No Americans Need Apply 1374
Victor G. Sommers writes "Daniel Soong, who lost his programming job to Indian offshore companies, is willing to relocate to India. 'It would be really interesting to work in Bangalore,' he says. 'But I was told, "Daniel, it is against the law for you to work here. You can come here on vacation, but you can't work here."' Indian officials have told him they don't hire Americans." An article in ComputerWorld talks about the possibility of getting more than you bargained for in outsourced code.
Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Interesting)
As it stands, the only people I know who have a consistent job tommorow are CEOs/VPs, service workers (want fries with that), and Smut peddlers... and as it stands, if we don't have any money, those service jobs are going to dry up as well.
ARGHHHH! Guess it's time to pitch my morals and get into porn
Miners (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, there's always miners. Mining jobs are among the highest-paying jobs in the country (U.S.). Support mining and miners in your community, for not only do miners provide the raw materials (avg. is 45,000lbs/year of newly mined minerals for each American) for everything from basic infrastructure, agriculture, communications, power generation, etc. to luxury goods, but the money we spend in the community, from equipment to services to goods, helps everyone. I know it isn't perfect, but you have to admit that countries with abundant natural resources are the richer nations.
I'm relatively secure in my job discovering mineral deposits, knowing that for at least the next hundred years or more, we'll still need everything from gravel to gold, and that we'll need someone to find those deposits, and mine them.
-cp-
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
For one example, I think that most foreign physicists I work with have better written grammar than the average US physicist, as more often than not these folks write the best papers. And on the other hand, I knew another fellow student who had great trouble speaking and writing English (and programming languages for that matter) in spite of several years of learning and speaking in the US, but who was an absolutely brilliant mathematician and theoretical physicist.
So, a person's English-speaking skills are not a good measure of how well they communicate. And communication is just one dimension of intelligence, which itself is a massively multidimensional thing. IMHO intelligence is impossible to quantify in any meaningful way.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Funny)
And I'm very very rude.
I hate the foreigners
I hate their stinking food.
I don't like French or Germans
Or care for Belgians much
But most of all, most of all
I hate the Dutch!
The Dutch, the Dutch
With fingers in their dikes
They use the wrong side of the road
And ride around on bikes.
They don't have any manners
They don't say "thanks" or "please"
And all they eat is tulips
And stinking gouda cheese."
British Tourist,
John Dowie
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
But as a Dutch citizen you can follow your job to Germany or the UK or Italy, because within the EU there is free trade for both labor and for capital. "Free trade" advocates these days want free movement of capital and goods, but not workers.
In WTO-world, corporations can move their jobs across borders but workers cannot follow. This one-sidedness pushes salaries down everywhere, as companies seek the cheapest available labor.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
What'll be the end of this, though? Eventually there'll be enough stabilization over the globe that it won't matter as much. I don't think that it'll happen in my lifetime, so it won't help me any, but as the world grows closer, I could envision this happening. Some countries with less free market play than here will have an advantage, for a while, but ultimately I think that it'll even out.
The other trouble is that we're seeing paradigm shifts that people aren't ready for. Remember what happened to the Swiss watch and clock makers once Japanese engineers perfected the use of quartz for accurate timekeeping? Their entire industry disappeared in a matter of months. In this case, if programmers as a whole are overpaid or are charging too much for their work as others perceive it, then the others are going to find a solution that doesn't involve the programmers. It's happened in other industries before, it'll happen again, I'm sure.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the feeling that when you say "Americans" you mean "Americans I'm comfortable with," which means "people who don't speak with accents and who have a similar skin color-" because if not I fail entirely to see the reason behind your statement. Our country is composed of immigrants and descendents of immigrants- hell, even the Native Americans are immigrants, if you trace it back far enough. You, yourself are the descendent of immigrants. So why spread FUD about people with roots analogous to your own?
I just noticed the time/date stamp (I'm usually oblivious to dates), and it occurred to me that this is a very topical discussion to have today. Many of the people who died in the World Trade Center two years ago today were immigrants to the United States or here under work visas. Many of the firefighters and policemen who died were immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. The immigrants "took American jobs"- and yet many became citizens or were in the process of becoming citizens, thus becoming Americans themselves. The point I'm making is that immigration- even in massive waves- has always been and will always be an important facet of the economic and cultural life of the United States, as has anti-immigrant bigotry, intolerance, and xenophobia. I invite you to reflect on this.
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading this article has got me thinking, though.
One of the other characterizations of the industrial revolution was cheap labor- the massive influx of immigrants into the U.S., who proceeded to work for dirt and drive "Americans" out of jobs. If you recall, it only made everybody's - except the wealthy, of course - living conditions worse. This is not a good thing. Being only a mere computer scientist, I hesitate to speculate on what far-reaching sociological effects this will have, but at the very least, in the near future, this is not a good thing.
Last time this happened, we unionized, but I don't think that will work this time. I wish I had a solution (since in three years when I graduate I probably won't have a job), but I can't see one.
And, for the record, I wasted three mod points to post this.
Immigration (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of 'native' people here is confined to mostly people who have property right to an 'indian' reservation. The rest of us are either from somewhere else or of people decended from somewhere else within the last 200 years. There are very few people who can claim their only lineage from the original east coast Pre-US colonies. Immigrants have brought business ideas, culture, and intelligence. A vast array of our scientists that have developed military materiel are immigrants. We tolerate them, right?
Even in our economic downturn, we still have a rather small unemployment rate. Our economy has always been cyclical, and now is no different than any other time, other than the industries most strongly affected. On an upswing companies hire as many people as they can, if they have a need for them, and they trim back when they have spent in excess of what their workforce can deliver, based on economic times. This is normal. It sucks, but as long as we allow the severe swings that we see, it'll remain this way.
When someone lives here, (s)he buys goods and services locally. This is money that isn't leaked out to foreign companies. Even the immigrant that sends money home for family ends up spending a lot here, since the cost of living is so high. I'd want to see raw figures collected by someone without a bias one way or the other before I would revise that thought.
