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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."
A labor boycott against tech companies that don't want to hire Americans? It's hard to see that as being effective.
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.
there certainly is a shortage of tech workers in the US willing to work for 19,000/year
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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.
Skilled worker [that costs too much for their profit margins].
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Word substitution is a common ESL problem.
So post it here.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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)
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Gotta love rules that almost enforce a form of slavery.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
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.
The relevant observation is that the bean counters deciding on hiring don't know, in many cases, what skills ... of
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
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.)
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
so they don't have to pay for the added cost of health care that is not needed with temps / Hb1's
Which means that they are flaunting the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
I think you mean 'flouting.'
and yet there's no shortage of English majors...
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.
A bean counter, I doubt it.
I think understanding that downtime costs money is exactly the thing a "bean counter" would know.
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.
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.
It also filters out workers unwilling to lie.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Table-ized A.I.
Basically happened to iOS development when it was first publicly released. Within the first six months you saw jobs requiring 5+ years of experience.
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
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.
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.
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.
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"
I love the ones where they want five years of experience with a product that has existed for less than two years!
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.
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"...
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.
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).
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.
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.
~~
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.
It is hard to find good developers anywhere. However, you have a much larger pool if you include overseas developers.
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.
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.
you mean it's hard to find acceptable developers at the wage the company wants to pay.
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?
You shouldn't have gone this path :) /.) and according to what I heard from my USA peers I'm paid around 1/8th of what I would make there. :)) 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.
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
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
"It's getting pretty frustrating when you won't compete on salary for a skilled job..."
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.
> 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
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.
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???
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
...
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.
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
...
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.
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.
...
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?
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.
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.
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.
Maybe the American programmers should go to court and have their names changed to sound Indian-like.
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.
You guys need to first solve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... before solving this H1B issue.
Casteism
JavaScript does have private methods: http://javascript.crockford.co...
> 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.
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."
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
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
Yes, we're barely competitive. We can vastly improve our competitiveness by using outsourced labor. What do you think we should do?