[MrLemon]

As someone who has worked in tech for many years, I've watched with increasing dismay as Indian and Chinese IT workers (H-1b holders) have essentially taken over huge swathes of US technology sector. Trillions of dollars of American wealth have been sent overseas. It's a very large part of the economic destruction of the middle class of America.

Like many IT workers I've gotten more radicalized. It's clear that the massive funds flow out of the tech sector to India have caused massive education, growth, and effort by the Indians to learn skills and then quickly zoom over to America to get as much cash as possible and carry it back.

The tech CEOs say "well, we are getting all that Indian talent". That's such utter bullshit. If that same funding had gone to the US midwest, we'd have programming schools and IT development out the wazoo in Ohio and Michigan and whatever. Cash flow creates jobs, jobs create education, education trains young workers. It's a cycle. If you cut funds, education fails.

What Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have done is not "take advantage" of the education gap between india and the US. They've *created* the education gap. They are maintaining it.

The H1-b program is a death spiral for the American economy. It's a matter of continued existence of our nation.

Having worked with Microsoft executives, for example the current CEO is Indian...no surprise...I know that they will never stop the drain. Their primary allegiance is against middle America. They hate their own country.

So, at the point of a gun (the international deadliness of the US military machine) it's time to shut down the god damn H1-B program and force, and I mean force, Microsoft and other tech companies to start investing back in the nation that they owe allegiance to.

You know, most US billionaires now have plans to escape to New Zealand or whatever, in event of trouble in the US. It's time to make them understand that there is no escape for them. They have a drone targeted at their foreheads.

Start investing again in the American people, or else.

[Centurion]

(01-25-2016 02:54 AM)MrLemon Wrote:  

If that same funding had gone to the US midwest, we'd have programming schools and IT development out the wazoo in Ohio and Michigan and whatever. Cash flow creates jobs, jobs create education, education trains young workers. It's a cycle. If you cut funds, education fails.

(01-25-2016 02:54 AM)MrLemon Wrote:  

So, at the point of a gun (the international deadliness of the US military machine) it's time to shut down the god damn H1-B program and force, and I mean force, Microsoft and other tech companies to start investing back in the nation that they owe allegiance to.

If you insist on relying on violent/terrorist/mafia tactics why not simply just let them hire whoever they want but extort cash from them instead? You yourself said how important cash flow is.

[Genghis Khan]

(01-25-2016 02:54 AM)MrLemon Wrote:  

As someone who has worked in tech for many years, I've watched with increasing dismay as Indian and Chinese IT workers (H-1b holders) have essentially taken over huge swathes of US technology sector. Trillions of dollars of American wealth have been sent overseas. It's a very large part of the economic destruction of the middle class of America.

Like many IT workers I've gotten more radicalized. It's clear that the massive funds flow out of the tech sector to India have caused massive education, growth, and effort by the Indians to learn skills and then quickly zoom over to America to get as much cash as possible and carry it back.

The tech CEOs say "well, we are getting all that Indian talent". That's such utter bullshit. If that same funding had gone to the US midwest, we'd have programming schools and IT development out the wazoo in Ohio and Michigan and whatever. Cash flow creates jobs, jobs create education, education trains young workers. It's a cycle. If you cut funds, education fails.

What Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have done is not "take advantage" of the education gap between india and the US. They've *created* the education gap. They are maintaining it.

The H1-b program is a death spiral for the American economy. It's a matter of continued existence of our nation.

Having worked with Microsoft executives, for example the current CEO is Indian...no surprise...I know that they will never stop the drain. Their primary allegiance is against middle America. They hate their own country.

So, at the point of a gun (the international deadliness of the US military machine) it's time to shut down the god damn H1-B program and force, and I mean force, Microsoft and other tech companies to start investing back in the nation that they owe allegiance to.

You know, most US billionaires now have plans to escape to New Zealand or whatever, in event of trouble in the US. It's time to make them understand that there is no escape for them. They have a drone targeted at their foreheads.

Start investing again in the American people, or else.

