Posted on 04/06/2007 9:16:11 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - T.J. Rodgers, chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor Corp., had a simple solution to the hassles of getting visas for foreign engineers he needed to run his $1 billion business.
"When I hire an Indian PhD today, I hire him in Bangalore, not San Jose. Now I can hire all I want and not have to worry about the vagaries of government decrees," Rodgers said.
"They've made it less tenable to do business here, so we do business elsewhere," Rodgers told Reuters in an interview.
News this week that the U.S. immigration service hit its annual quota for skilled worker visas in one day highlighted what Rodgers and other executives said is the need for reform of a system overwhelmed by New Economy hiring demands.
On Monday, the first day people could apply for the next round of H-1B visas that allow skilled foreigners to work in the United States, authorities were flooded with a record number of applications -- more than 150,000.
The government plans to grant 65,000 H-1B visas to those who hold the equivalent of an undergraduate degree and have expertise in a specialized field. Another 20,000 visas will go to people with advanced degrees.
Executives say the chronic shortage of American engineers, programmers and scientists is forcing many companies to expand overseas, while also squeezing smaller companies that do not have the money for such expansion.
"The problem, obviously, is that not every company has that ability to relocate people overseas," said Robert Hoffman, vice president of government affairs for business software maker Oracle Corp..
"A lot of small companies rely on H-1Bs. A lot of companies were started by those who were here on H-1Bs," said Hoffman, who is also co-chair of Compete America, an industry group that advocates easier rules on foreign workers.
There are also those on the other side of the fence who say the current system is not strict enough and that fewer foreign workers should be allowed in because they are taking jobs away from qualified U.S. citizens.
"The problem is that there are not enough skilled workers at ten to twenty thousand dollars below the market rate. That's the reason why these companies love these visas," said John Miano, founder of The Programmers Guild.
Guild president Kim Berry added by e-mail: "The fact that the cap was reached in one day indicates how important a cap is. The software job market is flat, and has been so for many years. If there were no cap, people would flood in until we were reduced to begging for day programming work."
Companies such as Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, counter that they often pay more to hire foreign workers since legal fees can run well over $10,000 per person.
"If we're not able to hire these people, it puts increasing pressure on us and other companies to do that work abroad. It has the perverse impact of encouraging off-shoring," said Jack Krumholtz, head of Microsoft's Washington, D.C. office.
Last month, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates urged Congress to find ways to keep foreign students in the United States and help speed skilled foreigners obtain permanent residency.
"I see the negative effects of these policies every day at Microsoft," Gates said.
Navneet Chugh, an attorney with The Chugh Firm, a Los Angeles-based law firm representing about 50 Indian companies doing business in the United States, said the visa limits meant American companies will increasingly turn to off-shoring.
"The IT environment in the United States and the IT manpower in India are two balloons tied to each other. When one is squeezed the air goes to the other. When the U.S. is unable to import software engineers, more work will go to India," Chugh added.
(Additional reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston)
Cypress Semiconductor Corporation Chief Executive Officer T.J. Rodgers speaks at the Reuters Semiconductor Industry Summit in San Francisco, California, in this file photo from November 3, 2005. Rodgers says he has a simple solution to the hassles of getting visas for foreign engineers he needed to run his $1 billion business. (Kimberly White/Reuters)
Ping.
And the reason why he is hiring Indians rather than Americans is that Americans figured out a long time ago that they are better off getting a law degree and suing him than trusting him not to fire them.
This weasel and his ilk have done irreparable harm to the American work ethic because they continually deal with their workers in bad faith. Too many good, solid workers have been laid off for even the most transitory reasons.
I have even seen people fired and rehired within two weeks so some turd of an executive could get a bonus for cutting costs. I have seen people put their lives on hold to to make an unrealistic schedule set by clueless management only to be fired the minute the product goes out the door.
This guy and those like him are going to India because the Indians here have figured out they can't trust him.
Bill
God forbid the greedy SOB’s hire people who can quit without fear of deportation.
/sarc
Maybe it's time to start offering tax breaks based on the percentage of employees a company has working in the United States versus elsewhere.
This weasel and his ilk have done irreparable harm to the American work ethic because they continually deal with their workers in bad faith. Too many good, solid workers have been laid off for even the most transitory reasons.
I believe in a free market and competition, but I also agree with your comment. I own a little stock in Cypress and really do get bad vibes from this guy.
I can well imagine that if you'd say to this guy, "hey, why does the work have to go to India? Why don't you hire US engineers?", he'd just look at you like you asked him to hire your dog.
Not to mention that they get the same amount of productivity for 75% less [wages, bennies etc.]
