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Tech Looks To Obama To Save Them From 'Just Sort of OK' US Workers
theodp writes Following up on news that the White House met with big biz on immigration earlier this month, Bloomberg sat down with Joe Green, the head of Mark Zuckerberg's Fwd.US PAC, to discuss possible executive actions President Obama might take on high tech immigration (video) in September. "Hey, Joe," asked interviewer Alix Steel. "All we keep hearing about this earnings season though from big tech is how they're actually cutting jobs. If you look at Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, why do the tech companies then need more tech visas?" Green explained why tech may not want to settle for laid-off U.S. talent when the world is its oyster. "The difference between someone who's truly great and just sort of okay is really huge," Green said. "Culture in tech is a very meritocratic culture," he added. "The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
I wonder if they realize this is politics, not Silicon Valley, where the meritocratic argument has little, if any weight. You're also not doing yourself any favors by calling yourself a multinational and then asking for special treatment in the US.
Joe Green probably had one conversation, once, with an Indian.
They aren't interested in building up or maintaining US employees; they want to have foreign countries foot the bill for the training of their workers so they can sit around and reap the benefits of advanced training without laying out money to make it happen--and further, they want these employees dependent upon their employment with the company to remain in the country, rather than being able to move about at will.
Indentured workforce, in other words.
Proof that US slashdotters techies are just sort of OK at best since they don't want high skills immigration. Low skills immigration is fine since it doesn't compete directly with their jobs though.
This isn't a tech report, it's political propaganda. There's plenty of awesome U.S. techs to do the jobs that are out of them, just as good as the imports, they just want U.S. wages.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
"The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
I've worked in tech (SE) for 15+ years now, and I don't know of a single colleague that would agree with the sentiment expressed in that quote.
Business lobbying for what what will be best for them. News at 11.... Hopefully, voters make this an issue.
"The difference between someone who's truly great and just sort of okay is really huge"
Especially when you want to keep that person tied to the company for the duration of their visa and pay them less than someone with a non-visa.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Then they'll have no problem paying "The Best" at 300% of the current median wage for the position under consideration, right? I mean the actual wage-into-employee's-pocket, they can also foot the bill for the agency or subcontractor in addition to same.
Oh, and the government will also provide the answer for the Citizen "sort of okay" worker's future livelihood since the government values said international worker ahead of the Citizen's welfare, right? And I mean better than those who were shafted by NAFTA.
We're too cheap to hire a less experienced person and train them to do their job properly.
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Of course they want to hire the "very best", where "bestness" is measured by how little money they are willing to work for.
I don't disagree that there are some really smart people around the world who want to work for Google, but really valuable people don't need special programs to come over to work. The existing system is already set up to admit them. This is a smoke screen to hide the true purpose of the program: finding more people who don't know the value of their skills, preferably ones without many existing relationships that are easier to overwork.
I read the internet for the articles.
Let's be honest here: no it isn't.
Tech skills are hard to objectively verify. Technical results are hard to objectively verify. We collectively proxy that by having lots of tests, competitions, selection, and other heuristics. But that's not a symptom of us respecting skill more than other jobs(maybe more than other specific office jobs, but not more than lawyers, doctors, manufacturing technicians, similar things), it's a symptom of it being really hard to tell.
These companies are looking to take shortcuts. And some are looking for excuses to cut salaries. That's it.
It's about cheapest workers, not better ones.
There's no lack of talent in the US, except from Java mills, and those are easily weeded out.
"The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
This is really about cutting the price for the vast middle of the bell curve of tech talent. It isn't about finding best of the best.
I defy Joe Green to parade a single American-born "tech engineer" in front of the press who would say "yes please, import more tech workers".
Because Joe Green and I would have a very different concept of what a tech engineer is. He's talking "company principal or owner who has a pocketbook staked on low cost workers being exploited" ... I - and most other people - would be talking about that exploited worker as the tech engineer.
From TFS, "Green explained why tech may not want to settle for laid-off U.S. talent when the world is its oyster."
When is someone going to call-out these bastards and their biases against the unemployed in STEM?
Is this article a troll? If it is then I give it 10/10, gr8 b8 m8, and all that shit, because it makes me want to punch someone. In the face. Repeatedly. I've never heard such total bullshit in my entire life. So, what, I'm supposed to sit back and accept an attitude of 'fuck U.S. workers, they all suck, we'll hire from overseas because they're better'? Bull-fucking-shit. Know what I think? I think they like getting anyone they can that will work cheaper, that's what. I work with engineers, I live in the same house as an engineer, and they all tell me how it really is: They'd rather hire younger workers from overseas, regardless of their lack of experience and education, because they can get them dirt cheap, and to hell with quality.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
B U L L S H I T
If its anything like the UK, the foreign workers won't all be the very best. I've worked with some top rate foreign workers on visas, but most of them are of an "OK" standard. Almost the same with native British workers, I've worked with some who are the very best, but most are "OK". The one difference is I have seen a couple of really bad native British workers who shouldn't be in the job. I've never seen a foreign worker that bad - presumably they fail to get out of their country.
Culture in business executives is a very meritocratic culture. The difference between someone who's truly great and just sort of okay is really huge. Why does this argument only seem to apply to employees?
"The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
Show me ONE.
Just fucking ONE.
He or she must have a pulse,
be conscience,
have an IQ over 30,
full citizenship,
NOT A POLITICIAN,
NOT A CEO,
NOW SHOW ME ONE.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
I would gladly give up my job so some super-dude could do what I do, ony for far less than my cost, even though s/he will want to work twice as long to do the same. That is capitalism at its finest, and I say, wooly-wooly! More power to those on high!
Laying off existing employees so you can refill the same positions with new workers at lower salaries ... that's basically illegal, right? Is that why these companies are so desperate to get foreign workers in on temporary visas ... so they can lump those workers into different categories than the US workers they laid off?
Also, this whole idea of tech being "a meritocracy" ... yeah, that may be true among peers. I'll be more impressed by someone with my same job title if they're good at their job. But since when does management view their staff as a meritocracy? Look at how many people in tech have to quit their jobs to get better work, or to get promotions. Maybe that's it, too ... these companies are tired of having to compete with other companies (look at Apple and all the other companies who colluded on secret, illegal non-compete agreements) so they want to hire workers on visas that don't allow them to easily change jobs.
as long as there is a high min wage + OT pay for them.
As some places use them as cheap workers chained to the job.
also if they want to use them as the best then they should be locked to that job with just about no time to find an other (h1bs have to get out as soon as there job is over) if they get fired or layed off.
.. when US Unemployment is below 2%.
Figure out how to put all the tech people to work with living wage jobs and then you can have your tech visa.
I agree with this statement. The industry believes in the market when it benefits them, they want cheap labor that is all.
