India freaks out

a reply to: Aazadan

What does this have to do with anything? what's actually wrong with it?

It has todo with the fact that they are abusing the H1 visa program. The whole premise is about bringing talented employees not cheap labor.

The current Staff shouldn't have to train their replacement besides on internal company matters, if they are supposed to be at or a greater level than they are .

It's part of the economic system we choose to do business in.

You don't get to choose the economic system the Oligopolies get to choose the economic system via market manipulation and lobbying efforts.

Your employers job in the market is to get as much work, of the highest quality possible that they can. Your job is to get the highest wage/quality of life for your work that you can

Agreed the problem is as an American living in America with a Family in America Expecting to Retire in America you can't compete with a foreign worker who has a cost of living one third of your cost of living.

Why would an American company hire you if your equivalent counter part will cost them a 1/3 rd of the price?

Why would you as an American goto to a difficult study program in college, get in debt , and work in a very demanding field to get paid what your friend is getting paid as McD manager?

we have so many tech jobs available right now that the market favors the workers so the usual problems aren't an issue.

Thats another problem with the H1 Visa program its discouraging American students from going into engineering and other computer related studies in college. Who wan'ts to go into a difficult program,get into debt to only have to compete with someone who can do the job for a 1/3 rd of the cost.

Once we lose our Engineers and scientist of the future America will be doomed. This is a bigger issue than just about cheap labor.

I have 20 years in the industry and It has worked out very lucrative for me. However, I would not encourage my son to go into the industry as I see what is happening and where its going for his generation. They will not be able to reek the rewards as I have.

I'm not against the h1 program when their are valid needs but today its being abused for cheap labor.

In addition, if America is having problems pumping out enough qualified candidates then the education system needs to be revamped and incentives need to be given to entice American Students, not discourage them further with H1 Visa program abuse.

originally posted by: interupt42
It has todo with the fact that they are abusing the H1 visa program. The whole premise is about bringing talented employees not cheap labor.

The current Staff shouldn't have to train their replacement besides on internal company matters, if they are supposed to be at or a greater level than they are .

It's the internal company stuff that they trained them on. What happened at Disney ideally shouldn't have happened, but the company was favoring the shareholders over the employees in that situation. It happens all the time, and really those workers weren't doing much to help themselves. Sitting in the same positions for 10 years. Life in corporations is an up or out mentality, if you stagnate you're going to be forced out because the perception develops that you're incompetent.

The error here was that the employees showed loyalty to Disney, business isn't about loyalty when it's impacting the bottom line.

Agreed the problem is as an American living in America with a Family in America Expecting to Retire in America you can't compete with a foreign worker who has a cost of living one third of your cost of living.

This situation is improving. Rather than outsourcing the India, they're using H1B's to bring people in. That means the worker you're competing with is paying our market prices for rent, food, taxes, and so on. It has created a situation where you're not competing with someone who makes 1/10 your wage, instead it's closer to 8/10 which is something you can start to compete with.

Why would you as an American goto to a difficult study program in college, get in debt , and work in a very demanding field to get paid what your friend is getting paid as McD manager?

To work the job you want to work.

Thats another problem with the H1 Visa program its discouraging American students from going into engineering and other computer related studies in college. Who wan'ts to go into a difficult program,get into debt to only have to compete with someone who can do the job for a 1/3 rd of the cost.

Is it? Numbers going into CS programs are at record levels, the same is true of MIS programs, the entire bootcamp industry has sprung up because people want these skills. Of course, the number who aren't getting through the programs are also going up. There are some problems going on, for example I think bootcamps/MIS (neither of which I have a high opinion of) opposed to CS and CE are good examples of where our incoming students just aren't up to doing what they should be. The demand and interest are definitely there though.

I have 20 years in the industry and It has worked out very lucrative for me. However, I would not encourage my son to go into the industry as I see what is happening and where its going for his generation. They will not be able to reek the rewards as I have.

