[Tfug] OT: Proposed increase in H1B visas

Tue Mar 18 09:35:07 MST 2008

I think you just hit the nail on the head with one line:

Finding qualified IT personnel is almost impossible

It's easy to find people, but very difficult to find the ones you want.  
H1Bs give you a larger pool to choose from, and that's bound to mean a 
few more of the rare gems.  I think there's always going to be plenty of 
work for the top talent, although it's not always easy for the great 
employees and great employers to identify each other.  Adding another 
10,000 superstars would be great for the IT industry in general and the 
businesses would gladly hire them.  Bringing in 90,000 mediocre people 
along with the 10,000 really good ones will just worsen the glut of 
mediocre people.  Now add in all the shades of gray between superstars 
and idiots and the whole situation gets really complicated.

Personally, I'm opposed to more H1Bs because I think they're a short 
term solution to a long term problem.  If we need 65k H1Bs/year, then we 
need to be offering citizenship to people who will bring their families 
and stay here rather than renting workers who will visit for a few 
years, build up their skillset, send money home and eventually go back 
to build up our competitors in another country.

-Steve

Harry McGregor wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am not going to get into details on the H1B Program, and if it's good 
> or not, but I can provide several levels of insight.
>
> IT consultants are idiots:
> As an IT consultant, I can tell you that many of the people in our 
> industry are a disgrace to the industry.  I have seen servers setup with 
> RAID0, 30 computer windows networks with a Linux Domain Controller setup 
> with XP Home instead of Pro, thus no domain auth.  I have seen telephone 
> systems installed (VoIP/Asterisk based) that you could not even return 
> missed calls on, as the dial plans were not built properly.
>
> Customers are idiots:
> I have seen my support contracts (at very reasonable $/month) dropped 
> due to stupid issues (took too long to fix the owner's secondary home 
> computer, or change the name on a phone), then the replacement company 
> actually thought they were have to restore from backup when the server 
> did not reboot properly (raid id's got replaced), they experienced days 
> of down time vs virtually zero down time, and had to pay more to get it.
>
> Another previous customer never notified us of an on-going issues 
> (echo), and then won't let us resolve the issues, nor will they pay for 
> the work done, or equipment that has been installed.
>
> I actually had to sue the company my dad works for, as they would not 
> pay for my time recovering a double drive failure in their raid 5.  The 
> president of the company thought I would do it as a "favor" for their IT 
> manager.  We got their data restored (company would not authorize $ for 
> additional backup tapes, and the one set had not been brought back 
> onsite for about 4 months).  Who does the company send to represent them 
> in small claims court?  Their accountant?  Owner of the company?  No, my 
> dad, who had nothing to do with the transaction or work being done.
>
> Trying to hire is a PIA:
> I have hired for numerous positions, both at U of A and else where.  
> Finding qualified IT personnel is almost impossible.  I was recently 
> hiring for a Windows/Linux server position, and had one of the three 
> finalists properly describe RAID0, and then go on and say it was 
> appropriate for a server!
>
> Training is available, but never enough:
> I teach classes for Pima, mostly centered on Linux and Unix.  I end up 
> going into routing technologies, switching, vlans, windows domains, 
> basic dns and ipv4 concepts, and general hardware.  It's not that the 
> students have not been exposed to it before in one way or another, but 
> it's just not enough.  Now we are going into virtualization 
> technologies, and teaching the classes via VMWare server, on a debian 
> base.  I actually took most of a class explaining how virtualization 
> works, and how it applies to the class.  We just started getting into 
> virtual network interfaces, and setting up routing and firewalling 
> between two interfaces on the virtual linux box to permit a virtual 
> windows box to get internet access.
>
> I have of course had good students and bad students over the years 
> (including one that would always keep his hand on the mouse, even though 
> we were at the command line, and I had not had the students setup GPM, 
> think what that will do to your typing speed).  I know of several that 
> have gone on to have very successful IT careers, and others, no matter 
> how talented they were just give up on the industry (one is in a nursing 
> program now, and he is in his 40s)
>
> So in summary, it's difficult to find people willing/interested/have a 
> love of technology that want to go into the industry and who do well, 
> while at the same time you have people that should not be touching a 
> computer over charging clients, and the clients liking it.  It's really 
> hard to cut through this.  For some reason people seem to think that IT 
> is a cash cow, it's not, it's a lot of work, a fair amount of stress, 
> and it has ups and downs, and the pay can be good, but generally not 
> "high" end.  Most entry level nurses in Tucson make more than even the 
> server related IT people in Tucson.
>
>
>                                         Harry
>
>
>
>
> keith smith wrote:
>   
>> Hi fellow tech people,
>>
>> Seems we have a sort of problem locally with our own congresswoman 
>> Gabrielle Giffords. <http://giffords.house.gov/contact/index.shtml>
>>
>> I first learned of this problem on the PLUG list.
>>
>> Seems she wants to double the amount of H1B visas from 65,000 to 
>> 130,000 per year and remove the student H1B visas from 20,000 to 
>> unlimited.  The legislation would increase the H-1B cap to 180,000 in 
>> 2010 to 2015 if the 130,000 cap is reached the year before.
>>
>> In part the article states:
>>
>> The Innovation Employment Act, introduced by Representative Gabrielle 
>> Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, late Thursday, would increase the cap 
>> in H-1B visas from 65,000 a year to 130,000 a year. In addition, there 
>> would be no cap on H-1B applications for foreign graduate students 
>> attending U.S. colleges and studying science, technology and related 
>> fields. Currently, there's a 20,000-a-year cap on visas for graduate 
>> students in all fields.
>>
>> http://www.cio.com/article/197100/Bill_Would_Double_Cap_on_H_B_Visas
>>
>> I called her office and complained.  I think everyone on the list 
>> should do likewise.  Phone: (520) 881-3588.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------
>> Keith Smith
>> (520) 207-9877
>> PHP Programmer <http://www.netcodeman.com/>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try 
>> it now. 
>> <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51733/*http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ%20> 
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
>> Subscription Options:
>> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>>     
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
> Subscription Options:
> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>
>   