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Disney Replaces Longtime IT Staff With H-1B Workers
Lucas123 writes: Disney CEO Bob Iger is one of eight co-chairs of the Partnership for a New American Economy, a leading group advocating for an increase in the H-1B visa cap. Last Friday, the partnership was a sponsor of an H-1B briefing at the U.S. Capitol for congressional staffers. The briefing was closed to the press. One of the briefing documents obtained after the meeting stated, "H-1B workers complement — instead of displace — U.S. Workers." Last October, however, Disney laid off at least 135 IT staff (though employees say it was hundreds more), many of them longtime workers. Disney then replaced them with H-1B contractors that company said could better "focus on future innovation and new capabilities." The fired workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney's action was cost-cutting. "Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing," one former employee said. Disney officials promised new job opportunities as a result of the restructuring, but the former staff interviewed by Computerworld said they knew of few co-workers who had landed one of the new jobs. Use of visa workers in a layoff is a public policy issue, particularly for Disney. Ten U.S. senators are currently seeking a federal investigation into displacement of IT workers by H-1B-using contractors. Kim Berry, president of the Programmer's Guild, said Congress should protect American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position."
companies to run with minimal staff and still "produce" as much if not more than before. Yet we still run around with the fiction of the "work week" and a "career"... These concepts are obsolete. It's time for the leisure society with resources for all. To deny this is to say we don't have the technology to do so.
Yet we have the technology to outsource everything. But this only benefits the few. If it benefits all, then it's wrong.
"We were running low on our 'being an asshole' quota this month. Now be sure to continue to watch as your wives and kids demand and purchase our products, chumps."
Mind you, that was just frustration talking... because seriously, what is anyone going to do about this?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
What's all this blabber about STEM in American education and code.org and we need more tech workers? What I'm so confused. Companies like Google and Facebook would never be so evil as Disney, right?
So good old uncle Walt would not hire himself these days. Greed can exist far beyond the graveyard.
Perhaps Mickey should be replaced with an H1-B worker
What is wrong if they can find someone who can do it for cheaper?
Doesn't a CEO have a right to run his business the way he sees fit. If you can't compete with these low end folks with language barriers that says more about you than it does about cost cutting.
The first part of your comment is worth expanding on a little:
You are correct, but define "cheaper". Is the extra time required to complete a project due to language barrier cheaper? Is the $150/hr per head you're paying to hire H1-B contractors making $20/hr "cheaper"? Is the extra liability insurance... well, you get the idea.
It only seems cheaper at first... until the invoices roll in, deadlines slip, and things start getting ugly once the contract agency does... because what are you going to do about it if the contracting firm decides to pull all their guys out at the end of the week? ;)
But anyway... as you were.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I just wanted to say Thank You, and no hard feelings. It seems we've found a couple of interns that will do your entire departments for a pepperoni pizza and 2 liter of coke per shift. You have 6 hours to train your replacements and will be expected to have vacated the premises or security will detain you until the police arrive and you will be prosecuted for trespassing.
Don't forget your NDA, you can't say anything about what this company does.
Thank you very much, and hit the road bud.
IAAL. Learned in a stint at an immigration law firm, that H1B means you write a job description that only your candidate can fill. For example, if I wanted an airplane engineer who knew jumbo jets, I could get a thousand Americans for the job. If I needed a jumbo jet guy who also could work on Bleriot biplanes, that might be a lot less. If I also said he needed to be fluent in Mandarin and Farsi, I've just written an H1-B for my candidate. The key to success is making sure that only your guy can meet the job description that YOU create. Had a friend who was H1-B, even though he was raised in the states...he never bothered for the green card, took the easy way through school, etc. Had a falling out with his boss, and the H1-B went "poof". This essentially American had to relocate to Europe, and when he didn't self deport, was excluded for five years. H1-B means your employer owns your ass. Sadly, it is now a means to "on shore" a docile labor force.
That's how it seems to me. God bless America but not Americans.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Why does America still wallow in a recession? It is by those that beat the drum for the H1B harvest.
Kim Berry, president of the Programmer's Guild, said Congress should protect American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position."
uhhh...enforcement of any such "protection" is up to the executive, not the legislative branch. Where's Obama (and the Justice dept.) on this?
Because it is illegal to replace employees with H-1B contractors,
This. Nobody wants to hear it but this is how capitalism works, and every other economic system we've seen is even worse in the long run (for example, Communism).
"Everyone is a private contractor" sounds like the title of one of those cheap business paperbacks, and it probably is, but it has a lot of the truth. When I hear about a company where the CEO talks about treating everyone like family - that's a company that's destined to go through an extended period of recriminations, with fired employees talking about betrayal.
The complaint is that companies are hiring people from outside the US because they can pay them less. The answer to that is simple: crack down on wage discrimination.
The H1-B program should be changed such that only the company that is the end recipient of the work product of the H1-B worker can apply for a visa.
Those companies that provide on-site engineers to other companies should not qualify for H1-B visa sponsorship. In this way many abuses would be stopped.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The issue really isn't the fact that the H1Bs are taking over 'native' STEM positions, it is that Disney et. al. is flat out lying about it.
Remember, the H1B program is an immigration loophole set up by the government for certain purposes (allowing non citizens to work in the US when there are no qualified citizens). It was not designed to be a welfare program for big companies. Even for 'easily replaced' employees.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The fired workers believe the primary motivation behind Disney's action was cost-cutting.
Is there anyone who believes that wasn't the primary motivation? Even the corporate spin: "focus on future innovation" is standard corporate-speak for "spending money elsewhere."
It's not even 'spin,' that is the most straightforward way to interpret Disney's corporate statement.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
With out them we can be replaced by contractors and it's the contract firm that is the one useing the H1B's
In that way H1B workers are perfect for American businesses. The workers can't find new work, can't be hired away from your company, don't have any leverage for increased pay or benefits. It's everything Steve Jobs wanted when he colluded with other Silicon Valley CEOs to suppress worker pay.
