Have you been in storage since the 50's or are you intentionally saying that to ensure that no one takes you seriously?
How long have you been in the business? Seriously. In the 80's and at least the first half of the 90's, the HR people in most companies didn't interfere with hiring by claiming to be able to vet people's technical skills. It meant more work for the technical staff - piles of resumes to read through. Even if you weren't directly doing the hiring, you'd occasionally have to do "resume duty" and help sift through piles of them. Nobody liked doing it, but everyone understood the importance of it. The person whose resume you gave a thumbs up to would likely wind up working next to you.
You're right. If anybody claims otherwise, ask them how long they've been around. I've been in the business long enough to remember a time before the great H-1B flood, and back then nobody wrote job ads that specific. They would have been laughed at if they had.
I hope it's not a publicly traded company, because if word ever gets out to the stock analysts that the company is not doing everything it can to screw American workers, your stock price will dive into the toilet. Even if a particular American screwing practice wouldn't save money, not using it would be seen as bad form.
My immigration law professor talked about this during our visa lectures.
Out of curiosity, what attitude did he have towards the practice? I would think it's unlawful, or at least a serious violation of legal ethics, because it's fraudulent - falsely claiming you need someone with a given very specific set of skills just so you can circumvent the H-1B requirement that you first try to hire an American. At the very least it seems like violation of doing something in "good faith". I'm not sure if that term is used outside of contract law, and one could argue it's terribly vague, but I think it has a clear meaning.
Sometimes an employer will write a job posting as a way of promoting an internal employee, though they have to post it as an open req for staff, so it doesn't look like favoritism(sp?).
Pssst, wanna buy a bridge? Those absurdly specific job listings are to justify H-1B's. Promotions are promotions, and no one sees them as favoritism unless favoritism was the basis for the promotion. Absurdly specific reqs would be seen as favortism, if one favored Bob, when everybody knows Charlie does a better job and has all the necessary skills.
What many would see as the surprising, or questionable, notion, is that liars only trust other liars. What it is though is only trusting people who play by the same set of rules as you, and it's irrelevant that the rules are crooked. Only trust your own kind. Another liar may be your enemy, but at least you understand him. Liars always try to act in their own self-interest, but those honest people are unpredictable, and their motives difficult to understand. How can you trust someone you can't understand, and hence whose behavior is totally unpredictable? It's like being with someone who most of the time is perfectly reasonable, but at unpredictable moments flies into wild irrational rages, screaming about demons seen only by them, like "ethics" and "truthfulness".
Hear, hear! I'm primarily an EE, both often spend a lot of time coding. When I was new to the field, my mentor (also an EE) highly recommended that I take some courses in algorithms and data structures. Some of the stuff I'd already learned on my own, but some basic subjects are best learned in a formal course where you can't say "I'm not interested in that part today". Best damn advice I ever got (well, second best, but I ignored the bit about staying single). Languages I can learn till they're coming out my ears. So what. Although "Ruby on Cheese"? Couldn't hurt to brush up on it just in case.
Of course. While you're at it, why don't you tell me the story of your divorce. I'm sure your version is the gospel truth, and your ex-wife's is a bunch of twisted lies.
when you do try to work with them to make things better, it's met with resistance
Pardon my skepticism that it's so one-sided, especially coming from someone who demonstrates their flexibility and spirit of cooperation by saying "if you're willing to learn, I will teach you and mold you." The "teach" part is fine, but mold? Guide, help, groom, and a whole bunch of other words from a thesaurus, but mold? Someone who wants to mold people doesn't sound very flexible or cooperative to me. And please don't say that it was just an accidental poor choice of a word. When I have to bet, I weigh what people say off-the-cuff far greater than any "corrections" they make when backpedaling.
Are you suggesting that while unemployment among tech workers hovers around 4%, there is actually a large population of "discouraged workers" in tech that have been unemployed for years and are consequently not counted among the unemployed?
