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MS Moves R&D To Canada Due To Immigration Problem
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Jul 05, 2007 05:40 PM
from the not-enough-brainpower dept.
from the not-enough-brainpower dept.
telso writes "Microsoft will be opening a new software development center in Vancouver because of difficulties getting workers into the US. The company said the center will 'allow the company to continue to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by the immigration issues in the US' It seems possible that shrinking immigration quotas have affected America's tax and knowledge base."
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I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no shortage of programmers or software engineers in the U.S.; there is a shortage of people who are interested in being paid next to nothing.
Re:I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Mod parent up Plz (Score:5, Insightful)
Could they be moving to Canada because:
-it has a very similar social, economic, and political environment to the US which makes it good for business
-Canada has 'open borders' for highly skilled and educated foreigners (yes, even Americans)
-Canada has very strong labor laws protecting the immigrants: they have the same rights as the natives, can switch employers, won't be deported (in fact, "ratting out" a bad employer can them a permanent visa, as happened to a bunch of welders recently)
-Canada believes in cultivating the best and the brightest, no matter where they were born
Face it, Canada is a mini-US, but with a more reasonable immigration policy. Canada is now the fastest growing economy in the entire G8 (the only one at over 3%), the Canadian dollar, the GDP, and the worker wealth.
Parent
Re:Mod parent up Plz (Score:5, Funny)
There, fixed that for you.
Parent
Re:Mod parent up Plz (Score:5, Funny)
Canada has very strong labour laws, eh ...?
There, fixed that for you. :-P
Parent
Re: Mod parent up Plz (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Mod parent up Plz (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Mod parent up Plz (Score:5, Interesting)
A developer earning 50-60k up here is considered middle-upper class. He can afford a house on his own, along with all the latest tech toys. Try that in Redmond... yeah right!
Then throw in the pervasive anti-American sentiment that continues to grow all around the world, and well, we Canadians don't look so bad anymore. We're far from perfect, we still have dirty dirty politicians and high tax rates, but to many people we're seen as a much lesser evil than our southern neighbors. I'm going to get flamed for this, but you guys need to start working to clear your name. Maybe a decade ago, the USA was a land of riches, I even contemplated relocating for a development job... then Dubya showed up and changed everything around. Not since Truman has there been a worse hated US president around the world. People are afraid of the USA. We see how badly their own citizens are treated, I can't even imagine how bad it is for immigrants.
Parent
Re:As someone who liaised with developers in India (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's because Canada is Microsoft's #3 exporter of staff, behind India and Japan (link) [smh.com.au] and an L visa is obtainable after a year.
Also, Microsoft DOES have R&D in China, India, Ireland, among other places, so opening one in Vancouver is incredibly overdue.
Sorry, I'm just nitpicking and I agree with your post, Mr. Lightning. This message isn't for you. However everybody else who posted trash about Microsoft opening an office in Canada because it's cheaper:
FUCK YOU
You assholes obviously haven't spent much time in Vancouver or Toronto in the last decade or Alberta in the last year. Stop posting shit about nonsense you have no fricking clue about. Have you guys actually sent your resumes to Microsoft? Geez. Sound like the neighbor's barking dogs.
Oz
Parent
A useful threat over engineers and politicians... (Score:4, Insightful)
Give us the tax/law breaks we need or we'll hire less people in Redmond and the state/US will earn less tax.
Having some flexibility just over the fence gives MS a lot of options to get heavy handed.
Parent
Re:I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
My take on it is that it is what they say it is. Yes, there is no shortage of US programmers. But what's missing are *good* programmers willing to relocate to the Redmond area without a huge incentive. I would imagine that Vancouver is a great place to pick up new talent.
And having a variety of ethnic backgrounds working on a product is extremely valuable. The US is not the only market MS is going after. Their software needs to reflect the cultures its moving into. I will give a relevant example.
