Soon, US IT jobs will be a thing of the past...

[lord dolf vader]

we killed ourselves to keep my wife in school last year to get her ccna . she made strait "A" s  passed ccna the first time.  school hired here as a assistant in their it department. long story short.
she gave up applieing for jobs after 100 or so and not one even vage nibble nor one call she gave up.  now shes doing data entry for the diddlyin post office.

tons of forigners have well paid i-t jobs ?

americans dont even get call backs.  

dont try to sell me companys cant find qualified people its roadkill.

p.s. she would quit in a minute and move  if she could get a job she quietly sends emails to this day still no interest at all.

send all the forigners home.

[Cobra]

And all descendants of Foriegners!!!

Ooops that would include most, if not all, of the people wanting to send those foriegners home!

12,708.

[SKurj]

Population explosion is over... here in Canada they want to increase immigration as well!!

not too thrilled about it meself..


SKurj

[fd ski]

well, here is a story of a canadian citizen - squadmate of mine from WB, whom i got a job in my company. They were willing to sponsor him for a H1B and gave him full fledged offer ( help desk job, as entry level as it gets )

The INS on the border ( where canadians ahve to get their H1B's stamped ) told him to pack his toejam and get the f..k out of the country. ( aka, denied, get out )

Ain't as easy as it sounds.

Rip, gonna join the union ? Or call your Democratic senator to protect your job ?

We love the free market theory as long as we're the ones pulling the dough in


Article is crap. Thinly veiled nationalism.
I interview people at my workplace for IT positions. it is hard to find qualified ones.
And certificates don't mean toejam those days. Heck, in normal companies, never did.

[lord dolf vader]

my wifes worthless cirt (ccna) took 9 months of her studying 2 or 3 hours a night plus classes.  why are these worthless?

[AKDejaVu]

Its easy to be nice and understanding when everything is going your way.  Its unfortunate to see what happens to people when things aren't going their way.

Foreigners aren't causing the problems we are seeing today.  Foreigners didn't start up litterally 1000's of .com companys over the last 5 years and completely tap the IT market as a result.  Foreigners didn't cause those .com companies to go bankrupt and turn loose tens of thousands of IT folks to flood the market with experienced certified personel.

Funny... none of the IT people were complaining about all the foreign co-workers when all were considered a commodoty and companies were paying top dollar to get anyone.

AKDejaVu

[Wlfgng]

good point.
being in IT myself, I know it's the glut of so many IT guys looking for work that makes finding and/or keeping jobs tougher.  most are skilled with tons of experience and looking to fill fewer and fewer jobs.
not to mention the fact that schools and tech schools are pumping out more and more job seekers.

[Thrawn]

No need for Canadians to go to the US to get Amercian IT jobs anymore.  The US IT companies are sending the jobs here.  Why pay an American $10 yankish, when you can pay a Canadian $10 canuckish.  

It's not the foreigners fault, it's the US IT corporations.

[Vulcan]

One of the problems is the protectionist US Economy. Its set up some false expectations within your market.

Two words, globlisation and commoditisation.

IT services are becoming more and more of commodities, and on the global market there are some cheap options.

However Rip, as with most cheap stuff there is lots of hidden costs, and that is cheap usually = low quality. The company I work for is a reasonable sized AsiaPac company, we use India for our software services and development, so I speak from experience.

Boeing will get bitten, they'll come back to US based IT, albeit looking for a slight sharper price than before but they'll come back.

[CH3]

Well you either believe in globalisation or you don't. So which one is it Rip?

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by fd ski
[B
Rip, gonna call the Union?
[/B]

First off, most union jobs are gone except final assembly at Boeing.  Why? Because they cut they're own throat. Since I hired in, when I was in a Union job, I always said we were overpaid for what we did compared to the same job outside of Boeing.  Well, the company has the right to offload any work they have, thats not part of the contract.  Boeing and what it does with its work is ITS business, not the union. So what did they do? Offloaded over 50% of the manufacturing jobs (Union) to sub contractors.

All I can say to the Unions at this time is "I told you so".

I'm salary, so I don't have Union representation, even if I did, wouldn't make any difference.

