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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 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
This is a myth
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.
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.
According to Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live, Pence will be president in two months. So far... right on schedule.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Gf0mGJfP8
"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.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
This has nothing to do with Permanent Residents, they aren't here on H-1B visas
Well, as long as they don't screw it up, either accidentally or on-purpose. I'd wonder what "loopholes" are being referred to.
Someone had to do it.
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.
Yes, it's legal in the US to not hire people who are not entitled to work in the country.
If Congress passes (and the President signs) a law changing who is entitled to work here, then the employers must also deal with that.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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!
1. It is not the corporations making/changing the law. So it cannot be their fault even *if* it was determined to be discrimination (it won't)
2. It is the H1B that is needed in order for them to live and work in the US... they wouldn't need the H1B visa if they were permanent legal residents
3. FTS states that the Bill will effectively double the minimum wage requirement in order to make it less cost effective to bring "talent" from another country. That is applying the same requirement despite country of origin so it cannot be racial discrimination.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
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.
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.
I am no fan of the Dems, but does this bill say anything beyond the visas in question? In particular, does it say anything about the countries of origin, being tougher on Indians than they might be on, say, Romanians or Swedes?
India's IT has been devaluing our skills and jobs for many years, it's about time somebody does something about it.
The amount of needful that will get done could drop as much as 15%.
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.
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?
*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.
Refuse to tell us how to reboot our Dells?
When I worked on the Google IT help desk in 2008, I had to walk a newly hired computer science graduate on how to TURN ON his workstation. He actually expected to find someone standing to turn on the workstations like they do at the university computer labs. He was shocked that he had to do manual labor.
"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.
They don't wanna pay twice as much. When it comes to negotiating salaries for people they employ, they are extremely tight, but funnily enough, when it comes to expected salaries, they expect something near the $200k mark, if not much more
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.
This actually the cure for H1B problem that h1B holders should never be allowed to become permanent residents. That will take away the sheen from H1B program If the rules are made to only address the real shortage(which does not exist in the first place).
..... best things in life are not so free..........
It IS the corporations who write ANY law in the US.
..... best things in life are not so free..........
That's actually an improvement. In 1979, I had to teach a Pakistani student how to use a laundromat. Fellow student down the hall, he had asked me what the best way was to the river, to wash his clothes. . .
Okay, so you appreciate Trump for getting this moving, then wanna remove him and his VP. What guarantee do you have that anyone else you have in mind - probably from the Dem side - is gonna continue this? And Trump, as a Republican, has a better chance of standing b/w lobbyists like NASSCOM and GOP congressmen: why would any of the latter go against their lobbyist to oblige, say, a Bernie or a Pocahontas?
How does the new rating system work? I want to vote you up.......++5
..... best things in life are not so free..........
Having a person to turn on the computer for you is the kind of thing you would expect in a heavily-unionized shop or a country where labor is exceedingly cheap.
Or volunteering to run the university computer lab as a prerequisite to join the computer priesthood to protect computers from users.
I guess sarcasm is lost on people. I clearly read the GP as pointing out that had DJT or a GOP congressman introduced something like this, he'd have been tagged 'racist', and that Lofgren ain't being treated that way b'cos she's a Liberal
. . .and then, if you get your way, you get President Ryan.
I suspect you wouldn't like him either...
At least your fellow student wanted to find the river to wash his clothes. Some (even US born) students lacked the understanding that clothing needed to be (at least occasionally) washed.
Wish I could say that I have seen it improve in the past 30 years, but I still encounter at least one student a year needing this life lesson.
Yeah, ask the poor fucks at Disney what they think about the idea that H1B's don't replace American workers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
If there are "No Americans" how are "more Americans riffed" every six months or so?
Well... yes... but I think you know what I mean
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Unless I misunderstand how it works in the US, if both Trump and Pence were removed from office this very moment the presidency would fall to the president pro tempore of the senate, who is currently Senator Orrin Hatch (A Republican).
I know nothing of his politics or whether he'd be for or against h1b reform though.
Ice Cream has no bones.
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?
To increase wages, you need to...
An increase in cash wages decreases the number of jobs by concentrating the same money into fewer hands. You can issue more money, increasing wages by raising product prices (if all wages go up by 10%, then all prices must go up by 10% to generate the revenue to pay the salaries); that does nothing.
