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Tech Looks To Obama To Save Them From 'Just Sort of OK' US Workers

Posted by Soulskill on from the right-in-the-pride dept.

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."

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  1. The US does not have an IT talent monopoly by sjbe · · Score: -1, Troll

    So this tool just shit on U.S. workers and claims that people who are essentially nothing but ITT Tech graduates from a third world country are superior.

    So you think 5% of the worlds population has some sort of monopoly on IT talent? You think IT workers in the US shouldn't have to compete for their jobs just because of where they were born? I'm not an IT worker (I work in manufacturing) and I have to compete with talent in my job from all around the globe daily so I'm not terribly sympathetic to IT workers who think they are owed something because of their citizenship. You want to compete? Get better at what you do. Give companies an ECONOMIC reason to hire you over the foreign guy because economic reasons are really the only ones that matter in the long run.

    Frankly the guy has a good point. Good IT workers come from all over the world, not just the US. If you want to get all xenophobic and crawl into your protectionist shell to hide I guess that is your prerogative but the best companies will hire the best people wherever they may be from. They also will hire average people from wherever they can get the best price. If they are willing to work for less money than you and can still get the job done that is your problem. Companies want to maximize productivity while minimizing cost. If you forget that even for a moment you are cutting your own throat.

    Trying to hide behind limiting visa or unions is not ever going to protect IT jobs. Quite the opposite in fact. In the long run it will drive software development outside the US. Arguing against a labor intensive industry (like IT) seeking the lowest cost labor available is like trying to be King Canute. At most you might slow the inevitable instead of actually finding a way to increase your own value.