Do you have any idea how unemployment is calculated? Once you get the burger flipper job, you're no longer considered a tech worker since you've "changed fields". Hence in U3 you won't be counted amongst unemployed, underemployed or discouraged tech workers. According to U3, you're now employed, and thus a happy productive member of the workforce. It's considered irrelevant that you've taken a 5x reduction in income, will never get another tech job since there's a big gap in your employment history unless you list burger flipper on your resume, that the cost and work of getting your university education is a total write off, or that you may be perfectly capable of doing some of the jobs for which H-1B happy employers claim there is a shortage of qualified people.
Another way of phrasing that claim would be "tech workers have a disproportionate ratio of discouraged to unemployed workers when compared against other sectors"
No it wouldn't - that doesn't follow at all. You could have a lower proportion of discouraged to unemployed workers (you forgot underemployed) when compared against other sectors, and still have a deceptive 4% figure. The fact that other fields may or may not be worse in that respect doesn't change the deceptive nature of the 4% figure for tech.
While we're at it, you apparently still don't understand the difference between U3 and U6. It's not credible to claim you have any real understanding of unemployment if you don't, so here's a clue.
Which even from the employer's POV is idiotic. You'll wind up with drones whose greatest virtue is that they were always good drones. Try looking for talent instead. A friend of mine dropped out of HS when he got his girlfriend pregnant, moved to an Indian reservation for a number of years, then wound up going to Harvard law. Oh, but he didn't learn to conjugate French verbs in the 12th grade. Who'd want somebody like that?
P.S. Any chance it has anything to do with the remnants of the British class system? Are they concerned that you attended a primary school that indicates your exalted rank in the class system?
Of course if working class Joe Q. Public is in the company of these "escorts"...
Or if you're going after Countrywide or one of our other esteemed and ever-so-honest financial institutions. Doubleplusbad if the bank was in the habit of giving sweetheart loans to other politicians. Cue Eliot Spitzer. The guy was an idiot and a hypocrite for using the "escort service" the way he did, but the case is still peculiar. Why was the case never prosecuted? How many other politicos could you catch this way, but somehow never are?
Will they buy Microsoft in the future? That would be sweet. It would have the odd effect though of giving the two most popular OS'es in the world a Finnish tie.
I thought unemployment in tech fields was actually below 4% for a good long while now, which is effectively "no unemployment". If you can't find a job, don't blame the market.
And if you're ignorant, don't blame the official statistics. Get a job flipping burgers so maybe you can make than next mortgage payment, and you're no longer an unemployed techie. Congratulations, you're a productive citizen again. The U3 unemployment rate usually cited in the US is bull because it doesn't take into account underemployment and has a questionable approach to long term unemployment. See if you can find the U6 numbers, which actually mean something. U6 is also what's frequently used in other countries, so when the crony capitalists and their sycophants say that "socialism" destroys job markets, they're comparing apples to oranges. I could sort of accept it if they were knowingly spouting a BS line, but the sad truth is that most are too ignorant to even realize it's BS.
And making a "side" move is proving extremely difficult because employers are over-picky these days.
No they aren't. Purple squirrel is just another name for an H-1B. Apparently the species is rare in the US, but can readily be found elsewhere (especially if they're willing to become cut-rate indentured servants).
The killer is that it would be easy, and entirely reasonable, to stop that practice if there was the political will. Simply limit the deductibility of business loans to a reasonable level. Real companies would still be able get loans they needed for expansion, capital investment, etc., and write off the interest as a legitimate business expense. Parasites like Bain Capital would die because the US taxpayer would no longer be subsidizing their absurdly leveraged scams.
Sure, I adapt, but can I adapt fast enough to survive 40 years in technology?
If you're any good, you definitely can. If you haven't become obsolete by your late thirties I'll bet you already know how to keep up. I'm a EE and I've known people in their 60's and 70's who started out working with tubes but have stayed bleeding edge all along. That includes one group I affectionately call the geriatric chip designers. Good luck finding people with more know-how in the difficult field of designing RF and hi-performance analog ASIC's. And yes, it's state-of-the-art stuff. The problem is that shortsighted management won't hire protégés to take over when these guys retire. That's not something you can do at the last minute either - try hiring them 10 or 20 years in advance, so they'll be knowledgeable enough when the old farts retire. I'm worried because several of the guys working on a chip for a project that I'm on have recently retired. BTW, did I mention that the chips these guys design are absolutely essential to a large company keeping its competitive edge in the largest part of their business?
