University of California Hires India-Based IT Outsourcer, Lays Off Tech Workers (computerworld.com) 618
dcblogs writes from a report via Computerworld: The University of California is laying off a group of IT workers at its San Francisco campus as part of a plan to move work offshore. Laying off IT workers as part of a shift to offshore is somewhere between rare and unheard-of in the public sector. The layoffs will happen at the end of February, but before the final day arrives the IT employees expect to train foreign replacements from India-based IT services firm HCL. The firm is working under a university contract valued at $50 million over five years. This layoff affects 17% of UCSF's total IT staff, broken down this way: 49 IT permanent employees will lose their jobs, along with 12 contract employees and 18 vendor contractors. This number also includes 18 vacant IT positions that won't be filled, according to the university. Governments and publicly supported institutions, such as UC, have contracted with offshore outsourcers, but usually it's for new IT work or to supplement an existing project. The HCL contract with UCSF can be used by other UC campuses, which means the layoffs may expand across its 10 campuses. HCL is a top user of H-1B visa workers.
Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This university should lose it's state and federal funding for doing something like this.
Horrible insult to the USA, our students, and our educators.
Terrible.
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nationalism is never a particularly rational argument.
However there is a much more reasonable argument. Part of the reason we pay taxes is because they are good for the economy, as they keep money flowing in the economy and increases employment in the public sector thus increasing consumption by the working class (which in turn feeds businesses). But if that work goes offshore, then that tax is going offshore and stops being useful to the taxpayer from an economic perspective.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say there are many rational arguments for nationalism, but you saved me the effort by providing one yourself.
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the reason we pay taxes is because they are good for the economy, as they keep money flowing in the economy and increases employment in the public sector thus increasing consumption by the working class
Yes, thats why I break a random window in the city every day. It keeps the money flowing and therefore increases employment and consumption.
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Part of the reason we pay taxes is because they are good for the economy, as they keep money flowing in the economy and increases employment in the public sector thus increasing consumption by the working class
Yes, thats why I break a random window in the city every day. It keeps the money flowing and therefore increases employment and consumption.
Ah, the Zorg strategy! [youtube.com]
That's why Detroit is the ultimate national model for the Democrat party.
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:4, Insightful)
China, India, the EU, Japan and everyone else in the world protects their own workers and industries from foreign competition, while our laws and corporations do everything possible to screw our workers out of salary or a job using cheap offshore labor. This isn't about nationalism, but economic survival, and our declining median wages show we are not doing a good job of that.
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nationalism is never a particularly rational argument.
Nationalism is a very rational argument. My ancestors fought and died to establish a government of, by, and for the people. The purpose of the government is to serve the citizens of the country. The purpose of the economy is to serve the citizens, not the other way around. When the government is modifying the rules such that the economy serves the interests of the government and foreigners over the interests of citizens, it's not doing its job.
What's irrational about expecting the government to serve the interests of the citizens who established, fund, and defend the nation?
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nationalism is a very rational argument.
I respectfully disagree. The older I get, the fewer reasons I see to make a distinction between "us" and "them" other than selfishness.
My ancestors fought and died to establish a government of, by, and for the people.
Your ancestors and mine fought and died to protect our inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that to protect these rights, we institute governments. Government is a means, not an end. But I split hairs...
The purpose of the government is to serve the citizens of the country. The purpose of the economy is to serve the citizens, not the other way around.
Yes, and in this case, the state government is serving the people by running a public university dedicated to teaching medical skills. Running an IT jobs program and spending more than necessary on IT staff does not serve the students or taxpayers of California. You may want more IT training and jobs in the US but that's not UCSF's mission or expertise. They quite reasonably decided to let someone else handle that and focus on their core job.
Re: (Score:3)
"Part of the reason we pay taxes is because they are good for the economy, as they keep money flowing in the economy and increases employment in the public sector thus increasing consumption by the working class"
The ONLY legitimate reason to pay taxes is to fund government services necessary to serve the people. In every way paying taxes to stimulate the economy is a failed experiment, and has led us to this state of unsustainable debt and crippled government.
You have come pretty close to claiming the broke
Re: (Score:3)
Wrong but consistent with CA politicians ... (Score:2)
Horrible insult to the USA, our students, and our educators. Terrible.