Any IT professional who does his job correctly can be easily replaced because part of being a professional is documenting everything so that anyone can understand it.
But that really doesn't matter because anyone can be replaced by a lower cost worker. The effects of that action, except for the immediate salary drop, aren't felt until later so they're not correlated to the employee change by the people who made that decision. Only improvements are seen. Losses are somebody else's fault and a large salary change can mask those losses.
Seriously, this H-1B shit needs to stop now. Until we're at 99% employment rate for whatever field we're importing workers for, they need to be shipped back to whatever country they came from. This is worse than the illegal imigrant, because these guys are diaplacing current American workers and taking jobs we have people dyeing to fill.
Every single one of those fired need to get together and file a class action against Disney, and this needs to be posted all over the social sites. Disney is no more a family company than Jack the Ripper was an exceptional lover. This needs to backlash on them, and hard.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
I can't go on the "small small world" ride now without thinking of it as their sourcing plan.
Table-ized A.I.
Posting AC because, you know... This is going to be unpopular, but It's the trajectory that I see in Tech management in large enterprises.
This isn't shocking. I built my career during the IT and dot-com boom, moved into management, and then into executive positions. I fear this path is no longer available.
Why? Young companies need competent tech workers who can perform, and they need them fast. Once the company scales and competition eats into margins and profitability, they cut cost, that means firing expensive domestic workers and using overseas/contract headcount. Disney is doing the mechanically rational thing for a mature public company.
"Fucking evil management", you say? Well, grow up kiddies. This is what the board, shareholders, and investors demand - increased YoY profitability, which can be achieved, partly, by cutting costs.
This will continue. It will get worse. It's a race to the bottom, so get used to it. The barriers to becoming an IT worker have vanished, and people can work globally. You don't like it? Unionize or advocate trade barriers (which IT will not do), but business will seek the lowest cost option to achieve their business objectives.
Oh, and just wait until AI/automation scales up... My prediction: IT as a profession won't be around in 5 years.
sure, blame the employees for this.
to even suggest that the employees had ANY part in this other than having western style expenses like american healthcare, rent, food, gas - you know, luxuries - is dishonest or outright fraudulent.
shill much for The Man?
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
How can any company have a position which "can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position"?
With a high enough salary, any position can be filled, so unless companies are expected to get into bidding wars and offer multi million dollar salaries to compete for one of the american workers that could fill the position, how can such a policy be enforced? My company hires a lot of H1-B's (typically PhD's from various European countries), and while we pay a good salary, we can't find enough american workers to fill our open positions. If we were willing to pay double or triple the market rate, we could probably entice happily employed candidates to come work for us, but our salary costs are already high, and paying several times market rate would probably drive the company into the ground.
Seriously, this H-1B shit needs to stop now. Until we're at 99% employment rate for whatever field we're importing workers for, they need to be shipped back to whatever country they came from. This is worse than the illegal imigrant, because these guys are diaplacing current American workers and taking jobs we have people dyeing to fill.
Every single one of those fired need to get together and file a class action against Disney, and this needs to be posted all over the social sites. Disney is no more a family company than Jack the Ripper was an exceptional lover. This needs to backlash on them, and hard.
Yep, and I have $1000 for a Congress-critter that says it's perfectly legal and you that should be declared an enemy combatant for resisting the will of our corporate masters. Let's see whose opinion prevails...
A) What were you doing you could be replaced that easily?!
Everyone is expendable, from the CEO to the janitor. That's not evil that's just running a good business. Anyone who tries to make himself indispensable is the first person you try to replace, it's not a good behavior and it's not good for anyone.
B) Companies can drop you any time, out of nowhere. Keep some savings, and keep skills up so that if you need another job, you can find one... it's really easy at larger companies to drift into something that lasts years, if not endlessly. Don't let such things trap you.
Yes, that's always good advice. However in this case it should not have happened but for screwed up laws and indentured servitude. If these people were replaced with other citizens or residents who were believably competing on wages, then generally I agree.
1. Don't volunteer (make them pay for every bit of effort)
2. Don't apologise (never admit mistakes in writing)
3. Don't resign (they have to fire you)
4. Always maximise outside options and minimise local effort
You know.....I really like what Ken has to say. I wish our congress critters would listen to him. After all, they are supposed to be there to help US citizens' needs above all others. *sigh*
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yes that's odd. It should be at prevailing wage rates
If the allegations are true, Disney (or their outsourcing firm) broke the law. It doesn't really matter how screwed up the law is if it's being ignored anyway.
What the hell are you doing that you can't? News flash for you: we replace our President every 4 to 8 years and the sun still rises the next day. If you can't be replaced tomorrow, then someone done fucked up.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
But refusing to backfill their positions and bringing in contractors is A-OK, plus it eliminates long term retirement benefit costs
All the cool executives are doing it
In a way, I hope you're right. Because the companies that buck the trend will be around in 10 years, and every other one will be on its way to bankruptcy. I take great satisfaction in seeing heartless, stupid, mindless dipshits fail and take large companies with them.
I eventually see this entire system collapsing within the next ten years and not just IT (Information Technology) but the whole economy. How can the economy continue if you have nobody working and earning anything? That's right, it can't. And when that happens the entire system is going to simply collapse. Like I said before, I give the system another ten years (if we're lucky) or five years (if we're not lucky) and then... poof, gone. Total and complete world wide economic collapse that will make the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s look like a historical footnote in comparison. Anyone with half a brain can see the writing on the wall.
quoting this wonderful gem:
Several of these workers, in interviews, said they didn't want to appear as xenophobic, but couldn't help but to observe, as one did, that "there were times when I didn't hear English spoken" in the hallways. As the layoff date neared, "I really felt like a foreigner in that building," the worker said.
I'll go ahead and name names: I used to work at cisco. I have said many times that I could walk down the hallway at any random cisco san jose building and for most of the day, not hear a single word spoken in english (in hallways or breakrooms).
is this what we want to see IN AN AMERICAN COMPANY??
