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Another wall of text from 2005 and the best argument to my numbers was "NO".
If those Indians are poorly educated, how they can replace you? Maybe your are overqualified for a job or that job requirement are so low that it not worth to pay 100k for it. Move to another job where your superior education will shine. Again, why owners and stock holders of Cisco company right for money should be below your right to be employed there? Thats definition of protectionism, not a capitalist free market. When you utilize poor workers in China for decades, it's ok. But when they utilize you same way, it's no-no. Thats definition of hypocrite.
....I was about to get serious about schooling towards IT and i saw a post some one had made about this "H1B" thing. Looked around, ask a question, and wow what a mess. Long story short, these immigrant workers come here with low quality education, work extreme hours(apparently not always very productively ether) and for next to nothing, as far as industry standard goes. The mass of them have flooded the IT market and as soon as that is saturated they will move onto something else. While the IT field does have many without degrees, its not necessarily the majority, MANY qualified, certified, degree holding people are out of work because they can be filled with some one who will do their job for half or less...(in the big picture, like with millions upon millions of revenue, how does cutting 4-5 70k IT people help?? and replace them with some one making 20/30k???)
THIS ISN'T INCREASING COMPETITION ITS STIFLING IT. Why would some one in their right mind spend 40k on school to get a job they will earn 30k in for the next five to ten years at least??? Can anyone explain that to me?
Sooo, whats the solution? school costs come down to meet the needs of the people?? um, no.. not in a capitalistic market, prices will increase so only a smaller few can take said risk..
Honestly, what are we looking at here? if this continues, which it will, the middle class will continue to dwindle while a select few continue to make absorbent amounts of money until the whole system collapses under its own weight via there not being enough consumers left with the purchasing power to consume.. Yep.. i would say this i a great system indeed.
Simple solution? change the immigration laws and start protecting American workers, this isn't the 1900s, we are not the same nation we were 20 years ago, were not even the same as we were 10 years ago even. Yes, we WERE the great nation of opportunity for anyone to come here and make something, but that ship has sailed. When will we start caring about the people here and their future? Since when does the rest of the world come first? These policies literally kill Americans slowly and painfully so that the rich get richer.
Right, last three paragraphs are mildly related, but i didn't understand Global Labor Arbitrage until now... I was having problems understand how it will effect the white collar but now i see there is a way around everything...
Welcome to my world. I have been dealing with this problem for years, only difference is that people taking over my field are illegal aliens from south of the border, I'm a contractor.
I always said that until workers from other countries started taking jobs from people working in better jobs, nothing would get done.
I have no problem with guest workers in this country until it takes jobs away from American people.
I don't have the time or patience to reread yet another one of these types of posts *sigh*, but I'll respond to the first portion by asking:
Where is the shortage?
When you have people losing their jobs in tech, and having to take transitional level jobs because there's no work available, how is there a shortage of American employees to fill tech positions?
not right now after a massive wave of corporate layoffs. but H1B was hot years ago. and companies can't just lay off H1B's because those are here on term contracts.
also remember that H1B workers receive significantly lower pays, and tend to work longer hours.
re. point 2, i can assure you that that is simply not the case. as a software engineer myself, i can assure you that by and large the quality of education that indian software engineers receive is poor and most are no geniuses. yes, the ones graduating from IIT schools are smart, but those are just a tiny fraction of all that come here. i have been told by indian masters students that the quality of the software engineering education that UNDERgrads receive here at even an ordinary STATE school surpasses the quality of education received by MASTERS students back in india.
i have heard stories of how it is only all too common for students there to simply copy the work of the one or two smart students in class and submit it as their own.
I don't dispute that. I'm not saying that they are geniuses. I'm saying that American corps hired them because of significant cost savings and acceptable/marketable performance -- the H1B's are willing to work longer hours for free. That usually is enough to compensate for their lack of proper training. Most programming tasks at the commercial level are not as tough as undergrad programming projects at, say, UTCS, UC Berkeley, UIUC, MIT, Cornell, Stanford ... etc.
