5 ms·
Off-shoring is pretty big right now but what shocks me is that when I walk around my company campus I see obscene amounts of people visibly and culturally from,
by catigula 1y ago
Off-shoring is pretty big right now but what shocks me is that when I walk around my company campus I see obscene amounts of people visibly and culturally from, mostly, India and China. The idea that literally massive amounts of this workforce couldn't possibly be filled by domestic grads is pretty hard to engage with. These are low level business and accounting analyst positions.
Both sides of the aisle retreated from domestic labor protection for their own different reasons so the US labor force got clobbered.
- splitstud 1y ago[dead]
- gedy 1y agoI was working at a SoCal company a couple years ago (where I’m from), and we had a lot of Chinese and Indian folks. I remember cracking up when one of the Indian fellows pulled me aside and asked me where I was from, because I sounded so different with my accent and lingo. He thought I was from some small European country, lol.
- catigula 1y agoJust to note interpersonally I find pretty much any group to be great on average but being a participant of US labor and sympathetic to other US laborers this is clearly not something I can support.
- hluska 1y agoYou can’t support having a good enough relationship with coworkers from outside of your country that you can relate cheerful anecdotes about them?
- tcdent 1y agoThe language I use being from southern California has, on more than one occasion, sparked conversation about it. Sorry, dude, it's like, all I know.
- yobbo 1y ago> The idea that literally massive amounts of this workforce couldn't possibly be filled by domestic grads One theory is that the benefit they might be providing over domestic "grads" is lack of prerequisites for promotion above certain levels (language, cultural fit, and so on). For managers, this means the prestige of increased headcount without the various "burdens" of managing "careerists". For example, less plausible competition for career-ladder jobs which can then be reserved for favoured individuals. Just a theory.
- boredatoms 1y agoI think that would backfire as the intrinsic culture of the company changes as it absorbs more people. Verticals would form from new hires who did manage to get promoted
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoI will admit that this is the most plausible explanation of this phenomenon that explains the benefit to managers I have read on this issue so far.
- catigula 1y agoPutting aside economic incentives, which the wealthy were eager to reap, the vast majority of the technical labor force in this country came and still comes from (outside of SF) a specific race and we have huge incentives that literally everyone reading this has brushed up against, whether in support or against, to alter that racial makeup. Obviously the only real solution to creating an artificial labor shortage is looking externally from the existing labor force. Simply randomly hiring underserved groups didn't really make sense because they weren't participants. Where I work, we have two main goals when I'm involved in the technical hiring process: hire the cheapest labor and try to increase diversity. I'm not necessarily against either, but those are our goals.
- ajmurmann 1y agoI am VERY pro-immigration. I do have concerns about the H1B program though. IMO it's not great for both immigrant workers, as well as non-immigrant workers because it creates a class of workers for whom it's harder to change employers which weakens their negotiation position. If this is the case for enough of the workforce it artificially depresses wages for everyone. I want to see a reform that makes it much easier for H1B workers to change employers.
- bdangubic 1y agoamen! that will never happen though, nothing ever happens here that helps the workers and whatever rights we have now are slowly dwindling (immigrants or otherwise…)
- andrekandre 1y ago> nothing ever happens here that helps the workers and whatever rights we have now are slowly dwindling its almost as if we need a 'workers party' or something... though i'd imagine first-past-the-post in the u.s makes that difficult.
- catigula 1y agoI want to use you as a bit of a sounding board, so don't take this as negative feedback. The problem is that the left, which was historically pro-labor, abdicated this position for racial reasons, and the right was always about maximizing the economic zone.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoEmployment-based immigration policy just isn't controversial outside of very specific bubbles. Everyone who's considered the problem seriously, left and right, realizes that the H1B system is bad a point-based system is the way to go, which is why it's been part of every immigration reform proposal for over a decade with essentially no controversy. If this were the only aspect of immigration issues, or if people felt it was important enough to pull it out of broad immigration reform, it would pass in a heartbeat.
- absurdo 1y ago[flagged]
- jayd16 1y agoI mean, aren't 3 out of 8 humans from India or China? If the company is big enough to appeal to a global applicant pool its a bit expected.
- sokoloff 1y agoIt’s presumably (from context) a company campus in the US that they’re taking about. I wouldn’t expect 3 of 8 legally authorized to work in the US people to be Chinese or Indian combined. Other than a few international visitors, I’d expect the makeup to look like the domestic tech worker demographics rather than like the global population demographics.
- bradlys 1y agoAlso, anyone who has worked in these companies also know it’s much larger than 3 out of 8… comical to act like it’s only 3/8.
- senderista 1y agoI estimate AWS engineering is maybe 80% Indian and another 10% Chinese. Less at higher levels though.
- apex3stoker 1y agoI think most software companies hire from computer science graduates from US colleges. It’s likely that international students makes up a large percentage of these graduates.
