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Thread: So many tech jobs, so many unemployed Engineers. What?

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    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    So many tech jobs, so many unemployed Engineers. What?

    Sign of the times, so many tech jobs, so many unemployed Engineers. What?

    Vexed in the city: Starved for tech talent and yet nobody to hire?

    As the H-1B debate continues, the tech industry faces an odd contradiction: a skills shortage along with an applicant surplus.

    by Nick Statt

    Darin Wedel made headlines in 2012 when his wife, Jennifer, asked President Barack Obama during a Google+ Hangout why her husband was still out of work while H-1B visa holders continued to stream into the US.

    Wedel, who graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in electrical engineering, lost his semiconductor engineering job at Texas Instruments three years earlier.

    Obama pledged help. But Wedel ended up taking a temporary position in the medical field, becoming another American with an engineering or technology degree who couldn't find a job in engineering or technology.

    The San Francisco Bay Area -- home to star tech companies including Google, Apple, Facebook, and hundreds of startups -- should be interested in experienced, mid-career engineers like Wedel. After all, tech companies often describe themselves as meritocracies, where skills are the only thing that matters.

    But here's the rub: While tech companies are flooded with resumes, only a fraction of the applicants for these lucrative spots wind up with jobs in Silicon Valley. All the while, the industry complains it's struggling to find the right people with the right skills.

    What's going on? Some say tech companies are being exceptionally picky. Fewer than half of the 12.1 million people in the US with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math -- so-called STEM-degree holders -- held jobs in STEM-related occupations in 2012, according to the latest data compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies.

    Others blame H-1B work visas, which allow companies to hire skilled workers from other countries.
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  2. #2
    H1B visas are the problem. Too many immigrants flooding the tech and IT job market.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by David Hilton View Post
    H1B visas are the problem. Too many immigrants flooding the tech and IT job market.
    It's probably that the H1B visa immigrants are likely either:

    A) Willing to work for less pay.
    B) The paperwork related to the visa probably makes them less of a liability through less guarantee of benefits than a full time [American] employee?

    The large majority of Americans won't immigrate to other nations that often pay less for skilled workers. When they do it is because it usually pays more to find a job outside the USA. Which is "probably" the same logic applied in respect to H1B visa workers.

    The larger issue might be that people (everywhere?) don't appreciate foreign skilled workers taking up residence in their own nations job market. In this case employers are probably looking at the paperwork, lack of benefits and guarantees, and probably ultimately about an immigrant who is willing to take less for the job.

    (With the few exceptions of situations where highly skilled foreign workers who really are overly-qualified and overly specialized to take up really unique positions in a foreign country)
    For every action, there is a corresponding over-reaction. -- Anonymous

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    Lead Moderator calikid's Avatar
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    Add to that current employers don't seem to accept anything less than a 100% CV/Experience match.
    What happened to the days when a prospective employee walked in the door with 80% of needed skills, and the interested company would provide some modicum of training to get the new guy up to speed?
    The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but
    progress. -- Joseph Joubert
    Attachment 1008

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