Lots of engineering and business majors get jobs at big corporations directly out of college, at least as relatively to very selective colleges. Why wouldn’t you expect to?
Who do you think is hiring chemical engineers or accounting majors? Not everyone works at Exxon or Ernst and Young, but they tend to be recruited by reasonably large companies because smaller companies can’t necessarily afford to hire people with little or no experience.
I studied business and engineering in undergrad and the only peers I know who didn’t work for large companies got jobs with startups or started their own companies. The only people I know working for small non-startups were Arts and Science majors and that’s just how their career track tends to go.
My first question is whether this master’s degree is from a good university. It’s one thing to get a graduate degree from Berkeley and not find a job; it’s another thing to get your sheepskin from ITT Tech and wonder why Google isn’t headhunting you.
Well, the OP didn’t say “a job at a big corporation” he said “a big corporate job” which to me, means more than an entry level engineering job.
Anyway, the OP is complaining about not finding a job, but I was under the impression of what you said, engineering majors are in high demand and get hired at big corporations after college. I just don’t believe they get “big corporate jobs” nor should they expect to get one.
You are misinterpreting the law. In the vast majority of cases, there is no requirement for an employer to demonstrate that there are no available U.S. workers in order to hire an H-1B worker. That’s only a requirement for the labor certification process (the first stage of the employment-based green card process for most people).
Think about what I typed. I said I couldn’t get a job at all. Of course I looked at entry level positions. Even if I were entitled like you say, I’d be on here complaining that as a “test engineer” I don’t get to design systems and basically just sit there and be a paperwork and script monkey. (ironically, the classmates of mine who did get such jobs describe daily routines like that)
Wow. So my complaint has serious validity. The reason big companies beg for quota increases is they say at hearings in Congress that they are short some huge number of tech workers. Yet they don’t even have to show this and really can just hire what are de facto indentured servants?
Employers want to hire people who have some experience or show they will make an effort. There are plenty of people willing to work any well-paying job. There are not necessarily plenty of people who are well qualified. What have you done that would convince an employer that you are well qualified?
I’m surprised they are importing all those H1Bs. I thought everyone figured out it’s cheaper to leave them in their own countries and send the development over there.
Companies can require you have any level of education or certification they want (so long as people are willing to work for them). I read one of the biggest complaints at Google is that everyone is overqualified because the demand to work there is so high. Like they have PhDs manning help desk phones. So that sort of begs the question of whether it’s better to work somewhere with super brand recognition or someplace no one has ever heard of that might actually give you real valuable experience.
Also “contract work” is “experience”. One of the realities of IT work is that unless you are supporting a product, much of it is project-based. Which means large companies that don’t perform IT as a core business tend to hire various types of transactional labor (temps, independing contractors, consultants, freelancers, offshoring and outsourcing firms and consulting firms). So the reality is that as a developer or engineer, you may be forced to be a contractor until such time you gain enough experience and qualifications to get into management.
There’s a 6-year cap on H-1B status unless you have reached a certain point in the green card process. At the end of the 6 years, you either have to find some other kind of immigration status or leave the U.S. H-1B workers aren’t indentured servants; they are free to move to other employers who are willing to sponsor them. And they are legally required to be paid the prevailing wage for the position, level, and geographical location, or what U.S. workers are being paid, whichever is higher.
In 15+ years, I have yet to prepare an H-1B petition for someone employed by a for-profit company who was making less than I make (and most H-1B workers are toward the beginning of their careers; by the time they have 15 years of experience, they have green cards). I have a master’s degree and 15+ years of experience in my field. Some indentured servitude.
Are there companies who game the system? Sure. Go ahead - throw the book at them. But they aren’t the majority by a long shot.
I wouldn’t say never. H1B status is, if anything, a negative. Not due to anything inherent in it, but because immigration is time consuming. Given otherwise equal candidates, with one that can start in a week and another that will need 6 weeks to get the immigration stuff in order, you can guess which one we choose.
