During this recession, I like many people working in technology, had a very difficult time finding work, but finally got back on my feet (though in a contract-only position with no benefits).
Now I am working in an American multinational here in the United States, and I find that every last person working for me is an H1B temp work visa holder. There are zero Americans on my staff. In addition to that, we recently had to fill 3 more headcount in my group. My boss instructed me that due to 'budget' that we were to go to our India sourcing department and they would arrange for contractors to be sent in from offshore (India). It would take about 1 month for their visas to be arranged and for them to be on site (in Raleigh North Carolina). Though our Applicant tracking system is overflowing with applications by Americans (including probably some of my own old ones), we didn't even look at those before bringing in the H1Bs. The corporate law firm arranges this, gives the 'no Americans can be found' stamp of approval and the temps are flown in with expedited Visas (H1B or other temp type visas that they use until the H1B is approved). I mentioned this to a couple of my coworkers, and I was discretely told to be quiet about it if I knew what was good for me and didn't want to 'expire' myself.
At the same time, while I was on a business trip, I found that several others in lower / mid management Americans in the firm, mostly in their 50s all have recent college grad kids living at home with them, unable to find any work or just working at the mall with their university degrees in solid subjects. It dawned on me then, that actually we had no American recent grads in the entire company. That virtually all the lower 2 to 3 rungs of company positions (programmers, BAs, SMEs..etc) were H1Bs (again, almost exclusively from India).
Basically the modus operandi is to first hire in India (we have a big India offshoring center), if that is not possible, bring someone from India to the United States, and if that is not possible either, then finally look at the Applicant Database and see if we can find an American for the role as a last resort. As a result, most junior roles (that are the easiest to fill), go to H1B and other temp visa holders. American new grads or unemployed won't even get interviews.
Talking to others in the area at the local linux group, it turns out virtually every other tech company in the area is doing this, and not only here either. Boston, Herndon Virginia tech corridor, the suburban silicon valley, it is the same story everywhere from coast to coast.
This is essentially visa fraud on a massive scale, probably criminal and basically theft from Americans who are legally supposed to get those jobs first. Right now, we don't even read the US applicant database when hiring in the US for most roles. Other firms here don't either from what others working in them tell me.
If you are working in a large corporate tech environment in the United States, you probably know exactly what I am talking about (reply and say 'yep' if you do). There are probably even some sitting within a couple cubes from you while there are fewer and fewer Americans working as they get 'replaced' around you.
I concluded that if this was not happening, the recession in the middle class would have been over years ago, and we would now be in a very healthy broad based recovery affecting everyone with increasing wages and improving benefits as the unemployed found good jobs with benefits, shortages would lead to new grads getting work, buying homes and filling them with furniture rather than living with their parents in their childhood bedrooms..etc.
What is the solution? A typical union is not the solution (I don't want one anyways, they often bring different kinds of problems). Writing to congress won't help (since corruption of congress by tech corp lobby corporate donations is what brought this about in the first place). Staging an annual 'Day of Action' protesting in front of tech company clients (i.e. if they use Oracle, in front of their clients retail stores) with your Guy Fawkes mask. Other industrial action like is common in European countries? A broad employee based (but somehow secret so we don't get laid off for being 'low performers' when it is discovered we are in it?) political pressure group? Anonymous? College grad groups (since they are the ones most affected by this)?
I'd like to hear the ideas and thoughts of the people on this forum of what to do, what action can be taken to reverse this. It is criminal what is happening in this country in this regard and I don't think we should stand for it.
Ed
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Monday August 18 2014, @08:09AM
Well I can think of three plans. One is getting congress to reform the H1B. Of course it's hard enough to get congress to fix anything, with opposing corporate interests this will be pretty unlikely. Two is name and shame the corps that are doing this. But that hasn't really done much to correct any of the other corporate bad behavior that is pretty much ubiquitous at this point. Lastly, find a lawyer who thinks they can prove malfeasance and damages in court. Maybe that will go somewhere, like the wage-fixing case against Apple, Google, et. al
(Score: 5, Interesting) by khallow on Monday August 18 2014, @08:47AM
He doesn't have standing for a class action lawsuit since he's not harmed by (and may actually be considered to be benefiting from) the situation. Only someone who actually were passed over in favor of an H1-B would have such standing. And it sounds like the company just isn't even looking at applications in a way that could allow someone to claim they were harmed.
Instead this appears to be an outright violation of the H1-B law since the process for selecting by H1-B doesn't allow the company to look for H1-Bs first (they're supposed to look for qualified US applicants first). And that leads up to an ugly aspect of this problem since his bosses aren't the ones actually doing the dirty work.
I'm not a lawyer here, but this is how it looks to me. The person actually doing the violating of the law is the anonymous hirer asking the question. If he doesn't have those instructions from his bosses in writing, then he might be fully on the hook as the fall guy should this get to the Feds. After all, they just delegated the hiring to him, they are just as shocked as everyone else that he didn't follow the law in his hiring procedure. Try to prove otherwise (which might actually not be that hard given how near universal their H1-B presence is).
At this point, I would suggest getting legal advice from a real lawyer immediately.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by cafebabe on Monday August 18 2014, @01:31PM
There is harm. The submitter is in an environment where wages have been artificially suppressed. The submitter is also a minority due to artificial circumstances. This affects the ability to integrate into a team due to artificial language barriers, cultural barriers and other circumstances. There may even be a difference in age which would not have otherwise occurred. It also affects future employment because it diminishes the ability to network effectively.
If the imported labor produces substandard work and the company is less able to compete or ceases trading then the submitter also faces harm due to the lack of ongoing employment and/or lack of references from an ongoing entity.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday August 18 2014, @02:18PM
Not to mention he isn't an employee, he is a "contractor" doing what an employee would for less compensation (no benefits).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @03:17PM
How are language and cultural barriers 'artificial'? Did the corporation somehow artificially decide what languages I happen to speak? Or is that just a natural consequence of my ethnic background and willingness to learn new languages.
I suppose the corporation can artificially choose the ethnic backgrounds of those they hire but do you suppose they will deliberately/artificially choose teams that won't get along and integrate well?
(Score: 2) by khallow on Monday August 18 2014, @10:47PM
And that argument would IMHO get laughed out of court.
(Score: 5, Informative) by davester666 on Monday August 18 2014, @08:14AM
...documenting what is happening, then forwarding it to US Immigration or the Dept of Justice, either anonymously or using your name?
It's like back during prohibition "Somebody should do something about these bootleggers"
Or when the Mafia was getting everybody with their protection racket "Somebody should do something about it"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @08:45AM
> ...documenting what is happening, then forwarding it to US Immigration or the Dept of Justice,
> either anonymously or using your name?
Do NOT do that. There is exactly $0 in the budget for H1B violation enforcement. In all of the history of H1B visas, there has been exactly one prosecution for H1B violations (at least as of about 2 years ago which was the last time I checked).
Your only chance to make a difference is to get your ducks in a row and then get in contact with a reporter who both cares and can get published somewhere big like the new york times or maybe mother jones. Be prepared to lose your job in the process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @10:56AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @11:49AM
> You don't need a major outlet to make a difference,
You need your ducks in a row in order to get the reporter on board.
Then you need the reporter's experience to make sure you've got the necessary documentation and framing for the actual story to have an impact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @11:06AM
If you can document it, it might be more useful to forward the information to your congressional Representative or Senator. Along with a note reminding them that all of those Americans being passed over are eligible to vote in the next election.
As long as the only information the congresscritters get comes from highly paid corporate lobbyists, you should expect them to act on behalf of the corporations. If you don't even try to talk to them, you can't really complain that you aren't being heard.
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Monday August 18 2014, @06:52PM
Don't forget to include a fat wad of cash.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by cafebabe on Monday August 18 2014, @01:37PM
Record conversations. Actually, record everything. It takes surprisingly little energy to leave a smartphone recording for eight hours. Just remember to make a log of important events as you go. Otherwise, you'll have a mountain of audio to trawl through when you may not be motivated or financially stable.
1702845791×2
(Score: 1) by deimtee on Tuesday August 19 2014, @02:52AM
It depends on which state you are in. US Federal law would say that is ok, but in many states it is illegal to record someone without their knowledge. (or a warrant).
