Which Google Should Congress Believe?

theodp writes "In Congressional testimony last month, Google's VP of People Operations told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration that, due to limits on the number of H-1B visas, Google is regularly unable to pursue highly qualified candidates. But as Google stock tumbled in after hours trading Wednesday, Google's CEO blamed disappointing profits on a hiring binge and promised Wall Street analysts that the company would keep a careful eye on headcount in the future. So which Google should Congress believe?"

Both..

[pickyouupatnine]

Like any public company - Google's learning to deal with keeping a steady growth in-order to keep its stock healthy. While they may have hired too many people recently - those are too many VERY WELL PAID people compared to what they could get for the same money if they could bring in H1-B workers. The H1-B worker is looking to come to America and start a new life - he/she is willing to sacrifice a few years worth of inferior pay inorder to get settled with a Greencard.

So yes, Google CEO blamed their hiring binge - what he really meant was "We're paying too much in wages and salaries - more than we'd like to anyway".

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[Retric]

Yea, the article is junk but so is the H1B quota system. It seems like the simple solution is for the government to auction off H1B's.

If Google really want's someone they can offer 50k but they can probably get local talent for cheaper. My guess is H1B's would balance out to around 25K a pop and most Americans would be fine competing on that type of playing field.

Re:how about believing that this is a false dichot

[djones101]

American programmers are qualified alright on average, but there aren't enough of them.

Personally, I'd disagree with that statement. The lack is qualified programmers that live in the tech-rich areas of the country. I've met certified programmers who could make code practically sing, putting others in Silicon Valley to shame. The difference was they didn't want to live in LA, or Houston, or any other tech-rich area. They enjoyed their smaller cities where you don't fight a 2-hour backup in the morning for a 15-minute drive. The qualified programmers are out there, the companies just need to learn that they need to look beyond the silicon corridor and the outsourcing countries.

Cheap Labor Lobbyists

[Doc Ruby]

Of course both are the same Google - and its not talking out of both sides of its billion-dollar mouth. If Google could hire more H1B workers in its "hiring spree", then it would cost less, and therefore profits on the same (or even somewhat less) revenue would be higher.

Google, like other American corporations, wants to hire H1B "guest workers" because they're cheaper than citizens or fulltime residents. Guest workers subsidize their American work time by spending more time back home in their foreign country, which usually costs less to live in than the US. So they can ask for lower pay than their American competition, who have to live here full time. With our higher cost labor protections, environmental protections, and overall higher quality of life - for most everyone - with its higher cost.

So Google wants to build its brand and infrastructure on the vast, longterm American investment in the Internet and creating most of its indexed content. It wants to tap the PhDs that Americans have invested in producing to make a less-valuable foreigner workforce more productive. And it wants to charge American corporate customers the money with which it pays them, while pitching expensive equity to mostly American investors. All underwritten by foreigner labor, even though there are plenty of Americans available, though at a higher price.

I'm not surprised: that's business. It's also kinda evil.

satellite branching?

[MoFoQ]

I wonder if they can't set up a satellite office/company in a country that is more friendly in terms of worker visas (Cananda or maybe Google's own island-country) and then "out-source" all their development to that other "Google" company.

If you think about it....allowing more H-1 visas would actually help to save more American jobs as those foreign hi-tech workers will live here and buy things, eat at restaurants locally (it's not like they will be flying back to their country of origin just to grab a bite to eat), buy services (phone, TV, etc.) locally as well as pay American income and sales taxes which gets pumped right back into the community.
If not, companies will have no choice but to out-source or move those specific projects overseas if they can not find enough qualified workers locally, and that means the govt loses on tax income.