- therealpygon 1y agoMy opinion is that off-shore teams are also going to be some of the jobs more easily replaced, because many of these are highly standardized with instructions due to the turnover they have. I wouldn’t be surprised if these outsourcing companies are already working toward that end. They are definitely automating and/or able to collect significant training data from the various tools they require their employees to use for customers.
- underlipton 1y agoWe all get 5 conspiracy theories before we advance from "understandably suspicious, given the complexity of the modern world" to "reliable tinfoil purchasers", and one of mine is that the prevalence of Indian execs and, to a lesser extent, Indian and Chinese workers in tech is a backdoor concession to countries who could open a demographic can of whoop-ass on us if they really wanted to. We let them bleed off the ambitious intellectuals who could become a political issue for their elite, and ours get convenient scapegoats for why businesses can't hire, train, and pay domestic workers well. As far as top men are concerned, it's a good deal. Nadella ascending to the leadership of Micro"I Can't Believe It's Not Considered A State-Sponsored Defense Corp"soft is what got my mildly xenophobic (sorry) gears turning.
- hluska 1y agoEdited: Actually disregard, this isn’t worth it, but I don’t grant any freebies.
- underlipton 1y agoWell, now I'm curious.
- lostlogin 1y ago> The idea that literally massive amounts of this workforce couldn't possibly be filled by domestic grads is pretty hard to engage with. I hear this argument where I live for various reasons, but surely it only ever comes down to wages and/or conditions? If the company paid a competitive rate (ie higher), locals would apply. Surely blaming a lack of local interest is rarely going to be due to anything other than pay or conditions?
- catigula 1y agoThe company having access to the global labor force is the problem we're explicitly discussing. This isn't seen as something desirable by US workers.
- lanstin 1y agoI was born in NC, and I mostly have experienced the large amount of immigration as a positive. Most of the people I grew up were virulently anti-intellectuals, mocking math and science learning, and most of them have gone on to be realtors and business folks, bankers even. All the people I've met from China or South Asia (the two demographics I work most closely worth) value learning and science and math - not as some "lets have STEM summer camps" but when they meet some new 8 year old will ask them to solve some math problems (like precisely 1 of my kids' dozens of relatives). I enjoy meeting the very smart people from all sorts of backgrounds - they share the values of education and hard work that my parents emphasized, and they have an appreciation for what we enjoy as software engineers; US born folks tend to have a bit of entitlement, and want success without hard work. I interview a fair number of people, and truly first rate minds are a limited resource - there's just so many in each city (and not everyone will want to or be able to move for a career). Even with "off-shoring" one finds after hiring in a given city for a while, it gets harder, and the efficient thing to do is to open a branch in a new city. I don't know, perhaps the realtors from my class get more money than many scientists or engineers, and certainly more than my peers in India (whose salaries have gone from 10% of mine to about 40% of mine in the past decade or two), but the point is the real love of solving novel problems - in an industry where success leads to many novel problems. Hard work, interesting problems, and building things that actual people use - these are the core value prop for software engineering as a career; the money is pretty new and not the core; finding people who share that perspective is priceless. Enough money to provide a good start to your children and help your family is good, but never the heart of the matter.
- renewiltord 1y ago[flagged]
- VonTum 1y agoWhat a weird crabs-in-a-bucket argument against unions. "Don't empower yourself and the rest of your colleagues because they might get powerful enough to kick you out"? The whole reason H1Bs were invented is to disempower the existing workforce. Not reaching for a (long overdue) tool of power for tech workers is playing right into their hand.
- renewiltord 1y ago[flagged]
- catigula 1y agoThe funny thing is that you're not wrong and this is yet another feather in the cap of "foreign labor are literal scabs" argument.
- renewiltord 1y agoThe history of unions and the past of the AFLCIO is filled with successful lobbying to prevent immigrants from becoming American. They’re not going to stop suddenly today. Knowing one’s enemy is key to fighting them.
- throwaway2037 1y agoThis comment made me laugh. I have not seen the term "scab" since the late 1980s when there were a bunch of union strikes in my area. It is funny to see it applied to white collar (office) workers. Edit: I found this funny quote describing a scab from the early 1900s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London#Diatribe_about_scabs_has_unknown_author https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_London#Diatribe_about_sca... > After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.
- spoaceman7777 1y agoIt's also worth noting that it's almost entirely native born Americans that are pushing back against nepotism. Extreme nepotism is still the norm (an expectation even) in most South and East Asian cultures. And it's quite readily acknowledged if you speak to newer hires who haven't realized yet that it is best kept quiet. It's a hard truth for many Americans to swallow, but it is the truth nonetheless. Not to say there isn't an incredible amount of merit... but the historical impact of rampant nepotism in the US is widely acknowledged, and this newer manifestation should be acknowledged just the same.