Immigration Attorneys: Industry Pushes Foreign Labor, Claiming 'US Students Can't Hack It In Tech' (breitbart.com) 472
geek writes: According to Caroline May from Breitbart News, "The tech industry is seeking to bolster its argument for more white-collar foreign tech workers with the insulting claim that the education system is insufficiently preparing Americans for tech fields, according to pro-American worker attorneys with the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). [In an op-ed published at The Daily Caller, IRLI attorneys John Miano and Ian Smith take the tech industry to task for its strategy to promote the H-1B visa program -- alleging a labor shortage of apt American tech workers while importing thousands of foreign workers on H1-B visas from countries with lower educational results than the U.S.]" John Miano and Ian Smith write via The Daily Caller: "But if the H-1B program really is meant to correct the failings of our education system, as BigTech's new messaging-push implies, why is it importing so many people from India? According to results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global standardized math and science assessment sponsored by the OECD, India scored almost dead last among the 74 countries tested. The results were apparently so embarrassing, the country pulled out of the program all together. Not surprisingly then, there isn't a single Indian university that appears within the top 250 spots of the World University Rankings Survey. And unlike American bachelor's degrees, obtaining a bachelor's in India takes only three years of study."
By Hack it, they mean work for 2 bucks an hour... (Score:5, Insightful)
and 60-80 hours a week with no OT pay (Score:4, Informative)
and 60-80 hours a week with no OT pay
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And do it all in a city where an apartment is $5K a month, so 8 of these guys share 1 bedroom/bathroom and always stink to high heaven
Re:and 60-80 hours a week with no OT pay (Score:4, Informative)
Only 60-80? I'd love to have a job where I worked that little. My current employer has done Seattle hundreds for the past two years. That's 16 hours a day Mon-Thu and 12 hours a day Fri-Sun. The vast majority of white and black employees have quit during that time, and I'm the only non-Indian developer left.
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There's a reason Seattle companies are so successful, and it isn't because we're lazy.
Because employees can only enjoy decent internet connectivity at the office so they spend more time actually at work?
I'm not even mad (Score:3)
Being Lazy Is a Sign of High Intelligence, Study Suggests [slashdot.org]
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There's a reason Seattle companies are so successful, and it isn't because we're lazy.
Fuckin bullshit. That's what the masters want you to believe. They want you to work all those hours because it makes the careerist managers look better. Dont be so fuckin naive
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and 60-80 hours a week with no OT pay
I had a boss try to tell me once that "If you work over 40 hours you are salary, if you work under 40 hours you are hourly". I looked at him and said "That is illegal" to which he responded, "No it's not, look it up!" I went and looked it up and it was illegal and went back to him and he said "oh I was just kidding!"
This is the type of sociopathic shit that we are dealing with here.
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Land of the broke and the incarcerated.
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With a mark up to 20 bucks an hour to their American customers. Or work for 60,000 as a Software Dev filling a Principle Dev role with commensurate experience.
And put up with the down playing of all their experience, badmouthing them when they leave the job and moving the goalposts on all of their stated job responsibilities after the fact. Don't believe me? I have lived it and I have 3 stem degrees in which I had a high GPA. The system as it stands in the US is broken. I have often thought of moving to Germany, where not only would I make way more money doing the same work, but my money once made is worth about 3 times as much due to the state of the German econ
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Pretty much this.
You need to invest in yourself in the form of continuing education. That involves your personal time and may as well coincide with what's needed at work.
Re:By Hack it, they mean work for 2 bucks an hour. (Score:4, Insightful)
uh, what personal time do you have if you're putting in 60-80 hours a week? idiot
Americans are so ridiculous when it comes to work culture. they have no joy, no pride, no self esteem, no passion. It's just work work work for them.
Germans are very hard working people too, but they get lots of benefits such as a good health care system, subsidized education so they are not drowning in debt, mandatory vacation, overtime pay, and so on. Americans on the other hand are so stupid, they think giving companies FREE LABOR is an honor. What a bunch of fucking morons.
Yeah Germany (Score:3, Funny)
A nation which consumes itself, just like South Korea and Japan. Germans on average don't have time and/or money for kids.