Re:Qualifications

[phantomfive]

I have to disagree completely on this point, at least in the programming industry. In our company, we are looking for good people; those who know how to self-manage and have strong programming skills, or at least the ability to grow into strong programming skills. If we are able to hire two people a month then we are really happy. We run into people who have these kinds of problems:

1. They are applying for a job they are clearly not qualified for. Maybe they studied system administration for two years at DeVry and then apply for a programming job.
2. They can't program at all. "Well, it looks like on your resume you have 6 years programming industry experience in java. Could you please write on the board a program to swap two variables? ............um.....yeah, something like that...." (I did not make that example up, she literally did not know how to swap two variables).
3. Once a month or so we run into a highly talented programmer who has been in the industry for a long time and really know what they are doing. These guys are always interesting to talk to so I love doing interviews with them because I always learn something new. Unfortunately they are looking for a short term consulting gig and we are looking for people to stay with us in the long term.

And this is all BEFORE we even talk about salaries. We are willing to pay enough, we just can't find the people. Furthermore, I don't know anyone who can't find a job. Recent college graduates might have a little trouble, but it's because they don't know how to look, not because there are not jobs. Try looking at smaller companies, they generally treat their employees better, have more potential, and are easier to get hired into than giants like google. If you are a good programmer and can't find a job, then let me know because first of all I won't believe you and second of all I want to hire you [slashdot.org].

Re:Qualifications

[kisrael]

my favorite bit of hiring dumbness: http://kisrael.com/viewblog.cgi?date=2005.11.09 [kisrael.com]

it is ASTONISHING at the low quality of people you can interview. Degrees are only super-loosely correlated.

BTW, w/ swap two variables... could they use a third place holder, or was it meant to be more clever than that?

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[SerpentMage]

>>Canada's lighter immigration restrictions apparently allow them to have more of the best people that they can find (overseas), but still have them 'close to home'.

This is why the immigration debate is so screwed in America. Canada's immigration system is not lighter. Canada's immigration system is hard, but if you have the skills you can immigrate! There is a big difference between what America does, and what Canada does. Yet people seem to confuse the issues.

What America has done and this is the dangerous part. They have clamped down hard on skilled labor, while letting in everybody else legally and illegally. So until folks in America start understanding what immigration means it will mean more and more companies will setup up shop elsewhere.

They don't need more people for search.

[Animats]

Google's main search engine doesn't take that many people to implement, extend, and run. About 50-60 smart people really make Google search go. A few hundred more take care of the software systems that support search. It's not that big an operation.

Most of the new hires at Google aren't on the search engine technology side of the business. Take a look at Google's job openings. [google.com] Only a few of those jobs [google.com] are anywhere close to the guts of the search engines.

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[Anonymous Coward]

Well from my first phone interview to the on-site it was only about a month, but from then on it was terrible. The place where my interview was supposed to be held was locked, they had no parking, they didn't let me have any of their fancy food, and then they delayed my offer for 4 weeks (even though they knew I had another offer on the table) because they kept canceling their meeting for discussing new hires. And don't get me started on the attitude of "you should feel honored to be interviewing at Google." I declined their offer once it finally came through because it wasn't even competitive.

What a waste of my time!

Google is evil.

[gumpish]

Also, I think them getting in on this side of the H1B argument goes against their "do no evil" policy.

You will observe that "Don't be evil" no longer appears in their credo.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings. html [google.com]

Sure, #6 says "You can make money without being evil", but it doesn't say that Google will itself refrain from evil.

Once you go public, you answer to the shareholders, who are usually more interested in money than morals.

Re:The two are not mutually exclusive

[piers_downunder]

As a former H1B worker (well, E3 actually but same kinda thing) I disagree that auctioning off H1Bs is a solution in the broader interest of the IT economy, as it will seriously impact on smaller players. What you will see is all of the H1Bs going to the big companies and the smaller ones squeezed out of the bidding war. I was hired and sent to the US to work for a small startup company (I was also a minority shareholder) because I had specialist skills (high end CAD systems programming) that was simply all but impossible to find in the US market. Since small businesses make up the bulk of employment in *all* industries, you really don't want to introduce anything in the market that further disadvantages the small companies in competing with the big ones.

Re:Google is evil.

[drsquare]

What's immoral about hiring based on talent rather than nationality?