local... by tlambert · · Score: 1

    FWIW, Washtech is a CWA union local...

    It's possible that they have the best interests of IT people in their hearts, but it's more likely that they, like the Alliance@IBM guys, also a CWA union local, have a bit of an axe to grind against IBM.

    The other two seem more or less non-affiliated, so they perhaps do not have an axe to grind against IBM. It'd bee interesting to know which group(s) picked which target(s) in this story.

    Also, FWIW, the CWA is a pretty piss poor match for programmers and other IT folks, but since automation of telephone operators jobs, they've been branching out to "anyone who uses a communications network, no matter how automated and non-labor intensive" as potential members. It's not a great fit, so they've had pretty much zero success in the IBM shops they've picketed (including one I worked for at one time).

  82. Re: Two sides to every issue by sodul · · Score: 1

    I used to be on H1-B and transferred twice before I got my green card. I never heard that my previous employer had to release the H1-B. Are you talking about the H1-B that are over their initial 6 years and stuck in the decade long green card process? I know this is a different status and sucks big time to be stuck. My recommendation to H1-B holders with long waiting lists: do not wait for you initial 6 years to run out and find a good stable company that respect their employees more than the average, and where you think you can wait for the green card to go through.

  83. Re: Two sides to every issue by CaptQuark · · Score: 1

    And contrary to Slashdot's opinion, lots of employers in IT are not bottom-feeding scum and they actually want to help people to relocate to the US without fear of being forced to move in case of visa expiration.

    This still doesn't explain why the companies aren't searching for people to hire within the US. I guess it is cheaper to hire someone from overseas than someone with the same qualification from Billings, MT.

    ~~

  84. Re: Two sides to every issue by m00sh · · Score: 4, Informative

    The law was changed over 15 years ago to allow the same H1B to be used when changing jobs.

    You can transfer an H1-B, but the employer who currently holds it has to approve the transfer. The employer holding it can refuse to perform a transfer, and prevent the operation.

    The law you refer to assumes cooperation between the parties.

    It's occasionally found for some companies to basically hold "H1-B" and "Green Card Application" hostages to work at lower wages. I've worked at a couple of companies which I later found out employed this tactic, and I've seen several contracting agencies that contract for work, H1-B in workers, and then take up to 70% "commission" on the contract wages on top of everything else.

    Technically, there is no such thing as a H1B transfer, there is only an H1B application. Only the hiring company is involved in an H1B application. It is utter and absolute made-up nonsense that the former employer has to approve anything.

    I have heard that H1B and green card petitions are treated as mini-promotion steps. Instead of raises or promotions, sponsorships are given. Perhaps some smaller unscrupulous "contractor" organizations will do that. In the larger corporations, H1B and green card petitions are done as soon as possible as company policy and promised as such before employment is finalized.

  85. Re: Two sides to every issue by Cyberax · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is hard to find good developers anywhere. However, you have a much larger pool if you include overseas developers.

  86. Re:Two sides to every issue by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 1

    A lot of people might not be as super awesome as they think but the vast majority of jobs don't match their advertisements and rarely require everything they asked for in the ads nor are the jobs as grand or as hard as the company made out to be.

  87. Re: Two sides to every issue by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 2

    you mean it's hard to find acceptable developers at the wage the company wants to pay.

  88. Re: Two sides to every issue by Cyberax · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We're paying a general market rate here (Palo Alto) plus ~20% and it's STILL hard to find good developers because of the competition with companies like Google. And if you're willing to work with people remotely then why not just do it overseas?

  89. Re:Two sides to every issue by war4peace · · Score: 1

    You shouldn't have gone this path :)
    OK, I risk sounding like the guy I responded to, but here goes, and please bear with me while I move forward.
    I live in a third world country... maybe 2nd world but I'd say it's somewhere in between. The minimum wage here is around 1.5 USD/h. The average salary is around 2.9 USD/h. I make close to 5.
    Not sure how much a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst working with Big Data makes in the US, but AFAIK the average is north of 40 USD/h. I understand it wildly depends on which state you work in and other lesser impacting factors, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway, I work for an US-based company (big one, relatively hated here on /.) and according to what I heard from my USA peers I'm paid around 1/8th of what I would make there.
    Now my salary here is decent for the country I live in. But it's not just the money. It's the environment, everything else that constitutes living. it's the pollution, how people behave, the ugly characters, the stray dog infestation that lasted for decades and never was taken care of, etc. I'm currently trying to find a job and move abroad (not to the USA, you're safe :)) because I want my children to live decent lives and I want them to learn what respect is. Here, illiterate gypsies (for example) make more money through stealing and scamming in a month that my whole extended family makes in a lifetime, and that's just one random example out of many which drive me to find a better place somewhere else where I could live in peace.

    Yes, I'd be willing to work for less than someone based in that country would ask, because frankly it's the only thing that's taken into consideration when I'm applying for a job abroad. The employer won't only look at skills. They will look at financial gains coming off recruiting me, and yes, I'm willing to let go of that big plasma TV or that shiny new car and settle for no TV, no car and renting a 3-room flat instead of owning a bigger house.

    I'm aware I'm ruining the market and lowering the salaries by accepting less than someone local would accept, and I'm sorry about that, but if you think about it and go past the knee-jerk reaction ("he's stealing our workplaces!"), I'm merely taking what I see as an opportunity to offer my family what I think they deserve. We're nice people, with similar cultural views (the main reason I want to move abroad) so much that the only thing that would point us out as foreigners would be some faint accent while speaking (more so when very tired or tipsy - or both). My best friend is from Colorado (we never met IRL, by the way).

    And when you think about it, it would be mutually beneficial for me to move, because right now the simple fact that I'm working here for 1/8th the US salary is worse (for both you and me) than me working there for 60% of it.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  90. Re:Two sides to every issue by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

    Nope, it's a conspiracy.

    Go to youtube.

