Slashdot Mirror
Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist
Beeftopia sends this excerpt from an article at BusinessWeek:
"There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense," says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. "They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV." ... The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff. "It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor," Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-mail. A 2011 review (PDF) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had "fragmented and restricted" oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. "Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor," says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.
You'd have to be out of your mind to pursue a career in the above in the USA right now.
Or; more correctly; you'd have to be out of your mind to work as an employee in one of the above. I migrated to business and finance from a electrical engineering job. My salary is new three times (3X) what I made as an engineer, which topped out at around $100k. I'll be retired, or independently set up, before I'm 45 - then I can go back to tech on my terms.
Kids aren't stupid. Ye reap what ye sow. Cough it up.
Is there a "Well Duh" tag somewhere?
Everybody in the various fields was already aware of this, including those complaining that nobody was taking the jobs even at the marvellously sub-minimum-wage rates they were offering.
All of the tech industries behavior point to a desire to keep wages lower than what they would pay in an open market. Whether it's expanding H1B's or agreeing not to poach the goal is the same not driving up the cost of talent. Thus we have a "shortage" of tech workers so we must import more rathe than we have an abundant supply at higher wages so lets hire them. I am not surprise at the GAO report. What needs to be done is make H1B visas portable so after say 6 month to a year the holder was free to switch jobs. That would end abuses quickly and all of a sudden the "shortage" would disappear when it becomes more costly to get and keep an H1B then hire a local.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
We know this. They know this. Will it matter?
There's a tech job shortage.
The shortage is caused by jobs not willing to offer a fair salary for reasonable hours worked.
I know of people working in tech who's boss expects 50 + hours but only admits to 40 hr work weeks.
"Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor..."
Gee, you think?
Seriously, as a working engineer, the fact that this hasn't been emphasised this has annoyed me for years. There is no shortage of bright, hard working engineering talent in the US, and the our schools are (and have been for years) capable of turning out as many well-educated engineering graduates as the industry requires. It's just that they want to make enough money to live a good life (and pay back the cost of their education). Graduates from the Farkistan Institue of Technology are *so* much cheaper. And they don't ask for raises or threaten to change jobs...because they would get sent home.
Do you seriously believe that a foreign H1B with an MS, working for $35k is equivalent to a US graduate?
How many number of interviews do companies go through to hire someone?
Last I heard, Facebook goes through ~100 people to fill 1 spot. My company goes through about 20 or so before finding a candidate worthy of a face-to-face interview... Most flunk on basic questions like "describe any sorting mechanism" (someone hands you 1000 sheets of paper, each with a page number out of order, walk me through the process you will use to sort them).
The problem isn't that there's a shortage of "tech workers", there isn't.
It's that most "tech" workers suck. If you want to hire someone who actually knows their stuff, you gotta pick them right out of school, and make sure they're actually "techy" kind (those that actually do their own homeworks because they find them interesting). Now, *those* tech workers are like 1% of "all tech workers", and yes, there's a shortage of those---but not something the h1b can fix.
Wait. Are you claiming that there actually people that don't realize this is what's going on?
The question isn't whether H-1Bs are really necessary (they're not, and they never have been). It's a question of who gets to profit from it.
This is exactly the same issue that migrant laborers are stuck with. The claim is made that Americans will not do field labor. The food industry uses that excuse and pushes to not crack down on undocumented workers. But if we shut down undoucmented workers field labor would receive far higher wages and then those jobs might be much more attractive for American workers. And it extends into other areas as well. The guy that labors in construction has his wages controlled by the availability of labor. So if the farm workers were paid more people who labor or work as store clerks may also receive higher wages or decide to work in the fields. And this conspiracy actually has official support. For example convicts on work programs are often assigned to work as field labor at very low pay rates with the lions share of their pay going back to the prison. Or the prison may have its own farm with the food being consumed by the convicts which also holds down the demand for field labor. And to the right wing nuts this situation is a great example of why supply and demand is not meaningful in economics. It demonstrates that supply as well as demand can be controlled by forces other than exchange for goods and services.
Everyone already knows this, whether they want to admit it or not.
The real question is will the US gov ever actually do anything to benefit US workers, or are they already too far under the thumbs of the hi tech companies?
If they really were looking for the high skilled, highly productive people they claim they need by the battalion, they'd be beating the drum to expand the O1 visa program and they'd be lying, cheating and stealing their way into monopolizing its pipeline. That they are going H1B is proof that their needs are, well, mundane. Facebook might love to have a labor force that's all good enough to work on HHVM and other cool, skunkworksy projects. Truth is, they don't. Most seasoned American web developers could easily jump in and work on their core products.
Researchers awarded grant to study Slashdot comments.
In other recent news, Why the heck does Dice keep letting Bennett write shit, and Dice only one that thought beta was a good idea.
I've worked as a programmer for a large company in the Fortune 100 for over a decade. In the last two years, we've been forced to stop hiring local US employees and are only allowed to hire contractors from India (who still reside in India). I have nothing against Indian developers (we have several local ones on our team that are excellent), but these remote Indian contract employees have continuously proven to output shoddy work (that we always have to revise/fix) and are extremely slow in performing this work. Ultimately, they cost about 25% of what a US programmer does and that's about what they provide. I understand a company wanting to save money, but ultimately these contractors cost more in the long run than our traditional local ones do (since we still need local ones to actually design and support the work they do).