IT companies and tech giants are not the same. Tech giants hire software engineers. I know tons of computer science majors who have 5-12 job offers when they graduate. There genuinely is a dearth of US software engineers, hence the push by Microsoft/Facebook/etc.

IT on the other hand is a fucking joke. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I know people who majored in business or something else, got trained by an outsourcing company for about 3-6 months and were able to get jobs in IT firms (these were Indian people on student visas). Sorry, but how valuable is your job if the stories are true: people training new Indian employees and then getting replaced by said Indian employees.

That said, I do absolutely agree this is a problem. There's too many IT jobs getting taken by foreigners while US citizens are getting fired. I don't know what the solution is, but to eliminate all H1B visas is short-sighted. One could argue we should stop H1B visas until we educate our own enough to fill the job positions, but that's a foolish gamble in today's fast paced global economy. If not us, someone else will do it. Keep in mind H1B visas are also used by many companies to hire foreign-born US-educated scientists and researchers (PhD level). No more H1B means all these people go back to their homeland and compete with US.

The proof in the pudding: tech giants typically pay their employees six figures. IT companies like Infosys and Wipro pay their employees $60K, the minimum needed for an H1B visa. The reason why Microsoft and Co are pushing for more H1B visas is so that they can get more software engineers, right now they're competing for these visas with the likes of Infosys and Wipro which import a lot of Indians.

As for *they've created* the education gap...please. If more Americans wanted to go in STEM majors, especially computer science, tech giants wouldn't need to pay their 22 year college graduates over $100K starting salary. Demand and supply. As for IT though, yeah it's a scam and we need to fix it.

One really need to be mindful about which STEM fields we're talking about. I hear a lot of people say we have plenty of STEM majors, but not enough jobs (in contrast to what is commonly touted). Yeah well, we have plenty of people with PhD biology degrees and not enough jobs for them. But bachelors in computer science...there is a need for them. Not all STEM fields are created equally.

[Fast Eddie]

^^You've drunk way too much of the Koolaid. The H1B visas are a complete scam. If software engineers are so scarce, why are wages stagnant for all but the most elite of developers and why do you need to have shitloads of experience to land even an entry level job if you're an American?

On the other hand, an Indian can be a semi literate monkey right out of some scammy East Bangalore University who can't even code "hello world" and he'll be brought over along with 200 other Indians as part of a massive H1B invasion whenever Wipro or Infosys wins a contract with some American corporation. No quality control whatsoever. Managers straight from India supervising hordes of FOB H1B indians half of whom don't do shit but who all bill the project, with zero visibility to the American organization that signed the contract and sponsored the H1B visas. It's a complete scam.

With that said, talking about stopping H1Bs with guns and aircraft carriers is going over the top. They are visas issued by the US government, and stopping them is as easy as signing a piece of paper blocking further issuance.

Source: 2 years of working in consulting and being on the management/sales side of these massive IT projects in financial services.

[HenryHill]

Dear government,

Ther are groups of people who engage in voluntary trade that I find non-beneficial to my self-interests. Please use violence against these people.

With love,
MrLemon

Without going into how morally despicable it is to plead for violence just so you face less competition, you will have to adapt sooner or later.

[I DIDN'T KILL MY WIFE]

(01-25-2016 06:29 AM)HenryHill Wrote:  

Dear government,

Ther are groups of people who engage in voluntary trade that I find non-beneficial to my self-interests. Please use violence against these people.

With love,
MrLemon

Without going into how morally despicable it is to plead for violence just so you face less competition, you will have to adapt sooner or later.

Are you a Libertarian?

[not-a-pua]

The big flaw in "Free Trade" is the free movement of people. Start reading Vox Day, dude is smart.

[Phoenix]

Quote:

Facebook/Google should be forced to hire only Americans. At gunpoint if needed.

U mad bro?

But on work visas, yeah they do the same thing in Australia. It's quite funny when I hear executives complaining about "skills shortages" in the same industries I hear guys complaining about difficulty getting jobs.

It's all just about forcing down wages, nothing else.

It's difficult to accept, but many people in society really have zero problem telling massive bare-faced unyielding lies if it could bump their bottom line up a few percent.