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and-conversations [dmlp.org]
Check whether it is a one party or two party state.
On the other hand, written notes are always ok. Write it down immediately in a small notebook, including the date, and NEVER edit it afterwards.
You will be allowed to refer to those specific notes in any testimony, provided you can swear that you wrote them, they are accurate, and that they have not been changed since.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Tuesday August 19 2014, @07:43AM
There is a sneaky trick I have heard of that may get you around the consent-to-record issue in certain situations.
If you want to record say an interview, keep a recording device in your pocket and turn it on. When you enter the interview, bring in a large notepad/notebook and a pen. At the start of the interview open the notepad and take out your pen and clearly ask the question "Is it okay if I record this interview?" and gesture to the notepad and pad. Most people will assume you are asking if you can make written notes during the interview and will just respond with "Yes that's fine". But any playback of the recording will now have clearly captured you asking "Is it okay if I record this interview?" and them clearly consenting to the recording. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @03:03PM
Document it all. Forward it along to the labor department in your local state and federal level. Add in your local state DA too. States have laws too... Then drop it in the lap of your local news station.
I would ad the US Labor department to that list. Those dudes are the nazgul of enforcing labor laws. They dont screw around.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Fnord666 on Monday August 18 2014, @08:20AM
My recommendation? Beat the rush to the door and find a better company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @09:47AM
It's their business model, the next-to-last phase of the company life-cycle. Next comes liquidation, after the how-low-can-you-go expense curve goes north of the sagging profit line. By all appearances, the concepts of "sustained profitability" and "long-term growth" aren't even taught in business schools any more, except perhaps as obstacles to increasing quarterly earnings per share.
Starting your own company, or getting on full-time with a big manufacturer or major retailer, are really the only two ways out. Both take time, effort, and patience, but you won't need a Rosetta Stone handbook for Hindi.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday August 18 2014, @12:01PM
He's talking about pretty much the entire fortune 500 list.
If your company has more than perhaps 500 employees it no longer hires americans. Thats just how it is.
I was mild curious if OP works at IBM or GE because they're the most famous non-american / formerly-american companies, but it really does apply everywhere.
BTW you can have a lot of fun bringing this up WRT "desperate job shortage in STEM fields means kids should get STEM degrees." Yeah, sure, if you enjoy unemployment. And the liberal arts degree holders at Starbucks type jobs do not like the STEM guys so you're not even getting a waiter / bartender job if you get a STEM degree.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jcross on Monday August 18 2014, @12:32PM
Agreed. IMO a tech company that hires like that can't care much about the quality of their product. I'm not knocking Indian programmers, but hiring to reduce cost in that way will turn out to be penny wise and pound foolish. If you're a developer and you want to work for a company that cares deeply about quality, I'm hiring right down the road in Durham. I know that doesn't speak to the bigger injustice, but might at least get you off of a ship that's sinking, however slowly.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Monday August 18 2014, @12:42PM
Actually, that goes for any readers in the area looking for development work at a small company. Since I can't seem to find a private messaging feature on this site, email me at jcross.soylent@gmail.com.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Tuesday August 19 2014, @02:39PM
That's awesome that you're looking in the soylent community for applicants. Perhaps a soylent job board, informing the readership of openings at the companies for which we work would be a useful feature.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 22 2014, @08:33PM
If you're a developer and you want to work for a company that cares deeply about quality, I'm hiring right down the road in Durham. I know that doesn't speak to the bigger injustice, but might at least get you off of a ship that's sinking, however slowly.
Got a link to a job description, official or otherwise?
Specifically one with a salary range included. $100k developers shouldn't waste time on $30k offer positions and $100k offers shouldn't want $30k applicants.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday August 18 2014, @01:44PM
I agree. The only successful outsourced projects i have seen are ones that had an on-shore team to "fix" the off-shore code. I don't think it has anything to do with nationality/culture. I have seen on-shore Indian teams do some great stuff. But they were full employees and actually cared about what they were making. Off-shore just treats the work like a hot potato. Or projectile code vomit.. something like that.
What OP is describing sounds like a former off-shore team brought on-shore. I don't see anything wrong with that if they are actual US citizens. But, you are right, if they cannot afford to pay their devs a competitive wage then OP should jump ship. Preferably to a competitor company. Take all of that institutional knowledge and use it against the former employer : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Monday August 18 2014, @02:07PM
I was hired like that guy: I'm a bay area person, been here 25 yrs and born/raise in the US. I have a ton of networking, software and even hardware design skills. and yet, last year I was hired as a contractor - no benefits like that guy - and 100% of the engineers other than me (this is a bay area founded and hq'd company, btw) were indian and asian. I was the sole 'white guy' (sorry to use that expression) there. correction, I was the sole white guy IN ENGINEERING there. the ceo and top execs were all 'white guys' and yet they could care less if they sold their country out to the lowest bidder,THEIR jobs were safe and not going anywhere.
I finally went full time after the right 'try out' period (sigh). and yet, another few months and the whole company shut down; but on the first wave of layoff (of which I was part), 100% of everyone who was let go was american born. this is the tech support line, the sysadmins, sales, marketing, you name it. all that was left was h1b's (and the top execs, of course).
in the past 20 yrs, I often can walk down the hallways of a bay area company and I'm the only american there. I often won't even hear english all that often during my day; its cantonese, mandarin, hindi (or one of the 500 dialects from india) or maybe korean. to hear english is a rarity and this is for a top networking company; but its all the same, now; they are all like that, big and small company.
I went years without a job, once. no one hired americans!
this has GOT TO STOP. I was not yet at the point of violence, but I could sure understand it! I could. being unhirable because you don't have the right accent and because you were not from the 'right' far-away place - that's killing the bay area and turning it into a ghetto (look up the word; I'm using it correctly). its becoming dual cultured - and neither of those 2 are US cultures, btw.
nothing can be done. the execs save money, they pay congress to keep things this way and you and I will just not get jobs.
don't know when the pitchforks and fires come out, but like I said, I have been damned close, myself, to feeling that way. many times.
you want a race riot in tech? keep this up and you'll find out.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 1) by Skwearl on Monday August 18 2014, @06:01PM
its funny, the military and such gearing up to fight a cyberwar. Its almost like they foresaw this happening, and the eventual fallout when the non violent confrontation happens.
(Score: 1) by albert on Tuesday August 19 2014, @06:11AM
Be a cyberwarrior or a cyberweapon supplier. (can be gov, mil, or com)
You'll need a SECRET clearance at minimum. Some jobs require much more. You can't get this if you have significant foreign connections. Anybody with family living in China or India is mighty unlikely to be accepted.
If you hear non-English at all, it's probably a translator discussing the meaning of something or just being silly.
An H1B is 100% unable to compete for these jobs. They don't stand a chance: automatic disqualification.
(Score: 5, Informative) by isostatic on Monday August 18 2014, @08:48AM
Don't worry, it's just the invisible hand of capitalism. If someone else is willing to do the job for cheaper then they'll get the job. No one owes you the right to a high paid job .
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday August 18 2014, @09:25AM
Nor does a corporation have a natural right to exist at all. We the people allow them to exist.
Wanting them to hire us first in return is not unreasonable. After all, their existence is supposed to be in the public interest.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @11:45AM
Welcome to the death of patriotism in favour of the worship of Capitalism. Why do something to "better your own country" when you can do something to better your own profit.
Globalisation has systematically destroyed any idea of the nation state. To even say you are "patriotic" in some circles is to basically say "I'm a racist xenophobe and should be lambasted". It is hip and trendy to have no loyalties to anyone other than your own financial interests.
With that prevalent mind set it is no surprise management would hire a cheaper Indian worker than a more expensive American one. As far as they are concerned they are doing nothing morally wrong because we've hammered equality in to everyone. Hiring a foreigner is morally the same as hiring someone of your own nationality. To say otherwise is to be accused of being a racist or a Luddite.
