Thread: San Diego tech companies can't fill thousands of jobs

This article is intended to provide information and encouragement to unemployed American workers who might be qualified for these jobs. Good luck with the job applications.

San Diego tech companies can't fill thousands of jobs

By Dean Calbreath
Originally published February 12, 2011 at 7:40 p.m., updated February 12, 2011 at 7:40 p.m.

Even though the jobless rate continues to hover in the double digits, there are literally thousands of high-paid job openings in San Diego County just waiting for the applicants with the right skills, according to the leaders of the local high-tech community.

But they say that finding those applicants can be a challenge, partly because of the area’s high cost of living and the lingering perception that San Diego’s more of a beach town than a Silicon Valley South.

A survey of local businesses by the San Diego Software Industry Council indicates there are around 6,000 information-technology job openings in the county. In addition, there are about 2,000 job openings in mechanical and electrical engineering, says Connect, a group formed to support the local high-tech community.

“Our universities have terrific programs in engineering, biotechnology and other fields, but we lose a large number when they graduate, especially the ones who don’t have family roots here,â€

Median salaries for high-tech workers
City Median salary San Diego equivalent
Silicon Valley $132,057 $103,508
San Francisco $123,479 $79,619
Boston $102,230 $83,948
Washington, DC $100,488 $100,488*
Durham, N.C. $100,402 $140,402
New York $98,541 $78,396
Oakland $98,406 $101,228
Seattle $96,741 $90,025
Boulder $93,590 $93,099
Philadelphia $93,406 $118,732
San Diego $93,250 $93,250
Austin $93,240 $116,506
Denver $92,156 $118,729
Los Angeles $91,152 $83,766
* The cost of living in Washington, D.C., and San Diego is essentially the same.
**Housing costs in the cost of living index are based on “monthly rental equivalentsâ€

Unemployed techies, San Diego is the place to look for work.

Just make sure that we don't educate illegals in the technology and we get REAL AMERICANS place in those jobs. ZERO TOLLERANCE....NO ILLEGALS TO WORK THERE!!!!!

Something's fishy here. I AM a tech worker, who knows lots more of my kind, and the level of desperation amongst our unemployed kindred is very high. Usually we see complaints like this when the big bosses are gearing up for a campaign to raise the H-1B limits. We're about due for one of those. This is just like when farmers say they can't get workers: then you find out they pay pocket change and there's no transportation (as there often is for illegals who are often brokered by their own bodyshopping industry). Or restaurants. When ICE raided the meatpacking industry in Greeley, the line of local citizen applicants for the vacated jobs stretched around the block.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

Something's fishy here. I AM a tech worker, who knows lots more of my kind, and the level of desperation amongst our unemployed kindred is very high. . . .

San Diego jobs pay

San Diego $93,250 $93,250

Now is your chance. So send some workers here before they can hire foreign workers.
If Americans don't come here to do these jobs they will bring in foreign workers sooner or later.

If a business can't figure out how to get workers that is their problem. It is their business. Our government should not be giving out worker visas to foreigners because business owners are incompetent. If they can't figure it out then let them go out of business. Let the competent business owners pick up the slack and expand. All they need to do is train Americans to do these jobs. Train people. They had no problems making American IT workers train foreigners before they were fired. It is not the responsibility of our government to help businesses run their business. If they can't do it then let em go down. BTW, there are plenty of IT workers in this country....the ones who trained foreigners and then they were thrown out like trash.

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BofA Programmer Commits Suicide

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Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2003 9:29 AM



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JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

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www.ZaZona.com

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A former local programmer from the "Bank of America" killed himself
after finding out how hopeless it was to find another job. He took his
life in the parking lot of a BofA in Concord, CA. Why did it take one
month to report this sad story?

BofA claims they were saddened by this death. Yeah, sure.

Outsourcing was partly blamed for the sorry situation at BofA but of
course there was no mention made of the fact that BofA job ads still
require applicants to be non-US citizens. No mention was made of the
fact that BofA hires immense numbers of H-1B and L-1s while shunning
Americans that need these jobs.