But again, it comes down to constitution. Who's going to force them? Lobbyists are a force, paid by the corporations. Who is the force in the opposite direction? Democracy rewards short-term recklessness, not prudent far-sightedness.

[AntiTrace]

I've always thought wages of foreign workers should be taxed at a higher rate. Sure, let the companies import cheap talent, but tax them just like we tax cigarettes. One is unhealthy for a person, the other is unhealthy for the economy.

Foreign worker may be thrilled with earning 40k a year compared to what he could back home, but the company is not gonna be thrilled at having to pay 60k a year in order give him that salary. They could spend the original 40k and thus give him 20k in salary, but 20k is not going to motivate many foreigners to come to the land of stolen dreams.

I dont know what you could do with the extra taxes, it would be nice to distribute equally among natural citizens employed by the company. Possibly it could all go into social security. Possibly it could go into education. I don't know.

Also the foreign "talent" is a myth. The homegrown talent is just as good, and many times better, than the foreign talent. I say that from first hand experience holding the hands of some workers on projects. Hell I once had someone come to me with submittal that was over A MONTH outdated with the current build because she had no clue how to use github and didn't bother to learn. Then she got pissy that she worked so hard on it and none of her code was portable. Also worked with some others that can't even tell me what their code is doing; like a child throwing a paint on the wall, they know something's there but they don't know what.

But...you know...diversity or something.

[Phoenix]

(01-25-2016 07:24 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  

I dont know what you could do with the extra taxes, it would be nice to distribute equally among natural citizens employed by the company. Possibly it could all go into social security. Possibly it could go into education. I don't know.

You could copy the UAE system, where only 10% of the inhabitants are local citizens, living off the taxation of the foreign workers
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/arti...h-gap.html

Sounds like a great way to end up on the wrong end of a revolt though.

[PrtSc]

(01-25-2016 06:29 AM)HenryHill Wrote:  

Dear government,

Ther are groups of people who engage in voluntary trade that I find non-beneficial to my self-interests. Please use violence against these people.

With love,
MrLemon

Without going into how morally despicable it is to plead for violence just so you face less competition, you will have to adapt sooner or later.

All government laws are through the threat of violence from the state. Stopping the program through a law or regulation would essentially be the same thing. A country should consider what's best for its citizens, whether it's free trade or otherwise.

[Sonoma]

I disagree pretty heavily, they have a K12 education from another country, then they get a college degree either overseas or here (where they pay out the ass in International Rates). Then they work for US companies and pay out the ass in taxes again.

The United States is the ultimate recipient of other countries education systems. The only immigrants who are generally a net loss are Hispanics, as they traditionally have only a minimal history of Education before coming here, where the educational infrastructure has to pour billions down the drain to get them up to speed (which never actually happens)

[Secrenis]

(01-25-2016 05:10 AM)Fast Eddie Wrote:  

^^You've drunk way too much of the Koolaid. The H1B visas are a complete scam. If software engineers are so scarce, why are wages stagnant for all but the most elite of developers and why do you need to have shitloads of experience to land even an entry level job if you're an American?

On the other hand, an Indian can be a semi literate monkey right out of some scammy East Bangalore University who can't even code "hello world" and he'll be brought over along with 200 other Indians as part of a massive H1B invasion whenever Wipro or Infosys wins a contract with some American corporation. No quality control whatsoever. Managers straight from India supervising hordes of FOB H1B indians half of whom don't do shit but who all bill the project, with zero visibility to the American organization that signed the contract and sponsored the H1B visas. It's a complete scam.

With that said, talking about stopping H1Bs with guns and aircraft carriers is going over the top. They are visas issued by the US government, and stopping them is as easy as signing a piece of paper blocking further issuance.

Source: 2 years of working in consulting and being on the management/sales side of these massive IT projects in financial services.

You are conflating IT and software engineering.

Programming salary's are stagnant for the same reason most office gigs are stagnant. It isn't performance based. How do you compare engineer A's contribution to engineer B's? You really can't. Whereas with sales you can. The only time a performance difference is evident is when you are either extremely good or extremely poor.

