Slashdot Mirror
Immigration Attorneys: Industry Pushes Foreign Labor, Claiming 'US Students Can't Hack It In Tech' (breitbart.com)
geek writes: According to Caroline May from Breitbart News, "The tech industry is seeking to bolster its argument for more white-collar foreign tech workers with the insulting claim that the education system is insufficiently preparing Americans for tech fields, according to pro-American worker attorneys with the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). [In an op-ed published at The Daily Caller, IRLI attorneys John Miano and Ian Smith take the tech industry to task for its strategy to promote the H-1B visa program -- alleging a labor shortage of apt American tech workers while importing thousands of foreign workers on H1-B visas from countries with lower educational results than the U.S.]" John Miano and Ian Smith write via The Daily Caller: "But if the H-1B program really is meant to correct the failings of our education system, as BigTech's new messaging-push implies, why is it importing so many people from India? According to results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global standardized math and science assessment sponsored by the OECD, India scored almost dead last among the 74 countries tested. The results were apparently so embarrassing, the country pulled out of the program all together. Not surprisingly then, there isn't a single Indian university that appears within the top 250 spots of the World University Rankings Survey. And unlike American bachelor's degrees, obtaining a bachelor's in India takes only three years of study."
With a mark up to 20 bucks an hour to their American customers. Or work for 60,000 as a Software Dev filling a Principle Dev role with commensurate experience.
i am so very tired....
If I would have known that I could obtain a bachelors degree in only 3 years... oh wait, I already did that by doing 18-21 credit hours a semester instead of the usual 12, otherwise known as benefitting from the fact that credits per dollar in that range reduced the cost of my education. Silly me for caring about my education's cost instead of viewing it as a time to goof off.
Thirty four characters live here.
I happen to know that even getting accepted for a BA at the IIT requires passing one of the hardest university entry exam on the planet. Sure, for MA and PhD, the IIT is crap, but the BA graduates are among the best available, simply because they are the best from a large pool of applicants (and the rest be damned...). That said, while there are a few US universities that can compete on BA level, they do not produce enough graduates, and hence the importing.
Side note: A few years ago when I was doing my PhD, we did a nice little experiment when we found a floor-plan of an CS institute at Berkeley: We tried to identify which PhD students were American and which were not. We ended up with something like 1 in 10 US and 1 in 10 unsure. The rest were from abroad. So my take is the insult here is not by the people saying the truth about the US education system, the insult is to those going through that defective system.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
and 60-80 hours a week with no OT pay
$150,000 minimum wage for H1(b) people and the issue will take care of itself overnight.
People act like having an Android instead of an iPhone makes them some tech god, or even someone installing a mainstream Linux OS that realistically runs about the same as any modern GUI OS. People nowadays use toys, and because they're electronic and modern and have quad processors, they seem to think that translates to a computer science literate generation of society, and that just isn't the case.
Simply, about age 35 I was "too old" and was pretty well done in the tech industry. I wasn't even able to get back into the interviews. This was right after Y2K (see, I am old) and there really was a glut of IT workers looking for jobs.
I saw the writing on the wall when I looked around for old men and didn't see many. I went back to school and now I teach at a middle school. If I really believed the jobs were there, I honestly believe that I could go back to school and be up to speed an a semester or two. However, I know that the jobs are not there. I know plenty of 50 year old ex-IT workers.
The reality is that the lack of willingness to hire is the problem. The workers have been pushed out; but can quickly "retool" of the demand existed. However, stop and think, if we weren't so fixated on pushing people out of the tech industry, about how much expertise we would have grown. That is potential, and, frankly, education investment that this country has wasted.
Those of you thinking, "I am so awesome that it can't happen to me," consider the number of older IT guys that are driving cabs and delivering pizzas.
The reason for hiring them, at least in Silicon Valley, is not to pay a bargain basement wage, but to enable US companies to hire the best and brightest in the world. It's got nothing to do with a shortage of US workers. [...] Now, if US employers were forced to hire based on immigration status - citizens first, then green card holders, then it would be a distinct advantage to be a citizen. It'd also probably result in US employers not having the smartest people in the world working for them.
