Re: Dissed-belief -- MIDRANGE-JOBS

Karl,

the h1b visa situation has not affected my job situation at all. Please stop making assumptions about my situation, my situation does not prove your point at all. I had that good full time job that you seem to think I need again, but I don't want it. I have had two companies call me since I quit my job and make me very generous offers, I turned down both jobs because I don't want a full time job. I did not call those companies or apply for a job at their company, these are companies that are having a hard time finding good people and heard I might be available. I don't travel around the country because I can't find work, I do it because I like it. I realize most people don't like traveling but I love it. The traveling jobs are quick 3 or 4 day jobs, they are easy money and they take me to fun places. I have selected part time contracts so that I have time to work on my house remodel. I have not selected them because there are not other opportunities available.

Thank you for making my point about AD, Journaling, networking ..... they are not rocket science. But still my experience interviewing people is the majority of them are clueless about these subjects. It shocks me every time I interview someone with programming experience and ask them if they are familiar with commitment control and journaling and they don't know what you are talking about. Or interview a system administrator and ask them about DNS and subnet masks and they basically tell you they have heard the terms. These things are basic yet so many people who claim to have experience have no idea.

I am not smarter, I am willing to learn, to read, to build a vm and test and play. I am not worried about my future, I keep learning new skills every day, I invest in my future. As china and india grow their economies will grow and they will create new opportunities for everyone including me and you. I may have to find a new field, but that is fine with me - just another new challenge. More power to the greedy corporate executives who drive down cost and drive innovation, I am pretty sure that is the American way and hopefully some day the global way. As more people participate and the standard of living increases globally the better for all of us. h1b still exists because there is an issue and a need.

What do you think affects wages more h1b or new technology and a shrinking market share for old technology? There is demand in the work force for people with modern skills.

Shadrach

Karl Abbott wrote:

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I guess the point you're trying to make is that you're smarter than the rest of us so you're going to be ok.
I too am a product of the california school system. I don't see how it gives me any particular advantage over people educated in the rest of the U.S. I also work in the southern california area and I know for a fact that most of the available jobs, even in Southern California, are in the Orange county area. The fact that you are holding down several part time contracts, and that they are spread across the U.S. seems to make my point that there is a shortage of jobs if you can't find a good paying full time job, or contract position, locally.

I too have worked with H1B workers. I have found them to be intelligent, capable, programmers. Generally they don't have a lot of experience, but like all young workers, they learn quickly. Some were better than average programmers and others were lower than average. You see there really isn't a difference between us and them. They're not better than us, nor are they less than us. However the one thing that is consistent with ALL of the foreign workers I have worked with is that they had lower salaries than local worker. That's my point.

The rules of the H1B program were put in place during the time when there was a true shortage of IT workers. It was supposed to be a short term solution, which is why H1B visas have a limit of 7 years. Another rule is that H1B visas are to be issued to people to work for companies that can't fill the position locally, another measure that is in place to prevent the program from negatively impacting the job market. Another rule is that H1B visa workers are to be paid the prevailing wage. These last 2 rules are consistently violated by MOST companies hiring H1B workers.

Also, virtually all of the foreign workers I have worked with are doing basic coding. The web guys are building basic web pages. The ISeries guys are coding user interfaces, subfiles and such. They aren't doing rocket science, they're doing the basic business programming that all of us are capable of doing. So hiring them for that purpose, when any of the thousands of out of work programmers could do the job, is a direct violation of the H1B visa rules. Especially when people are laid off while the H1B people working alongside them keep their jobs.

American workers are not falling behind in technology or failing to keep up with the rest of the world. American workers are being pushed out of existence by greedy corporate executive officers trying to push down their bottom line in the quest of a bigger bonus for reducing expenses.

Finally, FYI building an active directory script, secure socket layer, networking, journaling or committment control are not rocket science either. I've been dealing with most of these things for the past 15 years. The active directory stuff is fairly new so I've only been working with if for a couple of years. Do you really think these skills will keep you working when you can hire a Bangladeshi educated at UCSD with a Masters degree in Computer Science for around 40k per year? Even less if he works remotely...

Karl
----- Original Message ----- From: "Shadrach Scott" <shadrachscott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Karl Abbott" <kabbott1@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 9:33 PM
Subject: Re: [MIDRANGE-JOBS] Dissed-belief

Karl,

I don't see any squiggly red lines on the screen....