The problem isn't keeping up, it's convincing idiots that there is such a thing as keeping up and that you're one of the people who's done it.
No, a layoff biased against older people is definitely illegal, and grounds for a lawsuit. Good luck winning it though - it's not like the legal system takes labor law seriously anymore. Frankly you'd have a better chance with a sex or race discrimination suit. Sometimes those are taken seriously, and for good reason, but at best pay lip service is paid to the age discrimination issue.
Sounds like you work on the healthcare.gov job, or perhaps for an outsourcing firm. Where I am, beating the competition's performance and quality is a matter of do or die. Good thing too - I'd probably suck at churning out endless piles of garbage.
If you're willing to learn, I will teach you and mold you.
But the converse doesn't seem to be true. You sound quite inflexible, and stuck in the way you prefer to "mold" people. Why aren't you willing to learn things from people who often know more than you about certain areas? Do you want to become obsolete?
I've also seen where that sort of rigid approach means a manager can't work well with people who think independently or have experience that he lacks. Very limiting. Such managers are also usually the first to yell "shortage or qualified workers", even when a substantial talent pool is available, because they're stuck in their ways and incapable or unwilling to learn anything new. Cutting yourself off from available talent while the competition scoops them up doesn't sound like a good business approach.
Quarterly-report driven businesses are racing to the bottom of the skills pool, trying to find the least qualified, lowest cost cog that will not cause their business to implode.
Correction: That will not cause their business to implode before the CxO's grab the money and run.
They have business school knowledge (a very different thing from actual business knowledge) and great political skills. A touch of psychopathy doesn't hurt either. Who cares about actual business knowledge when you'll collect your absurd paychecks, bonuses and stock options before your shortsighted business practices really start screwing up the company.
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Have you been in storage since the 50's or are you intentionally saying that to ensure that no one takes you seriously?
How long have you been in the business? Seriously. In the 80's and at least the first half of the 90's, the HR people in most companies didn't interfere with hiring by claiming to be able to vet people's technical skills. It meant more work for the technical staff - piles of resumes to read through. Even if you weren't directly doing the hiring, you'd occasionally have to do "resume duty" and help sift through piles of them. Nobody liked doing it, but everyone understood the importance of it. The person whose resume you gave a thumbs up to would likely wind up working next to you.
You're right. If anybody claims otherwise, ask them how long they've been around. I've been in the business long enough to remember a time before the great H-1B flood, and back then nobody wrote job ads that specific. They would have been laughed at if they had.
Also we never hire H-1B's.
I hope it's not a publicly traded company, because if word ever gets out to the stock analysts that the company is not doing everything it can to screw American workers, your stock price will dive into the toilet. Even if a particular American screwing practice wouldn't save money, not using it would be seen as bad form.
My immigration law professor talked about this during our visa lectures.
Out of curiosity, what attitude did he have towards the practice? I would think it's unlawful, or at least a serious violation of legal ethics, because it's fraudulent - falsely claiming you need someone with a given very specific set of skills just so you can circumvent the H-1B requirement that you first try to hire an American. At the very least it seems like violation of doing something in "good faith". I'm not sure if that term is used outside of contract law, and one could argue it's terribly vague, but I think it has a clear meaning.
Apparently you know more than an immigration law professor.
Sometimes an employer will write a job posting as a way of promoting an internal employee, though they have to post it as an open req for staff, so it doesn't look like favoritism(sp?).
Pssst, wanna buy a bridge? Those absurdly specific job listings are to justify H-1B's. Promotions are promotions, and no one sees them as favoritism unless favoritism was the basis for the promotion. Absurdly specific reqs would be seen as favortism, if one favored Bob, when everybody knows Charlie does a better job and has all the necessary skills.
I see you're already up to +5 (for good reason).
What many would see as the surprising, or questionable, notion, is that liars only trust other liars. What it is though is only trusting people who play by the same set of rules as you, and it's irrelevant that the rules are crooked. Only trust your own kind. Another liar may be your enemy, but at least you understand him. Liars always try to act in their own self-interest, but those honest people are unpredictable, and their motives difficult to understand. How can you trust someone you can't understand, and hence whose behavior is totally unpredictable? It's like being with someone who most of the time is perfectly reasonable, but at unpredictable moments flies into wild irrational rages, screaming about demons seen only by them, like "ethics" and "truthfulness".
