10/14   Why all the H1B posts? Our jobs, esp support and QA are already being
        exported to countries like India and China. There was a report from
        60 Minutes that says a few phone companies already shifted their
        phone support ops to India. They even train the workers to be
        knowledgeable about the American culture (football, beer, etc).
        Face it, many jobs are indeed exportable. IT is just a glorified
        auto/steel/whatever industry.
        \_ You're a Cal grad and doing phone support and QA?  Jesus F. Christ!
           Did you graduate with a degree in English or something?
           \_ I thought Jesus' middle initial was 'H'.
              \_ You don't know what the 'F' is for?
        \_ Agreed, IT = auto = steel = dockworkers.  However, since most
           motd readers are sys admins, they confuse themselves with
           real software engineers and architects.  We're not worried
           about H1B workers.
           \_ uh, it's the software development that can be easily exported,
              not the sysadmin work.  Think autoworker vs. policeman.  -tom
           \_ *laugh* As a sysadmin, the last thing I'm worried about is my
              job getting exported to another country.  No sysadmin confuses
              what they do with what a coder monkey does.  When a coder monkey
              fucks up, you get a bug which gets caught by QA (in India). When
              a sysadmin fucks up, the whole shop goes down.  No one is going
              to ship their servers to India.  Silly troll, cookies are for
              kids!
        \_ Recently had trouble with an http://amazon.com order. Emailed them
           (the only way to reach them) and all I got were replies
           from folks with Indian-looking names. All replies either
           had good english or good scripts or both. I suspect
           amazon support may be outsourced?
        \_ I have never gotten good customer service of any kind from
           an Asian-outsourced helpdesk.  In fact, this is the main reason
           why I refuse to buy anything from http://Amazon.com anymore.
           My experience with US helpdesk workers is mixed, although mainly
           positive (unless you're dealing with a fucked up company like Sony.
           The only consistently good tech support I've gotten was from Irish
           call centers (most European tech firms redirect English-language
           calls there.)  -John
           \_ Was on the phone with a Netapp chick in Singapore last night.
              She didn't fix my problem but had a sexy voice so I still logged
              the call as a "10" in their customer service records.
           \_ I have never gotten good customer service of any kind
              through the phone, period.  Almost.
              \_ B&H over the phone seems okay.
        \_ Exporting software jobs is the best thing that ever happened to
           the software industry.  Perhaps now, we will realize that many
           engineering positions are filled by glorified, semi-skilled
           typists (software).  Let's face it-  software systems are LARGE
           nowadays-  but innovation is the crux of value, not WPM.  Stop
           complaining about your obsolete job.  Coding is a monkey task
           that should be outsourced, not protected by some archaic notion
           of an ivory tower of academia.
        \_ Which is why I would recommend moving up to a more architectural
           or managerial level, to avoid your job being 'exported'. I agree,
           coding, not only a 'monkey task' as the above posted noted, is
           often considered a thankless job. Don't shoot the messenger, this
           is what I heard.
        \_ Put it this way.  Number of engineers produced per year in US:
           65000, in China 700000, and their quality is improving.
           \_ This is exactly the kind of reasoning upper management uses to
              justify H1b's shortly before they get a http://fuckedcompany.com entry.
              Because if 1 american engineer can do it in X days, then 10 H1b
              engineers can do it in X/10 days.  Right?  Good math.