Apple Announces Plans to Establish iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in India

[chrono1081]

Sorry but this is completely inaccurate. The tech industry as a whole is understaffed by over 100,000 engineers.
[doublepost=1463603585][/doublepost]It is extremely hard to find and retain talented engineers in this market. Hence why engineering salaries are some of the highest out of college. People getting 100k positions out of school should be enough to tell you that the shortage is a reality.

Well you're again, completely wrong. Those "100k" positions are in places where 100k is practically entry level (i.e. The Bay Area).

You aren't going to find those "talented" engineers in India for the reasons I've already stated regarding the purely impossible to fill job requirements. The kind that want 30+ programming languages and 10+ years experience in each even if the language has only been out for 3 years.

You're simply trying to justify the offshoring of jobs by creating false rhetoric.
[doublepost=1463604627][/doublepost]

Not entirely accurate. Per department of labor rules and regulations the H1B visa salary has to be 'in range' of its American equivalent;

Except this doesn't happen. The H1B visa folks where I worked in the past made $20k less than their American counterparts.

Multiply that by a whole bunch of people and thats a decent savings.

H1B should have to pay double or triple a standard wage.

 

[Analog Kid]

So this article had nothing to do with H1B's, but it's probably too much to expect that an article suggesting that America isn't alone in the world wouldn't breed some sort of discontent...

This idea that there isn't a shortage of talent and companies use H1Bs to hire cheap labor is kind of silly on the face of it, no? If H1Bs were displacing workers, then there should be a bunch of unemployed engineers out there looking for jobs who would then be happy to accept a lower wage and then would be able to be hired at the same wage that's being offered to H1B holders. If that were happening, then we should see that tech jobs were broadly underpaid compared to other careers. I see neither a glut of unemployed engineers or a race to the bottom on tech salaries.

So, if the H1B pipe were turned off (or if employers had to pay triple) what would happen? The supply of tech workers would be further constrained, salaries would rise even higher, and the whole industry would become less profitable-- making it more likely that such work were performed by companies fully resident in countries where salaries were lower.

Sorry, this railing against H1Bs strikes me as just another outbreak of xenophobic isolationism.

If the concern is that America just won't be able to compete, then start funneling more attention and resources into education. That's how India got themselves to the point they're making you feel threatened.

 

[konqueror4u]

Well you're again, completely wrong. Those "100k" positions are in places where 100k is practically entry level (i.e. The Bay Area).

You aren't going to find those "talented" engineers in India for the reasons I've already stated regarding the purely impossible to fill job requirements. The kind that want 30+ programming languages and 10+ years experience in each even if the language has only been out for 3 years.

You're simply trying to justify the offshoring of jobs by creating false rhetoric.
[doublepost=1463604627][/doublepost]

Except this doesn't happen. The H1B visa folks where I worked in the past made $20k less than their American counterparts.

Multiply that by a whole bunch of people and thats a decent savings.

H1B should have to pay double or triple a standard wage.

Tech Industry never had a standard wage for Americans. An American tech worker charges around $200 - $300(not a college passout) an hour based on technology skill set and experience. You can never set a standard wage in tech industry. If you kill H1b more jobs will be outsourced. Many jobs are coming back to US only because of h1b.
[doublepost=1463607538][/doublepost]

To be honest , the Mac Pro is a dead product line, I expect to to be discontinued , and yes it was PR stunt to have it build in us.

look, TC is awful for innovation , but has an hawk eye for penny pinching and maximising profit, if he can find a place cheaper than China to make Apple products he will do so. Though he will pretend he cares so much about China as he recognises they buy lots of Apple products .

Agree sir. But that is how tech companies are going to work and they work for maximum profits we cannot find fault with them. The solution is every body should think as an entrepreneur

 

[mi7chy]

I can understand the concern with jobs going offshore but the benefit is much needed software improvement so the pros outweigh the cons.

 

[oplix]

Time to outsource everything to India. Including innovation

 

[konqueror4u]

So this article had nothing to do with H1B's, but it's probably silly to expect that an article suggesting that America isn't alone in the world wouldn't breed some sort of discontent...

