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Indian IT Sector Warns Against US Visa Bill (reuters.com)
India's IT lobby warned on Tuesday that a bill before the U.S. Congress aimed at imposing tougher visa rules unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a U.S. labor shortage in technology and engineering. From a report on Reuters: Industry lobby group Nasscom was responding to a bill introduced by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, that would double the minimum salary required for holders of H-1B visas to $130,000 and determine how many of the visas were allocated, based on factors such as overall wages. India's $150 billion information technology sector, led by Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, uses the H-1B visas to fly engineers and developers to service clients in the U.S., their biggest market, but opponents say they are using the visas to replace U.S. workers. Concerns about President Donald Trump's immigration policies were heightened by his ban on refugees on Friday. "The Lofgren Bill contains provisions that may prove challenging for the Indian IT sector and will also leave loopholes that will nullify the objective of saving American jobs," Nasscom said.
I could careless about the Indian IT job sector. Piss off.
How about salary shortage? There is no shortage in engineering. Engineering in the West is a dead-end profession and you can only lie so much to young people before they study in some other field.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm
"Job Outlook, 2014-24 0% (Little or no change)"
Engineering is for the naive.
I see no downsides at all. This should have been done long ago.
I suspect this will be the only good thing to come out of the Trump presidency.
I doubt much good will come out of the Pence presidency either. Bets on how many months before that begins?
...to replace U.S. workers". Let's not be naive - that is exactly what is happening, and nothing else.
I worked a few months for a company that was stocked mostly with H1-Bs and owned and ran by Indian immigrants. The way that they abused the heck out of their own countrymen like they had imported the caste system to their little office just filled me with disgust.
Yeah plenty of American employers abusing American employees but at least the American employees don't risk deportation if they quit, or get fired because the employer suspected them of trying to find a better job.
about time, even though using me to prove American skilled worker stat is not fulfilled was not helping the cause when they tech interviewed me
Donald Trump is an idiotic stopped clock, but on this issue he is right with the times. H-1B and L1 visas have to go. Entire divisions at companies like Microsoft are virtually monolithic blocks of Indian or Chinese immigrants, and foreign staffing firms dominate their placement. 9 out of 10 recruiting emails I get are from foreign recruiters, all trying desperately to eek out another dollar or two on the rate.
Screw 'em. This is the only thing Trump has done (or will do) that I find appealing.
This is a myth
it'll be cheaper anyway
You speak of the "U.S. labor shortage" yet I look around and see American colleagues who are stuck in dead-end positions with no raises/promotions and struggling to find anything better, and then on the floor above me is at least a couple hundred H1-Bs in positions that could easily be filled by Americans who are looking.
>> bill introduced by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat...Trump's immigration policies
Nice to see some bipartisan agreement and action again, right?
Now we know who's abusing the H1B visa program - the ones who complain the loudest.
We offshore our India team, so we won't be affected by the H1B changes. But the body shops here will be decimated, which is probably going to be a good thing.
Indians don't want to get paid twice as much? Sounds like trump has it right.
.... that it is legal in the USA to discriminate based on country of origin now, even when they are legally landed permanent resident, and entitled to work in the country? I'm not wholly up on US immigration policies, or how h1b's normally work, but it seems top me like this bill might be setting companies up to deal with a swarm of discrimination lawsuits.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
After the dot com bust, I read a study that predicted that the IT industry will have 1M+ job openings by 2030 because baby boomers will have retired by then and foreign workers will stay home to pursue a middle class lifestyle. That prompted me to go back to school to learn computer programming on a $3,000 tax credit that George W. signed into law after 9/11. People thought I was crazy to go into computers when health care became the new money major. Fast forward 16 years later... I'm enjoying my career in IT support, making more money and paying more in taxes. Looking forward to making more money and paying more in taxes as the baby boomers retire and foreign workers stay home in the next 13+ years.
"unfairly target some of its members" ??? Are they kidding ? What about their sham operations unfairly replacing American workers ? And "it will not solve US Labor shortage" ?? Again which labor shortage ? The one where people refuse to work for poverty range salaries, whereas the 4 Indians crammed into a one bedroom apartment sharing one car, making 40% less than the American worker they are replacing ? That is not called a labor shortage. It is called slave driving. All those infosys, tata, wipro, etc companies can go to hell as far as I am concerned.
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The more I know people, the more I love animals
take that cheap foreign labor and shove it up yer curry hole
Time and time again we hear how this technical talent simply doesn't exist here in the US and we need to go abroad to find it.
If this is true, why don't these entrepreneurial and brilliant technologists build world-class companies and products in their home countries?
Something tells me these H1B visa holders are neither entrepreneurial nor brilliant.