Yes, but this is in character with CA politicians. Recently when the Bay Bridge was constructed they used Chinese steel.
Do you think the jobs of white collar IT workers are any more valuable than blue collar steel workers to CA politicians? That being a UC employee makes any difference to them? And don't kid yourself about the administrators of the UC system being politicians. Funds must be cut to fund their political payback projects and their vanity projects.
FWIW, I have seen behind the scenes of UC
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes irony is too much.
I imagine the university will also have the cognitive dissonance to talk about STEM and the information economy and the future of highly skilled work. We need to educate our kids in technology so they can have jobs in the future!
By that they mean the kids can take courses at the university to bring business to the university.
All the while doing this to actual tech workers.
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Informative)
Currently a UCSF student. Many people don't realize this but UCSF is exclusively a medical professional school with no undergraduate degrees. Students here are a minority compared to the system of hospitals run by professionals. https://www.ucsf.edu/about/economic-impact-report/employment-economic-stimulus
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Informative)
Tuition for public universities are no where near 100k in California.
For undergraduate non resident students is somewhere between 35k-40k. It's actually cheaper for non-resident grad students at ucsb.
http://www.finaid.ucsb.edu/cos... [ucsb.edu]
UCSF is also significantly cheager than you're suggesting.
https://finaid.ucsf.edu/newly-... [ucsf.edu]
Re: Completely wrong.... (Score:4, Interesting)
You do understand WHY foreign labour is cheaper, right?
Despite common believe, IT employees are not able to live on half a can of mountain dew a day.
The entire economy has to basically collapse in order for local labour to become "competitive" with countries where everything in the economy is cheaper.
As an example; technical education in India is about US$1000 per year (http://qz.com/445500/the-cost-of-getting-a-decent-education-in-india-is-now-staggering/).
According to GP, that would be roughly 35 times cheaper at the very least.
Re: Completely wrong.... (Score:4, Informative)
As an example; technical education in India is about US$1000 per year (http://qz.com/445500/the-cost-of-getting-a-decent-education-in-india-is-now-staggering/).
According to GP, that would be roughly 35 times cheaper at the very least.
Technical "education", in India, is also hardly worth the ink written to spell those words.
Re: Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Technical "education", in India, is also hardly worth the ink written to spell those words.
It's apparently sufficient to outsource jobs to.
Re: (Score:3)
Because someone in the accounting/management bureaucracy has looked at the dollar amounts and no further. Heaven forfend that they cut fat where the fat really is - in said bureaucracy.
Re: Completely wrong.... (Score:3)
Re: Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having worked several times with these outsourcing companies, I can say fairly definitively that it isn't. These people are so breathtakingly inept that it boggles the imagination.
The decision to oursource is *always* made by pointy-haired MBAs who are unable to make the connection between cost of labour and quality of labour.
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Interesting)
UC is a system of campuses.
What is stopping them from "outsourcing" their IT to another UC school which teaches system administration as part of it's curriculum. It seems like it would be a good opportunity to teach remote administration.
What am I missing?
See, you're looking at the problem with common sense, they're looking at with dollar signs.
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:4, Informative)
Like the Futurama episode where Hermes realizes the number one factor harming the company's performance is the ridiculous performance assessments he keeps doing and fires himself.
It was likely on the table. (Score:4, Insightful)
What is stopping them from "outsourcing" their IT to another UC school which teaches system administration as part of it's curriculum. It seems like it would be a good opportunity to teach remote administration.
It was probably on the table that they have another UC's IT department handle it; it was likely *never* on the table that IT students handle it.
Personally, I wouldn't be an IT student, if it's obvious that IT is going to be outsourced everywhere; about the only thing you could train to be would be a trainer. It's like being an English major: the only jobs are in creating more English majors.
What am I missing?
Most likely the fact that UCSF is a graduate medical university, and that means that pretty much every IT system on campus has "live data", which means, in turn, that you have to be able to trust the people running it with HIPAA sensitive information.
You can trust HCL (which is actually located in Sunnyvale, not India) with that, because they have deep pockets to sue, if they ever screw up. You can't really trust students to the same degree.
