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New The ghost of Desitter
he told us so, but many would not listen. Companies would rather hire a H1B Visa worker for six years than hire a US Citizen for 6+ years and pay a pension, etc. As Boxley said, Indentured Servents.

My previous employer had a 90% turnaround rate for 4 years in its IT department. 30 people got fired or quit in four years time, and the IT department is 32 people out of the 600 employee firm. Even custer had better odds than we had. :)

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New H1B's
Even though they may not understand the business they're dealing with.

Even though they may speak English in Hinduese (or whatever).

Even though they may not actually be able to do the job.

I think offshore/imported work has been hugely hyped and littlely profiled as to actual results.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
-- Donald Knuth
New Re: H1B's
Even though they may speak English in Hinduese (or whatever).

Ferfuckssake at least get a grip on the problem. The language is called Hindi, the religion is called Hinduism and the singular for a member of that particular socio-ethno-religious grouping is Hindu.

Speaking English in "Hinduese (or whatever)" indeed.

Kindly keep your racial prejudices to yourself.



Peter
Shill For Hire
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
New Quit crying wolf
There's nothing racial there.

He's not referring to Hindi, but to the English spoken by natives of India, which often seems quite different than American English.

And, all of the points he brings up are quite valid as potential problems when it comes to shipping work offshore, whether it be to China, India, Thailand, Mexico, or where ever. You'd see many of the same problems if an Indian firm subcontracted work out to an American firm.

If you want to discuss the problems of global competition, communications across cultures, problems of programmers who lack domain knowledge, or other points brought up, please do so. But please don't throw out stupid accusations.

Tony
New The India people call them Hadjis
from the "Johnny Quest" cartoon. Hadji spoke broken English with a thick accent on that cartoon. I have a friend from India who speaks perfect English, he tells me that they call the ones that don't speak perfect English as Hadjis.

But let me focus on the other points.

H1B Visa workers:

#1 Do not understand the US business model, or don't seem to be able to adapt to it. They can program, but the programs seem to be cardboard cutouts next to the code that a US Citizen can code. But many PHBs want "Fast Food" code instead of quality code.

#2 The quality of the work is not as good as a US Citizen, they usually do the coding fast and cheap. this results in Spaghetti code (code that is hard to understand or maintain), poor documentation, memory leaks, and other problems.

#3 The colleges in India are different than the ones in the US, so they get taught to do things differently. In some cases this may be good, in others it may be bad.

#4 They can only work for six years on a H1B Visa, then they have to go home for a year, and then can work another six years. A US Citizen can work until they retire, get laid off, etc. With the US Citizen you have them for life, with the H1B Visa worker you have them for a temporary amount of time.

#5 With English as a second language, they usually have poor communication skills with English speaking people. They may not understand our culture, or phrases that we use. According to someone I know, who worked with several H1B Visa workers from India, they are hard to work with. You tell them one thing, and they can take it a whole different way.

#6 They know that they will be there a short amount of time, so they have no reason to make a program that will last a lifetime or have a long life. They go in, slam out some code, and then don't think about how they could make it so that it can be upgraded to the next technology easier. Little things like using global variables for various settings so it can be easily changed, reusing objects, turning code that is used over and over again into global libraries, etc don't get done. So the employer gets disposable code that usually cannot be used over again.

#7 They take the wealth out of the country, when they move back to their home country, they take the money back with them. They may have to cash in their 401Ks, or Profit Sharing accounts, or sell their stock, but most of the time the money goes with them. This ordinailly wouldn't be that much of a big deal, but the H1B Visa quota was tripled. Which means that more of them will be taking money out of the country. Six years or more can be a big chunk of change, and multiply that by the number of H1B Visa workers.

#8 We don't know for sure, but some of them could belong to terrorist groups, or got contacted by terrorist groups to go to the US and sabotage something. I know this sounds paranoid, but the H1B Visa background checks are a joke. They need to get more stricter on them. Some of the Sept 11th Terrorists had come into the country on work visas, or fake IDs, or another way. If they did it, why not more?

