Microsoft Says H-1B Workers Among Those Losing Jobs 612
CWmike notes that after a US Senator urged Microsoft to lay off H-1B workers first, Microsoft says it is cutting a 'significant number' of foreign workers as part of the layoff it announced last week. But experts say there is nothing in the law requiring a company to cut the jobs of H-1B workers before US workers. David Kussin, an immigration attorney, said, 'In fact, the law is very well designed to say that you have to treat H-1Bs the same as US citizens in all regards.' Another H-1B critic, UC Davis professor Norman Matloff, said the Senator's letter would help their fight. 'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first — and they won't state this — then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:4, Interesting)
Then let it be fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean if you do not see why a company should pay more for my services when someone is willing to do it for less, then I would like to see the following:
Microsoft should outsource management or hire H-1B visa personnel for management positions as well. It will be cheaper for the company too. How about that?
Re:Let Microsoft import as many people as they lik (Score:4, Interesting)
That is so true. The university i am working in (somewhere in new england) has a bunch of foreign grad students. I would say that about 80% of them are foreigners. I am myself a postdoc and a foreigner, all but 2 postdocs are foreigners. Americans should see the things straight: without foreigners research in the US would take a big hit. I do not understand those xenophobic republicans bitching about us. There is nobody to replace us. The foreign postdocs got hired because there was no american up to our job. Not surprising as few get a PhD anyway. Of course getting a green card is awfully hard and guess what, people do not really like being treated like disposable toilet paper.
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it can be put in simpler terms: When H1B visas were requested and utilized there were many more Americans with jobs. While the workforce market allowed for foreign workers then, it does not necessarily do so now. Foreign and temporary workers should make up the bulk, if not total, of workers laid off now. Don't give me crap about how they spend money here in the USA too. It's about keeping a job, feeding families. Sorry, American families should come first in these hard times. Yeah, I know we just did the bialout shuffle dance, but any company that retains foreign workers while citizens are put out on the street will lose my business, and I will work to ensure they lose business from other citizens.
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:3, Interesting)
Mmm. Market forces work just fine in a nearly homeostatic state. There's a real choice to be made between cutting costs (bad for the employees) or increasing productivity (good for everyone).
Unfortunately when you throw a market wide open to widely disparate providers - and we're talking about a ratio of 5 or even 10-to-one in salary costs - then market forces dictate that purchasers go for the low cost bidder. Increasing productivity - i.e. training and retaining skilled staff - isn't a realistic option for the high wage bidders; they have to join the rush to the bottom.
That's good for consumers, but not for workers. Unfortunately, a lot of us are workers. What we want - what benefits everyone - is increasing productivity rather than cutting costs. Do you see a lot of that happening in the global knowledge economy at the moment?
Work in the engineering field... (Score:2, Interesting)
I work at a nuclear power plant. We need engineering backgrounds like crazy. They literally just aren't there. We haven't turned to H1B Visas, we turn to contracting. It's quite possible the contractors are H1B, but we don't generally see them, just their engineering designs and such. My company goes around looking for engineering students all over the country that want to work. There just aren't enough graduates.
We are in a constant state of hiring, especially with the workforce entering retiring age in very large quantities(30% or more in less than 4 years). There just aren't enough graduates to go around. This definitely helps my income, because the company will gladly pay to keep my skill set right where it is.
Being a hard working 20-something, I find 1 problem with my own generation. We're lazy as heck. I'm not seeing this laziness with the older generation. Sure, ever generation has had a problem they have to work through. But can you really work through laziness? Lazy is also a very destructive problem. If my generation is going to wake up at 30+ and realize their mistake, it's getting a bit late to go back and fix it after having a dead end job at McDonald's for 10 years, assuming they weren't so lazy they stayed employed for 10 years after high school.
20-somethings on a large scale want something for nothing. I'm not surprised at all about the H1B Visas and companies trying to justify them. Go visit an engineering class and look at how many are actually US citizens. The numbers are only getting smaller. In my opinion my generation needs this recession(I'm expecting it to be a very long painful depression) so we can see that we have to work for what we have. Nothing is given away for free. It's just too bad that my parents are approaching retirement age, and their retirements are dwindling fast from this economic downturn.