For a good example of this see the defence industry. Morally it should be about ensuring the security of the nation. In practice it is about screwing the tax payer for as much as possible and then selling the product to the rest of the world. Patriotism isn't even part of the job description.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday August 18 2014, @05:11PM
One doesn't need to be "patriotic" in a neo-con "kill'em all and let god sort 'em out" sense. A little "economic patriotism" is not wrong in moderation. I'm not talking about colonialism, but enough focus on self-interest to make sure that you can survive. Being a liberal non-racist does not mean you have to slit your own throat -- doing so is very maladaptive.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday August 18 2014, @01:11PM
You take an expansive definition of "the public interest."
Corporations as a legal construct weren't meant to be in the interest of employees. They were designed to further the interest of shareholders. Specifically, corporations were created to solve two problems. First, to allow multiple investors to pool their money to create a profitable venture that none could afford to finance by themselves. Second, to protect smaller investors from potentially massive personal liability if the venture they invested in went bankrupt (e.g. to protect someone who owns a single share of IBM from bearing personal joint-and-several liability for all of IBM's debt if IBM declared bankruptcy).
That's it. The "public interest" served is insuring profitable business ventures (which presumably serve the consuming public) can get funded. And the bias of "what interests are served" is heavily tilted towards serving the interest of investors, as opposed to consumers or employees - any benefits to those groups are knock-on benefits.
Arguably, capital markets existing is a Good Thing for everyone in a society. Companies can raise money to create new cool stuff we want to buy. A small business owner can get the financing to expand to new markets. An individual can start a small business without the fear that the business failing means personal financial ruin. Individuals who DON'T have millions of dollars have the ability to invest in companies and share some of the overall profits of the economy (e.g. though stock ownership or mutual funds). You can certainly make a convincing case that organized capital markets benefit some segments of society more than others, but the existence of corporations and equity investment are useful. And that's the only "public interest" that allowing incorporation provides.
Any benefits of allowing corporate incorporation has to consumers or to employees is a secondary effect at best, not a primary objective.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 18 2014, @02:48PM
Oh [wikipedia.org] really [soylentnews.org]?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday August 18 2014, @03:23PM
Yes. That's the only public benefit that THE CONCEPT OF "INCORPORATION" provides. And it's pretty much always true, including in the cases you cite.
You're mixing "who does the fact that this enterprise is structured as a corporation benefit?" with "who does the enterprise's mission benefit?"
A public benefit corporation is a concept that was absolutely created to protect the owners of an enterprise. It's just that the owners of those enterprises are governments. Example - New York created the MTA to create a separation between the operating budget and debts of the transit operations from the states' general debts and obligations. The state can allow the MTA to go bankrupt in ways they can't let (for example) the state police to go bankrupt. The spinning off of a government service to a "public benefit corporation" is absolutely to limit liability of the government at large from a financial perspective from the debts of that specific service. For what other purpose would such organization be useful?
A not-for-profit organized as a corporation protects the founders of the not-for-profit from personal liability if the not-for-profit enterprise founders - without incorporation, the founders of a NFP might be liable for, say, bank loans taken out by the not-for-profit.
The Benefit Corporation concept (which is new) that Soylent News is organizing under is no different. Incorporating protects NCommander from personal legal liability for the finances and operations of SoylentNews.
Sure, the chartered mission of a corporation COULD be to benefit society in some way. That doesn't change the fact that incorporating is primarily a mechanism to protect owners/investors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @06:22PM
Corporations[...]weren't meant to be in the interest of employees
Now, change "employees" to "worker-owners" and you can remove the "n't".
Worker cooperatives. [google.com]
USA Workers Occupy Their Factory Twice Then Incorporate A Worker-Run Cooperative [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [libcom.org]
Worker-Owner Cooperatives Taking Root in the US [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dissidentvoice.org]
How America's Largest Worker-Owned Co-Op Lifts People Out of Poverty [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org]
People need to stop thinking of themselves as serfs in the service of overlords.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @05:23AM
Somewhere in there, a glimmer of a good idea (the employee-owned corporation) is dying under an avalanche of partisan language. This is something that the energetic left today doesn't understand: it comes across as a throwback to a largely industrial era (globalism killed that) and as a threat (words like "occupy" are militaristic). I understand that this kind of rhetoric is good for whipping up the base, but there's so much more out there that can be used effectively to get across the idea of employee ownership and to do so in a way that doesn't alienate conservatives but gets them to think about the idea rather than rejecting it at first blush.
Consider Florida: it's so Republican (especially thanks to the old folks -- Republican donors) that the Democratic candidate for governor is the former Republican governor. They also have what's probably the most successful employee-owned corporations, Publix grocery. It's the default grocer for Florida, almost a monopoly. Completely employee-owned, with generous benefits and great working conditions, and tremendous social-welfare programs like free antibiotics and diabetic supplies. Somehow, they manage to flourish in one of the most rabidly right-wing swamps of the South, and their approach wins loyalty from the conservatives. They manage to succeed without invoking occupation and factory conditions and all the imagery that has been poisoned by decades of anti-left media: they're the friendly grocer up the street, a bunch of clean-cut kids who always smile and ask if you'd like help taking your groceries out to the car.
Yin, yang; it's important in rhetoric to be able to adapt, not just oppose.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 18 2014, @12:28PM
but but but the entire K12 school system and the rich banker and my ancestors all told me if I took out massive loans for this STEM degree I'd magically get a high paying job. Because they hand out lifetime high paying STEM jobs with each STEM degree, thats what I've been told all my life.
Blind worship of higher education is a core cultural value, whaddya mean a BS degree isn't worth BS anymore? How dare reality collide with blind worship of a dead idea. Damn reality for not conforming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @03:39PM
whaddya mean a BS degree isn't worth BJ anymore?
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @03:46PM
No, they told you you would have the skills to compete in the modern workforce that requires you to be capable of more than just alphabetizing. They may have neglected to tell you that your competition would be China and India, but if you didn't realize that, then you must be living under a rock. As ever, education is a starting point: you still have to get out there and sell yourself. As long as labor is disorganized, employers are going to find someone willing to sell himself just a little bit cheaper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @05:31PM
Praise bossman morning workbells chime,
Praise him for bits of overtime,
Praise him whose wars we love to fight,
Praise him fat leach and parasite.
Amen
Workers' Doxology
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 18 2014, @07:33PM
Don't you know that BS means degree in Bull-Shit ..? :D
(on a more serious not, this kind of market force will degrade the society at large..)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @02:29PM
Sure, in a case where the government has not only failed to ensure the game is not rigged but gone out of their way to rig it, the problem is the invisible hand of capitalism. Of course.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday August 18 2014, @04:59PM
How is this the governments fault? We could replace it with a system where there are no immigration controls (no government interference), how would that be better? We could replace it with a strong government with closed borders, but that goes against your anti-government rhetoric. We could remove minimum wage, health care, and other laws which presumably harm American citizens, but how will that help when it's a race to the bottom with no concern for quality?
It's a failure of a civilisation, caused by people who don't look at anything but the next quarterly earnings statement. It's sad how far America has fallen from the left wing days of "no CEO should earn more than 20 time the lowest worker".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @10:27PM
I think the GP was suggesting that the government should be acting in the interests of the nation, not the wealthy few.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday August 18 2014, @09:29AM
Pay peanuts, get monkeys. They'll probably crash and burn for some reason of another soon enough be it from you or someone else blowing the whistle (the DOJ will do nothing, but public backlash might) or from a huge technical debt caused by a lowest bidder workforce and employees acutely aware that one cross word and they can be on a plane back to India virtually overnight.
Either way, you'll probably prefer to be elsewhere when it happens.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 18 2014, @12:39PM
"Pay peanuts, get monkeys."
Get liars has been my experience. You want a CCIE for this cable pulling job, fine, I'll write CCIE on my resume, you aren't going to check my paperwork anyway for a mere cable pulling job. There is a reputation that you never trust a credential or reference from overseas (well... .eu and .jp and .au are OK but generally speaking none of the rest) Despite it being "OK" for all the foreign stuff to be falsified, we still "really need" local americans to be legit. Which is a pretty annoying attitude to deal with.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RamiK on Monday August 18 2014, @10:08AM
You're next.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Informative) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday August 18 2014, @11:19AM
I don't know what the solution is. As long as corporations are run by professional management who put their short-term interests ahead of everything else, the hollowing out of America will continue until everything collapses.
