Job Fraud by US IT Employers
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On one side there's the argument that there are 1000s of skilled yet unemployed American programmers. On the other side, you see companies complaining that they are finding it extremely difficult to hire quality developers. In fact developer positions remain open for several months because of the difficulty in getting the right candidates. Somehow this doesn't add up. If there are 1000s of quality candidates out there, how come they do not show interest in these job openings? You cannot have a skilled pool of unemployed candidates and also have unfilled job openings together, can you?
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com linkNishant Sivakumar wrote:
[...] On the other side, you see companies complaining that they are finding it extremely difficult to hire quality developers. [...] You cannot have a skilled pool of unemployed candidates and also have unfilled job openings together, can you?
Of course you can, and here is how... Companies are looking for high-quality developers. High-quality developers (should) produce higher-quality code, resulting in better designs, more robust and better performing implementations, less defects. But they no longer believe that they need to actually pay a high-quality salary to get them. The old adage you get what you pay for seems to have been forgotten. Have a look at a site like Monster, and compare titles against salary ranges. Companies are looking for senior-level developers for only $40-60K, and principal-level developers for only $60-80K. Throw in 2 weeks of vacation time, minimal 401K participation, no profit sharing or bonus plan and you can quickly see that this is not a great deal for someone that has been developing software professionally for more than 15 years. To better explain why that is not a great deal, remember that many older and experienced (i.e. senior- and principal-level) developers are not the cheap-1-bedroom-basement-apartment-living-ramen-noodle-eating-20-somethings that they used to be. Many are now married, and/or have kids, and/or have a newer car, and/or have a mortgage, and/or have more debt. It is not that they do not want to take a pay cut, it is that they simply cannot take a pay cut. When you have a house, wife and kids, you cannot just up and move to a smaller apartment on a whim all that easily (ask anyone that has a house - storage would be a nightmare). As to why we are in this situation, I am not going to provide any comments because it will only start a flame war. Peace!
-=- James
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On thing you need to know, Nish, is that the law requires employers to pay H1B visa holders comparable salaries as non-visa holders. This isn't just to protect American, permanent resident or green card, workers from being unfairly undercut, but to prevent H1B visa holders from being exploited.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
[...] the law requires employers to pay H1B visa holders comparable salaries as non-visa holders.
Sounds like another reason to drop salaries - it makes the H1Bs even cheaper... :/ Peace!
-=- James
Please rate this message - let me know if I helped or not! * * *If you think it costs a lot to do it right, just wait until you find out how much it costs to do it wrong!
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On thing you need to know, Nish, is that the law requires employers to pay H1B visa holders comparable salaries as non-visa holders. This isn't just to protect American, permanent resident or green card, workers from being unfairly undercut, but to prevent H1B visa holders from being exploited.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
comparable salaries as non-visa holders.
Are you aware that the DOL thinks the average salary for a lawyer is about $25/hr? Would you feel comfortable hiring a $25/hr lawyer to keep you out of jail? And yet companies in the U.S. expect $15/hr "developers" to create HAL 9000 in a week.
Grim
(aka Toby)
MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
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YouTube Video On Avoiding U.S. Job Applicants Angers Programmers IT professionals criticize a law firm's video play-by-play description on how to circumvent the PERM process in favor of H-1B visas. http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199905192[^] This law firm actually held a conference to advise attendees on the best ways to avoid qualified American job-seekers. If this doesn't typify why people hate lawyers, I don't know what does. The article contains a link to the video that criticizes the conference.
-------------------------------- "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing" -- Edmund Burke
This has happened because laws supported by BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats allow it to happen. I call this bipartisian economic treason against American workers. VOTE GREEN!
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On one side there's the argument that there are 1000s of skilled yet unemployed American programmers. On the other side, you see companies complaining that they are finding it extremely difficult to hire quality developers. In fact developer positions remain open for several months because of the difficulty in getting the right candidates. Somehow this doesn't add up. If there are 1000s of quality candidates out there, how come they do not show interest in these job openings? You cannot have a skilled pool of unemployed candidates and also have unfilled job openings together, can you?
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com linkIn some cases many of the positions go unfilled because of the salary that the company is advertising. During the .com boom I worked with a foreign student who was completing his MBA specializing in Tech Management. After graduating a Fortune 500 company hired him on an H1B visa as an IT Director in Mountain View... for $60k a year. There's no way they could have found a senior level manager in the Bay for that much in the late 90's short of an H1B worker.