It's been proven, time and time again that the H1B program and the so called "Tech Worker Gap" is a untrue and yet here is another "Research work." The H1B program is there so employers can not be affected by market forces. Couple that with non-competes, "right shoring" and non-poaching agreements that are killing the tech labor force in this country.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
This sort of phenomenon is a natural effect of globalization. A century ago, the world contained wealthy advanced nations, developing nations, and lots of "backward" nations which lacked modern industries and hence had a relatively low standard of living. However, this was somewhat compensated for by a low cost of living. Someone might only earn a dollar or two a day, but food was cheap and life was OK.
Enter globalization: the inevitable outcome of free-market, free-trade economics plus cheap ubiquitous transport. Within a few decades, the world became one single marketplace and - as we in the wealthier nations have seen to our cost - jobs began "finding their own level", that is being exported to the cheapest countries.
Not satisfied with that, bosses and shareholders wanted to bring in cheap labour to do those relatively few jobs that couldn't be done "at long range". Obvious examples are construction, health care, personal service of all kinds, and to some extent expensive specialities like law. (Not many lawyers in India have US bar qualifications, and even if they had they couldn't very well show up in a US court).
After the first irrational exuberance for outsourcing skilled jobs (like IT) to cheaper countries, even the most thick-headed of PHBs are now coming to recognize that outsourcing of this kind doesn't usually work too well. No matter how good the workers are, the communication problems (and often cultural discrepancies) are just too great. Hence the increasing eagerness to import cheap (but well qualified and skilled) labour to do those jobs under direct (not to say oppressively close) supervision.
Unfortunately, citizens of nations like the USA get it coming and going: the government taxes them heavily in order to provide services in a "first world" manner, while allowing business to export jobs to "third world" nations (or bring their workers to the USA to work there). This is a classic "wealth pump" which systematically sucks up wealth and transfers it to the rich.
Ironically, globalization looks set to be pretty much complete and settled in, just in time for the cheap oil that made it possible to run out. Then we'll all have to face the expense and disruption of reverting to relative economic independence within our own countries.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
That's what some of the service techs were getting paid to do on-site service for Dell, last time I checked. And that's in the DC metro area, where cost of living is way high!
Gee... I wonder why people aren't lining up to take those job offers?!
When will we finally get to a ruling class no longer pining for the pre-civil war days?
From the crop of developers I've interviewed over the last few years, there are a bunch of under-skilled people who think very highly of themselves and want to be paid more than they are worth.
My company has hired some very bright people and paid them very well. But then there are people like this MIT grad we hired several years ago, purely based on her resume and what BS came out of her mouth, only to discover she was perhaps one of the worst developers I've ever worked with. She was fired several months later. We looked at dozens of resumes, and interviewed 5 or so. Of that batch, she was the only one that seemed remotely qualified.
My 'replacement' at my last job made 2/3rds of what I made, and within a month or two they discovered why I was worth the wages they paid me as he single-handledly almost destroyed a critical database that would have put them out of business and then didn't have the skills to fix it. They had to hire me as a contractor to help fix the mess he made.
Many of our current developers seem to think QA is where you send code to find bugs once it compiles clean. The ones that work in my new group are going to learn really fast that depending on QA to find your bugs is the quickest way to find the door.
If someone wants a batch of developers they have to babysit and spoon feed requirements to, they are a dime a dozen and deserve to be paid the same. If someone wants developers who can think for themselves, are self-motivated, and are able to fill in the blanks by finding things out ... they are few and far between and worth the price paid.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
... Have wanted cheaper labour.
So what has changed, what is different in Tech than others?
Is it that Laws have changed allowing this behaviour?
Is it that American Tech workers are demanding more than they are worth, and the companies simply cannot afford to pay that?
Is it that America has a shortage of skilled Tech workers who can do the jobs that the companies want done?
Is it that to get higher female quotas, or just non-white at least, they need a bigger pool to draw from?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo... Here, no such thing as a STEM shortage only the desire to suppress wages.
This has never been about a skills shortage, it has always been about lowering the market rate for those skills.
Basically these companies are publicly saying they want to go to an external economy to drive down labor costs for tech jobs.
This is entirely about corporate greed and entitlement, and has never been about anything other than driving down wages.
And somehow politicians have bought this hook line and sinker.
Or, more accurately, the politicians have been bought, and the rest of us be damned.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I tend to agree, the issue in the Tech Industry isn't as much the shortage of workers, as it's much more a shortage of the Industry to pay a wage for the worker they want. In lieu of that, the Industry isn't as willing to invest in it's Human Capital, expanding training and skill sets. They're afraid if they train you, you'll go find a better job. Well, if you don't train them, what if they stagnate and don't go find a better job?
If you aren't challenging your Tech Workers, then they want to move on, to avoid being bored, to find a new challenge. But if you train them, invest in them, they become invested in their company, and if they're challenged, they're just too busy and too happy to think about if the grass is greener on the other side of the street.