So let me see if I get your point.
The important issue in your mind is that US employers get the smartest people in the world.
And this is a more important issue than US citizens having a job.
Additionally, why shouldn't there be an advantage to being a citizen?
(I'm all for helping people in other nations, and note that we've brought a lot of people out of poverty... but do we have to bring our own population into poverty to promote that goal?)
WE need unions
No. The last thing we need is unions. The last thing I want is some group of people stealing my wages to promote their own agenda, sanctioned by the government.
source.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
The American war on unions has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns that most of alive at this time have ever seen. It amazes me that people have been convinced to act against both their own, and the nation's, best interest in order to increase profits for so few.
We are only now seeing the results of continual decreases in aggregate spending power that is the result of the failure of the workers to organize both for themselves, and for the greater good. Instead organizing has become a historical footnote as we descend into a vicious circle brought about by lower aggregate spending as a direct result of decreased worker power.
has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns
The unions do most of the advertising all by themselves. At some point in history, they went from being the victims to the bullies, and they lost popular support. Even without the violence, anyone who has had to work with a union finds the process maddening. When you read about the sickening attitude of both management and labor in the 80s within the auto industry, it makes you wonder how we stayed on top as long as we did. Unions have become just another bureaucracy that people have to deal with. We really need to reduce the influence of both corporations and unions on government (a la Citizen's United).
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Makes perfect sense to me. How's that working out for you in the long run?
Why is Snark Required?
I employ a lot of IT talent in Canada and the US. Here's what see in the marketplace:
* North American talent is the best, bar none but ... ...
* North American talent is produced in small quantities.
* Indian talent is (among the?) worst, but
* Indian talent is produced by the thousands.
I also work with many business partners, some of whom are Indian outsourcers and some of whom are large US corporations that have outsourced a large part of their IT work to India.
The work that gets done in India is usually shoddy. It takes 3 Indians to attempt the same job that one American will do.
So what's wrong? Are Indians dumb or something?
Turns out, they are exactly as smart (or dumb, take your pick) as anyone else. But they operate in a toxic work culture:
* Their organizations encourage cheating, which begins with those very difficult University entrance exams.
* Corruption permeates the workplace. You do favours for managers, so they will later help you advance your career.
* If you are really smart, you get poached from one outsourcing firm to another every 6-18 months. You never settle into a job long enough to get productive. Indian outsourcers literally have talent scouts on their payroll that have full time jobs at competitor firms.
* If you are not very smart, you stay in the same job for much longer, but you will never be very productive for the same reason that a not very smart American will never be very productive.
As a result, Indian outsourcers tend to have incredibly poor productivity and work quality. Firms that hire them are fools, because they look only at the low (and rising) hourly rates, but not at what an hour of labour will buy you.
I also see Indian workers (H1B or just normal immigrants) working in North America. First, I assume these are among the best and brightest, as they obviously had the motivation to relocate and had to get through whatever filters immigration authorities apply. These people fit in quite well and after a few years are (aside from accent) indistinguishable from their native-born cousins.
So the problems are basically this:
* North American education is good, but should scoop up a bigger segment of the population to compete.
* Indian education mostly sucks, with a few exceptions like IIT.
* Indian workplace culture is dysfunctional, and it's better to hire immigrants from there than to either send work over or give work to temporary workers. Don't outsource to Indian firms - that's a disaster.
* Employers frequently mistake hourly rates for total cost of ownership. They harm themselves and their former local workers through this mistake.
That's the world we live in.
Unions raise wages at first. The dark side that they don't tell you about is that this causes the companies to try to find other ways to cut costs, and eventually leads to the jobs moving overseas.
Unions are not the answer. Unions are a hack workaround for a failed government that isn't raising the minimum wage fast enough to keep up with inflation, that isn't protecting workers from what should be illegal cuts to employee pensions, that isn't protecting worker safety enough, that isn't doing enough to protect workers from wrongful termination, and so on. Everything a union does is something that our government is supposed to be doing, but has failed to do.
