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How To Land A Tech Job at Apple, Google and Facebook
By EconMatters
With 14 million Americans unemployed, it is difficult to fathom that there are companies that can not find qualified candidates to fill job vacancies. Oil industry has had a chronic skilled labor shortage dating way before oil hit an all-time high of $145 in 2008. Nowadays, working at McDonald's at the Bakken oil shale in North Dakota fetches about $25 an hour, while truckers get $70,000+ a year vs. $40,000 elsewhere.
But the talent crunch is now hitting the technology sector fast and furious spreading beyond the Silicon Valley in California and central Texas Austin, into cities as disparate as Indianapolis and New York, according to MarketWatch. The article described how more than two dozen start-up tech execs flew from Austin for two days to try to poach Silicon Valley talent and ended up leaving empty handed.
MarketWatch article also quoted CareerBuilder.com that
“Tech and engineering jobs are one place we’re really feeling a worker shortage..... job openings are there for software developers, systems engineers, product managers, mobile-app developers and database administrators."
Indeed, you can't automate job functions such as software development which still requires human brain skill and insight. And the tech worker crunch is set to get worse. According to CIO.com, more and more corporate IT executives are looking to pull the plug on outsourcing (i.e. insourcing) due to a number of factors including poor service quality, desire of more control over the future direction of the IT function, etc.
Moreover, MercuryNews noted that even the $60 billion IT outsourcing industry of India is hiring "thousands of expensive engineers and business development specialists in Silicon Valley and [the U.S.] nationwide," due to the growing complexity of outsourced work, and since the best Indian engineers are hired away by American giants such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), IBM and Accenture, Indian outsourcing companies instead are finding U.S. employees a much more attractive option.
So as dismal as the U.S. employment outlook seems to be, tech sector led by innovation is one of the very few bright spots left. When one in four young professionals consider working for Google their dream job, this timely infographic highlights some facts and tips on what you may need to land a gig at Silicon Valley. Of course, a college degree would definitely better the odds particularly in the science and tech field.
(See also Top 10 Recession Proof Jobs infographic)
Created by: Masters Degree
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All you have to do is step into any university graduate classroom in engineering in USA and yell"anyone born in the USA here"? I did not say Americans arn't good engineers , just that there is a lot more quality available worldwide and that a US Bachelors degree is no longer a big deal. But US university life is indeed the best in the world.
In fact:
http://community.dice.com/t5/Tech-Market-Conditions/US-Education-Who-is-the-Customer/td-p/253921
The overwhelming of Bachelors level STEM graduates are US citizens. So why, then, do we have workforces of H1-B's, at entry-level Bachelors' pay rates, permeating the industry?
Funny you claim that, but most of my class were white people. It was only at the Masters and PhD levels (ie: highly theoretical research) that the people were mostly foreigners.
Quality of engineers is a dead issue? LOL.
I see a lot of posturing, a lot of wage arbitrage, H1B visas, and other corporate games, but at the end of the day, all that matters is who paid attention in class, and who can actually translate their ideas into reality. Folks who actually paid attention and who can manifest ideas will do just fine, regardless of what country they were born in. I've worked with engineers from around the world, and it is clear that some cultures are more innovative than others. At the same time, engineers are not defined by the uniform metric "quality." You mean to reduce the art of engineering to a single dimension, where you, as a member of the "staffing industry" define quality in terms of tiers associated with the schools they went to, as if this framework had anything to do with whether or not these people understood engineering. And no, I'm not in IT, and I'm definitely not moving to Bangalore for a lousy job.
"Leave your kids behind" Nice sentiment. Don't make any pretenses about destroying families, just separate them indefinitely.
""Leave your kids behind" Nice sentiment. Don't make any pretenses about destroying families, just separate them indefinitely."
It's not just families being destroyed, it is the entire fabric of a society. But if you want free sushi at lunch you'd better be ready to pack up and move at the whim of the completely manipulated marketplace.
My implication was that you as the adult would be the family guinea pig. If you could handle living in INdia a few months your kids would likely do the same.
You've missed the larger implications entirely.
There is a very simple reason that South Indians are some of th ebest coders/relational thinkers on the PLANET.
They speak some of the most complex languages, with deep syntax (hint hint) and tons of nesting and total tongue twisters to boot.... their brains are wired for it.
Don't scoff, a multi-lingual, like any Good Southie Indian Techie will be, is a potent mind for programming. I'm speaking from deep experience (did the Vally Boom/Bust cycle in totality).
Now North Indians, useless programmers, but great interface designers, light weight, just like their fast plummeting language.
ORI
Computer Science is, and will remain to be, an extremely prudent choice for college study. Also, you should add Amazon to the list, they currently add 140 heads every Monday.
Queue momo rage and outbursts.
"Computer Science is, and will remain to be, an extremely prudent choice for college study."
No it isn't. Read some of the comments here or talk to people who have worked in the industry.