There's a reason that H1B workers strive to be great English speakers. English is the language of business, and it's still where people want to move towards to be successful. If we cultivate a culture of Tech Workers to move a long...then companies become a Journey, not a Destination. Would you rather work for a company who is the proverbial Wilderness, or the Promised Land?
Invest in Human Capital. That's how a Company is built that becomes a Destination, and not just a Journey to something better.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Here's why I'm not convinced that the answer is simply higher salaries. To be sure, some workers who could be doing tech decide to do something else. Maybe they go into academia, finance, IP law, etc. Raising tech salaries across the board, by everyone who employs tech workers, would steal some of these guys back. But would it be enough? You would probably also motivate some young people to go into tech that currently go into other fields. But that's for the future; it doesn't help the present. The fact is that there's a fixed supply of domestic talent at each point along the talent spectrum. You could pay 10x as much and it won't magically increase the amount of available talent. If there is, in fact, not enough talent to "go around", i.e. to fill all the tech positions employers want to fill, then we don't just have a salary problem.
Side note: what's good for the domestic tech worker may not be the same as what's good for the country. That is to say, an influx of highly-skilled foreign tech workers might depress salaries in the short term, but an abundance of cheap tech labor could juice the success of domestic tech companies which, in the long run, may actually be better for the U.S. as a whole.
There's also anecdotal evidence that the U.S. is becoming less attractive to foreign talent and not more. Which, in my opinion, is terrible news.
...Especially after the NY Times and LA Times seemingly rephrased and trumpeted out the following pro H1-B puff-pieces, as if on-queue from the cheap I.T. labor lobby in Silicon Valley, (where is the counterpoint opinion in these articles?):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
The NY Times piece highlights Zenefits. Look at their current unfilled openings, as they seemingly warrant a NY Times articles focused on Zenefits' desire to get the H1-B action they're missing out on, (because they can't compete for H1-B labor *in* Silicon Valley alongside Google, Facebook, etc.).
What they want is more flexible workers. Guest workers are very flexible. Given that they are already immigrants, whats the difference to them if they work in New-york the first half of the year and Seattle the second?
I went through this is the late 90s/ early 2000s. I'd get a job as some company was building some new product, have solid work for a year... then there'd be the long, inevitable breakup as they found a way to lay us off another year later. So I'd go onto another project... same thing. Then my current company did the guest worker thing... I hear a lot of nonsense about them, mostly indian... not being qualified. I'd have to disagree. I'd say there are good and bad just like US workers, but there are certainly stars that stand out. Some of our best coders are from india, and I actually found out during our last pot luck that not all Indian food has curry in it and I even liked some of it. I got hired on permanently because they know I'm not just going to move away. The distinction of who goes at the end of the project and who doesn't is clear. The temps. Before, I could have been working somewhere for 5yrs, then bring in 20 new us workers for a project and when that's over 20 go home. It may be the new people, but it might be me!
The many and varied services that do projects for you are Terrible I've been through so many nightmare projects that were outsourced like that... uggg. They charge way too much and deliver the lowest quality work they possibly can.
I'm not sure what the answer to this dilemma is, but it's not simple at all.
This always reminds me Native American at Anti-Immigration Protest: 'You're All Illegal'
Not only US Its about commoditisation of skills and lack of vision from a generation of middle managers who don't just want someone who can do the job, but someone who can do the job *tomorrow, without any lead-up*. Never mind it takes time to adapt to new processes anyway - the job spec says Mysql 5.2. Therefore nothing but Mysql 5.2 will do. The recruitment industry should bears its share of responsibility also.
Do you want to hire foreign talents that are genius ? Pay in taxes the same amount, or some percentage like 50% of what you will pay for salary, this will increase the costs to hire someone from overseas. But If the guy is REALLY talented, this increase on costs will pay itself with his brilliant work.
You can cut off this tax, when the guy is free to switch jobs wherever he wants to( If/When he get a green card), while he is bound to you, you pay the tax.
A lot of what evolved to what we call engineering today was developed and started in Scotland (and Northern England); while a "profession" it didn't originate with the aristocracy in London, like lawyering and doctoring (notwithstanding a fine medical school in Edinburgh). Steam engine, bridge design, steel, etc.
One cannot be in the highest classes if one sullies one's hands with toil or trade, don't you know?
I honestly don't think salaries are out of line. Tech workers should make less than management, they have a smaller scope of responsibility. Really, most people should plan to work until they reach retirement age and refrain from buying a yacht or private jet. $100k is so far above the poverty line that the poster (a ways) above who was dissatisfied with it is a joke. There is a culture of overworking tech workers though, that I think needs to end. I would be perfectly happy with a $70k job where I could show up at 8, leave at 5, and not give it a passing thought after I walk out the door.
I think the "tech worker shortage" is really just a shortage of people who have no idea how to run a technical company.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There is a very simple solution to this. The law should make companies put their money where their mouth is. Change the law to make H1B paid 2x what an equivalent American doing that kind of job gets paid and make it any time the person works over 40 hours a week (including checking/answering emails after work), the government fines the company 1 million dollars and pays it to the H1B (no taxes paid). But ultimately, both the government and companies want to bring in cheap, educated labor and go through this whole pretense of this"shortage" because they know the public will not stand for it otherwise.