This idea that there isn't a shortage of talent and companies use H1Bs to hire cheap labor is kind of silly on the face of it, no? If H1Bs were displacing workers, then there should be a bunch of unemployed engineers out there looking for jobs who would then be happy to accept a lower wage and then would be able to be hired at the same wage that's being offered to H1B holders. If that were happening, then we should see that tech jobs were broadly underpaid compared to other careers. I see neither a glut of unemployed engineers or a race to the bottom on tech salaries.

So, if the H1B pipe were turned off (or if employers had to pay triple) what would happen? The supply of tech workers would be further constrained, salaries would rise even higher, and the whole industry would become less profitable-- making it more likely that such work were performed by companies fully resident in countries where salaries were lower.

Sorry, this railing against H1Bs strikes me as just another outbreak of xenophobic isolationism.

If the concern is that America just won't be able to compete, then start funneling more attention and resources into education. That's how India got themselves to the point they're making you feel threatened.

You are spot on.

 

[jhbush]

Unfortunately there isn't enough engineering talent domestically in the United States. Our education system isn't producing nearly enough engineers to fill the need.

You know that is globalist BS

 

[konqueror4u]

You know that is globalist BS

it is the difference between hiring an engineer and hiring a good engineer

 

[ackmondual]

You're completely incorrect. There are tons of people here who are more than qualified, jobs just don't want to pay them what they're worth.

Companies like to claim there are no qualified people, but that's a lie and they know it. They put a ridiculous laundry list of items on a job posting that no one can possibly fill, this lets them seek out H1B visa status where the outsourcing companies magically "find" people with that skill set (a skill set that person in reality doesn't come close to matching) and that person gets in on an H1B visa, then the person currently doing their job gets to train them how to do the job.

You obviously never worked at a place that outsourced development to India. What to know what happens? The jobs often end up coming back because the product completely suffers, the customer base gets angry because the software begins to get filled with bugs and hacks, and the company wastes millions of dollars trying to fix what they screwed up by trying to save some money.

That's what I've been hearing... when companies say "there isn't sufficient talent and skills in the US", they really mean sufficient talent and skills at lower wages.

 

[reza87]

This is wonderful. I love that Apple is investing in a developing nation, even better, it's actually a good decision. There are a lot of bright tech minds in the country. Paving the way for a major entry into the South Asian market! Awesome.

 

[fozzwozz]

WOW!!!! Reminds me of Microsoft circa 1999. This should be officially the end of Apple. I guess Steve Jobs was truly the company. They're going to tank. I'm shorting all tech stocks. I believe that an economy grows by manufacturing and what you produce. You can't eat an app or wear an app. Facebook for example is essentially a modern day television station selling advertisement. Google's biggest business by far is still the advertisement they sell for their search engine.

 

[Tiger8]

Except this doesn't happen. The H1B visa folks where I worked in the past made $20k less than their American counterparts.

Multiply that by a whole bunch of people and thats a decent savings.

H1B should have to pay double or triple a standard wage.

That's your experience, in my industry there's been serious shortage of talent, specialized talent, I saw a single company with 8 million dollars worth of projects not being spent, simply because there is not enough talent. A lot of candidates, no true talent.

Btw, H1b is capped, thousands of people every year can't qualify because the number of visas is limited

And why should companies pay double or triple? I didn't get that part of your reasoning

 

[maxsix]

Pipeline for H1B visas?

Apple is thrilled with the H1B program. Especially given the company's tight payroll budget. Barely able to afford the staff they have, H1B will make it possible for Apple to grow and prosper

 

[alexN350z]

Looks like either Apple need to Indian CEO to replace Tim, or Tim looking for his successor. Either way, they copying from Google.

 

[tentales]

Pipeline for H1B visas?

No!
Offshoring development work to AVOID processing H1-B visas and possibly cherry picking identified talent for L1-A or L1-B visas down the road, but primarily to get cheap labour *without* having to pay immigration attorneys for the limited and capped H1 program. How do I know ? I went through it.