I disagree. I don't have 20 years in the industry, but I have 4, nearly 5 tech related degrees, 20 years of programming experience, and some work experience. I can't speak for the hardware side of things but software is definitely a lucrative field to go into. I do think that the US's disproportionately high salaries in the field compared to the rest of the world are going to go away eventually, but if the rest of the world is any indication it's still going to be a job that starts at a wage above your areas median wage and grows from there. The real issue I see is that salary growth on the software side has an issue with hitting plateau's which can discourage long term involvement in the field. Programmer positions tend to follow a logarithmic curve while most other skilled, in demand labor follows an exponential one.

But, when it comes to recommending the degree. Name one other field that allows for perks like being highly mobile, significantly above average wages, and can be done with a relatively low level of education. It's the minority, but some graduate boot camps and land 100k starting jobs with just 3 months of education. You can't do that in any other high paying field. Doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers (the 3 jobs with the most comparable salaries) have much lower levels of career satisfaction, require much more student debt, and require more education.

I'm not against the h1 program when their are valid needs but today its being abused for cheap labor.

I agree, but that's not changing. If salaries are equal or higher to what an American wants, if the company can't find the labor it needs it's going to open a foreign office in China or India pay their local wages, and we still lose out on jobs because it becomes harder to compete. The current situation is a better outcome.

originally posted by: interupt42
In addition, if America is having problems pumping out enough qualified candidates then the education system needs to be revamped and incentives need to be given to entice American Students, not discourage them further with H1 Visa program abuse.

Sorry for splitting this into two parts on you, I started rambling on this part and hit the post size limit.

This is a very complicated issue. Again, I can only speak for the software side, but software is extremely broad. Schools cannot teach everything you might need to know in the real world. Different companies use different frameworks, different languages, different styles, have different positions, and most importantly have non standardized hiring criteria. Computer science is only 70 years old, object oriented programming is 30, artificial intelligence is (functionally) 10, 3d graphics are 20, the internet is 10 (tech in use, not since it was created), automated stock trading is 25, mobile apps are 10, and so on.

There just hasn't been enough time for industry standards to develop, and if there's no industry standards, there's no cross corporation standards. Some companies are starting to develop this by cargo culting Google and Amazon but even that isn't super widespread and as new technologies get invented it becomes even more complex.

Let me give some examples here, a banking company which has zero tolerance for error might give Fizzbuzz as an interview question, Fizzbuzz being a very simple question and that comprises their entire technical interview. Another company can give something more ridiculous. I had an interview the other day for example (which I failed) where I had 5 minutes to work out a linear time solution to compute the hamming distance between two numbers. The obvious solution to that problem is exponential which is what I got, I ended up going to one of my professors (a phd) a couple days afterwards and asking him for the solution. It took us working together 30 minutes to figure it out, and worse it has very little practical value. It was simply a bit of math trivia that you either knew or didn't for the companies internal filter.

I think the whole problem stems from the issue that companies know they need people, but they have very high level knowledge of what tech people do (if they know at all), so they don't actually know what to look for. On top of that the field is broad and one companies needs don't necessarily mirror anothers. This makes it hard for the schools to teach a core bundle of knowledge. For example two equally prestigious schools can cover very different classes. I'm in a top 10 school for my current program and we have 20 in major classes, another top 10 school only has 12. At some schools you learn things like graphics, building compilers, assembly level optimizations, or AI (or all 4 in my case) while at other schools you might get a couple courses in Java and some work in front/back end web frameworks. Those are both useful paths to go down but the field is just very broad and schools can really only prepare their students for a very narrow slice of the jobs available.

The standard view by employees in the industry is to prove you can learn, get hired, and then learn whatever that specific company is using but the companies want specialized experts ready to go on day 1, and that's just not how it works.

a reply to: Aazadan

Come on The sh1t is so obvious even the Left is seeing it.

Huffingtonpost: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas To Pay Low Wages To Immigrants
www.huffingtonpost.com...

The H1 Visa program and the way it is CURRENTLY being used is not good for Americans or America in the long term.

a reply to: interupt42

And what's the alternative? If we make it so they can't bring people over here, the companies move their offices over there and pay even less.

I would rather keep the jobs in this country myself. That way Americans MIGHT get them. Do you want to do to our tech sector what we did to the manufacturing sector where the most profitable action is to move the jobs out of the country? H1-B's still involve bringing people over here, paying our CoL, paying our taxes, and using our supporting jobs.

a reply to: Aazadan

And what's the alternative? If we make it so they can't bring people over here, the companies move their offices over there and pay even less.

