Combating depression during a job search

[Matt Kidd]

surprise surprise...still no job...still no recent relevant experience. Anyway with each day that I apply for jobs I feel myself getting more and more depressed. Its gotten to a point where being told to "perservere" is insulting. I got a call 2 saturdays ago from a project manager for a job and was elated....till Tuesday and I finally contacted her and for some reason she contacted me, a mostly java guy, for a ASP/SQL job. I got ruled out because of the lack of recent relevant experience, the "complexity" of their code, and the fact they have a small operation. If not for me just up and leaving to go workout I doubt I'd be typing this.

But then there are each subsequent day and the jobs I apply for.

Open source? yeah I've yet to meet a hiring manager that actually respects the work done on open source projects.

Honestly what is the point......


I was on Monster and tried a mock interview...most the answers I chose where I was honest (I hate my job, its not my field of choice, I want more money) were the wrong answers and the right answers came off as contrieved and more or less me lying....the Eagle Scout in me won't let me do that. Or I'm just too much of Type A.

So pretty much...what is the point...my resume keeps me out hte interviews....if I get interviews somehow my face kicks me out (I'm black) if not that I get remedial questions that I can answer but then back the resume...no recent relevant experience.

I'm probably lucky I don't own a gun. I really think this depression is keeping me from getting a job...maybe.

[Sania Marsh]

Hi, sorry to hear that..
But things should work out.. Almost everyone who is looking for a new job has same reasons as you do. Just explain more, so that interviewer sees you as a person who wants to create comfortable athmosphere to develop, not just as ever demanding selfish freak.
You don't hate your job for no reason, there are some problems with technology choice or your co-workers who are not very knowlegeable, explain that. Having too high salary is not comfortable to anyone, because it is insecure, so the salary you want is what you feel you worth, you just don't want to be underpaid - there is nothing wrong with that either.

[Eric Lemaitre]

Hi Matt !

I have the feeling (may be wrong, would like confirmation from other ranchers) that you are far from being alone, as right now the whole system has gone totally dumb, not to say unfair too.

It looks like US native freshers simply cannot any longer find a first job at all, as recruiters make years of paid experience mandatory, even working for free is useless as only paid experience counts. So US students are abandonning IT studies in huge crowds, and native US programmer exctinction seems unavoidable, especially with avaibility each year of 55,000 new alien cheap IT people ready to work for 50$ a day. Of course reality shouldn't be that dark, but it really looks like it right now, IT field looks doomed for US beginners, and things get worse every day without any visible government or INS reaction. Considering K-street proposals as solution (increasing H1B), there is no chance for things going better any soon.

I'm not black, white but 40 years old, and I'm not hired either, so you should be conscious that discrimination exists in other forms. France is as stupid as US on this matter, exactly for same basic reason : need for only 30 years old IT pros with 10 years of paid experience minimum and as cheap as a university fresher. And they keep complaining they find no one of course, and propose too immigration as solution (our immigrants are often illiterate even in their own language, and 95% have no professionnal ability, official figures)...

Showing on purpose a dark picture, hoping for some ranchers comments to enlight it some...

Best regards.

[Sania Marsh]

Originally posted by Eric Lemaitre:
Hi Matt !

I have the feeling (may be wrong, would like confirmation from other ranchers) that you are far from being alone, as right now the whole system has gone totally dumb, not to say unfair too.

...

(our immigrants are often illiterate even in their own language, and 95% have no professionnal ability, official figures)...

I agree that system is unfair towards freshers(by the way doesn't matter foreigners or not), there is age and race discrimination, but there is discrimination against immigrants too.
But my friends (foreigners) with at least 2 years of experience won't take job if it pays less than 55K, most of immigrants I know in IT make 50-90K.
Immigrants that are in IT field are not illiterate in their own language, at least none of 50-60 I know in US.

[Homer Phillips]

What's that movie with, must be, Micheal Douglass. He stuck in traffic and goes to the burger king? He an unemployeed aerospace engineer or something like that. You should see it again.

[Eric Lemaitre]

Hi Sania !

Immigrants that are in IT field are not illiterate in their own language, at least none of 50-60 I know in US.

You probably missed one point, Sania, when I said this along "France is as stupid as US on this matter,..." I took this as granted for France. On US side on contrary, I am afraid that IMHO at the total opposite even very qualified aliens cannot any longer go to US right now. As one of my US mates stated, only way for an IT pro to come to US is through marriage or DV lottery, qualification no longer counts.