The same BofA spokeswoman that said she was saddened by the suicide
also said in some cases it made sense to have workers train their
overseas successors before they are let go. She doesn't even see her
own contradiction when she said, "It's important to note that just
because we decide there is a good business reason to send a project
(overseas) does not mean it will necessarily result in job
displacement." I wish the reporter would have asked her you can send
projects overseas without firing Americans.

Debashish Sinha, analyst for Gartner, chimes in with his spin: "Very
rarely is there a direct staff substitution. Very rarely will a U.S.
enterprise lay off their internal IT folk to hire an external offshore
service provider." Gartner usually tries to be academic but in this
case Sinha stoops to blatant political spin doctoring. Gartner should
fire him.

The BofA should be more honest and change their name to BofB - Bank of
Bombay. It's an affront to the citizens of this country to have
"America" in their name.


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http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/5848767.htm

Posted on Tue, May. 13, 2003

Job losses sap morale of workers

By Ellen Lee
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

In his oldest son's Pleasant Hill home, Tom Flanagan occasionally
curses as he walks through the halls and gathers his son Kevin's
belongings: the black-and-white photos his son developed in his
makeshift darkroom, the household products he had a tendency to buy in
bulk, the box-loads of books on computer programming.

More than once, Flanagan shakes his head. "It's a shame," he says. "We
lost a good friend and a good mind."

One month ago, Kevin Flanagan took his life in the parking lot of Bank
of America's Concord Technology Center, on the afternoon after he was
told he had lost his job.

It was "the straw that broke the camel's back," his father said, even
though the 41-year-old software programmer suspected it was coming. He
knew that his employer, Bank of America Corp., like other giant
corporations weathering the economic storm, was cutting high-tech jobs.
He knew that Bank of America was sending jobs overseas. He had seen his
friends and coworkers leave until only he and one other person remained
on the last project Flanagan worked on.

Flanagan took steps to soften the blow. He considered studying law, and
even made a list of California schools he was interested in
researching. He applied for other jobs at the bank, but didn't receive
responses.

In e-mails to his father, Flanagan sounded lighthearted. "I'm safe!" he
would write in his Friday missives. "I'm safe for another week."

But Flanagan apparently masked the depth of the distress he felt as he
fought to save his position. "He felt like he was fighting a large
corporation that pretty much didn't care," his father said. "This final
blow was so devastating. He couldn't deal with it." The father said he
saw no other signs of depression before his son's suicide.

It is unclear if Flanagan lost his job because it had been sent
overseas, or because the bank was slimming down because of the tight
economy. Lisa Gagnon, a Bank of America spokeswoman, declined to
comment, saying, "We're deeply saddened by this tragedy. We send our
prayers to his friends, colleagues and family."

But his death underscores the anxiety that has swelled among technology
workers at Bank of America and elsewhere as more businesses shift
high-tech jobs and responsibilities to contractors offshore even as
they cut jobs in the United States.

A report by Forrester Research projects that, led by the
information-technology industry, 3.3 million service jobs and $136
billion in wages will move from the United States to such countries as
India and Russia over the next decade or so.

Another survey by A.T. Kearney said that U.S. financial-services
companies are planning to send overseas 8 percent of their workforces,
thus saving them more than $30 billion.

Coupled with a rough economy and high unemployment, the phenomenon has
left U.S. workers looking over their shoulders, wondering if their
overseas counterparts could soon replace them. Blue-collar
manufacturing jobs have for years crossed U.S. borders and waters. Some
workers are bitter that white-collar, high-paying technology jobs are
next.

"It could be me," said a Bank of America information-technology
employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It could be
anybody."

Flanagan's parents say that he complained about the company's move to
shift jobs out of the United States and talked about taking care of
problems that contractors in India couldn't solve.

"Outsourcing has led to tragedy for us," said Tom Flanagan. "We are
devastated."

Flanagan landed at Bank of America seven years ago after spending time
at a San Francisco technology company and at ChevronTexaco Corp.

The Concord Technology Center, a cluster of four buildings that opened
in 1985, employs programmers such as Flanagan to develop software
programs that handle jobs like wire transfers. Throughout the Bay Area,
the bank employs some 13,400 workers; the bank would not release the
number of workers at the Concord center.

About two years ago, Bank of America created the Global Delivery Center
to identify projects that could be sent offshore. In the fall of 2002,
it signed agreements with Infosys, whose U.S. headquarters are in
Fremont, and Tata Consulting Services, two of the largest players in
information-technology consulting and services in India.