Not all immigrants remain, but many do. Many find a much better life here than they have in other parts of the world. They see the salaries of their peers, and ultimately want that salary, or more of that lifestyle. They get addicted to pay-per-view and pizza delivery and cheap transportation. They become part of 'us'. I won't say that they all do, for many who come from countries as economically comparable per capita as the U.S. don't assimilate, but they have no reason to, either. Those from poorer countries become Americans. Their original culture doesn't disappear, but it all gets thrown in.
It's not nearly as clear of an issue as people make it out to be.
Re:Immigration (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the important distinction that must be drawn is the fundamental difference between H1B type workers and immigrants. In my opinion, an immigrant is someone actively pursuing citizenship and should be considered an "American". As the descendant of Scots, Irish, and French Canadians I've heard the stories of persecution and discrimination my great grandparents underwent during the Great Depression because they were "stealing" jobs from "real" Americans.
In my opinion, the hiring policy, this man ran in to is just plain wrong regardless of legality. Does this mean that the US should adopt a similar policy? I don't think so, I believe the outcome would not impart a favorable change on the state of the economy. If my company lost all its H1B's we would be in serious trouble. I'm pretty confident we could not fill the vacant jobs with "real" americans, even in today's job market. Of course, I could be wrong.
Re:Immigration (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been looking for a good Oracle DBA job for a while now and its been difficult. I'm not very happy where I am. In this situation, the H1B program definitely hinders my search, but I really don't think by all that much. Most people who oppose the H1B program talk about just this kind of scenario and their argument has merit. However, the biggest problem I have with the H1B program is the way some employers abuse the hell out of the process. My division has been undergoing constant layoffs for over two years and during this process our managment has really been treating us very poorly, but it pales in comparison to the way the H1B's are treated. More than a few have received veiled threats that they will do what they are asked or they could be laid off and promptly kicked out of the country. They've forced people in to very long hours, constantly cut benefits, in general become hostile. The consensus among most of the H1B's is to keep their mouth shut and do what is asked. It is in this regard that I think the system needs an overhaul. I do not, however, know the solution.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
True free trade allows:
The European Union has all three. It is a true "free trade" system.
Most others, including NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), do not allow free movement of labor. NAFTA permits "brain drain" labor movement to occur fairly easily ("temporary" work visas are easy to obtain for skilled/educated workers), but unskilled labor cannot cross borders.
NAFTA and its ilk are not free trade agreements. They are better described as trans-national outsourcing agreements.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now we have a fad for outsourcing, and Canada is again bypassed to go to places even cheaper. It is never good to be in the middle
Before Americans get too riled up about the Indians, they should perhaps examine their own history of buying companies and moving them to the U.S. American immigration laws prevented employees of those companies from following "their" jobs too. They might also reflect on where the revenue that pays their wages comes from, maybe foreigners think they are entitled to share some of the wages that their purchases make possible.
As far as I am concerned, Americans are just getting a taste of what other countries have gone through the last few years. Americans disproportionally benefited from the tech bubble and may have a false idea of how much they are really worth.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has enjoyed the benefits of globalization for decades now. Look at all the goods at your disposal, right now. Look at the computer, the mouse, the car, the food. Realize how much of it is affordable to you because they exported the labor, to a place that could make your underwear with labor that cost $1 a day.
Now, imagine all the prices of all those goods increasing as every individual on the production and supply chain, all the way back to the origin, gets paid in US-standard wages that allows each and every worker to buy a US-sized house on a US-sized tract of land for a small nuclear family, with 2 recent-make cars for the family, health care, home entertainment systems, etc. Are you willing to pay $20 for a pair of socks to make that happen? $50,000 for an entry-level car?
I'm all for wage convergance, labor and environmental riders on trade agreements - although that will also end up making your goods more expensive. But to think that the US has suffered under globalism is completley misguided.
Also, the H1B visas were granted because of something that most IT professionals, particularly the libertarianish ones, just don't understand: class conflict. IT was very expensive blue-collar labor. The US economy is managerial capitalism, and it is in their class interests to push down the cost of that labor.
Most IT types mistook their good wages for a sign of inclusion in the "wealth-generating," upper-classes. In fact, it was an artifact of a labor scarcity that has been engineered away. Now, the IT rabble has to take its place in front of the punch-clock like all the other line-workers.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Interesting)
And actually you can move right on in to California now, since the retarded state gov is basically trying abolish all immigration law. Come on over!
You have a foul grasp of economics... (Score:5, Interesting)
A Trade Deficit means we continue to import more than we export, that is, spend more than we produce.
This is a cycle most of you are more familiar referring to as DEBT, in this case, foreign debt. The cycle is hard to stop once it gets rolling, and once foreign debtors no longer believe us credit-worthy, they can refuse us credit and cripple our economy.
Read this [sba.gov] for a better understanding of the situation. Economists have been warning about this for years, and now that our core software industries are packing up for India, things look even more bleak. Considering how every government official in America has chosen to ignore this problem, including every president since Reagan, I can't see us addressing it in time to really help.
You really didn't understand the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Foreigners putting their dollars into dollar-denominated investments only puts off the problem. At some point, the foreigner must use the dollars to buy US-produced goods and services. Doing anything else means that US consumers have gotten a whole lot of real goods and services for the price of printing a bunch of green paper or transferring a few electrons.
A trade imbalance is not like your PERSONAL debt. It doesn't mean the same thing, so don't try to apply your intuition about personal debts to a trade deficit.
--Paul
Re:You really didn't understand the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Like, for example, if several major members of OPEC were to begin pricing their oil for export in Euros rather than dollars. Most of the substantial national USD reserves around the world (procured mainly for the purpose of buying oil) would then find themselves being sold off to buy Euros.