A large part of my reasoning for seeing this as a long and painful depression is simply the bumbling idiots with no skill set wanting big bucks to watch TV. They have little/no motivation to work for anything, and feel that everything can(and should) be given to them with little effort on their part. 4+ years of college is "more committment" than my generation can handle.
My generations motto:
If it can't be earned in short order, it clearly isn't worth having.
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:2, Interesting)
Public education is just not trying to make us smarter and competitive. International students come from a more rigorous school system. Remember, we are in the bottom tier when it comes to education in the United States.
We are trying yet it is only to the best of our training.
Re:Then let it be fair... (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? I thought that the company existed to serve the CEO and his hand-picked board of directors. Not the workers, and heaven forbid they look after share-holders (unless the CEO is a founder). That's why CEO pay rises are at the highest level since the Great Depression.
Heck, a CEO doesn't need to outperform their competitors. A company that performs dismally compared to their competitors will still rise or fall (in share price) based on wide-ranging market forces, not whether or not the company was well managed. Any effort the CEO makes will only marginally effect their bonus - so they are better looking defensible than trying to improve profits.
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:5, Interesting)
There should not be workers here on visas. Especially for high-tech jobs.
Give them full legal residency and give them the option to stay instead of sending them home after 6 years and perpetuating the "shortage".
Re:Re H1B should go first (Score:1, Interesting)
H1B's understood the risks when they signed up. Employers want people who can be used up and then transformed into a six pack of beer and a bag of chips. From the employer perspective, H1B is the next best thing. For an H1B to expect to be treated as anything other than disposable is to misunderstand how the system works.
It's like taking a contract position and then complaining that you are up the creek when the contract expires. For this reason, contract workers need to collect premium wages to cover the risk. Smart people negotiate a premium wage for precisely this reason. Dummies get hammered.
Is it fair? Legitimate US citizens have to pay for their college education and then compete with foreigners whose education was more heavily subsidized and whose families receive socialized health care in their home countries. Then again, H1Bs pay lots of taxes in exchange for very little service and no voting rights. I suppose fairness is a two-edged sword.
I don't see any OTHER countries offering deals like this for AMERICANS to go work there. Anyone who doesn't like the H1B program is free to seek employment in their home country.
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:3, Interesting)
Why mark you troll for "hippie liberal douche" when this comment is enough? You sound more like a communist that demands people buy what YOU want them to buy. Free will and choice be damned!
Oh go fuck yourself. I didn't demand that people buy what I want them to buy and I didn't advocate for legislating Wally World out of existence. All I said was that if you buy that cheap shit from China then in one way or another you are part of the problem. I buy that cheap shit myself when there is no alternative but if there is an alternative and I can afford it then I'm going to take it. Odds are that alternative will cost me more money but odds are that it will also last a lot longer and I won't be replacing in a year when it breaks.
unless it's in the context to the posters arrogant and idiotic philosophy of anti-freedoms and repressions.
The anti-freedom stems from those who are selling this country out to a communist dictatorship to save a buck. Funny that you would call me a communist for making a plea to buy stuff made here in America as opposed to buying stuff made in a communist dictatorship.
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:2, Interesting)
I used to be an H1B holder, and one day decided to switch employer and start working for startup. The visa transfer application has been filed, I quit my job and moved to startup, without waiting for application to be approved (which is legal, as transfer considered to be pure formality). Few months later my transfer application gets refused on the grounds that startup doesn't seem to have profits and may fire me. Thank you very much Department of Labor for firing me out of fear that my employer may fire me.
One can argue that its my fault, and I had to wait for transfer to get approved, but that's not the point. I knew that I was taking a risk, and was prepared, but to get refusal on such grounds? That's pretty lame.
Anyways, getting back on topic. Suppose I were the best developer in the company and in rough times company had to downsize, but they would like to keep me and get rid of some slackers, however some legislation wouldn't allow them to do so, so they have to fire me. I pack my stuff move back home, and then economy picks up, there is shortage of qualified people in US, and US companies start to bombard me with offers. Do you honestly believe I would go there again?
It is very shortsighted policy, you are risking to alienate the most qualified people. Way to go.
