H1-B Admits To Being "Modern Day Slave"
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I stumbled across this on Craigslist. Just more proof that I.T. managers are using H1-Bs as indentured servants. Good job, Mr. I.T. Manager. In my book, any, and I mean any, Cheap I.T. Bastard that hires H1-Bs should be publicly shamed, their pictures and work addresses posted on the web like child molestors.
Hey, that's a great idea for a new website! And www.hi1bpimps.com is available!
Hi there -
Even I had very bad experiences of doing business with Americans. I made a wrong choice to persue career in america. American companies never keep their word, they renage on their promises, find excuses to not pay long term incentives they had offered to employees at the start of employment. They constantly underpay H1 people and also use H1 as a modern day slavery tool to keep employees on payroll longer without much legal options.
Also I found American companies and government are very "money" minded. They find out tricks on extracting more money. I get denied good insurance rates despite excellent driving record. Recently I got a parking ticket in LA, sorry, I never got the ticket but it was notice for collection. When I called the city, I told them that I never got parking ticket or any delinquency notices and I should have my "fine" and colletion fees returned since honestly my vehicle was wrongly parked, but I had in truth never got ticket or notice. Also when they sent the colletion notice , the time mentioned was 9:00 PM whereas street was closed from parking at 9:00 AM. This is just one example. And I have to deal with such headaches and money extracting idiots everyday who are merely trying to take advantage of the situation to fill their coffers with no moral values.
Seriously just like you cant stand Indians, I cant stand lot of things in America. When I came to US, it looked like a land of opportunity in the short run. I wish I was matured enough to know I was wasting my time in USA. Infact its not too late now, and I have decided I will go back to India in 1 years time. Cant stand bullshit!
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Correction, that is www.h1bpimps.com. I just parked it. I am looking for talented developers to turn it in the next big thing on the web.
I figure it could be kinda like "America's Most Wanted" but with pictures and profiles of Cheap I.T. Bastards that fill their shops with low wage indentured servants.
I envision an avitar on the home page going "Have you seen this guy? He fired 3 talented U.S citizens and brought in 10 Infosys clowns. If you any information about this guy, contact H1BPIMPS.COM right now!"
Contact me if you are interested -- I think it could get some V.C. capital, at least $5 million to start.
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You could probably at least get some content from http://www.programmersguild.org/. They are activists involved in immigration/job issues.
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@TunnelRat said:
Contact me if you are interested -- I think it could get some V.C. capital, at least $5 million to start.
What're you paying? After all, this isn't 1999 and nobody wants to work for free.
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Guess again! We're gonna party like it's 1999!
http://online.wsj.com/article<WBR>/SB119189215196852951.html?mod<WBR>=hpp_us_pageone
I'm offering equity baby! Sweet stock! Get in now, while you can.
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I think I could come over to help you on your project, but you would have to to get me an H-1B.
j/k
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I, and most of the WTF community, do not appreciate you using this forum to forward your racist agenda. You have your own website. Use it. This is not the purpose of the WTF forum.
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@ShadowWolf said:
@TunnelRat said:
[snip]insert non-wtf story here[snip]
This isn't a WTF. You're a racist moron.
It's not? I have no problem believing that a company that would fire terminate developers in favor of unproven ones would treat the new guys like shit. Unless there's something the Indian didn't tell on Craigslist, he didn't deserve to be treated the way he did. Claiming his treatment is not a WTF is a WTF in itself.The whole H1B thing is a WTF. You can (and will) be called a racist no matter what your position on the issue.
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MOST of that rant is about a parking ticket. What's that have to do with H1-Bs?
Although, I find do it indicative of the very problem with H1-B workers (that I've encountered). They can't focus and don't know what they're talking about (or doing). I can't say I am capable of feeling sorry for anyone who agrees to work for well below established wages, thereby displacing american workers in america and suppressing IT wages in general.
And it's not like they don't manipulate things either. My friend is the single American in a sea of H1-Bs, he's trying to manage high turnover, as all the H1-Bs take a cheap job to get over here, then start looking to jump ship immediately for the next better opportunity. They have no more loyalty or values than their supposed "enslavers".
Waaaaah.
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Sorry, but if I'm not mistaken, the forum description is:
Because more things make us ask WTF than just code
And if you think importing a bunch of poorly skilled workers to take the jobs of highly educated Americans doesn't scream WTF, they I don't know what will.
Or maybe you just hate Americans. Racist.
Na-na-na-na-na-na.
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It's racist to quote a post made by an Indian on an H1-B? It's the man's own words?
To the left, speaking the truth=racism.
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@operagost said:
It's racist to quote a post made by an Indian on an H1-B? It's the man's own words?
To the left, speaking the truth=racism.
You obviously haven't seen the other things that tunnelrat has posted. It's quite disgusting. The fact that he's using this to support his claim that H-1Bs are less than human is even more disgusting.