One analysis I saw said the US treasury has continued to print dollars in order to buy imports as if there were no tomorrow, with the result that these foreign reserves now account for half the US dollars in existence. But this is just storing up big trouble for tomorrow.
Figure it out for yourselves. If half the world's dollars, previously locked up, were to start leaking out onto the money markets following an OPEC move towards the Euro, the value of the dollar would quickly go to nothing.
Actually it's a matter of record that this process has already begun. North Korea has already switched exports of its oil over to the Euro. By last spring, Saddaam Hussein had almost completed a three-year long process of switching Iraq's oil exports over to the Euro (presumably this was mainly intended to take a swipe at the US). Venezuela has been considering such a move for some time, to reduce dependence on the dollar. Who's next?
Many people think that this was the real reason President Bush's government sought to remove Hussein, to deter other OPEC leaders from attempting to follow suit. Just as, in fact, it had supported Venezuala's failed military coup in 2002.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Funny)
Are you sure it's not because you're an incompetent hack?
Many are sure ... (Score:4, Informative)
Are you sure it's not because you're an incompetent hack?
Many people are sure - because their company hires a bunch of H1Bs, uses their higher-paid US workers to TRAIN them to do jobs equivalent to the US workers', then fires the US workers.
Happens all the time in Silicon Valley - both in big and small companies. Occasionally a large company (Sun was one) gets so blatant about it - dumping whole departments - that they get sued.
Re:Duh...(a job for you) (Score:4, Funny)
If you know how to spell, use proper English, and can recognize that two stories are duplicates, you could probably be the editor of some tech news blog.
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, duh... As a dutchman it's also not possible for me to relocate to the USA. Unless I prove that there's no way my skills can be found in the States.
Informative, my ass. Funny, maybe. Yes, you can come here and work. The requirements of the work visas indeed are that no Americans can do the job and that the applicant gets paid the same as Americans. But that is not what is happening here. The whole point is that these laws have no effect because they are not enforced. RTFA, Americans are being
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article more carefully. The guy tried to get a job with Tata Consulting, an Indian-owned firm operating in the USA that places staff at USA-based clients. They apparently refused to hire him for this work in the USA because they do not hire Americans. Only then did he try to work in India, which is the less interesting aspect.
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me get this straight: I can not expect Indians to hire anybody from the USA because I need to be tolerant of their society, but I must hire anybody other than an American to be inclusive?
Yea, still makes no sense.
BTW, obviously not a direct response to your post, just staying on topic and adding a new point with historical context.
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
No, an H1-B is granted to a foreign national who fits the requirements of a job, if no qualified American or permanent resident can be found after a reasonable recruiting effort. There are 280 million Americans, and it'll be prohibitively expensive to ensure that there are absolutely no matches anywhere in the country.
That may sound like a bad deal to you, but consider that the foreign national in question may have to have moved an entire family overseas to take the job. It is equally unfair to fire him or her the very moment a qualified and willing American shows up at the door.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument would fall under the rubrick of tissue of lies if were even that substantial.
My great grandfather moved halfway around the world to sell fruit off of a wagon in Sioux City, Iowa. Don't give me this sob story about moving your entire family.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, who determines whether the individual is qualified is the employer. This means that the only real requirement is that the employer advertise for a job for which they have absolutely no intention of hiring anyone.
Sometimes - to keep down the number of responses, they'll also stick in all sorts of obscure unrelated skills their visa applicant has. You see this a lot on job boards -- "HW Design Engineer working in Boise - must be fluent in Mandarin".
This comes straight from the mouth of a senior HR recruiter I knew at a previous company.
Re:Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
Also not accurate. (Score:5, Informative)
I also work with people from Tata, and they do employ American citizens, to fill much the same sort of job responsibilities that my firm does.
Re:Hrm... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Duh... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.business-standard.com/archives/2003/
Wonder how they do the Texas drawl?
Attorney Fees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe we have too much pride. Look at the number of immigrants willing to do landscaping, and work on the back of ga
Just usual (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just usual (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that we allow folks to immigrate to the states and work here. Live here. Bring their families here. Become citizens. Pay taxes. Get an education. Enjoy life here. All those things and many more is what makes America great.
Immigrants are immigrants usually for a single generation, often shorter than that since they can become citizens. Then they are part of us. Then they have to worry about the next batch of immigrants taking their jobs! Crazy huh?
Maybe you ought to ask yourself why there are so many immigrants in the US. There just might be a reason. We are not an exclusive club like many EU contries. We are the people, born here and immigrated here.
When the USS Reagan launched a short while ago I was reading some of the commentary and stories in the news. One was from one of his aides (I forget who exactly). He told the story of how when Reagan was at one of the Olymic games events and how he watched all the athletes enter. His comment to paraphrase was this:
The Chineese entered will all the Chinese looking folks, the Mexicans entered with all their Mexican looking folks, the african nations all entered with their african looking folks. But you know what brought the most joy, was that the Americans came in looking like all the world, white, black, short and tall, but all of them were Americans.
How so many people in our country claim that the republicans are the racist bunch is beyond me. If there was ever a group of people that truly would ignore skin color, gender, or such, the republicans are truly the political party who does not care who you are, but are all inclusive.
Of course he can't work there... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't immigrate to work unless you can prove that you can do a job that no one else in the country can do.
If it wasn't for this law, the US would be flooded (more so than now) with techs and doctors from all over asia.
Re:Of course he can't work there... (Score:4, Insightful)
A MAN SHOT HIMSELF BECAUSE HE ENDED UP TRAINING HIS INDIAN REPLACEMENT.
So, if this man could come to the US and BE TRAINED by a CITIZEN what could this man do that the CITIZEN could not?
Re:Of course he can't work there... (Score:3, Insightful)
He could get an H-1B visa, evidently.
Re:Please don't make me mad... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why go so far? Y'all live in a country that simply imposes crushing tariffs whenever the right lobby group gets involved...
"Free markets" my fanny...
