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Don't Answer The Polls -- You May Get Audited

According the sources inside the Barack Obama campaign, many Obama staffers are making calls posing as pollsters to identify McCain supporters. The strategy is being used to compile lists of people to be targeted for audits and other action if and when Obama wins.

According to an anonymous Obama staffer:

"If we come across a McCain supporter while doing our so-called polling, we record the number and do a reverse look-up to log the name and address. This data is uploaded nightly to Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago. The word is that this database will be passed on to Obama donors working for government agencies so that these people can be investigated for child-support issues, unpaid taxes, warrants, and other problems. I heard the IRS will be involved, because many Barack donors have been identified as IRS people."

Another staffer, reported on the Obama campaign's attempt to confuse voters:

"We pay people and organize people to go to all the online sites and play the part of a clinton or mccain supporter who just switched our support for obama…
The polls are roughly 3-5 points in favor of Barack. Thats due to our inflation of the polls and pulling in the sheeple." (http://hillbuzz.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/confession-of-an-obama-blogger-by-sarah-p-as-posted-to-this-site/)


So if you get a call from someone claiming to be a pollster, hang-up. It may be an Obama staffer trying to skew the polls or compile a list of anti-Obama people.

Lurking With The CEWPs

I'm going to wrap up the SIAN thread soon (I have a year and half worth of material to draw from), but I wanted to shed some light on the odd world of the H-1B programmer. You know, CEWPs.

For the last year, I have been lurking on a forum for H-1Bs. As you will see from the posts that have I culled, this is a dark and nefarious world, full of scams and deceit.

First, the H-1B agencies trick the U.S. companies into believing that they have qualified developers to fill all the programming positions that supposedly cannot be filled by American developers.

Next, these agencies have to trick these foreign programmers into leaving their home country with promises of good jobs and great pay. Then the H-1B programmers try to get out of their contracts and commitments with the corrupt agencies by switching jobs. Finally, the agencies sue the poor programmers, who then in turn file complaints with the U.S. government.

While reading these posts that I have collected, note the lack of English skills. The bad grammar. The misspellings. All of it.

Now, normally a U.S. programmer needs a bachelor’s degree to get a good job in the I.T. field. In order to get that degree, the programmer would have to demonstrate a reasonable command of the English language. He/she would have to write papers, take English classes, and communicate verbally and in written form with instructors and peers.

And why do a lot of job descriptions for developers include the term "Must have good communication skills?" Perhaps being able to deal with complex technical issues requires a command of the English language above that of the average 6th-grader.

So how can these H-1Bs be considered qualified to replace a U.S. developer? If I started sending emails to my bosses and peers in an amateurish manner, I would eventually be dismissed as an ignoramus.

But most of all, after reading these posts, look at the sheer amount of fraud that involves these transactions. Is it really worth it?

Because it looks like the U.S. companies pay about $75/hour to these H-1B firms, which is about $10/hr below the going rate for a local staffing firm. The fact is that the local company who places a U.S. developer gets about a 30% cut, and the American programmer grosses about $50-$60/hr W-2. These rates have been flat or declining since the Y2K/dot-com days, when a programmer could expect to gross $75-$100/hr -- even after the agency got the cut.

So what do these H-1Bs make after their agency takes their cut (after all, the firms have to pay for visas, plane flights, lawsuits, and countersuits)?

$23 an hour.

That's right, Mr. IT Manager, you are saving about $10 an hour by going with the H-1B firm instead of a local recruiter. And in return, you get an illiterate indentured servent with horrible communication skills. And he probably can't code. But if he complains, he losses his visa and gets sent back to India to make $5/hr instead of $23/hr.

So you have him by the proverbial balls. You can't really do that to fiesty American developer, can you, Mr. IT Manager?

You deserve to have someone piss in your coffee, you schmuck.