When management can pay $20,000 a year to a worker in the Philippines to write code, what incentive is there for me to learn how to write code? I can't beat $20,000 a year.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Americans farm out a lot of stuff, ranging from making our clothes to picking our tomatoes.
It has nothing to do with Americans not knowing how to do something but rather Americans aren't really interesting in sewing shirts in a sweatshop or picking tomatoes in the hot sun. So we hire people who are willing to do those things.
Not really any different than my hiring my maid to clean my house for $3/hr so I can do something more enjoyable.
They can go fuck a cow.
Refuse to tell us how to reboot our Dells?
This is simply another thinly veiled attempt to maintain an unfair, questionably legal, unethical and immoral position in the united states via H1B visas.
I am fine with visas filling positions which cannot be filled with American workers but to "restructure" positions then force workers to hire their replacements which are not supposed to be replacements is completely wrong.
I'm pro-open-borders (subject to individual background checks) but if you are going to have a system like HB-1 visas that are nominally only supposed to be used when a US citizen or permanent resident can't be found, you need to do it right.
This means making it very difficult to "game" the system so that you can hire a foreigner for $60K to do a job that "looks like" a $60K job on paper but is really a $65K (or $165K) job with a low-ball salary designed to make American candidates look elsewhere.
A partial fix is to do what Trump is suggesting: Have much-higher minimum salaries. If the minimum salary is $130K, you still may have "low ball" job offers of $130K for a job that is really a $200K position, but at least most mid-level and fresh-out-of-college techies won't have to compete with non-Americans for jobs in America.
They will still have to compete with jobs that will go overseas (and SOME will if hiring foreigners gets harder), which is one reason I'm for open borders when it comes to employment.
Personally, I would replace all work visas with a general work visa available to anyone who can pass a background check, but I would charge the employee a significant surtax on all income (probably 10% or so) with the funds directed to career-education and -retraining programs for American unemployed workers with any leftover money directed to K-12 and secondary education programs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
India's IT has been devaluing our skills and jobs for many years, it's about time somebody does something about it.
There's a shortage of below minimum wage labor within our borders.
Call centers tend to be run as sweat shops to squeeze as much tech work out of as minimally qualified people as possible for a little pay as they can offer to get them to show up to work. India was the solution to pay even less to get equally unqualified work.
The problem with tech isn't the lack of people willing to work tech, there's thousands of reasonably good techs that are jobless in every major city. It's the way companies view tech. Bean counters see tech as a pure expense since I.T. rarely brings money into the company directly. The job of I.T. is to enable everyone else in the company to bring money in. Sadly I.T. is seen as the equivalent to cleaning staff or the electrician that had a job to do but never left by many organizations. This view of I.T. is part of why so many companies that shun tech are often caught without good backups and easily fall prey to ransomware. At least ransomware makers are profiting from the mindset.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Forget the details of the issue and look at it from a distance. Lobbyists for a sector say a legislative change pertaining to that sector is bad.
For all issues the same thing happens. Whichever party proposed the legislation. But people don't seem to see that it's the lobbyists that are always the problem and their attention is easily diverted by an issue that probably doesn't even affect them.
Apologies for the anonymous, but I'd rather not be identified. I've worked for multiple fortune 500 companies and it's a cost decision. IT has always been viewed as overhead and a necessary cost of doing business. Moving the majority of support to India literally cuts costs by 60-70%. It doesn't seem that way at first because often similar benefits are required (US LAW)... but the benefits aren't used by the indian counterparts.
This isn't an issue of quality of employees... it's about providing a service that's "good enough" to get by with. US Employees aren't competitive salary wise with how US LAW currently allows us to exploit (yes I said exploit) H1B Visa for projects that require on site staff (not located in india).
I don't facilitate this kind of thing, and highly recommend against it. Most often I suggest that 1 US employee is equal to 2-5 indian counterparts and that the issues that arise with foreign replacements (language, cultural etc) often outweigh the cost difference in Tier 3+ or critical positions. Tier 1 and 2 is different matter. Generally there's no difference in education and quality of individuals between US and India. In fact, India seems to be the obvious choice when you compare sick time used, benefits used, and cost per employee.
I'm not saying this is right. I'm just saying that's how the playing field is right now. So again, there is not a labor shortage, it's a labor shortage at competitive salary requirements.
I would love a default doubling to our salaries (Though an important note is that is would not be close to 130,000). I might be bias that I am in Illinois, but you all probably know our situation right now. How are employer's saving money with this? or even before this? I don't have too much knowledge on what else that 130,000 or H1-B in general entails so if someone could fill me in on that, that'd be awesome.
Is that why there are so many Americans working 3 burger flipping jobs just to keep alive and pay the rent?
