U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
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Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#2Along those lines, the census agency says most STEM graduates do not work in STEM fields: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/10/cens...
Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#3Aren't 12,000 of the 18,000 mostly overseas jobs at Nokia Devices in Finland? And 6000 doesn't seem that high based on the churn at most big tech companies between people leaving, layoffs and firings.
And it's kinda funny that Satya would've himself been on a work visa when he worked at Sun or at Microsoft, perhaps the senator is implying that poor Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced with a foreign worker? :)
Looks like a flamebait headline and article by the same guy at ComputerWorld who seems to be on a crusade against H1B, as part of a personal crusade or for page views (these articles seems to invariably make it to the Slashdot front page).
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=computerworld+h...
Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#4I've been thinking about this subject for a few years now. Like many HN'ers, I work deep inside the tech industry. I'm also fortunate enough to have watched the operations of dozens of different companies.
I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers. I'm not talking about managing projects, or how to coach or train. I mean the whole thing. The technology sector of the economy has no idea of exactly how many workers, in what configuration, it needs for accomplishing any job.
Weird situation, I know. But where that leaves us is a lot of "open" job positions that are little more than unfulfilled wishes. Sure would be nice to have another 40 guys on the helpdesk. Would that be as nice as 10 more developers? Who knows? Or -- we've got that big government project coming up, so we'll need at least 500 IT workers. Why do we need it? Who knows? It's a big project. It should have a lot of people on it, right?
The implications of this is that there's a huge downward pressure on wages. People want a certain number of tech workers, but there's no market pressure to hire them or even to lay them off if they've hired too many. They just want a certain number. So what they really want is really cheap, disposable workers that they can easily swap in and out as the political winds inside a company changes. The U.S. labor market isn't really geared for that.
Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#5Aren't 12,000 of the 18,000 mostly overseas jobs at Nokia Devices in Finland? And 6000 doesn't seem that high based on the churn at most big tech companies between people leaving, layoffs and firings. And it's kinda funny that Satya would've himself been on a work visa when he worked at Sun or at Microsoft, perhaps the senator is implying that poor Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced with a foreign work…
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Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#6"U.S. Senator accuses Microsoft of not treating workers as the generic cogs they are"
"'When I go down to the market to get some workers, I always check the label', says the Senator, 'it's our patriotic duty to acquire locally produced workers'"
Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#7I've been thinking about this subject for a few years now. Like many HN'ers, I work deep inside the tech industry. I'm also fortunate enough to have watched the operations of dozens of different companies. I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers. I'm not talking about managing projects, or how to coach or train. I mean the whole thing. The technology sector of…
>I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers
It's not just the tech industry, almost all companies struggle to measure productivity, especially as a comparative measure. People like salesmen do have defined metrics like sales, but it's harder to do that for people in HR and Accounting, for example.
Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#8Along those lines, the census agency says most STEM graduates do not work in STEM fields: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/10/cens...
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Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#9A large pool of H1B quota is being misused for sure. Instead of those mediocre or low tech workers, if more highly skilled workers are let in, I guess it would be better and we can manage with current allotted quotas.
Re: U.S. Senator blasts Microsoft's H-1B push as it lays off 18,000 workers
#10Aren't 12,000 of the 18,000 mostly overseas jobs at Nokia Devices in Finland? And 6000 doesn't seem that high based on the churn at most big tech companies between people leaving, layoffs and firings. And it's kinda funny that Satya would've himself been on a work visa when he worked at Sun or at Microsoft, perhaps the senator is implying that poor Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced with a foreign work…
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> He is a Republican Senator from Alabama. He doesn't need to look at facts.
Let's be fair here. That should read:
He is a Senator. He doesn't need to look at facts.