MS Moves R&D To Canada Due To Immigration Problem 765
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."
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.
Shrinking something, anyway! (Score:3, Insightful)
Rewrite Title (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the governments intent. (Score:2, Insightful)
Economic inequality was the major stumbling block for the creation of the European Union. It's no different for the creation of the American one.
Too late to save money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where? (Score:4, Insightful)
Cue all the H-1B's (Score:1, Insightful)
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:I call BS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I call BS (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree, & call "B.S." alongside you... needless to say, this time? Microsoft has actually pissed me off some (& they wrote me to take the word "Windows" out of some wares I wrote years ago for the shareware/freeware circuit no less, & that meant recompiling for resources (.exe's are where I do this, but I ought to consider it in
Why am I pissed off? Because I make less now, than I did back in 1999-2000 & beforehand, per year (I live in the 12th worst city economically there in in the U.S.A., & with that comes nearest the highest amount in violent crime as well along for the ride), & the poster I am replying to has it right... wtf is wrong with our businesses & more importantly, our gov't.??
You take our jobs, GOOD PAYING JOBS, not "hand-to-mouth" ones (plenty of those abound, minimum wage or near to it ones literally) that just keep you in a subsistence form of living?
Who the heck will have the 'disposable income' for the VISTA OS, & a new PC (or other things of larger values, all the way up to automobiles & homes, typically the second largest & largest purchase most folks ever typically make)?
I mean, Ronald Reagan the republican hit the air-traffic controllers unions HARD decades ago, & why don't these republicans in office now, do the same to ANY business that outsources? Sure, let them have their "laissez faire" & all that, but TAX THE SHIT OUT OF THEM for it, absorbing ANY gains made & then hit them with fines for doing it ontop of that... it'd discourage outsourcing for sure.
BUT, the fact remains, that it is TRULY now, "Corporate America" & our unalienable rights are being subverted such as free speech (what with all this "political correctness" bullshit) & if you protest against this war built on LIES (saying there were WMD's, & none were found, & THEN TRYING TO "OLLIE NORTH" the CIA, who only provides information, it is up to our leaders to have it TRIPLE verified, if not more, before acting on it)?
They surveil your home, your phone, etc. for using one of your inalienable rights, to freedom of speech, & terrorize us into silence via "homeland security" bullshit. Think I am kidding? Take a look:
http://foi.missouri.edu/firstamendment/protesting
No, the world's fucked up, & our gov't. is @ the helm of it... helping things just "death spiral" more, imo!
A sad APK
Re:I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Could also be (Score:5, Insightful)
Immigration/Hiring Policies Shrank Knowledge Base (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't believe the propaganda, either. They are not having trouble finding technical expertise. They are having trouble finding people who will accept minimum wage for it. This would be one thing if their profit margins were tightly squeezed, but that Microsoft is complaining about this is rich indeed given the profit margins they already enjoy. If corporations in the U.S. want a robust and affordable labor pool, they should stop hiring foreign workers immediately, create good technology training programs, and start hiring American citizens for entry level technical positions. To assist them, the federal government should stop promulgating immigration policies that work against its own citizens and competitiveness.
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....
Re:I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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)?
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's good enough for Flint, Michigan, it's good enough for Silicon Valley.
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.
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.
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.
Outsourcing (Score:2, Insightful)
The government needs to ensure that it is more expensive to hire a foreign skilled worker than a local worker. This would ensure that immigrants are hired based on their skill and not to save money.
Unfortunately, the government fails to realize that the immigration policy doesn't consider outsourcing. The US is better off allowing the skilled worker to live in the US (spending their earnings and paying taxes) than having that work outsourced. It is very easy for an IT worker to live in Canada and telecommute. Protecting local workers is one thing, but a narrow sighted policy drains the US economy like a sieve.
Also, not everyone wants to immigrate. The government needs to grasp the concept of a working holiday. The UK, Canada, Australia etc offer these.
Re:I call BS (Score:3, Insightful)
US Population: 300,000,000
Over 95% of smart people are foreign-born.