Why the hell should the Indians care? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dumbass (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd call you a troll but with so many people saying the same thing it must be an actual viewpoint a lot of dumbasses have.
Do you think a secretary or a security guard has the same mortgage payments you do? They have accepted their jobs pay X a month and have learned to live within their means.
Your job no longer commands the salary it once did. Deal with it. Don't whine about not being able to make mortgage payments, move to a smaller place! If your phone bill is too expensive, use the damn phone
Re:Of course he can't work there... (Score:5, Informative)
It's time to terminate the the H-1B visa program.
Re:Of course he can't work there... (Score:3, Funny)
You can't immigrate to work unless you can prove that you can do a job that no one else in the country can do.
I dunno, I see a lot of Indians here in the US doing jobs that I could be doing. Must not be too hard for them to immigrate here.
Basically here's the phone conversation between the US Dept. of Immigration and the HR person for the company trying to hire an Indian worker:
Immigration Officer (IO): "So there's nobody else in the US who can do C++ programmi
Sovereign country (Score:3, Insightful)
USA is also a sovereign country. Let's do the same. It's about time we stop issuing visas to people who steal native born Americans' jobs.
Before some slashbot calls me a racist, let me tell you that I don't care if you are a black, white, hindu, christian, jew or a muslim. If you're American, I've got nothing against you. But if you think you should be able to just waltz in and have a job or study at one of our universities, think again.
Re:Sovereign country (Score:4, Insightful)
Correlation does not imply causality.
Causality under certain conditions does not necessarily lead to the same results in all conditions.
Your logic is sorely flawed.
The bigger story (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially Americans who whorked for SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
It is almost redundant to say that Indian firms won't be hiring many Americans.
Curiously, my little firm is now subcontracting for Indian firms, so perhaps the rules can be bent a little for genius Belgians. C'est genial!
Re:Especially Americans who whorked for SCO (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly unfair or unusual. (Score:5, Informative)
What about convenience stores? (Score:4, Funny)
That way, no matter where it is in the world, it'll be fucking impossible to get a big gulp and a chilli dog.
Re:an ironic twist (Score:3, Funny)
hidden malware story (Score:3, Informative)
Story by Mark Willoughby
SEPTEMBER 11, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - "You've go to be a little paranoid to survive in this business." -- Andrew S. Grove, chairman and founder, Intel Corp., ca. 1980
The extreme difficulty in discovering a back door hidden deep within a complex application, buried among numerous modules developed offshore in a global software marketplace, is forcing those assigned to protect sensitive national security information to take defensive actions.
The threat of hidden Trojan horses and back doors surfaced this summer when the governments of the U.S. and China announced plans to strengthen national security policies covering information processed by applications written in the global software marketplace. The private sector joined the fray with the August announcement of the File Signature Database, which will use hash values to protect software integrity from malicious additions (see story).
The National Security Agency's information assurance director, Daniel Wolf, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security's cybersecurity subcommittee in July, called for a federal lab that would "find malicious software routines that are designed to morph and burrow into critical applications." Separately, the State Council of the People's Republic of China in August directed all government ministries to buy only Chinese software in the next upgrade cycle in an effort to encourage the development of local software companies but also to protect sensitive government data.
Mark Willoughby, CISSP, is a 20-year IT industry veteran and journalist with degrees in computer science and journalism. For the past seven years, he has tracked security and risk management start-ups and is a managing consultant at MessagingGroup, a Denver-based content development specialist.
Steps taken so far
The simmering global paranoia is rooted in the realization that no simple solution exists today, experts say. It is virtually impossible to find unauthorized malware hidden deep within a sophisticated multitiered application with data normalization, messaging middleware and other modules originating from labs in a half-dozen countries.
Robert Lentz, the U.S. Defense Department's director of information assurance, said in a written statement, "The DoD currently is studying several aspects of software assurance. The DoD has a current software acquisition policy. The group studying software assurance is looking to supplement that policy with strengthened mechanisms to increase our confidence in the security of both foreign and domestic software products."
Input, a Chantilly, Va.- based technology research firm, says federal government spending on IT products and services will grow 8.5% yearly from 2003 to 2008, from $45.4 billion to $68.2 billion. Approximately half of that spending will be in areas in which the government would like to see stronger information assurance.
Incidents of back doors compromising sensitive national security information may never be known. That's not so in the private sector.
"There have been a number of cases where software was found with intentionally planted back doors," said Shawn Hernan, team leader for vulnerability handling at the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University. "Most of these were for providing support, although no such support option was given to commercial customers. It's happened in both proprietary and open-sourced software."
Hernan said discovering hidden malware is one of the most difficult tasks facing an assurance investigator. CERT doesn't track vulnerabilities by country of origin, he added.
Software engineering processes are only now beginning to focus on providing traceability in security code. Traceability, which would allow a given line of code or a software module to be tracked back to the developer, is viewed as the Holy Grail in combating hidden malware. Traceability is also an effectiv
I usually add such "back doors" (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah; I usually do this. Any program more than a few dozen lines, and I start adding debugging hooks.
They're never "hidden", though. I always document them. Of course, I can't force users to read the documentation.
And I don't remove the debug hooks for a "release" version. When it's out at some customer's site and they call you asking what's wrong is when you REALLY need those hooks.
It's really handy to be able to be able to tell a user "Just add the following line to the config file, wait a bit, and tell me what it says."
I've worked on several projects where we added an HTTP interface, with the app listening on some port. All configurable, of course, but usually turned on by default. Then when a user called with a problem, if they are on the Net, we can ftp to that port, start typing GET commands, and learn about its state. This is a real back door, very easy to implement, and incredibly helpful when there are problems.
Of course, you do want to document them, so that the user can't accuse you of sneaking something in on them. And make sure there's a simple way to turn them on and off. If the app has a config file, a line like "HTTP-Port: N" does the job, with N=0 to disable the back door.