If you don't like H-1Bs, fine, whatever. You don't have to refer to them as "Curry Eating Wage Pirates." Oh yes he did!
This website is supposed to be amusing, not a place to start a new KKK.
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Thanks for the plug! Although, I never made a claim that H1-Bs are less then human. Sounds like a straw man.
And amusing is in the eye of the amuser ;-)
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@belgariontheking said:
@operagost said:
It's racist to quote a post made by an Indian on an H1-B? It's the man's own words?
To the left, speaking the truth=racism.
You obviously haven't seen the other things that tunnelrat has posted. It's quite disgusting. The fact that he's using this to support his claim that H-1Bs are less than human is even more disgusting.
If you don't like H-1Bs, fine, whatever. You don't have to refer to them as "Curry Eating Wage Pirates." Oh yes he did!
This website is supposed to be amusing, not a place to start a new KKK.
If you don't like it, there's a "report post" button under his posts. If enough people use it, who knows what might happen?
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yawn...
At first, I had to ask myself did I really say this:
In my book, any, and I mean any, Cheap I.T. Bastard that hires foreigners should be publicly shamed, their pictures and work addresses posted on the web like child molestors.Because I don't have an issue with hiring foreigners, just H1-Bs. After all, I too am a foreigner. But in my haste, I could have mispoke. That is what they say John Kerry, aka Lurch, did when he said only stupid people join the military. I think I am pretty clear about the H1-B issue in my post, Curry Eating Wage Pirates.So I checked the transcript, and sure enough, here's the quote:In my book, any, and I mean any, <FONT color=#02469b>Cheap I.T. Bastard</FONT> that hires H1-Bs should be publicly shamed, their pictures and work addresses posted on the web like child molestors.Moving on, it's time to make Rat Poison my bitch. Let the rebuttal begin:I am not only of Hungarian decent, I was born in Hungary and left when I was four. My father sneaked into Yugoslavia, and on a moonless night, drugged me full of sleeping pills, tied me with some belts to an air mattress, and swam two miles of shark infested waters to Trieste, Italy, where he declared asylum. For those of you prancing around in Che Guevara T-shirts, the communist regime we fled was hardly paradise; some people actually risk their lives to get out.When I was 20, I dropped out of junior college and joined the Marine Corp. When my drill instructor got pissed off at me and asked "Dammit, TunnelRat, why the hell did you join the Marine Corps?", I shouted back "Sir, to kill communists, sir!" Because I was smart, he made me the scribe, just like the guy in Jarhead.I ended up as a grunt, and spent the first few years in the Corps getting in and out of trouble. Minor stuff -- letting females in the barracks, drinking on duty, etc. I finally lost a stripe in Korea after a wild night involving the purchase of certain services and substances that the Corps took issue with.I got my stripe back, ended up as a company radio operator in Kuwait, and after six years, got an honorable discharge as an E-5. That's a sergeant to you civilians.Now, in light of the facts, that's some pretty lame sh*t Rat Poison is trying to pull, implying that someone with three rows of ribbons, including a Combat Action Ribbon, got kicked out with a BCD. But his ilk hates the military, so it's not surprising.Now permit me to continue setting Rat Poison straight.After 3 years of night school, I got a Bachelors from Pepperdine, 13 years after my very first college class. I leveraged the skills I learned in the Marine Corps (getting things done, not being a pussy, working with a sense of urgency, good grooming, etc.) into a successful career as an Applications Developer.Finally, I paid an offshore Australian programmer $30 hr. on a project for which I was getting $50 hr to write a few modules for a web app. Yeah, I paid him a fraction of my earnings, 60%. Since I had to do the code review and integration, I figured that was fair.And I've never been able to hold a job for more than two years, because most of my contracts are 3-6 months stints. The few times I was an FTE (being in the Box, as I like to say), I got bored and underpaid.As for you Rat Poison, I think you are getting lead poisoning from all the infected piercings on your body and it is impacting your ability to think rationally. Your post is a true WTF.For the rest of you, I need some help getting http://www.h1bpimps/ running. You know how to reach me.
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@poopdeville said:
@ShadowWolf said:
@TunnelRat said:
[snip]insert non-wtf story here[snip]
This isn't a WTF. You're a racist moron.
It's not? I have no problem believing that a company that would fire terminate developers in favor of unproven ones would treat the new guys like shit. Unless there's something the Indian didn't tell on Craigslist, he didn't deserve to be treated the way he did. Claiming his treatment is not a WTF is a WTF in itself.The whole H1B thing is a WTF. You can (and will) be called a racist no matter what your position on the issue.I don't feel like TunnelRat's point was that the guy was mistreated. Based on this and other points, I can't see him being that noble. The mistreatment is indeed a WTF.
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@unklegwar said:
Although, I find do it indicative of the very problem with H1-B workers (that I've encountered). They can't focus and don't know what they're talking about (or doing). I can't say I am capable of feeling sorry for anyone who agrees to work for well below established wages, thereby displacing american workers in america and suppressing IT wages in general.