There has always been, and (AI aside) will always be a shortage of the best people. As you move further down the skills pyramid you eventually reach a level with unemployment, so whether there is a shortage or not just depends on who you define as a tech worker. It would make sense to just have an immigration channel with a very high bar for highly skilled people, but since those in the lower tier of the pyramid are the majority you're never going to get support for that.
They may not be able to find them at the price they want.
Zuckerberg's taking care of that.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Who knew?
H1-Bs are all about the benjamins and crony capitalism.
Re-elect no one until they start trying to manage the nation for the citizen's benefit.
Yes siree Bob! That ol' invisible hand is really working for us.
We need government to get out of the way and let in all the low-cost immigrant labor we can get, without all those pesky regulations. Business needs to be free to innovate!
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
That's what unions are for.
Unfortunately, tech workers are too dumb to unionise.
Either that or tech staff spout some libertarian anti-union nonsense that if implemented wouldn't benefit them anyway.
Why do you think all big companies lobby government? Too get protection and preference from the law, that's why.
Corporations, doctors and lawyers cover their asses with restrictive practices, we should too.
We just sit and take any BS employers and government throw at us.
Ever wonder why the salespeople and suits get the tickets the game and the "drive a ferrari for a day" prize when they deliver?
It's because we tech workers behave like livestock.
It is too bad that we did not learn from doctors, lawyers, nurses, etc. back when there was ridiculous demand for tech professionals in the 90's. We should have set up a professional governance board and lobbied for licensing requirements (licensing that the professional board controls) to do certain jobs (programming, server admin, networking, IT security, etc.). That would have stopped the race to the bottom in salaries and quality (lower pay gives you lower quality).
But companies don't want to pay american workers a good wage for those jobs. They'd rather pay H1B visas and pay a quarter to half the cost of an american. Its the sad truth. I've been in IT for over a decade and am finding myself at the dead end of my salary after having it cut 18% this year. Better start working on my master's degree!
you know my boss?
Artificial limits on supply are basically the only way to protect salaries in any field. We do see this with doctors and nurses, the legal profession seems to have taken the wrong approach at this point.
I agree that the H1-B program leads to the working basically being indentured servants, but it's the cost of going through the government hoops via the sponsorship system that creates the problem. It makes it very hard for the worker to change jobs given the cost of the application ($5k + legal fees)
The system should be changed such that the applicant works directly with the government to get the visa and work authorization, and then can apply for jobs at any company just like any other job seeker for the same wages. At that point unless the immigrant fails to get employment within a reasonable amount of time, or commits a crime or what have you, the program should create a clear path to citizenship.
Immigration isn't just about getting labor, it's about attracting the best and brightest around the world who have a desire for freedom to join our ranks.
Just to add many of these "there is no labor shortage" studies are conducted by people who don't know talented geeks from the halfwits with online degrees. I'm sorry getting a crash course in programming from Phoenix and completing your assignments by paying people on rent-a-coder does not make you qualified to work at my company.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's always been about the salaries and nothing else.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Those kids at school, boys and girls who were socially popular, always trying to stay on top of the social list are the ones who managed to make it into managers by doing the same clicky behavior.
They are also the same people who treated techies / geeks poorly. They are now your bosses. They don't appreciate what you do and just want it done as cheap and disposible as possible for their profits.
I find the patent's post hard to believe. I have also been in interviews that asked about things that I haven't had in years and never had to use. Like, compiler design. Really? For a C# .NET job? Do they hace a custom compiler? Nope. Do they optimize code? Nope. Jackasses.
Sorting? I haven't had to write sorting code since college because every platform has tried and true sorting libraries. To answer the parent, I would use a binary sort or bubble sort and it'd take me a bit to write the code.
I think a lot of interviewers have chips on their shoulders and just like to feel superior by asking questions to make folks look foolish. And if it's that important for the job, I'll cram for it over the weekend
I have had the bad luck of being born in a country where education costs have spiraled out of control, have student loan debt from a STATE school while opportunities are declining.
I'm available for $250k/year.
Your "shortage" is my "insufficient surplus"...
Makes sense, dump everything behind an education and a license requirement so only the people willing to waste 4-10 years of their lives and accumulate $100k in student debt are deemed hireable. Oh and lets also make sure there is a lack of actual accredited programs for people that are willing to do this so it makes the journey all that much more painful for the ones willing to put up with the bullshit, this undoubtedly keeps wages high, this also means the average person can barely afford a doctors visit with out insurance.
Source: My wife is trying to find an RN program that doesn't have a multi year wait in California just for the privilege of handing over money to the program.
Those "pesky regulations" are the exact cause of this problem - and is the exact reason why Libertarians want government out of employer/labor relations.
If government had not given favored immigration status to tech workers, the free market would naturally settle on wages via supply and demand. Tech companies with the aid of the US government distorted the labor market to increase supply and drive down wages.
An Econ 101 student could understand this and see what is happening. Why you can't is a mystery.
People are saying that H1B Visa imported foreign workers will accept "slave" wages - but they are making $100K+? How are those slave wages? I am an unemployed American software engineer with 15 years experience (C++, Java, you name it). I can't get hired because I am a 52 year old white female. I would accept minimum wage at this point.