Re:It was likely on the table. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can trust HCL (which is actually located in Sunnyvale, not India) with that, because they have deep pockets to sue
If they ever lose a major judgement we will find out that the US entity is a penniless shell and the money is all in India.
they should be teching real skills not outsourcing (Score:4, Insightful)
they should be teching real skills not outsourcing work. Also PASS the savings on
Re:they should be teching real skills not outsourc (Score:5, Insightful)
Also PASS the savings on
Passing savings on? What kind of commie talk is this. Real capitalism is asking the highest price the market will bear.
Student loans need to have chapter 7 and 11 (Score:2)
Student loans need to have chapter 7 and 11 so that schools can't get a free pass.
Re: (Score:2)
They used to be. But then the federal government took over the entire industry and got rid of bk'ing student loans. After all, if the government can borrow money from itself @ 3% and loan it to someone for 6% and keep the profits, why should it let the private sector do it.
There's theory, and there's fact. (Score:4, Interesting)
They used to be. But then the federal government took over the entire industry and got rid of bk'ing student loans.
There's theory, and there's fact.
The theory was that no one in their right mind would loan someone in poverty, and who did not qualify academically or athletically for a scholarship, the money for them to get an underwater basket weaving degree, unless the government agreed to do it.
In exchange, the government, as guarantor, put the condition on the loans that they could not be discharged in bankruptcy -- just like any debt owed the government (i.e. we still have debtor's prisons, only they are for taxes). That way the guarantor could throw your butt in jail if you decided not to pay the student loan back.
The fact is that underwater basket weaving isn't really a marketable enough skill to allow you to make your student loan payments.
Re:they should be teching real skills not outsourc (Score:4, Informative)
Capitalism is NOT a system of governance nor is it a form or measure of patriotism, regardless of how one may have been socially engineered to believe otherwise.
Re:they should be teching real skills not outsourc (Score:4, Informative)
That's not capitalism, it's free market economics.
Re: (Score:3)
Especially when the product involves basic human needs like Education or Health. Quite why the food industry hasn't realised this and continues to compete to drive prices downward is a mystery to me.
Re:they should be teching real skills not outsourc (Score:4, Insightful)
And who controls the government in the US?
Elected politicians do.
The fact that these elected politicians sell legislation to the highest bidder has nothing to do with Capitalism and everything to do with Statism.
If you want to reduce the influence of money on the State, then the correct course of action is to reduce the influence of the State. I bet however, that you are one of those "don't throw your vote away" douches that is going to vote for Donald Clinton.
Re:they should be teching real skills not outsourc (Score:5, Interesting)
Way off, buddy. I'm one of those eurotrash types who lives in a (still) democratic country. Unfortunately you USians are doing your damnest to destroy what's left of democracy all over the world.
But I digress. It's a long standing tradition in your mighty country to buy your way into politics. Show me a politician not backed up by some lobby group (BTW nice euphemism for bribery) founded by some corporation. I'm not talking here about some obscure name from some obscure state but the ones from the federal level.
Can you?
Re:they should be teching real skills not outsourc (Score:5, Insightful)
>The fact that these elected politicians sell legislation to the highest bidder has nothing to do with Capitalism and everything to do with Statism.
Sorry pal, but now you're moving the goalpost. You declared that capitalism is selling at the highest cost the market will bear. These politicians are being capitalists by selling their product, legislation to the highest bidder. Their supposed to sell it to the voters (who appointed them at the ballot box and pay their salaries with taxes) but the voters offer less than the market will bear.
That's capitalism - like it or not.
The thing is - this is not supposed to be a capitalist institution. A public university is part of the civil service. What you're seeing is the outcome of the long republican drive telling us "universities should be more like businesses" - which is what they are now doing, and this is exactly why that was always a terrible idea. The two types of organisation have nothing in common. Universities are not SUPPOSED to be profitable or efficient or even cost-effective. They are suppose to produce knowledge and to give that freely to the world. That's the exact opposite of what a business is supposed to do.
If all you care about is the cheapest school the market will bear - private universities exist for that purpose, but public universities first and primary goal is supposed to be research and even their entire education section's sole real purpose is to pass the results of the research into the population and, coincidentally, train another generation of researchers to take over when the current batch dies.
Making money, even training people for a job, is nowhere on the list of things a university is supposed to do. The latter is, at most, a tangential benefit from sharing knowledge with students.
Re: (Score:3)
Damn it, where are my mod points this morning? Excellent post!
