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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.
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.
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!
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.
A business is not a person. A business has only one moral. What is good for the profit margin. A business will poison the water, and kill its employees as long as their is profit is greater than the cost. See the majority of environmental disaster for the last 300 years. At the center is a business saving money by not safely disposing of products. Even Fukushima was at the heart a business saving money by providing the minimum levels of safety.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Pass a law limiting CEO pay and shareholder payouts to some multiple of the number of the salary of every employee below C level. Even better, just limit profits and capital in a similar way, with the excess being taxed off.
Suddenly employment and good wages become assets rather than liabilities.
A lot of Japanese companies see their primary reason for existing as to provide employment. I don't think is possible in the West, but perhaps we can change how companies see their human resources in the same way that environmental regulations made efficiency and emissions a factor.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.