In the end HQ help cost money. You can always get a body for cheap. But a mind cost money.
The fact that most technology companies have headquarters in high-population, high-cost-of-living areas like Silicon Valley, San Fran, Seattle, and the DC area, means there is a shortage of people who want to live in those areas. Anyone who wants to live there will move there, and we see a ceiling on the number of people who want to do that. Otherwise qualified people who do not want to live in these areas will either never get into software development/IT or they'll do it and live somewhere else. The companies talking about a shortage are always the same ones in the same areas who poach each other's developers. There is simply a ceiling to the number of people who want to live in, say, Silicon Valley.
I don't know why they bother; if those are exempt employees (which they are, if the employer has any brains). It's perfectly legal to require your exempt employees to work many many more hours than the 40 they're getting paid for on paper, and not compensate them for anything over 40. At least for now, if someone complains about long hours, as far as the employer is concerned, they can either 1) shut the fuck up and get back to work, or 2) be threatened with replacement by a cheaper worker. It's harder to do that in technical roles, but not impossible. The effort is probably worth it if you make an example out of someone; the others will be less likely to complain if they see someone frogmarched to the door for speaking up.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
We've been saying that since 1999.
You're kidding right? The licensing and certification is being abused so much by immigrant labor that finding good doctors, lawyers and engineers is becoming difficult. Sure it solved the problem short term but now it's killing every good company out there because some douchebag from erkelstan with a license is doing the job for next to nothing while you collect massive debt. It doesn't hurt them because they can just shut down and move back to their home country if something happens. Meanwhile, you as an American company have to keep legitimate insurance, paying an arm and a leg for it, and living constantly under the threat of liability for everything. They don't.
Technical Licensing is generally a scam devoted to earning more money for Microsoft and Cisco and others. It has very little to do with guaranteeing the quality of the tech help that you hire.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Over 50% of H1B1 are picked up by Tata Consulting and Winpro and used to bring consultants.
There is also the J1 visa which was originally meant for visting academics and others who would come for a few months. Indian firms are using that to bring over engineers who are paid Indian wages($600/month) and stay at company housing; know of a few cases like that.
The iniitial false argument was "there aren't enough tech workers". When the economy went down and many engineers were out of work the argument became "Quality of the Indian engineer from India is better". :-)
"is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff." If they want that, they can start with replacing the highest paid, least skilled workers in the companies...the upper management.
DEY TURK R JERBS!!!!1
Companies with job openings have a choice in the free market:
* They can raise salaries or otherwise improve the work environment, which has the effect of "poaching" from those who would choose to do other kinds of work instead (plus a few who might choose to not do paid work at all such as would-be stay-at-home parents)
* They can lower their requirements, which increases the qualified applicant pool
* They can decide they would rather leave the position unfilled or eliminate the position entirely, and use the money they saved for some different purpose, such as creating non-technical-jobs or technical buying goods and services from overseas
* They can try to import or create talent that is willing to work for below-market wages or work in below-what-is-acceptable-by-society working conditions
I bolded the first one because it cuts to the heart of any real "shortage" that might exist - if companies do that, then they will either steal from other employers and/or related industries, possibly creating a similar shortage there, or entice young adults to get the training they need to enter this career field. The first is the free job market at work but it does nothing to eliminate the "overall" shortage of talent across all affected employers/industries. The latter is desirable but only if it doesn't create shortages in the industries that these students would otherwise go into upon graduation.
The second option isn't always an option - lowering your standards for employment may do far more harm than paying more or eliminating the position.
Barring legal or other barriers to trade, the third option - exporting the work to another country - is frequently viable. However, quality control and other issues may be harder to control than doing the work in-house. Caveat employer.
Now, the open question is how much of the "shortage" is real - that is, how much would "appear" to be solved by just raising wages but which would really amount to playing musical chairs with existing American talent - and how much is "artificial" - that is, how much could be filled by existing American talent that is currently unemployed or under-employed and which can't get a job because employers rig job descriptions so they "aren't qualified" or because employers offer salaries that they know no American will accept but which they know a non-American would be happy to accept?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I know not all the tech sector is the same.
But consider the gross margins a lot of software heavy corps enjoy. It's not like they are poor. It's not like they don't make a shit ton of money. And they then want to depress salaries even more? They should all just fuck the hell off.
So what faggot? You think your vote counts for fuck all in the age of Citizens United? Suck my K street cock faggot.
on how various sectors of the US work force did and did not protect itself from stuff like this.
There is a shortage of good tech workers. Maybe not tech workers but good ones. H-1B causes the number of tech workers to increase but not really the number of good ones. we got lots of resumes but we reject something like 90% of them either via an interview or right away. I say we reject over 70% right away. Yes this should say something here. Many large companies hire anyone and everyone and this is how the number of tech workers goes up. But most are dead weight.
... in San Francisco, that is. Those people who protest the gentrification of their neighborhoods could tell you a few things about the "slave wages" that Bay Area companies are paying their software developers.
Which is why I said a professional board. You think passing the bar exam or getting your license to practice medicine is a scam? That is the level of licensing I am talking about.