    Search for
    "avoid hiring americans"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    "Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. "

    And...
    Lou Dobbs: Law Firm teaches how to avoid hiring Americans
    A law firm is teaching corporations how to get around hiring American workers for jobs so they can import foreign workers under the H1-B visa program. Lawrence M. Lebowitz, the marketing director of the Pittsburgh law firm of Cohen & Grigsby, told executives at its Immigration Law Update Seminar how to advertise...

    --

    Quote: "Our goal is CLEARLY not to FIND a qualified us workers."

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  91. Re:Two sides to every issue by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

    The thing you need to realize is that they are not rewarded based on your replacement succeeding as well as you.

    They are rewarded for saving money. Executive bean counters can literally redefine the goal posts as well and declare success when the project failed by the original criteria.

    And finally, they can move on to another job after a fairly short time to take their money saving ideas to the new company.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  92. Wanna Fix It? by rally2xs · · Score: 1

    Wanna fix it? Pass the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax eliminates the income taxes and the IRS, both good things, but also institutes a sales tax on new retail items and services for sale. It has a mechanism called the "prebate" that pays each citizen enough money to pay the Fair Tax on the basic living expenses of someone making money at the poverty level. Every citizen from your favorite street person all the way up to Bill Gates gets this prebate.

    Significantly, non-citizens, such as these foreigners working here, DO NOT get the prebate. That means that they will not get the monthly payment from the gov't to defray the cost of the Fair Tax for spending up to the poverty level. That means that if they want to send our dollars back to the old country, they're going to have to do it without help from us. That will make them demand more $$$ from employers here, and make the playing field a bit more level. No more taking American jobs just because you're sole claim to fame is being willing to work for peanuts.

  93. 'trying to fill' by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

    Lately I've been getting plenty of calls from Indians 'trying' to fill roles all right - but when I give my normal rate they say "Oooo you are very expensive" after which the try and get me to take half of that and when I say no they thank me and hang up.

    I have no doubt that such calls are being noted as "American was contacted but wasn't interested in job" to justify the 'lack of resource'.

    This is in Europe, by the way. Indian call centers coming through via a +44 UK code.

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
    1. Re:'trying to fill' by rock_climbing_guy · · Score: 1

      Interesting. I get calls from India and it seems like the area code displayed on my caller ID is selected at random.

      --
      Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
  94. Re: Two sides to every issue by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    you mean it's hard to find acceptable developers at the wage the company wants to pay.

    Employers generally don't make a specific salary offer until after an interview. So if what you said was true, we would be interviewing plenty of qualified candidates, making salary offers, and then having those offers rejected. But that is NOT what I have experienced. We are simply not finding many qualified people. When we do find someone, they almost always either accept our offer, or reject it for reasons other than the salary, such as commute distance. We pay $80k-$90k for college graduate starting salaries, and a median of $150k for developers with five or more years experience.

  95. Re:Two sides to every issue by ruir · · Score: 2

    Bullshit. It got nothing to do with skill, but standards of living. A foreign is willing to accept a work working for ten times less the going rate, where an American, or an European will give show you the middle finger. Also, if you dont want them "to leave after a year", grow some common sense and stop hiring kids with the salary of janitors. You seem like a douchebag or someone that somehow envies IT workers.

  96. Re: Two sides to every issue by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 1

    That's because you choose to operate from an expensive area with the cream of the crop companies. If you want to work alongside those who pay the best then you should have to expect to do that too.

    I don't think developer's jobs should inherently be owned by the people that were born in that country nor am I saying everyone that outsources is doing it for scummy reasons. However every company that I worked for that outsourced didn't get value for money. In one case because they paid miserable wages by Filipino standards even though paying a premium is still virtually like paying nearly minimum wage in this country. In other case they only outsourced it to a company within this country. The costs weren't really less and the employee skill set didn't always match the hourly rate. their suggestions were things that best suited them and not necessarily the company. Had there been no one with an ounce of knowledge (i.e me and other developers) the most anyone could do is moan about the cost but have no legit counter argument to the proposed solution.

    It generally fails when outsourcing is based on costs alone and whether everyone wants to admit it or not that is the primary reason most companies do it. If you only worry about the short-term and keep slashing budgets to keep profits up then it has to fall apart eventually. After all if they genuinely can't find someone locally to do it then they should be happy to pay even a premium for someone overseas. But so far all stats have been pointing towards H1-Bs being paid less regardless of people's anecdotal stories and obviously if you outsource to another country you're paying less and if their location didn't matter then whether they were in Ohio or India doesn't matter.

  97. It's all about the money!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why should I pay the prevailing high wage to a US worker when I can get two or three Indian workers for the price of a single US one?????? Does not make business sense. I'm in business to make money for myself and my share holders. I'm not in the business of paying for overpriced US employees.

  98. Re: Two sides to every issue by Cyberax · · Score: 2

    We tried a less premium location (San Diego) but we had even worse luck finding good developers for our startup. Talent pool is much less and it's much harder to persuade them to leave their jobs for a small company.

    Companies getting H1b-s generally fall into two categories:
    1) Companies with crappy jobs designed to allow people to move to the US. These companies are sometimes called 'bodyshops'. Their employees usually work for 6-12 months and then transfer the hell out of them.
    2) Good software companies. They generally pay a market rate and often offer relocation assistance.

    And even the first kind of companies is restricted by the prevailing wage law, so they pay quite a good wage as a result. Here is the data by state: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Repo... . If you look at California then you can clearly see the divide: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Cali... and you can also see that most of visas go to 'good' companies.

  99. Re:Two sides to every issue by dlingman · · Score: 1

    Yah - like the new language from Apple - Swift. Except, if you think about it, Apple has been working on it for 4 years... You should be able to potentially find people with up to 4 years experience with it. That formerly worked at Apple.

    Just because a product or a technology has only been on the market for 3 months, doesn't mean that there aren't people with years of experience with it.

  100. Class conflict by swb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think there's an obvious class conflict when it comes to STEM fields. Wages are high enough that it challenges the corporate class structure that dictates what field should be paid more than other fields.