I once worked on a word processor that the marketing and sales team were trying to sell to the Japanese market. This word processor claimed (on the box) to support Japanese scripts. Well, one of them anyway. Katakana to be precise. Katakana is used in Japan almost exclusively for foreign loan words and signs. A word processor that only supports katakana is completely useless.
We had a Japanese programmer on the team. He explained this to management. Some talk went back and forth about what to do. In the end, the decision was made to remove it from Japanese shelves. Seriously, before this fellow clued in Management, they thought the word processor must be massively pirated in Japan. Otherwise how come no sales?
You want a diverse culture in your development teams. Having lived both in Canada and the US, Canada values diverse culture more. The US is the "melting pot" (your uniqueness will be added to our own). Canada has "multiculturalism" (which admittedly has its own problems). It makes sense to move some development to a place like Canada (as long as management is moving with it). There are lots of other places that would be good too. But Vancouver is quite close to Redmond.
Parent
Re:I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I work in R&D and let me tell you that the majority of folks at American universities who graduate with masters or doctoral degrees are non-Americans. For whatever reason, the vast majority of Americans do not seem to particularly favor staying in school for grad school. If you do not believe me, just have a look at the graduate student list of any technical school and you will see that there is a significant number of non-Americans in there.
I work at a baby-Bell doing R&D and in our team, we have 4 PhDs, and only one one of them is American. Two are Indian and one is South Korean. Even in grad school, the numbers are similar. In fact, most of the interns that we have tend to be non-Americans, as well.
So is it any wonder that MS is moving part of the R&D to Canada? If you are comparing a software engineer or a programmer with the kind of people MSR employs, you have no clue about what is happening.
And secondly, I doubt MSR would pay "next to nothing". Most people in R&D, especially in areas like EECS tend to get quite a bit, easily making six figures or more.
Parent
Re:I call BS (Score:5, Informative)
IBM, EA, ATI, AMD (just to name a few) all have huge labs in major cities in Canada. It's completely unsurprising for MS to finally follow suit and open a lab in Canada, where tech / engineering talents are aplenty. It's a bit surprising that they didn't open it near Waterloo, where a huge percentage of MS engineers are from... But Vancouver just makes more sense because of its proximity to Redmond.
BTW, a somewhat related article on CBC claims the Canada government is throwing money into luring back expat canadian tech workers down in the US [www.cbc.ca]:
"Meanwhile, the province is trying to lure back Canadians working south of the border. This summer, it is launching a $2-million program promoting new job opportunities, improved taxation and a higher dollar in their home country."
Draw your own conclusion at why MS is making this decision right after the announcement about "improved taxation" in Canada.
Parent
Its not BS. Its the global economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is whether you are buying a toaster, calling support or getting a job its increasingly a global economy. One way or another you are competing with people from India, China and Canada.
Microsoft going to Canada to hire people can only be attributed to one thing. They feel they get a better deal there. And before we call them greedy or evil, we should consider that most of us do the same thing when buying a toaster, we look for the best quality at the lowest price.
The fact that the USA is a less attractive than Canada as a place to hire foreign workers won't be a surprise to many foreign workers who have worked in the USA. The procedures for foreign workers in USA are complex, slow and characterized by hostility from immigration officials at every stage. (I left USA after my H1B visa was extended for the last time and green card procedures were too expensive, restrictive and lengthy for my taste (I would point out that my time in USA was otherwise excellent and I love the place, the people and the culture)).
In today's world, the only sustainable way to increase your earnings is to make yourself more valuable. If you are asking Microsoft to pay you more than another similarly skilled candidate based on geography or nationality then you are just asking them to subsidize you.
cheers,
David
Parent
I call BS on the BS call (Score:5, Insightful)
Your saying that Microsoft can't find employees because they don't pay enough because salaries are being held artificially low because of the flood of new employees from other countries.
Something not quite right about that argument. Seems to me that if the programming field was being flooded with immigrants, Microsoft would not have trouble finding employees.
