Quality of Foreign Tech Degrees/Workers

[aschen]

Originally Posted by aigel

So why is it then the subject that these folks come from abroad? There are plenty of poor quality US universities that churn out poor tech graduates. This is a xenophobic thread and every middle aged white guy now chimes in with their example of an idiot [enter nationality here] they had to work with.

IMHO you should have started a thread on the sweat shop your company runs with the help of temp agencies bringing in sub par labor that they pay poorly in exchange for an H1B while overcharging you. Good engineers don't work for temp agencies, especially in this economy. Top talent is hired straight into a top company that supports their H1B and hires and supports them for the long term.

If it wasn't for the constant influx of foreign talent, tech would be practically non-existent in this country ...

G

In my context, all of the visa'd workers would be educated in the US or europe. That is the real driver for education inequality for higher degrees.

Why would a US citizen stick around for a PHD degree when it pays 5% more and maybe even limits upward mobility. Lots of international students continue education because its there only means of staying.

Im far from xenophobic, Im a mutt myself, my wife is not a US citizen yet, Ive been lots of places, I work with a very diverse group of people (as many of us in the tech field do).

My conscience is clear with making some generalizations though. Everybody is very sensitive to PC issues these days but lets not make observation of statistical patterns an evil thing.

[930addict]

I'm curious why you get so many foreign educated applicants. Surely something is discouraging more people from applying.

Good question. The more I think about this, though, the more it makes sense. We only want temporary help so we use job shops. The job shops want to make the most money possible so they get the cheapest labor they can find. I have no idea why, but out of the 35 total applications we received, the large majority were from India.
So perhaps what we see is somewhat distorted based on a concentration of the lowest cost. The funny thing is we pay decent money even for Silicon Valley. One guy on my team makes 120/hour plus we pay for his weekly flights home plus food and lodging while he's on site.

[cockerpunk]

Originally Posted by romad

Another Myth... I have never seen a educational or technical gap .pure BS. In fact American technical personnel generally have more hands on experience. Colleges are cranking out more than enough qualified engineers and technicians. Companies want foreigners because they are cheaper.

ah that makes no sense at all. a foreign engineer, in the USA, is arguably far more expensive than an american one.

i work in a very diverse nationality background. on my direct team we are about 50% american, 1 german, 2 british, and 2 chinnise.

to say there is diversity of outlook on what exactly engineering is, the process, and the goals, is an understatment, and a whole thread onto itself.

that being said, i would hardly call any of the team under-qualified or lacking in experience. if anything the american engineers are under-qualified.

[cockerpunk]

FYI, my dad (also an engineer) had to fire a guy on his team once. american guy, but lied about his engineering degree. literally a career engineer 20+ years in the field, and knew his stuff. but in a random company background check, they found that he never attended nor graduated the school he claimed to on his resume.

crazy what some folks can get away with.

[930addict]

Quote de 930addict

Instead of just measuring from a point on the floor below where the cable was to go then measure the height of the wall they started calculating using the a^2+b^2=c^2 method taking nearly 30 minutes(including all of their arguing with each other) to do what could have been done in 3 minutes. I admit I just sat back and chuckled as the two did their rounds.

I'm married to an absolute geek Indian woman. Welcome to my life.

Lol. Back in '95 I worked for a startup company the software guys were predominately from India. They asked if i had ever had indian food, which I hadn't. So they took me to an indian restaraunt. Fell in love with indian food. After two weeks of daily indian food they asked what to do for lunch and i said Indian! They rebuffed saying they wanted american food. They selected McDonalds. My wife can't cook Indian food but luckily i'm adventurous. So far I've mastered chicken makhani, veg. Korma and chicken tika masala.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by romad

Another Myth... I have never seen a educational or technical gap .pure BS. In fact American technical personnel generally have more hands on experience. Colleges are cranking out more than enough qualified engineers and technicians. Com
panies want foreigners because they are cheaper.

I don't know. We had an exchange student working with us. We needed the third root of an equation and he calculated it on paper before we could get our HPs out. This is the same guy who could not get his Honda to start one morning. Over the phone we told him to pour some gas into the carb to see if it would fire. He called back to say it stopped cranking completely. I asked him how much gas he poured in and he replied, "A litre or so."
There is a place for everyone.

[Schumi]

I think you should be a bit more introspective and take a look at your pre-hire screening processes with regards to these workers, instead of generally riffing on them.

Sounds like your screening sucks. There are good engineers everywhere, and if you are getting doped into hiring bad ones, that isn't their fault, it is yours.

Originally Posted by 930addict

This article really angered me. I have a relative that went through the same thing (outsourcing to India - even had to train his predecessor) a few years ago and the quality went down so much that at one point they tried to put the American team back together.

A couple of years ago we hired a system engineer for a very specific task. He was an H1B visa employee from India. After a month on the job it was apparent he had no clue what he was doing and, in fact, I was training him when he was supposed to be the specialist in this particular area. So we let him go and brought on another engineer that was local that turned out to be an awesome and valuable member of the team. Looking back, the H1B guy sounded different on the phone interview than he did in person. Additionally, when he would get stuck on something he always called someone who would help him.