Best regards.

[Arjunkumar Shastry]

But I can see some people going on short term basis.

[Sania Marsh]

Originally posted by Eric Lemaitre:
Hi Sania !

You probably missed one point, Sania, when I said this along "France is as stupid as US on this matter,..." I took this as granted for France. On US side on contrary, I am afraid that IMHO at the total opposite even very qualified aliens cannot any longer go to US right now. As one of my US mates stated, only way for an IT pro to come to US is through marriage or DV lottery, qualification no longer counts.

Best regards.

Yes, sorry I ran through your post without really reading everyting.
And was skipping sentences again in your next post

Most foreigners come to US on student (F1) visa, study in graduate school and then try to get work(H1) visa.
Not many are willing to marry just to get status, it usually turns ugly.
And you are right, almost noone comes to US with job offers.
[ April 19, 2005: Message edited by: Sania Marsh ]

[Peter Rooke]

Recent relevant experience

- We have a similar situation here in England. Employers, or the agencies that are representing them, have a fixation with years of commercial programming experience using language X (in environment Y). Academic experience is not considered relevant. The employment agents do not understand the technologies they are representing, which is why they demand 'X years of recent experience'. This is only way they can validate a candidates knowledge.

I've heard of Oxbridge computing graduates who are on the dole, or have moved into other roles. At the same time we are hearing reports that there is a skills shortage and that many IT companies cannot find the 'right people'. This situation is being discussed about in our [computer] press:
Letters - Employers blinked by commercial experience / Is NHS nepotism giving talent the cold shoulder? (you need to scroll down a bit)
[ April 19, 2005: Message edited by: Peter Rooke ]

[Peter Rooke]

Matt, you may have a use for this: What Color Is Your Parachute?. Also don't let them grind you down, keep going. All great sports people and /or teams have one common virtue, desire.

[Homer Phillips]

I found it Falling Down.

[Don Stadler]

Originally posted by Eric Lemaitre:
Hi Sania !

Immigrants that are in IT field are not illiterate in their own language, at least none of 50-60 I know in US.

You probably missed one point, Sania, when I said this along "France is as stupid as US on this matter,..." I took this as granted for France. On US side on contrary, I am afraid that IMHO at the total opposite even very qualified aliens cannot any longer go to US right now. As one of my US mates stated, only way for an IT pro to come to US is through marriage or DV lottery, qualification no longer counts.

Best regards.

Eric, the US was the last holdout in that game. The problem was how the H1B and L1 visa programmes were converted from vehicles whereby people like yourself could come to the US into a way to underprice large numbers of native programmers.

The number of H1B visas were tripled and at the same time a number of Indian firms organized in a way to submit applications for the entire (expanded) quota in a single day, greedily abusing what was once an excellent program both from a business and a talent POV. The US was able to do well by doing good, this seems no longer possible.....

So native US programmers organized and pressured politicians to end the program. A simple matter of self-protection. It hasn't been stopped but has been shrunk to the size it was during the early 90's. I'm not sure it's worth having any more to be honest. Very sad.

[K Riaz]

Originally posted by Peter Rooke:
At the same time we are hearing reports that there is a skills shortage and that many IT companies cannot find the 'right people'.

By "skills shortage", they mean "we cannot find cheap foreign labour to do the work". Are these the same "employers" who will not train anybody unless they magically have X years of experience straight out of University? Its not just in the UK, I suspect this problem is global. They want something for nothing. I know I've had interviews where employers have wanted the finished article, little do they know that when they were young, someone taught them everything they know today. But they are unwilling to pass this knowledge on. Its a big secret. We can't tell you. Somehow, you must know it as if it were common knowledge the whole time. Computer Science degrees are academic, not vocational, so not every graduate uses ANT to deploy applications, or CVS to manage source control, or the latest and greatest web framework from Apache (with an 800-page O'Reily book to complement it). You ask "Recruitment Consultants" or Employers about the catch-22 situation with regards to experience, and they just shrug their shoulders.

Only in IT does a Junior role require 1-3 years experience, in every other industry, a Junior role is the beginning, the entry point, the starting from the bottom role, the "full training no assumptions made" beginning of a career. So imagine the shock and horror of IT graduates who discover that the "Junior Java Developer" position they so eagerly anticipated will result in a flat rejection because its not as "Junior" as they thought.