How does an entity lobbying for foreign companies say something will 'nullify the objective of saving American jobs' with supposedly a straight face...these guys are comedians at night right...just to make ends meet.
I mean, since when cutting and pasting code from a code base and creating a sub-par application is called skilled labor ? Has anyone ever worked with so called wonderful java code that one of these H1B abusing Indian companies' employees produced ? I personally did. One of my old employers had a team of Indian "Java programmers" As a sysadmin, I had to talk to them daily to inform them about problems we were encountering daily. And the solution was to copy another piece of code from a screen and paste it into their source code and compile it and hand it out to me to test again. No optimization , no garbage collection or nothing like that. I know a few people who barely graduated high school and can do a job like that. You don't need no stinkin' (and I mean it figuratively and literally together if you can catch my drift) H1B abusing Indians to do that ? When someone has the title of "Programmer" I expect them to know how to actually write efficient code, not copy someone else's work and hope for the best. Not the way it should be, but according to these H1B abuser outfits, US needs this kind of workers from India. Pfffft... I don't think so. They can now go home, roll up the java code they wrote printed on rough paper and shove it up where sun never shines.
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The more I know people, the more I love animals
Before I delve into the issue,
About: I do have Master's degree from an U.S. institution with 7 years of relevant experience. I am on H-1B, and my previous job was replaced by 2 outsourcing firms. I have resided here for 10 years. I have directly worked for American companies (not outsourcing or IT work). In my current company 99% are all Americans and I did not steal or replace anyone's job.
The Limitation: H-1B is firstly capped by 85,000 visas every year out of which only 20,000 visas are given to people with a Master's degree. If the number of applicants is greater than 85,000, then a lottery takes place. For example, last year there were 240,000 applicants, which means only 1 in every 3 applications is approved. Imagine your fate being decided by a lottery.
The Abuse: The thing that sucks is that Outsourcing/IT companies abuse the system. There are atleast 10k to 20k applicants from these "outsourcing" companies each year. Whomever wins the lottery gets to work on-site, in USA. The outsourcing firm usually charges it's American client of say $100k+, out of which 60% goes to the employee and 40% goes to the outsourcing company. That's how they make revenue. The big prize for American companies is that along with the on-site techies, you get a dozen offshore support. So from an American company perspective, imagine getting 13 employees for $200k.
Green Card can be applied in EB-1, EB-2, EB-3 categories. EB-1 is the fastest which takes 6 months and reserved for exceptional candidates (like PhDs + cited publications etc.) or managers with lots of experience. EB-2 is for people like me, with a Master's degree, and takes 6 years (if you are an Indian citizen). EB-3 is for people who only have a bachelor's degree.
Workers from outsourcing company who come on-site, portray themselves as "Managers" and apply in the EB-1 category. They get the green card in 6 months. A person like me who has gone through the U.S. system of education and experience are made to wait longest. I have seen this abuse first-hand.
Limitation while on visa: H-1B is strictly controlled. It has to be renewed every 3 years. If you change your title, job duties, company, you will need to apply for a new visa. If you are laid-off, the you go on an illegal status immediately. The advantage outsourced worker, you ask? They work for the same parent outsourcing company. In other words, if their contract ends, they can find a new American client.
For renewing after 6 years of H-1B, you need to have your green card petition filed by your employer. I will no go into the details, but the process much worser than H-1B.
Qualifications: Outsourcing companies blatantly lie on their resume. I have seen and worked with people, where they say they have experience in engineering while all they know is IT.
Pay: $130k+ is absurd. While it maybe feasible in California or other big cities, I don't see payscale rise for people working in smaller cities. Infact it will affect brightest talent since Outsourced workers are already paid $130k+.
I have been on both sides of the sword. I can empathize what Americans are going through and also as a legal immigrant, how my hands are tied. After jumping through so many loops, I am still on the queue for a green card. As a legal immigrant, bright talent, gone through the US system of education, contributing to the economy and my society, I am made to wait the longest, with so many possibilities of losing your spot along the way.
I agree with Trump that the system has been abused. I also agree on having a curfew for people abusing the system. I just hope he retains the brightest talent.
*word's smallest violin*
H1B Visas are meant to supplement not replace U.S. workers and yet it's the outsourcing firms that get the largest number of Visas.
Build up your own fucking economy ass-hole.
You can make claims about freedom of religion and all this other nonsense but this issue is about economics, pure and simple. What's being proposed is that incentives to hire people outside of the United States who have no interest in the success of the United States to do the same job for half the wages be greatly lessened. Also, I can tell you from direct experience in the software industry, Indian contractors produce lower quality code, break more builds, have poor communication and many other things that lead to worse quality software. I can't tell you how many times I traced build breaks back to Indian contractors. The only benefit to hiring them is that they cost less.