I don't dislike indians. I like the culture, love the food, think people from india are fine and decent, overall. but why should it be 'normal' to walk down the hallway of a san jose, california company and not hear english for hours and hours at a time?
I should have had a gopro cam or something on me and taped what a typical day was like, there (when I still worked there; they canned my ass not too long ago). I would then send a copy to the congresscritters who think that there are not ENOUGH foreign workers in the US. maybe they want me to go a full week between hearing english in an american company?
if I go thru an interview and hear 'not a cultural match' one more time, I swear to zeus I'm going to go postal. I'm nearly at the end of my rope, here....
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
My company hires a lot of H1-B's (typically PhD's from various European countries), and while we pay a good salary, we can't find enough american workers to fill our open positions. If we were willing to pay double or triple the market rate, we could probably entice happily employed candidates to come work for us, but our salary costs are already high, and paying several times market rate would probably drive the company into the ground.
Your post is anecdotal evidence that H1B visas are depressing market rate. Maybe you should figure out why people won't come work for you at what you consider to be "market" rate.
A) What were you doing you could be replaced that easily?!
In my experience, upper management's views on who is easily replaceable don't usually conform very well to reality.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Disney decided to outsource their IT. This has been going on in industry for what, a couple decades? That the IT company didn't take on the Disney employees and used a lot of H1-Bs from India is bad enough w/o the sensational Disney's-directly-hiring-H1-B-replacements-for-their-staff implication of the crappy cut and paste summary.
I wonder how many months until they have a massive data loss ?
Can anyone say stock option meltdown ?
Sony Sony Sony !
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
Companies have been working for years to eliminate essential personnel. You find complex tasks and break them down into simpler and simpler tasks. If they were paying middle class wages this wouldn't be feasible. But at slave wages it works perfectly. If you're not doing incredible complex math that requires near genius level intellect that only a few genetic freaks have then your job can be broken down into processes and then your livelihood replaced.
And after 30 years of declining wages who the hell can save anything? 60% of Americans are paycheck to paycheck. And before you trot out that nonsense about buying iPhones every 2 years my generation doesn't smoke. That more than makes up for the cost of a phone every few years. So shove off.
Maybe companies _shouldn't_ be able to drop me anytime. You know, there's a downside to my desperation for you too. That's what unemployment is for. It's not to protect me if I'm unemployed. It's to protect _you_ from competing with me when I'm desperate and I'll take _anything_. See, when that happens they'll fire you with your benefits and your high salary and hire me for minimum wage. The unemployed are coming for you. Welcome to the race to the bottom. It's a long way down.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
H1B visas rules should first apply to CEOs then downward to that organization. No company really needs an expensive CEO, they cost a lot and no large company has ever closed when their CEO died in a car crash, so they are expendable. Get a new CEO at a fraction of the cost and benefits, that's even better shareholder value.
What's good for Disney is good for America. Or at any rate, good for the Americans who matter.
I recently read that Southern California Edison replaced its whole 500-strong IT staff with H1Bs. However, details are scarce. Several US senators have called for an investigation, but the feds are refusing on the grounds that no one hurt by it filed a complaint.
The US economy is screwed anyway. The H1B saga is just one more issue in the decades-long trend of converting the economy into shareholders and people who flip burgers for shareholders. Once the rich have skimmed all the cream, they'll go find another country to screw - or at least one that actually makes stuff they can buy with their winnings.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It was not designed to be a welfare program for big companies.
You haven't been paying attention.
There's already several programs for the genius of the world to immigrate if they want to so H1-B was never necessary. But how will you get popular support? There's just too many issues that divide the American Workforce. No one votes with their wallets. Whether it's Guns, Gay Marriage, Abortion, Drug Legalization, whatever. There's always something to split the electorate. And with our winner take all 2 party system that means all anyone has to do is get a majority of the vote. Add in Gerrymandering and it's basically a done deal.
To get rid of this crap Americans would have to give up on every other issue they think matters and vote on money and only money. I just don't see that happening. If we could switch to a parliamentary system, but that pretty much means scraping our Constitution; and to hear Americans talk about that damnable piece of scrap paper you'd think it was their bible. To be fair I remember as a kid having it droned into me that it was a sacred document. Every teacher I've ever had sung it's praise. When I was older I found out why we have a Senate (hint: it our version of the House of Lords) and why we had so much States rights. It wasn't for Freedom's sake, that's for sure...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Every American job they fire - is one less American's family income for Disney.
(that includes DVD's and theater and toys and well pretty much anything, but I'm sure the lower payed H1B's will pick up the slack and make more profit!!!)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
H1B visas aren't an essential feature of capitalism.
Play Command HQ online
Disneyland was a great place years ago, my family visited there many times. Now it seems more like Wally World. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Better yet is a deadman switch with a several month time delay. That way, disaster doesn't strike until you've been gone long enough that people won't connect you to it, even though you were responsible for the programs that are now giving them trouble.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
The H1B program is making the problem worse. The corporations have the choice of training an American or hiring a fully trained foreigner. Once they hire the H1B worker they won't also do the training, and no American is going to spend lots of money in self training for a job that's filled: so no American will ever arrise to take that job. Hiring an H1B worker makes that temporary skill shortage permanent.
The CEO in question is using a government program, so he isn't the only player here.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Lesson 1 - try not to work in a place where they use fucking stupid euphemisms for employees such as "cast members".
It's a bit of a clue that either employees are not valued as long term staff or that somewhere there is a total idiot drafting policies insisting on what employees with be called.
"But it's showbusiness!" someone may exclaim - but no that does not fit because camera operators etc are not "cast members" - which means this is some weird shit for appearance sake and other arbitrary shit is bound to happen.
Who happen to be H1B visas working for temp agencies.
at least with the ACA you can get a non group Health Care plan with pre existing conditions.
Surely each slot is worth $20-50k or more for these expert workers.