How dare these employers turn around and bemoan the fact that they have a supposed "skills-shortage". You made your bed, so now you sleep in it and reap your failure in acknowledging the above. Its like asking a child to run as fast as they can before they can walk.

Employers say that the hiring of a non-experienced candidate is too risky because they have no work history as proof of their skills. Yet they are not willing to offer any opportunities whatsoever, not even a no-risk trial. Is this not hypocritical? Something has to give.

Originally posted by Peter Rooke:
The employment agents do not understand the technologies they are representing,

You are absolutely correct. That explains why I had to explain on at least 2 occasions to Recruitment Consultants the difference between J2SE and J2EE (both agents specialised in Java-only Recruitment - shocking).

[Eric Lemaitre]

Hi Don !

Eric, the US was the last holdout in that game. The problem was how the H1B and L1 visa programmes were converted from vehicles whereby people like yourself could come to the US into a way to underprice large numbers of native programmers...
So native US programmers organized and pressured politicians to end the program. A simple matter of self-protection. It hasn't been stopped but has been shrunk to the size it was during the early 90's. I'm not sure it's worth having any more to be honest. Very sad.

I totally agree with you, with your analize of situation too. I understand native US programmers self defense reaction too.

But what I don't understand is the total lack of reactivity from US gov. The issue is H1B abuse, which would be frankly easy to control if needed. Why doesn't US gov do anything for simply applying the laws as they were voted, while their non application harms many US citizens ?

The situation is much more critical than it seems, first symptom is a complete abandon of IT studies by students, who know no one will hire them for not having years of previous paid experience, the same in worse for alien students in USA. This guaranties if it lasts too long that US will have no longer any importance in world IT field because it will still be a big market, but no longer an innovation maker (economical growth is onlu due to innovation, nothing else). I consider very indicative that about present hotest technological topic, which is JDO (Java Data Objects), clear worldwide leader is an alien company (Xcalia, french), while first US concurrent (Versant/Solarmetrics Kodo) is far behind. In IT field US don't innovate any longer since 2 years, they simply produce, which is deadly for their IT leadership even on short term.

IMHO, this is more or less what Alan Greenspan said recently in a real alarming manner, without innovation US economical growth remains slow, which prevents it to recover. So this situation must not last long for everyone's sake.

Best regards.

[Mike Gershman]

The problem is that the current US government administration allows industry leaders to drive immigration policy and these US employers are completely hooked on cheap IT labor, both off-shored and H1B/L1.

These employers don't hire many domestic beginners, at any price, for two reasons:

1. There is an ample supply of low cost temporary workers who can get the job done and who can claim whatever unique experience is specified by each employer because really detailed verification of claimed experience from 10,000 miles away is difficult and seldom occurs. Since H1B workers have few job protections, it's easier to just interview them, hire them, and terminate nonperformers.

2. Many domestic trainees would be happy to start at the same low wages but they would soon demand a normal US wage and hiring an H1B worker instead of hiring or retaining an experienced US worker would be too obvious for even a willing USCIS to ignore. Remember that all H1B applications are available online and the detailed paperwork must be open for public inspection at each employer's premises.
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/CaseH1B.aspx


The capitalist economic system is very efficient in allocating resources, promoting innovation, and meeting customer demands. However, this system promotes local optimization at the level of an individual enterprise or department. Policies that benefit the country at the expense of individual businesses, such as child labor, minimum wage, and occupational safety laws, must come from the government.

Historically, these policies are adopted when the government is run by liberals with working class constituencies. This cannot happen before 2008. Until then, both openly illegal immigration and worker visas issued without regard to legal restrictions will continue.

The good news is that if you hire people with solid training and a strong aptitude, the time to effectiveness in the workplace is measured in months, not years. I say this based on my own experience when time on mainframe systems was a scarce resource. With unlimited machine time, better training materials, uniform Computer Science curriculums, and solid international certification exams, the recovery from the present destructiver policies should be swift. Since H1B visas are based on an alleged shortage of domestic workers and all visa policies are subject to congressional revisions, the conversion of domestic IT employment to US citizens and permanent residents (green card holders) residents can be quite swift.