Now, here are the posts (I've replaced the name of the H-1B agency in question, because they appear to enjoy legal action) :

HI M*** S***** (The great hr director of MeanFartin),
Don't make that you are a genuine person and your company is a decent company, I know very well about you and your company employees, like how they are suffering, after joining this company. You guys are suing all employees, whose are quit within 2 years contract. Why they are quiting, because you guys were treating like a slaves. I was a slave for MeanFartin for some time. Now, I am very happy after come out from this ugly company. All are trying to make money, but you guyz are like real BLOOD SUCKERS. My hourly rate was $75, but you have given $23. You and your colleagues are sucking your employees blood.
*I don't like to give harsh and bad words. but MeanFartin consultancies like poison ivy. No human being, no courtesy, no decency, no discipline.*

Hi
I am a new joinee in this company. This is my first time in USA too. From the day one, things are looking dirty and suspicious. First the HR girl takes away my I-94 card. I gave it to her but later my friends told me that I made a mistake because that makes me illegal in USA. I ask for my card back, but they are refusing saying that it belongs to the compnay. I am not sure if this is true.
Also, their office is actaully in a small town in New Jersey. When they hired me they told me they are based in New york. There are just 3-4 guys sitting there. I did not know it was such a small company.
They also lied to me about company strength. When they interviewed me they told me that they have 200+ employees. But the I-129 petition says they have only 17 employees.
I am already quite scared. I am running out of the money I brought from India. I have not been able to find any project for myself yet. These guys have not paid me a single dollar yet.
:confused::(:eek:

Hi Friends,
MeanFartin is sued me recently for " breach of contract ". Please let me know how to face this court case against MeanFartin, if anybody face these kind of experience with MeanFartin.

This is strange. Suman Gaur left this company long back.
Looks like Mona, Ravi etc are trying to rip you off by playing tricks on you. Whatever happens, don't pay them any money before you reach US. Also, try to get air ticket from these guys themselves.
These guys are not in the good books of US govt anyway. Coming to US on this company's visa will spoil your immigration record too. My advice, try to find some other company. This company is really nothing but a confidence trick operation. Last month, all their newly filed H1 visas were rejected by US govt.
---Quote (Originally by snappy)---
hi, i understand you are an employee of MeanFartin. I am one of those consultant whom they sponsored H1B last year and until now I am not in the US together with others whom havent not contacted by JM for sometime.
And then suddenly, we got a call/email from " SUMAN GAUR " she said she is Senior Manager, Global Services of Mean Fartin... we dont know how true her email is and how legitimate her message to us. She was saying that " she will be working with me/us on our "on-boarding" process to USA on an internal project or a client project based on my current skill-set.
She would like to speak with me regarding the regarding travel plans so that HR can go ahead make arrangements accordingly. She said that their intention is to bring you to USA as soon as possible and it can be as soon as
by end of this May.
any feedback guy, your advice and opinion are highly appreciated. We are not sure how true their intention is....

Hi All,
I guess this blog is gonna save my life. I just got my H1B petition approved through Mean Fartin. Now how do I back off ? I think i'm wasting whole year by filing with JM. But its better to have a peaseful life in India instead of struggling with JM. Please advice.
Ashish.

Hi guys,

I had a very bad experience in dealing with this company recently. About a year ago I was looking for some project in NJ/NY area, and this company found my resume on the Internet. Their recruiter contacted me and took my social security number, saying that it was needed for the purpose of submitting the resume. Being quite naive back then, I gave away my SSN in good faith to this company.

The project never came through. That was not a problem because I soon found another project in another company and forgot all about this Mean Fartin. However, when my current project got over and I started looking for new project, I came across a nasty surprise.

Apparently, this company Mean Fartin was misusing my SSN for the purpose of fraudulently applying to different projects behind my back! I am a peoplesoft developer, and whenever this company would come across some job opening in peoplesoft they would apply using my name and SSN without bothering to inform me. The trick is that through this tactic they will prevent me from getting the same job. (The clients summarily rejects resumes which have been doubly submitted). So they would increase the chances of getting the projects to their preferred candidate. Also, by flooding the job market with such fraudulent resumes they would give the impression that they have a large pool of consultants available, which of course is not true at all. It is a typical back of alley desi money making scam.

I am still suffering from the effects of making the mistake of giving them my social security number. I still haven't found job in any of the large financial firms in NJ/NY area. I am just hoping that these b*****ds have not sold my SSN on the Internet. Then I would really be in soup because my credit history can be ruined in such a case.

How low can people get? What would their children do with such a ill gotten wealth of their parents? I am really not a vindictive or hard-hearted person, but in the case of the recruiter of this company, I really wish his children pay for his deeds in the future. After all my kids have suffered because of them.

