Quality of Foreign Tech Degrees/Workers
 

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.

Im an engineering mgr. I hire bunches of engineers and work with hundreds of engineers of varying backgrounds.

I agree with your statement about broad strokes. However, one mans stereotype maybe considered a judicious application of statistics by the initiated engineer :).

In general I find many "foreign" workers are talented at analysis and analytical stuff. IN general I find many 'mericans are talented at design and hands on type work.

When I was in grad school my advisor wasnt so PC. She was chinese and said: aschen i dont want anybody but you to touch the expensive equipment, and I want the chinese students to do all the math. I was the only non asian in the small group

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.

I have some experience in this area; she was probably making $20-$30/hr. If she was FOB, could be as low as $15.

While I have run across some H1's who were actually good, 98% of them seem to only have their price going for them.

I've seen companies whose executives cries that they don't have enough tech people and they need more H1 slots at the exact same time that they are laying off said tech people.

It angers me too, but for an entirely different reason, as it seems to assume that everyone on the H-1B scheme is incompetent by default.

As a "foreigner" it is easy to brush me and some of my well educated and qualified engineering colleagues in the third world with the same broad "quality" brush. In reality though I have a first class engineering degree from a school with good international standing and accreditation, and I have extensive experience with a variety of multinational corporations.

Sadly I too compete with "cheap" foreign (Indian) tech skills sourced for their low cost but whom, once they arrive here are determined to "wing it" until they pick up the actual skills, all to the detriment of both myself and the client.

My expertise and experience comes at a price not dissimilar to what someone like me would cost if I were an american in the US. This is because my "price" is aligned to my actual proven skills as opposed to my claimed skills.

Sadly the bean counters don't see it that way and want to measure everything in terms of cost saving.

The downside is simple; you get what you pay for. Do you want to blame the H-1B scheme for it, or rather go have a nice chat with the cost accountants that fuel this situation?

You know what's funny is that my experience has been exactly the opposite. Here's a rather pedestrian example that clearly illustrates my experience. I was going to lunch with one of our H1B engineers (the one we had to let go). Due to our parking lot being full and also since the place was less than a mile down the street we didn't want to drive so we set out to take the bus. We're waiting at the bus stop when he starts calculating how long it would take to walk vs the bus schedule. While he was engrossed in calculating the bus pulls up and I said the bus is here lets just take the bus. It is obvious that a person cannot walk faster than the bus, right? This guy says," wait no cause if we start now it would only take us fifteen minutes to walk." The bus pulls away and he's still trying to explain his calculations to me. I let him talk. After he was done talking I told him that we would have been there by now had we just gotten on the bus. Yes he knew math but he didn't have the common sense to apply it.

Another example from several years ago, two H1B engineers from India were trying to decide how long a cable to get that would start at a point on the ceiling, go across to a wall and then reach down the corner of one of the walls in the room. We didn't need a lot of accuracy as it was for an extension chord. They had a tape measure. 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.

Leaving aside the actual competence of foreign workers, this is what annoys me about the IT industry too... I've worked for some big names in IT and big companies' IT depts.

It's the SAME $**** every 5-10 years. "Management" wants to save money by outsourcing (to India or these days a big service provider, which then outsources to India ;-). Then, oops, the software that comes out is crap, quality is down, or the services provided suck, the vendor underdelivers and raises their price. 2y later, like clockwork, they try to bring back the local workers they fired, who by then have either changed career or won't come back... It's so prevalent there should be Harvard case studies writen on this, yet EVERYONE does this, over and over. I suppose it's like us: We KNOW it's better to pay for someone else's restoration, but the $5000 rusty 911 is hard to resist...

Gone through this 3 times in 20yrs. Last one to leave the first 2. Last time, I resigned 2 weeks after the initial announcement (despite being assured I'd be the last to go again, F$%^ that ! ). Key is to relo in an industry where the support must be local and not outsourceable.
After that, H1Bs are from all over... 90% of the ones I worked with were brits and great to work (and party) with !

Totall BS thread. "I hate to paint with a broad brush, but let me do it anyway".

I work in the heart of the Silicon Valley and my company is the united nations with quite a few US born employees as well. We kick ass and we hire whoever is best for the job, doesn't matter what passport, country of origin, skin color, accent. That includes US born engineers as well.

This really is a non issue IMHO. If you attract hot air resumes, fix your recruiting strategy, run an attractive company, pay well.

