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How the H-1B Visa Program Impacts America's Tech Workers (computerworld.com)
Computerworld is running an emotional report by their national correspondent Patrick Thibodeau -- complete with a dramatic video -- arguing that America's H-1B Visa program "has also become a way for companies to outsource jobs." An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the article accompanying the video:
The vast majority of people who work in IT did everything right: They invested in their education, studied difficult subjects, kept their skills updated... But no job is safe, no future entirely secure -- something IT workers know more than most. Given their role, they are most often the change agents, the people who deploy technologies and bring in automation that can turn workplaces upside down. To survive, they count on being smart, self-reliant and one step ahead...
Over the years, Computerworld reporter Patrick Thibodeau has interviewed scores of IT workers who trained their visa-holding replacements. Though details each time may differ, they all tell the same basic story. There are many issues around high-skilled immigration, but to grasp the issue fully you need to understand how the H-1B program can affect American workers.
Over the years, Computerworld reporter Patrick Thibodeau has interviewed scores of IT workers who trained their visa-holding replacements. Though details each time may differ, they all tell the same basic story. There are many issues around high-skilled immigration, but to grasp the issue fully you need to understand how the H-1B program can affect American workers.
It's not really a function of price so much as a function of skill level. Most of the H1-B folks I've had the displeasure of working with had very little experience, skill, or talent. Were there actually a glut of workers in IT, I'd say it made sense, but there aren't, and it's getting worse every day as more are imported annually, displacing folks that make better business sense to hire in every aspect save for price. There's a saying, "you get what you pay for." It may look good on paper to replace that $150k/yr rock star programmer with five $30k/yr H1-Bs (supposedly illegal, but it happens, and more often than you think), but one high quality developer will consistently produce more and better code than an army of mediocre ones. The biggest issue with this is, even though IT business process automation represents a major part of a given company's competitive advantage, if all the companies in a market play the same game and begin to all suck equally, any lack of advantage due to poor systems becomes moot. As a result, what used to be smart work done by smart workers becomes the domain of the MyComputerCareer lowest-common-denominator. And real fast, we're all out of a job.
They don't even teach welding in highschools anymore, you need to go to a specialty college to learn even the basics. Seems to me though, your "stuff being taught at highschool" isn't. Rather it can grant partial college credits towards an applicable program...in college, we had that 20 years ago too. But a college doesn't have to honor the full amount that is gained, and the board of education can drop the accredited amount when you least expect it.
Om, nomnomnom...
I'm wearying of it, but so far I just post the same thing over and over when I read about this topic. You don't see this with comparable white-collar high-knowledge professions like accounting, teaching, law, medicine and engineering. ...because they are all licensed.
This is not about unionism or protectionism. It's not holding onto the job for nationalism's sake or racism. Any race can get a license, indeed foreigners can be licensed - if they can pass the tests. Most of this outsourcing is not about putting in equivalent people; it's about being able to afford more of them and make up for the lower productivity and accuracy.
Information technology should be a licensed profession for multiple reasons; there are a lot of crappy local programmers that shouldn't have such jobs, too. This isn't about handy helpers or kid's games any more: our civilization depends on code that works right and we lose money, privacy and opportunity every day from IT failures. Medicine was not a licensed profession just a few generations back; it was licensed when it was time. For IT, it's now time.
People should stop beating around the bush and call this what it is: a government run program to subsidize labor costs for businesses and shareholders, to the detriment of American workers and taxpayers. "Fair market rates" only apply when they are to shareholder's benefit. When they actually give the worker a leg up for a change - fuck you, we're going to bring in some grads from India to do your job. Grads who can compete without five figures of student loan debt hanging over their heads.
In short - "It is entirely reasonable for American citizens to endure a drop in standard of living down to Third World levels in order to fluff corporate profits."
The usual pro-H1B supporters on here say there's nothing wrong, and it's really good that all these people are being brought in to displace American works and push wages down.
The sad truth is that not all H1Bs like the situation either. I met one who worked for an American international subsidiary in India and was now a H1B in the US. Four of them lived in a two room apartment, provided by their employer. They never went out to lunch with the other American folks on their project . . . because their wages were so low, that they could simply not afford it. Instead, they went home and cooked for themselves.
The one I met lamented that he wanted to go back to India to get married and start a family. He also commented that they could sense the disdain for H1Bs among their American colleagues.
So, American workers do not like H1Bs, the H1Bs don't like being H1Bs . . . who likes the H1B concept? Oh, yeah . . . top level management. Well, at least someone is happy here.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
> They could likely afford it, but the typical H1-B is hoarding as much money as possible so they can take it back to their country.
Of course they are. They're being thoughtful, responsible people planning for a future, and perhaps even planning for their family's needs. Americans spending s much as we do on "entertainment" as part of our work life, on expensive lunches and expensive hobbies is why so few of of my younger colleagues in the field have any savings, or fallback plans if their startup stock options turn out to be worthless.
There are reasons to dislike the results of H1B immigration. Fiscal caution by the H1B holders is not a reasonable one.
So let me get this right..
You are voting for a guy who regularly stiffed laborers of their pay (hundreds of cases on record), who stiffed subcontractors and other businesses on their pay, and who said he was using u.s. labor when he was found to be using foreign labor.
P.T. Barnum put it best. There's a sucker born every minute.
Fortunately, Trump has basically lost the race.
Just for funsy's go to Youtube and search for "trump praise clinton". You'll see only 7 years ago he was saying she was terrific and would make a good president or vice president.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I completed highschool 10 years ago (2006).
I took Welding (Gas, Arc, and MIG), Drafting and CAD, Computer Science, Carpentry, and Electronics. My high school also offered Machining, Autobody, Small Engines, etc.
