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Conventional custom development is a commodity. If you are going to get into IT, look for a niche: business intelligence, smart cards... or work on something more scientific... statistics is hot right now.
Want to do custom development? This is what you are due to:
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.
While I don't dispute such possibilities, I have to wonder what percentage of these non-science degree holders are as competent or well-prepared as science degree holders when it comes to problem solving.
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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.
I'm sure personal experiences vary from managers to managers. I wouldn't doubt you. If I were you, I'd just communicate to them, firmly and clearly, my standards, their job performances, and conditions for continued employment. If they failed to improve, I'd lower their pay and/or look for replacements. People who take initiatives, responsibilities and pride in their line of work are a rare breed.
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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.
I wouldn't doubt you. But CEOs, shareholders, in fact capitalists in general look at cost and profit before anything else. It is in this sense that most H1B workers are considered "good", or "good enough".
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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.
I myself have never worked with an I.T. guy without a CS or engineering/Math degree. Frankly, I doubt that anyone can easily switch to a technical field from a non-technical field. It's not just the subject matter; the analytic problem-solving skills most I.T. jobs require take a long time to develop.
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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.
Now that's a chicken and egg problem. I'd just note that over the years at Univ. of Texas, the majority of freshmen at CS dept have been American; but after the 2nd year, the majority of CS juniors have been Asian or of Asian descent. At UC Berkeley, Asian students predominate the CS dept from 1st year through graduation. Asian population in America has been less than 5% for the past 15 years and yet Asian student population at MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, etc has stood between 20% to over 50%. Why?
Conventional custom development is a commodity. If you are going to get into IT, look for a niche: business intelligence, smart cards... or work on something more scientific... statistics is hot right now.
Want to do custom development? This is what you are due to:
theres many sites like that out there like rentacoder.com. others are: guru.com, getafreelancer.com, etc. etc.
however unless you're living in a third world country yourself, its hard to make a living out of these projects alone, because in general they tend to pay very little!
theres many sites like that out there like rentacoder.com. others are: guru.com, getafreelancer.com, etc. etc.
however unless you're living in a third world country yourself, its hard to make a living out of these projects alone, because in general they tend to pay very little!
to design a good website here in the US could easily cost a few grand, whereas through that site the most ppl. are willing to pay is a few hundred dollars for several days worth of work.
i recently signed up on guru.com to develop iPhone apps. applications that can easily take at least 40 - 60 hours of work were getting bids for as low as $100 and $250. you would have to be working 24/7 cranking out several such projects every week in order to make a living on such wages in the US.
I think your criticism of the poster is short sighted. Yes, it is possible for one to be critical of the H1B program and have not malice towards the Indian population.
2. Many American graduates aren't as good and hard working as imported techies on H1B.
I find this an extremely racist and ignorant statement.
1) It is a sterotype that one group of people is "better"/smarter/more hard working than others. Many Indians that I have met in the workforce or hired have come to this country with a higher skill set than an entry level American graduate. An entry level graduate can not compete with a person with a master's degree in another country who has spent 2-3 years working for an IT shop in Mumbai. I have also had to deal with many firings or contract workers who were hired by IT managers that bought into your sterotype that an Indian worker is better than a US worker. Workers who appear to be hired based on that sterotype alone. Then they are in the job learning or studying as most entry level folks must do. Depending upon the position, you can either let them learn on your dime, cause problems in the workplace or fire them and start the hiring process again.
The salary review is there, I used to be a H1B. If you can't prove that your salary is same or above the market level, your visa will not be issued on first place and could be canceled. If it has not been done in the past, that's possible, but now the situation is different
Your numbers are way off. As I wrote, H1B for IT is maybe 10k persons per year, are you telling me that's 66% of American IT workforce?
H1B for IT is very marginal and percentage-wise is way, waay below 1% of IT workforce.
H1B Visas in IT are way more than 10k per year and much more than 1% of the IT work force in this country. Try closer to 115,000 per YEAR. I believe the visas are good for 5 years. So multiple that by 5 and that will give you an idea of how many are in this country.
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