Big Tech Gets Ready to Defend Low Pay. Again.
31st January 2017
Writing in 2015, Dewayne Hendricks, CEO of think tank the Dandin Group, described how Silicon Valley exploited the visa scheme to the detriment of American techies.
“Beginning in the early 2000s, I witnessed first-hand what happens when Silicon Valley tech companies, focused almost exclusively on the near-term bottom line, bringing in massive numbers of guest workers as a prelude to offshoring later development and manufacture.
“Cypress Semi was a leader in convincing Congress that there weren’t enough domestic engineers to meet their needs. In fact, there were but many had families and weren’t willing to work, day-in-and-day-out, the often very long hours some SV companies desired and even for those that were amenable companies weren’t willing to offer adequate compensation. Companies also weren’t willing to adequately encourage education and grooming of domestic engineers. Instead, they got the H-1B visa program greatly expanded at the same time senior domestic engineers were furloughed, many never to work again in tech.
“These foreign engineers, mostly new graduates working (in overtime exempt positions) through jobs shops, were (as required by law) paid the same as the domestic engineers they had replaced but were forced to work more hours (often nearly double). For years I would watch these workers on their way back to their flats in the East Bay late into the evening on BART. In this way tech companies were able to stay within the letter of the law (equal pay to domestic workers) while exacting many more labor hours than they otherwise could. Many of these foreign engineers would later return (not all by choice) to their countries where SV companies had set up subsidiaries or made arrangements with local industry to continue follow-on design, development or manufacture,” he noted.
February 1st, 2017 at 10:48
Of all the obnoxious crap coming out of the Left, Silicon Valley stands out in a manner that should inflame both Lefties and conservatives alike. This idea that somehow restricting visas will hurt software development in this country – obstensively because the USA can’t produce enough intelligent programmers, is just blantant greed. Bill Gates was one of the most vocal, but seems to focusing on his “save the Third World” efforts. Microsoft can’t get qualified people without trolling the Third World? How about handing out a few scholarships in the States! Nope? Oh, then all this is just about hiring people cheap – and making sure there are plenty of new sources of underpaid workers out there so the top dogs can buy football teams and tropical islands and such.
Have you seen a single MSM outlet call them on that? Me neither.
This flies in the face of both fair pay for labor (Left) and supporting jobs for Americans (Right). I suspect that it’s just so confusingly stupid that neither side wants to shoot at it.