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US Senator Blasts Microsoft's H-1B Push As It Lays 18,000 Off Workers
dcblogs (1096431) writes On the floor of U.S. Senate Thursday, Sen. Jeff Sessions delivered a scalding and sarcastic attack on the use of highly skilled foreign workers by U.S. corporations that was heavily aimed at Microsoft, a chief supporter of the practice. Sessions' speech began as a rebuttal to a recent New York Times op-ed column by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffett and Sheldon Adelson ... But the senator's attack on "three of our greatest masters of the universe," and "super billionaires," was clearly primed by Microsoft's announcement, also on Thursday, that it was laying off 18,000 employees. "What did we see in the newspaper today?" said Sessions, "News from Microsoft. Was it that they are having to raise wages to try to get enough good, quality engineers to do the work? Are they expanding or are they hiring? No, that is not what the news was, unfortunately. Not at all."
Well, as tough as it is, and as right as this senator may sound, this is the result of global free market economy. Companies get their resources where they are cheapest, regardless if this is parts or people.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
As usual, leave off the R when they do something good. Leave off the Dwhen they do something bad.
FTFY
The few articles that I've read state that the layoffs are primarily middle management and a ton of Nokia personelle (presumably Nokia peronell aren't overwhelmingly in America?). H-1B are technical professionals not business majors, though I doubt that there isn't some overlap. Said overlap might be shitty workers that they slapped on to the overall firing (easier to fire people for this than bulding up a bunch of evidence for just cause).
There's a false comparison being made here... who says the Nokia engineer or the Xbox content maker being laid off has the same skills as the programmer they are wanting to hire?
If somebody does something good you should overlook their political affiliations :)
In the same way if they do something bad you should hold them personally responsible rather than claiming it's because of their political affiliations.
Anybody who thinks they're not all sucking the same corporate dick should invest heavily in the bridge and nigerian prince mentioned above.
Quite frankly though the fact that it took anybody in the Senate this long to speak up on the issue indicates how complacent they've become.
I say we just close our border altogether and stop these migrants from coming here. They are ruining our country and living good on our backs with government housing, food, healthcare and benefits that they would never get in their shithole home countries.
Look at the waves of poor, uneducated Central Americans crashing our borders now. They know we won't have the stones to kick them back home because we have become a nation of pussies. America for Americans please.
I guess he didn't get his campaign contribution from $MSFT this year.
Tech workers (and workers in general) are not fungible.
Basic economics says if you are having a skills shortage in a certain sector then you should see wages increasing as employers attempt to attract the required labor. If wages are not going up then you do not have a skills shortage. This is something economist Dean Baker points out all the time.
Why should we pass laws to enable a company to do what it wants?
Laws should be passed because they are morally right and protect the American people, not to make business more profitable. Train the workers you have.
He should have saved a shot for IBM.
With 12000 being from the Nokia side of the business, and the majority of that outside the US, the Senator is just knee jerk reacting. The biggest hit is a factory in Finland (a few thousand at 1 location). The reason they are probably needing H1-B is to bring some of the staff from closed locations into the US. They aren't "taking jobs", their jobs are just moving local, to people who will pay taxes locally in America, rather than in another country.
I haven't read the detail of the 18,000 M$ is laying off, and I doubt they have the detail anyways. But it could completely be that they're laying off all janitors and hiring an outside firm, or they're laying off a whole bunch of non-skilled or low-skilled workers. They may still need high-skilled workers with H-1B visas.
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
A good side effect of this is that Microsoft is expanding more in Europe and Canada than in US now due to immigration problems. This means that as an Indian, if I get a chance to go abroad, I wont have to deal with the American immigration process, I can go to Norway\Denmark (where they give you citizenship in 10 years), or Canada instead of US where they make Indians and Chinese wait indefinitely for even a green card
M$ do you hear us?
We don't want you in US anymore. Move out and take your your shitty OS with you.
There's a false comparison being made here... who says the Nokia engineer or the Xbox content maker being laid off has the same skills as the programmer they are wanting to hire?
Really? And exactly what skills would those be?
So, they are going to lay-off programmers and engineers who have worked on the product and hire folks who know nothing about the product? Do you know what happens to a product when people who know nothing about it work on it? It turns to complete shit. I have seen it.
This "don't have the skills" excuse is getting old. I have a tennis buddy who is an HR big shot at a very large IT/development company. We were talking about the guys who have been out of work for a year or so. The hiring managers don't want them because they "forgot what they know".
The HR guy replies, "Not ten years worth."
Out of work guys don't get a job. They are told that "they do not have the skills".
"Do not have the skills", "You do not fit in" and other vaugue non-sense reasons are just quick excuses and nothing more to get rid of people for capricious reasons.
My father in law had an interview and an exited employer until they interviewed his 74 year old ass.
"Sorry, you are not a good fit." was their rejection email.
Really, until I start seeing actual lists of skills and reasons, I think all these excuses are bullshit. Just bullshit to hire in some cheap labor in or from a Third World country.
u are dumb..
Any US company that outsources to a foreign county is treasonous and anti-patriotic.
If they love India so much, they should just pack up and move there. And stay out!
So, then, you have no problem with having your products made by slave labor? Sure is inexpensive, and the wages are low. Or chemical plants that don't have to deal with those pesky environmental regulations for emissions into water, air and soil?
That's where the whole "the job is worth $X universally". It's not really the same job.
Here in the U.S. (and Europe), we don't allow people to work as slaves, and we generally require a reasonably safe workplace. Buying services overseas from a country with less regulation is essentially getting around rules that we as a group in society feel are important. Now, you and I may not agree on *all* the rules and regulations, but that's sort of the sacrifice one makes for living in "civilization", as a opposed to a Lord of the Flies free-for-all.
