Deborah Rothberg

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announced on June 1 that the 65,000 H-1B visa supply has been exhausted for the 2007 fiscal year, four months before new ones will be made available. The H-1B, launched in 1990, is a temporary work visa issued to skilled foreign nationals allowing them to work in the United […]

In the lull before the long holiday weekend, the U.S. Senate passed the immigration reform bill on May 25, which includes a controversial provision to raise the H-1B visa cap to 115,000 from 65,000. Bill Gates, Microsofts chairman and chief software architect and long a proponent of an uncapped H-1B program, arguing that limits must […]

Nearly half of the U.S. IT workforce is planning to change jobs in the next year, according to a study released May 31 by recruiting and staffing firm Spherion Corporation. “Right now, it is clearly an employees market for IT workers,” said Brendan Courtney, senior vice president of Spherion Professional Services, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in […]

Appalachia may be one of the poorest regions of the United States, but its about to receive a boost of technology riches thanks to a partnership announced May 26 between the Appalachian College Association and IBM. Designed to build open standards skills and promote collaborative learning, the new initiative between the ACA and IBM will […]

Do you have what it takes to move upward in your IT career? Or enough juice in the skills department to weather an outbreak of outsourcing? Several longtime watchers of the IT jobs market say they believe tech workers impressions of whats needed to succeed may be out of date, and offered eWEEK some tips […]

News spread quickly that the director of Microsofts internal security told a reporter at the AusCERT conference May 23 that Microsoft is considering limiting employees full admin rights to their desktop PCs. Microsoft has always given the majority of its employees full admin rights on their desktop PCs, though this is unusual; most companies IT […]

Microsoft has been taking action to improve its reportedly low employee morale, unveiling a series of new perks as part of a program dubbed “MyMicrosoft” at an all-employee meeting May 18. This comes on the heels of a Reuters report that 1,000 Microsoft contract workers were forced to take a week off without pay. MyMicrosoft […]

Today it seems that everyone is talking about work-life balance, throwing about catch phrases such as “work to live—dont live to work” and “escape the rat race.” Yet beyond the inspirational mantra comes the reality of IT infrastructure and services that demand 24/7 attention. The pressure of this service level is leading many workers to […]

A new study of Web surfing behaviors at work finds that on any given day, an employee might check out porn, fall for a phishing scam or drain bandwidth while streaming a music video on company time. Nevertheless, 50 percent of office workers would rather give up their morning coffee than their Web surfing, finds […]

One in three workers want flex schedules as part of their overall compensation, finds the Hudson Employment Indexs Transforming Pay Plans 2006 Compensation and Benefits report, released May 17. “[Workers] are placing much greater value on less tangible, lifestyle-oriented benefits,” Peg Buchenroth, managing director of compensation and benefits for Toronto-based Hudson Highland Group said in […]