[gofaster]

Originally posted by senna
U mean like IBM Global Services. They were one of the Original folks who ventured into this IT business and they did so aggressively. Deals would be made, entire IT groups would let go then they would be offered to go work for IBM Global Services as contractors at their current position. This was something I witnessed years ago at an older job. I suppose things are different now. The difference was the buck long term and the more scalable and dynamic resources possible with a larger entity.  

I was on the other side of that business: I worked for IBM Global Services, working with the sales teams to make sure they weren't running afoul of the law (a job best described as "personality-altering").  The main impetus for outsourcing IT jobs is reduced cost, either through economies of scale or reducing payroll (i.e.: reducing the number of people doing the job or reducing the cost of keeping those people employed, such as making them contractors and not having to provide medical, dental, and retirement benefits, nor having to pay severence when the outsourcing contract expires).  Essentially, your employer was selling you out.  But you know what?  IBM sold out its labor force a few years later.  Now its just a shadow of its former glory, focusing on the content hosting business and laying people off as projects wind down and aren't renewed.  Gerstner is retiring with full benefits and a fat check.  The folks at the platoon level are scrambling to make ends meet.

Never underestimate the power of an MBA and office politics to get on the corporate path of success.

You have to remember that the main goal of a corporation is to earn money for its owners, whether stockholders or the officers or both, even if that means shafting its workers.  Workers are a resource and possibility the largest expense for a company.  If you work for a large corporation, be certain where your loyalties lie.  Are you in a position to benefit from your company reducing its expenses?  If you answer "no", then consider your job to be a revenue stream and get ready to run to another revenue stream when that creek runs dry.

[ra]

'true. jobs should be given to the ones skilled to do them, regardless of nation of origin.

however, if jobs are being give to others just to satisfy the politicions then screw it... as long as the playing field is equal and everyone has an equal chance, based on skills, I'm happy.'

I'm a free-marketeer myself, but in the case of H1Bs the market is not nearly free.  U.S. IT workers have always had foreign competition in the form of offshore IT farms and H1B visas, so the issue is not competition itself.  The issue is the natural ebb and flow of the U.S. marketplace.  The number of H1B's issued each year is not dynamically linked to real market forces, but to pressure/lobbying on Congress.  The decision to open the floodgates for H1B's was made during the .COM/Y2K bubble, and now that those bubbles have burst the market is totally screwed.  

An H1B from India can work cheaper than any native American because he lives in a sort of economic space capsule.  If he works here for $35,000 a year, he can easily save $10,000 a year.  When he goes back home to India after 3 years with $30,000 saved up, he is rich by Indian standards.  

The thing that bugs me the most is the fact that the IT recruiters who lobbied for the H1B increase make out like bandits when they sponsor these foreigners.  I talked to one Filipino programmer who said his recruiter was paying him 38% of the hourly rate the customer was paying for him.  I know there are other expenses involved, but the recruiter had to be making at least a 50% profit.

ra

[fd ski]

Originally posted by lord dolf vader
my wifes worthless cirt (ccna) took 9 months of her studying 2 or 3 hours a night plus classes.  why are these worthless?

Let me see if I can explain this any good...

Back in the days... i'm talking 1990-1995 area, certifications like Novell CNA were truly a test of one's experiance and knowledge. Stuff you would have a really hard time learning from the book.
You HAD a job in industry, then you did your certs to prove what you knew.

As MCSE came into the scene, tests got easier and easier, less and less job specific, more theory based, which is good, if you have previous experiance. If you don't, well, that's a whole another story.

Then the certs industry grew, people figured they can make killing teaching you 5 day class as a "prep" for a cert, which will GUARANTEE you a job. And they did. Market was flooded with people who knew to reset the spooler when printer doesn't print, but had no idea what spooler is.

Same story repeated itself for Cisco certs, with few years slide.

3 years ago, cert didn't show experiance or knowledge, more of the "willingness to go the distance". it was enough then, in the market which would hire a 6 year olds for IT jobs if it could.

Today on the other hand, if you walk into the job with a cert and no experiance, well, you're just toejam out of luck.

Too bad for your wife. She was about 2 years late.

[AcId]

Well.....speaking of ye ol' choppin block.....*looks left, looks right*.....Next week it gets used.....The axes are being sharpened as we speak.

Wish me luck fellas.