It was drilled into our heads that College/University was required to enter the real world, but many of my graduating class that took the "trade" courses went right out into the work field and learned more as they need it in the field.
I started my own business in high school doing web design. Out of high school I worked full time "regular" jobs in advertising, direct sales, retail, low voltage wiring (ethernet, coax, 18-2, 18-4), security system installation, and then locksmithing.
My business slowly grew as life progressed. While working for the locksmith I had an opportunity to focus on my business fall in my lap and I took it. Since then business has only picked up and grown year-over-year.
I am Canadian, living in Canada. The majority of my clients are in the US. :-)
The upper middle class doesn't give a shit what happens to the lower middle class, at least not until it happens to them. No big surprise there.
Sure we do. We just get accused of racism/nativism/protectionism instead of lauded for our noblesse oblige.
I remember this same discussion 20 years ago when I was in grad school for electrical engineering. I was a Pat Buchanan voter arguing with a neocon-ish professor at my lab about how important it is to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States. He said "but we don't want those jobs here, we want tech jobs." Okay, that's great in theory, but the vast, vast majority of our fellow citizens are not as intelligent as we Masters/Ph.D. electrical engineers. I cannot take a 100 IQ auto worker and run him through engineering school and have him come out with a 150 IQ. It doesn't work that way.
I'm opposed to illegal immigration because it drives down wages and decreases the safety of my poor countrymen. I'm opposed to unfair "free" trade agreements because they eliminate the jobs and drive down the wages of my working class countrymen. The purpose of "the economy" and national trade and immigration policy is to serve the interests of the citizens. It is not the purpose of the citizens to serve the interests of "the economy."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
There are plenty of jobs for [this, that, and the other thing]
There are plenty of job ADS.
This is because, in order to hire an H1-B, the employer must first advertise the job to US persons.
But there are whole classes given on how to gimmick the hiring process so that anyone who applies, other than the desired H1-B, can be plausibly turned down as unqualified. The US applicants waste their time, and the H1-Bs get the positions.
Give us a call when there are plenty of HIRES of US citizens for these, or any, positions.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A lot of people deride unions, but unless we have them, corporations pull this type of shit again and again. The government is either apathetic or complicit, which means the only protection for this type of shit is unions.
Actually, as a pro-H1B supporter, you're wrong.
I fully acknowledge that there's something wrong. Companies like TaTa being able to bring over tech-workers for non-specific, non-highly-skilled generic coding jobs, and then contract them out is very very very wrong. What that does is generates immigration of people with mediocre skill sets, who will likely be net neutral on the economy, but a net negative on the wages of people working in the tech sector.
That's really not good.
On the other hand, what H1B should do (exclusively - it does this anyway, but it should *only* do this) is allow companies to hire people for very very specific jobs, with very very high wages, where it's not possible to find someone else to do it. There absolutely are legitimate H1B workers coming in and doing jobs for Google/Apple/FB/MS etc that no one else in America has the skills to do, and being paid multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That's good both for tech employment (as it makes products possible that weren't before, and in doing so makes companies more profitable, and hire more people), and for the economy. An all round win.
I can assure you, that if companies like Google/Apple/FB/MS could hire Americans for a role, they would not jump through the hoops of hiring a European for $200,000 a year, plus $150,000 worth of moving them to the US, plus tens of thousands of dollars in paying for visas and green cards. The key is to make sure that all H1Bs are for that kind of role, not the bullshit that TaTa does.
[Disclaimer] I'm an H1B holder working for one of the above companies in a very specialist area.
Absolutely!
In part, it's all about how things look on the budget sheet. Replacing one North American worker for two Indian workers - and paying less - looks good. And the numbers can be shown to management. The downside - inferior code, taking longer to produce - isn't captured as neatly. And the numbers can't be shown to management anywhere near as easily.
And one other fun fun fun detail ... managers get promoted based on the number of people they manage, not the total salary of their underlings. So replacing your home-grown, competent North American worker with multiple lesser-skilled, lesser-paid foreigners means the managers get bumped up a pay-grade.
So ... while the outsourcing (or, in the case of H1-Bs, in-country outsourcing) means that companies pay much, much more for the same software, the people making the decisions don't care about that - they care about promoting themselves.
And one final candle on the cake: the stock market punishes companies that deviate from the pack. If one company were to stand up and say "Hey, this outsourcing is costing us more! Let's stop doing it!" then their stock would take a hit. And corporations are run by the board, for the board: the largest part of their remuneration is stock options.
A country without borders is no longer a country.
In an ideal world, the flow of labor, capital and ideas should be free and borderless - but we do not live in an ideal world.
Countries have differing laws, social programs and structures. To protect a country's citizens and its social programs and infrastructure, there needs to be sensible immigration control.
Flooding any nation with immigrants until social structures break benefits no one. Immigration is a noble thing (both of my grandparents were immigrants), but there are practical limitations that need to be enforced.
Fifteen years ago, I was offered a job at Yahoo, in California, making close to four times my then-current salary in Mexico City. About US$70K a year. That money, even today, is a shitload of money for me.
Of course, I declined. I declined even being unaware of the ridiculously high costs of living in the San Francisco Bay area — I declined because I didn't want to stop living at a city I love, close to my family and life-long friends. But yes, digging a bit deeper into what US$70K a year would be for a living there... I never looked back.
Currently, I have been employed for 11 years at the same place. The peso has slided against the dollar, so I still make slightly over US$20K a year. I live a very nice life in a house very well located. I don't have much savings, but then again, I did have something to fall on when my kids were born. Have never had a loan. My wife does not currently work, but we estimate she can go back to doing so in 2-3 years, and then we will get some savings again.
What would there be in there for me going for a life at a country that will always see me as a foreigner? Not much, I guess.