Are American high tech workers obsolete?

[Jerry Feldman]

When the economy was in good shape, H1-B was used to fill in for positions 
that were not being filled. Very similar to the need to migrant workers in 
the Southwest. When the economy went sour, companies found that the foreign 
workers (mostly from India) were cheaper. 
Much of the displacement has been in system administration. Unfortunately 
Congress opened the floodgate. In retrospect, H1-B is a very bad thing, but 
when it was first proposed it was a necessary thing. 
But, for many years companies, such as Digital, Compaq and HP had foreign 
engineering. (Both HP and Digital have engineering centers in India). 
I worked for HP in 1999 as an onsite consultant in Raytheon's Bedford 
Prison facility. One major component of HP-UX (the realtime extensions 
required by the military radar programs) were written in HP's India 
Engineering Center. At one meeting, the Army representitive really grilled 
my boss. This was the system that is supposed to intercept and destroy 
enemy missiles. 
(Think of 2 Superdomes sitting in a trailer in Iraq). 
Bob Davis did a big song and dance on that one. 
On 13 Aug 2002 at 10:34, Hewitt Tech wrote:
> Like a lot of folks leaving a big computer company I have noted the extent
> to which American companies have been replacing domestic workers with H1-B
> program employees or simply shipping the jobs off-shore. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9