Parent
Re:I call BS on the BS call (Score:5, Insightful)
You could potentially argue whether their policy or actions achieve this "best bang" effectively, but I dont think there's enough real facts in the story to allow us to do that, so the bottom line is that this is just a draw for Microsoft bashers with the added benefit that you could use this to argue our nations imigration policies are either to lax or strict, depending on your goals..
Sorry.. I think it's really a non-story. Microsoft does business all over the world, and it makes sense that they'd have offices all over the world too.
Parent
Re:1/2 of a corporations duties (Score:5, Insightful)
-
It provides a better or less expensive products for the consumer.
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It provides a lucrative job for the immigrant.
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It increases company profits, which does the shareholders good.
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The increase in profits means an increase in taxes paid,
a definite public good.
Seems to do a least some good. What's more, a profitable company grows, increasing demand for more employees including non-immigrants. In other words, a job given to an immigrant does not necessary mean a job lost to a non-immigrant.Major rule of economics: Very few things are a zero-sum game.
Parent
Re:1/2 of a corporations duties (Score:5, Interesting)
You have one "american" employee leading an "american" company with 100,000 employees from every other country on earth.
The products which cost pennies to produce- are nonetheless priced at "full retail" in the american market while being sold for much lower prices profitably in other countries. And of course those products are either gimmicked ("indonesian only" $25 windows) or have laws making it illegal to reimport them to the US (My blood pressure pills-- 10 cents in india, $5 here-- illegal to import and sell for 50 cents).
The one "american" only pays taxes on realized profits and income. The rest is funny money stored in various ways. Net result to American- nothing really. Net result to the company- enormous.
Should I buy that companies products? Not if I can help it.
Parent
Re:I call BS on the BS call (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actual MS Salaries (Score:5, Informative)
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/libr
(from http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03/internal-mic
Fulltime out of university is level 59.
Parent
bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
That's a nice fairy tale, but you're confusing H1B visas and green cards. There is no requirement to interview American workers for H1B visas; for H1B visas, a company can simply write a letter saying that they couldn't fill the position with an American worker.
The requirement to interview American workers exists only for green card applications. Green cards remove any hold the company may have over their workers, so they are the exact opposite of what a company would apply for if it wants to keep salaries low by hiring cheap immigrants. Companies are indeed trying to skirt that requirement, but that's not to keep salaries low, it's to avoid losing an employee that has likely been with the company for many years and is very valuable to them.
I just recently read this in the news.
Perhaps your inability to read and understand written materials has something to do with your inability to command a higher salary.
Parent
Re:bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a minor mistake: H1Bs are temporary visas, green cards are immigrant visas. Green cards can't lead to salary depression for American workers because people hired on green cards are American workers, with all the same labor rights and mobility. So, your diatribe makes even less sense for green cards. Either you just don't know what you're talking about, or you're deliberately misrepresenting the facts to push your political agenda.
I have an education thank you and my salary is 3x the nation average. So stop being a little dick.
So, you are making $130k/year and you're still whining that you're not being paid enough. And because you're not satisfied with your already big salary, you're willing to bad-mouth companies, keep highly skilled and productive people out of the US, and make the US less competitive.
With people like you around, it's no wonder if the US loses the software industry to China and India, just like we lost the auto industry, steel, TVs, and VCRs to overseas.
Parent
And I CALL BS AGAIN! (Score:5, Insightful)
What immigration visa in the US is geared towards skilled people who can later on start a life in the country? Answer NONE. In Canada, UK, Germany, Switzerland, etc they all give you visas towards citizenship.
And please note that this qualified workers is a problem not only in the US, but EVERYWHERE! I know, my wife who is a manager for a software development team in Switzerland is dealing with the skilled labor shortage EVERYDAY...