Another argument against it -- it is pretty much unenforcible. What will business do? They'll just create new entity and move all H1B holders they would like to keep to that new entity. Oh, big brother patches this loophole? Fine. They'll create an independent "consultancy" business and move all H1B holders there, and hire them as consultants. I am sure there are thousand tricks to work around such restrictions.
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:5, Interesting)
Here I was thinking that our society is supposed to be built on competition
Ah, the dog eat dog extreme of the far right. Eventually people will wake up and realize that it's no better than the "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" extreme of the far left.
I wasn't advocating for a socialist solution. I was bemoaning the fact that the Michael Dell's of the world grew up with all of the advantages that the United States offers and can't even bother to employ American workers to answer their goddamn tech support numbers. They've taken all of the advantages that American society offered while contributing as little as possible in return. You may respect that but I don't -- and it's this extreme that business has shifted to in the last few decades that has emboldened the far-left into seeking further expansions of the nanny state that will eventually erode our competitiveness on the global stage.
Read up about welfare capitalism sometime. Read up about the CEOs of yesteryear that sought a square deal for their workers and in so doing helped to create a market for their products. Everybody won to a certain extent. Now we've traded that all away for the cheapest labor or the cheapest stamped plastic POS product that breaks every 12 months.
why should a company be forced into 'purchasing' the less skilled labor?
At no point in my post did I advocate for forcing anybody into doing anything. I was bemoaning what we've become -- not advocating for any specific solution. So nice way to distract from my underlying point.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:5, Interesting)
People look at me like I'm a friggen lepper when I say I don't shop at WalMart sans crisis.
Buying import crap (literal meaning) is almost unavoidable in some cases. In other cases you can find import crap (figurative) that is better made. I do try to buy American/Canadian especially for food products (often cheaper, always seasonal), and my art supplies tend to be from the UK or Germany. Where I do willingly stoop to Chinese knock-off quality is glassware for the kids chemistry set, and even then I buy the higher end. My personal glassware is all "proper" German and American glass. I try to buy at least American owned company computer components.
But to quit rambling:
Country of origin is not always a choice, but is one often enough that the consumer *should* pay attention. In addition to steering money to American companies, often the build quality is so much better that you will not be needing to replace that POS a year or so down the road. (My German(?) built toaster is serviceable for contact wear, is your Chinese one?
-nB
I was an H-1B worker at Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at Microsoft in Redmond with H1B work status for four years. In 2007, I left MS because I found a job opportunity that was better for my family. (This new job happened to be back in my country.)
I can't comment about the overall H1B program in the US, or the overall US labour market, or even on any new changes at MS over the past year, but I do definitely know about the experiences of H1B employees in the developer and testing roles at MS.
I (and all other non-US-citizen employees) were treated exactly the same as every other employee. We had the same job descriptions and responsibilities as other employees and the same opportunities for promotion. We were integrated in teams that included US citizens, other H1B-status workers, and people with other immigration statuses. We were certainly paid the same as any other employee with a similar job and similar experience.
I also know that Microsoft has very high hiring standards for developer and tester roles. I was not in a management/lead position, but I occasionally reviewed resumes and took part in interviewing applicants. Interviews were tough all-day affairs, including questions that required the use of logic, math, programming, and testing methodologies. The point wasn't to see if the applicant could regurgitate the knowledge, but to view his or her thinking process, creativity, and problem solving abilities as they tried to come up with a solution, and handle complications or restrictions that the interviewer throws at the candidate after they come up with an initial solution.
During the time I was there, my group and most others were always trying to hire more people. The major bottleneck was waiting to get any resumes for candidates that seemed worth interviewing. Most interviews ended with frustration that the candidate wasn't up to standards. Just because you applied to MS and didn't get a job or even an interview is not proof that Microsoft didn't need to look outside the US to find candidates up to their standards.
So, you might have valid criticisms about the quality of Microsoft software, but MS really does have very high standards for their employees, and employees with H1B status are treated the same as any other full-time employee there.
Re:WHO IS JOHN GALT? (Score:5, Interesting)
You seem to think that medical doctors would be able to set arbitrarily high prices and people would have no choice but to pay them. That would not happen because people have a choice about which doctor to go to.
If doctors were making insane amounts of money then more people would become doctors, which means more competition and lower prices. So, medical doctors would not necessarily be the richest people in the world by any stretch of the imagination.
