Lots of people learning Java

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Kishore said:

That is absolutely wrong!

I recently graduated with a MS - Computer Science from NYU's Courant Institute and I know that the fresher graduates expect far less money.

In your opinion, what salary expectation would result in a US job offer for a top recent graduate without commercial Java experience?

[ March 16, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Gershman ]

Dude: I am talking about graduates from Berkley & Stanford, not from NYU(I am sure NYU CS is decently regarded in NY area). But my observations are from first hand interviewing experience.

[peter wooster]

Originally posted by Kishore Dandu:
Dude: I am talking about graduates from Berkley & Stanford, not from NYU(I am sure NYU CS is decently regarded in NY area). But my observations are from first hand interviewing experience.

If you are interviewing in the Bay area, you must be aware of the cost of living there. I worked in Palo Alto for a while and remember that tiny houses and apartments cost like mansions elsewhere. $80K is barely survival wages in that area. Same goes for NYC and Boston.

[Eric Lemaitre]

Hi peter !

If you are interviewing in the Bay area, you must be aware of the cost of living there. I worked in Palo Alto for a while and remember that tiny houses and apartments cost like mansions elsewhere. $80K is barely survival wages in that area. Same goes for NYC and Boston.

Very good remark Peter, but I would like to come back to Kishore Dandu's comment which is much deeper than it seemed. He stated that high end students from Stanford & Berkeley asked for high wages, which "prevented" ordinary companies to hire them because they needed people ready to start their career at "sensible" market wages around 50K which seem can be found easily right now. A first light interpretation is that high end students may ask much because of their high end studies, but could perhaps accept lower wages if needed as a start, so together with high local cost of live this could easily justify local high wages demands from beginners.

But more deeply this leads to the real core of today's market problem : is the industry right to user alien H1B to lower native US wages for it is more fair from industrial point of view, or are native US right to ask for very minimum H1B cap so as to create or maintain the famous IT skills "shortage" (if any) so as to keep wages high ?

This is a real issue, for the only figures come from IT industry. If only industry claims "we need very qualified workers at sensible wages so we cannot hire native US beginners and must import more qualified aliens", figures for hiring will be kept very low because very few very qualified workers at low wages allowed to work in USA will be available, justifying present IT pros "shortage", hence US gov willingness to increase H1B caps perhaps explaining present situation. So are there other available sources for figures other than IT industry's only point of view for showing real need for IT professionnal in USA ?

Best regards.

[Henry Wong]

IMO, everything is supply and demand. While Harvard may have a tick on its effect on demand, I highly doubt that it is much of a effect, when the hire is for a candidate fresh out of school.

As for an experienced hire, some of the best developers that I had the pleasure to work with never graduated college.

Henry

[Mike Gershman]

Kishore said:

I am talking about graduates from Berkley & Stanford, not from NYU(I am sure NYU CS is decently regarded in NY area). But my observations are from first hand interviewing experience.

So your company only hires Americans from Berkeley and Stanford.

What Indian schools does your company hire from?
What kind of work do these freshers do that only Berkeley and Stanford graduates can do well?

[ March 17, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Gershman ]
[ March 17, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Gershman ]

[Mike Gershman]

Kishore said:

Dude: I am talking about graduates from Berkeley & Stanford, not from NYU

So when you attested to the US Department of Labor that you could not find any qualified American workers, you meant at Berkeley or Stanford?

[peter wooster]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Kishore said:

So your company only hires Americans from Berkeley and Stanford.

What Indian schools does your company hire from?
What kind of work do these freshers do that only Berkeley and Stanford graduates can do well?

"Of all the young men who come to me with letters of introduction from friends in the East, the most helpless are college young men"
Leland Stanford.

By "the East" he meant Ivy League, but I suspect LS's feelings would apply to those who come from the West, of either gender, as well nowadays.

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Kishore said:

So when you attested to the US Department of Labor that you could not find any qualified American workers, you meant at Berkeley or Stanford?

What do you mean by 'attest to US Dept of Labor'. I never said anything about hiring anybody myself. It is HR dept in big firms that take care of this.

