Do I really have to worry about competing with foreigners throughout my career?

Im still new to IT, but through my months of research and reading, Im wondering how secure a career this can be.

I keep reading about outsourcing of jobs abroad, the cloud, or foreigners here in the country being a preferred hire over Americans. How true is this?

First theres this article which highlights how companies will hire H1Bs in order to cheap out on paying American citizens. How H-1B Visas Are Screwing Tech Workers | Mother Jones

Then theres this link, which talks about how IBM and two big tech recruiters Infosys and Manpower Group, outright plot in order to avoid American workers. Tech Worker Groups Boycott IBM, Infosys, Manpower - Slashdot

It really makes me sick to think about how companies could be doing this to people....watching citizens fall down so they can make a buck. This all seems in total contrast to a lot I read about how rewarding IT can be monetarily and mentally.

I guess Im looking for reassurance that I wont regret this career movie when Im 40. I had a hard enough time breaking into the business world after college. I dont think I could deal with another portion of my life dealing with unemployment or poor pay. I really just want a little security for once

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Comments

kohr-ah

First I apologize if I type this horribly I am on my phone.

Every job has its worries and its problems. Do you have to worry about being outsourced ? That depends your company. Is the one you are working for heavy on outsourcing to save money or do they want a more personal approach. Outsourcing doesn't always mean it goes overseas also. They xpul outsource to a local MSP or national MSP and cut the jobs down and repurpose them.

Is it anything to worry about ? No. Jobs will always exist and be there to be had as long as you are in an area that jobs are needed and your skills are kept up to date.

How do I know? My company outsourced all out jobs and we are now a 2 man team and half my job is business now and half technical. I'd prefer all technical but I still have a job and I know I can leave once I am sure my family is where it needs to be.

Always look down the road but look 1 step at a time. Otherwise you are going to stress yourself out. Instead of going am I going to be outsourced go "what can I learn to stay on top of my game".

OfWolfAndMan

This is something you should not make an issue out of. Sure they're getting paid less for the benefit of the company saving a few bucks, but in essence, having the title of "citizen" does not entitle you to a job. I know plenty of H1Bs that may get paid less, but they're good or great at what they do, and their prime objective is usually supplying for their family. A company's goal has always been to grow and justify ROI for any move. This is no different.

Your real threat should be learning to know what you're talking about and learning to get better in the field. Knock out a few certs, get some experience, and learn as much as you can, because technology is ever changing, and if this is a career path you want to stick to, you'll come to enjoy it or hate it. Some people on here do it for the $$$, some do it for the knowledge and the challenge (Even though sustainable income still applies). You also want to make sure you stay current. Repairing computers for years and not willing to expand will hurt you more than help in the long term.

Find a category you enjoy, whether it be network, systems, info sec, programming or devops, cloud, whatever. Stick with it, and if you enjoy it, be receptive on how to move up in the company. If you don't like the position, you can always deviate. I will tell you though, coming home after a week saying "This new job sucks" is not the way to look at it. First, get yourself familiar with the environment, then see if you're still put off by the job.

I wish the best of luck to you, sir.

kly630

I've wondered about this myself every once in a while. The conclusion I came to is that people who bring the business in the door get to decide how it runs ultimately. I hope to work out those sorts of skills myself long before it reaches that point in my career.

NOC-Ninja

The sad part is if we stop studying, we lose.
Its not a secret that people from a 3rd world countries are willing to give up their fri night, sat and sunday to study. If you can make studying as your hobby then you should be fine even if you are 40. You'd be surprise that there are well known CCIE's who still studies like the they are going take another CCIE test.

jaycrewz

Thanks for the replies so far.

Which IT concentration paths would you say are more prone to outsourcing or being filled by a foreign worker? From what Im reading online it seems that its mainly programming.

Is this true?

kohr-ah

Depends on what is needed to be programmed.

A quick app for your work. Maybe.
Supporting a homebrew Corporate applications then probably not.

MeatCatalogue

The short answer is YES.

However, as a former IBMer I can tell you that even IBM values American workers. It really just depends. Yes IBM no longer hires L1 and L2 Americans.. however nearly the entire L3+ structure is americans.

The lesson here is to become a senior level engineer as fast as possible and surpass your foreign counterparts. Not only will you be paid more, but you'll have more job security.

jaycrewz

MeatCatalogue wrote: »

The short answer is YES.