You are a fucking racist. Quit hating the president, WE WON.
Outsourcing to foreign countries should be outright illegal. Every job given away is food taken out of the mouths of US children. Companies that do that should be given a death a million times worse than Osama Bin-laden.
Jeff Sessions, Tea Party Guy. Of course he's going to take the nativist view. He probably thinks Microsoft could just take the 18,000 people it's laying off and repurpose them to fill whatever positions it's trying to use H1B visas for. Because tech skills are interchangeable, right? And all those 18,000 are totally okay relocating across the country (or globe) right?
Y'all are missing the point -- Jeff Sessions is a dumb-ass teabagger from AL. His big issue is immigration; he wants to keep any and all immigrants out of the US (excepting his own white self and his family, in the finest "I got mine, screw the rest of ya" republican tradition). He doesn't give a damn about jobs. He doesn't give a damn about engineers. All he wants is to send immigrant children back to the Mexican and Central American drugs-and-guns war zone he and his fellow congress critters created so he can get them dark skinned Spanish speaking people as far from himself as he can get them.
Jeff Sessions isn't very deep. Don't read more into this than there is.
Since they are laying off local workers, I really think that Microsoft should have 18,000 fewer H-1B visas. After all, the H-1B visa is intended to fulfill a lack of local talent.
Nativist view? He works for the people of the U.S. Why do some of you expect him to speak and work for the people of the world? He's not in the U.N. and the U.S. doesn't need to speak for other countries.
This is so easy to fix.
Establish what the standard rate is for whatever position and say "you can have all the H1-B visa applicants you want so long as you pay 20 percent more then what you're paying for domestic labor.
If its not a matter of pay and is a matter of limited labor supply, they'll import the labor and pay them more.
If it is about wanting cheap labor then they'll go with the domestic labor which will by law be cheaper.
End of discussion.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Seriously this is what it's come to, editors? "As it lays 18,000 off workers"? You can't even proofread the title?
Anyway, it's mostly non-American Nokia employees who are being laid off, and it has nothing to do with the H1-B situation. So bottom line Sessions is an idiot.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Senator notices Microsoft is evil.
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They are American's first guest workers. Hundreds of thousands of indians taking American tech jobs. They have no interest, desire or plans of staying in this country permanently. I work with many of them and they all tell me someday they will return to India (and live like kings with the wealth they've gained here). Its unpatriotic. Its a travesty. Eliminate this work class and you force corporations here to train American workers and focus on our education system (and its many deficiencies). I know I would be making a bigger salary if I wasnt competing with these guest workers.
Niklaus Wirth really was a genius when it came to language design. His languages are the most readable I have ever worked with. For fun this weekend I decided to teach myself python and I keep going WTF were they thinking ?* Not to put Python down it seems very well executed, but it just seems to make design choices just for the sake of being different.
*APL, IMNSHO is still the all time champion of being a write only language
Right now, it's a split infinity.
Any company which lays off 10% of their workforce should be banned from the H1B program for at least 5 years.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
What the senator is really saying is that Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced by a foreign worker.
This space for rent.
also forced OT pay for h1-B's.
no more of this you make them work 60-80 hours a week with no OT pay.
I'm going to get a lot of flak for this but I generally favor open immigration when it comes to people who can contribute to our economy, even if this means my paycheck will go down and my field's labor market will be more competitive for me as a result.
Why?
* America shouldn't pretend to be the land of opportunity if it's not.
* If I can't compete in in my chosen job market without depending on the government to protect me from immigrant workers, either I need to get better at what I do or I need to find another line of work where I can compete.
* If my standard of living is higher than the income I would make in a free (from an immigration perspective) labor market, I need to lower my standard of living or find a more financially lucrative line of work.
* If a company has a choice between
1. hiring US workers who may be in short supply and demanding higher wages
2. importing workers to increase the supply and as a result possibly depress wages slightly
3. outsourcing the work overseas where the supply is more plentiful and the wages are significantly lower
everything else being equal it will go with #3.
Now, everything isn't equal, and there are usually clear benefits from having employees who are if not on-site at least in-country. But if the benefits aren't high enough to do #1 over #3 and #2 isn't an option, guess what choice they will pick? If you make #2 an attractive option compared to #3, American will at least benefit from the imported workers paying rent or buying homes, eating food, and otherwise helping the local economies of where they live.
In other words, if America let in anyone willing and able to work who had a job offer in hand, enough skills and financial resources to make sure they don't become a burden if they get laid off, and no particular reason to not let in that person, we should let them in to work.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
the rest of the world had basically been converted to rubble and it takes a couple of decades to rebuild after such destruction.
I assume you mean the rest of the industrialized world.
Do Canada and Australia not count?
I don't think Canada suffered much infrastructure damage in WWII. Other than the northern coastal areas (particularly Darwin) and some ship-launched attacks on harbors I don't think Australia did either.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
But don't tell him that.
*joke*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Decades ago - we are talking the 50s and 60s, possibly up through the '70s and '80s, large companies treated employees as a long-term asset not as a short- or medium-term one.
They wanted to cultivate the reputation of "we take care of our employees" more than "we take care of our stockholders."
Back then, it would take a radically different skill-set between those being laid off and those being hired for you to see simultaneous layoffs and hiring from abroad. As a hypothetical example, if a conglomerate were shutting down its meat-packing division and hiring new researchers as it expands its pharmaceutical research division, the odds are that most of those meat-packers wouldn't have the intellectual capacity to qualify for the Ph.D.- or at least graduated-in-the-top-quarter-of-my-class-from-a-good-school B.S.-in-chemistry-or-a-related-field- degree required for the new jobs even if the company was willing to invest 4-6 years to re-train them.