Money is just a proxy for labor. The question is really how much time you work to buy a product. If you make $20/hr and a product costs $30, you buy it with 1.5 hours of labor. If your salary goes up to $40/hr and the product now costs $60, wages haven't increased: you still work 1.5 hours to buy that product.
Trade finds advantages (wage or technical) to reduce the price of a product, thus allowing people to buy more of that product with the same labor-hours. That makes the population of the importing country wealthier; it also increases the amount of domestic shipping and retailing, while decreasing jobs related to whatever's now being imported. The labor force rapidly adjusts to re-settle unemployment to a stable point (4.5%-5.5% in the United States).
Technical progress is the long-term solution. This reduces labor investment. Say you and 10 people work for $20/hr and produce 20 of a given product--that product costs $20 per unit. Now we invent a new method of making it such that you and 10 people produce 40 of that product per hour. It's now a $10 product. Instead of prices falling, money is issued (mainly via debt) faster than population growth to create inflation: you now work for $50/hr, and the product costs $25.
You might notice that the 250% increase in wages is unavoidable here if the inflation rate is 25% and the labor requirements are 50%. It's also notable that you might not have 10 workers making 40 of that product; it might be 5 making 20, and the other 5 workers... well, half your hour's wage is unspent now, so you can buy something else, and someone has to make, ship, and retail that. The jobs fill back in.
Here's the thing: the minimum wage workers are pegged to a published minimum. If we bump them by inflation, they go from $10/hr to $12.50/hr, while you go from $20/hr to $50/hr. If we raise them by the amount of actual buying power increase the middle-class workers enjoy, then the $10/hr minimum-wage must go to $25/hr. Because you're still trading labor hours in the end, only a set amount of money can be earned in a given time, and thus a set amount can be spent, and thus a set number of jobs can exist; if wages are higher for a subset (e.g. minimum wage), then fewer jobs exist. You've got to decide the trade-off between quality of life of the poor and forcing more people into unemployment while the labor market adjusts to reduce the number of job-seekers (and eventual population) when you make the new policy.
An economy isn't an ideal system surrounded by an infinite supply of consumers with an infinite supply of money.
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Orrin Hatch is an old-school corporate-whore Republican who has made his position on H1B's quite clear.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Its good enough for the mass media and their politically active teenagers and young adults, which is a huge target now that their last voting block is all but dead.
You assume to much. He likes complaining, the conditions are always right for complaining.
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.
60k for a bay area job? what a joke!!!
I make $50K+ per year and live in a studio apartment by myself in Silicon Valley. If you live a modest lifestyle, you can do well here. But if you want to pursue the American Dream of having it all (i.e., big house, big cars, big wife and big kids), you need to earn big bucks for that.
Also sleeping on the floor?
Some people are willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals. I've known engineers who slept on floors to save up for a down payment on a $1M+ house in Silicon Valley.
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.
What's your point? They got an education that didn't intersect with actually running the machines. That is literally what IT is for.
You may also be shocked to learn that most mechanical engineering grads can't rebuild their car. Most electrical engineers can't re-wire a house. As specialization increases you have people that are highly trained in one area but don't have the breadth of the 'jack of all trades' that exist in some fields.
Next you'll be complaining your cardiologist is a terrible orthopedic surgeon. "But they're doctors, it's all pretty much the same".
Most Americans are stupid and most American Christians aren't Christians according to the Bible. Otherwise, Trump wouldn't be POTUS.
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
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.
That is literally what IT is for.
Uh, no. It's not IT's job to turn on your computer. The Fortune 500 companies I've worked for in the past have policies in place that prevent IT techs from running over to turn or reboot a user's workstation.
You may also be shocked to learn that most mechanical engineering grads can't rebuild their car.
No, but mechanical engineers should know how to turn on the ignition switch.
Most electrical engineers can't re-wire a house.
No, but electrical engineers should know how to turn on a light switch.
As specialization increases you have people that are highly trained in one area but don't have the breadth of the 'jack of all trades' that exist in some fields.
Or, as Robert Kiyosaki writes in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," the more you specialize about something in college the less you know about everything else in real life.
Next you'll be complaining your cardiologist is a terrible orthopedic surgeon. "But they're doctors, it's all pretty much the same".
No, but I do expect them to turn on their workstation in the examination room without calling IT to turn it on for them. Although I've shocked a few doctors when I refused to transfer their iTunes library to a new workstation because having iTunes installed on their workstation was against hospital policies.