However, as a former IBMer I can tell you that even IBM values American workers. It really just depends. Yes IBM no longer hires L1 and L2 Americans.. however nearly the entire L3+ structure is americans.

The lesson here is to become a senior level engineer as fast as possible and surpass your foreign counterparts. Not only will you be paid more, but you'll have more job security.

Im likely staying far away from IBM. I have a friend whose parent was forced to retire not long ago. And from looking over IBM behavior over the last few years, they have been cutting jobs in favor of the cloud and outsourcing. Nevermind the age discrimination issue I feel happened with my friends parents, or the age discrimination lawsuit IBM lost last year.

Im just trying to plan a good starting path for the future. Im not trying to get into programming myself though. Im just worrying if oursourcing or h1b workers are something a system admin has to watch out for. As right now, system admin is my goal in the future.

anhtran35

Foreign competitors after your job? It depends. You don't want someone from China to set up a Network for the Department of Defense. Corporate espionage and with the recent hacks( ex: SONY ) will probably reverse the trend to rely on a foreign workforce. SAs and NAs are safe for now.

Kinet1c

Knowledgeable workers are always coveted, become one.

MeanDrunkR2D2

Being the best you can be and putting forth your best effort will guarantee that you won't lose out to a H1B or outsourcing if they see you as extremely valuable and not replaceable. Focus on yourself and your career and don't worry about anyone else stealing your job.

jvrlopez

Get a job that requires US citizenship and/or a security clearance if you are worrying about foreigners taking your job opportunities.

the_Grinch

In five years I have never lost a job, I've left, but have never been outsourced. If you're good at what you do then you have nothing to worry about.

jeremywatts2005

I totally get what is being said here. I have noticed a disturbing pattern in some companies. It is called nepotism. Not trying to be really nasty here but one guy from a certain country gets hired. Great they got the job congrats on that then they have to take off 30 , 60 or 90 days once a year because of visa. OK not so bad. Now that same person is a manager and he hires all of his friends in to work with him. Now you have an entire group of people from said country. Their language skills are very poor and their technical skills are good, but they cannot explain a word of what they are doing. American workers get overlooked also because they cannot communicate with the manager from another country and he does not want to work with people who he cannot communicate with. Eventually you have entire departments all from this one country. Things do not get done on time or properly and no one can understand the group. The company has allowed so many of them to be hired in on visas that if they start terminating or letting them go they are viewed as discrimantory and possibly could be sued. I deal with this every day and I see it over and over.

I see this over and over and get companies wanting to save money. At the same time are they really saving enough to warrant some of the other issues. I interviewed 25 candidates for a job mostly from India. Great technically on paper. When I started to drill down on them and push on specifics they could not answer the questions because most everyone could not understand what I was asking. Even when I reworded or changed the question. American workers understood the questions and could answer the questions easily without any clarification.

mstd0n

Kinet1c wrote: »

Knowledgeable workers are always coveted, become one.

robS

If you want more protection from government then avoid libertarian (free market) parties and consider lobbying your representative / MP to block TTIP and the pacific one (can't remember what it's called).

Doesn't matter how good you are, sometimes companies decide to outsource. You can sometimes overcome this by being indispensable, or you can keep your skills updated, your CV current and your interview shoes polished.

I've generally found that the things most often outsourced are the things that are easiest to outsource or have a huge offshore skills base, though this isn't always true. Older dev languages (eg. winforms), MS MVC, testing, ABAP, helldesk etc are especially prevalent.

If you get outsourced though, don't burn bridges. You may find that you get called back in on a nice day rate, or if the company then insources again you may get the same job on better money.

stryder144

Honestly, I'd be less worried about "foreigners" and more worried about those who are hungrier than you are. The hungry ones, be they young, old, from another country, etc, are the ones who are willing to do what it takes to get, keep, and excel in their jobs. Anthony Robbins talks about Continuous And Never-ending Improvement (CANI). Take that to heart and you'll never have to worry.

E Double U

You made me think of how Edison cut lots of American workers recently and replaced them with Indians:

Edison's plans to cut jobs, hire foreign workers is assailed - LA Times

I've been a victim of offshoring, but it actually helped me quite a bit. I was working for the NOC at a British company that was sending the work to Brazil so I had to find another position or get laid off. That pressure led to me joining the configuration/migration team which I didn't feel prepared for, but I couldn't stay in the NOC. Spent less than two years on that team and was advised they would send that work to India so I had to find another job once again. Joined the SOC which I didn't feel prepared for, but I couldn't stay in config. Less than a year in SOC and that work was sent to India so our jobs were cut.