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Re:I call BS (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
LOL (Score:5, Funny)
Starting with you.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
The new steel-worker (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The new steel-worker (Score:5, Funny)
During the 3 hours when the sun will shine here, I emerge from my igloo to play the government required hour of hockey. Then after I have finished I go hunting for my family's dinner with my trusty bow and arrow. Once home with my cariboo meat, I will sit back down in my igloo, crack open a Molson Canadian and watch one of the two channels we get up here, CBC and the Curling network. And this was a good day, some days it is too cold to even leave the igloo. I can't wait for global warming.
Parent
Too late to save money (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't underestimate Ballmer (Score:4, Funny)
Going to Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: We don't want to pay American employees what they're worth, so we're going somewhere else.
It's their right to do so, but....
I was on a congressionally funded study of some specialized skills of which the government believed there was a shortage. We had a distinguished economist on the committee and his first comment was, "There is no shortage. Employers (the government, in this case) always perceive a shortage because they want to pay their employees less."
There are more than enough qualified engineers in the US to work for the tech firms. They're just not willing to compete on the salaries. When Bill Gates says, "we need more visas for the best and the brightest,' he means he wants to pay less for talent.
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's good enough for Flint, Michigan, it's good enough for Silicon Valley.
Parent
Could also be (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't *moving* R&D... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Other centres exist in North Carolina, Ireland, Denmark and Israel, while full research-and-development locations exist in the U.K., India, China and California's Silicon Valley."
It's really not that big a deal. Microsoft probably can't hire enough people in the US, and opening development centers in other countries make sense. Not that great a story....
Microsoft R&D? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps A Career Change... (Score:5, Funny)
Secondly, there's no shortage of excellent marijuana in Vancouver. After hours and hours of working for Microsoft, nothing will make you feel better than a few bong hits of BC bud. I think being really high makes Vista worth having. It's slow, you're slow. The nifty visuals are "trippy" and while it's paging out to disk, you can munch.
Problem with "Plenty of programmers here" argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, having said that, I work on a team that's only about 20-30% US-born citizens. The rest are a mix of Russian, Romanian, Chinese, Indian, and Mexican. But they're not your stereotypical wage slaves hired to save costs. They're bright, intelligent contributors. And my girlfriend, an Australian citizen in a different group, gets paid as much as I do and got even more out of her relocation benefits (apparently shipping across the Pacific isn't cheap).
So, why then does MS hire foreigners. Because (arguably, at least) MS isn't interested in the top 4X% of American developers, they're interested in the top X% of all developers. Since that subset isn't entirely American, they're very interested in immigration issues. Not to drive down wages, but to drive up hiree quality.
You can argue all the live-long day that Americans are the best in the industry (correct or not), but you can't reasonably state that *all* American developers are better than *all* non-American developers.
Re:Problem with "Plenty of programmers here" argum (Score:5, Interesting)
Also don't forgot that first world citizens from countries such as England, Germany and Japan need visas too. A lot of Americans on this forum are dumbing this issue down into a "slave labour" issue but I call BS on that.
There are many extremely bright people across the world and not letting them into America to train Americans just makes your country even dumber.
Good luck with that.
Parent
Lack of Talent Indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I work, I am often tasked with interviewing senior level software developers and team lead candidates. Occasionally, an architect level position, also, but that is rare as our company has not a software architect, per se.
Over the last 6 months I have interviewed approximately 15 candidates, and I was probly seeing about 1 candidate for about ever 150 resumes submitted. Some of these people had 5 years experience, some had as much as 18 years. We're a
I'm willing to grant that they are nervous, may not know everything, whatever. But overwhelmingingly, the fact is, these people say that can do x and y and in reality, after the stated 15 years experience, can even demonstrate the minimum competency required for the position. We are not rediculous expectations by any standard. But if you've been doing remoting for 7 years in
The typical response is: I just google it. That's fine, but someone who never wrote a line of code before can Google it, too. We need to know you can actually perform well in the duties you'll be assigned. Some people get up and walk out of the interviews stating they are too difficult. We finally hired a couple of these guys and they performed very lousy.