The ok US tech worker is still able to get more work done, with fewer issues than a team of 30 top breed outsourced gits.
The really good US tech worker is worth 100 outsourced gits.
Then, the phenomenal US tech worker, well, the population isn't high enough in India to get enough people to do the same amount of quality work.
I call them "mornin' boss, great haircut".
Here is a study that was done a long time ago (1985). Skip down to section 5. It states that the most productive engineers were given 78 sqft of dedicated floor space, thought of there environment as quiet, private, and could silence or divert calls, were not interrupted, and thought they were appreciated. Skill had nothing to do with whether the engineer could finish the project they were assigned. http://teaching.davearnold.ca/...
Maybe tech companies need to develop culture that encourages good engineers rather than hiring foreign workers.
Enough said..
If slashdot comments are any indication, unemployed natives are more interested in free software and politics than actually honing their skills on the latest technologies. They have a list of varying dislikes as long as my arm (C++11, DRM, Ruby, PHP, etc.). Foreigners that want to work aren't nearly as obstinant.
Let the downvoting begin.
So that means that tech workers from abroad are better than tech workers here? Well, that must then mean that schools abroad are better than schools in the US because, hey, where would they get their knowledge from. And that of course must mean that we'd also find much better managers in India and Pakistan than we can find here, for obviously the same reason.
I fail to see a lot of H1B visa applications for CEOs, though? I really, really wonder what could possibly be the reason. I'd really want to work for a great CEO for a change, I can tell ya. I mean, when we all want to work with superior colleges, I can only assume that we would all just outright LOVE to work for a superior CEO!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So while we're mired in the Second Great Depression American workers keep getting squeezed from below by illegals and above by H1B.
Every light carries a shadow
Let's be honest here: no it isn't.
In most companies, tech workers are judged purely by seniority. It does make some sense, since the upper management assumes that lower management would not keep a useless employee around, but very few of the lower managers actually know how to assess the usefulness of tech workers under their watch. This results in newer employees being the first on the layoff list regardless of ability, and anyone who has been in the company for a while has job security that makes tenured professors envious.
Facebook's Wealth Demands Unlimited Slaves
I bet it was intentional, you know the Zuck loves to mock people right in front of their faces.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I guarantee you that "the vast, vast majority of tech engineers" would not assume that "other countries" automatically meant "the very best". The general consensus in my neck of the woods is that engineers of foreign origin are about on par with our native engineers. The consensus I've seen in pop culture is that the foreign engineers are generally much worse. I can only imagine the question that would lead to the response above:
Q: If faced with a choice between a top foreign engineer or a mediocre American one, which would you hire?
A: The foreign one. I'd want to work with the very best.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
So why can't *I* do the same thing with a lawyer, notary, accountant? You telling me *there* I have to use a local person? 2+2=4 in China too.
Oh that's different.
Mostly random stuff.
Depends on weather or not age led to wisdom or knowledge. One company I worked at they fired the recent hire who just got done working an 80 hour week and I know he was smarter, and cheaper, than half the people they kept. I know what you mean.
As others here have already posted, I call BULLSHIT of this quote by Joe Green. This is nothing more than political propaganda. I worked in the computer industry over 35 years for DEC, EDS, HP, Loral Aerospace, and others. My roles ranged from component repair at customer location (soldering iron & oscilloscope), customer service manager, system engineering project manager, database admin, sales support, system admin, and virtualization work. As also stated by an early poster, I don't know of a single colleague that would agree with the sentiment expressed in the Joe Green quote. I worked with many software people holding visas. Many are very competent and motivated. Others not so much. If Mr Green thinks the 'best' are outside the United States, then perhaps Facebook, Zuckerberg, and Mr Green should relocate to become permanent expatriates.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
That is some grade-A 200 proof certified bullshit. I am involved in a multi-national project team where we support a company in the UK who is outsourcing a good deal of their work to India. We get raked over the coals all the time for how expensive our consulting rates are in comparison to the Indian company. Yet we regularly have situations where a single one of our mid-level software engineers (Good people, $75K salary, 4 year degree from public US university, but not the "very very best") can accomplish in one week what took a team of 10 engineers in India 2 - 3 months.
Send me bright, hard working American programmers. We don't need all these mythical offshore tech workers.
The best foreign workers are hardly going to want to go and live in the United States. After all, what smart person wants to work in a country with such poor healthcare, such a dismal education system, and such a totalitarian government. Smart people don't want that. America will get the talent it deserves instead.
Gets you exactly what you want to hear!
"The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
Anyone who has worked in the IT field long enough knows this truth -- there are rockstar, mediocre and just plain awful tech workers in both the foreign and domestic camps. However, other than people complaining in general about how awful people they have to work with are, I've never heard anyone say anything like "All US engineers/programmers/IT guys are universally bad and so my company should hire foreign workers so I get to work with the best of the best." (I've seen a lot of people who *think* they're the best of the best and aren't. I'm pretty good and would *never* give myself the label "rockstar" like some of these idiots do.)
The central argument against something like this isn't "I want my job protected at all costs against competition." It's the fact that large employers are working to reduce the baseline salary for everyone regardless of talent level. It sounds like the "vast, vast majority of tech engineers" interviewed for this aren't really workers -- they're probably startup founders given the lobbying org this guy works for (fwd.us). The guy who came up with Snapchat probably isn't coding anymore -- he's busy trying to convince people that Snapchat is worth 44 billion dollars.
I've worked in a few different companies, and been on lots of projects (I'm in IT services.) I've seen lots of perspectives. I was on the systems integration team for a very large offshored dev project to replace a critical system that basically had to be thrown out, taken back in house and reworked. I've also seen situations where offshore coding and H-1B holders end up doing decent work. The same goes for the US as well...I've been very fortunate to work with a few people who *really* knew their stuff in the little niche I work in. They're few and far between, and very expensive, but worth it. There's also horror stories...I remember one guy who basically BS'd his manager for over 3 years that he was administering a systems management application, but in reality he was doing the absolute bare minimum to keep it from falling over (and yes, I wound up having to clean up the mess.) I've dealt with systems guys who have absolutely no concept of troubleshooting, and just lack a grasp of the basics. Everyone starts out that way, but there are some people (domestic AND foreign) who don't put the effort into getting better. This is why arguments like this are so hard to completely refute, but on the other hand are mostly BS.
I think companies need to get back to investing in their employees and keeping them around for a while to see a return on that investment. If they did that, employees would be more loyal and employers wouldn't feel like (a) training money is "wasted" and (b) they need to hire a ready-made rockstar with every single skillset they could possibly need. Job descriptions are crazy -- they want everything, when in reality a good systems engineer can jump between hardware, software, operating systems, etc. pretty easily given enough time to learn the basics.
...Like this idea. Let the immigrants come and do the work. Hell they can have the nightmare that has become the technical industry. I quit my job over a year ago, just because of how ridiculous doing work for a technical job has become.
