There’s an old joke in which a man asks a woman if she’ll spend the night with him for $1 million? She will. Then he asks if she’ll spend the night with him for $10?
“Do you think I’m a prostitute?” she asks.
“We’ve already established that,” he replied. “This is just a price negotiation.”
Not a great joke, but it came to mind recently when a reader pointed me to a panel discussion last September at the Brookings Institution ironically about STEM education and the shortage of qualified IT workers. Watch the video if you can, especially the part where Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith offers to pay the government $10,000 each for up to 6,000 H-1B visas.
In the joke, this is analogous to the $10 offer. There’s a $1 million offer, too, which is another U.S. visa — the EB-5 so-called immigrant investor visa, 15,000 of which are available each year and most go unclaimed. Why?
The EB-5 visa is better in many respects than the H-1B. The EB-5, for one thing, is a true immigrant visa leading to U.S. citizenship, where the H-1B — despite misleading arguments to the contrary — is by law a non-immigrant visa good for three or six years after which the worker has to go back to their native country. But the EB-5 requires the immigrant bring with him or her $1 million to be invested locally in an active business.
What’s wrong with that? Can’t Microsoft or any other big tech employer suffering from a severe lack of technical workers just set these immigrants up as little corporations capitalized at $1 million? It must be a better return on investment than the 1.52 percent Redmond made on its billions in cash in 2011. Yet they don’t do it. Why?
The answer is simple economics wrapped up in a huge stinking lie. First of all there is no critical shortage of technical workers. That’s the lie. Here’s a study released just yesterday from the Economic Policy Institute that shows there is no shortage of native U.S. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) workers. None at all.
You may recall this lack of a true labor shortage was confirmed empirically in another column of mine looking at tech hiring in Memphis, Tennessee.
If there was such a shortage, Microsoft and other companies would be utilizing EB-5 and other visa programs beyond H-1B. They’d be doing anything they could to get those desperately needed tech workers.
Some argue that these companies are using H-1Bs to force down local labor rates. Forcing them down how much is becoming clear, in this case thanks to Microsoft’s Brad Smith’s offer. If H-1Bs are each worth $10,000 to Microsoft, the average savings from using an H-1B has to be more than $10,000 plus the risk premium of cheating the system.
But the H-1B program wasn’t started to save money and money savings can’t even be considered as a reason for granting an H-1B according to regulations. Though companies have become pretty brazen about that one when they advertise for only H-1Bs for positions.
An interesting aspect of this story is that some readers have characterized Smith’s offer as a bribe. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just a gift or it’s intended to cover the true cost to the local and national economies of using an H-1B worker or — more importantly — not using a comparably trained U.S. citizen. But that can hardly be the case given the high unemployment rate among U.S. STEM workers.
What this kind of offer seems to be counting on are the typically terrible math skills of elected government officials. $10,000 ($3,333 per year) is not going to cover the lost income or true cost to society of a computer science graduate taking a lower-paying non-technical position.
What we need, I think, is a much simpler test for whether H-1Bs are actually warranted. The test I would impose is simple: if granting an H-1B results in the loss of a job for a U.S. citizen or green card holder, then that H-1B shouldn’t be granted.
Solving true technical labor shortages or being able to import uniquely skilled foreign workers are one thing, but this supposed H-1B crisis is something else altogether.
I just sent this column to my congresswoman. If 1/10th of the readers of this blog would do the same, that would be 40,000 letters to Washington. It probably won’t be enough to get the attention it deserves.
Next I will be sending this to other elected officials and all the major news outlets. Please do the same.
“Not a great joke…”
Well, not told that way.
: – )
I came to this country on the equivalent of an H-1B visa years ago and it was ridiculously simple for the company that I worked for to manipulate the process and get me a visa to employ me … why did they do it? Simple, because I cost less than an American – this was in the late 70’s and I started work here at $14k per year.
After I started work in the US – doing the same job here that I had been doing for them in the UK, I ended up needing more people in my department and we started hiring Americans and most of them did a great job. They could just as easily hired an American to start off with and sent them over to the UK for six months to get up to speed but the corporate mentality would not allow them to think of that … because an American worker could have just asked for more money and walked off the job if they didn’t get what they wanted. As a UK citizen working on a visa, my job, and my wages were tied to the company that I worked for – if I left them then I had to go back home … it’s much the same today.
If we’re as short of tech talent as the companies say then I say STOP the H-1B altogether – tell the companies that we (yes, I’m a naturalized US Citizen these days) will grant US citizenship to the people they need … and of course they will be free to move here and work for whoever they wish.
I’ll bet that under those conditions no company would bother applying for an H-1B visa quota.
“under those conditions no company would bother applying for an H-1B visa quota.” Of course not…the conditions you stated are that there are no H-1B visas and that citizenship would be granted. (Perhaps I misunderstood your point.)
What Edmund is proposing is to eliminate the barriers that these immigrants have to working for another company, or even starting their own company.