I'm a European that worked for a US tech company back in the late 90s and was brought to the US on an L1-A for my specific technical expertise. A process that took 9 months and cost 1.5x my annual salary in fees.
Despite being paid only 60cents on the dollar for a similar position of a US citizen, I was subsequently laid-off 3 years later because of "the economy" and replaced by a worker from India, which incidentally I had to train.

Corporate greed is always justified by the "increase shareholder value" argument, but make no mistake, if they could get you to work for free or just for food & lodging, they would. Corporate responsibility is solely to its stakeholders & customers, ie. target market. Employees are a necessary "evil" and wage pressure is always at the forefront of HR managers.

So because labour visas are limited, increasingly companies are setting up their own shop in low-wage countries. It's been going on for quite a while now. Apple is way late to *that* party

Another point is, Apple has immense profits offshore that it avoids paying US taxes on by keeping it offshore. So investing abroad utilizes those funds and keeps avoiding the on-shoring of profits.

This whole discussion here about "nationalism" or "shortage of domestic skilled labour" is laughable.
No one has accurate figures, they're just made to support whatever one's point is.

"Corporate citizens" live in a globalized world with great financial mobility, while national workers do not.

 

[Tiger8]

You know that is globalist BS

We have thousands of universities; most of which are 'party schools'. Again, it's this big 'me' many graduates have; they want to party their way through college, get a D- average in a mediocre school, and expect a $160K job that only requires them to do 30 hours every week. Oh yea, and get pissed when they get passed for promotions.

The fact of the matter is, YES, the visa program gets abused for cheaper talent; but there is a legit use for it too, foreign talent has always been good for this country. You are limiting your vision to tech industry, but H1B brings also doctors, engineers, nurses; a ton of other professionals. H1B folks pay taxes from day 1, just like an American; they pay for Medicare and social security too, though they can't use those programs. Some of them could become citizens too.

What's wrong in working hard and earning your keep? Who are we to close the door and say 'no more'? If you're not an immigrant, your parent or grandparent was, unless you are a native American.

 

[kdarling]

This idea that there isn't a shortage of talent and companies use H1Bs to hire cheap labor is kind of silly on the face of it, no? If H1Bs were displacing workers, then there should be a bunch of unemployed engineers out there looking for jobs who would then be happy to accept a lower wage and then would be able to be hired at the same wage that's being offered to H1B holders.

In real life, that's not what has been happening at all with the thousands of laid off American engineers and programmers.

Instead, when they apply for a job they are automatically seen as "too experienced" and are rejected. It doesn't matter even if they offer to work for much less that they used to make.

Although yeah, most people with decades of experience are not willing to go as low as being paid entry wages.

I can understand the concern with jobs going offshore but the benefit is much needed software improvement so the pros outweigh the cons.

Any American onshore engineer (including Indian immigrants) has tons of tales of the junk code that comes from offshore Indian programmers.

The sole reason companies use them is because of price. Not quality. Ironically, it often costs more to clean up and fix the "cheap code" than it would've to have let experienced people write it in the first place. But accountants don't think that way.

Corporate greed is always justified by the "increase shareholder value" argument, but make no mistake, if they could get you to work for free or just for food & lodging, they would.
Corporate responsibility is solely to its stakeholders & customers, ie. target market. Employees are a necessary "evil" and wage pressure is always at the forefront of HR managers.

This. It's always amazing to me to see the kids on this forum spout nonsense about how corporations MUST make the most profit at all costs.

No, there's no such law. In fact, in the past it was fully expected that corporations equally weigh the best interests of their customers, employees, neighborhoods, and stockholders.

Nowadays though, CEO salaries are often tied to stock price, so they're quite happy to gut a company and its employees in return for a short term gain.

 

[hiddenmarkov]

What I want to know is why is apple finally doing this now, finally pushing their new framework. Not touching the outsourcing stuff. Screw over US people, work foreigners for crap wages to screw them over all to bring home that big paycheck and benefits package for the architects of this plan...I can rant for pages possibly.

I am talking about finally caring to push some development with swift and such.

It was not released to much fan fair as version 1. Nor was swift 2.0 whose only attention grabber was it was being made more open source.