My wife has been an RN for 15 years. When she went, she got an Associates degree. She is working on her BSN completion because of career limitations but she still got licenses as an RN and passed the NCLEX 15 years ago.
yeah.....not.
The current state has the idiots coming over because there is no accreditation board involved in vetting and licensing the people who do highly sensitive work.
You can frogmarch the first complainer to the door, unfortunately, that guy or gal is statistically likely to be your best.
Cheap storage VM.
There's one silver lining in all this bitching about needing more H-1 visas. The tech companies that can't find enough cheap labor in the US are still looking for labor in the US. They could find all the cheap labor they want as long as they're willing to outsource the jobs to India - but they've already tried that, and it doesn't work.
As one of the few remaining onshore resources in an outsourced company, I can attest to the horrible inefficiencies that outsourcing brings to a tech project. Sure, it's cheaper. Perhaps even by enough to account for all the extra process to manage the outsourced workers. But what isn't said in there is that nothing actually gets done. Our outsourced systems are gradually falling into unsupportability by a thousand bits of bad code put in by cheap offshore resources that don't have adequate guidance to get up to speed without doing damage - and aren't kept on the project long enough to ever finally do some productive work once they get up to speed.
The big guys either know this intuitively, or have tried outsourcing and know it from painful experience. Either way, asking for H-1 visas amounts to an admission that outsourcing tech jobs doesn't work. Now we just need the political will to tell them that paying crap wages isn't an option either.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
There are indeed plenty of engineers available, and it is absolutely true that people with these types of skills are just going to go and do something else if they don't get a salary of an appropriate level for the task. Importing cheaper foreign workers, or contracting out work, isn't a good solution in the long term. This is the way to end up with junk quality code. Good foreign workers command exactly the same, if not better salaries to workers from our own countries.
100 sheets
1. Give them back and tell you to reprint them in order.
2. Give them back and tell you to have your Secretary sort them.
In Silicon Valley, New York, Seattle, and select other high-tech hubs, there certainly is a shortage of skilled qualified workers. This is clearly illustrated by the salaries and perks at tech companies are driven to such extremes. Google and Facebook don't have a personal chef and free dry cleaning and egg freezing because they are your best buddy; they do it because they have to offer these kinds of perks to retain their people.
In non high-tech hubs, these shortages do not exist. There are lots of qualified workers.
The question is, why do tech companies focus so much on the hubs vs. growing a lot of smaller regional offices. This is something I have never understood. Especially if you subscribe to the model of Bezos and others who say the maximum size of a productive team is somewhere between 5 and 7 people, having huge amounts of people concentrated in one area has questionable benefits when you consider the huge salary they command due to the simple fact of geography.
That assumes that they care about losing "the best". They would rather have a bunch of mediocre workers that get the job done and accept poor treatment than have good workers who want crazy shit like market wages and to be treated like human beings. At a certain point "good" is no longer profitable, you reach the point of diminishing returns. Cheap > good again. The Walmart effect in action.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
When an economy has 8-10% unemployment, that economy should not import labor for any reason. Governments exist to protect it's citizens - that includes REASONABLE immigration policies.
I'm the second generation of a family of immigrants. My grandparents came here almost 10 years apart due to restrictive immigration policies. Generally grandpa waited his place in line, came here with a sponsor, worked, and paid taxes. After establishing himself here, was he allowed to bring over the rest of the family.
Allowing too many people into a country, too quickly, is a sure fire way to hurt the local workforce, and stress social support systems to their breaking point.
Unfortunately the politicians in charge don't give a damn about the citizens they claim to serve.
I have very rarely seen this desire for low cost workers. Maybe for call centers, or simple web programming jobs, etc.
But for anything requiring seniority, quality is the only factor that matters.
Most of the time when we hire, we have a problem finding GOOD people, period. Forget even about any salary range.
I've interviewed 25 candidates in a year and out of that we hired 2 (TWO).
All the other ones had resumes a mile long, with experience, jobs in top companies, etc.
But poke at them a few CS questions (and I am not talking anything really complex) and so many of them fell apart within 5 minutes.
I've had a lady once with 20 years of experience who was not able to explain the difference between a List and a Set in Java. I didn't know what to say...it was just my introductory question before moving on to the "real" interview questions. Ended the entire interview in 5 minutes.
Many of the VC-backed "startups" in the Bay Area are openly proud of their death-march style 60hr work weeks.
I see a bunch of stuff here trying to nail the GOP etc. for this. Most of them are guilty as charged. But at least as many Democrats are just as guilty. Why? They are all getting their pockets lined by most of the same donors. Both parties. Don't be a useful idiot for either of them!
A few independent minded politicians are calling foul on this. Two of the most notable are Jeff Sessions (R), Bernie Sanders (Independent because he's too liberal for the Democrats).
The sooner the rest of us drop the partisan crap and being the parties' useful idiots the sooner we can unite and send the message we're not going to vote or donate for any of these clowns who are voting for swaths of cheap imported foreign labor. They can call it "Comprehensive", "Reform" etc. or anything they want. It all boils down to the same ruse which is to placate their corporate donors with cheap imported labor.
Simple, the executives want to live in the fancy neighborhoods with the best schools, etc. Their head explodes if they think about managing teams "remotely" a couple states over, in pretty much the same time zone.