In principle, H-1B visas don’t lead to salary reductions. In practice, workers find it difficult to switch jobs, which means they can’t accept competitive job offers as long as they are in the H-1B system. That means their employer doesn’t need to give them raises to keep their salary competitive. As long as the take-home pay is much greater than the pay, staying in India or the Philippines or wherever, then we Americans will have to compete with immigrants working at much lower salaries.
If companies had to pay for people to immigrate, and then not be able to trap them the way the H-1B visa traps them, then that would eliminate a lot of the incentive to import workers on H-1B visas.
This is another great approach! The companies’ bluff would be called, they COULD get anyone they wanted, yet they could not use it to get low wage workers who are ‘trapped’ with the company. And the U.S. would benefit by getting desirable new citizens. Ideas like this are great because they address the problem, and have added benefits to society.
Exactly – the whole H-1B visa issue hinges on the attached status of the new workers – as Bob has shown before, there’s no real shortage of skilled workers – just a shortage of cheap workers.
I didn’t spell out the reason why, when I was running the department, I started employing Americans – it was simple, with more Americans employed I was in a much better situation to justify why my wages should be raised – in fact my wages more than doubled to about $32k (I started at $14k) once we were employing Americans.
The fact is that all the arguments that you hear about why we need H-1B workers are simply about the wages and captive status of the visa holders – none of these companies would ask to import workers if the workers were free to move about in the labor force.
Exactly – the whole H-1B visa issue hinges on the attached status of the new workers – as Bob has shown before, there’s no real shortage of skilled workers – just a shortage of cheap workers.
I didn’t spell out the reason why, when I was running the department, I started employing Americans – it was simple, with more Americans employed I was in a much better situation to justify why my wages should be raised – in fact my wages more than doubled to about $32k (I started at $14k) once we were employing Americans.
The fact is that all the arguments that you hear about why we need H-1B workers are simply about the wages and captive status of the visa holders – none of these companies would ask to import workers if the workers were free to move about in the labor force.
Or how about require that if a comparably trained citizen or green card holder comes to the company for the position even after it has been filled by the H1-B worker, then they must let the H1-B worker go and give the citizen/green card holder the job instead.
Bob, I love this line: “The test I would impose is simple: if granting an H-1B results in the loss of a job for a U.S. citizen or green card holder, then that H-1B shouldn’t be granted.”
Isn’t that already the intent of the law?
Let’s assume it is now hard solid law, or becomes one through magical fairy dust implementation….. How do you test for this? As long as 1 STEM worker is out of work, that would mean you can’t have any H1-B visas right?
I’m seriously trying to figure out a way to measure this realistically. I’m not sure it is possible to make it hard and fast like this.
I agree with the April 25, 2013 at 2:08 pm comment by SpecialEd: how indeed do you prove that hiring an H-1B results in the loss of a job for a U.S. citizen or green card holder?
I’m not sure you can, but what if the onus were on the hiring company?
Why not create a system where any company hiring for a STEM position was required to maintain documentation about EVERY qualified candidate considered for a given position, and if an H-1B were actually hired the documentation would have to prove that NO citizen or green card holder was among them.
The penalty for a fraudulent hiring should be a fine at least an order of magnitude greater than the position’s total cost to the company (salary plus benefits, overhead, etc.), making it not at all worthwhile to attempt circumventing the law.
I agree with SpecialEd’s comment of (April 25, 2013 at 2:08 pm): how indeed do you prove that hiring an H-1B results in the loss of a job for a U.S. citizen or green card holder?
I’m not sure you can, but what if the onus were on the hiring company?
Why not create a system where any company hiring for a STEM position was required to maintain documentation about EVERY qualified candidate considered for a given position, and if an H-1B were actually hired the documentation would have to prove that NO citizen or green card holder was among them.
The penalty for a fraudulent hiring should be a fine at least an order of magnitude greater than the position’s total cost to the company (salary plus benefits, overhead, etc.), making it not at all worthwhile to attempt circumventing the law.
John, I’m with you. Plus, I’ll add a few remarks about other government programs that are totally messed up. Of course, there are so many that I will have to limit myself to the worst five or six.
Amen.
I think it’s not just the lower cost of the labor, but the immigrant mindset of someone not fully aware of the new culture and willingness to do whatever management asks, like work extra-long hours without compensation.
I say abolish the H1-B visa program. Of course I don’t give millions to politicians for their elections.
“The test I would impose is simple: if granting an H-1B results in the loss of a job for a U.S. citizen or green card holder, then that H-1B shouldn’t be granted.”
That scheme is the same as protectionist tariffs for imported products. Why not say, “If importing this automobile results in the non-sale of a U.S.-made automobile, then that car shouldn’t be imported.” Not just automobiles, but clothing or computers or iPads or anything else.
Big companies are consumers of employees the same way regular folks are consumers of products. Unless you paid the premium such that everything you own was “Made in the USA”, how is it not hypocritical to ask for employment protections?
Of course no one wants to compete with immigrant workers on wages, particularly those from poor countries. But we are becoming an increasingly global economy; it’s a fact of life. The field is being leveled.
I agree that there probably is no shortage of domestic STEM employees; but I suspect most of them are of the entitlement mindset that “I’m a natural born citizen, and by that virtue alone I deserve more than someone who is equally or more skilled and willing to work for less.”