[Billy Tsai]

the only solution is to move to some other countries to find jobs such as India or some asian countries etc....
There is no hope with u keep trying in the same or nearby locations from where u are despite the fact the certifications u have keep increasing and maybe after u got a postgraduate master degree u will still not be able to find a god damn job.
And eventually this job search will ruin ur life and slowly convert to a suicidal depression.

[Sania Marsh]

Originally posted by Billy Tsai:
the only solution is to move to some other countries to find jobs such as India or some asian countries etc....
There is no hope with u keep trying in the same or nearby locations from where u are despite the fact the certifications u have keep increasing and maybe after u got a postgraduate master degree u will still not be able to find a god damn job.
And eventually this job search will ruin ur life and slowly convert to a suicidal depression.

I swear, I just don't get it...
Why do I have so many offers and all my previous employers are asking me to come back?
I have only 3-4 years of experience, MCIS and SCJP.
I almost feel guilty to have a well-paid job in US while others, more deserving, are struggling.
Are you maybe overqualified for most positions?

[Mike Gershman]

Why do I have so many offers and all my previous employers are asking me to come back?
I have only 3-4 years of experience,

You just answered your own question.

[Ranjith Rajgopal]

I am under similar situation. I got a job in a big company after claiming big experience. Everything is smooth. Going fine. But the problem is I am feeling guilty of what I have done. Now, I feel like quitting it and go to another company with genuine credentials. Is it possible to show my real experience of 1+ years instead of 3 which I showed on my previous resume. I am asking this because the HR or the employees of the new company to which I may go can have friends in the current company. I am putting myself in more mess by coming out of it? Please help me in giving right advice.

[Homer Phillips]

You can't possibly lie about your experience on your resume. People without the actual experience are detected by management in the first month and fired.

[Jayesh Lalwani]

We can debate the immigration quotas all day, but the simple fact is that any reduction in quotas will increase outsourcing, and any increase in quotas will increase the influx of experienced professionals into the country.

The way I see it, under the current system, the average American student is screwed either way. The only way to put American students on par with the alleged "cheap foreign labor" is to provide them with the required experience before they graduate. Although American universities are providing an excellent education, what the industry clearly demands is education + experience. Now, some people might try to place the blame on the foreign workers, but that's not going to stop American companies from employing foreign labor. What US needs to do is to provide a competitive edge to the average American IT worker.

[Homer Phillips]

but the simple fact is that any reduction in quotas will increase outsourcing

How do you prove this simple fallacy?
[ April 24, 2005: Message edited by: Homer Phillips ]

[Don Stadler]

Originally posted by Eric Lemaitre:
Hi Don !

I totally agree with you, with your analize of situation too. I understand native US programmers self defense reaction too.

But what I don't understand is the total lack of reactivity from US gov. The issue is H1B abuse, which would be frankly easy to control if needed. Why doesn't US gov do anything for simply applying the laws as they were voted, while their non application harms many US citizens ?

Well..... The political problem was H1B's major advocates were the big companies like Oracle and Microsoft who were heading overseas anyway. They helped abuse the programs. Native programmers wanted to end the programs completely. The solution was to cut it back to 65000 per year as it was.

Originally posted by Eric Lemaitre:
The situation is much more critical than it seems, first symptom is a complete abandon of IT studies by students, who know no one will hire them for not having years of previous paid experience, the same in worse for alien students in USA. This guaranties if it lasts too long that US will have no longer any importance in world IT field because it will still be a big market, but no longer an innovation maker (economical growth is onlu due to innovation, nothing else). [/QB]

This seems to go in cycles Eric. This is not the first time it has happened this way. In the late 70's early eighties the percentage of undergrads in IT fell from 5-6% to 1% in the space of 5 years. It crept up for years, then shot up during the dot.com boom.

I too am worried about innovation, though there remains a good deal of it in the Open Source community.

Originally posted by Eric Lemaitre:
I consider very indicative that about present hotest technological topic, which is JDO (Java Data Objects), clear worldwide leader is an alien company (Xcalia, french), while first US concurrent (Versant/Solarmetrics Kodo) is far behind. In IT field US don't innovate any longer since 2 years, they simply produce, which is deadly for their IT leadership even on short term.[/QB]

JDO? Innovation? I worked at a company which compared JDO with Hibernate and the latter was the clear winner. I'm not impressed with Versant these days - innovation comes from Open Source.

There is a lack of investment these days in new IT technology except maybe from Microsoft. That worries me quite a lot.

[Eric Lemaitre]

Hi Don !

