Living life on your own terms

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

I can't tell you how many friends I have that are engineers, well recognized in their fields (including IT) that can not find a decent job.

That's because you live in a fly over state. Its way different in CA.

By the way IT is not an engineering job.

I think we have hijacked this thread enough

 

[idonthaveaname]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Feel free to hijack! It's an interesting and informative conversation. Here is some other info to gain an understanding.

Who's Hiring H-1B Visa Workers? It's Not Who You Might Think : All Tech Considered : NPR

The biggest employers of foreign tech workers are consulting companies, or "offshore-outsourcing firms." And if you think it’s because it’s cheaper, you are correct. Read on… "I remember having phone interviews and talking with the manager, having him sound really excited about my experience and he was going to bring me in to meet the team," Sawade recalls.

And then: nothing. He called his own placement agency to find out what happened.

"And that's when they told me, 'Oh, they hired somebody from Tata Consultancy.' And they actually told me on the phone, the woman I was talking to said her jaw just dropped when they found out how little Microsoft was paying this person from Tata Consultancy to do this job," he says.

Like I mentioned earlier, H1Bs are paid less. Maybe not with all companies but with many and I can attest to that first hand. The work around is the consultant companies like Tata and the others. There are many many loopholes. Still, U.S. lawmakers are adding requirements for potential H-1B hires. A provision to the stimulus package would restrict H-1B hiring at companies that have received funds from TARP and that have more than 15% of their workers on visas; these companies would be required to prove they have diligently recruited American workers. My guess is there are still loopholes there.

 

[dingbat]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Not qualified enough for us to hire them.

There are a lot of smart, intelligent people out there with no common sense or ambition.

I did some contract work (installation services) for my previous employer. One project they assigned one of their up and coming Service Engineers to tag along for me to train. Sharp kid, good with customers but the kid was clueless when it came to analogue and digital interfaces and he had little to no interest to learn. He spent half the time on site talking video games with the customer's representative

I finally gave up teaching him anything and assigned him to splice an additional 3' on the end of 48 pair shielded cable that was too short. That kept him occupied for a while

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Like I mentioned earlier, H1Bs are paid less. Maybe not with all companies but with many and I can attest to that first hand. The work around is the consultant companies like Tata and the others. There are many many loopholes. Still, U.S. lawmakers are adding requirements for potential H-1B hires. A provision to the stimulus package would restrict H-1B hiring at companies that have received funds from TARP and that have more than 15% of their workers on visas; these companies would be required to prove they have diligently recruited American workers. My guess is there are still loopholes there.

At the company I worked at before, we hired h1B software contractors both based here and in India(obviously not h1b). Yes, they were definitely cheaper. For the most part, they didn't work out, especially the one based in India. We had to redo most of the code they wrote. We did hire one of the guys full time though and brought him in permanent and sponsored him for his green card . He was awesome and the company ended up hiring him full time and he is now the software manager there.

My current company has engineering groups in both India and Romania. We have actuall reduced the number of engineers in India. Our company is learning that having engineers all over the place just doesn't work out. Time difference just causes too much inefficiency.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Please, I work all over the world, yes that includes Ca.

Apparently, not in industries that employ electrical design engineers.

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Living life on your own terms

North of the border....we are almost forced to go abroad to hire.
We simply do not have enough experienced, qualified people for a lot of the work we have.
The biggest challenge is that a lot of the work is not all in the ever popular urban centres where a lot of the talent wants to stay.....ie: Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal.
So, we are on hiring binges out of Ireland, U.S, the U.K....you name it and the responses are often very good...but it is a laborious process to set up.
A lot of this issue for us lies in the fact that we have very few people (33 million) to take care of and develop what is arguably the biggest country in the world...depending on how you view the new Russia.
Tradespeople are increasingly hard to come by as the loss of hardskills increases. If you are an experienced industrial electrician you are probably making more than the plant engineers defining the work and often treated better...LOL (based on my experiences in the automation business and in some of the Toyota plants)
BP

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Yeah, factory automation / data collection doesn't require electrical engineers. LOL

Not the same quality needed in my industry.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

By the time you've gotten to the interview stage you are looking for the best qualified out of those selected for interview. Either your HR people are woefully under trained at their job or the interview process is being used as a smoke screen to justify HB-1 hires.

Nope, we just hire the best! Probably the reason our company has made money for every quarter except one in the 15 years it has been in existence.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Re: Living life on your own terms

hey guys......

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Or, you can make profits by hiring cheap HB-1s....

By the way, it's H1-B.

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Living life on your own terms

I'm not familiar with this term....H1-B....what is this?
Is this a foreign worker program term in the U.S? or?

BP

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

H-1B visa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's a political hot potato.
By the way, I am all for the US tightening up the H-1B visa process. Maybe would help to have our schools actually teach our kids some math might help too.


LOL..I had it wrong too. H-1B...not H1-B. That's probably the name of a virus.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Just so you know how hard it is to find qualified engineers at my company, they offer us $10K finders fee for an engineer or software person that they hire.