Before you call me a racist, I have high respect for other cultures and enjoy their cuisine a lot. I love Indian food and I think Indian people in general are pretty cool. What I don't like is when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is throwing all the American citizens under a bus by hiring less skilled workers for a much cheaper price at the expense of American citizens so they can turn even bigger profits when the corporations the Chamber is comprised of are already sitting on vast piles of wealth. It's really a slap in the face. They've taken advantage of the Land of Opportunity so much that it is no longer the Land of Opportunity.
The U.S. Chamber brought this on themselves. They gamed the system too hard and caused a lot of hardship to good, hard-working Americans and that's why this backlash has occurred.
We'll make great pets
If you are hiring someone in the US for $3 an hour you are a monster. I hope you are exaggerating, otherwise please take a second to think of how you are devaluing human life and decency.
It isn't that American's "don't want to do the job" it's that they "don't want to the job for a non-living wage".
12 hours a day for $3 an hour isn't going to pay for any type of decent living condition in America. Acting like a feudal lord and being oh-so-beneficent as to allow the peasants to work for peanuts isn't something we should aspire to. The idea of a job-creator class is a joke. People should be ashamed for treating other humans like this.
We can, and should, do better.
If you want to fix the employment problem, you remove national restrictions on workers and place them on capital.
want to start a subcontractor to american companies with employees in the US you have to form a company there, hire employees there(even if you want to import them from india) comply with all labour laws and you must pay for their expenses do it both ways no restrictions on work immigration(ie you get a job in the US you get a work visa, same the other way for india, or gemany or wherever) but companies must be incorporated in THAT country pay taxes in THAT country and bare the cost of importing labour to THAT country, none of this set up a dummy corp bring people in under special permissions, if the imported workers want to leave(the contractor company) they can get another job in the US(or wherever) and they automatically get a work via no holding people hostage no wage terrorism
"It takes a lot of determination to rise up against societal norms, get an education and leave their home country."
It sure does.
It takes far more determination to fix the societal problems instead of fleeing them. It is not our responsibility to provide a path to middle class for the entire world. Nations must forge that path for their own people.
God bless Donald J Trump and the United States of America!
There's this : "imposing tougher visa rules unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a U.S. labor shortage in technology and engineering"
Then this : "contains provisions that may prove challenging for the Indian IT sector...nullify the objective of saving American jobs"
So in other words, "this looks uncomfortably like it might work, so we're going to come up with a load of bullshit while we figure out a way of getting round it".
If there is a labor shortage, surely American jobs don't need saving? Anyway, as many people here have pointed out in the past, this has nothing to do with closet racism, denying smart people with the vital skills we need the right to come and work in the US or protectionism.
It's about unscrupulous people breaking the rules and exploiting their fellow countrymen while careless (in both senses of the word) suits look the other way.
I am not a Trump supporter but I am definitely anti H1-B visa and offshoring. The Indian firms are wrong as there is plenty of talent in America capable of writing excellent software. Conversely, I have seen very poor software come out of India that was not only unstable but replete with spelling and grammar errors on the user interface. Some stuff was so pooly written, that friends of mine have told me that they ended up re-writing large portions thereby negating any savings. The only reason the Indian IT firms are calling foul is because they're going to lose money and it isn't foul because the Indians engage in protectionism for their economy. They have very high import taxes .... sky high to as much as 25%. So the Indians get no sympathy from me whatsoever.
Despised Races
Of all stupid ill-feelings, the sentiment of my fellow Caucasians towards our companions in the Chinese car was the most stupid and the worst. They seemed never to have looked at them, listened to them, or thought of them, but hated them A PRIORI. The Mongols were their enemies in that cruel and treacherous battle-field of money. They could work better and cheaper in half a hundred industries, and hence there was no calumny too idle for the Caucasians to repeat, and even to believe. They declared them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of choking in the throat when they beheld them. Now, as a matter of fact, the young Chinese man is so like a large class of European women, that on raising my head and suddenly catching sight of one at a considerable distance, I have for an instant been deceived by the resemblance. I do not say it is the most attractive class of our women, but for all that many a man's wife is less pleasantly favoured. Again, my emigrants declared that the Chinese were dirty. I cannot say they were clean, for that was impossible upon the journey; but in their efforts after cleanliness they put the rest of us to shame. We all pigged and stewed in one infamy, wet our hands and faces for half a minute daily on the platform, and were unashamed. But the Chinese never lost an opportunity, and you would see them washing their feet - an act not dreamed of among ourselves - and going as far as decency permitted to wash their whole bodies. I may remark by the way that the dirtier people are in their persons the more delicate is their sense of modesty. A clean man strips in a crowded boathouse; but he who is unwashed slinks in and out of bed without uncovering an inch of skin. Lastly, these very foul and malodorous Caucasians entertained the surprising illusion that it was the Chinese waggon, and that alone, which stank. I have said already that it was the exceptions and notably the freshest of the three.