Today, by contrast, if the employee being laid off can't be quickly retrained, the short-term-economic decision is a no-brainer: lay that person off and hire someone for the newly-created job who can hit the ground running.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Microsoft walked right into this. I can't believe they actually purged 18k people at once. So tone-deaf and out of touch! At least space it out over a few years, and do it under the radar. It's like the new CEO is bragging he purged more workers than the last CEO.
Yes, this is dead weight, with Xbox programming creators and marketing drones, but people read the headlines, they do not read the stories. The Drudge Report shapes public opinion, and MS got gobsmacked on the Drudge Report.
Well, as tough as it is, and as right as this senator may sound, this is the result of global free market economy. Companies get their resources where they are cheapest, regardless if this is parts or people.
Yet these companies lobby congress with billions of dollars to avoid free-market principles when it the wealth of the capital owners is in question. The entire computer industry, defense, electronics, was incubated with tax-payer money to every last penny. The "free market" would dictate these taxpayers own these industries.
This propaganda you spout is rubbish. Free-market in order to spiral wages downwards, but the antithesis of free market to protect capital. Corporations loathe the free market and rely upon the state for capital protection.
"Lays 18,000 Off Workers"
I think that beats Jenna Jameson's record.
What a difference a transposition makes.
I can't speak for Microsoft, but I can speak for my company -- we're about 100 people, 40 engineers, of which 5 are H1-Bs. I make sure our H1-B employees are paid exactly what they would be paid if they were US citizens, I can promise you that if a printout of our salaries was accidentally left on the printer and all engineers could see everyone's salary, they would find that we are paying everyone relative to their value contributed to the company and not their visa status.
I'll also point out that there are laws that specifically state that we must adhere to that practice of fair pay, though I'd do it anyway because it's the right thing to do. We hire H1-B employees because we can't find US citizen programmers that are good enough and wiling to come here -- there is intense competition here in the Valley.
Oh, and another thing: H1-Bs are not indentured servants. We hire H1-B engineers from other companies, and unfortunately, H1-B engineers sometimes leave us for other opportunities. It takes me just 2-3 weeks to switch an H1-B sponsorship from the current employer to us.
also evil.
The layoff wasn't much of a surprise.
I've been expecting it for a few years and I expect that Apple and Google will follow suit,
just not sure of the timeframe. They're all engaged in verticalizing their information
equivalent of a supply chain, i.e. an indicator of saturating markets.
http://nodemy-ghost.herokuapp....
Let me preface this by saying I think Limbaugh has become a self-important blowhard, who spends hours saying nothing, just to hear himself talk on the radio. I'm also no fan of the vast majority of idiots signed up as members of the Republican party.
But let's not try to cherry-pick historical events to make conclusions that just aren't there..... The Great Depression might have shown signs of going away before WWII, but you'd have to be kind of crazy to back the idea that America's prosperous period after WWII had nothing to do with winning the war! Essentially, on this one, Rush actually *is* right. Heck, if nothing else, one could make a strong argument that the war put America in an advantageous place in the world market simply because other major competitors were knocked out for a while. (It's easy to look good when the other players are still rebuilding decimated manufacturing capabilities and so on.)
And no... "massive govt. spending and growth" from WWII wasn't the magic ticket to prosperity.... Fools like GWB seemed to believe this, and America found out the hard way that you can't just dump a ton of money into having a war and expect automatic prosperity to result.
In reality, if America had some way to win WWII without all of the military expenditures, we would have been that much MORE well-off, post war, than we were.
Now, arguing about banking regulations, specifically? Yes, I think it's pretty widely understood that the deregulation in the Reagan era (and let's be honest here ... much of that had more to do with Reagan's economic advisers than Reagan himself) turned out pretty bad. If you had to put a face and a name to those ideas, you'd probably pin most of it on Alan Greenspan, who eventually admitted himself that he was wrong. (Essentially, he felt he did the right thing, philosophically speaking -- but didn't think the people put in charge of banking would be so short-sighted and irresponsible to do some of the things they were ABLE to do with the regulations lifted. Basically, he was guilty of believing too much in some of the people who supposedly could make wise business decisions.)
If you want to talk fundamental change that would actually help America's situation today? We've GOT to get rid of the Corporatism. Big businesses can NOT be allowed to infiltrate government and effectively become another arm of it! Too many people, today, have this simplistic notion that big businesses are evil/bad/wrong, and need to be forcibly dismantled -- or forced to give up a portion of their wealth to "everyone else". Big business, itself, is not the problem. A big business is just one of those small businesses people like to cheer for that did well enough, it got bigger and hired a lot more people. The PROBLEM comes in when government accepts financial gifts from said businesses for favors, or allows people with direct ties to the businesses to take key positions inside government itself and proceeds to get new legislation made/approved that only benefits those businesses.
IMO, Obama is just as guilty of perpetuating this as any of our last few presidents -- and the results are like a snowball rolling downhill. For example:
http://www.newyorker.com/onlin...
Corporations and their shills will cry out hard "Never let the government touch the free unfettered pristine market!!!" But why should they be the only ones not allowed to participate? Every company known to man tries to artificially manipulate the market to its favour, every day. Clearly the 'free market' is not being served by getting workers in one market --India-- and selling to another market --United States--. This is skewing the labour rate, and skewing profits artificially high, yet the shills will claim "all is good". Yet smaller players can't compete with foreign workers. Clearly the market favours the bigger players and its not fair to smaller players. It would be better for the US if they had more --American-- technology workers in the market, but if they try to regulate the market to make it fair, shills will cry out 'don't touch my unfettered market!!!', yet microsoft is already skewing the market. I'm in favour of market regulation. Like any competitive game, the market needs (desperately) a referee. Football doesn't allow late hits, rabbit punches, tripping, punching, kicking, fighting, gouging, biting, or weapons on the field. But in the 'market' all of these are allowed 'all is fair game', and when the government wears the black and white shirt and blows the whistle, the worst offenders cry like babies. Its just that if there are rules, they can't arbitrarily run up the score. A fair game is best for everyone.
