US Senator Blasts Microsoft's H-1B Push As It Lays 18,000 Off Workers 529
dcblogs (1096431) writes On the floor of U.S. Senate Thursday, Sen. Jeff Sessions delivered a scalding and sarcastic attack on the use of highly skilled foreign workers by U.S. corporations that was heavily aimed at Microsoft, a chief supporter of the practice. Sessions' speech began as a rebuttal to a recent New York Times op-ed column by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffett and Sheldon Adelson ... But the senator's attack on "three of our greatest masters of the universe," and "super billionaires," was clearly primed by Microsoft's announcement, also on Thursday, that it was laying off 18,000 employees. "What did we see in the newspaper today?" said Sessions, "News from Microsoft. Was it that they are having to raise wages to try to get enough good, quality engineers to do the work? Are they expanding or are they hiring? No, that is not what the news was, unfortunately. Not at all."
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Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
What the senator is really saying... (Score:5, Funny)
What the senator is really saying is that Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced by a foreign worker.
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Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Funny)
"You must be stupid if you believe that" is a logical fallacy.
Man, you are stupid if you believe that.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Informative)
"You must be stupid if you believe that" is not a logical fallacy. "You are stupid, therefore what you believe is false" is a logical fallacy (ad hominem). "People who believe things that are obviously false are stupid. That is obviously false and you believe it, therefore you must be stupid" is valid, assuming you accept the premises.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Funny)
Begging the question:
Please please please question, don't hit me!
Waiting for Congress to realize that they're (Score:5, Informative)
also evil.
The layoff wasn't much of a surprise.
I've been expecting it for a few years and I expect that Apple and Google will follow suit,
just not sure of the timeframe. They're all engaged in verticalizing their information
equivalent of a supply chain, i.e. an indicator of saturating markets.
http://nodemy-ghost.herokuapp.... [herokuapp.com]
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But but but, teh future is supposed to be full of infinitely growing tech jobs, this is unpossible!!1!
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Your employer's duty is to give you money, not hold your hand and guide you through life.
Microsoft had a very generous severance package for engineers. They're on the payroll for 2 months after "being layed off", they get 2 weeks pay per 6 months tenure up to some high cap, from what I've heard.
When I got layed off in the dot-bust, my employer gave me a check and a shove out the door, but not having to work for 6 months gave me plenty of time brush up my skill set and to place myself with another company.
A
Re:Did he just notice that? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue that an employer's duty is both to compensate you monetarily AND to provide a safe and comfortable working environment. Beyond that one nitpick, I completely agree with you.
Even as a temporary contract programmer, when my project with Microsoft was cancelled, I was treated very well. They kept me on for another month as an unofficial "severance" even though there was no work to be done, and arranged for a few other internal interviews for me. My project lead also bought me an Xbox (the first one, which had recently come out) and some games out of his own pocket.
Obviously, that was a while ago, but from what I've heard, MS still generally treats its people pretty well, and that experience was borne out several times while working for them in contract positions. Note that this isn't completely altruistic - part of it is to avoid wrongful termination lawsuits (I've been given severance pay by another employer in exchange for promising not to sue, which was fine with me), and part of it is simple competition with others who might treat their employees better. And of course, part of it is that most people aren't complete jerkwads, and understand that helping out someone with a severance package is simply the right thing to do, as being laid off is already a mildly traumatic experience.
Re:Did he just notice that? (Score:4, Insightful)
A free man doesn't expect his employer to be his mommy too - that's how a serf thinks.
Look around you. Do you see people who *want* to be free men, or *want* to be serfs?
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I know plenty of people at MS. Several months ago, they announced the end of SDT (QA) as a thing. About half the SDT guys found internal transfers to the development teams. The other half were clearly looking for seats before the music stopped. Well, the music stopped.
That's the thing about software - whatever your technical skills, they have a half-life. You have to keep on top of that, or you'll find that what you know how to do simply isn't valuable any more. SDT was supposed to be a "developer, bu
Re:Free market economy (Score:4, Insightful)
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He can't. Jeff Sessions is a Republican in the Senate. Harry Reid is single handedly deciding on what gets to the Senate floor for a vote and what does not. Until Reid chooses to do somehting about it, nothing can be done in the Senate. Sessions is attempting to shame everyone who is preventing something from being done.
