Posted on 02/19/2017 1:35:05 PM PST by Tours
Many years ago, I worked print & tape I/O for a large company which shall remain nameless. Print/tape was a tiny department under Company IT, but not a degreed part, as it mostly involved schlep work. The primary requirements that I recall were diploma/GED & ability to lift 50 lbs.
Eventually I found myself loaned out to Legal Dept, then finally the sole printer for Legal. I trained the 2 Legal IT guys to cover my vacation/sick/personal outages. They were none too happy to be stuck covering, as my job was sort of beneath them & no fun babysitting the machine added to their other responsibilities.
Then one of their primary duties, prepping/running IT at trial sites, which could take place country-wide, was handed off to Company IT. They had to train the very people who took over that part of their job. But then again, they got in on the ground level of *virtual* printing, a new technology being programmed for Legal by a contract employee (American, if you’re wondering).
The day came when the few Company employees left were downsized. Not just employees, but entire departments.
What was left of my job went to the 2 Legal IT guys who became contractors among the rest left on the floor; the actual Company IT department had to train the foreign workers who took their jobs, or lose out on the separation benefits package.
All that was eight years ago. Pardon my bitterness for not keeping in touch.
Just a couple weeks ago, I ran into a former coworker. She had been one of the contract workers who made up the majority of my coworkers *before* the Company ditched Legal. She had left voluntarily for a sanity break; to my surprise, several other long-timer temps left for better despite the overall lousy economy.
I’m mildly curious as to how that foreigner crap is working out for them, but don’t care to find out. No relevance to my life at this point.
In passing, I will say that if I call the 800-number customer service for my credit union, I get stuck w/ some foreigner trying to promote an additional service in heavily-accented English. However if I find & call the local branch number provided on my original account paperwork, I indeed speak w/ a local at my own branch who handles my request & doesn’t waste my time.
At a third of my former compensation, I’ve managed to cling tooth & nail to my mortgage. (If I had to return to living in multi-unit housing I’d lose what’s left of my mind.)
In my current job as a security guard, it’s all I can do to contend w/ micro-mismanagement from an Administrative office so divorced from Operations that instead of recognizing they only have jobs because we do, up & lost the very contract that was their job to massage & renew. Oops. This has not discouraged them from continuing to (mis)lead from the top, going by the most recent set of messages from on high delivered this evening. *sigh*
Neponset River, eh?
You have my sympathy. That region is the worst of the major US tech markets.
Hold onto that tech job for dear life, there may not be another anytime soon.
Unfortunately, a lot of Tech Workers are hard left Democrat.
My experience with Apu is to simply ignore what he’s offering.
Most of the time, you can figure out what company Apu is hawking, simply by running portions of the job description through Google.
There’s a solution to this. Legislation will curtail misuse. Simply require H1b employees to be paid 5 times the highest paid American employee in that industry. Any company needing unobtainably skilled employees should have to pay handsomely for the find, not receive it for a bargain.
Companies would just claim the “supervisor” is some low paid HR flunky, while the high paid “project leader” is not an H1B employee.
Making H1B visa workers more expensive than American workers would only work if they absolutely need to be onsite. As the article notes, many of the jobs are simply performed remotely in other countries. Remote work could be curbed by deeming any access to American-based software or systems illegal just as certain technology export embargoes exist.
The only way to really keep American tech jobs for Americans is for the IRS and BLR to dig into all foreign operations and foreign service providers to American companies. Then collect a tax equal to the difference in cost of those workers compared to American workers. If an American worker would cost $100K including benefits and payroll taxes while the employee of the foreign service provider is being paid only $50K, then there is a $50K IRS tax due on that worker.
Bottom line is that the company must not be able to reduce costs by employing foreign labor, whether that is H1V workers in America or simply workers in other countries.
The fact that they say they need so many foreign workers speaks volumes about or society/education system.
I’m 1 of 3 Americans in the IT department out of 75.
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