Inherently built into the supporting factor(s) of the tech industry, is the eventual collapse of workers that want to work. Using the same business practices that are practiced today, the overseas folks that are going to be taking these jobs will eventually need to be replaced as well. And then what? The problem's not the workers, it's the work and those that design the work. By the way, those folks will not be replaced.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
They don't want 'talent' they want dirt cheap. If they could figure out a way to make everyone an unpaid intern which was only 1% as productive as GOOD talent they'd do that. Everyone needs to pull their heads out of their asses on this. Companies HATE you. They HATE having to pay you. And bringing in a few thousand H1B's is a political ploy to avoid getting slammed for sending the OTHER 3 million jobs to Asia. In ten years there won't be any tech jobs in the US. Wake the fuck up.
Most of our foreign (European) contractors are better developers (and all round co-workers) than the home grown US developers, unpopular thing to say but there it is. Add to that they are better educated in general than the US devs and US developers have the highest sense of self-entitlement and things start to look clear. I am a senior sysadmin and I prefer to deal with the foreign devs and select them for projects as they are not obsessed with position and work place politics, they just get it done.
That's easy to believe. I feel the same way.
Yet sometimes I hear people bitching about immigrants in other contexts. If they're agricultural workers instead of tech workers, somehow they're undesirable. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. It makes so little sense to me, that I think it's just plain stupid.
But that's just, like, my opinion, man. We don't open the borders. Every election we nearly unanimously scream that we want highly restricted immigration consisting of very few people, and the thought of making any moves toward meritocracy makes us so incredibly angry and resentful, that we go out of our minds with blind rage.
So, tech workers and tech industry customers (i.e. most of America), if this is how you really feel, then you need to live with the consequences. You can't say justice, fairness, and efficiency are important, yet also things you totally don't care about. Make up your fucking mind. If you speak about programmers from India in a fundamentally different way than farmers from Chihuahua, maybe you are the problem, psycho.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
So, you categorically claim that what helps your employer is against your own interests. However, you continue to fund them, as you provide a service that is very valuable (more than double your salary) to them which clearly harms your interests.
Nah, it's not moral relativism, you just knee jerk to the progressive bullshit without thinking about it. Don't claim you're a liberal; you're not. You're part of the plague that has allowed the tea party to have any traction.
I don't like unions, but this is one case where the lack of unions is hurting US tech workers. There is no lobbing group to call out companies on this kind of BS. You would need a very large well funded organization to even think of going up against the tech giants in the political arena. Maybe you could call attention to it on something like change.org, but I don't think it would be very effective without some lobbing money behind it. Anyone have any ideas that would actually work, because whining about isn't accomplishing anything as we've seen for many years now.
Sorry, but the first hurdle of trying to get an H1B job gives me a better hiring pool there than the shitbags who think they're degree and a democrat for president entitles them to a job. I'm pretty cynical; I'm sure that if we moved to India we'd have the same problem with different names, but let's be honest. If I spent as much retraining US workers as I did hiring those skillsets I've filled with H1B's, I'd have fired at least half for not doing a fucking thing after failing to learn in whatever training they wasted money on. Hiring makes people very, very cynical.
Can I find Americans to do these jobs? Well, apparently not, because I've looked for 10 months for all three of them before giving in an attempting the bullshit to find someone willing to work with the appropriate skillset.
they're bringing in low wage entry level tech drones from india.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It is skilled labor, and yes there is a major difference between the best and the average, but almost no one cares.
There will be continued downward price pressure as the size of the work force increases, and the US will become a management layer like in every other industry that we once dominated. The few remaining programmers in the US will be very highly specialized workers.
No amount of protectionism is going to change that reality, not letting them in doesn't give the jobs to Americans, it just sends them overseas entirely. At least some portion of the money being injected into H1Bs is being recirculated in the local economy. Of course this shill is just trying to depress American wages, it has nothing to do with finding the best or brightest, besides we have genius visas for that. If we try to put up artificial barriers to this process more aggressive economies will simply take the jobs away. If you feel that your wage and job is threatened by H1B influx, its time to either climb the skill ladder or make a move into a different industry.
All they want H1B visa's will be granted, each one hired must be paid at least 50% higher than the national median or local median, whichever is higher, for that job.
If they REALLY need higher skilled workers, make the fuckers pay for them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Lots of geniuses FAIL. They fail spectacularly.
To be truly successful, you need to be a genius and be lucky.
I don't care how smart you are, you need the luck - if for no other reason than being born in the right country, not having a debilitating disease, and not having family that desperately needs your help. Because sometimes good luck is simply not having bad luck.
But that's beside the point. Lots of genius just had the wrong timing. There was this guy - a real genius. he came up with a great idea to help kids tie their shoes. But someone else came out with Velcro shoes that year. If he had his idea one year earlier, he would have made a couple of million and the Velcro guy would end up selling the idea to the Kid's Shoe King, instead of becoming the Kid's Shoe King.
Genius is not that rare, and the difference between the best and the second best guy is for all purposes irrelevant. Other things matter more than creativity and intelligence.
Timing, luck, and hard work matter just as much as genius.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"Culture in tech is a very meritocratic culture," - not much now a days guys.
If you want resolution to such issues, ask feminists support. Govt. will hear if feminists requests.
Okay, you can have ALL the visas you want, however, the visa is not tied to your company and the worker you hired has to join a trade union to advocate his/her rights.
The other part of this problem , it isn't just tech workers that get temp visas. There are agriculture temp visas are a 100x worse, if you are female and young you can expect to be a different kind of worker. Upon reaching the country (canada or US) , the scam is to take your passport and work visas so you have no recourse or method of avoiding deportation if you complain.
The solution is to have mandatory workers union and representation for all temporary and H1B type visas. Then instead of driving the cost of labor down in their respective industries , it will drive the costs up to fair value.
This isn't a tech report, it's political propaganda. There's plenty of awesome U.S. techs to do the jobs that are out of them, just as good as the imports, they just want U.S. wages.
That last bit is the flaw in your argument. You mistakenly think there is such a thing as "US wages". The talent pool is global and what matters is your productivity versus your price. If you demand more in wages you had better be significantly more productive and able to prove it. Your economic value to any company is based solely on productivity per dollar spent. If an overseas worker can do the work needed and is willing to do it for less money then you had better find a way to increase your value either by improving productivity or decreasing your price.
Pretending that your citizenship is any kind of meaningful protection against economic reality is just foolish. I understand that the reality of H1B visas and the rest is a harsh reality but its a reality that isn't going to change. Even if you did away with H1B visas altogether they are merely the symptom of the bigger problem which is wage disparity for a given talent level. US workers are highly paid relative to their talent compared with IT workers elsewhere and the economic consequence of that is that companies will seek lower labor costs wherever possible. This is true for ALL labor intensive industries. Get rid of H1B visas and I guarantee you will see some other equally odious tactic to reduce labor costs take its place. The only thing that will preserve high US IT wages is to develop structural economic advantages to hiring US IT workers. On a price/performance basis you need to make US IT workers the best in the world. Any solution that does not address that fact is doomed to fail.