The real solution isn’t to whine that “they’re takin’ our jobs” but refuse to be out-done by anyone else. I.e. own up to the competition of the capitalist landscape, and raise your game enough that no one can under-bid you, because you are the best. That’s the mindset most leaders have anyway.
Thanks Matt. As painful as it is to admit, your reasoning is common sense eloquently stated.
It’s sad that our government would sell out its own citizens.
It’s pretty easy to say “No-one can under-bid me, because I am the best” when it’s not your job that’s under assault. You’ll change your tune when employers aim at whatever skillset it is that you’ve worked hard to acquire (and continue to keep up to date). Employers don’t fly in cheap labour or offshore their work because the results are better, but to drive down local labour costs. They will wear the hits of sub-standard quality until those ends are met.
“First they came for the helpdesk operators, but I wasn’t a helpdesk operator so I kept my head down. Then they came for the computer programmers, but I wasn’t a computer programmer so I kept my head down. Then they came for the accountants, but I wasn’t an accountant so I kept my head down.” ANY job that is done in front of a computer can be offshored to cheap labour. Armies of Indians are being taught tax law and other local regulations that apply to developed countries and have nothing to do with India — doesn’t that seem perverse to you?
Consumers buying cars/clothes/electronics manufactured overseas is different from large employers picking their labour forces from overseas. They are acting individually, with items that must meet minimum quality standards (ostensibly at least, but those standards are being eroded…), not strategically targeting en masse the living standards of a whole class of people. Anyway it’s really hard to find locally made products a lot of the time, it’s not in corporations’ interests to give me that choice (now where’s that freedom of choice gone that the free market is supposed to offer?)
Populations DO have the right to expect that countries will protect their interests.
Corporations DON’T employ cheap overseas labour because it’s more competitive, but to drive down local wages.
The everyday common man WILL lose in this race to the bottom, if corporations and the elite are allowed to target classes of people who can only fight back (or even fight to survive) individually, with no organisation or solidarity.
I agree that there probably is no shortage of domestic STEM employees; but I suspect most of them are of the entitlement mindset that “I’m a natural born citizen, and by that virtue alone I deserve more than someone who is equally or more skilled and willing to work for less.”
***
Let’s clarify something. This nation, the Government and the Constitution exist SOLELY to better the lives of American citizens. Period. Hence, our own Government should NOT be importing cheap labor into the country, thereby depressing wages, because corporations have lobbied i.e. bribed it to do so. It is corporations that act entitled, IMHO rather than displaying capitalistic values such as competing for labor in a market where supply and demand rule.
The real solution isn’t to whine that “they’re takin’ our jobs” but refuse to be out-done by anyone else. I.e. own up to the competition of the capitalist landscape, and raise your game enough that no one can under-bid you, because you are the best. That’s the mindset most leaders have anyway.
***
Frankly, this sounds like generic, executive BS to me. They relocate ENTIRE divisions to India and China. Was no one in those divisions able to “raise their game” or “bring their A game” or [insert stupid executive metaphor/analogy justifying offshoring everyone’s jobs except management]? The people here are not evaluated for their skills, it is is simple math– cheaper over there. They take very skilled positions here, hire entry level over there (which is also cheaper than entry level here) and presume that they can get up to speed in “6 months”. I’m not making this up. The only thing that somewhat ruins there plans is the attrition rate is quite high in India and China. So the cycle starts once more… producing bad code and delays in the process.
That’s what MBAs do: they look at numbers and make decisions based on numbers. The game is rigged when the numbers don’t accurately represent what is going on in the company. If you can get more people cheaper overseas but that cheap labor makes mistakes, leading to penalties paid to customers and damaged reputations stunting future growth, then the trade off wasn’t so good after all.
There’s a saying that you can’t teach experience, and when you lose institutional memory by dumping departments overseas or by replacing workers with H1B visa holders you lose efficiency. That is something that can’t be regained by documentation, but by DOING the work. A person with four years experience at a job is much more efficient at their work than a person only there for a year. Sure, there are exceptions, but in general the experienced workers are paid more because they can do more. When you gut departments in the interest of saving money, you are sacrificing efficiency for that. And when a department is sent overseas…
Corporations love to downplay operational efficiency when considering H1B and offshoring, or they skew the numbers to justify their desire to cut costs this way. But when the brown stuff hits the fan, do those same people in management trust those H1B and offshored workers to solve an emergency when the servers are down and the customer is screaming into the phone?
Yeah, I’ve heard that before.
First, I am a citizen. An automobile is not. I don’t know if you ignored that or just didn’t know that. I have a right to expect more from my government than a consumer good does.
If competing with H1Bs (not immigrants) means lowering my salary, then only the corporation wins. If competing means bringing more value for the same dollar, then I’m all for it. Bring it on.
I have worked with H1Bs who were paid less than I was. It was at a company that was laying off senior (higher-paid) workers and hiring people straight out of college. Just like Microsoft does.