With Reid as Senate Majority leader there will be no free market. A free market might allow people to not be dependent on government hand outs and he can't allow that to happen.
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So, the Senate controls the markets?
Really?
Or is it just Reid?
Not decades and decades of bad & manipulated & paid-for laws/regulations/state monopolies?
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
He can't. Jeff Sessions is a Republican in the Senate. Harry Reid is single handedly deciding on what gets to the Senate floor for a vote and what does not. Until Reid chooses to do something about it, nothing can be done in the Senate. Sessions is attempting to shame everyone who is preventing something from being done.
With Reid as Senate Majority leader there will be no free market. A free market might allow people to not be dependent on government hand outs and he can't allow that to happen.
Similar arguments (about this and other things) can be made about Speaker of the House John Boehner and the House Republicans. Obstinate, obstructive, short-sighted, selfish, petty people can be found many places in Congress.
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regulation would work in reducing immigrant workers, but microsoft would simply move whole divisions overseas. in totality, us jobs will decrease, not increase. i would think that inviting the smartest people from other countries and letting them create wealth inside the us would be better than less jobs in the us.
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"we don't need regulation, we need fundamental change!"
coming to a political campaign near you...
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll let you know when he actually starts changing something. So far, it's been pretty "Hopey" and not a lot of "changey".
It annoys me when conservatives get up in arms about Obama, who is basically just keeping Bush policies steady. Yes, even the recent migrant kids thing is a Bush policy. sigh.
At least Liberals hate him for REAL reasons... Basically that he hasn't been very "Changey".
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, it's hard to change much while you need 60 votes in the senate to get anything to pass.
I'm glad he spent his political capital on the ACA. I'm disappointed and curious about why he didn't shut down Guantanamo . He's made a lot of "small" liberal progress on over a hundred issues but his hands are tied by the party of "no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO NO no no no!"
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
>we had enough regulation already, look where it got us.
To the most economically, technologically and military powerful nation the planet?
America only started falling off once Reagan and Clinton started busting unions, signing free trade treaties, giving amnesties to illegal aliens and deregulating wall street.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, we paid for all that with $17 trillion of debt, and a behavior/thought process that it was ok, starting with Reagan and continuing to this day.
Other countries are just waiting for it all to collapse and pick our bones.
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Well, we paid for all that with $17 trillion of debt, and a behavior/thought process that it was ok, starting with Reagan and continuing to this day.
Other countries are just waiting for it all to collapse and pick our bones.
When Reagan took office federal debt was a little over 2T and went up to a little over 4T when he left office. Clinton took it from a around 6 to around 7. The current administration has seen it go from around 9 to around 17. Maybe you haven't kept up on current events but there hasn't been much union busting, new free trade treaties, or deregulation of wall street in the last 6 years.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, we paid for all that with $17 trillion of debt, and a behavior/thought process that it was ok, starting with Reagan and continuing to this day.
Other countries are just waiting for it all to collapse and pick our bones.
When Reagan took office federal debt was a little over 2T and went up to a little over 4T when he left office. Clinton took it from a around 6 to around 7. The current administration has seen it go from around 9 to around 17. Maybe you haven't kept up on current events but there hasn't been much union busting, new free trade treaties, or deregulation of wall street in the last 6 years.
You skipped a prez, hoss......GWB, the president who ran up that 8 trillion to bail out his Wall Street Buddies.....
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... There's been plenty of Union busting, plenty of new free trade treaties, and plenty of wall street deregulation. Certainly there's been no love for Unions. Free Trade Treaties? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... [wikipedia.org]. Since we already deregulated the banking industry to stupidity, we TRIED to re-regulate, and now even Dodd and Frank acknowledge that the Dodd-Frank act is toothless.
Where have YOU been?
Also, yeah, you missed a President there chuckles.... How Convenient.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Reagan went from $1T to $3T
Bush Sr went from $3T to $6T
Clinton went from $6T to $5T
Bush Jr went from $5T to $11T
Obama went from $11T to $17T
Which one was worse?