Software engineers will make between 2000 and 3000 euros and will pay 1200 euros rent for a family home.
Merkel now turns Germany into an Arab hellhole, because that is apparently the cheapest way to replenish the workers for this broken economic system. Have all the fun you want with Sharia soon.
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"Americans are so ridiculous when it comes to work culture. they have no joy, no pride, no self esteem, no passion. It's just work work work for them."
You're getting your Eurotrash lefty narratives mixed up. Aren't Americans supposed to be all fat and lazy?
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Ok, then where does the money go? If there was a time when this was sustainable, it means that there was a time when we could actually pay someone a wage he could live off. What changed?
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Sorry that I wanted to live instead of surviving. If I wanted to "survive", I wouldn't be working.
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I think you will find that the two kids are mandatory for humanity to survive for millennia.
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This is what billionaires want you to believe.
Re:By Hack it, they mean work for 2 bucks an hour. (Score:5, Insightful)
They want you to believe illogical bullshit. So the claim is that education in the US can not prepare students to become employees in tech industries, that already exist and we built using students trained in that US education system, that was (the one disparaged and being torn apart to create for profit charter schools). Can no one see the illogical bullshit, if the claim was in any way or shape or form true, the would be no fucking tech industries looking to employee those improperly educated students but as those industries exist and are pretty much fully staffed with educated students, then the claim must logically be bullshit.
Basically they are loosing the lie, what they are saying is they do not want to pay one cent to train people, the want the government to do if for them for free (absolutely for free as they keep their money in offshore tax havens and do not want to pay one cent for taxes to pay for that education) and even when the government pays for all that training those corporations want to pay those trained people less, much less.
Before the psychopaths took over, corporations trained people, tried to employ them for life and continued to train them, corporations were loyal to their staff and staff were loyal to their corporations. Now the psychopaths have turned it all on it's head, loyalty to no one or nothing, lying, cheating and stealing is acceptable as you get away with it or when you get caught the penalty is lessor than the benefit and the investors, well, their assets are there to be strip mined, at the first opportunity, taking into account the rules about net getting caught or the penalty being much less than the crime.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Only 3 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Only 3 years? (Score:5, Funny)
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, sit in 6 hours of evening lectures, come home, do another 6 hours of physics and math homework with single piece of paper and lump of coal to write with, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
Re:Only 3 years? (Score:5, Funny)
You had hot gravel? Some people just don't know when they've got it good.
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Why were you in such a hurry to join to slave-force? You have literally the rest of your life to sit in a cloth-covered box and regret past decisions: college is a chance to actually have a life while you're still young and stupid enough to enjoy it. Better to take the time and make some memories.
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This is such a wasteful attitude.
Re:Only 3 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is such a wasteful attitude.
Time you enjoy wasting, is not wasted time.
One question for you (Score:3)
How many hours a week did you work at a job?
Re:Only 3 years? (Score:4, Informative)
A coworker of mine is from India - green card, permanent resident, married to a US citizen. She told me her credit load per semester was 18 and that "humanities and other general education" were not required. Also that foreign languages were a high school requirement.
She also said her education was fully government paid (and that the admissions requirements are far higher than for US universities).
Re:Only 3 years? (Score:4, Informative)
So what? Indian universities are, for the most part, diploma mills with no academic standards.
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Well, it depends on what you are going for.
Did you get straight A's or did your grades take a hit because of your class load? Lower grades exclude you from select jobs and sometimes change the entire path of your career.
Did you intern? Because a lot of companies don't like to hire people without experiece.
Was it a Stem degree? If so, you are pretty sharp because stem degrees are much harder than many other degrees. You may be atypical if so. If it's not a hard degree, your achievement is less impressiv
Re:Only 3 years? (Score:5, Informative)
The other reason is that US students at age 18 are behind their counterparts in other countries. You get to 18 in the USA and your qualifications are as far as I can make out roughly the same as a 16 year old in the UK. This was abundantly clear in the notes for a number of my text books back when I was studying for my physics degree. They would specify the level of study that the text books where suitable for. In fact one of the books we used in the final year of my *undergraduate* degree suggested that it was suitable for masters degrees in the USA. In fact most masters degrees in the USA take two years where in the UK they take just one year.