Re:they should be teching real skills not outsourc (Score:5, Insightful)
Those skillsets are high school level skilled trades these days. Because of the insistence that IT was only something you could get into with a full college degree by people like those on Slashdot we never trained those workers in the skillsets.
IT is the equivalent of welding these days. Until the US vocational schools start cranking out IT and programmer techs companies are going to fill the positions with Indians.
Re:they should be teching real skills not outsourc (Score:4, Informative)
should they all be replaced with vocational school graduates?
They are. My wife is a doctor and what a doctor does in 2016 has changed a lot from what they did in 1996, 1976, 1956, etc. You have nurse practitioners, registered nurses, all the way down to orderlies. You can get into the medical field with... voch tech level training. It's not because the work doesn't need to be done it's because the doctors need to work on other things and it's too expensive to pay them to do something someone with a tech degree can do.
A doctor should know how to put in an IV but there's a good chance they'll suck at it. They don't do it anymore that job falls to other positions.
We need fewer CS code architects and more Programmers that can actually build it.
Re: (Score:3)
Universities have been outsourcing their IT for years. At my school, we use Microsoft for email, Elucian for student records, Plesk for web services, and I can't recall which company does personnel. Company comes in and claims that, because of their existing infrastructure, they can offer better services at lower per-student cost, and budget pressure takes over. Contracting out the actual staffing of help desk is just the next logical step.
It's a funny thing to watch a university that was part of the deve
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't exactly working that way.
No US workers are being laid off to hire H1B's. UCSF just cut their IT costs by going to an outside contractor and laying off a portion of their workforce - this is perfectly legal. And just so happens to be the way the system is rigged to get around laws protecting US workers. The contractor is able to supply IT workers at a lower cost per head than the existing employees because they use H1Bs that work for considerably less salary. UCSF benefits from less employee overhead, and the contracting firm gets paid the H1B's salary plus a bit more for profit.
By inserting the contractor between the company and the H1B workers, companies are immune from H1B restrictions.
Just about every H1B story that hits the news (SCE, Disney, etc.) use this method.
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That "argument" boils down to "USA! USA! USA!" - might fit a Trump rally, but really is not argument at all.
How is that not an argument? I expect the government of Mexico to serve the interests of the citizens of Mexico. I expect the government of China to serve the interests of the citizens of China. I expect the government of the USA to serve the interests of the citizens of the USA.
What is an argument is that service from abroad is likely to be unsatisfactory - at least because of distance, time zones, and the cultural differences, even if the provider is competent in general. And that last point is not a given.
When somebody else wants to fuck your wife do you quibble about whether or not his service will be satisfactory to her?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I expect the government of Mexico to serve the interests of the citizens of Mexico. I expect the government of China to serve the interests of the citizens of China. I expect the government of the USA to serve the interests of the citizens of the USA.
I don't. The USA was established as a more enlightened nation, one that understood the notion of inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The proper role of such an enlightened government is to guarantee those rights and freedoms to all people within its jurisdiction, not just to those who through an accident of birth acquired the label of "citizen". Further, such a government should take the view that all humans everywhere deserve the same guarantees, and that there is no r
Re:Completely wrong.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've fallen into the trap of universalism, that there exists some universal culture beneath our surface cultures and that deep down we're all the same. But we're not. So, no, those "rights" and "freedoms" are not for all people, because not all people agree they exist or even want them to, and unreciprocated altruism is a very bad idea because you will be very nice to people thinking they will then learn to be nice to you but they won't. They will still hate you and want to exploit or kill you. This is why we can't go invade Iraq and then say "you're free now! Be a free western democracy!" No, they say "oh, we can be whatever we want to be now? We want to be an Islamic government" and we kept having to try to swat down the Iraqis writing Sharia law into their constitution and then it all collapsed into tribal/muslim bullshit as soon as we left.
The purpose of the government is not to be your conscience and humor your universalist fantasies. It is to protect the way of life of our unique, and exceptional people. And it is absolutely not to impose burdens on our people in order to serve foreigners. That's some weird slave morality, and I do not share it with you.
Well, what do you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
You've let the worst human beings rule this world since... a long time now. You expect *good* news to just appear without doing anything about it? This nightmare will continue until a good person (if such a thing exists) decides to put a stop to it.
