OT: Battle Ground Zero: Murrieta: Invasion of America

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Speaking of H1B, I’m not a big fan of that either. Does your colleage, for instance, provide some type of unique skill that no American citizen can provide? I doubt it. The H1B program is clearly a scam used by corporations to hire cheap technical labor.[/quote]

It’s a double edge sword. There are companies that do abuse the H1-B system. They tend to be bottom feeder seedy contracting/contractor chopshops, and frankly you probably don’t want to be in a situation to work for those contracts….There was I remember one headhunter that was speaking to me because we needed a contractor for a short duration, and I remember the guy had a company and would “bench” H1-Bs without real work available… Gray area/borderline illegal (and no, we didn’t bother with chopshops like that)…

But there are also plenty of of jobs that college grads without h1-b’s either don’t want to do or aren’t qualify to do. For example, there weren’t too many candidates out of college that were interested in doing embedded O/S mobile development.. Most of the college grads wanted to go work for facebook, linkedin, and to a lesser extend apple and google…

And let’s face it…Also else being equal, a tech company would rather take a younger person than take and older person and retrain them….It’s how it is..The argument about “experience” in tech only works so far. You don’t get “life credits” just for having a lot of miles on the odometer. It’s “relevant experience” that counts…And especially with tech, a lot of skills either becomes outdated or there ends up being an influx of too much supply of a skill very quickly. So the burden of “proving” one’s net worth ends up being oneself in staying current and staying at the top of the game….

Regardless, the H1-B “threat” is not nearly as big a “threat” as a company deciding to move an entire operations offshore, especially as more and more business comes out of Asia versus the U.S….Also, when a US companies start competing strictly based on cost, you know the end is near because a US company will never win based on cost alone… I’ll use my own employer for example.One of our competitors is based in Taiwan. They can easily fly people from Taiwan to China for cheap, where the bulk of the new business is coming from…How many US employees want to fly 15+hours every 2 weeks to hang out with customers in China versus if you had an office of employees in Banglore 5 hours away? How much in operating expenses between the two…

I speak, as I’m turning 40, and acknowledge I’m one of those people that will have a target on my back sooner versus later… It’s not great, but it is what it is. Because when you get older, you have to at some point decide whether you have the time, energy, desire to keep up.. Or if you come to the point in which you think, enough is enough, and decide to do something else….(And yes, that thought process tends to happen a lot more for me these days :))

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=livinincali] And the biggest issue I have with this situation is that right after the president decides to execute the DREAM act by executive order we got a huge influx of illegal immigrants. Whether the message got lost in translation or not, the Central American’s have certainly taken it as an open invitation to illegally immigrant to America.[/quote]

I doubt those women and kids have even heard of the dream act or understand the intricacies of American immigration laws.

[FlyerInHi]

Sounds like this is all about fear of future competition from immigrant children.

Are people that afraid that immigrants will steal their jobs?

[Anonymous]

I’m sure there are a few “exceptional” cases where it is necessary to hire a foreign specialist. However, I’m tired of hearing the propaganda that we need to bring in more high skilled foreign tech workers because we don’t have enough engineers and scientists in this country. There is absolutely no evidence to support that.
Here is a good article describing this Myth of the STEM worker shortage.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/

[Anonymous]

deleted

[Anonymous]

[quote=FlyerInHi][quote=livinincali] And the biggest issue I have with this situation is that right after the president decides to execute the DREAM act by executive order we got a huge influx of illegal immigrants. Whether the message got lost in translation or not, the Central American’s have certainly taken it as an open invitation to illegally immigrant to America.[/quote]

I doubt those women and kids have even heard of the dream act or understand the intricacies of American immigration laws.[/quote]

Well they do know that if they manage to elude border patrol, there is very little chance they will ever be deported and they will be able to live and work in relative peace.

They also know that if they have a child born here, that baby will be instant US citizen and through their baby they will start qualifying for welfare.

Additionally, they do know there was a mass amnesty in the 1980s, and politically there is push for it again (AKA “immigration reform”) so they have reasonable hope and expectation that if they stay here long enough, they will eventually be granted citizenship.

[Doofrat]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Sounds like this is all about fear of future competition from immigrant children.