It doesn't fucking matter.
Re:Free market economy (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.westegg.com/inflati... [westegg.com]
What cost $100 in 1980 would cost $278.44 in 2013.
So Reagan's increase was about the same as Obama's.
And a lot of Reagan's increase ALSO came from unrealistically high defense spending and tax cuts on the wealthy.
What cost $100 in 1988 would cost $193.96 in 2013.
Bush's deficit increase was also about the same as Obama's increase.
Clinton used funny accounting tricks and gutted social security to balance the books. Actually he increased the deficit about 2T when you remove the accounting tricks.
What cost $100 in 1992 would cost $163.61 in 2013.
So his increase was about 3T about half of Obama's.
What cost $100 in 1992 would cost $122.42 in 2000.
Bush Jr increased the deficit by 7T. Currently still a record.
And bush's tax cuts account for 30% of the deficit. Obama is responsible for not allowing them to lapse. Defense spending the size of the next 25 nations combined accounts for another 40% of the deficit and *modest* cuts would have reduced the deficit by 1T. And we'd have still been spending more than china, russia, and all of europe combined. All of the rest of government accounts for the other 30%. Notably, the ACA is only a miniscule part of the deficit. The vast majority of it is bills from prior administrations that are difficult to stop- and impossible to stop with the republican dominated congress passing bills which only increase costs.
But Obama could have allowed the tax cuts to lapse and he'd be at about $4T. A *REAL* failure of spine there. And that's been the biggest gap. Let's rate them by spine.
Bush Jr., Spine of Titanium.
Bush Sr., Spine of Steel (and it cost him the election)
Clinton, Spine of Iron
Reagan, Spine of Wood (really- he basically went "Guns AND Butter)
Obama, Spine of Silly Putty
Hate him or love him- Bush got what he wanted. But he had the largest deficit adjusted for inflation and his policies are responsible for 1T to 2T of Obama's deficits (before Obama had a chance to allow them to lapse).
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Copying?
We're newby pikers next to England at the deficit spending thing. IIRC England stole the idea from the French. Who were inspired by middle age bankers who loved to loan money to both sides of wars, on condition that the winner pay all the debt (tale the deal or be guaranteed to lose).
Don't worry about the dollar until the pound has taken an even bigger crap. They are the canary in the coal mine regarding confidence in make nothing/print money western economies.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
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There has never been deregulation of anything. Only changed regulation, and usually more of it. The problem we have today is not too much or too little, but regulatory capture by the big boys which serve as a barrier to entry for little guys.
We need fewer, simpler regulations. Regulations that you can understand without being a lawyer or expert on "regulatory compliance". The mess of overlapping regulations today were largely written by the regulated and the ones who really understand them use them to do wh
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Interesting)
1. massive natural resource endowment (particularly land area, educated population, and cheap energy reserves)
2. being the only large industrialized nation not bombed into oblivion post-1945.
to name just a few. Now we are witnessing a regression to the mean as some of these key points (education, cheap domestic energy, and unique industrialization) are challenged by the same globalization principles that we put in place. The fact that our government bureaucracy at all levels is a bloated and inefficient mess only serves to retard any attempts to correct our deficiencies and maintain our position.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
What did regulation get us? You mean after the new deal was put in place but before Ragean and company went about getting rid of it? Hmm let's see? End of the great depression? But wait Rush Limbah says that WW2 ended the great depression? Well the great depression was starting to end before WW2 but if you are saying that the massive government spending and massive government growth during WW2 ended the great depression then I have to thank you for proving my point exactly,
What else did it get us? ~50 years of strong growth without any real recessions? Strongest middle class in the history of mankind? Turning the US economy into the biggest in the world with the largest manufactoring base? Remember back in the day all the best consumer electronics were all made in the USA. Our manufactoring base was protected because from the founding of the country until about the 1980's we actually charged tariffs to people importing goods we could make here. In fact until WW1 tarrifs completely funded the federal government.