Then you can say "Well, I can't see what's wrong, because the HTTP port is turned off. Yes, I understand your security concerns. But I can't help you if your security won't let me talk to the program."
Usually this isn't much of a problem, since new users rarely notice that stuff, and leave the back door enabled. When their security folks discover it, it's really handy to be able to point to the fact that it's all documented in the manual and the sample config file. Then they say "Oh, yeah." turn it off, and don't bug you.
What the case really is (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike the US, India, being a developing nation, with a very large economy has always had a dirth of jobs. There are a few hundred people to fill up a single job vacancy. Thus, India has *never* felt the need for foreign employees.
However, I know for a fact that a large number of Americans/Europeans (and even Russians in defense companies) regularly work on contract basis. I had a Russian neighbor long back, working in India on a 2 year contract with a defense company.
So people, before you start flaming, ponder over the fact that a law for hiring outside employees doesn't exist because there hasn't ever been a need for it. Now with the outsourcing, it may not be too long before the government comes up with an H-1 like plan.
Can't work there? Why are they here? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you underestimate.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I think you underestimate.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can't work there? Why are they here? (Score:4, Informative)
Funny enough, that's pretty much the situation here (except for the illegal immigrants that is.) If you really want to work overseas, start applying for foreign citizenship/work permits.
This can't be true (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't true. (Score:5, Informative)
You can get a working visa for India. I have a friend that works there. It's just like anywhere else in the world in that respect.
I expect this guy just got a tourist visa and turned up in India expecting to get employed, and the person told him he couldn't legally employ him, which would be true because he had the wrong type of visa.
Is there anywhere in the world where you can just turn up without a working visa and legally work? Not that I know.
I wish the Slashdot editors would just spend five minutes googling to check the validity of this type of thing before posting.
you are Right : Its called Employment Visa (Score:3, Informative)
These are the requirements for an Employment Visa
EMPLOYMENT VISA: An appointment letter, contract letter, applicant's resume and proof that the organization is registered in India are required. Duration of visa would depend on the period of the contract.
Why yes, it *is* illegal to work with no visa (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to inject dull ol' reality into another 'The Indians Are Coming!' flap, but why exactly is it surprising that he can go to India on holiday and can't work there? Does he have a work visa for India? Are Indians allowed to work in the US with no visa?
I always figured the general pattern was that to work in country A, you need to be a citizen of country A or have a work permit issued by country A. Did this suddenly stop applying in the case of Americans wanting to work in India?
Other than that, well, it's a competitive marketplace. If other people are selling the same skills -- or what are percieved as the same skills -- cheaper, then he's got to change something.
Incidentally, I've known some terrible experiences with outsourcing to cheap countries and I think it's generally a false economy. But on the other hand, I think I'd rather have a disoriented and inexperienced Indian working for me than listen to this guy's whining.
Re:Why yes, it *is* illegal to work with no visa (Score:3, Informative)
TPS Report? (Score:5, Funny)
However, the SEI is introducing Team Process Software (TPS), which brings traceability of specific code modules to individual programmers, said Humphrey, a former IBM software engineering executive. Indian software companies and a few U.S. developers, notably Microsoft Corp., are aggressively implementing TPS.
To which my immediate reply was, "Did you remember to include the right cover on your TPS report?" :-)
Free Trade Double Standard (Score:3, Insightful)
Indian embassy (Score:3, Informative)
I am sure there is a provision. While living in india i have seen many foreigners, mostly russian working in the nuclear facilities at BARC. It shouldnt be more difficult than it is to receive work permit in the US.
Re:would like to add (Score:3, Informative)
These are the requirements for an Employment Visa
EMPLOYMENT VISA: An appointment letter, contract letter, applicant's resume and proof that the organization is registered in India are required. Duration of visa would depend on the period of the contract.
Let me explain something. (Score:5, Insightful)
2) I use Macromedia Director extensively on a mac. I have since 1987. I even worked on Director for about 4 years at Macromedia. Director MX for the mac was ported by a company in India. IT SUCKS ASS. A vast majority of "details" that make software great are gone. It is now just "usable" and annoying. I will saddly admit that the windoes version of Director MX is much more usable than the mac version. Whomever ported it, just doesn't get it. What really sucks is that this crappy ass port is what I have to use every day. Yeah. Woo. shoot me.
3) I used to contract for McGraw Hill in Carlsbad. We took a major project that was about to fail, developed and released the 4 CD set on time and budget for McGraw-Hill. After I left, under financial pressure, one of my co workers told me that things were about to change. This biz guy from a software firm in India come in to talk to the biz guys at McGraw-Hill and states "my programmers can write 1000 lines of code in a hour and they are pennies on the dollar." WHAT MORON measures productivity in "lines of code per hour?" Obviously, the business guys who don't understand programming. Last I hard, a lot of Glencoe/McGraw-Hill's development moved offshore to India.
Leaves alot to think about.
A bit of perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like I'm shocked that there's now a heated debate about Indian labor law among the various IANAIndianLaborLs here -- that's why we're here, right? -- but you may want to wait for someone in possession of even a single real fact to come along before drawing a conclusion.
Why work in Banaglore? (Score:5, Funny)
Terminate the H1/L1 visa program (Score:3, Insightful)
Let us get the facts straight. (Score:4, Informative)
Fact #1: Americans (and others) can work in India
Fact #2: Lots of Americans (and others) do work in India
Fact #3: A Visitors visa is different from a Work visa (just like USA)
Fact #4: If you travel on visitors visa, you cannot change it to work visa unless you leave the country first. Basically you cannot transfer visas without changing your port of entry (guess what? just like the good ol' USA)
Fact #5: This guy traveled to India on a work visa and applied for a job
Fact #6: Following fact #4, he got denied a visa.
