What is Digg?106 Comments
- factsahoy, on 02/24/2009, -3/+33What the hell? The article (and the one it links to) fails utterly to explain why OFFSHORE companies need H-1B visas at all. H-1B visas are for working in the U.S. The linked-to article includes this:
"Meanwhile, U.S. IT services providers are also shifting work overseas without the reliance on H-1B visas that Indian-based firms have. For instance, Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services Inc., which only needed three H-1B visas in 2007, announced last month that it plans to move "more complex, higher-paying" jobs to other countries."
What is it with "journalists" today, and their failure to answer the first question that the reader would have? The failure is so profound that it undermines most of the value of the article. The H-1B is a separate issue from shipping jobs overseas, and it's a convenient scapegoat. It's the use of totally offshore outsourcing firms that presents a bigger problem, but because it's harder to legislate, everyone takes the lazy approach and attacks H-1Bs.
Oh, and where's the continued outrage over Halliburton moving overseas? Does that just magically not matter anymore?
Nice job, journalists and representatives. - gunbuster, on 02/24/2009, -3/+26Best? Hardly. We have to go through rediculous amounts of screening when it comes to the candidates coming in from India. The resumes are 90% BS and I've had to cut loose more than my fair share of developers. Granted, some of them are excellent. But for every great contractor that I have had work for me, I get 3 mediocre ones and 2 terrible ones. All the meanwhile project timelines get blasted apart because we keep backfilling resources that did not hold up.
I have no problems w/ H1-B's bringing in good quality workers. But the Satyams, Wipros and Tatas are more than happy to sell you on a few of their good resources then bombard you with dozens of low to mediocre quality resources after you sign the dotted line.
We just outsourced all our production support to one of these companies. Our support team got replaced with a bunch of under-experienced resources. An I am supposed to believe that our company saved money??? - Number23, on 02/24/2009, -8/+30I used to work for Lockheed Martian on the IT contract for the Social Security Administration, believe it or not, it was one of their biggest contracts and ti was staffed AT LEAST 2/3rd H-1bs. Well, one day they bussed us all to a auditorium in Baltimore to listen to the CEO of LM give us a pep talk.
He detailed LM's efforts to encourage HS students to study Math and Science and I thought, "yeah and at the same time you lobby congress to import workers to drive down our wages."
If you're college right now, skip computer science. It was great in 90' and earlly 2000's, but wages have really stagnated. If you're smart, study Medicine. - mdmcgee, on 02/24/2009, -4/+21Claiming they are hiring the best is somewhat disingenuous, don't you think?
We all know the reason, cost. They can hire foreign workers, work the
hell out of them for next to nothing and they have no recourse.
Modern slave labor in some instances.
The whole point is to push down labor costs here in the US. - winstonsmith303, on 02/24/2009, -17/+34With record unemployment, shouldn't they be cracking down on stuff like this to perhaps keep jobs here?
- dunhate, on 02/24/2009, -12/+26wow i'm shocked that many Digg users actually think protectionism is the way to go.
really? do u really think allowing 58000 H1 visas is why Americans are losing their jobs in HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS? Because these foreign workers stole it? And not because the H1 visas are abused to hire entry level jobs, pushing some of the more trained, experienced and much needed foreign workers out of the quota, and therefore making harder for companies to stay competitive globally, and thus forcing them to move the jobs somewhere else like Microsoft did to Canada,,,AND THEREFORE leaving Americans without jobs?
I got my engineering degree from a top 10 US university, proved my job performance working at a company under the OPT visa, but had to leave the US and the job because I couldn't get an H1 visa. 2 years in a row.
"So what?" you may ask. I'm not a rocket scientist with supernatural powers. But now Australia got one more engineer whose education was mostly paid for with American private scholarship donors' money.
That's right. Do nothing about the illegal immigrants but put quotas for skilled people trying to legally immigrate. Or in my case just to work temporarily. - inactive, on 02/24/2009, -4/+18boobsbr, you haven't dealt with incompetence till you've seen some of the H1B guys. To be honest it's not totally their fault. A lot of under qualified people apply for jobs they shouldn't using over inflated resumes just hoping to get a visa and a better life. That being said the H1B visas are a kick back to a different time when IT staffers were in high demand. Now there are a ton of out of work IT staffers, but business continues to abuse H1B visas as a means to bring in low cost labor that they can bully and intimdiate with threats of revoking their visa.
- Thefatheroftime, on 02/24/2009, -2/+14The jobs are here.
- darkstar949, on 02/24/2009, -0/+11@duniyadnd - Luck shouldn't have anything to do with it though, the H-1B visa means that the person is competent in regards to the skills needed, otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to work in the country. If the person is incompetent then why were they given the visa?