The skills that I acquired on those three teams (especially the SOC) made me a very desirable candidate for my current Info Sec role at a financial institution. Before I came here the management of our ASAs was being handled by the network team and the CISO wanted to bring that to Info Sec. If I wasn't forced into those other roles due to outsourcing then I probably wouldn't have pursued them which means that I wouldn't have learned all of those new skills and could still be calling out telco circuits to this very day lol.

I don't worry about my competition coming from overseas because I could also be replaced by a fellow American citizen. So I'll keep working on my skills/knowledge (CISSP, GCIH, CISA/M for 2015) as long as I have the energy and hopefully that will keep me ahead of my competition regardless of their nationality.

jeremywatts2005

Read the law about Visa's

H1B Visa - H1B Jobs - Work in America - USA Work Permit - Green Card - H1 Visa - US Work Visa - Immigration USA - H1B - H1-B - H-1B - Live in the USA - Job in USA - USA VISA - Work in USA

networker050184

It's a global economy. You'll be competing with the whole world your entire life. Nothing to worry about as long as you are up to the challenge.

tkerber

As someone who works for a large tech company who has employees all over the world I will give you my perspective. The United States has some very top talent. A lot of the jobs we've lost were low level jobs for example inbound support, guys who will simply answer the phone and create a case. Anything past that is pushed up. Now not all companies are like this but I've seen this same pattern at several of the large companies I've worked for. Low level work is outsourced, high level work remains in house and untouched.

I personally place outsourcing as one of the smallest career related fears I could have. Back in the early - mid 2000's when outsourcing was a big idea I would have been worried. But it's interesting every company I've worked at but one has tried outsourcing at least one of their technical departments and failed catastrophically. Once again, this doesn't represent all companies but it definitely doesn't seem uncommon.

Therefore, I personally see the biggest challenge to my career and many other IT careers as; change. Cloud computing is changing things whether we like it or not. A lot of businesses no longer need as much physical infrastructure. Also the implementation of more mobile devices and mobile apps as well as Saas, IaaS, etc... Look at AWS, Microsoft Azure, and newly the IBM and Apple partnership. These are all technologies that could be big game changers. What about SDN (software defined networking)? Anyways without rambling too much I just want to say there is a lot of constant change and uncertainty. I really cannot think of too many career fields that don't have these same challenges.

LeBroke

Not worried about outsourcing to other countries. Quite a few local/Canadian companies that once tried outsourcing their stuff to India are now bringing back in force. There's only so much "Hello, this is Rajesh. Sorry, have you tried to turn it off and on again? Urgently do the needful" customers can stand when their computer won't even start, and they were quite vocal about expressing their discontent.

Most system/networking positions require you to be physically present at the site. Sure, you can outsource remote support, but then you also have to deal with dubious quality of most of their specialists. For every hadoop engineer they have playing around with Active Directory, there is 3 idiots who only got their job because their cousin runs the office, and they have no IT background whatsoever, and only started doing it because it pays good money.

So, companies are becoming hesitant to take a risk on someone they can't see, meet or assess.

If anything, I'm more worried about foreign workers/new immigrants undercutting wages and driving a race to the bottom. But then, I come from a city made up of immigrants, so it's probably less of an issue in places that aren't Vancouver/Toronto/New York/San Francisco/whatever.

UnixGuy

tkerber wrote: »

..

Therefore, I personally see the biggest challenge to my career and many other IT careers as; change. Cloud computing is changing things whether we like it or not. A lot of businesses no longer need as much physical infrastructure. Also the implementation of more mobile devices and mobile apps as well as Saas, IaaS, etc... Look at AWS, Microsoft Azure, and newly the IBM and Apple partnership. These are all technologies that could be big game changers. What about SDN (software defined networking)? Anyways without rambling too much I just want to say there is a lot of constant change and uncertainty. I really cannot think of too many career fields that don't have these same challenges.

