David777
Well-known Member
- Location
- Silicon Valley
As a Berkeley professor, I see the impact H-1B visas and AI have on students' job opportunities
As a Berkeley professor, I see the impact H-1B visas and AI have on students' job opportunities
...The impact of this visa-farming problem is particularly acute among young people and recent college graduates, who face a bleak job market despite moderate overall unemployment rates. According to government data, the ratio of unemployment for college grads under 25 to those over 25 has hit an all-time high of more than four to one. This means that entry-level jobs are already four times more scarce than jobs requiring experience or advanced expertise...
The problem here is not about the number of visas issued, but rather how they're being used. Program applicants explicitly should be people with specialized skills, and those specialized skills should not be readily available from existing resident workers. However, the bureaucratic review process allows employers to exaggerate claims and hire workers with ordinary skills at low wages. There is an entire sub-profession of HR staff and attorneys that specialize in dressing up pigeons to look like peacocks...
As a 4+ decades now retired Silicon Valley tech person, I agree with this professor's recent assessment. Probably a reason Yahoo for several years now has censored even my minor comments on their news articles because I was obviously scaring some of them on this very subject I wrote on at length. Note I a relative peon, worked 6 years in engineering departments at the 800 pound gorilla of the Internet. The below is a terse summary.
Such is not new however and goes back to about 1990 when the early Internet rose at the same time companies began offshoring and outsourcing segments of their operations. What happened was, the Wall Street eastern center of banking and corporations money became highly envious of the exploding value of California hi tech companies so by using their money in funding became entrenched in decisions of who would run those companies and especially brought in Human Resource directors that had been schooled in Ivy League universities that would do their bidding and set up their departments like black boxes company department managers had little control over. Many of them seemed to loath how much money average experienced tech people were being paid.
Another thing the big banking money did was buy and sell via technology transfers what American engineers had created to Asian companies. That is how those companies arose. Yeah, the Wall Street bean counters that had little to do with our products sold off much of our American work to highest Asian bidders so they could retire in Palm Beach playing golf. And that was years after universities had been pushing top students into math, science, and computer careers as though that was a ticket to career success. Average level American university graduates had increasing difficulty finding employment in high tech.
And now companies ironically whine why native USA young Americans are not entering those career fields. Worse American manufacturing left with what was sold off so now we are rapidly becoming a third rate nation with our middle classes suffering. Of course that big money is also behind much of our illegal immigration and exploding housing costs.
With the Internet as an easy cover, HR departments could easily pose their job openings in technical skills ways that any older very experienced workers could not meet. No more could people just walk into doors of companies and apply for jobs. Instead all resumes had to be sent in over the Internet they could make an easy list of excuses for ignoring. For instance, on job req's requiring specific college degree skills that had only recently been taught in schools. Thus many resumes from qualified experienced persons went directly into the trash that hiring managers never got to see. Instead they hired either recent college grads, especially those US citizen immigrants born elsewhere with language limitations without much experience or cheap and willing H-1B Asians.
They then told hiring managers for their gurus to TRAIN EM. The only way many highly qualified tech persons like this person could get in those doors was via their buddy employment head hunters or direct employee referrals. What those HR persons did allow was movement of American engineers into Sales and Marketing because those positions require high English language people skills. Over time many of our SV companies became dominated by foreign engineers that then tended to prefer hiring those with similar foreign culture that spoke the same language. And in time were making the same high salaries we USA citizens used to make.
As a Berkeley professor, I see the impact H-1B visas and AI have on students' job opportunities
...The impact of this visa-farming problem is particularly acute among young people and recent college graduates, who face a bleak job market despite moderate overall unemployment rates. According to government data, the ratio of unemployment for college grads under 25 to those over 25 has hit an all-time high of more than four to one. This means that entry-level jobs are already four times more scarce than jobs requiring experience or advanced expertise...
The problem here is not about the number of visas issued, but rather how they're being used. Program applicants explicitly should be people with specialized skills, and those specialized skills should not be readily available from existing resident workers. However, the bureaucratic review process allows employers to exaggerate claims and hire workers with ordinary skills at low wages. There is an entire sub-profession of HR staff and attorneys that specialize in dressing up pigeons to look like peacocks...
As a 4+ decades now retired Silicon Valley tech person, I agree with this professor's recent assessment. Probably a reason Yahoo for several years now has censored even my minor comments on their news articles because I was obviously scaring some of them on this very subject I wrote on at length. Note I a relative peon, worked 6 years in engineering departments at the 800 pound gorilla of the Internet. The below is a terse summary.
Such is not new however and goes back to about 1990 when the early Internet rose at the same time companies began offshoring and outsourcing segments of their operations. What happened was, the Wall Street eastern center of banking and corporations money became highly envious of the exploding value of California hi tech companies so by using their money in funding became entrenched in decisions of who would run those companies and especially brought in Human Resource directors that had been schooled in Ivy League universities that would do their bidding and set up their departments like black boxes company department managers had little control over. Many of them seemed to loath how much money average experienced tech people were being paid.
Another thing the big banking money did was buy and sell via technology transfers what American engineers had created to Asian companies. That is how those companies arose. Yeah, the Wall Street bean counters that had little to do with our products sold off much of our American work to highest Asian bidders so they could retire in Palm Beach playing golf. And that was years after universities had been pushing top students into math, science, and computer careers as though that was a ticket to career success. Average level American university graduates had increasing difficulty finding employment in high tech.
And now companies ironically whine why native USA young Americans are not entering those career fields. Worse American manufacturing left with what was sold off so now we are rapidly becoming a third rate nation with our middle classes suffering. Of course that big money is also behind much of our illegal immigration and exploding housing costs.
With the Internet as an easy cover, HR departments could easily pose their job openings in technical skills ways that any older very experienced workers could not meet. No more could people just walk into doors of companies and apply for jobs. Instead all resumes had to be sent in over the Internet they could make an easy list of excuses for ignoring. For instance, on job req's requiring specific college degree skills that had only recently been taught in schools. Thus many resumes from qualified experienced persons went directly into the trash that hiring managers never got to see. Instead they hired either recent college grads, especially those US citizen immigrants born elsewhere with language limitations without much experience or cheap and willing H-1B Asians.
They then told hiring managers for their gurus to TRAIN EM. The only way many highly qualified tech persons like this person could get in those doors was via their buddy employment head hunters or direct employee referrals. What those HR persons did allow was movement of American engineers into Sales and Marketing because those positions require high English language people skills. Over time many of our SV companies became dominated by foreign engineers that then tended to prefer hiring those with similar foreign culture that spoke the same language. And in time were making the same high salaries we USA citizens used to make.
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