Sure but most engineers do not think it through. They simply demand that the whole program be canned and that's stupid. Instead, they should insist on fixing the program as is, for which there needs to be no law change at all. I have outlined how to do that.
Unions know nothing about H-1B. Neither do most engineers, they should first _read_ the law, then voice an opinion.
Shortages are real. Why would Intel and other companies set up design centers in Israel where labor costs are sky high? Why did TI place the design center for the MSP430 in Germany where costs are as high and labor laws are way unfavorable to employers? Why does Atmel employ engineers in super-expensive Scandinavia?
I called up both my senators.. When I called the democratic senator's office, I was able to talk with a legislative aid for about 10 minutes.. Note: the freshmen republican senator office didn't answer the phone.
First major point.
The H-1B visa props up the once abandoned, defective (company town)/defacto indentured servant business models.
Before H-1B, when a company used up of the available local talent.
It either retrained or re task'd existing employees(not happening). Increased wages & benefits to acquire employees from other local employers(not happening). Contracted highly paid specialists(consultants) to perform short term tasks (not happening). Hired older(>40yr) technology workers(not happening). Opened up branch offices, (distribute work load), in other parts of the USA(also not happening).
These foreign work visa's(H-1B, L-1x, F-1 opt) interfere with/defeat all these traditional shortage mechanisms which would normally deprive these sociopath employers of their victims.
Yes, some business are destined to fail. Employers do not have the right to abuse employees and continue too exist.
H-1B enables these sociopathic employers, to depress wages via dozens of loopholes. Typically by hiring for a lower paid entry level position, while assigning more difficult advanced tasks, using forced unpaid overtime, and generally abusing workers.
Second major point.
Simple economic theory, of supply verses demand, dictates that increasing the numbers of workers(Supply) automatically lowers wages(cost per unit) for the whole market.
In the past the high wages of tech workers, (disposable time & income), was the seed corn for the tech industry, enabling them to become the early adopters of new tech. That dynamic is now long gone.
Lastly, a successful US tech worker has already acquired significant fixed assets, which may require significant price reduction in order to sell quickly. Incurring a significant financial loss like that, may require five, maybe ten, years to recover from, thus making such a move a non-option.
Third major point,
The US Government receives approximately 85% of it's tax revenue based on individual income and Social security taxes(workers wages). Depressing industry wide wage scales has a rippling effect through out the industry, and beyond. These same depressed wages/income also result in significantly lower federal tax receipts.
Congress by undercutting wages and income on a wholesale basis, is on a path to oblivion. Notice the skyrocketing federal debt, a big chunk(several trillion dollars) of that is due to past and present worker visa abuses.
If they continue(or accelerate) this self destructive, anti-social corporate behavior, either they shift the government's tax burden onto these corps, or become insolvent.
Ever tried to find a really good analog engineer? I have, and it was no fun at all. In many cases another company snatched them away from my clients very quickly.
this day).
We have their huge Folsom about 10 miles away and I know a lot of folks who work there. They live here and they tell a very different story.
It's not about merchandise but about people.
So why doesn't California? Such negotiations are a normal thing in business.
There are two possibilities. One is that engineers can work in the USA. The other is that engineers can work in foreign countries. If engineers work in the USA, then additional jobs are created in the US. If engineers work in foreign counties, the additional jobs are created over seas.
By all means let's get rid of H-1B visas and let some other countries be the leaders in tech.
Ever tried to get a job when you're over 50? _TOO_ good to get a job, "overqualified"...
There is _NO_ shortage. We have how many millions people out of job in our country? Do you think they are all janitors or burger flippers?
When you guys say "good engineer" you omit 90% of other conditions like "ready to work for food," "not having any belongings so ready to move anywhere on the first call," "30-years old with 35 years of experience" etc. etc. etc.
Sure there are some really unique guys worth bringing in but "shortage of Java programmers" etc. is simply BS.
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I _am_ over 50 and I've never had a problem with that.
For certain engineers there definitely is a shortage. I vividly remember one of the academic H-1B foes, a professor who adamantly proclaimed he can find numerous great candidates for any EE opening. So I personally called him up on that, actually told him that if he gets us a good discrete circuit designer we'd send his university a nice fat finder's fee. Hic Rhodus, hic salta, as the old folks used to say. He couldn't do it!
Unfortunately too many are low-skilled which is a problem. Then lots of smart web site designers, loan officers, realtors and so on. I know many of them. Society simply does not need so many of them. One guy I recently met actually did study engineering but threw in the towel, said it was too difficult with the math and all that. Well, yeah, then one will have a harder time finding jobs in life.
I have never met any engineer worth his or her salt that carried a sign "Work for food".
There is no shortage of Java programmers. But there is a shortage of seasoned (yes, as in older) analog circuit design engineers and various other disciplines.
No the analog market dried up a long time ago.. Late 1980's or so..
What's left really isn't worth the effort. Some microwave stuff(not a huge market), some medical devices. Power engineering, better off with a digitally controlled front end..
DSP's &PGA's rule the day and night.
And from what I've seen, RCG's/imported workers might get some the analog stuff right, but then completely screw up on the thermodynamics. Which results in a unreliable product in the field.
What? I make a living in exactly that market since pretty much forever.
They don't. For example, I design a lot of low noise switch mode converters. A FPGA wouldn't even fit in some of them. Oh, and try to get boundary conduction mode going in a MHz switcher using only a DSP or FPGA.
Besides, once clock frequencies head into the GHz range a lot of digital stuff quickly requires analog talent again. A good dose of my assignments isn't really analog but the underlying problems are.
stuff right, but
product in
You have to get the right kind of engineer for the right kind of job. If you hire an experienced business jet pilot and then task him to win the Indianapolis race instead, don't complain. If you can't find good allrounders look at engineers from countries like Russia. People who, when they were kids, either had no radio and stereo amp unless they built their own.
