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Higher demand and lower pay?

 
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I saw an interesting thing in US Java job market:
The number of Java job posting on dice or monster
is much higher than that of six months ago, but
the pay (hourly or yearly) is getting lower.

Can anyone explain?
 
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Hi S. Palanigounder !

I saw an interesting thing in US Java job market:
The number of Java job posting on dice or monster is much higher than that of six months ago, but the pay (hourly or yearly) is getting lower. Can anyone explain?


To say it short, as there is no staff shortage in this field (to say the less, IT is overcrowded), wages will get lower until pepole don't become so easily available.

We have the very same debate raging in France, which for once seems ahead of US about admitting (but still unofficially) collapse of jobs in IT field, especially "http://forums.munci.org/viewforum.php?f=243", but sorry all in french.

Visible facts, certainly true for whole europe and USA, are in IT field :

_ huge unemployment in IT field, much greater then other fields, even for decently skilled people, especially for seniors (from 40 onwards), some very cheap beginners or imported aliens being the main exceptions

_ collapse of wages

_ lies of consulting companies who pretend some +50% job offers raise, but never state that 60% of these offers are fake, designed by advance to match expected customer needs but as most often they don't most offers don't go for a real hire. This simply means consulting companies strictly work as big temporary job providers (interim) like ManPower, and "offer" jobs on demand in real time. Sometimes offer is totally fake, simply to look dynamic (I hire so I grow) or to gather economic info from candidate or to populate a resume pool in case

_ collapse of training facilities, must produce, no wasted time for training

_ total abandon of labour force estimation needs by officials, who leave false claims to industry only who see of course huge shortage of (alien) IT specialists (for cheap, while natives are not). This is probably why USCIS never strikes against obvious abuses despite they are seen by everyone, destroy local employment but boost short term profits. In France in particular, our officials who state that IT is a favourable labour domain simply lie, they perfectly know IT employment has become catastrophic (more than 40,000 official jobless for french IT, more than twice in fact if you count the individual consultants)

_ since internet bubble burst, so as to maintain past profits, all IT expenses are seen as costs to be minimized by any way, such as outsourcing, even investments for innovation are gone

_ IT is a simple tool, and it is now seen as such, so usual industrialization applies to it too. The standard white collar Developper of today is nothing else than the very same blue collar workman of yesterday, so wages will collapse to the same level, and with automation many IT specialities will disappear

The conclusions we had in France were some kind of :

_ youth must flee IT studies like plague, and choose a field which may provide work later, for IT population is already much too numerous and must decrease

_ people who have average skills and some interests in other labour fields should shift to other jobs, for IT skills demand will get much higher while wages will get much lower, as long as outsourcing and IT overcrowd will allow it. On short/average term, only "multi-skilled IT specialists with knowledge in business domain" (contradiction, I know, but this is what market wants) will find a job in IT

_ apart from very few exceptionnally competent people, "ordinary" IT people who whish to work in this field must expect wages lowering up to standard blue collar standard wages

Best regards.
 
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I'm guessing it's because so many software development jobs are going off-shore where salaries are *much* lower ...
 
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lower wages because of THIS:

http://programmersguild.org/docs/h1b_abuses_april2005.html

Since "Mr." Bush is hand in glove with special interests things will only get worse. Bush is only worried about his cutbacks, he could care less about the American worker...that is the truth!
 
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probably still within the supply-demand thing.....higher demand, but yet, a relatively high supply
 
Jesus Angeles
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and that supply now probably includes, the offshore, ..yikes!
 
Eric Lemaitre
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Hi Kevin !

lower wages because of THIS:
http://programmersguild.org/docs/h1b_abuses_april2005.html
Since "Mr." Bush is hand in glove with special interests things will only get worse. Bush is only worried about his cutbacks, he could care less about the American worker...that is the truth!


OK, but... who cares if nothing is done against such obvious abuses ? What do officials and especially USCIS do, except promoting increase of abuses through their total inaction ?

I frankly wonder whether US gov is not in favor of this system, which destroys local US employment on long term but increases big companies profits on short term, exactly what happened with WallMart. Abuses are so obvious, widespread and apparently never fought that officials cannot be unaware of them, so must be in favour of them in reality.

Best regards.
 
Jesus Angeles
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i wonder if there is any skill that is not 'offshoreable'...or least only locals can provide...
 
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I'm guessing it's because so many software development jobs are going off-shore where salaries are *much* lower ...


No, we don't believe that. It's complicated, but it's very hard to do business between NY and CA. Send the worker around the world and make him speak another dialect and things get more difficult. Even if you can offshore, hey that's life. Flooding the US market with supply is a major cause. Drop off in demand is a major cause. Wall Street corruption has dealt a blow to IT too.
 
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Originally posted by Eric Lemaitre:
Abuses are so obvious, widespread and apparently never fought that officials cannot be unaware of them, so must be in favour of them in reality.



Unfortuantely, the page linked has some rather interesting flaws. They claim that the vast majority of H-1B workers have displaced software profesionals in the US, and then the wage abuses they highlight - only one can claim to be anything remotely close to programming!