JDO? Innovation? I worked at a company which compared JDO with Hibernate and the latter was the clear winner. I'm not impressed with Versant these days - innovation comes from Open Source.

I agree with you on all points, except on this one, which is only one of the aspects to consider. If you are looking for a cheap OR mapping technology then Hibernate is the clear winner, you are right, but if you consider performance and scalability JDO is much better by very far. One could say the same for application servers, JBoss is the clear winner for cheap good performance, but it collapses under heavy load while WebLogic & WebSphere are much more robust.
JDO is presently used in critical banking systems in Germany where it sustains millions of transactions per second, a performance Hibernate is clearly totally unable to achieve. If subject interests you, look for "torpedo" benchmarking which will allow full aspects comparison between JDO (many brands) and Hibernate.

There is a lack of investment these days in new IT technology except maybe from Microsoft. That worries me quite a lot.

I totally agree, even much more than you think. We have a best seller in France "lions led by donkeys" (translated title) which demonstrates whealth growth is simply THE consequence of innovation, without innovation a country's whealth simply decreases. It allows to understand why German economy simply cannot recover from her Eastern lands absorption even after 15 years, why Japan will stay in recession for many other years despite her higest tehcological qualities, and why France is economically doomed. If innovation doesn't reappear in US, economy will go simply more and more bad whatever else is done.

Best regards.

[Mike Gershman]

Homer said:

You can't possibly lie about your experience on your resume. People without the actual experience are detected by management in the first month and fired.

You are assuming that years of paid business experience really are necessary to be a good programmer. This is nonsense. When I finished college, I had been programming for two years in school and was already better than most of the people they had (or so I was told).

Programming effectiveness is mostly a function of natural aptitude, activated by a little experience that can be acquired at least as as readily doing challenging projects in college as doing trainee's work on the job.

The recent demand for business experience in a very specific language and software set is a lazy form of hiring, enabled by the H1B program. It is also a convenient way for employers to pass over new American workers and retrained older workers in favor of the H1B/L1 workers they really want.

It will be interesting to see how the recent US Supreme Court decision restricting facially neutral job rules with disparate impact on older wokers gets used by state Human Right offices to challenge arbitrary hiring requirements. Time will tell.


Jayesh said:

any reduction in quotas will increase outsourcing, and any increase in quotas will increase the influx of experienced professionals into the country.

The US end of these projects consists solely of the tasks that must be done in the US because comparable Indian workers in India earn so much less than H1B workers (check out this BB for details).


Jayesh said:

The only way to put American students on par with the alleged "cheap foreign labor" is to provide them with the required experience before they graduate.

Part time experience, such as co-op or internships, will no longer get you past HR except at the exact company you interned at. Besides, these programs are far less plentiful today than in the 1980's, let alone the 1990's. That is because US companies have so few openings and so many applicants that they see little need to develop new talent. There are exceptions, but the numerical difference is striking.
[ April 24, 2005: Message edited by: Mike Gershman ]

[Jayesh Lalwani]

Mike said:

Jayesh said:

any reduction in quotas will increase outsourcing, and any increase in quotas will increase the influx of experienced professionals into the country.

The US end of these projects consists solely of the tasks that must be done in the US because comparable Indian workers in India earn so much less than H1B workers (check out this BB for details).

Yes, but what percentage of a project has to be done in US? If we are talking about jobs that do not require security clearance, the 80-90% of the job can be done by any programmer anywhere in the world. So, to cut costs, companies have 2 options a) hire experienced H1-B labor that is slightly cheaper than native labor or b) outsource to India. Which option is best for the company depends on the situation of the company. What I'm trying to say is reducing H1-B quotas provides more incentive for companies to start outsourcing to India, whereas increasing H1-B quotas makes it tough for fresh grads to compete in the market. Either way, the American fresh grad is screwed. Yes, there are some jobs that have to be done by a programmer in US, but those jobs are constantly reducing

Mike said:

Jayesh said:

quote:The only way to put American students on par with the alleged "cheap foreign labor" is to provide them with the required experience before they graduate.

Part time experience, such as co-op or internships, will no longer get you past HR except at the exact company you interned at.

I don't know about you, but I consider the value of a degree to be dependent on a) the knowledge you obtain from the degree and b) the kind of career opportunities that are available after you get that degree. Is'nt there something wrong when a Master's degree doesn't carry any value in the market, in spite of the fact that the kind of knowldge provided by good US schools is world-class? Isn't there something that the colleges can do differrently?