I have been in IT for a number of years... everthing from Sysadmin/System Engineer/Network Engineer/ Sales Engineer - done it all and proud of my accomplishments. I have also worked with a huge number of people in the US on H1B visas. Like US workers, all are capable of great things, but I have never met one person that was brought into the US as the best. I have never taken a job (or met anyone that has) where a criteria was "I want to work with their H1B visa rock stars" - the whole concept is an oxymoron. The exceptions are company founders that tend to want to emigrate to the USA - these are not the H1B holders that are being discussed.
They were hired because they were cheap and had some (usually minimal) experience.
The ONLY reason these companies want H1B visa workers is to keep wages low. Their skills are no better then US workers, and there is no hunt for superstars. They are bodies filling seats.
He's right, I have said that. Of course, I always follow it with "but only if they have unrestricted visas that give them the same freedom I have to shop the market and work for whomever they want", and I suspect everyone he's talked to (presuming he isn't making it up) have said something similar.
Because when the best of the best make $200k a year, it kicks the wind of out the whiners who complain about the the average programmer salary. But when they work for $80k and they can't switch jobs, that depresses my salary, and that is precisely why lying fuckwits like Joe Green and Mark Zuckerberg want to bring them here.
"We want A workers at C prices."
Table-ized A.I.
"The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
Ah, so any American engineer who disagrees with you obviously doesn't want to work with the very best, and since most of them are going to disagree with you, they prove your point that they're all mediocre.
In all my years of working with foreign contractors there were two, just two, who had any grasp of the work. Every single last one of the rest of them could barely program or test and could not think independently.
too bad management isn't a meritocratic culture
Of course they want to hire the "very best", where "bestness" is measured by how little money they are willing to work for.
ALL companies want to hire the maximum performance for the minimum price. What else were you expecting? If someone else can do the job and demands less money to do it why wouldn't the company hire them instead of you? Labor is judged solely on productivity versus price at the end of the day. You can maximize that equation by increasing productivity or decreasing price but either way the question is what will maximize that ratio. Where the workers are from is irrelevant in the equation beyond how it affects their price or performance.
I understand the frustration with the H1B program and agree it is a real problem but it is a symptom, not the core problem. The core problem is that US wages versus performance are not obviously superior. Even if you get rid of the program the fundamental economic problem will remain because IT is a labor intensive industry. Companies will ALWAYS seek the optimal price/performance ratio regardless of industry.
Huh. When I worked at Intel, 80% of the foreign contractors were "barely adequate" - not even "sort of ok".
Article is fuck full of shit.
It's about cheapest workers, not better ones.
Not quite. It's about the cheapest workers that can still get the job done. Companies are in business to maximize profit and you do that by maximizing the performance of the labor per dollar spent. You can hire fewer but more productive workers or cheaper but less productive workers. If you cannot discern the difference in productivity (which can be difficult sometimes) then the cheaper guy will win almost every time. You will note that country of origin plays no direct role in that equation.
"The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best." Replace tech engineers with chemists or biochemists and that is absolutely not true.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Maybe tech firms should hold on to some those dividends paid to shareholders and use them to train their employees if the employees are just "sort of ok." Or, maybe the government should say for every foreign worker you higher, you need to pay 20% of gross wages and benefits into a fund that will be used to train those "sort of ok" workers. That way, the short-term solution of hiring foreign workers leads to a long term domestic solution. It also keeps companies from having a windfall profit from the practice.
I am, right now, as I type this, a contractor at a Fortune 100 company, hired for six months as a "network engineer".
Today my task (after three days of sitting idle) is to stop some emails coming from a well-known piece of monitoring software.
And since I'm assumed to also be too much of a lackwit to handle unchecking a box, to "help" me, the full-timer gave me a print out of the manual.
God bless America.
You think IT workers in the US shouldn't have to compete for their jobs just because of where they were born?
YES. I'm not free to work anywhere I want on the planet yet these companies are free to set up shop anywhere? Until I can go where the jobs are screw the companies.
If $DESIRABLE_EMPLOYER won't hire me because there is a more technically qualified candidate than me in the next town over or the next country over or the next continent over, do I have the right to complain if they want to hire him?
If I want more $PAY than the worldwide market for my skill set is asking, do I have a right to complain when $DESIRABLE_EMPLOYER offshores the work or lobbies Congress to allow them to import workers to America?
Maybe I have the right to complain, but do I have the right to expect the company to change its attitude? Not really.
Bottom line:
If I went to college hoping to get "a better paying job" then I did so "at my own risk." Anyone who led me down the garden path of assuming the labor market at the time I started college would be the same as when I graduated or for the rest of my working career did me a disservice.
On the other hand if I went to college for self-edification and to expand my career options, then it's not as important if the market value of my skill set is lower than I expected, as long as I can make enough money over a lifetime to cover a modest standard of living and pay off any education debt.
You can't have a career as a software developer. That's going to destroy America. There's no way to progress from junior to mid-career to senior software developer, taking on more skills and responsibility, and having more earning power. The industry is shifting to temporary, disposable workers. And if you can't have a career, then new people won't join the field in the future. Why study intensely and learn a difficult body of knowledge to top out at $55k at age 35 and then be done?
I saw a job ad recently for a mainframe assembler programmer with 10+ years experience ... one of the hardest skills ever ... but it was for a crappy 6-month temp job. I knew at that point that any hope of a career was over.
We need the absolute best and brightest people the entire planet has to offer. If I can hire a guy from Zimbabwe who has an IQ just one point above anyone in the USA then we absolutely require a tech visa for that Zimbabwe genius and we will hire nobody else if we can't get him. This of course does not apply to our board, or chief financial officer, or CEO - for those people any mother of two can run the entire business, but for the lowly $12,000/year talent we need the best people!
Obama has been suckling the nipple of the tech giants for a long time. Payback is hell.
Conservative, mod down for violating
If it's so damn hard to bring the workers to the US, why not bring the work to the workers?
If they will never be worthy of employment, may as well at least let them provide food for everyone else.
YES. I'm not free to work anywhere I want on the planet yet these companies are free to set up shop anywhere?
You are free to work wherever you want. Plenty of US citizens work outside the US. I have at times in my career. They are called expatriates and it's quite normal. If the opportunity for you is in China or France then go there and stop whining about it. Maximizing your own income may require you to look outside the town where you grew up and also may require some actual sacrifice on your part.