Per annum. After all, the "maintenance costs" don't just go away...
Aren't they supposed to pretend that they couldn't find a qualified American? Or has the program been changed, so that no pretending that you searched long and hard for someone with 75 years of C++14 experience?
That's operating a printer with 16 years J2EE development experience.
Dear friends
I'm posting as an anonymous for obvious reasons, but wanted to share some inside view on this subject. To qualify my comments, I lived in South America working for North American and European based companies as a consultant, being paid USD 90.00/hour (so 14.4K/month == 172K/year). I credit my involvement with Opensource as the main reason to be well paid even though not leaving in USA at time.
I always admired USA and still believe this is a good country, even though is no longer the best country to live when compared to some countries in Europe (e.g. Germany, France, Finland).
About 2 years ago I decided to migrate to USA, mostly to provide my child the opportunity to learn how to speak good and proper English (with American accent). My starting pay was 200K/year, so, not within the stereotype of cheap labor and local job stealer that is so common here in Slashdot.
The H1B visa was the only way to move to USA. Calling to kill the program will just push away talented people that might otherwise being working and paying taxes in USA. That being said, I feel disgusted to know that several companies exploit the program to get cheap labor and I believe this must be stopped.
One common misconception is to believe that you can always find local people to do the job. Well, boys... that might be true for trivial jobs (like IT support), but is exactly the opposite for elite jobs (e.g. linux kernel, WebKit/Blink, Gstreamer, etc).
For those elite jobs, most of the people is already taken (e.g. Apple, Google). And the remaining people is scattered around the world, being just a few who are willing to move to USA.
Another common misconception is to think you can 'just train' the locals to do it. Nopes... it takes several years to make an elite programmer that is a maintainer in one of those aforementioned Opensource projects.
Maybe you are considering that instead of going through the H1B, I should have applied for a GreenCard (GC)? Well, I have a close friend, PhD and one of the top 20 experts in his domain area that was living in Australia and applied for a GC... that was 3 years ago and only now he will be able to move to USA.
To close my message, I would like to tell that it may be the minority, but there are indeed some really good engineers/programmers that depend on the H1B program to move to USA and later apply for a GC if planning to stay longer, which, to be quite honest, I'm a bit unsure if it is worthwhile considering that:
a) Your wife won't be able to work;
b) You pay taxes and social security in a European level and get South American level services in return;
c) Life in USA is quite expensive;
d) This country is becoming less and less democratic by the day.
Cheers
AnonymousCoward
Anyone can be replaced easily. Whether the replacement is able to pick up the job and continue is not always considered carefully enough - consequences may be bad but the act of throwing someone out the door isn't so hard. History is full of the best in a field getting shown the door because someone's nephew needs a job.
Also, while it can be hard to replace someone in a niche role it's not impossible. When I was a contractor I replaced a few "indispensable" people myself for a while. It took a bit of time to quantify what they were actually doing but I could eventually pick up the threads and do the job the "indispensable" person failed to do and document it well enough for someone with the a similar background to the "indispensable" person to take over for the long term. Sometimes they really were doing shitloads of complicated stuff for good reason, sometimes it was a needlessly complicated shambles held together by brown paper and string and only the "indispensable" person knew the standard operating procedures to keep it going.
Unless your job is to do things that have not been done before it's not so hard to replace you with a list of stuff you do handed to a person with a similar background to yourself.
I could replace you overnight. The replacement may never be able to do the job as well as you do, but often that's a problem for someone other than the person that has decided to replace you. Sucks on many levels but you are no more immune than the guy you've asked "What were you doing (that) you could be replaced that easily."
Aren't you supposed to build a pyramid?
While it is possible that someone might manage such a thing, I'd still find it insane. Two wrongs do not make a right. Just because a company screwed you over, does not give you the right to throw a tantrum and break as much stuff as possible. Such actions tend to lead to long jail sentences and impossible to pay damages. They would also make you non employable in pretty much any future job. Your best bet is to let go of your anger, and if you have time left continue to do your job. Now I wouldn't necessarily bend over backwards to make sure everything went well without you, but you still need to continue to do your job or if you can't bring yourself to do that then you need to politely ask for time off or simply explain why you feel you can no longer work there. Seriously though, I'd continue working until the end while looking for a new job. Sure it cuts into your time looking, but it is not as if you will lack time after your current job is done... Also, just because a company hires H1B's, doesn't mean they won't have to call back some of the workers they let go. Now, it would of course be poetic justice if those workers already had a different job and the H1B replacements make a complete mess of things, but, there is no point in closing a door needlessly.
I don't think you understand the concept of "market rate". If you have to pay more to get qualified candidates, then that higher rate is the market rate.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
My company hires a lot of H1-B's (typically PhD's from various European countries), and while we pay a good salary, we can't find enough american workers to fill our open positions. If we were willing to pay double or triple the market rate, we could probably entice happily employed candidates to come work for us, but our salary costs are already high, and paying several times market rate would probably drive the company into the ground.
Your post is anecdotal evidence that H1B visas are depressing market rate. Maybe you should figure out why people won't come work for you at what you consider to be "market" rate.
A large part of it is because we're a startup, and though we can match the salary of Google, Facebook, Apple, etc, we don't have the big name, nor the stability that comes from working for one of the big guys. We've got several Executives that are well connected in the industry (and came from Google and Apple), and they have a pretty good idea of what the big companies are paying and we know we're competitive with the salaries.
We're pretty strong at college recruiting, and have all the interns we can handle as well as recruiting new graduates that are doing research in our field, but we still need more senior people for some roles, and these are hard to find,a lot of them are already locked up at the big companies (Google, Apple, investment banks, etc) and aren't interested in switching jobs.
H1B fees and legal expenses are not cheap, nor is paying international relocation expenses for a candidate and his/her family, so we're certainly not saving money by hiring H1B's.
Doesnt the public have the right to demand the business owner hire only countrymen? That door swings both ways.
