Cheap labor
The reason most sane ppl dont want to study tech is because low wages and long hours and stress.
So the solution seems to perpetuate the problem by importing relatively lowly paid ppl while breaking the law....
American techies who discovered their Silicon Valley bosses were suppressing their wages illegally now have to suffer fresh insult to injury. GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving said this month that "with so much technical illiteracy in the US," it's no wonder companies use overseas workers on H-1B visas to fill science, tech and …
Irving's blog says "half a million high-skill IT and computer science jobs sitting unfilled in the US today. These are jobs that are so technical that there aren’t enough trained and lettered workers in the US to fill them."
Despinning this, there are half a million high-skill IT and computer science jobs sitting unfilled because US Corporations won't pay enough to fill them, are overly choosy about who they employ, and aren't interested in training their staff.
It's about cheap labor, and the opportunity to treat people badly.
One company where I worked back in the 1990s had a problem with lab techs. The boss was very miserable to the techs, so they kept quitting. There wasn't a shortage of new US techs, it was keeping them despite the boss. So they hired an H1B from Pakistan. Problem "solved." Yes, the management lied on the federal form.
And yes, it's a felony to lie on that form. And no, the powers that be don't check, because it's too expensive and not worth the return to prosecute.
Professor Norman Matloff also calls the STEM “crisis” synthetic. The computer-science prof, based at the University of California, Davis, has long argued that the US has "a surplus of homegrown STEM workers now ... This is all about industry wanting to lower wages.”
I can tell you that in the semiconductor industry there are more American semiconductor engineers that are unemployed, than there are employed. And they all vote.
Taking their place are cheap H-1B visa employees. Walk into many U.S. engineering offices and you will find that one-third of the employees are here on H-1B visas. They got their jobs eight months after their higher-paid American replacements were laid off.
Look, I'm a U.S. citizen, a degreed experienced semiconductor engineer, and I'm an expert in my niche. Two years ago I tried to apply for a job at a major semiconductor company based in Texas where I was an absolutely perfect fit. I was told "we want to fill the job internally first" (I later learned that's code for H-1B need only apply). I was persistent, I pinged them every two weeks. Yes, the job was later filled by an Indian H-1B visa applicant.
Last November I met a friend who works at that company and told me the H-1B employees in his department are making one-third what a U.S. employee would make. It's a $120K job and he's getting paid $75K.
I discovered that when a company wants cheap H-1B labor there is a pattern. The job description on their website is so specific that most people won't qualify. They won't use a recruiter, they won't post the job on job boards. Often the job is posted on their website only after they have hired an H-1B applicant, and it will stay online until his first day. You can't get an HR person on the phone, it's email your resume only. They will not call you, they will not email you unless you are persistent. The reply you get will be "we are still evaluating candidates" and you will hear that until the H-1B employee has started the job.
This is all about industry wanting to lower wages
There is no economic case for H1Bs. Why import workers when it would be far more profitable to employ the SAME WORKERS doing the SAME WORK at a lower wage and usually with less stringent employment laws in their own country?
The truth is the drive for H1B visas is politically driven by a self-interested group who exploit others, divide their opposition and have no loyalty to your country (because a strong nation that isn't corrupt is a collective force that can oppose them). America's political system is totally corrupt, all politicians are their puppets, Trump included. America's military is used to serve their interests around the world, the American people never asked their government to invade other nations.
I downvoted you not for the concept reflected in your post, I agree with it, but the fact that you kept writing "ppl" instead of people.
This isn't Twitter, it's not an sms via Tap9 on a feature phone, it's a post made to a forum with plenty of capacity to store your entire message, a message that you included longer words like "perpetuate" without any problem writing out in full.
I wanted to upvote you for the post, but the use of "ppl" nixed that for you.
Please don't abbreviate words that don't need to be, especially if you're going to type out far longer words in the same message. Thanks.
Sorry if this comes across wrong, I don't mean to denigrade the post content, I agree with it after all, it's just the use of "ppl" that hits like fingernails down a chalkboard.
Software Architects write up the design for the developers. The developers then slap the Software Architects around a bit, remind them that anti-gravity drives require hardware, not software, and the Architects then revise the specifications so the developers can get on with their code-monkey work.
