June 22, 1998
Visa limits, training, and the IT worker shortage
By Bob O'Donnell
If you want to get a conversation started with your co-workers or professional
acquaintances, ask them what they think about the United States' limit on H1B visas for
foreign workers. Nearly everyone, it seems, has an opinion on the subject. (Join InfoWorld
columnist Bob Lewis' forum
to voice your own.)
I found this out when I moderated a roundtable discussion last week at the ABC
TechWorld Career Expo in San Jose. The Expo was sponsored by KSFO, the San Francisco Bay
Area ABC radio affiliate on which my weekly "O'Donnell on Computers" radio show
(now available via RealAudio)
is heard, as well as sister station KGO. The event's roundtable was called "The
Bottom Line: Who Makes What in the High-Tech World." It featured a presentation by InfoWorld
Enterprise Careers editor Margaret Steen on the recent "InfoWorld
Compensation Survey" as well commentaries from several Silicon Valley recruiters
and hiring professionals from RHI Consulting, Hall Kinion, and Oracle.
The purpose of the forum was to discuss important trends in hiring, concentrating
primarily on compensation issues and the changes in the marketplace affecting salary
levels. Not surprisingly, reports from panelists confirmed the high-tech worker shortage
and the fact that this shortage has increased demand for IT professionals. And, as a
direct result, IT salaries are on the rise in what one panelist described as "clearly
an employee's market."
As strong as the job market may be, however, there are still a variety of reports that
crop up about some workers -- particularly older ones -- not being able to find work.
Several panelists acknowledged that age issues can and sometimes do play a role in hiring
but stressed that the more important issue is technical expertise in relevant areas. Many
older workers have experience with technologies that are no longer relevant or needed in
the marketplace, and as a result they may not qualify for many of the jobs currently
available. The unanimous sentiment of the panelists was that job seekers need to have
knowledge of and experience in cutting-edge technologies and need to keep up with those
technologies in order to keep their skills up-to-date.
The critical issue in the widely reported worker shortage, they clarified, is an
insufficient number of qualified people with the appropriate technical skills, not
necessarily a shortage of workers with any IT experience. In fact, finding people with the
appropriate technical skills has driven the rapid growth in the "importing" of
foreign workers to fill empty programming and engineering positions, as well as
traditional IT jobs. Companies need to get these positions filled, and some are finding
that foreign workers have the skills needed for these jobs.
The U.S. government has limits on how many foreign workers can enter the United States
each year to fill specific jobs, however, and that yearly limit was already reached in
May. As a result, many high-tech companies are lobbying Congress to raise the visa limit
so that they can hire more foreign workers. As one panelist pointed out, in some cases the
effort is being made to prevent entire programming operations from moving offshore and
thereby costing even more U.S.-based jobs. At the same time, many people believe that
foreign workers are willing to accept lower pay and are forced to work for the company
that sponsors them for at least two years, which some feel is almost like a form of
indentured servitude. Roundtable panelists, however, said that their experience has not
borne out these concerns.
Others argued that the real problem is a lack of training and education programs
provided by employers. If companies provided on-the-job re-education programs and training
in the latest technologies, then they would be able to fill the positions they have
available. Panelists confirmed that most companies are well aware of this pressing need
and are working on implementing more and better training programs, not only to fill open
positions, but to retain the workers they do have.
In fact, retention levels have apparently reached all-time lows, with the average job
in Silicon Valley lasting less than two years, according to one panelist. As a result,
companies are finding that they have to invest in their employees to avoid spending
inordinate amounts of time and money just to acclimate a constantly revolving door of new
employees to a new job.
Ultimately, there's no easy answers to the current high-tech worker shortage, but if
last week's panel was indicative of the real issues facing high-tech employers and
employees, it's clear that education of new and existing workers needs to be priority
number one.
See InfoWorld's related Enterprise feature story, "The
training imperative."
©
Copyright 1998, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
155 Bovet Road, San Mateo, CA 94402. Further reproduction is prohibited.
