Accenture to hire 15,000 US workers

[gopokes88]

Do not let this get political. This is simply to discuss if OKC can get an innovation center.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/17/accen...obs-in-us.html

Accenture said on Friday it would create 15,000 jobs in the United States, as IT services firms brace for a more protectionist U.S. technology visa program under President Donald Trump.
The company is domiciled in Dublin, Ireland, while a large chunk of its more than 394,000 employees are in India.
IT services companies came under the spotlight after Trump said that his administration would focus on creating more jobs for U.S. workers, who had been affected by the outsourcing of jobs abroad.

Major IT service companies, particularly those based in India, use H-1B visas to fly engineers to the United States to service clients, but some opponents argue they are misusing the program to replace U.S. jobs.
Accenture said on Friday it would invest $1.4 billion to train its employees and would open 10 innovation centers in some U.S. cities.
The newly added jobs will raise the company's U.S. workforce by 30 percent to more than 65,000 by the end of 2020, the company said.
The U.S. business accounted for 46 percent of the company's full-year revenue for the year ended Aug. 31.

[TheTravellers]

Wonder what an "innovation center" actually is (article doesn't elaborate)? Call center type of operation, training center, big warehouse with a bunch of desks with consultants (I think that's what Accenture calls them) sharing desks between flying around the country to clients, ...?

[gopokes88]

Wonder what an "innovation center" actually is (article doesn't elaborate)? Call center type of operation, training center, big warehouse with a bunch of desks with consultants (I think that's what Accenture calls them) sharing desks between flying around the country to clients, ...?

I have no idea, but it would be a good chunk of jobs non O&G related.

[Pete]

If it is meant to replace the thousands of software engineering jobs often occupied by Indian Visa holders, then no, OKC would probably not be a good candidate because of a workforce that is not well served by the local education system.

[Laramie]

Oklahoma has one of the nation's best & most reputable vocation technology training system of centers in the country.; if Accenture needs training and an innovation center (plenty of warehouse space in OKC); we are well equipped as any state to take on this challenge.

Now, as it relates to replacements as referenced in Pete's concerns above; not sure about how this would benefit Oklahoma.

[Pete]

Vo-tech does not provide the type of training needed for these jobs.

[Laramie]

Vo-tech does not provide the type of training needed for these jobs.

Wow! Sounds like in-house training...

Are there any incentives we (Oklahoma) could provide to lure Accenture jobs and a training center or would this be something that would be in our best interest?

[Pete]

The jobs most often filled by mainly Indians on visas are software engineering jobs.

Go to any company in the Silicon Valley and they have scores of them because they can't find Americans who are qualified.

So, to replace those jobs it will take someone with not only college degrees but a fair bit of experience as well.

[FighttheGoodFight]

We really need some sort of push of STEM in college. Not for everyone I understand but we should be doing better than 24% of people in OK having a college degree.

[stile99]

We absolutely positively need to greatly increase focus on STEM. I don't want to take away from that point.

That said, when the tech sector says "can't find Americans who are qualified", by 'qualified' they usually mean 'willing to work for $1.14 an hour'. Exact numbers are hard to pin down of course, they would obviously change based on what company is being discussed, but using the numbers from payscale.com, in the US a software engineer can expect an average of a little over 80K per year.

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/...ngineer/Salary

In India, that's about halfway between 420K and 421K a year.

http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/...grammer/Salary

Senior engineers have an average of about halfway between 711K and 712K a year.

http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/...ngineer/Salary

Now, those last two numbers are in Rupees. Converted to US dollars that's a little over $6200 for the engineer and $10,000 for the senior engineer.

Yearly.

[Pete]

Actually, I know lots of managers in the Silicon Valley who have Indian visa workers on their staff and they are very well paid.

If you can do that job and do it well, you make very good money.

[Teo9969]

Without making a value judgement one way or the other, I believe Trump and his staff want to increase the minimum salary for those types of visas from (and I can't remember the exact numbers) $60,000 to $120,000.

Were they successful in doing so, that would have pretty profound effect on all this.

[stile99]

Actually, I know lots of managers in the Silicon Valley who have Indian visa workers on their staff and they are very well paid.

Where are they located? I'm going to guess here, based on the 'visa workers' part. There's a bit of a difference between someone here and someone in a sweatshop in India. I don't think the people here are paid in rupees.

[Pete]

Where are they located? I'm going to guess here, based on the 'visa workers' part. There's a bit of a difference between someone here and someone in a sweatshop in India. I don't think the people here are paid in rupees.

The point is that those here on visas would be curtailed under new immigration plans and they are the ones that would have to be replaced.

[Rover]

Where are they located? I'm going to guess here, based on the 'visa workers' part. There's a bit of a difference between someone here and someone in a sweatshop in India. I don't think the people here are paid in rupees.

Sweatshops? Really? Have you ever worked with any programmers based in India. You stereotype any work done outside the US as being done under extreme situations. If you visit companies around the world you might be surprised and better informed. There are sweatshops, of course, but many legitimate, well run foreign companies just willing to do it for less to get the work. That's what competition is about.

[stile99]

You stereotype any work done outside the US as being done under extreme situations.

I said all work done outside the US is done in sweatshops? When did I say that? I said there's a difference, does this equate to me saying that all work done outside the US is done in sweatshops? I don't believe it does, so I'm sorry that I'm unable to make that same leap.