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On one side there's the argument that there are 1000s of skilled yet unemployed American programmers. On the other side, you see companies complaining that they are finding it extremely difficult to hire quality developers. In fact developer positions remain open for several months because of the difficulty in getting the right candidates. Somehow this doesn't add up. If there are 1000s of quality candidates out there, how come they do not show interest in these job openings? You cannot have a skilled pool of unemployed candidates and also have unfilled job openings together, can you?
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com linkIt is a problem with the decision-makers in HR and management. They don't know good people when they see them, and they've probably spent money on bad people in the past. This makes it hard to make a decision and hire someone who is quality, because we know who we are and we want more money, won't put up with BS, etc. I've turned down offers simply because of corporate BS that I observed in the interview, and I thought "I don't want to work at any place that, for example, schedules interviews and then isn't ready when I show up" - I like a tight ship, and I'm in demand enough that I can turn down things I don't like. Then there is the other group of people, who are generally just starting out, and they are hard to hire because they don't have any experience at all, are highly likely to screw something up, take massive amounts of time away from other developers, and cost only a little bit less. If you take those two groups - the highly qualified and expensive, the not-as-skilled and a little cheaper - and you add this third group, it becomes a real problem. The third group is "not qualified and expensive" - HR people live in fear of this group. Often, these people seem qualified up until the day they get fired, so if someone has been burned by this situation before, they are reluctant to hire people who look qualified for the job, because they still can't tell if the person actually is worth it or not. So, it's not as simple as having a bunch of holes and a bunch of pegs. I wrote about some things job-seekers can do: Blog Post Clickety[^] There's another issue that bothers me and could be contributing to the problem: recruiters just don't care about finding qualified people... they expect you to find them. And they still want their commission. If you can avoid it, don't go through recruiters and go straight to the company. See this: Open letter to recruiters[^]
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
Joe Woodbury wrote:
comparable salaries as non-visa holders.
Are you aware that the DOL thinks the average salary for a lawyer is about $25/hr? Would you feel comfortable hiring a $25/hr lawyer to keep you out of jail? And yet companies in the U.S. expect $15/hr "developers" to create HAL 9000 in a week.
Grim
(aka Toby)
MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL GO
(0 row(s) affected)
No but I would believe the actual value of a lawyer is closer to $25 an hour than to what they actually charge. I've never got any lawyering done where I didn't walk away feeling like I paid too much, and like I probably could have done it myself. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that lawyering is all about the law, and someone from another country is likely to be completely unfamiliar with our laws. And finally... as an American citizen, I can tell you it really, really bugs me when I see people come over here from other countries and live the high life, when there were American citizens and immigrants already here who need those jobs and money a lot more. I would bet that half of the people I've met from other countries, who are over here working a job, were from wealthy families to begin with, and they have no business coming over here and making a grab at OUR MONEY, when they have so much to begin with. The people who are sneaking across the border with nothing because they can't get a bowl of rice once a day for their kids... those people need the jobs. The people who are already wealthy can stay where they are and be fine. They don't need our jobs, and I'd much rather spend the money to train someone for a better life, than shell out that money to someone who doesn't need it. I think if you're going to come here for the work, you should be planning to stay. So I would abolish the H1-B program and make everyone get green cards.
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
YouTube Video On Avoiding U.S. Job Applicants Angers Programmers IT professionals criticize a law firm's video play-by-play description on how to circumvent the PERM process in favor of H-1B visas. http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199905192[^] This law firm actually held a conference to advise attendees on the best ways to avoid qualified American job-seekers. If this doesn't typify why people hate lawyers, I don't know what does. The article contains a link to the video that criticizes the conference.