In item #2, they state that the unemployment rate has gone up among software profesionals, which is true. They then claim as gospel that it's related to underpaid H-1B workers.

Item #3 claims that the H-1B visa allows discrimination based on national origin - which is absolutely laughable since the only legal form of discrimiantion allowed in the US based on national origin is the phrase No H-1B candidates will be considered and most people here would give such a firm a medal.

Item #5 is absolutely laughable. I've never relinquished my passport to anyone, and I've ditched an annoying H-1B employer at the drop of a hat. The fact that so-called "professionals" are outraged at the notion of billings exceeding actual wages has me convinced that these IT folks are not professionals at all - ask any doctor or attorney what percentage of billings ends up in his or her paycheck!

What makes Item #5 unsupportable as an indictment of the H-1B program (or any non-immigrant work visa program) is that the majority of non-immigrant workers in America come from First World countries, and are therefore exceptionally unlikely to tolerate such abuses. When you take those numbers and subtract out the largest country of origin (Mexico, and since we are not hearing sensationalistic stories about underpaid Mexican professionals we can safely assume they are in agriculture, not IT) the disparity becomes even larger.

The numbers I have are from the FY02 USCSIS visa numbers, which are at the high of the large H-1B cap. Since the FY05 H-1B cap was used up on the day it started, the numbers in favor of First World countries are even larger today.

Shall I post them?

Cheers!

Luke
 
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Originally posted by Luke Kolin:


Item #3 claims that the H-1B visa allows discrimination based on national origin - which is absolutely laughable since the only legal form of discrimiantion allowed in the US based on national origin is the phrase No H-1B candidates will be considered and most people here would give such a firm a medal.



Luke,

If any firm were to advertise "No H-1B candidates will be considered",they would be definitely inviting lawsuits. It is illegal in the USA to ask a person's background while conducting interviews. They can only ask if the candidate has the ability to work legally in the US. They can't even ask if he/she is a citizen/permanent resident/visa holder. The only exceptions are to those jobs that require a security clearance where most definitely, citizens(especially natives) are preferred.

The firm may advertise that they will not sponsor H1-B visas. This is not wrong and it may be the company's policy or culture. They may not want to go through the hassle of dealing with immigration issues or may not be keen on issuing company/tax related papers to the immigration lawyers.
 
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Originally posted by Anand Prabhu:


Luke,

If any firm were to advertise "No H-1B candidates will be considered",they would be definitely inviting lawsuits. It is illegal in the USA to ask a person's background while conducting interviews. They can only ask if the candidate has the ability to work legally in the US. They can't even ask if he/she is a citizen/permanent resident/visa holder. The only exceptions are to those jobs that require a security clearance where most definitely, citizens(especially natives) are preferred.

The firm may advertise that they will not sponsor H1-B visas. This is not wrong and it may be the company's policy or culture. They may not want to go through the hassle of dealing with immigration issues or may not be keen on issuing company/tax related papers to the immigration lawyers.




I totally disagree with your first paragraph. What is wrong with saying we will only hire US citizens & permanent residents. I do not see any chance for a law suit from this. H1 is not an entitlement, and H1 can only be sponsored provided there is no compelling local talent.
 
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Originally posted by Kishore Dandu:



I totally disagree with your first paragraph. What is wrong with saying we will only hire US citizens & permanent residents. I do not see any chance for a law suit from this. H1 is not an entitlement, and H1 can only be sponsored provided there is no compelling local talent.



I guess I put it wrong. Yes, a company can advertise that they hire only citizens/permanent residents. But while conducting an interview, they cannot ask about his visa status. Either they advertise upfront that they will not sponsor the visa or they can ask the candidate during the interview if he/she can work legally in the USA. I reread Luke's post and I guess I did not put my point right. Yes "No H1-Bs apply" is valid and will not invite a lawsuit but "Are you on H1-B?" can invite one. Whether they are discriminatory or not is another topic.
 
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Anand said:

while conducting an interview, they cannot ask about his visa status. Either they advertise upfront that they will not sponsor the visa or they can ask the candidate during the interview if he/she can work legally in the USA.


US employers are required to verify the legal employment status of job applicants. To do this, they must ask about immigration status.

Since no employer is legally obligated to apply to transfer a visa, the applicant has no legal right to work at any other company than the one named on the H1B visa.
 
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Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Anand said:

US employers are required to verify the legal employment status of job applicants. To do this, they must ask about immigration status.

Since no employer is legally obligated to apply to transfer a visa, the applicant has no legal right to work at any other company than the one named on the H1B visa.



I don't want to tread on the legal jargon but I feel we are speaking the same thing but in different ways and mostly, I am not being clear. My memories about the hiring processes are from a time when we were looking to hire and we were given a list of valid/invalid questions by our HR. We used the below document for reference. See page 3:"An unsolved dilemma".
http://cohesion.rice.edu/Administration/CareerServices/emplibrary/International_Guide.pdf
 
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