A 'STEM' degree is HIGHLY overrated. An experienced programmer (without a degree) is AT LEAST as likely to be the next great hire as someone coming out of a college that managed to get enough credits to graduate. That's ALSO because U.S. colleges are wholly INADEQUATE at educating people in tech. Yeah, they're too busy churning out socially indoctrinated SNOWFLAKES instead.
Meanwhile, people who left college because they couldn't STOMACH THE LIBERALISM, or had career opportunities open up immediately (think Bill Gates), and THEN went on to become highly successful engineers, and NOW have decades' worth of experience PROVING their abilities (note: college graduation is proof of POTENTIAL, but not SKILLS), are being REJECTED by _CLUELESS_ HR departments and CEOs that *FEEL* "a degree is necessary", because "ACADEMIC ARROGANCE".
I suggest there are PLENTY of qualified programmers and engineers out there, without the 'STEM' buzzword on their resumes, nor a handful of letters after their names, nor other academic pedigrees. It's just that the LYING CEOs of these Silly Valley corporations aren't looking in the right places [deliberately, to justify H-1B, most likely].
Morons.
Bombastic Bob, I actually agreed with your basic point. Until you derailed it into ranting about liberalism. The first two sentences of your post are reasonable, but thereafter you're more interested in MAKING yourself look like an IDIOT who can't get himself out of CAMPAIGN MEGAPHONE MODE.
Which is not really helpful for debate.
The real reason college degrees aren't everything is because there are many ways to learn things. College is usually the easiest, but that doesn't make its graduates any better than those who learned their stuff the hard way.
And indeed sometimes the opposite is true, because the college was more interested in ticking boxes and cashing checks than teaching anything. (See: Trump University.)
@veti wrote: The real reason college degrees aren't everything is because there are many ways to learn things.
College teaches you self-discipline.
You are also forced to network like crazy with classmates - people in your field. Do not underestimate how valuable these contacts will be later in life.
Contrary to some other replies to your post, I would agree with everything BUT the last paragraph. There are plenty of people with a degree but barely anyone of those actually knows what they are doing. The learned more about how to get through their four years and get a piece of paper at the end or some fancy new paradigms, but rarely know what is required in the real world.
>> (think Bill Gates), and THEN went on to become highly successful engineers
Gates isn't an engineer he's a businessman. Do you REALLY imagine that he spent his time at Microsoft writing software himself?
>> An experienced programmer (without a degree) is AT LEAST as likely
Sorry but you're wrong. I was an experienced programmer before I got my CS degree, and I can tell you that without a good knowledge of Computer Science, you're only ever actually going to be a second-rate hacker, no matter how good you believe yourself to be.
Also, and possibly more importantly, you won't understand the thinking/rationale behind many things you'll see in other people's code that you'll have to fix, maintain and extend.
Already the FLMs (First line Managers and Second Line Managers ) are those who got their Green Cards. And they are just as clueless and are hiring more H1Bs and cheap labor. Don't kid yourself. The bulk of the H1Bs are faking it until they make it. They are totally clueless and are there because they are cheap.
At one client, I had a manager tell his staff to speak English because I was there. And this is in the States.
Sorry, but if it wasn't for Moore's law, most of the code written today would fail.
Some sectors of the US medical system are already reliant on foreign-born doctors. See reporting from Stat and from NPR.
Last time my mum, aged 94, went to a doc she saw a young Japanese internist. He spoke English with quite an accent, but he was very thorough and competent. This was in a relatively small clinic in a nondescript medium-sized town on the west coast of USA. A colleague of mine sees a Libyan-born doctor at another clinic, one of two brothers who practice medicine locally.
Something akin to osmotic pressure will always tend to move educated professionals into areas of opportunity. You can stymie this at a national level by tightening work visa and immigration controls, and IMHO you will kneecap your nation economically by doing so. Yadda, yadda. Nobody cares, really; we're all busy reading Trump's latest ignorant tweets.
Undoubtedly the US pulls in excellent medical staff from around the world. However, the US also has the American Medical Association acting as a cartel to limit the number of medical schools and medical school slots in the US. Perhaps if that eased up, one could find more US-born doctors willing to practice outside the big cities.
the American Medical Association acting as a cartel to limit the number of medical schools and medical school slots in the US. Perhaps if that eased up, one could find more US-born doctors willing to practice outside the big cities.
That's not the problem. Big cities support specialists who earn more. Small towns need general practitioners aka Family doctors who don't make nearly as much, especially if they have to maintain a private office.