For 1.0 release we got...duh duh duh...some free books on the i books store. Not exactly Nerd ranch level stuff either. Nerd ranch being, imo, one of the better learn by yourself publishers out there if you can't swing the costs for the stay at the ranch for in person classes.

Developers left to fend for themselves really. Had a strong background already its was hoped its just learn syntax applied to fun old concepts like control structures and stuff. Didn't have a background...well...you'd be told not saying don't make this your first language to learn but....you'd be better off learning something else first to learn the common core stuff then swift syntax after you know your way around say python real well.

Not how a new language gets numbers up. First learn python, then ruby then come back to swift. Run the high risk of that new coder going elsewhere and not coming back. Well I learned any other language besides swift and somehow it got me a job (and is not paying me to know swift nor plans to ever) I love they could very well say.

This imo didn't change much after release. Not even apple press put out much literature here. Left that to 3rd party who by and large put out books again assuming you knew core concepts.

Nor did they or do they even still now seem to care about its in house use. I was expecting after swift release at least a small flood of applications iOS and Mac OS from apple saying loud and proud....100% swift, see what it can do for you.

Prime choice for it, the language makers are in a cubicle somewhere in the building. Real easy to have meetings with and say you made this language, here are our apps. You know this forwards, backwards and sideways....tell us how to make this even better.


Even M$ does this. As annoying as their frequent releases (and version incompatibilities, the annoying part) of .net frameworks are they show they use what they make. Here is our new application. And yes...you will need to install latest .net if you don't have it. it at least shows they believe enough in their frameworks they actually use them.

With apple we got yeah....here is swift. its great stuff, use it. Just don't ask why we don't seem to give 2 craps about using it ourselves.

If apple wanted to push swift...they didn't have to wait to seal a deal with India for this. They could have just put this out better a few years ago basically.

Now it seems they wonder it never took off and looking for buzz.

 

[dvoros]

As was rumored earlier this week, Apple today announced plans to establish a new iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in Bangalore, India. According to Apple, the accelerator is part of an effort to support engineering talent and boost growth in India's iOS developer community.

On a weekly basis, Apple experts plan to lead briefings and offer one-on-one app reviews for developers. The facility will also feature support and guidance to help Indian developers master Swift, Apple's programming language. Apple plans to open its iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in early 2017.News of Apple's Development Accelerator comes as Apple CEO Tim Cook is making his first official visit to India, where he will meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Apple is also planning to open a technology development center in Hyderabad, India, where it will focus on Maps development, and rumors suggest Apple will open its first three retail stores in India over the course of the next 18 months.

Article Link: Apple Announces Plans to Establish iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in India

Why here and not in the United States? Are you inferring that we have no cities or communities with innovative and talented people?

 

[Analog Kid]

In real life, that's not what has been happening at all with the thousands of laid off American engineers and programmers.

Instead, when they apply for a job they are automatically seen as "too experienced" and are rejected. It doesn't matter even if they offer to work for much less that they used to make.

Although yeah, most people with decades of experience are not willing to go as low as being paid entry wages.

You're going to have to back that up with data, because what you're describing is completely at odds with my experience, the data I find, and what common sense would dictate.

What you're describing is a world where employers are essentially harming their own business simply to stick it to experienced workers out of pure spite and where experienced workers would rather go without any income than accept a lower, but still well above twice median, wage. And this situation has developed to the point that the workers have dropped out of the workforce in one of the fastest growing fields in the country (17% versus average of 7%), so they don't show up in unemployment statistics (~2.7% across all computer/mathematical/architectural/engineering fields, half the national average and historically low).

If that was broken down further, I think we'd find that software developers have a lower unemployment rate than that large aggregate grouping, but I don't have data at my fingertips to support that.

Maybe your sense of scale is off? Remember, when you say thousands have been laid off, that a thousand laid off programmers is a 0.1% unemployment rate in a field of over a million.

The fear a decade ago was that the sudden rise of software development in India would gut the industry in the US, but we've seen nothing like that happen from any objective point of view.

 

[AFEPPL]

The track record of IT support and development coming from india is extremely poor.
All that's going to happen is many more people on the payroll creating worse products than we have now.

Short sighted political move. Nothing more.

