Microsoft Wants End to Limits on Overseas Hiring – from TBO.com — I seriously do not understand what they are thinking at Microsoft to make these sorts of public comments. Ballmer said something like this some months back and I emailed him about it and he was baffled by my email. They apparently do not see any of this as a “hot potato” issue that can have negative implications on sales. This is total isolation from reality. In this case Gates has physically gone to Washington to go door-to-door on this issue.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates urged the Bush administration and lawmakers Wednesday to abolish immigration limits on foreign engineers who can be hired by U.S. companies, a sensitive subject among American technology workers watching their own jobs increasingly move overseas.
Too add insult to injury regarding unemployed USA coders, Gates said they are obviously no good.
“Anybody who’s got good computer science training, they are not out there unemployed,” Gates said. “We’re just not seeing an available labor pool.”
I guess that’s true insofar as young hotshot coders who will work cheap. In the early days of Microsoft one of the earmarks insofar as getting hired was Gates desire to get employees to take a cut in pay to work there — to prove they wanted to work there. This paid off for early employees when the stock was flying high. Then the company went into the practice of hiring supposed contractors who actually worked for the company full-time, but were not paid the same as others and had no benefits. The company was sued over its labor practices. This is just the latest phase of evolving corporate policies, an overall effort to get rid of pesky American locals. It would make more sense if the company wasn’t banking a billion a month. Why be so cheap?
Why so cheap? To borrow a made up Gates quote from the Simpsons, “I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of checks!”
That was a joke, but it is still true. Every penny Gates saves by hiring cheap labor adds to his fortune. That’s one of the differences between the rich and everyone else. It’s in their nature to nickel and dime. You don’t become the richest man in the world by saying, “I’ve got enough.”
Before thinking of getting better developers from the outside, perhaps Bill Gates should work on improving the skills they already have on the INSIDE! $40 billion dollars worth of idiot sum up what is known today as Microshit!
There must be groups opposing any change to these visa. I hear time and time again about unemployed tech guys. These guys should start protesting the Microsoft campus with signs such as “I’m qualified, I’m American, why won’t you hire me?”
It’d be great if a 1000 or more unemployed tech workers swarmed the MS campus. It might even become a news story.
And john, the next time you talk to Ballmer ask him about how college kids are avoiding IT degrees like the plague. Exactly why are kids avoiding such training if there are so many great jobs unfilled?!
This issue completely disgusts me. I know programmers in Tucson who can’t find decent jobs and here comes Gates saying we need more foreigners. I’d love to see a comparison of what Microsoft pays American programmers versus what they pay foreign programmers. I’d be willing to bet that there is quite a bit of disparity between the two. That’s why Bill wants more of them. They work for a fraction of the cost of an American. The greed of Bill and others of his ilk will lead to the ruin of this country someday.
We have already seen this in the auto industry. American cars used to be built in the USA. Now many of them are built in Mexico by workers who are paid $1 and hour. Next time you buy a car, check out where it was built. Many Fords and Chryslers are built in Mexico. Yet my Nissan was built in Tennesee. Is there something wrong with this picture or is it just me?
If we keep farming out our high paying jobs to low paid foreigners, who is going to be left in the USA to buy expensive products? CEOs love these workers because it means more profit in the short-term. Unfortunately, the long-term effect of this strategy cannot be good for the average citizen.
Even if you think outsourcing is OK, the quality of the outfit[s] M$oft uses is abysmal! My original 80211.b wi-fi network was all M$oft hardware — purchased because of lifetime 24/7 support. I really don’t want to learn much about networking and, living in a “destination”, there’s often kin staying with us with the latest refurbed obscure Thinkpad with a wireless card bought at a garage sale.
Worked fine till they outsourced. Then, the quality of service tanked as quickly as any Malcolm Glazer sports team the year after they win something and he sells off the bits that worked! Fortunately, by then, I was ready to upgrade to supercharged “G” — and threw the MSoft hardware into the appropriate part of our local landfill.