And it's not like they don't manipulate things either. My friend is the single American in a sea of H1-Bs, he's trying to manage high turnover, as all the H1-Bs take a cheap job to get over here, then start looking to jump ship immediately for the next better opportunity. They have no more loyalty or values than their supposed "enslavers".
Why do you think that H1B workers agree to work for well below established wages? Do you even know how the H1B visa process works? Among other things, the employer has to show that they are paying the prevailing wage for the job. And do you know how difficult it is to "jump ship" to the next better opportunity? Changing jobs on H1B is a huge hassle and the turnaround time on it is a discouraging factor to many employers. Especially since an H1B worker who has been here for a couple of years is not going to be "cheap" anymore.
The H1B visa was most abused about 10 years ago, mainly pre Y2K. But once the internet bubble burst, most of the lower quality H1B workers went or were sent home.
Sure, there will be some who work for lower wages, but there are equally others who make par or above-par wages.
The majority (in fact, almost all) of people I know who were initially employed on H1B visas earned graduate degrees at US universities before getting a job. And pretty much all of them are in IT and have six-figure salaries. (And this includes me)
I feel pity for someone like TunnelRat, whose blind prejudices and knee-jerk rage at anyone who looks different from him cause him to blame them for his own personal failures.
If he were any good, he wouldn't be starting a new job every couple of months.
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I actually start a new job every few months because I am consultant and contract programmer. And if the H1-B program is so essential, why have programmer salaries been flat or declined since the 90's? Why the hell do lawyers make twice as much as engineers out of college? Because nobody would want to be defended by an inarticulate, surly, undereducated indentured servant from the third world.
And I don't have a problem working with someone who looks different than me, I just wish they spoke English, didn't nod their heads all the f-ing time, even when they disagreed with me, and could write code.
And there is an entire class of hardworking blacks, women, Hispanics and other American citizens woefully under-represented in I.T. Bottom line, the H1-B program is a sham. There is no programmer shortage, just an over supply of idiot I.T. managers and lame programmers being exported to America.
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Oh yeah, and I am a "curry-eating wage pirate".
Better curry than cholestrol clogging my veins.
And about the wage pirate thing: If my company could find someone to do my job for less than what I am paid, they would have done so by now.
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@TunnelRat said:
And if the H1-B program is so essential, why have programmer salaries been flat or declined since the 90's?
One of the reasons why salaries flattened or declined was the whole internet bubble thing. But the top programmers still did fine.
Case in point, yours truly. I started work in IT in 1996 as a trainee out of college, eventually being hired on an H1B visa within 6 months.
My salary more than doubled while I was on H1B, and has more than tripled over the 11 years I have worked in IT- 5 years on H1B, 6 years on a Green Card and now as a US Citizen.
One thing you fail to recognize is that the H1B visa route is the only way for a non-US citizen who was educated in the USA to get a job and work in the USA.
So the program itself is not a sham. There are some employers who are abusing it, but in a capitalist economy, if there is an advantage to be taken, someone will take it.
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I've never met an H1-B that was educated in the U.S.
This is only anecdotal, but I recently put together a team for a web project. One was a DBA with 20 years of enterprise experience. The other guy was solid .NET developer that was wrapping up his contract. The third person was a brilliant systems analyst whose first job out of college was with Microsoft.
Out of the 4 of us, all had either worked at Microsoft or turned down offers to work there. Say what you will, but it is not an easy place to get in. We had combined 60 years experience in enterprise I.T.
I found everyone on this team, except for the DBA, whom I knew, after running an ad on Craiglist for one week.
Now in a hot market like this, what the hell are this people doing on the street? WTF?
I'll tell you why -- they expected to be paid between $75 and $100 an hour. And H1-Bs can be had for $35/hr.
Sorry, the whole thing is a disgusting sham that is ruining the I.T. field. Programmers now tell their kids not to go into I.T.
The only thing that will stop is if we U.S. citizens stage a silent boycott. You can do your part:
- Refuse to cooperate with H1-Bs. Don't answer their emails, show up late to their meetings, and generally ignore them.
- Ask them to repeat themselves over and over again. Your manager will get tired of the communication breakdown.
- Report them when they try to peddle some bootleg software.
- Give them the stink-eye.
Together we can bring this H1-B crap to its knees! From here on out, every project using H1-Bs will fail!
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@TunnelRat said:
The only thing that will stop is if we U.S. citizens stage a silent boycott. You can do your part:
- Refuse to cooperate with H1-Bs. Don't answer their emails, show up late to their meetings, and generally ignore them.
- Ask them to repeat themselves over and over again. Your manager will get tired of the communication breakdown.
- Report them when they try to peddle some bootleg software.
- Give them the stink-eye.
Together we can bring this H1-B crap to its knees! From here on out, every project using H1-Bs will fail!
