Thread: US high-tech companies lobbying Congress for more H1Bs

Kate you are so right. I do video games for a living and managed to survive the outsourcing craze of 2001-2003, although I had to go through my 401K and savings account to do so. The game industry licked their collective chops over cheap labor from overseas and tried to farm out as much as they could. I personally know of over a dozen instances of this practice going on--and every single time we dumb, lazy Americans had to completely re-do the work done overseas. In 2004-2005 there was another craze of having Americans flown to nations like China and the former Soviet Union to train these superior overseas workers. That didn't work either.

Today, in nearly-2007, the outsourcing craze, from what I can tell, IS OVER. This is great news folks. The truth is, most of these reptilian businessmen who wanted to line their pockets at our expense have been bitten on their fat asses as re-doing game assets put games over-budget and off-schedule. One former supervisor of mine, I'll call him Bart, referred to us game artists as "a dime a dozen" and "toilet paper" and couldn't wait to outsource as much work as possible. All of it had to be redone. Meanwhile, we lazy Americans had to work 60-70 hour weeks (of course no overtime pay) to finish the game but we did it.

Bart is now unemployed. His attitude however was/is absolutely textbook--he'd replace any of us in a heartbeat if he could put more money in his own pocket. And here's the best part--I learned from my Art Director that Bart was using company funds to fly to "video game seminars"-- but he was really flying to Thailand trying to rig up an outsourcing facility over their for his own profit. So Bart was stabbing our staff in the back AND stabbing the owner in the back. He even tried to get the Art Director, on the sly, to try to join him in this underhanded endeavor but the AD said NO.

So if anyone wants to dog Americans, start with the Barts of this world. These parasites will be the ones who eventually ruin everything.

Oh and by the way--in 2004 we advertised for an IT guy in the city newspaper. We got 600 resumes within one week. The guy we eventually hired, who is one of the most competent, dependable, hard-working guys I ever met, was unemployed for TWO YEARS before he got the job with us.

We had a handful of foreign Visa employees working on site until recently--but then word got out that Bart was paying them between 10 and 15K LESS than the Americans, so they all took off.

BobC, great story. I don't have any doubts about what you say. You should consider sending this to John Cornyn and his other H1B insourcing supporters in the Senate. They really need to hear such stories from those on the front lines.

Originally Posted by Kate

BobC, great story. I don't have any doubts about what you say. You should consider sending this to John Cornyn and his other H1B insourcing supporters in the Senate. They really need to hear such stories from those on the front lines.

Hi Kate. I have sent the following series to several representatives. I doubt they paid attention to it. The H1B visa is a big joke. It looks like the 'sleepy' state of Maine is a huge storefront for phony H1B's. There is alot of information to read, but it's all here, if anyone is interested.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/immigration/

I spoke to my friend who does computer programming about this yesterday. He told me that there are virtually no computer programming jobs in the United States. They are either in India or the Ukraine (a former Soviet Union Country that is to the west of Russia). As I said earlier he has a job as he speaks Russian and the computer programmers the company he workers for are in the Ukraine. His ability to communicate with the programmers is the reason he has a job.
We also were wondering why do so many universities offer degrees in courses like computer programming when there are no jobs here. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize no from here would want to immigrate to the countries where those jobs are.