    My wife works in marketing for a company that makes an engineered product and we had a fairly heated discussion about this once. Without thinking about the implications, she actually said that marketing was more important than engineering and marketing should always be paid more. Raising engineering salaries above some ceiling wasn't an option.

    Now, my wife isn't a mean spirited snob but I think she genuinely meant this and I think it reflects the class consciousness in corporate thinking.

    Strangely I never see this mentioned in articles about H1-Bs and STEM workers. It always seems to devolve into an unresolvable debate involving conflicting macoeconomic labor statistics.

    1. Re:Class conflict by Archwyrm · · Score: 1

      I guess the joke will be on her when she finds herself on the "B Ark". ;)

      --
      Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
    2. Re:Class conflict by John_Sauter · · Score: 1

      I think there's an obvious class conflict when it comes to STEM fields. Wages are high enough that it challenges the corporate class structure that dictates what field should be paid more than other fields.

      My wife works in marketing for a company that makes an engineered product and we had a fairly heated discussion about this once. Without thinking about the implications, she actually said that marketing was more important than engineering and marketing should always be paid more. Raising engineering salaries above some ceiling wasn't an option.

      Now, my wife isn't a mean spirited snob but I think she genuinely meant this and I think it reflects the class consciousness in corporate thinking.

      Strangely I never see this mentioned in articles about H1-Bs and STEM workers. It always seems to devolve into an unresolvable debate involving conflicting macoeconomic labor statistics.

      I have seen this also. I think there is an evolution in large companies: even if they start by developing good products, they eventually become so focused on sales and marketing that they forget that the quality of their products is the basis of their business. I was at Digital Equipment Corporation as it went through this transition. By the time the founder, an engineer, was finally forced out, the company was headed downhill, and was soon acquired.

      IBM has somehow managed to avoid this problem. While definitely focused on sales, they continue to develop new, competitive products. Whatever their secret is, I wish it was taught in American business schools.

  101. Re: Two sides to every issue by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 0

    Employers are not slaveowners.

    We're working on that though.

    And contrary to Slashdot's opinion, lots of employers in IT are not bottom-feeding scum and they actually want to help people to relocate to the US without fear of being forced to move in case of visa expiration.

    THIS! Now that corporations are people, they can finally do the good for humanity they have wanted to do for so long. Why just yesterday, I saw a corporation rescuing some little ducks that got caught in a sewer grate, and this was just after coming back from a old folks home, where they gave all the residents as much money as they needed to live their worry free forever. The corporations reason for existence is to do good in this world, after all.

    Seriously dude, if it is a matter of life, yours or mine, or the next quarters profit, well, we should make sure our life insurance is paid up, cuz the stockholders must be serviced. BP, Ford Pinto, Goodyear tires, GM ignition locks, Tobacco industry.On and on and on. Yeah, they really care about us so much.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  102. Re:it depends on what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Currently doing a grad program at a mediocre university in Canada. Out of 60 or so students, we're 5 white guys. My point? Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean much.

  103. Re: Two sides to every issue by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
    But that doesn't explain why they don't advertise at home. I mean, you just said they want the larger pool, right? If you don't advertise at home for those jobs, the pool is smaller.

    Sorry, they want the cheapest pool. Perhaps they need to hire only foreign CEO's and accountants? Get the largest possible talent pool?

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  104. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You'd think so, wouldn't you? Perhaps this is why everyone uses the term with such disdain: because "beancounters" tend to be "penny-wise, pound foolish" (in other words, they suck at their jobs)...

  105. Re:Two sides to every issue by Drethon · · Score: 1

    Then why do I keep getting (very good paying) work to fix things that were outsourced? And typically a dozen of us high payed workers cost less to completely rework the unusable results of outsourcing...

  106. Re: Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was not aware that foreign students get free Masters degrees from US universities. But if that is actually true, it is an issue you should take up with your universities and your government. Regardless, I doubt you would find getting multiple masters degrees to be as easy as you suggest.

  107. Re: Two sides to every issue by BitZtream · · Score: 2

    Your story sounds like BS.

    We are simply not finding many qualified people

    You aren't looking very hard then, I know several people who are very good developers, including a Google developer who had to move due to family reasons and simply couldn't stay at Google. I assure you, she was qualified for anything she applied for. So maybe you live in that one place that doesn't have any qualified workers, but since there are people claiming that pretty much everywhere, I call bullshit.

    or reject it for reasons other than the salary, such as commute distance.

    Another bullshit line. They really went through the entire interview process and THEN decided the commute was too much? That makes no sense at all. You seem to think that these people would waste their time letting you interview them when they never had any intention of taking the offer. That would be pretty stupid and as such makes it hard to believe your version of the story.

    We pay $80k-$90k for college graduate starting salaries

    Sure you do. Even in the shittiest places to work as far as location and cost of living, you'd have grads beating your door down for the job, moving there from all over the country.

    , and a median of $150k for developers with five or more years experience.

    Are you in hiring at office int he middle of Manhattan or San Fran? If so, thats not that impressive considering cost of living and experience.

    Your entire post just sounds completely unbelievable like its being embellished for you to provide excuses for why you can't hire anyone or pretend that you're even trying.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  108. Re:Two sides to every issue by NotDrWho · · Score: 1

    They have salary demands, but they don't actually have the specific salary demands the business needs, and the business doesn't want someone they have to pay a decent wage

    FTFY

    --
    SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  109. let me fix that for you: by buddyglass · · Score: 1

    "It's getting pretty frustrating when you won't compete on salary for a skilled job..."

  110. "shortage" is stupid term by jgowen · · Score: 1

    Mon 7/07/2014 9:11 am. Using the term "shortage" in any discussion of market-driven activities is stupid. The term is meaningless and only causes confusion on both side, and in this case is *undoubtedly* used by employers to do that very thing and cover-up their simple desire to *pay less*. ... Which of course is also why they are so active in supporting the STEM propaganda: more engineers etc. means cheaper salaries.

  111. Re:Two sides to every issue by tubs · · Score: 1

    > They might be able to replace me with someone and pay then 1/2 of what I make, but they're not going to get my skillset.

