IGX

This is a more likely culprit IMHO - http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240 ... 0897409182

cleaner464 wrote:This is a more likely culprit IMHO - http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240 ... 0897409182

Certainly at the lower levels, but what are your thoughts on that for higher level IT types? Just about all of the roles I work on are in the $100k-$150k base comp range (although right now I have several that are closer to $200k). IMHO, the Triangle of Project Management absolutely applies to all levels of recruiting:

Everyone wants:

Cost Savings
Speed
Quality

But they can only have 2 of the 3.

Cost + Speed= lower quality/need to offer training/higher churn
Quality + Speed= you pay for that/can stretch budget/can potentially cause discontent with other employees making less.
Cost + Quality= you wait for that/work doesn't get done or is stacked on others in the interim.

The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:

cleaner464 wrote:This is a more likely culprit IMHO - http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240 ... 0897409182

Certainly at the lower levels, but what are your thoughts on that for higher level IT types? Just about all of the roles I work on are in the $100k-$150k base comp range (although right now I have several that are closer to $200k). IMHO, the Triangle of Project Management absolutely applies to all levels of recruiting:

Everyone wants:

Cost Savings
Speed
Quality

But they can only have 2 of the 3.

Cost + Speed= lower quality/need to offer training/higher churn
Quality + Speed= you pay for that/can stretch budget/can potentially cause discontent with other employees making less.
Cost + Quality= you wait for that/work doesn't get done or is stacked on others in the interim.

Off topic but this is written a distilled down way that is useful for more than this specific discussion.

It's my 'secret weapon' line when I have to deal with difficult hiring managers or their VP's when fills are tough.

I'm a veep now, but I still manage production teams. I also get my hands "dirty" doing some coding every now and again. I'm still a programmer at heart.

I'm also involved with some of the offshoring that we do. My experience has been that the initial squads sent from the coding mills are a bunch of polished, highly intelligent gents dead set on selling their product and skillfully allaying any management concerns.

They are very good at what they do. They regaled us with tales of how many of their employees have advanced degrees from the best universities in India. They provided us with really impressive resumes. They listed many impressive clients. They practically abased themselves before the CIO.

What they finally provided however was an under-performing suite of garbage. Thankfully, the local folks hadn't been terminated yet, and they fixed it up as best they could. Then they were canned.

I will give a few examples of "Life With Rajiv" -

When users call for support, and are finally transferred to a techie, they have to deal with someone who speaks a barely intelligible form of English.

Every glitch undergoes a byzantine approval process. Simple mods or fixes take weeks to get done now.

The time difference is a constant source of irritation. Even with production critical events, we have to wait for someone to either wake up or have their dinner interrupted.

The quality of the code is always an issue. The language problem is at the root of a lot of the issues, but there have been errors that even a rookie wouldn't commit. Uncompiled code in a production upload. Production code with debugging statements in it. Simple reports that take hours to run.

It all comes down to the money. Management has traded quality and prompt service for big reductions to the bottom line. The users are livid, but their cries are currently falling on deaf ears. Plus, they blithely went along with this mess in the beginning, so they are culpable as well.

It's bullshit that we can't get the employees we need from US citizens. The bean-counters just want to underpay for technical support and development.

C464....agree with much of that and frankly, I've made some damned good money staffing local H1's or Joe American C2C independants fixing the CTS, ACN, Wipro, you name it offshore/nearshore type problems.

My question to you the other day was regarding higher level FTE types. I've placed around 40 people in the past 12 months, all but 3 over $100k base and all but 2 were *not* H1's. Do you disagree at all with my comments on that Cost/Speed/Quality triangle?

Protobot wrote:I think it was Michael Savage who said, kids come here from India and in a few years they're winning spelling bees, yet we spend billions (literally) on inner city schools and the kids still can't do shit.

The problem is inner city schools are not filled with kids from India. They are filled with the perpetual victims of the democratic welfare plantation system.