Don’t forget BG is
shorting US dollars, but lately that bet hasn’t been paying off. Every rupee he buys/dollar he sells pushes his bet towards success and/or greater success. With his level of wealth, not to mention leverage, he could easily make back the salaries of hundreds or thousands of programmers if the dollar made a small drop, even if he paid the extra programmers directly out of his own pocket, which, of course, he won’t.
An action that can pay off in more ways than one, decreasing programmers’ pay and secondarily hitting the dollar — hey, I’d be tempted.
P.S.
Is that a straight photo, or did you photoshop in a John Denver grin?
If Microsoft likes foreign workers so much, perhaps they should close down their U.S. operations and move to India, China or wherever? We won’t miss you Bill and don’t let the door hit you in the ass.
I see fair employment as a social issue in that if there are only two types of jobs around – those that pay Corporate higher ups $200million a year and Wal-Mart jobs that pay $6.95 an hour – then not only is the question “who will buy” the products made a poignant one, but we also risk destroying the middle class and becoming more like South America, where the taxes are assessed more on the poor and middle class and are almost non-existent to the rich. According to the CBO, this year for the first time in American history, the middle class and the poor pay more of the tax burden than the rich even though the rich make 60% more per year.
In SA countries like Columbia, where this sort of tax inequity has been going on since the Spanish settlement, for decades the ultra rich have had to hire private armies to protect themselves. These armies often form death squads and start victimizing the poor and middle class. The desperate then form something like the FARQ and usually end up doing the same thing, or turn to drug sales and distribution. And then billions and trillions are spent fighting against or protecting the “Patron” class, the irony being that except in their guarded houses and neighborhoods, they cannot walk the streets of their country’s cities for fear of being kidnapped or killed.
Or the flip side happens, like in Venezuela, where some ultra left nuts take over and make it a “worker’s paradise” i.e. everyone but the guys in charge get the same low level of nothing; i.e. Cuba.
It would be cheaper to just pay everyone fairly and be able to walk the streets with out fear. We have that now in the US, and that is a major part why we are a great country; the fact that I can walk anywhere in any city and be reasonably safe. But it will change if things stay the “dubya” way.
I believe in my heart there is a middle ground. I believe every citizen and legal immigrant in this country deserves the following: food, shelter, medical care and an opportunity for education. If employed – a fair wage. I believe that the country as a whole should fund this someway, I personally don’t have a suggestion on how, but it could be done. A fair wage would be the basis.
If organized well I bet it could be done more efficiently than the present hodge-podge and I bet it would cost less, or at least no more than is wasted now.
The effort would no doubt be a major one – maybe the biggest the country has made since WWII. Heck, just defining a “fair wage” would be a major issue, but it would lead to a better society – one others would want to emulate. Also it would be the Christian thing to do. It’s a shame that “dubya”, the man “chosen” by God to be president, doesn’t believe in doing the REAL Christian thing.
BTW – Gates didn’t finish college – is he suppose to be my role model on a properly trained Developer?
It’s not that USA coders aren’t any good. It’s that Microsoft has made .NET too complicated. It has a ton of overhead.
Congratulations Microsoft! You’ve made your crap such an investment of time and energy to simply learn that 3/4 of the programmers out there can’t hack it. Plus the .NET framework is 2 GB, hard to debug, has high overhead for simple things and MS products are always about patch management to keep MS’s fragile products from breaking.
Not that Java or XML/XSL are any better. CSS/CSS2 is a joke which is why Dvorak pointed out, there are no WYSIWYG editors because even computers can’t figure it out.
One day, nerds won’t design stuff. They always muck it up. All our programming languages are fuct.
I say allow him to import the workers he “needs”.
But tax the hell out of it. Make them MORE expensive than local workers. Then, if he REALLY needs them that bad, he will hire them anyway. right?
And then apply the tax money to job training for our local programmers.