Good-bye
Everyone is expendable, from the CEO to the janitor.
I suggest that you leave your parent's basement and visit the real world some time. in the real world everyone is expendable except for the CEO and their cronies.
Look at all the big US companies after the 2008 crash. No CEOs, C-anything-O or boards of director were out and out fired. A very few CEOs (for example the head of Bank of America) were "retired", but given their fat golden parachutes they still ended up outrageously wealthy. There is no negative penalty, even for complete failure, for anyone at the top.
Corporations only have one goal: making the upper management as rich as possible. They will throw anyone under the bus to achieve that end: employees, stockholders, customers. If it's ever a choice between stockholders and management, stockholders get screwed.
For example: Deep Misalignment Between Corporate Economic Performance, Shareholder Return and Executive Compensation
What universe are you from? How can you make a statement that is so clearly false? Did someone pay to say that, or are you a free lance idiot?
Why is Snark Required?
American workers by mandating that positions can only be filled by H-1B workers when no qualified American — at any wage — can be found to fill the position.
I don't think that a job exists that some American would not be willing to take for $1 billion dollars.
The following jobs where it would be easy to find *some* American willing to do for $1 billion:
1. Be raped to death (with he proceeds going to their family).
2. Kill their whole family (with the proceeds going to themselves).
3. Being the 2nd or 3rd person in a human centipede.
4. Being eaten to death by Hannibal Lecter.
5. Being fed to themselves to death by Hannibal Lecter.
For point (A), they story made it sound like they were replaced overnight. I'm just wondering how that happens for any IT job... there's always some knowledge transfer that needs to be done.
For point (B), I'm saying that you cannot trust the company period. Some are saying what Disney did may well be illegal - doesn't matter to the people who were fired, because they need something to live on now. Never assume a company will follow the law, or cares about you whatsoever. In some cases they might, mind you, it's just that you should never assume that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How will you be able to buy anything at Walmart if you don't have any cash to buy said products? That's the situation that we are very much looking at coming within the next 5 to 10 years.
So capitalism involves cheating and gaming the H1b system to the point of criminality so corporate profits can be maximized at the expense of everything and everyone else? Sign me up for a different system.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
While it is possible that someone might manage such a thing, I'd still find it insane.
/. would be stupid enough to do something like that, but I'd hope that if they were, they'd at least have enough sense to include a reasonable time delay.
You didn't really think I was serious, did you? I was just pointing out that if you're going to be foolish enough to build in a deadman switch, having it go off right after you leave is going to tell everybody exactly who's responsible. I won't say that I can't imagine anybody who reads
Good, inexpensive web hosting
It really annoys me that you can get an H-1B for a job that requires you to be able to write a "Hello World" program or to be a junior sysadmin. However, the US needs some "quick" visa for highly skilled people instead of just offering green cards. The green card application process takes more than a year and no one with actual skills will sit on their ass waiting for a year, especially when you can't apply for a green card from a US student visa without first leaving the country and doing the waiting abroad. They will go somewhere else instead. My proposal would be the following:
1. Reduce the quota to maybe 10000 visas instead of 85000
2. Instead of a lottery for visas in early April rank applicants based on their salaries and pick the top 10k. Maybe do it at the beginning of each month with a montly quota of 1000 visas with any leftovers transferred to the next month.
3. Drop the lottery system completely for funded PhDs (restricted to universities belonging to some of the university groups with very strict standards)
(1) would make it impossible to use the visa for pulling down salaries and none of the consultancies could get cheap workers. (2) would guarantee, together with a fast processing time, that the visa would be very fast to get. Highly skilled people don't want to wait and the salary requirements to fit the quota is already a very good filter, so the USCIS don't need to do filtering themselves. The market is much better at evaluating who has skills through what they're willing to pay.
I'm a PhD graduate from one of the top 5 schools in the world in my field. I know there are less than 10 people in the world that know anything about my area, since my team essentially started it. Top tech companies where interested in it and wanted to hire me. I would like to stay in the US, but I will just return to Europe if I need to fight this visa mess.
I'm starting to think the only way to stop these companies from wholesale firing so they can replace everyone with cheap H1-B workers is to make them targets for massive cyber attacks. Not that I can do that. It's not my skillset. But if it ever does happen, I'm going to sit back with a big bag of popcorn and laugh my ass off.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I agree.
If you follow the second order links down to what Disney actually did, they outsourced their IT to a contracting agency.
When they did this, they laid off 125 full time employees in the process, and between three of the contracting agencies providing the services to replace them, there were apparent;y 65 H1-B applications in the last 3 years. Presumably, not all 65 went to Disney, because the contracting agencies contract services out to companies other than Disney. In fact, a vast number of dark data center porn and shopping sites are located in that area of the country, down by Los Angeles, where the majority of that kind of content is produced.
What this story is actually about, is complaining that the full time workers were replaced with contractors, some of whom were probably in the U.S. working for the contracting agencies on either H1 or L1 visas.
The summary is a gross misrepresentation of the facts here, and going with a contracting agency is a valid mechanism for ensuring "Just In Time" capability, without over-employing in order to handle upsurges in workloads. It's how janitorial and security services are handled (when you have a large company event, you have the contracted agencies put on more security people for the event itself, and added janitorial people post-event to clean up afterward.
That said, the usual route a decent company will follow when out-sourcing to a local agency, as opposed to off-shoring the work entirely, is to require that the contracting agency hire a certain percentage of the workers that are being laid off to replace them with contractors. This has the effect of ensuring continuity of service, providing a built-in mentoring capability to the contracting agency for the processes and procedures being contracted out, and in general providing continuity of employment for at least some of their existing staff.
It falls under the category of "Not Being Dickish About Switching Over To Contractors".
But the idea that they should not be switching over to contractors at all, for something like IT services, which are generally modular, replicable, and have uniformly applicable skill sets, if what you are spending your time doing is pulling wires, spinning up VMs, installing system software on replacement desktop/laptop machines, and so on, is patently absurd. These are "cog jobs", where any sufficiently skilled cog can replace any other sufficiently skilled cog in the machine, and you probably won't lose a marching step over the replacement.