The world is chock full of bright, enegetic and ambitious people. The majority are found outside of the most economically successful entities. This is an underutilized resource and in many ways a tragedy. It will be exploited. Many are eager to enjoy being exploited in such a relativly lavish fashion. The mobility of workers and work has dramatically increased along with the pervasiveness of information The invisible hand of the market will not ignore it. Discrepecies across borders become increasingly less sustainable. We can hope that the first world can continue to advance while the rest of the world catches up. This requires careful management of policies and regulations in the first world. You can be sure that the developing world is not going to give it the same priority. H1-B visas are simply a goverment safety net for tech industry companies. I think of it as socialism for the rich. You can tell that the anti socialism talk is sponsored by the really deep pockets because it is only when socialism benefits those of lower socioeconimic strata that it is called socialism. I see two big problems here. Overpopulation will overwhelm the advancement of global civilization. The second problem is that the developed world will become the plaything of a few extremely wealthy people. We have see great successes on both fronts. Teddy Rooseveldt has demonstrated the relase of goverment from regulatory capture in the past. Population growth has been achieved in many countries. We just need to make sure our economy can adapt to an aging population that inherently becomes less adaptable.
"At one point construction and industrial jobs like meat packing were all unionized. Then the unions were broken and the jobs were filled by immigrant labor. That's why there are now large numbers of Spanish speaking non-documented workers in the Midwest, for example. "
Um, actually, no. The nation's big meat packing plants have ALWAYS been staffed with lots of immigrants. Some were founded by immigrants who had that as their vocation in Europe (lots of Germans, Italians and Polish) and who needed to have a job skill as a requirement for getting through the filtering process at Ellis Island. Many others were either immigrants or the sons of immigrants who were willing to take those particular jobs because they were working hard to rise in the society and there was less competition for jobs that are too unpalatable for most people. In the past, however, most of those immigrant meat packers were LEGAL immigrants who came here to become Americans and those jobs, which also were held by many non-immigrants, paid a more middle-class wage (i.e. a meat packer could provide for his wife and kids with that one salary and no government assistance). VITAL POINT: H1-B visas and/or status as an illegal alien give an employer more leverage over a worker than anything else in US history.One hundred years ago, no average worker had to worry that his employer could turn him in to the federal government if he go out of line.
The meat packing business in the US preceeded the wave of unionization, and most meat packing companies were historically too small to unionize.
The big shift has NOT been fuelled by a political anti-union move, but rather by the tidal wave of buyouts of small businesses by Wall St investors. Lots of small independent farms, ranches, meat packers, etc have become massive corporate industrial farms, ranches, meat packers and so-on. Massive corporations have huge numbers of employees, which would normally lead you to think they would be easy to unionize, BUT this also makes them have accountants who are always looking to shave a little more off the big cost item named "labor" AND also makes them big enough to have political lobbyists. A small independent meat packer saves a few bucks when he hold down the salaries of a few employees, but a big Wall St firm saves MILLIONS when it supresses the wages of thousands. These modern mega-corps are (in EVERY field) pushing for politicians to let them import as much cheap labor as possible whether it's illegals to pluck chickens or turn cows into steaks or it's programmers to make Facebook better. The super-rich simply DEMAND the right to cheat the rules of the free market by importing labor from outside that market.
Don't let a desire to slam "open global markets" libertarian loons bait you into a false understanding of the problems or the history of this stuff; the world did NOT start with happy well-paid unionized workers who then lost out as politicians got rid of unions. Most businesses in the US started without unions and most that unionized did so with lots of union intimidation (often involving actual mobsters) but even unions are no match for a bunch of rich bankers/investors demanding lower labor costs. This will go on and on until average Americans force their politicians to say "no" to the investor class. Sadly, right now there is only one politician I can name who is on the right side of this issue: Senator Jeff Sessions of Georgia. Assume the bankers will find a way to smear him soon...
Actually that is untrue. They can't make you an exempt worker unless you are a manager. Many companies have been sued and lost for overworking regular employees under the guise of "exempt". It only takes someone to document and sue.
government created Obamacare, which is simultaneously killing the 40 hour work week because of its definition of "full time worker" and all the new regulations that kick in of you have too many full time workers. Government also, via Obamacare, makes it much cheaper to hire non-US citizens who are exempt.
government also setup the tax rules that make US corporations pay higher taxes if they employ people within the US than if they employ them outside the US. If you employ an American, you will pay him AND social security taxes for him AND unemployment tax for him AND workers comp taxes for him, AND (if you have a pension program) pension benefits insurance for him, etc. If you are the exact same company filling the exact same position but you hire him in India, you pay a lower base wage and then NONE of these extra taxes.
government also setup thousands of rules and regulations on energy, the environment, worker rules, etc that ONLY apply if you are doing the work in the US.
Libertarians did not create H1-B visas, government did. Libertarians did not create corporations nor did they enable mega-corporations; government did that too.
