The bottomline of this rant is ...
1. Unemployed high tech workers are NOT bums looking for a hand out. Their jobs have been stolen from them by H1B's who have NO business in our country taking our jobs just so some greedy company can make an easy buck.
2. H1B's can work for minimum wage because they DO NOT have to live in THIS society when they leave. It is NOT a level playing field for the American worker.
3. Lower wage paying companies are NOT going to hire highly (over) qualified people. AND if a high tech worker aws lucky enough to land a low paying job, he would NO LONGER be available to interview for high tech jobs if they became available cause he is now flipping burgers in Podunk (where the jobs are).
4. The next industry hit by this could EASILY be yours ... so get off your arrogant assinine high horse (not talking to you personally John)
5. Most of these high tech workers have spent a lifetime building their lives and are NOT likely to give them up before the situation becomes critical ... we HAVE been though downturns before, BUT in high tech this is NOT a repression ... as the media recently reported, it is a high tech DEPRESSION. No one could have anticipated the level that this has reached.
On a good note ... after 9 months of hell 88 recruiters and dozens of resume submittals ... I got a job in an electronics company doing something distantly related to my disipline. I was into my first extension, without which I would have gone hungry.
Three years ago, I was hired for software project that started out with two outstanding software engineers. We studied the problem for two months until we fully understood all of the details required to create software to solve the business problem we were tasked with.
After two months of studying the problem, we were ready to attack the problem and create the software required. That is the time when we were first introduced with H1b programmers from India.
This caused a major problem, since we could not use a common language. Yes, they were good programmers, but it was impossible to express the details about this business and how our software can be optimized to solve the problem.
We got flooded with Russian, Canadian and Indian programmers within a month. Out of 46 software people, only two were Americans! For the people paying for this project, they thought this was cost-effective!
I was an expert in distributed programming and I refused to back down when people ignored my advise. Eventually, I was fired from the project because I was not following orders and demanded that the software be written correctly.
Two months later, the last American also quit in total frustration. After working 14 hour days, 7 days a week, everything was going to shit. As he told me: "Dammit, you fired the only person that knew how to make this stuff work!"
After $6 million dollars were invested in this project, the investors finally pulled the plug. It was a total disaster.
Jeff and I eventually worked together on another project a few months later with Lockheed Martin. Software Engineers who do know what they are doing can work magic, and hopefully, you may see our software results in the near future.