That, and surge scalability, make them rather ideal for out-sourcing.
Frankly, I'm surprised companies like RackSpace are renting out their IT people, rather than forcing everyone to live on RackSpace racks; it's a pretty ideal scenario for them, in terms of profit per employee, and gives them buffer for their own internal surge scalability issues. They get borrowable capacity, and other people pay to maintain that capacity at a certain level.
Add the fact that a lot of deployment is on OpenStack with standard deployment tools, no matter if you're working on your cloud or working on someone else's cloud: all the tools are the same, so all the skills are pretty much transferrable.
This is kind of what happens when you sufficiently commoditize an industry through standardization.
I don't think you understand the concept of "market rate". If you have to pay more to get qualified candidates, then that higher rate is the market rate.
Well that's *a* market rate, but not a fair market rate. If the intention is to use scarcity to drive up wages without bound, then at least my company is large enough that we have a better option -- open up an offshore research center, move half (or even all) of the development team there and do our offshore hiring from there.
Any sufficiently complex system contains a bunch of dead man switches by nature. No need to be malicious, just walk away.
If that's not the case, you might need to acknowledge your job wasn't all that complicated.
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
This. It's not about whether you're replaceable. It's about whether some PHB who did Strategic Management at A&M Galveston thinks you are.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A lot of folks are advocating for the gov't to step in and save the American IT force. Don't hold your breath. If US companies were unable to import cheap labor, they would have to save that money some other way. It's not like they're just going to reach into their pockets and give out more money. They will appeal to the government to lower their tax or regulation burdens. The gov't won't budge here. The gov't burdens are forcing companies to cut costs in ways which the gov't allows, and H1-B is that vector. It's a deliberate loophole to keep private companies content with the existing burdens, and will not be closed, because it would rock the boat in these other regards.
My "must check in every 72 hour" deadman switch software cache that's spread through the network holding back a whole slew of self-rewriting virus and malware is what keeps me employed.
Madame Clinton proactively sought donations from Tata and Infosys eventually garnering $3Million from them. If you want your last 2 weeks to be spent training your replacement then be sure to vote for the Pantsuit Puppet.
That and the access to affordable contraception.
If you can be replaced overnight, I wonder how much work you were doing...
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Companies that replace American workers with H1-B Visa workers should be taxed at a MUCH higher rate and have any and all tax abatements eliminated.
In 15 years and 4 companies I have had 9 different CEOs, that's what makes me say that. None of them believably retired or voluntarily stepped down, and only one or two was an obvious crook. By comparison in 15 years and 4 companies I've had 6 supervisors, only one of whom left the company but in her case she really did retire.
I am not defending what upper management does, they do what I'd do, only they have more power to do it. I personally consider Wall St. the big enemy, not upper management.
The company I work for has only ever hired one H-1B worker, because he was literally the only qualified candidate. That's one worker over a ten year period.
The H-1B program is useful, but I don't see why it needs to be expanded.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I just suggest everyone does the same and tells them what theyI am writing to you as a potential visitor to your resorts and occasional consumer of your media to complain in the most intense terms possible about your companies attitude towards its IT staff in general, and specifically those employed within these resorts.
If recent reports are to be believed (http://www.computerworld.com/article/2915904/it-outsourcing/fury-rises-at-disney-over-use-of-foreign-workers.html) , you have just replaced one hundred and fifty hardworking staff with offshore labour that is cheaper.
The reasons given, unfortunartly don't jel with any reasonable person who believes in a healthy economy. Workers should be paid their proper worth and be allowed to bring up their families without the threat of an offshore person taking that job.
It is not even as though Disney is doing badly in terms of income and needs to cut costs. The only people that benefit from this action is mostly corporate share holders and the one percent of the population, including board members such as yourself. If you truly believe in a strong proud America, you should be looking to keep those good workers and give them something to be proud of.
I fully expect that such a plea falls on deaf ears, but I will be doing what I can to ensure that Disney recieves no income from me. My wife and I were planning to go to Disneyland this year. However in light of your shortsighted attitude to US workers I will take my dollars elsewhere. I will also try my hardest to make sure people know how Disney treats their employees.
Yours sincerely think of Disney.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
Hey wait a minute, if this is capitalism, where by Corporations can source labour from anywhere is the world
Why does this same capitalism prevent me from sourcing my Music, Movies, TV programs, Books, etc etc etc etc from anywhere is the world too ?
Well, after all, if "Nobody owes you a job", why should you "owe them your business"?
I was going to take my three sons to see the new Marvel Comics Move "Avengers: Age of Ultron".. forget about it now. I urge you all to do the same. use the internet , get the word out. There is only one way to deal with greedy bastards.. make them go broke. After they go broke they will take care of the rest.
My thought as to why they are changing from outsourcing to bringing them here is that now the wealthy assholes don't have to go to third world countries!
I can't wait until Disney has a Sony like insider breach and Star Wars is leaked before it is released.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Our lawyer told us we needed to show that there were no qualified US Citizens available to do the job. ;). To provide formal documentation, we took out a 30-day ad in a trade journal cited that, and stated that there were no responses (there weren't; I think trade journal job ads are pro forma for this purpose anyhow). Also the lawyer told us we had to state the wages were consistent with what we were paying similarly qualified US Citizens doing the same job.
We were doing our hiring via usenet (this was a while ago
In our case it didn't matter; these requirements were just facts. But I'm curious why Disney doesn't seem bound by those same rules.
Have the rules changed?
Was our lawyer incorrect--Is H1-B meant to displace qualified US workers with cheaper foreign workers?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Most companies I know that have done this, do not understand they are taking a 5 year road trip to mediocrity and fail. It takes about 5 years of breaking the cycle to fully understand what they just did to themselves. I'm sure some "MBA know it all", just got a huge bonus check and doesn't care because he is either retiring or moving on. Or possibly he is retiring and moving on in 5 years and just doesn't know it yet. Most companies bring in a consulting firm to help explain how best to accomplish this who also make a huge amount of money.