These judgments are typical of the feeling in all Western America. The Chinese are considered stupid, because they are imperfectly acquainted with English. They are held to be base, because their dexterity and frugality enable them to underbid the lazy, luxurious Caucasian. They are said to be thieves; I am sure they have no monopoly of that. They are called cruel; the Anglo-Saxon and the cheerful Irishman may each reflect before he bears the accusation. I am told, again, that they are of the race of river pirates, and belong to the most despised and dangerous class in the Celestial Empire. But if this be so, what remarkable pirates have we here! and what must be the virtues, the industry, the education, and the intelligence of their superiors at home!
Awhile ago it was the Irish, now it is the Chinese that must go. Such is the cry. It seems, after all, that no country is bound to submit to immigration any more than to invasion; each is war to the knife, and resistance to either but legitimate defence. Yet we may regret the free tradition of the republic, which loved to depict herself with open arms, welcoming all unfortunates. And certainly, as a man who believes that he loves freedom, I may be excused some bitterness when I find her sacred name misused in the contention. It was but the other day that I heard a vulgar fellow in the Sand-lot, the popular tribune of San Francisco, roaring for arms and butchery. "At the call of Abraham Lincoln," said the orator, "ye rose in the name of freedom to set free the negroes; can ye not rise and liberate yourselves from a few dirty Mongolians?"
For my own part, I could not look but with wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. Gun-powder and printing, which the other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never had the delicacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a long-past antiquity. They walk the earth with us, but it seems they must be of different clay. They hear the clock strike the same hour, yet surely of a different epoch. They travel by
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
it's about time the american worker get's a reach-around.
I have very little problem with the original intention of the H-1B program -- giving companies a safety valve to import a small number of workers who actually possess skills that can't be found domestically. I work for a multinational and we use internal transfers a lot for that purpose...and most of the people they bring in are actually the kind of people that the program originally targeted.
What I don't like is the abuse. Any time a company's IT costs get too high for the MBA's liking, they can turn to any number of "IT services" providers. These companies will always come in cheaper than FTEs, both from a cost and an accounting perspective. Since the company has to make money, they'll offshore most of the work and bring in a few H-1B's to displace all the FTEs over time. In places that do this, I have yet to see evidence that any of these H-1B replacements are exceptional in any way. Often, they're just swapping out a DBA or sysadmin who's been working for 20 years with a DBA who will work much cheaper regardless of quality. What bothers me more is that the company can just pull a "Pontias Pilate" and wash their hands of their entire IT department. This is what happened with the bigger swap-outs that have made the press like Disney and others. All they have to do is point to the fact that their IT is now in control of one of the body shops and they had nothing to do with replacing domestic workers.
I have absolutely no doubt that (a) there is plenty of domestic talent, and (b) if you don't set an expiration date on people's careers, even more people will study CS and engineering. I say the program should be kept to some degree, but the obvious avenues for abuse should be shut down. My suggestions would be to crack down on the fake labor certification processes, and raise the minimum H-1B wage to a certain percentage over the average prevailing wage for the area they're going to work in. If people see that the program is fair, and don't feel like it's a serious threat for their future earnings and career, then everything will work out for employers over time. The workforce will be happier, and there won't be as much of a language/timezone barrier.
I don't know -- maybe I've been lucky and have worked with very talented domestic people. But I don't believe companies who say they can't hire people domestically -- they just don't want to pay for it.
Good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A shortage will increase wages which has needed to happen for nearly 30 years. Bring on the shortage.
Umm, have you *seen* the code from such locales?
Sure, you will have rockstars there as well (I know quite a few living in Pune - they're trying to move here), but for every rockstar, you have something like 10,000 total incompetents whose code will require a massive overhaul just to get built without fatal errors.
Usually ends up costing more than its worth once you add it all up.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I have nothing against people moving to the US to actually make a living, projecting a family, etc. Giving to the country and becoming a part of the US. But the perspective or having the current $60k req invites to do something completely different. 60k for a bay area job? what a joke!!! I had for neighbors four adult men sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Of course as soon as they got their stuff done they disappeared, probably to home again. The saved every penny. How are you supposed to compete with that? Also sleeping on the floor? What have they given to the country? To me H1B and L1 can continue, but requisites must be higher.
