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Former Disney IT Worker's Complaint To Congress: How Can You Allow This? (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes: At a congressional hearing Thursday on the H-1B visa's impact on high-skilled workers, the first person to testify was Leo Perrero, a former Disney IT worker. He was overcome with emotion for parts of it, pausing to gather himself as he told the story of how he was replaced by a foreign visa holder. Perrero wondered how he would tell his family that "I would soon be living on unemployment." He paused. The hearing room was still as the audience waited for him to continue."Later that same day I remember very clearly going to the local church pumpkin sale and having to tell the kids that we could not buy any because my job was going over to a foreign worker," he said. But a person who made a case for access to foreign workers was Mark O'Neill, the CTO of Jackthreads, an online retailer. He argued that there is a need for more skilled workers. Competition is so fierce for developers "that my developers' starting salaries have risen by 50% in the last eight years," said O'Neill, and "senior positions command compensation that meets or exceeds even that of United States Senators."
It makes no sense especially when you have kids struggling to pay their student loans. Corporations do not want to pay a liveable wage. That girl who wrote the yelp flame bait this past week is spot on. Corporations will hire you for pennies on the dollar.
Seriously. Fuck this particular guy for assisting DisneyCorp in its DMCA-abuse environment. Fritz Hollings was known as "the Senator from Disney" for a reason - they buy the best laws they can afford. Live by the sword, die by the sword, dude. Now at least there will be fewer Americans assisting Disney in its attacks on America.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's that lack, of a follow thru, which lands this bullshit journalism into the hands of sheeple. That's what you're pacing back & forth over. It isn't whether this worker can or cannot land a new job, its that the evil H-1B visa took it away. Disney hasn't created anything since the new millenium that isn't just recycled bullshit. They're solely surviving on their brand, which is burning like a pile of worn out tires. And that's where the journalistic focus should be. Let the companies who employ the H-1B visa tactic, fall. And may they fall swiftly.
The years I spent becoming a Systems Engineer were a waste when each time I found a new job, it would only be stable for about a year or two until I was training my H1-B visa replacement. Finally, I left it altogether for a career in truck/bus driving where the average time spent unemployed is around 4 hours. I make almost 65,000 a year which is what I was paid at my last IT job (which was a demotion.) If you ask me, the problem is the entire H1-B Visa program. College-bound kids ask me if they should go into a career in IT and I give them the real downsides. I tell them to learn a trade. If I had had a crystal ball, I NEVER would have gone into IT - I would have learned a trade. Certainly, driving a truck can be a bit mind numbing at times so I'm learning to code in C and C++ on my own time to keep my mind engaged. Computers and networks are so much more fun when you can hack.
Oh get off your high horse. When a company can get rid of a domestic worker and bring in a foreign one it is NOT a free market. It is deleberately stacked against domestic workers. People would go into tech if they SAW PEOPLE WITH TECH JOBS DOING WELL. As a tech parent, my kids will not be going into tech unless something changes drastically, and soon.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Can we really afford to risk further devaluing international relations with a guy who might just say anything?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
d. do the disenfranchised really believe that once elected, he'd be interested in helping them?
The real irony is that while one side pushes for the government to do the educating, the other pushes for the government to get out of education and privatize that 'industry'. To make it worse a lot of talent exists that just doesn't dot the i's and cross the t's the HR people or those who decide who gets hired wants.
Where I live (in PA) there are to many people looking for to few IT jobs. Yet even so, we aren't just competing against people from here... Local colleges, universities, and trade schools have scaled up their Comp Sci/CIS/MIS programs due to 'demand'. But the number of jobs for you after getting a degree has remained low locally. Those who can afford to leave, go elsewhere. Those that don't become unemployed or underemployed and compete for the small number of positions in the field that exist locally. Having recently gone back to finish my degree I saw people just graduating who have moved to every state in the union. Anyone who stayed can't find a job.
Even in what most people would call 'the middle of nowhere' all the larger companies (GE transportation division for instance which is the largest company in my region) hire out nearly all their internal IT to foreign workers. The example I just used tosses away apps that don't have bachelor's degrees or higher and even a bachelor's is a bare minimum. Does maintaining a small server environment require indepth knowledge of data structures or programming? No. The place uses MS products and doesn't locally do any software coding. Sure a degree shows you could work through the crap of school for 4 years or so, but most university or college programs are complete overkill for basic IT positions and don't teach the more practical things they will need on the job anyways. Then most 'require' skills that would be impossible to get outside of an industry that utilizes a particular piece of software or hardware (since no one is buying a server and a $200k piece of software to learn it for a $40k/year job). Worse are the ones that require knowledge of a product built internally at another segment of the company. In other words a job that requires skills impossible to get outside of the company for entry level employment. This is a glowing red sign saying 'We train people outside this country on our software, please don't bother applying'. After all if you already have training in that software, you worked for them already and why would you move from one job within to a different entry level one?