-------------------------------- "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing" -- Edmund Burke
Pretty disgusting, but not surprising. And if you want to know why this is happening, it's b/c big companies are responsible for generating returns for their stockholders. They are bound to pay as little as possible wherever possible, that's their job. Why? b/c people like you and I have money in stocks (or mutual funds) and any of us with any common stock likely owns a small piece of a company that one of the attendees was working for. Those people are there doing their jobs trying to find adequate candidates at the best price they can find. And they're doing that so that we can make more money on our stocks. So, is it unethical, maybe kind of sick? Probably. But it's coming from people in the RICHEST country in the world. All of us IT guys whining about outsourcing are not really seeing the big picture very well. An American programmer is making 10-20 times what equivalent programmers are making in India or Ukraine. And with modern tech that job can literally be completed anywhere in the world. The USD is consistently creeping downwards and it will continue to do so until we reach some parity on the international scale. The CDN will follow closely, but it will recover much quicker as places like China get richer and start buying Canadian goods. The American way of life for the past 40 years has been completely unsustainable, they owe money to everybody and that's not changing any time soon. This article is just one of many symptoms of the slide. Gates VP
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Christian Graus wrote:
Depends on how you look at it. Everyone wants to pay as little as possible for things. No-one wants to spend money they can keep. Do you think that's a good rationale for devaluing what it is that you and I do for a living ?
I think there are several different scenarios here that can't all have one single generic answer. I wouldn't want someone doing the same work you and I do at a 40K salary. That would be devaluing it. But if someone who can barely write a simple program wants a 90K job and won't accept anything less, and then blames not getting a job on outsourcing or foreign workers, that's a whole different situation altogether. There are instances of the former and the latter here in the States - people need to know that, and understand the differences. Most of the time, people just assume that only one of these scenarios exist and provide a bunch of flawed arguments supporting their case.
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com linkStill rationalizing, Nish? Employers like the conditions under which non-citizens work, and they're right. Citizens have become too expensive in many ways, not just salary. That's the problem that needs fixing, and hiring non-citizens into increasingly subservient positions is not the answer. Moving away from that is what the country is about. Knocking out some irritating pillars always seems like a great idea, until you figure out they're holding up the roof. :) Il n'y a pas des sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l'esprit!
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Joe Woodbury wrote:
comparable salaries as non-visa holders.
Are you aware that the DOL thinks the average salary for a lawyer is about $25/hr? Would you feel comfortable hiring a $25/hr lawyer to keep you out of jail? And yet companies in the U.S. expect $15/hr "developers" to create HAL 9000 in a week.
Grim
(aka Toby)
MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL GO
(0 row(s) affected)
Grimolfr wrote:
Are you aware that the DOL thinks the average salary for a lawyer is about $25/hr?
Not true. Furthermore, DOL does sampling of all the jobs available and publishes a median. These jobs will include all sorts of types of jobs within a category. The number of H1B visa holders is not significant enough to suppress wages significantly. There is far more variation simply due to the sizes and demands of individual companies than anything else. (A small company may not be able to pay what a large company does, but may have more interesting work.) I've had three jobs in the last seven years. My salary has varied by just under 20% (add benefits and the swing has been even larger.) Oddly, the highest paying job is the only one where there were several H1B visa holders and they were paid comparable to the rest of us.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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No but I would believe the actual value of a lawyer is closer to $25 an hour than to what they actually charge. I've never got any lawyering done where I didn't walk away feeling like I paid too much, and like I probably could have done it myself. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that lawyering is all about the law, and someone from another country is likely to be completely unfamiliar with our laws. And finally... as an American citizen, I can tell you it really, really bugs me when I see people come over here from other countries and live the high life, when there were American citizens and immigrants already here who need those jobs and money a lot more. I would bet that half of the people I've met from other countries, who are over here working a job, were from wealthy families to begin with, and they have no business coming over here and making a grab at OUR MONEY, when they have so much to begin with. The people who are sneaking across the border with nothing because they can't get a bowl of rice once a day for their kids... those people need the jobs. The people who are already wealthy can stay where they are and be fine. They don't need our jobs, and I'd much rather spend the money to train someone for a better life, than shell out that money to someone who doesn't need it. I think if you're going to come here for the work, you should be planning to stay. So I would abolish the H1-B program and make everyone get green cards.
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles.The H1B program actually saves us money. H1B visa holders pay taxes, including Social Security, but cannot receive benefits. It's a net gain for the country. I believe you are unfairly lumping H1B visa holders in with other programs (there are many.) I also think you will find greater abuse in the green card system than the H1B system, though there is abuse in both and enforcement is lacking.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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YouTube Video On Avoiding U.S. Job Applicants Angers Programmers IT professionals criticize a law firm's video play-by-play description on how to circumvent the PERM process in favor of H-1B visas. http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199905192[^] This law firm actually held a conference to advise attendees on the best ways to avoid qualified American job-seekers. If this doesn't typify why people hate lawyers, I don't know what does. The article contains a link to the video that criticizes the conference.
