Tech Recruiting Clashes with Immigration Rules

[babylonsister]

Tech Recruiting Clashes with Immigration Rules

By MATT RICHTEL
Published: April 11, 2009


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Where’s Sanjay?

The question comes from one of dozens of engineers around a crowded conference table at Google. They have gathered to discuss how to build easy-to-use maps that could turn hundreds of millions of mobile phones into digital Sherpas — guiding travelers to businesses, restaurants and landmarks.

“His plane gets in at 9:30,” the group’s manager responds.

Google is based here in Silicon Valley. But Sanjay G. Mavinkurve, one of the key engineers on this project, is not.

Mr. Mavinkurve, a 28-year-old Indian immigrant who helped lay the foundation for Facebook while a student at Harvard, instead works out of a Google sales office in Toronto, a lone engineer among marketers.

He has a visa to work in the United States, but his wife, Samvita Padukone, also born in India, does not. So he moved to Canada.

“Every American I’ve talked to says: ‘Dude, it’s ridiculous that we’re not doing everything we can to keep you in the country. We need people like you!’ ” he said.

“The people of America get it,” he added. “And in a matter of time, I think current lawmakers are going to realize how dumb they’re being.”

Immigrants like Mr. Mavinkurve are the lifeblood of Google and Silicon Valley, where half the engineers were born overseas, up from 10 percent in 1970. Google and other big companies say the Chinese, Indian, Russian and other immigrant technologists have transformed the industry, creating wealth and jobs.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/business/12immig.html

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. Another world citizen, some day we may grow up.

[Deja Q]

7. LOL! Enough with the "world citizen" gibber. If that were true,

the cost of living in every country would be the same, the wages would be the same, profits would be real, education would be real, and EVERYBODY would be better off.

Right now it's a farce. Please try and think for yourself.


Addendum: If we were all "world citizens", would we still have individual maps as countries, individual armies, individual spending, the US bailing everybody out, et cetera? Nope. So, until that happens, please spare the fiction of "world citizen" anything. That's a lie.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

9. What, no vision? The world remains flat, it needs to be viewed

whole.

[empyreanisles]

2. Not enough Americans are getting Computer Science or Engineering degrees.

This is a direct result of students not being prepared in math & science from the early stages. I am considering going back to grad. school for an MS in Computer Science so I can at least teach on the community college level.

Right now, though, I'm just an out of work programmer.

[Deja Q]

3. No money in it - it's all being done cheaper, just show the degree* and be done.

Most people also agree that the degree you're putting good money into should be able to land a job that allows one to pay it back.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11181-0.html?forumID=6&threadID=179848&start=0

Forgive me for not believing the cow and bull story that Americans are not being prepared from the early stages. I was there, but I haven't gotten a job, experience, and I'm pigeonholed in my current job so I've decided "Fuck it, I'm training for another field."



* legitimately obtained or otherwise.

[AndyTiedye]

8. If There Are Not Enough CS People, Why Are You Out of Work?

[empyreanisles]

10. I left on my own accord. I wasn't fired/laid off.

I also haven't been looking for employment. It's a long story.

NOTE: I left when the economy was "good".

[ChromeFoundry]

12. Not true....

College enrollment in computer science, engineering on the rise

3/18/2009

SAN FRANCISCO — Relief may be finally on the way for engineering-starved employers.
For the first time since the dot-com bust, there is a jump in the number of undergraduate computer-science majors. New enrollment in North American computer science and engineering programs rose 8% during the 2007-08 school year from the year before, according to a report released Tuesday by the Computing Research Association, a trade group for about 200 university computing departments. It is the first increase since 2002.

More:http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009-03-17-engineering-computer-enrollment_N.htm

[Tesha]

13. Why on earth *WOULD* an American go into Computer Science or Engineering?

You'll only end up unemployed with "your" job
given to a much-less-costly Indian, either resident
here on an H1-B visa or living back in Bangalore.

Instead, get an education in some skill that must
be delivered live and in person.

Tesha

[empyreanisles]

14. Ummm.. because you love computers and want to know exactly how they work?

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I believe an education is its own reward. If it leads to a high paying job, then all the better. But it should not deter you from gaining the high level knowledge of a subject area.

In the end, your passion and acumen in your area of expertise will produce results that ultimately lead to some sort of monetary compensation. If you have talent & skills, you will not starve.

[ddeclue]

15. That's a great theory as long as education is free...

:eyes:

In the real world people get an education to get ahead in life and if it happens to be in something that they like and want to know more about, that's just gravy.

[Deja Q]

4. Facebook; the same one that revamped its ToS contract because of how they saved peoples' profiles?

For employers to cache and search through later?

[ddeclue]

5. Nonsense... there are plenty of engineers and programmers looking for too few jobs right now

and we are being forced to compete against H1B visa holders who did NOT have to pay for their college degrees and who can thus afford to work for a lot less money. I just spent 15 weeks being unemployed and will be going back to work on Monday. I know two other engineers here locally ALSO unemployed. The reason I was let go: My test engineering job was outsourced to China where the manufacturing was already being done.

In addition to using H1B Visas to drive down wages for technically skilled people, corporations are also offshoring engineering tasks these days as well to places like Bangalore, China, and even Vietnam.

The end result is that it doesn't matter what you know or how much education you bother to obtain, ultimately your skills will be made worthless because you will be forced to compete against slave labor in countries that don't allow unions and/or have multi-party democracies.

The few technical jobs left in this country are either medical or defense related. The only reason they aren't being outsourced is because we don't trust other countries to build our weapons systems for us - these jobs all require U.S. citizenship and security clearances OR they simply can't be outsourced because medical jobs have to be near the people being treated.

There are even attempts now to outsource medical jobs through so called "medical vacations" where people go overseas to get treated at much reduced rates and combine the process with a vacation there.

Ultimately we are all being reduced to serfdom unless we do something about it. You will either be born rich and die that way or be born poor and die that way. There will be no in-between middle class any more and no way to be "upwardly mobile" anymore as long as we accept "free trade" (i.e. slave labor based) instead of fair trade.

Doug D.

[Deja Q]

6. 100% agreement.

The sad part is, with China's current reputation (which they made, with little help from anyone else), I'd be wary of the testing done.

China is more than free to put in regulations and improve its image, we'll all listen and approve, but then I'm sure they'd lose their manufacturing industry to another country that'll do it cheaper too.

[OhioChick]

11. Agreed and Well Said.

I know of at least a dozen qualified U.S. IT workers that are out of work and I'll soon be joining those ranks. It's all about cheap labor.

[lumberjack_jeff]

16. He's lived here since age 14. He was educated entirely in the US

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~sanjay/

Where "dumb" comes in was not investing those resources into educating an american engineer.

They may have been born overseas, but they were educated here. Someone must explain to me why he's doing a job that no american will do, and if they had Sanjay's education, could do just as well.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the problem isn't the proliferation of work visas, it's the proliferation of student visas.