The fundamental problem right now is with professional management which has taken over corporations in a generational change. What I mean is people who are trained as MBAs and have never done anything but manage. They have no real-world skills or industry experience. The only tools they have are short-term fixes like firing people, outsourcing, and so on. They juice the numbers in the short term so they get bonuses, and there is no long term.
It's not possible to have a career as a software developer any longer. America will have no software development workforce in a decade or so, because no one can make a living doing it. The short term has won completely. Companies hire people (not just H-1B visa holders) as disposable resources for short-term contracts. That's great if you have a glut of unemployed people who are desperate for work, but bad in the long term because it hollows out the workforce.
But if you look around, the same kind of short-term thinking is going on. I just noticed the plastic in Ziploc bags is thinner. Kleenex had 300 count boxes which are now 210 count. Cicso just fired a bunch of people and bought back stock with the money they saved.
Cutting works in the short term. You can juice your results. But in the long term, this hollowing out of America will eventually get to the point where it's not sustainable. You can't keep cutting forever.
Today's professional managers simply don't know how to do anything different. They are incapable of investing for the future. They are incapable of doing anything new or creative. They simply are unable to think that way. They've never been trained to, and have never had any real-world experience. I just went through this with my former company. Some PE guys bought it with a lot of debt, sucked out all the money, and left it limping along to pay off the debt, and randomly fired people each year to save money. These guys had no idea how to run a business, and didn't want to. What do you do when management doesn't care what kind of people they have working for them and isn't interested in providing a quality product or service? Nothing.
I do not know what the solution is. There's going to be a rock bottom at some point, because what's going on isn't sustainable. It's easier to destroy than to create, but at some point you've destroyed everything and there's nothing left to destroy.
Sorry, I'm too sad and depressed to think up a Star Wars analogy.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 18 2014, @12:01PM
You've described the situation well. It won't change, either, until the outsourcing clears out everyone below the CEO or the American people stand up and put an end to the nonsense, aka downsizes Washington DC en masse, with prejudice.
I experienced the fall of the Iron Curtain first-hand. What's coming will dwarf that in the granddaddy of all paradigm shifts. I can't tell which way it's going to go so I'm boning up on both my high-tech and primitive survival skills.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 18 2014, @12:23PM
"I can't tell which way it's going to go so I'm boning up on both my high-tech and primitive survival skills."
Why does it have to be binary only one way, the future for me looks a lot like trying to run a tech startup or a real small business after inevitable ageism related downsizing in a city where the downtown streets resemble Ferguson Missouri. Because all downtown streets are going to look like Ferguson soon enough. The only difference between Ferguson and where I live, is the riots haven't started here, not yet. We have large segregated minority populations under occupation by a hyper militarized mostly white blue shielded police force, just like almost all urban areas in the USA. I'm glad I live 20 miles into the 'burbs and not in a trendy gentrifying downtown. Its bad now with aggressive panhandlers and massive street crime, imagine what its going to be like downtown when the riots arrive. Um, I think I'll work from home that... month, yeah.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Monday August 18 2014, @01:56PM
When you have population which feels like it is under siege, bringing more force does not solve the problem. This was tried in the UK prior to the 2012 Olympics and in Brazil prior to the 2014 World Cup. In both cases, it inflamed the situation.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday August 19 2014, @03:13AM
Before thinking about solutions, you want to be more careful about identifying the problems. The stated problem is that American companies won't hire American workers. But that is not the root problem. Why do we have this problem? Because, true or not, foreign labor is seen as both cheaper and more grateful and compliant. Why is foreign labor cheaper? Because the standard of living in their home countries is way, way lower. They live so much more cheaply than we do that they still look like a better deal even after the costs of language difficulties and such is factored in.
And it's true that we really are quite wasteful. We don't like to talk about it, but it's true. We drive big cars, live in big houses (and have huge mortgages), and eat too much rich food like steak for our own good health. We're thoroughly programmed to spend money to have fun. Almost everything most Americans think of doing to have a fun weekend involves spending money. Stay home and play cards with friends and family? Hike in a nearby park? Check out some things from the local public library? No! It's go to an amusement park or a sports game, or a big rock concert, or opening night of the latest hit movie at a luxurious theater, or a nightclub. Somehow it doesn't feel as fun and worthwhile if it was free. Throw in dinner at an expensive restaurant with wait service. And it all has to be done by car. Even staying home and watching TV is done in high style, with most people grumbling but coughing up the money for cable TV, because broadcast isn't good enough. Our cities are built for cars, not people, and most of us look down on pedestrians. Sprawl is very expensive and wasteful, but we live with it and think it's normal to have to drive a car to get everywhere. Then there's the matter of display. Often, people spend money to show off how rich they are.
Do you recall this Joseph Stack, who was furious with IRS rules that make it more difficult to operate independently as a software engineer? He flew his private plane into an IRS building, killing himself. He did have a point, the rules he didn't like are unfair, but that he even had a private plane shows he wasn't hurting for money.
So I think some things will have to change. Until world wealth equalizes more, American workers will have a rough time competing.
There's more. Because life can grow at exponential rates, people simply are not valuable. At any time, we can quickly exceed the capacity of our environment. A few generations of everyone averaging 3 or more children fills up all available space very quickly. When that happens, then life gets real cheap. How we restrain ourselves is the problem. Do we exercise no restraint, push to the limits, and suffer collapse? Do we constantly wobble on the edge of starvation, because that's what it takes to discourage us from having too many children? Do we have periodic wars to bring population levels back down? Or do we agree to keep our numbers down, and develop means to enforce this on the unwilling, so we can all live a life of luxury, have nice jobs if wanted, and be of some value?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday August 19 2014, @02:37PM
You are not wrong about how wasteful Americans are. You have described attitudes about money neatly. Those are, however, recent attitudes, and recent habits. I was raised by grandparents who grew up during the Great Depression and experienced WWII with its rationing and scrap drives as adults. They grew their own vegetables in a garden, heated their home with wood they chopped themselves, and recycled everything their whole lives. Thrift was their creed. So it is within living memory Americans lived as you implicitly recommend. Many Americans are returning to those values and behaviors now because they choose to or because they must.
Though I naturally side with those who are frugal, and try to live that way myself, I have serious doubts that Malthusian theory can explain or predict the course of civilization. War, disease, and overpopulation were drivers Malthus obsessed about and he was convinced they would bring about the end of civilization, imminently. The year he published those ideas? 1798. I think it's safe to say civilization has not collapsed since then and has even managed to achieve certain advances like modern medicine. I wouldn't be surprised if the advances we're just now developing, computers, genetic engineering, additive manufacturing, improved energy generation & storage, don't allow us to escape the Malthusian prediction of doom yet again.
In the meantime, though civilization itself won't come to an end, revolutions do happen. We are headed for a doozy. You can't concentrate wealth so extremely and violate social conventions like the Constitution or the Rule of Law with impunity. The people who hold all the wealth and power now see things like rules, laws, Constitutional rights, etc., as inconveniences that don't really apply to them, or as quaint notions that keep the rabble in line. Before they pretended those things were important because they acknowledged explicitly or implicitly that it was useful to keep up appearances. Now, they feel so supremely powerful, so unassailable, so transcendent, that they don't even bother to pretend; indeed, many of them have taken to rubbing our noses in it. And, boy, is that a bad move. Ask Marie Antoinette how profitable it is to insult the people whom you have just finished grinding into the dust.
There are cynics who dismiss the ability of Americans to care. "They'll watch another reality TV program," they say. "They'll go to the mall and buy something else they don't need," they scoff. But when the NSA violates the Constitution 20 trillion times (William Binney's estimate) and the Director of National Intelligence (Eric Clapper) lies openly to Congress, with no consequences, they notice. When the head of the IRS (Lois Lerner) uses her office to suppress political opponents and gets away with it using the equivalent of "the dog ate my homework," (her emails were 'lost') they notice. When cops are using tanks and military equipment to suppress peaceful demonstrations (Ferguson), they notice. And beneath the surface of daily, conscious thought, anger at the unfairness of it all grows. Their neighbor loses his job to outsourcing. They get angrier. They have their hours cut back because their employer doesn't want to provide benefits. They get angrier. They lose their homes because the bank seized it fraudulently, and they get angrier. All of those are 24/7 realities that just aren't going away and aren't being dealt with by the authorities, and that pressure will explode.