Occupational Hazards

Two weeks into my new gig at the Sweatshop In A Nightclub (SIAN), I started to have physical problems.

First, a tingling in my fingers, followed by a numbness in my wrists. Shoulder pain. A stiff neck.

At first, I chalked it up to the long hours. The project I was working was an under-bid, under-planned set of enhancements for a big client, SIAN’s bread and butter. The client was a big computer company – let’s call them Pewlett Hackard.

And, as I was soon to find out, this was how all the projects at SIAN worked. I would spend 10-12 hours a day working on a web page, and an account executive (either Baby Huey or Ms. Account Executive Whore ) would stomp into our three-man office and throw a stack of printed screen shots on a desk. The pages were covered with red marks.

“PH wants these change made ASAP!!!”

So I or one of the other two developers would take a few of the pages and start hacking the changes in. I worked with two other guys – Cowboy and a total nerd that I shall alias at a later date. The nerd was such a piece of work that I am at a total loss for an appropriate nickname.

I mean, how do you come up with a moniker for a guy that can only be described as a “forty-something tech school grad with coke-bottle glasses who goes on vacations with his mother and drives a 15 year old import that he thinks is a bitchin’ ride and plays guitar in his Catholic church and has probably never been laid and used to work in the defense industry for, like, twenty years, and is a big hot head, and thinks Amiga was the greatest fuckin’ system ever made – and had been working at this place for seven years, and is the only one that understands the PDF generation code that he hacked together for THE BIG CLIENT, so NO ONE CAN FIRE HIM, and wears jeans and plaid shirts tucked in and the belt is pulled all the way up to his solar plexus, and thinks PHP is the ONLY language worth programming in, and the all this .NET shit is crap, and he’ll be dammed if is going to deal with shit like version control…”

You get my point.

As for Cowboy – you know what I mean. A hacker. Rockstar programmer who knows all. There is one in every shop, if not a shop full of them.

The kind of programmer that names all primary keys “id.” So when you are trying to figure out his in-line SQL, none of it makes a bit of sense because it all look like “Select a.id, b.id from tblShit a, tblCrap b Where a.id=b.id.”

Fucker.

Bastard did not even have the fucking courtesy to spell his variables properly. “Customer” would become the “Cutsomor” property. The “Assigned” field would be either the “Assding” or “Assnigd” parameter.

Whatever, baby. “’CAUSE I’M A COWBOY!”

Assnigd?

I was asking (aksing?) him about some of his code once, and it was full of these charming examples of illiteracy.

“Oh, just so you know,” he said, “when I’m in the zone and really coding, my spelling gets kinda bad. Just so you know.”

Thanks for the heads-up, butt-wipe.

Now, for those assholes out there who want to pull the “YOU’RE A HYPOCRITE” card and point out my grammatical faux-pas --- fuck you. I am writing a blog. Not code.

Anyway, some of the changes were cosmetic. Others were wholesale redesigns of pages, menus, functionality. Whatever.

This would go on until about six at night, when most of the company would go home, except for the developers and the account managers. Someone would order in food, and we would take a break around the bar, eat, and drink a few beers. Then it was back to work, usually until around nine, when we would do a build and the account executives would screenshot the whole site and get their red Sharpies out. They would then present the site to the client in the morning, and the whole cycle would start again.

At first, it was kind of cool. Exciting. Wow, I thought, this is like working at a dot-com. And I could drink at work!

But it got old quickly.

The most dangerous thing in my business, other than a fellow programmer walking in with a machete or an AK, is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. It can end your career. So you have to be careful.

So, after a couple of weeks, I took a tape measure to my desk.

Holy shit, it was 38 inches high! And the cheap, trendy, IKEA chair they had me in had NO HIGHT ADJUSTMENT.

“Dude,” I asked Cowboy -- who was in the same kind of chair, and would code with his keyboard in his lap and his feet propped up on his desk, “what is with these desks? They are so fuckin’ high.”

“Yeah, when they turned this stage into offices, they paid some Mexican to come in and do the construction. He ran an electrical conduit across the room about waist-high, so they wanted him to build the desks above that so that it would look, like, smooth and shit. So we got high desks. Don’ bother me, I kinda dig it.”

He went back to his coding.

Man, I thought, I gotta take this up with the boss man. ASAP.