BTW, all these facts are responses to USA's visa policies. India has a repuation for treating citizen of outher countries the same way other countries treats it's citizens. For example, USA charges a fee for each applicant of a visa (may it be student, work or travel) to people from India. Guess what India does? They charge a fee to Americans who want a visa to India too. Nepal doesn't charge a fee for Indian citizens. So, India doesn't charge a fee to Nepalese citizens. So, that is it guys: tit-for-tat.
However, moving tech jobs offshore is bad, and so are H1B visas in todays economy. They were good during the boom days when we couldn't hire enough people.
Most of you guys are completely missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares about the last part of the clip, everyone knows that it's a pain in the ass to get a job in another country, unless your an executive or you live in the EU. (My personal experience alone with this is endless.)
The point is the first part. And I don't want to collectively diss the /. population, but if you guys would read BusinessWeek, The Economist, etc., in addition to all your damn computer magazines, then you'd be enlightened already about how the H1 visa problem is growing so fast in the States.
There are countless stories at countless firms about people who've been forced to train their outsourced replacements. It is a really big problem in this country.
I really don't give a f*ck if you want to outsource a job to India. But all that bullsh*t with Tata is a gross exploitation of a labor-law loophole. Generally, the law states that you can't lay someone off and replace that exact position within "X" amount of time (it varies by State, I believe, here in Illinois it's 1 year). So companies get around it by creating whole new departments and positions for companies like Tata to come in and rape your office space, replacing you with an H1-er.
Start reading other magazines, and you guys might actually be motivated to care about this instead of giving supposedly righteous comments about how obvious it is that it's difficult to obtain work visas in other countries.
Focus on the important stuff. Like the BEGINNING of the clip.
"All techies should be forced to take at least 12 credits of business in college."
-SD
CNN Story: H1-B Visa program may not be that bad (Score:4, Interesting)
http://money.cnn.com/2003/09/11/news/economy/visa
First few lines are:
Visas vs. jobs
While many U.S. tech workers hate the H-1B program, studies suggest its impact is limited.
September 11, 2003: 12:14 PM EDT
By Mark Gongloff, CNN/Money Staff Writer
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A U.S. visa program that allows aliens to temporarily work in technology and other high-paying industries is often blamed for taking American jobs and pushing wages lower. But two recent studies suggest this program might not be as awful as some critics think.
We need Tom Clancy's Trade Reform Act (Score:3, Interesting)
I am well aware of the economics of outsourcing to India, my previous employer spent at least 6 months being courted by a half dozen code shops in India. They were complete professionals and very flexible. The skillset was in place, the language skills were better than what we want to believe and the price advantage was good. *That* I can live with.
What it is bothering me is this statement that it is illegal for an american to work in India. I mean, the only thing they had to do was say suuuure, come work for us, but you will get an indian salary commesurate with your skills and experience, we cannot pay you a US salary just because you are an american. That would be fair for everyone involved.
Or somebody in the government should wake up and see all these american going out of work because their jobs are going overseas. This of course sounds horribly naive on my part, but what is going to happen with defense sensitive software development? Are we going to outsource it too?
Some kind of trade reform act would be a great way to wake up India, China and Japan about the real meaning of trade. They can't expect to continue flooding us with cheap products and labor and then taking their profits and spending them elsewhere.
Why are H1B's not sent home in a bad economy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay - so the point of H1B's is to provide workers for a growing economy when we can't train our own people fast enough, right? (No local talent).
So when there IS an abundance of local talent (evidenced by the posting volume of /. posts) why aren't H1B's sent home? I have no problem with international workers being here, if they are filling a need that can't be filled locally.
To give an example of the way I think the H1B system is getting worked, the last job I worked at was an Informix 4GL shop. If you don't know what this is, it's the most insanely brain-dead programming language ever made. No features, no objects, hell you can't even pass arrays to functions. So what does this company do? Hires chinese H1B's who don't really know anything, for pennies. These guys were working REALLY cheap (like $8/hr) and the company had no intention of hiring any Americans because they wouldn't work for $8/hr. They had some scam running where a few of the american employees did work that cheap "officially" but got kickbacks for supporting the H1B program. I came into this company from a merger, and left shortly thereafter.
My current company is outsourcing to an Indian development firm who supposedly has 30 employees assigned to us. Our entire dev team here in the US is like 5 people, and we're doing the lion's share of the work!
So my opinion of outsourced and H1B employees is rather low, although I'll be the first to admit that there are probably lots of great foreign computer folks out there too. I just haven't seen any :)
How do you afford your right wing lifestyle? (Score:5, Insightful)
The philosophy of market fundamentalism--the mantra of Fox, Wired, Rush, Gilder, Friedman and every zealous conservative and libertarian pundit--is doing an excellent job of encouraging business to turn its back on US employees. We'll see much, much more job flight in the short term until the brakes are applied to this savage anti-social approach.
Plainly this is what happens when you shatter the social contract and replace it with an ideology of dog-eat-dog. When times are good, it's nice to be able to bark, "Hands off my bone!" Not so nice, is it, when times are bad... Then, living under dog ideology isn't all it's cracked up to be, and you may come to see that millions and millions of your fellow Americans have been given the same raw deal.
For America, reeling under the destructiveness of this philosophy, a reordering of priorities is necessary. Increasing shareholder wealth may be the highest goal of a company; but it should never be the highest goal of a nation.
Above all, as you see jobs go to India, or elsewhere, and worry that it might be yours next, remember whose advice and guidance led you to this low hour. Remember also who made historically high profits from your labor in the 1990s, but now pleads the inability to continue your employment. And ask yourself if you can afford to subscribe to the politics of plutocrats who don't care if you and your family sink or swim.
Lets return the favor (Score:3, Insightful)
That's business-friendly vs. citizen-friendly (Score:4, Insightful)
Any government that is more concerned about corporation's well-being than about their citizen's well-being will allow companies to hire non-citizens to their heart's content.
I think that's pretty cut and dried. I am certain someone will correct me shortly.