The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and now Ferguson are all expressions of that anger. There will be more, and it will be huge.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday August 19 2014, @04:54PM
I think Malthus was incomplete. For billions of years, life has had the capacity to expand too rapidly. And yet it doesn't happen. We don't see endless cycles of collapse and recovery, like the Moties in the Sci Fi classic The Mote in God's Eye. Why doesn't this happen? There must be self limiting factors at work, other than the disastrous ones of war, starvation and epidemics. That's what Malthus missed. There is much research showing that many animals do restrain themselves. Mostly, if food is scarce, females simply won't breed. Might not go into heat. Or, might abort a baby, as kangaroos do. There are other ways. Elephants will single out and ostracize a female, and it may be because she had a baby when there are already many elephants and room is scarce. See research about an elephant named Paula and her baby Bruce.
Why does such restraint exist in the animal kingdom? There must be an evolutionary advantage to it. It's not hard to suppose that a species without such restraint would quickly put itself at a disadvantage and go extinct. Their initial success would "plant the seeds of their own destruction", and when the collapse came, the few survivors would be too weak and too few to win competitions with rival species.
My parents grew up in the Great Depression. Yes, they know how to be frugal. They lived that life of wood burning stoves, outhouses, hand pumps for well water, the vegetable garden, and canned food for the winter.
One thing I still wonder about Marie Antoinette. Was "Let them eat cake" the words of a clueless bimbo who honestly had no idea that that proposal was totally impractical, and who couldn't be bothered to take 1 minute to inform herself otherwise? Or was that more harsh, with cake being an euphemism for feces? Let them eat feces!
Yes, I think the super rich had better be careful. It's not too late to head off disaster. But their attitudes make it sound like they won't try, until it's too late. Let them eat feces.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24 2014, @05:56AM
One time out walking, I started to cross the street. A car just nonchalantly turned in front of me. I made eye contact with the driver but all they did was was sorta stare at me while they made their turn--kinda a 'Sorry, I'm in a hurry!' type expression.
And don't get me started on all the people talking on their cellphones while they drive.... :P That proves right there that pedestrians are in danger of people who value their social or business affairs HIGHER that the life and safety of another human being not riding in an enclosed vehicle like they are.
Funny how I've NEVER seen someone on a two-wheeled vehicle use a cellphone while operating it. Maybe that is the solution to talking/texting while driving--ban all privately-held cars!
Mass transit where I live is barely usable. Service got cut (temporarily?) because property owners were unwilling to help their neigbors who can't (afford to) drive cars to get around town as needed.
Sadly, it looks like life in the USA, if not the rest of the industrialized world, is heading for a REAL COLLAPSE that will make the socioeconomic depravations faced by the 99%ers in 1929, 1987, and 2007 look like pleasant memories in comparison.
All the 1%ers are doing now is basically pushing the 99%ers to open revolt.
It could become another French Revolution...only this time backed by the Internet for communications/networking purposes and (tens of?) millions of 99%ers with NOTHING left to lose but their (near?) worthless lives as deemed by the 1%ers through their 'race to the bottom' business policies....
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 18 2014, @12:15PM
"Sorry, I'm too sad and depressed to think up a Star Wars analogy."
Car analogy? Its like 70s era Detroit iron garbage, which got worse and worse until the Japanese came in and took over, because they're simply better managers, so they sell better products. Nobody aspires to an American made car, its just something you settle for if you can't afford Japanese. After you go Toyota, you never go back to GM... maybe I'd buy a Honda, but never a government motors again, ever, just too incompetently managed.
If as you postulate American managers and execs are pretty much the bottom of the barrel, which based on experience I really can't argue with, eventually foreign owned firms will employ all the Americans, or at least all employed Americans will be definition be employed by foreign firms. Get a job at a real company in the USA branch of Siemens or Daimler or Bayer or Kontron or Merck or a Japanese or Korean firm. Make sure they have foreign management not incompetent locals.
Also the better American managers work at companies still mfgr stuff in the USA. We have lost all consumer products (aka anything walmart sells) but we still rule the world (or are at least serious competition) in mining gear, aerospace, resource extraction in general, and .mil death machines. If there's still a profitable operating mfgr plant in the USA, that company probably has relatively higher competence management. Not a guarantee, but the odds are at least somewhat better.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 18 2014, @03:31PM
but we still rule the world (or are at least serious competition) in mining gear, aerospace, resource extraction in general, and .mil death machines.
Even that is getting shipped out. We do work for a large aerospace/defense contractor and we ship parts to Mexico for assembly. I can't go into detail but the Mexican assembly plant has all sorts of communication and quality problems that we have to deal with. This is for flight critical hardware BTW. But hey, free market and all that good stuff.
A lot of assembly is going south of the border to Mexico. Trucks, mining aerospace, you name it. If they can save a buck by opening a plant in Mexico then they will do it. A lot has to do with union busting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24 2014, @06:26AM
When NAFTA [wikipedia.org] became law in the USA on January 1, 1994, the downward spiral REALLY BEGAN!
Here we are 20 years later and only the ones at the top of the socioeconomic ladder have TRULY benefitted from it!
Basically EVERYTHING is offshored except 'aerospace/(defense), resource extraction', financial services, and the entertainment/service/advertising industries.
Products are designed in the USA, manufactured overseas on the cheap to avoid playing decent wages to Americans, then shipped back into the USA and marketed and sold for a tidy profit that covers the added expenses.
People get all up in arms about Wal-Mart. How else can you make what little money you have if you are a 99%er go as far as possible in order to buy the stuff you NEED to live properly--principally, food, cleaning supplies, and clothes. I'm not talking about spending money on anyting else available for sale there unless it is ABSOLUTELY, TRULY NECESSARY!
I've worked in unionized and non-unionized environments in the past. The only REAL difference between the two was the amount left in my paycheck each pay period....
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 18 2014, @01:58PM
I agree with the general sentiment here. A fundamental problem in business today is the professional managerial class who got there not by working their way up but by getting a business degree, cozying up to some corporate bigwig, and then being put in charge of things they know nothing about.
This is part of the legacy of the 1980's in particular: The size of MBA programs skyrocketed, and a fundamental philosophical shift was made towards the idea that management was a skill independent of knowing the ins and outs of the process of making a product. By contrast, there's at least one account of Ford executives being required to be able to assemble a working Model T.
An example of this was an acquaintance of mine who had recently graduated with both a mechanical engineering and MBA degree - she got a job scheduling production of moulded plastics, and within a few months had pissed off the factory floor workers so much that they would simply refuse to do what she told them to, and her boss eventually fired her when the orders weren't delivered. The reason? She saw the entire production process as simply numbers on a spreadsheet, and had never spent time on the floor understanding exactly what she was telling them to do. She had never asked the foremen to teach her the details, or even asked for their input on day-to-day decisions. Had she done that, she could have made better decisions, gotten the foremen and others on the factory floor to work with her rather than against her, made the company more profitable, and kept her job.
A lot of what the MBA seems to be about is blinding those with decision-making power from the consequences of those decisions. I've read some of the popular business literature, and there's absolutely nothing in there about the impact of decisions on the personal lives of employees, or the environmental effects of industry, or long-term retention of customers and employees. There's lots on how to put together convincing presentations, though, to convince superiors, investors, and customers to buy useless junk at inflated prices. There's a lot on how to turn anything into numbers on a spreadsheet, and a lot of inspirational-sounding nonsense.
The way those with power mitigate the risk of a real change is by throwing enough crumbs to a subset of the peasants that they are more concerned about making sure the other peasants don't get their crumbs than they are about trying to figure out where the rest of the cake went.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 18 2014, @08:23PM
What do this bread crumbs consist of?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:19AM
If you work as a software developer or system administrator, there's a good chance you're one of those who gets crumbs. Crumbs like:
- Driving a car made in the last 15 years
- Owning a home (and having a good chance of being able to eventually own it free and clear without a mortgage to worry about)
- Cable or Netflix
- A retirement account, with the accompanying promise of eventually not having to work
- The ability to travel relatively easily around the world
- Good (possibly private) schools for your kids
- Eating high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables regularly
I know, it's not much, but the majority of the country right now has a really really hard time getting any of those. Education isn't necessarily the answer either: There are thousands of PhDs making peanuts teaching as adjuncts because those are the only academic positions open.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by germanbird on Monday August 18 2014, @02:58PM
I've gone through a similar situation at a former company and I think you've hit the nail on the head.
