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.

Comments

Duh

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

Re:Duh

[anagama]

Workers bear the burden of H1B -- both the immigrants and the locals. That burden could be shifted by changing the rules. For example, make the visa last three years, non-renewable, cost $25,000 per visa paid for by the employer, and once the worker has been employed for two weeks, he/she will have the legal right to quit working for employer, even if that means sitting at home playing video games and doing no work at all, and make all employment contracts that contain some kind of damages provision if the worker quits or is fired, not just void, but result in a $25,000 fine, or twice the damages provision in the contract, whichever is greater, to be imposed on the employer.

This way, if a company really wants that genius they just gotta have, they can get that person no problem. They just better treat him/her right or risk losing a substantial investment. As for getting slave labor, it would make that completely unfeasible from a financial perspective.

Sure

[Greyfox]

If you want skilled tech workers, fire most of your HR department except for the one person who fields the sexual harassment claims about Gary in accounting, refuse to do business with any recruiter and start doing your own recruitment off github and recommendations from your good developers. If you want to retain those people, show them some respect, pay them a decent wage and offer them meaningful work. It would also help if you understood the market you're targeting and the problems you're trying to solve. If you don't understand what your developers are capable of and what they're doing, the only means you have to evaluate them is the market response to your product.

I think the "tech worker shortage" is really just a shortage of people who have no idea how to run a technical company.

Re:Slaves are always cheaper than the free

[smellsofbikes]

When will we finally get to a ruling class no longer pining for the pre-civil war days?

A friend who teaches economics was posting about this the other day. Her contention is that for all of history until the 1800's, it was fairly easy to just leave and go find some subsistence environment, so if you wanted workers you had to enslave them and force them to work for you. Now that it's not generally possible for most people to find environments for subsistence lifestyles, there's no longer any need to enslave people. They have to find jobs to survive. At that crossover, work stopped being something the lowest class of society did under force, and became something that was considered a privilege.