Maybe the good Senator thinks Hungary is somewhere in Kansas and that Finland is somewhere near Alaska. He is from Alabama, so it's hard to say. As Tom Lehrer once sang about another southerner, "He's from Georgia, and doesn't speak the language very well."
There's no real relationship to Microsoft's Nokia layoffs and H-1B visas, except for those people in Seattle maybe. But the Seattle folks a be marketing people or managers, and you don't usually get H1-B visas for marketeers and managers.
I agree with you about the tech companies and the lack of flexibility with training. Even if you're not a programmer, but simply want a job related to the I.T. infrastructure (network engineer, systems administrator, etc.) -- you run across the same mentality. There's typically a belief, internally, that nobody has time to train a person to get them up to speed on what they're doing. Better to be REALLY specific about what you need, and let the H.R. drones find you a good match.
Then whenever that comes up short, the larger companies especially will go to the H1B VISA idea, because "Hey... if you can't find a great match, at least find someone who says they'll work here for less money, so we can cost justify the extra time it will probably take us to get that guy up to speed."
About nursing specifically, though? My mom was a registered nurse and taught nursing for most of her life. As long as I can remember, she *always* advised people that jobs in the nursing homes or "long term care facilities" were the bottom of the barrel. Those are the jobs nursing professionals accept as "first jobs" when trying to get a career started, or quite frankly, for those who never did very well in nursing school and lack the motivation to do what it takes to go further in the field.
The elderly care situation in this country is in really bad shape, all the way around, though. Complaining that nursing homes are looking at foreign labor to save money amounts to complaining about only one symptom of the problem.... Nursing care facilities are chock-full of corruption; often charging very large fees to residents but basically leaving the people to lie in bed and die after that. I'm pretty sure if you followed the money, you'd find a massive amount of it that's not going back into the business at all.
Yea that's what I thought, not a fucking thing. so shut the hell up and mind your own, think there's some asses to kiss over there
Here's a simple solution, just kill all Indians. Drop a bunch of nukes on India from orbit just to be sure.
Microsoft: "But they are old farts. We want young hipsters without families that make fluffy angry birds, not Microsoft Bob."
Table-ized A.I.
Just in case you were wondering, most of the layoffs are in the Czech republic.
H-1B is not economic and is not about Globalist competition. It is a pride thing for CEO's in the United States only... and a Blind knee jerk reaction based on other corporation behavior.. not objective thought. Its more of a Marketing decision by Marketing CEOs.
Look, less expensive developers or engineers come from younger people, doesn't matter where. They accept lower wages just to get their foot in the door. They expect wage increases.. and often find themselves priced out of the industry. Some even legitimately cannot accept lower wages because of their loan payback situation, the only deferment they can get is through unemployment or welfare.. its that bad.
For all the excuses blaming young families, lazy greedy middle class.. its simple Agism that is pricing our younger people out of the market, once they get over a specific age they are blocked (blackballed) by HR.
The H-1B visa program "strips" legal status and rights from people who try to immigrate to the US, simple as that, it removes their citizenship for a period of time and automatically "deports" them when they reach that "Age limit"... if they get the chance to come back multiple times.
If they Invert the company (becoming popular now) or they outsource to a service company in legally disadvantaged corporation in another country they "temporarily" try to use up the younger workers in that country and then abandon them by shifting the jobs elsewhere when the foreign country begins makes demands unfavorable to the busiess.. like tax dodge, rights dodge.. lack of kick back or subsidy ect..
None of this is "good" for people in either country.. its like a shell game for both sides and does harm to everyone involved.. like a hole in the ozone.
Finally.. its Super bad for stock holders and only benefits short sighted CEOs with an exit strategy.. because it encourages people trusted with internal company jobs and trade secrets to take with impunity.. and build competitors as fast as possible.. building their "start ups" in other countries faster than the market can adjust.. causing a fall in the original companies true value and stock price.
H-1Bs are just one facet of a bad situation. All H-1B visas should be immediately and irrevocably be "cancelled" and then the who possibility Outlawed by the Supreme court.. as a service to Humanity.
The federal BUDGET each year often does not include things that BOTH the congress and the administration leave "off-budget" so they can both avoid voter wrath over the numbers.... but the money spent each year beyond what was taken in DOES get added to the DEBT number each year. ALL the money Bush overspent (including his TARP and November 2008 mini auto-bailout) was included in the $9 Trillion dollar cumulative debt which Obama inherited. The Democrats came up with a claver "talking point" after he got in office by saying they would put the war costs during the Obama years "on-budget" (a correct and more-honest action than Bush) but then helping the public get confused into thinking Obama's budgets included spending for wartime actions pre-dating his presidency. Obama's budgets do NOT include retroactive spending for Bush's bailouts or war spending - THOSE expenditures were what caused the debt to skyrocket to $9 Billion on Bush's watch.
The Bush mini-bailout of the auto industry (which I presonally detest) was a gentleman's act by Bush (of whom I am also not a fan) to Obama: Bush COULD have let GM go under or bailed it out completely in the months between Obama's election and his inauguration - but he announced the mini-bailout to keep GM alive but unresolved until Obama was in office and could choose his own policy (few American presidents handing-off to a successor of another party have gone that far out of their way and angered their bases that much to give the incoming guy maximum flexibility).
