How to Lower Cost with Your Job
By Simon Jones on Dec 30, 06The title to this article may sound extreme. You be the judge. After responding recently to articles about the Indian invasion of America, I was finally encouraged to write an article about my experiences in the high-tech industry. Because of severance agreements, the names of my former company and former coworkers have been changed.
I am a computer programmer, and have been for 15 years. I worked for a company TechnoDataCode in California for 6 years, and I was the director of one of the R&D projects.
About a year ago, most of the other American employees and I were fired and replaced with people from India on H-1B and L-1 visas. The people from India were making only a fraction of what we Americans were making. I was making $110K a year; my replacement, $37K. The people under me were making about $75K; their replacements, about $29K.
To keep my severance pay, I was required to stay on for an additional six months (after the other Americans were fired) to train the replacements. This was probably the most humiliating experience of my life.
What I describe above is happening now every day. Many of my friends in high-tech have also recently been fired, and are being replaced with cheap imported labor from India or China. Microsoft says there is a “high-tech shortage,” which is a lie. Almost every American programmer I know is now unemployed and has been replaced by a cheap import. There is not a “shortage.” Big business only wants more cheap labor.
This article was sent to me by Hugh. How common do you think the practice of bringing in foreign workers to drive down American wages?
December 31st, 2006 at 1:29 pm
What irks me is that the companies firing these expensive professionals didn’t offer them paycuts to keep them employed, but rather axed them all for fresh blood. Doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe it’s that sense of entitlement kicking in, thinking these highly paid professionals expect so much money because they’re “special” in some regard. If you ask me, salaries should never have gotten that high in the first place. The fact that their replacements are easily found at a quarter of the pay tells me those high salaries were grossly, unsustainably inflated anyway.
December 31st, 2006 at 1:32 pm
$29-37K is a livable salary for people smart enough to manage their money properly. It’s not like they’re coming in here working sub-minimum wage to force everybody below the poverty line.
December 31st, 2006 at 1:36 pm
And for what it’s worth, I wrote my congressmen when these visas were first being exploited back in 98 asking them to lower the quotas instead of raise them so Americans could stay employed.
December 31st, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Chris
If you over supply labor than you take away rights of people to negotiate. Between India and China they over 2 billion people, they have a unlimited supply of labor.
Also if you pit workers with less rights to workers with more rights you destroy the rights of workers. This is a race to the bottom.
We also have a problem that the cost of education does match the wages to pay off the debt.
December 31st, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Yea that cost of education thing is another problem that’s skyrocketed, to the point of being a scam. When I graduated, college cost $2.5k/year, and any loans involved could be paid off in the first year of employment. I suppose we should blame these inflated educations costs on cheap labor as well.
December 31st, 2006 at 5:32 pm
The practice is widespread in almost all sectors of the economy. One sector that I read on from time to time would be call center outsourcing to Canada or even South Africa where english speakers are available for a fraction of their american counterparts. Indian call centers are utilized to a lesser degree because they have not been able to deliver on promises of certain levels of service. The next hot spot for outsourcing will be the outlying islands nead the Americas like Costa Rica. This is because spanish and english speakers are available at a fraction of the cost of their American counterparts. In many cases companies can do away with redundant seats in their contact center because the no longer need english and seperate spanish speakers but can acquire both languages in a single representative.
Next time you call a service center for any reason, take a moment to ask where the contact center is. Many companies are picking up on the fact that customers prefer American support. I personally boycott a lot of companies that have questionable employment practices. You might wonder, if they outsource all the jobs, who will be left with money to buy the goods and services?!
January 1st, 2007 at 12:45 am
Chris, wouldn’t you agree that at least a side-issue to this problem of importing cheap offshore labour involves a betrayal of trust.
From the ’seventies and ‘eighties on, people were persuaded to accept more economic “reform”, on the basis that this would enable western countries to gear up for the “new” technologies, which would provide compensating jobs for people losing out in the “sunset” manufacturing sector.
Therefore, is it really fair to expect people who based their forward planning on these assurance, to now have to again cede employment gracefully, for the benefit of some CEO or fund manager somewhere, on an exponentially excessive package gained from doing nothing better than dreaming up ways of sacking tens of thousands of often decent people from their jobs?
If “25-37k” is “livable” for the rest of us, why are the people causing so much distress for everyone, also unable tolive at this level if they are so clever? Do they need $ tens of millions a year for THEIR compensation and survival?If they are som smart you think they’d need LESS than “25-37k”and WE’D be the ones needing the multiples of $millions!
I mean, what is a society run for?
This corruption of visas from the top is going on in Australia also, instigated by employer groups close to a government that until a few months ago was slathering another smaller group of recent incomers; refugees, as “queue-jumpers”.
Now, all of a sudden, it suits them to “bend” the rules, because employers see the value of cheap imported labour not so much for their relative efficiency, but as catspaws for union-busting and driving down wages and conditions.
Now, you may say “market forces” etc, but I would suggest a component of “market forces” might begin to include frustrated workers again dudded by the system, beginning to fight hard against being taken for granted yet again by the people running things, who then can do know better than have their tabloid spin docotors insolently dismiss such people “racists”.
January 1st, 2007 at 10:14 am
Cost is not an issue if wages go up faster Chris. If the cost goes up faster than wages something has to give,
January 1st, 2007 at 5:08 pm
That’s the point John. Everything is going up faster than wages. This society’s breaking point is near.
January 4th, 2007 at 2:36 am
Mr Konop,
“Cost is not an issue if wages go up faster.”
Come again? To an employer, wages are a cost of doing business.
.
James,
Since when is Costa Rica an “outlying island nead [sic] the Americas”?
Costa Rica is a democratic nation without an armed military that has become a highly attractive destination for American retirees.
Oh, and it is on the mainland, between Nicaragua and Panama.
Sheesh.