Nobody is saying to not bring people over here. They just need to pay them the same wages ,rights,and benefits as Americans and only Hire foreigner when they can't hire an American as was intended and as sold by the Corporations .

originally posted by: interupt42
Nobody is saying to not bring people over here. They just need to pay them the same wages ,rights,and benefits as Americans and only Hire foreigner when they can't hire an American as was intended and as sold by the Corporations .

Yes they are. Read this thread, read other threads on the issue. Read my thread on the proposed bill. The man on the street view is generally to not give jobs to foreigners unless we're employing all of our own domestic talent already.

The problem is, that's not feasible. Like I said in my second reply a couple minutes ago (you posted at about the same time, so you have have missed it) the hiring situation in the US is very screwed up on the software side. Companies don't know what they need or even want, and no one has really developed good metrics on this stuff.

When companies don't have consistent metrics on what they need, they don't know who to hire, and this is why they don't hire Americans and are instead going through H1-B staffing agencies who claim to have the answers.

I made a post on this subject a few days ago, www.abovetopsecret.com... what I liked about this thread, was that at the end of it I got to talk to another poster here who is hiring for a tech company and uses bootcamps. But when I asked him for details he said he's mostly hiring on attitude and culture fit rather than technical ability. So that's yet another example of the very wide hiring standards that are currently in place. With such a large disparity the schools can't really respond to the industry and gear their graduates to what companies are looking for.

a reply to: Aazadan

The man on the street view is generally to not give jobs to foreigners unless we're employing all of our own domestic talent already.

What is wrong with that and how is that saying not to bring people over here?

Also why wouldn't the man on the street view it that way? That was the intention of the program and that is how MS,GOOGLE,IBM and the rest are claiming why they need it and how it works.

the hiring situation in the US is very screwed up on the software side. Companies don't know what they need or even want, and no one has really developed good metrics on this stuff.

Don't disagree, I have been on both side of it

But when I asked him for details he said he's mostly hiring on attitude and culture fit rather than technical ability.

That only applies if the person is technical enough to apply in the first place. So thats just the gravy and usually happens in the smaller more dynamic companies not the behemoth ones who only see overhead cost.

With such a large disparity the schools can't really respond to the industry and gear their graduates to what companies are looking for.

They could but American companies don't wan't to invest in training domestic candidates when they can train foreign candidates for far lesser money and for far lesser pay after they graduate. That is why American companies are constantly investing overseas in starting technical schools such as in Africa.

Its a better investment for them to go Foreign not so much for Americans and America.

originally posted by: interupt42
What is wrong with that and how is that saying not to bring people over here?

Also why wouldn't the man on the street view it that way? That was the intention of the program and that is how MS,GOOGLE,IBM and the rest are claiming why they need it and how it works.

If you're giving Americans jobs it means you're not giving them to others. While I think that sounds good to a lot of people (and that's where they're coming from) it just doesn't make business sense to these companies. I think they would prefer to hire American for the most part, but the bottom line outweighs preferences. Companies are going to take any route they have to in order to maximize profits. In companies where your software engineers are considered a cost center, business logic usually dictates trying to trim those costs which means bringing in cheap overseas labor. If that wasn't an option they would instead outsource for the cheap labor. If they're bringing labor over here, it means we have a chance to compete... but you have to look at the scale of the problem. India has a lot of engineers, they're bringing over top tier talent at bargain basement prices. That means we have to be good enough that our below average graduates are as talented as their top tier. That's not easy to do, but that's what we have to do to compete.

That only applies if the person is technical enough to apply in the first place. So thats just the gravy and usually happens in the smaller more dynamic companies not the behemoth ones who only see overhead cost.

In larger companies it just comes down to who is interviewing you. Even somewhere like Google of Microsoft there's a wide disparity in interviews and it's just the luck of the draw as to what you get. What it tells me though is two things: First of all, if people with what I would consider very basic skills are enough to do the job, then the company probably isn't doing very challenging work and the position is just undergoing normal market corrections as the wage declines on average. The other thing it tells me is that companies don't know what they're doing, which goes back to my previous point that the problem is with the hiring process.

