Posted on 07/01/2020 4:19:11 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
If President Donald Trump can push his H-1B reforms into 2021, he will dramatically increase the marketplace power of U.S. college graduates, complains a top manager at the Fortune 500 business group the Conference Board.
If the [H-1B] suspension continues beyond 2020, recruiting high-quality tech workers could become much more difficult, wrote Gad Levanon, who heads the groups Labor Market Institute that has repeatedly recognized that a smaller supply of workers tends to raise wages and salaries.
Under Forbes headline, Tech Workers Were Already Hard To Find. The H-1B Visa Suspension Just Made Recruiting Them Even Harder, Levanon wrote:
Hundreds of thousands of foreigners will no longer be able to attain work in the U.S. as a result.Computer experts are likely to regain their hot commodity status in the next year or two, he wrote.This halt will deal a one-two punch to employers of computer-related occupations, which includes jobs such as software developers and computer systems analysts. First, people in this field receive the overwhelming majority of H-1B visas. Out of the nearly 400,000 H-1B petitions approved in fiscal year 2019, about two-thirds were in that line of work. Most went to software developers.
Second, computer-related workers are the one group for which the labor market will soon become tight again. When that happens, new foreign workers may be sorely missed.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
My public in-box is just now getting bombarded with IT jobs. Coincidence?
If American workers are all displaced by cheap foreign labor, then who will have any money with which to buy all of those high tech gadgets?
None of these high tech companies with their love of cheap foreign labor ever seem to consider that.
Where did I put those Fortran-77 & COBOL manuals?
I pay around $100.00 USD for service on 3 cell phones. $100.00 USD is what some in sub Saharan Africa make a month yet all those folk seem to have cell phones. How is that?
The ironic part is some of the biggest abusers of the H1-B visa program are Silicon Valley companies who are almost exclusively run by SJW Liberals...Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc......
...and our AA quota sheets get boosted when we hire brown people over white american kids.
Where I work (in Dallas). Africans from Africa are interviewed more often than local white kids from DFW for engineering jobs, because we don’t want a Poverty pimp shaking us down, because dallas is 40% minority and our engineering dept is only 20% minority.
As someone who works in Financial Services and has dealt with this issue repeatedly over my now thirty year long career I think I'm qualified to answer your question: Because it's not cheaper and the quality of work (software, labor, time to remedy issues, etc..) suffers horribly.
American high-tech workers are far more diverse in their skill-sets (generally speaking) vs. their India and other Asian counterparts. In the environments I've worked in, American information and high-tech workers are in-tune with business requirements and workflows whereas India and other Asian counterparts are not.
I can go on, but I point to these two specific things because they matter the most. Knowing how a business actually works vs. focusing on technical requirements (which is what I've seen the large India based outsourcing firms do) makes a dramatic difference in software usability and reliability from an end-user perspective. They have tremendous impacts to things like uptime, availability and reliability.
American information technology and high tech workers far more often than not maintain more diverse skill-sets across platforms and tools to craft solutions that work out of the box and are easy to mature vs. the "specialized" nature of India and Asia information technology workers who more often than not require far larger teams to accomplish tasks.
Those far larger teams may be cheaper per hour per individual however when taken as a whole, they are more expensive and they take more time to accomplish tasks.
The global financial services firm I work for outsourced three years ago. The promises of saving money lured the bean counters and business folks to shove 2/3rds of my IT friends out the door within 60 days of inking the outsourcing deal. After year one they wanted out of the contracts they signed with IBM, Infosys and WiPro because cost skyrocketed.
Our three year contracts expired in January of this year. Our CIO and CTO announced we are re-insourcing almost 1,000 highly paid jobs and cutting ties with Infosys and WiPro while leaving our very large mainframe complex managed by IBM because frankly, they have us by the balls.
Then the China Virus hit. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find and onboard people right now? Not because they're not out there, because finding and onboarding quality people right now is damn' tough. Onboarding in a remote-work scenario is not something my employer was fully setup to do.
And yet, our uptime, availability and reliability dramatically improved vs. Infosys and WiPro almost immediately after not renewing those contracts. Yes, it takes a little longer to implement new systems however they're done right without performance or downtime related issues (bugs, configuration issues) and our KPI's show it.