Put another way you can get an undergraduate degree at either Oxford or Cambridge in three years. Both of which are in the top 10 universities in the world, with a reputation to match. If offering degrees in three years was a bad thing how come these two are managing it?
In fact University College London and Imperial College London are also in the top 10, so that is 40% of the top 10 universities in the world offering degrees in three years.
Nice propaganda piece (Score:4, Interesting)
I happen to know that even getting accepted for a BA at the IIT requires passing one of the hardest university entry exam on the planet. Sure, for MA and PhD, the IIT is crap, but the BA graduates are among the best available, simply because they are the best from a large pool of applicants (and the rest be damned...). That said, while there are a few US universities that can compete on BA level, they do not produce enough graduates, and hence the importing.
Side note: A few years ago when I was doing my PhD, we did a nice little experiment when we found a floor-plan of an CS institute at Berkeley: We tried to identify which PhD students were American and which were not. We ended up with something like 1 in 10 US and 1 in 10 unsure. The rest were from abroad. So my take is the insult here is not by the people saying the truth about the US education system, the insult is to those going through that defective system.
Re:Nice propaganda piece (Score:5, Informative)
The truth is far, far simpler: the companies are looking for cheaper workers, and India is happy to provide. Quality is of little concern.
Re: Nice propaganda piece (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Nice propaganda piece (Score:2)
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I'm getting that second hand from some friends who were appalled by the undergraduates they had to teach in the USA, but then I'm been pretty appalled at times elsewhere so it may not be a general case
Re:Nice propaganda piece (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nice propaganda piece (Score:5, Informative)
They don't, speaking as an Indian in IT in India. The big outsourcing companies, whether the homegrown ones like Infosys/Wipro/TCS or the foreign (to us) ones like Accenture/Capgemini/Cognizant have no such rule about hiring only IITians. MNC product companies on the other hand - Amazon, Adobe, IBM etc - do hire the cream of the crop for their local R&D facilities. The IITians you see in the US probably went there to do their master's and then got a job locally (not sure what visa category that comes under)
Re:Nice propaganda piece (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be interested how you would determine that. At the undergraduate level there are lots of Asians at UCB, but most were born in the USA -- their parents are 1st generation immigrants.
Another UC site, UCLA has an alternative meaning for the initials (You See Lots of ...).
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The place they got their BA and MA from, personal pages, CVs, etc. Not 100% reliable, but pretty good. And we had one person that had just spent two weeks in that group as a guest.
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Please....I took a post-degree training program at a Toronto, Ontario college that was 95% Indian students. They all had undergrad degrees from good schools in India and they had no clue what tehy were doing or talking about. They had rote memorization of simple definitions but even as they were repeating it out loud, they had no clue what the words meant.
My lab partner had a computer engineering degree. He didn't know what binary was -- well he could recite 001 010 011 100, etc, but didn't even underst
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Okay... based on my 30 seconds of research there are about 33k undergrads currently enrolled across all IIT schools. Assuming for the sake of absurdity they all graduated every year (when in fact, for a three year program less than 1/3 would reasonably graduate in a year), and every single one of them became an H1B worker in the US, that would still only account for half of
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Or maybe he just made a typo.
Not a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
$150,000 minimum wage for H1(b) people and the issue will take care of itself overnight.
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$250k would be better. We're dealing with a similar problem here in Canada called TFW's and unlike H1B's which are mainly stuck to one industry, TFW's can work in any industry. And there have been numerous cases of well paid pipefitters and welders working in the Oil patch making 150k+(around 80-90k in the rest of canada once you figure in cost of living/housing/etc) being canned by companies and hiring on these TFW's instead. Oddly enough? There seems to have been an increase in failures of pipelines i
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except this is dumb. A $150,000 per year threshold is just too high for some industry. We tried to hire university professors last year and annual salary for starting position (assistant professor) is about $90k-$100k in computer science across the country, which many people complain is so high that that is why college is unaffordable. We had exactly 1 applicant that was a citizen or a permanent resident for one of our position. The guy was good, we made an offer and he chose to decline and go to a higher r
WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamnet (Score:2, Interesting)
WE need unions also why train your h1-b replacement if we can't hack it.