They could but American companies don't wan't to invest in training domestic candidates when they can train foreign candidates for far lesser money and for far lesser pay after they graduate. That is why American companies are constantly investing overseas in starting technical schools such as in Africa.

Its a better investment for them to go Foreign not so much for Americans and America.

When they invest overseas they're usually looking to keep the employee overseas which has nothing to do with H1-B's. So here's the question, how do we fix that? Training costs companies zero in the US because it's been offloaded to the individual to go to school, get a degree, and then get the additional knowledge that supplements a degree. Yet, companies are preferring to spend their own money to train people outside the US. Why is that?

a reply to: Aazadan

it just doesn't make business sense to these companies.

Well of course it doesn't . No business wants to pay a fair price if they don't have to.

That means we have to be good enough that our below average graduates are as talented as their top tier. That's not easy to do, but that's what we have to do to compete.

Even that wouldn't be good enough to compete.

Training costs companies zero in the US because it's been offloaded to the individual to go to school, get a degree, and then get the additional knowledge that supplements a degree. Yet, companies are preferring to spend their own money to train people outside the US. Why is that?

The answer is still cost savings and cheap labor.

Its an upfront cost to save you money in the long run and that is assuming they are actually spending their own money and not US tax payers money under some guise of foreign aid.

Heck the US tax payers just within the last 2-4 years paid to revamp Africas electrical grid where the Big Tech companies are, Guess where the next outsourcing push will be?

www.nytimes.com...
disrupt-africa.com...
www.economist.com...

They have been pushing for Africa because Brazil and India are getting to costly.

The (ROI) cost of training them overseas in a third world is negligible where they are begging to get the work (its not like a 4 year degree school in the US) and having them work for you is far cheaper than having to pay a US graduate 100K a year. They will get that upfront investment 100 fold.

Majority of outsourcing jobs outside or inside of the US is about lowering your cost and nothing more.

So let me ask you , what are you insinuating for the reason US companies prefer to spend their own money to train people outside the US ?

originally posted by: interupt42
Well of course it doesn't . No business wants to pay a fair price if they don't have to.

I'm just looking on the employer side of things right now because that's where the quickest changes can be made. I do think however that if we gave students (all students, not just tech) some good honest education, practice, and feedback on negotiation employees would be able to secure better contracts for themselves and we wouldn't have situations like what happened at Disney because employees would have been able to strike the provisions from their contract that allowed it. That sort of change involves long term plans though, and may not always be possible depending on how much leverage an employee has.

Back to the point though, everyone wants to pay as little as possible. As a prospective employee it's your job to convince the employer that it's worth paying a bit more for the next model up. That's easier said than done, but it's what has to be done. Sometimes that might fall on the employee to sell the company on what you offer. Solving some of a companies tech ignorance is one of the ways you can do that, and the way you do that isn't in throwing tech knowledge at them, it's in putting metrics on your own ability.

Again, my experience has been that colleges are piss poor at helping CS students write resumes (and that's presumably where you'll learn), the HR people who help with that aren't tech people and don't know what to suggest for you. Being able to quantify certain skills with cost savings or revenue generation helps a lot.

Going back to my previous post where I mentioned culture fit being a big deal to hiring managers, if you're American you automatically have an advantage there. Being able to secure that interview in the first place is what's important.

Even that wouldn't be good enough to compete.

I don't know about that. Few will turn away actual talent... if they recognize it. That said, I do recognize that not everyone can be in the top X% of jobs. We need an economy where the bottom 20% of a field can obtain reasonable employment too. And that goes back to the hiring situation. Companies these days want to hire 9's at 6's wages to do 3's work. Figuring out business needs is #1.

The (ROI) cost of training them overseas in a third world is negligible where they are begging to get the work (its not like a 4 year degree school in the US) and having them work for you is far cheaper than having to pay a US graduate 100K a year. They will get that upfront investment 100 fold.

Those jobs are kept in Africa though, they're not competing with the H1-B slots. H1-B's live here.

