Reply #6: ...The ads are only put in to justify the H1B visas.

[wroberts189]

They have to show that they looked for a US worker before they get their visa permits... so they deliberately create bogus ads using fudged wage data. Then they say "See.. we tried and could not find anyone."

My sister ..who is a highly qualified paralegal is now seeing the same thing. Showing up at a job interview with hundreds of others only to see the same ad being run weeks later...

A good programmer or Unix admin could at one time command a 60-100k+ salary. But during the big dot com bubble the CEO's said "Why are we paying the geeks so much? So what if they deal with complex challenging stressful situations on a daily basis? Lets just import cheap IT labor from India where most get free Scholarships."

That was their attitude.

I know because I was a Unix admin working for a company that got bought out. My supervisor told me.. the new management "had serious questions about my salary".

This company had the dumbest of ideas..lets merge a thousand isp's into one and call it "OneMain your hometown Internet"

So they fly us all down (admins from across the country from a bunch of isp's they bought) to some waste dump hotel in some state that was so dead and boring I cannot remember it's name.

We all tried so hard to tell them... Merging hundreds of different billing and administrative systems into one was going to take some serious time and work just for beginners.. you would also need tremendous co-ordination ..on and on we went. A room full of possibly some of the most brightest IT people I have ever seen collected in one room and we all told them..do not do this.

As a side note most of us were also very concerned about changing our local brand name.

"Integration is coming and will happen ..deal with it." The head lackey said.

Funded by venture investors.. they did not last very long ..8 months ..and were bought out by Earthlink who promptly laid off or forced who (after two mergers) remained out the door. I was forced out after I reported them to the Labor Dept for clear ERISA violations dealing with our 401ks .. despite promises of confidentiality the people at the DOL call the company ..tell them my name and simply asked them if they were doing anything wrong. Long story but I got screwed over for reporting they had removed all our retirement funds from our accounts and we had been waiting for 3 months to find out where they were all moved to. After another month we all got statements from the new investment company. We all lost 10-20 percent.