+10000

hit the nail on the head. you should be very worried about the Cloud, a game changer. People will disagree, but I can see less and less need for IT people. Service providers will continue to employ skilled IT professionals, just not as many. The next 10 yrs will be interesting to say the least.

robS

UnixGuy wrote: »

....the Cloud, a game changer. People will disagree, but I can see less and less need for IT people...

I call your raise...

The cloud itself is less a game changer than people's attitudes to it. The same was true with ITSM, it's true with DevOps.

I see most industry's IT moving towards a more agile and responsive approach for of IT (whether or not that includes Agile development) or a 2-speed IT (which Gartner call Bi-Modal IT) where older, sensitive systems are changed more carefully and newer more innovative systems/services can fail fast and evolve quickly.

Infrastructure as code is merely an evolution (from a technology perspective) but has the potential to enable a revolution in getting differentiated services for the business out there as quickly as possible. Chef and Puppet etc I see as little different from an old school sysadmin's USB drive full of homebrewed scripts to manage his/her infrastructure, but formalised, matured, structured.

The one place where I do agree with cloud being a game-changer is 'shadow IT' where, with the easy availability of online cloud solutions for £50/month which can go on a manager's credit card, they get to bypass IT altogether. However I've already started seeing many lists of excluded cloud apps on company web filters, not just dropbox but basecamp, trello and more. I disagree with restricting this, but that's a different topic.

tkerber

robS wrote: »

I call your raise...

The cloud itself is less a game changer than people's attitudes to it. The same was true with ITSM, it's true with DevOps.

I see most industry's IT moving towards a more agile and responsive approach for of IT (whether or not that includes Agile development) or a 2-speed IT (which Gartner call Bi-Modal IT) where older, sensitive systems are changed more carefully and newer more innovative systems/services can fail fast and evolve quickly.

Infrastructure as code is merely an evolution (from a technology perspective) but has the potential to enable a revolution in getting differentiated services for the business out there as quickly as possible. Chef and Puppet etc I see as little different from an old school sysadmin's USB drive full of homebrewed scripts to manage his/her infrastructure, but formalised, matured, structured.

The one place where I do agree with cloud being a game-changer is 'shadow IT' where, with the easy availability of online cloud solutions for £50/month which can go on a manager's credit card, they get to bypass IT altogether. However I've already started seeing many lists of excluded cloud apps on company web filters, not just dropbox but basecamp, trello and more. I disagree with restricting this, but that's a different topic.

I somewhat agree with this. Since I started working for a large storage provider I can say that I've seen a trend. Most of our clients are very large companies. Many fortune 500.. Also, almost all of our clients have their own IT staff. The 'cloud' or 'cloud services' such as AWS or Microsoft Azure cannot match the speed and security of an in-house FC SAN (yet).. Too a lot of these large companies, their data is sacred therefore investing a lot of money into a SAN is negligible. Same thing goes for a lot of the other infrastructure.

Now on the other end of the spectrum, cloud computing and cloud services has been a godsend for small businesses, non-profits, etc... No longer do they have to deal with managing a small business server or finding a place for their infrastructure. They can use services like Office 365, one drive, and Microsoft Azure if needed. The small business area is where I see is going to hurt the most.. At the time I worked for an MSP about a year ago, a lot of our clients were happily dropping their small business servers to go to cloud services. Which was great for Microsoft but for the MSP I could see in the not to distant future that there wasn't going to be as great of a need for many of the server guys. A well trained Help Desk can manage Office 365 accounts and many of the services we supported. For larger companies I've seen a lot of 'private clouds' which in some cases are just essentially their own FC SANs with a bunch of VMware hosts running specialized applications just a change of wordplay.

UnixGuy

I don't disagree with you guys, just to summarise my response:

1. Small to medium large business don't need in house IT anymore ==> Less IT jobs.

2. Cloud can't match the speed and the security of in house SAN/servers ==> Will definitely change in the next 3~7 yrs (slowly but surely). ==> Less IT jobs.

That's my point, less IT jobs in the long run, more automation. More SDN, more Virtualisation. This is bound to happen, innovation continues and there will be 'less' need for people. Less IT jobs, but there will always be IT jobs.

powmia

UnixGuy wrote: »

I don't disagree with you guys, just to summarise my response:

1. Small to medium large business don't need in house IT anymore ==> Less IT jobs.

2. Cloud can't match the speed and the security of in house SAN/servers ==> Will definitely change in the next 3~7 yrs (slowly but surely). ==> Less IT jobs.

