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Laid-Off IT Workers Worry US Is Losing Tech Jobs To Outsourcing (www.cio.in)
An anonymous reader shares a CIO article: Sixty-three-year-old Bob Zhang is worried about the future of tech jobs in the U.S. Will the high-paying positions be a thing of the past? Zhang thinks it's already starting to happen. He's one of 79 IT workers from the University of California, San Francisco, who've been laid off. Tuesday was their last day on the job. To replace them, the school is outsourcing some of their work to an Indian firm. "Usually, they outsource the low-paying jobs," he said at a gathering outside a school building. "But now they use H-1B (visa) and use foreign workers to replace the high-paying jobs. This trend is dangerous." It was a sentiment shared among the laid-off IT workers, who've tried to push the school to save their positions, to no avail. Now they fear other publicly-funded universities will take the same approach, and replace U.S. employees with foreign workers. "Once you send out the manufacturing jobs, once you send out the service jobs, once you send out the research jobs, what's left? There's nothing left," said Tan, who's 55 and now looking for a new job. Kurt Ho, another laid-off worker, said he was paid an annual salary of about US$110,000, but the new workers replacing his position will fraction that amount. "In two years, I could be at another company, and I could be facing the same thing," he said.
Duh... And in other news, the sun is hot.
"Once you send out the manufacturing jobs, once you send out the service jobs, once you send out the research jobs, what's left? There's nothing left,"
Well, thank goodness people are beginning to wake up. If you're doing business (i.e.: taking money from people) in a country, especially THIS country, you have a moral obligation to employ people from the community, if possible. Adjust your profit expectations accordingly. We're all in this together, or at least, we should be.
The H1-B scam has been going on long enough.
I see that there are still jobs, but companies expect you to be more of a rock star to keep them.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
why bother with California in the first place? Just own up to it & move your university to the Phillipenes.
In the short term, people in the US can choose to work at what amounts to starvation wages compared to local cost of living. Or move on to those new jobs everyone's always claiming will magically appear.
In the long term (after the American economy is destroyed but the richest have milked it for all they can and moved to whatever nation can still support their standard of living), foreign workers will have cause their local economies to grow and their wage expectations will grow simultaneously. Ultimately, they'll be the same as domestic labour only with the hassle of dealing with people in a different time zone and possibly with cultural and language issues. But hey, equalization will happen faster if America's crashing as quickly as they're growing.
It would seem one solution is to levy a 'standard of living' tariff on offshored jobs that covers the difference in expense, and here's the difficult part - remit the collected tariffs to the foreign workers instead of trying to hold onto it domestically.
That will not only make the domestic labor force more competitive in the short term, it will insure a rapid rise of the foreign economy so they are less competitive in the long run.
Or you can put up various walls, isolate your nation from the global economy, and find yourself falling further and further behind the rest of the planet over time.
Isn't UCSF putting themselves out of a job? If the jobs get outsourced, then who needs UCSF? There's no reason to go to UC and get trained for something if no one will hire you.
Great idea moron!
"At the same price point, there is no reason for an employer to prefer the H-1B..."
There is tho... that H-1B probably has free healthcare, you dont have to buy him a health insurance plan, thats saves a lot of overhead.
Label people who disagree "white supremicists" or "nativists" or "Nazis". Then disregard everything they say. Problem solved.
so wipe the system, let the india guys fail, then charge $1000 an hour plus expenses to fix it.
Once you send out the manufacturing jobs, once you send out the service jobs, once you send out the research jobs, what's left?
A reversion to the mean. The US has some of the highest wages in the world. That's great but if we want to keep it that way we need to be doing things that are hard to replicate outside the US. That means investing in research and education and technology and infrastructure and supply chains. All things that have payoffs which are measured in decades. There is nothing special about the US that entitles workers here to abnormally high wages when the work can be done adequately well in locations with lower labor costs. If we want higher than average wages then we need to do things that will get higher than average results.
That's why a lot of the rhetoric coming from Washington about "bringing back manufacturing jobs" is just nonsense. Unless you want to accompany it with a reduction in wages to significantly lower amounts than we currently expect. Those jobs left because they were labor intensive and labor costs were substantially lower elsewhere. If the job can be done in China for $2/hour, you aren't going to compete on labor intensive manufacturing with wages of $15/hour or more. No amount of political promises will change that fact. Those jobs aren't coming back unless a drastic drop in wages comes with them. I'm pretty sure we don't actually want that.
And herein lies the inherent problem to the globalized capitalist economy. Eventually, there could be an equalized economy shared across the globe.
Getting to that point however, requires that the economically healthy nations fall while the economically poor nations rise.
The business owner benefits. The bankers benefit. The shareholders benefit. The workers get the shaft. Historically, trends like that lead to bad things.
It is only valid to hire an H1B when a qualified citizen does not exist. If you're laying off citizens to replace them with H1Bs, the use of H1Bs was clearly not valid.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Then we'll see how long it takes to get some laws in place to protect our own citizens.