For US medical trainees, the obvious lure is as a specialist in a city. They then have an income sufficient to pay back their education loans, whereas foreign generalists quite likely don't come with the same debt burden, so are willing to work for less.
It's not about pay, it's about pay per hour of work. Plenty of US workers would agree to work for the current minimum pay ($85.000 if I remember correctly) under H1B. However there is no regulation on the number of hours a worker can be expected to work for this pay. So an extra unpaid 30 hours a week extra on top of the "standard" workweek is the norm. No sane US citizen would voluntarily work 70 to 80 (or more) hours a week for such low pay (unless they are self employed) so no-one does and the companies can claim they can find no-one to fulfill their vacancy. Then they bring in a foreigner who they CAN cajole into working for a measily sum per hour and the company gets to fire 3 people for every 2 H1Bs they hire.
The answer is not just raising the minimum pay level, it's setting a minimum pay per hour with no unpaid overtime allowed. (Unpaid overtime being something I don't get in the first place. I'll put up with it every now and then if needed for a customer, but there is no way in hell my employer is going to get me to put in 60 hours a week structurally with no extra pay to show for it)
Please indicate your level of seriousness in regards to the above post.
This would be a "partly", I guess. I believe all those things are markers of a functioning fair society, but we are talking about America and it seems that these things are un-American, and interfere with the great American dream of having more money than everyone else.
I smell sarcasm there. "Socialism" is the buzz word that the tories like to throw out at people who enjoy the civilization upgrades that come with a progressive governments using tax monies on the infrastructure; roads, clean water, free elections, etc. It's the assholes who claim they hate paying taxes, yet are driving around in monster trunks on "my" roads that form this "hypocrites parade." If you don't like paying taxes, go visit a tax-free, "non-socialist" country like Afghanistan and check out their "roadways" and other crap infrastructure that no one cares for, even after it was built and offered to them by our crafty war-profiteers, er, I mean friendly companies doing business during the various recent wars in their region, that we made up. Those crafty WMDs! Clearly their tech was so advanced the threats were invisible. Also, we're now protected from polar bear and tiger attacks in the continental US! Hooray! USA! USA!
"Okay, we invaded the shit out of your country and offed the only non-Muslim friend we had here, but check out this nice power station we're leaving behind. Here's the instructions on how to opera..."
*BOOM*
"Well, never mind about that power station now. It's just a crater in the name of allah-balla-boo. WTF were we doing here again?"
Restricting foreign worker access/protecting the internal job market from competition is already socialism. Might as well do it right.
Guess me should just open the borders and let all the immigrants come who can get here then.
That's what the "free market" demands, after all.
Just, in some countries, that protection is used by companies to keep the wages low. Unless you have a strong contractual power, they will offer you the minimum, and most accept and don't protest because they don't have to pay for welfare services - so they can at least live somehow...
Yet low wages means also less taxes paid, and need of new services (i.e. children day care) and the system soon become unsustainable, because the expenses became simply too high.
I'm not saying those protection are wrong - they are good - just beware greedy companies can still exploit them. Especially when you get idiotic unions more interested in politics, outdated ideologies, and self-interests, than actually taking care of workers interests.
The current minimum pay for H1-B is $65,000. That's below the average pay for a citizen counterpart in IT. You're right on the hours though, they get paid less and work twice the hours effectively more than halving their hourly. (For anyone curious that comes out to $15.62/hr)
I believe it's 65k, it was when I looked into this in 2016 after the company I worked for laid off all the Devs/ QA and a lot of IT staff to replace us immediately with h1b's from an agency. If they took agencies out the equation it would probably be a more defendable position.
I would be more sympathetic to the allowing genuinely rare/ talented people in but mostly I've seen production staff, even at tier 1, replaced.Research sites showing which companies apply for h1b's seem to back up this view.
Nah, the first thing that would happen is, they'd be required to work 90 hours a week instead of just 70.
I say, abolish the H1B program entirely. None of this "reform" bullshit. Then let America sink or swim with its homegrown talent, and do whatever it takes to raise its next generation of programmers.
I smell lots of opportunity for us foreign techies in that scenario.