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:4, Insightful)
WE need unions
No. The last thing we need is unions. The last thing I want is some group of people stealing my wages to promote their own agenda, sanctioned by the government.
source [wikipedia.org].
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Unions raise wages, period (and also working conditions, benefits, etc.)
"Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%."
If you don't want that, okay, but you're being flat-out irrational.
http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/ [epi.org]
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions raise wages at first. The dark side that they don't tell you about is that this causes the companies to try to find other ways to cut costs, and eventually leads to the jobs moving overseas.
Unions are not the answer. Unions are a hack workaround for a failed government that isn't raising the minimum wage fast enough to keep up with inflation, that isn't protecting workers from what should be illegal cuts to employee pensions, that isn't protecting worker safety enough, that isn't doing enough to protect workers from wrongful termination, and so on. Everything a union does is something that our government is supposed to be doing, but has failed to do.
And because they aren't the government, unions don't have the power to punish companies that decide to move the entire labor force overseas. A union's power exists only up to the point at which the company decides that they no longer need U.S. labor. After that, the union has no power whatsoever. Thus, unions will always be poor substitutes for proper government oversight and regulation of businesses, at least as long as we live in a global economy.
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What temporarily embarrassed millionaires never bother to think about: companies always set prices to maximize revenue, and they always look to cut costs. It doesn't matter if you pay your workers 25 cents or $250 per hour, those two market forces will remain unchanged.
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:4, Insightful)
That's pedantically true, but the panicked rapidity with which companies try to cut labor costs is directly proportional to the difference between what that company is paying for labor and what its competition is paying for labor. That's why so many small retail businesses support minimum wage hikes on a state and/or national level. It makes it easier for them to pay their workers a decent salary because they know their competition will have to do the same.
That's absurd because the reason for choosing politicians has nothing to do with corruption. Your ad hominem doesn't actually rebut my point. If anything, it's more like saying that people don't need the right to vote, because politicians are so universally corrupt that it won't do any good....
No, they actually don't. You're still as expendable as toilet paper with a union. You obviously missed the part where unions have absolutely no power once the company decides to offshore everyone. What, you think the executives are going to walk out in solidarity? When the plant closes, and nobody has a job. It doesn't matter if the workers all go on strike, because the company doesn't need them anymore anyway. And that Chinese (statistically) factory that takes over production won't be a union shop.
And the people who should be regulating those Chinese factories to ensure that workers are paid reasonably, are not forced to work unreasonable hours, etc. are the Chinese government. They (along with the governments of many other countries) have not done so to nearly the degree that we in the U.S. would prefer, which is a big part of why we have such problems with offshoring in the first place. And the U.S. government hasn't done enough to prevent Chinese companies from dumping goods into American markets made by workers in such conditions. These are all things that only government can fix, and that unions are completely powerless to defend against. And unless government is willing to enact those regulations and enforce them, the unions don't make a bit of difference except in the very short term. And if government did enact adequate regulations, then the union wouldn't be needed.
But please, educate me about how a union is going to prevent offshoring—how a union has even the slightest bit of power to do so. Better yet, educate all the folks from my hometown who lost their jobs when two of the largest union shops shifted manufacturing to other countries. Ask them whether that 20% was worth having to get by on unemployment until it ran out....
Of course there are greedy corporate executives looking to abuse their employees. I never even remotely implied otherwise. What I said was that unions have no real power to stop it, because when push comes to shove, they don't have the legal authority to tax the bajeezus out of those companies' imports to punish them when they shift most or all the jobs to another country.
In my experience, union shops generally turn into train wrecks—union grievances for daring to touch the wrong piece of equipment (even if you weren't forced to do so by management), corruption in the union leadership (to the
THE case against illegal immigration (Score:3)
"That's why so many small retail businesses support minimum wage hikes on a state and/or national level. It makes it easier for them to pay their workers a decent salary because they know their competition will have to do the same."