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and when i was an undergrad at a state school here for computer science, we had a big scandal in the masters program for comp. sci. which had a large number of indian students. alot of them basically would just copy each other's work (sometimes without even changing the name on the paper) and submit it as their own. many had to be failed for such behavior.
I believe you.
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as someone else already pointed out, the only people that truly benefit are the corporate elite who pocket the extra profits. the middle class see no real benefit. and the truly culpable in this case are those execs who actually decide to offshore the work.
I worked for Adobe Systems in San Jose, CA from Oct-Dec 2005 in a software engineering group as a contractor. Upon starting work I noticed that the company was jammed to the ceiling with foreign guest workers - mostly from India and China. In IT positions in the company there were barely 15% Americans overall. Our tiny group was mostly Americans because all worked on a niche computing platform that doesn't focus on Windows. Most of my coworkers were Americans and my immediate boss was an American. However, his boss was from India and was apparently new to the company and had only been there about 5 months before I got there. In meetings I would notice that this senior Indian manager would constantly talk about "cross-training". The company had rooms full of foreign guest workers doing nothing but sitting around learning new skills, not developing products. I would notice many of these foreign workers often going to the office of the technical lead in our group to ask him how things were done. The senior Indian manager himself didn't really seem to know what he was doing as I would always hear him asking rudimentary development questions in the project manager's office adjacent to mine. One time I even heard him asking the project manager where he got a prerelease installation CD for Microsoft's upcoming operating system. The answer of course was "MSDN". The project manager was an American also. One would think a highly skilled, highly educated senior IT manager from India would know such basic IT information, but apparently not.
There was also another engineering manager in another group who appeared to be from Viet Nam. She spoke broken English and was difficult to understand at times. I was tasked with writing some software for her group. Upon starting the project I asked her for a project GANTT chart for the tasks I was to work on. A GANTT chart is a standard project planning tool used on all properly run software projects. She didn't even know what a GANTT chart was. Her idea of good software development practices was to send daily emails to developers saying "Oh and one more thing...". She of course went home at 6 every night so she could watch TV while we had to stay until midnight to struggle with the ensuing chaos she created. She didn't know the first thing about developing software. It does make one wonder why we are bringing these people into the country if they don't already possess the skills claimed.
After about two months Adobe acquired Macromedia and it was announced a few weeks ahead of time that there would be layoffs as a result of the merger. I didn't mind the layoffs so much as the way they happened and *who* was and was not laid off. I ended up getting laid off, as did my American boss, as did the American project manager in the office next to me. One other senior American Windows engineer in our group was laid off after being with Adobe 8 years. In a former life he had worked on the Xerox Star at PARC. Nope - no skills there! I guess he is one of the American workers who is not smart enough to work in American companies or one of the highly skilled American workers that companies claim they can't "find". In the end 5 people were laid off from our group. One was of Chinese descent but the other 4 were Americans - U.S. Citizens.
Two of the 4 laid off Americans in our group were REPLACED with two foreign Indian workers from within the company. One took my old manager's job, and one took the Windows installer engineer's job. The new Indian manager who replaced my boss came running around with a big smile on his face shaking everyone's hand the next day with glee introducing himself and telling everyone he would be managing the group "going forward". He could barely constrain his excitement. Both Indian workers were directly promoted to their new positions by the senior Indian manager in our group.
So in the end the senior Indian engineering manager took the merger and layoffs as a prime opportunity to slash Americans from the workforce, and to promote Indians into the same positions. I've seen this happen at nearly every company I've worked at. It's an American worker replacement program. These people coming into the country possess little or zero of the skills claimed. The real goal is to get them into the country, TRANSFER the skills of existing American workers to them first, and then lay off the American workers. This has been the case at nearly every software company I have worked at in the past 8 years. It's a mass skills transference plan on a national level. Of course, the CEOs and executives high up in these American companies are too ignorant and stupid to know that they are being conned, because all they see are the dollar signs from the money the Indians promise they will save. Of course in the end it never works because after 8 years of these shennanigans Silicon Valley is a wasteland of FOR LEASE signs.
None of these imported workers have delivered any of the economic benefits we were promised in 1998 when these programs were increased to mass levels. In fact, the opposite has happened. Instead of keeping the 90s booming economy going, these 3rd world workers have sucked it dry. Silicon Valley is dying and it is because these stupid companies are importing millions of fake workers under fraudulent pretenses and then the workers aren't producing anything. All the 3rd world workers know is "IT is a good way to get rich". So they come to Silicon Valley and the companies collapse. They move from company to company kicking out productive Americans, taking skills and money, and then not producing anything. When the company collapses they move on to the next one. One company after another goes under and the CEOs wonder why they can't make this business model work anymore.
The Indian workers could care less about whether they destroy the companies or not. All they care about is taking. As one Indian worker said "We have to get our money before the Chinese do". Yes, GET is their operative word. CREATE is not in their vocabulary. Meanwhile the very American workers who created the industry are deliberately being kept out of the workforce by managers like the senior Indian engineering manager at Adobe - so that unskilled Indian workers can have "jobs". What is actually happening is that these imported workers are enjoying the benefits of the 20 million jobs Americans created in the 90s long before they got here. The imported workers are enjoying having those jobs now but they are not maintaining them nor are they creating new ones. They are getting a free ride coasting on jobs Americans created. Meanwhile the very American workers who GAVE them these jobs are being kicked out of their own job market by the imported workers themselves. That is the way 3rd world gratitude works I guess. This entire thing has been a fraudulent racket from day one.
There are plenty of IT jobs in America - it's just that Americans are not being allowed to work in them and ones who are working in them are having their skills stolen from them and then they are being kicked out of the industry they have created. This is happening all over America on a huge scale. Americans can't find jobs because they are being deliberately excluded from their own job market by racist Indians who will only hire other Indians for positions in IT. Our government is either complicit in the process or else they are too stupid to know they are being conned also.
The fact that nearly none of these workers possess the skills claimed and the fact that they are being given skills from existing American workers means that these guest worker programs amount to fraud. They are intended to deceive the American people. Intent to deceive is fraud. All guest workers imported since 1998 should be deported immediately and the jobs be given back to American workers. Laws should be passed that impose criminal penalties and jail time for any American executive that participates in such acts of fraud. Imported guest workers who engage in such behavior should be banned from ever entering the country again.
Now you know the truth about these fraudulent guest worker visa programs. Greedy CEOs and executives are giving away America's most important economic engine to unskilled, uneducated 3rd worlders just so they can save a few bucks right now. These programs have been a total disaster for California's economy and for Silicon Valley. They should all be ended immediately before they destroy the U.S.
Here's another letter forwarded to me:
I worked for Cisco Systems of San Jose, CA for almost four years. I was the last American to work in the Oracle Database Administration department of approximately 25 individuals at this site. Almost all of the remaining DBAs are from India on H1-B visas. Other technical departments have extremely similar demographics and it is obvious to all that only Indians need apply for technical positions. Several times, I attempted to submit resumes of qualified candidates only to be told 'they wouldn't be a good fit' - and this was without interviewing or even looking at their resume beyond their names. I understand that even Indian US citizens were turned down for interviews when they mistakenly told Cisco representatives that they did not require sponsorship. I was given a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan), ironically enough, shortly before I had told several people that I was planning to leave the company soon as well as around the same time I sold a number of my stock options, a practice strongly discouraged by management as options become invalidated if an employee is terminated, saving the company large amounts of money. At my going away lunch, virtually the entire department, except for my manager who had also gotten rid of the earlier American DBAs, came to the lunch. I had very good relations with my Indian colleagues who could undoubtedly speak on my behalf as to my dedication, skills, and conscientiousness. When I was terminated, I was given a termination package but no reason was provided, despite my repeated requests. The best the PIP could do, was to say I did not answer my telephone by the third ring. The plan was followed but no matter what, I was told that it was not good enough. I was told that if I protested or considered legal action, my termination package would be revoked. If I was not planning to relocate, I would have pursued the company regardless as I was without doubt, discriminated against and very openly. Additionally, I was several years older than my manager as well as several years above the average of the generally younger group.
In short, you are angry at Capitalism and/or American "democracy" (or pseudo-democracy as some would put it).
Those of you that were born here are the leverage needed to incite the foreigner to compete on an unbalanced scale. The foreigner must be able to low ball the present wage structure to such an extent that he/she can be assured of the job security that is lacking in their own country.
India, and Bangalore in particular, is slowly strangling the life out of the future of IT in-country enterprise, the Indian government can't stop the outflow of young Indians to the US and other western nations, and it's not all about the money to these transplants, they want to experience the western culture they have worshiped from afar.
US business never was a friend of the working class, oops, I guess that was too sudden a revelation, yes, you IT types are working class now, and are getting the same shaft that NAFTA, GATT, and a host of other acronyms that corporations used to whip the blue collar boys into perpetual joblessness a decade ago.
I can't believe that anyone still thinks of our nation as a place of fair play. Most American's have bought into the low price whoop-di-doo that drove so much of our "miraculous" economic expansion, had it not been for the slow coming of the reality of mass joblessness we may have been able to justify the huge drain on our lesser skilled workforce as the price we pay for all that cheap labor and goods that our foreign bretheren have bestowed on us. Now, the global economic order is showing it's true form, with the spoils going to the lowest bidder.
1. There aren't enough Americans with science and engineering degrees to fill those jobs.
You do not need a computer science degree to do many I.T. jobs. A network support analyst or a database administrator does not need a science degree. You can become certified in these industries with independent study.
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2. Many American graduates aren't as good and hard working as imported techies on H1B.
I have not found that to be the case in my experience. Since I work in I.T. I have worked with a lot of Indian and Chinese university graduates. I have seen that in general, the Indian and Chinese workers are unwilling to take ownership of issues, unwilling to think "outside the box", and often unable to be self-starting enough to independently find solutions to very complex problems. In my line of work I know that if I am dealing with DBAs from India, I will have to do a lot more work on my end to ensure that code is properly deployed and supported. If there is a problem, even if it is on their end/caused by them/their fault, they will toss it over the wall as if it's a grenade, expecting me to take total ownership of it when it is 100% their responsibility. I regularly have to escalate issues all the way up to directors and sometimes even VPs to get things done simply because of this "not my problem" attitude. It's really annoying.
Of course there are exceptions on both sides. I have worked with extremely competent Indian coworkers willing to take ownership of issues, and I have worked with incompetent American coworkers who will pass the buck at the first opportunity. However, in general, I have found that Indian I.T. workers are not superior to American I.T. workers due to cultural attitudes and the type of education that they receive. The best I.T. people I have worked with overall have been Americans without a degree, or without a computer science degree, as they have had to apply themselves and train in their own time to acquire these skills. That kind of drive is 100% necessary to perform most I.T. jobs to a superior standard. H1-B visa holders are usually adequate at best.
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3. Forget immigration controls. Not only are technical/engineering jobs moving overseas, high tech R&D positions are also disappearing fast. Asia, particularly China, has been projected to displace America as the largest market for high tech R&D in as little as 10 years. In 15 years, many well educated American scientists and engineers will be applying for Chinese green card to work in China. In fact, Chinese leaders are already implementing various plans to attract leading Western scientists with high salaries and favorable work environment. Cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong are set to outclass New York, Chicago, Paris, Frankfurt and London in 10-15 years.
And you expect American students, seeing that, to dive into studying engineering and computer science? A lot of them see the hordes of H1-B workers and jobs moving overseas and think there is no point in studying those subjects, and on some levels they are correct in coming to that conclusion.
I worked for Adobe Systems in San Jose, CA from Oct-Dec 2005 in a software engineering group as a contractor. Upon starting work I noticed that the company was jammed to the ceiling with foreign guest workers - mostly from India and China. In IT positions in the company there were barely 15% Americans overall. Our tiny group was mostly Americans because all worked on a niche computing platform that doesn't focus on Windows. Most of my coworkers were Americans and my immediate boss was an American. However, his boss was from India and was apparently new to the company and had only been there about 5 months before I got there. In meetings I would notice that this senior Indian manager would constantly talk about "cross-training". The company had rooms full of foreign guest workers doing nothing but sitting around learning new skills, not developing products. I would notice many of these foreign workers often going to the office of the technical lead in our group to ask him how things were done. The senior Indian manager himself didn't really seem to know what he was doing as I would always hear him asking rudimentary development questions in the project manager's office adjacent to mine. One time I even heard him asking the project manager where he got a prerelease installation CD for Microsoft's upcoming operating system. The answer of course was "MSDN". The project manager was an American also. One would think a highly skilled, highly educated senior IT manager from India would know such basic IT information, but apparently not.
There was also another engineering manager in another group who appeared to be from Viet Nam. She spoke broken English and was difficult to understand at times. I was tasked with writing some software for her group. Upon starting the project I asked her for a project GANTT chart for the tasks I was to work on. A GANTT chart is a standard project planning tool used on all properly run software projects. She didn't even know what a GANTT chart was. Her idea of good software development practices was to send daily emails to developers saying "Oh and one more thing...". She of course went home at 6 every night so she could watch TV while we had to stay until midnight to struggle with the ensuing chaos she created. She didn't know the first thing about developing software. It does make one wonder why we are bringing these people into the country if they don't already possess the skills claimed.
After about two months Adobe acquired Macromedia and it was announced a few weeks ahead of time that there would be layoffs as a result of the merger. I didn't mind the layoffs so much as the way they happened and *who* was and was not laid off. I ended up getting laid off, as did my American boss, as did the American project manager in the office next to me. One other senior American Windows engineer in our group was laid off after being with Adobe 8 years. In a former life he had worked on the Xerox Star at PARC. Nope - no skills there! I guess he is one of the American workers who is not smart enough to work in American companies or one of the highly skilled American workers that companies claim they can't "find". In the end 5 people were laid off from our group. One was of Chinese descent but the other 4 were Americans - U.S. Citizens.
Two of the 4 laid off Americans in our group were REPLACED with two foreign Indian workers from within the company. One took my old manager's job, and one took the Windows installer engineer's job. The new Indian manager who replaced my boss came running around with a big smile on his face shaking everyone's hand the next day with glee introducing himself and telling everyone he would be managing the group "going forward". He could barely constrain his excitement. Both Indian workers were directly promoted to their new positions by the senior Indian manager in our group.
So in the end the senior Indian engineering manager took the merger and layoffs as a prime opportunity to slash Americans from the workforce, and to promote Indians into the same positions. I've seen this happen at nearly every company I've worked at. It's an American worker replacement program. These people coming into the country possess little or zero of the skills claimed. The real goal is to get them into the country, TRANSFER the skills of existing American workers to them first, and then lay off the American workers. This has been the case at nearly every software company I have worked at in the past 8 years. It's a mass skills transference plan on a national level. Of course, the CEOs and executives high up in these American companies are too ignorant and stupid to know that they are being conned, because all they see are the dollar signs from the money the Indians promise they will save. Of course in the end it never works because after 8 years of these shennanigans Silicon Valley is a wasteland of FOR LEASE signs.
None of these imported workers have delivered any of the economic benefits we were promised in 1998 when these programs were increased to mass levels. In fact, the opposite has happened. Instead of keeping the 90s booming economy going, these 3rd world workers have sucked it dry. Silicon Valley is dying and it is because these stupid companies are importing millions of fake workers under fraudulent pretenses and then the workers aren't producing anything. All the 3rd world workers know is "IT is a good way to get rich". So they come to Silicon Valley and the companies collapse. They move from company to company kicking out productive Americans, taking skills and money, and then not producing anything. When the company collapses they move on to the next one. One company after another goes under and the CEOs wonder why they can't make this business model work anymore.