I agree. Even if what TFA says is true (it is not) then the US companies would be competing with companies around the world for those people. And their own governments.
Not to mention the ones who start their own companies and work for themselves.
Which would mean that those awesome programmers would have all the bargaining power. They wouldn't be accepting H-1B wages.
Statistically, there cannot be enough of "the best" to feed the stated demand for "the best".
But it makes sense if you substitute "cheaper" for "the best".
And that is reflected in the quality of the code being produced.
node.js is a meritocracy. You just aren't leveraging the synergies hard enough.
Hey Zuck! There is a whole army of non-US Ivy league MBA's who will be more than happy to produce the same BS as Joe Green for a fraction of the cost. Don't you want to work with the "Best"? Doesn't Joe Green want you to?
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
I believe my senator is not corrupt; he told me that they don't buy him stuff and it may be in part because even something at starbucks would have to be reported. They do other things, like let you or your staff know how much campaign money they gave direct or more importantly how much indirect stuff they were involved in (make it sound as vague/big as possible.)
The most common thing of all is for lobbyists to become your "friends." Golf and other activities; from tagging along or just happening to be where you are. They tell you stories, jokes, arguments, opinions whatever they think will work while you do whatever. They'll provide valid information to establish trust in their area from where they can bias the info later on. When you have a lunch meeting and play golf with some CEO of a tech firm and can act like a normal person (any politician learns you never completely relax) perhaps not even discuss any relevant issues. When the time comes to decide something, your buddy has a few informal remarks that sound like insider information. THAT has an impact. a HUGE impact. Remember, even if you don't trust them much-- subtle commentary repeated over and over by different lobbyists and other sources will create impressions and feelings regardless, so without knowing all the details when something comes up you start out in their pocket. Things become big and complex even for lawyers-- the amount of work is also their protection because the gap filling is where the bias comes into play.
Plus people view rich successful people too highly when most know little about their own industry outside of the top level management issues.
i need to gargle with some bleach after reading that smelly, facetious crap
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
. . . when we all know of dozens and dozens of times these foreign visa scab workers have never been vetted and end up being responsible (that is, their corporate dipshit bosses bear the ultimate responsibility) for crap problems which arise accordingly. Plus there have been numerous studies supporting this. Sorry, charlie, your b.s. ain't flying this time. It's 2014, do you know where your economy is?
As a manager at a company that does to hire the best and the brightest, I can say that people calling for more H1-B visas are full of s#!t.
The biggest users of H-1Bs are consulting companies, or as Ron Hira calls them, "offshore-outsourcing firms."
"The top 10 recipients in [the] last fiscal year were all offshore-outsourcers. And they got 40,000 of the 85,000 visas — which is astonishing," he says.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/allte...
Here is the break-down of my reports.
15 - born in the USA.
3- naturalized citizens when I hired them.
2- from Egypt on L1 visas (we have an office in Cairo)
2- from Korea that had green cards when I hired them
1- from China that was a grad student that we supported. F1 students visa changed to H1B by obtaining a sponsorship position with an H1B sponsor company.
1- from India that was a grad student we supported. F1 students visa changed to H1B by obtaining a sponsorship position with an H1B sponsor company.
It is fairly easy to convert F1 visa for a student that has completed graduate school in the USA to an H1B, and as far as I can tell there is no limit.
(I am not an immigration lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.)
If tried to hire highly qualified individuals from outside the US and was told that I would not be able to get them H1B visas because they were all taken (by the body shoppers). These people had PhDs from prestigious Universities and years of relevant experience. They made the unfortunate mistake of not attending a US
graduate school.
So the solution is quite simple. Stop giving H1B visas to "consulting companies".
more cowbell
. . US workers should focus on making bombs and various incendiaries to implement blowback against all the criminal corporations out there: GE, AT&T, Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Blackstone Group, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, KKR, TPG, etc., etc., etc. Time to bring back the days of the McNamara brothers, Emma Goldman, Alexander Birkman ---- in other words, time to go Old School!
One more article like this and I'm taking my business elsewhere.
Seems like many articles on here recently are directed at US based software developers. Seems like "the man" is trying play down the demand for developers.
"Hey guys, you're not worth nearly as much as you think! See, we're replacing you with Pragnesh and Deepak! Now accept this absurdly low wage offer and go back to your 60/hr week cubicle dungeon."
open borders, unbridled immigration, free transfer of money across borders and for the U.S. government to get out of their way so they can buy capital _anywhere_, transfer it anywhere else at anytime, reduce their costs to a minimum and increases profits to a maximum.
But they want to live in their cozy walled communities in the USA with the government providing full protection of their capital (money and property) and their personal welfare (read, they can sue anyone at anytime for whatever).
Inotherwords their attitude is that "government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy, shall not perish from the earth."
A new study by two American University professors has found that ordinary Americans have virtually no impact whatsoever on the making of national policy in the United States. The analysts found that rich individuals and business-controlled interest groups largely shape policy outcomes in our country.
Good point, now please allow me to describe the "meritocratic" Amerikan process I came into contact with at Microsoft in the 1990s as a tech support contractor (was a highly skilled programmer once upon a time, but due to advanced age I found myself working down the jobs structure): they gave us an preliminary tech knowledge test to ascertain if we qualified, but of course, refused to tell us our scores [I qualified, and later find out I was only of two who had actually passed said test --- always be hyper suspicious when they refuse to tell you your score].
Next, we go through several weeks training, where they assure us that only those who pass the test finals will set on a rack to answer clients tech problems --- only two of us (older and more experienced) actually pass the Operations exam and the Networking exam, yet everyone goes to work the next week.
Yes this was only tech support for MS Windows 95, but that is how they, MS, and the rest of the industry rolls --- absolutely zero meritocratic processes, although MS and a few others are obsessive about hiring Ivy League types.
Seriously, H1B allows a company to LOCK IN SOMEBODY at a low rate. Basically, they are a slave here.
Likewise, more than 50% of our legal visas go to Mexico, and little of it is for those that can help America.
We need to solve the illegal issue AND CHANCE THE IMMIGRATION LAWS. Get rid of H1/2 B. It is a NIGHTMARE. And quit making visa be based on nations or who they know here. Instead, make the green card be based on what the person can do here (i.e. PhDs or expertise in needed areas). However, with a green card, it means that these ppl can move around to better jobs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is always about the money. It is only about the money. If you don't know that then you are not in business.
It is not about talent. Not even a little. It is only about saving wages or taxes by not paying citizens or green-card holders to do a job.
If you don't know that - then you never worked for one of them.
How many technical interviews have you done, as an interviewer, in your life?