You also left out the massive piles of cash Bush spent bailing out the airlines (which all nearly went bankrupt in the immediate aftermath of 9-11), bailing out NYC (after Lower Manhattan was smashed on 9-11), and creating the DHS and the TSA in response to 9-11. Bush haters also love to conveniently forget that in 2000 the Clinton-Era "internet bubble burst (remember PETS.COM?) so the big Bush tax cut (which went to EVERY tax payer - not just "the rich") was designed to keep the economy from plunging into a severe recession (the internet bubble burst + 9-11 attacks cost the economy many billions of dollars, slammed the markets and grounded aviation)
It should also be pointed out that Democrats took over congress in 2006 and for the last 2 of Bushes 8 years Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate passed only Democrat budgets and bills. Even the budget the Republicans in congress along with Bush worked on throughout 2006 never actually became law - in the November 2006 ellections the Democrats won the congress and immediately ended budget negotiations with the then "lame-duck" Republian congress; the budgets under negotiation died and the congress passed a "continuing resolution" to fund the government for only several months (just until the Democrat majorities could get sworn-in). Normally, a new preident's first year in office operated under the previous guy's last budget (Bush's 1st year in office was under Clinton's last budget) but Obama was spared that by the actions Reid and Pelosi the previous November.
Microsoft advertises itselt as the best in the world ... so in theory they should have the best practices, techniques, methods, etc and therefore should need to train ANY new person to get them up to "microsoft standards". This being the case, which is it better to start with: [a] a foreign worker with possible cultural/language issues, dubious educational records, etc or [b] an employee who already works at microsoft within the system and culture. The existing employee should ONLY need the additional training for the specific skills for the new task (which in the case of microsoft have NEVER been revolutionary)
Any programmer at microsoft working in C or C++ should be able to smoothly move into any other job involving C or C++ with VERY little "training" required ... unless they want to publicly assert that they have for many years employed imcompetent people... It's one way or the other, but it just cannot reasonably be stretched to be "we have the best in the world, so we have to dump them and import a bunch of rookies from India who are better".
"Establishment" hates/fears the TEA Party. The GOP leaders in Washington love big business, but actual conservatives and libertarians are wary of big business for the same reasons they are wary of big government. TEA Partiers have been opposed to crony capitalism for as long as the movement has existed (Bush's TARP and auto bailouts were the initial spark that lit the fuse that started the TEA Parties). Obama's big bailouts and stimulus package were only the last straw. Go back and read the articles and interviews from early 2009 as the movement started: nearly all of them cited Bush's "crony capitalist" bailouts. TEA Partiers were outraged that the big Wall St investment banks who had done so much wrong were being bailed-out with tax dollars while small local banks (who had done NOTHING wrong) were not only getting nothing but also were being burdened with a whole new raft of regulations. TEA Partiers were upset that Bush's TSA was spending billions buying ineffective and intrusive airport scanner machines purchased (without competative bids) from a company run by the guy who had just been Bush's FEMA director. TEA PArtiers were also outraged that both Bush AND Obama bailed-out all the "bad" car companies (like GM and Chrysler) which would then unfairly be preserved to compete with the one responsible car company (Ford) AND that after using tax money to bailout Chrysler, Obama would give it to Fiat rather than to some American (after-all, there were MANY retired Americans who had owned shares of GM who'd had those shares stolen by the government as part of the deals)
Being opposed to mega-corps "in bed with" government is NOT something new for the TEA Partiers - it's a core issue.
Oh, and Senator Sessions is not "new" to the issue of "outsourcing" and H-1B visas... he has been fighting these actions that suppress middle-class wages ( AND benefits, and employment options and potential "upward mobility" (which are often forgotten parts of the problem which big companies and the politicians they buy do not want you to think about)) for YEARS much to the distress of his bought-and-paid-for colleagues.
Nonsense.
1. Hobby Lobby doesn't have anything to do with the matter in question.
2. Hobby Lobby is not a random bunch of "rich stockholders." It does not trade on the exchanges, and in the everyday sense, is not a stock corporation at all.
3. "Hobby Lobby" didn't make the decision you probably object to, the US Supreme Court did.
4. And as far as the HL situation goes: The HL decision surely shows the way the balance should operate, which is why the court majority voted that way. HL, like any other business, should offer as many or as few benefits as it likes. Every prospective employee should be entirely free to accept a position as reasonable, or not to accept it and seek work elsewhere. There is no enforced uniformity among benefit packages, any more than there is among wages, nor can I see much reason there should be.
I can't speak for Microsoft, but I can speak for my company -- we're about 100 people, 40 engineers, of which 5 are H1-Bs. I make sure our H1-B employees are paid exactly what they would be paid if they were US citizens, I can promise you that if a printout of our salaries was accidentally left on the printer and all engineers could see everyone's salary, they would find that we are paying everyone relative to their value contributed to the company and not their visa status.
I'll also point out that there are laws that specifically state that we must adhere to that practice of fair pay, though I'd do it anyway because it's the right thing to do. We hire H1-B employees because we can't find US citizen programmers that are good enough and wiling to come here -- there is intense competition here in the Valley.
Oh, and another thing: H1-Bs are not indentured servants. We hire H1-B engineers from other companies, and unfortunately, H1-B engineers sometimes leave us for other opportunities. It takes me just 2-3 weeks and about $4000 to switch an H1-B sponsorship from the current employer to us.