Hear, hear! I'm primarily an EE, both often spend a lot of time coding. When I was new to the field, my mentor (also an EE) highly recommended that I take some courses in algorithms and data structures. Some of the stuff I'd already learned on my own, but some basic subjects are best learned in a formal course where you can't say "I'm not interested in that part today". Best damn advice I ever got (well, second best, but I ignored the bit about staying single). Languages I can learn till they're coming out my ears. So what. Although "Ruby on Cheese"? Couldn't hurt to brush up on it just in case.
It's not that I'm inflexible, it's that they are
Of course. While you're at it, why don't you tell me the story of your divorce. I'm sure your version is the gospel truth, and your ex-wife's is a bunch of twisted lies.
when you do try to work with them to make things better, it's met with resistance
Pardon my skepticism that it's so one-sided, especially coming from someone who demonstrates their flexibility and spirit of cooperation by saying "if you're willing to learn, I will teach you and mold you." The "teach" part is fine, but mold? Guide, help, groom, and a whole bunch of other words from a thesaurus, but mold? Someone who wants to mold people doesn't sound very flexible or cooperative to me. And please don't say that it was just an accidental poor choice of a word. When I have to bet, I weigh what people say off-the-cuff far greater than any "corrections" they make when backpedaling.
Are you suggesting that while unemployment among tech workers hovers around 4%, there is actually a large population of "discouraged workers" in tech that have been unemployed for years and are consequently not counted among the unemployed?
Do you have any idea how unemployment is calculated? Once you get the burger flipper job, you're no longer considered a tech worker since you've "changed fields". Hence in U3 you won't be counted amongst unemployed, underemployed or discouraged tech workers. According to U3, you're now employed, and thus a happy productive member of the workforce. It's considered irrelevant that you've taken a 5x reduction in income, will never get another tech job since there's a big gap in your employment history unless you list burger flipper on your resume, that the cost and work of getting your university education is a total write off, or that you may be perfectly capable of doing some of the jobs for which H-1B happy employers claim there is a shortage of qualified people.
Another way of phrasing that claim would be "tech workers have a disproportionate ratio of discouraged to unemployed workers when compared against other sectors"
No it wouldn't - that doesn't follow at all. You could have a lower proportion of discouraged to unemployed workers (you forgot underemployed) when compared against other sectors, and still have a deceptive 4% figure. The fact that other fields may or may not be worse in that respect doesn't change the deceptive nature of the 4% figure for tech.
While we're at it, you apparently still don't understand the difference between U3 and U6. It's not credible to claim you have any real understanding of unemployment if you don't, so here's a clue.
Which even from the employer's POV is idiotic. You'll wind up with drones whose greatest virtue is that they were always good drones. Try looking for talent instead. A friend of mine dropped out of HS when he got his girlfriend pregnant, moved to an Indian reservation for a number of years, then wound up going to Harvard law. Oh, but he didn't learn to conjugate French verbs in the 12th grade. Who'd want somebody like that?
P.S. Any chance it has anything to do with the remnants of the British class system? Are they concerned that you attended a primary school that indicates your exalted rank in the class system?
Of course if working class Joe Q. Public is in the company of these "escorts" ...
Or if you're going after Countrywide or one of our other esteemed and ever-so-honest financial institutions. Doubleplusbad if the bank was in the habit of giving sweetheart loans to other politicians. Cue Eliot Spitzer. The guy was an idiot and a hypocrite for using the "escort service" the way he did, but the case is still peculiar. Why was the case never prosecuted? How many other politicos could you catch this way, but somehow never are?
Will they buy Microsoft in the future? That would be sweet. It would have the odd effect though of giving the two most popular OS'es in the world a Finnish tie.
I thought unemployment in tech fields was actually below 4% for a good long while now, which is effectively "no unemployment". If you can't find a job, don't blame the market.