Yes, you can keep pointing fingers at the influx of cheap foreign labor, and companies that ship jobs overseas, but how is that going to help fresh grads? Do you think the situation is going to be remedied by putting an end to all H1-Bs? Well, then companies are just going to shift their entire software development to India and China. Are you going to stop companies from shipping jobs overseas? That's placing too many restrictions on businesses. Some companies might prefer to go close shop. I'm saying that US schools should change something so that their graduates are respected in the industry.

[Mike Gershman]

Jayesh said:

H1-B labor ... is slightly cheaper than native labor
.
.
Isn't there something wrong when a Master's degree doesn't carry any value in the market, in spite of the fact that the kind of knowledge provided by good US schools is world-class? Isn't there something that the colleges can do differently?

If you examine the USCIS H1B database, you will see that H1B workers are paid much less than US citizens with equivalent job titles. I know that the supposed market salaries you will see there are ridiculous, but there is no enforcement. As a result, few employers will hire inexperienced MS graduates. There is nothing the schools can do about this except add their voices to the calls to enforce the law and to cut the H1B quota.

http://www.flcdatacenter.com/CaseH1B.aspx

On the issue of offshoring, most of the US job postings I have seen on the net fall into categories like working directly with the user (trading floor), software installation, marketing support, and small projects not worth contracting out. There are also defense jobs, but the high cost of security clearances creates another sort of barrier to entry by trainees.

[Jayesh Lalwani]

Originally posted by Mike Gershman:
Jayesh said:

If you examine the USCIS H1B database, you will see that H1B workers are paid much less than US citizens with equivalent job titles. I know that the supposed market salaries you will see there are ridiculous, but there is no enforcement. As a result, few employers will hire inexperienced MS graduates. There is nothing the schools can do about this except add their voices to the calls to enforce the law and to cut the H1B quota.

Hmmm.. I don't know how you can draw any conculsion from the data you posted here. The data doesn't even show the number of years of experience. Anyways, I opened up the 2004 database and looked for approvals that have the Job title as Software Engineer, and the salaries returned were from 45K to 100K. I don't know how you can call that "ridiculously" low. I did a quick search on salary.com, and salaries for Software engineers range from 48K to 107K, not very far off from H1 salaries. Seriously, if a fresh graduate is expecting to make more than 50K (in the DC area atleast) in his/her first job, then s/he needs to adjust his/her salary expectations

Going back to the discussion of schools. The schools can make sure that a graduate is as good as a foreign worker with 3-4 years experience. That's what I mean by "being competitive" in the market. Employers are simply looking for the most cost-effective way to develop software. If US fresh graduates expect to be paid much higher than their Indian counterparts, then they better provide atleast the same value for the money to their employer

[peter wooster]

Originally posted by Jayesh Lalwani:
Employers are simply looking for the most cost-effective way to develop software. If US fresh graduates expect to be paid much higher than their Indian counterparts, then they better provide atleast the same value for the money to their employer

Maybe the landlords and home builders will need to adjust their expectations. One of the chief reasons for high salaries in large U.S, Canadian, and European cities is the high cost of housing. No one can live in London, N.Y or Toronto on 15 lak per annum. I suspect that will become impossible in Bangalore in the near future as well.

[Jayesh Lalwani]

Originally posted by peter wooster:


Maybe the landlords and home builders will need to adjust their expectations. One of the chief reasons for high salaries in large U.S, Canadian, and European cities is the high cost of housing. No one can live in London, N.Y or Toronto on 15 lak per annum. I suspect that will become impossible in Bangalore in the near future as well.

How is the employer responsible for the high cost of living in London, NY or Toronto? No one is forcing the employee to live in those cities

[Sania Marsh]

Excuse my dumb questions,but
please consider following figures:
I have 8 friends on H1, ages 25-30, all have MSCIS and 2-4 years of experience in US.
their salaries range at 60-78K. They have average benefits and work 40-50 hrs a week. None of them had problems finding job, it took them 2-6 months to find one.
Are these salaries too low comparing to what US citizens would make?
I understand that some are very experienced and worth more, but wouldn't they take a 70-75K job if they weren't offered better pay? Is 70K so low that one with, say, 8-10 years of experience wouldn't even consider it?