American politicians (and PARTICULARLY Democrats) should stop PRETENDING they care for young Americans and particularly the huge populations of hopeless young black and Hispanic men in America's big cities. Instead of importing foreign workers and importing college kids (and then pretending we need to give them visas to stay here so we do not lose the benefit of their educations) we need to sh*t-can the teachers unions and get GOOD teachers into all of our schools so our colleges are full of American kids of ALL skin colors and those American kids graduate with degrees and get those jobs. It makes NO SENSE to raise taxes on everybody to get the money to send welfare checks to millions of Americans who cannot get good jobs and then import hundreds of thousands of workers to fill the good jobs. Ask any young kid in a screwed-up inner-city school if he'd rather join a gang and spend the rest of his life in low-paying jobs and a welfare-subsidized substandard life OR get an engineering, architecture,science,medical or other technical degree and design the next airplane, or X-Box, or skyscraper, etc and very few would honestly choose the former.... it's just that most are realistic enough to know that they have no realistic path to the latter, particularly when the richest men on the planet are working so hard to rig the game against them.
There is a saying, "If I am not for me, who will be?"
Most Slashdotters have internalized the anti-American, anti-White guy worker ideology as part of the eternal White status mongering and ignore their own interests. Forget "What's the Matter With Kansas?" What's the matter with Slashdotters?
Reagan, Bush, Obama, Carter, Clinton. Tax rates, and the like don't really matter that much.
What matters is if the nation exists to protect its native people from having their living standards lowered to what "a Pakistani Bricklayer would consider prosperity" in a global race to the bottom (to quote Snowcrash) or if it serves big business and non-White / Latino ethnic lobbies.
A real nation would curb its oligarchs, deport its illegals, and require both goods and services to be made in its own country with its own people at decent and protected wages. America has embraced protectionism for its workers since the beginnning. That was the key social and economic policy of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton from the beginning.
And the huge part of that is not having half the poverty stricken 7 billion people on the planet moving here, to suck up welfare and job training and other spending that should go to natives only; and not allowing business to either move jobs abroad or import cheap foreign workers.
If "there is no way to stop this" then there is no point in having a nation. No point in fighting for it. No point in dying for it. No point in paying taxes for it. No point in its symbols, holidays, traditions, and values. It is merely a "geographic expression" as Metternich said of Italy. Not a real country.
A simple three point plan to raise the wages of Slashdotters at the expense of their moral status standing and place in status-whoring about who is more muy moral:
1. Deport every illegal, with fines equaling a million dollars per illegal for each company or individual that has employed them. This includes dependents, kids, grannies, whatever. Not our problem, let their nation take care of them. Lifeboat is full.
2. Deport every H1B, with fines equal to a million dollars per H1B for any company caught using them henceforward. Like fines for #1, the money distributed to each and every citizen.
3. Require all goods and services to have 90% American content. That is, only 10% of the raw material, save a few exceptions (like rare earths) can be imported. Everything else including ALL labor, ALL other manufacturing, must be done in the US. Otherwise the goods and services are subject to 400% tariffs and up. [Brazil already requires Facebook for example to keep all data regarding Brazilians inside Brazil, not in data centers outside, so this is hardly anything new.]
You might argue even more "addition by subtraction" i.e. the stuff that Wall Street does, layoffs to decrease labor costs and increase profits:copying the Dominican Republic. Which is currently deporting all illegals (nearly all Haitians by the way) including those whose ancestors came there in 1929 (but illegally). If you are a Haitian descended person, unless you can prove you came to the Dominican legally or your ancestor came legally you will be kicked out. Backstory: The Haitians invaded and enslaved the Dominicans in the War of Santo Domingo in the mid 1800s. So Dominicans don't like them much.
Getting rid of say, the descendants of illegals here since 1965 (the start of the big wave of illegal immigration) would greatly enhance the money spent on natives. The State of California for example would have lots of vacant housing, about a tenth of its spending on welfare, AFDC, WIC, Food Stamps, education, etc.
Doing that would be enough for the State of California to hire every Slashdotter at $125,000 a year, to code up its Health Care Program under ObamaCare, for greater speed and connectivity (example: your California ObamaCare ID card works like an ATM Card for payment automatically for medical services, lab tests, medical devices, medicine, etc.)
You ever wonder why Japan has
What is it about the US Constitution that you find so distressing???
Have you READ it?
The worst thing most people "know" about the Constitution is that it "codifies/legitimizes slavery and declares black people to be 3/5ths of a person"... but it does not actually DO that. The Constitution ONLY says that "non-free persons" (which included black slaves owned by whites, black slaves owned by free blacks (yes, there WERE many of those) and "indentured servants" (most of whom were white)) could only be counted as 3/5ths of a person for the purpose of calculating how many seats in the House of Representatives would be assigned to each state. The southern colonies would not joing the Union if they could not count these people but northerners were unwilling to let the south count those people fully when EVERYBODY knew they were not really going to be represented by their representatives. Our founders did NOT embrace slavery and segregation as a permanent condition of man... many of them (like Washington and Jefferson) grew up with the institution of slavery and presumed it would eventually end but in the pre-mechanized world there was no easy and obvious path to replace those workers without economic upheaval so inertia won the day. Our founders did NOT institute segregation and "Jim Crow" laws into the Federal government - those were added many decades later under Democrat President Woodrow Wilson (the President who led during WWI) and reversed by President Eisenhower (post WWII)
So, do you fear that with a smaller federal government you would have less power to force people in other states to do what you want? That's true... but then you also get those other people in other states having less power over you and your state.
Do you fear tri-corn hats and Gadsden (the yellow "Don't Tread on Me") flags? If so, then I have to ask if you fear gays over the "fashion statements" they make, or if you fear they Irish over the green hats and shamrocks in their parades.
Do you fear fiscal responsibility? The alternative is ultimately FAR worse - ask any survivors of 1935 Germany. What's wrong with the idea that before demanding more and more money from taxpayers, the government should FIRST stop wasting the money it gets, and then stop doing the stuff it was never authorized to do in the first place? What's so scary about demanding government act responsibly?
Are you terrified by the idea of ACTUAL border security over "security theater"? Are you worried about people who want the US Government to live within Constitutional boundaries and stop spying on its own citizens without warrants?