#9 They take jobs away from US citizens, right now we are feeling an IT crunch because most of the US citizens that work in the IT field are either losing their jobs to an H1B Visa worker, got downsized, got put on part-time salary, or had their job affected in some way because there is cheaper labor out there due to the H1B Visa workers. Some may not be effected, but everyone knows somebody that lost their IT job, or had to work a different one, or had projects taken away from them.

#10 We should focus on the US first, if there are not enough qwualified IT people, then start training your own people to fill those higher jobs. Why is it that a US Corporation won't pay for training, yet will pay legal fees to hire an H1B Visa worker? Why not use the money to train existing workers to work with the higher technology? *Bog*

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
New That's one side
But I think your presentation is a little too one sided.

First off, I have dealt with one H-1B visa worker and wasn't impressed. But, then again, I've seen worse from American programmers.

Second, I think you're being unfair. Immigrants, including Indians, have added a lot of wealth to the Bay area and other parts of the US. Many are quite good, and the goal of many H-1B visa holders is to become US citizens.

It's rare to find employment for life. The main example I can think of right off hand is our Italian parent company, in Italy, where they like to hire right out of college, train the people well, and then keep them. The closest in Silicon Valley was probably Agilent, but even they have had to lay people off recently. My company has been through a lot of people, for a variety of reasons.

So because of layoffs and looking for better opportunities, the average job stint in Silicon Valley is around two years.

Also note that H1-B employees are supposed to be paid the prevailing wages. From what I've seen and heard here, they typically are paid pretty well.

When it comes to shipping work offshore (outsourcing manufacturing, programming, tech support, etc to people based in India, China, etc) there can be a whole different set of problems, like lack of communications, lack of understanding the problem domain, different cultures leading to very different approaches. I've seen a lot of problems with companies that use the 'design in US, build overseas' approach. The obvious advantage is lower cost, and it does work OK most of the time.

Take disk drives for example. No one (or not very many) is willing to pay extra for a "made in US or made in UK" hard drive, and it'd be very hard to build one in the US for the same price as the made in Asia ones.

Tony

New Re: That's one side
Both you and Norm have put things well. Tony, although he wasn't strictly a programmer, one of the best people I know is an Indonesian immigrant who adapted very well to America. Yet just the same, some of the least enjoyable experiences have been with H1B's who never quite got a grasp of the programming domain.

Actually, come to think of it, some of this is due mainly to following a rigorous waterfall development approach, not an iterative approach. Needing everything specified up front rather than developing it. That may be more the fault of the companies involved than the people themselves.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
-- Donald Knuth
New Hey, I listened to him.
What I didn't want to listen to was the racist pap that was coming out of his mouth about "furriners."

Face it, if we were over there, we'd kill to get an H1B. The real enemy is the corporations, not the H1Bs...
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
New What you said.
Welcome to free-market capitalism, where the lowest-cost good wins.

Sucks, eh?


Peter
Shill For Hire
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
New except when you're buying
New Unless you don't like
low quality goods, that have an expiration date of six years? :)

"Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
     H1B visas in the news - (Silverlock) - (16)
         Cheap indentured servants -NT - (boxley)
         The ghost of Desitter - (nking) - (10)
             H1B's - (wharris2) - (5)
                 Re: H1B's - (pwhysall) - (4)
                     Quit crying wolf - (tonytib) - (3)
                         The India people call them Hadjis - (nking) - (2)
                             That's one side - (tonytib) - (1)
                                 Re: That's one side - (wharris2)
             Hey, I listened to him. - (inthane-chan) - (3)
                 What you said. - (pwhysall) - (2)
                     except when you're buying -NT - (tonytib) - (1)
                         Unless you don't like - (nking)
         Pisses me off - (tuberculosis)
         Re: H1B visas in the news - (a6l6e6x) - (1)
             The H1B mess - (nking)
         possible solution, make them adhere to Davis Bacon - (boxley)

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