The solution to this problem isn't to drive kids through 16 years of education...its for companies to open their budgets and send staff to technical schools to learn specific technologies. Universities are great at teaching theories, and a very few have begun to actually integrate vendor coursework (primarily Microsoft) into the curriculum so students graduate with the diploma that says they know the theory *and* a certificate that demonstrates at least a minimum level of practical knowledge. Take a new hire, have that person spend the first two weeks being trained in the dominant technology the employer uses that the employee will be supporting. Then allocate another two weeks the next month for training in a secondary skill area.
Costs a few dollars, sure, but without the four year degree, HR at most other companies won't even let the person's resume through the first culling, so the candidate will be staying a while (plus, there are always contractual agreements that you won't quit within a certain time unless you pay back the costs). And the person who has actual tech training will be better able to contribute than one who has a four year degree with no practical aspect integrated in. Over time, other universities are likely to include a practical aspect to their degrees, but for the time being, filling the alleged half-million jobs is a matter of investing in people...not buying their servitude. Take the average salary for the area, for a newbie, and cut a few thousand off the top, but add it back in as training. Its a perk, and the company can move that money to the business expense column instead of payroll.
And with a bit of cleverness, the company can avoid paying for any advanced training, even though there's supposed to be a budget of x dollars per year per person for training, by keeping the work load too high for the employees to actually go to any training, once they have the minimum necessary to blunder along doing the job they have already.
Yeah sure, Cisco and MS already did that and now we have people making technical decisions based solely on marketing talk.
My beginner CS and networking classes covered: Cisco CCNA(nothing else, there is no other technologies in networking apparently) and the MS portfolio. It took a proactive teacher to show us SUSE in her free time.
Have you ever wondered why you are stuck with useless overpriced Cisco/MS kit? Well someone was lectured by those guys in school.
What the US needs is for those idiots to pay their taxes, if they paid their fair share then free or semi-free quality education from non-corporate educators can be provided.
But you won`t get that if you voted for Trump(or Hilary for that matter).
Free college for everyone? Never going to happen, doesn't matter who gets elected. Nor should it. College isn't a right. Its not "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of a bachelor's degree." But I'm not getting on my soapbox today. I would rather see people coming out of college able to handle Windows and/or Cisco kit. Because most networks are Windows-based, that's where the jobs are. Likewise, most routing and switching runs something very like Cisco IOS, and in fact, usually identical, since IOS isn't patented or copyrighted, since its derived from Unix and thus is no an original work - so anyone can use it, and *lots* do, so learning Cisco actually gets you solidly grounded in a lot of manufacturers. SUSE? Good on you to learn alternative tech, but I suspect most of your CS peers are happy to learn the skills likely to get them a job right off. I have never been a Microsoft fan...I came up in the days of Novell Netware, which I believe to this day was a far superior product compared to Microsoft Servers. But Microsoft is where the money is, and as I have to work for a living, I have to work with the products the companies are buying, not with what I like the best.
I never mentioned either one..in this thread, I think I mentioned code monkeys in another posting thread on this article, though. Here, I was just talking IT as a whole; waiting for universities to re-tool their curricula and starting churning out people who have knowledge and how to apply it in the real world is a fool's game. Companies can come out ahead if they take some initiative and train their people instead of expecting people to just come to them already experts in whatever field of IT.
@thomn8r - Short answer - no. The real answer is about PHBs looking at the wages on their Excel spreadsheet and trying to reduce them. So if they can lie on the form, they can higher someone for less than the going rate and work them harder they save a few bucks short term. The real problem is the burnout treadmill and the fact they had to lie to get approval.
A common trick is to load up a job description with requirements that no one in the world could meet. When this fictitious person can not be found in the US then they file for H-1B visa and get someone to lie on the paperwork. Viola! The visa gets approved by some incompetent, lazy bureaucrat who could care less about doing their job.
Not quite.
The trick is to create a job posting that has a really low salary. So that it doesn't get filled.
There are a lot of tricks that get played in HR these days.
The whole goal is to show a position was open and there were no qualified applicants so hiring a H1B is fair game.
Wanted programmer
Requirements:
CS degree
5 years experience
Java, C#, SQL
Must speak and write fluent Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi (to communicate with overseas colleagues)
Salary - less than a US college leaver
Put that up on the job boards, get no takers then you can legitimately apply for a H1B as there's nobody in the States suitably qualified.
Republicans love the poorly educated, the crux of trump's votes. The poorly educated are they who can rally to 'FEAR thy Neighbors' rants, just as in Brit's Brexit.