I'm not even a libertarian and I could see the problems with your sarcastic rant. Pure libertarians imagine a utopia very similar to the utopia imagined by hardcore progressives - they just disagree about whether this utopia will be created by an invisible hand of the market or the velvet-gloved hand of a massive benevolent government. The Libertarian imagines a wonderful borderless planet of free individuals where EVERYBODY magically succeeds; the progressive dreams of a wonderful borderless planet of citizens of a global love-fest government run by selfless super-genius technocrats who provide everybody with the benefits of success without actually having to succeed. Neither is tethered to either American history or the real world where things are messy and imperfect.
Man speaks the truth!
Those that allow the bastardization of the H1B program to persist are not traitors, but they would rather sell their patriotisum to the highest bidder.
Oh good grief. 15 years after the DotCon implosion, when industry leaders and Congress responded to the collapse in tech employment by ramping up H-1b guest worker visas, we're supposed to believe this is news?
Seastead this.
At my place of work, we put out notices of IT/IS jobs and barely get any respondents. No salary listed, that's always negotiated. Of those that do respond, few are even remotely qualified on paper. When one makes it to the interview, they're typically washed out real quick. It's seriously hard to even get a quality person to apply. We rarely even get to the salary negotiation stage!
On the other side of it, I get hit from head hunters multiple times a week trying to fill positions. I've seen some eye-popping $$$ amounts, but I enjoy where I work now, and I live in a great area. I don't want to move to somewhere I don't want to live, there isn't enough money to make me do that. I get the feeling the same is true of most IT/IS people. Perhaps too practical and won't respond to the typical "just pay more and they'll move" thing. Money isn't everything, in fact, once you've got a certain minimum adding more really isn't an incentive anymore. Supply/demand doesn't account for that fact.
Well, you can blame my Libertarian party just as soon as enough people wake up and actually elect enough of us into high office to have made a difference. In the meantime you don't actually know that this is how Libertarianism would work in practice balanced against the other parties' agendas.
And in the meantime you get ping-ponged between tax-and-spend Democrats who bloat the government and greedy-as-fuck Republicans who bloat the government, both of whom run things by a Dictator, er, President via Executive Decree, er, Order. So, how's that been working out for us?
The study may be right in terms of overall for the US or for STEM but it's definitely not true in my experience as a technical interviewer. I work for one of the large Silicon Valley tech companies. Part of the standard job duties is to perform technical interviews for hiring new people. A candidate goes through 2 phases, first a couple of phone interviews and if everything is fine it is followed by a series of onsite interviews. THEN, if everything went well there will be a recommendation to make him/her an offer, then he/she can decide to accept the offer or not. So it is only at this last step that any form of compensation is being discussed and negotiated. Until then it's all about if they have the skills to be hired and let me tell you, VERY VERY few do. I give "go ahead" scores in my phone interviews for maybe one in 40 candidates and maybe one in 20 for onsite interviews.
The vast majority of candidates can't code well a solution to very simple programming problems (the kind I was doing in high school). It may not invalidate the results of the study (since mine is all anecdotal evidence but it is similar with other coworkers doing interviews) but it definitely seems to me that there are very few people that are technically skilled enough to be made an offer at all and this is before any compensation discussion takes place.
As to the idea that H1b's are indebted to their employers, again, maybe true for other companies and for the field in general but definitely not in this company, at least from my own and other immigrants I talked to. There is nothing making me stay other than the balance of advantages for continuing to work in this foreign country. I know lots of people (and it's actually affecting my social life) that have moved out after a couple of years, for technically skilled people it's not really an issue to move, once you are able to get a job at one of the picky Silicon Valley companies there isn't an issue getting a similar job at other companies in the home country or elsewhere. As to moving to another company in the US, my employer has fully supported (ie fully payed for the immigration lawyer fees and they support starting this process in the first 6 months after starting on their H1b) my green card application so once I get that I won't be bound to them in terms of visa requirements but I do not expect to look for another employer for many years since I like it here. I'd expect the same from any other big tech company in the area, otherwise they wouldn't be competitive and would lose people.
Now people may say that this is only true for certain companies or only for the SF Bay Area so we shouldn't generalize it for all H1b workers. Correct, but nor should you generalize the demands that the companies make. Just because many (most?) other H1bs are being used as slaves doesn't mean that these few tech companies that ARE asking for H1b relaxation/quota increase/etc aren't being good players. From my experience, they are very good players and at the same time they do suffer from a lack of talent (we reject almost everyone before there is even a talk about compensation). In my case they couldn't even get me on H1b initially because it ran out of quota for that year in the first days after the applications started so there is an actual problem.
This guy's been pushing this same nonsense for years and years - regardless of the current economic conditions or job climate.
But look how many ad impressions he was able to generate for Slashdot. Wonder if he got a kickback?
Murphy was an optimist
http://wh.gov/iCfVS
Casteism
Tech can suck my dick. I'm going to grow pot.
Market forces are wonderful when they work to the advantage of employers. But when they work to the advantage of employees, the employers get legislators to change the rules and tilt the playing playing field so employers have the advantage again. They corrupt the market. . Join a union. There really is no other way in the long run. Show your kids you love them and secure THEIR future.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Seriously, America does need to improve our immigration. Basically, we need to select based on what skills somebody brings, rather than if they have extended family here. H1B is about lowering pay for all, including the immigrants. If green cards are based on skills, AND new immigrants can move between companies, then everybody is a winner.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.