I have not been able to get a job in my field in over THREE years. Companies call me "overqualified". If I offer to work for the same wages as the H1b hires get companies say "you won't stay long." Just what exactly am I supposed to do? The sooner I get out of Engineering the better.

Vote Kucinich (D) or Tancredo (R) in the 2008 presidential primaries!

Oh, cry me a river. Microsoft isn't laying off all their US development staff and starting up in Soviet Canukistan. They're expanding their workforce and since they can't get the people they want in the US they're moving elsewhere.

What did the government expect when they made it as difficult as they can to bring in talent from other countries?

M$ was founded in America, but is now an international company. Let them take the jobs to Vancouver and pay import taxes when they bring the foreign software in. They gave up on US high tech workers a long time ago.

This was not the first nor will be the last Microsoft facility in another country. Their PR wonks just spun it that way in order to lobby for an H-1B increase. I'm told they owned the land already, the facility was already in the cards. They simply used it as a visual aid for Bill to throw a hissy fit when he got thwarted on the H-1B issue.

Ephraim Schwartz wrote:

"If Microsoft believes in fairness, and not just in lower wages for skilled IT people, then why aren't they looking here as well?"

Microsloft has completed a productivity study and found the following:

1. Employees with family present, tend to require paid family leave and personal time for events such as transporting sick children/parents for medical treatment.

Solution: Hire socially dysfunctional employees who are willing to live thousands of miles away from family distractions.

2. Employees tend to have personal-lives which interfere with anticipated overtime hours.

Solution: Hire employees with family abroad, socializing will occur within same-sex shared communal apartments and required remuneration to family abroad will deter non-sanctioned socializing.

3. Employees with American college degrees tend to service college-debt, require cost of living raises and ongoing life-learning.

Solution: Hire foreign employees with inexpensive foreign bachelors degrees (American postgraduate only when requested by CompeteAmerica for guestworker propaganda program.) Replace foreign employee(s) with new foreign employee(s), which mitigates salary inflation and eliminates life-learning requirement.

4. Employees with U.S. mortgages unfairly require that the location of employment be within commutable distance from residence and often require cost of living raises. Additionally, these employees resist arbitrary relocation of employment and participate free-trade practices such as considering employment with competitors.

Solution: Foreign workers living in commune-style residences with self-contained socialization patterns are easily relocated. Relocation costs are minimal because most possessions are jointly owned and left within the communal residence.

Where would you like to go today?

The bigger question is what about Canadian citizens who are displaced by non-Canadians brought in to Canada? As a dual citizen of both Canada and the USA, it seems to me Microsoft would do far better investing in higher education for both Americans and Canadians, than trying to do end runs around both countries immigration regulations.

Especially since they are the second largest outsourcer in the USA, according to INS statistics.

Solution: Get real and stop trying to game the system.

It is not just Microsoft. I live in a community where a Canadian company is "expanding" and hiring up to 2000 new programmers and techs. Of course to expand, they need vast tax breaks from the city, county and state-- which all of the anti-government Republicans are all lined-up to provide. The catch is that they are looking for employee candidates with Ph.D.s. Like all of my programming neighbors have doctorates. But there is a load of visa candidates with "doctorates" all lined up and ready to move in. Fire the politicians that enable the bad behavior of companies.

Microsoft says they need more H-1B'a since they can't find enough "qualified" people. Their idea of qualified is someone willing to work for peanuts. I attended a very diverse University of California campus and believe me many newcomers to this country, including BS degrees in CS and EE will gladly work for minimum wage just to get a foothold here. That is exactly what Gates wants.
Enough complaining: If you have the H-1B blues, why not consider a job in Aerospace? I work for a big defense contractor, they have lots of IT jobs. US Citizenship required. You must get a security clearence where I work, so if you have a serious record you are out of luck. No H-1B competion pushing down wages. No way you can get "offshored". Great benefits, pensions, 401K, the works.
Yes, we build stuff used to fight wars. If you are a hearts-and-flowers liberal you might not like that. I could care less, I'm happy to work on stuff that kills terrorists. Check it out!

As an IT professional, I can't tell you how many times I have gotten someone on the line when I call tech support for a product, that has such a strong accent, that I can't understand what they're saying. I don't know if the Microsoft in Vancouver is hiring any tech support staff, but aren't there language barriers involved in hiring so many foreign staff?