 

[konqueror4u]

The track record of IT support and development coming from india is extremely poor.
All that's going to happen is many more people on the payroll creating worse products than we have now.

Short sighted political move. Nothing more.

hmmm looks like you have chosen a bad engineer.

 

[Tiger8]

Instead, when they apply for a job they are automatically seen as "too experienced" and are rejected. It doesn't matter even if they offer to work for much less that they used to make.

Although yeah, most people with decades of experience are not willing to go as low as being paid entry wages.

I spoke to several hiring managers and HR people about this one; one of the reasons why they would sometimes go for someone with far less experience, even if the experienced candidate is willing to work for the same salary is the 'stepping stone' theory; a lot of companies are suspicious about someone willing to take a big cut, because they know that person will fly off as soon as they get get a position that pays what they are truly worth

Hate to say, I've seen it too

 

[tentales]

Any American onshore engineer (including Indian immigrants) has tons of tales of the junk code that comes from offshore Indian programmers.

The sole reason companies use them is because of price. Not quality. Ironically, it often costs more to clean up and fix the "cheap code" than it would've to have let experienced people write it in the first place. But accountants don't think that way.

Oh boy, speaking from my heart. I quit my job as a PM consultant over this exact issue.
This giant European company hired me in 2005 to clean up their disastrous CMS system that supported many high profile media websites. They were using a combination of Ukrainian and Indian offshore coders and then employed a team of 8 high paid local employees to test it and provide bug reports back to India and Ukraine. To complicate matters, this multi-national wanted to utilize their under-utilized "beta-testers" in Portugal that provided daily reports to our local "higher-level" testers in Zurich, Switzerland.

One of our 8 testers cost as much as the entire team in Ukraine, and half as much as the team in India. For some reason, that Indian company negotiated a much higher rate than the Ukrainians. In any case, 9 months in I was pulling my hair out because of the shoddy code that was getting worse not better. Between my local stakeholders and this company's clients' demands for feature sets (among others, to keep up with iTunes back then) it was impossible to build a solid product. Hence, I no longer wanted my name on it.

3 of those 8 testers were excellent coders. 6 figure salaries, but engineers with post-grad degrees. My suggestion to just write the damn code locally was rejected by my boss, his boss and the board.
Suffice to say, 2 years after I left, all customers had switched to other platforms and the business unit was sold to some chinese outfit.

I bet the accountants looked good tho
[doublepost=1463811975][/doublepost]

I spoke to several hiring managers and HR people about this one; one of the reasons why they would sometimes go for someone with far less experience, even if the experienced candidate is willing to work for the same salary is the 'stepping stone' theory; a lot of companies are suspicious about someone willing to take a big cut, because they know that person will fly off as soon as they get get a position that pays what they are truly worth

Hate to say, I've seen it too

kdarling is on the money here. Experienced laid-off engineers often become independent consultants and won't work for accountant-friendly salaries anymore. I've personally not met a truly experienced candidate willing to work for much less than what he was paid before, unless his experience was overrated in the first place. Barring the crazy days of Silicon Valley in the late 90s when walking into a shopping centre in Santa Clara got me offers double my then salary from strangers, just because I was wearing a company logo T-shirt.

 

[kdarling]

I spoke to several hiring managers and HR people about this one; one of the reasons why they would sometimes go for someone with far less experience, even if the experienced candidate is willing to work for the same salary is the 'stepping stone' theory; a lot of companies are suspicious about someone willing to take a big cut, because they know that person will fly off as soon as they get get a position that pays what they are truly worth

kdarling is on the money here. Experienced laid-off engineers often become independent consultants and won't work for accountant-friendly salaries anymore.

From personal experience and from watching job boards, I think you're both right. Tiger8, I was about to add the same thought.

Experienced people are generally unwilling to accept a much lower paying job... unless they're really desperate (losing their home, etc).

At the same time, HRs are unwilling to even take them at such a lower wage, because HR naturally expects them to leave if offered something closer to what they're actually worth.

It's a Catch-22 situation. They can't get a lower paying job even if they wanted.

Then throw in the fact that many of these engineers are over 50, with age bias working against them.