Some firms like Verizon do away with this crap by way of giving out 'Statement of work' to consulting firms. It is upto consulting firms to hire who ever they need or want.

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by peter wooster:


If you are interviewing in the Bay area, you must be aware of the cost of living there. I worked in Palo Alto for a while and remember that tiny houses and apartments cost like mansions elsewhere. $80K is barely survival wages in that area. Same goes for NYC and Boston.

I am talking about hiring these folks in other sensible, not so expensive parts of US.

BTW there is demand for people who can do J2EE, and sure many consulting firms in my area(Dallas, TX) are looking for those folks. But not for 100-120K per year.

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Eric Lemaitre:
Hi peter !

If you are interviewing in the Bay area, you must be aware of the cost of living there. I worked in Palo Alto for a while and remember that tiny houses and apartments cost like mansions elsewhere. $80K is barely survival wages in that area. Same goes for NYC and Boston.

Very good remark Peter, but I would like to come back to Kishore Dandu's comment which is much deeper than it seemed. He stated that high end students from Stanford & Berkeley asked for high wages, which "prevented" ordinary companies to hire them because they needed people ready to start their career at "sensible" market wages around 50K which seem can be found easily right now. A first light interpretation is that high end students may ask much because of their high end studies, but could perhaps accept lower wages if needed as a start, so together with high local cost of live this could easily justify local high wages demands from beginners.

But more deeply this leads to the real core of today's market problem : is the industry right to user alien H1B to lower native US wages for it is more fair from industrial point of view, or are native US right to ask for very minimum H1B cap so as to create or maintain the famous IT skills "shortage" (if any) so as to keep wages high ?

This is a real issue, for the only figures come from IT industry. If only industry claims "we need very qualified workers at sensible wages so we cannot hire native US beginners and must import more qualified aliens", figures for hiring will be kept very low because very few very qualified workers at low wages allowed to work in USA will be available, justifying present IT pros "shortage", hence US gov willingness to increase H1B caps perhaps explaining present situation. So are there other available sources for figures other than IT industry's only point of view for showing real need for IT professionnal in USA ?

Best regards.

I agree and respect your remarks.

Why do you think outsourcing and firms like IBM, Accenture are settingup shops in India?

Because, with the advent of different technologies things can get done across the globe as much as in Tulsa or Dallas; if planned and executed properly with a correct mix of Employees both offshore and onshore

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Kishore said:

So your company only hires Americans from Berkeley and Stanford.

What Indian schools does your company hire from?
What kind of work do these freshers do that only Berkeley and Stanford graduates can do well?

[ March 17, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Gershman ]

[ March 17, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Gershman ]

My company only hires experienced folks mostly. But about 10-15% of openings do go out for folks from top-10 perceived CS programs in US for reasonable wages. No hiring is done for freshers from India. But we do development work in UK and India, to offset budget on maintenance and longer term projects.

[Mike Gershman]

Kishore said:

No hiring is done for freshers from India. But we do development work in UK and India, to offset budget on maintenance and longer term projects.

So freshers get their first job in India and are considered experienced workers when they come "on-site".

Some firms like Verizon do away with this crap by way of giving out 'Statement of work' to consulting firms. It is up to consulting firms to hire who ever they need or want.

I don't blame you for considering US immigration laws "crap", since the laws are not being enforced and your company has to maintain a competitive cost structure. It's up to Americans to insist that their laws are enforced.

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Kishore said:

So freshers get their first job in India and are considered experienced workers when they come "on-site".

Mark,

Please don't make your own conclusions. My company never entertains bringing people from across the pond for working here. We do send managers to India to get things done.

I feel you are not considering me as a foe and making these rude remarks.

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Kishore said:

I don't blame you for considering US immigration laws "crap", since the laws are not being enforced and your company has to maintain a competitive cost structure. It's up to Americans to insist that their laws are enforced.

Again Mark: I did not explain what I meant by 'Crap' in my previous post. You took your own conclusions.