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.
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.
That's not taking into account that many people can come in as a foreign student and get a college degree for free or severely reduced cost, meanwhile the skyrocketing costs of college for even in-state tuition is going further and further out of reach of many americans. If the US shored up all the foreign aid dispersal until after higher education dispersal to all that wish to have it, each year, thereby paying in foreign at only what was remaining, we would not have that gap. Before you take that first sentence and decide it is somehow selfish or nationalistic, consider this is the same forumla france employs and they give college to just about all their citizens that can pass an entry exam.
Trump had nothing to do with them cutting the price of those fighters. Just because he says it does not make it true. If you actually look into it, he's taking credit for the fact that the next batch they build (90 as opposed to the initial 10), will cost less per fighter (about 6 -7 million less) than the last batch. 90x6.7 million =~ 600 million. The discussions on those costs started before he was elected....so yeah.....liar.
Unless I misunderstand how it works in the US, if both Trump and Pence were removed from office this very moment the presidency would fall to the president pro tempore of the senate, who is currently Senator Orrin Hatch (A Republican).
I know nothing of his politics or whether he'd be for or against h1b reform though.
Actually, it would go to Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. President Pro-Tempre (not sure about spelling) of the Senate is #4.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
There is no labor shortage.
There is a companies willing to pay what it takes to hire someone competent shortage...
Succession goes: VP, House Speaker (Ryan), President pro tempore of the Senate (Hatch), Sec. State (Shannon, a career diplomat and now just a place holder), Treasury, Defense, AG...Secretary of Homeland Security. The order of cabinet succession is based on date of the department's creation. They also have to meet the standard presidential requirements such as native born resident for 14 years and 35 years old.
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.
I'm not software developer. I work in government IT. The bad news is that I make significantly less than my Silicon Valley peers. The good news is that I work a regular 40 hour week, get the usual benefit package, paid federal holidays (40 hours), paid time off (80 hours) and unpaid time off (40 hours) per year, and I'm halfway through a five-year contract. My contracting agency gave an extra month in pay as a Christmas bonus last month.
Wouldn't it be awesome if you were able to bank over $150K a year after tax?
I bank 20% of my income after tax. If I moved to the Sacramento Valley, I could save up for a down payment, buy a $200K house and pay off the mortgage in 10 years.
This is nothing about race. This is only about nationality.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Well, I knew plenty of kids who dropped off laundry with Mummy and Daddy before heading out to party on a Friday night. Heck, one SHIPPED his wash back to Connecticut (College was in Pennsylvania) and he got a box of clean laundry back every week. . .
More likely you've been fired too often and no one wants to work with you.
The only time I ever got fired was when I was working in construction with my father and I got into a fist fight with the boss's grandson when he threatened me with a piece of rebar. That was 25 years ago. Today I'm a successful IT support contractor. Boss's grandson is a drug addict and his father closed the 60-year-old family construction business when he retired.
Refuse to tell us how to reboot our Dells?
When I worked on the Google IT help desk in 2008, I had to walk a newly hired computer science graduate on how to TURN ON his workstation. He actually expected to find someone standing to turn on the workstations like they do at the university computer labs. He was shocked that he had to do manual labor.
Did you have to hold it for him when he had to go?
Sounds to me like he wanted to play a joke on you or someone put him up to it.
It wasn't a joke. His help desk ticket history showed that he was a new hire without an assigned manager. He obviously fell through the cracks. Google was hiring 300+ people per week back then.
While I believe YOU ARE NAIVE ENOUGH TO BELIEVE he couldn't understand how to turn something on, occums razor suggests it is more likely that this is a joke played on you.
If I thought he was pulling a joke, I would have reported him to security and have him escorted off the campus.
That's a different scenario entirely. He was literally unaware of laundromats because Pakistan probably didn't have them, and he was willing to do the much more manual process to clean them.
On the other hand, the Googler was inept with the hardware that they reasonably should have understood. How one makes it to your first job, circa 2008, without turning on a workstation is astounding.
I hope he quit and did something useful.
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.
Most electrical engineers can't re-wire a house.