So let me ask you , what are you insinuating for the reason US companies prefer to spend their own money to train people outside the US ?

Because outsourcing is a problem. H1-B's are insourcing though. Outsourcing is a different problem, which requires a different solution. And fortunately, seems to be dying on it's own because concepts like Agile have created an environment where it really helps to have everyone in the same office (or atleast in the same time zone), which generally means having everyone in the US.

a reply to: Aazadan

I do think however that if we gave students (all students, not just tech) some good honest education, practice, and feedback on negotiation employees would be able to secure better contracts for themselves

Definitely need better education and change our methods of learning to better keep up with the fast changing tech world.

One thing I was pissed about and talked with my counsellor in Engineering school while taking all the stuppid electives , was Why wasn't there a basic course patenting and why couldn't that be my elective.

IMO I think every Engineer should be required to take a patenting course to better protect themselves.

Going back to my previous post where I mentioned culture fit being a big deal to hiring managers, if you're American you automatically have an advantage there. Being able to secure that interview in the first place is what's important.

Money and budgets in most companies trumps citizenship especially in Engineering , assuming they are equivalent in knowledge. If it didn't most wouldn't even know or care what H1 visa was.

Figuring out business needs is #1.

Returns for investors is needs #1

Those jobs are kept in Africa though, they're not competing with the H1-B slots. H1-B's live here.

Because outsourcing is a problem. H1-B's are insourcing though. Outsourcing is a different problem,

Never said they were related.It was as an example to what extent companies will go for cheaper labor.

You still didn't answer my question.

Why is it that you think that American Companies are investing in third world countries to train people?
Is it because of cheaper labor or is it because of talent?

originally posted by: interupt42
Never said they were related.It was as an example to what extent companies will go for cheaper labor.

You still didn't answer my question.

Why is it that you think that American Companies are investing in third world countries to train people?
Is it because of cheaper labor or is it because of talent?

They're training in the first place because they can't find anyone who can do what they need. They're using third world countries because it's cheap labor. They wouldn't be doing that in the first place if they were finding who they need in more developed areas. It all goes back to the ridiculous hiring culture.

a reply to: Aazadan

They're training in the first place because they can't find anyone who can do what they need

Nope, They're training in the first place because they want to lower their cost of doing business with cheaper labor. Its a smart ROI for the company bad for Americans and American economy.

They're using third world countries because it's cheap labor.

Bingo

They wouldn't be doing that in the first place if they were finding who they need in more developed areas.

False you have plenty Americans that can do the job they just expect to get compensated better because of their cost of living. If it wasn't, than what is the big deal to force employers to only be given H1 visa in circumstance where Americans aren't qualified?

That "Americans aren't qualified" was propaganda started by the Big Corps to hire cheap foreign labor .

However now the consequence is that will likely become the reality , because fewer Americans are going into Engineering and the Sciences , due to outsourcing and having to compete with someone who has 1/3 of the cost of overhead.

Once Americans stop going into the sciences and engineering, America will loose its dominance in the world.

American companies are "saw your feet off to save on shoes" stupid

That sounds exactly like my last job! For example, we had four extra printers in our storage room, and the management freaked out because it's "wasting money" to have things that you already paid for and will need in the future in your inventory. So they made us ship them all to other campuses. Not only does it cost a ton to ship a 25 pound printer, but now if one breaks they will have to waste money on a brand new replacement printer and wait days for it to arrive.

Oh, and they thought I was a bad IT person because I had equipment, parts and tools visible in my office, and the counter top doesn't match the desks in the rest of the offices, if you can believe that. Now they are trying to train a new person and things aren't getting fixed while I start this week at a "normal" company.

And my supervisor admitted that she doesn't know how anything works, she just tells people what to do, the epitome of the term "empty suit". Stupid, conservative business people are do detached from reality it's pathetic.

a reply to: CB328

Stupid, conservative business people are do detached from reality it's pathetic.

Wow, you need an intervention from political cheerleadering my friend. The obstruction of bias and hypocrisy has gotten the better of you , if you think only conservatives are detached from reality.

Seriously , You don't find it an issue or curious with always being so one sided and blaming the conservatives?