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Government Businesses Republicans IT

IT Worker Who Trained H-1B-Visa-Holding Replacement Aims For Congress (computerworld.com) 134

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Computerworld: Craig Diangelo was an IT worker at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut until he completed training his H-1B-visa-holding replacement. He was one of about 200 who lost their jobs in 2014 after two India-based IT offshore outsourcing firms took over their work at what is now called Eversource. Diangelo, at first, was quiet, bound by severance agreements signed with the company. Then he started speaking out. Now, Diangelo is running for Congress. offering up a first-hand perspective on IT outsourcing that resonates with many other workers in his state. "I've seen the injustices that have been done to us," said Diangelo, who is not optimistic lawmakers will deliver on H-1B reform. "You can't let this matter die down, because when you stop talking about it nothing seems to get done." Diangelo isn't a one-issue candidate or political novice. He previously served two terms as an alderman in his hometown of New Britain and remains involved in city planning work. The 64-year-old has filed the necessary papers to run for office, has a campaign manager, a website and knows he has to raise an awful lot money to challenge Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Esty, now in her third term. But Diangelo has no illusions about his odds. Even so, he may be the only person to run for Congress, at least in recent times, who has trained his replacement. He went to college hoping to be come a teacher, but when that proved difficult, he wound up at Travelers Insurance in Hartford -- in the company's data processing center.
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IT Worker Who Trained H-1B-Visa-Holding Replacement Aims For Congress

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Before it requires an angry voice, or automatic weapons fire, or SWAT teams, let people hear from him first.

    • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      Nobody has any sympathy for what constitutes "destitute" in the US because anybody with any reasonable upward mobility knows people in other countries that make their trials and tribulations look trivial.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @09:06PM (#54389369)
    vote in your primaries. Gerrymandering means that guys like this don't have a chance in the General. But in the primary anything goes. Change your party affiliation to the one that's owns your district if you have to, but vote in your primary. Also, call your representative and remind them you'll be voting in their primary and if they don't put a stop to this crap you'll kick them out.

    They're not afraid of losing the general. They _are_ afraid of their primaries.
  • by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @10:03PM (#54389683) Homepage Journal

    Hello fellow /.ers.

    For years we've watched this happen over and over again. When are we going to draw the line in the sand? Trump *might* do some things, then again he might not do anything. He has no skin in the game so to speak. Here we finally have a candidate who's been through what many of us have been through. We need to make sure he has the support he needs to win. Hopefully he either knows how to run a campaign, or has people to do that stuff for him (Speaking as an IT guy that has done a TON of campaign volunteering)

    To the Indian /.'ers.

    This is nothing against you, but the way you've been leveraged to drive down US IT worker wages has been unfair to us. I know you're simply looking for a better life, but when you take that H1-B job, and you're being trained by the person you're replacing, just remember what karma is. This has happened over and over and over again. Besides hurting us, you're not getting any closer to being "American". Your visa is designed to turn you into a low wage indentured servant, it is not a path to citizenship. I've seen how you and your brothers get treated, and I can't imagine why you guys haven't risen up yourself to unchain yourselves from this oppression. My only guess is you come from someplace worse than here, and that fear of going back, and being called a "failure" by your family, your village also weighs heavily on your minds.

  • The 64 year old. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @10:09PM (#54389713) Homepage

    The 64 year old. Good lord. This is what the future is, eh? Maybe the issue is that you can't retire at 63. Maybe the issue is you expect or need the same job at that age. That's kinda messed up. You might as well want the same things as a union at that point. Yet I kind of doubt this guy is pro-union.

    • start with lowering the age of Medicare eligibility. That is what keeps people working.

      Also we need up the H1B min wage to stop it from being used to replace us worker with cheap ones chained to the job.