And you really expect $75-$100 per hour for that kind of attitude?
"I'll take your $100, thanks, but I won't cooperate with those supposedly cheaper coworkers and I will deliberately let the project fail if I can"?
It seems you are the problem, not the H1-Bs.
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It is called passive resistance, a strategy pioneered by Ghandi, ironically. If all U.S. I.T. workers covertly gum up the works, the I.T. managers will start to see a pattern of failed projects related to H1-Bs.
Even the possibility of staff resistence to H1-Bs on a project would be enough to make them hesitant go that route. Of course it would just be a subtle, nagging perception that things just aren't going right. Guys like me don't have to do anything blatant, just demand that an H1-B communicates in fluent English, cleans up his code, or writes emails that are coherent. It has been my experience that H1-Bs do none of that well.
Of course, some paranoid I.T. managers (just because you are paronoid does not mean that everybody is not out to get you, Mr. Cheapskate CIO) may decide to fire folks like me if they suspect something is going on -- after all most management wants passive, submissive developers, and there are none more passive and submissive than H1-Bs.
But then we can start suing and filing EEOC complaints. It's just not going to look good, a company defending itself by saying "Hell yeah, we fired that $100/hr guy and got two H1-Bs for what he cost! He was a troublemaker!" I could see Lou Dobbs having a field day, chasing down a CIO whose entire shop is staffed with H1-Bs.
After a while, the impact of millions of American developers sabotaging the H1-B projects will show up in the bottom line, at will become financially and legally untenable to hire H1-Bs.
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@TunnelRat said:
I've never met an H1-B that was educated in the U.S.
So what you say is that US educational system is the best, ever? In this vein you should stop talking to anyone who didn't graduate in Harward because all the rest are useless junk and shouldn't be allowed to touch a computer or even drive? Sure lots of people are coming to US on H1-B and most of them are with less than 5 years of experience, but honestly would you expect too much out of a person without any experience or 2 years working on very small projects even if he/she is born in NY? I have friends in LA on H1-Bs and they have been working as developers for over 10 years and they are a real bargain IMO.
Honestly do you think the world divides into 2 essential parts:
Civilized world: United States (and maybe including Canada)
and everything else - filled with indians, aborigens and all sort of people living in a jungle?Did you ever hear about a continent called Europe? Probably but perhaps you think it was lost due to some disaster or something...
Sorry if my sarcasm was a bit too much, but I think you have to open your eyes and start thinking with your head again...
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Is there a point in that post? But since you asked, I think the educational system in America is pretty bad especially compared to Europe. But that is because our math, science, and even music education has been squeezed out to make room for mushy-minded subjects like self-esteem programs, sex-ed, and indoctrination in gender/race/class topics.
And I guess you prove my point -- your friends on H1-Bs are real bargains, relative to U.S. programmers who have to support families and pay for huge mortgages. Your friends can come here, live ten to a room, and survive on a fraction of the wages an American developer needs. That's great, unless you are programmer with a ton of education and work experience, training the guy with that absolutely horrible accent to do your job.
But what H1-Bs have to do with Europe, I don't know.
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@TunnelRat said:
After a while, the impact of millions of American developers sabotaging the H1-B projects will show up in the bottom line, at will become financially and legally untenable to hire H1-Bs.
Surely the impact would show up in the bottom line.
"We don't need no H1-Bs anymore. What for would we need them? We don't do any development at all in the US any more. Too many projects have failed, apparently because they have been sabotaged by American programmers. Software development is now outsourced to India, Europe, Australia and South Africa."
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@TunnelRat said:
Out of the 4 of us, all had either worked at Microsoft or turned down offers to work there. Say what you will, but it is not an easy place to get in.
I was at MS for a few years...I met a number of folks there on H1-B visas. Actually, it turns out that there were somewhere north of 3100 people at MS on an H1-B in 2006. Another 1100 at IBM. 1000 more at Oracle.
@TunnelRat said:
There is no programmer shortage, just an over supply of idiot I.T. managers and lame programmers being exported to America.
Microsoft also has several thousand unfilled 'heads'. The last role I was in there, they were looking for 6 months before they found me...and with the guy they hired next after me, the role was open for 9 months.
Prior to joining Microsoft, I was leaning in the manager direction at a successful & well-funded dot-com, with 6 dev positions to fill. I did 2-5 interviews a week for 2 months and still only filled 4 of the positions. There is no shortage of people calling themselves programmers, but that's a very different thing from "a shortage of talented software professionals", which in my experience is in full force.
@TunnelRat said:
Of course, some paranoid I.T. managers (just because you are paronoid does not mean that everybody is not out to get you, Mr. Cheapskate CIO) may decide to fire folks like me
Given your stories, it sounds like they do that all the time anyway.