96% of adult Hindus in the US have college degrees.
36% of adult Christians in the US have college degrees.
http://www.pewforum.org/2016/1...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd damn sure rather have Paul Ryan as President. Ryan really knows what he's doing. Trump, Pence, and Clinton have never *read* the federal budget, Paul Ryan has *written* the federal budget, more than once.
There's a reason there was no "campaigning" for Speaker of the House this time around, why Paul Ryan was the consensus pick, even though he refused to follow tradition and do campaign appearances for the reps who voted for him. His peers wanted Ryan, without a campaign, because they know Ryan is the smartest of all of them.
That is no team he's assembling, it is just some guys and gals he likes
Have you met any people that sit on the boards of large companies? I have - and I can tell you that most of these boards are made up of people that the CEO/President likes.
Corporate governance is hardly independent in this country.
Obligatory South Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Except this time it's the Indians complaining that Americans are taking their jobs. Still hilarious.
It is not our responsibility to provide a path to middle class for the entire world.
The three fundamental truths of human existence: there is no God, life has no purpose, and free will is an illusion.
At the most fundamental level "responsibility" is an artificial social construct relating to the kind of world people want to live in.
Some people think the purpose of life is to compete to do as much as you can for yourself - to be as selfish as possible. Other people think the purpose of life is to do as much as you can for others - to be as generous as possible. Of course, the truth is that the notion of life having purpose is itself meaningless.
Would there be less suffering and misery in the world if people were more cooperative and generous - as opposed to being more competitive and selfish. Well, yes, of course.
But, then, free will is fundamentally an illusion: people are no more capable of being different from who they are than they are capable of changing the fundamental gravitational constant.
The most we can hope for is that the laws of physics and random chance will be merciful and we will make "choices" that result in less suffering rather than more.
I worked with one visa worker who confided that he was paid only once every 6 months. He got his full amount, but had to budget carefully. I've seen other shady visa practices also.
I don't like Trump and didn't vote for him, but on THIS issue he is right (perhaps accidentally).
Table-ized A.I.
Shows you how bad CS is for basic IT skills
It won't solve a labor shortage? We don't have a labor shortage. We have a job shortage for the skilled labor we already have. If I have a choice between giving $$$$$ to a guy who lives near me for quality work or $$ to a guy who lives in another country for sub-par work, then another $$ to another guy in another country to fix the sub-par work up to acceptable, then I'd rather pay the guy who lives close to me, because if those other two guys become homeless and turn to crime to survive, they don't live near me, but the first guy does. I like to keep my city thriving, thank you. Heck, I'd rather pay $$ to four unskilled local guys to give me sub-par work, because one of those four guys might turn into someone I'd pay $$$$$, and in the mean-time, none of them is robbing me in an alley.
There is no such thing... we have plenty of people willing and able to work.
The biggest challenge we face is that we will need to train workers to take their places... this is because India has made skilled workers so cheap in the past couple of decades that US companies has little or no incentive to hire entry level folks here in the states and train them, and individuals saw little to no value in paying for this training themselves let alone spending years in school for a job that was already taken by some goon in another country.
"India's IT lobby..."
A foreign nation has a group lobbying to affect our laws? I'd ask how lobbying is still legal, but the last thing a human would ever do is create legislation that would negatively impact one of their revenue streams, I suppose.
"OMG, you mean American's might have to learn something "
Please learn this: a plural doesn't use an apostrophe. An American, several Americans. Simple.
curry? No way this is bad for me. If they can't come in and hose us I might move up a bit. I really don't give a damn if In the 99.9% if I can get paid better for the work I do.
Easy. You get to be one of the guys they hire to fix that crap code and process. EVERY project I have ever worked on with overseas code resources has had massive problems with the quality of code that is returned.
The same cycle always holds true: First the overseas resources are given full tasks to complete. Then the returned code is total shit and doesn't do what was asked. So the tasks are broken down into smaller chunks, and those still don't work. Then the resources are asked to provide procedures and subroutines written to a rigid spec, and 70% of those finally work. Then the company realizes that they're paying experienced software engineers over here to spend hours a day breaking things into small enough chunks that the overseas people will *probably* not screw up and the amount of time wasted is enormous, plus those software engineers could just do it themselves in a fraction of the time.
So the company stops offshoring after wasting a couple of years of time and god knows how much money.
I make $50K+ per year and live in a studio apartment by myself in Silicon Valley.
That's great and everything that you can live on such a meager salary.
But, have you gone up to PayScale.com or some other website to see what you're worth with your skillset?
My English teacher cousin makes over $90K in San Francisco with awesome benefits. Political Science professors at Berkeley make over $285K.
