How to Underpay H1-B Workers
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Category Archives: IT News
Do You Like Vista ?
Code Project is a website which specializes on development on the Microsoft Platform. So its kinda surprising to see their latest survey results (Click on the image to get a better view):
No More Big Salary Hikes for IT Professionals in India
An article on IBN Live says that “fat salary hikes in the IT industry may soon be a thing of the past”. The article quotes S Padmanabhan, ED and Head-HR,
“What we are experiencing this year is a stability in wages. Last year, we had a 12 per cent –15 per cent increase in wages and my own expectation is that this year the wages will increase 10 per cent –12 per cent,”
You can read the complete article here but there are a couple of things which one should keep in mind.
The title of the article “Party over, IT sector in for big pay cut” is actually misleading because it implies that IT Professionals are going to have a pay cut, which is not true (as of now). Instead there is going to be a lower % in the hikes that employees will receive.
Another point is that the article speaks mainly of TCS, Wipro and Infosys who anyway dont give big hikes. They focus on giving lower pay and try to send as many people onsite as they can so that people wont complain much. TCS and Wipro are notorious for treating the employees badly when they are sent onsite (with comparatively lower salaries and long working hours) . Infosys seems to be a little better in this aspect (but not much). These companies charge exorbitant rates to the clients but pay below average wages to the employees abuse the H1B and L1 system (which is starting to work against them now). These companies are also making big noise about the rise in Rupee value cutting into their profits. Actually these companies are still making huge profit in spite of the rising Rupee. A moron executive in Wipro was quoted as saying that making Saturdays working days (to fight against the decrease in profits caused by rise in Rupee value) seems to be an attractive option.
It seems it is pathetic time ahead for Indian IT Professionals.
Didnt get the Green Card? Dont Worry, here is the Blue Card
Getting a Green Card (or Permanent Residence Card as its more officially called) is the dream of most of the H1-Bs coming to the USA. Its the ticket to achieving their long term goals. Getting an employment based Green Card is a big deal, there are pit falls everywhere and it takes a inordinately long period to complete all the processing (to get more details on these check out any immigration forum or mailing list).
The European Union has proposals for a Blue Card that
… would provide educated immigrants, including tech professionals, with a two-year, renewable permit to work and reside in an EU member nation. Because the EU aims for a worker’s blue-card application process to take less than three months, the visa would provide a fast track for foreign-born individuals to land jobs in EU member countries.
By contrast, the U.S. green-card process can take anywhere from five to 10 years for an individual to gain permanent residency.
The complete article can be read here.
Tech Pay At An All-Time High
Here is something thats very interesting. While there is a lot of clamoring everywhere regarding H1-B system bringing down the pay scale for tech employees, a study found out that the pay for technology professionals are approaching an all-time high.
Based on data compiled from 75 Yoh field offices and 5,000 technology professionals contracted in short- and long-term projects, pay increased an average of more than 5.5% for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to the same period last year.
Compared to the same months in 2006, hourly wages for techies in 2007 rose 6% in July, 4.64% in August, and 5.79% in September.
Another interesting part of the report is that
Among the hottest skills being demanded right now by Yoh clients are Java and .Net developers, database administrators, SAP functional and technical consultants, and project managers, said Jim Lanzalotto, Yoh’s VP of strategy and marketing. Last quarter, SAP consultants on average earned $88.07 per hour, while Java developers earned $50.89, per hour, according to Yoh’s research.
Read the complete article here. There are a few insightful comments to the article at the bottom, don’t forget to read them.
India has more competition for tech jobs
China is growing to be a very good competition against India for the outsourcing of tech jobs from the US. But its not only China that is competing now, says Paul McDougall in his Digital Life Weblog.
At OutsourceWorld, a conference that’s operating in conjunction with Interop this week at New York’s Javits Center, the vendor booths added up to a virtual United Nations of offshoring. Beyond India and China, there were vendors from Brazil, Australia, Costa Rica, Canada, and Hungary. And even tiny Mauritius was represented.