I would have thought that your military experience would have taught you to get the job done regardless of the situation. Was "I don't like the guys I have to work with" an acceptable excuse for failure? "I don't like the accent of the Kuwaities I have to deal with, so I don't deal with them."
Man the fuck up and get the job done.
-cw
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Well, there was that time that consulting company had me screen some candidates over the phone. I talked to two Americans and a wellspoken Hindi. The Hindi answered all the questions correctly.
A week later, they parked an H1-B next to me and said he was the guy I screened. This guy barely spoke English. Obviously not the same guy. "Get him up to speed!" they said.
"But he doesn't speak English and he can't code," I protested.
"Deal with it!"
Sure, enough, pretty soon the surly prick was sucking up all my time, causing me to miss my deadlines, and generally making an ass of himself. I even appealed to a nice Pakistani consultant (U.S. citizen, very sharp) to talk to him, to no avail -- the guy was worthless. They were from different castes or something and the H1-B told him to fuck off.
Two weeks later, the project was on the ropes, and I was fired with 3 hours notice. The H1-B got to stick around because his agency had a 2-week notice clause in the contract.
It's not a case of not liking the guys I work with, it's a case of the guys I work with not speaking English and not being able to code.
No, you deal with it, Mr. Hiring Manager -- I'm moving on.
BTW, I get offers to go full time after almost every contract, but that's beside the point. I only have gotten fired from full time jobs, usually because I dare my pussy bosses to do it. And I always get a nice severence.
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@TunnelRat said:
Well, there was that time that consulting company had me screen some candidates over the phone. I talked to two Americans and a wellspoken Hindi. The Hindi answered all the questions correctly.
A week later, they parked an H1-B next to me and said he was the guy I screened. This guy barely spoke English. Obviously not the same guy. "Get him up to speed!" they said.
"But he doesn't speak English and he can't code," I protested.
"Deal with it!"
And that was fraud on the part of the consulting company, and stupid on the part of your Hiring Manager. So, there's a company that believes that lying to make money is acceptable; and there's a hiring manager who doesn't know better. You're caught in the middle. That sucks.
But how is that the fault of the H1-B holders as a whole?
@TunnelRat said:
It's not a case of not liking the guys I work with, it's a case of the guys I work with not speaking English and not being able to code.
You seem to think that it's just people with funny accents who suck at developing software. There's a reason that there are anecdotal statistics like "some developers code 10 times as much as other developers". Or "I did 2-5 interviews a week for 2 months and still only filled 4 positions", for that matter. It doesn't matter if they speak Tamil, Hindi, Urdu or English, a significant portion of the software industry flat out sucks and you're going to have to get the job done anyway. Get over it.
-cw
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I am dealing with, the best way I know how:
1. Spreading the word that hiring H1-Bs is not a silver bullet.
2. Detailing horrid experiences I've had with them.
3. Describing the outright fraud and deception that is pervasive in the H1-B world.
4. Letting I.T. managers know that we're on to them. We know they are paying below market rates. We know they are treating developers like a commodity. We know they are getting kickbacks from big Indian consultanting shops like Infosys and WiPro to fill their U.S. shops with low-grade programmers (our sys. admins read their email, after all).
So screw you, Mr. I-Hire-H1-Bs-SoWhat. Your life will start to get miserable as the movement grows. Your coffee will have a hint of urine, your tires will be flat, your H1-Bs will complain that someone deleted their source code, or that they have a virus on their PC, or that no one answers their email...and the project will slip...and your good loyal American developers will leave...and you'll be left with nothing but your H1-Bs and another missed deadline.
Get over it.
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@TunnelRat said:
So screw you, Mr. I-Hire-H1-Bs-SoWhat.
You make a lot of assumptions. The companies I've hired for aren't usually willing to deal with the hassle of petitioning for a candidate.
But the H1-Bs I've worked with have had about the same incidence of suckiness as the non H1-Bs.
And, actually, there seems to be a lower incidence of a "sense of entitlement". I've worked with plenty of upstanding natural-born citizens who really seem to think they don't need to do the job. There was the guy who stayed up all night using company resources to develop websites for his own private clients and then complained all day about being tired when I wanted him to work on our site. There was the one who used to nap in his office all day -- I caught him with indentations of the edge of his keyboard in his forehead. There was the one who sat on his hands for 2 months because he didn't really want to do the specific task he was given, so he didn't.
All white folks with no accent; and entirely useless.
Now, offshoring, that's another matter, and I've had a great deal less luck with them; but that's a completely different deal.
@TunnelRat said:
Your life will start to get miserable as the movement grows.
No, I'm really quite sure it won't, because your movement starts and stops here. You'll have better luck building a fence along the mexican border.
-cw
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@TunnelRat said:
Is there a point in that post? But since you asked, I think the educational system in America is pretty bad especially compared to Europe. But that is because our math, science, and even music education has been squeezed out to make room for mushy-minded subjects like self-esteem programs, sex-ed, and indoctrination in gender/race/class topics.