Re:Well, what do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
In the immortal words of Leonard McCoy (Score:5, Interesting)
In a battle of Good versus Evil, Evil usually wins unless Good is very, very careful.
Training is immoral (Score:5, Interesting)
Expecting an employee who is being fired to train his replacement is immoral. This is even more so when the employee is being fired without cause.
The employees have every right, both legal and moral, to stonewall the education of their replacements. It would be immoral to sabotage systems or update documentation to be incorrect, but passive resistance is fair game, and far better than the University deserves.
Re:Training is immoral (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Training is immoral (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly!
I have no problem with off-shoring. Sure, I don't like it, but the same technology that lets me work from home means that my job can be done from pretty much anywhere on the planet. And if that area has a lower cost of living so that someone can charge less? Again, I don't like it, but there's not much I can do. Competition is a good thing.
If the work is being off-shored, though, then it shouldn't be done here. There should be no reason for anyone to have to come here for training. If they want in-person training, they'd better be sending me over there. Otherwise, we can do video-conferences and document our work and they can take it over.
Re:Training is immoral (Score:4, Insightful)
The businesses probably argue that the H-1B workers have the TECHNICAL skills they need, and the training is more of a list of "This is what we've already done, this is why we did it" etc. since you can never hire a new worker, domestic or foreign, that instantly knows everything that's already been done on a project.
Re: (Score:3)
Problem is they still need to demonstrate why the current worker does not have those skills and cannot meet their needs. If you have someone already in a position and you aren't getting rid of them for cause, then presumably they meet the needs of that position. Thus if you bring in someone to replace them saying "This new person has technical skills we need" isn't really a valid argument.
Re: (Score:3)
Expecting an employee who is being fired to train his replacement is immoral. This is even more so when the employee is being fired without cause.
The employees have every right, both legal and moral, to stonewall the education of their replacements. It would be immoral to sabotage systems or update documentation to be incorrect, but passive resistance is fair game, and far better than the University deserves.
Most likely they're holding a severance package over the heads of current employees to be paid out upon completion of training their replacements.
Sure, it's yet another sign of their immoral behavior, but they've already opened that can of worms, so par for the course.
Stonewalling would require 100% participation. Doubtful you're going to get it when there are those who likely need the severance package.
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The employees have every right, both legal and moral, to stonewall the education of their replacements.
Sure they do. They have the right to quit. They don't have the right to continue getting paid while refusing to do the work being asked of them.
Re: (Score:2)
5. Set up an external monitor of your ex-services so you can laugh when the replacements drive the car into the ditch.
6. Get friendly with the most likely tech services agency that will inevitably be called in to clean up the mess, so they can call you with offers for consulting, but tell them they have to charge 2x-3x what you were making per hour.
University of California had a good reason (Score:5, Funny)
University of California Cites 'Courage' As Reason To Lay Off Tech Workers
Right, university labor is expensive. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you telling me you can't find a handful of smart kids in your Computer Science department that would rather do remedial computer work than work at the mall? You've literally got an entire department of unemployed cheap labor and you are looking to India? That doesn't speak too highly about your graduates...
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, this only works out if you have a lot of semi-technical people that enjoy re-training staff and keeping them busy. Heavy techs are too zoned in on their current projects to deal with this. For a college with this many IT staff, they really should have plenty of those, though, or they hired wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
OK, so, American IT workers have a weight problem. So what?
CS = lot's of theory and little hands on at state (Score:3)
CS = lot's of theory and little hands on at state schools. Also mit and harvard are more on the theory side and had some outsourcing WTF in the past.
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CS = lot's of theory and little hands on at state schools
Apparently CS also means skipping that class where they talked about using apostrophes (unless it's used to remark out a line in a script).
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CS = lot's of theory and little hands on at state schools. Also mit and harvard are more on the theory side and had some outsourcing WTF in the past.
There is the problem. IT != CS. Getting a CS degree to do IT work is like getting your MD and becoming a nurse. Requiring CS degrees for simple IT work has fucking destroyed the industry.
Re:Right, university labor is expensive. (Score:4, Informative)
It's a medical school - they don't have a Computer Science department.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a medical school - they don't have a Computer Science department.
That certainly defaults my argument. Dang.