You are all misinformed about the H1-B Visa. (Score:5, Informative)
H1-B visas are only granted to persons with the equivalent of a 4-year Bachellor's degree. Part of the application process involves going through a degree equivalency comparison by an accredited lawyer. My fiance' has a Masters' in Computer Science.
H1-B visa holders have a minimum salary stipulation. I believe the last time I checked it was $35,000 US. My fiance is being paid the same salary as the person that held her position before her, which is substantially higher than minimum.
The position she was hired for was unfilled for some time as the company could not find someone with her required database/programming/java skills locally (we reside in a small midwestern community of ~150,000 population including neighboring villages and suburbs.)
The real culprit here is twofold:
1. The L-1 Visa. The L-1 has *substantially* lower pay requirements. These are the job-stealing visas.
2. Corporate greed and government inaction. CEO's just see their programming expense as a budget line item to be reduced, like finding a cheaper widget supplier. Government inaction is self-explanitory. They are closing the door too slowly.
H1-B's are typically attracting highly educated Western Europeans to the U.S. for a number of reasons. Salaries that are 1.5 to 2x higher than back home (not 5-8x as compared to India), A significant other in the states (grin) or a sense of adventure and desire to try the U.S. for a while. I find it baffling that in the wake of the articles regarding Teller's passing that we're questioning the H1-B situation. Post WWII, alot of our brainpower came from Western Europe. Highly skilled, highly educated persons who desire to become U.S. citizens and melt into the pot are what strengthens the U.S.
It.is.the.L-1.visa.that.is.killing.the.programm
PERIOD.
What Crap ! (Score:4, Informative)
Inflammatory subject. Here is a reality check. (Score:5, Informative)
In order to work in India, you need a work permit. Not knowing exactly the procedure for obtaining a work permit in India, I can only speculate that one will normally be issued only for jobs/diciplines for which there is no qualified native applicants.
That's the same way it works in the USA. In order for foreigners to get a work permit (a H1-B visa), the prospective employer must:
The H1-B visa is temporary (expires after 3 years, can be renewed for a grand total of 6 years). This is kind of unique - not many other countries have this restriction.
Finally, a H1-B visa is tied to a particular employer (which some other countries do, but not all), so the holder cannot change jobs without going through this process again.
Given these restrictions, only a small percentage of American companies (usually mid-size companies that otherwise have troubles finding qualified personel) are willing to sponsor H1-B visas for foreign workers.
In a country of ~250 million people, an influx of 150-200 thousand legal (H1-B) immigrant workers per year is nothing - indeed, a much lower percentage than other western countries (including my native Norway).
Of course, illegal immigration is much larger, and a different problem alltogether. Too bad some of the less intelligent elements of this society is unable to distinguish the (modest) number of legal immigrants from the (huge) number of illegal immigrants.
The process of getting a permanent residency ("green card") -- remember, the H1-B is only temporary -- is even harder, and many more steps are involved (including INS, the department of labor, and a handful of other agencies -- all of which are understaffed and overwhelmed).
I was personally on a H1-B visa for nearly the allowed 6 years -- it took me that long to apply for (and receive) a green card. I am in a field where there is still a lot of demand for labor, and I am from a country for which parts of the application/qualification process goes quicker than for most. (Yes, the processing time of one of the agencies involved in the serialized green card application process depends on where you are from).
Re: Outsourcing to India in general, I can only say: Tough. The USA is getting what it asked for - a more globalized economy. If the US gets easier access to foreign markets, then foreign countries get easier access to the US market as well. Indian-produced goods and services (whether managed by US companies or not) can enter the US market more freely, just like US goods and services have already entered other markets more freely.
The bad news for industrialized countries is that this will level the global playing field w.r.t. salaries, standards of living, etc. The good news for the developing word is the same. All the same, it means further concentration of power an money in the hands of large, multinational corporations, whether they be incorporated in the USA or elsewhere.
NAFTA Countries (Score:4, Informative)
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a citizen of a NAFTA country may work in a professional occupation in another NAFTA country if the applicant meet certain requirements.
American professionals may easily work in Canada [cic.gc.ca], for example, and vice versa [state.gov].Some issues with this story (Score:4, Informative)
1. Before you start beating up on Indians, remember that it's American managers that do the outsourcing, and the ones that benefit the most.
2. If the Tata company didn't hire him in US because he was American, he could (and should) take legal recourse.
3. You can work in India as an American. Thousands of other Americans do, even in high tech jobs. You need to :
a. Get a job in an Indian company. Like Intel [intel.com]
b. Apply for a 'business visa for employment at your local Indian embassy/consulate [indianembassy.org]
And go.
The economy sucks, but that doesn't mean you put the blame on other people who like you are trying to work for a living.
Freedom of Capital vs Freedom of Labour (Score:5, Informative)
The central issue for me that links these stories is not so much the relocation of manufacturing and productive jobs from the core of an empire to peripheral client states. This has happened before (Roman Empire, United Kingdom, and so on) and will happen again.
No, for me the real issue is one of freedom of movement for labour versus freedom of movement for capital. Because of their many advantages, corporations are "gaming" the international political system to produce labour arbitrage. They have lobbied hard for their right to move capital between countries at will. What we have now is globalization that serves corporations, not globalization that serves people.
This is the fundamental ideological underpinning of this discourse. Corporations and politicians have structured a political system that implicitly and irrevocably favours the movement of capital over labour. Why should this be so? Could it be different? These are questions that need to be addressed. Different political movements are examining them in different ways.
Meanwhile, for ordinary people who, for the most part, have no greater or more fundamental asset to offer than their labour, their options are a lot more restricted. US companies send jobs south into Mexico with minimal regulation because of NAFTA, but Mexican people are not equally free to move their bodies north into the US. This unequal treatment creates the exploitative arbitrage that the corporations milk for profits.