Execpt for all of that then I guess I would have to say yeah, regulations gave us nothing. Guess we need a fundamental change? And by fundemental change I guess you mean do the same thing we have been doing for the last ~30 years? I.E continue to deregulate and destroy whatever is left of the new deal? Yes we should not got back to the way things were back in the 50's and 60's. Back then the government actually regulated business. Back then a CEO could not be paid in stock (so he -- and yes back then it was always he, couldn't pump and dump like everyone loves to do today.) If a company became a monopoly then the government would split it up. The government wouldn't allow banks to lend money to people that couldn't afford to pay it back. And since the ultra rich had a +50% top tax bracket (with a lot fewer shelters so they actually mostly paid it) more rich people invested more money in their companies (to avoid paying taxes) and so there was less money around to have tons of bubbles in the stock market, energy market, housing market, etc. Back then companies actually had R&D departments because the CEOs all weren't slaves to the stock price -- they actually cared about the long term future of the company (imagine that!)
No you are right we should certainly not go back to the way things were back then. We need a fundemental change and that means doing the same thing we have been doing since Ragean.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
I appreciate your comments, very well said.
But, the American prosperity after World War II was due to the fact that the rest of the world had basically been converted to rubble and it takes a couple of decades to rebuild after such destruction. America lost a lot of young men, but our infrastructure was intact after the war.
I agree with everything you are saying, just pointing out why we had 50 years of growth and prosperity. We built industry, everyone else had to rebuild.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, Reagan came into office and lowered that top rate. All of a sudden, the government deficits started going up and work didn't get done. Millionaires started using their new buckets of money for speculation. Now, we're in a recession as a result of Wall Street speculation and we can't fix a fucking pothole let alone pave a single new freeway.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny how much some people respect President Reagan. Actually, it's not funny. It is sad.
And you didn't even mention the War on Drugs, the sole reason the prison population bloomed during and since his presidency.
And what recession? The DOW is at an all time high?
Laughable conclusions ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me preface this by saying I think Limbaugh has become a self-important blowhard, who spends hours saying nothing, just to hear himself talk on the radio. I'm also no fan of the vast majority of idiots signed up as members of the Republican party.
But let's not try to cherry-pick historical events to make conclusions that just aren't there..... The Great Depression might have shown signs of going away before WWII, but you'd have to be kind of crazy to back the idea that America's prosperous period after WWII had nothing to do with winning the war! Essentially, on this one, Rush actually *is* right. Heck, if nothing else, one could make a strong argument that the war put America in an advantageous place in the world market simply because other major competitors were knocked out for a while. (It's easy to look good when the other players are still rebuilding decimated manufacturing capabilities and so on.)
And no... "massive govt. spending and growth" from WWII wasn't the magic ticket to prosperity.... Fools like GWB seemed to believe this, and America found out the hard way that you can't just dump a ton of money into having a war and expect automatic prosperity to result.
In reality, if America had some way to win WWII without all of the military expenditures, we would have been that much MORE well-off, post war, than we were.
Now, arguing about banking regulations, specifically? Yes, I think it's pretty widely understood that the deregulation in the Reagan era (and let's be honest here ... much of that had more to do with Reagan's economic advisers than Reagan himself) turned out pretty bad. If you had to put a face and a name to those ideas, you'd probably pin most of it on Alan Greenspan, who eventually admitted himself that he was wrong. (Essentially, he felt he did the right thing, philosophically speaking -- but didn't think the people put in charge of banking would be so short-sighted and irresponsible to do some of the things they were ABLE to do with the regulations lifted. Basically, he was guilty of believing too much in some of the people who supposedly could make wise business decisions.)
If you want to talk fundamental change that would actually help America's situation today? We've GOT to get rid of the Corporatism. Big businesses can NOT be allowed to infiltrate government and effectively become another arm of it! Too many people, today, have this simplistic notion that big businesses are evil/bad/wrong, and need to be forcibly dismantled -- or forced to give up a portion of their wealth to "everyone else". Big business, itself, is not the problem. A big business is just one of those small businesses people like to cheer for that did well enough, it got bigger and hired a lot more people. The PROBLEM comes in when government accepts financial gifts from said businesses for favors, or allows people with direct ties to the businesses to take key positions inside government itself and proceeds to get new legislation made/approved that only benefits those businesses.
