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A couple of years ago it was reported that in 2012 more than half of all American wage earners made less than $30,000 per year. The Social Security Administration's new earnings report for 2014 is out and there's still much gnashing of teeth about the dying middle class. With earnings numbers that haven't changed much in 2 years, estimates running as high as 100 million working age Americans without a job, and no one tracking the population of H-1B visa holders, where are the jobs really?
The July 9, 2015, issue of The New York Review of Books carried a very thoughtful piece by Andrew Hacker. In "The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent," Hacker discusses a number of books and reports that address whether or not there really is a need for more tech talent, the justification for the H-1B visa program, and issues in the American educational system.
[...] Throughout his piece Hacker is basically questioning two things:
1. Is there really an unfilled need for STEM graduates, or are we actually graduating too many so that many end up unemployed or employed in different areas?
2. Are there flaws in the American education system, both at the K-12 level and in college, that lead us to be very dependent on foreign STEM graduates?
[...] The texts Hacker is reviewing, and his own information, seem to dwell predominately on overall job projections for the STEM fields. Nowhere does there appear a breakout of the job forecast for computing related job categories. With the increased ubiquity of computing across all industries and employment sectors, it seems unlikely that we will see the "deskilling" trend that may be occurring in engineering (whereby engineers create equipment that means they and others like them no longer have job opportunities). We know that there are many jobs in the "tech sector" but there are also a lot of computing jobs in banking, finance, manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, etc. We can get an accurate picture of future job openings only if we can make a good determination of the computing jobs that exist outside of the "tech sector."
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday October 27 2015, @12:00PM
From what I remember, H1B's are subjective to a prevailing wage condition - i.e. you cannot pay them *less* than other workers.
Does this not still hold?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by edinlinux on Tuesday October 27 2015, @12:14PM
No, there is no enforcement provision in the law for this. (which is why when companies post those H1B notices in dark corners of corporate hallways, there is no federal # to call to report irregularities)
As well, there are plenty of other tricks corporate HR depts do to scam this and skirt around the law:
Scam 1:
i.e. call a Sr. DBA role a Jr. DBA role (with a Jr. DBA salary of course) on the job spec, then hire an actual Sr. DBA H-1B from a 3rd world country to fill the role. As the Jr. salary in the USA will still be multiples of what that H-1B would earn in their own country as a Sr. DBA, they will gladly take the role anyway even though it is a 'Jr. role', and push out the American Sr. DBA. They won't complain about as they don't want get sent back to India or whereever.
Scam 2:
Excessive amounts of free unpaid overtime. This was rare in the 80s. Now, you can make people work as many hours as you want for (almost) free, as the H-1Bs don't want get sent back. The Americans have families and mortgages to pay, so don't want to work 80 hours / week for only 40. So guess who gets laid off when the quarterly cuts come.
Scam 3:
Make the role very specific to the H-1B you have already designated (just put that person's resume into the job spec, so he is the only one who is 'qualified') to replace the American you are trying to get rid of.
Scam 4:
Consulting company (usually from India) looks for Sr. DBA's in bumf*ck Nebraska where their recruiting office is. Of course there are no Sr. DBAs in bumf*ck Nebraska, so they get the visa, and bring in their H1-B to Nebraska for $35K / year (the prevailing rate in Nebraska). The job though, really isn't in Nebraska, it is in NYC. As soon as they get to Nebraska, the H-1B is given a ticket to NYC, and gets sent there - American on $150K gets replaced.
And don't even get me started on L-1 visas, where there are no requirements at all to prove shortages...
We need to stop being so naive and do something about this..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 27 2015, @02:29PM
Actually, most of that is not necessary any longer.
That's because in the last couple of years, they've quietly removed the provision that H1B's can only be used in cases where there are no qualified American citizens. So now the bosses are faced with the choice of hiring a citizen who requires health insurance and a decent salary and time not working, or an H1B who you can demand works 90+ hours a week for half as much as the American makes and if he doesn't do it and pretend to like it he'll be deported. Guess which one they pick, every time?
The fundamental problem in IT is that management in large companies attempts to shoehorn into an industrial management model and activity that has more in common with scientific research. Which is to say that their mental model is basically "output roughly equals programmer productivity per hour times hours worked times number of programmers" as opposed to reality which is more like "output roughly equals number of programmers times (average percentage of days each programmer gets really good ideas minus average bug rate per day) times days worked". And then they go and desperately try to find metrics that tries to determine the hourly productivity per programmer without understanding that when you make programmers work long hours the average bug rate goes up and the percentage of good ideas goes down and causes your output to drop (even if it appears to be going up according to your metrics).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 27 2015, @07:23PM
Scam 1:
i.e. call a Sr. DBA role a Jr. DBA role (with a Jr. DBA salary of course) on the job spec, then hire an actual Sr. DBA H-1B from a 3rd world country to fill the role. As the Jr. salary in the USA will still be multiples of what that H-1B would earn in their own country as a Sr. DBA, they will gladly take the role anyway even though it is a 'Jr. role', and push out the American Sr. DBA. They won't complain about as they don't want get sent back to India or whereever.
I keep seeing bollocks like this. You guys never consider that these H1Bs have to live in the US. "will still be multiple of what X would earn in their own country" is an invalid argument because they are no longer in their own countries.
Learn how to relative, man.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday October 27 2015, @10:47PM
Tomorrow I will tell you a story.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 27 2015, @04:09PM
Does this not still hold?
I see no evidence that prevailing wage ever did hold.