And because they aren't the government, unions don't have the power to punish companies that decide to move the entire labor force overseas. A union's power exists only up to the point at which the company decides that they no longer need U.S. labor. After that, the union has no power whatsoever. Thus, unions will always be poor substitutes for proper government oversight and regulation of businesses, at least as long as we live in a global economy.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
uh, what personal time do you have if you're putting in 60-80 hours a week? idiot
Americans are so ridiculous when it comes to work culture. they have no joy, no pride, no self esteem, no passion. It's just work work work for them.
Germans are very hard working people too, but they get lots of benefits such as a good health care system, subsidized education so they are not drowning in debt, mandatory vacation, overtime pay, and so on. Americans on the other hand are so stupid, they think giving companies FREE LABOR is an honor. What a bunch of fucking morons.
I have to laugh myself silly when people object to unions.
Have you ever been in an effective union? Most haven't been in a union at all, but spout nonsense "everybody knows". Or they pick outstanding bad actors and paint all unions the same.
Some very few have been in bad unions. Those do stink.
No, the gripe people have with unions is propaganda generally spewed by those that would least benefit from good unions; bad employers that don't want to pay a fair wage. Before you fire off that hot reply full of indignation, ask yourself if you'd like it if you couldn't be fired because a H1B visa worker costs less, or because your boss is a clueless skylark, or because your employer can cut costs and increase profits by working you like a dog by cutting your team by 1/3 and doubling your workload.
Is fifty buck a month is starting to sound like a better deal now?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Please stop shilling for billionaires.
The United States has a higher GDP per-capita than it did during the time the boomers came up. There is *plenty* of wealth to go around. What has changed is the distribution of that wealth.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
We've hired several people from India. You have to perform a rigorous technical interview because more than half of them didn't know a damn thing. The people we hired are good, though.
-- Will program for bandwidth
That's pedantically true, but the panicked rapidity with which companies try to cut labor costs is directly proportional to the difference between what that company is paying for labor and what its competition is paying for labor. That's why so many small retail businesses support minimum wage hikes on a state and/or national level. It makes it easier for them to pay their workers a decent salary because they know their competition will have to do the same.
That's absurd because the reason for choosing politicians has nothing to do with corruption. Your ad hominem doesn't actually rebut my point. If anything, it's more like saying that people don't need the right to vote, because politicians are so universally corrupt that it won't do any good....
No, they actually don't. You're still as expendable as toilet paper with a union. You obviously missed the part where unions have absolutely no power once the company decides to offshore everyone. What, you think the executives are going to walk out in solidarity? When the plant closes, and nobody has a job. It doesn't matter if the workers all go on strike, because the company doesn't need them anymore anyway. And that Chinese (statistically) factory that takes over production won't be a union shop.
And the people who should be regulating those Chinese factories to ensure that workers are paid reasonably, are not forced to work unreasonable hours, etc. are the Chinese government. They (along with the governments of many other countries) have not done so to nearly the degree that we in the U.S. would prefer, which is a big part of why we have such problems with offshoring in the first place. And the U.S. government hasn't done enough to prevent Chinese companies from dumping goods into American markets made by workers in such conditions. These are all things that only government can fix, and that unions are completely powerless to defend against. And unless government is willing to enact those regulations and enforce them, the unions don't make a bit of difference except in the very short term. And if government did enact adequate regulations, then the union wouldn't be needed.
But please, educate me about how a union is going to prevent offshoring—how a union has even the slightest bit of power to do so. Better yet, educate all the folks from my hometown who lost their jobs when two of the largest union shops shifted manufacturing to other countries. Ask them whether that 20% was worth having to get by on unemployment until it ran out....
Of course there are greedy corporate executives looking to abuse their employees. I never even remotely implied otherwise. What I said was that unions have no real power to stop it, because when push comes to shove, they don't have the legal authority to tax the bajeezus out of those companies' imports to punish them when they shift most or all the jobs to another country.
In my experience, union shops generally turn into train wrecks—union grievances for daring to touch the wrong piece of equipment (even if you weren't forced to do so by management), corruption in the union leadership (to the
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
A nation which consumes itself, just like South Korea and Japan. Germans on average don't have time and/or money for kids.