Sheeit... you're kidding, right? Any EE that can't figure down basic wiring, look up Code, know how to keep the neutral line balanced, and get it done to ensure it's safe and compliant? Yeah, that person isn't worth a damn as an EE, seriously. When you compare it to the regs, boundaries, and environment adaptation required to rig-up industrial control systems? House wiring is a do-it-in-your-sleep piece of cake.
I get what you were getting at, but really... that bit wasn't the best example.
(Okay... *recent* EE grads who don't know shit outside of Verilog might have a hard time with it, but c'mon...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
YOU'RE MAKING THE MACHINE SPIRIT ANGRY!
AIEEEEEEE! There are daemons on the pipes! The token fell out of the token ring! We're doooooomed!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I hope he quit and did something useful.
Based on my experience at working Fortune 500 companies, he probably got promoted to project manager and found the corporate credit card useful.
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.
Uh, no. It's not IT's job to turn on your computer. The Fortune 500 companies I've worked for in the past have policies in place that prevent IT techs from running over to turn or reboot a user's workstation.
It's the IT's job to do whatever the company requires. I've worked in design houses, where they literally expected IT to re-position the mouse/mousepad when they went too far.
And have you worked at a "real" fortune 500? Everyone I've worked at (5000+ employees and computers at all) had a way for IT to reboot without "running over" so long as the base OS was reachable. So yeah, they'll have a policy about not running over to reboot, because if you are doing that, you are doing your job wrong. Why are you doing your job wrong?
Or, as Robert Kiyosaki writes in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," the more you specialize about something in college the less you know about everything else in real life.
Writes -> Speculates. That someone wrote it in a book doesn't make it true. And the Renaissance man isn't dead yet. Instead, it's a complaint about people ignoring the basics. You can learn the basics to a level of competency and still specialize. Maybe not everyone, but enough that it's common.
Although I've shocked a few doctors when I refused to transfer their iTunes library to a new workstation because having iTunes installed on their workstation was against hospital policies.
They must have been shitty doctors. I've seen IT people fired for less. They are doctors, the rules don't apply. Though, I've never figured out, who's worse? Doctors or lawyers?
Learn to love Alaska
[...] come in as a foreign student and get a college degree for free or severely reduced cost [...]
You appear to be misinformed. International students typically pay three times more than a typical American student. They're actually subsidizing public colleges at $9B per year.
http://www.businessinsider.com/foreign-students-pay-up-to-three-times-as-much-for-tuition-at-us-public-colleges-2016-9
Wire a house when it's a frame (and do so better than code, even if not strictly to code), yes.
Re-wire a house, no. You have to cut open walls, pull wires, drill, and put it all back to where nobody knows you were there. "electrician" is more builder than wiring. The wiring is trivial. Getting it to look professional is harder.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
They would put the electric sockets at the most convenient locations - like electric sockets behind the sink or on the mid-level half way up the staircase. Maybe not to code, but the most logical and practical location for hoovering a staircase or using an electric drill or saw.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
He was the authoritarian asshat most supportive of Jack Thompson's crusade against video games, among other things.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
Nice copy pasta. Too bad it does not apply.
The problem they're facing is not racism. Nobody's calling Indians dirty or stupid. But we do need to limit immigration in some way, so why not let in the best and brightest? Those kinds of Indians will have no trouble getting an H1-B in the new system because they can command $200k salaries. It's the barely competent ones earning $40k that will be hurt. But you know what? That's fine. The US does not owe them a job or any social services.
And in case you're wondering why we need to limit immigration: India has been a democracy for a long time now, but their people are still very poor. In a democracy, the only thing that decides how well the country is run is the people, directly or indirectly. If you move all 1.1 billion Indians to the US, you won't be giving them US living standards, you'll be turning the US into India, and giving everyone Indian living standards.
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.
96% of adult Hindus in the US have college degrees.
36% of adult Christians in the US have college degrees.
Because the US only lets in the smart ones. In India, only 8% have college degrees. 36% are illiterate. Should we let them in too?
But if you want to pursue the American Dream of having it all ([snip] big wife and big kids), you need to earn big bucks for that.
You have it wrong, you need to earn big macs. Plenty big macs.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Both groups are "selected" - adults who live in the United States.
That doesn't answer the question: Why are American Christians so poorly educated?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hey now, stopped clocks are right twice a day. He might do something else you find appealing, eventually... maybe.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It's the IT's job to do whatever the company requires.
As an enterprise IT tech, I've never turned on a computer for a user. Not in person, not remotely.