Irony of ironies (Score:2)
It's not likely to save them money either (Score:5, Insightful)
At least not unless there is a reduction in services. I don't know why people think outsourcing always saves money. It often doesn't. Basically outsourcing is a good idea if you are too small to be able to do something yourself efficiently. You either don't do enough of it, or do it often enough to make it worth having an internal team.
For example construction is something basically everyone outsources. You just don't build new buildings often enough to make it a worthwhile proposition to have a dedicated staff for it, they'd be sitting around most of the time.
However when you get large, often you can do shit in house for cheaper, or at least the same price and have more control. It isn't like those contract workers are free, and it isn't like the company who contracts them takes no cut.
With a large university, practically everything should be in house. They are so large they usually have their own police forces, they are literally small cities. So you have enough needs that hiring your own staff usually makes sense. In general when I've seen a university outsource something they used to do it ends up costing them more, and the service is generally worse, sometimes a bit, sometimes a lot.
Thus my bet is in the end this contract costs them more than they were paying.
Worst example I've seen is a friend who consults for a public school system (primary, not university). They outsource most everything, as is evident from him contracting to them to do development. So a project he was doing needed a dedicated Linux virtual server. They balked at that, and he pushed back, confused. It was a low spec server, could be a VM, it just needed to be dedicated for security. The reason they balked? The outsourcing firm that ran their servers charged them well over $1000/year per VM. AT a rate like that, you don't need many VMs before it would be cheaper to buy a server and hire a guy who does nothing but mind after it.
nested VM's just request an 32 core 128 GB VM (Score:2)
nested VM's just request an 32 core 128 GB VM and then nest all own VM that you need under that.
Re:It's not likely to save them money either (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAICT, the outsourcing savings are usually spreadsheet savings up front measured with optimistic labor costs of lower paid workers.
Lost in these models are the inevitable cost increases that happen over time. Increased consulting management fees required from the inevitable management maze that gets created, adding in additional outsourcing bodies, often higher rate bodies with more skills when the cheap bodies aren't good enough, longer implementation cycles caused by the transient nature of outsourced workers who lack institutional knowledge and organizational buy-in.
Then you get the service reductions, either because the outsourced staff aren't as good, deliberate service reductions as organization management attempts to contain spiraling costs, or service underdelivery by outsourcers working under fixed price contracts who face pressure from the outsourcing company who want to retain their own profit margins.
I would argue that the basic economics of outsourcing don't make sense. The macro economy of an organization has a kind of invisible hand effect that sets the cost of IT services at a given service level. The idea that it's possible to deliver the same services at a lower cost while extracting a profit for the outsourcing provider without a loss in service delivery is like believing in free energy.
Organizations that decide to fix their IT environments with outsourcing are basically admitting a failure of management, either the inability to manage their IT department or their entire organization. Sure, some IT departments are broken, but who's fault is it they got that way? Almost never the line level IT worker or even first tier of management.
masters degrees that are not accredited with schoo (Score:3)
masters degrees that are not accredited with schools own accredited ones.
The usual (Score:2)
We the people, for the people by the people
(suckers)
San Francisco minimum wage heading to $15 (Score:4, Informative)
This was likely a factor in the decision: the minimum wage is $13/hour and will be $15/hour by 2018.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Minimum-Wage-Jumps-to-13-Per-Hour-in-San-Francisco-385257511.html [nbcbayarea.com]
When something is more expensive, less of it gets bought. When it costs more to hire people, jobs start to go away.
H1B minwage needs to be like 100k-150K (Score:5, Insightful)
H1B minwage needs to be like 100k-150K
Re:H1B minwage needs to be like 100k-150K (Score:5, Insightful)
H1B minwage needs to be like 100k-150K
I like that idea, actually. The theory is that H-1B workers are hired instead of US citizens because the H-1B workers bring crucially needed skills otherwise unavailable, and not because they can be paid less and/or treated like slave labor. If they are that crucial, pay them accordingly.
And if raising the prices on something means you get less of it... in this case, that means less of H-1B workers, leaving more room for US citizen workers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: San Francisco minimum wage heading to $15 (Score:2)
It's ILLEGAL to pay H1Bs less than the prevailing wage.
is there a severance package? (Score:3)
Other wise I'd tell them to fuck off if I was told to train the person who is going to take my job by me being laid off.
