Article

2020-05-31 Economy

[The American Mind]

The shotgun blast reverberated across the parking garage of Bank of America’s Concord Technology Center in the Bay Area suburb of Walnut Creek, California.

In the front seat of a pickup truck sat the lifeless body of Kevin Flanagan beside a 12-gauge Remington. Behind him were boxes of his personal effects from his office at Bank of America, where the programmer had worked for nearly a decade.

In the months leading up to his 2003 suicide, Bank of America had forced Flanagan and his colleagues to train their foreign replacements before laying them off. These transplants entered the United States on the H-1B worker visa. After months of the humiliation of having to train his replacement, a broken Flanagan climbed into his truck and shot himself in the head the day Bank of America let him go. "Kevin losing his job with Bank of America was the defining event in his decision to end his life," said Tom Flanagan, his father.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman characterized the H-1B visa as a government subsidy program the year before. Socialism for the rich. But bad press and picket lines in parking lots fell on deaf ears.

Vivek Paul, then vice chairman and president of Wipro Technologies, told reporters he felt confident, despite Flanagan’s suicide, that his business would outlast the outcry. "We know how this movie ends," he sniffed. "If a decade ago we discovered that manufacturing can be done anywhere, in this decade we are learning that knowledge can be learned anywhere."

Posted by M. Murcek 2020-05-31 00:00|| || Front Page|| [6 views ] Top

#1 The H-1B program need to end and be seriously overhauled. Companies that hire H-1B to replace American workers, need to be fined ten time the worker's salary, plus the board of directors need to be fined at least 25% of their income as well.

The H-1B program may have started out with good intentions, but it's been so badly abused that it might as well be shut down completely.

In the future, if companies want to hire foreign worker, they need to post an annual bail of at least two to three times the American worker salary, to be paid to any laid off workers. Make it too costly to simply replace American workers.

/rant and yes I have strong feelings and options on this subject. It's shows how corrupt our congress critters are (both parties.)

Posted by Seeking Cure For Ignorance 2020-05-31 00:47|| 2020-05-31 00:47|| Front Page Top

#2 The latest trend is to simply hire people in India and have them work in India.

Posted by CrazyFool 2020-05-31 01:14|| 2020-05-31 01:14|| Front Page Top

#3 We might want to consider overhauling the Minimum Wage system which may do more than anything to keep Americans unemployed.

Posted by Clem 2020-05-31 06:14|| 2020-05-31 06:14|| Front Page Top

#4 Seeking, I agree with you, especially about the opinions and emotions.

I spent 30+ years in IT and saw the very beginning of this back in the '80s. DEC tried to pull off outsourcing to India back then, but, the communications just couldn't handle it.

There were basically two species, Indians and Eastern Euros. Cultural differences were enlightening especially when they were supposed to work together.

Several of the big companies that I consulted at went TU due to lack of managerial ability to manage IT costs and performance. PG&E and Kodak are 2 examples.

Posted by AlanC 2020-05-31 07:06|| 2020-05-31 07:06|| Front Page Top

#5 The latest trend is to simply hire people in India and have them work in India.

They've been trying it for 40 years. Time difference, cultural and managerial style. If the Indians were that good they would have cornered the market by now. That is why they want to import them here. Then hold their visas over them like overseers.

Posted by Procopius2k 2020-05-31 07:10|| 2020-05-31 07:10|| Front Page Top

#6 As I've learned in over 36 years in data, the farther away the operations are from the data, the
worse the result

Posted by Warthog 2020-05-31 08:59|| 2020-05-31 08:59|| Front Page Top

#7 "Hello. I am calling today from Windows. There is a problem with your Microsoft. Please have your credit card ready..."

Posted by M. Murcek 2020-05-31 09:49|| 2020-05-31 09:49|| Front Page Top

#8 Re: 4,5,6,7

Seems like I have a few compadre hanging out here at the burg.

Mazel Tov to you all

Posted by AlanC 2020-05-31 11:39|| 2020-05-31 11:39|| Front Page Top

#9 As I've learned in over 36 years in data, the farther away the operations are from the data, the worse the result --Warthog
Management, too. Managing by "metrics" the Robert McNamara Way™. People code models with no idea whatsoever about the reality they are trying to predict -- and Management uses it because it is "scientific".

Posted by magpie 2020-05-31 13:16|| 2020-05-31 13:16|| Front Page Top

#10 Well, it can be a useful skill if you want to start your own business, but yes, the H1-B makes it way harder to get work at established companies for Americans.

Which also has negative effects on networking and building up a native talent base.

We've seen the results of an overreliance on China for pharma; you'd think American companies might figure out that a similar dynamic could play out with coding.

But that underestimates the power of shortsighted greed.

Posted by charger 2020-05-31 14:36|| 2020-05-31 14:36|| Front Page Top

#11 The protest would be so much more effective if one would take out their boss first.

Posted by Skidmark 2020-05-31 21:22|| 2020-05-31 21:22|| Front Page Top

#12 If they are important and needed enough to grant them immigration status, then give them a green card, and allow them to negotiate salary on an even playing field, instead of them requireing an indentured servitude contract in which the hiring company sponsor status allows the company to underpay and underbenefit them compared to similar citizen engineers/etc.

Its the control the corporations are handed that allow them to treat the H1B like serfs, which drops the market out from under fair competition by Americans

Posted by Marilyn Tojo7566 2020-05-31 23:35|| 2020-05-31 23:35|| Front Page Top

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