I have done about 220. Evaluating technical skills is dramatically easier than evaluating many other types of skill, in particular, it's a lot easier than evaluating skills in management, marketing, customer service .... anything with a large component of soft, people skills. You can ask a technical person to achieve a very specific, tightly scoped technical task during an interview and if you know the question well quickly get a feel for how good they really are. I wouldn't want a hiring decision to be made based on just one interview, but in the hands of a good interview it still yields valuable data. For someone without specific technical skills you end up having to rely on much vaguer and more gamaeble questions like "Tell me about a time you overcame a problem of type ", the answers to which are both hard to verify and easily manipulated by people who want to make themselves look good.
I'm afraid I must agree with the original statement. The difference between someone who is merely OK and is great, well, that's huge. Someone who is merely OK will come in to work each day and will (probably) resolve the bugs or implement the features you set them. They will probably not come up with a solution that puts you ahead of the pack. They may waste large amounts of time on trivial things or produce something that sucks because they are only familiar with technology X but that's a poor fit for problem Y. Their technical judgement may be flaky - in the worst case you will have to spend a lot of time double checking what they're doing, yet they will start demanding more responsibility because they've stuck around for a while. The very best will teach you algorithms and techniques you never knew about. They'll come up with the unique feature that makes you stand out from the competition. They'll be fun to work with and help you recruit other great people. The difference is not to be sneered at.
The only economic reason they'd hire an American over an H1B is if the American is willing to let his kids starve and be downright abused for $10 an hour after spending his whole life studying his craft.
You outsourcing shills are downright retarded. It should be criminal. US IT workers shouldn't have to live like utter slaves, work 80 hour weeks and need food stamps just because some barely qualified H1B will do it for $10/hr. We are not disposable blue collar idiots. We are white collar professionals and we just want the same damn respect accountants, other dept managers, other educated employees and even secretaries get within the same organization. We are often abused just about everywhere companies get away with it. We're also treated with copious amounts of paranoia and mistrust.
How would you feel if hospitals outsourced all their surgical labor to Mexican H1B's getting paid $19,000/yr and still gave you the same $2,000 bill for giving your kid antibiotic eardrops after a 5 minute visit?
Americans can't compete on price. Point blank. It costs too much to BE an American and LIVE in America. We can't tolerate spending our entire lives (and a lot of personal money) dedicated to being the skilled folks we are only to be forced to compete at a hair above minimum wage. Get a grip.
And you think unionization killed US manufacturing? No. Outsourcing did. And as good as we are at pissing off the rest of the world, being a society of unemployed skilled workers, management, minimum wage employees and lawyers will kill us if the world cuts us off.
"The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
Let's see, I'll bet it went something like this:
"if it meant you could keep your job, would you want to work with the very best engineers that I'd like to hire from foreign countries?"
"Does that mean I can keep my job if you hire foreign engineers?"
"I'm looking for a yes/no answer here."
" uh...yes"
Refer to http://www.epi.org/publication... for the truth about the "best and brightest" BS.
If those foreign engineers they are going to hire are the best one would reasonably expect them to be paid as if they are the best. Does the data on salaries of current and past H1B visa workers indicate that they are being paid like they are the best?
There is only one way out of this mess. Become financially independent before age 50. Do not let yourself become enslaved by debt. Reject materialism, and seek out providers of the lowest cost products and services.For more details, read some of the articles on http://mrmoneymustache.com. This guy was an engineer, and
through will power and determination saved enough money to not be subject to the whims of employers.
Do people usually buy this "you're not running fast enough on my treadmill" schtick? Jobs pulled it off, but everyone knows he had a "reality distortion field," and I think we're discussing reality here.
The entirely of a company outside of engineering (exceptions -precisely to the degree- a non-engineering position is held by one with engineering skills) is a useless cost-producing wrapper around engineering, where all the actual value is produced, and the very worst engineer is infinitely more valuable than anyone in the corporate wrapper.
Are you better than many? Possibly. That doesn't alter the fact that it is more difficult to quantify actual performance--non-engineering doesn't really need any questions at all, other than golf course membership. It is indeed difficult to determine if one has, say, extensive C++ skills whether they would ultimately produce more than someone with a more limited C# background for a C# position, along with a multitude of other such issues.
You're obviously very long on bluster, as evidenced by multiple of your posts. To that end, though, what -provably objectively optimal- choices have you made in those 200 interviews, and where's your proof?
"Green explained why tech may not want to settle for laid-off U.S. talent when the world is its oyster."
Yes. Keep those US workers unemployed and replace them with cheaper foreign workers.
Something just seems wrong about this. Especially when I'm sure many of the unemployed US workers could fulfill some roles just fine.
Outsourcing has already killed enough jobs in America.
Now the foreign talent is coming here and doing the same work at cheaper prices.
"The difference between someone who's truly great and just sort of okay is really huge,"
Now, I will run it through my bullshit translator, aaaaand...
"The difference between someone who's willing to work for less money because they live in a poor country and someone who wants a competitive wage is really huge,"
The only economic reason they'd hire an American over an H1B is if the American is willing to let his kids starve and be downright abused for $10 an hour after spending his whole life studying his craft.
If you spend your life studying something that allows you to be replaced for $10/hour then you are frankly retarded. Nobody owes you a comfortable living. You need to earn it and part of that is having the foresight to see what might be valuable to employers.
US IT workers shouldn't have to live like utter slaves, work 80 hour weeks and need food stamps just because some barely qualified H1B will do it for $10/hr. We are not disposable blue collar idiots.
Who is suggesting that you do? If you provide enough value for the wages you command then you should be able to live very nicely. But if your job can be done by someone willing to work for $10 per hour then you better reconsider just how valuable what you do actually is. Furthermore, just because someone does a "blue collar" job doesn't mean they are an idiot. Stop looking down your nose at people who don't work in an air conditioned office typing on a computer. You think you are too good to get your hands dirty? Are you really that arrogant?
Americans can't compete on price. Point blank.
Americans ARE competing on price at all times and the movement of certain types of jobs proves that fact. You could not be more wrong. Anyone who thinks price doesn't factor in is delusional. That includes competing for wages. You can ask for whatever you want but that doesn't guarantee the market will bear your asking price.
Furthermore the per-capita US income is in the top 5 in the world. How sustainable do you think that is? I suggest you learn about regression toward the mean. There are 5 people in China for every 1 in the US. Do you think Americans are smarter or harder working or more deserving? Do you think Americans are somehow special so they don't have to compete with the other 95% of the world? Grow up. The US has had a good run since WWII but that doesn't guarantee it will stay on top without a lot of hard work and sometimes some belt tightening too. Some jobs are going to move to where they make more economic sense. If you want to keep high paying jobs in the US then there is a lot of hard work to do. Better get busy because the rest of the world isn't going to wait for your lazy ass.
And you think unionization killed US manufacturing?