No. That would be "vote with your wallet".
But, in the case of public companies, the shareholders could do this. But it would hurt the share prices.
And for private companies "vote with your wallet" is the only viable approach (and by viable I mean there is no approach actually).
BlameBillCosby.com
As if I needed one more reason not to go to their hell-hole parks.
I got dragged to their parks a few years back to make the wife and kids happy. It was a miserable time, but my kids loved it.
No more. I won't give Disney another dime of my money. I'm going to vote with my wallet on this one. No more Disney toys, lunchboxes, clothing, movies...etc.
F these guys. Let them build parks in India for all I care.
not a fair market rate
The market has nothing to do with fair! It's supply and demand! Applying moral considerations to pricing would be communism!
More seriously, what makes 60 hours a week of labour from a nurse less valuable than 40 hours from a CEO? Nothing. To the people they care for, their labour is far more valuable. They'd rather have the nurse, than the CEO, who probably won't change a bedpan and has no sympathy for someone who can't get out of bed on their own. The only thing that differs is the CEO has the ability to control what he is paid.
We're all part of a vast enterprise that uses the resources of the Earth to sustain the human race. A fair rate would be for us all to get enough to live on comfortably.
The problem is that H1-B's aren't really hired. They are temporary workers to whom the company need feel no long-term obligation. They are temporary residents to whom the government need feel no long-term obligation. Bring a few of them in, let them work for a bit, then send them off when the project is done: perfect workforce flexibility.
The H1b program, like unemployment insurance, is a good idea but is subject to abuse. Fraud in unemployment benefits individuals, and we have all manner of documentation, regulation, and verification to minimize that abuse. Fraud in H1b benefits corporations, and we basically trust them to do the right thing.
..and the Libertarian position is that the problem is that the company just can't pay you pennies on the dollar and are forced to import labour because of it.
I'm pretty sure he meant Micheal Jordan
Management: "train your replacement, or you do not get any severance."
IT worker: "guess I have no choice"
vs:
Management: "train your replacement, or you do not get any severance."
Entire IT staff: "you try to pull that bullshit, and we all walk out"
Management: "okay IT workers, you win"
Microsoft hires far more H1Bs. As does IBM, Apple, etc.
The entire situation needs to be fixed. Singling out one company is pointless.
Start by donating to NumbersUSA. I do.
Thank god the group is called "Partnership for a New American Economy". I'd hate to think they were sponsoring anything un-American, which obviously they could only do if they were being duplicitous about the name of the group. Politically-minded folk wouldn't do that, would they?
But here's the problem. Unlike in the past we really do have the technology to put everyone out of work. Everyone including...
* The factory worker. Once thought as a safe job, now being replaced by robots.
* The warehouse worker. Again, once thought as a safe job, now being replaced by robots. We had an article about this on this very site. http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
* Retail employee working the cash register, replaced by self-scan registers.
* Fast food worker, replaced by self-order kiosks and machines that can even make a burger.
* Customer and technical support agents on the phone, replaced by the likes of IBM Watson.
* Janitor, replaced by a robot that can clean toilets, mop floors, etc.
And that's just the start of the jobs that everyday people rely on for their very survival that simply won't exist anymore. Not everyone can have a college degree. Hell, we have too many of them as it is in the USA. Tons of people with college degrees, even technical degrees, and they can't find work. Why? Because either the job has been completely automated by a computer or a robot.
So when all of that happens, what do you think is going to happen? The very people who were once the life-blood of the economy will quite simply have no way to earn money. The system will collapse.
Capital is so overwhelmingly victorious that they aren't bothering to pretend it's about worker shortages anymore. They don't give a flying fuck about their country; they believe their only responsibility is to make money. They are wrong; corporations are government creatures, not private entities. They've no existence other than governmental laws that grant them their superpowers. That existence comes with requirements, and one of those requirements is that they exist for the good of the country that was gracious enough to let them enjoy their legal immunity and ability to print money. The idea they have no other god but money is their own notion, brought into law by their own lobbying efforts, and it is wrong. They have obligations to their community to provide jobs, to obey laws about the effects of their pollution, and in other respects act like the human beings they bought laws to say that they are. You want power? You also get responsibility. Right now they get the former and dismiss the latter.
This is nothing new. Having worked in IT for over 50 years I have seen this many times. Bottom line, its a cost issue. Contractors can be let go faster then employees, there are no legacy or current benefits to pay. You can "ramp up" and down your staff. The contractor usually cost a little more per hour, but easily replaced or removed. The "lie" that there are no qualified US based candidates, at any price is false and always has been. What companies get with H1B staff is "cheap" labor that is well educated and motivated. I can tell you that I have always seen adds for 5 years experience in new tech at lousy salaries for "young" staff. Their is feeling in the industry that your stale if you are over 40, you want too much money and you will not work for a younger boss. The truth, and I have seen this, is that you can contract young H1Bs, pay less, dispose of them when done and keep the cream till later. Life's bitch, but that's reality. I lived with it and so must the current generation. It's not going to change. Costs must be low to complete. At least the H1B's pay us tax's, that better the offshoring the job.
in the real world everyone is expendable except for the CEO
And that's why when Steve Jobs died, he was entombed along with all of his employees to care for him in his next life.
Or maybe he, too, was replaced.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Sign me up for a different system.
Figure out something else that actually works and isn't based on wishful fantasy and I'm there. Till then we're stuck with capitalism.
I eventually see this entire system collapsing within the next ten years and not just IT (Information Technology) but the whole economy.
It'll likely be a slow hollowing out rather than an overnight crash. It'll be a like a giant game of musical chairs with everyone scrambling for fewer and fewer seats. I could easily see us reaching 50% unemployment even without the development of strong AI, just the extension of current trends in robotics and expert systems.