And have you worked at a "real" fortune 500?
I've worked at eBay, Fujitsu, Google, Intuit, and Sony to name a few over 20+ years. Now that I work in government IT, I'm responsible for 80,000+ workstations.
Everyone I've worked at (5000+ employees and computers at all) had a way for IT to reboot without "running over" so long as the base OS was reachable.
That would be against the policies of the Fortune 500 companies I've worked for.
That someone wrote it in a book doesn't make it true.
Pull a college catalog. A bachelor degree is very general with half the required classes dedicated to liberal arts and the other half to a specific major. A master degree focuses on a very specific major in more detail. A PhD program focuses on the obscure details that few people will ever know about. See how education goes from everything to very little? Robert Kiyosaki's point is that too much education can prevent someone from being a successful business person because the education system focuses on getting the right answers versus taking risks. Someone with a PhD will take less risk than someone with a bachelor degree or no higher education at all. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are two notable college dropouts who took great risk and changed the world.
They must have been shitty doctors.
Heart surgeons.
I've seen IT people fired for less.
I've seen IT people fired for not enforcing policy.
They are doctors, the rules don't apply.
You have obviously never worked in a hospital.
You have it wrong, you need to earn big macs. Plenty big macs.
According to Apple, the biggest big Mac you can get has 16GB RAM. ;)
Depends whether the Shengen Area of the EU counts as one country or many countries.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
Out of curiosity: do you admit that there can be money shortage?
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."
Quote: "The US does not owe them a job or any social services."
This is the fundamental problem. I agree with you. However, it seems that the US government has gotten into the jobs and social services business. If the government stopped handing out freebies like candy, we would not have this problem, and there would be no need for Trump's wall.
Of course, not supplying social services would probably cause a huge outcry amongst entitled Americans like yourself.
As for jobs, they do not "belong" to America, but to whichever private individual or company is doing the hiring, they are not owed to anyone at all. So the employer can hire whomever they damn well please. And if the employee cannot come to the job, then the job (and the taxes) will move to the employee. It is an iron law - you can complain all you want.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Any good EE should be able to easily wire a house, even if they've never done such work. However, they might not do it to code unless you give them the actual code to read beforehand, or some condensed version of it.
The code is, in general, a good idea to follow (though it probably doesn't get updated as fast as it should). It has evolved to prevent house fires and other problems. Just because a EE can figure out the basic theory behind house wiring pretty quickly given their educational background doesn't mean they'll figure out, on-the-fly, why certain practices are bad and can result in a fire later.
But honestly, it's pretty easy these days just looking at the parts they sell at Home Depot.
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.
You appear to be confusing "what the company requires" with "what some shitcock from marketing wants".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yeah, no shit; three fucking wires to tell apart...
They really don't have much to work with here; perhaps we could cut 'em a little slack and let 'em conflate the issues... just a bit?? :)
electric sockets behind the sink
Amazing idea.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Nope. I meant what I said. Some companies choose to hire only people who can work a computer, then expect IT to not reboot. Other companies knowingly hire people without the expectation they can use a computer, then hire others around them to hand-hold them in using them. Sometimes this is in assistants. I worked for one "tech company" that the CIO didn't have and had never used a computer. Every email he received was printed and delivered on his desk on paper. His email replies were dictated (then typed up and emailed). An office supply chain expected IT to sit with finance and help finance "program" Excel equations.
This wasn't one idiot in marketing, but the expectation of the CEO/board of these companies, and was in written policies.
That you've lead a sheltered life doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Learn to love Alaska
Why would they have policies against supporting users remotely?
If a user is working from home and can't access their workstation because its turned off, they should be calling their manager or driving into work to turn it on. They shouldn't be calling the help desk to avoid talking to their manager and/or driving into work.
Were you too stupid to know of those tools?
As a help desk tech, I don't think we had access to those tools.
SMS/SCCM is used by "Fortune 500" companies, and allows remote rebooting of PCs. Why are are you not managing user PCs in an effective manner?
Until I got into government IT, I wasn't aware of SCCM. Now that I'm responsible for 80,000+ workstations, I can reboot the entire network. One of the senior IT guys runs a script that automatically reboots 25% of the workstations each week.
The story seems absurd. That you are making up incompetence on your part to make an arguing point to make another slashdotter look stupid. You are only succeeding in making yourself look stupid.
