What H1 and related are really about is making sure the IT people don’t rise to executive level in the business. Executives correctly assume that the docile Indian workers won’t challenge them the way native Americans do. Software developers are more intelligent than the average business director and will eventually take over executive leadership in many corps, the way marketing and financial guys did generations ago. The children of the Indian workers who are taking our jobs for half the pay, or less, won’t be so docile. So, we will have second generation Americans running things. At least the traditional business school people will finally be demoted.
I lived as an IT Mgr with outsource companies from India both On-shore and Off-shore
1-Yes cost of labor is cheaper, but you get what you pay for. Yes per person it is cheaper, but they are not skilled. Knowledgeable maybe, greatly inexperienced. Especially in a support keep the lights on, sense of urgency role.
2-H1Bs are a revolving door of people. They roll on and roll off. Once you lay your guy off and he did “knowledge transfer” to their guy, they then own that site specific knowledge as it went out the door. You are at the outsourcer’s ability to institutionalize that knowledge. They talk a good game, but they fail at it.
3-Now that your internal knowledge went out the door, and that knowledge now rests with the Outsourcer, good luck getting rid of them. This knowledge becomes the hammer held over your head.
4-You cannot understand a thing they say. Look at the interview with the India IT guy last night on 60 Minutes. They had an interpreter. Imagine having that in a conference room or on the phone with a business user - NOT
5-It is not mutually beneficial to both countries. IT helps India with massive population, appears to help Corporate annual report, hurts American workers.
6-IT has become a commodity. With Windows machines and networks, we have come to expect things crashing, going down, data getting lost, etc. Just another train wreck after another. The million dollar mainframes of the 1980s ran all day long w/o problems. Now problems are what you get when hardware got 100 times cheaper. I just have 200 times more servers as they can only run one Application each.
Why I retired from IT. Windows & Outsourcing. Used to be fun
That actually makes sense.