-------------------------------- "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing" -- Edmund Burke
A couple things about this.... First it is very hard to find good people. I have interviewed a bunch of people lately and it is not only skill set that matters. That is actually almost secondary. Most important in my small shop is a cultural fit. By culture, I am mean the one in the office. Will the new hire be able to work with / on the team? We have hired some smart folks that weren't the right cultural fit and they either left to find a job that they were more comfortable with or flat out let go. Second off, we are owned by a big Fortune 500 company. We constantly get pressure to offshore/outsource. However, our attempts to do so have failed miserably. Generally resulting in my office having to actually do the work that someone over seas was contracted to do. It is so bad that I actually said to our GM, "Why are we paying people to not do any work?" Pressure from the Street. That really ticks me off cause my office is not a cost center. We make money and plenty of it. Still we are required by corporate to attempt to offshore a certain percentage of our work.
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The H1B program actually saves us money. H1B visa holders pay taxes, including Social Security, but cannot receive benefits. It's a net gain for the country. I believe you are unfairly lumping H1B visa holders in with other programs (there are many.) I also think you will find greater abuse in the green card system than the H1B system, though there is abuse in both and enforcement is lacking.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Possibly yeah. I think we can all agree the system is not as good as it could be if we had better enforcement. I'm speaking from my experience though, that a good number of people are coming here and getting jobs they don't need. Whether this is good or bad is a moral issue, and not really appropriate for law, but it doesn't make it any less annoying to see the huge economic difference between people who have a lot already and are making a grab for more, and people who have nothing and can't get anything either because they've been beat to the punch by folks with more resources. It's not fair for Sheik Mohammed to come over here and live in a mansion and drive a Mercedes, when he's perfectly capable of doing that at home. He's taking $60K or so away from somebody who needs it, and that's pocket change to him, he doesn't need it. Basically, I think you should have an economic reason to get an H1B, or a green card for that matter. Not that I think we can do anything about this that would be fair or legal, but it annoys me to see it, and it's not a fundamental flaw in the system, just something that is visibly unfair to me in my world. I am not sure if my experience is typical or not, just that I've seen it enough to make an impression. And I disagree about the net gain... how can it possibly be more? I contribute not only taxes and social security, but I also spend all my money here, and will for my entire life... that's gotta result in more money overall I would think.
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
A couple things about this.... First it is very hard to find good people. I have interviewed a bunch of people lately and it is not only skill set that matters. That is actually almost secondary. Most important in my small shop is a cultural fit. By culture, I am mean the one in the office. Will the new hire be able to work with / on the team? We have hired some smart folks that weren't the right cultural fit and they either left to find a job that they were more comfortable with or flat out let go. Second off, we are owned by a big Fortune 500 company. We constantly get pressure to offshore/outsource. However, our attempts to do so have failed miserably. Generally resulting in my office having to actually do the work that someone over seas was contracted to do. It is so bad that I actually said to our GM, "Why are we paying people to not do any work?" Pressure from the Street. That really ticks me off cause my office is not a cost center. We make money and plenty of it. Still we are required by corporate to attempt to offshore a certain percentage of our work.
Hehe... yeah it's no longer a time when you can be the nerd from Jurassic Park. You've got to be socially competent, which used to not be important at all. Tell me if you agree with this: http://smoothjazzy.blogspot.com/2006/09/it-job-market-sucks-rocks.html[^]
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
Hehe... yeah it's no longer a time when you can be the nerd from Jurassic Park. You've got to be socially competent, which used to not be important at all. Tell me if you agree with this: http://smoothjazzy.blogspot.com/2006/09/it-job-market-sucks-rocks.html[^]
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles.Yeah it is true. When you are working on a small team (2-3 people) it is real important that you all get along. Plus being a small office (~35 people) we can't hire people that aren't willing to chip in and work on basically anything. One guy left because he felt some of the things asked of him were beneath him.
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Richie308 wrote:
The point is that employers are purposely and deliberately finding any way they can to disqualify American workers through sheer technicalities, just to enable them to hire non-US citizens. Watch the video. It's plain as the nose on your face.