My decision to leave my job had nothing to do with money, I decided to remodel a house I bought. And if you read my email you would see the comment about my previous job being high paying with great benefits. Have you considered purchasing a DS they have these great brain games...sorry off subject. Yes I work in the OC I realize not every economy in the US is as robust as the OC. Several of my contract that I have signed have been for out of state work were the client pays for me to fly to them and for work I do via VPN from home. It seems even the people in Kansas have a hard time finding talented iSeries people. I currently have 3 contracts 1 is a year contract the other is indefinite with no end date.

I have worked with a lot of H1B visa people, they were talented and I would work with them again. I am not concerned with the people in china and india, the more people participating in the world economy the better for all of us. I am more concerned about the US and our protectionism. We bring the smarted and brightest from all over the world and give them an education at our best schools and then we kick them out of the country when they graduate. We need to be retaining the brightest people in the world to work here in the US.

Karl Abbott wrote:

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I was going to say that it seems odd that Shadrach says he has the skills to do the things he mentioned, but apparently can't operate the spell checker...
Aside from that, your point that there are few highly trained and educated programmers and that our skills are outdated is unfounded.
You say that you don't have a problem finding work at top dollar, yet you say that you pick and choose your jobs. This indicates that you are probably a contractor working at short term gigs. You also mentioned that you quit your previous job. I am assuming that it was because you didn't think you were making enough money.
Perhaps one reason you weren't making enough money at your previous job is because the prevailing wage has dropped considerably in the past few years. Could this be because there is a glut of IT workers in the market?
I have worked contract jobs in the past and one of the first things you learn when considering contracts, is that the short term gigs pay a higher rate than long terms gigs. Could this be one of the reasons you are making better money now?
Also you mentioned that you work out of Orange county. Southern California, and especially the Orange county area, have historically always been short on IT workers. Consequently it has always been easy to get work in this area of the country. It is unfair to think that because you are able to find work in Orange county that everyone should be able to find work. There are MANY areas of the country where the need for IT work is not so great. A small influx of foreign workers in any of these areas would cause a significantly greater impact than even a large influx would cause in Orange county.

The real issue isn't whether or not you have better than average programming skills, or how many programmers have better than average skills. The issue is that the H1B visas are supposed to be issued to foreign workers to work for companies that can't find local people to do the work. The people who are being brought in on these visas are not more highly skilled or better qualified than the people they are displacing. They are simply working for lower wages, and in many cases local workers are laid off to make room for the lower wage earning foreign workers. And the even larger issue isn't the foreign workers who are already here, it is the fact that the floodgates have not been closed, but opened even wider due to the increasing number of visas being issued annually.

Before you are so quick to dismiss the rest of us, due to fact that you are able to find work, consider that right now there are probably hundreds of people in China or India who are gaining the skills that you believe make you so valuable. When they arrive and start competing for YOUR job, will you then decide to fight for your job? By then it may be too late, since you didn't join the fight when it might have made a difference.

Karl
----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Murfitt" <jmurfitt@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "'Shadrach Scott'" <shadrachscott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 7:51 PM
Subject: Re: [MIDRANGE-JOBS] Dissed-belief

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I find it amusing that you question there being educated people out there
looking for work. From your writing it's obvious you don't have command of
the English language. You don't know the difference between here and hear,
their and there, and oh yes it's paid not payed. You might have excellent
coding skills, but lack other necessary skills. Just because there are areas
that people lack knowledge of does not mean they do not have any experience.
If I was to use your thinking than I would have to guess from your writing
that you are uneducated.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-jobs-bounces+jmurfitt=cfl.rr.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-jobs-bounces+jmurfitt=cfl.rr.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Shadrach Scott
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 10:28 PM
To: midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [MIDRANGE-JOBS] Dissed-belief

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list.