Unfortunately, I don't know what the solution is either. It seems like the most important thing would be for the management teams to suffer the consequences of their short-term thinking when they are cutting and slashing and burning. Most of the time they get rewarded for increasing short-term profits (or even bailed out by the government when their short-term thinking causes the company to fail). I guess its probably not realistic to expect these guys not to move on to greener pastures when things start going south, but if we could tie their financial incentives to longer-term goals and numbers it might help turn the tide.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Monday August 18 2014, @04:56PM
Isn't this arguably a good thing in the long run? If all of these companies run by short-term thinkers end up tanking, the market would be left wide open for companies with competent management. Or is this all just me being naive? I'd actually want to start a corporation in this sort of market. There's a massive pool of qualified labor locally and all of your competitors are morons.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @09:18PM
Or is this all just me being naive? I'd actually want to start a corporation in this sort of market. There's a massive pool of qualified labor locally and all of your competitors are morons.
A successful business is at least 50% marketing, probably closer to 90%.
Hobbling engineering takes a long time to overcome good marketing.
You can hire those guys, for much higher rates and get better work out of them, but you'll still have a fucking hard time competing with the guys who have been running professional marketing for decades.
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Tuesday August 19 2014, @08:26AM
Yes, this is what should happen; and DID happen during the "Global Financial Crisis". But apparently the corporations were "too big to fail"... So instead of the old failures being swept away leaving an opening for reform, regrowth and renewal; everything just continued to stagnate.
Also, big corporations do NOT like competition. If you search around you can find numerous stories about corporations lobbying local/state/federal governments to add more and more regulations (often with almost believable excuses like consumer or employee "safety") that make it harder and harder for small businesses to compete or even exist. If there are no alternatives possible, it doesn't matter how terribly mismanaged large corporations are. If everybody needs/wants to buy food/cars/tv's/etc. and the only suppliers of the product are Ubercorp United & Friends, product quality isn't even an issue.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 18 2014, @08:39PM
So what professions actually make a (really) good living? especially if they didn't previously. Or perhaps different geographic location?
Something tells me there's is certainly not a lack of technical challenges to make this planet a better place and making a profit while accomplishing this. (Like extraterrestrial mining for starters) Those projects will need a lot of engineers.
The other aspect of this situation is that if MBA run companies are weak on quality and innovation. There's an opportunity to outdo them and grab their customers. Or future customers that need these factors. In 1810 there was "no need" for computer servers..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday August 18 2014, @12:34PM
"A typical union is not the solution (I don't want one anyways, they often bring different kinds of problems)."
Maybe its time for new problems.
For better or worse a large part of politics / economic policy isn't about fixing unfixable problems but keeping all the plates spinning at the same time by rotating the problems.
Waiting for things to get bad enough for a proletarian revolution to take hold or civil rebellion like in Missouri to spread outside minority areas or complete economic collapse to set in (more severe than the current great recession) is probably a worse aggregate net outcome than having a couple union stewards or having to pay overtime pay to all laborers not just some lucky ones.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by danaris on Monday August 18 2014, @12:46PM
Furthermore, if we got together and formed a union, we would be the ones who got to decide what that meant. It's not like the modern problems with unions are inherent to the very idea of a union: they are a product of corruption within the union, and losing sight of the true goal. If you and I and a dozen of our tech friends got together and decided to start a union, it wouldn't instantly become bogged down by union politics and leaders who were solely out for their own interests, because we would be the leaders, and would still have the reason we formed the union in the first place (y'know, five minutes ago) fresh in our minds.
Dan Aris
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday August 18 2014, @07:27PM
I'm sorry, but while the problems aren't inherent in unions, they *are* inherent in management. And try to run a union without management. You might be able to reduce the problem if you insisted on total transparency from the beginning, but that would reduce the effectiveness of the union in bargaining, and would also increase some internal stresses.
P.S., in any organization, the "leaders" are not the rank and file. That's an impossible organization. You *might* be able to design some sort of distributed management that would work, but you would need to be quite careful that there weren't any chokehold positions, because those driven to acquire power look for positions that will give them power. Stalin got into power because he was the guy that notified people when a meeting was scheduled. (Lenin really was idealistic, if a bit brutal, narrow-minded, and delusional. Stalin was just brutal.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 18 2014, @08:28PM
The problem with organizations with power is not who you put in charge but what the situation does with them. Power corrupts and a high position distance people from other people. Few people in power also means a lucrative target for lobbyist and others.
The main culprit is probable the collectivization of the individual. Just look at large corporations and the Dilbert comics based on it.
This also hints that political systems in itself matters less than the processes that runs it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by morgauxo on Monday August 18 2014, @01:04PM
There are too many people out there convinced that good jobs are hard to find. The problem is, as you are discovering, that's what makes it true.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Monday August 18 2014, @01:50PM
Gosh, I'm so glad you pointed that out. Pointing out that everyone is "part of the problem", while ignoring effects of relative power to change the situation is always so, so, SO helpful. Because blaming the victim always makes these situations better!
That is all.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:40PM
"Gosh, I'm so glad you pointed that out."
Your welcome! :-)
"Pointing out that everyone is "part of the problem""
Nope, not everyone, just most people.
"while ignoring effects of relative power"
A funny thing about relative power, it works two ways. Certainly a company, especially a large one has more influence on the jobs market than an individual. Still, there are hundreds of millions of employers in the world. If one company had a reputation for treating it's workers poorly but every other company was always trying to do the right thing... how long could the bad one last? And yet the situation we have today still developed. If business executives believed in 'relative power' we would never have been in the situation we have today. And yet here we are...
My own relative power is very little. I can chose where I work. And I can post snarky comments on Soylent. I already left a large corporation that I saw going downhill in how it treated it's employees. From there I went to a small company that turned out to REALLY treat it's employees badly. I kept on walking, now I've been at a place I love for 7 years! I guess those Soylent comments are all I have left. Oh.. but there's more. My old friends at that large corporation I mentioned... the ones that wouldn't leave (and yes, I did [much more politely than here] suggest they do so)... they are getting laid off and are terrified of whatever comes next. So, that's where my frame of mind was coming from when I posted what I did.
Companies can only be such big douches because people are letting them. Good work IS out there but it is gettinng harder and harder to find BECAUSE too many people are convinced that it isn't.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday August 18 2014, @01:31PM
To me this article raises two distinct and separate issues that I think are more helpfully considered separately.
First, there's a question of violation of US hiring law. As submitter points out, the H1B visa program is designed to allow importation of labor when a company cannot find qualified American laborers of equivalent skill. It can certainly be the case (especially in companies/industries that take the shortsighted view that software engineers are commodified drones) that companies are ignoring this provision in law, and basing their hiring decisions on what's cheaper, even though this is illegal. How would you remedy suspected violations of hiring law? Honestly, the best course of action might be to bring suit agains the head of whatever federal department is supposed to oversee the H1B program for failure to audit company assurances that "no qualified Americans can be found." The government is supposed to investigate, just as they investigate EEOC complaints as they receive them. By the way, yes, you SHOULD file a complaint. How do you expect the government to act if no one's willing to do so?
Second, there's a question on whether the provision in question (that US companies ought to favor hiring US citizens) is just. I think there's a reasonable discussion that we can have independent of the "how do we get laws enforced?" question. Regardless of current law, SHOULD US companies be expected/required to favor US citizens in hiring? There's an argument to be made that this codifies economic imperialism - the companies with the greatest current wealth share should retain it by giving as little as possible to those outside their borders, regardless of talent or ability. There's a counter-argument that US companies enjoy numerous legal and economic benefits by operating within the US, and that the US has some reasonable expectation that they provide such advantages in return for some expectation of benefits for US citizens. What SHOULD the responsibility be?
