6 years ago
17
Big tech conferences overlook U.S. for Canada
Some of the biggest tech conferences, including Collision, Creative Commons and RightsCon, are being held in Canada instead of the U.S. this year, Financial Post reports, as Canada's tech industry booms amid President Trump's travel ban and tightening of foreign worker policies. Big picture: Canada has been aggressively recruiting top academic and tech talent recently. Meanwhile the Trump administration has pursued stricter employment-based immigration policies that could have negative impacts on the U.S. tech industry.
Continue Reading
https://www.axios.com
Join the Discussion
I don't blame them,not one bit.
I can see why they are doing this, but the issue isn't black and white. The massive immigration related to the tech industry has had a dramatically negative effect on natural born citizens. Finding an entry level software job has never been so difficult. The greedy companies would rather pay someone that emigrated here from a low median income country and is thus used to severely poor income and go just above that, which makes those immigrants happy as they are doing better than they were in their parent country. Everyone has to start at entry level and talented natural born citizens are getting passed up and many are not finding any work in their field and are forced to get a non-skilled job to make ends meet. Moving back in to the field once there is incredibly challenging and sometimes impossible.
Note: I am NOT a Trump supporter. Never have, never will be. This is not a political comment.
Yet, because of assumptions implicit in the comment, it may easily be taken as political. One such assumption that leaps out at me is that employers in the tech industry, were it not for migrant workers, would be giving native-born citizens well-paying, rewarding jobs with benefits and total self-actualization. While there is no direct connection between a visa-carrying migrant worker and a corresponding native-born dunsel, scapegoating migrants for hard times is a basic human failing. Agreed, the so-called shortage of highly-educated, highly-productive native-born tech workers is a sham, and agreed, migrant worker visas are part of corporate grift, but even if they were all rounded up by la Migra and put into camps overnight, tech companies won't suddenly start offering living wages and fulfilling careers. They'll be blaming regional minorities in their international sweatshops to suppress their wages instead. Migrants are just one of the jokers in a Three Card Monte game you got ripped off in a long time back. Another assumption might be that software jobs are a birthright, but point well taken.
The main takeaway I'm trying to go for is that the hiring of migrant workers is flipped. The companies are preferring migrant workers for their low income requirements to save them money. Instead they should be hired because of their skill set. In the final recruiting round if there are migrant workers with skill sets more valuable than the rest I see no problem hiring them. But this isn't what is happening. The choice between a more skilled native (and thus higher pay requirements) and a lesser skilled migrant worker is too often going to the migrant worker because of the pay. A native must be that much more exceptional to make the cut and that's just bullshit and a disservice to our country.
Arguably you're being too kind. A more cynical view might be that in order to hire a supposedly-temporary foreign worker, Rube Goldberg immigration laws require a native-born worker be interviewed and denied that job, hence the farcical job interview musical chairs game you're forced to play as a qualified, good-faith, citizen applicant. Congrats, good for you, you've found a way not to look at it as an obscenity in black letter law pointed directly at you for being from here, wherever that may be. I can't seem to get past it that easily. I do take some comfort in knowing, though, that the assumption there would always be something like a family-wage job or straight-shot career waiting for each of us wasn't necessarily true when my Boomer parents were eagerly taking it for granted. Let alone now, at the point of habitat collapse.
Heh, don't even get me started about trying to have this conversation with my parents. They have zero concept of how the hiring process works these days, especially in fast moving fields like software engineering. Oh, that's another thing that bothers me. Where did "Software Engineer" go? You don't see that title much anymore. Now it has been dramatically lessened to "Software Developer" and that distinction has been lost on so many. The word "engineer" has certain connotations to it that "developer" doesn't have. I suppose it is fitting considering the upside down nature we're talking about here. I suppose I am being too kind because this is something that has deeply irritated me as someone that has spent the majority of their life in academia and took on so much student loan debt to achieve my CS degree with the empty promise that there would be jobs lined up for me when I graduate. Boy, was that not the case. Ironically, the ubiquitous phrase in the field, "Garbage in, garbage out" couldn't be more accurate.
Good points. I can see someone making the mistake of creating the first assumption you mentioned, but if they did it would be a logical fallacy and not what I meant to imply. I agree with you that there is more to it than that and if the migrant workers were to disappear the problem wouldn't be solved. Companies will always look at how they can pay their employees the least amount of money. This situation just provides an easy route for them to do so. That being said I would like to note that the majority of the job solicitations I get from recruiters (I'm in software) make a point (even in the title of the position) to highlight "visa sponsorship". Regarding the last assumption I can see that as well, but certainly not what I implied. I definitely don't believe that and there are certainly very talented migrant workers that have every right to work along side the natural born.
I once knew a senior tech lead at an American HQ of an Indian telecom firm. I guess Indians and Pakistanis have wars like we have soap operas, but business back then was brisk and things hadn't gotten tense yet, so there were still Pakistani employees working there. My friend was asked by one of them, in passing, how much those New Balances had cost, and made the mistake of saying. One of the things that got the tension building? Apparently, compared to what that Pakistani employee made in a month, the shoes were an extravagant luxury item. So it burns every which way.
When you said "American HQ of an Indian telecom firm" does that mean the office is in the US or India?
U.S.
And is your friend Indian?
U.S.-ian.
I mean their heritage; not nationality.
Yes.
Uh? So heritage isn't the word I meant. Ancestry was the word I was looking for. But either way American is not an ancestry.
Oh, I don't know about all that, but bless your heart...
I have no idea why you're avoiding the question. Not sure where you think I was going with it, but oh well.