Speaking of language barriers, I actually upgraded WSUS using info written in German on a German website. And it worked! I'm starting to understand German! Mind you the screen captures of the upgrade were all in English. So that helped. So maybe language is not that big of a barrier when it comes to software engineering.

95% of the customer issues I encounter are not with our CRM application, but with Microsoft apps which users have never really learned, and of course they haven't spoken to a MS help desk person in years, if ever.
I'm not sure MS gave up on finding and hiring American geeks, but they certainly didn't support us, that's for sure!
If anyone thinks MS is hiring non-US IT workers for creativity, then you don't know or ignore Microsoft's high-profits, endless delays and delivery of the poorest quality, bug-ridden ponderous code that one can buy for the money.

MS is notorious for their habit of buying serious competition, or outright stealing it. Then they send their lawyers into court to fight it out for years like they did with Borland.
MS wants individuals, programmers and small businesses to spend thousands to become certified on their product and most of it is learning how to work around the tens of thousands of bugs and glitches in their previous or current version. With that sais, I hereby challenge MS to a serious world class competition. The following was off the top of my head after 4-cups of coffee – so be kind – I’m just venting.

The project would in effect be a reality show that would be recorded without interfering with or asking questions of any of the participants. It would not be viewable until the project was completely over.
The following is an ad hoc list of requirements for consideration.

An independent team of five business consultants would design and specify a sophisticated data based software project involving one billion customer records. Suggestions from all over the world could be submitted via a special web site. None of the participants would know who the designers or the testers were and would not be able to communicate with them. All forms of communication and travel would be audited, recorded and documented by different independent security teams. A third security team would evaluate the performance of the first two security teams.
Microsoft would provide a draw account of $500 million for each team. A complete accounting of all expenses would be required from each team at the end of the project. Of course, MS would own all copyrights, broadcast rights, etc. for both versions, and retain all funds remaining. Only an English language version of the application is required.
One team would consist of 25 non-US citizen members and the second team would consist of independent native US citizen programmers. The project would have to be designed by the consultants in one month and completed by the teams in 3 months; and then two weeks of testing each application during the fifth month.
The application would have to be capable of being served to tens of thousands and auto-tested for 500 simultaneous users via the Internet, LAN and WAN - using a combination of Unix and Windows servers located in five countries running on five different processors (e.g. PC, AS400, etc.) per the design.
The hardware and telecom design would be identical of course, but each team would be responsible for independently provisioning a separate but identical network. All equipment and telecommunications circuits would have to be setup and financed independently from the budget of each team. Only built-in documentation would be available to the Testers.
A second independent team of five consultants with no previous knowledge of the design would have to use each application for a period of two weeks. At the end of the month they would rank each application using very strict guidelines. (Of course, they would not know for certain which team created each product.)
Members of both consultant teams would be paid a salary of $25,000. each for one-month of work.
All team members would each be paid the same salary of $100,000. for the 3-month period. The winning team would be paid an additional $100,000. each. Total time allowed each day in the work facility would be restricted to 16 hours per day. All project members would be required to exit the work facility to an adjacent R&R facility for 8 hours each day and one 24-hour day per week – scheduled by the team members. There could be no exceptions or requirements of any kind made on team members during this one day of documented rest.
Will MS accept and fund the challenge? I think not! They would rather spend billions on advertising that tells us how great their products are, or fight competitors in court, or fund politicians and entertainment companies in all sorts of global endeavors that no one seems to question. By the way, whatever happened to the antitrust laws? Does anyone even know what they are? Does anyone care? I think so!

Do you really expect Microsoft to find enough qualified employees in a country where most citizens can't find their own country on an unmarked map.
Just ask Miss South Carolina.

Go to Microsoft.com/careers and take a look at how many positions are open in the US for SDET and SDE roles. Hundred and hundreds of them - there is plenty of opportunity for US engineers.

So, has anyone heard what's going on with this Vancouver Development Center? When is it opening? What type of development work will they be doing? Is Don Mattrick going to call this office his home base?

Yes, M$ is really a bad place to work. They don't care for americans, they cheat on business, and their feet stink. Why are you complaining then? You wouldn't like to work for them anyway...