As if those two things weren't enough a third issue is that most companies need IT, but hate it. They see it as not bringing anything to the company and so minimize it (nearly insuring it doesn't do anything to useful for the company). Often thousands of machines with little to no automation. Primitive tools and equipment below what's required to even maintain the existing infrastructure. Business people making IT decisions with no reasonable expectations of the requirements. This is why we all hear stories about those '5 million dollar boondoggles' where consultants and outsourced companies were called in and the money seemed to all get wasted away. Hell most companies don't even trust their IT people. And really often they shouldn't. I've seen way to many cases where even the good guys are treated like shit, payed almost nothing, and expected to regularly perform miracles without ever even being appreciated. Given the treatment even good people can be tempted because they come to resent those they work for.
Oh and lastly my own personal favorite... I turn 38 years old this year. I now regularly get asked 'Why are you still in IT?' And have to explain that I actually like the problem solving and adaptation that is at the heart of IT. Or even more how I can apply for positions above 'network adminsitrator' all day, but business people don't take me seriously so I can't be 'executive material' and of course with more small companies around than large ones there are few jobs between 'network admin' and 'C** level employee'. While still being called a
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
In Silicon Valley it's not uncommon for someone straight out of college to start at 100-110k these days. One of my friends is working -remotely- (while living in the middle of nowhere, so cost of living is super low) for a west coast company as a Sr Engineer and makes 200k~.
I'm on the east coast and while my title is one notch above Sr, I'm still just your every day software engineer, and I make about 230k. I'm not leading a team. I'm not architecting anything large. I used to, and I'm qualified to, but right now I don't.
The market for qualified software engineers is -brutal-, because you need software engineers to do ANYTHING, and the market is getting flooded by "I didn't finish highschool but I went into a bootcamp so I'm awesome at Rails" and "I have an MIT degree so it means im good, right?" peanut gallery folks (even though I do know a lot of good engineers who went that route). Even paying in the 200k+ range, giving every benefits under the sun, giving people everything they want, the hardware they want, the software they want, the money they want, the projects they want, the location they want (including remote), it's STILL hard to find good people.
H1B is supposed to help with this. And the idea is good: if a position cannot be filled locally, get someone from abroad so we're not at a disadvantage. If it worked that way, it WOULD be perfect.
But it doesn't. I know a bunch of TN1s from Canada who are fantastic engineers, and are filling positions that would take forever to fill up, and are commanding 250k+ a year...and because they're not lucky at the H1B lottery, they're stuck with the TN1 leash, year after year.
During that time those subcontracting crooks are using up all of the H1Bs for bullshit that goes against the spirit of the program. And then we allow spouses of those H1Bs to work, so it takes up low skill positions (which the country has a huge shortage of), forcing people on food stamps. Its terrible.
Yes, there is a shortage of H1Bs for the companies that have genuine need for the system in the spirit it was meant for. The solution isn't to increase quotas though, its to make sure it's used the way its meant to be.
Education costs have far outpaced both inflation and the value add thanks to government subsidies that get hoovered up by the universities. In Germany, a university education is free, even for foreigners. The higher taxes graduates who get good jobs will more than make up for the cost to the taxpayers. Those good jobs exist because graduates, not being bogged down by 6-figure debts, can actually spend money that goes into the economy, rather than just paying back their student debts until they're on social security, or even longer.
Crazy student debt has created a generation that gets out of school so far in debt that their earnings don't prime the economy and create a virtuous circle of spending to create jobs.
Let's go to extremes - imagine if you had to go into debt for your primary and secondary education. Many wouldn't go, and those that did would be financially strapped, with whatever income they made going back to basic survival and debt repayments.
I'm just glad that my eyesight forced me out of programming, because it's now the pit from hell, a dead end trap, for the vast majority, and one that "more education" in the same field will never solve.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Exactly. If these H1-B's were so much more qualified, why did they need training by the less-qualified workers?
Bernie is a political hack? I'm a conservative and not really a fan of Bernie's politics but I've always viewed him as one of the very few politicians in Washington with any sort of integrity at all. Frankly I would take him over Hillary any day despite her so called "centrist" policies. The former Senator from Goldman Sachs is hardly going to be a friend to the "people."
Here are James Madisons's (the guy who wrote the Constitution) own words from Federalist Paper 46 regarding standing armies and the use of militias to oppose them:
The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
While further down Madison makes the case:
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
he is clearly stating that the people, i.e. the militia, will be subordinate to the powers of government in relation to opposing a standing army of the federal government. Those powers were already enumerated by Hamilton in Federalist Paper 29 in which he states the need for regular drills by the militia under the control of the government.
While these papers are not part of the writings of the delegates to the Constitution, that the men who wrote these papers had a hand in forming that Constitution and would most certainly have used similar arguments during its construction, it is clear their intended meaning was to have Americans armed for the defense of the country, as I stated, and which Switzerland employs.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower