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So then they go to India and hire a bunch of guys for considerably cheaper than Americans would work for. I can't imagine that students in India are doing anything different than American students, they're just willing to work for cheaper.
Why dont you do some research before peddling such drivel? H1B salaries are public info. So maybe you can check h1bwage.com and type in google/apple and see if these workers are 'cheaper'. Only reason a company goes through the extreme legal hassle of h1b and expenses is because they can't find qualified workers locally. Also almost all h1b workers came to US for higher education... Companies dont go to India to recruit slum dwellers at minimum wage. Instead of whining if you focus on getting educated then maybe you will someday get one of these coveted jobs!
And the CS field is very trends-based, and someone starting a CS program today might do something that is seen as very useful in 2012, but will it be useful in 2016 when he graduates? All of this is a broader trend among employers, who have had the advantages for so long in the job market that they've forgotten how to screen or train people--but tech has the money to hire lawyers to get H1-B visas. In terms of college education, generally all you see is big firms making billions of dollars while hiring lobbyists to convince lawmakers to gut public education, which is stupid.
Completely incorrect. The high tech industry is very trend based, not Computer Science. Computer Science is about the fundamental concepts and theories.
There are plenty of CS graduates in this country, however, most of them came from inferior programs (not just diploma mills, but respected schools) that did exactly what you described. Too many programs produced graduates who only know and were taught whatever the trend was at the time. They were never taught the theory and concept behind it. Most never did internships to apply what they knew either.
The problem isn't more STEM graduates are needed, it's that most probably never should've gone to college and study CS in the first place. And the rest went to programs that seriously failed them by teaching specifics. I worked with few new M.Sc. grads from decent schools, who had no clue about fundamental OO programming concept, could only program in 1 or two languages and had difficult time learning new ones. New languages should be easy to pick up, because it's just usually syntax changes..the concepts are the same.
People think just because someone have a CS or whatever IT degree, learned the latest "in" programming language in a course or did certification for whatever is "hot", that makes them qualified for jobs that are on every freaken "hot jobs list" of the week. That is not how the industry works.
The hardest to fill high tech jobs in the bay area, are looking for candidate they can show they can adapt what they already know, quickly learn new technology and DEVELOP the next trend. It's not something that one develop training classes for. I can teach you the syntax of a programming language, but I can't teach you how to create with it. The trend move way too fast for that. Those CS graduates who went to the top engineering & CS schools like MIT, Stanford have no problem finding good jobs for a reason (and if they can't, they have weird issues, because it's being "off" tolerated in the field).
I am sorry to hear that there are Americans in area and in the field who can't find work. I am seeing good American friends who are having a difficult time finding work. But they are also the ones who are focusing their job search on the same sector of tech they were in before, a sector that is much smaller, no longer as profitable as before, and therefore, not as much jobs. I tried to stir them toward the newer sectors, different roles where their skills would be valued but they seem reluctant to make that change.
Some of the best people I have worked with are from China & India, and came here on H1B's. Many are leaders in the field, and hold patents in their field. And I also worked with excellent engineers from Europe, Canada, U.K., South Africa etc.. who also came here on H1B's ..myself included. None of us were EVER paid less then our American peers..if anything some of us were probably paid more because of the experience that made our skills desirable to U.S. employers in the first place. I find people who repeatedly spew the same old "H1B's are stealing OUR jobs." to be extremely shortsighted. Why would you NOT want to steal the best and brightest from AROUND THE WORLD to contribute to your country's economy? And it was never YOUR jobs for us "foreigners" to "steal".
And for the last freaken time, H1B are NOT cheap labor. It's extremely time consuming and expensive to file. And there are prevailing wage requirement that must be met for each applicant. Each applicant has to prove their educational and professional background.
I am speaking purely based on my 12+ years of experience working in R&D in silicon valley, not mainstream "IT".
Another sham that helps corporations yet again.
The fact that Americans suffer in the aftermath
is irrelevent. Disgusting corporate hoggery. H1B
should be annhilated while putting a cap on L-1 visas
period at no more than the level of 10% of the labor force for the
High Tech Industry as a whole.
Completely incorrect. The high tech industry is very trend based, not Computer Science.
What I meant was the industry as job market, not just schooling, sorry if I was unclear.
Quote:
The hardest to fill high tech jobs in the bay area, are looking for candidate they can show they can adapt what they already know, quickly learn new technology and DEVELOP the next trend. It's not something that one develop training classes for. I can teach you the syntax of a programming language, but I can't teach you how to create with it. The trend move way too fast for that. Those CS graduates who went to the top engineering & CS schools like MIT, Stanford have no problem finding good jobs for a reason (and if they can't, they have weird issues, because it's being "off" tolerated in the field).
If employers are dissatisfied with the products of college education, then they should get involved more in communicating with schools so students come out with skills that employers want. Instead all we're seeing is big business in general in the US demanding that their taxes be kept low while lawmakers gut public education. Stanford has a reputation for having close ties to Silicon Valley, and that's great, but not everyone can go to Stanford.
Quote:
None of us were EVER paid less then our American peers..if anything some of us were probably paid more because of the experience that made our skills desirable to U.S. employers in the first place.
I've known Silicon Valley workers who made good money but they were generally from places like the UK or Canada. There's no way that all those guys from India you see waiting for the train to Fremont are making the same as Stanford grads, or have the same level of education. Plenty of links here about low wages for H1-B workers:
It may be expensive and complicated to get the visas but if you're doing it in bulk and have a legal team used to the process it will pay off to get so many cheaper workers, especially if you're paying off the government. And tech has a lot of money to invest in saving more money. The Larry Ellisons of the world need their yachts.
Why dont you do some research before peddling such drivel? H1B salaries are public info. So maybe you can check h1bwage.com and type in google/apple and see if these workers are 'cheaper'. Only reason a company goes through the extreme legal hassle of h1b and expenses is because they can't find qualified workers locally. Also almost all h1b workers came to US for higher education... Companies dont go to India to recruit slum dwellers at minimum wage. Instead of whining if you focus on getting educated then maybe you will someday get one of these coveted jobs!
Explain why a significant portion of H1-Bs go to Indian consulting firms, then.
I had the misfortune of working with several consultants from TCS at more than one job...very unimpressed.
Because there aren't enough qualified Americans. I you look at our failing educational system and lack of math/tech/science grads you'll understand. Our country sadly is just not keeping pace with the incredible demand. Whenever my husband needs to find someone he gets very few qualified American applicants. He certainly would prefer to hire a native English speaker that can communicate effectively with clients/management and someone that fits into the work culture, but he often has great difficulty in doing so. Often times, he'll hire an American and have them intern to gain some necessary skills while working in tandem on their degree. Also, he has discovered that even the guy just out of college with a CS degree still don't have the necessary "on the job" skills that can only be learned by working in the environment for years.
I know it's not what people want to hear and many will disagree. There are some interesting points that always seem to be made about these folks being indentured servants etc. It's not to say it isn't happening somewhere, but has not been the case at all in my husband's situation..and he's been in the field for over 22yrs now working for both very large companies and smaller start ups and everything in between.
Obama just announced today that he'd like to reward and attract exceptional teachers in the math/science fields since our current educational system has fallen so far behind places like China/India (where most of the HB-1 are being recruited from).
Makes perfect sense to me. In most other countries that can't find qualifies workers such as Germany, it's usually because of a declining birthrate and not enough people to fill jobs. Here we have the people, our education system just hasn't worked for them.
I've been in I.T. for 15 years and I call BS on this. I've worked with many MANY individuals from China and India and I can safely say that they are in no way superior to US workers. In fact many of my Indian coworkers have been quite sub-par for their experience levels compared to their US counterparts.
I also know plenty of unemployed American IT workers, so don't give me that song and dance about there not being any qualified applicants out there. That's BS and we all know it.
We import H1-Bs now to keep salaries nice and low. We should suspend the program altogether with unemployment as high as it is, but hey...there's money to be made.
This is the paranoid type speculative heresay that people that aren't actually doing the hiring/interviewing/dealing with recruiters like to say to themselves (because they see many Indians/Chinese, yet have no idea what their status or even their pay is to begin with). This is not a song and dance, it's a falsely created stereotype and falsehood.
Show us all where all the unemployed database admin, engineers, QA, architects are. You don't find them because they all have jobs. These are generally the people that don't get laid off. Companies generally put most of their energy behind their engineering departments and they generally command the highest salaries as well. There is an astounding lack of Americans with these qualifications to go around. The demand is incredible right now. I don't know what kind of companies you work for but just because you SUSPECT that these folks are somehow less qualified, it still doesn't mean that there are ENOUGH Americans with similar qualifications to go around.
Even when the folks were getting laid of left and right a few years ago in the tech sector, my husband was desperate to find a database administrator. He was shocked that only TWO resumes were sent during this time (we thought there'd be hundreds coming in)--we chuckled a little because both names were Indian names--not one English sounding name. They were not HB-1 visa holders..but folks like you would automatically assume that this was the case.
Cracks me up when people make this argument that salaries are nice and low--uh, how exactly would you know this? Are you the CEO? CFO? COO? Director of Engineering? Do you work in HR where you set the salary range? How many interviews have you conducted or how many resumes have you looked over?
What I find ironic about this argument is that the same people that will go out of their way to protect and offer sanctuary for illegal immigrants are often the same people that cry about H1 Visas and "corporate greed." Of those two groups, unskilled illegal immigrants or highly skilled *legal* guest workers, who should we be attracting?
We really should be offering more H1 visas than we already are. And we should be offering these folks citizenship. We need to be attracting and keeping the best talent in the world. Anyone with a basic understanding of macroeconomics will understand this has positive effects on the economy, and will ultimately benefit everyone. This is not a zero-sum game. One job filled by someone on a visa is not necessarily one less job for an American. The more talent we attract, the more innovation is spurred, and the more jobs are created because of it.
This is the paranoid type speculative heresay that people that aren't actually doing the hiring/interviewing/dealing with recruiters like to say to themselves (because they see many Indians/Chinese, yet have no idea what their status or even their pay is to begin with). This is not a song and dance, it's a falsely created stereotype and falsehood.
Show us all where all the unemployed database admin, engineers, QA, architects are. You don't find them because they all have jobs. These are generally the people that don't get laid off. Companies generally put most of their energy behind their engineering departments and they generally command the highest salaries as well. There is an astounding lack of Americans with these qualifications to go around. The demand is incredible right now. I don't know what kind of companies you work for but just because you SUSPECT that these folks are somehow less qualified, it still doesn't mean that there are ENOUGH Americans with similar qualifications to go around.
Even when the folks were getting laid of left and right a few years ago in the tech sector, my husband was desperate to find a database administrator. He was shocked that only TWO resumes were sent during this time (we thought there'd be hundreds coming in)--we chuckled a little because both names were Indian names--not one English sounding name. They were not HB-1 visa holders..but folks like you would automatically assume that this was the case.
Cracks me up when people make this argument that salaries are nice and low--uh, how exactly would you know this? Are you the CEO? CFO? COO? Director of Engineering? Do you work in HR where you set the salary range? How many interviews have you conducted or how many resumes have you looked over?
Wow, I obviously struck a nerve here.
A few points. First of all, what makes you assume that I am NOT in a position to hire people, or that I haven't watched many an Indian or Chinese applicant flopsweat and BS their way through an interview?
And many may not be H1-Bs NOW, but most of them started off that way.
I personally know two QA people, one app developer, one database developer, and one database administrator who are all out of work. I'm not including the tech writers and helpdesk people I know who are looking; they'll never find anything.
A few points. First of all, what makes you assume that I am NOT in a position to hire people, or that I haven't watched many an Indian or Chinese applicant flopsweat and BS their way through an interview?
And many may not be H1-Bs NOW, but most of them started off that way.
I personally know two QA people, one app developer, one database developer, and one database administrator who are all out of work. I'm not including the tech writers and helpdesk people I know who are looking; they'll never find anything.
Wait a minute--you're writing this from Texas? You don't even work in Silicon Valley, do you? Helpdesk and tech writers are not the same as engineers and architects. I don't even think you need a BS degree for these. I've also perused a couple of your posts about illegals--typical that you'd pop over to the California board here to express your opinion when you post really has no merit or based in truth.
It would be completely ridiculous to try to recruit/hire someone in India/China for something like this that in itself could be done overseas at a large scale call center (I'm certainly not advocating this). Now this I would agree with--call centers, tech support is a huge field over there, but they are not trying to get them to move here.
It's fairly obvious that don't really know what you're talking about since you are not familiar with hiring practices in this industry in the Bay Area at all. Your types are all the same...
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