The bottom line is that, it is indeed difficult to find someone qualified for certain tasks. If we hire for a bit of a lower-level position such as typical ASP.NET stuff and maybe some middle-tier business rules tasks, its a bit easir to find people but it is still difficult to find someone that when hired, can perform very well until about 6 months into the task after which, they leave and go to another company making more money and more responsibilities (and we pay relative to the 50th-70th percentile of the local norm) and have a disreable culture.
In any case, just incase it was because I was doing the interviewing and they were nervous... I have recently interviewed for a software architect level position for a fortune 100 company requiring the ability to chug roughly 400 million transactions daily with an extreme degree of reliability, and I did fine in the interviews. I was able to answer and demonstrate all but 2 of the questions or tasks asked of me and received a job offer. I have only 10 years experience and no college degree (yet). I don't know whether I'm special, but I think my observation remains: finding someone qualified is difficult enough, but getting the company to offer what they are worth (rather, what they think they are worth) is even more difficult. Most places I've worked hasn't a problem rewarding people that prove themselves or that dazzle during interviews. But if you just barely get by in interview or just get hired because they are taking a chance while not sure of you, and ask for $100k, you're probly not going to get it.
On that note, I've hired people before that I wasn't too sure of but they showed potential, they wanted a rediculous amount of money and we offered what we thought t
Lack of Talent - in the management (Score:5, Insightful)
When you want top talent and/or qualifications, YOU PAY. Else, you get what you pay for.
I know what I am talking about, I am stuck at hiring people with 20%-under-norm salary and temporary status... and half of the people we get suck. But sometimes, we get good candidates... and all we have to retain them is warm, fuzzy "you're in the family" feelings. We are so notorious for our stingy paycheques that a candidate in the last recruiting round asked about the salary when we called him for the interview, and declined the invitation when we said the amount.
Parent
Train your custom officers, MS would stay in USA. (Score:5, Interesting)
It must be an utter nightmare for MS to bring in the smartest developers available around the world, enriching the intellectual capacity of the USA, helping an American company grow wealth for their American shareholders.
In an unrelated field, my wife, who is a Canadian with two science related bachelor's degrees and a professional registration has been blocked twice from entering the USA on temporary work visas by ignorant american customs officers.
And she was going to perform work needed by American companies that were not able to find qualified American professionals. High end specialized scientific work
The first time, the company she was going to consult for made a small mistake on their reference letter. She had to wait for several hours
The second instance
This fuckwad didn't have even the most basic understanding of the situation
Her client nearly lost her services, which would have delayed their project, which would have meant laying off American citizens from their jobs, and would have delayed or pre-empted millions of dollars of economic activity in a remote area of the USA where the jobs are desparately needed.
But many hours later, after missing her connecting flight, she did get through
There was another incident
Re:Where? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Where? (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. I have two friends that have had incidents relating to American laws to protect american workers.
One WAS working in the 'states, but his visa ran out. The company was unable to renew his work visa because he hadn't completed his CSC degree. He HAD been working for this company for 3 years and getting anyone else up to speed would take a LONG time as he was lead developer for a large system. The argument given was that there are americans that are better qualified for the role, i.e. people with degrees who are American citizens that would love the job (which is questionable as the pay wasn't amazing). He did have >10 years programming experience, but that obviously isn't equivalent to someone with a "degree".
The other friend was an artist for gaming companies (he worked at Canadian rockstar for a while and more recently has been art lead at other companies in Canada). He was told straight out by american interviewers, "Great portfolio, wish we could hire you, but you have no degree and we have to hire an American that is "better" qualified."
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Re:Shrinking something, anyway! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:ahem.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:This was waiting to happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is. . . Will the Canadians put up with it?
Or will they insist that Microsoft hire qualified Canadian programmers first (as the US gubermint refuses to do)?
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Re: NOT TRUE (Score:4, Informative)
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