That's my point, less IT jobs in the long run, more automation. More SDN, more Virtualisation. This is bound to happen, innovation continues and there will be 'less' need for people. Less IT jobs, but there will always be IT jobs.

Who will be providing out of house IT services? Who will be building those cloud services? Unicorns or people?

UnixGuy

powmia wrote: »

Who will be providing out of house IT services? Who will be building those cloud services? Unicorns or people?

Again. "Less IT jobs", not "NO IT Jobs".

Do you need the same number of people to run a SDN that you need to run a traditional physical network? Absolutely not, because the new technology is meant to reduce cost. More of this in the next 10 years for sure.

Do you need the same number of people to run hundreds of cloud instances that you did using physical servers in different site?

There will be LESS IT jobs, technology is meant to make managing servers and networks easier and more automated, that's what vendors are trying to do.

Architects will still be needed to design those solutions (although technology is meant to reduce complexity, so less architects will be needed).

jibbajabba

I haven't read all of the thread, but being German myself and have worked in different countries now (Ireland, Gibraltar, Spain and now England), I can tell you something from the 'other side' of the coin.

IBM is a bad example, but I have worked in a small local hosting company here in the UK.

The majority of foreigners who get a job instead of a local is indeed mainly due to skills. And in fact, language !!

Let me explain. That hosting company looked for someone for tech support. That requires email and phone support.

The biggest problem the director was facing, and in fact the same applies to all companies I worked for, is to find people who have both, technical knowledge and who can speak and write decent English.

I was the first one passing their English written with 100% and I was the first foreigner they have interviewed.

Locals barely know the difference between who and whom, their and there or they're, affect and effect and it hurts my eyes when they say 'would of'.

Some Americans are even worse (no offence). Most didn't even know that Berlin had a wall (nothing to do with language, just remembered the conversations we had).

A hotel in London Gatwick airport only employs Germans for the front desk staff. Why? They speak better English (plus the funny accent I can't even stand myself lol) but also, they have a proper education. In Germany you would not get a job without a degree or apprenticeship. Latter is more common.

In the UK you barely find staff who have trained in hotels and if you hire Germans with a hotel education, you know they have all studied the same material and have actually seen a hotel from the insight.

powerfool

jeremywatts2005 wrote: »

I totally get what is being said here. I have noticed a disturbing pattern in some companies. It is called nepotism. Not trying to be really nasty here but one guy from a certain country gets hired. Great they got the job congrats on that then they have to take off 30 , 60 or 90 days once a year because of visa. OK not so bad. Now that same person is a manager and he hires all of his friends in to work with him. Now you have an entire group of people from said country. Their language skills are very poor and their technical skills are good, but they cannot explain a word of what they are doing. American workers get overlooked also because they cannot communicate with the manager from another country and he does not want to work with people who he cannot communicate with. Eventually you have entire departments all from this one country. Things do not get done on time or properly and no one can understand the group. The company has allowed so many of them to be hired in on visas that if they start terminating or letting them go they are viewed as discrimantory and possibly could be sued. I deal with this every day and I see it over and over.

I see this over and over and get companies wanting to save money. At the same time are they really saving enough to warrant some of the other issues. I interviewed 25 candidates for a job mostly from India. Great technically on paper. When I started to drill down on them and push on specifics they could not answer the questions because most everyone could not understand what I was asking. Even when I reworded or changed the question. American workers understood the questions and could answer the questions easily without any clarification.

I have seen this same thing in several companies, since I work as a consultant. It appears that Tata (the big outsourcing company in India) hires folks to move to the US and become CIOs for medium to large companies and then work to outsource most of the work. Once they do this, they move on to another company.

I am not against any group of people, but that is a strategy that is being employed and I think it is largely problematic for companies. I think that there is a murkier side to it that has yet to be exposed, because I believe that the companies that outsource are under the impression, based on the contract that stated it, that they are basically hiring full-time people to work on just their account, but that these folks are likely supporting 2-3 accounts in "full-time" capacities. Their justification will be that they are cross-training people for better support, but I think it is just a strategy for them to increase revenue without increasing costs...

Whenever you are dealing with large cultural divides, that can be significant barriers communications. I have worked with several folks where that hasn't been any issue, but they are the exceptions to the rule.