There are serious issues regarding the job market and it has nothing to do with the types of jobs immegrants are taking. It has to do with the loss of highly specialized and technical jobs. Jobs that once lost cause losses all the way down the chain. These are the types of jobs that had fueled the boom of the 90’s. Let me see if I can clarify this.
Cheers, Shouts, Fireworks, and much drinking, resolutions, friends, family and much more drinking.
Ok so where are we? 2001, was the beginning of pretty rotten succession of months. 2002 and 2003 were pretty much down the tubes as well.
So what do we, in the heart and soul of the Telecom industry have to look forward to in 2004. If recent events in the news are any indication 2004 will be no different than the last four years.
The current administration gives all indications that IT and Telecom jobs will continue to flee the shores of the United States in ever increasing numbers. Almost all of the high tech companies are lobbying aggressively against attempts to limit moving jobs offshore. They give a number of reasons that they need to send work overseas. And none in my opinion has any merit besides fattening the corporate wallet.
Some insist that we are not educating our children well enough to fill the open vacancies. This is patently ridiculous if one looks to see the number of institutions giving technical education in America. Ever since the fabricated technology manpower shortage of the late 1990?s. Americans have been flocking to computer science and technology education programs through out the United States in increasing numbers. Students and established professionals spent years of hard work and considerable money getting the education, and experience to support the new wave of jobs that were becoming available. As a telecommunications professional, I made sure that I kept up with the latest technologies and focused on learning as much as I could in order to be able to do my job in the best possible fashion possible.
Another indication of this fact is that currently for every single new IT / Telecom job that opens up, recruiters are getting several hundred applications. Even while not every one of these applicants are best qualified. You cannot state that out of 500 applicants there is not one that can reasonably do the job.
I know some very highly skilled and educated people who have been without work since 2001, people that I would hire in a heartbeat if able. But we are being led to believe that these people choose to be unemployed because they feel that the available IT / Telecom jobs out there are beneath them or do not pay enough. Will someone please explain to me how these individuals are willing to loose their homes, their life savings, battle through medical emergencies without health insurance and loose any shred of self worth just because they would have to accept a pay cut?
During my two-year national job hunt, I have, lost my home, lost all of my family possessions; my wife was diagnosed with cancer and has no insurance. I have been aggressively applying for any and every job I felt that I could make a contribution to. Yet out of hundreds of applications submitted for positions that I was fully qualified for, 99.99 % have fallen into some black hole. I also had the time to do some research.
Go to Monster.com and do a global search for jobs under telecommunications and IT. Note that the number of listings for telecom and IT professionals leans heavily towards countries like India. Heavy, like a ratio of approximately 10 to one. There are hundreds of openings listed for telecom / IT professionals of every classification. Seems like the offshore market is having difficulty meeting the amount of jobs that US companies are shipping overseas. Think I am making this up? Well just go to the top job search sites and see for yourself. Like me you will be shocked.
Another interesting thing I learned is that while Americans are loosing their jobs in increasing numbers many tech companies are increasing their demand for H1B visa workers. They are claiming that because there is a shortage of educated and skilled tech workers here in the US they have to import from overseas. Not only are they shipping jobs out, they are bringing workers in. Why? Because they can be paid less! The law says they have to be paid the same prevailing wage but there are so many loop holes in the laws, that this is rarely enforceable. Plus if you consider that if you can save just $3,000 per year on each H1B and you have 5 or 6 hundred foreign contractor filling positions. Your savings can be quite substantial over the period of the contract.
Are these companies first offering these jobs to Americans? Well yes, they have to by law. But have you ever noticed the job ads that list a set of requirements that just about any experienced professional can meet. Then added to the requirements one obscure qualification or requirement that is a possible 1 in 1000 match? Some specialty in a obsolete, obscure, or supremely specialized technology? I see these types of job postings, regularly. This is tactic used, so if the company should come under scrutiny they can show the applications received or lack there of and prove that they could not find an individual with these highly in demand, important, skills. Think this is my imagination? As an experiment I have applied to such openings, I drafted a resume detailing word for word the requirements outlined, with a cover letter emphasizing the requirements. I have yet to get any response back to the applications. For research purposes I have applied to over 50 positions that in my 15 years of experience told me were requirements next to impossible to meet by a single individual. Mean while they open a H1B request to fill the same position but lo and behold the job requirements are just a tiny bit different. This is supported by the fact that while several major companies slashed their American work force by 40 to 60 percent. H1B contractors remained in position and even more hired.