Nicely argued. One of the crasser arguments of the pro-undocumented protesters is the unstated claim that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. Of course it's not - but it's victims - other than the obvious ones where the desperate migrant acts to get food by a property crim
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There's laws against hiring people without proper documentation. Enforcing these laws would solve a number of problems.
Of course, Democrats typically want the illegal immigrants to do well, and Republicans like the supply of near-slave labor, so it won't happen any time soon.
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:5, Insightful)
Unions do all kinds of wonderful things.
They make it incredibly difficult to fire under performing workers, for example. That lazy guy who never finishes anything on time? Yeah, can't fire him. Can't even discipline him.
Unions take your dues - which will not be small - and will use them to prop up politicians. Politicians that you may not like.
Unions may raise your wages, sure, but that will also raise the cost of your company doing business. That means your company will need to charge more, meaning more work for the non-union shops because they're less expensive.
Unions will make sure that you are promoted based on years of experience, not skill or knowledge. So that moron who doesn't know the difference between an integer and a float, but has been here 20 years? He's getting paid more than you and always will.
Speaking of, are you particularly valuable as an employee? That's nice. You may be super smart, very talented, incredibly fast at what you do, but too bad. You're getting union scale pay.
No, we don't need unions. Is your company crappy? Leave. Find a job somewhere else. That company will have to learn to treat their workers better or they'll be stuck with a perpetual revolving door, with no work getting done.
It worked at my company. We weren't being treated well. A ton of people quit. Company wised up, started treated existing employees better, increased pay and benefits. No union needed - just a free market.
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:4, Insightful)
Makes perfect sense to me. How's that working out for you in the long run?
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Democracy sucks. Join the campaign to bring feudalism to the workplace.
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What do you mean by "bring"? You're working a job where you aren't essentially already the property of your company?
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I didn't realize I wasn't allowed to quit my job and take a job elsewhere. When did this happen?
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You are of course allowed to quit, but who would hire a quitter?
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One big sign is that individuals no longer own things that they pay for. This is blatantly true for anything that hooks to the internet or has a computer in it. You have a Windows machine that doesn't have Windows 10? Microsoft will hijack it and make you run Windows 10. That says you don't own that box, no matter what you paid.
By the way, this is the future. It's already happened with some of the early IoT
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Why is it the unions' fault when the government sanctions them? Why isn't it your fault for electing that government?
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:5, Insightful)
The American war on unions has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns that most of alive at this time have ever seen. It amazes me that people have been convinced to act against both their own, and the nation's, best interest in order to increase profits for so few.
We are only now seeing the results of continual decreases in aggregate spending power that is the result of the failure of the workers to organize both for themselves, and for the greater good. Instead organizing has become a historical footnote as we descend into a vicious circle brought about by lower aggregate spending as a direct result of decreased worker power.
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:5, Insightful)
has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns
The unions do most of the advertising all by themselves. At some point in history, they went from being the victims to the bullies, and they lost popular support. Even without the violence, anyone who has had to work with a union finds the process maddening. When you read about the sickening attitude of both management and labor in the 80s within the auto industry, it makes you wonder how we stayed on top as long as we did. Unions have become just another bureaucracy that people have to deal with. We really need to reduce the influence of both corporations and unions on government (a la Citizen's United).
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to laugh myself silly when people object to unions.
Have you ever been in an effective union? Most haven't been in a union at all, but spout nonsense "everybody knows". Or they pick outstanding bad actors and paint all unions the same.
Some very few have been in bad unions. Those do stink.
No, the gripe people have with unions is propaganda generally spewed by those that would least benefit from good unions; bad employers that don't want to pay a fair wage. Before you fire off that hot reply full of indignation, ask yourself if you'd like it if you couldn't be fired because a H1B visa worker costs less, or because your boss is a clueless skylark, or because your employer can cut costs and increase profits by working you like a dog by cutting your team by 1/3 and doubling your workload.
Is fifty buck a month is starting to sound like a better deal now?