If you are a developer with over 2 years of experience, you should be making $200K - at least. Some of the guys are making over $350K.
Wouldn't it be awesome if you were able to bank over $150K a year after tax?
Some people are willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals.
Sure, if I were starting up something and taking a draw of $50K, I'd do that if I thought I could win the Silicon Valley lottery and become a billionaire in two years.
But if Silley Valley corp wants me to relocate from where I live, I am going to demand that I can keep my lifestyle - including living space and commute - which means at least $500K per year.
I've been down that road before where a recruiter lied to me about how cheap one can live to relocate, and afterwards, I was struggling paycheck to paycheck - that was before the web and the cost of living calculators.
Experienced (2+ years) software developers: $200K a year should be your minimum to work in Silicon Valley. Anything less, and you are being ripped off. Don't let anyone tell you different.
In other news, countries that have been stealing US jobs and screwing US workers for years due to imbalanced trade deals are pissed that those days are over.
Why we in the US should be in any way unhappy that India will be less effective at stealing our jobs is beyond me.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
we dont have a labor shortage in our IT industry... what we have in an over abundance of assholes like Mark Zuckerfuck that want to pay pennies on the dollar for skilled labor while he goes and buys an other fucking island or yaht or something.
There is no labor shortage.
There is a companies willing to pay what it takes to hire someone competent shortage...
This right here is the one good effect of everything Trump has done.
If this stops the outsourcing and devaluing of IT work and hiring of qualified educated IT workers in the US (OF WHICH THERE IS NO SHORTAGE) starts again, then we will have an excellent economy and better IT security at the same time!
The problem with the Indian workers is that we were outsourcing IT security and the Indian workers had 0 clue when it came to the culture, they were easily socially engineered and gullible and they had a language barrier when it came to doing their job and understanding directives. This does not make up for them working for 1/4 the going market wage for the same type of work.
SCREW INDIA
So the companies don't want to spend 6 figures for these IT people. Suddenly, the 'cheap' H1-B option goes away. The dream is that they will start hiring local rather than importing. The reality will be they will suck it up and just fully offshore jobs they would otherwise have kept in the US.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
is a tent in the desert and a bottle of water.
Well, if those jobs on American soil were basically all going to H1-B's before they suddenly decide to outsource the entire office, I fail to see why I should give a shit. Since those were not jobs I would have gotten anyway as a citizen, I have lost NOTHING. As a matter of fact, I GAIN because it gets less crowded and I get some semblance of my country back. I never decided to move to the Third World, so I will not miss it if the Third World moves away from me.
Since we're receiving flak from the offshoring bodies, it means that this would be an effective enough measure.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
What I'd like to know is if offshoring these IT jobs is *just* about the money. If it's a matter of getting *quality work* for cheap, compared to American counterparts, then tightening immigration laws will put the US further behind the IT curve. If it's just about the money, firms should be able to find comparable quality stateside, but I'd like to know if there's an indication, either way, that the quality of home-grown IT grads is comparable in quality.
There was never a labor shortage of US workers, only a shortage of people who didn't want to work for low wages.
I know several students who changed their college path from IT and Engineering to "safer employment goals".
Why? because they didn't want to run up huge student debt only to have their jobs "off-shored" as they seen happen to their parent.
I also know of seveal people who got "layed-off" because they were 50 or older and replaced by H1Bs at less wages.
Maybe we could get back to having good software again with less bugs.
What there actually is, is a shortage of US IT workers that will take the job even with the unreasonably low salary that most companies want to pay.
Go get a job in India, supporting Indians, and finally give those of us in IT some relief! If the day arrives where I don't have to repeat "pardon me?" 50 times, it won't be too soon.
If there was, we wouldn't be bringing in H1B visa workers and forcing US workers to train them. If there was, salaries would be rising for STEM workers. The problem is management does not want to pay proper salaries to STEM employees that reflect a "shortage"
There is *NO* labor shortage in IT. There is a perceived CHEAP labor shortage because corporations don't want to pay people what they are worth, while holding up countries like India as an example of what they think people should get paid.
If you want to pay people what they get paid in India, move your fucking company to India.
Two years ago, Obama finally submitted a budget request on time, and Congress passed a budget (written largely by Ryan). Paul Ryan became Speaker in October 2015.
If I have one doubt about that I will revert the same.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you want something done right get a citizen to do it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I have worked in the software industry for over 25 years. Only recently we have started hiring people offshore. We work with people who are essentially contractors. It is very easy to let people go who are not productive. Over the course of a year we have gone through a lot of people, but now have a core team, that is very very good. And very very cheap, compared to a local team. The H1-B visa restrictions will just push people into that model sooner. The Internet is the great equalizer. To the detriment of many and the joy of others.