My recommendation to aspiring tech workers: Grasp the basics of SQL! You will sooner or later use relational database content.
It took me a week to master SQL. You need to know it, but if you are a carpenter you'll need to have a hammer.
Learn the basics...then move on to NoSQL solutions because they'll probably be more relevant in 10 years than arcane transactional yahyahs.
SQL is old news and commonly done worldwide. Whats in is NOSQL dbs like Mongo , couchdb, Cassandra with JSON, Scala, akka.
What's so hard about SQL? Anyone with a good CS background understands the concepts in set theory, and actual SQL is essentially just a matter of sorting out the syntax.
Using the data is easy...but good DB admins that know how to structure the data beforehand are priceless.
It's translating some vague process models (if you're lucky) into a bulletproof data model that's the hard part. That's not taught anywhere, not even in CS schools.
P.s. $25/hour McDonalds workers in North Dakota is total exxagerated bullshit. The salaries in Fort McMurray weren't even that high at McDonalds. A good chunk of the oilfields in ND were underwater or impassible this spring/summer to drilling, so really, if there was a lot of labour demand, it was mostly from cleaning up the Minot flooding, which, like Katrina, is a one-time event (hopefully).
BTW, calling 'cloud' a skill is a complete misnomer. "Clouds" are just centralized computing, which is basically the essence of web apps, unix, etc.
Actually, most of these big brand-name Silicon Valley firms hire heavy numbers of H1-B people, and don't even give the 'time of day' to candidates who aren't H1-B.
Google, Microsoft, etc., only respond to fewer than 1% of applications, and most certainly do not have armies of HR staff to consider applicants from highly qualified engineers who apply. Most tech positions advertised are deluged with hundreds, if not thousands of applications from qualified individuals. Employment in the Silicon Valley amongst engineers has not risen from levels in the 1990s. Employment rates out of major top-tier schools in engineering and Computer Science are less than 40%, such as UC Berkeley computer science.
$99k might seem like a good salary, but remember that housing in most parts of the Silicon Valley starts at $500k and goes up from there, with all the other expenses, including taxes, being commensurately high.
I know, of my 2002 EE/CS class, most of the top grads have had enormous difficulty finding jobs. Firms are not looking for people to hire, rather, they are looking for US citizens to fire (ie: see Cisco's or HP's recent mass-purges in the Valley), and have no committment to developing the next generation of their US-based workforces.
As the chart says, with Google and Facebook receiving literally millions of resumes per year, one might wonder if it would be a better idea simply to buy lottery tickets instead, with a credit card? All that competition, for a job that doesn't even pay, on average, enough to buy a house? It is nothing short of treasonous that people like Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates, and others actively lobby for more H1-B visas.
H1-B workers are favored, because that have the extremely valuable quality that industry desires in all its employees: they are vunerable.
Excellent, excellent point BRMan. Cannot be stressed (!!) enough. Very true across the spectrum.
ORI
True, except H-1Bs are not easily available now as immigration is not issuing them. And the #1 reason why employers hire H-1 B is not cost. We have H-1Bs and we bill them out enough so that I take a 6 week vacation in Thailand, Egypt, and India this year. The #1 reason H-1s get jobs is because they have relevant skills AND they are ready to relocate on a dime. Trust me we do not lease our H-1s for cheap. $85/hr for 8year Java professional, thats $170K per year. Keeps me in Thailand Phuket with a big smile this November-See YA!
You're a big part of the problem in the tech industry--not passing enough wages on to the people actually doing the work. Relocate on a dime? How is that contributing to stability? Every H1B contractor I know does fine if he is single, but as soon as wife and kids are invovled, they don't make enough and are living in veritable poverty. While you vacation in Phuket. Great job, hero!
$85/hr? that's your billing rate?
Curious, what are you paying the H1B? The one performing the work.
Our pay to H1-Bs are 80/20 (they keep 80%, if we are lucky 70/30). The H-1Bs are not vulnerable, we are , its a lot of effort to hire someone from India get the visa and find them a job. They quit usually in 6 months. Hi-Bs are not vulnerable or cheap. Just go on DICE and talk to some. Better yet go to any local Indian curry joint and talk to them. Try hiring an American for a quick job 25miles out of his home zipcode and feel the resistance to move. The H-1Bs are very mobile. In fact a lot of our projects are stalled becaue we cannot find engineers, and companies are simply hiring overseas. H-1B acceptance is so high that local employers clearly tell us that they will process visas for right talent (5 years ago it was greencard and citizens only for fulltime jobs).
I'm friends with enough of them to tell you to your face that you are full of shit. They are extremely vulnerable. They are totally exploited by the sponsor of their visa for years on end. It is a disgusting system in which bright, young, hopeful people are brought to the US with big dreams and then slowly demoralized and turned into angry, miserable drones. I hate everything about this system, it is nothing but a lie with massive social consequences.