IMO, Obama is just as guilty of perpetuating this as any of our last few presidents -- and the results are like a snowball rolling downhill. For example:
http://www.newyorker.com/onlin... [newyorker.com]
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
There was the savings and loan meltdown in the early '80's when they were deregulated. That was the first sign about the dangers of de-regulation with the big difference that people went to jail then.
Now they get huge bonuses as rewards for screwing the worlds finances.
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is the economic problem with globalization, wages and prices are locally coupled, and it is every company`s individual best interest to max/min in a p
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This is very true as people shop at Walmart, not because of the amazing people that visit there, but because they can get a lot of stuff cheaper. I won't complain about that.
What I will complain about is the outrage expressed by Microsoft sucking at the teat of government because they want to bring said cheap labor into this country while telling lies to the people and that same government. This is NOT a free market while these kinds of things are going on.
But if this senator is really upset, I wonder how
Re:Free market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
You're forgetting the HUGE back-door corporate subsidy they get by putting workers on poverty wages and forcing them onto welfare.
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Companies get their resources where they are cheapest, regardless if this is parts or people.
But, but, but... Every company I've ever worked for has touted how their employees are their most valuable asset. Were they fibbing to me? Sigh. Now I'm sad.
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Oberon ,Modula 2, Pascal (Score:2)
Niklaus Wirth really was a genius when it came to language design. His languages are the most readable I have ever worked with. For fun this weekend I decided to teach myself python and I keep going WTF were they thinking ?* Not to put Python down it seems very well executed, but it just seems to make design choices just for the sake of being different.
*APL, IMNSHO is still the all time champion of being a write only language
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The problem with UI design is it is subjective, it depends heavily on who your target user is. The "good designers" of the past were catering to a particular type of user who no longer makes up the majority of customers. They were indeed good at what they did, but the market has shifted and thus a new crop of designers are trying to work out what serves the majority of user now well.
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Nope, never have met anyone who cares for Windows 8, even amongst the unwashed masses. General consensus is that the UI worked and didn't need changing.
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Wait, what? People are fleeing TO Unity?
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The self-interest of commercial software developers like Microsoft involves ripping everything down and building it over again ever few years.
This is what happened with Smalltalk. It was getting better as long as they were discarding *everything* every two years (they used to call it the "burn the diskpacks" [c2.com] approach). But it *never* happened with Microsoft software, ever. They don't rebuild stuff, the accrete onto it.
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In all the ways that really matter (fiscal policy, economic policy, regulation, law enforcement, etc...), the candidates are identical.
I think you've taken a valid point and stretched it a little far here. If we'd had eight years of Gore starting in 2000, do you think Iraq would have played out exactly the same? If we were on our way to eight years of McCain starting in 2008, do you think the trends in health insurance would be what they are?
Whether you approve or disapprove, you have to agree they'd have been different.
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You as Americans have a choice and a vote, each 2-4 years. You can either do something or you don't want to. The spiral and time is working against you.
Every so often we get to vote, but we are limited to two choices, both of which have been given large sums of money by various PACs, which are essentially just fronts for various corporate officers. Often, the same PAC will back both candidates in any given race, just so that they get the benefit of backing the winner every time. There is no democratically elected leadership in this country anymore, there is only a selection between two candidates presented to the masses by the 1%. In all the ways that really matter (fiscal policy, economic policy, regulation, law enforcement, etc...), the candidates are identical. They will debate and argue over the issues that the public has been trained to believe really matter, but in reality the issues that are hotly contested don't really matter, and the ones that do, are quietly agreed upon behind closed doors. How many politicians that truly have power have done anything to end Guantanamo, or the rights abuses happening there? How many have done anything to end the systematic dissolution of our constitutional rights? How many have actually taken steps to fix the systemic problems that led to the recession? How many have taken any action to help eliminate the vastly disproportional power the 1% wield in our political system? How many have taken steps to address the extraordinary and growing wealth and earnings inequalities in our society?
The answer to these questions is now, and has been: none that matter. The only way we will be able to undo the damage the 1% have done to our country will be through an extraordinary action outside the accepted political system, because everything inside the political system has been thoroughly corrupted by those with the real power: the 1%.
