Of all people a tech recruiter on LinkedIn recently asked “IT professional”, “Non-IT professionals”, web developers, recruiters, and HR managers what they thought about the H1B Visa Program.
Hmmm. I should ask him how he feels about cancer or being paid about half of what he’s worth?! I seldom engage on any social media, but I just couldn’t help but respond: “It’s disgusting and everyone behind it deserve to have THEIR JOBS depressed with more artificially imported competition, they better watch it because enough good US programmers might find ways to replace them with automation systems. That’s social justice and karma.”
So, a tech recruiter, someone whose job isn’t directly affected by political whims and crony capitalism, is asking “our thoughts” about these destructive, self-serving and anti-American labor policies under the guise of what’s called the H1B Visa Program. He’s asking as if he really has a dog in the fight, as if his livelihood has been intentionally depressed by supporting the policies of importing substandard IT, programmers and other web professionals and supplanting Americans from jobs they’ve proven are capable of doing.
Many tech recruiters get 20% of many new hires’ first year salary for being a middle man without the same marketable, highly valued skills they are actually selling. On top of that, their fees price some developers out of good positions, even if the employer finds them most qualified! Thanks, again recruiters!
So much patronizing arrogance surrounds the tech sector. So many just don’t understand how we do things, if they don’t get it, it must not be important, this interweb thingy, making it work right and all — many still just don’t value tech. Many organizations value people with Marketing Degrees a lot more than programmers, database administrators and software engineers. O, I went to school, got a bachelor’s in Business Management, minored in Marketing but I learned much about the web, including system design, programming and writing code over the span of 15 years.
It’s almost like what we tech people do is so mysterious and nebulous to so many people, we’re not even here. What people don’t understand, they ignore, they don’t see. This might be why so many ignore our presence and use that as an excuse to need to import cheap labor knowing it will bring salaries drastically down. So many people who make their money off the tech industry, like some recruiters, treat web developers and software programmers as commodities instead of people, like cattle instead of fellow countrymen. Many recruiters are great and try hard for their candidates but shame on those American organizations, businesses and politicians who are exploiting hard working and smart people in their own country, people who spent years learning these highly technical skills, skills admittedly most people just can’t do or don’t have the discipline themselves to study and master. We’re all neighbors and you basically let your dog crap on our front lawn everyday, how neighborly.
I say since you’re so pro-globalism and want more competition, be careful what you wish for. I’d like to remind the people who are hurting American workers and their families that their selfish greed will come back because us tech people, programmers, the makers of “internet stuff”, one day we might just all wake up and automate you out of a job, build a better system to compete against your business, make sure you politicians who aren’t protecting our interests that all you selfish H1B’ers out there, the tables will be turned on you. It’s almost a guarantee, karma has a way of coming around and serving up some delicious humble pie.
Do I sound bitter? I’m not, a little angry, perhaps because its selfish and unjust for so many who have been affected. I have friends who lost jobs and had to train their cheaper H1B replacements, just down in Orlando. Though I know H1B has created competition that has pushed down tech salaries in general, even here as a Director of Web Development in Jacksonville, Florida, I’m pretty grateful I work at a web-centric company that is evolving with its appreciation of web savvy technical expertise and that they value it more than most companies around.
Still, I’m a lucky one and I like to see people be treated fairly and rewarded for their skills, talents and contributions. A true meritocracy will empower companies that are not just taking part in depressing the tech sector’s wages, they’re really disincentives that are hurting their own bottom line, they’re stifling tech innovation, and that is hurting our economy with billions of dollars worth of misdirected underemployment. A meritocracy is what capitalism is supposed to model and H1B is an aberration to true market principles because it introduces artificial and unfair pressure to a large labor market with trillions of dollars in costs to our economy, in the form of opportunity costs, misdirected incentives, and resource misallocation.