Re: (Score:3)
It's quite easy to get an OPS position in SF. They should just get out of there early.
higher ed bubble ready to pop (Score:2)
The higher ed bubble is ready to pop.
ITT was good in the 90's / 2000's but in 2016 it went under.
Le Cordon Bleu schools owned by Career Education Corporation 2015
My tax dollars (Score:2)
Being used to undercut my field of employment.
There goes the last "safe" employer (Score:5, Interesting)
UCSF is a medical campus, and they operate a hospital, so this is probably where the cuts are being made. Healthcare IT is badly funded and there's never enough money to do anything interesting...they're focused solely on keeping doctors happy so IT's needs never come before that. But, having a public university system signing outsourcing contracts with vendors, foreign or domestic, is a new twist I didn't see coming.
It didn't say in the article what they offshored, but in my experience HCL is a mainframe programming shop, so of course this means that anyone being replaced is probably "old" and will have a very rough time finding employment even close to previous levels again. That sucks double for them, because they're going to be marched through the "train your replacement" humiliation to get severance/early retirement.
I'm all for stuff like cloud computing, colocation, etc. where it makes sense, but I really don't understand why companies continue to believe they're going to get some great deal doing an outsourcing engagement. Do they not realize these companies have to get paid enough to profit from the deal? Where do they think that money comes from? I hate the trend of running companies on a huge tower of outsourced services. Every company of reasonable size should do almost everything in house -- it's cheaper in the long run and the employees doing the work are more engaged. There is absolutely no task that is better done by an outsourcer than your own employees.
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Uh you do know that of the two presidential candidates Trump is the more likely one to offshore things? Hint: businesses do it all the time and he is a businessman.
Re:I'm so mad, I almost want to vote for (Score:4, Informative)
But hillary is paid by the people who keep the H1B machine running.
They both suck, let's not pretend.
Re: I'm so mad, I almost want to vote for (Score:5, Informative)
Trump is very much against this. Hillary Clinton is an endorser of the H1B program. I'm a Canadian and seems I know more about this than you do. Follow some of Trump's speeches more closely and listen for yourself.
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Why would I listen to Hitler; everything I need to know about Trump I learned from CNN. So as long as he's still a fascist baby-eating, muslim-gassing, Europe-nuking, orange-faced, tiny-handed, Putin-fellating, literal antichrist, #ImWithHer.
Re: I'm so mad, I almost want to vote for (Score:4, Funny)
Why would I listen to Hitler; everything I need to know about Trump I learned from CNN. So as long as he's still a fascist baby-eating, muslim-gassing, Europe-nuking, orange-faced, tiny-handed, Putin-fellating, literal antichrist, #ImWithHer.
Would you support him if he finally returned the kidnapped Lindbergh baby and promised to stop dropping nukes on Japan?
Re:I'm so mad, I almost want to vote for (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump is...
Here is Trump's actual policy regarding H-1B, which you may read on his campaign site:
Increase prevailing wage for H-1Bs. We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program. More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program's lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.
The last time anyone heard anything definitive about H-1B from Clinton was early in 2016 at which point she wanted a higher cap (more H-1B workers.) Not surprising given how much loot Silicon Valley has dumped into the Clinton coffers.
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Trump played the game as rigged.
Clinton helped rig the game.
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Uh you do know that of the two presidential candidates Trump is the more likely one to offshore things? Hint: businesses do it all the time and he is a businessman.
No, his plan is to make it more expensive and difficult to offshore anything. Sure, he offshores stuff all the time, the system is set up to encourage it. He wants to change that system. The only candidate who has talked about doing anything about the bleeding of jobs and wage suppression since Ross Perot (the other candidate everybody called insane).
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He's already flipped on that (Score:3, Informative)
I wouldn't hold out much hope. He two-faced and both of them are fake orange. He's already flipped to supporting H1b visas already:
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-h1b-visas-gop-debate-immigration-2016-3
Kelly: "Mr. Trump, your campaign website to this day argues that more visas for highly skilled workers would, quote, "decimate American workers." However, at the CNBC debate, you spoke enthusiastically in favor of these visas. So which is it? "
Trump: "I'm changing. I'm changing. We need highly ski
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Re:H1B (Score:5, Insightful)
They *HAVE* skilled workers. They are getting rid of them.