As for your remaining comment, try getting a job at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. without knowing how to print "hello world." You can't. There is a pretty rigorous technical interview process where you are grilled on your technical background and your ability to communicate/likeability.

Many Indians and Asians who work at these companies do so by getting a masters in the US. This is usually around $50,000 per year. Scholarships are scarce. They are paying out of pocket. Universities are less invested in the students, and for most administrations, these programs are seen a cash cow.

After investing their own money, competing with American students, and being vetted by American unis for their competency, what is wrong with these individuals staying to work in United States? Must they really go back to their home country?

That line of reasoning does not make sense to me.

[Genghis Khan]

(01-25-2016 07:24 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  

I've always thought wages of foreign workers should be taxed at a higher rate. Sure, let the companies import cheap talent, but tax them just like we tax cigarettes. One is unhealthy for a person, the other is unhealthy for the economy.

Foreign worker may be thrilled with earning 40k a year compared to what he could back home, but the company is not gonna be thrilled at having to pay 60k a year in order give him that salary. They could spend the original 40k and thus give him 20k in salary, but 20k is not going to motivate many foreigners to come to the land of stolen dreams.

I dont know what you could do with the extra taxes, it would be nice to distribute equally among natural citizens employed by the company. Possibly it could all go into social security. Possibly it could go into education. I don't know.

Also the foreign "talent" is a myth. The homegrown talent is just as good, and many times better, than the foreign talent. I say that from first hand experience holding the hands of some workers on projects. Hell I once had someone come to me with submittal that was over A MONTH outdated with the current build because she had no clue how to use github and didn't bother to learn. Then she got pissy that she worked so hard on it and none of her code was portable. Also worked with some others that can't even tell me what their code is doing; like a child throwing a paint on the wall, they know something's there but they don't know what.

But...you know...diversity or something.

Once again, I want to emphasize that the IT scam is a problem. We need to stop hiring low-skilled Indian employees while pretending they're high-skilled. I completely agree that this type of thing is a scam and the H1B visa program is being abused. I wouldn't mind banning Infosys/Wipro/other companies from applying for H1B visas.

[The Wire]

(01-25-2016 04:18 AM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

IT on the other hand is a fucking joke. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I know people who majored in business or something else, got trained by an outsourcing company for about 3-6 months and were able to get jobs in IT firms (these were Indian people on student visas). Sorry, but how valuable is your job if the stories are true: people training new Indian employees and then getting replaced by said Indian employees.

That said, I do absolutely agree this is a problem. There's too many IT jobs getting taken by foreigners while US citizens are getting fired. I don't know what the solution is, but to eliminate all H1B visas is short-sighted. One could argue we should stop H1B visas until we educate our own enough to fill the job positions, but that's a foolish gamble in today's fast paced global economy.

So this exact scenario is happening at my company as we speak. They announce they were bringing in around 50 H1Bs with also offshore counterparts. The general idea is you train them so that you can focus on doing development type of work so that the company can write that off against capital instead of your time being against expensive for keeping the systems running so to speak.

On one hand this does free up my time for other things but it also does annoy me that instead of hiring U.S. citizens who would snatch these jobs up in a second they are going with the obvious cheaper method. Eventually this will probably really bite me in the ass as technology will be so advance that having development teams from offshore will actually really start snagging jobs away. Part of me is afraid of that and part of me thinks that maybe if some kid in India could actually do my job then I should actually do something else with my life.

I know a lot of older IT people who are not the brightest and set in their ways with their comfortable 100k IT jobs extremely afraid of this.

[Fast Eddie]

(01-25-2016 09:08 AM)Secrenis Wrote:  

You are conflating IT and software engineering.

Programming salary's are stagnant for the same reason most office gigs are stagnant. It isn't performance based. How do you compare engineer A's contribution to engineer B's? You really can't. Whereas with sales you can. The only time a performance difference is evident is when you are either extremely good or extremely poor.