There are sweatshops, of course

You acknowledge they exist. Excellent. Do you propose that you and I acknowledging they exist implies that 'any' (your word, not mine) work done outside the US is done exclusively inside them? Because that's what you are accusing me of, I'm not sure you realize that.

Before anyone else gets the desire to tell me what I said, ALL I said was in response to Pete's posting that companies can't find Americans qualified to do software engineering jobs. I disagree. That's literally all I'm saying. Anything else read into it would be a reflection on one's own prejudices.

[Mike_M]

I had a long response about outsourcing, but it's probably something to save for the politics thread.

Back to the OKC discussion, I see several challenges in OKC landing a large IT firm. One, (edited from my initial comment) the education isn't here. The work they do is highly technical and requires several very specialized classes and compounding experience. There simply isn't an infrastructure for that kind of education here.

Secondly, travel is expensive and pretty cumbersome. These IT firms spend a lot on travel, but they are constantly trying to control it. At the service center I work, a lot of people are from out of town, and their firms will find every and any excuse for them to telework for the week instead of flying in. Even though most software is online, there are stages of development that require face-to-face interaction with field users. In such a dynamic business, a lot of travel can be last minute, which only gets even more expensive.

Third, Dallas. Not a big fan of the city so it's hard for me to give them props, but they've been successfully siphoning IT from the west coast for 10 years. They've also solved the two problems above for a while now.

That said, I've heard nothing but good things about Paycom, which seems to be expanding their product offerings every year. I think the city would get a better ROI on feeding grassroots IT companies in the state.

[NoOkie]

Actually, I know lots of managers in the Silicon Valley who have Indian visa workers on their staff and they are very well paid.

If you can do that job and do it well, you make very good money.

Pete, there are two common ways to use H1Bs in the tech sector:

Company A can't find the skill set they need, they go through the process and hire an H1B and pay him decent wages. Good chance he's Indian if in the IT area.

Company B is a massive company with a fully staffed IT department they're paying for. They hire an outsource firm like Tata or WiPro to replace the jobs. The outsource firm places blanket ads for all sorts of IT positions with pay significantly below market and then use that as justification to bring H1B visa holders. Company B's staff is forced to train their replacements or lose severance, and are then laid off.

I've never had a problem with the company A's out there. But that company B scenario is pretty ****ty.

That being said, I think you're right that we're not going to see many big IT shops moving here. Unemployment in the IT sector is already pretty low, and trying to compete against California, Seattle and Denver/Colorado Springs for new CS grads is probably a losing battle. I know if I was a 20 something college grad with marketable skills, we're a pretty hard sell.

[Questor]

Accenture is formerly the consulting part of the Arthur Andersen firm; their core business has always been consulting, etc. In the past they have headquartered in tax havens such as the Bahamas and Ireland. I have no insider knowledge of the company, but it would seem to me that their approach is consulting for large established companies and providing them with cost-effective IT services. In the industry lingo some websites have called this an outsourcing model. If that is their model, then it would make sense that given the current climate they would try to shift to an "insourcing" model. From a Trump administration perspective this doesn't really / sort of solves the original problem but maybe it is considered more palatable.

Innovation Centers are the latest craze in the technology industry. The easiest way to describe it would be a place that is setup to automate business functions for you. They are important because rather than for example being a taxi cab driver who is setting around waiting to be disrupted by silicon valley or other competitors, maybe you take charge of your own destiny and disrupt yourself by innovating. So maybe you own some factory that does the same thing it has for the last 50 years... in today's climate, your business is at risk, there is no way it isn't. If you want to grow and reduce waste, you need to innovate. That is what an Innovation Center is for... think of it like an IT showroom floor with flashy robots and other cool stuff, but upstairs are a bunch of folks who can completely rework your business.

I would be really surprised if something like this located here for two reasons: 1. we don't have enough STEM people here... we would have to pull them in from the rest of the country... that is really hard without competitive salaries, which kind of runs against the grain on what this company is trying to accomplish, 2. the point of an Innovation Center is to setup shop next to your potential customers. Oil and Gas is probably the only thing big-enough here to attract one of these... possibly aerospace, I don't know if it is quite big enough here for them to care about yet, but there are certain restrictions in that field that would probably keep them out of that industry anyway. The state of local business might not be as important if we had really robust air service here, but we don't.

So with not enough technology workers, and only one industry big enough for someone like this company to care about being possible customers here, I just don't see it.

I forget how many college degrees we crank out each year here in Oklahoma, but I know it is less than 30%, and only some fraction of that falls in the STEM category. The reality is that STEM jobs are just going to continue to grow and gobble-up all the older industries... the state really needs to change gears and start focusing on this before it is too late.

[Rover]

But I thought STEM was a liberal left wing endeavor to make states conform to their agenda. You mean it has merit? Who knew?

[jn1780]

But I thought STEM was a liberal left wing endeavor to make states conform to their agenda. You mean it has merit? Who knew?

I don't know that that many people who stay that about an actual STEM related degree.

[soonerguru]

We do have a lot of tech talent that is connected to civilian and DOD jobs at Tinker. Just throwing that out there. But it is mostly defense and aerospace related industries.

[Bunty]

If it is meant to replace the thousands of software engineering jobs often occupied by Indian Visa holders, then no, OKC would probably not be a good candidate because of a workforce that is not well served by the local education system.

But Oklahoma's minimum wage is still just $7.25 an hour and has Right to Work. Compare that to Colorado where the min. wage is $9.30 and does NOT have Right to Work.