Something tells me that if the locals were cheaper, gates would be using them instead.
Bill made $2.56 billion in profit last quarter. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7670209/
Makes me wonder why he is so desperate to earn even higher profits on the backs of foreign labor.
In response to Anonymous: Have you ever seen Bill try to operate his own software at a trade show? It’s usually quite hilarious. Here is a link to some video of his latest fiasco at the CES show. Who’s the stupid one? http://news.com.com/1606-2-5517693.html
Pisses me off to no end! I have been following this H1-B visa scam since last November when I first learned about it and I subscribe to the Job Destruction Newsletter which gives me WEEKLY updates on all of these worker replacement issues. The H1-B is a LEGAL way for companies who cannot outsource the work to foreign countries to bring in the foreigners to the USA. Yes, there are people screaming about this issue and their cries are going unheard. There are whole news groups of unemployed IT workers/programmers and software people who have been instantly unemployed by their companies once the company finds out they can use the H1-B or L1 visa programs to get rid of Americans. This is not about unqualified workers – it is about greed and race to the bottom of getting the labor at the cheapest possible level. Meanwhile more and more Americans are being unemployed by this visa crap. In December I helped lobby Congress to stop the visa increase, but we failed and now they have 20,000 more H1-B visa alotments. As was said in the Job Destruction newsletter on this topic: “If you have recently received some phone calls for interviews lately it
is probably because companies can’t hire new H-1Bs this year due to the fact that the limit has been reached on visas. If Bill Gates manages to open the floodgates, you better get that resume to Fry’s and Radio
Shack ASAP because that’s the only job you are going to find.”
The companies and Gates claim that there are not any qualified Americans – this is BS. In another twist on this same problem, companies are going directly to the American tech universities and placing ads – but the ads make it clear they are only recruiting F1 visa holders (foreign students studying abroad) and refusing to consider any of the American graduates! If the Americans and the foreigners are at the same school getting the same degree, you tell me how it is that the foreign student is “qualified” and the American student is not. This H1-B visa abuse is not just affecting the tech industry but it is spreading to other fields – I’ve heard that the school district here in Calif. is even doing it. It is a complete abuse being perpetrated for greed. In the end the economy will collapse because no Americans will have jobs and there won’t be anyone to pay the taxes.
I too was a bit taken back by the learned opinion of one William T. Gates. Interesting plan, Bill! Lower immigration requirements instead of fostering good colleges and universities IN America.
Ohhh wait, I get it, Bill and Belinda had made all these friends in poor third world countries and now Bill wants to get them on the Microsofty payroll for a fraction of their American counterparts. Nice touch. Now that is humanity! And it is another chance to showup all those people who put him down when he was a dorky young codehead.
One can only wonder when we will all be looking for accomiations in Mexico or Bopal. After all, THAT is where the hot talent is. It really is so good of Mr. Gates to make us aware of our utter failure as a nation to provide fodder for his coding assembly line.
Someone really needs to give these guys a reality check.
Judging by his software, he’s right. It would be neat to debunk the dunk.
How naive can one be, to build on a static vector table architecture and expect flexibility? Where’s Mr. Barnum, sitting?
It is truly lamentable, but not surprising. Why would a for-profit company intentionally hire more expensive workers? Out of a sense of social responsibility? Forget it. It’s not going to happen. Big companies are juggernauts whose culture and army of workers strive to increase revenue and reduce costs. Unless forced, they do not do things like “protect the American worker”, “keep environmentally clean”, “ensure a 9 to 5 workday”, “provide a healthy workplace”, etc.
And what about the obvious question? If US worker salaries are double those of other places, then cheaper foreign products outsell our own. Even our own citizens and companies don’t buy them, and the company goes bankrupt. “Buy American” pressure only goes so far. This is no big secret. It happened with many other products. Often, the foreign product is simply a US company’s product made in a cheaper place. Now the IT sector is moving in that direction. What about it? Is it really something that can be stopped?