I have seen engineering and project management jobs off-shored. The project management jobs really puzzle me. How can you manage something if you can’t take a look to see if actual matches reported? Project management (the way I do it) is a very hands-on role. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), put out by the Project Management Institute, agrees with me. It doesn’t even make sense to off-shore an engineering job if they can’t see the product, the lab and the manufacturing floor.
I have been in several companies who were laying off senior staff and hiring college graduates. It is a fact of life. College kids will work long hours, and PHBs think that means that they are getting more out of them. Eventually, the kids will either burn out or wise up and work smarter based on their hard-earned experience.
To get back to your leading comment – it is insulting to compare people to products. It is dehumanizing. It is the kind of thing that is said and practiced by those who have enough money that they can mistreat their wage slaves any way they want to. If you are not one of these oligarchs, you might want to take a look around to see what the score is before you get nipped in the wringer – as all wage slaves eventually get nipped.
I’ve always heard that joke attributed to Winston Churchill.
I work for a large Indian company here in the US. The push is always to unload as much work on our “offshore team” as possible, and then of course RIFs come down eliminating positions of US workers. Meanwhile due to lack of raises or any career path growth, attrition of highly skilled employees is at an all-time high.
What I’m seeing in the job market right now, is that contract positions are on the rise again at the expense of permanent full-time hires. Companies seem to be getting a bit skittish of having W2’s, perhaps its the general lackluster growth in the economy, or perhaps its ObamaCare creeping in.
While we don’t seem to have a shortage of STEM people, we do have a shortage in certain skillsets, such as virtualization, storage, and database. There are no programs to train or retrain people for these skillsets. There are lots of programs to train software developers, but nothing to take a skilled IT worker and grow him or her into a storage administrator or a network engineer. Universities are still geared towards the software side of the house, and not the hardware or implementation side. Community colleges are doing a better job of offering classes for some of these IT skills, but they often aren’t as current as what’s needed. Microsoft needs to invest say $20,000 per H1-B visa in a scholarship for training qualified US workers.
The problem is when software developers that cannot find jobs are forced to dumb-down into “storage administrators or network engineers.” Let’s be honest, the former is a professional (like an actual degreed engineer) and the latter is skilled labor.
BTW, by “former” I meant “software developer” and by “latter” I was referring to “storage administrator or a network engineer”.
H1Bs are permanent visas that result in citizenship. The 3 or 6 year periods is a time period in which the visa holder can apply for a green card.
This is correct. I inherited a department that was 50% H1B at one company, and all of the H1B employees had filed for green cards and citizenship.
After assessing the knowledge, skills, and aptitudes of the H1B staff members, it was readily apparent that the reason 50% of the department was on an H1B was because they were cheap and basically bound to serve the company or be deported, and so could be treated very badly. My predecessor had no people skills, so having a staff permeated with what amounted to wage slaves suited his management style.
The entire H1B program is badly abused by executives like this; individuals who have no moral center or ethical awareness of their actions.
That’s my understanding and experience as well… H1B employees as restricted-mobility employees.
also happens with Health Insurance situations…
That’s not true, a visa does not result in citizenship, or even a green card. You can apply for a green card while you are here on a visa but it does not mean to say you will get one (although you probably will) but it’s expensive and there’s a LOT of checking involved and it used to take years, maybe it’s better now but it’s not fun. 5 years after getting a green card you can apply for citizenship but there is no automatic road to either. If you are lucky the company holding your visa will pay for the green card. Whether you consider that a carrot or cruel and unusual punishment is up to you (it takes so long to get, the latter may be true!). Citizenship is pretty much down to you though.
When you mentioned “cruel and unusual punishment” I was reminded of getting a driver’s license in a new state after you already have one from another state. Gotta keep the government employees busy.
The Australian equivalent to the H1B program is the 457 visa. It has a fairly simple set of criteria: demonstrate that your training budget for local staff is at least 1% of your payroll; and also provide evidence that you are paying the foreign worker the same salary or higher as you are paying your local workers. If you don’t have an equivalent local worker then you have to use some reputable external source (e.g. Salary surveys from an approved third party) to prove that what you are paying is reasonable.
Needless to say, this works well for everyone because if there really is a skills shortage, you can hire from overseas pretty easily. I’ve never had a problem hiring anyone through the 457 program and I’ve never heard anyone complain about a foreign worker taking their job here. (Off shoring still happens a lot, but that’s different.)
What I find odd is that the USA doesn’t do the same thing. Why?
Have you been living under a rock lately Greg? Read a newspaper once in a while.
You must be the only person hiring foreign workers under a 457 visa to fill a role that you can’t fill with a local worker. 457 visas are primarily used to bring foreign skilled IT workers onshore so that they can be trained up on an organisation’s IT environment and then return offshore to work at roughly one quarter of the cost of a Australian worker. The 456 visa is the same except the worker is limited to 3 months onshore. These visas are used extensively by the large IT companies (and willingly encouraged by their clients – large financial organisations among others) to replace local workers with offshore workers. One effect of this is to drive down local salaries or at least limit annual salary increases. It’s also increasing the number of unemployed local skilled IT workers. If you haven’t noticed this, either you have an interest in perpetuating the lie or you are living in the place mentioned by Magnum in his post.
