Tuesday, June 29, 2004
An article to boost ur confidence.......
Congressman and over 200 multinational corporations, universities,
research institutions and trade associations in the United States are
trying to retain the foreign-born, American-educated graduate students
in the country despite the restrictive H-1B visa caps.
Compete America, a coalition of over 200 companies, universities,
research institutions and trade associations, has called on the US
Congress to support a legislation to exempt foreign nationals with
master and Ph.D. degrees from the US universities, from the current
H-1B visa caps.
This has enormous implications for India as at present there are
around 75,000 Indian students in the US with a majority of them
enrolled for master or Ph.D degrees in different universities.
Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom said: "The US government and
companies collectively contribute billions of dollars to universities
to support cutting edge research. Much of that work is done by
graduate students, many of whom are foreign nationals. These foreign
nationals, with a large percentage of them being Indians, add
tremendous value to the US companies and the economy. They must have
H-1B status to remain in the US."
Compete America is backing congressional bill -- HR 4166 -- proposed
by Lamar Smith, a Republican Congressman from Texas, aimed at
extending the H-1B visa cap by over 30 per cent.
This year the H-1B quota -- down to 65,000 visas from 1,95,000 in 2003
-- was exhausted on February 17. This is the fifth time since 1997
that the caps have been reached before the end of the year.
While up to 50 per cent of the master and Ph.D. degrees granted in
disciplines such as physical sciences are given to foreign students,
this figure goes up to 90 per cent in some other disciplines.
The coalition includes MNCs which have a major presence in India such
as Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, AMD, Agilent
Technologies, Cisco, Motorola, ABB, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, DuPont
etc.
It also has on board associations and bodies such as the US Chamber of
Commerce, Information Technology Association of America, Society for
Human Resource Management, Software & Information Industry Association
and HR Policy Association.
In its letter to the Congress, Compete America has argued to retain
the foreign nationals educated in America on the grounds that the
companies are facing "difficult challenges in getting the right talent
for key professional positions."
The letter also says that it does not make sense to send back a large
percentage of foreign-born graduate students who benefit greatly from
the US education and, often, from research grants funded by the US
taxpayers.
Sending these people back because of a shortfall in visas also means
that the country gets no payback from investment on them and, worse,
it forces a foreign-born student to seek employment in a foreign
country, often competing against the US firms, reasons the coalition.
research institutions and trade associations in the United States are
trying to retain the foreign-born, American-educated graduate students
in the country despite the restrictive H-1B visa caps.
Compete America, a coalition of over 200 companies, universities,
research institutions and trade associations, has called on the US
Congress to support a legislation to exempt foreign nationals with
master and Ph.D. degrees from the US universities, from the current
H-1B visa caps.
This has enormous implications for India as at present there are
around 75,000 Indian students in the US with a majority of them
enrolled for master or Ph.D degrees in different universities.
Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom said: "The US government and
companies collectively contribute billions of dollars to universities
to support cutting edge research. Much of that work is done by
graduate students, many of whom are foreign nationals. These foreign
nationals, with a large percentage of them being Indians, add
tremendous value to the US companies and the economy. They must have
H-1B status to remain in the US."
Compete America is backing congressional bill -- HR 4166 -- proposed
by Lamar Smith, a Republican Congressman from Texas, aimed at
extending the H-1B visa cap by over 30 per cent.
This year the H-1B quota -- down to 65,000 visas from 1,95,000 in 2003
-- was exhausted on February 17. This is the fifth time since 1997
that the caps have been reached before the end of the year.
While up to 50 per cent of the master and Ph.D. degrees granted in
disciplines such as physical sciences are given to foreign students,
this figure goes up to 90 per cent in some other disciplines.
The coalition includes MNCs which have a major presence in India such
as Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, AMD, Agilent
Technologies, Cisco, Motorola, ABB, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, DuPont
etc.
It also has on board associations and bodies such as the US Chamber of
Commerce, Information Technology Association of America, Society for
Human Resource Management, Software & Information Industry Association
and HR Policy Association.
In its letter to the Congress, Compete America has argued to retain
the foreign nationals educated in America on the grounds that the
companies are facing "difficult challenges in getting the right talent
for key professional positions."
The letter also says that it does not make sense to send back a large
percentage of foreign-born graduate students who benefit greatly from
the US education and, often, from research grants funded by the US
taxpayers.
Sending these people back because of a shortfall in visas also means
that the country gets no payback from investment on them and, worse,
it forces a foreign-born student to seek employment in a foreign
country, often competing against the US firms, reasons the coalition.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Job Hopping......!!! Hopp....Hopp....Hopp..
Actually this article is written by a MBT employee...........not me.....
Job hopping. This is one phenomenon you frequently see in IT industry. Also this is something I never really understood even after 3 1/2 years in the software industry....