A classic case of a statement that's "not even wrong." It's utterly nonsensical. What do stagnant salaries have to do with a job being performance based? Supply and demand determines salaries, performance determines commissions and bonuses. Stagnant salaries mean there is no "shortage' that needs to be ameliorated through H1B visas, despite what corporate concern trolling shills would have us believe. Your "point" is a complete non-sequitar and I just wasted 2 minutes of my life replying to it

Quote:

As for your remaining comment, try getting a job at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. without knowing how to print "hello world." You can't. There is a pretty rigorous technical interview process where you are grilled on your technical background and your ability to communicate/likeability.

Read my comment again, bro. I was not talking about American grads applying for jobs at Google and Facebook. They face steep odds indeed, that was my whole damn point. I was referring to barely literate H1B Indians who come in hundreds strong upon the signing of contracts by outsourcing companies like CSC and Wipro and face no such quality control. It's pretty damn fucked up that Americans have to have github profiles, internships, and god knows what else to land an entry level dev job while Subramanians from Bombay can come in with no vetting whatsoever and half of them can't even speak English that a non-Indian can understand.

Quote:

Many Indians and Asians who work at these companies do so by getting a masters in the US. This is usually around $50,000 per year. Scholarships are scarce. They are paying out of pocket. Universities are less invested in the students, and for most administrations, these programs are seen a cash cow.

Shut them down. I don't care what universities see as cash cows. What kind of an argument is that? Because American universities see FOB students as cash cows, that obliges us to sacrifice American workers at the altar of these scam artist academics? lol wut and all that.

Quote:

After investing their own money, competing with American students, and being vetted by American unis for their competency, what is wrong with these individuals staying to work in United States? Must they really go back to their home country?

You just said it yourself, these universities see the FOBs as cash cows. I wouldn't take their "vetting" that seriously. Who looks a prize horse in the mouth, right?

Quote:

That line of reasoning does not make sense to me.

Just because it flew over your head doesn't mean it makes no sense.

[expectation]

I have worked at IBM and Deloitte (Consulting) and I've been on and heard about projects where we had subcontractors that specialized in bringing in H1-B talent. Working with them - they performed mostly - technical engineering or IT type of work. My observation - there were never any instances that I felt convinced that their type of work was something that any College Grads could not handle or be trained for on the job. NONE WHATSOEVER.

Worst of all, these guys were a nightmare to manage for team leads as they generally have a personality of a IRT.

[262]

So assuming the OP's proposal is not going to happen - the tech industry almost certainly has lobbies in Washington that would kill it - what else can you do?

What jobs haven't yet been outsourced or automated?

As time progresses, it seems folks are going to have to become more entrepreneurial. Doesn't sound easy, but it sounds like alternatives are drying up.

[kosko]

H1-B = better skills for cheaper.

The reality is the Yankee workforce is overpaid and underskilled.

You can't have it both ways. On one hand Big Tech manipulates Govt to make it more easy for then to import cheaper labour. But then you now want the Govt to protect American workers...

The market is showing they prefer to import as they don't see it as viable to overpay Yankees to do the same job.

[Fast Eddie]

(01-25-2016 11:52 AM)kosko Wrote:  

H1-B = better skills for cheaper.

The reality is the Yankee workforce is overpaid and underskilled.

You can't have it both ways. On one hand Big Tech manipulates Govt to make it more easy for then to import cheaper labour. But then you now want the Govt to protect American workers...

The market is showing they prefer to import as they don't see it as viable to overpay Yankees to do the same job.

You lost me there. "We" are neither of the parties that you describe. If "we" were Big Tech or the Government, your statement would make sense. As it is, your comment is a non-sequitor. We never asked for Big Tech to manipulate the government. We want big tech to stop manipulating the government. That's the whole point of this thread.



"You can't have it both ways. On the one hand Chad is fucking your wife but now you want your wife to stop fucking Chad."
Da Fuck?

[MrLemon]

(01-25-2016 07:22 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

Quote:

Facebook/Google should be forced to hire only Americans. At gunpoint if needed.

U mad bro?

But on work visas, yeah they do the same thing in Australia. It's quite funny when I hear executives complaining about "skills shortages" in the same industries I hear guys complaining about difficulty getting jobs.