G

Quality of Foreign Tech Degrees/Workers
 

Had a mechanical engineer (to this day I have no idea how he ever passed the PE exam) from China who was frightfully incompetent a few years ago. I had to take on a lot of additional responsibility to cover my company's ass due to flagrant code violations and life safety issues related to this guy's "work". Turns out he'd bought (as in paid for) his engineering degree back in China which he used to come to the USA and eventually build credentials here. Apparently this is not uncommon practice there too. Scary. This guy was a citizen too (had immigrated years prior).

Wow - don't get your panties in a bunch. This is about credentials coming out of foreign universities. I see no difference in this discussion and someone saying that the Comp Sci program at XYZ University sucks.



I'm in the heart of Silicon Valley as well. This has nothing to do with race, language or anything else accept our experience with the quality of people with degrees from foreign university. We employ just under 28k people but very few Tech people, relatively speaking, as we are not a tech company. We primarily use job shops when we are looking for people and we typically pay the contract company between $100/hour on the low end to $300/hour. I realize the candidates don't make that but regardless, that's not cheap. These are typically gigs that last for 12 months at a time and sometimes we hire the contractors permanently.



So here's another experience for you. I worked with someone who had a masters in computer engineering from the Philipines. She was supposedly a storage engineer - we hired her from SanDisk. She knew nothing. Even basic IT concepts went right over her head. I was not involved in the interview process for this one.

This has been my experience. I realize that it is limited to my working environment and that is why I asked the question.

Another with multiple negative experiences here, both with individual engineers and contract engineering companies. Slow, unresponsive, poor quality work. The upfront cost is cheap, funny how upper management rarely wants to capture or acknowledge the rework cost.

Edit: I should clarify that my response was in regards to Indian contract labor. I've worked with lots of Brits and other Europeans, it's always been a positive experience.

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

for clarity when I am talking about analysis, I mean PHD or at least MS level. The example where some of these candidates might be lacking in common sense type calculations and engineering approximations is in line with my experience.

In general we consider these applicants only for specialized skills: Things like non linear fea, multiphysics, or magnetic modeling. Usually PHD types

I thought the government makes it very difficult to support work for more general skills.

I work in a very fast paced, extremely high tech industry where every single company has a large % of foreign workers. The company I work for out of all the companies in the industry has more reason not to hire foreign workers but they chose to do so by actively looking at reqruiting from outside their country.

Just of the top of my head I work people from Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Czech Republic, South Africa, UK, Spain, Switzerland, India, Canada, Slovenia etc Nationality does not come into it as quality always shines through, has nothing to do with race, colour, nationality. Has everything to do with education, training, atitude and experience.

In 18yrs I have only worked with 3 Americans (1 was crap, 1 wore a tin foil hat and 1 is good at what he does). Don't want to paint with broad strokes but generally they just don't have the right degree's, previous experience and are quite reluctant to leave the USA.

I think from your experience you are talking about hiring on price which has nothing to do with nationaliity,

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

The article refers to abuse of the H1B program, where a job that normally pays 95k would be given to someone who will take 65k for the same work and skill level.

That by itself is just bad.

On the topic of resume padding, that's not good either. I don't think it's confined to H1B workers though.

On whether all H1B workers have been all bad, I guess we remember the bad experiences more than the good ones.

I've worked with many US citizens, many H1B visa holders, and the results are mixed. Some are brilliant, some average, and some don't know what the hell they are talking about. But whether they are a US citizen or H1B holder or British or Canadian or Chinese or Australian or Singaporean, it doesn't matter.

And yes, I am a former H1b holder, now a US citizen, leading a small team in a Silicon Valley company. I did not pad my resume, and I always knew what I was talking about when it comes to work.

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

OK... So your Government offers a way for foreign workers to get to the "US of A" and then you're surprised that some (or most?) of them abuse it?

lol... That's funny. What did you expect? ;)

Because I'm asking about people's experience with people with foreign degrees.

Edit: I should also clarify that most of my bad experiences have been with engineers from India.

You're absolutely correct.

Who said I was white? I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley for 30 years. Since I was 17 years old I worked with EE's from every corner of the globe and can say the same of the diversity of folks I work with since moving into IT in the 90's. You are misunderstanding the point of this thread. Your very assertion that everyone replying with common experience is a middle-aged xenophobic white guy is problematic. I have no reason to be jaded. Silicon Valley has treated me well.

We hire temps because our needs fluctuate based on project needs. We have a core group that is permanent but sometimes we need more resources of a temporary nature and sometimes we need skills that we don't have in-house so we contract it out until the project is complete. Our IT environment is pretty diverse and high tech, more so than you would see in most high tech companies just due to the nature of our business.

Again, you are misreading the whole point of this thread.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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.

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. ;-)