The last few Trade agreements included reeducating those who would lose jobs due to dying US manufacturing to cheaper wages abroad but Republicans holding Congressional purse $tring$ reneged (mind you these are the same folk who crashed the US & World economies by reducing regulations-YEP, they're at it again)...Did I add that one of the Republican pillars within their 'making government smaller' rhetoric is to destroy the education Institution body. So YES, Americans are steered towards ignorance but it's for political reasons.
>>Republicans love the poorly educated, the crux of trump's votes.
That could just as easily have been written to say: Democrats love the poorly educated, the crux of Obama's past votes....
After all the Democrats were in office for the past 8 years and the people who are graduating from a 4 year college today are the ones who went through HS and College while Democrats were in office.
I'm not trying to egg on a Republican vs Democrat debate as the USA's education system is littered with problems born from both sides. Rather the debate should be more along the lines of asking the question as to why we, as tax payers, continue to employ those who have set the current educational agenda? I'm talking about Superintendents, Boards of Education, etc. Given the leeway they've had, those people have fundamentally failed to prepare our children for what the world needs today.
I'm not even blaming the teachers as they have little to no control over the content of what they teach. Of course, way too many teachers are there because the liberal arts degrees they chased after didn't exactly prepare them for the real world and they couldn't find another job. It's a lovely situation that the term Pear Shaped doesn't exactly describe.
My oldest is a senior in college. He brought a couple friends over for dinner a few weeks ago. I asked each of them (all seniors) what it was they were wanting to do once college is over. Every single one of them said something along the lines of "Work in an office ... somewhere." I persisted and asked doing what? "I'm not sure. Just whatever I can get." They showed exactly zero desire and zero motivation beyond getting a piece of paper.
That's the problem that any education system should be addressing. They need to show the kids a taste of what's out there. Get them excited about *something* and then help them achieve it.
-8 years of 'Do Nothing Congress', 8 years Congress did nothing to work with President Obama ("Make him a one term President' -R Mitch McConnell's words), 8 years of racist/bigoted rhetoric (propelled Trump) and complete disrespect for the Office of the Presidency, 8 years of sabotage (ACA=Obama-Care) JUST for THIS moment; to repeal Healthcare. Stop with the nonsense! America/World suffered through Republican ineptness (Market Crash of 08) and they are at it again, this time their ineptitude and poor decision making skills (one cant make good decisions with hate and racism as motivation) by placing a Russian spy in the White House. Stop with the delusional nonsense
BTW- folk who lost manufacturing jobs would most likely not have access to college coming out of the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression.
I always love how some people like to lay the blame of the '08 market crash at the feet of the Republicans - when the reality is that both sides of the aisle screwed the American public.
I worked in the legal side of the mortgage industry prior to and during this time. The cause of those problems are firmly rooted during Clinton's presidency when he signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act. Yes, Gramm/Leach/Bliley were Republicans - however, this act was passed by both parties in both houses and signed by a Democratic President.
That act did a few horrible things. It removed the barriers that had been put in place to prevent banks from doing exactly what they ended up doing - combining consumer banking, investment banking and insurance into one.
The second thing that really kicked it into gear was the Community Reinvestment Act changes that all but forced banks to give low or no document loans to people. Ignoring their ability to repay those loans in an effort to help certain demographics buy a house. As usual with liberal policies, the very people they claimed to try and help were the ones hardest hit. By allowing people to obtain a mortgage with nothing more than their word, this increased the number of people in the market. Which, in turn, drove up home prices. Which, in turn, meant more creative ways had to be established to allow low income people to buy a house. Which led to a plethora of mortgage products that had no option but to default when home prices either stabilized or dropped. Even in 2002, we knew it was coming, it was only a matter of when.
Regarding the ACA, you have to understand the history of insurance and what the act utterly failed to accomplish in order to see why it was doomed to failure from day one.
Insurance was originally set up as a way to fix the income streams of doctors when the Great Depression hit and people stopped seeing their doctor as often. A group of doctors realized they weren't making as much money and needed a way to convince the public to keep paying them. So instead of paying the doctor for each visit, they'd just pay a small monthly fee. The effect was to change healthcare into a subscription style service.
This became it's own industry that grew outside the control of those original doctors rather quickly. Of course, as health care become more complicated, insurance companies did everything they could to divide up the market to reduce their expenditures while giving the appearance of coverage. If you think cell phone plans from 10 years ago were complicated, you should see the list of medical billing codes (CPT codes). You'd probably notice that even a blood draw has several different codes based on where the service is performed and the condition of the patient; and if you've ever billed an insurance company you'd know that depending on the company and even policy within that company a simple blood draw might, or might not, be covered based on the code used.
This leads to several problems. First, fraud is easy. So another industry is set up to detect medical billing fraud - increasing costs. Second, an insurance company can establish dozens of different plans where the various codes are cherry picked for "coverage" - a favorite thing to do among marketing folks which gives the end patient the illusion of choice. Third, a billing industry is established - also leading to increased costs by the doctors as navigating billing codes requires full time people. There are other issues - all of which drive up health care costs while giving insurance companies more control.
One of the the right answers in health care would have been to regulate the crap out of the billing procedures - forcing the insurance companies to do away with all the nuances. Instead, the ACA dialed up the confusion to 11. Ultimately leading to the average person paying far and away more on insurance than before - and getting far and away less because of it. The ACA needs to go away, I can only hope that whatever replaces it actually recognizes and addresses the root problems with health insurance.
Educate yourself. It's actually kinda important.
"Community Reinvestment Act changes that all but forced banks to give low or no document loans to people." I call BS on this statement of yours, what kicked the banks behavior into high gear was the ability to sell on those loans so that they then didn't have to suffer the impact of the bad loans, this is a typical attempt to blame liberal policies for free market/capitalist forces.
Medical billing codes (IDC-9/IDC-10) are necessary to help prevent free market fraud in the healthcare market. The ACA was and isn't doomed to fail from day one, the Republican obstructionist campaign limited what it was able to achieve but it's already shown a marked reduction in the average rate of premium increase (v's the same timeframe before it went into effect). It's not perfect by any means but it could be fixed, it's a pity that the Republicans are more interested in trashing President Obama's legacy than actually providing affordable healthcare, anytime one of them talks about 'accessible healthcare' just remember that Lamborghini's are accessible to everyone but don't be surprised if you can't afford one.
Education in both these areas is vitally important, it's a pity that yours in so one-sided.
No single candidate or party is causing the "educational crisis". Its weeks, months, even years spent in classrooms covering things that no student will ever see, use, or hear about again, unless that student becomes an educator as well. If we can pare down the stuff that's of no objective use (I have not been asked to identify the adverb in a sentence since I was in fifth grade - or so) perhaps we can free up time for kids to be taught real life skills. Democrats have screwed things up just as much as Republicans have, its short-sighted to place the blame entirely on one party. The "purse strings" of Congress are controlled by the House of Representatives - all spending must originate there. Since 1855 (when the two party system pretty much took hold), Democrats have controlled the House 86 years, Republicans, 74. For 40 years, ending in 1995, Democrats never lost their majority in the House. If all the educational ills of our nation are due to the Republican treachery, exclusively, we should have had an educational system that was the envy of the world in 1995. But we didn't. Fact is, *both* sides of the aisle are packed with cretinous, self-righteous narcissists, and the solution is term limits to force turnover in Congress so new people with new ideas have a chance, instead of having the same old carcasses re-elected time and time again with the same tired old plans and the same tired rhetoric. I don't care if a person has a "D" or "R" after their name on the news reports - if they've been there 15 or 20 years, they're dead weight and need to be tossed out to make room for someone who might have more than getting re-elected (yet again) in mind. Plus, it'd help of the Congress Critters realized that, eventually, they'll be private citizens again and be subject to the laws they make the rest of us live with, instead of being in Congress and subject to Congressional immunities until they keel over and die of old age.
No, I got one in 1986. And Bell labs brought me over to Noo Joizy because they wanted to pay under the market rate. BTW I took a 30 or so % pay cut to "experience the States". Nothing has changed.
- Simple remedy has been proposed. Every application charged $5k regardless of result. The "winners" are selected on basis of highest pay TO THE EMPLOYEE (very much like a T-Bill auction). This would enable FB, Google to get good guys on $250k, and prevent TCS / Wipro from taking a 100% mark-up on a junior tekky on $50k.
The GoDaddy CEO is just another Silicon Valley whiner.
If we just kicked the Offshore Outsourcing companies out of the H-1b syste, we would have more than enough visas. Silicon Valley barely uses 1/3 of the available visas.
The Offshore Outsourcing companies use more than half, to facilitate the removal of entire departments to India. It has happened over and over again, the well known places such as Southern California Edison, UCSF, and Disney are just the tip, of the tip, of the iceberg.
The reality there are never enough workers in the U.S. because a person on minimum wage pays more in taxes than people earn in other countries the whole year.
These CEOs need some disruption in their lives and fat-cat salararies, lets give it to them.
You and BobCatTail are in the right, me old sons!
"These CEOs need some disruption in their lives and fat-cat salararies, lets give it to them."
I'm doing ALL I CAN by overcharging these idiots for my services! I promise to continue upping my rates until I run out of places to hide the money! Once I was a Unix/Solaris Admin, then I called myself a Linux Admin. More money. Then I called myself a DevOps guy and learned me some Python. More money. Now I'm my own consultancy and will also call myself a "cyber security" guy if that makes me some more money. Hey, what's with all the sad faces? Go out there and learn more and charge more! Do it TODAY!!1!
If we just kicked the Offshore Outsourcing companies out of the H-1b syste, we would have more than enough visas. Silicon Valley barely uses 1/3 of the available visas.
Yes, when you get a small company that may have a genuine need to bring in a specific person, they can't do it because all the visas are taken. Bumping up the fee per visa and possibly restricting the number of visas per company (or adding surcharges as the number increases) might help a bit, although I guess you'd have a holding company with a dozen smaller companies under it, each with a smaller number of visas. Increasing the minimum wage threshold would help, but then they'd be expected to work 100 hours instead of only 70 to make up for that.
Sure the pay's less but maybe, just maybe, for some the actual standard of living is actually higher in certain ways?
Non existent gun crime, free healthcare etc. Fairly common features of most developed economies, but not of the US.
Of course if US techs are as bad as he claims that's a non starter.
Thing is, I don't believe him.
China.
China knows it doesn't have the experience it needs to do the work it wants to do. They will hire countless expatriates in the next few decades building up the expertise it needs. Of course, as soon as it feels confident it will kick all those people out of the country, but I hear the pay is pretty good if you want to live in China for a few years.
Can anyone recommend a reliable, reasonably priced domain registrar, and a good managed Wordpress hosting company?
I don't really need to move my domains and hosting, but as I was educated in American schools, I'm not technically literate, and therefore feel compelled to close all my GoDaddy accounts for no good technical reason. :P
Hover is an easy registrar to deal with. Hawkhost, Stablehost, Crocweb, and other non-EIG companies (do check those lists to be very sure) offer deals on webhostingtalk.com, and there are reviews there as well. Reviewers have to submit a URL to review. Godaddy has the distinction of being as bad as an EIG brand without actually being one.
Domains are moving now, hosting to follow. Their managed wordpress has been decent, although of course I don't trust my own judgement in that area for obvious reasons.
Just sayin'.. that I'm not just sayin'
I don't honestly believe other companies are better, but OTOH most of them haven't openly taken a stand against high pay for American tech workers.
I wonder why there aren't more women in tech?
> US is "tech Illiterate"
Really? As compared to cheap and most usually clueless and very low quality Indian workers that the chances are, significantly cheated on their degree (if they even have one) and/or was from a university that is little more than a certificate printing shop?
http://time.com/3752128/india-bihar-exam-cheating-climbing-walls/
http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/phds-bachelors-degrees-on-sale-in-punjab-463936
Also name me any significant computer technology that was invented in India? The only one I could come up with is Backus Naur notation, which doesn't really count because John Backus was American. Now consider the long list of computer technology that was invented in the US.
Its VERY clear what's really going on here.
You are mostly in the wrong there. I've worked with many, many NRIs here in sunny California, and the majority are well educated, speak da good englishes more than the locals at times, and have very good tech skills. Then again, I'm talking about programmers, developers, and Linux admins. C and Java are their specialties, and working with them is the same as working with tech-savvy locals. If they have a degree from an Indian university, that's good enough for me. I have zero higher education, yet I can manage to build the shit out of any data center in any kind of business. Knowledge is what makes me the money for building the infrastructure, not a degree. Pretending only gets you in the door. Though, if I did have one I could be even more valuable. It is known.
I've meet strong locals, and some that got in the door and there's no reason why.
The U.S. tech job market is FUBAR. Low pay, ridiculous skills requirements*, H1-B undercutting citizens, short term contracts that nobody can live on. The list is endless and includes everything in your nightmares like worthless certs and clueless suits who make the pointy haired boss in BOFH look sane.
I get contacted everyday for short term contracts, (3 or fewer months) 1000 miles away for shit pay. Take a wild guess what my response is?
The bottom line: if you can't fill jobs, you aren't fucking paying enough. Live by capitalism, die by capitalism. You really do get what you pay for when it comes to experienced IT employees.
(* got a call for a desktop position that required travel to set up servers. My reply email was not nice. I get variations of these all time. Must have dozens of skills, pay less than $50K)
They're not actually looking to fill them. They're looking for enough "No" answers so that they can safely say (should Los Federales ever come after them for violating the rules) that there were no qualified Americans.
Also, given the amount of data they collect during the process, I strongly suspect they're reselling it.
"got a call for a desktop position [...] pay less than $50K"
Desktop position? What are you, 12 years old? Dude, learn the shit out of Linux and Python and get your ass into a data center server admin job, or network admin, or backup admin, or Windows admin if you only know how to use a mouse, or etc... get the picture? Holy crap, I am making more money than ever, and the market is ripe to give me even more. I get lots of calls too, and I don't relocate, and I don't talk to people who are not offering US$100/hr+ corp to corp, or US$60/hr W-2, or will telecommute and negotiate on the price. If you have the big boy skillz, then start marketing yourself as such. All that anger is not going to make you look younger, or solve that tricky problem with the mouse. :)
Earn your potential and stop letting shitty managers rule your life!
If you think a 12yo can fix your computer, you should call one next time you need one. Or go to Geek Squad.
That attitude is part of the problem. Thanks for making my point.
As for MY skills, I was just illustrating this point: the attitude that anything other than high profile project/skills du jour's can be done by anyone and paid accordingly.
It is one of the biggest reasons for project failures. The other of course being manglement.
I'm currently 'under-employed' Silicon Valley after I was effectively terminated for not being a 'culture fit'. That meant that I wasn't putting in the late nights expected. I was the only one leaving at 5:30pm to pick up my kids.
Almost everyone I worked around was an immigrant, including many that were recent. The guy who took over most of my work had recently arrived, after taking almost a year to get a work visa.
I don't begrudge them personally. They were nice guys that worked long hours for less pay. But it was absolutely untrue that the company had to hire H1B because they couldn't find the skills in the U.S. The company just wants to pay less for someone that will work far more than a regular work week.
I'm just wondering what country has an overabundance of science, tech and engineers?
Because it seems everyone is a major shortage...
Oh yeah, I like how the derogatory term 'uneducated' is making its way through the intellectual yet idiot chattering classes of socialists, has really taken off with them, you know since they had to replace racist, xenophobe, & bigot, as they seem to be loosing clout against the people they really mean, and go out of their way to avoid using the real term to describe them "The Poor".
Once you start replacing the term 'uneducated' with 'The Poor', you start coming off as Arrogant, smug and sneering which is unsurprising since most of you are.
Before the Tech industry wrangled a tax incentive to bring in cheap, exploitable labor computing was supporting entire universities, newspapers entire sections to just computing related employment and even bookstore dedicating whole floors to computing related reading.
Irving is hypocrite, his maggot wranglers are being sued for discrimination because they hire only South Asian and mainly male. GoDaddy is losing relevance anyway, there are better and less expensive domain pimps out there and GoDaddy's service bites.
" The computer-science prof, based at the University of California, Davis, has long argued that the US has "a surplus of homegrown STEM workers now ... This is all about industry wanting to lower wages.
So Blake Irving gets on CNBC and tells a bald face lie that abuse in the H-1b visa system is a small fraction of the total.
When he knows, full well, that more than 50% of all H-1b visas go to Offshore Outsourcing companies in order to get better qualified, more experienced, U.S. workers and Green Card holders to train their H-1b replacement.
Why do liars like Blake Irving get to spout their fake new and false information? Why, because they paid for it, that's why.
There's not enough _young_ talent. There's lots of us more "senior" folks around who've been doing the job for a long time, but hey, you thought we were too expensive. But, hey, we write great code for kicks, now. In the meantime, companies import cheap talent (cheaper than they can get in a domestic recent college graduate) and put us out of work. I have no sympathy for them.