Quoted for truth.
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@TunnelRat said:
I've never met an H1-B that was educated in the U.S.
So you're obviously only working on the crap jobs that hire the dregs of the H1B quota.
Do you know that 20,000 H1B slots are reserved for non-immigrants with US degrees?
And that a large percentage of the rest also have some level of education in the US?
You say you have never met an H1B who was educated in the US. I, personally, know (literally) over a hundred.
And this is just people I know personally, not even counting those I have met at work. In my experience, the percentage of sucky non H1B programmers is quote comparable to that of sucky H1B programmers.
Your wonderful non-cooperation approach will just result in you getting fired as there must be dozens of hard-working, non-bigoted contractors willing to do your job without bitching and moaning all the time and actually approaching the job with an open mind.
It's no longer as economically viable as it used to be to bring someone over on an H1B visa- outsourcing is the trend now- and that's a whole different story.
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Good points, Zonker, but I beg to differ.
It's no longer as economically viable as it used to be to bring someone over on an H1B visa- outsourcing is the trend now- and that's a whole different story.
Agreed -- outsourcing is the trend, and that is fine for me. I have no problem with sending work overseas. It is just the idea of importing workers into a hi-tech field when there is no evidence of a shortage of skilled programmers (only evidence of cheap I.T. companies) that bugs me. Same with importing migrants -- I'll be happy to pay a dollar more for a head of lettuce.
So you're obviously only working on the crap jobs that hire the dregs of the H1B quota.
Yup, my perception is my reality. I've only been doing this for about 15 years, so maybe I am just inexperienced.
Do you know that 20,000 H1B slots are reserved for non-immigrants with US degrees?
WTF is a non-immigrant with an H1-B?
Your wonderful non-cooperation approach will just result in you getting fired as there must be dozens of hard-working, non-bigoted contractors willing to do your job without bitching and moaning all the time and actually approaching the job with an open mind.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I will get an H1-B fired instead. I have no problem finding work, because I don't bitch and moan. I just ask the H1-Bs to repeat themselves, and when they can't write coherent specs or emails, I copy my boss. He usually gets tired of it and gets the hint -- H1-Bs are a waste of his money.
Like CodeWhisperer has discovered, it is hard to find good talent. We pros like to pick and choose our battles, and the minute we walk through a shop filled with H1-Bs headed for the first interview, the alarm bells go off. We think "Cheap I.T. Bastard! Sweatshop!" We rather take our chances freelancing. So we sit through the first round, pass on the details to our contractor buddies, and all you see after that is crap candidates. We have our own network, and we all know where the H1-B shops are at (Farmers, Ameriquest, etc.) And we stay clear.
Finally:
And this is just people I know personally, not even counting those I have met at work. In my experience, the percentage of sucky non H1B programmers is quote comparable to that of sucky H1B programmers.
Agreed. But keep in mind -- how many potential good U.S. programmers are working for the DWP (75K), law firms (100k+), porn-biz (?), etc. because they know the I.T. business is loaded with low-wage indentured servants that are suppressing wages? Why bother? The work is tough, you need training, and it caps out around 100k? And the cheap CIO will always have WiPro or Infosys whispering in his ear "I can get ten shitty guys in hear for the price of five of these shitty Americans! After all, they all suck anyway!"
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@TunnelRat said:
when there is no evidence of a shortage of skilled programmers (only evidence of cheap I.T. companies)
Well, here we go then. If there is no shortage of skilled programmers, why does MS have several thousand open headcount right now? Why did I have to search for 2 months to hire 4 people? Why, when I come on the market, do I get hit with dozens and dozens requests from recruiters? My experience is that there is indeed a shortage of "skilled programmers" (our definitions may vary).
-cw
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Have you ever thought that maybe word has gotten out that your shop is full of H1-Bs, or that maybe you run a sweatshop, or that you are a bad interviewer? There are a ton of factors involved with getting talent, and most sharp developers network and share the knowledge. They get online after an interview and say "What a shithole. A bunch of H1-Bs. I couldn't understand a word the lead developer said, and he was a surly prick who treated me like I was a from an inferior caste!"
I'd look at your organization and try to figure out why people are not interested in working there. Do you have 15" CRTs? Does the place smell? Do you have programmers in bullpens or scrum rooms like cattle?
As for Microsoft, maybe they have are losing PHDs to Google. I don't know, I turned down their offer years ago. I am in the trenches, walking into interviews, seeing the wreckage of failed I.T. projects that were driven into the ground by H1-Bs. I clean up their shit, and move on.
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Bzzzz. Thanks for playing. And a fine job of tarring everything with your own brush, by the way.
It's not a matter of people not being interested in working there, the number of people who turned down offers was tiny compared to the number of people who never made it to interviews in the first place, and relatively small compared to the number of people we interviewed and decided not to extend offers to. And, to my knowledge, we had no H1-Bs on staff and there was no specific discernable odor. Every place I've spoken to in the region has problems getting good people, so I don't think it was just me.
