"Shortage of tech workers" or "Shortage of people who want to work at Microsoft"?
Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
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Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#42If it were a genuine crisis, rather than a 'genuine crisis', wages would be genuinely rising more than they are, for anyone with anything close to the skills sought. Instead, this strikes me as a push to get cheaper workers, rather than actually paying for a scarce resource. But maybe I'm just cynical.
According to this: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.htm Developer-related positions(both research and development), are some of the highest paid STEM-related positions available.
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Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#43There doesn't seem to be a shortage at all. We've gotten plenty of good candidates in our doors that turn us down because our pay is barely competitive and our health insurance is terrible. Pay more money and you can attract more tech workers. Or lower your standards and make a plan to promote in company education, make the specialized work force you need yourself!
That's all well and good for companies like Microsoft. In fact Microsoft can always hire staff into a foreign office, and transfer them to the USA after 1 year with an L1 visa (no quota), and train them as they go, if they so choose.
But this is not an option for small startups that have to move fast, and can't hire a larger B-team just because that's all they can find.
Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#44I support loosening immigration requirements... but another complimentary option would be for tech companies to raise wages. Why not do that?
What would that achieve? Are Microsoft's wages low, in your opinion? How much higher should they go?
It's a market. The wages are too low if they can't get the number of workers they want, and they should go higher until they can get the number of workers they want.
Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#45From the Huffington Post: "The Bureau Of Labor Statistics has released its annual Occupational Employment and Wages report, and the top-paying industries are dominated by health care professionals. In fact, nine of the 10 highest-paid jobs in America are in the health care industry. The only other group that made the top 10 is corporate executives." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/20/top-ten-highest-pai... Here…
I've encountered this sort of response citing the high pay in healthcare before. So I wanted to throw a thought out there for feedback. A relevant point is the "carrying capacity" for healthcare professionals. The USA can probably double the number of people employed in healthcare (using a handwavy argument that that 40 million [edit: I earlier wrote 40%] of the population is uninsured). Note the number of people wit…
Wait are you saying that there are fewer people working in health care in the US compared to STEM? I don't think that's true at all.
Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#46[deleted]
Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#47I'm for skilled immigration, but can we please, please rethink the H1B program? At the very least, don't make it so the individual goes out of status the day they leave their job. Give them time to shop around. And get rid of the fee/paperwork every time they switch jobs. Raise the fee to $50k and apply it to the first employer that sponsors them only. More of the risk of holding an H1B needs to go to the first emplo…
Raise the fee to $50k and apply it to the first employer that sponsors them only.
I think thats pretty unrealistic and I'm hoping that $50k was a typo ... my first h1b was by a small firm who would most definitely have turned me down at that price point.
An important change that I think could be made with the h1b would be to allow people to get into Green card status after 2 years of being in continuous h1b status ... irrespective of company. That way h1-b hires aren't used as pawns in lowering wages and abused because they can be forced to do things that an American hire would never do.
Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a tough question, because I would generally prefer to allow the market to set employment and wage levels. The problem here is that employers in high tech are asking for special consideration - granting green cards specifically to STEM degrees. Unfortunately, this puts us in the position of playing favorites through government - we're deciding that there "should" be more engineers than we're getting at current…
I understand your point, but if you prefer to allow the market to set employment and wage level, you should be for much looser immigration. The government regulating immigration is anything but free market. If the government were to loosen requirement for STEM immigrants, that is having freer market, not less.
There is an externality to letting in more people though. The hiring companies get all the upside in form of more workers, but the public as a whole takes on the downside risk of supporting them if they're unemployed, retraining them if they're unemployed, integrating them culturally, etc. The public commits to educating those peoples' kids for free for 12-13 years and at subsidized prices for college, supporting them if they ever use welfare services, etc. It's not a clear cut: "more free, less free" situation, but a "who pays for it?" situation.
Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#49I'm for skilled immigration, but can we please, please rethink the H1B program? At the very least, don't make it so the individual goes out of status the day they leave their job. Give them time to shop around. And get rid of the fee/paperwork every time they switch jobs. Raise the fee to $50k and apply it to the first employer that sponsors them only. More of the risk of holding an H1B needs to go to the first emplo…
Raising the fee will only serve to benefit bigger companies (e.g. Microsoft) and hurt smaller companies, particularly startups, from hiring.
Maybe the fee should be higher for low salary jobs, to prevent the visa from being used for bringing in low-wage employees for outsourcing firms.
Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'
#50> Employers would have to pay $10,000 for each employee that receives one of the visas.
How convenient for Microsoft, they're trying to kill off competition for foreign engineers from Startups in SF, NY and Boston that are starting to realize that they can get some really good H1-b hires to work for them