- sergebeauchamp, on 02/24/2009, -17/+27By preventing US companies to hire the best foreign workers to come to the US, it will only cause those companies to open more offices abroad to be able to hire those workers.
A very short-sighted policy indeed. - byronm, on 02/24/2009, -1/+11Hit the nail on the head. Just another way corporate America gets submissive employees.
- duniyadnd, on 02/24/2009, -2/+12Actually for the H1-B, it is not a competitive position. The company does not have to make a position available to an American citizen before allowing the H1-B counterpart in. The Green Card however is a competitive position and the company has to show that the position was opened up to the American public before given to a foreigner - so for that, you can definitely say "there just aren't qualified Americans to fill them".
- miffelplix, on 02/24/2009, -11/+20Great. Now we're not only outsourcing well-paying blue collar jobs, but bringing in foreign workers to take the remaining well-paying white collar jobs. So much for the American middle class.
- chetanw, on 02/24/2009, -2/+11I'll attempt to answer some of the questions posed in the comments (IANAL):
1. The reason why Indian companies have so many H1B's is because those visas are held by the employees of their American subsidiaries. So, when someone says that Infosys got 4500 H1B visas, they mean that Infosys Inc got those visas.
2. Contrary to what people believe, a lot of the H1Bs are really used for their intended purpose i.e. to supplement much needed smart workers that are not readily available in the US.
3. The H1 system has a fubdamental flawe - it allows the employer to get an H1 and then just walk away. What Senators Grassley and Sanders are attempting to stop is the way for H1B workers to study our work and replicate it offshore. One easy way is to force the employers to apply for the Green card for their worker. That way, they have to pay and the brain power remains in the US.
4. A small percentage of the visas are misused and this must definitely be stopped. I know of someone who works as an HR Manager in a bodyshopping company and he managed to get his wife an H1 visa while she's not even qualified to babysit. WTF?
5. The brilliant people in India DO incidentally have some good products. Unfortunately, a large portion of those products are gobbled up by giant US firms. The latest example is the Flexcube product from i-flex which was swallowed by Oracle Corp.
6. The American worker has no ides of what the following really mean: Hunger, Hardship, Desperation and Poverty. This is what driver him/her to demand atrocious salaries - which has caused their downfall.
7. Someone mentioned - "Follow the path to US citizenship, and preferably serve in the US armed forces to test your loyalty, and be welcomed here" - The path that you recommend is not an easy one. Are you aware of the harassment that immigrant go through to get a visa or Green card. It takes years and years. The Citizenship process takes 10 years easily.
8. Remember that someone (generally) cannot apply for a Green Card on their own - the employer has to apply for and sponsor it. So, for the card, you need to find an employer first - i.e. H1B. Also, while the GC process goes on (think 7 years), you're stuck with the same employer. - gunbuster, on 02/24/2009, -1/+9The sponsor is often times *not* the company needing the staff augmentation. The largest H1-B Visa sponsor is someone like a Satyam, Wipro or Tata. Keep in mind a lot of these contracts are not for one or two individuals, but it can be a contract to outsource an entire IT function. In this case, they are free to bring in whomever they want if they feel they can get by with the job. This includes underqualified resources to handle roles they are over their heads for.
Trust me, I am living this nightmare right now. Our entire production support function was outsourced to one of those companies. Sure dollars were saved on the front end w/ the support contract, but the company is making up for it by giving us resources that are generally worse than what we had before. - enclaved, on 02/24/2009, -0/+8Ireland isn't doing so well these days....
- darkstar949, on 02/24/2009, -1/+8I don't think that most people have a problem with the H-1B program conceptually, but too many people in technical positions in the US have seen the system abused by companies.
For example, a valid use of the program would be for someone to say "We need someone with PhD level education in topic X" upon which looking for six months, they can't find anyone in the US with that background. However, they are able to find someone outside of the country that has the background. They do the paperwork, the person gets the job, and everyone is happy. You would find no complains from most people for this situation.
However, a lot of people in IT have heard of a situation where a company will say something like "We are looking for someone with ten years programming experience, five of which need to be in C#, SQL, and JavaScript." There are people like this in the US and they aren't too hard to find, but then went people interview, you find out that they only want to bring you in as a Programmer I (entry level developer) and pay you the equivalent wages, which isn't a fair salary for someone with ten years experience and those skills. So then you find out that the company went outside of the country to hire someone on the H-1B program so they only had to pay them entry level developer wages. This is what most people have a complaint about.
