Stink:
If you think companies are making a bad business decison by “overpaying executives and outsourcing IT type jobs”, you should start a competing company that does the opposite and put them out of business.
Think of it as a Zen thing-- the more you fight it, the more it’s going to get to you. It’s going to happen, and the sooner you deal with it the better off you’ll be.
From my experience working as an IT consultant, there seemed to be two types of IT professionals. There are good ones who really know what they are doing and then there are the kids right out of an MIS program who went through a week of just-in-time training in VB or Crystal Reports.
I am guessing that companies either
a) doesn’t need untrained or barely trained professionals anymore
or
b) would rather pay some kid who takes twice as long half as much as a qualified professional
Well, someone told me 6-7 years back, that entertainment and education would be the core and perpetual thriving industries. While that may not remain true in 500 years, it certainly rings true for the next 50 years.
Read the cites in the link I posted originally. That may be the theory, but it doesn’t work that way in practice.
Again, I maintain that this is an enforcement issue, not an issue of the ethical justifiability of the H-1B category.
I think Stinkpalm has a valid complaint. In their rush to sell inexpensive products and maximize profit, corporations have lost sight of the fact that there need to be consumers who earn enough money to have disposable income, to be able to buy those products.
Only when the dearth of well paid jobs becomes so severe that it results in a consumer drain, will the trend reverse itself.
I work at a company with quite a few H-1Bs, in IT jobs and other areas, and there’s a couple reasons for that, none of which have to do with them being cheaper, because they’re not. We pay them the same rate we pay Americans, and there’s a higher overhead with them because we handle their immigration costs.
The reasons we have a bunch of H-1Bs are:[list=1][li] We’re located outside of a major metropolitan area, and it’s really hard to find qualified, skilled American employees for those positions; no one wants to move from downtown Seattle to Assboink, Idaho. It seems like everyone with a bachelor’s degree thinks a city of 500,000 is too small for them. We get local applicants from a city of 80,000 who are underqualified, underexperienced, and haven’t worked out in the past. In contrast, most of our H-1Bs are very happy to go from a good university to a much smaller urban area for a decent job.[/li][li] We hire H-1Bs, and they have foreign friends looking for jobs who are similarly qualified. Most of the job market is hidden, meaning that you have to know someone to find the job in the first place. When we have a position open, we grab someone who we think will do well, without a lot of the fruitless formalities of the want ads. If that friend-of-a-friend needs an H-1B to take a job with us, we get them one.[/li][li] The H-1Bs we have tend to work harder than the Americans. I’m not saying Americans are lazy, I’m saying that someone 10,000 miles from home is more motivated to keep a job and to advance, especially when they have family back home pressuring them to succeed on their own.[/li][/list=1]Having said all that, it’s not H-1Bs you’re competing with. H-1Bs are filling up the jobs that Americans won’t take–the IT jobs at manufacturers of commodity goods, the DBA positions at insurance companies and shoe store chains, the sysadmins at the local lumber mill. The problem is inflated expectations.
8 weeks vacation? It is to laugh.
I will take that job out in urban Idaho.
I will agree with the 8 weeks vacation being really high. Although in the military if you don’t take leave your first year you will have 8 weeks the next, up to 12 weeks if you dont take any for 3 years. But I also worked six 12’s a week for 6 months in Kuwait so that may be why.
My former employer is a good example of the kind of business Stinkpalm is talking about.
The business (3 letter name, starts with an E…?) has been making money hand over fist. They have been cutting costs through lay offs at an unheard of level. They have been shunting as much of their processing work over to Chenai, India as they can get away with.
Earning reports, however, continue to dog them. They haven’t met an earning report prediction in quite some time. Each time this happens, the stock price tanks. They have dropped almost 50% in the past 2 years.
The CEO, however, continues to make a $55 million dollar salary. This isn’t counting stock option, living expenses, or the ton of other perks.
On a side note, I’ve been temping now for over a year. There is nothing out there for what I do. This could be related to issues like Nepotism (rampant in the business) or “old boy network” type deals, but it’s no matter to me. I’m 27, and have no health insurance.
I’m going to go to school, and become a Medical Assistant. Screw the tech biz.
I just got a call from another IT friend yesterday. I worked with him for several years. Laid off, looking for a job.
Screw the eight week vacation! I don’t know anyone who has one! These guys just want a job. They’re not the prissy coddled self-appointed elite most of the above posts make them out to be. They’re guys with families who need the work, and there arecplenty of them. It costs you more to pay for the visa? Hire the out-of-work guys and save the expense. They’re qualified.