IMO one of the best things that's happening to this country is not allowing cheap foreign labor (which is NOT cheaper when properly accounted for!) to displace American workers in any industry. American workers are the best. Period.
NOT Bab Bee.
This headline/sub could read:
“Business leadrers complain US Policy helps US graduates
...admit H1B workers taking jobs from qualified US workers”
And nobody calls them on it.
Also the subheading could read:
“Software quality and resilience go up 1,000%”
So have your pigmentally impaired employees self-identify as people of color and/or any gender they fricking feel like.
Problem solved.
If a company has the guts...
Summary:
Spec: Put circle A in square box B
Overseas programmer: OK (proceeds to cut circle down into square)
US programmer: Does/will not work. Suggest we make the receptical circular or come up with the proper solution.
The limitations you describe in dealing with Indians and other Asians would seem to be applicable regardless of whether the Indian/Asian in question is working in Asia or in the U.S. So what advantage does a U.S. employer have in using these foreign workers regardless of where they are located?
A few years ago I left the best job I ever had because I got tired of dealing with corporate bullsh!t. So now I'm on my own.
I only hire family members and close friends. All other work is done by contractors. During this COVID-19 fiasco I have had the best four months I've ever had since I started my company. Meanwhile, my former employer has laid off 10% of its work force since March 1st.
Who is doing more to Make America Great Again here -- me or my former employer?
Re ibm mainframe management.
Nothing has changed in 40 years.
I remember when small environments had the box written with one length contract and the crts with a different length contract so the shop would be locked in forever because it could not afford to carry either contract and buy from a different vendor.
That’s a very good point. I was thinking more about software development and engineering work where personal information is generally not involved.
RAT run education in America has created generations of people who know very little. They have mostly been indoctrinated with social justice hogwash and are of very little use.
You see some of that product out acting like big babies and self righteous idiots causing havoc all over the place.
Education is America is a disgrace and so unfair to the young. They have been cheated and abused. Kids of politicians and the very wealthy get to escape the abuse of those that have destroyed American education.
“Why would a U.S. employer bother hiring Americans or even H-1B immigrants if its easier and cheaper to do the work in India or the Philippines?”
The intent of slowing the influx of foreign workers is to create American opportunities for American people. According to Investopedia, “it is estimated this change will result in only a 16% increase (5,340 workers) in the number of U.S. advanced degree holders selected each year.” But even that little an adjustment will force the market into a more competitive employment balance.
Furthermore, earmarking visas by employment positions to certain people, and not allowing the market to be free to handle its own needs, creates a monopoly in employment opportunities and visa chances for other immigrants wishing to come into the country legally by assuming someone other than the Hi-B applicants are not computer capable. Not every immigrant attempting to get in is trying to get on welfare.
This type of program is no different than anchor babies, DACA, and ignoring the rules for migrant employees like when they are supposed to voluntarily depart the country, and the “sanctuary city” comes into effect as ICE is forced to activate. After all, when their H1-B visa expires and they are no longer eligible to stay here, if they don’t leave, are they any different than the border jumpers? And it affords the companies using them with a steady supply of cheap “throw away” labor they can replace at will. And then the US is faced with illegals that were brought in with the illusion of permanentcy but now are just an overage with nothing but existence and their hands out.
rwood
rwood
Thanks for re-pointing that out, I missed answering it.
The answer is NONE. I equate H1B's to exploited labor, irrespective of where they are. If they are here in the U.S. they practically LIVE in the office. The hours they put in to accomplish tasks are far above and beyond that which their American counterparts put in to accomplish the same task(s.) This is due to the reasons I cited above.
Bringing an India worker here to the US carries with it the "promise" that family can follow, take jobs in America and displace even more American workers. This practice must stop.
Bringing an India worker here to the US also carries with it the "threat" that unless they meet requirements without respect to the hours they have to put in, they'll be sent back and replaced is also a practice that must be stopped.
IMO, H1B's are exploited labor.
Our mainframe complex is quite large and across three data centers. Complicating things our mainframe staff was hitting retirement age and finding qualified people to replace them was tough here in the Chicago area. That was a huge driver in our decision to outsource it to IBM.
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