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Hmmm...yeah thats the same as what we simply call the 'Temporary Foreign Worker Program'....also a point of controversy up here.
It has its pros and cons.....but increasingly a lot of employment out there does not appear to want to be embraced by the home grown folks. Or, they simply are no longer trained and skilled to take advantage of a lot of the higher end opportunities.
Immigrants who are brought in just for work are often under a lot of scrutiny in the community. Some want to stay long term....some view it as a very short term thing.
BP

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

duplicate post

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Living life on your own terms

No one has claimed it, not one? not ever? Hmmm..... So who are they hiring? I see.....

Many have received it including me. Got a friend of mine to come in here.

I can remember when companies actively went out and sought top people in the universities with job fairs, interviews, internships, etc.. American companies don't do it today,

Every summer my company hires college interns. Most are between their Junior and Senior year. The last 2 we had were from Cal Tech and were making between $30 -$40 hour. Not bad for a summer job.

Companies don't need to do as many job fairs with the everything on the internet. That's old school.
Most job fairs these days are done by the engineering schools and they invite in the companies.

If a company looked and seen some natural material was running low and they would have to import it across the pond the company would be all about securing more local supplies but when it comes to human beings they won't invest a nickel.

Have you ever heard of 2 companies called Broadcom and Qualcomm? Their founders, Samueli and Viterbi have donated millions of dollars to UCLA and USC engineering schools respectively. Those are just 2 examples in southern California alone.

 

[greenbush future]

Re: Living life on your own terms

I have strongly disagree with this. I have been in the game for 15 years now and I have people calling me all of the time wanting to talk. There is lots of work out there if you know what you are doing. If you don't know what you are doing then I will hire the HB1 and pass on the recent graduate who has no work ethic and no real world skills.

I hate to say it but american kids are lazy, really lazy. For the same price they want out of school I can have a HB1 who has been in the game for years. My team is a mix of HB1 and US born and educated engineers. They are all the same pay grade. The HB1 holders contribute way more than the entitled white kids on my team. With that said the kids that came out of the military seam to know what real work is.

Your thoughts are very accurate about today's young Americans in general, I run a IT staffing company and deal with all of this stuff. America's kids and our future are in a world of hurt with what is being raised (again in general) today. Kids are coddled to an extreme that they have no clue about reality. That's is the majority, but there are exceptions thank god.
Only the very best and highest cast of H1-b's are coming here, guess what percentage of Indian's are college degree'd? It's like the top XX % and they are very wealthy, they just have a completely different approach to life, than an American. Yes they save, yes they live in groups, but it isn't because they are broke, they are smart!! Most of India live's in squalor by design. It's a very interesting discussion for sure.
Heck Michigan cant find enough engineers, most of the sharp one's left and have 0 interest in being screwed over again. You get what you give!!

 

[itsaboattime]

Re: Living life on your own terms

I have my dream profession. I'm a Carpenter. I get to work outside in the sunshine. I was US Navy before that and grew up on a beef farm in Illinois. There is nothing like the satisfaction of driving by something that I built and saying "I built that". The hours very between 40 and 84 a week and when I get home at night I am TIRED! I raised 4 kids and paid for a house before my divorce.
At 45 I am very privledged to be able to be somewhat selective on which jobs I take. And I love it when a young apprentice comes out to the job. Am I afraid they will displace me? Nope. It's my responsibility to teach them the job.
I work 8 to 11 months out of the year. And my time off is usually in the winter. It's part of the reason winter is my favorite season.
That kid is following his dream. And more power to him. I wish him nothing but success and happiness.
"Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life." Truer words have never been spoken.

 

[bspeth]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Kids do most of their learning at home. They got two parents they are better in school.Their parents just need to teach them to work for their goals.(instead of showing them the statements from their college fund).That's how I feel about the youts in our country.

 

[Bigprairie1]

Re: Living life on your own terms

Ya know what the funny thing in all this is? That no one wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room. There are more human bodies on the planet than there are jobs and that is a trend that is not going to end anytime soon. To be sure, consumerism of the "keep up with the jones" variety delayed the inevitable but even that isn't working and requires too many natural resourses. The part that I find shocking is how very few people want to discuss it and plan for what's coming.

Thats a good point...the amount of jobs per capita out there is certainly in trouble in the west, at least some jobs.
Any job that can be quickly outsourced to a cheaper area or country....probably will be, as the virtual world gets increasingly easier to work in with a reasonable amount of confidence.
So the trick....is to target a job or career that stands little chance of being outsourced or quickly moved.
Consumer culture has made us our own worst enemy in search of tomorrows next bargain. Which is why I work hard to not darken the doorsteps of companies like Walmart, Target, Harbor Freight, etc. These companies are famous for their low wages and minimal (if any) benefits to workers. I have never been a fan or supporter of unions in the model established over the last 40 years...BUT, I would love to see these companies unionize in some way and if that meant their prices rose by 20%...who cares.
If I can, I try to find the best local business with reasonable pricing and support them.
BP