Software engineers will make between 2000 and 3000 euros and will pay 1200 euros rent for a family home.
Merkel now turns Germany into an Arab hellhole, because that is apparently the cheapest way to replenish the workers for this broken economic system. Have all the fun you want with Sharia soon.
Unions do all kinds of wonderful things.
They make it incredibly difficult to fire under performing workers, for example. That lazy guy who never finishes anything on time? Yeah, can't fire him. Can't even discipline him.
Unions take your dues - which will not be small - and will use them to prop up politicians. Politicians that you may not like.
Unions may raise your wages, sure, but that will also raise the cost of your company doing business. That means your company will need to charge more, meaning more work for the non-union shops because they're less expensive.
Unions will make sure that you are promoted based on years of experience, not skill or knowledge. So that moron who doesn't know the difference between an integer and a float, but has been here 20 years? He's getting paid more than you and always will.
Speaking of, are you particularly valuable as an employee? That's nice. You may be super smart, very talented, incredibly fast at what you do, but too bad. You're getting union scale pay.
No, we don't need unions. Is your company crappy? Leave. Find a job somewhere else. That company will have to learn to treat their workers better or they'll be stuck with a perpetual revolving door, with no work getting done.
It worked at my company. We weren't being treated well. A ton of people quit. Company wised up, started treated existing employees better, increased pay and benefits. No union needed - just a free market.
Love sees no species.
Funny you should mention the auto industry. Japan's is heavily unionised, and they are making the most popular cars in America, and they didn't need massive bail-outs during the last financial crisis.
Unions clearly ruined them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You are right in that I have no idea what percentage of unions are rotten. I can only tell you that all of my experiences have been pretty poor. My wife's hospital had a strike. These are nurses, not iron workers. Tires were slashed, threats of violence were made, etc. The scabs were better nurses, by most accounts. The nurses were already the highest paid in the metro area. The hospital was (and is) bleeding money due to its role in a poor area. The only reason the strike was "resolved" is because the bought politicians leaned on the hospital.
My friend runs a small iron working shop - just him and a few long-time employees with benefits. He's had rocks through his window and his equipment is regularly vandalized.
Locally, the iron workers union burned down a church that was under construction by non-union labor.
Attempts to reform public schools are repeatedly thwarted by public teachers unions. Attempts to get rid of morally objectionable public pensions fail across the board at the hand of public unions.
In NYC, the grossly-overpaid TWU went on strike illegally in a city that is 95% dependent on transit.
Have you ever been written up for a bullshit "grievance" by dozens of cliquey union members because you said something unpleasant to one of the other members? That's fun to be on the receiving end of.
I'm sorry, I do recognize the historical importance of unions, and I do think workers need to be organized. I just don't think the current thing we call a "union" is terribly beneficial to society. Its mostly a semi-governmental bureaucracy at this stage. I'm glad it served you well, but I have not had nice interactions.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
They want you to believe illogical bullshit. So the claim is that education in the US can not prepare students to become employees in tech industries, that already exist and we built using students trained in that US education system, that was (the one disparaged and being torn apart to create for profit charter schools). Can no one see the illogical bullshit, if the claim was in any way or shape or form true, the would be no fucking tech industries looking to employee those improperly educated students but as those industries exist and are pretty much fully staffed with educated students, then the claim must logically be bullshit.
Basically they are loosing the lie, what they are saying is they do not want to pay one cent to train people, the want the government to do if for them for free (absolutely for free as they keep their money in offshore tax havens and do not want to pay one cent for taxes to pay for that education) and even when the government pays for all that training those corporations want to pay those trained people less, much less.
Before the psychopaths took over, corporations trained people, tried to employ them for life and continued to train them, corporations were loyal to their staff and staff were loyal to their corporations. Now the psychopaths have turned it all on it's head, loyalty to no one or nothing, lying, cheating and stealing is acceptable as you get away with it or when you get caught the penalty is lessor than the benefit and the investors, well, their assets are there to be strip mined, at the first opportunity, taking into account the rules about net getting caught or the penalty being much less than the crime.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen