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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.
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.
Label people who disagree "white supremicists" or "nativists" or "Nazis". Then disregard everything they say. Problem solved.
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
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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!?
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!