The no loss of local jobs test sounds simple, but how simple is it to actually apply? Existing regulations (that are ignored) already seem to trying to achieve some approximation of it, unsuccessfully.
Instead, I would suggest an even simpler test that is unambiguous and difficult to game: Require that the H1-B holder be payed at least a large minimal wage. The minimal wage should be WELL above the average wage for STEM workers. If a worker brings truly unique and valuable skills to a job, that should warrant a high wage by itself. There should be a global minimum high enough to discourage gaming the system by incorrectly categorizing a job, and then maybe even higher minimums based on geography and/or specific job types.
I don’t have a strong sense of current wage structures, but I suspect the global minimum should be at least 100K, and possibly much higher.
>Require that the H1-B holder be payed at least a large minimal wage.
Isn’t that essentially what the Microsoft council was offering, except the extra money would go to the US government not the foreign worker. And he was offering absurdly little. Suppose the government demanded $20k per year per worker though?
Why not ask the real question here? Why does it cost so much more to employ Americans than it does to employ comparably skilled foreigners? Because the cost of living is higher in America than it is anywhere else. But why is the cost of living so much higher? Because everything produced in America costs more to manufacture because it costs so much more to employ Americans! It’s a vicious cycle of high prices and ignoring it won’t make it go away.
When big business started shedding its US factories 40 years ago, the college-educated/professionals/high-tech workers were not interested, or worse, they were openly gripped with schadenfreude. The nice ones said, “You can’t stand in the way of progress.” The less nice said, “To hell with them. They’re moronic slobs. Why should they be paid more than a third world peon?” All the while the white collar workers were smugly certain that there jobs were “irreplaceable”.
After the blue collar workers were put in their place, the 1% went after the low level white collar grunts. The reaction of the upper level white collar workers? See above.
Now the big money is going after the “irreplaceable workers”. The reaction? WHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, it’s not fair! Someone send a Whambulance!
My family got thrown under the economic bus quite long time ago. Sorry if I don’t have any sympathy for your techie friends, Bob. Instead of studying nothing but coding, maybe they should have cracked open a history book now and then.
“If we don’t hang together, by Heavens we shall hang separately”
— Ben Franklin
The larger reality is that there has been a fundamental shift in the macro economics of the United States over the last forty years. As Mark above pointed out this shift started in heavy industry and has slowly run through the rest of the economy.
Simply put over the last 40 years a smaller and smaller segment of society has benefited from GDP growth. For example, when my wife first graduated from college she got a job as a retail merchandiser, the job came with a company car, health insurance and a salary of about 25K per year. Not too bad for 1990. After taking ten years off to have children she is looking to reenter the work force, and wants the flexibility that comes with a merchandiser. Today that same job now pays only 26K to start, no car, no health insurance. Yet the economy has allegedly grown from 8 trillion to 14 trillion dollars in real terms.
H1B visas, amnesty for illegal immigrants, and the destruction of private sector unions has effectively held wages and benefits growth below the rate of inflation for a large number of workers.
Today the government released preliminary GDP numbers and many economists were disappointed that growth was below 3%. Yet, how can we expect higher GDP growth when wages are stagnant? Companies are sitting on one trillion dollars in cash. Apple is sitting on 145 Billion dollars in cash, yet it was just accused and settled a lawsuit over wage price fixing, with Google and other technology companies. How can a company that is sitting on over a hundred billion dollars in cash conspire to force wages even lower?
Obviously from a microeconomics perspective each company is acting in its own best interest. Forcing down wages, reducing employee benefits and forcing higher productivity should have the effect of increasing profits and thus increasing the almighty “share holder value.”
From a macroeconomic perspective this will result in a decrease in demand. With employees earning at best stagnant wages and more likely falling wages the inevitable result is a decrease in consumer demand.
Reading about Apple’s earnings report yesterday was truly depressing. It had a slight year over year earnings decline, yet it still remains a money printing machine, and it’s stock is still trading above $400.00 per share. What does Apple announce? Stock buy back, a strategy straight from the MBA playbook. This will manipulate the stock price so some people at the top can exercise their stock options, but will do nothing to actually grow the company actually put money in the pocket of consumers.
Regards,
Joe Dokes
Rather than requiring proof that no US Citizen jobs got lost, why not target the indentured servitude aspect of the H1B by removing the employer sponsorship requirement (for example). Then an H1B employee could seek the best wage like anyone else and there would be considerably less financial incentive to bring them in.
On another note, US corporations have, in obsessing over shareholder value, lost sight of an alternative value set that is at least as valid: responsibility to employees, community, and nation. The old H-P used to get that, and even stated explicitly in their corporate objectives.
The free market that some people talk about applies only for the big corporations who are free to use different countries to maximise their profits. Just like they can move their profits around from one jurisdiction to another to almost completely avoid paying tax, they move employees around the globe as if they’re just economic units.
Ordinary employees and people running small businesses don’t have this freedom. Unless you have a business that spans the globe and you can afford to hire the accountants, you’re subject to the laws and taxes of whatever country you live in and it’s not easy to just move from one country to another.