As for me being a bad interviewer, you can search through the old posts here to see my philosophy & practice of interviewing and make your own determination.
When it comes to Microsoft, it's again a case of them only interviewing a small fraction of the people who apply and offering jobs to only a portion of those who apply. Contractors are a different matter, they get brought in regularly to fill in the gaps and have a much lower bar to pass.
Now why is that? Why does MS have thousands of open jobs? Because they are all full of H1-Bs? Nope, MS is about 5% H1-B. You can interview with a dozen teams and not run into one. Cheap? I suspect not, given the average salary there. Any other ideas?
Your argument that "there is no programmer shortage because..grumble..grumble...damn H1-Bs" just isn't going to cut it.
There is a shortage of talented software professionals. Arrogant pricks and self-proclaimed gurus, those we've got coming out of our ears.
-cw
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There is a shortage of talented software professionals. Arrogant pricks and self-proclaimed gurus, those we've got coming out of our ears.
Agreed. There are probably tons of talented software professionals who have left the field, entered real estate or MLM, anything but having to deal with incoherent hacks who could not communicate, and the bosses that hired them. The H1-B programs have decimated the field. It used to be professionals with at least a bachelors degree, minimum. Now a J.C. drop out will do, as long as he says he knows WSDL. After all, that is what the H1-B with the degree from the bogus trade school in Calcutta has.
Now, what would it take to attract talent back into the biz? Not LCDs and back rubs. Money! And as long as MSFT and whoever wants to cap things at the wage H1-Bs are demanding, good luck. We'll stay on the sidelines, consulting, freelancing, nipping at the heels of the big shops, doing anything, and I mean anything to stay out of the cube farms.
The floodgates are open. The net has given us the transperency to spread the word -- witness http://coderific.com, or the blogs spewing venom about crappy companies.
It probably wasn't you -- it was your company, or its culture, the corporate DNA. Maybe you ran ads on Dice that wanted 10 years experience with J2EE and C#. And maybe nobody wants to work in a place with 300 cloudy days.
Deal with it.
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Are you even listening to the counter arguments? No, of course you're not. You're just blissfully spewing your racist hatred, totally ignoring the fact that you're WRONG. Can we ban this fucktard already, so we don't have to listen to his insane ramblings about H1-Bs even when someone says "Nope, no H1Bs here"?
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TunnelRat, you are paranoid about H1-Bs. Seems like you are the prototypical immigrant who hates immigrants.
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@TunnelRat said:
So you're obviously only working on the crap jobs that hire the dregs of the H1B quota.
Yup, my perception is my reality. I've only been doing this for about 15 years, so maybe I am just inexperienced.
Either that or you just have the wrong experience.
@TunnelRat said:
Do you know that 20,000 H1B slots are reserved for non-immigrants with US degrees?
WTF is a non-immigrant with an H1-B?
Do you even understand what an H1B visa is?
@TunnelRat said:
Your wonderful non-cooperation approach will just result in you getting fired as there must be dozens of hard-working, non-bigoted contractors willing to do your job without bitching and moaning all the time and actually approaching the job with an open mind.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I will get an H1-B fired instead. I have no problem finding work, because I don't bitch and moan. I just ask the H1-Bs to repeat themselves, and when they can't write coherent specs or emails, I copy my boss. He usually gets tired of it and gets the hint -- H1-Bs are a waste of his money.
Good luck with that. My bet is that it is going to be your ass that gets fired most of the time.
If a company has to make a choice between a good company man and an insubordinate insolent self-important hack, guess who's getting the boot.
@TunnelRat said:
Finally:
And this is just people I know personally, not even counting those I have met at work. In my experience, the percentage of sucky non H1B programmers is quote comparable to that of sucky H1B programmers.
Agreed. But keep in mind -- how many potential good U.S. programmers are working for the DWP (75K), law firms (100k+), porn-biz (?), etc. because they know the I.T. business is loaded with low-wage indentured servants that are suppressing wages? Why bother? The work is tough, you need training, and it caps out around 100k? And the cheap CIO will always have WiPro or Infosys whispering in his ear "I can get ten shitty guys in hear for the price of five of these shitty Americans! After all, they all suck anyway!"
Why pay top dollar for crap if you can get it for cheap?
And I know how many potential good U.S. programmers are out there. I have interviewed at least a dozen people every year for the last 7 or 8 years. And I have hired/recommended for hire about 10 or so in that time. And only maybe a couple of them needed a new H1B or needed to transfer an existing H1B.
There ain't that many good programmers out there. And that's just a fact.
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@ammoQ said:
Seems like you are the prototypical immigrant who hates immigrants.
I think, that all US guys fighting with immigration are a little WTF anyways... Just instead of rum and drugs to weaken their minds, they get cheap developers now ;)
Not that I have anything against US guys in general, I know why they want to limit migration, but that situation is just ironic...