Also, you have to remember that most of what people in the US have heard about the program and overall there is a negative opinion about it as a result. The second story may in fact be a small minority of cases, but it is a situation where the negative stories are souring everyone's option. Plus, when you factor in people seeing massive layoffs, but companies still hiring on the H-1B program, people are automatically going to question why the company can't hire a US citizen, regardless of if it might be a case of looking for a PhD with a background in X. - yuanzhoulu, on 02/24/2009, -3/+9no. let the company hire who they feel is fit for the job. it is already more work to hire from the outside, so these companies have chosen certain foreign workers despite the hassle, for a reason.
if well-managed companies choose who they want, they have a better shot at succeeding, and the economy will come back. - roodammy44, on 02/24/2009, -0/+5Ireland's economy has been in freefall for the past few months.
- Elranzer, on 02/24/2009, -1/+61. USA is now a "service-based economy"
2. Service jobs are being off-shored at an alarming rate
And these analysts wonder why our job market is collapsing - slysamba, on 02/24/2009, -8/+13Nope, that would be the logical thing to do.
- FredFredrickson, on 02/24/2009, -1/+6Find a different career then. Maybe one that doesn't involve spamming URL's on social media sites. Unless that is the extent of your being an "IT professional."
- mikesoba, on 02/24/2009, -2/+7I am more upset by outsourcing of IT help desks, I've found that calling for help is a useless endeavour, It's time to bring this work back to the US if IT companied want to stop alienating the customers.
- BDOUG, on 02/24/2009, -0/+4I took it to mean the H1B's are needed as "go betweens" to help manage the off-shore resources. That's certainly the way I've seen it done.
- inactive, on 02/24/2009, -2/+6Jobs like that are getting fewer and far between. If you are working for a state with a budget deficit and find yourself caught up in a lay off get ready for a shock.
- banderwocky, on 02/24/2009, -0/+4How exactly does that "prove" loyalty? All I see that doing is the beginning of a class based system. A dangerous one at that.
- trollick, on 02/24/2009, -0/+4Ok, I'm not against bringing here some uber-geniuses who would work on next great things like smell-o-vision or flying car. But something tells me that ***** "Tata Consultancy Services" does not bring this kind of people here. And who the ***** needs hordes of Indian VB/database programmers here, if any american school dropout can do that kinds of work after minimal training?
- BlacklabelSAR, on 02/24/2009, -0/+4So you've served in the military?
- inactive, on 02/24/2009, -2/+6eh, making 60k 4 years out of college isn't so bad. and that's working for the state, so the wages are low and benefits are good.
- banderwocky, on 02/24/2009, -0/+3So to become a citizen you think immigrants should first serve in the military? That sounds like something I've heard of before...
- FutureGuy, on 02/24/2009, -0/+3I don't think low wages is the problem, it's the culture where Math and Science is considered un-cool and nerdy. IT has some of the highest paying jobs by far.
- chaoswings, on 02/25/2009, -0/+3It all depends on what you specifically do. IT is broad industry and like any industry will have ups and downs. The important part is that the job is steady and pays well. Picking a major just because it is currently doing well in the economy but you hate will be harmful in the long run.
I see too many people who grossly overestimate their abilities or the work involved and waste years at college/university only to drop out half way through and end up with nothing. Go and do something you like because you are going to spend the rest of your life (or a long time) doing it. - duniyadnd, on 02/24/2009, -2/+5There's a few problems with this:
1. Corruption is quite high, especially if you live in areas like Delhi (Government officials will suck you dry).
2. There is less emphasis on the Arts and similar subjects when you're in college studying computer science. The talent is there, but a lot of people in India have not been groomed to think outside the box to come up with product/application ideas. So either they have to come up with a "aha" moment, or hope someone with a broader view of what they want can give some direction on what to create. - halabala, on 02/24/2009, -3/+6Don't forget - universities and other gov't institutions don't have caps on H1-Bs and can bring in as many people from overseas as they want. Think about this next time you sit in Cal 3 class and can't understand what the instructor is saying ;)
- HappyScrappy, on 02/24/2009, -0/+3Even though the GC process is very long for Indians, it doesn't take 10 years. Although it's kind of tough to measure it since you measure the total time by people who are getting their GCs right now, and assuming that new people applying right now would have similar wait times but in reality the time spent waiting has gone up consistently for the last 15 years. It's kind of like looking at the stars and saying "that supernova we're seeing right now took place 1,000 years ago, we can't tell what it looks like right now".
I wasn't aware India buys products from Ford or Citibank. You don't see a lot of Fords in India, and Wipro just bought a lot of Citi's Indian assets off them!