Has somebody mislead you into thinking TEA Partiers are racists? That's a mighty phony accusation given the large number of TEA Party leaders/organizers who are minorities (some of the most popular and famous are asian or black (like Kevin Jackson). There have been some occasions where anti-tea-party people have shown up at tea party events with racist signs pretending to be tea partiers (to create pictures for use on left-wing web sites) who have been "outed" and kicked-out of the events. I recommend both Penn Jillette's (NOT a TEA Partier) "Penn Point" and This set on invterviews on the subject of TEA Party "racism".
Any firm that fires workers not relevant to it's continued prosperity and which fights tirelessly to hire those who would be, regardless of where they are FROM or in what so-called nation they live in, is a great company. Any politician not understanding that it is only such companies which create ANY of pensions, taxes, profits, goods, services, OR jobs, ought to get zero votes.
Nadella is Indian and he wants to hire more of his people.
I've coded in academia & professionally in a dozen languages from 1982 - to present day 2014 & I too, like you, have always found pascal (specifically object-pascal (delphi)) to be just as you said: Easiest to HUMANLY understand and use (& it does as much as C++ can, yes, even drivers via toolkits for it, only lacking a multiple inheritance model, opting instead for a more practically usable single inheritanc one instead)
Hey - in fact, I consider it SORT OF a 'cross' between Visual Basic & C++ (ends in semis like C/C++, & uses Begin-End vs. curly braces) with neat features like functions INSIDE of procedures OR functions (better scope control AND "locateability")!
Trivia you *MAY* find interesting & enlightening:
Back in 1997, in a competing trade rag that was widely read "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" Sept/Oct. issue, Delphi (though downplayed to only 1 LINE to *try* to "hide it" but the graphs told the tale/truth) swept the floor with both VB & even MSVC++!
Delphi beat the hell out of MSVC++ in 4 of 6 tests performed in "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" issue October 1997 entitled 'Inside the VB 5 Compiler Engine'...
ESPECIALLY IN MATH & STRINGS WORK - Which EVERY program, does, & here by HUGE margins.
Delphi lost 1 test of 6 to VB5 (ActiveX Form Loads) which even beat them both here (MSVC++ & Delphi) because it's MASSIVELY optimized for that. 5 of 6 to Delphi here vs. VB (with its 'watered down' C++ compiler engine that doesn't optimize loops e.g. vs. the 'real deal', MSVC++ from Microsoft).
Delphi lost 2 tests of 6 to MSVC++ in Graphics Methods. By a PUNY margin, of like .020 of a second here, & in TextBox Form Loads by another PUNY margin of .057 seconds. 4 of 6 to Delphi here.
The others were purely & largely won by Borland Delphi. By FAR larger margins than those, like 3x that in Strings vs. MSVC++ (300% faster), & 2x that in Math vs. MSVC++ (200% faster).
Where it won, it did so by HUGE margins/orders of magnitude, in programs created for like purposes with all 3 languages & fully compiler optimized.
VERY IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE? This test??
Was done in a COMPETING LANGUAGE'S publication no less - oh, they tried to "downplay" it of course, mentioning only 1 line about it in a 4 page article, but the charts?
Couldn't fool 'em... 10 tests were these:
1.) String Processing Suite
2.) Math Suite
3.) DataBase Suite
4.) TextBox Form Load
5.) Graphics Methods (rotating bitmap)
6.) ActiveX Form loads
APK
P.S.=> It's the reason I stuck by it since version 1.0 (Delphi) & loved Turbo Pascal 4.5 - 7.0 Object Pascal in 16-bit, then Delphi for Win16 -> Win32 -> Win64, & wrote this latest creation of mine in it for BOTH 32 &/or 64-bit code (It gives users more speed, security, reliability, & even anonymity online, AND, even shores up DNS redirect security issues ala the Kaminsky flaw, which 99.999% of ISP DNS servers are NOT patched for a decade++ later even when a patch has been out that long - it also does all that, & more, MORE efficiently than the "so-called 'competition'" in clearly INFERIOR browser addons by far, doing more from a single output file result than any single one there is, bar none -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...
... apk
... the difference between an XBox application programmer and Nokia OS programmer is ...
...that Nokia engineers have historically built products no one wants to buy, while Xbox engineers make game consoles that people actually buy.
I suppose we could retask the former Nokia engineers with making game consoles no one wants to buy, instead of phones no one wants to buy.
But frankly, Microsoft has already announced that 12,500, or roughly 70% of the 18,000 people being laid off, are primarily factory workers assembling dumb phones and feature phones, which are both low margin, and selling poorly, and they are predominantly not employed in the U.S. anyway.
The remaining 5,500 people are redundancies of the kind you get when you smash a 127,000 employee company together with a 90,000 employee company to get a 217,000 employee company, and then decide that 2.5% of them are duplicate effort which is not necessary.
I have a 4-cyl gas engine grass cutting tractor that requires a tune up inasmuch as it has breaker-point ignition. That tractor dates from the early 1980s, though.
How old is your car that it needs a "tune up"?
And also eating more vegetables and fruits (such as Dr. Joel Fuhrman's work or Dr. Andrew Weil's work) to reduce inflammation. You might also be sensitive to some compounds in food, such as in the nightshade family (like tomatoes) or possibly other things (food additives, etc.)
If you want true alternatives. gold and guns/ammo won't help. All that can be confiscated.
I collected some better solutions at this link and elsewhere on my site:
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
Learning more about health creation for yourself falls in part under subsistence production... And also the gift economy,,,
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Easier fix: Move the company out of the US, needless to say almost any sane country would take MS in with open arms and crazy tax breaks.