On one hand the Technology sector is complaining that they do not have enough qualified people and on the other they claim that qualified people are not willing to take the jobs, or they can not afford qualified people so they have to go outside of the country, and they lobby for tax breaks to fund research and development! A tax burden that then has to be picked up by the very same people they laid off to pay to hire foreign contractors to do the research and development! CEO?s and top-level executives even have gone on record with the nerve to say that the American worker must compete internationally for their jobs from now on. I do not see any CEO, Director, or other top-level Executive positions being outsourced! So why does that attitude not surprise me. Should it be accepted the norm, for a person who invested years of time and substantial financial resources going to school, getting trained, gaining experience to work for wages at or below minimum wage, in a country with a cost of living like the United States in order to compete with the salaries paid to foreign tech workers in third world countries? Well this is exactly what was suggest by the CEO of HP corporation this week!
Is American technology setting it?s self up for a huge fall in the not so distant future? Where Americans no longer see technical work a viable means to earn a living. Where, the majority of the software, hardware, infrastructure, and operations that the United States relies upon is created and supported by foreign providers? Are we risking the possibility of being held hostage by foreign interests that control the technology that we use? These are not TV sets and Walkmans we are talking about any more. Talented individuals in increasing numbers are being forced out of the industry here in the United States. The prospects for new graduates are diminishing. But in the tunnel vision of boosting profits, companies, that created the technological revolution across the world, powered by American know how and determination, are now selling America?s lead in technological innovation to the lowest bidder.
Mean while hard working educated people are left floundering on the wayside. Were the people laid off from HP, Cisco, Motorola, IBM, Nortel, Lucent, AT&T and dozens of other companies offered the option of taking a pay cut in order to keep their jobs. Well on the whole they were not. I wasn?t. The only ones that had that luxury were the top executives in those corporations. And we were made to feel that they were force to make monumental sacrifices. Like not getting that 1.2 million bonus this year. Or instead of making $864,000.00 this year they had to squeak by on $734,000.00
If we as a nation do not take our politicians to task and implement real protections to American jobs in this country, we risk becoming pawn to those who we are teaching and tasking to do our work for us. Not because we do not have a local talent pool, but because unfortunately the US has become a place where Money Talks and the rest walk. At the lowest levels we are outsourcing the need for this nation excel in the sciences, to learn, to expand horizons by allowing these vital skills and knowledge to be outsourced.
In closing finally let us take a look at whom we are outsourcing our technologies to. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China, Korea, Malaysia. Am I crazy but are these not some politically hot and unstable areas of the world? India and Pakistan are a hairs breath away from a nuclear shooting war. China, Korea and Malaysia are certainly not Americas best friends. Some of these countries are even home to known terrorist groups, or have people in government sympathetic to radical causes.
As more and more of our technology gets developed in foreign countries, more and more of what keeps our national infrastructure intact, falls under the indirect control of individuals who?s motives and actions can not in any way shape or form controlled.
Here is a What if.
What if networking software code developed in (Pick a Country) had written into it a routine to completely crash the network and take down any network connected to it. Say this routine is buried in amongst million lines of code. Since the software was developed and written by a Indian software outsource firm, paying it?s engineers the equivalent of $15,000 per year and they are the only ones who can economically test and debug the software. What if the engineer who wrote the harmful code wanted to make more than $15,000 so was open to suggestion from a distant relation who just so happens to be tied up with some radical faction. What if that software was now running major networks in America?s banking system, Telephone system, Heath care system. Think about it, and like I did get mad, and go out and do something about it.
Think that this can not happen? Ask any software pro, Testing and debugging millions of lines of code is a time consuming and expensive process. Heck this is one of the reasons the US companies are outsourcing the work. If you had to then hire American engineers and developers to test, debug, and modify the software you might as well not outsource it at all. So it would be child?s play to embed malicious code into a application and get it through undetected. Programmers have ever since software was born left back doors in applications. Up until now these were for relatively harmless reasons, with the exception of a disgruntled employee or two. Plus as they lived and worked in the US for US companies with American colleagues such things were not as hard to catch and track.
Now just imagine a environment where none of the developers are American, some may or may not have issues with US policy. Screening applicants is far less stringent, records far harder to access. You have to remember these are third world countries. Is my ?what if? that much, a stretch of imagination?
Stop, Think, Act.
A few notes about the author.
Peter Nevai
Over 15 years experience in the deployment, and support of complex telecommunications / IT systems and networks. Having contributed to the efforts of several leading and prominent Telecommunications equipment manufacturers. Responsible in efforts that led to successful networked systems deployments in 8 countries and in the United States. Approximately 20% of the world population uses or has used at one time or another telecommunications services provided by the systems the author was instrumental in deploying.