My experience is a bit different from yours. Several years after I retired the company I had worked for asked me to come back to work on a part time basis for a year. And I did help them out. And then they asked me again a couple of years later. And once more I helped them out.
If Tektronix had done that I am sure some screw-ups wouldn't have happened. That's why I always said, companies like that should run subsidized assisted living places. With a nicely equipped lab in the basement where youngsters could have the occasional session with the older crews, like when they become stuck on a problem or need ideas. Something like "$2k/mo off the sticker price for you and your spouse, and you agree to give us up to x hours of talk/idea time a week".
My wife is by now seriously doubting that I will ever fully retire. And I have to say that she may be right. Seen it, I have worked side-by-side with engineers who were in their 80's.
It is very misleading for the govt to post "numbers of jobs" rather than both "numbers of jobs" and no index to 'quality' the value of those jobs, like "salary of each job" times "number of jobs" as some total value. Now THAT would really show the value of job creation.
For example posting useful information, would show the fallacy of hailing as a triumph the loss of 100,000 engineering jobs at $150k each and 'replacement of those jobs with 200,000 service jobs at $15k each. It would definitely show how much the US economy shrank. Politicians would NOT be able to tout a true failure as some kind of 'success' It also seems, more and more each year the question begs, "Why bother to go to school?"
I semi-retired in my late thrities. Traveled a lot. [Thank God! Too old to put up with all the inconveniences and those travel requirements now] Believe me you get bored!!! There is nothing more enjoyable than accomplishing a good design to solve a really sticky problem in some incredibly inexpensive manner. They'll pry the scope probes and soldering iron from my cold dead fingers. Or, head will crash into the PC screen while doing some 'paper' design.
They should post the numbers with income levels. But right now that would reveal some rather inconvenient truths.
Oh yeah. It always irks me when (especially here in California) it is claimed "Oh, we created this many jobs". And then it's just government jobs, many of which don't really create anything in terms of GDP. Or service jobs that pay little and do not create exportable assets.
This is why I am so surprised that parents don't become more involved. Find out what your kid could do. Find people (like you and me) the kid could talk to if technically inclined, to figure out what has future. One does not want to end up with $60k in college debt just to be able to hang a degree on the wall.
There would be huge surprises for them. For example, in the 80's our professors told us what was also said in this thread, that analog is "dead". Oh how wrong they were. Well, nearly all my mates bought it and went towards digital and software. I did not, because I knew the professors were wrong.
Unions had a decent purpose once, about a century ago. Now they are the disease. If you have ever worked around "unionized" "professionals" in engineering you would spit on most of them. Sometimes right in their face. I mean will not and cannot do long service run drop calculations, and worse. I have vented here before over this.
I get frustrated by the same set of hard-to-interpret numbers which seem to get sanctified by the media, then become talking points as if they actually represented, to some inappropriate degree ( I grudgingly deleted "insane" here ), measures of a concept as vague as "employment".
You both sound like you have given this some thought. What _should_ be the right "number" or numbers", or, rather, how should they be calculated? ( Hm. That seems to tie back into an old joke about the President of a firm who asked the VP if Finance what the numbers showed; the reply was "Well, what do you _want_ them to show"? )
Some starting points ( yes, I made these up ):
1) NGPrES ( Net Private Employment Salaries ): The sum of all annual salaries and annualized wage estimates(?) for new hires, less the salaries of those laid off or fired. ( But what about benefits? )
2) ANGPrES ( Averaged NGPrES ): NGPrES divided by net job slots.
3) NGPuES/ ANGPuES: Same figures for public empolyment, reported separately.
4) ANGCGES ( ANGPrES for College Graduates ): How well are College Graduates doing one year after graduation?
Are these the kind of numbers you were thinking about? If so, do you know any ( relatively simple ) way of deriving them from publicly available data?
If not, if I completely missed what you all were getting at, what did you have in mind?
Frank McKenney
--
You can't just wave a magic wand and eliminate risk for free,
which is what people want to do. If you restrict people from
taking jobs, if you restrict the foods that they eat, if you
place limits on how much they can weigh, all of these things
will reduce their welfare as they perceive it. The proper role
of government is to give people enough information so they can
make reasonable decisions, and after that step aside and allow
them to make their own choices. -- W. Kip Viscusi
Good idea but it should not be restricted to new hires.
Yep, essentially we need the payroll data. Which is being reported to the IRS already so all one needs to do is require immigration to report the fact that someone is on H-1B status to the IRS. If income less than prevailing wage -> red flag goes up -> immigration authorities are notified. Can all be fully automatic.
IMHO that doesn't really matter. Nowadays one often needs engineers with experience that unfortunately a large part of college graduates no longer brings to the table. 20-30 years ago that was different, as in better.
If the government computer systems are too clumsy to derive such data (considering the mess in California, chance are that they are) there is a much easier way: IEEE does a salary survey each year. Participation is usally quite high and IEEE is the most respected trade organization of American engineers, probably even worldwide. These numbers could be taken pretty much verbatim and I am certain that would get us very close to the true prevailing wage.
IMHO the wage for H-1B should be set significantly higher than prevailing, for two reasons:
The prevailing wage calculation then does not have to be very precise. If prevailing is set 25% above the calculated number and the calculated number carries +/-10% uncertainty in it that would still work.
Abuse would immediately stop. If they can find an American engineer for k/year and they'd have to pay a foreigner k, nobody in their right mind would do that. If they absolutely can't find an American engineer than paying k or more above prevailing should not present the slightest problem. If it does then the need is not truly there.
In a nutshell, it can be done rather easily if there is a will. Problem is, I think there is no desire to really fix this.
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