I meant Crap related to incompetent applicants who put 4-5 years experience on resume(probably genuine) but turn out to be unproductive. That applies to both people that are local and on immigration visa.

So by way of giving work to consulting companies as 'Statement of Work', the bigger firms take the indirect route to getting things done; than putup with crap that is hired out of incorrect resumes or incompetent people.

That is what I meant by 'crap'.

[Mike Gershman]

Mike not Mark.

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Mike not Mark.

Sorry about the mistype.

[Mark Herschberg]

Kishore said:

people from schools like Berkley expect about 80K per year just out of school

Mike Gershman replied:

That is absolutely wrong!

I recently graduated with a MS - Computer Science from NYU's Courant Institute and I know that the fresher graduates expect far less money.

Well, I can't speak for most schools, but you can find MIT's annual salary survey results here.

--Mark
[ March 19, 2005: Message edited by: Mark Herschberg ]

[Mike Gershman]

Mark:

Thanks, that is an interesting survey.

So the mean 2003 MIT MS salary was 82K with a range from 21K to 125K. Do you know which course numbers relate to IT?

Of course, there is no way to know which of the graduates had substantial industry experience contributing to the salary offer.
[ March 19, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Gershman ]

[Mike Gershman]

Kishore:

I think this line of discussion within the thread started with your statement that: "There are situations where there is genuine need for H1 holders, since there is no equivalent resource from US."

You then defined that resource as "Entry level IT staff who can work for reasonable market wages(since people from schools like Berkley expect about 80K per year just out of school)."

You clarified this point with "I am talking about graduates from Berkley & Stanford".

So you are saying that the only alternative to hiring graduates from Berkeley and Stanford is importing H1B workers. No other school will do (well, maybe MIT with good grades ). I don't think the immigration law or ordinary experience agrees with you. I have hired over a hundred entry level programmers, only a few from the very top schools, and well over 80% became quality programmers.

[Homer Phillips]

It's interesting isn't it that the top 2004 BS IT grad commanded $75K. How many of the grads do you suppose went to work for the fortune 500 as direct hires with terrific benefits and how many got jobs as contractors? $75K for basically no experience and never made a single release work.

I'll bet all of them can regurgitate interesting facts about sort algorithms.

Looks like MIT details the survey in five categories for years and years. Sure would be nice if they would plot the numbers by grad's age. Anecdotally we know that 40 year old grads don't do as well though.

Where's the IIT numbers?
[ March 23, 2005: Message edited by: Homer Phillips ]

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:

So the mean 2003 MIT MS salary was 82K with a range from 21K to 125K. Do you know which course numbers relate to IT?

Of course, there is no way to know which of the graduates had substantial industry experience contributing to the salary offer.

Course 6 is EE/CS. They do mention the name of the major and that should be able to help you. Of course, plenty of course 8 guys (physics) go into software as well as people from lots of different fields, so it's not much help.

Generally, most undergrads at MIT have no real experience. Less than 5% of the undergrads I've known at MIT in the past 14 years have had significant experience (aside from summer internships). Most who have had experience had it from taking a year off to do a startup, and all but one of those people graduated by 2001.

Keep in mind most of the line data you see in the survey has too small a sample size to be meaningful, but you can aggregate it across years or majors to get an idea. For example, looking at course 6-3 people (software guys) across the past 2-3 years should be a big enough sample size and should compensate for an outlier or two.

--Mark

[Arjunkumar Shastry]

Originally posted by Homer Phillips:

Where's the IIT numbers?
[ March 23, 2005: Message edited by: Homer Phillips ]

When it comes to earn the money,its IIM!
{
IT is a great year to be graduating." It sure must be so for 26-year-old chartered accountant Mr Ravi Singhvi, a student of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, who has been picked up by HSBC Bank for $1,52,000 per annum
}
{
Notable companies which visited IIM-A on Day Zero include Booz Allen Hamilton, Barclays Capital, McKinsey and Company Ltd, Boston Consulting Group, Merrill Lynch, LNM Group, Temasek Holdings and Deutsche Bank.
}
IIM Ahmedabad