Personally, I find "code is code" - the ones and zeros don't care where the person who wrote the source code lives, and the economic benefit of software has nothing to do with where it's written. So I personally favor paying developers what their value is to the company - a fantastic developer who lives in India should make as much as a similarly fantastic developer who lives in the US, and a "I can technically implement Java classes if the architect tells me exactly what to do" developer shouldn't make terribly much either place.
By the way, I personally believe the real problem is that the disparity in pay between "absolutely amazing developer" and "actually pretty crap developer" is too SMALL relative to their actual value - companies pay their most productive people too little and their least productive (sometimes almost net negative people who create as many problems for others as they fix) too much. Companies are used to a specific pay range and scale and the industry has mostly accepted it, which puts far too much (in my opinion) of their available dollars to spend on developers at the low end of the spectrum. And that's where they (arguably correctly) see potential cost savings - they don't get much out, so they don't want to spend much.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Monday August 18 2014, @02:40PM
If money is spent within a local economy, it is possible for virtuous circles to be formed. If money is spent nationally or internationally, it encourages winner-takes-all economics and you probably won't be the winner.
That may be your opinion but people with much greater financial influence are excluding Huawei, Cisco, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other companies due to real or perceived political ties.
Ignoring politics, we have a situation where the world market cost for writing commodity software is about US$3 per hour - which is less than the minimum wage in many states/countries. Furthermore, the languages in which the software is written allow bugs. Some of these bugs are serious. The consequences of these bugs fall disproportionately on the most computerized nations.
Perhaps if offshore work was paid at minimum wage, much less of it would occur. The US is keen to exercise its laws beyond its borders and this is a clear case where labor laws can be enforced.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday August 18 2014, @03:21PM
I believe that US law specifically states that to sponsor an H1B
a) the job posting must be in a public place for 30 days to inform the local area labor force.
b) Pay a "prevailing wage", which means you cannot pay an immigrant *less* than a local worker.
c) cannot employ H1B where there is a strike
d) if a non-union job it must be posted electronically.
There's the govt link
http://www.dol.gov/compliance/guide/h1b.htm [dol.gov]
Since employers are required to post the jobs locally, if you assert they are not, this would appear to be actionable. Since these jobs *must* pay better than average, perhaps people should be applying for them!!!??
There is a cap on H1B visas and I believe it is probably proportional to the population of the country applying i.e. India and China get most of the visas.
If the job requires an Msc or above there are fewer restrictions but the pay must be >$60,000.
Finally "code is code" is not really true. There are specific skill sets required to write application specific software.
You would be interested that many PhD projects are 10% code and 90% mathematics/algorithm... I attended a recent PhD defense using Quantum Field Theory and the mathematics was implemented in R, Mathematica and Latex (for output).
Can you imagine writing code for that?
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday August 18 2014, @03:32PM
I suppose you can argue the specifics of the terms, but I believe this is basically stating Computer Science and Software Engineering are not the same thing.
Computer Science (my definition) is a theoretical science - a branch of abstract mathematics and is an area of high-end academic research primarily concerned with algorithms.
Software Engineering (my definition again) is an applied science - taking the learnings from Computer Science and applying them to write practical working software applications to solve real world problems.
My "code is code" comment is specifically within the domain of Software Engineering - I couldn't care less where an application was written, or what the specific skills of the programmer writing it were. If it does a useful thing, it's useful. If it doesn't, it's not. (By the way, I'm including "is it secure?" "does it scale?" etc. in "does it do a useful thing?" I couldn't care less if an app with good security was written by a security expert or a novice that got lucky - if it's secure, that's all that matters). It is the tale, not he who tells it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @04:37PM
A is not helpful, because the fact that the job is posted does not mean Americans will be interviewed, or if interviewed actually considered, for the position. When you get enough practice you can often tell jobs that are posted for the many reasons jobs are posted other than actually wanting to hire someone who might respond to the posting. Depending on the location and the state of the economy, bogus postings may outnumber real ones by... about the same ratio as the Craigslist personals.
B is not enforced, and what's more, there are many other issues aside from wages that make H1B workers preferable to Americans. The H1B worker cannot change jobs at will (without returning to their home country and getting re-sponsored, assuming they aren't blacklisted for attempting such a thing) and is therefore beholden to the employer. Of course, that doesn't stop them from changing jobs because their job ended or even if the company where they work wants to get rid of them - since their actual "employer" is the contracting company. They receive inferior if any benefits (also true even of American contractors) and present no risk of promotion and competing for their manager's job.
C and D are not really relevant because software companies rarely have unions. And even in companies that both develop technology and have unions, the technology employees are rarely members of the union.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Monday August 18 2014, @03:26PM
Computer programming is no longer some obscure profession. It is mainstream and we need it to keep our people employed.
I am a huge believer in manufacturing here in the US. I believe adding value by transforming raw material into finished good will be at the heart of any economy for a long time to come. But this may be slightly shifting to include creating working processes from nothing. The manufacture of code.
We need that manufacturing here if we want to continue adding value to the global marketplace.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 18 2014, @08:32PM
Is there any barriers to pay good developers more? I thinking if there's some price fixation laws etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @03:55PM
I used to manage offshored IT development projects for a fortune 50 company. We had a massive IT division that the CFO thought we needed to "do more with less". Offshoring was part of the strategy. Work was divided into the following groups, in order of relative ease of offshoring:
1) infrastructure management - these are your DBAs, Unix Admins, Application Server managers, etc. - this is repetitive work that is documented to the last detail. All that is sent offshore and done from India.
2) software development - this is writing code, QA/testing - you send the requirements, specs, test plans, etc offshore and get code back. Group 1 will do the deployments to the systems they manage.
3) project management - when you chop up your IT into rigidly constrained groups that only interact via ticketing systems, it becomes a nightmare to get anything done. PMs are hired (on both sides) to make it all work.
4) business analysis - folks that are often dual trained in IT and a business area (e.g. accounting, manufacturing, marketing, whatever your company does to make $) will work with those folks to translate what they need into requirements, specs, etc that go to group 2. Hard to offshore.
5) management, procurement - these are the folks that manage (i.e. supervise or arrange managed service contracts for the other groups). Never seen those folks go offshore yet.
6) hardware management - if the hardware is in the US, can't offshore the folks that babysit it :)
Bottom line: if you are in group 1 or 2, look out!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @12:32AM
I used to manage offshored IT development projects for a fortune 50 company. We had a massive IT division that the CFO thought we needed to "do more with less". Offshoring was part of the strategy.
Yes, but Outsourcing/Offshoring (or Right-Sourcing or Right-Shoring as it was re-branded in my region) is a different animal again - where work goes offshore rather than offshore workers taking domestic roles. The H1-B loophole is nasty and I don't know how to advise the OP.
This year a friend of mine looked to leverage the existing regulatory framework/s by creating a technical solution to the offshoring problem. See the "Business" tab on this site http://thruglassxfer.com/ [thruglassxfer.com]. It removed the absurd differentiator that was being marketed to industry regulators to appease concerns around offshore strategies. i.e. the data remains "on shore" while the worker is "off shore". The TGXf tool should also apply to HIPAA which the OP is probably subject too, but as I said H1-B is very different to offshoring.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @04:02PM
I interviewed for a position as senior sysadmin, at CaseLogic, in Redwood Shores, a month or so ago.
I was told that the guy before me had died, from diabetes, and from complications related to the amount of stress he was experiencing.
EVERY SINGLE PERSON I met during the three-hour-long second interview, was from India, except for the two hiring managers.
While I was interviewing I was told that every single person I was looking at - and they were all Indian - was going to be laid off, and the entire department was going to be outsourced to a data center operated by Dell, in Texas. Presumably, run by other people, also from India.
The managers gave me their direct dial numbers and invited me to call them directly to get updates on the status of my application. After a few weeks, I did so. The answer I got was vague and unsatisfactory.
It's been a few more weeks, and I still haven't heard anything back.
From what I heard previously, the hiring managers were under considerable pressure, from their management, to use this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, by replacing a unsatisfactory evenings-and-weekends employee with the new senior systems administrator ... who was also supposed to provide oversight to staff onsite during the week.
This was a contract, with an option to hire - and what I was being offered, for a strictly temporary job, with managerial responsibilities, was $60/hour, on a W2 basis - about what I received, for much less responsibility, in 1995.