The doomsayers who predict a country of fungible minimum-wage service jobs with a happy ruling circle of millionaires and their private armies are probably right. In some sense, many of our politicians and the government infrastructure which they control already constitute such a private army. It is devoted to the interests of big companies and industry sectors that pay their way. How can you and I do anything about this with a few political contributions and emails to action groups? I see the situation becoming a lot worse.
At dinner last night, a lawyer friend was crowing that his firm found a way to ship large-volume due-diligence and document review work to an Indian legal outsourcing firm. Apparently they have highly educated, cheaply available lawyers in India who can do this work for $40/hr. instead of the $200/hr. the firm’s New York associate would have to bill a client for it. What’s next? Maybe my HMO will set up mandatory VR visits with Indian physicians before I can see the dermatologist or get the MRI that we all knew in advance that I would need.
If you are against relaxing H-1B requirements, then you can try political action to prevent it. That’s about all you can do. I’d gladly give money and pepper legislators with letters about this. In fact I think I will, but I am not holding my breath.
SEATTLE (AP) – “Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that third-quarter earnings nearly doubled from last year, driven by growth in the software company’s server and tools business and lower legal costs, but revenue fell shy of Wall Street expectations.”
I have my own problems. I’m fairly sure Microsoft does not have the solutions. The CBS News reported that Exxon profits were way up for the first quarter. I think it was 44%. Our community was raped by the corporations way back when. Software helps automate the corporate rape of small business and the average consumer. I really don’t care if they go out of business or if the stock market crashes. Most of these corporations are operated on the same basis as Enron or World Con. Nothing personal, just business. Software should be free and increase social and political freedom. Information with a price on it is always suspect. Support your local library and local business. Quit your job and start serving people or keep serving your corporate masters of deceit.
Bill didn’t get where he is today by building good operating systems. (Is that his real face?)
John, Safari is constantly cutting off the bottoms of your comment columns; are you mad at Tiger or is it just me? (or none of the above?)
A lot of good posts here and clearly a lot of frustration with “business as usual”.
Remember, a company’s first order of business is to make profits for their investors, whether public or private. But unfortunately, investors mostly seem to be greedy little suckers that continually want more profits. So companies have to find ways to keep growing – maybe by lowering costs and/or selling more product at the same cost. I went over this in some detail in last weeks “Illegal’s” thread ( http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=1834 ).
All our tax laws, all of our political system is for and controlled by corporate and special interests. There’s little to no financial incentive for corporations to think about the future or be socially proactive on anything other than a token scale. Why worry about the social fabric? After all, if you are a corporate executive making the big decisions and $$, if your profits continue to grow, you will probably amass enough $$ to hire an army or move elsewhere when the crap really hits the fan here.
Until we change our political system (perhaps by adding more VIABLE parties and having people actually cast significant votes for members of these parties), nothing is going to change. The present situation will just continue to worsen. The only question I have is when will the REAL class warfare (rioting and killing) begin? I’m beginning to think it may be about time to avail myself of my 2nd Amendment rights. You know, just in case.
Just another illustration on how insulated Gates is from the state of affairs for the software worker. From his vantage point, it makes sense, as he is interested in procuring the brightest minds at the cheapest price. Obviously, it’s a blatant slap in the face to the American programmer, who’s already been besieged by the onslaught of offshoring and importing of cheaper non immigrant visa workers.
I’ve had to train my offshore and imported non-immigrant visa workers in several of my past jobs and assignments. I’ve witnessed firsthand the fate of colleagues and friends who’ve been compelled to undergo career change or early retirement. I’ve seen my own earning prospects diminished, and I’ve settled for temporary gigs that pay way less that I was earning a few years ago. Even full time positions are no panacea, the last one was awful as no work went on here in the states, I felt like a “ticket pusher”, writing emails to explain system workings and funnel work to offshore teams as management insisted that all coding work be done by the offshore vendors.
