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Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

wsj.com

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Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#181

Post by no_wave »

winter_blue wrote: post #172
jmspring wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm jaded. But stories like this are planned to divert to things like what IBM are doing or job shops like Tata,etc. "Oh look at what immigrants are contributing in entrepreneurial sense, but ignore how big companies are moving jobs overseas." IBM and Disney, iconic US brands are at the for front of outsourcing local jobs using H1B scabs as the route.

Well, there are two groups of companies. Companies that can't find the talent that they need in this country, and companies trying to save money. There definitely is a STEM shortage, and you are being really dishonest if you say there isn't. Ask any hiring manager at a tech company. Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and many, many other companies do not underpay or maltreat their visa-holding employees in any way. It is p…

There is absolutely no STEM shortage at the Facebook/Google level. Google has been on the record many times that they're happy rejecting good applicants in order to reduce the risk of hiring a bad candidate. That's not what hiring during a shortage looks like.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#182

Post by dalke »

winter_blue wrote: post #172
jmspring wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm jaded. But stories like this are planned to divert to things like what IBM are doing or job shops like Tata,etc. "Oh look at what immigrants are contributing in entrepreneurial sense, but ignore how big companies are moving jobs overseas." IBM and Disney, iconic US brands are at the for front of outsourcing local jobs using H1B scabs as the route.

Well, there are two groups of companies. Companies that can't find the talent that they need in this country, and companies trying to save money. There definitely is a STEM shortage, and you are being really dishonest if you say there isn't. Ask any hiring manager at a tech company. Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and many, many other companies do not underpay or maltreat their visa-holding employees in any way. It is p…

No, there is not a STEM shortage because "STEM" is a nonsense term. The companies you mentioned don't want to hire anthropologists, general relativity theorists, large animal biologists, nuclear power engineers, differential geometry experts, meteorologists, pharmaceutical chemists, or most of the other diverse fields in STEM.

No, the shortage is only in from a much smaller subset of primarily programming related skills.

If there were a real shortage, FB and others would start their own training program, give people scholarships to attend for a year and get up to speed, then hire the best candidates from that pool. We are nowhere near there because it's cheaper to get people to pay for their own education (or get the government to pay for it), and hire from that.

Historical, that's similar to what happened when there were real labor shortages. After all, it's not like all the women welders during WWII came in knowing how to weld.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#183

Post by winter_blue »

lgbr wrote: post #175
winter_blue wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was responding to the article, but the WSJ article is not about the super-rich moving here. It is about the vast majority of skilled immigrants who have to go through the H-1B visa as a step in their immigration process.

> It is about the vast majority of skilled immigrants who have to go through the H-1B visa as a step in their immigration process. They don't have to go through the H-1B process. Generally, wealthy people are people don't just have good jobs and money, they also have connections, are attractive, and hold citizenship from wealthy countries, all things that make it much easier to come to the US. Their connections allow…

I disagree. I've met people from Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., and other people who have citizenship in wealthy first-world countries through FWD.us meetups and elsewhere. They all had an incredibly hard time immigrating here.

We're not talking about the top 2% or 3%, but the 95% of the citizens of these rich first-world countries. Not folks who have $500k+ just lying around. One of the peope I met at FWD.us was a Canadian citizen, but he couldn't even get a TN visa because the TN occupation list didn't cover his field. See this article for more stories: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/large-companies-game-h-...

Also, the O visa is not "for various types of talent". It is an "extraordinary ability" visa that is really difficult to get. The only viable employment-based pathways to the US are the H-1B visa, the L-1 (intra-company transfer), and for rare talented few, the O-1 visa. The L-1 is a horrible visa where you can't change jobs and are deported if you ever get laid off. If you want the ability to change jobs, your only option is the H-1B visa[1].

I've looked carefully into the visa rules, and it as though Congress wanted to make it as hard as possible for people to immigrate into this country. They've built a incredibly complex system with numerous restrictions and conditions, and Damocles swords.

[1] H-1B visa holders lose legal status the very day after their employment ends. H-1B visa holders can change jobs, but they must be careful to never get laid off. It's insane. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11188339

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#184

Post by ones_and_zeros »

winter_blue wrote: post #172
jmspring wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm jaded. But stories like this are planned to divert to things like what IBM are doing or job shops like Tata,etc. "Oh look at what immigrants are contributing in entrepreneurial sense, but ignore how big companies are moving jobs overseas." IBM and Disney, iconic US brands are at the for front of outsourcing local jobs using H1B scabs as the route.

Well, there are two groups of companies. Companies that can't find the talent that they need in this country, and companies trying to save money. There definitely is a STEM shortage, and you are being really dishonest if you say there isn't. Ask any hiring manager at a tech company. Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and many, many other companies do not underpay or maltreat their visa-holding employees in any way. It is p…

There is not a STEM shortage according to many academics who study the issue and scientific research.