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:5, Interesting)
You are right in that I have no idea what percentage of unions are rotten. I can only tell you that all of my experiences have been pretty poor. My wife's hospital had a strike. These are nurses, not iron workers. Tires were slashed, threats of violence were made, etc. The scabs were better nurses, by most accounts. The nurses were already the highest paid in the metro area. The hospital was (and is) bleeding money due to its role in a poor area. The only reason the strike was "resolved" is because the bought politicians leaned on the hospital.
My friend runs a small iron working shop - just him and a few long-time employees with benefits. He's had rocks through his window and his equipment is regularly vandalized.
Locally, the iron workers union burned down a church that was under construction by non-union labor.
Attempts to reform public schools are repeatedly thwarted by public teachers unions. Attempts to get rid of morally objectionable public pensions fail across the board at the hand of public unions.
In NYC, the grossly-overpaid TWU went on strike illegally in a city that is 95% dependent on transit.
Have you ever been written up for a bullshit "grievance" by dozens of cliquey union members because you said something unpleasant to one of the other members? That's fun to be on the receiving end of.
I'm sorry, I do recognize the historical importance of unions, and I do think workers need to be organized. I just don't think the current thing we call a "union" is terribly beneficial to society. Its mostly a semi-governmental bureaucracy at this stage. I'm glad it served you well, but I have not had nice interactions.
Re:WE need unions also why train your h1-b replamn (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny you should mention the auto industry. Japan's is heavily unionised, and they are making the most popular cars in America, and they didn't need massive bail-outs during the last financial crisis.
Unions clearly ruined them.
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No, Japanese unions do not behave like their American counterparts. You should read about the 1980s when GM set up a partnership with Toyota in California to produce the Nova (and later Geos). I believe this is the plant Tesla operates out of. The corporate culture of GM was so rotten that they could not grasp Toyota's methodology, and the GM union was so rotten that they could not work with management in the same way.
You should also study the Japanese economy, because it looks very much like what a culture
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The American war on unions has been one of the most successful propaganda campaigns that most of alive at this time have ever seen.
Sure, if you consider pointing out and fighting against deeply rooted corruption to be "propaganda." You're practicing propaganda right now, by your own vague standards.
We are only now seeing the results of continual decreases in aggregate spending power that is the result of the failure of the workers to organize both for themselves, and for the greater good.
No, we're seeing the rest of the world finally catch up in their ability to provide the same goods and services that - for several post-war decades - used to be the sole province of US-based businesses.
Instead organizing has become a historical footnote as we descend into a vicious circle brought about by lower aggregate spending as a direct result of decreased worker power.
No, you're seeing the direct result of decreased worker value. A given worker isn't nearly as valuable as they used to be, because we no l
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Sure, if you consider pointing out and fighting against deeply rooted corruption to be "propaganda." You're practicing propaganda right now, by your own vague standards.
Some unions are corrupt, doesn't mean all are. Corruption is in all aspects of society. You can use that non-argument to argue against the existence of corporations too.
No, we're seeing the rest of the world finally catch up in their ability to provide the same goods and services that - for several post-war decades - used to be the sole prov
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Oh, wait, you didn't do that. You can't bring yourself to try to explain away reality, so you're just using lazy ad hominem in order to deflect. The left: always home to shrill whiners who are scared of forming and expressing their own thoughts. Nope! "What you said makes me feel uncomfortable with the premises on which I've based my entire
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When I came to Sweden as the equivalent of an H1B, the union made sure I wasn't paid only half what a Swede would have got for the same job (could they have found one who was capable of doing it, which they couldn't).
*This* is how unions (and H1B) are supposed to work.
And I don't know about the "retard" part, but the "brainwashed" part seems appropriate.
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In the US, it is illegal to pay an H1B worker less than the market rate, so the union backing isn't necessary. I'd say Sweden needs to update their labor laws.
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Unions work to counter-balance the power wielded by bosses and capitalists. Unions counter-balance the corporate greed of capitalists, who DGAF if they drive the company intro the ground, at the expense of employees and customers, as long as they get rich in the process. Has either the power imbalance or corporate greed disappeared?
No. Which makes you as much of a tool as someone who claims the little people don't need to vote in elections anymore, because politicians are no longer corrupt.
Totally unprepared! (Score:3)
I know right?