      • by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

        Raise the age! Keep people working longer. It's absolutely idiotic that there is anyone who thinks retirement age should remain the same while life expectancy and medical care for the elderly continue to improve.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by pnutjam ( 523990 )
          It's easy for a white collar programmer who probably lives in an urban area with higher life expectancy to say "raise the wage".
          What about the blue collar workers who are struggling to make it to retirement, the lower working-class whose bodies are falling apart? Many of them already die before or shortly after retiring.
  • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @10:40PM (#54389851) Homepage Journal

    It can't be that much worse than what we have now. Just saying.

  • Two sentences worth of reasons for why he's running, a big Donate button, no party affiliation, no link to his stands on various issues, no standard candidate biography I could reach.

    he may be a great candidate, but you'd never tell that from his website.

    • by Desler ( 1608317 )

      And who decide it was a good idea to put a hamburger menu in the bottom right?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Starting to see why he got H1B'd.

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @11:30PM (#54390081)

    Well at least one part of the government is already doing what he wants - Trump's Administration Just Made It Harder to Get Work Visas [bloomberg.com]

    I couldn't tell what party he's with from his website [diangelo2018.com] but hopefully not with the Democrats, who have let the H1-B situation worsen for years while they collected huge donations from the companies involved in farming out these workers...

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Except for the H-2B expansion included in the 2017 Omnibus bill Trump signed last Friday. Good news however, no timeline. Still though, fucking sellouts in Congress!!!

      http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/09/h-2b-expansion-hits-dhs-roadblock/

  • When you can't do, teach. When you can't teach, run for Congress. "He went to college hoping to be come a teacher, but when that proved difficult...."
  • by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @09:55AM (#54392465)

    Northeast Utilities did what lots of big companies do -- outsource their IT to some faceless consulting company. It goes in cycles -- a new CIO comes in, promises millions of dollars in savings, it gets done, people are usually disappointed and IT usually swings at least partially back in-house. I've experienced it twice working in a financial services company and an airline. There is very little one can do when the MBA crowd presents the board with a spreadsheet showing 50 or 60% savings on IT.

    Those consulting companies should be the targets of any action. I actually think the H-1B as it was originally intended is a good "safety valve" to get a few very talented people into the country. I now work for a multinational company who has their own issues with offshoring, but has also used H-1Bs to move very key people to the US. What these outsourcing companies use it for is not that at all, and this abuse should be what's targeted. I would be fine with consulting companies using contractors, paying a little less, etc. as long as it was done fairly. What I've experienced is that the offshore company will bring in a few H-1B workers for the jobs that absolutely require a physical presence, as well as the "train your replacement" crew. This second group is who collects all the information, procedures, etc. from the soon-to-be-fired IT workers and sends it back to the offshore teams. H-1Bs are supposed to be high-level experts, not train-the-trainer guys.

    That said, I'm really hoping I don't wind up like this guy, a few years away from retirement and unhireable. The covert age discrimination in IT and software dev is what needs to stop. Every other proper profession values experienced people -- newbie doctors aren't considered experts until they've seen a lot of things, and frankly had their egos checked by having a few patients die on them unexpectedly. Yet, in the Silicon Valley startup world, and corporate IT in general, 25-year-old "rockstars" who work 100 hour weeks to make up for inexperience are celebrated. Now, it is true that there are older people who have not kept current with things and basically done the exact same job for 20 years. The problem is that as I age, and continue to keep my skills current because I really like what I do, I'm lumped in with the same "too old, too expensive, can't hang with the bros" crowd.

    I think that's one of the crappiest things companies do -- kicking out someone in their late 50s/early 60s to save money, knowing that they're never going to find a comparable job to bridge the gap between now and retirement. I've seen it happen many times...and people should save to defend against it. But at the same time, IT work or development is not like being a professional athlete, where you have a 10 year career at most and have to make all your money then.

  • It's only an "injustice" if the company didn't offer you to keep your job at the rate the Indian company was offering. If you refused to work for so little, then that's on you. Nationality does NOT make one person better or more entitled than another!

  • "But Diangelo has no illusions" - allusions is the correct word

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