I strongly disagree that there are plenty of educated and trained
professionals available. I am not a programmer and I get the feeling the
majority of the people frustrated by the H-1B situation are programmers.
I quit my very high paying job with great benefits on purpose over 12
months ago. Most of the IT professionals in the market have outdated
skills so I now contract and make more than top dollar working for
companies that are having a hard time finding people with the skills
they need. I do for them what they can not find in the open market at a
premium. I pick and choose my jobs and keep raising my rate and I have
more work than I want. The company I worked for had an open position
when I quit and then opened my position. In the +12 months since I left
they have only been able to find one person who was somewhat qualified
and they ended up letting them go after 3 months. One of my best friends
switched jobs a few months back and was offered the job on the spot plus
was offered higher than market because the interviewer told him that in
6 months he was the first person he had interviewed he would even
consider hiring. I live in southern California, orange county area and I
know a lot of people in the business and I constantly here from them how
frustrated they are when it comes to finding qualified people. I have
interviewed dozens of people for iSeries jobs over the years, and you
ask them questions about networking, SSL, journaling, commitment
control, writing secure applications, how to create test scripts, and
they will often not even know the basic concepts - and these are people
who claim to have years of experience.

I don't know who gets the h-1b money, and I don't worry about it. The
last timed I payed for training I knew more than the trainer. I train
myself using the free resources on the internet or sometimes I purchase
a reference book and I put the time in to understand the concepts. Lots
of time I learn on the job, just today someone asked me if I could put
together an active directory script to make some user account changes. I
have never written an AD script in my life, I am an iSeries guy but I
understand the concepts, I went to the internet to free resources and
found the information I needed, created a test plan, put the script
together, tested it, documented it and at the end of the day I had a
very happy client and I was happy - I got payed to learn today.

I don't want anyone to lose there job, and I am sure it is even more
frustrating when you get outsourced, but I believe we all need to plan
to someday lose our job. So I make sure I keep current, I network with
people, I have my rainy day + perfect time for a vacation fund and I
believe new challenges are a great thing.

Shadrach Scott

Cindy Howard wrote:

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list.

I'm sorry to interrupt here, and I don't know if what you are saying about

the grant is true or not, but the problem isn't that we don't have educated,
trained IT professionals available in the US. There are plenty of educated,
trained, AND experienced people available to fill the jobs.

Cindy> From: pvinodr@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date:

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:42:39 -0500> Subject: Re: [MIDRANGE-JOBS] Dissed-belief>

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Recruiters may advertise only permanent employment positions in this list.>

Not sure if I understood the response to the info wrong or others have

worngly inferred the award.> "H-1B HIGH GROWTH JOB TRAINING GRANTS"> I'm not
for or against H1B...being a beneficiary of this...:-)> Now, coming to the
grants...the money is collected from employers who employ H1B & then this is
disbursed to encourage IT education/Job training in US.> > Rgds,Vinod >
From: AlexMRPG@xxxxxxx> To: midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx; jmurfitt@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:00:12 -0500> Subject: Re: [MIDRANGE-JOBS]
Dissed-belief> > *** Please pay close attention when replying to a message
on this list!> *** If you want the reply to go to the list, use
REPLY-TO-ALL> *** Recruiters may advertise only permanent employment
positions in this list.> > > I was just looking for a government grant for a
first time business possibly a consulting company, when I came across this.
A Federally funded government grant encouraging hiring of H1B's this was
just a small excerpt of what they consider accomplishments with what is
called "High Growth Job Training Initiative"! > > ----- Original Message
-----> > > > From: Joe Murfitt<mailto:jmurfitt@xxxxxxxxxx> > To: 'Alex
Montalvo'<mailto:alexmrpg@xxxxxxx> ;
midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:midrange-jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > Sent:
Saturday, November 24, 2007 7:25 PM> Subject: RE: [MIDRANGE-JOBS] (no subje>
ct)> > > This is exactly why I'm looking into getting out of the IT
profession.> > > H-1B HIGH GROWTH JOB TRAINING GRANTS > > PROGRAM
ACCOMPLISHMENTS > As of March 2006, 131 grants worth over $258 million have
been awarded> under the High Growth Job Training Initiative. Between July 1,
2005 and> March 30, 2006 over $54 million in H-1B funds have been awarded
under the> High Growth Job Training Initiative. During 2006, competitions
are expected> for talent development investments in the advanced
manufacturing,> construction, and energy under the President's High Growth
Job Training> Initiative. Under the WIRED Initiative, ETA has awarded $195
million in> grants lasting three years to thirteen regions. An additional
competition> under the WIRED Initiative was announced in February 2006 > --

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