So fast forward a year, we had another opening for another engineer. All but two of the applicants had degrees from somewhere in India. After interviewing about 15 applicants, only one candidate was able to answer questions related to the field. It was obvious that they all padded their resumes as none of them could answer simple questions except for the one we ended up hiring. Some of their resumes look better than my entire team combined - and I have an awesome team - but these candidates didn't know jack. One of them said that she knew C so I asked her how to dereference a pointer. It doesn't get much easier than that, right? Was that question too hard for someone that would be making $80/hour?(the contract company is billing us $80/hour - she was probably making $50 or ?)

There's another guy we just brought on (Not in my group) that has a Masters Degree in Artificial Intelligence from an Indian University. So far I am not impressed. So I put it to you, what has your experience been with these H1B workers? It seems that the only thing they have going for them is they work for cheap. I hate to paint with such broad strokes but this has been my experience.

[930addict]

Originally Posted by Schumi

I think you should be a bit more introspective and take a look at your pre-hire screening processes with regards to these workers, instead of generally riffing on them.

Sounds like your screening sucks. There are good engineers everywhere, and if you are getting doped into hiring bad ones, that isn't their fault, it is yours.

This is a valid point but I don't think it's the case. The guy that we had to let go was interviewed by my boss, who is a founder of two separate well known companies and is a pretty brilliant guy, another contract worker who is renowned in his field, and one other manager who is also really bright. Personally I think the agency had someone else do the phone interview. Unfortunately, sometimes a phone interview is all we can accommodate due to various constraints, which lends itself to fraudulent activity but you would hope these companies would be honest.

With regards to my most recent experience, we put out the requirements and those requirements went out to several contract companies. Each of the contract companies sends us applicant resumes and we weed out based on our specific needs/requirements to get a short list. Me and two others interviewed the shortlist and each interview left all three of us shaking our heads with the exception of the one we hired. He impressed us.

[masraum]

I'm in IT, so we are generally called or considered engineers even though we are not PEs, like an EE, ME, ChemE, etc.... I've been in this business for 15 years. I'm a network engineer working with routers, switches, firewalls, etc.... I've worked for several different companies over the years and have been involved in interviews and worked along side many, many folks since the beginning. Many, many of the folks that I've worked with have been foreign.

My experience with resumes and interviews has been that most resumes look like the glossary or index of a technical textbook, but 90-95% of the folks that I've interviewed couldn't back up what was on the resume whether they were foreign or domestic. I have also heard at least one story of a guy that I once worked with going into an interview, and when he started looking over the resume, realized that it was his own, but presented as the resume of someone coming from overseas.

I have personally dealt with folks that were exceptional at their job with minimal training and qualifications, and I have also met folks with certifications, degrees and training that couldn't network their way out of a wet paper sack. I've met folks that interviewed very well, but when you get them at a desk, you wonder who was in the interview because they somehow managed to talk a good game, but weren't actually able to do the job (foreign and domestic).

The only place that I've seen folks with MS and PhD is just recently, and the fact that they were interviewing for a position below mine seemed bizarre, but then they were trying to come over from India, and based on their resumes, they didn't really have anything going for them other than the degrees.

I did once work with a guy from China. He had a degree (can't remember if it was MS or PhD), but because it was from China, no one in the US would honor it. He was very, VERY smart, quite impressive actually. I've worked with a few other Chinese that were very bright, but they were if not born in the US, then had grown up here.

I think I remember a thread here once that was talking about engineers from Asia vs the US with an interesting bit of info that I believe may be accurate to a degree. They said something to the effect that if you want the job performed exactly to standard that Asians were great. And if you want a problem solver that can think outside of the box, get an American. In my experience, it seems like many/most of the Asian cultures value and promote that everyone conforms to the norm or standard, but in America, innovation .

[SilberUrS6]

Originally Posted by masraum

I think I remember a thread here once that was talking about engineers from Asia vs the US with an interesting bit of info that I believe may be accurate to a degree. They said something to the effect that if you want the job performed exactly to standard that Asians were great. And if you want a problem solver that can think outside of the box, get an American. In my experience, it seems like many/most of the Asian cultures value and promote that everyone conforms to the norm or standard, but in America, innovation .

Exactly. The techs I had working for me were like this. Asian techs could grind out routine stuff repeatedly, and do excellent work. But if a glitch ever popped up, they never sought a workaround or substitution. My U.S.-born techs were slower to get routine work done, and the quality wasn't as uniform as the asians', but if there was any kind of hassle, they'd figure something out to get the job done. Small sample size, and over-generalized, but I think you've hit on a cultural difference.

[930addict]

Originally Posted by masraum

I think I remember a thread here once that was talking about engineers from Asia vs the US with an interesting bit of info that I believe may be accurate to a degree. They said something to the effect that if you want the job performed exactly to standard that Asians were great. And if you want a problem solver that can think outside of the box, get an American. In my experience, it seems like many/most of the Asian cultures value and promote that everyone conforms to the norm or standard, but in America, innovation .

This has been my experience with Asian Engineers as well. Very by-the-book and they don't question authority. I have a few on my team - I'm of the american descent/type. Our skills compliment each other and this creates a kind of synergy. I call us the dream team. ;-)