By V. B. Velasco Jr., Ph.D.
A decade ago, most Americans would have agreed that the USA needed more
engineers and programmers. The country needed high-tech workers in order to
maintain its worldwide edge in technology, and common wisdom dictated that
there jus weren’t enough of them to go around.
As the years went by though, the popular sentiment started to change. Yhe Y2K
threat fizzled out, the dot com bubble burst, and the 9/11 tragedy forced many
high-tech US companies into conducting massive layoffs. Among engineers and
programmers, unemployment started to rise, as did resentment toward foreigners
who were alleged to have taken jobs away from hard-working Americans. Whereas
high-tech workers used to trumpet the need to recruit talented manpower from
overseas, many of them started to proclaim that there were plenty of techies to
go around, and that this manpower shortage was all a myth.
Predictably, many Americans chose to heap blame on foreign workers,
particularly those who were employed on H-1B work visas. This visa program
allows workers in specialized categories—typically, science, engineering, and
computer technology—to work in the USA on a temporary basis. Resentful techies
protested that there was no manpower shortage, and that companies only wanted
to hire foreigners because these people would be willing to work longer hours
for less pay.
So what’s the real deal? When Americans technical workers remain unemployed,
does this mean that US companies are passing them up in favor of cheap labor?
Are there more than enough American techies to go around? Is the high-tech
manpower shortage real, or is it all just hype?
I think that the answer lies somewhere in between. Admittedly, there are many
programmers and engineers who have a hard time finding employment. It is also
true that there are companies that deliberately underpay foreign workers. Does
this mean that the manpower shortage is mere fiction, though – nothing but a
ploy to justify the hiring of low-wage foreigners? Not necessarily. There may
be unemployed techies out there – perhaps even an abundance of them -- but this
doesn’t mean that a company will have no problem finding the specific kind of
person that they need. (It’s also worth considering that the unemployment rate
among engineers has dropped considerably since the immediate post-9/11 era –
but for the sake of argument, let’s assume that unemployment is still a grave
concern.)
Some people seem to think that a programmer is a programmer and that an
engineer is an engineer. They see companies choosing foreign nationals over US
citizens and they protest that these companies must surely be looking for cheap
labor. Mind you, I have no doubt that some companies do operate in this
fashion; however, we should not conclude that this is indeed their motivation.
People are like snowflakes, after all; no two of them are alike. Engineers are
not interchangable, and it would be foolish to conclude that one programmer can
do the work of another, simply because they both know how to produce code.
I speak from personal experience. During the post-9/11 employment bust, I was
working for a robotics company in Silicon Valley, where I was involved in
evaluating prospective job candidates. Despite the large number of available
programmers out there, we had an extremely difficult time finding anyone who
had the right skills. We weren’t looking for a perfect match, mind you; just
somebody who was close enough. The best candidates were usually foreign-born,
and few if any of them were US citizens. Additionally, while the best
candidates did have the right technical skills (or were close enough to what we
needed), their resumes and interviews often revealed inadequacies in other
areas—lackluster communication skills, for example.
Mind you, I’m not saying that American techies are lacking in skills or
qualifications. That would be an oversimplification as well. Rather, my
argument is that we should avoid painting with a broad brush. Different
companies have different needs, and some of them will have a hard time finding
just the right people. This is especially true of companies that are pushing
the envelope of high-tech development and who need to recruit the most
qualified people possible.
I’ve heard other engineers make the same observation. As one commentator said,
“A good programmer requires a lot of different skills. These skills are
developed in several ways: (1) a good basic education, (2) experience, and (3)
analytical thinking. I haven’t met much people who combine these skills.” When
a company isn’t just looking for someone who can hammer out code – when they
need someone with strong analytical and problem-solving skills, for example, or
who can develop strong software architectures – then the pool of possible
candidates can dwindle dramatically.
This problem is especially acute in strongly cross-disciplinary fields. Suppose
that you need someone who can do circuit design, but who also has some software
development and mechanical design skills. Such people are valuable in fields
such as robotics, automation, and disk drive design, and they can be tough to
find. When an American engineer is passed up for jobs like these, it’s
typically not because companies want cheap labor. Rather, it’s because people
with the right combination of skills can be mighty difficult to find. That’s
why companies are willing to recruit foreign nationals for these jobs, despite
all the legal expenses and headaches involved.
So to summarize, is the manpower shortage real? In my judgment, yes and no.
There are indeed times when foreigners are hired because they’re willing to
work for less. However, we should not be quick to conclude that companies that
hire foreign nationals are simply doing so to save a buck. I’ve seen too many
situations where a company had a difficult time finding anybody who had the
right skill set, even when there was no shortage of applicants.
About the Author:
V. B. Velasco Jr., Ph.D. works for a biotech firm that provides
ELISPOT research services, ELISPOT plate
readers and other immunology
research products and services.