Nothing has killed US manufacturing. I work in manufacturing in the US and have for most of the last 20 years. I run a manufacturing company. The US manufactures over $3 Trillion in goods each year. The US manufacturing sector alone would be among the 10 largest economies in the world by GDP. Manufacturing in the US is alive and well and anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they are talking about. The number of jobs in US manufacturing has fallen just like it did in agriculture a hundred years ago but that is not by itself a bad thing. Would you prefer that 50%+ of the nation's workers be employed on farms like they were 150 years ago? What has changed is that the US predominately manufactures capital intensive rather than labor intensive goods.
What you say is partially true.
Companies are not interested in making over someone who isn't a good employee into one. It's the same reason you don't buy burnt out light bulbs, and remanufacture them into working light bulbs yourself, when there are perfectly good light bulbs sitting on the next shelf.
The idea that companies should provide vocational training to potential employees because the educational system has failed to provide them with the ability to be an asset to a potential employer is wrong headed. It is not the responsibility of the employer to make a person employable, it is the responsibility of the person to make themselves employable.
IF we were talking about blue collar manufacturing jobs, or sales/cashier/hamburger jobs, then yeah, apprenticeships and on the job training make sense; in technical areas, it doesn't make sense, any more than it would ti hire someone at a hospital, and on-the-job train them until they were a doctor.
We're too cheap to hire a less experienced person and train them to do their job properly.
Get your own training. If I have to train you to do your job properly, I damn well don't want you.
If I wanted to run a training program, I'd open my own version of DeVry University or University of Phoenix. I am in business to do what my business does, and as we are not a vocational education institution, get your freaking vocational education somewhere else.
Majority of the H1B1 visas are taken by temp agncies : Tata, InfoSys and Winpro.
Majority of H1B1 workers I have worked with are average. Very few are exceptional as the
visa requirements states.
It is all about money. All industries try to lower labour costs and tech is no different. However it has to be done in a shall we say "smooth way".(Hey there is a shortage! Yes there is!)
I spend a large portion of my day answering questions and fixing screw-ups by these "truly great" workers. I would take laid-off, older, experienced workers in a heartbeat.
Sad to say, but you've hit the nail on the head. If someone can do the same amount of work for less, then that's a benefit to both the employer, as well as the customers of the business, because it means higher productivity, and ultimately lower prices.
That being said, there's a *huge* range in capability in the tech industry that simply isn't effectively accounted for by salary scales - there are literally some people who can do things twenty times as fast as someone else, but no company I've ever been in has a salary range that varies by that much, even considering junior programmers compared to senior consultant/specialists.
I'm sure that anyone in tech has had the general experience that the vast majority of the work funnels through a small minority of the workforce - the distribution of talent is hugely imbalanced, but the salary scales don't reflect that.
Would you buy a product in US while you get exactly the same product for half price from China? I am not advocating one way or the other but this is how the system is suppose to operate. Or I go one step further, this is all based on people's fundamental drive for greed (or you call it productivity?) - don't blame the "system".
Mandate that all foreign workers have to be paid the exact same salary that a domestic worker would be paid to do the same job for the same knowledge/experience level. Watch the requests for foreign workers disappear and lawsuits appear because the govt is stepping on the rights of slave hol...er... tech companies to hire workers.
One possible solution to preventing H1Bs from being used just to import cheap slave labor would be to attach a very large annual fee to the visa's use that must be paid by the employer, something like $200-$300K. The purpose of the H1B, I thought, was for cases where there are no local/citizen workers who can fulfill the role so the company has to go oversees to find someone. If that really is the case, attach this fee. It would stop abuse of the visas as a means of bringing in cheap slave labor (if you don't like working 120 hours a week we'll deport you and get someone else) and I imagine cases where companies truly need the rarest of jewel employees, they would gladly pay the additional annual fee. It would also encourage companies to invest in domestic education and training so they can actually find the local talent they claim does not exist.
Granted I imagine the corporate response would be to then begin shifting away from actually hiring people and doing everything via contract either directly with workers or with contracting/consulting companies though I imagine there could also be means of prevent loopholes like this.
Complete Fucking Bullshit.
Like it or not, we have system that DOES control who works here. They want an exception so they can hire cheaper people. Their arguments aren't based on technological superiority, but costs. They fire people and then whine that they have no one and need to import workers
If they want to hire people from outside the U.S, set up shop overseas. Don't bring the Third World here.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Not in these companies, obviously. It's getting to the point where I don't even know why some of these corporations are based in America. Their workforce is in or from another country and their bank accounts are in another country. Just about everything but middle management is in another country, and if these corporations were serious about saving money, that's where they'd be cutting the fat.
I can see from reading this thread that there is a lot of righteous anger about this issue. The question is, what are you going to do about it?
Just mouthing off on slashdot is not doing something. You need to let your elected representatives know that this issue is important to you and that they should not toe the party line on immigration just because Green and Zuckerberg, and their ilk are laying down big bucks to the the parties and campaign funds.
Writing your congressman and calling his office are just baby steps. What you need to do is vote incumbents out of a job. Eric Cantor, then the House Majority Leader lost his primary to a guy who campaigned on a mere $50,000 because of Cantor's support for immigration "reform" (i.e., letting loose the flood gates). That sobered the House Republican leadership up real fast.
Tech people have for too long wasted their votes on trivial social issues, or have not voted at all. You need to find candidates, support them, and get out the vote to oppose Zuckerberg, et. al. That is the only thing that can save your hides.
Allow me to conclude with a short poem by the great German playwright and poet, Bertolt Brecht*.
The Solution
After the uprising of the 17th June, the Secretary of the Writer's Union,
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee,
Stating that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government;
And could win it back only by redoubled efforts.
Would it not be easier in that case, for the government
To dissolve the people, and elect another?
* You may know him best as the author of "The Three Penny Opera" from which the song "Mack the Knife" was taken.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
I do not agree.
I have been in the tech industry for 25+ years and most of the time foreign means cheap workers.
I would also point out out, how incredibly frustrating it is to design technology over language and cultural barriers. Especially for non trivial infrastructure work spanning continents.
I finally asked management to just send our US team abroad to work for a year, otherwise I was going to quit.
What would have taken 3 years was done in 8 months time to I would like to point out.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The grueling two year primary & fund raising system for electing top US leaders need improvement. The past several winners have been barely OK.
""The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."
....you're brain dead. I wouldn't believe anything coming out of this shill's mouth.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
We are not disposable blue collar idiots. We are white collar professionals and we just want the same damn respect accountants, other dept managers, other educated employees and even secretaries get within the same organization.
If you are not in the 1%, then you are one of the rest.
Some might get a bit more, some might get a bit less.
That's all there is to it.
New things are always on the horizon
You can ask a technical person to achieve a very specific, tightly scoped technical task during an interview
And if you're hiring for a job doing very specific, tightly scoped technical tasks, that'll work. But that describes very few non-entry level jobs.