Apart from the top management, most people who think they can get a good career in a big corporation are deluded just like the girl in Bob’s joke who thinks she’s special. They’re just too far down the corporate food chain to avoid being swallowed up and spat out. They end up being victims of a race to the bottom because someone else can eventually be found who can do the same job, maybe not as well, but cheaper.
Thanks. I’m adding this to my slowly building list of ways to survive animal attacks.
The same thing is happening north of the border too: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/04/11/rbc-foreign-workers-apology.html What is worse, the visa workers can get 15% less than equivalent Canadian workers. One Chinese-owned mine claimed that there were no “qualified Canadian workers” available to work, so they had to bring in Chinese. “Qualified” must mean “willing to work for next to nothing.” At least some of the media took the ball and ran with it. The government claims to be “looking into the issue”.
The home page showed 37 comments for this article but the link leads to the article which says there are 35 comments. Same for 3 other articles in the first 10, except that each of those had a discrepancy of 1. This, along with the server issues with posting, all began this year with the use of WordPress; could be coincidental but that’s what I’ve noticed. The Cringely column had been working fine since 1997, but started failing badly this year.
The home page showed 37 comments for this article but the link leads to the article which says there are 35 comments. Same for 3 other articles in the first 10, except that each of those had a discrepancy of 1. This, along with the server issues with posting, all began this year with the use of WordPress; could be coincidental but that’s what I’ve noticed. The Cringely column had been working fine since 1997, but started failing badly this year.
We’ve been having some technical problems, it’s true, but in a couple of weeks we’ll be going to a new WordPress host and things should get a LOT better. Please be patient.
Thanks Bob. I’ll keep quiet about it (except to reassure others) until May 15th.
I’m surprised Mark didn’t get flamed unmercifully for his above posts! But he hit a couple of nails on their heads.
Buy a $20 pair of shoes at Wal-Mart and they’re made by someone making maybe $4 a day. And while Wally World makes its profit, some of that $ ends up going against the US balance of payments. Sometimes I feel sorry for our corporations having to compete on this unlevel field, and sometimes (more often) I think our corporate leaders are short-sighted, greedy, immoral bastards.
And yep, the national apathy that ignored the beginnings of all this “job emigration” four decades or so ago has lasted up to this point, where now 99% of us are in the same sinking boat.
Add to these points our (very) aging population. I don’t remember the name of the rogue economist who first explained how disastrous this can be for a nation, but now his ideas have found widespread acceptance. I won’t go into a lot of blah – dependency ratios – blah – decline in labor force participation – blah, but basically it’s another way the US economy is screwed.
And the best we can seem to come up with is the dreary Tea Party and the goofy Occupy Wherever. Now I’m depressed. Thanks, Cringely!
I believe the problem isn’t the QUANITY of Computer Science students. The problem is QUALITY of the education the Computer Science students are getting. Not all Computer Science degrees are equal. Students are typically only taught the fundamentals of programming. They work on small programs that they write from scratch by themselves or small teams of 2 or 3 students. In the real world you typically work on large systems that have been around for years, that have thousands of lines of code, that were written by many different people, using a variety of ever changing technologies. Companies have to spend a considerable amount of time training new college graduates. I know because my company, Maverick Software Consulting (https://www.mavericksoftware.com/Services.aspx), was built from the ground up to help bridge the “IT Talent Gap”. Bob stopped by and interviewed us back in August of 2010 (https://www.cringely.com/2010/08/24/little-geeks-on-the-prairie/). Our goal is to make it easy for companies to work with IT students while they are in college. Through the program, companies in need of IT talent can build a pipeline of new college graduates who already know and have experience working on their products, their technology and their culture. The students get the real world experience and good paying, flexible jobs while they are in college so they’re well-prepared to be productive employees after graduation.
I believe the problem isn’t the QUANITY of Computer Science students. The problem is QUALITY of the education the Computer Science students are getting. Not all Computer Science degrees are equal. Students are typically only taught the fundamentals of programming. They work on small programs that they write from scratch by themselves or small teams of 2 or 3 students. In the real world you typically work on large systems that have been around for years, that have thousands of lines of code, that were written by many different people, using a variety of ever changing technologies. Companies have to spend a considerable amount of time training new college graduates. I know because my company, Maverick Software Consulting (https://www.mavericksoftware.com/Services.aspx), was built from the ground up to help bridge the “IT Talent Gap”. Bob stopped by and interviewed us back in August of 2010 (https://www.cringely.com/2010/08/24/little-geeks-on-the-prairie/). Our goal is to make it easy for companies to work with IT students while they are in college. Through the program, companies in need of IT talent can build a pipeline of new college graduates who already know and have experience working on their products, their technology and their culture. The students get the real world experience and good paying, flexible jobs while they are in college so they’re well-prepared to be productive employees after graduation.
—
Martin
How about IBM doesn’t get any more H1Bs as long as they are firing?