Not to mention expensive. A couple grand in government filing fees alone, even if the employer has in-house staff to prepare the necessary legal documents (and staff cost money too).
At the time, I didn’t have any experience. How was I supposed to get some if no one would hire me? I did have friends that went to more elite schools, and those schools have internship programs. That wasn’t accessible to me.
One offer I did get was for a firm that would have me take a few weeks of classes and then they create a doctored resume - basically a series of lies - where I do have the 5 years experience. (I learned about this scam reading about it on linkedin, the company doesn’t advertise this). Employer calls to verify, the firm would lie “for me”.
If firms like this exist, this explains one reason why I had trouble find jobs - I wasn’t lying on my resume.
Anyways, I did ultimately solve the problem. I have done some real systems and have a bunch more in progress. I’ve done a lot more than my classmates, working 12 hour days for weeks on end to make it happen. And I get paid by the job, so I’ve made as much money as my classmates do in a year in 6 months.
One advantage to getting a Masters is that it gives you a couple more years for internships.
In my experience, internships are the easiest way to get a cushy corporate job. The entry requirements are lower than a full-time position, and yet in the end–if you aren’t a complete screw-up–you’re virtually guaranteed a full-time job.
I’ve done hundreds of interviews and there’s been no small number of candidates where the conclusion was “doesn’t quite meet our threshold for full-time, but if it were an internship we’d give him a chance.”
If there were some mechanism for a post-graduation trial period, we’d probably use that as well. But internships are what we’ve got and you have to be in school for them. Hence the value in postgraduate education.
True, though my position doesn’t see those expenses. We have to select among a group of candidates and ability to start quickly plays into that.
However, I expect that expense of flying in candidates for on-site interviews is a negative. A candidate has to be truly excellent (or have a personal recommendation) to justify the thousands it costs to bring someone in for an interview. There’s a big H1B filter before the candidate even arrives.
As far as I know, there’s no need for a school to have a dedicated internship program to be an intern. You won’t necessarily get school credits or anything for it, but you still get the experience and money.
It’s definitely easier if the school has one (there are a few schools that seem to be entirely dedicated to funneling their students into our internships), but not impossible.
Face it, H1B workers are cheaper. Maybe five years ago, they were limiting the number of permits and Microsoft set up a branch programming house in Vancouver and brought a bunch of foreign workers there (I have been in that Vancouver office). Then the US relented and that office is either closed or just reduced to a skeleton (I am not sure of this).
Yes, this is what I have concluded. My problem with this is the Federal government
Says Americans need to train in more STEM majors. I have 3 STEM degrees, one of them is the supposedly highly sought after computer engineering degree, yet it was crickets when I applied for jobs.
Spends vast sums of money to train Americans. I owe a lot of student loans.
Then gives special treatment to companies so they can bring in foreign workers to do my job instead. I don’t have a problem with the companies setting up offices in foreign countries and doing it that way - I can’t really expect America to police that. I do have a problem with them giving special incentives to take the jobs away from Americans.
Again, what in your resume demonstrated the ability to do these jobs? A bachelor’s degree doesn’t mean much in software. You need a master’s, internships, independent contracting - something that says you can program, not that you took a class.
What are these special incentives you think the companies are given? The privilege of H1B fees and dealing with all the legal crap? You might not like the increased competition. But you are competing on level ground or even a position of preference versus an H1B candidate. If you still can’t compete with them, put in the effort to make yourself better.
I get it that finding that first job out of school is really tough. That sucks. But when your takeaway from the experience is that you should have lied on your resume, not found an internship or taken a lower-level job to prove yourself, then you lose my sympathy.
If you don’t want to get a Master’s, that’s a perfectly valid choice. One of the reasons why there are so many more foreign students getting advanced science degrees is that when you do the math, it’s often not worth it if you have other options.
But these guys are better qualified than you. That’s the trade off. If you won’t do what it takes to get the experience and qualifications, you are less likely to get hired than the people who do.