    "They" don't care, they've saved 50% of your wage (probably 80%). In fact, the bean counter who approved it has probably gone on to another company for double the pay already (claiming they've saved ££££), whilst taking the "bonus" for saving money with them.

    And when it hits the fan .. http://www.computerweekly.com/...

    --

    try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die

  112. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, but, no one has the skills that corporations are looking for. Ever read job descriptions? There might be two or three people on the planet who can meet the skills requirements of some of these jobs.

    Someone who has been around a long time like me has most but not all of the skills, and I have done just about everything that can be done with computers. And the funny thing is, when I do apply for some of these jobs, I get nowhere. So even if someone shows up with the skills, they won't get hired.

  113. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You referring to broad IT and tech. generalizations, or specialist positions?

    How many COBOL mainframe programmers are really out there, especially with H1B's? With H1B status, probably countable on 1 hand, if at all. You're telling me an H1B visa candidate that has 15-20 years of COBOL mainframe experience HASN'T found a permanent job already, and is lingering in the H1B applicant pool? Get real.

    I just can't see applicants for the expert skillset positions that are available, coming from the H1B visa pool. A small percentage, sure. But overall? No way. Those people have found their ways in, made connections, and aren't lingering in the visa pool. Not buying it, sorry.

  114. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If no one can understand you, then it doesn't matter how intelligent you are because you will not be able to communicate any of your ideas or knowledge to anyone else.

  115. Here is the solution by twatkins · · Score: 1

    For the Government: Stop H1B COMPLETELY. if people want to work in this country then the need to go through the normal channels. Additionally rules need to be put in place that prevent off-shoring of jobs.

    For the Company: Quit the stupid job requirements shenanigans. Actually invest in (training) and try to retain employees by making them feel valued, BTW money is not always necessary for this. Make employment contracts last more than one year at a time. Show some Loyalty to your employees we are not a commodity, we are people.

    For the Employes: Show some loyalty to the company and don't job hop for 2K or 3K more a year. If the company is good to you be good to them. Let the company benefit from their investment in you for a bit before moving on.

    1. Re:Here is the solution by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      For the Employes: Show some loyalty to the company and don't job hop for 2K or 3K more a year. If the company is good to you be good to them. Let the company benefit from their investment in you for a bit before moving on.

      Excuse me for a moment while I laugh myself sick.

    2. Re:Here is the solution by majid_aldo · · Score: 1

      there is (practically) NO "normal" channel! you literally have to be lucky to get a green card. got skills? let's see you go through a gauntlet of legal procedures that are complex, illlogical, and inconsistent.
      http://reason.com/assets/db/07...

      --
      --- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme, ..etc.
  116. Re:Living in Colorado, and yes, there is a shortag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    maybe people are avoiding your toxic sounding environment

    rowing in a slave galley is also "working hard"

  117. Re: Two sides to every issue by rock_climbing_guy · · Score: 1

    I've been doing web application development as a consultant. If you need help with one of your projects, do let me know and I'll see how I can help you.

    --
    Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
  118. Hiring Manager Here: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And we cant get enough skills applicants for the price we are told the company wants to pay. Most companies are outright in denial about the true cost ofa good tech worker, offering somebody 95k/year-135k/year who can go make 200/k+ a year is just insanity. We need to comepte but thanks to the drug of cheap H1B's we do not have to.

    We get people from offshore because its cheaper and we can make an H1B our slave cheaply, but they hardly know anything, waste a lot of company resources, and are often much less effective than their more expensive american counterparts that we are NOT ALLOWED TO HIRE due to cost being over the budget we are given. So we tell them they "are not a good social fit" and wish them on their way.

  119. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Except international students pay more than US-based students for graduate (and undergraduate) degrees, and there are few programs which are focused intently on just exams. As a US student and software developer working on his second MS (first one in neuroscience, current one in CS), I know this firsthand. The cost of the degrees, obviously, I know of secondhand (through the many international students I have worked with).

  120. Re: Two sides to every issue by BVis · · Score: 1

    And even the first kind of companies is restricted by the prevailing wage law, so they pay quite a good wage as a result.

    No they don't. They don't because the H1Bs don't complain about it (because complainers get fired, especially when they complain to someone who's in a position to cause the business trouble), so there's little chance they'll get caught. Even if they do complain, good luck finding out what the "native" workers actually get paid; that information is usually confidential.

    --
    Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
  121. it depends on what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The problem with your statement is that the lack of workers these companies are complaining about are on the low end of the IT spectrum.

  122. Re: Two sides to every issue by Duhavid · · Score: 1

    I live in San Diego ( Poway, now ), there are *tons* of good developers here ( myself included ).
    ( and a lot of mediocre ones too... Like anywhere ).

    I have participated in the interview process at several of the companies I worked at here, and I would say we have a good talent pool ( LA's is probably larger, but who wants to live there... :-) ). It might be hard to recruit people out these days, but before the recent drop, people were fluttering here, there and everywhere.

    --
    emt 377 emt 4
  123. Re:Two sides to every issue by sabri · · Score: 1

    A take-over is easier than a reapplication for a new visa, if the current visa limit is exhausted (which it constantly is), so unless this happens at the start of a year, and you have all the ducks in a row before tendering notice, you are likely going home as soon as you give notice to the current visa sponsor.

    H1-B Portability takes care of that, this process is cap-exempt.

    A take-over is allowed, but voluntary on the part of the original sponsor, who may be, er, a "little spiteful"...

    The original sponsor does not have to cooperate. You may be mistaken with an older practice where I-140 sponsors would withdraw the petition when a worker left, and the process had to start all over again.

    --
    I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
  124. This isn't new by Cheirdal · · Score: 1

    This has been going on since the 90's with the huge influx of H1B visas for tech positions when we had enough American tech workers to fill the need. In 1997 I worked for a very large payroll company (although not in their payroll division), and my VP told me he was instructed to fill future computer programmer/analyst positions with Indian workers that needed their green cards sponsored. This allowed them to lock in someone to two years minimum at a low wage. It was bad for the person being hired because they didn't know any better, then they were trapped (unless they wanted to start process all over again at another company willing to sponsor them). It was a way of screwing over citizens and current green card holders, by bringing indentured servants on the promise of a green card two years down the road.