I traveled back east to visit family recently and visited with cousins a few years older than me that managed to stick it out in the steel mills (before that career route was snuffed out) and they’re looking golden. as they will be rewarded with an excellent retirement package well before the age many Americans now retire. OTOH, despite possessing advanced degrees, many of my peers have had to seek out specialty niches, just to stay economically viable.
Meanwhile, these firms that we loyally worked for and served continue to prosper beyond belief. Has selfishness so embodied itself in our culture that we’re all willing to sell eachother out?
Paul Jonas said “Meanwhile, these firms that we loyally worked for and served continue to prosper beyond belief. Has selfishness so embodied itself in our culture that we’re all willing to sell each other out?”
———————————————–
It’s certainly selfishness from the corporate executive position. After all, how many millions of $$ and stock options does one need to recognize that they have enough and can instead be more forgiving and charitable towards others?
From the little guy perspective, it’s come down to self preservation, the law of the jungle. In our never ending quest to maintain our lifestyles, our well-being and support our families, many of us are or have been put into the position where it comes down to us or them. There is only one choice that can be made in such circumstances. When any animal is backed into a corner, they will lie, cheat, lash out, stab someone in the back, do just about anything to stay alive [collect a paycheck].
Maybe that is how the plan is designed to work – divide and distract while the rape of the country continues unabated.
Welcome to a REAL reality show.
> Software should be free and increase social and political
> freedom. Information with a price on it is always suspect.
> Support your local library and local business. Quit your
> job and start serving people or keep serving your corporate
> masters of deceit.
Jim, what are you smoking? How far do you take that? Should software support be free too? You do realize that no one would make software if production and support were free.
> Quit your
> job and start serving people or keep serving your corporate
> masters of deceit.
“Only then can you find emptiness”
– Thulsa Doom, Conan the Barbarian
Sounds like you found some LSD from the ‘60s lying around. Yes, let’s all quit our jobs and sit around the campfire singing KoomByAh (sp?). Wake up man. Throwing your hands up in the air is not the solution.
There’s something sinisterly wrong here; something doesn’t smell right.
Think about it: Microsoft has development campuses in India, Russia, and they’re setting up campuses in China. All these countries have vast, educated, cheap pools of IT labor.
With such a massive (and cheap) labor force available to them, why does Microsoft think they need to bring these people over here?
What am I missing???
There is a big difference. It’s called replacement and control. Sure they have labs overseas, but there are jobs here that need to be filled too. Getting rid of higher paid (often older) employees and replacing them with H1B makes sense to more than a few beancounters.
Or do you think it’s really about the coders? It’s about the whole company!
That mean we can dump the over paid (older) bean counters? How about shoot a $100,000,000 CEO that runs his company into the ground.
Lets make everyone responsible for the company, not just the worker bees.
I think the answer lies in the old adage: follow the money.
Lets just say that Gates n’ Company get their way and the floodgates are opened to admit unlimited numbers of cheap labor, who would benefit the most?
Bill Gates would; so would Warren Buffet.
Think about it, America could now import unlimited numbers of cheap labor to replace the indigenous population. (Not just IT but everything!) So rather than paying an American coder 85K/year, Gates can pay a foreigner 20K-23K/year. AND probably do it in 1099 situation so Microsoft won’t have to pay health or retirement benefits. That’s got to have a positive effect on the all mighty bottom-line.
But it gets worse.
Now, you have 10’s of thousands of American coders out of work. I think it’s safe to assume 65%-75% will have mortgages. The size of these mortgages were based on a decent standard of income. With that income gone, most of these families will have to default on their mortgages.
Now, before you say “the banks will work with the people”, I’ll tell you right now…FORGETABOUTIT!!!
I have one data-point on this subject which most people don’t; I was part of the Alaskan Pipeline Bust of the mid- to late-80’s.