Plus, the striking down of the law limiting corporate contributions by the Supreme Court has made things even worse. Now they can give as much as they want.
How a corporation came to have the right of free speech is beyond me...
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This argument always comes from a corporate true-believer.
Silly argument (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a false comparison being made here... who says the Nokia engineer or the Xbox content maker being laid off has the same skills as the programmer they are wanting to hire?
Re:Silly argument (Score:5, Funny)
There's a false comparison being made here... who says the Nokia engineer or the Xbox content maker being laid off has the same skills as the programmer they are wanting to hire?
Facts don't matter when THEY'RE TAKING OUR JOBS!!!
Re:Silly argument (Score:4, Informative)
It's not clear yet how the the layoffs will be distributed, but they certainly won't be all in Finland. Microsoft's already given notice [wa.gov] of 1351 layoffs in Redmond, and that's likely only the first round of Redmond layoffs.
Silly argument (part 2) (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should we pass laws to enable a company to do what it wants?
Laws should be passed because they are morally right and protect the American people, not to make business more profitable. Train the workers you have.
Re:Silly argument (Score:5, Informative)
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yes, they might only have 3 years of Javascript experience when you really need 4...
Re:Silly argument (Score:5, Informative)
I say that in the 18,000 is more than one.
It's amazing how people are born with skill sets and training has absolutely nothing to do with it. /sarcasm If you are a programer by trade you should easily adapt.
The programer that they want to hire costs less. That's it. That's all.
Re:Silly argument (Score:5, Interesting)
The only skill Microsoft is seeking is a low daily wage.
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There's a false comparison being made here... who says the Nokia engineer or the Xbox content maker being laid off has the same skills as the programmer they are wanting to hire?
Right... The majority of the layoffs appear to be on the factory floor of Nokia. A shame... but those jobs have nothing to do with H1B workers. On slashdot, we like facts... we like them so much that if they agree with our opinion we don't even care if they're true. :-)
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Exactly. They are different skills, and in fact most of the people laid off are foreigners (i.e.: Nokia).
Even though I am not a huge Microsoft fan, I do have a friend there, who was actually laid off with this wave. He was a US citizen, but he will not be replaced with an H1B worker, since the entire project was cancelled.In fact this seems to be his only regret, because not only they gave him a good severance package, he is skillful, and I believe he'll have no difficulty finding another job (even at Micro
Not fungible (Score:3)
Tech workers (and workers in general) are not fungible.
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Much has been done so that conveyor belt workers are fungible. More qualified workers are, of course, not.
Re:Not fungible (Score:5, Insightful)
If tech companies weren't shit at training they would be somewhat more fungible, though not perfectly so. Engineering companies are somewhat better at this: if a company is looking for chemical engineers and can't find someone with experience in exactly the process they're hiring for, they'll hire a chemical engineer with experience in a different process and get them up to speed. Tech companies seem incapable of doing that, and instead they have a big list of really specific background they want, "must have 7 years of experience in J2EE and 3 years experience using Joe Bob's Serialization Framework", then complain they can't find anyone so it must be a "programmer shortage".
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Tech skills often just translate very well across companies, so major efforts in training will make it easier for the employee to leave. Compare that with, say, domain knowledge: Knowing what your company does better will not help you get a job that pays better elsewhere. The end result is that training is the most attractive fora company that pays extremely well and rarely loses employees: The kind of company that does NOT need to train anyone, because it becomes a top destination of their market.
Who has t
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If tech companies weren't shit at training they would be somewhat more fungible, though not perfectly so. Engineering companies are somewhat better at this: if a company is looking for chemical engineers and can't find someone with experience in exactly the process they're hiring for, they'll hire a chemical engineer with experience in a different process and get them up to speed. Tech companies seem incapable of doing that, and instead they have a big list of really specific background they want, "must have 7 years of experience in J2EE and 3 years experience using Joe Bob's Serialization Framework", then complain they can't find anyone so it must be a "programmer shortage".