The Indian workers could care less about whether they destroy the companies or not. All they care about is taking. As one Indian worker said "We have to get our money before the Chinese do". Yes, GET is their operative word. CREATE is not in their vocabulary. Meanwhile the very American workers who created the industry are deliberately being kept out of the workforce by managers like the senior Indian engineering manager at Adobe - so that unskilled Indian workers can have "jobs". What is actually happening is that these imported workers are enjoying the benefits of the 20 million jobs Americans created in the 90s long before they got here. The imported workers are enjoying having those jobs now but they are not maintaining them nor are they creating new ones. They are getting a free ride coasting on jobs Americans created. Meanwhile the very American workers who GAVE them these jobs are being kicked out of their own job market by the imported workers themselves. That is the way 3rd world gratitude works I guess. This entire thing has been a fraudulent racket from day one.
There are plenty of IT jobs in America - it's just that Americans are not being allowed to work in them and ones who are working in them are having their skills stolen from them and then they are being kicked out of the industry they have created. This is happening all over America on a huge scale. Americans can't find jobs because they are being deliberately excluded from their own job market by racist Indians who will only hire other Indians for positions in IT. Our government is either complicit in the process or else they are too stupid to know they are being conned also.
The fact that nearly none of these workers possess the skills claimed and the fact that they are being given skills from existing American workers means that these guest worker programs amount to fraud. They are intended to deceive the American people. Intent to deceive is fraud. All guest workers imported since 1998 should be deported immediately and the jobs be given back to American workers. Laws should be passed that impose criminal penalties and jail time for any American executive that participates in such acts of fraud. Imported guest workers who engage in such behavior should be banned from ever entering the country again.
Now you know the truth about these fraudulent guest worker visa programs. Greedy CEOs and executives are giving away America's most important economic engine to unskilled, uneducated 3rd worlders just so they can save a few bucks right now. These programs have been a total disaster for California's economy and for Silicon Valley. They should all be ended immediately before they destroy the U.S.
Here's another letter forwarded to me:
I worked for Cisco Systems of San Jose, CA for almost four years. I was the last American to work in the Oracle Database Administration department of approximately 25 individuals at this site. Almost all of the remaining DBAs are from India on H1-B visas. Other technical departments have extremely similar demographics and it is obvious to all that only Indians need apply for technical positions. Several times, I attempted to submit resumes of qualified candidates only to be told 'they wouldn't be a good fit' - and this was without interviewing or even looking at their resume beyond their names. I understand that even Indian US citizens were turned down for interviews when they mistakenly told Cisco representatives that they did not require sponsorship. I was given a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan), ironically enough, shortly before I had told several people that I was planning to leave the company soon as well as around the same time I sold a number of my stock options, a practice strongly discouraged by management as options become invalidated if an employee is terminated, saving the company large amounts of money. At my going away lunch, virtually the entire department, except for my manager who had also gotten rid of the earlier American DBAs, came to the lunch. I had very good relations with my Indian colleagues who could undoubtedly speak on my behalf as to my dedication, skills, and conscientiousness. When I was terminated, I was given a termination package but no reason was provided, despite my repeated requests. The best the PIP could do, was to say I did not answer my telephone by the third ring. The plan was followed but no matter what, I was told that it was not good enough. I was told that if I protested or considered legal action, my termination package would be revoked. If I was not planning to relocate, I would have pursued the company regardless as I was without doubt, discriminated against and very openly. Additionally, I was several years older than my manager as well as several years above the average of the generally younger group.
I can back this up. I have seen this happen with my own eyes. It is happening at my current company; in the last year, all of a sudden our hallways are crawling with Indian contract workers who do not even speak English to each other in the office.
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