After busting there ass for 4 or 5 years and spending 100 grand on tuition, graduating Americans were totally unprepared for the insultingly low salary they were offered.
Our youth plays with toys, not real tech (Score:5, Insightful)
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Removing age barrier would solve the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Simply, about age 35 I was "too old" and was pretty well done in the tech industry. I wasn't even able to get back into the interviews. This was right after Y2K (see, I am old) and there really was a glut of IT workers looking for jobs.
I saw the writing on the wall when I looked around for old men and didn't see many. I went back to school and now I teach at a middle school. If I really believed the jobs were there, I honestly believe that I could go back to school and be up to speed an a semester or two. However, I know that the jobs are not there. I know plenty of 50 year old ex-IT workers.
The reality is that the lack of willingness to hire is the problem. The workers have been pushed out; but can quickly "retool" of the demand existed. However, stop and think, if we weren't so fixated on pushing people out of the tech industry, about how much expertise we would have grown. That is potential, and, frankly, education investment that this country has wasted.
Those of you thinking, "I am so awesome that it can't happen to me," consider the number of older IT guys that are driving cabs and delivering pizzas.
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I assume you're saying you couldn't get a job after the tech stock market crash that happened between 2000 and 2001 (the term Y2K is usually associated with "Y2K bug" which was software having problems with dates going from the 20th century to the 21st.)? If so, welcome to the club. You not being able to find a job had nothing to do with age and everything to do with a massively depressed market for tech workers. You weren't some special oppressed gem, there were quite a lot of us having a hard time finding
Why India? Dumb Question. (Score:2)
I'm not a fan of the current H-1B system by a long shot but the question of "why India?" seems foolish to me. When there is a billion people in a country it doesnt matter how bad the education system is, there are going to be a good number of people worth recruiting, especially since they can make a lot more here. Plus, while their national average on math science test scores are quite low the parts of their education system that work are quite good at turning out degrees in the sciences. Their education sy
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there are going to be a good number of people worth recruiting
So why does person after person say their companies haven't found any?? Indeed this has been my experience as well.
Re:Why India? Dumb Question. (Score:5, Informative)
We've hired several people from India. You have to perform a rigorous technical interview because more than half of them didn't know a damn thing. The people we hired are good, though.
US Labor Pushes Foreign Management (Score:2)
Claiming US managers can't hack it in tech.
Better headline, I think.
Lawyers == hired guns. (Score:2)
This is really a "film at eleven .." article. Lawyers say whatever benefits their employers. That's the beginning and the end.
The truth? Most of these corporate lawyers simply don't care if what they say is true or not.
I'm an employer ... this is what I see (Score:5, Informative)
I employ a lot of IT talent in Canada and the US. Here's what see in the marketplace:
* North American talent is the best, bar none but ... ...
* North American talent is produced in small quantities.
* Indian talent is (among the?) worst, but
* Indian talent is produced by the thousands.
I also work with many business partners, some of whom are Indian outsourcers and some of whom are large US corporations that have outsourced a large part of their IT work to India.
The work that gets done in India is usually shoddy. It takes 3 Indians to attempt the same job that one American will do.
So what's wrong? Are Indians dumb or something?
Turns out, they are exactly as smart (or dumb, take your pick) as anyone else. But they operate in a toxic work culture:
* Their organizations encourage cheating, which begins with those very difficult University entrance exams.
* Corruption permeates the workplace. You do favours for managers, so they will later help you advance your career.
* If you are really smart, you get poached from one outsourcing firm to another every 6-18 months. You never settle into a job long enough to get productive. Indian outsourcers literally have talent scouts on their payroll that have full time jobs at competitor firms.
* If you are not very smart, you stay in the same job for much longer, but you will never be very productive for the same reason that a not very smart American will never be very productive.
As a result, Indian outsourcers tend to have incredibly poor productivity and work quality. Firms that hire them are fools, because they look only at the low (and rising) hourly rates, but not at what an hour of labour will buy you.
I also see Indian workers (H1B or just normal immigrants) working in North America. First, I assume these are among the best and brightest, as they obviously had the motivation to relocate and had to get through whatever filters immigration authorities apply. These people fit in quite well and after a few years are (aside from accent) indistinguishable from their native-born cousins.