What you are claiming is a shortage is a lot like me claiming there is a shortage of Mercedes vehicles because I can't afford the ones on the market.

Supply will meet demand and I wish employers were encouraged to train already well educated people that are in this country already than lobby for the expansion of immigration, because to me the expansion of immigration just really looks like employers not willing to pay market rates.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#185

Post by ArkyBeagle »

staunch wrote: post #6

These are not the downtrodden masses. Immigrant does not mean poor. These are wealthy upper class people coming to the most logical place to create a successful technology company, because they can afford to do so. Poor people are usually stuck wherever they are. Investors in Silicon Valley care a lot about status and pedigree. A foreigner that can afford elite credentials is far more likely to get funding than a poo…

See also "The Lump of Labor Fallacy". Supply and demand only "work" in cases where supply can be raised in a roughly linear ( as in non-discontinuous ) fashion. The only means of raising the supply of programmers has a ten-year lag.

H1B visas are an attempt at substitution. But it's not clear this works. Had I met happy, well-adjusted folks who were here formerly on an H1B, I'd be much less inclined to say that. I've mainly met angry people.

WRT SiVa/SanFrancisco, the costs of living have massively outstripped even techie salaries.

There is no programmer shortage. It's either a Machiavellian ploy or bad reading of tea leaves.

If programmers cost too much, then there would be all sorts of accounting tricks to salve this wound. Quite the opposite is true. For every hour you spend programming, some multiple ( much > 1 ) of your employer's "burdened run rate" is attributed to it.

The failure of the overall culture to come to terms with the things needed to produce software are reasonably obvious if you will only look.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#186

Post by ArkyBeagle »

jmspring wrote: post #147
dalke wrote: post #117

In a slightly older thread concerning this topic, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11306290 I made some objections to this analysis. I think there's a fundamental problem in how to interpret this analysis. It says that a company is founded by an immigrant if there is at least one immigrant founder. This means that if 1 of 10 founders is foreign born, then it classified as immigrant founded. An aggregate calcul…

I'm jaded. But stories like this are planned to divert to things like what IBM are doing or job shops like Tata,etc. "Oh look at what immigrants are contributing in entrepreneurial sense, but ignore how big companies are moving jobs overseas." IBM and Disney, iconic US brands are at the for front of outsourcing local jobs using H1B scabs as the route.

IBM and Disney are old line ... "fading" companies that are attempting vainly to deal with Baumol cost disease. There's an "American Experience" about Disney in particular that makes it clear that the company has always been on the edge of disaster. It took the Mickey Mouse law to get them this far.

People who are prepared to emigrate seem slightly more likely to take the risk of a startup. And to an extent, the people who emigrate who are also qualified to play that game are largely the children of the elites in their home country.

Never mind how grad schools work.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#187

Post by forgetsusername »

dalke wrote: post #153
jmspring wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm jaded. But stories like this are planned to divert to things like what IBM are doing or job shops like Tata,etc. "Oh look at what immigrants are contributing in entrepreneurial sense, but ignore how big companies are moving jobs overseas." IBM and Disney, iconic US brands are at the for front of outsourcing local jobs using H1B scabs as the route.

There's no reason to feel jaded. What you say is absolutely true. That's why these reports always come from think tanks, without peer review, and half-assed analyses, but dressed in the clothing of rigorous, critical scholarship.

>That's why these reports always come from think tanks, without peer review, and half-assed analyses, but dressed in the clothing of rigorous, critical scholarship.

As if academic scholarship is without the same problems....

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#188

Post by cubano »

no_wave wrote: post #181
winter_blue wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are two groups of companies. Companies that can't find the talent that they need in this country, and companies trying to save money. There definitely is a STEM shortage, and you are being really dishonest if you say there isn't. Ask any hiring manager at a tech company. Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and many, many other companies do not underpay or maltreat their visa-holding employees in any way. It is p…

There is absolutely no STEM shortage at the Facebook/Google level. Google has been on the record many times that they're happy rejecting good applicants in order to reduce the risk of hiring a bad candidate. That's not what hiring during a shortage looks like.

This is so very true, and not only that, they use their ridiculous exclusionary and arbitrary hiring practices as a self-enforced proof that they absolutely need more low cost H1B workers.

Re: Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups

#189

Post by dalke »

forgetsusername wrote: post #187
dalke wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to feel jaded. What you say is absolutely true. That's why these reports always come from think tanks, without peer review, and half-assed analyses, but dressed in the clothing of rigorous, critical scholarship.

> That's why these reports always come from think tanks, without peer review, and half-assed analyses, but dressed in the clothing of rigorous, critical scholarship. As if academic scholarship is without the same problems....

Certainly. Whoever makes that claim is ignorant of how science and scholarship is done.

I am not so ignorant, nor do I mean to imply that the converse or the inverse are true.

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