One of the issues that was not discussed was how I would be compensated, as a contractor, for being on call. As an hourly employee, in the 1980s, I received a stipend - $15 - for each 8 hours I was on call.
Nowadays EVERYONE is on call, ALL THE TIME ... but nobody receives any compensation. It seems criminal. Especially for those of us whom are actually called, at 3 AM, and ordered to work - gotta honor those service level agreements to customers, even if we don't honor our employees ... you know?
(It's possible that raising the topic with my recruiter led to my being dropped as a candidate.)
Imagine what a shot in the arm to the economy it would provide if every employee whom was required to carry a cell phone, by their employee, for off-hours access, received ((5 [days] x 2 [8-hour shifts]) + (2 [days] x 3 [8-hour shifts]) x $15 [per 8-hour shift, on call]) per week, for each week they had been required to carry said device ... plus interest.
Perhaps someone should Kickstart a class action lawsuit and use the class to start a union - $10 per week, per employee, from each employee that is on call and receiving a union-negotiated stipend, would solve a lot of problems.
As I was leaving I noticed, parked in a discreet corner of the parking lot, a vehicle which had been retrofitted to act as a discreet recreational vehicle.
Obviously, one of the employees in one of the buildings close by, slept, on the street, in their car, during the week - obviously, because they could not afford to do anything else.
Food for thought.
I'm sensitive to these things because I do the same thing - like many parents whom have children, I have been sleeping in my car - to save money, when working in the Bay Area - for nearly a decade, now.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @10:44PM
Oh, you're lucky. I work for a TV station and I'm on call 24/7. I receive nothing for being on call, but I may not seek other employment, nor may I have an overly-active social life. I can do pretty much what I want, but I must be available at short notice.
Of course, I am very well paid for what I do, which is a sarcastic way of saying that I'm barely paid anything at all. The CEO modifies time sheets to reduce our pay because his budget is a bit tight and he really can't manage that well. (MBAs don't rank highly in my opinion, but since he's one he thinks they're just amazing.)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Tangaroa on Monday August 18 2014, @07:49PM
This is not a market problem. There are qualified Americans who will work for less than what these companies are paying the H1Bs. There are unqualified but intelligent Americans who can be trained into the position within six months and and will work for even less than that. According to Econ 101 and the basic laws of supply and demand, the companies should be hiring Americans first. The fact that they are not hiring Americans at all suggests that something else is going on.
The problem is more widespread than the tech sector. McDonalds was caught doing the same thing in Canada. [www.cbc.ca] If locals end up barred from the most basic entry-level jobs, the economy is screwed.
What can we do about it? One approach is to name and shame the companies, executives, and lawyers responsible for the problem. To do that, we need information. We need to know who these people are. We need to know what exactly the problem is, where it is occurring, and why it is occurring. I propose the formation of a whistleblower group to collect and distribute information about the problem. We will need an email list, a wikia site to post information that is strong enough to survive a libel claim, instructions for how people can contribute information anonymously, and an outreach effort to get these stories into the public consciousness to attract more information from the wider public.
As for legal resolutions, qualified applicants can sue if it can be shown that they were qualified and rejected in favor of a lesser qualified H1B. This is nearly impossible to prove without being inside the company's HR department. Corporate stockholders can sue if they can show that the corporation is not being run in the stockholders' interest. This might be the easiest type of case to win, as the stockholders should only need to prove a general pattern of rejecting qualified employees. We could organize the H1B workers, make them aware of their legal rights, and find some lawyers to give them pro bono service if they ever need to sue. If the businesses are worrying about Americans and Canadians having access to the law, putting the immigrants on an equal footing in that respect will take that argument away from them. State and federal regulators are not working or else we would not be having this conversation.
We could also respond in the marketplace. We can find out what companies have policies against hiring local talent, and then find some tech billionaires from the 1990s to fund the development of alternatives to their products and services. If we have a generation of programmers sitting idle, it should be easy to get employees for a cheap wage plus stock in the startup. This is a job for a Larry Ellison or Bill Gates.
As for the individual inside one of these companies, like the OP, there is little they can do other than get the word out in a way that will not get them fired.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @09:33PM
I suspect the USA is a lost cause.
It -can- serve as a warning to workers around the globe--if they don't allow themselves to be mesmerized by corporate media the way the USA's working class has.
The elites have had multiple generations to implement their game plan, and they seized the day.
They got their actual marching orders in the Powell Memorandum of 1971. [wikipedia.org]
To reclaim what has been lost, THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS WILL HAVE TO RE-LEARN THE LESSONS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA.
Change doesn't come quickly or easily: Plessy v Ferguson was in 1896; Brown v Board was in 1954; The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.
Change especially doesn't come when everybody just sits at home consuming lamestream media (aka corporate propaganda).
Step 1 is to recognize the divide-and-conquer tactic used by the elites and make it ineffective.
That is one topic in Ralph Nader's latest book "Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State".
Note: Ralph recently sponsored a Left-Right convention in DC.
Grover Norquist (the make-gov't-so-small-you-can-drown-it-in-a-bathtub guy) joined him on the dais.
Supermajorities of Americans already agree on many many things. [googleusercontent.com]
(orig) [popularresistance.org]
The problem is that they allow themselves to be played by lamestream media on the less-important things.
Step 2 is to reverse Citizens United via a constitutional amendment.
http://www.wolf-pac.com/the_plan#headline [wolf-pac.com]
https://movetoamend.org/#main [movetoamend.org]
Prof. Lessig's recent idea is another related movement.
http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/05/07/145242&mode=nested [soylentnews.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @05:42AM
The best idea you have there is organizing the H1-B workers. That actually addresses the root of the problem: the H1-B's are preferred because they're vulnerable (can't switch jobs, often receiving exploitative benefits/pay, can't be promoted), so remove the vulnerability and take away the incentive for the MBA's to exploit them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 24 2014, @08:07AM
All unionizing the H1-B workers will do is force the CxOs/management to lay them off/fire them and they turn to sites like Elance and Guru for programming help on the cheap WITHOUT all the H1-B legwork/paperwork or the CTOs and their staff code the software themselves.
Business logic software is rather easy to write.
Writing EFFICIENT business logic software can only come with a DEEP understanding of a computer at its most FUNDAMENTAL level along with the proper use of the fastest algorithms available to code them with.
As far as I know, the ONLY WAY to REALLY obtain this type of programming knowledge is to learn assembly language.
Once you learn that, computer programming is a piece of cake from that point on because you will have learned how to MAKE EVERY INSTRUCTION/(PROGRAM STATEMENT) COUNT because you have to write SO MANY OF THEM at the assembly language level. The C/C++/C# programming languages take care of a good chunk of this painstaking tedium--freeing you to code your algorithms as efficently as possible and have them run just about as fast as an equivalent program would run in hand-crafted assembly language. Learning assembly language first allows you (if you have the time available) to focus on program DESIGN first with a handful of written notes if needed and get it as PICTURE PERFECT as possible before you sit down and type the code in as if from memory because it REALLY will be that easy--I spend more time finding the information I need for a program I write or debugging the few subtle errors lurking in the program than I did typing all the code in, compiling and testing each part of the program along the way.
All the REAL PROGRAMMING has been already done by REAL PROGRAMMERS who had to create their operating systems and programming tools from scratch IN MACHINE CODE--hundreds and thousands of binary numbers--first! Once those were created, everything became easier and easier.
Business owners know this, which is why they pay so little for computer programming nowadays--all you are REALLY doing is automating some business rules and manipulating data in a database according to them. However, there is one industry I know of that still hire REAL PROGRAMMERS at REAL PROGRAMMER wages: High Frequency Trading. HFT RUNS on efficiently coded software in order to make BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in arbitage fees--otherwise, what's the point?! Some time ago I read an article here (or on the Green Site) about some HFT trades that went through 'faster than the speed of light'! Someone in Chicago. IL managed to get their HFT software to execute trades and make some (serious?) money a few milliseconds after the Federal government made some sort of official financial announcement in Washington, DC at a certain time BUT but before that news could even have time to travel through a fiber optic cable between both cities at close to the speed of light! To find out more about this AMAZING yet dishonest(?) business practice, read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Boys [wikipedia.org]