"Is software and services next? It's a very valid question and it would be a miracle if it didn't happen," Grove said.
The root of this problem IMO is the H1-B immigration program. This is an on-the-job-training program designed to transfer as much high-tech work to India, China, and other low-wage countries as possible. Grove and all other high-tech CEOs have been wildly in favor of this program, which benefits them at the expense of the American worker. It is a disaster for the American economy and for American security.
Below is an ad I wrote and paid for in the Capitol Hill newspaper Rollcall. I did it 3 years ago by selling some stock, back when stock was worth something. ;-(
I've also posted occasionally about it on SI, on the Foreign Affairs Discussion Group, e.g.
Message 19091819
The best sources of info on H1-B IMO are:
programmersguild.org
heather.cs.ucdavis.edu
Doc [ex-software engineer]
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Rollcall Sept, 2000
H1-B: H-NO
Forgive me for not joining the chorus of praise for expanding the H1-B program. The entire American establishment: business, the media, government, and academia, seem united behind it.
This is surprising since the news since the last, more contentious, expansion hasn’t been very good. First, Rep. Lamar Smith held hearings in the House that revealed a shocking amount of fraud and deceit in H1-B and similar “non-immigrant” programs.
Next Al Strong, an insider who helped write the H1-B law, spoke up, revealing that he and 400 fellow technology business owners are under assault: “‘I must get 20 e-mails a week that ask me to take on [foreign workers] available in the United States,’ he said. ‘It’s normally a company from India and they offer these people at ridiculously low salaries.’”
But the effect of these two revelations was muted by the fact that they received very little coverage in the national press. By contrast, the press always had room for the latest farcical high-tech industry-financed “study,” purporting to prove the desperate labor shortage.
Why such unanimity for more H1-Bs? The press is a major high-tech employer, and sees its future on the Internet. The press is part of the high-tech hiring process through want-ads, etc. Academics want more foreign students, to expand their empires and to bring in more government dollars. They get cheap labor, and by overproducing science Ph.D.s, are able to get post-docs and untenured teachers, some on H1-B, at “ridiculously low salaries” also. And trotting out the old “education crisis” warhorse is always good for more government largesse. Government is swayed by the great power, prestige, wealth, and contributions of the American high-tech industry.
And one thing more. Alexander Haig recently filed to sell stock he acquired as a board member of AOL, for a total of almost 30 million dollars. I'm certainly not accusing him or fellow board member Colin Powell of any wrongdoing. But others are sorely tempted by those 30 (million) pieces of silver. Those who cooperate with the high-tech machine may look forward to board seats, consulting deals, and other benefits. Government shows a bipartisan zeal for H1-B not seen since Savings and Loan reform.
The Microsoft antitrust trial afforded the first look inside the high-tech sausage factory. The industry’s machinations and truth-impairment moved the New York Times to quote a Lily Tomlin line, “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” The trial proved that when high-tech has a choice between the truth and an untruth that will make them money, they always tell the untruth.
LET’S LOOK AT A FEW OF THOSE UNTRUTHS:
THE MOUNTAIN OF HIGH-TECH WANT-ADS PROVES THE DESPERATE LABOR SHORTAGE.
I personally counted ads in the ‘bible,’ The Sunday San Jose Mercury News, and found fewer professional high-tech ads in May 1999 than in May 1978. Yet somehow we muddled through for decades without H1-B, to dominate the world software industry.
“IT'S THE FREE MARKET IN ACTION.”
A government program bringing in hundreds of thousands of foreign indentured servants to replace Americans in high-tech jobs is an outrageous, unprincipled intervention in the free market for labor. Rather than meddling in the strongest sector of the economy, government might better direct that reforming zeal closer to home.
“IF WE DON'T BRING IN H1-BS, INDUSTRY WILL JUST MOVE THE JOBS OVERSEAS.”
Industry has understandably been trying for years to move software production overseas, where wages are often a tenth of what they are here. It hasn’t worked very well until recently. Team software development is very complex, only learned by working on an experienced team. It is the H1-B program itself which has trained the critical mass of programmers and managers, made the business connections, and established the relationships that have allowed cross-cultural software development to flourish. The companies most clamoring for more H1-Bs are the ones that have been moving the most work to India already: Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, Intel.
Outsourcing production to low-wage countries is the holy grail of the software industry, and their biggest potential payoff from H1-B. High-tech would be the last industry to continue using higher-paid American workers for patriotic or sentimental reasons. Note that industry is in no hurry to get green cards for their H1-Bs, nor to increase the country quotas for them.
When the H1-B program began, around 1990, America dominated the world software industry. India had software exports of just $30 million a year, compared to 1998 revenues of about $2.5 Billion a year, and projected revenues in 2008 of $50 Billion.
The new business trend is to fire your American programmers after they train their replacements, H1-Bs working for an Indian company, who will act as liaisons to the main programming force based in India itself. Dun & Bradstreet, Hewitt, and others are going down this path. It is likely to become a stampede once the H1-B increase is passed, particularly if this trend wins the expected approval on Wall Street, pumping up the all-important stock price.
Wasn’t there supposed to be a program for those who work hard and play by the rules? I hope it's not H1-B. Under H1-B those people are squeezed hard by those who make the rules. Its a shabby way to treat the workers most responsible for America’s prosperity, and it’s a lesson that won’t be lost on America’s brighter young people as they choose careers.
And, at the least, the American people should be told that “The American Competitiveness Act” means teaching other countries how to be competitive with America, because there's been some confusion on this point.
Lily will need to step that cynicism up a few more levels.
__________
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Annual cost of domestic staff as reported by Indian outsourcer Cognizant Technology to American customers.
Data Search, integration and analysis - $4K
Engineering and design - $8K
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Beginning Post-doctoral Fellow at the National Institutes of Health - $28K
H1-B: (80% make less than $50K) - $50K
Newly graduated lawyers, national law firms, with no experience - $140K
Bill & Larry’s net worth - $50 Billion each
(May I suggest that they receive ‘heroic entrepreneur’ awards for doing that well when it’s so hard to get good help.) |