Well, as tough as it is, and as right as this senator may sound, this is the result of global free market economy. Companies get their resources where they are cheapest, regardless if this is parts or people.
I'm not sure if you being sarcastic or an idiot. This is nothing more then political PR by some jackoff who is abusing this opportunity to gain votes. You and the morons that voted this up want to bury you heads up your asses and pretend otherwise are the very fucking problem with this country.
Put that in your delusional and suck on it!!!
Wages had not risen in 14 years. All you geniuses figure that out.
Did anyone expect anything different? This is what liberals have been lobbying for - the destruction of the American Middle Class. This is why more and more Americans are looking to move to other countries - they see the US is no longer a "free" country, but is to support the immigrants to vote Democrats into office, while the country decays.
It's time we make noise about the impact outsourcing has made to the Tech Industry. Politicians shook it off for the longest time believing that only Desktop Support was outsourced. Well it's the good jobs that are outsourced too.. Sr. Positions. The jobs are not performed as well by our outsourced counterparts because these folks don't think "out of the box". InfoSys and WiPro employees work from a knowledge base. It also takes six or seven outsourced individuals to replace one insourced individual. I know because there are seven individuals trying to cover my job.
We need to fight back. Since the all mighty dollar motivates the banks, hospitals, software companies, etc... we need to fight back with the same. If you know of a bank that outsources IT or any other department.. pull your money out, deposit it in a smaller bank that employs local individuals! Software... It's time to dump Microsoft.
If boycotts don't work then this will eventually evolve into a class war. Yes..a class war. If you are willing to sell out your fellow citizen's financial future to increase your bottom line, your are no better than a drug dealer and should be treated as such. Locked up in a detention center.. no access to your money.
Where I work the outsource ratio is now 80/20. This is a serious security risk . They also have a hard time speaking and understanding english and therefore messing up databases and applications. There's more of them than us know so we are just riding the wave.
I'm riding the wave thinking of ways to fight this. Any company outsourcing jobs that can be sourced locally should be considered a traitor.
I'm all for a Nationalism Drive. A Nationalism drive not only for the USA but for every country. Our goods and services should be generated by our people. We should be able to trade goods.. just like the old days.. But we should NOT Sell out our fellow citizen's job increase our profit margin.
Globalization has grown to a point where many corporations have become greedy.
It's time to tax corporations that outsource to H1B visa individuals heavily, tax the paychecks of H1B holders too, and apply tax incentives for corporations that in source.
Why should we do this ? Because many of us are not going to take this anymore.
wait until there's less of you and more of them. You will feel differently and wish all the H1-B engineers die from a form of Ebola that only affects them.
I hate what outsourcing has done to me. I wish they and everyone that is pro outsource... just drop dead. I've never felt that way before about anything.
When has a politician ever said something without an agenda? If you're thing to start putting stock in political babble then I've got some Nokia shares for you (I seriously do).
Made in America!
"Lays 18,000 Off Workers"
WTF?
I think you mean "Lays Off 18,000 Workers".
Yeah, I don't believe there is a developer shortage, either. I think that the claim is used to undercut the cost of hiring developers. What there is a shortage of is people who can think beyond immediate short-term goals and to anticipate consequences. Time has a not-nice answer to all of us because of that. We will all pay. In the meantime be careful whom you give more and more power to and don't complain if they end up screwing you, you will have yourself to blame, largely. I am generally in favor of ways that pit the universal ways all of us have to abuse power but especially pitting business and government people against each other. The problem is not that business is opposed to government but that business and governrment is too much in cahoots.
Microsoft wouldn't have abused its power if it weren't protected by government, if anti-trust law had been enforced and if people holding the public trust hadn't sold out to them. The rest of us deserve some blame for that too by buying the myths associated with Microsoft's dominance of the market. I never thought that the OEM agreements the company had with hardware companies were ever right, and today I delight in erasing Microsoft products from used systems and replacing them with Linux. I would like to see future systems come bare and the customer gets to choose which OS to install. '
...is code named Precipice, or Cliff, or something like that. Fitting.
Hasta la Vista, Microsoft!
Put a cap on market capitalization of these companies.
Casteism
It's not really a surprise that most top level executives and most people who have invented anything worthwhile in the US weren't educated there.
Outside of Berkeley and a few other schools, The American education system sucks.
Maybe if the citizens were worth something they wouldn't have to import them.
If they laid all of those Off Workers, what are they going to do to the On Workers? Inquiring minds want to know!
if you need workers that bad to get H1-b then you must pay OT.
So you can make them pull 60-80+ weeks to get the work of 2 people out of 1.
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Kill the derivatives market. Had all that capital gone into production of real goods and services 15 years ago rather than amplify an utterly virtual marketplace...better paying jobs would exist GLOBALLY. But as it is all that glitters is propping up the ponzi schemes and shell games played by banksters, insolvent insurers and other assorted upper crust hooligans.
I hate your signature...why would I give you the same opportunity?
You shouldn't push policies that are so radical that they have no chance of adoption. The policy I'm pushing is skirting crossing that line as it is... yours goes well over it and thus is non-viable since it has zero chance of passing the legislature.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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H1B is originally intended for extra-ordinary professionals like Albert Einstein, Linus Torvalds etc and NOT for http://sammyboy.com/showthread...
Casteism
U.S. Senate Thursday, Sen. Jeff Sessions "Alabama-GOP" insults US and Alabama. He supports exporting jobs from the USA, importing foreign science and technology workers, and enslaving illegal immigrants everywhere in the USA. This is typical GOPolicy.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
False positivism inflated scam to delude, cover and fight against reality knowledge spread . All we (stil) work in this industry know that there is a single driving factor - greed as there is no tomorow.
Post link to your heavenly company or put your tail between the legs and shut up.