  125. Re: Two sides to every issue by TheNastyInThePasty · · Score: 1

    What does Google offer that you don't? Despite thinking you are, maybe you're not offering the real market rate. Or maybe your benefits suck.

    --
    The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
  126. Re:Two sides to every issue by penguinoid · · Score: 1

    Then why do I keep getting (very good paying) work to fix things that were outsourced? And typically a dozen of us high payed workers cost less to completely rework the unusable results of outsourcing...

    Because the boss is an idiot, and hired idiot foreigners, instead of hiring competent foreigners.

    --
    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  127. Two things overlooked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In our enormous intelligence we (IT guys) generally overlook the following two things.

    1. Population: Believe it or not there are more people added to both global and local talent pool than those that leave/retire.
    2. Self devaluement: We program everything so that even a child can do it. There are templates/wizards to do most of the common things that makes the employers think about why should they pay for a job. Why can't they ask someone already working for them to just learn it. Sure there will always be projects that are extremely complex to require new development but my guess is that they will come down as time goes. This happens in other industries but at a much slower rate.

    Both of the above two factors also contribute significantly to the problem above. Now there would obviously be people who won't agree and all I can tell them is, just keep waiting and you'll see the branch you are sitting and chopping merrily come down with a crash.

  128. Outsourcing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We need to outsource the CIO's and CEO's

  129. Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is what it's all about. Offshoring - didn't see the lawsuit a few months ago, where someone was suing Oracle because he found out that they were paying him 10%? 20%? less than US citizens, and during discovery, found an email saying something to the effect that "that's enough for an Indian".

    And that's also why they don't want to hire older, experienced people - they have to pay them more. They'd rather pay less, and get buggy crap, from younger folks who are willing to do "whatever it takes", and if that's years of 50+ or 60+ hour weeks and working from home evenings and weekends, why, sure.

    Btw, if you think I'm wrong, and you work the hours I just mentioned, just goes to show there's a sucker born every minute....

                    mark

  130. Not true by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm a hiring manager in a Fortune 500 company. There is a tech shortage for qualified and experienced applicants. I have dozens and dozens of open unfilled positions. I really don't care if they are local or H1-B hires if they are competent and qualified. I'm not looking for a bargain basement price - I'll take any qualified people I can get, and I'm willing to pay for it. Most of the people I hire earn six figures or close to it.

    People that claim there are lots of qualified US tech works out there simply don't know. I have firsthand knowledge, and it's very, very tough to find people.

    People need to have experience with complex enterprise systems. If you created a web site for your grandmother, that's not what we are looking for. Do you understand middleware? Well versed in service oriented architecture? Do you understand enterprise cloud platform environments? If you do, and you can't find a job...the problem is you, not the job market. If you don't, start learning. Java programmers are easy to find, but people that really understand the interaction and integration of complex systems are not.

    1. Re:Not true by darkwing_bmf · · Score: 1

      Have you considered taking these Java programmers and training them for more complex work?

  131. The paradox of Older Workers by Mister+Null · · Score: 1

    I am also a case in point; I have over 20 years experience yet couldn't find a job. They either wanted a 30 something or a H1B(?) that they could pay 1/3 the usual rate. As long as these conditions persist employers will complain about not enough workers while older software professionals go without jobs. Now I'm trying my own company doing Data Warehousing as I know the subject and fortunately haven't had a failure yet.

  132. But this will irritate Hillary!!! by sgt_doom · · Score: 0

    Portrait of a Neocon

    Voted for the Iraqi War and all subsequent war financing legislation while a senator.

    Her major donors in her senate race were the Indian offshoring firm, the Tata Consultancy and Rupert Murdoch.

    Helped open an American jobs offshoring office for the Tata Consultancy in Buffalo, NY, "to aid their economy"?!?!?!? (Also belonged to the Indian group within the senate which raised numeric levels for foreign visa scab workers in the USA.)

    Chaired the Millennium Challenge Corporation which helped to finance the overthrow of democratically elected (and highly popular) Honduran President Zelaya.

    Was endorsed in her presidential run in 2008 by the vile rightwinger plutocrat, Richard Mellon Scaife.

    As secretary of state, appointed uber neocons Marc Grossman(former George W. Bush inner circle dood) and Victoria Nuland.

    Recently gave a talk embracing her love for Monsanto's GMOs.

    Believes Edward Snowden should return to the USA where, of course, he will receive a fair trial!

    Was still secretary of state when US State Department was involved in the ouster of the democratically-elected president of the Ukraine.

    Claims to really be Hillary Clinton Cratchit and suffering from bouts of extreme poverty!

  133. Job Creators and Creative Creators by mx+b · · Score: 1

    I work in education largely currently, and it is similar. The teachers -- the ones producing the "product", though calling education a product kind of perturbs me -- are the ones that are paid the least. The administration and marketing (at a college it's known as "admissions", but basically the same thing) get WAY better salaries, perks, etc. Actually, the fact they have full time jobs at all is a step up, seeing as many teachers these days are adjuncts (part-time) with no benefits.

    I don't want to say that the marketing isn't important -- because it is, if no one knows your school or program exists then you won't get students, I understand that -- but fundamentally, if there are no teachers, there is no school. You would think it would be even and on par. But no. The instructors are looked at more as a burden than anything else.

    The spouse works in engineering, and basically same there. The salesmen look at the engineers as people that "get in the way" of making the big deal because they want to "add all this extra money to the price" (when really its adding safety clamps and shit to try to prevent it from exploding).