Batboy2/75 wrote:

Protobot wrote:I think it was Michael Savage who said, kids come here from India and in a few years they're winning spelling bees, yet we spend billions (literally) on inner city schools and the kids still can't do shit.

The problem is inner city schools are not filled with kids from India. They are filled with the perpetual victims of the democratic welfare plantation system.

Kids that come from India come with both their graduate degree holding father and university educated mother, eat home-prepared meals each evening and go to bed in a house that has more books than guns (not trying to start anything here, Bats) or empty bottles of 40s. Not sure they are a valid comparison.

Protobuilder wrote:

Batboy2/75 wrote:

Protobot wrote:I think it was Michael Savage who said, kids come here from India and in a few years they're winning spelling bees, yet we spend billions (literally) on inner city schools and the kids still can't do shit.

The problem is inner city schools are not filled with kids from India. They are filled with the perpetual victims of the democratic welfare plantation system.

Kids that come from India come with both their graduate degree holding father and university educated mother, eat home-prepared meals each evening and go to bed in a house that has more books than guns (not trying to start anything here, Bats) or empty bottles of 40s. Not sure they are a valid comparison.

My comment was sarcasm.

It was to point out the obvious differences between the children of Indian immigrants and native born inner city welfare recipients. You could triple the budget in inner city schools and you would be throwing the money down the fucking drain. Not because inner city kids are inferior to kids from India, but their culture is.

The perpetually poor in this country are poor because of culture. It has nothing to do with race. Take any group of people; say the Indians coming to the USA. Now destroy the family unit, get them hooked on the welfare state, tell them that they are victims, wash and repeat for a couple of generations and they will be just as backwards and miserable as poor inner city blacks, American Indians on Reservations and or poor whites living in Appalachia. Do that to Indian kids and no amount of money would fix them either.

The great lie is The Progressive Welfare State. It's failures are not a system bug, but a main feature. Keep them dumb, keep them dependent on the State and keep them voting Democrat! I'm not saying they'd do better voting Republican, but at this point, anyone other than a Democrat would be a good start.

The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:C464....agree with much of that and frankly, I've made some damned good money staffing local H1's or Joe American C2C independants fixing the CTS, ACN, Wipro, you name it offshore/nearshore type problems.

My question to you the other day was regarding higher level FTE types. I've placed around 40 people in the past 12 months, all but 3 over $100k base and all but 2 were *not* H1's. Do you disagree at all with my comments on that Cost/Speed/Quality triangle?

You are dead on with your argument.

My beef is that even a minimum level of quality is not to be had post turnover, and any hope of using the technology to drive process innovation is likewise a non-starter.

The h1b's I deal with are not all geniuses. A woman who works for us had a fairly impressive resume however, when I added up all of the experience she had listed, she would have needed to start in IT at the age of 5.

Also, they don't work any harder than the folks who preceded them. They just know how to put in the facetime.

Abbott Labs has joined Disney in the unloading of Amurikkan IT workers for H-1B replacements

Abbott Labs, a global healthcare company, is laying off about 180 IT employees after signing an agreement with Wipro, a major India-based IT services firm, to take over some IT services. The employees were told about the planned cuts on Feb. 22; their last day will be April 22.

Efficiency - a busy man at his desk, surrounded by chaotic paperwork
Efficiency hacks for IT: 6 tips for getting things done
Modern tech leaders wear many hats -- too many, sometimes. Here are six expert tips from seasoned IT
READ NOW
The workers are expecting to train their replacements, possibly workers on H-1B and other temporary visas.

In other Offshoring news, I've done tons of business with Hotwire. They're a reputable company but their problem resolution has been moderate. Now I think they've gone to the Philippines for customer support.

Today I tried to resolve a Hotwire caused problem. I might as well have been trying to work through issues with a polite starfish. Really really really bad.

Some genius undoubtedly got a great bonus for this move to awfulness. Makes me wonder about the long term results of H-1B layoffs. Good or bad, I'm sure some Abbott VP was well rewarded.

Outsourcing your customer service to India or wherever is telling your English speaking customers to fuck off, loser.