There are essentially two types in business: The guy who knows that by providing direction and leadership to talented people he can create wealth and the guy who thinks innovation springs from his genius and that if he can just flog the lazy oafs hard enough he just might manage to make his genius known to the world.
Good leaders lead a team to victory, success, and reward.
Bad leaders live in the constant fear of everyone else, always suspecting they aren't getting their due. Deep down they know they aren't that good and they overcompensate by constantly punishing anyone who threatens them with competence.
The flight of jobs to India is an indictment of incompetent business leaders who want to keep the talent as far from themselves as possible to make sure everyone knows they deserve all the credit.
Having worked in that situation, I can guarantee you they aren't getting anywhere near the same productivity. And the problem is not with the Indians.
First of all, talent largely takes care of itself. What that means is that when you hire a technology professional, chances are he is competent and motivated. Studies pretty much prove that point: This is a well sourced fact.
The problem is in the management of that professional. No matter how good he is, if he is asked to turn out worthless crap or placed in a hostile, negative or dysfunctional work environment he will be powerless to create a marketable product.
OK, so a company that can't manage the technical professionals in their own building decides to outsource 12 timezones away in a different culture and language. Now class, has the management problem been made easier or harder?
It doesn't really matter that the Indians are cheaper, that really isn't the problem in the first place. The problem isn't with the cost effectiveness of the American worker, it is with the managerial competence in the company in question.
The companies that could pull of managing a technical project on the other side of the globe generally don't feel a need to. And the ones who think it will solve all their problems are just reloading to shoot themselves in the other foot.
It sounds like both of you might be quite happy with the German way of doing things. We treat our workers as human beings. Problem is the inflexibility of the job market means we have 9% unemployment. There is a difficult balance to be met. Hard to say which is better.
We need a revitalization of the trades in public education. We’ve been socialized that “blue collar” work is somehow for an underclass. We need to break the socialist union control from the trades and incorporate into our public schools.
Always has been.
Always will.
And it is people like THIS who reside and preside at the top of that pyramid.
And piss all over the others down below them.
Very well put. I’ve worked for several Fortune 100 companies that outsourced to India. They get an immediate short term return in that their bottom line looks good at the next quarterly report to the stockholders. Maybe, if they are lucky, the bottom line looks good (or better) at the year end report too. Mid-term, the outsourcing costs and ineffeciencies start to catch up with them and actually show in the bottom line and in customer satisfaction. I could never see any focus beyong the next 12 months in any of these companies - I have always blamed it on the fact that management’s compensation is based on the stock price and they look no further than manipulation of that price - certainly not even as far as the long-term good of the company they manage.
A small example...customer’s brand new pc quits. I provide third party IT services to small and medium sized companies without their own IT staff or with limited staff. I go look at the computer, call the manufacturer for warranty support. Any Indian (Soloman with a very strong accent) reads through a script - he would become very impatient with me when I said something that deviated from his script. Finally I gave up and we plodded through the script. The company sends a new hard drive. It doesn’t fix the problem as I knew it would not. We plod through the whole warranty support phone call again - this time with a Bill whose accent is so thick I had to ask him to repeat everything two and three times. His frustation was so complete, that I finally persuaded him to transfer me to a supervisor. The supervisor is in Atlanta, GA, can you believe that. Spoke normal southern american english and we sorted out the problem in less than 3 minutes. The customer - the whole process cost him a week’s down time during his busiest season (accountant) and he’ll never buy another computer from that company again. On top of that, he paid me to manage this process as he felt too intimidated to do it himself - quite rightly I might add. What did that save the company who makes that computer - certainly not the customer - who has now instructed me to purchase the new server and machines from another vendor and who will bad mouth the company to everyone he knows. Not only that the company had to ship parts overnight twice in an effort to fix the computer when an accurate diagnosis of the problem would have meant only one shipment of parts and possibly a happy customer.
Good IT people are like diamonds. There is no shortage at all in this country. You just might not like what you have to pay to get one. So these greedy SOB’s want to flood the market.
Well, I don't think legislation will fix this. CEOs looking for the quick fix, free lunch, etc are just bad CEOs. No amount of legislation will turn them into good CEOs.
The best thing a worker can do is figure out when they are working for a good CEO and stay there. And when you realize that you are working for some chump looking to take his next bonus out of your paycheck, move on.
Similarly, the quality of a company's management often seems to be inversely proportional to the compensation of its management. Companies that pay exhorbitant sums to management are overcompensating for a lack of managerial competence and simply trying to buy something that generally isn't for sale: Wisdom.
People looking to pay too little or too much for something are simply being foolish. The market can be fooled, but only temporarily.
I worked for a company 27 years ago and they replaced American engineers making $35,000 with Indian Engineers making $17,000 per year.
They ultimately went Banckrupt.
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