Overall, this deal should affect no more than 5 percent of the bank's
21,000 employees, or about 1,100 jobs, in its technology and operations
division, Gagnon said. So far, it has been less than that, she added.

But Gagnon declined to say how many U.S. and Concord workers have been
affected so far.

"It's important to note that just because we decide there is a good
business reason to send a project (overseas) does not mean it will
necessarily result in job displacement," she said.

Employees at Concord, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described
shrinking project teams as work is shuffled around. One veteran worker
said that in the middle of a project, he and his team members were
asked to hand over documentation and explain their work to a group of
engineers from India. He and his co-workers were then transferred to
another project. A short time later, he lost his job.

Gagnon confirmed this, saying that in some cases it made sense to have
workers train their overseas successors before they are let go."The knowledge transfer is essential to continue to provide our
customers with the best possible services and solutions," Gagnon said.

One software engineer, who was laid off about two months ago, said that
he lost his job because the bank was tightening its budget. But he
argued that had other technology jobs not been moved offshore, he would
have had more opportunity to shift jobs.

The harshest critics have called Flanagan's death an example of the
collateral damage brought on by businesses expanding their offshore
operations. A former software programmer said that morale in the office
is so low that some employees feel like they're on "death row."

"Every day you think, 'Is this the day I'm gone?'" he said. "The next
day you think, 'Is this the day I'm gone?' The stress builds up."But other Concord employees have taken it in stride. "It's a fact of
life in business," said one worker. "It's not perfect here, but it's a
pretty darn good place to work," he said.

Proponents say that hiring technology workers overseas will make the
company stronger: For one, it cuts costs. A contractor in India, the
most popular locale, is typically paid $10,000, compared with $100,000
for a U.S. worker with the same skills. Proponents argue that this
allows companies to stay competitive, saving and creating U.S. jobs.

Growing overseas does not necessarily translate into a loss in the
United States, said Debashish Sinha, principal analyst for information
technology services at Gartner, a research group.

"Very rarely is there a direct staff substitution," he said. "Very
rarely will a U.S. enterprise lay off their internal IT folk to hire an
external offshore service provider."

But as offshore workers graduate from basic jobs to more sophisticated
technology work, critics here wonder if there will be high-paying,
high-tech jobs left in the United States.

"There's a huge hole opening up here and no one is seeing it," said
Pete Bennett, a former technology consultant in Danville who is now in
the mortgage industry. He founded NoMoreH1B.com to protest businesses
bringing in non-U.S. workers through the government's visa programs for
highly skilled workers, a program that he believes helped fuel
businesses' move to transfer jobs offshore.

A few weeks before his death, Tom Flanagan helped his son on yet
another home improvement project in his Pleasant Hill fixer-upper. That
night, they stayed up until 4 in the morning, "just shooting the
breeze."

They often had these long discussions, about California politics, about
the Enron debacle, about other world issues. They would argue until
they couldn't keep their eyes open.

"He would never give up," Flanagan said. "He would never give up. But
he gave up."

In a note that he left behind, Kevin Flanagan said that he felt like he
had finally found his home when he moved to Pleasant Hill and landed
his job at Bank of America.

"He loved working there," his father said. "He loved his house. He
loved it here. He was happy. This was his life."



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Ellen Lee covers technology and telecommunications. She can be reached
at 925-952-2614 or elee@cctimes.com.




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http://www.zazona.com/NewsArchive/2003- ... uicide.htm

Qualified American workers need to apply for these jobs NOW.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Qualified American workers need to apply for these jobs NOW.

John: My brother is an IT worker...American. He has been an IT worker since the 90's. They don't want American workers....they don't want it. He has had to scratch and struggle just to stay employed. He has taken serious pay decreases just to stay employed. Now he makes the same amount of money that he could have made without a degree. THEY DON'T WANT AMERICAN WORKERS. They don't want to pay money to them. They want foreign workers that will work for a shabby roof and a can of beans. Even if you luck out and get one of these jobs, it will not pay anything and you will be a CONSTANT risk of losing the job. And the cherry on the cake? You have to train your replacement. The final insullt.