[Henry Wong]

Originally posted by Sania Marsh:
... I understand that some are very experienced and worth more, but wouldn't they take a 70-75K job if they weren't offered better pay? Is 70K so low that one with, say, 8-10 years of experience wouldn't even consider it?

I don't think that is the problem, as "low" offers generally don't happen. Experienced programmers that previously made 100k may have problems finding work, but that doesn't mean it won't eventually happen.

Now you are a manager, with a 70k limit on the position. Are you going to make the offer to someone who may find the 100k position in 6 months?

Henry

[Sania Marsh]

Originally posted by Henry Wong:


I don't think that is the problem, as "low" offers generally don't happen. Experienced programmers that previously made 100k may have problems finding work, but that doesn't mean it won't eventually happen.

Now you are a manager, with a 70k limit on the position. Are you going to make the offer to someone who may find the 100k position in 6 months?

Henry

Ah, this is too complicated for me...

But how about consulting jobs? Do they also worry to underpay someone?

Also how are those managers giving too low offers to those "pay me half of the salary" foreigners? They can also find better pay in 6-10 months, can't they?

[Jayesh Lalwani]

Originally posted by Sania Marsh:


Ah, this is too complicated for me...

But how about consulting jobs? Do they also worry to underpay someone?

Also how are those managers giving too low offers to those "pay me half of the salary" foreigners? They can also find better pay in 6-10 months, can't they?

People on H-1 are generally limited in the number of jobs they can look for. Not everyone is ready to sponsor an H-1. Many times H-1's work as consultants and their employer, who is sponsoring their H-1, has a say on where the H-1 can and cannot go. These kind of arrangment usually leads the developer getting short-changed into taking a job with lower than normal wages, or many times there is a huge discrepancy between what they employer charges the client and what the employer pays to the programmer

Another common way is that the programmer finds his/her own job as a consultant, the employer takes a cut from the hourly rate that is paid by the client. So, a client might be paying 90K for a programmer with 8 years experience, but what the programmer gets in hand is 70-75K. Note that such an arrangment not only leads to widespread abuse (many employers take a lot of money), but is also technically, considered fraud. It doesn't get reported because many H-1 programmers are willing to give up some of their wages to get the flexibility of working where they want. I don't think such an arrangment affects citizens because the end client is paying the standard hourly consultant wages. The employer does make a lot of money for maintaining the programmer's H-1 visa though

[Henry Wong]

Originally posted by Sania Marsh:

But how about consulting jobs? Do they also worry to underpay someone?

Also how are those managers giving too low offers to those "pay me half of the salary" foreigners? They can also find better pay in 6-10 months, can't they?

I don't think consulting jobs are a problem, as they are generally short term anyway. On the other hand, there is generally a premium for consultants, so underpaying consultants may still be higher than a full time employee.

Not too sure what you mean by "pay me half" foreigners? Are you saying these "foreigners" have a history of getting a much higher salary, and is now willing to accept half?

I think the term that describes it best is being "overqualified". Right or wrong, the theory is, that someone who has gotten paid a much higher salary previously, can probably find that salary again. (Personally, I don't agree, but that seems to be the reasoning)

Henry

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Matt Kidd:
surprise surprise...still no job...still no recent relevant experience.

Matt,

Can you please provide more information such as if you have a degree or certifications?

Good luck!
[ April 25, 2005: Message edited by: Jesse Torres ]

[Andrew Soltis]

I have 8 friends on H1, ages 25-30, all have MSCIS and 2-4 years of experience in US. their salaries range at 60-78K.

Just how did you happen to learn all their salaries?

[Sania Marsh]

They are my friends!!!
We discuss our offers even before we take the job!

I know it is not common for US...but most foreigners don't make a secret out of it

[m brown]

wow, i this thread sure is depressing me....im about to enter the job market fresh out of school and then i run into this thread.....matt kidd where do you live by the way?

[m brown]

okay, matt, i see you are from the chicago area just like i am...(Saw you mention it in another post)..which is even more depressing! man, this is what i have to look forward to after graduation? ....oh boy im screwed


oh another thing mk, dont let the "black" thing get you down because i know quite a few blacks that are gainfully employed in the java field...even my professor (who works at the stock exchange downtown using java) is black.i feel that if you really really really know your stuff, you cant be denied no matter what
[ April 26, 2005: Message edited by: m brown ]