It's all just about forcing down wages, nothing else.

It's difficult to accept, but many people in society really have zero problem telling massive bare-faced unyielding lies if it could bump their bottom line up a few percent.

But again, it comes down to constitution. Who's going to force them? Lobbyists are a force, paid by the corporations. Who is the force in the opposite direction? Democracy rewards short-term recklessness, not prudent far-sightedness.

Naw, I'm not mad. Not at all! Heh.

[MrLemon]

Foreign IT workers/developers are scammers. It's a pure international scam to drain US assets and move them to India or Russia or whatever.

The US tech industry isn't getting talent. The hordes of H1b workers and developers are less skilled, less efficient, than if I hired a bunch of gum-snapping high school graduates from Kentucky or whereever the fuck, and gave them a 3-month training class. The indian managers and indian CIOS just cover up the fact that they are hiring 50 average undertrained guys from their home town (or in many cases, they are hiring their cousins, neighbors, or whatever) and then they training them HERE in the US on the job.

It is 100% pure corruption. If anybody bothered to investigate this, the CIOs could actually be prosectuted for corporate corruption. It's massive conflict of interest. What they are doing is no better than accepting bribes from suppliers (and by the way, many indian exectuives in American companies accept bribes too, several have gotten caught.

The entire Indian tech industry is based on a lie. I've had many, many indian friends kind of laugh and tell me this. "we can't believe you all fell for this".

Look, I like indians personally. I don't blame them for wanting to escape the looming fucking genocidal disaster of India. If I lived there, I would do anything, say anything, to get out.

But that doesn't mean we as Americans have to sit back and just let our country get destroyed. It's like cancer. At some point you gotta stop it or cut it out.

America has a great tradition of immigration. It's powerful. It will make us stronger in the future. But you have to step back and make sure it's not out of control. We are way past that point.

It's very simple. Force the tech titans, at the point of a gun, to re-invest their hiring back to the US. And yes I mean "at the point of a gun". Like, arrest them. Swat team in the middle of the night. Can be done. If they are on a billionaire retreat in Davos, well send a black helicopter.

[MrLemon]

(01-25-2016 06:29 AM)HenryHill Wrote:  

Dear government,

Ther are groups of people who engage in voluntary trade that I find non-beneficial to my self-interests. Please use violence against these people.

With love,
MrLemon

Yes. Exactly. At some point national survival forces governments to do things that you previously thought morally impossible. See: WW2, WW1, Civil War, etc etc.

That's where we are going no. Better wrap your head around it.

[El Chinito loco]

(01-25-2016 07:22 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

Quote:

Facebook/Google should be forced to hire only Americans. At gunpoint if needed.

U mad bro?

The whole gunpoint thing sounds like empty nationalist rhetoric but you realize this has actually occurred before in other countries.

Post WW2 in South Korea when they were rebuilding and planning to go into full scale economic reform the military dictator at the time sat many of the country's industrialists in a room and told them in no uncertain terms that they would cooperate or face dire consequences ie. jail time.

Same thing happened in Japan during the Meiji restoration. A lot of the wealthy elite families were sat down and told politely to cooperate or else. This is how they initiated vast land reforms away from the feudal system.

This idea of the elite running roughshod over society being the norm is a regression back to the old ways of thinking. It's really not healthy capitalism to allow a small percentage to control everything. I would not be entirely surprised if we see a complete slip back into a feudal type social hierarchy before people wake up. If you look at society now it's slowly becoming that with .001% of the population dominating the masses and the middle class slowly being crushed. Labor is a race to the bottom now and people are essentially being turned into serfs with bare minimum living wages.

It will get to a point where generational wealth takes over and the only way to make it is through nepotism and family connections. That is economically very regressive.

[Aurini]

There's another aspect to be considered with the H1-Bs: that they are reliant upon their job to maintain residency.

Not only does the tech company get a cheap worker, but they get a slavishly devoted worker who will put up with whatever BS gets handed to them by management, where an American would be more liable to tell them to take their job and shove it.