The large international bank I work for is directly replacing American IT workers with H1B’s, and has been doing it for three years.
For every American worker they’re displacing, three Indian H1B’s are brought in the door. Those Indian workers are working two and three people to a cube and are working pretty much seven days a week.
They’re afraid to complain because the bank holds their H1B, and they don’t want to get sent back.
It’s taking three of them to fill one American workers IT slot because the Indian workers are all specialized, whereas my American counterparts all have/had multiple specialties.
Anyone who says there’s a skills shortage in IT is full of shit.
This is all about displacing American workers to drive wages down. I work in the Chicago IT market where unemployment in IT is still over 6.5 percent. I know more people who are far smarter than I who haven’t been able to find full time work in IT for more than two years. These are people with Masters degrees and 20+ years of experience. They’re not low skilled or outdated skills either.
Some may complain they can’t find skilled workers in places like Kentucky for example, but the reality is in most urban cities that I’m familiar with, American IT workers are not in short supply, quite the contrary. Wage stagflation in this industry is horrible too. I’ve been very fortunate that I haven’t lost my job in this recession (yes, we’ve been in one since July of 2008) however I’m stiill making what I made almost ten years ago. So is most everyone else I know in this market. One sign of a labor shortage in any industry is rising wages. That’s Economics 101, and it isn’t happening here.
STEM labor shortage my ass!!!!!
BTTT!
Got one who knows iOS, Android, and/or Win8/JavaScript, along with JSON, XML, plus suitable UI and mobile data skills? who can handle fast-paced requirements & deadlines, big-client (a la Fortune 50) demands, graceful under pressure, and needs no hand-holding? willing to work near Atlanta? We're having a tough time finding them.
Just because someone is smart and "works in IT" doesn't mean they're ready to drop in to any technical opening.