What I mind is the mentality that "if you're unemployed, then you're no good."
It kills me when I apply to jobs that I fit very closely or even exactly only to hear nothing back or "you don't have the skills."
And what really hurts is when your friends and family wonder why you can't get a job because you're a programmer and there's a shortage of programmers.
THAT hurts along with the comments. They think if you "know computers" you can just walk into any job you want and if you can't, then there's something wrong with you.
I love programming and computers - I HATE this goddamn industry!
Move to a less populated (and progressive) area of the US. The IT roles aren't going to be as glamorous, the organizations you'll work for are most likely smaller, and the pay is going to be less. But.... job security is substantially increased. The areas of the country I'm speaking of hold more traditional 'American-Made' values as well.
So basically he was okay with outsourcing the low paying jobs and doesn't pitch a fit until they start replacing the high paying jobs? So F the people that lost their low paying jobs? What a jerk.
Did you miss the part about how these particular laid-off workers were making on the order of 110K? That's over $50/hr.
It's not the minimum wage, it's the cost of living. Those guys are "IT workers", and they are being pad that just keep computer stuff running. Here in Texas, 100K is good pay for a senior developer, because it costs less to live here.
When I first read the headline and story, I thought it was some kind of joke. Yes, jobs are being shipped overseas. Yes, IT workers are getting screwed through abuse of the H1B system. Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, it sucks. We know all that, and have for some time. What am I missing here?
Editing. It's fundamental.
This is an ABUSE of the H1B visa program, clear and simple. It's been done under democratic "leadership" and republican "leadership" Why? Simple...$$$$ corporations want to earn more profit, so they outsource for pennies on a dollar, kick back a ton of so called campaign donations, to ensure that the government goes along with it.
Learn about about the secret Exotic Mysteries of India
If you want to discriminate against ANYONE for ANY reason all you have to do is just be silent.
Look at their application, search the web and if they are not someone you don't want, just be silent.
Or at worst just say, "You don't have the skills."
Good luck to the candidate in proving any sort of discrimination.
Yeah sure, some managements panic and pay off EEOC or ADA blackmailers (there are databases that track that: ask your lawyer) - mine paid off one $50,000 and afterwards found out they were her 3rd victim (She was African-American and she is out of business now - good luck living on $60K after lawyer fees for the rest of her life!).
See, employers in the know ...know that these laws are easy to get around and it costs chump change when caught.
So spare me.
These sticky banner ads are horrible ... someone should be flogged. These are really really bad.
"Lazzy?" Really, too arsed to spell a single word right?
After all, one of his core messages was that he wanted to bring jobs back to America...
I live un Canada (Montréal) after been layoff in 2005 I was forced to became a consultant (and no more insurance, lost my pension plan, etc) I choose to reoriente myself as a mecanic technician to help me achieve the rest of my Working Time.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
The university is showing its tech students what waits for them when they graduate.
At the same price point, there is no reason for an employer to prefer the H-1B.
H1Bs can't quit without jeopardizing their residency.
I'm 41, so I guess I'm way past due for Logan's Run style "renewal". However, I'm still here working in IT hoping I can stick around as long as possible because I actually enjoy the work a lot. I really don't like the fact that age discrimination makes it very hard for laid-off older IT workers to come back into the profession (and yes, it does exist....I understand some people don't keep their skills sharp, but even good people over 50 can't get cold call interviews; they need to know someone.) In my opinion, outsourcing and the H-1B visa simultaneously implement a brake on salaries for experienced people, and take away entry level positions that are needed to replace people at the low end. When a company can call up one of the body shops and cut their IT costs (on paper) by 80%, it's very difficult to convince them that they'll end up paying way more in the end.
This is a subject I care about a lot, because one of the things I like best about my job is sharing knowledge with the newbies and making them better IT people. It's fun being the adult in the room and showing people who've grown up with systems that are very abstracted from the actual goings-on under the hood how something actually works behind that cloud service, API call or PowerShell cmdlet. IT pros with a good grasp on fundamentals have no trouble picking up the latest fad or hot tool in my experience. What I worry about is the fact that people coming into the profession will see offshoring, outsourcing and age discrimination as a reason to not go into IT or software development. People aren't dumb - if they're smart enough to be excellent students, they'll pick a path like medicine, pharmacy or the rarefied world of investment banking or management consulting. Medicine is especially attractive for simple reasons -- the profession is highly regulated, experience is actually respected and rewarded, and the supply of medical school slots is kept low to ensure high salaries for people who put the work in. If you're smart enough and have a photographic memory, I can't see any reason why a young person today wouldn't try to get into medicine. We could use a lot more smart, talented people in IT. Another thing is working conditions, which could be improved in many places. That said, not every job involves 16 hour days banging out JavaScript in FrameworkOfTheMonth 0.9.1 while chugging Red Bull for a phone app; I've chosen to forego the highest possible salary to choose sane employers who understand work-life balance and actually appreciate my experience.
I think that the body shops who are abusing the L-1 and H-1B programs should be stopped. Kicking out the ladder of entry level IT employment is a bad thing and will lead to executives feeling that the only way they can get competent people is hiring from these body shops. Once that's firmly in place at every company, the profession is pretty much doomed to a fate of hourly, gig economy contracts whose rates just keep dropping. So, preseve the pipeline of newbies -- give them work so they can learn how to do IT right.
Did you miss the part about how these particular laid-off workers were making on the order of 110K? That's over $50/hr.
It's not the minimum wage, it's the cost of living. Those guys are "IT workers", and they are being pad that just keep computer stuff running. Here in Texas, 100K is good pay for a senior developer, because it costs less to live here.
"IT workers" is a meaningless term when it comes to the press. It can mean anything from helpdesk people to senior architects.
and BTW .. for the curious .. it si $52.88/hour for 2080 hours in a year. Unfortunately, I don't know any "IT workers" that only work 2080 hours a year. Example,
by the end of the 9th week of the year, I will already be at 586 hours vs the expected 360.
Once the pendulum is set in motion it does not stop in mid swing. Millionaires will realize that they are not safe in a few years. The bigger fish gobble up the smaller fish. Just wait.
I'm super curious what the actual jobs *were*; IT can mean a lot of different things.
Were these helpdesk? Software? Network admins? Database folks?
Tech reporting is *terrible* at this.
Remember the 2000s? The big prank, when IT people got everybody spooked about the Y2K bug and got big money to "fix" it? When everybody and their dog though they must be on the Web or else? In case you haven't noticed, it's been over for more than a decade now. Suck it up, your work isn't worth five figures.
I'm in the same situation right now, albeit I'm a -little- older than 63... Employers are not allowed to ask you questions related to your age, but it's pretty obvious when you forget and start relating sexism in the workplace to the synod of Rome in 850. The bigger issue (at least for me) seems to be that it doesn't matter if your 63 or 2022, employers are looking for young cheap people that have exactly the skills they think they need without considering the advantages of experience and adaptability. If they can't find that locally, they outsource.
Seriously, you would think that 200 decades of experience would count for something, but no. It seems far more important that you are a tiny square peg they need to fill the tiny square hole they have. Sheesh.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Try working for 20 year, owning a house with a note, owning a car with a 7 year note, having wife and kids, or ex-wife with child support and then live on 1/3 of your salary.
More than likely that 1/3 of the salary goes to child support, and the state will not care that you are now living on 1/3 of your salary. Nor will the mortgage company.
Nice try, but not possible to compete with someone where minimum wage salary here lives like kings in other countries.
Thanks for playing and try again.
Sorry, dude, but where exactly have you been those past 25ish years? Living in a sheltered bubble or ... how could you NOT see this happen before?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This worry has long existed. One company I worked at laid off tens of people, using offshore workers in India instead. Quality of work tanked. Slower to push releases. Then one day tons of db records were fucked while the guy responsible for it tried to hide it and pretend it never happened. Then we ended our contract with the Indian firm and went back to hiring locally.
Aside from that, the trend lately is companies wanting more onsite staff / less telecommuting.
And lastly, there are so many unfilled jobs right now that even if there was a surge in outsourcing, as unlikely as it would be, it wouldn't affect most people.
Why is there a war on the IT workers in the US?
- Talent shortage is fabricated by business decision makers as an excuse to use H1-B workers and save money
- Older IT workers are being fired and ignored in the recruiting process
- Rote memory certifications are being placed above advanced degrees and experience
- Recruiters are given the hiring criteria by -- guess who -- business decision makers
WAKE UP!!
I agree that a lot of the recent "Trump talk" about bringing back manufacturing is just speech to make an audience happy. But it doesn't have to all be nonsense either.
You can see by how many foreign auto-makers chose to put assembly plants in the U.S. that it can make good financial sense. (Not long ago, the whole "Buy American!" thing meant bashing companies like Toyota, Hyundai and Kia -- yet today, they're employing lots of American workers and putting the vehicles together here that we buy here. Saves a lot of money in costs to ship them over from Japan or S. Korea.)
No, there's not any point in trying to bring manufacturing here that's little more than slave labor, like sewing together dress shirts or jeans. But there's a whole lot of more advanced manufacturing of physically large objects that makes sense to do in America.
The area is San Francisco where the cost of living is very high. If you want to live and work in the city, you need to have a high salary - just to get by there.
And your comment applies to a non-profit public university HOW?
You alt left morons want to blame Trump?
That may have less to do with outsourcing and more to do with the fact that California has budget and pension problems.
The guy wasn't working for "a company", he was working for the California university system. Peopl who "work for companies" already understand that they may get laid off when their employer needs to save money. Apparently, to government employees, this is a big surprise.
H-1B is a red herring; these jobs will get outsourced with or without H-1B visas, for the simple reason that external companies can provide these services cheaper than state employees.
Been-there-done-that. The thing is, I can accept the idea that we have to compete on a global market, and brains are becoming a cheap commodity. We cannot stop the inevitable. It's not 1970 anymore.
However, I think it's reasonable to shut the tech-visa door during a recession, which the US government did NOT. I lost two jobs during a recession when the 1st company croaked and the 2nd outsourced, and had to leave the state and my family to find work. I probably would have actually voted for T back then, *gulp*.
Table-ized A.I.
I think the original posted is absolutely correct, in his comment that, "I've observed that the average age is definitely older, and people have been here forever. Lots of my co-workers are stuck in their ways, and they have an attitude about their job + entitlements that only a person with no recent private sector work experience would have."
My wife work in I.T. for a local community college and has observed the same thing. The head of networking has been there for YEARS. His area of expertise was Novell Netware, which is utterly obsolete today. Ever since he was forced to move to support Windows networks and servers, he's done nothing but screw things up and hold back needed change. (He won't implement basic security precautions because he keeps saying they aren't necessary. In reality, he's probably not confident he can implement any of them properly and doesn't want to be bothered to learn.)
Another guy on the team was continually pushing updates out to systems that broke them, and then just going home, shrugging and saying, "Oops.... Oh well.... something to figure out later." Professors had to cancel classes in some cases, due to his negligence. Yet did they fire him? No! They just moved him to another area for a while, and now he's back, making the same mistakes again!
"Usually, they outsource the low-paying jobs," he said at a gathering outside a school building. "But now they use H-1B (visa) and use foreign workers to replace the high-paying jobs. This trend is dangerous."
... the high-paying jobs are worth about as much as the janitorial jobs at the same school.
When jobs can be outsourced for cheaper wages, it's a clear sign that the "good old days," are gone.
The real danger is wasting time and money resisting change.
Just fucking outsource those goddam jobs, for Christ's sake, and ramp up the education system to produce workers that actually work at doing shit that makes a lot of money.
I have to think of everything.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The organization in question here is not some for-profit 1%-er evil CEO run korporashun, like say, Apple, Tesla, or the Daily Kos.
It's a public university run by the glorious people's State of California, and presumably all the faculty and staff are good San Fransiscans or at least good Californians who seek nothing more than progress.
Companies are run by people who take advantage of other people. You're not going to change that reality. You cannot legislate morals and ethics. Add whatever regulations you want, CEOs are still going to find a way to take advantage of you. Therefore, rather than say they should stop (since they won't), you should find a way to be competitive. Employers really only care about three things when it comes to their employees: 1) how much work can I get out of you? 2) How good is the result of the work I can get out of you? 3) How much is that going to cost me? If you want to remain employed, you have to find a way to compete in those 3 categories. You could offer to work for half your salary, but you probably don't want to (even though IT workers tend to have inflated salaries due to what was once a shortage of skilled IT workers), and even if you did, it would still be more than an Indian IT worker would be charging. You could offer to work 80 hr weeks, but that will probably end badly sooner rather than later, and the Indian IT worker is also already doing that. It's probably down to trying to make the proposition that you can do better work. There's nothing inherently better about that there is about an Indian, but you do have one competitive advantage in this arena. The Indian IT worker, as previously mentioned, is likely already working 80 hour weeks, while you are not. This means he has a lot less free time to improve his skills. While American labor laws and relative economic prosperity have put you at a disadvantage in the first two categories, they have also led us to the 40-60 hour work week, which leaves time to read trade journals, seek advanced degrees, contribute to open-source projects, learn about new languages, processes and technologies, or a wide range of activities that make you much better at your job than you were a month ago. IT workers in Indian sweat shops working 80 hour weeks really don't have that luxury, so you've found your competitive advantage! I know you think you shouldn't have to do this. I know you feel you are entitled to employment. But that's not how the system works, and probably not how it's going to work any time soon. The reality is you have three choices. You can make yourself more valuable than the off-shore alternative, you can refuse to do so and accept the consequences, or you can choose to stop being an employee and start your own businesses. Whichever you choose, I wish you luck!
So don't live in the city. There are tech jobs all over the country.
OMG! Is that a laugh! Where I work the Indians spend half the day in the break room jabbering and drinking coffee and microwaving snacks.
Official H1-B Indian Work Schedule
Show up at 9:10
9:15 in the break room for coffee and monkey chatter
9:45 off to the cube
10:30 time for a coffee refill and more jabber.
11:00 back to the cube
11:19 take a piss
11:50 time for lunch.
12:40 time to get on elevator back to office.
12:45 in break room kitchen washing up food containers and utensils.
1:01 back to the cube
1:43 time for chai tea and monkey chatter
2:15 back to the cube
2:30 time to take a leisurely shit.
2:53 back to the cube.
3:20 time for a snack and more jabber
3:33 time to piss then back to the cube.
4:00 time to go to company gym and work out.
4:30 back to the cube
4:47 pick up food containers and utensils in kitchen
4:56 time to go home.
Yes! I was born in Minnesota. I just got my HB1 visa approved last week and finally am back to work.
You just need to get your workers visa. Sure, I'm a citizen already but having that HB1 credential means I am better than you. Period. And I require sponsorship now. But that's ok. Ill be able to work in the country I was born and raised in again.
I love the HB1 visa program. My fellow USA citizens, apply for your visas today! You'll be back to work soon.
It's bad enough the school is doing this to their staff, but the school is ALSO charging students for curriculum which will prepare them to work the very same sort of jobs the school just outsourced.
So not only are they screwing their people, they're robbing their customers too and sending them into a dead end.
I'm not much of a protectionist. I think free trade is mostly a good thing. BUT I do think the US has a serious problem with H1-B and work visas in general. If you go to any other country, the process of getting in the country to work is MUCH MUCH harder. Canada, for example, will not allow someone in if they merely suspect the person is there to work and does not have a work visa and a sponsor. Even if they DO have a visa and a sponsor, the work in question has to be a job that NO Canadian can do. So if you take photos, for example, then you can't work there because clearly Canada has photographers who could do the work.
The US makes no such restrictions. You can come here and take the job of an American even if we have lots of other qualified Americans ready and able to do that work. We don't care. Bring on the foreigners! This is ridiculous.
Sig for hire.
It seems like the UOC is just the latest in a long string of companies/institutions to repeat this experiment. They could save themselves a LOT of trouble by just looking around at the many others in the industry that already tried this and switched back, but for some reason these mangement types are always arrogant/clueless enough to think they automatically know better and are somehow different.
UOC will now take multiple years of inflicting tremendous pain on themselves before the bean counters will finally admit that they might have got it wrong, and they finallylearn the universal truth that everyone else already knows: Cheap engineers produce very low quality work which pisses off all your customers/users and costs FAR more and takes FAR longer to put right, than just hiring good engineers in the first place ever would have.
Parent said in his comment:
The UAW president replied "But how many cars do these robots buy?"
Ford isn't relying on only Americans to buy their cars. They are counting on developing countries like CHINA to take up the slack and drive growth. Big business is OK with your purchasing power falling if it's rising in other countries.
And that is why Kate Steinle is still alive?
The guy who killed her had been deported 5 times, with a long record and was still in the US illegally killing US citizens. Oh yea, in a "sanctuary city" so he wouldn't be deported again, supported by the DNC and Obama.
Apparently whatever Obama "deporter in chief" was doing wasn't working. But you don't really care, because the DNC being in power is more important to you than citizens being killed by illegal aliens.
Why is it the DNC and their supporters hate US citizens so much?
I was like you up to my early forties.
By my late 50's I hated everything about the work in IT/CS and the assholes that populate it, mostly the bosses and outsourcers, all of whom richly deserve a beating.
Look at the crap that most - no ALL - software is. It is unbelievable how buggy, fragile, and incomprehensible everything from the Internet/Web to phone "apps" to car software has become - Sturgeons law is apparently now infinitely recursive in the field of software.
I wish I knew in my 20's what I know now. I would have run screaming from IT/CS. It is a bottomless pit. I recommend to any smart person that they go into medicine, pharmacy, regulated engineering fields - hell even becoming an electrician is better than the shit working conditions and career hell in CS/IT.
I don't mean to be insensitive here but when I see something in this article saying “Usually, they outsource the low-paying jobs” I'm thinking these people were fine with it since it didn't touch them. I have seen places where you can tell these high-level employees are fine with outsourcing and even thought it was normal that their company was saving money. They would have done something to defend the low paying jobs if they had understood it would eventually come for them. The lack of solidarity between tech workers is appalling I find. I'm not suggesting it would fix the underlying problem occurring here but it makes it hard for me to have sympathy for them.
On the other side of this issue, what about the students? Are they still going to go to this school knowing it's telling them their future job won't be there because an H1B has it or will they stop registering for these courses to send a message to the school's administration? I'll bet they will still attend and give their borrowed money to get a diploma that won't mean anything to an employer who can get people on the cheap.
Disney and Transamerica both did it. They forced their employees to train their replacements under threat of lost severance.
"If you're doing business (i.e.: taking money from people) in a country, especially THIS country, you have a moral obligation to employ people from the community, if possible."
You used to be right, but not any more. Money is no longer spent locally, so why should jobs be kept local? If people are buying all of their consumer goods from multinationals and having them delivered to their doorstep, then why should employment be any different?
I don't respond to AC's.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"But now they use H-1B (visa) and use foreign workers to replace the high-paying jobs. This trend is dangerous."
"NOW they use H1Bs?"
This snowballed when the H1B quantity was increased so much to drive down IT wages; at least since 2000, not new.
Are they really saying that it is that hard for qualified IT folks to find another job somewhere in the whole U.S. with a similar salary/cost of living tradeoff. I know plenty of recruiters who would be salivating at the thought of 110 highly qualified people looking for a job.
So the questions are:
What exactly do they do?
Have they kept their skills up and stayed marketable?
One guy complained that even if he finds a job he may get laid off again in two years. What type of 80s mindset is that? Changing jobs for qualified IT people is like changing socks.
Outsourcing could very well make it hard for *qualified* people to find a job in the future, but not today.
U.S. jobless claims near 44-year low, and "A survey from the Fed on Wednesday showed the labor market remained tight in early 2017, with some of the central bank's districts reporting "widening" labor shortages."
Cue the propaganda about there being a worker shortage again. There is no worker shortage. There are workers lined up to work in IT. US companies have a champagne taste and a beer budget because that's what drives these insane profits on the stock exchange. The champagne is the American workers, the beer is the foreign workers for the most part with a few exceptions. This is why we need to suspend the H-1B Visa program because American companies will have no choice but to compromise. They certainly can afford it. I think it's only fair, the American people have been asked to compromise and compromise and then compromise again since 2008 to do their part to help the economy recover from The Great Recession. We've fulfilled that obligation now and it's time for us to get a slice of the historically enormous cash pile that has built up and been stored overseas to avoid repatriation.
We'll make great pets
"Laid-Off IT Workers Worry US Is Losing Tech Jobs To Outsourcing" Seriously. This has gone on for years and years.
An exodus of tech workers from the SF Bay area will likely happen. Eventually their market is going to burst.
Your 401k, IRA, investments drive short term focus of all companies. Your money are used against you! Someone should create index of companies that do not use HB1 so we can support them.
As a senior experience professional primary working in the oil and gas arena in the Middle East. Companies here need to prove very strictly that they have nationalisation percentages and all vendors have In Country Value. It's a big deal. He'll even the wipros and tatas's of the world need to invest in local talent. Doesn't this happen in the states?
Visa holders will be replaced sooner than later as well. They can't work for less than an AI machine can. Soon AI will not be limited to single discipline fields, and so employment, as it currently operates, won't work out well for many humans. Major reforms will have to be made, in either how we earn or what we earn, in order to keep the poor poor; because if there is no poor - there is no rich.
Finally someone tells us the right way. I will also apply for my workers H visa. I'm in California and everyone else in the large companies have these visa allowing them to work.
Its kind of obvious. All us USA citizens also need to get work visas if we want to comets and work.
Thank you for telling us. I need to find a sponsor asap.
I had trouble finding the article provided in the news entry. CIO had it here: http://www.cio.com/article/317...
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
So you're going to join the rest of the Republicans in screaming and crying about people starting families you can't afford and oh my god the country is turning brown because nobody is starting families but don't start a family you can't afford but...
Does Republican cognitive dissonance ever reach a level that it can be used as an energy source?
I agree that a lot of the recent "Trump talk" about bringing back manufacturing is just speech to make an audience happy. But it doesn't have to all be nonsense either. You can see by how many foreign auto-makers chose to put assembly plants in the U.S. that it can make good financial sense. (Not long ago, the whole "Buy American!" thing meant bashing companies like Toyota, Hyundai and Kia -- yet today, they're employing lots of American workers and putting the vehicles together here that we buy here. Saves a lot of money in costs to ship them over from Japan or S. Korea.)
No, there's not any point in trying to bring manufacturing here that's little more than slave labor, like sewing together dress shirts or jeans. But there's a whole lot of more advanced manufacturing of physically large objects that makes sense to do in America.
That's all good and dandy until you realize all those foreign manufacturers are heavily automated. You can bring back manufacturing output, but not manufacturing jobs. That shit is gone, never to come back. Hell, China is already making the change, and Mexico has increased its purchases of industrial robots five-fold in the last 2 years IIRC.
And guess what? We have millions of workers who are effectively illiterate who can neither work in a modern manufacturing plant nor operate in a service economy.
Read Lester Thurow's "A Weakness in Process Technology", 18 December 1987. Everything I'm telling you was identified 30 years ago. Both the nation and the individual have done nothing. So whatever comes ,it is deserving.
I have a legitimate question for anyone reading this topic:
Have you ever been hired instead of an H1B because you are local and available to work? Have you ever had to hire a local person instead of the H1B you wanted to hire because a local person applied? Have you ever heard of this happening in real life? How did it work out?
From what I've seen of the hiring process, this doesn't happen. But my experience is limited. I'd be really interested to hear of it actually happening and how it went.
A coworker in my former life was doing jobs of two for pitiful pay. One day when another coworker left, she was told to do the job of the departed in addition to the two she was handling. When she refused, she was written up for insubordination. A week later, she landed herself a job with normal work load and 50% increase in pay, and promptly left. That company ended up hiring three people each with higher than what she was paid to do the work she did.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
If all of the smart computer people started automating everything then wouldn't there be no reason to be a slave to work? Or, is it better to keep job security and to continue to make more money than the average middle class household? I would rather me and the world be chilling one day and work would be automating more things instead of being so primitive.
The US Government needs to wakup and start protecting the american tech worker, one of the last stable jobs in this market.
You are not obligated to pay the mortgage or car payment. Nobody is forcing you to do this. The police are not going to arrest you if you walk away from it like they do in other countries. From the sounds of things you got divorced and have to pay child support. Well, so does every other American when they do the same thing. Tough shit and welcome to the club! Do what every other screwed over American does. Declare bankruptcy and walk away from the house and nice car you can no longer afford. Drive a beater and rent an affordable apartment until the kids grow up. Save money, spend the next few years taking up new hobbies and reevaluating your life choices. And for the love of God, spend quality time with your kids when it's your time for them!
Re this section:
You think the government should be able to limit profits and capital?
It already does, via taxation. There are numerous other limitations placed on companies too.
No, the government does NOT get to limit profits and capital directly, that is a minor secondary effect of taxation. Were they to attempt to make it a primary effect (like you do in England/UK/Europe et al - remember when the Beatles were in the 98% tax bracket? Pepperidge Farms remembers!) we WOULD see a revolution. We Americans like the practice that if we work harder/longer/etc we get more for our efforts, and having the government penalize us for doing so would NOT be tolerated here.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I have the same question to many people who bitch and moan about their jobs going to China... 10, 15 years ago... and still live in the same economically depressed towns without learning anything during all that time.
Well said. There is a famous saying that if you aren't getting better you are getting worse. Just because you stand still doesn't mean anyone else will.
We are past manufacturing.
Not remotely. We just are past labor intensive manufacturing and we are only past that in the US because our cost of labor is so high relative to other parts of the world. We still do capital intensive manufacturing to the tune of about $3 Trillion per year. The US manufacturing sector would be one of the ten largest economies in the world by itself. We don't make happy meal toys. We make jumbo jets and cars and earth movers and semiconductors and drugs and lots of other complicated stuff that requires more than a high school diploma to design and make. The only country with a larger manufacturing sector is China and not by much. Per-capita theirs is much smaller. Manufacturing in the US is alive and well. It just isn't the same system your father and grandfather grew up it.
We are in a post-industrial setup and no amount of barriers would have prevented globalization.
That is a nonsensical statement. There is nothing "post-industrial" about our economy. You are correct about globalization being more or less inevitable but it's not because we are "post-industrial" anything. It's because communication and transportation and logistics systems and infrastructure improved so much that it made it economically inevitable. We can literally travel halfway around the world in a single day. We can talk in real time to people on other continents. We have ships that are literally the size of small towns and aircraft that are bigger than the ships that Columbus used to cross the Atlantic. We have a world wide network of information with all of humanity's knowledge. It's cheaper to build a car and ship it across oceans in some cases than to build it next door.
You can see by how many foreign auto-makers chose to put assembly plants in the U.S. that it can make good financial sense.
Modern auto assembly plants are highly automated and don't employ massive numbers of people anymore. Foreign automakers build plants in the US for several reasons but two are particularly important. 1) They are building a car for sale primarily in that market and have no plans to export it and 2) as a hedge against currency fluctuations. If you build a plant in Japan and ship the cars to the US you run into the problem of currency risk. If the Yen were to rise against the Dollar (1 Yen buys more Dollars) then the price of your cars just went up because each dollar can buy fewer cars made in Japan. But if you make the car in the US you don't have that problem because there is no currency conversion. Currency fluctuations can work in your favor too but it's a big risk and the car companies cannot control the relative values of currencies. This is exactly why China has so much US debt. They have kept their currency intentionally weak because it makes their exports more competitive. If the Yuan were to rise against the Dollar significantly it would make everything made in China more expensive.
But there's a whole lot of more advanced manufacturing of physically large objects that makes sense to do in America.
Exactly. Germany does this rather well and believe it or not so does the US. It's capital intensive manufacturing. Chasing poorly paying labor intensive manufacturing jobs is a fools errand.
The only thing we can do is, NOT give out the H1B visas to IT people. About 2 months ago, I went on an interview at a cable company for a Network Engineering position. (I did not get the job, and I am 100x more qualified than any of them.) The entire department was Indian and the team lead was a perm employee but was from China. These were key positions that are being given to foreign nationals. They have the ability to capture traffic in a major American Service provider. I should not need to give everyone a scenario but here goes...
A US General, orders Cable, Internet and Phone from this cable company for his family residence. He has his military issued phone for security. He feels as if he is not being monitored. His 16 year old daughter, is on the cable issued phone and is standing next to dad when he is on his private phone and is talking with her friend. She also has he iPad connected to the cable with the microphone on and is charging it on the table.
Now can anyone tell me what is wrong with this picture? The General can do everything right, and still be vulnerable to the foreign nationals at the cable company. We are not only vulnerable to losing our jobs and our livelihood, we are vulnerable to espionage and it could actually kill us. We are being so unwise about this, I feel sick.
Let India employ their own in India, it is not our job to employ a nation of 1 billion people.
Nope. Didn't miss it at all. I've personally been at the wrong end of IT off-shoring, so I know how this works. Physically displaceable jobs get sent offshore. Low paying jobs that require a physical presence (like janitorial services, etc.) stay. Sit in on a basic economics course sometime. You'll find that higher minimum wage means higher payroll costs which business owners pass on to customers in order to maintain profit margins. Higher prices for customers = a higher cost of living. One drives the other.