And it is a far cry from the Government service days of old when one struggled to get a job when fresh out of college, but once employed worked on there till retirement.. In those days no one ever thought of changing jobs.. Perhaps nobody thought of career or work/monetary satisfaction that much then... job stability was more important. In IT industry, it is a different ball game altogether... here people are supposed to switch else they would stagnate.. and it seems like a rule of thumb that no one sticks around in a single company for too long... and if he does then people think that is bcoz he is not good enough to get recruited anywhere.. Somehow when a person X switches from company A to company B, he gets a 40% hike (atleast)...and also goes one step up in the hierarchy. Similarly when a person Y switches from company B to company A... he also gets a similar hike and promotion...
Then why are they switching in the first place.. ? If X is so good that company B is ready to pay him a higher wage... and company A is also willing to pay that amount to hire Y from company B.. then why do the companies not retain their own employees at a better scale.... At least they can prevent the brain drain and loss of talented people... ( or perhaps the companies also want some different ppl after sometime ? This way they too need not fire anyone.. they go their own way.. )
It seems that IT majors now are in a frenzy to recruit the best talent around that they give incentives to attract and pull in experienced people from contemporary companies... you see hiring sprees in Infosys, Wipro, TCS... even Syntel is hiring like crazy with so many walk-ins in the past few weeks.
Interestingly, caliber and capability no longer matter it seems... you are just supposed to have the proper names on your resume.. (names of big colleges) and sufficient years of exp to show.. that is it.. you are in. For a little senior position... interviews are a joke... one is usually asked some general personal stuff and directly come to salary negotiation... like "We can offer you so much... are you willing to take the offer" !!
Note that you don't have to be a technical genius to be recruited into any of these top companies... with the amount of work (and most importantly *kind of work*) being outsourced to third world countries like India... mostly testing / support / bug fixing.. anyone with a few yrs of exp to show... and who can type (and talk) is in. Good for the employees... one might say.. it is easy to thrive under such market conditions.. As the saying goes.. "Make hay while the sun shines"
When I entered my first job in software.. I was advised by my seniors that frequent switching is not advisable... and you
should stick around in a company and stay loyal if you wished to learn and progress... but if you look at the career graphs and salary scale of people who switch regularly... you see that they have progressed so much over a very short time that it is impossible to grow so much staying with one organization...
But what is the main reason why people switch ? Is it career growth ? Or job satisfaction ? Or money ? Or all of these ? Maybe perhaps it is just need for a change.. with frustration levels running high taken the kind of work done in software
industry... ppl need a break occasionally. And a change of environment helps...
On a side note, I wonder how long this phase would last... there was a time during the software boom.. that anyone who knew just to type on the computer were being hired in US.. all and sundry were suddenly in the IT industry and were landing in US earning big bucks... once the bubble burst... all was gone.. the dream American IT job had vanished... everything is being outsourced now to cheap labor houses... third world countries like India and China.. It would only be a matter of time before it moved on to other countries in the south east...
Microsoft has now outsourced testing of most of its old OS versions to India...they are not supporting anything older than XP now here.. I guess Wipro / Infy have landed the contract for Win SE testing.. a huge multi million dollar project... for testing / bug fixing legacy OS components... I see that many new vendors from Wipro / Infy (maybe about 80 people) have landed here in the past few weeks for knowledge transfer and carrying the testing work back to India... no wonder they are hiring like anything..
Having mentioned this, the job scene in India is booming right now and is expected to stay that way for the coming few years at least.. ideal time to make a pile and plan for an early retirement..
But what surprises me in all this is that people usually switch just companies... they end up doing the same job in another place... albeit for a bigger sum.. and so the frustration never really goes... and hence the need for another switch after a year... not everyone switch to a *proper job* and that's why they keep going in circles switching from company to company.. also the money helps.. but imagine doing the same stupid testing for twice the pay... would it help ? is it really satisfactory ? maybe like someone said... if you are doing something stupid.. might as well do it for a bigger sum..
This is where I feel a job culture like Microsoft is missing in India.. here there are ppl who are developers even after 20 yrs exp... bcoz they enjoy their work.. and they are paid handsomely... here salary is not based on seniority but on proficiency and experience... people can choose what they like and want to work as... some want to go into management while others prefer technical positions... compensation is based on ratings and work profile created according to the person's choice.. there are lot of cases here where experienced developers are paid more than their managers..
Amidst all the outsourcing and body shopping.. we have missed out building India into a software product development centre.. rather it is now like a cheap labour shop.. I read in an article that India is known as the "back office of the world". I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of this tag. When Bill started Microsoft.. they were a few tens of ppl... we at MBT are around 4000 and all are capable and well qualified and what sort of work do we mostly do... testing / product support / maintenance...that is stopping us from building some product and selling it to the world ? And why on earth do we sell our work-force as contract workers to multinationals ? Rather than switching from company to company in search of the ideal job... or the best package.. me thinks it is better to go down south to Kerala and get a nice water-front house... settle down peacefully with family... purchase some fields and do some farming... now that would the ideal job switch....
Job hopping. This is one phenomenon you frequently see in IT industry. Also this is something I never really understood even after 3 1/2 years in the software industry....