You really can't distinguish great programmers in an interview, or even a set of them. That kind of evaluation takes weeks and months, through the exact process you describe in the second paragraph of your post.
you should know it smells funny. why do they look to Obama? he's just one man. the POTUS is not everybodies go-to political salesman. the POTUS does not LEGALLY have that much power. why aren't these tech companies working with local schools and state governments? you know, the organizations that need the money to make the changes?
You can ask a technical person to achieve a very specific, tightly scoped technical task during an interview and if you know the question well quickly get a feel for how good they really are.
Along with that, with techies it's a lot easier to weed out the bullshit and outright lies on their resumes. I wish I had a dime for every candidate that listed something obscure on their resume to puff it up, and then couldn't answer basic questions that anyone familiar with it should know.
"I see here you've got some extensive VMS system administration experience and show it as an area of expertise."
"Yes."
"That was a really cool OS - I liked how DEC implemented file versioning. Can you tell me how one would distinguish different versions of the same file?"
"Umm...it was a long time ago, I don't really remember...."
"Okay, can you give me one of the hardware platforms supported by VMS?"
"I'm pretty sure the system I worked on was a 486."
After 30 seconds you can tell the guy doesn't have a clue, and the entire resume is now suspect.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
scum....
Said no one ever!
Unfortunately, they didn't vote the opposite.
Living overseas for the past decade and a half, a lot of times I've described my job as "English to English translation". It's amazing how many times meetings are conducted in English because it's the only language both sides have in common-- but it is native to neither of them, and they both leave the room thinking they understood what was said, when in fact, neither did.
In my experience what they seem to be saying is true... I do circuit design at a large CPU design company. In my design group, I'd estimate 75+% of our new hires are foreign born and on H1B or simliar and it has nothing to do with the money... Everyone we interview gets the same set of technical questions and must have at least an Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. We get very, very few US citizen applicants let alone qualified ones. Might as well take the cream of the crop. I graduated from Arizona State in 2010 with my MS in EE and in my graduate level circuit classes, it was literally me and like 1 or 2 other guys (men) who were US citizens. Everyone else was from India or China. With no US kids enrolling in these advanced courses, it's no wonder we can't find enough people...
Well, I guess if they value the expertise of foreign tech workers they should pay them the same rate as a tech worker from the U.S. The same pay plus however much they need to pay in administrative costs to legally keep them working here.
Recent salary surveys (http://www.roberthalf.com/technology/it-salary-center) show that IT salaries are growing at a robust 6%. Salaries in Canada, a country without H1B Visas, is growing at an almost identical rate. If you are personally experience wage stagnation or depression you should consider your options, the industry as a whole is booming.
H1Bs may or may not be good. Local workers may or may not be good.
The larger issue is the use of H1Bs by the various subcontracting pimps.
If Google or Msoft is directly sponsoring an H1B, they're doing their due diligence on who they're getting. It's arguable whether that is "good for the country" or not. It probably is.
But the majority of H1Bs are going to subcontracting pimps, and they aren't scouring the world for geniuses. The warm body orgs aren't hiring the best and brightest, they're pushing who they have in their systems, and under their thumbs. Who they have the paperwork on.
The decision that the true hiring org makes is which pimp to procure from, not which genius to hire. It's hugely corrupting to the businesses involved, as the slush fund generated by taking 25% off the top of dozens of salaries is huge, so that millions of dollars turn on which pimp gets hired. If you think that none of that slush manages to find it's way back into the pocket of the corporate decision makers who choose the pimp, you are deluded.
Corporations corrupted, shareholders robbed by middle management decision makers, citizens put out of work, labor laws evaded, disposable human cogs imported to the country, who often plan on leaving, and thereby are willing to take legal risks in a foreign land, knowing that they'll be getting out of dodge in a few years anyway.
What's not to like?
Firstly, I wouldn't disagree with the people shouting about the crushing of the rights of US workers, and the blatant corruption and criminality of the US regime in supporting the oppression of their own people like this.
However, as a worker for a company with a US division that hires American programmers, we see that is really isn't worth touching US graduates without at least a master's. The problem is that they spend the first 1-2 years catching up with remedial mathematics at university, which isn't properly taught in their school system, so end up with a fairly lightweight degree. I'd also agree to an extent that there is a lack of well qualified people. Wages in the United States are actually quite high for good quality staff. As a consequence, we effectively don't hire developers there any more, since we get better quality at a lower price in Europe.
It's all about cheaper salaries. The truth is that the vast majority of US techies are far superior. But for big box companies with all their managers trying to justify their jobs they actually just want the equivalent of code monkeys and lots of bureaucracy. Americans are truly lazy; we actually want the systems to work and work well so that we can relax and think up new ways to make the system actually easier or more flexible. Code monkeys know the managers only care about numbers so they actually want to make buggy code with lots of simple fixes so as to create the illusion of doing something called work. Fix one error and create two more for next time; this makes your manager happy. These people can be just as smart/lazy/efficient as their American equivalents; they just understand their job is to make their managers look good.
What is happening is that the majority of H1B workers are being hired through labor agencies. They are indeed making a better living than they would back at home. The labor agency is rotating the workers though. There are working more than a 40 hours a week and they know better than to complain because the culture is such that whomever breaks the unwritten rules of silence can expect consequences from their fellow workers/friends at a later time. Your friends and family are punished as well. Think back to the early union days but the union thugs are there to make sure no one complains which would ruin it for the group as a whole.
I have no problem with having unlimited H1B workers so long as they are being paid slightly more than what comparable US workers would cost and are actually getting the benefits they earned according to our labor laws here. So theoretically the number of $100,000 H1B's should be unlimited.
And 90% of the problem would go away if you simply get rid of the agencies and made the tech companies hire directly. They know they are cheating the system and would fear class action suits. They use agencies to buffer their legal exposure.
Ok, let me get this straight. The vast majority of great American engineers want the be replaced by Indians. ya right. I've heard a lot of totally outrageous BS through the years but that is pretty Fargin amusing. Indians are not better. The are cheaper. You can hire more of them for the same amount of money. My comoany has been doing it for years. Where I work we have almost entirely replaced our native staff with Indians and thats is what this is all about. Sure the quality sucks but its cheaper and thats all executives car about.
I had this great idea to build a system to replace Indian software developers, so my employer could make even more money and then lay me off when I finished, but I couldn't get the Indian software developers to get it to work.
Also, a "basic income" might be part of the solution rather than or in addition to "make work" jobs.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
From: http://www.stevepavlina.com/bl... "Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press On" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. (Calvin Coolidge)"
Of course, it has also been said: "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)"
Perhaps the difference lies in having some way of validating that you are making some progress through your persistence, even if infinitesimally?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Bingo.
They don't want to pay Western salaries. Propaganda..
So it is ok to fuck over blue collar workers but not white collar? Interesting world view.