Are people that afraid that immigrants will steal their jobs?[/quote]

Deleted, I need a more anonymous profile so I can say what I really think they’ll steal. 😉

[The-Shoveler]

[quote=flu]
I speak, as I’m turning 40, and acknowledge I’m one of those people that will have a target on my back sooner versus later… It’s not great, but it is what it is. Because when you get older, you have to at some point decide whether you have the time, energy, desire to keep up.. Or if you come to the point in which you think, enough is enough, and decide to do something else….(And yes, that thought process tends to happen a lot more for me these days :))[/quote]

Funny I got twenty years on you FLU, And I have no intention of giving up on Hi-Tech employment.

I have a niece and a nephew, both just got out of college with master’s degrees in engineering, both had very good Jobs at Broadcom in Irvine.
Funny they both said they did not like it and went back for PHD’s LOL. (why anyone would want a PHD in engineering is kind of beyond me, well unless you want Gov work).

I have had three calls from head hunters over the last few months.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]I’m sure there are a few “exceptional” cases where it is necessary to hire a foreign specialist. However, I’m tired of hearing the propaganda that we need to bring in more high skilled foreign tech workers because we don’t have enough engineers and scientists in this country. There is absolutely no evidence to support that.
Here is a good article describing this Myth of the STEM worker shortage.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/%5B/quote%5D

There weren’t many people that were willing or able to do embedded mobile O/S when we went on our hiring spree a few years. And take a look at the number of EE/CS graduates, most of them are H1-B… There’s different level of STEM workers, and different skill sets. It really depends…Unfortunately, a lot of STEMs isn’t transferable. For example, you can’t really take a mechanical engineer and stick him in doing RF design, vise versus.. You can’t really take a software apps guy and have him to digital signal processing. And it’s unrealistic to take a firmware engineer to write the most elegant user interfaces and web/mobile apps…

People don’t understand that “STEMS” term covering a huge range of different disciplines. The difference is if people want and are able to break out of their mold and retrain (themselves) into something else. Some have done so, others have not or will not or cannot…

Are some bottom feeder companies taking advantage of the H1-B system? Absolutely…Is there an across the board shortage in every field, certainly not. Is there shortages in some areas. Absolutely yes…Is there age discrimination in tech? Probably, indirectly. I think companies often don’t want to pay for someone 15-20+years of experience when most jobs might only require say 10-12 years…..Maybe more likely that a young(er) person will replace you (that happens to be an H1-B qualified candidate). The output of *most* 20+veterans that has 2x more odometer in tech probably are not necessarily 2x better at doing their job than someone 10 years younger…There are exceptions, in some tech professions, and some superstars ( I know I probably am not )…

[The-Shoveler]

I keep seeing articles saying Software engineer is going to be one of the most in demand jobs for decades to come.

Most code is still written in “C” (well on Linux based systems anyway).

Cobol programmers are still in demand LOL.

Keep your hands elbows deep in the code my friends.

[Hobie]

Thats why you see a lot of grey in senior management 🙂

[Anonymous]

Regarding H1B and STEM, again my point is not to deny there are shortages in some unique areas. But generally speaking the notion that U.S. has a shortage of engineers is total B.S. and is pure propaganda. If there was truly a shortage in any specific Engineering or CS related career field, there would be significant upward pressure in salaries and there is no evidence of this.

Regarding Engineering graduate schools, no doubt approx 50% or more of the MS and Phd students are foreigners. However those numbers have no relation to any “need” to fill specific jobs in the U.S. Recruting foreign students is simply a money grab for the Academic industry which is a whole different topic.

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Thats why you see a lot of grey in senior management :)[/quote]

Unless you happen to be one of the idiots that insisted on staying technical hands on throughout your career 🙂

[Hobie]

[quote=Hobie]Thats why you see a lot of grey in senior management :)[/quote]

Still doesn’t guarantee job security. Solution, form a union 😉 har….

[The-Shoveler]

[quote=flu][quote=Hobie]Thats why you see a lot of grey in senior management :)[/quote]

Unless you happen to be one of the idiots that insisted on staying technical hands on throughout your career :)[/quote]

That’s me LOL…

Hey I am still employed in the Tech field while more than a few buddies who went the management route are not.

I think in defense or a very large company Management may be a safer route (for staying employed at that company) but for small or mid size firms, the main thing is results and earnings and who can help you get more earnings.

In a very large code base it takes about a year to come up to speed, if someone is producing on that system, you don’t get rid of them easily.

Small systems (That did not take 10 or more years to develop) maybe it is a little easier.

[Author]

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