When high-tech corporations take the low road to cheaper labor

Portland Press Herald ^ | Nov 5, 2015 | Jonette Christian

[stephenjohnbanker]

The Disney Board would be a good start.

[Wolfie]

Face it...a srrong middle class is troublesome. People protest, get involved, and generally get in the way of the powers that be. That’s why it has to be gutted.

[Dick Bachert]

Thank you for those charts. They went into my IMMIGRATION IMAGES KEEPER FILE. Might I urge others to copy them as well because we’re going to need them — A LOT — in the coming days. Just pray that those with whom we share them READ and UNDERSTAND them.

[Rashputin]

Riiiight, the ends justify the means even when the means is impoverishing the US.

[Hugin]

And Ted Cruz wants to bring in five times as many tech coolies.

[stephenjohnbanker]

I know it, believe me.

[FourPeas]

There are several problems with this article.

And the replacements weren't "the best and the brightest" -- they had to be trained by the Americans they replaced.

Even "the best and the brightest" will need to be trained when joining a new IT/engineering department. Policies and procedures need to be learned. Documentation is often non-existent or out of date, so this is most effectively done by human training.

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His resume listed top-level skill certification and command of seven operating systems and 15 program languages.

This may sound impressive, but it's not that unusual. First, there's the issue of whether these are modern operating systems and programing languages or older, rarely used systems. Even if they are modern, most non-management (and many management) IT professionals have certs and/or have worked with many operating systems and programing languages. It's just part of the job. In addition, collecting certs in IT isn't necessarily all that difficult depending on the cert agency. Some are rigorous, many are not.

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paying its foreign workers $1.21 an hour to install computers, when the prevailing rate in Silicon Valley was $19 to $45 per hour

Yep, minimum wages cost jobs. Less, not more, government regulations are the answer. Businesses will use whatever loopholes they are afforded to lower their expenses.

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Only half of U.S. technology graduates find a technology-related job, while two-thirds of newly created science, technology, engineering and math jobs are filled by low-skilled foreign guest workers.

Without further details/definitions this stat is meaningless. Do we have a glut of graduates in one field and a shortfall in another? Do the US graduates have the same skill set that the foreign workers? What is meant by "low-skilled?" All training programs are not equal by any means.

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Finally, regarding outsourcing, there is good news. I've been involved with several companies that have outsourced Help Desk personnel and software development. All have found that the challenges of coordinating with people on the other side of the planet costs them more than it could ever save. Beyond the language and cultural challenges, there are security, timezone, implementation, personnel turnover and other issues that make outsourcing IT a hassle.

[Rockitz]

Is Ted Cruz still tone-deaf on this issue? Not much difference between cheap illegal low-tech labor and cheap legal high-tech labor in my book.

[Rockitz]

Seconding Dick Bachert’s comments on this excellent article from which you posted images. I will be sending it to my list of 100. It will get forwarded to another 1000 and to another 10,000 downstream. This is exactly why this is the most critical issue of this election cycle.

[TomasUSMC]

OUTSTANDING INFO ON THE RAPE OF AMERICAN WORKERS JOBS BY BOTH PARTIES, STEALING THE BEST JOBS AND GIVING THEM AWAY TO FOREIGNERS!!!