That's true, I wish I could count the advertisements I have seen specifying not just three or four certifications but also down to a dozen or more APIs that you must have top notch experience with in order to qualify. It's as if they are looking for a mental clone of some guy who left for a better paid job somewhere else and actually expect to find him/her. In some cases it's near impossible even to convince people that if you can handle web development in PHP you can handle web development in Perl. I'm not
Re:Not fungible (Score:5, Informative)
If tech companies weren't shit at training they would be somewhat more fungible, though not perfectly so. Engineering companies are somewhat better at this: if a company is looking for chemical engineers and can't find someone with experience in exactly the process they're hiring for, they'll hire a chemical engineer with experience in a different process and get them up to speed. Tech companies seem incapable of doing that, and instead they have a big list of really specific background they want, "must have 7 years of experience in J2EE and 3 years experience using Joe Bob's Serialization Framework", then complain they can't find anyone so it must be a "programmer shortage".
At which point they bring a foreign worker over and train them in J2EE and Joe Bob's Serialization Framework.
I've written about this at length in the past. My own wife came over on an H1A as a nurse. The reason that they got her had nothing to do with a "shortage of nurses". Instead, it had to do with a "shortage of nurses that would work for the shit wages that the nursing homes wanted to pay". Big difference - and frankly that's the same thing I see in the tech industry.
If the Department of Labor simply forced these companies to follow the law and compensate the foreign workers on par with American workers it would somewhat alleviate the problem. But they don't, and the law's a joke.
The other issue is that these workers are essentially indentured servants until they get a green card and the power disparity also plays heavily into this. Looking at my wife's situation again I know of nurses who pissed off the wrong people in their job and ended up on a plane back home. If you hate your job you don't have the ability to simply get another. I'd like to say that everybody acts like an adult and that doesn't matter but the reality is that it matters a lot. When you don't really have the option to quit there's little pressure on management to make sure you like your job.
In the nursing industry it's even worse because of regulation. I don't mean the regulation makes it worse - hiring foreigners is a great way to get around regulation and not worry about your employees turning you in. After all, if your understaffed shit hole gets shut down by the state you get a plane ride back home.
In my wife's generation this was even worse because they had to come up with US$5000 to pay the staffing agency to bring them over. That's about a year and a half of wages for your typical middle class Filipino - it would be analogous to an American coming up with $75,000. Not easy. And if you lose your job in America you'll spend 10 years working in the Philippines to pay that off.
Ugh.
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I wonder if just putting a wage floor would help out with some of those abuses. Say, you can use H1B, but only for salary offers above $100k. That way H1B can be used to fill high-skill jobs with shortages, but not lower- and middle-end jobs.
Jobs for immigrants .... (Score:3)
I agree with you about the tech companies and the lack of flexibility with training. Even if you're not a programmer, but simply want a job related to the I.T. infrastructure (network engineer, systems administrator, etc.) -- you run across the same mentality. There's typically a belief, internally, that nobody has time to train a person to get them up to speed on what they're doing. Better to be REALLY specific about what you need, and let the H.R. drones find you a good match.
Then whenever that comes up s
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From experience, you might be quite surprised at how many are transferable or retrainable to new roles. During the last few economic crashes in the US, quite a few younger or mid-level engineers had to withdraw from the higher tech markets because they needed to _eat_, or to support a family. They're now chronically under employed, and find it very difficult to get their next job to get back on the technology or professional hierarchical employment ladder.
Working with these people, and making sure they get
Work Shortage where is the Wage Increases?, (Score:5, Informative)
Basic economics says if you are having a skills shortage in a certain sector then you should see wages increasing as employers attempt to attract the required labor. If wages are not going up then you do not have a skills shortage. This is something economist Dean Baker points out all the time.
Majority outside the US (Score:2, Interesting)
With 12000 being from the Nokia side of the business, and the majority of that outside the US, the Senator is just knee jerk reacting. The biggest hit is a factory in Finland (a few thousand at 1 location). The reason they are probably needing H1-B is to bring some of the staff from closed locations into the US. They aren't "taking jobs", their jobs are just moving local, to people who will pay taxes locally in America, rather than in another country.
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I'll cut you a deal, AC: Microsoft gets a new allotment of H-1B visa sponsorships if they promise to only use them to bring workers who have jobs with Microsoft subsidiaries (as of some fixed day in the past) to the US, and consent to meaningful oversight to ensure they keep that promise. If they don't want to make that promise, I will infer they mostly want to fire people with decent-paying jobs (which I hear is the usual case in Finland, especially for tech workers) in favor of low-paid, almost captive l
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That visa already exists. It's called an L-1.
