Replies

>> I’ve never seen them to depress my wages or the wages of citizens around me. <<

That’s really funny.

>> Everywhere I’ve worked (Chicagoland and midwest) there is a shortage of IT workers <<

Really, because I work in IT, too. I happen to be smack dab right in the middle of where that trillion dollars of “stimulus” is heading, and am very safe in my job, but I have dabbled in looking elsewhere, and I just don’t see listings. But we’re in a bad economy right now, so that’s not too reliable. It just means I don’t trust your anecdotes either way.

There was a day when meat packing was a job which would bring in about $50/hr (today’s money), plenty to retire on when the inevitable damage to the human body over-ran the ability to work. Then they brought in immigrants, and meatpackers make about $6 an hour.

When my brother worked in construction, he could pull down $100/ hr. Then they brought in immigrants; his old job (he switched careers) would pay about $6 an hour.

I studied IS instead of CS at the graduate level. Why? Because CS salaries were already declining. (It’s harder to offshore IS; CS can do everything via email.)

There are other options, such as attract more domestic innovation by paying better, develop domestic workforces (all the grad assistantships go to people who struggle to communicate). Besides, what’s so terrible about offshoring the project? The same jobs which are low-pay here are comparably high-pay there, so BOTH countries see an increase in per-capita income; we continue a domestic resource development, and they have seed capital to develop their own markets, which we can then also trade with.

>> But the biggest reason for a wide variance in wages is negotiating ability. <<

A-ha... you just said a mouthful. Now, consider the impact of your employer being able to force you to leave your new country at will.

If I have developed a few prejudices, one of the biggest is in favor of Indian people. My wife has a horror story or two, but I’ve never met one I didn’t like. If there’s a flaw in my relationship with Indians, it’s that I rather presumptively figure we’re going to get along great. Another huge source of H1-Bs is Philippino nurses. You want to talk a people who are devoted to Christ, and who are beautifully charitable! If I were to name the people I would expect would be the first in Heaven among my acquaintances, the top of the list would be jammed with Philippinos. Then there’s African priests, who are giving the American Catholic Church a much-needed re-evangelization.

But be that as it may, there’s still a tremendous amount of abuse in the H1-B program, resulting in greatly artificially large demand. I’m not saying scrap the program altogther, but huge reform is desperately needed.

I have dabbled in looking elsewhere, and I just don’t see listings

As I said, my yahoo inbox is filled every week with emails from recruiters begging me to take some IT job that they are having a hard time filling. Because I've always worked in the Midwest (MO, KS, MN a few, Chicagoland many) it's natural that I get a lot from this area.

Michigan had many up thru 2007. In 2008-08 it disappeared. But in late 2009 and now in 2010 it is coming back. Recruiters say they can't find anyone who wants to work in Michigan. (That includes me, of course.)

In addition there seem to be many IT openings DC to FL up through TN, AK, TX on the way to AZ.

I've never understood why, regardless of the economy, I never see jobs from Baltimore to PA,NY,MA nor CA,OR,WA.

The job market is like musical chairs. Over 10% of a typical IT shop hop for a better job every year. (Seemed like more than 10% in my shop last year.) That leaves jobs open for others. When they hop their old jobs become open.

Here in IL one IT shop announced that it was laying off 123 IT workers. Immediately two other IT shops said they would hire every single one of them that was willing to come over.

Job hopping for a better spot seems to account for many more empty chairs in the game than the addition or subtraction of chairs by boom and bust.

I'm not sure how much technology trends have to do with it. COBOL/DB2/SQL are my skill and always in high demand. Java, networking and column based databases seem to be in high demand. VB/.net/MS skills have low demand and by the law of supply and demand, probably don't pay as well.

You'd think people in IT would think logically. But in fact IT is very much driven by fads that defy logic. It seems that every month there is a new trend du jour, only to be replaced the next month by the newest hype from the marketing departments.

I think we can all expect that there will be a massive need for IT workers in the shops that need to keep up with the massive number of changes that we can expect will come out of the hundreds of new government regulatory agencies, commissions, committees, boards, etc. As my daughter said, she thinks Obamacare is bad for the US. But it is great for her short term employment prospects.