And if you're ignorant, don't blame the official statistics. Get a job flipping burgers so maybe you can make than next mortgage payment, and you're no longer an unemployed techie. Congratulations, you're a productive citizen again. The U3 unemployment rate usually cited in the US is bull because it doesn't take into account underemployment and has a questionable approach to long term unemployment. See if you can find the U6 numbers, which actually mean something. U6 is also what's frequently used in other countries, so when the crony capitalists and their sycophants say that "socialism" destroys job markets, they're comparing apples to oranges. I could sort of accept it if they were knowingly spouting a BS line, but the sad truth is that most are too ignorant to even realize it's BS.
And making a "side" move is proving extremely difficult because employers are over-picky these days.
No they aren't. Purple squirrel is just another name for an H-1B. Apparently the species is rare in the US, but can readily be found elsewhere (especially if they're willing to become cut-rate indentured servants).
There are literally thousands of applicants for every programming job, and there are literally three people looking for work for every available job.
Ergo we need more H-1B's. Just ask Zuck or Infosys.
The killer is that it would be easy, and entirely reasonable, to stop that practice if there was the political will. Simply limit the deductibility of business loans to a reasonable level. Real companies would still be able get loans they needed for expansion, capital investment, etc., and write off the interest as a legitimate business expense. Parasites like Bain Capital would die because the US taxpayer would no longer be subsidizing their absurdly leveraged scams.
It's also partly responsible for why we're in this mess.
Please elaborate.
Sure, I adapt, but can I adapt fast enough to survive 40 years in technology?
If you're any good, you definitely can. If you haven't become obsolete by your late thirties I'll bet you already know how to keep up. I'm a EE and I've known people in their 60's and 70's who started out working with tubes but have stayed bleeding edge all along. That includes one group I affectionately call the geriatric chip designers. Good luck finding people with more know-how in the difficult field of designing RF and hi-performance analog ASIC's. And yes, it's state-of-the-art stuff. The problem is that shortsighted management won't hire protégés to take over when these guys retire. That's not something you can do at the last minute either - try hiring them 10 or 20 years in advance, so they'll be knowledgeable enough when the old farts retire. I'm worried because several of the guys working on a chip for a project that I'm on have recently retired. BTW, did I mention that the chips these guys design are absolutely essential to a large company keeping its competitive edge in the largest part of their business?
The problem isn't keeping up, it's convincing idiots that there is such a thing as keeping up and that you're one of the people who's done it.
No, a layoff biased against older people is definitely illegal, and grounds for a lawsuit. Good luck winning it though - it's not like the legal system takes labor law seriously anymore. Frankly you'd have a better chance with a sex or race discrimination suit. Sometimes those are taken seriously, and for good reason, but at best pay lip service is paid to the age discrimination issue.
Sounds like you work on the healthcare.gov job, or perhaps for an outsourcing firm. Where I am, beating the competition's performance and quality is a matter of do or die. Good thing too - I'd probably suck at churning out endless piles of garbage.
If you're willing to learn, I will teach you and mold you.
But the converse doesn't seem to be true. You sound quite inflexible, and stuck in the way you prefer to "mold" people. Why aren't you willing to learn things from people who often know more than you about certain areas? Do you want to become obsolete?
I've also seen where that sort of rigid approach means a manager can't work well with people who think independently or have experience that he lacks. Very limiting. Such managers are also usually the first to yell "shortage or qualified workers", even when a substantial talent pool is available, because they're stuck in their ways and incapable or unwilling to learn anything new. Cutting yourself off from available talent while the competition scoops them up doesn't sound like a good business approach.
Quarterly-report driven businesses are racing to the bottom of the skills pool, trying to find the least qualified, lowest cost cog that will not cause their business to implode.
Correction: That will not cause their business to implode before the CxO's grab the money and run.
They have business school knowledge (a very different thing from actual business knowledge) and great political skills. A touch of psychopathy doesn't hurt either. Who cares about actual business knowledge when you'll collect your absurd paychecks, bonuses and stock options before your shortsighted business practices really start screwing up the company.
I automatically assume all those usual expenses that befall other men that stem from having a girlfriend or wife you are devoid of.
Actually some of us have one of those hidden somewhere, but we try not to mention it in this forum.