However, in a pure market system there would be people that could not get care (as there are now) because they are unable to pay the market price. Free markets maximize overall wealth (barring externalities), not the number of products sold or people served.
If this is unacceptable, which it may very well be in this case, then that is your argument for why health care should not be subject to the free market, NOT because doctors might get rich.
You'd better be damn careful that what you replace it with actually is better. Doctors must be paid enough to get the best people. I sure as hell don't want to be under the knife of some second rate surgeon kept on by some government bureaucracy.
Re:Require pay and benefits parity (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:She is the one who defines "mutual benefit". (Score:3, Interesting)
How does the act of defining something negate its truth? We are just trying to get an agreement on a definition.
Mutual benefit occurs when both parties enter the contract willingly and exchange goods, money, or services at an agreed upon rate. Each party receives something of more value than what they lost. If they didn't then they obviously shouldn't have entered into the contract.
Selling alcohol is ethical if it is sold to a person who wants to buy the alcohol.
One may say, "but wait, the person who bought the alcohol might become a drunkard". By that logic, it would be unethical to sell food because it might make one fat, or cars because one might drive recklessly. The unethical behavior of the alcoholic or reckless driver is solely their responsibility, not the responsibility of the seller.
Re:Let Microsoft import as many people as they lik (Score:3, Interesting)
There are plenty of American kids who go into science and engineering. But when you compare the population of the US (300 million) to that of India ( just for example--1.2 billion), it's easy to see why there are so many "qualified" Indians compared to Americans.
The problem isn't necessarily a lack of technically qualified Americans--just a lack of technically qualified Americans who will sacrifice things such as quality of life (living anywhere just for a job) or for lower pay. The real problem is Microsoft moving jobs overseas to save a buck--not because they can't get enough qualified Americans to live and work in Redmond.
NO Evidence of Shortage (Score:3, Interesting)
Studies by Rand and universities have shown that this is FALSE. There is NO demonstrate-able general shortage.
Now there are *spot* shortages, but we need spot shortages to allow us to transition from the surplus spots. Otherwise, citizens would be fired from the surplus specialties but not get the shortage spots because they are filled by H1B's. Think about it.
Because Americans know that masters tend to *limit* your choices rather than expand them. Asian cultures value higher degrees out of historical habit. It's a phallic symbol there. American corporations instead value mostly hands-on and tool-specific knowledge (for good or bad), and a masters does not represent that.
I've seen a citizen fired and H1B's kept with my own eyes. The poor lady laid off was nearly destitute. I felt for her. This was not the stated reason H1B's were created.
It's true the citizen lady had problematic people skills, but the stated purpose of the H1B program was not to replace citizens with people skill difficulties. It was not created to replace "C" citizens with "A" foreigners. Perhaps some of you darwinistic free-marketers want it that way, but that's not the way the bill was sold to and by Congress. Voters would reject it (as is) if they knew what was really going on.
Hopefully this recession will expose some of the dark-sides of the H1B program. It's been festering for too long.
Training and Education are not the answer (Score:3, Interesting)
"Hay, maybe if there weren't HB-1 visa holders filling the slots, there would be more American how got trained and got training for those positions."
Training and Education are not the answer to the lack of skilled workers.
Education is only a part of an answer if the person in question is educable. And then they have to have non-economic motivation for getting that education; with one exception, I've never had a good experience with a person who entered into a field of endeavor solely due to an economic motivation.
I've worked with brilliant engineers and scientists from all over the world; in fact, I pick my employers on the basis of whether or not I will end up working with smart people. Smart people have an intrinsically higher effective communication bandwidth because it takes less data exchanged to communicate with them.
No amount of training and education is going to turn 100 randomly selected -- to pick on a profession that's been hit with outsourcing, former call-center phone jockeys -- into world-class scientists and engineers. You might actually get several from that 100, after you invested a decade or more of effort in the process, but the ROI is just not there to make it worth it, either as a business or as a nation. The latency between when you need to hire them and when they are eventually qualified to fill the position is just too high, even if you were successful.
I have to agree with the people who've as much as suggested that the way to get qualified US citizens for jobs like these is to naturalize qualified foreign workers, turning them into US citizens.
-- Terry