Follow the money: it pays the banks for you to crash and burn…
A lot of people (in Alaska at that time) thought they could go in and negotiate with the bank, but it just was not true. What most people don’t understand is the bank does not own your loan. As soon as you sign the mortgage papers the bank turns around and sells the loan to Fanny Mae or Freddie Mac; who in turn aggregate a bunch of loans together into a security vehicle and sell the vehicle (usually a bond) on the open market.
The banks make their money on originating the loan, and administrating it over the life of the loan. The bank no longer owns the loan and can’t negotiate with regard to the loan after its been sold.
If a bank projects X percentage of the available housing market will get loans through them, then it benefits the bank immensely if the available housing market hits 100% for a short time.
Follow the money: the banks will make a fortune in refinancing all those houses.
But it gets worse.
Thanks to the new bankruptcy laws that our wonderful elected representatives just passed, it’s going to be very hard to get out of debt after going bankrupt. Even if you’re able to get part of the debt erased, the new laws are set up in such a way you’re still going to have to pay something. It’s a sure bet the Mortgage Industry is going to pressure the judges to squeeze you pretty tight. Even after the crash settles out, you might have such a large bankruptcy payment you won’t be able to purchase another property.
Follow the money: The Mortgage Industry not only gets the originating fees for re-mortgaging your old home, and associated long-term administration fees, but they keep you paying something for the duration as well.
But it gets worse.
All those usurped American coders were also consumers. All the support services that relied on the income from those coders will crash as well. The misery just keeps spreading.
So who’s the big winner here??? Bill Gates.
Bill Gates has openly admitted he has heavily shorted the US Dollar. (He makes money as the dollar goes down.) The farther the economy goes down, the more money he makes. He makes the most money if the US economy totally crashes and burns.
But it gets better!!! After the crash there will be this huge IT labor market, which will be heavily in debt, AND unable to get out of debt, AND willing to work for slave wages just to say out of debtors prison.
Welcome to the 21st century!!! The century of indentured servitude.
A former post said.
So rather than paying an American coder 85K/year, Gates can pay a foreigner 20K-23K/year.
The century of indentured servitude.
We’ll fix things up here, since you can’t fix your little problem.
I don’t see much future in being a commercial Windows blue coder myself.
If Gates can’t get enough H1B workers, I have a solution.
Keep the cap where it is now, but operate it as an auction. Take bids for H1B visas. First dibs goes to the highest bidder. Visas would be distributed among bidding companies, from high bids to low, until the cap is reached.
If Gates really just wants to hire the best people in the world, he’ll be able to, if he pays enough for their visas.
On the other hand, companies who just want cheap foreign labor will probably be disappointed. Either it’ll be too expensive to be worthwhile, or they won’t get any visas for their low bid price.
Gates wants the cap removed, but even if Microsoft really just wants to hire the world’s best people (doubtful), there are thousands of other companies who just want cheap workers. So removing the cap isn’t an option.
Poster Jon H said:
“Keep the cap where it is now, but operate it as an auction.”
Personally, I think that’s a GREAT idea. You are obviously a super genius!! 🙂 It would generate some revenue and would also give us a insight into what companies really are looking for intellectual assets as opposed to warm bodies.
I know this might ruffle a few feathers, but I think France (before the European Union) had it about right. It use to be as a US citizen you could work over in France for 6 months, then you were out for several years.
Personally, I think it’s a good idea for a SMALL number of foreign workers to come here and work in the US for 6 to 12 months. It lets “them” get to know us better as a people. It also promotes friendship and open lines of communication. From their prospective, America would seem less like an enigma or a fortress. I also think it’s a good idea for Americans to work abroad for a year or two. I spent 18 months in Hong Kong and it was very insightful. I now understand the Chinese a little more.
Having said all that, I am TOTALLY in favor of keeping the cap, if not reducing it to about 50K.
I myself have been doing IT for about 23 years now, and it’s my opinion the American coders are not that bad; they’re just more expensive. If you want, I can rant about how to fix that problem in my next post.
Later!