It’s a nice travelogue, but here’s what this really adds up to: The outsourcing of U.S. tech jobs is going to continue for the foreseeable future. With the rising rupee and 15% annual wage inflation, there are signs that India is becoming expensive and oversold. But the fact is, there’s plenty of other countries lining up to pick up the slack.
Nations in Eastern Europe, South America, and other parts of Asia are all investing the necessary resources in education and infrastructure required to become major players in the flat world.
Indian IT professionals among worst paid globally
A recent article in The Economic Times reports that Indian IT workers are among the 4th worst paid globally (and 3rd in Asia). This comparison should be taken with a pinch of salt because the salary is compared in US dollars and the buying power per dollar varies wildly among the nations compared.
Vietnam is the lowest payer followed by Bulgaria and Philippines. Switzerland pays the best money to IT professionals followed by Denmark and Belgium, according to this survey by Mercer.
See Mercer’s Press Release here.
Indian IT Companies Planning to Make Saturday Working Day
From an article on the The Times of India,
It seems like the saga of five-day working week, enjoyed by over 15 lakh technology professionals in the country, would soon be a thing of the past.
TOI had first reported last month that such a thing was being considered by some companies to offset the impact of the rupee appreciation on their margins. Now we hear some are actually moving ahead on the idea, and implementing it in certain sections.
…
There is no official communication yet, but that, employees think, may be because the company does not want to upset overall morale.
…
Here is what Wipro HR VP says:
‘‘Some of us are already working on Saturdays depending on delivery schedules and deadlines. But there is no plan to introduce a six-day working regime, although the idea sounds good.’’
I am sure this asshole has never worked a saturday in his whole life, except maybe teeing up the golf ball.
All this sounds very depressing to me. These companies are NOT looking to cut losses (none of them are losing any money, their profits are in the billions, and their growth percentage are still positive), they are just trying to fight their decrease in profit margins as a result of the appreciation of the Rupee. What a boost this would be to the employee morale !
Read the complete article here.
Average salary in Indian Software industry up by 11% in 2007
From an article in Economic Times:
The average salary in the Indian software industry grew by 11 per cent in 2007 compared to a three per cent dip last year, an annual survey conducted by a leading industry analyst said on Tuesday.
The more interesting thing is:
It found that there is virtually no correlation between ‘salary levels’ and ‘satisfaction with salary’.
HCL infosystems was way down at No 23 in salary rank, but it has topped the charts on employee satisfaction with salary.
While TCS employees ranked their company at No 4 in terms of ‘satisfaction with salary’, it was ranked at No 13 in terms of salary. Infosys was ranked at No 12 in terms of salary but No 28 in terms of ‘satisfaction with salary’.
Read the complete article here.
New music watermarking technique patented by Microsoft
A patent entitled “Stealthy Audio Watermarking” has been awarded to Microsoft on Sep 4, 2007. The patent abstract states:
Described herein is audio watermarking technology for inserting and detecting watermarks in audio signals, such as a music clip. The watermark identifies the content producer, providing a signature that is embedded in the audio signal and cannot be removed. The watermark is designed to survive all typical kinds of processing and malicious attacks. In one described implementation, a watermarking system employs chess spread-spectrum sequences (i.e., “chess watermarks”) to improve the balance of positive and negative chips in the watermarking sequences. The balance is not imposed in an orderly fashion, which might make the watermark sequence more easily detectable to an attacker, but in a pseudo-random fashion. In that way, better sequence balance is achieved while preserving its randomness for an attacker without knowledge of the keys. In another described implementation, a watermarking system employs an energy-level trigger to determine whether to skip encoding of a portion of a watermark within a given time span of an audio clip. If a large discrepancy in energy levels exists over a given time frame, then the frame is not watermarked, to avoid audible time-dispersion of artifacts due to spectral modifications (which are similar to “pre-echo” effects in audio coding). In another described implementation, a watermarking system begins encoding of a watermark at a variable position after the beginning of an audio clip.
This is already being touted as the “Uncrackable DRM”. DejaVu, anyone ?