The H1B dilemma with off-shoring

[M Burke]

I was 'off-shored" again. Damn, that's twice now. I love to develop software, but I just can't deal with being laid off every six months. They call it "contract to hire", It's more like "contract to fire".

I am an American citizen, but I work with many H1B's and Green card holders, all good guys with great skills, some of the best India has to offer. I feel worse for them than I do for myself. If they can't find new sponsors, they get the boot.

There in lies the irony: H1B's are getting outsourced by Indians who stayed home. What is this world coming to?

Well, I just have to plug away, look for a new gig. If I knew the software biz was like this I would have never gone into it.

[ab parashar]

Originally posted by M Burke:
I was 'off-shored" again. Damn, that's twice now. I love to develop software, but I just can't deal with being laid off every six months. They call it "contract to hire", It's more like "contract to fire".

I am an American citizen, but I work with many H1B's and Green card holders, all good guys with great skills, some of the best India has to offer. I feel worse for them than I do for myself. If they can't find new sponsors, they get the boot.

There in lies the irony: H1B's are getting outsourced by Indians who stayed home. What is this world coming to?

Well, I just have to plug away, look for a new gig. If I knew the software biz was like this I would have never gone into it.

Thats freemarket at its best(or worst).The only people who are making big bucks are the corporate heads like Larry Ellison who can pay themselves big bonuses.

[M Burke]

Your right, developers on both sides of the shore (Americans and Indians) are being exploited one way or another.

It's back to the 19th century robber baron days again.

[Jayesh Lalwani]

Exactly how many companies did you get work for? Did the companies give you a specific reason for firing you?

Generally speaking, when companies advertise for "contract to hire" opportunities, that means that there is a position for a full-time employee open, but they don't want to take chances, and use the "contract" term as a probation period. Not all "contract-to-hire" positions get sent to India. If the position is being sent to India in the next 6 months, then there is no reason for the company to advertise a "contract-to-hire" position.

Something about your post doesn't sound right. Either, there is something else going on besides jobs moving to India, or you are one unlucky guy.

[Prem Khan]

Mr Burke, I am looking at going into something like carpentry or electrician, those jobs pay very good, and can not be outsourced.

[Amit Saini]

Or get into something that requires excessive client interaction !! That cant be outsourced either

[ab parashar]

Originally posted by Amit Saini:
Or get into something that requires excessive client interaction !! That cant be outsourced either

from a friends email:
With 90% of all software/hardware/firmware/programming jobs headed outside the USA, I just want to create a resource list for people who want to live here.
1) Construction and real estate
2) Healthcare
3) Airline pilo
4) Criminal justice
6) Military
7) insurance
8) banking
9) Store Manager- like in Walmart, McDonalds
10) Janitorial services

Stay away from IT jobs and you will be fine

[Arjunkumar Shastry]

People here are desperately looking for java developers. In monster.com,I typed Java and I got more than thousand results.In dice.com ,I got more than ten thousand results.No point in arguing if you say "these employers are hiring only H1Bs secretly"
[ September 01, 2005: Message edited by: Arjunkumar Shastry ]

[Eric Lemaitre]

Hi Arjunkumar !

People here are desperately looking for java developers. In monster.com,I typed Java and I got more than thousand results.In dice.com ,I got more than ten thousand results.No point in arguing if you say "these employers are hiring only H1Bs secretly"

OK, but how many of them are real hires (for I hope there is no need to explain you that a job add is not equivalent to an hire) ? There are many rumours about companies using job adds as publicity (a successful company grows and is profitable so hires), awfuly much cheaper than a marketing campaign (especially on Monster.com still from rumour, don't know real hires behind).

In France too we have now an awful lot of adds, but seemingly very few hires after, kind of 1 hire for 10 job adds. Another reason for this is the fact that not any company in France any longer hires by prevision, only on contracts in real time, like any temporary agency. I recently went to attend a technical test with Java+J2E+UML for such company pretending to hire 50 people for expected work load to come, but the refusal later I received practically the day after strongly suggested I succeeded in technical test but was not needed right now. In clear companies often launch huge bunches of job adds to store resumes, but seldom hire by selecting a resume from their pool only when a real contract has been concluded.

Looks like everywhere, except for ISV, all IT consulting agencies are nothing more than temp agencies like Manpower for example...

Best regards.

[Eric Lemaitre]

Hi ab parashar !

from a friends email:
With 90% of all software/hardware/firmware/programming jobs headed outside the USA, I just want to create a resource list for people who want to live here.
1) Construction and real estate
2) Healthcare
3) Airline pilo
4) Criminal justice
6) Military
7) insurance
8) banking
9) Store Manager- like in Walmart, McDonalds
10) Janitorial services

Stay away from IT jobs and you will be fine

Do you mean all IT fields or mainly development ? What about networking (I mean Cisco/Juniper/Nortel stuff of course, not interprofessionnal relationships), databases, and other such IT fields ?

Best regards.

[Jason Cox]

As I posted elsewhere, I have been deluged by recruiters recently and even before then it was not unusual for me to get a couple of probing e-mails a week. It was about the middle of last year that I finally gave up on trying to reply to them all.

I do not think we're going to see some mass off-shoring of jobs anytime soon. Mostly because the time that was most likely to happen has now passed. I do think that off-shoring is not going away, but it would seem the trend is starting to correct itself. The talk of all these jobs being sent overseas seems like a lot of paranoid hooha to me.

Also, I would not personally read too much into M Burke's post. My general policy is that unless they do something contradictory or have some sort of history of falsification that people are generally telling the truth. Only because I can't prove otherwise, not because I'm some sort of idealist I think the somewhat sideways implication that he is not being totally honest wasn't necessary.

[Tim Holloway]

Well, it's been about 5 years since I had a recruiter try and get in touch with me, and I never considered myself "deluged" even before the '80s except maybe for a brief time around '83 when everyone was trying to get me to move to Tampa. You obviously have more friends than I do (most people, do, though).

But I can't resist any longer:

And if you talk about fish to a starving man, then you're a consultant

If you charge an outrageous fee to talk about fish to a starving man you're a consultant.

[Jason Cox]

Originally posted by Tim Holloway:

If you charge an outrageous fee to talk about fish to a starving man you're a consultant.

But... but...I'm worth every penny

[M Burke]

Originally posted by Jayesh Lalwani:
Exactly how many companies did you get work for? Did the companies give you a specific reason for firing you?

Generally speaking, when companies advertise for "contract to hire" opportunities, that means that there is a position for a full-time employee open, but they don't want to take chances, and use the "contract" term as a probation period. Not all "contract-to-hire" positions get sent to India. If the position is being sent to India in the next 6 months, then there is no reason for the company to advertise a "contract-to-hire" position.

Something about your post doesn't sound right. Either, there is something else going on besides jobs moving to India, or you are one unlucky guy.

You certainly know how to make friends and influence people


I was caught up in two department wide level layoffs. I was escorted out with fifty or more people each time. The first I was an employee. The second I was a "contract-to-hire". I�ve learned its all semantics. There is no such thing as a permanent job.
[ September 02, 2005: Message edited by: M Burke ]