    I honestly feel like the whole job creator debate was in a sense correct, but about the wrong class of people. The "job creators" are not the businessmen/marketing people -- it is the ENGINEERS, SCIENTISTS, PROGRAMMERS, TEACHERS that actually provide a service. And yet somehow, all of these creative professions that provide real-world value are the ones facing the most unemployment, lowest wages, longest hours, etc. It is really unfair, and we all need to unionize and get equal treatment to the executives/marketing people. I'm not saying they are unneeded -- just if they can get full time jobs with high salaries and perks, why can't we, when we actually MAKE the things they sell?

  134. Re: Two sides to every issue by Cyberax · · Score: 1

    All the H1B data is public and is monitored by the Labor Department. Companies MUST pay the advertised salary or they'll be hit with a hefty fine.

  135. Re: Two sides to every issue by Cyberax · · Score: 1

    Google is big and it's stable, it won't go away in a year - and that matters for a lot of people, especially senior developers with family and kids. We also can't offer a campus with A-class offices and free food.

  136. Re: multiple sides to every issue by NickGnome · · Score: 1
    While it is true that hiring managers and HR clones create job descriptions specifically designed to eliminate American workers, it is *also* true that some American "IT workers" and some foreign "IT guest-workers" think they are super-awesome and really aren't. Or maybe they just think they're shrewd enough enlist other, more tech-savvy acquaintances to be able to muddle through while sowing confusion and bragging about themselves to deceive.
    ...

    Or they might have the skills, but they don't have the specific credentials the HR gate-keeper demands. I mean, how many US STEM pros have 4 years of experience programming in Swift... seeing as it's only a few weeks old. (Flashback to the mostly-newbie recruiters at the bodyshops demanding 5 years of Java experience in 1996.) Or maybe they have a bachelor's, or a master's or even a PhD, but it's not from the university the hiring manger likes. Or maybe they have the degrees, but not the certicates. Or maybe they have the skills with brand A version 4.7.2, but not brand B version 1.4.5, and neither the recruiter nor the hiring manager knows that they work almost exactly the same way, nor that anyone the least bit savvy with version 2.0 could adapt within half an hour to brand A version 4.7.2 or brand B version 1.4.5.

    They might have skills, but they might not actually have the specific, purple squirrel combination of skills that the hiring manager wants, to replace a team of 4-12 specialized collaborators with one indentured house-geek.

    Or they might want a real long-term full-time job designing and/or developing commercial software products instead of a series of bodyshop/temp/contingent/contract/consulting gigs doing "data processing" or "IT" kinds of work at non-STEM firms. Or they might want to make enough to actually make a living, buy books and e-books and DVDs and otherwise continue learning, buy a home and car, marry, raise a family... radical things like that.

    Managers don't want to invest in training, or flying in candidates for interviews, or relocation assistance, or 8th-page and quarter-page job ads in multiple high circulation print publications the way they did before H-1B. They don't want to put their e-mail addresses and desk phone numbers in the job ads because they know they'd be swamped by able and willing US citizen candidates as well as by spurious callers.

  137. It depends on the company too by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 2

    Sure there is some monkey work at the lower levels of support, especially in a "free" hotline where you don't get billed for calling. Several years ago I met a guy who did first level "support" for Microsoft, following a script from a database. But even there, I think second level should have some actual skills, as they are the ones who handle the cases that are too complex for the script monkeys.

    At my current, relatively small company, the hotline (which is AFAIK costing more than peanuts to call) offers what you might find at second level support in a company that follows the above pattern. People who are familiar with the product and don't need to follow a fixed script. Some of them are actually quite good, based on years of experience.

    Cases that are too hard for the hotline go to the "repair team", those are software testers who otherwise do QA on upcoming releases. I guess they are at least the equivalent of 3rd level support at a place like Microsoft. The "repair team" can talk directly to software development and ask for fixes, we trust them to distinguish bogus calls from real bugs.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
  138. Re: Two sides to every issue by NickGnome · · Score: 1
    Yes, purple squirrel job descriptions are used both for hiring a particular person on H-1b, and as part of the PERM process to convert from a temp visa to a green card (as described in 2007 by Lebowitz at the C&G seminar).
    ...

    Yes, though H-1B visas were, for a short time, single-intent, guest-work only visas. Applicants were required to show that they owned property or had some other anchor to the old country. That was done away with, they were converted to "dual intent" so that they could convert from H-1B to green card without having to go back to wait for the process to run its course.

    Then the H-1B was changed so that they could go from one employer/sponsor to another, even if they have a pending green card application. But, regardless of whether they have a pending green card application, the barrier to jumping ship is still higher than it was for US citizens before the H-1B visa existed, so many guest-workers keep their mouths shut and make nice and do whatever unethical or otherwise obnoxious projects the employer wants and stay put until they get a green card.

  139. Re: multiple sides to every issue by NickGnome · · Score: 1

    It is easy to find good developers nearly everywhere. But it requires lifting a finger to find great developers. However, you have a much larger pool of bright, gifted, good and great developers if you include US citizen developers, younger developers and older developers, black, yellow, pink, brown and orange developers, rather than dumping all US citizens' applications into the black-hole candidate management system without otherwise examining them... as has been the practice since H-1B was hatched.

  140. Re: multiple sides to every issue by NickGnome · · Score: 1
    "Right now we're hiring. Truth is we probably get 6 times the number of H1B applicants compared to US applicants."
    ...

    So, obviously, something about your advertising methods are biased... or the kind of work you mention in your ads is less appealing to US citizens for some reason.

    What methods are you using to advertise the jobs? I assume you've placed ads on some of the on-line sites. How many classified or display ads have you taken out in print publications (both general circulation and trade zines) both in your metropolitan area but across the USA? What is the circulation of the publications in which you've advertised? For how many days and weeks are the ads to run?

    How many deans and department chairs have you written to or called? How many university computing centers and institutes and labs have you contacted? Have you built up long-run relationships with those deans and department chairs and directors?

    Did you include your e-mail address and the number of the phone on your desk in the ads?

    Is the tech involved more or less obsolete? Are you advertising outside of the appropriate niche? Maybe you're reaching a lot of the wrong people, and few of the right people.

    How willing are you to fly candidates in for interviews from around the USA?