"Pay them enough" reasoning is BS: the fact that I could sleep with the entire Swedish bikini team at once if I "paid them enough" is immaterial if I just plain cannot afford the price, OK?
We are already buying Japanese cars and Chinese TVs with your "pay enough" attitude.
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.
Re:Mod parent up Plz (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kick the bastards out. (Score:3, Insightful)
(Saying that, it might never happen, al that is needed is for a few countries to get isolationist again, but then you lose the benefits (cheap consumer goods, foreign markets to sell to) too.)
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.
As someone who liaised with developers in India: (Score:3, Insightful)
[Several politically-correct suggestions, mostly based on the idea of non-Canadian workers in Canada, deleted.]
As someone who has been liaison with developers in India I can suggest other possibilities:
Canada has people who:
- Speak English understandably and understand us when we speak it.
- Are working in the same time zone rather than offset by a shift or more.
- Are working where administrators can easily visit.
- Have a work ethic.
- Have been known to deliver working code, rather than something you have to rework locally anyhow.
- Have a casteless society within the work force, drastically reducing barriers to communication between workers, the incidence of "drones" who expect the lower castes to do their work for them, and other pathologies (such as women who MUST leave at office closing time rather than being able to work overtime like the rest of high tech).
- Are much less likely to humor you until the project is almost due then quit (leaving you with no product) and start their own company (using local workers) to compete with you using your own IP (under local laws that won't be enforced against them).
- Yet still can be paid a lot less than workers in the US while enbding up with a comparable standard of living.
I COULD go on...
Re:I call BS on the BS call (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They aren't *moving* R&D... (Score:4, Insightful)
And how do you know that? Did you interview with Microsoft and was offered a position but declined because pay was too low? Or did you friends had such experience?
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
Re:Mod parent up Plz (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I call BS (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is true, but far, far less than 95% of the smart people with post-secondary degrees are foreign-born and foreign-educated; for all the United States' primary and secondary education problems, its university system is still among the best in the world. The kind of people Microsoft is interested in for these positions -- Ph.D.s, post-docs, etc. -- were probably educated in the U.S., with a smaller but still significant number in Europe. Post-9/11 hassles make them less likely to a) be able to come to the U.S. and b) like staying here once they do. Maybe the United States should consider that it might be shooting itself in the foot with its overreactions to 9/11.
Re:Mod parent up Plz (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I call BS (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen several articles, both in the newspaper and on Slashdot, where Microsoft is talking about this mythical "shortage of tech people" and how we need to open the borders more so that they have enough people to hire. This is a smoke screen any discerning individual can see right through. This is pretty much the last thing they can do to lower the cost of production. They've reached the max market penetration and are simply trying to fight the cycle of products (well, in this case cycle of the company) that everyone learns about in management. If we give out more H1-B's that means there is cheaper labor, which means the programmers here make less money, which means Microsoft makes more money, which means their share price goes up.
Re:1/2 of a corporations duties (Score:5, Insightful)
-
It provides a better or less expensive products for the consumer.
-
It provides a lucrative job for the immigrant.
-
It increases company profits, which does the shareholders good.
-
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.
Pervasive anti-American sentiment?? (Score:4, Insightful)
*snip long rant about the Bush administration*
Me: Wow, sounds like you are less than happy with the US.
Him: I hate everything the government stands for.
Me: Maybe you could go home to protest it? Send a letter to the Congressman and tell him thats why you're taking your PhD home with you.
Him: Are you "#$"% nuts?
And yes, thats what most immigrants feel like. There are occasional frustrations with living in America -- complaining about incompetent bureacrats is a well-established tradition for everybody, regardless of place of birth. (And the INS and its successor agencies are probably among the worst in the federal government.) But would large numbers of folks give up the tremendous opportunities living in America has over those frustrations? As my Chinese-accented colleague put it, are you "#$"# nuts?