Even harder than doing CS well is managing people who don't want to be managed in an environment with an overload of tasks.
What happens in the real world is that before long you have 500 tasks to do, and 200 are deemed drop everything else top priority.
Soon the whole team thrashes around as a select 20 or 30 of the top-most top priority become the daily firedrill.
The 300 tasks that actually lead to real improvement are just lost in the notebooks full of paper bug reports.
Eventually the staff (like me!) quit when it takes 2x units of thrashing to undo the chaos caused by last month's 1x unit of thrashing.
Life is much better elsewhere, and I'll never ever type 'make' again.
And we will just ban outsourcing totally. ( "ban" as in tax companies so high they go out of of business if they try it )
Half of us are here to squirt, the other half are here to ooze. (Mark Mothersbaugh).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There is an experience shortage; all co's want more experience, but importing workers only increases the experience shortage for citizens. A billion hours of school cannot replace experience.
Table-ized A.I.
And don't even get me started on those Goobacks from the future, coming back in time here to Take our jobs!
This space unintentionally left blank.
a. Don't compare the middle east of 1000 years ago to the one of today. There's been 1000 years of scientific advancement.
b. The Middle East was happily partaking in that advancement until we meddled. There are pictures of girls in Iran wearing modern, brightly colored dresses without burkas. We put one of your Theocrats in power to protect our interests and stop communism.
c. Two words: Saudi Arabia. They'd have most favorite nation status if we didn't give it to China.
We do awful, awful things in the middle east for the sake of cheap oil. I suppose it's better than what we do in Central/South America for cheap bananas...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is so true! I am in a position to break down tasks into small pieces so India consultants won't mess up codes too badly. Later I have to review their codes to correct defects, one by one. American managers are bragging about how brilliant outsourcing strategy is. This is how corporate life is, managers always lead staffs from one success to another.
But word gets around, and the industry becomes aware of what those guys can and can't do, and adjust the plan accordingly.
Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro are the new slave trade dealers. This H1B abuse is damaging everybody:
1. The American workers from IT sector as they are pressured by slave labor to accept lower and lower salaries.
2. The Indian workers from IT that accept lower salaries in India because of the promise of a H1B. Yes, as wild as it sounds the promise of a H1B visa that ensures moving to USA is part of the hire package for TCS !!! just ask people in the TCS Thane campus.
3. The European workers from IT that have limited opportunities due to this slave market. USA companies cannot move workers from Europe to USA if is the case because the H1B program is flooded with applications by Indian slave companies. It is not unusual that sometimes you need to temporary relocate people from one branch to another due to some project contracts: they are forced to use travel VISAs that restrict working and limit stay to 3 months. The same companies prefer to lease slave labor in USA instead of growing the European branches.
I like the sentence about leaving loopholes. Well current system is no perfect.
There is no doubt that H1B attracts talent from all around the world. On the other hand these companies not just limited to Infosys, Wipro and TCS; exploit the visa program.
Why they need so many visas every year?
- Simple reason: they send people to US and after few months or a year they switch employers. Hence they keep on needing more and more visas every year.
But by this time, the executives who started the offshoring in the first place have cashed their bonus checks and moved on.
When employers are telling current employees to train their replacements, replacements that are being brought in because supposedly the employer cant find employees, (HUH?) I dont feel any pity for India or its IT crowd.
Fuck the Indian IT Sector. What are they going to do about it? Hilarious.
I wish I had beaucoodles of +mod points to hand out.
A lot of good stuff here. We all know the companies abuse hell out of the H1b program.
In recent years the companies such as Disney don't even give enough of a shit to hide the fact they're flaunting current laws.
I read with interest the stories shared here of abuse handed out to H1b visa holders - plenty of them tell their story over on the Programmers Guild forums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Look, I'm really glad that H-1B abuse is finally getting some lawmakers' attention, but the reality is that there are already regulations on the books that prohibit most of the bullshit companies are pulling. It's a question of enforcement.
Are lawmakers going to start mandating that these regulations be enforced? They don't ever address the issue of enforcement, so my guess is no.
This is just patronizing posturing coming from a politician who is getting a jump on her 2018 re-election campaign.
India has about 350 foreign pilots, down from 800 four years back. The countryâ(TM)s airlines had been required to phase them all out by December 2013.
http://bit.ly/2ksfzD6
And chances are you'll find the same code at the next company unlucky enough to outsource. They are big in recycling (code that is)
"So the company stops offshoring after wasting a couple of years of time and god knows how much money."
I do wish at least the stops offshoring part were true but it only lasts until the next batch of management/executive knowitalls begin their "sweeping" reforms, teaching the world how to do it better...