And it is a far cry from the Government service days of old when one struggled to get a job when fresh out of college, but once employed worked on there till retirement.. In those days no one ever thought of changing jobs.. Perhaps nobody thought of career or work/monetary satisfaction that much then... job stability was more important. In IT industry, it is a different ball game altogether... here people are supposed to switch else they would stagnate.. and it seems like a rule of thumb that no one sticks around in a single company for too long... and if he does then people think that is bcoz he is not good enough to get recruited anywhere.. Somehow when a person X switches from company A to company B, he gets a 40% hike (atleast)...and also goes one step up in the hierarchy. Similarly when a person Y switches from company B to company A... he also gets a similar hike and promotion...
Then why are they switching in the first place.. ? If X is so good that company B is ready to pay him a higher wage... and company A is also willing to pay that amount to hire Y from company B.. then why do the companies not retain their own employees at a better scale.... At least they can prevent the brain drain and loss of talented people... ( or perhaps the companies also want some different ppl after sometime ? This way they too need not fire anyone.. they go their own way.. )
It seems that IT majors now are in a frenzy to recruit the best talent around that they give incentives to attract and pull in experienced people from contemporary companies... you see hiring sprees in Infosys, Wipro, TCS... even Syntel is hiring like crazy with so many walk-ins in the past few weeks.
Interestingly, caliber and capability no longer matter it seems... you are just supposed to have the proper names on your resume.. (names of big colleges) and sufficient years of exp to show.. that is it.. you are in. For a little senior position... interviews are a joke... one is usually asked some general personal stuff and directly come to salary negotiation... like "We can offer you so much... are you willing to take the offer" !!
Note that you don't have to be a technical genius to be recruited into any of these top companies... with the amount of work (and most importantly *kind of work*) being outsourced to third world countries like India... mostly testing / support / bug fixing.. anyone with a few yrs of exp to show... and who can type (and talk) is in. Good for the employees... one might say.. it is easy to thrive under such market conditions.. As the saying goes.. "Make hay while the sun shines"
When I entered my first job in software.. I was advised by my seniors that frequent switching is not advisable... and you
should stick around in a company and stay loyal if you wished to learn and progress... but if you look at the career graphs and salary scale of people who switch regularly... you see that they have progressed so much over a very short time that it is impossible to grow so much staying with one organization...
But what is the main reason why people switch ? Is it career growth ? Or job satisfaction ? Or money ? Or all of these ? Maybe perhaps it is just need for a change.. with frustration levels running high taken the kind of work done in software
industry... ppl need a break occasionally. And a change of environment helps...
On a side note, I wonder how long this phase would last... there was a time during the software boom.. that anyone who knew just to type on the computer were being hired in US.. all and sundry were suddenly in the IT industry and were landing in US earning big bucks... once the bubble burst... all was gone.. the dream American IT job had vanished... everything is being outsourced now to cheap labor houses... third world countries like India and China.. It would only be a matter of time before it moved on to other countries in the south east...
Microsoft has now outsourced testing of most of its old OS versions to India...they are not supporting anything older than XP now here.. I guess Wipro / Infy have landed the contract for Win SE testing.. a huge multi million dollar project... for testing / bug fixing legacy OS components... I see that many new vendors from Wipro / Infy (maybe about 80 people) have landed here in the past few weeks for knowledge transfer and carrying the testing work back to India... no wonder they are hiring like anything..
Having mentioned this, the job scene in India is booming right now and is expected to stay that way for the coming few years at least.. ideal time to make a pile and plan for an early retirement..
But what surprises me in all this is that people usually switch just companies... they end up doing the same job in another place... albeit for a bigger sum.. and so the frustration never really goes... and hence the need for another switch after a year... not everyone switch to a *proper job* and that's why they keep going in circles switching from company to company.. also the money helps.. but imagine doing the same stupid testing for twice the pay... would it help ? is it really satisfactory ? maybe like someone said... if you are doing something stupid.. might as well do it for a bigger sum..
This is where I feel a job culture like Microsoft is missing in India.. here there are ppl who are developers even after 20 yrs exp... bcoz they enjoy their work.. and they are paid handsomely... here salary is not based on seniority but on proficiency and experience... people can choose what they like and want to work as... some want to go into management while others prefer technical positions... compensation is based on ratings and work profile created according to the person's choice.. there are lot of cases here where experienced developers are paid more than their managers..
Amidst all the outsourcing and body shopping.. we have missed out building India into a software product development centre.. rather it is now like a cheap labour shop.. I read in an article that India is known as the "back office of the world". I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed of this tag. When Bill started Microsoft.. they were a few tens of ppl... we at MBT are around 4000 and all are capable and well qualified and what sort of work do we mostly do... testing / product support / maintenance...that is stopping us from building some product and selling it to the world ? And why on earth do we sell our work-force as contract workers to multinationals ? Rather than switching from company to company in search of the ideal job... or the best package.. me thinks it is better to go down south to Kerala and get a nice water-front house... settle down peacefully with family... purchase some fields and do some farming... now that would the ideal job switch....