[…] as he’s written about it frequently and in great detail. His latest piece on the topic is https://www.cringely.com/2013/0… It’s shameful how this program is being used, and what’s worse is no one is at all […]
Martin, what you have described is a co-op program and it is nothing new. I was a CS co-op student over 20 years ago, as was my brother over 30 years ago. Many university CS and engineering programs partner with local industry to provide apprenticeships for credit. It is a great deal for everyone involved, the students get to apply their studies in real-world settings, the businesses get low-cost, enthusiastic workers, and the universities get up-to-date information on the current state of the industry. As for a problem with the “quality” of education that CS students are getting, that is a complete red herring. The purpose of earning a university CS or engineering degree is not to learn specific skills, but rather to gain general understanding which can be applied in a broad variety of settings. I use almost none of the skills I learned in college or from my co-op program (with IBM – ha!) anymore, but I use my understanding every day.
Here’s a article that was written about Maverick Software Consulting in Network World…
https://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/getting-value-out-internships-both-ends
If you scroll down to the bottom you will see feedback from former MSC Students that talk about the difference.
Martin
Emilio, you are correct. Maverick Software Consulting is like a Co-op program and it is a great deal for everyone involved but it is not the same thing as a co-op. Maverick Software Consulting takes care of all of the “Heavy Lifting” for our clients. We recruit at 58 Universities. We work with the CS departments, student groups, career advisors (basically anyone that will listen). We interview the students and see if they would be a good fit for our clients. If they are we hire the students and take care of all of the HR Responsibilities (Drug Screen, Back Ground Check, I9, Pay Roll, etc). We also train the students, manage the students and help mentor the students. So, you are also correct about it being a great deal for everyone involved, the students do get to apply their studies in real-world settings, the do businesses get low-cost, enthusiastic workers, they also have a pipeline of entry level employees that are trained in on their systems, their products, their technologies and know their culture. Finally the universities get up-to-date information on the current state of the industry. I’m going to disagree with you about Quality being a red herring. Go and check out some of the degree programs from various colleges and see what’s required and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Emilio, you are correct. What we are doing at Maverick Software Consulting is like a Co-op program and it is a great deal for everyone involved but it is not the same thing as a co-op. Maverick Software Consulting takes care of all of the “Heavy Lifting” for our clients. We recruit at 58 Universities. We work with the CS departments, student groups, career advisors (basically anyone that will listen). We interview the students and see if they would be a good fit for our clients. If they are we hire the students and take care of all of the HR Responsibilities (Drug Screen, Back Ground Check, I9, Pay Roll, etc). We also train the students, manage the students and help mentor the students. So, you are also correct about it being a great deal for everyone involved, the students do get to apply their studies in real-world settings, the do businesses get low-cost, enthusiastic workers, they also have a pipeline of entry level employees that are trained in on their systems, their products, their technologies and know their culture. Finally the universities get up-to-date information on the current state of the industry. I’m going to disagree with you about Quality being a red herring. Go and check out some of the degree programs from various colleges and see what’s required and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
6000 per year right ?
that isn’t very limiting.
Auction them.
Part of the problem is not the knowing where to find the qualified, it is the convincing of said qualified persons to move to a smaller city that is in the middle of cornfields.
It seems if the companies that are hiring are not on the California or East coast, or Chicago, a high paying entry level position is not enough incentive for Americans. Perhaps H-1B is the best, or only perhaps the only solution for the moment.
It is rather sad when a STEM city with a world class hospital, Fortune 500 companies, and booming research cannot woo qualified American candidates.
Jasper, the reason qualified and experienced people won’t move to a city in the middle of nowhere is that the risk is too great. At least in the big coastal hi-tech areas there is a good chance that you’ll be able to find a new job when your current one is outsourced or offshored, or your employer goes bust. The last 20 years have taught the savvy hi-tech worker that his employer has no loyalty to him whatsoever and will eliminate him at the first opportunity — if the company even survives that long. Every week the salespeople from Wipro/Tata/etc… are making the rounds and it is only a matter of time before his managers throw him/her under the bus or the company simply goes out of business. The chances are basically 100% that he will not be able to keep that job for 10 years. If he is in Podunk, Nebraska, he will be SOL. At least in Silly Con Valley he has a chance of finding something else for a while. Also factor in the cost of selling a house (a 6% commission on a $400K San Jose ghetto hovel is $24K — OUCH), relocating, etc… and moving looks pretty darned unattractive.
Trust, once lost, is impossible to regain.
Jasper,
I grew up in the Mid-West, hate winter, and have no interest in winter sports. Just like some people can’t imagine living in say, Arizona where the temps are regularly 110+, there are many people who can’t imagine living where the temps are regularly below zero and precipitation is measured in feet of snow. If you are trying to get young people, they want to go where other young people are.
From experience I have to agree with what Emilio has said, even though I don’t live in a big coastal hi-tech area.
There’s one thing that bothers me with that study… In evaluating whether the companies can fulfill their job vacancies out of locally available workforce, it shows *only* circumstantial evidence: size of workforce, what kind of jobs they get, etc. I didn’t see a single mention of the most obvious data: number of unfulfilled job vacancies, average time to fulfill a job vacancy.
Given the amount of different measurements included, it leaves me suspecting that this data is not present simply because it does not sustain the conclusions of the study.