Yes, but can you blame them for doing so if that's the only legal way they can hire programmers they want at the rate they can afford?
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
My latest book : C++/CLI in Action / Amazon.com linkLet's check your logic. If bread costs $2.00 but you only want to pay $1.00. You should steal the bread and leave the dollar. Yeah, that's legal right?
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Yeah it is true. When you are working on a small team (2-3 people) it is real important that you all get along. Plus being a small office (~35 people) we can't hire people that aren't willing to chip in and work on basically anything. One guy left because he felt some of the things asked of him were beneath him.
So what do I do about our new guy... he smells like dirty dishes or baby puke... I can't place it but it's offensive... hoping maybe he reads this forum... again, I'm annoyed that I wasn't consulted on this. I would never hire a guy who smells like baby puke, unless he's going to work at home. It's little things like that which seem to make the big differences... usually not gross incompetence, but gross other things... hehehe :)
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
Quit whining about the H1Bs. For the IT industry to stay competitive in a free market scenario it has to go with the best quality at the best price available. If you want 200K a year to make web apps - you are going to be dissapointed. It's capitalism so get used to it. Protectionism of domestic industry in the face of competition is a communist measure and I thought you all are against that form of government, right? I think the pay for programmers is quite reasonable for what programmers do. Programming is a job done equally well sitting anywhere in the world. If the wages here become too high there won't be any programmers in the country left. BTW I am not on an H1b. The next thing industry needs to do is import doctors and lawyers so that their fees go down too :-)
Tanveer Ansari 1 wrote:
Programming is a job done equally well sitting anywhere in the world
You must do programming quite a bit differently than all of the places that I have worked for and every single one that I have interviewed with. There are very few companies whose business model and business culture are setup to support outsourcing. Most places deliver requirements verbally on a weekly, daily and sometimes hourly basis. It is impossible for them to produce written requirements. Sometimes requirements are even delivered during QA or even after a customer install. Requirements tend to be be fuzzy and often require a lot of experience in the business (not the technology) to correctly implement. And sometimes require cultural knowledge as well. For me even those places that used written requirements often produced requirements that were technically impossible to implement. Even after reviews. So if you feel that you can have someone half way around the world to produce a product for a culture that they don't know, based on verbal communication in a language that they barely understand and with your assumption that they are in fact as technically capable as the third party company you hired to find them claims then I can only wish you good luck. I can only note that companies that can't produce software with their existing software developers will in fact save money using external sources. Because then the non-production costs less. That certainly isn't a company that I would care to work for even if they weren't outsourcing though. And yes I have seen companies like that.
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It is a problem with the decision-makers in HR and management. They don't know good people when they see them, and they've probably spent money on bad people in the past. This makes it hard to make a decision and hire someone who is quality, because we know who we are and we want more money, won't put up with BS, etc. I've turned down offers simply because of corporate BS that I observed in the interview, and I thought "I don't want to work at any place that, for example, schedules interviews and then isn't ready when I show up" - I like a tight ship, and I'm in demand enough that I can turn down things I don't like. Then there is the other group of people, who are generally just starting out, and they are hard to hire because they don't have any experience at all, are highly likely to screw something up, take massive amounts of time away from other developers, and cost only a little bit less. If you take those two groups - the highly qualified and expensive, the not-as-skilled and a little cheaper - and you add this third group, it becomes a real problem. The third group is "not qualified and expensive" - HR people live in fear of this group. Often, these people seem qualified up until the day they get fired, so if someone has been burned by this situation before, they are reluctant to hire people who look qualified for the job, because they still can't tell if the person actually is worth it or not. So, it's not as simple as having a bunch of holes and a bunch of pegs. I wrote about some things job-seekers can do: Blog Post Clickety[^] There's another issue that bothers me and could be contributing to the problem: recruiters just don't care about finding qualified people... they expect you to find them. And they still want their commission. If you can avoid it, don't go through recruiters and go straight to the company. See this: Open letter to recruiters[^]
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles.Jasmine2501 wrote:
Then there is the other group of people, who are generally just starting out, and they are hard to hire because they don't have any experience at all
That is a two edged sword. You can't get hired because "You don't have any experience". :(( Or How are you to get any experience if someone won't hire you? :confused:
