Replies

1) H1B workers can't speak English. They have grave difficulties in communicating with colleagues, users, and the public.
2) H1B workers suck. They can't get the job done without serious handholding.
3) I have never met an exception to (1) and (2) and I've worked with a lot of them.

Businesses that rely on these are making a huge mistake and will pay for it eventually by going down the tubes.

The first company I was with had H1Bs, they kicked butt. 3 of the 5 best programmers I've ever worked with were H1Bs (the two worst were Americans raised in France and Sweden). Communication wasn't an issue, most bug discussion are in tech-talk anyway what accent it has doesn't matter too much.

Like so many things in life, especially those that revolve around personalities, your milage may vary.

Businesses that rely on these are making a huge mistake and will pay for it eventually by going down the tubes.

I have worked in an environment where the H1Bs came in several years later in mass, mostly Indians. When that happened, I discovered that 80% of them were almost impossible to communicate with, about half were extremely rude (they would not even try to speak English when an American walked into the room), and well over half were below par in capabilities.

In fact, I even wanted to go up to some of them, shake them by the neck and say, "Did your mother raise you to be rude to others?" Then I found out that yes they did in fact raise their children to be rude to others. Theirs is a class society full of strife and envy.

But this is my position on the entire matter. It was a business decision that the business management felt was necessary to stay afloat, and it worked. I can't fault them for it. This is America. I don't depend on them for my lively hood. America is the land of opportunity, and still more so than anywhere else in the world.

"1) H1B workers can't speak English. They have grave difficulties in communicating with colleagues, users, and the public. 2) H1B workers suck. They can't get the job done without serious handholding. 3) I have never met an exception to (1) and (2) and I've worked with a lot of them."

I agree with your assessment. I am a COBOL programmer for a major retailer and have had a lot of bad experiences with H1B workers from India and Pakistan.

Often I have to spend hours of my time training these people on the basics of COBOL/CICS/DB2 programming. Every other thing they say I have to have them repeat because I cannot understand what the hell they are saying through their heavy accent.

Just yesterday I was called into a 1 hour meeting so I could tell this one H1B guy how to read one of our VSAM files in a CICS program. At first he tried to tell me this wasn't possible. I wanted to reach across the table and slap some sense into him. The sad thing is, this program he is working on is probably going to take him 3 weeks not to mention all the time he is going to waste of other people that will have to walk him through it. I could have this thing wrapped up in 2 days, 3 days at the most. They better be paying this guy less than 12k a year, otherwise it would of been a lot cheaper just to give the project to me.