[Kosh]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2060613,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594


I'm not sure how much of this is true, what are your thoughts?

[Ashrak]

most amerikans are stupid enoguh not to know what a CPU is or does

[Windrunner]

Thats positive i guess, more work for us IT-nerds . But seriously  we have the same situation here in sweden. tech companies are screaming after competent worklabor. I myself have allready gotten two job offers with a pretty good pay.

[Prophet]

Yeah? In Finland evryone's a IT worker. Exept the folks born after the war, but they're retiring soon anyway. The forecast says that soon the country will be full of computer capable sons and daughters, but nobody who understands anything about blumbing and carpentry and such. Hell, blumbers and construction workers and electricians are already making ****load of money, and have more work than they have time to do it. Why oh why I didn't become a car repair man. Getting overpayed for doing a ****t job. *sigh*

[Fury]

No kidding, by average Finland must have pretty high percentage of computer savvy people.

[Windrunner]

Then you dudes better consider  moving to sweden then

[Fury]

Yes, I want your bandwidth.

[Selectah]

Ya, the long of it; the downside of the finnish IT-scene is that the pay (on an average) sucks, due to the unhealthy abundance of savvy/nerdy folks. Heck, there's thousands upon thousands of educated computer techs/engineers in Finland who can't even get a job in the IT sector. It seems that the supply & demand bit got lost on the finnish Ministry of Education somewhere in the post-Soviet doom and gloom of the 90's. The short of it; the IT sector is overpopulated, hence there's no money in it.

[Geezer]

As far as H1Bs are concerned, it's amazing that US companies have to import IT workers when American IT workers can't find jobs. I wonder if it's got anything to do with the fact that we Americans want American-style wages and the H1Bs are willing to work for much less? It's just another way for the present Administration to help big business by outsourcing IT.     

[Flipside]

The UK is facing the same problem. Outsourcing was relied on as a cheap alternative to hiring UK-born staff, and then when the outsourcing bubble burst and companies started reeling back to home-grown IT techs etc, it suddenly became apparent that the drop in IT jobs had created a Graduate defecit. Now the UK is going to be in a situation in about 3-4 years where there are far more IT jobs than Graduates.

Since I plan to be doing my Masters in Programming in about 2-3 years, this suits me fine

[Ulala]

I'm confused as to what exactly do they mean by IT. Engineering is mentioned in the article a few times.. like software engineering/computer programming? Or like.. manufacturing?

[Flipside]

In the case of the article, I think it's a lack of specialised Hardware engineers, rather than 'Microsoft Certified Engineers', so not just people who can put a computer together, but can actually know the intimacies of how it works.

[Ulala]

Ah. Clarification appreciated. 

[Black Wolf]

It's similar here, though I don't think we're quite as IT desperate (though it's certainly better than it was a few years back, when outsourcing was at its peak).
That said, we're also short on pretty much everything else. If you have a degree in almost anything, you can get work in Western Australia. Even if you don't have a degree - we need cops, tradies, builders - everything.

[aldo_14]

As far as H1Bs are concerned, it's amazing that US companies have to import IT workers when American IT workers can't find jobs. I wonder if it's got anything to do with the fact that we Americans want American-style wages and the H1Bs are willing to work for much less? It's just another way for the present Administration to help big business by outsourcing IT.     

Probably no coincidence that it's easier to **** over an H1B employee due to their work-linked immigration status.....

[Geezer]

I wish I could tell you that I feel bad about big business screwing over the H1Bs, but I just can't. It's my friends that are out of work, my job that's threatened and my industry that's disappearing like morning mist. If the H1Bs would insist on American wages, I'd have no problem with them. But they don't. 

[aldo_14]

I wish I could tell you that I feel bad about big business screwing over the H1Bs, but I just can't. It's my friends that are out of work, my job that's threatened and my industry that's disappearing like morning mist. If the H1Bs would insist on American wages, I'd have no problem with them. But they don't. 

How many H1Bs do you know?

[spartan_0214]

It's sad how stupid many Americans are. My Pre-Calculus was telling me how stupid some of the enlisted officers are. The test he took to get into the Chair Force was wayyyyyyyyyyyyy easy. One question showed the picture of a screw (the one you use to hold things together) and asked "What's this for?" My teacher was finished in three minutes, but was alloted ONE HOUR!

\hangs head and cries


It'd be interesting to be an Information Technician. I'd love to be paid to work with computers all day, especially because most of the work you'd do would be tell someone where the hard drive is..........

\spartan realizes how computer illiterate most of the world is, hangs head again

[Geezer]

How many H1Bs do you know?

ATM I have no idea. I work with a lot of foreigners but only one in my group and I don't know his status. It's not exactly the kind of question that you simply ask a nodding acquaintance with an accent, since it carries some baggage.  But over the years I've worked with quite a few. There's always exceptions, of course, but often, to keep expenses down, they'll  live in what I would think of as a barracks - maybe six or seven or more sharing a house. If you get friendly, they might tell you about how they're able to send huge portions of their money home and that after a year or two they'll be able to go home and live like kings, the American dollar being able to buy so much more in their countries. When it was a small percentage of the industry, it was interesting to see what people would do to make their way in the world. And I've got to give them credit - spending a year or two in a foreign country without friends or family isn't what I'd want to do to secure my future.  As individuals, the only problem I've got with them is that they'll undercut my salary by a large percentage.  But taken in their hundreds of thousands, and thanks to Bush and Company, American IT is going the way of American manufacturing: offshore.  

[Windrunner]

can someone explain what H1B stands for?