You realize that this goes against the idea of H-1B legislation, don’t you. The philosophy is that H-1B visa holders aren’t supposed to take jobs that might go to Americans, and that you’re supposed to make a reasonable effort to find qualified folks already here. What you’ve just told us is that the system is not, in fact, functioning the way it’s supposed to. I gues that’s just another “enforcement” issue.
As I said in the point prior to this one, we are constantly failing to find qualified Americans to do the jobs, and the thing I blame most is our location–we’re too far from a major urban center, and most Americans turn their nose up at us, when they even notice our want ads. It seems the only people who want to or are willing to work in small towns and cities are people from those cities, and they’re usually woefully underqualified.
The hidden job market isn’t about H-1Bs. That’s the situation everywhere.
Let me add something else about my employer’s experience with recruiting and H-1Bs: two years ago (well after the dotcom bubble burst) we used a recruiter, located in the nearest large urban center (3MM in the greater area) to fill an IT position; the only requirement was a bachelor’s in Computer Science or equivalent. Not one person who got referred to us had one. Not one. Lots of guys who’d had web flunky jobs at the tail end of the boom; one 45 year old Russian woman who’d taught at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Finally, one of the H-1Bs had a friend from school with a BSEE, who got the job. That’s why we have a bunch of H-1Bs, most of whom are in Operations (i.e., distribution, production planning, business planning), not IT.
Umm, actually, for an H-1B there is no legal requirement to search for U.S. workers (there generally is at the green card stage, however), unless your company is “dependent” on H-1B workers, which is generally defined as having more than 15% H-1B holders in your workforce.
Again, if a company is following the rules, there is NO incentive to hire an H-1B worker over an American, unless that person is more qualified or you can’t find qualified Americans for the position. It’s expensive and a pain in the ass to deal with the immigration system, trust me. It’s what keeps me gainfully employed.
Yes, and you’ll note that I was careful not to say that there was such a requirement. But it certainly is alien to the philosophy of the act, and it is apparently brought up in discussions about it and rhetoric that H-1B visa holders aren’t “taking away American Jobs”.
All I know is that my unemployed friends – no slackers they – see things very differently than those posting above. One of them’s been out of work for over a year.
A lot of posters have made valid points. CalMeachem et al, there is a BIG difference between hiring H1-B workers and out-sourcing work to another country. Methinks you might be complaining about the latter because let me tell you that
(a) Most H1-B workers get paid on the same scale as US citizens
(b) They were hired in large numbers in the recent boom because there just weren’t enough workers domestically but a lot of them were fired once the bubble burst
© Right now, the quota is not even close to be being filled. Suffice it to say that the legal costs of hiring one in such a terrible economy pretty much explains why companies explicitly prohibit temporary visa holders from applying. It is ridiculous to complain that you are losing your job to temporary visa holders because in the current economy temporary visa holders are not even considered for a great many positions.
Which means your grievance lies with globalization. Do you know how many domestic companies in various countries have been run out of business by MNCs? Unless you severely legislate and restrict trade, there is no other way to stop this force.
Even though the thread is bobbing and weaving, I was drawn to the title question about globalization.
In about 1812, President Jefferson abolished the National Bank, and with it, the lynchpin of our system. The result is looming like a mushroom cloud now.
Our founders were experts on corruption and it seems that they weren’t really inclined to burden their kids with the art, since they had risked it all to get away.
The National Bank was established to handle the corruption problem.
My simple minded understanding is this: the National Bank was to be run by the citizens through their elected officials. Low interest loans were available for infrastructure or whatever the citizens decided was necessary. Their elected reps were to vote the way their constituency instructed.
For those who wanted to play the inflationary/speculative/bloodshirsty game of money lust, they could… and be kept from draining the core financial needs of the country. Noone would be doomed to living on the street because they weren’t kewl enough to justify their existence.
I’m not at all competitive and I have suffered greatly for always stepping aside so someone could go ahead. I’m nearly at the bottom of the food chain now, but I like myself; I live by the golden rule.
As I was saying, closing the bank pretty much disembowled Congress, it seems to me and cut citizens off totally.
Why did he do that? Oh, duh! Maybe the private money from England and Europe belonged to his friends.
Bess
Why on Earth would someone do something like that? If you are unwilling to compete, you have no one to blame but yourself for coming in last.
Other than that, a lot has happened to the banking system since 1812. You might want to get up to date.