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@viraptor said:
@ammoQ said:
Seems like you are the prototypical immigrant who hates immigrants.
I think, that all US guys fighting with immigration are a little WTF anyways... Just instead of rum and drugs to weaken their minds, they get cheap developers now ;)
Not that I have anything against US guys in general, I know why they want to limit migration, but that situation is just ironic...This is not specific for US guys. Since my wife is from Poland, I know a lot of Polish immigrants in Austria, and a few are right-winged at an absurd level. Sometimes I raise the question "and you really think that those guys you support will respect your Austrian passport?"
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@zonker said:
And I know how many potential good U.S. programmers are out there. I have interviewed at least a dozen people every year for the last 7 or 8 years. And I have hired/recommended for hire about 10 or so in that time. And only maybe a couple of them needed a new H1B or needed to transfer an existing H1B.
There ain't that many good programmers out there. And that's just a fact.
That's not entirely true - while the majority of programmers are useless, there are far more good ones than you think. You're falling into the usual trap of the employer's sampling bias: if somebody is coming to you for an interview, then statistically they are likely to be far below the average in the field, simply because they currently need a job. Good programmers will not normally come to you for an interview, because they already have a good job. They typically work for a single company for five years or more, and when they move jobs they often don't interview because they're either starting a new company or moving to join one of their old co-workers who started a new company.
You always get a few good people from time to time, because their previous company blew up or was bought out or whatever, but they represent only a very small fraction of the skilled workforce.
If your interview process is any good at all, then you should be rejecting almost every applicant (the rate you quote here sounds reasonable, but I don't have current numbers to hand). Any hiring process that accepts a significantly larger fraction of the candidates than that is passing a lot of useless people, and probably some dangerous idiots.
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@ammoQ said:
@viraptor said:
@ammoQ said:
Seems like you are the prototypical immigrant who hates immigrants.
I think, that all US guys fighting with immigration are a little WTF anyways... Just instead of rum and drugs to weaken their minds, they get cheap developers now ;)
Not that I have anything against US guys in general, I know why they want to limit migration, but that situation is just ironic...This is not specific for US guys. Since my wife is from Poland, I know a lot of Polish immigrants in Austria, and a few are right-winged at an absurd level. Sometimes I raise the question "and you really think that those guys you support will respect your Austrian passport?"
Most such people do not let minor details like facts, logic, or their own claims get in the way of what they want to believe in.
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I take issue with the use of the term "immigrant" to describe H1-Bs. They are not migrating to the U.S. -- they are brought here to work at sub-market wages and then, after six years, they have to go back to their home country.
And I agree with asuffield that all you H1-B apologist are falling into the employer bias trap. There are good programmers, except they are usually working. The only thing that is going to get them to jump ship is a nice pay raise. As long as H1-Bs are there willing to work for 75% of what a U.S. employee will take, the wages will be depressed by this artificial supply of supposed "programmers."
And the more I think about, they are only following the money -- it is the scumbag CIOs and staffing firms that are dumping them in the I.T. market, whether than can code or not. Judging by the comments here, it seems like a lot I.T. management pussballs like the idea of a developer scared shitless of getting his visa yanked, and it makes him very compliant. So much better than a capable yet outspoken American programmer who has no qualms about speaking his mind.
If you H1-B fanboys want to keep importing such migrant workers, you should clean up your own house and obey the f-ing law. According to IndiaTimes InfoTech:
H-1 B is a temporary visa programme that enables employers in US to hire professional level foreign workers for a period of up to six years. As per the US law, employers must pay H1-B workers either the same rate as other employees with similar skills or the ‘prevailing wage’ for that occupation and location, which ever is higher.
The December 2005 findings by Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), on whose basis two US Senators wrote to nine Indian firms asking for details of how 20,000 H1-B visas were used, reveal that such visa holders were being paid an average salary of $52,312 as against $65,003 to locals.
BTW, I have no problem shipping the work overseas -- then you managers can deal with hidden transaction costs involved with the time-zone hassles and general inability of offshore help to speak and write English.
Deal with it.
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@TunnelRat said:
I take issue with the use of the term "immigrant" to describe H1-Bs. They are not migrating to the U.S. -- they are brought here to work at sub-market wages and then, after six years, they have to go back to their home country.
OK, you have just confirmed what I suspected. You don't really understand what the H1B visa type is all about.
Congress removed the "temporary" designation from the H1B visa class, recognizing that the H1B visa is the first step in the immigration process. See [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1B#H-1B_and_legal_immigration"]H-1B_and_legal_immigration[/url] for more information about this.
And you are fooling yourself if you think that all H1B visa workers are here on sub-market wages. This may be true for the bodyshoppers but is certainly false for those non-US citizens who have come through the US university system and then moved into the American workforce via the H1B visa.
The more you say, the more your ignorance and paranoia shine through.
