Suit: Sun fired US workers to hire lower-paid Indians

Boston Globe ^ | March 18, 2003 | Hiawatha Bray

[sarcasm]

The lawsuit, for which class-action status is being sought, is certain to intensify an already fierce debate between technology companies and American engineers over the future of the H-1B visa program. Such visas let companies temporarily bring foreign workers into the United States.

[techworker]

While I agree with most of what you said the Sun Chairman is a staunch Republican and outspoken supporter of Bush. Ironically M$ Chairman is much more liberal despite the hordes or "Rush-ies" defending his firm.

[dark_lord]

Add Python, PHP, and Apache, and you'll be prosperous.

Define prosperous. Someone who is proficient in those skills in the Chicago area gets paid about $35/hr as a contractor. Contractors work about 8 months of the year - the rest of the time they are between jobs - sewing together 3 or 4 contracts of 2 months each (for those skill sets.) Plus they work overtime but can only bill 40 hrs a week. So they make about $45K per year - but have to pay benefits out of their own pockets. No 401K. No pension. If you have a family (and most older people do) then subtract $10K year for dental, health, and life insurance. So now the income is $35K per year - before taxes. For those skills.

Reality - that is not prosperous. It is not dirt - but not prosperous.

[Citizen of the Savage Nation]

I suppose you're right. Here's the kicker...looking on that list o' french companies to boycott, there seems to be more than a few of them that have operations here in the US, employ Americans, and add companies like BMW, Mercedes, and Philips into the mix...all of whom employ expensive American and European labor, and yet, get this...at the same time actually earn money!! And keep your pants on, because here's the good part...these companies can do all of this yet good old fashioned American companies have to cry to Uncle Sugar for more H1B's and then run off to Bangladesh for the groundbreaking for the latest design center...at some point you have to wonder why US executives suck so much, and maybe they and all their millions should be the ones outsourced to a guy in Calcutta who could do a better job for 5 cents on the dollar.

As much as I detest the frogs, Michelin is here in the US and employing American workers, as is Philips, and Thompson Electric, and BMW, and Nissan, and Toyota...what's going on here?

[clamper1797]

PDP-11 assembler

That probably went well with the TPA-70. You probably know DCL (Dec Command Lanquage) and worked on a uVAX (like I did). High IQ people huh ??? You mean like ... Mensans (like me again)

[_Jim]

You probably know DCL (Dec Command Lanquage) and worked on a uVAX

How about the "SCI" (system command interpreter language instead of DCL) and making 'supervisor calls' passing both LUNO's and GLUNO's as args (Logical Unit Numbers and Global LUNO's) ...

[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

Shipping engineering work to off-shore sites (especially India) is becoming more and more common.

There is a bigger problem then just lost wages.

I'm extremely concerned about how this country is going to maintain its technical edge if we don't train the next generation of engineer from American stock.

[NP-INCOMPLETE]

Well, all engineers have to update themselves. You can't live on 1 single skill forever.

[Poohbah]

I'm extremely concerned about how this country is going to maintain its technical edge if we don't train the next generation of engineer from American stock.

We're too busy teaching the next generation of lawyer to sue the next generation engineer's employer because the next generation idiot decided to misuse the product...

[_Jim]

Shipping engineering work to off-shore sites

Sorta depends on the 'job' being shipped off-shore - a lot of the design work for new consumer product entails recursive use of EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools like from Ansoft, Sonnet and HP/EESOF has just about ritualized the so-called 'design' of many products - down load the libraries for the parts under consideration then load them into the circuit simulator or system simulator of your choice, choose some setup/initial bias conditions then 'run' the device on your desktop ...

Anymore, it comes down to a knowledge of those tools coupled with keeping-up with the lastest 'buzz' in device simulation and modeling ...

[_Jim]

one time I was doing a code review of some application going to test and he actually wrote out about 10-20 lines of Java to change the sign ...

LOL!

Having teethed on a Z80 (which doesn't even have a hardware multiply or divide!) w/coding in assembly makes me appreciate those less-verbose, 'clock-cycle stealing' solutions!

[eno_]

Actually the TPA70 was NOT a PDP-11 clone. TPA later did clone the PDP-11, as did a Czech company. I've got a manual buried somewhere with my VAX manuals. Never did too many DEC OSs. I was doing BSD Unix on VAXen.

Yeah, mensans are welcome.

[RnMomof7]

lawsuit filed yesterday in California alleges computer giant Sun Microsystems Inc. laid off thousands of American high-tech workers in order to replace them with younger, lower-paid engineers from India.

Sun was started by an Indian Engineer.

I do not see what all the fuss is about we send blue coller jobs to Mexico and China and we bring workers to America to do the jobs more cheaply than Americans..that is free trade at its finest!

[clamper1797]

You go back a ways my friend .... :<). I remember using paper tape and I still have several big mag tapes from the VAX in my garage. I'm sure that "Adventure" is on one of them ...