    How willing are you to invest in the 3 weeks of new-hire training that DoL expects to be the norm?

    How willing are you to invest in relocation assistance for the best candidates?

    How willing are you to help them break a lease, sell a home, and secure new quarters within 30 miles or so of your location?

    What if you find a great candidate who, in light of the on-going economic depression, is cold broke, doesn't have a car or a pile of cash to come to you, or a cushion on which to live for a few weeks until pay-day?

    How much are you able and willing to invest into reaching and hiring the genuinely best or brightest?

  141. Re: Two sides to every issue by rfengr · · Score: 1

    Depends on the color of the reasesrch funds, and RA & TA perks such as free tuition. I knew a few stretching out PhD to 10+ years to avoid being sent back home, and one hiding out from INS after graduation due to student visa expiring. Coasting in school is very easy if you are used to spending very little.

  142. Re:Living in Colorado, and yes, there is a shortag by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

    Ladies and Gentlemen, office/IT/tech work does not mean you don't have to WORK! and no, you are not harder workers than the rest of the world or more innovative or more irreplacable. Get off your asses!, > 2 hrs of real work a day is NOT asking too much. Crist, walk around and all you see is facebook or amazon accounts on people's machines.

    Your cries for harder work are falling on deaf ears because your company has fouled up too many times.

    "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

    In other words, your management has made stupid choices, repeatedly, then insisted their workers "work hard" to clean up the mess, then failed to exhibit any gratitude whatsoever for excess hours put in (illegally uncompensated, in some states). What you're seeing around you now is the end result of years of poor management. The people who like to work have long since moved on. What you have left are the people who can't be bothered to find a better managed position.

    I see this in my current position. I actually have the best manager on the floor, as far as paying attention to what is happening now, paying attention to what's coming, and modifying plans in advance to aim for a different project when the customer for the first project experiences a delay. A coworker who was hired the same day I was works for a different manager. He can go two or three weeks at a time with literally nothing to do. His manager made no contingency plans. His manager paid no attention to possible delays outside of his control. So there he sits, on Facebook (or the moral equivalent). Nor can I blame him. There are too many people and too many moving parts for him to just randomly strike out on his own. He would end up working at cross-purposes with the other poorly managed people around him, and nobody likes throwing away work. So why work, let alone work hard?

    Me, I'm on Slashdot tonight because I'm at the end of a project cycle. I've done releases of two products to QA, determined that a release of a third product doesn't need to happen (which was somehow missed by everybody else involved) and now I'm waiting on the last of the test results, poised to take care of any trailing problems. I'll be working on the next thing in a matter of days.

    I really liked Colorado the three years I lived there, but I can tell I don't want to work for your company. You suffer from dysfunctional tech management. I could generalize that a bit. You, like so many other American companies, suffer from dysfunctional management.

    Ladies and Gentlemen, management work does not mean you don't have to WORK! and no, you are not harder workers than the rest of the world or more innovative or more irreplacable. Get off your asses!, > 2 hrs of real work a day is NOT asking too much.

  143. Re: multiple sides to every issue by Cyberax · · Score: 1

    We _do_ include US citizen and we can't care less about color, race, age or accent. It's still very hard to compete with big companies.

  144. Change the name by carys689 · · Score: 1

    Maybe the American programmers should go to court and have their names changed to sound Indian-like.

  145. Re:Living in Colorado, and yes, there is a shortag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This! And not just your corner of the US but what I've seen in most places I have worked so far (in Canada and Germany). No Chinese and few Indians that weren't in India as few speak German, but lots of Facebook and Twitter and whatnot especially for younger generations (I'm 32). Lots of Chinese and indians in Canada though. And the chinese versions of these, like weibo etc. I don't get it. I feel dirty when theres some free time because I need to wait for something to finish and I go read slashdot and you see these people hanging out on facebook half the day.

  146. Re:Living in Colorado, and yes, there is a shortag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then put the name of your company and the contact info for a real-live HR rep that the qualified people can call tomorrow. Or seriously, drop the schtick about there being a 'shortage'. I personally know top-shelf, top-notch talent that has been whipping their applications out to employers like you claim to be, only to receive no response to a resume submission. We're all getting quite tired of the lies and the nonsense about a tech shortage.

  147. of course there isn't a skills shortage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    BUT there is a lack of cheap programmers in the U.S., who want to work for Rupees. That's why we import workers from the 3rd world. Who by the way go on 10 week training courses to become experts in areas like SAP etc... before they get flown over here.

  148. Re:Living in Colorado, and yes, there is a shortag by komodo685 · · Score: 1

    The Chinese folks seem to have their ducks in a row. They ain't great on the innovation part and you have to spent a LOT of time steering them, but at least they work hard.

    The Indians spend most of their time emailing management about how awesome they (the Indians) are, rather than doing any actual work.

    The Americans seem to be stuck in the glory days of post-WWII when America didn't have any real competition (rest of the world was smoldering ashes) so they now seem allergic to the concept of hard work.

    I've found 0 (or near 0) correlation between country of origin and work ethic. This is complete bullshit and flamebait. That this was posted by an AC does not surprise me.

    My company tried for almost a year to find good tech people. Begged, scrounged, tried to poach, nada. The jobs may not be the best paying, ~$120k/year

    I'm not certain about the COL in silicon valley and other very expensive areas (generously assuming you're even in one), but unless the skills you were looking for was some obscure language and/or toolset I'm pretty sure this is obvious bullshit as well.

  149. Get real by NewYork · · Score: 1

    You guys need to first solve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... before solving this H1B issue.