There is one study conclusion that doesn’t need proof: “Workers from countries with low wages and limited career opportunities will find the U.S. IT labor market attractive even when wages are too low and career opportunities too limited to increase the IT supply from domestic students and workers.”
This is what it’s all about – our jobs are to be sacrificed so that the big guns can sell more stuff in India. And don’t think for a second that only Europe is affected.
“The European Union is ready to make an “ambitious” offer on temporary work visas for Indian professionals to help finalise a delayed free trade agreement, the EU’s chief negotiator said on Tuesday, and called on India to reciprocate.”
See the full report at http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/04/23/india-eu-trade-pact-idINDEE93M09220130423
That article also says “The EU has been asking for greater market access in auto, wines and spirits while India wants liberalised visa norms for its professionals.” It’s quite true that globalization results in the lowest price for goods and services since the market for both is expanded. Unfortunately, this means more competition for the professionals who were being over-paid by global standards. Looks like whether we like it or not, protectionism is on the way out. This may ultimately involve early retirement or career shifting.
[…] I, Cringely. […]
I am sure you creating sensationalism by playing to public sentiments. By bashing big corporations such as IBM and programs such as H1B you seem to be getting more web site hits. And of course, people in companies that are getting outsourced, will love your blogs. But you seem to portray your opinions as facts. The reason why an H1B high tech worker cannot move to a higher paying job is because of H1B restrictions. Please go and read up on it. And of course, ruthless employers, use it to their advantage and hold the H1B hostage – almost like indentured servitude. And I am an IT manager that has been interviewing tens of people in the last few years with little to no success. Almost all the resumes I get are from either H1B workers or green card holders but not from citizens. So whatever story you can conjure up regarding not having a labor shortage here is a myth. Reality is not just want you imagine or see in your little world. There’s more going on in this country. Please stop your blogging nonsense. People need facts – not your biased crappy opinions that play to a section of people.
“Almost all the resumes I get are from either H1B workers or green card holders but not from citizens.” Bob knows this…that’s the point and the problem. If there were no H1B option, you would get no resumes at all until you raised your offer to attract citizens, not just desperate immigrants.
Really? Do you realize that I’m talking about 6 figure salary jobs and not 30K or 40k ? And since when did you start paying an entry level developer 6 figures or an admin who can barely execute a few commands 110K? The equivalent would be – do you want to hire a painter to paint 1 room for 10K? It is a myth that H1B workers lower salaries. Did you realize that H1B workers are in the top 10 if not 5% of household income earners in the country ? Using my sentence to prove your point might work well for you but will might get you a high paying tech job.
Infosys senior level meetings : “We will dump 6 million Indians in US and capture their entire IT market and no American will ever come to know about this. We will throw these Americans out of their own country. They don’t know what we are doing over here.”
[…] In case you missed it, the Rambling Wrecks of Georgia Tech will next year begin offering an online masters degree in computer science for a total price of just under $7,000 — about 80 percent less than the current in-state tuition for an equivalent campus-based program. The degree program, offered in cooperation with ATT and courseware company Udacity, will cost the same no matter where the students live, though two thirds are expected to live and work outside the USA. Time to complete the degree will vary but Georgia Tech thinks most students will require about three years to finish. The program is inspired, we’re told, by the current hiring crisis for computer science grads — a crisis that anyone who reads this column knows does not exist. […]
yes yes ofcourse, benefit from the system (H1B), and once you have got your citizenship come out and complain about work visas. pathetic.
Actually the H1-B is a dual intent visa. It is one of the few visas from which you can be currently holding when you apply for a greencard. You may leave the country at the end of it, but you may also be approved for permanent residency.
American IT workers under attack:
1) Jobs outsourced. US corporation growing campuses in India and China
2) Jobs in the US becoming contract basis and the race to bottom leads to import of H1Bs from India and other places. Wipro, Tata and other body shops apply for H1B visas and H1B for tens of thousands of Indians eager to get to the US and don’t mind jumping from one state to another just to get here. Microsoft, Google and others complain that there is not enough H1B visas (Yeh Tata and Wipro and tens of other bodyshops are jumping on as soon as new filing period start. Once H1Bs get here and gain experience item 3 gets executed
3) Indians in hiring positions hire only Indians for perm. positions and the cycle goes on. Either way IT jobs are going away for locals
How do you explain the massive amounts of Technical job requisitions? That says there are not enough qualified peole to do the jobs…
From: Rajesh Kumar Ramachandran (Collabera)
Subject: Listen to me A******!!
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 20:49:20 -0700 (PDT)
“Now listen carefully to me a******.. dont just bark around in the corner like a rabies stricken stray dog about your pathetic views about politics and jobs. If your insecure about your skills and abilities thats your f****** problem not Indians or any other politicians.. Well you want me to provoke you well then hear this, we are gonna take all your jobs away.. we gonna make sure that you dont even have money to buy s*** and eat, we gonna take evrything thatwas yours. we gonna drape the Statue of Liberty with a saree (you dont know wahta saree iis, well its a dress which Indian women wear).. now get your f****** stinking face out of here A******!!!!!”