The number of citizenship applications, one easy barometer of "So, how many of you folks want to hitch the rest of your lives to the United States of America?", is up 60% in four years. That is more than double the number when Clinton left office and a Dark Shadow Fell Across The Land. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/05/news/citiz
Also, I don't know if subtleties of domestic politics make it abroad that often, but while Dubya's Republican Party is often depicted as being anti-immigrant, and that might well be true for a large part of the party base (also true for a large portion of the Democratic base), Dubya is personally *extraordinarily* pro-immigration. He wanted comprehensive immigration reform, which would have included a mass legalization of illegal immigrants living in the US, to be his domestic legacy. It failed for a couple of reasons, including opposition from broad portions of the bases of both parties and absolutely incompetent political maneuvering. (I think that is distressingly common in the Bush administration, and I say this having voted for him twice.)
(Disclaimer: I'm actually an expat in Japan, but I feel like waving the flag a little bit this close to the Fourth of July. America should be justifiably proud of how it treats immigrants, in the main. The system has its fair share of issues, but its nothing intractable, and its so much better than Japan its not even funny.)
(P.P.S. On the general topic of the thread, to all Slashdotters who worry that the immigrants are forcing you into poverty: learn to compete. I got a degree in Japanese along with my IT skills, and now on either side of the Pacific for jobs which require a bilingual English/Japanese engineer I can compete quite favorably with folks making a tenth of my salary, because if they can't speak both languages than hiring ten of them still won't replace me. Languages are just one way you can make yourself something other than an interchangeable cog. Domain expertise, business skills, communication skills, a finance background, proficiency in obscure legacy technologies, jumping early onto new ships like the Ruby on Rails boomlet, etc, etc.)
Re:1/2 of a corporations duties (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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
After reading the article (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:1/2 of a corporations duties (Score:3, Insightful)
I think they should sell them for a profit.
And if they are selling them for a profit at 10 cents then 5.25 is obscene here.
We are getting the worst parts of capitalism without getting the benefits of it.
Yes- they should get it for 10 cents. And they should sell for 10 cents here too.
Is there some particular reason, I should pay $800 for a
This is not going to last. It will even out in the middle. But even now- it's not right. It's not remotely fair.
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...
Pharmaceuticals. BAD ANALOGY. (Score:3, Insightful)
What are they going to do, not make the drug at all?
Yeah, like a lack of profit stopped ugg from making the wheel.
Considering how many people die in America for being unable to afford drugs, the profit model is extremely harmful - indeed, it's a national security risk. Look what happened with the flu vaccine shortage last year.
Take profit out of pharmaceuticals. Necessity will always be the mother of invention. What idiot thinks that these CEOs would just rather go without medicine that'll later save their lives?
Besides... pharmaceuticals rely mostly on Government - via university research. Taxpayer funded research, thankyouverymuch.
This analogy was a very bad one.
Some of us WILL NOT GO to the US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pervasive anti-American sentiment?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No - (Score:3, Insightful)
But let's say you're right. If a company makes all its money in a single town, should they only be able to hire people born in that town?
Re:Pervasive anti-American sentiment?? (Score:1, Insightful)
So, basically, the US is great because citizens of what remains a *communist* *dictatorship* like it better here? They do? No shit!
When I was younger (say, Reagan era), America was the place *everybody* else wanted to be. Now only the unqualified mexicans and the oppressed want to come.
Is that a good sign?
Re:1/2 of a corporations duties (Score:2, Insightful)
The other side of the argument, that profits go up for the company, is also in doubt. As more work is taken outside the country, there is less for US citizens. Those that aren't working may not be able to buy the product.
As more higher paying jobs are moved offshore, the effect is worsened. Now instead of same factory worker not being employed you have someone that used to be able to make $60k unemployeed.
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.
Re:Lack of Talent Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm amazoned that you could respond in a timely fashion! But even more amazoning is your experience:
Why so mystified? All of the above can be explained by the preceding sentence:
IOW what did you expect?
Anyone who was a good VB6 developer had already transitioned to the WWW with Microsoft's ASP and, when Microsoft abandoned that platform and VB6, the best of these developers went on to Java, Perl, and PHP. That's 3 million developers, please.
You were scraping the bottom of an empty barrel.