Microsoft is lying its a** off when it says it can’t fill positions with Americans. Filling a position with an H1B employee allows a company to trap an employee in the position while and until all H1B conditions are met. I’ve seen many employees get stuck in bad situations in this condition. My company does this intentionally also.
There are enough Americans easily available to do these jobs. The problem from the company’s perspective is that American’s won’t take the crap that comes along with the position, the crap being that you’re competing with slave labor companies in China that drive you out of the market.
Lumpy, cynical, middle-aged, white software veterans aren’t willing to work 70 hours a week for $45,000/year the way young, single Indian nationals are, and thus represent a poor economic value for Microsoft when the global labor arbitrage is taken into consideration. Microsoft’s threat is, “Hey, at least the H1B’s are doing the work here and paying US taxes...but we can do this in Bangalore, if you really, really want us to.” And government is likely to fall for that argument.
Yeah, I don’t think there is a shortage of American tech workers in the United States.
That’s a big lie in the Tech industry. It’s much more profitable to hire an Indian worker and pay them a meager salary than paying an American a 6 figure income.
I saw an ad on dice.com last year for what appeared to be someone to test software that runs GPS receivers.
To do it right is a non-trivial task.
The ad was offering $33 per hour. Contract. In LA.
That’s not even new-grad pay.
They were clearly trying to build justification for an H1B visa, for a guy who would share a one-bedroom apartment with three other guys, and send half his pay home to India or China.
All the while claiming “There are no qualified Americans to fill the job”, hiding the fact that that’s half the going rate for anyone who wants to be able to support a family.
I live right in the middle of flyover country looking for this talent everyday. There are 10 openings for every qualified C#/.NET developer and I'm including H1B applicants. There is a BIG shortage of this talent.