  150. Companies ruined or almost ruined by Indians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired. (forward caste)
    AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009) (forward caste)
    AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot). (forward caste)
    Apple - R&D; CLOSED in India in 2006. (forward caste)
    Australia's National Australia Bank (Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010). (forward caste)
    Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall) (forward caste)
    Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA) (forward caste)
    Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S. by Indian national guest worker) (forward caste)
    Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America. (forward caste)
    Caterpillar misses earnings a mere 4 months after outsourcing to India, Inc. (forward caste)
    Circuit City - Outsourced all IT to Indian-run IBM and went bankrupt shortly thereafter.(forward caste)
    ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int (forward caste)
    Deloitte - 2010 - this Indian-packed consulting company is being sued under RICO fraud charges by Marin Country, California for a failed solution. (forward caste)
    Dell - call center (closed in India) (forward caste)
    Delta call centers (closed in India) (forward caste)
    Fannie Mae - Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out. Indian logic bomb creator found guilty. (forward caste)
    GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later (forward caste)
    HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006) (forward caste)
    Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned) (forward caste)
    Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers) (forward caste)
    Medicare - Defrauded by Indian national doctor Arun Sharma & wife in the U.S. (forward caste)
    Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing. (forward caste)
    MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled) (forward caste)
    PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed). (forward caste)
    PepsiCo - Slides from #1 to #3 during Indian CEO Indra Nooyi' watch. (forward caste)
    Polycom - Former senior executive Sunil Bhalla charged with insider trading. (forward caste)
    Qantas - See AirBus above (forward caste)
    Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure) (forward caste)
    Rolls Royce (Sent aircraft engine work to India in 2006, engines delayed for Boeing 787, and failed on at least 2 Quantas planes in 2010, cost Rolls $500m). (forward caste)
    SAP - Same as Deloitte above in 2010. (forward caste)
    Skype (Madhu Yarlagadda fired) (forward caste)
    State of Indiana $867 million FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued (forward caste)
    State of Texas failed IBM project. (forward caste)
    Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, had to be sold off to Oracle). (forward caste)
    UK's NHS outsourced numerous jobs including health records to India in mid-2000 resulting in $26 billion over budget. (forward caste)
    Union Bank of California - Cancelled Finacle project run by India's InfoSys in 2011.(forward caste)
    United - call center (closed in Indiay) (forward caste)
    Victorian Order of Nurses, Canada (Payroll system screwed up by SAP/IBM in mid-2011) (forward caste)
    Virgin Atlantic (software written in India caused cloud IT failure) (forward caste)
    World Bank (Indian fraudsters BANNED for 3 years because they stole data). (forward caste)

  151. Re: Two sides to every issue by MaxVT · · Score: 1

    JavaScript does have private methods: http://javascript.crockford.co...

  152. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The fact that you would prefer recent graduates who literally don't know anything, compared to people with "several years experience", shows a massive flaw in your company and the hiring practices of companies in general, if that is what you mean. If not I misinterpreted.

  153. Re:Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Idk. I'm not the best IT professional in history, with only 8.5 years of actual experience, not counting the full 16, and it was nearly impossible for me to find a new job this year. I worked for Atos (formerly Siemens) and I'm pretty sure they blacklisted me as best as possible in Cincinnati (or the market is horrible). I moved to Houston after 3 months of fail - excluding a brief contractor role in May - and it took me 6 days from the day I got there and 2 interviews to get hired. People have asked me how the IT market is in Cincinnati. I'll tell you: Like someone siad, they are legally required to post jobs, so you see dozens of job postings for positions that don't actually exist.

    But with only that many years experience, I can easily outdo people with double that. It's not a matter of pomposity with the American worker like some chumps on here are trying to say: Some people are clearly full of shit, some definitely are not.

  154. Re: Two sides to every issue by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    We pay $80k-$90k for college graduate starting salaries

    I know a college graduate who turned down an offer of $120k because he got a better offer (from Uber). So you're not really doing anyone a favor here.......

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  155. Re: Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Having done this for a coworker and friend, it's not exactly that easy. You're required to relist the original job that the person is employed in, so if you picked up an H1B employee on a lucky break as he was leaving another company, and he's worked for you for years, you have to risk losing his years of experience to hire some noob worker again.

  156. Re: Two sides to every issue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From my own experience as former H1B owner: when you're good, it's no problem at all to demand a higher salary at a good company. I did it many times and was never denied.
    Here's an inconvenient truth: H1B candidates are often the cream of the crop of their home country. That makes them more attractive than average local candidates in the US (who always think they're fantastic.)
    Good H1B companies are not conspiring to keep salaries down, they simply want to competitive against other companies who hire the best. It's that simple.

  157. I've seen this in too many companies... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All of you are nuts here. I'm the sole super brain. You nuts, don't you see, we buy 99% of our fireworks from China. Why? 'coz you want big bad ass box full of fireworks for 29.99. Many of us in our beloved country buy $24.99 shoes from Walmart and Target, you guessed it, made in Indonesia and China. Why? heh. you want to pay low prices. McD sells you $1 burger, and you go for it. Exercise: Figure out why you go for it.

    Oh, you are a nut, so your probably can't figure it out. When I say you, I may not mean the real "you", but the many native born Americans, "us" that avail of these low prices.

    Corporations in our Capitalist economy are like people (so said a famous politician). They go for low prices too.
    But dear nuts, no H1B really works for $19k/year in the USA. They get $65K and upto $140k and beyond, based on their skills.

    Dear nuts, let's remember, we are a capitalist society. We do business around the world, indirectly paying really really really low wages to people to enjoy our iphones and Galaxies. Dear nuts, get our brains together. Let's be consistent when applying our nutty brained theories to native American/European American/Indian/Mexican/Chinese/* workers and their wages.

  158. Re: Two sides to every issue by CyprusBlue113 · · Score: 1

    We're paying a general market rate here (Palo Alto) plus ~20% and it's STILL hard to find good developers because of the competition with companies like Google.

    Right, so you aren't competitive... This isn't hard, you just don't like the answer.

    --
    a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
  159. Re: Two sides to every issue by CyprusBlue113 · · Score: 1

    I hear the same arguments from failing restaurants, no one complains. People don't complain about the food, they just stop going there.

    What you guys don't get is we just don't bother with you at all if you don't look attractive.

    --
    a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
  160. Re: Two sides to every issue by Cyberax · · Score: 1

    Yes, we're barely competitive. We can vastly improve our competitiveness by using outsourced labor. What do you think we should do?