You sound angry, you perhaps need to get over this idea that another country owes you something. - Thuban, on 02/24/2009, -0/+3Or maybe American schools can start teaching basic math skills to its graduates so they can go on and become the brainy people the visa's are used to import. Industry Week ran an article claiming that American Industry is 500.000 engineers short, so American companies have to recruit overseas to meet their needs.
Meanwhile a friend of mine who teaches Business math at a local university tell me every Semester he gets at least a third of his freshman students who don't even know their multiplication tables or are able to do long division without a calc. - publiclurker, on 02/24/2009, -1/+4What they do is take their inexperienced people and ship them to the US with the H-1B's. then when they get a small amount of experience, they bring them back home and use them as outsource workers. that way the US companies get cheap easily exploited workers and the offshore companies get some of their training subsidized.
- BlacklabelSAR, on 02/24/2009, -0/+2Australia? I'd gladly trade you my US citizenship for your Australian citizenship. You dodged a bullet, you just don't know it yet.
- SamSks, on 02/24/2009, -2/+4to paraphrase an IT Manager friend of mine:
Indians are bred to sit in front of the computer for 10+ hours a day writing code. Americans are not capable of doing that.
Among American IT management, Indians and other Asians for that matter, are considered to be superior for doing IT work. - psYcon, on 02/24/2009, -1/+3@SamSks, I am here to stay whether you like it or not. And I'm not from India either.
This country is not closed for immigration, if you're dad wasn't an immigrant, your grandpa probably was. So really, shut the hell up, you immigrant hater hypocrite :) - banderwocky, on 02/25/2009, -0/+2And you call Obama a communist? If you really believe half the crap that comes out of your mouth, I'd say the real 'red' threat is you.
- publiclurker, on 02/24/2009, -0/+2Actually, they screw the workers over even better than that. What you do is set op a dummy company in Iowa and claim that's where the workers are based. Then you pay the minimum wages for this part of the country and ship the workers of to New York or Seattle.
- publiclurker, on 02/24/2009, -0/+2The claims of no qualified Americans has been shown to be a lie over and over again. I'm sure everyone here has seen the clip of the seminar where they were teaching how to rig the system in order to avoid hiring an American.
- lilamae, on 02/24/2009, -1/+3Accounting pays extremely well and the math isn't hard at all...
- MSUKate, on 02/25/2009, -0/+2But asking them to think creatively to come up with an innovative solution is a problem.
This is a major criticism of the Indian educational system. Rote memory is emphasized, but creative thinking is all but lost. - chetanw, on 02/24/2009, -2/+4Folks, remember that someone cannot apply for a Green Card on their own - the employer has to sponsor it. So, for the card, you need to find an employer first - i.e. H1B
- duniyadnd, on 02/24/2009, -2/+4@darkstar949 - the same reason why everyone wonders why someone was hired in a company despite not being able to perform their job requirements. I call it luck because it's really out of your hands who is going to be your colleague, whether they have a H1-B or an resident of the US.
- FutureGuy, on 02/24/2009, -1/+3As I see it there is no doubt that the H1b visa program has its flaws but it has benefits too. At the end of the day it’s hard to justify how this program can be blamed for the "record unemployment" or how it can fix it. US has lost millions of job, IT is relatively doing well. Even if every H1b holder in the country is let go that's not going to make any noticeable dent in the unemployment index.
Consider this, there were almost no H1b visas issued for manufacturing jobs, where are those jobs now? Can you blame H1b's for that? No? Outsourcing yes, every damn thing is no made outside of the US? That where the problem is, there is no point making H1b a convenient scapegoat, that only a distraction, focus on how to do more/make more stuff in US and how to get kids interested in Science and Maths and the unemployment problem will be long gone. - tdclark23, on 02/24/2009, -0/+2They're needed if the employer wants the work done for peanuts. IT may be much more complex than operating a punch press, but the stockholders expect to pay no more for the knowledge than they paid unskilled workers. In many situations, the IT solution has replaced many time-consuming processes over the years and reduced the number of total employees necessary to perform the job, but the need to reduce costs year after year has given us a short memory. The money saved by implementation of IT solutions has fallen off the P&L sheet. Now they want to reduce the cost of the IT solution and that requires hiring folks for whom a "middle-class" wage is equivalent to the pay of a french fry cook at McDonalds. This contributes to the widening of the gap between the haves and have-nots. I worry that the middle class will cease to exist.
- edstate, on 02/24/2009, -2/+4I put an ad in the paper for "tech talent", but nobody responded... so.... I guess I can get me some of them's HB-1s, and increase my profits!
I mean, it shouldn't matter that I posted my ads in "Korean Dry Cleaner Monthly", should it? -
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