Fuck, you don't get out much, do you?
I would rather work in so many OTHER countries than America, you guys don't even feature on the 2nd choice list.
Crap police, crap laws, crap courts, crap employment conditions, crap medical care, crap public transport, crap education.
GM food everywhere, over-medicated, and most of the populace willfully ignorant of the "rest of the world".
Without even the enormous hassle of visas and immigration delays and confidentiality, why would anyone not in the 3rd world even bother?
The jobs are being shipped overseas. Limit H visas all you want, how is he going to prevent companies from moving departments or just having a outsource partner's division do the work?
Again, you're short on details. You know how badly local companies will fair if bumble into a trade-war? Maybe wait for more details before you assume this will be easily done.
So pretty much you're repeating his sound bites. It's ok, but I doubt you ever hated Trump.
So you're saying that it is totally okay to destroy our quality of life for the sake of your white guilt or whatever other malfuction is causing you to embrace unfettered globalism? In the 50's a person could work as a grocery clerk and have a simple house, a wife, 2.1 kids, and ON A SINGLE INCOME!. Thanks democrats, this hopey changey stuff is great!!!
Just walk away from the problems. Great idea. Is that your fix for everything? Maybe we should all have broken families and kids growing up without 2 parents so we can fill the prisons up faster. Perhaps we should just convert half of every city to prison complexes for efficiency's sake.
I have been in the I.T. business since 1979. I run a software development company. Our clients are agencies, digital marketing departments, and the like.
I am certainly not the 1%. I drive a base Ford F150 pickup and own a small Bayliner fishing boat. I live in a small house, that I have poured a ton of sweat equity into. I do have a decent, but not massive bank account. I work 12 hours a day Monday-Friday because I am the boss/owner.
When I started the business I had all U.S. developers. Then, ever so slowly we started loosing customers because our prices were too high. It didn't take long to figure out that most of our customers were getting their websites built overseas.
So we had two choices. Close the doors, or go overseas. We tried India, it sucked. Tried South America, it sucked. Ended up in Eastern Europe. So I have project managers in the U.S., and accounting in the U.S., and the rest overseas. And I'm certainly not getting rich exploiting people in foreign lands. The performers get paid a good wage. Not as much as a developer here costs, because I am not on the hook for horribly overpriced insurance, and it costs less to live there than it does here. But the difference isn't as great as the idiots in the media lead you to believe. The markup is not that great. The business is very competitive.
So before you go wailing about the evil rich conniving in some back room about how they are going to screw all the Americans and ship their jobs offshore, paying a senior developer $6/Hour or some such bullshit please, please, please talk to someone who actually lives in this world and deals with it every day.
The going rate for agency dev work IS WHAT IT IS. It is not set by ME. It is set by the MARKET. The going rate for a developer is also set by the MARKET. My clients will not pay a higher rate for an American developer. I know, I asked them over and over and over. So to be blunt WTF do you people expect me to do? Not make a living? Nobody will hire me, I've run my own show too long. And no, "slick sales" won't convince a client to pay 150% of what all the competitors are charging. Every other I.T. service provider and I.T. department is in exactly the same situation I am in.
If you want to survive in the I.T. industry you have three choices. 1) Get a skill that's so rare, and so in demand, that you can charge big bucks. 2) Learn to manage developers through Skype, and focus on design. 3) Work in an industry where you have to be onsite - such as one that's highly regulated, or a factory where they don't have Internet connections, or defense work and the like. I'm sorry but that's the way it is. The good old days, where developers wrote their own tickets are simply gone.
Now if the Trumpster says all offshore labor is taxed at about 50%, and the rates I can charge go up, I will do a happy dance, go rent an office, and hire U.S. developers again... But seriously most of what is written on every one these threads about offshore dev is just so much fanciful thinking bullshit.
I'm not bitter. But please try to look at the REAL WORLD.
Murphy was an optimist
I work at one of the U.C. schools, hence the anonymous posting.
The bigger issue that people are missing is the *age* of the workers. They forced the workers to retire at 63. The larger pattern here isn't about H1B visa workers, but doing everything that they can to lower and limit retirement and pension payments to their employees. They just outsourced the workers because it was more edxpedient than filling positions normally. Let me explain:
It takes 3-4 months, typically, to post, interview, and hire a position, because the pay scales for non-union jobs at Cal State and U.C. schools are 10-20 years behind the curve. A typical non-union worker makes 40-60K a year, and they are unwilling to budge on their requirements. They want A level talent at C level wages. It can take up to a year to fill some management positions as a result. H1B visas take DAYS as they are technically temp workers under hiring rules and they don't have to pay them benefits ( including retirement ) Also, if they were union workers, HI1B visa workers don't fall under union jurisdiction, either.
This was about retiment and benefits. The H1B workers were just the quickest band-aid to fix the labor gap until they fill in the workers with people in their 30s.