So the problems are basically this:
* North American education is good, but should scoop up a bigger segment of the population to compete.
* Indian education mostly sucks, with a few exceptions like IIT.
* Indian workplace culture is dysfunctional, and it's better to hire immigrants from there than to either send work over or give work to temporary workers. Don't outsource to Indian firms - that's a disaster.
* Employers frequently mistake hourly rates for total cost of ownership. They harm themselves and their former local workers through this mistake.
That's the world we live in.
Re:I'm an employer ... this is what I see (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the issue is your HR department.
Most HR departments now days demand a bachelor degree or better, just to be able to say hello. This is because the bachellor's degree is the new high school diploma, as far as the hiring process is concerned. HR drones will say that the bachelor's degree tells them the following things: 1) You know how to read and write, and can do math at a passing level. 2) you can finish what you started.
Rather than actually use what the customary 90 day probation is actually for, or doing some kind of job skills assessment, they reach straight for the degree, and refuse to listen to reason otherwise.
Nevermind that the best IT talent is often self trained, on the cheap, and typically lacks a degree.
When you refuse to look where the talent is, is it any mystery why you dont find the talent you claim to be looking for?
Fix HR. Then you will find talent.
I will believe that the H1B program is legit (Score:2)
Sure. (Score:2)
Who is really needed? (Score:2)
A legal team, people with the correct security paper work to fill out standards forms? People who can help with the local community of political leaders and their election funding needs..
That is the new limit of the really well paying jobs. Everything else can be legally and fully outsourced, covered by a few local security clearances and full party political protection.
The need for a vast pool of skilled loc
it's not mean if it's true (Score:2)
Simple: American companies don't employ the average Indian, the
Is this your point? (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for hiring them, at least in Silicon Valley, is not to pay a bargain basement wage, but to enable US companies to hire the best and brightest in the world. It's got nothing to do with a shortage of US workers. [...] Now, if US employers were forced to hire based on immigration status - citizens first, then green card holders, then it would be a distinct advantage to be a citizen. It'd also probably result in US employers not having the smartest people in the world working for them.
So let me see if I get your point.
The important issue in your mind is that US employers get the smartest people in the world.
And this is a more important issue than US citizens having a job [gallup.com].
Additionally, why shouldn't there be an advantage to being a citizen?
(I'm all for helping people in other nations, and note that we've brought a lot of people out of poverty... but do we have to bring our own population into poverty [washingtonpost.com] to promote that goal?)
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The part your missing is the feedback loop of 1. attracting the smartest people in the world, 2. smartest people in the world creating success, 3. success leading to wealth creation, 4. wealth attracts more smart people.
Somewhere in that loop, even the rotten boats with holes in the bottom somehow manage to get a big-screen TV and an iPhone.
We have a very real problem with a shrinking middle class - in particular the half that is going down rather than up. And despite the effect of automation, I do think th
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You cannot run a country like a company. We tried. It ended not too well.
The problem is you can't fire your citizens.
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Perhaps in some companies, but mostly, it's to get cheap employees. It's not done directly: that would be illegal. Instead, a company will fire its employees and outsource the tasks. The outsourcing company will bring in a bunch of
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Where is Donald going to get his fresh supply of wives if we cut back H-1B?
I was waiting for this one. Too bad I've already posted.
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No, only Americans have the right to live the American dream. I'm living the Canadian dream myself, which is only for Canadians.
Yeah, your national anthem even starts with 'My home and NATIVE land' so clearly its only intended for people actually born in Canada eh.
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here don't seem to be that many Americans who are getting PhDs, which is pretty much a requirement in my line of work...
Total BS. There's a glut of PhD's out there, so many in fact that it's half the reason why the underemployment rate is through the absolute roof. Businesses, schools, employers all pushed the "university, is great! Degrees are great" so how there's tones of them out there. The problem is they've gotten PhD's that you don't want, or want more money then you're willing to pay(even though you were part of the group that pushed for them) and then there's the other class who've gottenuseless degrees. So you