From Wikipedia: "The visa allows such foreign workers to relocate to the corporation's US office after having worked abroad for the company for at least one continuous year within the previous three prior to admission in the US. The US and non-US employers must be related in one of four ways: parent and subsidiary; branch and headquarters; sister companies owned by a mutual parent; or 'affiliates' owned by the same or people in approximately the same percentages.
consider the source (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Technically he works for the people of Alabama, and engages in the magical cooperition of federal government that is intended to give us all the feeling he works for the rest of us. Regardless, if he does something good we should all praise him.
Personally I think libertarians are people who worship some strange pagan deity, in the sense that they believe in and worship magical forces of nature which sensible people shield themselves from, so what he's doing is good. Unfortunately I think by the time his pos
Require H1-B visa recipients be paid more (Score:5, Interesting)
This is so easy to fix.
Establish what the standard rate is for whatever position and say "you can have all the H1-B visa applicants you want so long as you pay 20 percent more then what you're paying for domestic labor.
If its not a matter of pay and is a matter of limited labor supply, they'll import the labor and pay them more.
If it is about wanting cheap labor then they'll go with the domestic labor which will by law be cheaper.
End of discussion.
also forced OT pay for h1-B's (Score:3)
also forced OT pay for h1-B's.
no more of this you make them work 60-80 hours a week with no OT pay.
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You're apparently an abysmal reader.
Sorry if that comes off as insulting but hold your unrightous indignation for a moment and I'll back that up.
I said you pay the H1-B visa applicant MORE then the US worker.
So if they load up the requirements sheet they'll be increasing what they ultimately have to pay the H1-B visa holder.
They'll have a very strong incentive to NOT do what you just said because it will cost them more money.
I made that very clear. It was the centerpiece of my post.
You conclude that they'll
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That's too radical to work. It would start a global trade war. There are more subtle ways to go about it.
Furthermore, you're going to have to find bipartisan solutions.
Both democrats AND republicans want this problem solved but they're both beholden to large corporate interests. Unless the voters from BOTH parties stand united on this issue you're not going to get anywhere because the corps will just sit in the shadows bribing both sides.
Consider what you lose by going with an ultra partisan solution. You c
"As it lays 18,000 off workers" (Score:3)
Seriously this is what it's come to, editors? "As it lays 18,000 off workers"? You can't even proofread the title?
Anyway, it's mostly non-American Nokia employees who are being laid off, and it has nothing to do with the H1-B situation. So bottom line Sessions is an idiot.
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i don't get this whole racism against indians thing. i am an indian, english is my second language. i am in the 99th percentile according to the gre verbal test. microsoft ceo is a guy completely educated in india. you think he is worse than the thousands of american microsoft employees?
Any company which lays off 10% of their workforce (Score:5, Insightful)
Any company which lays off 10% of their workforce should be banned from the H1B program for at least 5 years.
Salary and indentured servant accusations not true (Score:3)
I can't speak for Microsoft, but I can speak for my company -- we're about 100 people, 40 engineers, of which 5 are H1-Bs. I make sure our H1-B employees are paid exactly what they would be paid if they were US citizens, I can promise you that if a printout of our salaries was accidentally left on the printer and all engineers could see everyone's salary, they would find that we are paying everyone relative to their value contributed to the company and not their visa status.
I'll also point out that there are laws that specifically state that we must adhere to that practice of fair pay, though I'd do it anyway because it's the right thing to do. We hire H1-B employees because we can't find US citizen programmers that are good enough and wiling to come here -- there is intense competition here in the Valley.
Oh, and another thing: H1-Bs are not indentured servants. We hire H1-B engineers from other companies, and unfortunately, H1-B engineers sometimes leave us for other opportunities. It takes me just 2-3 weeks and about $4000 to switch an H1-B sponsorship from the current employer to us.
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Go read, because you sound like an ignorant ass.
I came to that conclusion as soon as I read the $ sign, so I didn't miss much.
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