"H-1Bs are not easily available now as immigration is not issuing them."
This is a spigot that is easily turned back on. So an engineering grad has no long term prospects.
Yep...he's not a troll...definitely telling the truth.
What he didn't mention (because Indian's do not have this perspective) is that American Engineering is dying a little more everyday as we allow the corps to slowly starve it by bringing in H1-B/L-1/etc. All it allows the corps to do is stop the Americans from developing the relevant skills and replace them with someone willing to work for 30% less. In the past, US corps would send their engineers back for MS/PHd degrees to develop their workforce. No more. That stopped in the 90's. Funny...about the same time that they started this game of on-shoring and eventually off-shoring.
Expect that innovation will grind slower and slower as the collective IQ of our technology centers drops lower and lower under the burden of a sub-par intellectual base.
The dude-- H-1 abuse stopped in 2002 when the new law allowed H-1 employees to instantly quit without the earlier 2 to 3 month H-1 transfer wait. L-1 abuse has also been brought to a halt now with term limits or similar(I am not familiar with L-1) as I basically staff locally H-1s, citizens, and whatever. ANd as of now H-1s are impossible to get unless you are a direct OEM US employer with impeccable paperwork. Bodyshops like ours which used to get the bulk of H-1s are simply not able to get immigration approval. Sigh. I may have to work hard now.
H1s have almost zero job mobility, with or without the law change.
The whole staffing company model with middlemen taking their huge cut has to come to an end. It is merely a form of fraud and adds nothing to the business except having to talk with mostly dumb recruiters who don't understand tech and have only their own selfish interests in mind.
And like a typical staffing POS, he denegrates the people he places and brags up the amount he earns every year. Likely being too intellectually challenged to hold a positon of the type that he ridicules.
When the collapse comes, right after they get done hanging the politicans and bankers, I am pushing a couple of staffing schmucks to the front of the line.
Yep...open season on douches...no bag limit.
A different take on Outsourcing
ORI
Troll.
Not a troll. That is the truth in the tech sector, especially in Silicon Valley.
You're both right, in a way. There's a vicious circle at work. I'm now working in IT in Europe, where you see an occasional Indian, but they're usually UK citizens. Indian involvment is common, but over the wire, not in person. There are no other types of Asians visible. The difference in Europe is that 1) technical degrees are still a good option here and therefore 2) young people still pursue these degrees.
If you're US-born teenager and good at math/science, you look at the career options and see that as soon as CS or engineering starts to pay much, they open the floodgates from poorer countries. (They have good engineering schools in Germany, but how many Germans do you think are on H1-Bs?) So you opt for medicine or something else with a protected market.
This in turn breeds the actual 'shortage'. H1-Bs may not be all that cheap, but they are willing to live in cheaper housing than the native-born, work lots of unpaid overtime, and to put up with worse treatment at work. (And why not? Whatever they save will be magnified in purchasing power when converted back to rupees.) What's for an employer not to like?
The short-term fix (and what else does the US do?) is to hire more foreigners and worry about your pig-ignorant college grads later.
He is definitely not a troll, I work 2 blocks from ebay, clientele is mexican and indian. Lottery odds might indeed be better than fighting for the 5,000 jobs at the 3 growth firms in Silicon Valley. The rest are downsizing, and the government wants HP dead, hence Whitman. She already turned Ebay into some fucking 3rd world bazaar, no cool homemade things anymore. Govt. investigating Oracle, not happy they are still doing well. The govt. doesn't want merikans getting hired, just ask Gibson.
Work bitchez
The destruction of the American economy began in the late 1990s due to two factors.
1. The government (at industry's request) greatly expanded the various visa programs, and the position of American high tech workers was destroyed by the flood of foreign workers. These were the private-sector-good-jobs at good wages.
2. Greedscam pumped up the high tech bubble and then popped it which destroyed the nest egg of many Americans, including the high tech workers mentioned above. The real estate bubble was largely about trying to paper over the debacle from the high tech bubble. Not surprisingly, Greedscam went overboard on the real estate bubble.
it will not work. the best talent resents the outsourcing. financial security is low. managers aren't team players. the people are tired of being suckers. the others aren't worth hiring.
http://expose2.wordpress.com
I know a Stamford professor of math. He said US and European private school, and some public schools (albeit rarely) were way stronger than Asia when it came time to perform in college. Kids are just willing to find solutions to problems they'd never encountered before. The Asian kids would just shut down. You can invite Western-educated people to find solutions to problems that they'd never been trained on.
No offense to the culture, but they are waaay to fucking close to their mothers. The mothers break the child's will and align it to theirs - I've seen it in action, it's awful. Gut-wrenching.
I hope you're talking about Stanford, as in, the University....Not Stamford, the home of many of the incompetent hedge funds and bankers who have ruined this once great nation (often hiding behind the falsity of 'financial engineering').
:P