Or maybe I'll pirate views of them. Give Disney money for screwing the US?
mark
Yet I had to struggle to get 4 weeks of vacation time.
The obvious medium term band-aid to is start restricting working hours to 45 absolute max a week, and restrict the number of work days per year to make people take time off and regain some mental health. Get rid of the salary sham for all those working for under $100k (indexed to inflation). If your company relies on 60 hour work weeks, then hire more people.
We could soak up huge swaths of idle labor if we prioritized quality of life more.
You just described the alternative of paying enough to make your total package competitive as being too expensive. It sounds like you're saving money by that any reasonable definition, even after the government and lawyers take their share. If it wasn't cheaper than raising your pay rates, you wouldn't be doing it.
That being said, I'm willing to grant that a company that hires PhD level people is much more likely to run into a real hard limit when it comes to finding subject matter experts, and they're the types of operations that the H1B system is supposed to work for on paper. If we did the sensible thing and auctioned off H1B slots and allowed them to be resold on an open market, those are probably the types of companies that would buy them.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
What is wrong if they can find someone who can do it for cheaper?
Doesn't a CEO have a right to run his business the way he sees fit. If you can't compete with these low end folks with language barriers that says more about you than it does about cost cutting.
I can tell you have thought long and hard on this topic.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Nobody owes them a tax break, or subsidies either.
Nobody owes them totally "free" trade either.
Just make the H1B slot an expiring license (say 5 years). Auction it off at the beginning and allow it to be resold on the open market until it expires. Then you can stop bothering with questions about pay gaps and other nonsense. If there's a $10K per year arbitrage opportunity, the market will quickly sort it out.
We could use the spot price of visas at different maturities as a "yield curve" to see what the predictions are for future technical labor demand and as an indicator for how tight labor demand is right now. Best of all, the visas will be used on rock stars who are actually worth importing rather than being doled out more or less at random.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
What is wrong if they can find someone who can do it for cheaper?
Doesn't a CEO have a right to run his business the way he sees fit. If you can't compete with these low end folks with language barriers that says more about you than it does about cost cutting.
The CEO is probably one of the highest paid people in the company. Surely, they could find someone to do that job for less. And yet, that calculation never seems to come up. Funny, eh?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Right, because I'm not supposed to be allowed to petition my government to change abusive practices. Im supposed to stand aside as I see wrong and say nothing about it to my governing body. Is that what you are REALLY saying?
Good-bye
whoosh.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I thought you were referring to the companies themselves, and not public action persuading the government to create/enforce certain labor laws.
Sorry for any confusion.
BlameBillCosby.com
Yeah, so these probably did some quasi-legal manoeuvring to get around this
a) Created a new position with a different skillset for the H1-B, whose duties happen to overlap (oh, but the old guy/gal wasn't qualified to do X,Y,Z he/she only knew X)
b) Created/hired a third-party/shell company, filled with H1B, and subcontracted the work to it
The latter seems to be popular, these days, then they can say "well, we didn't hire foreign workers, we're just contracting the work to EvilCorp which happens to have mostly H1-B's as employees"
Seriously, we should all start boycotting companies which do this. There are enough of us now to make an impact. If we can convince our friends and families to boycott, too, it will make it more expensive to hire H1Bs than it is to hire Americans. We need to stop idly watching from the sidelines and do something about this. If we don't, they're free to use, abuse, and discard us with impunity.
Don't for get to sign the MoveOn.org petition instruction the prez to veto S.169, the senate bill proposing an expansion of the H1B program.
http://www.petitions.moveon.or...
...but it sure does rhyme
Historically there was the Aristocracy, and everyone else barely scraped by. Any concept of a middle class was quite small (maybe the town blacksmith?)
Sadly, it seems things are headed back to the historical norm: The One Percent doing just fine, with everyone else just surviving day-to-day, (or even more sadly, perhaps not even surviving the day).
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Fuck Disney and their Fucking retarded media, overpriced theme parks and targeted marketing to kids. It's time that this company be dismantled and sent to the bottom of the submarine ride.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Yyou don't get it. The brotherhood of multinational corporate executives are the ones running this show. They aren't going to outsource themselves - they're at the top of this ponzi scheme.
And most people still vote in favour of politicians who clearly are working for these CEOs and their cronies, not the average citizen. Before you can reasonably expect things to change, the public first needs to wake the f up and stop (re)electing these clowns. We're still a very long way from that, as most people still hold firm to the notion that "their party" deserves their vote.
You have to understand one thing.
In order for Disney to sell products in India, they have to provide India with business.
Disney is NOT going to give up that business to protect your job.
Tell me why you want American's dollars but no American employees?
Horseshit! Bob!
Don't be disingenuous. "Designed" in this context meaning "originally intended." You aren't perhaps an H1B candidate, are you? ;)
were given to keep a strong central gov't from redistributing wealth. The wealthy landowners wanted a weak central gov't that couldn't challenge their power and authority. Say what you will about strong central gov'ts, but there isn't really an alternative that can stand up to an aristocracy. The trick is keeping it from becoming crony style fascism. But it's worth the risk. The only difference between corporate fueled aristocracy and fascism is the color of the jack boot at your neck. Might as well roll the dice with a strong central gov't and try to hang on to it. The only thing you really have to do is not let the bastards divide and conquer. All you need is worker solidarity.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Why USA is issuing H1B visas to most racist people on earth?
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
https://www.change.org/p/presi...
Casteism
Every Corporation is a giant Ponzi/Pyramid scam in Globalization;
http://www.businessinsider.in/...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Casteism
Corporations only have one goal: making the upper management as rich as possible.
Please, please, please go out and start your own business and get back me after a few years, will you?
Murphy was an optimist
Well, for coding jobs, it often does involve stepping through how the code/systems work. Unless in a "nice" scenario where you're teaching a new guy the ropes (while not facing the sword of damacles yourself), it's basically "here's all the shit you need to do to keep the lights on."