This also explains a fundamental difference between the USA, NAFTA, and the European Union project. I've noticed most Americans really don't "get" the EU because their expectations are constrained by NAFTA and the halting of the US expansion within North America.
At its core the EU project is very simple, but very powerful. It holds out the promise of regional improvement by granting freedom of access to a unified market for both capital and labour. As it expands, relentlessly it seems, it allows poorer countries to join, once they restructure their political, legal, and social systems to bring them into some degree of harmony with the EU consensus. In return for this social transformation, all the citizens of member countries can enjoy free and unfettered movement throughout all other EU countries (admittedly and annoyingly, several EU countries impose different temporary restrictions on some new member country citizens). In essence it's very similar to the freedom of movement that US citizens enjoy throughout all 50 States.
This is a powerful lure. For all the talk of "old Europe" and "new Europe", the former Soviet Bloc countries are not clamouring to create bilateral trade agreements with the US... they are fighting tooth and nail to join the EU, and so submit their trade relations with non-EU countries to the fiat of Brussels. This yearning for EU membership has produced and is producing massive social and political change across eastern Europe.
However, it seems that the US project has stalled at its current borders. I don't see the US engaged in a determined effort to expand south, to create a distributed American citizenship that would be a beacon for social progress and political aspirations throughout the Americas and the world. Immigration isn't any sort of answer: it's tedious, socially disruptive, and over-regulated. Try opening the floodgates, as the EU has done for its member countries, and within a few decades the improvements in both old and new member States will be enormous and unprecedented.
But that's a fantasy. People today in the poorer countries of Central America, so close to the US, nonetheless know explicitly that their relation to the US and the member States within can never be based on equality and access, but will instead be permanently structured as clientist an
Re:Freedom of Capital vs Freedom of Labour (Score:4, Interesting)
Studies show that by increasing developed economies' quotas on inward movements of both skilled and unskilled labour by just 3% of their labour forces, world welfare would rise by $156 billion - about 0.6% of world income.
Further liberalization of labor movement could double world income and imply proportionately even larger gains for the developing countries.
Keep it in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Time zone: I was on the East Coast (EST/EDT). I beleive that India was about 12 hours away from us, give or take. This meant that basically anything you asked them to do took at least 1 full working day, since by the time I got into work, they were in bed. You can just imagine the problems this caused when deadlines or other time-critical matters were involved.
2. Language: Again, without making any broad generalizations... Their English sucked. It was nearly impossible to communicate with them on the phone and their written English was less than acceptible. Also, based on serveral very frustrating experiences with the whole group, I concluded that their comprehention of written English was equally poor. We finally found a guy there who could understand English well enough to explain things to the rest of the group, but even then, my confidence level was quite low.
3. Work Ethic/Product: Both the group in question and several other Indians I've worked with since then have had some similar issues w/r/t how they worked and what they produced. Again, not to generalize... If you give them very clear, step-by-step instructions to perform a discrete task, they generally will perform the task quite thoroughly. However, if the procedure requires any deviation from the norm or any creativity or synthesis, you're better off doing it yourself, because they'll never figure it out.
We also had problems getting them to listen to anyone other than management -- they basically ignored team lead's, including myself.
In their defense, I understand that the education system in India teaches them to work this way; it has a large focus on rote memorization and obeyance of authority. That's great, and it seems to work for them. However, that's not how we work in the US, and folks who have gone to US (or European or Chinese) schools and worked with others of the similar ilk will get very frustrated trying to mesh with thinking processes that are polar opposites of their own. Furthermore, I find this thinking process thoroughly unproductive and pretty much useless in an Engineer.
Now, I'm just waiting for someone to write back flaming me for being some kind of racist, so let me state once more that I am relating my personal experiences with certain Indians. I went to grad school with several amazingly talented Indians whom I would choose to work with in a heartbeat. I'm not trying to reinforce any sterotypes or discriminatory policies.
What I am trying to say is caveat emptor. If a thing seems too good to be true, it probably is. Sure, you can get engineering labor abroad for 10 cents on the dollar. But in many cases, you get what you pay for.
And finally, there are countless qualified engineers in AMERICA who need jobs. If a foreign individual or group has skills you can't find here, then fine, bring them here. But in the long run, you hurting yourself, your company, and your fellow Americans by trying to save a buck abroad. It ain't worth it.
Re:What's this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, sure. Except that if the plans by the US Office of Homeland Security come through, I won't be able to fly over to the USA with my brand new EU passport without submitting my fingerprints and/or retinal scan with the visa. The new passports will, at the request of the beforementioned office, have to feature digital biometric information that will be fed to a federal database.
I will not submit to this.
Re:What's this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like they have reasonable migration policies.Moreover no restriction on Natural/Naturalised citizens in politics either. An former Italian [encyclopedia.com] is the opposition leader
Re:What's this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now is a real bad time to be a programmer... especially a newly graduated one. Of course pointy-haired bosses don't see the value of in-house development. If they can save money now, they look good. It doesn't matter that the software they get doesn't work right and they have to spend more money to fix it, they saved the company money.
There are also security concerns... but I won't go there.
Re:What's this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea, you'll need a worker's visa for that. I actually was confronted by someone over there because of that, and who seemed rather upset. I was working on a project in Shenzhen; he wanted to know what I was doing that a Chinese citizen couldn't. Well, in the big picture nothing, but my company did have reasons for sending me there. Still, I could see where he was c
Re:What's this? (Score:3, Informative)
That means she could have been working within a matter of months instead of the years it took to become a permanent resident, with no special specifications about the job needing to be met.
Re:What's this? (Score:4, Informative)
India working visa, anyone? Contact your local Indian embassy for details.
This story is bunk.
Mismodded humour (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm imagining it
business as usual ...
utter silence ensues .....
Heck, I'm on an EU passport, and *I* don't have the right to work in the USA. This is perfectly normal practice worldwide - I'm not saying it's right, just commonplace.
So why does this bit of humour get a + insightfull moderation?