The stupidity of your comment makes no sense whatsoever.
Because it'd almost be as if you had a little power? Don't get too excited from behind your helpdesk.
Power is replacing your computer with a box of crayons. I haven't done help desk for nearly a decade now.
Some people work to have a regular (not pop star) life.
As an IT support contractor, I haven't worked overtime in over ten years. My employment contracts prohibits me from working more than 40 hours a week. Fortune 500 companies and even the government are unwilling to pay overtime.
If you want to bust your ass off to live bad. You can surely ask for a pay reduction.
Or become a software developer.
I'm sure that the few hundred dollars not spent on a good mattress sure got them there faster.
A mattress takes up space. A sleeping bag can be tossed into the closet.
I had a solid handle on _all_ the building trades before I started Engineering school.
Professional electricians don't fix drywall, they will cut the walls open, but leave the fixup after to 'professional' painters.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If the government stopped handing out freebies like candy, we would not have this problem, and there would be no need for Trump's wall.
Of course, not supplying social services would probably cause a huge outcry amongst entitled Americans like yourself.
You are just too funny. Do you have any idea just how socialist Indians are? Hint: they have always been friends with the USSR, better than even the Chinese.
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.
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'
I know very well. But you generalize. There are Indians who are self-reliant, free-market supporters, who chafe under the socialist consensus. They are the ones who want to escape to an America that is better, not asking for handouts, and willing to pay their taxes due.
But America wants to shut the door on them, tragically citing the same reasons which they deplore elsewhere.
I apologize for mixing up two separate, but related, issues. The first is the Indians, which I have discussed above. The second is the Mexicans and other Latin Americans. The latter are perceived to be mooching off the American taxpayer (they are not, but if they are, why does the taxpayer permit it?) Both are "stealing" jobs, just in different industries and different levels of society.
If you are born and raised American, with all the benefits and advantages that entails (freedom, education, security of life and property, natural resources, environmental quality) and you cannot compete with a third-world jumped-up peasant, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Just for ref (and to piss you off). My dad came to the USA in 1963 on contract to do research work on the Apollo heat shield. He got a green card in 30 days.
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/
America wants to shut the door on them, tragically citing the same reasons which they deplore elsewhere.
Some people do. Most the comments on this site suggests making reforms to prevent IT sweatshops from popping up. Very few are saying we should stop immigration completely.
If you are born and raised American, with all the benefits and advantages that entails (freedom, education, security of life and property, natural resources, environmental quality) and you cannot compete with a third-world jumped-up peasant, you should be ashamed of yourself.
I'm not, because I'm a first generation immigrant. The H1-B process is utterly disgusting. It both dehumanizes people like myself and disenfranchises American workers. It's only purpose as it exists today is to pad the coffers of rich business men. I don't speak out against it because I'm scared to compete with immigrants --- I already did and I'll happily do it again. I speak out because it's a shitty system that should be fixed.
Where I am, the electricians do the clean-up. Almost always doing the drywall, and only not doing it when they are one contractor in a set of contractors (such as in a major re-model).
Learn to love Alaska
But by this time, the executives who started the offshoring in the first place have cashed their bonus checks and moved on.
In the group I worked with @ HP, they had to hire Americans just so they could lay them off. Seriously: in my group they hired a bunch of developers that had been out of school anywhere from 0 - 5 years, and then 6 months later, replaced them with H1's. You read it right: Meg had to hire people in order to make her layoff quota.
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/...
You've never visited "There, I've fixed it?" :)
http://failblog.cheezburger.co...
The mystery Google car:
https://i.chzbgr.com/full/4575...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I was at the house of a college friend of mine. His mother said she was glad that he had laundry, because that's the only time she got to see him.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In every educational environment I've been in, we've been expected to know a few practical things related to our studies. Graduating with a CS degree and no knowledge of how to trouble-shoot the hardware would be reasonable. Not being able to use a computer wouldn't be.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I like Pakistani girls. They are cute, and their manners and cultural upbringing are excellent
They come back after the inspection? Why wouldn't they hire painters? Lower hourly etc.
I sometimes disparage painters...the proudest I've ever been as an amature 'medicine' cultivator was when a painter asked for something weaker than trainwreck, as he couldn't do his job on it. But the good painters can plaster flat as glass. Thousands of hours experience does make a difference.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'