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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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
and yet there's no shortage of English majors...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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