151–160 of 487 posts
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> so as a Canadian who may want to move to the US at some point, I'm hoping it passes. Why would it affect you?
You quote the part that explains it. It looks like it might affect him as someone who might move to the US at some point. It might affect him. Large, successful insurance companies work on the notion of probability. It does bear taking into account.
Here is the summary straight from the horses mouth: https://lofgren.house.gov/uploadedfiles/high_skilled_bill_sx... A few points: - This does not raise the salary requirement to $130k/yr. This only applies to employers that do not want to do the extra paper work for "attestations regarding recruitment and non-displacement of U.S. workers" - It takes a "market based" allocation strategy which allows "cash bonuses and…
> - Startups and small businesses will get 20% of the visas. It'll be interesting to see how this is gamed Probably the old fashioned way: Tata Startup Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Consulting Services.
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shrug I may be out of touch, or perhaps everyone else has adjusted their expectations downward to account for how expensive everything is, or think that long commutes are normal. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today.
I kinda of figure what you mean by 'barely-living', is actually worry free living style(good housing, close to workplace, go to decent places for dining/partying) in SF/NYC. And yes, 130k may knock the door for that standard, but not quite there. But saying 130k is 'barely-living', if not bad wording, is close to insulting, and helps little in the conversation.
Anyway, swap out dining/partying for cooking good food at home, add in rainy-day/retirement savings as well as saving for kid's college (even if you don't have kids yet). So, you know, you're actually following standard financial advice.
I mean, sure you can sacrifice quite a bit (don't save, eat crap, waste your time commuting, live in a shoebox) to get by on less, but at some financial point you (and your family) will just be treading water over the long term at best in order to work in SF/NYC. Especially considering that $130k is total compensation (ie. including bonuses that you might not even get, or in a form that is actually worth the face value).
TL/DR: COL in SF is bonkers.
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I've commented on this before, at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13433540 I'm copying the comment below: --- I'm on an H-1B, and the thing that infuriates me about the dialogue on this is that they are effectively trying to ban skilled immigration, and exclude people like me from coming. If you don't qualify for the family-based or refugee route, employment-based immigration is the only viable pathway. The amo…
One could argue that H-1B is a visa that never was intended to apply for fresh graduates - it's a vehicle for "importing" specialists that USA doesn't have, bringing in unusual expertise that USA can't build locally. Yes, "People from outside who have lots of experience (and skill) and can command a much higher salary upfront" is the exclusive target audience for the intended goals of why the H-1B visa is implemented…
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> OTOH, in low COL markets (eg. KC) this eliminates H1-Bs from consideration for most entry-level positions. Isn't that the point? I thought H1-Bs were supposed to only be used when the skill set required could not be found locally. This does not match up with entry-level positions unless there are no programmers in the area.
Well, do you want the price to reflect the wage of an average entry-level employee, or that of a talented one? I'm not sure the US should have as a goal keeping every foreign grad here.
Put another way, the government is basically forcing companies to adopt stack ranking for certain classes of employees.
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Oh, and comparing to the average probably isn't what you want to use to make your argument, you probably want to compare to the median.
The median would definitely be lower. I'd wager money on this. The mean is skewed upwards thanks to executives earning USD 1 million+ . The median would just treat these people as being above the 50th percentile.
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"but for niche applications that can be pretty hard, you're talking people who have studied for years." How many people that have studied for years to become experts at niche applications are being paid only $60,000 a year - the current minimum for H1B Visas? I would think that getting such an expert is well worth $130,000 a year.
Agree that 60k is too low. But 130k is too high. Consider someone who has just finished their PhD in a relevant area. You want to employ them in your startup in e.g. Orlando, where the cost of living is much lower than SF. Maybe 80k is reasonable. But you'll have to pay a 50k premium. Or you could set up an office in Montreal. And then your tech team will come to Florida for a 3 month code camp every December anyway.…
If they're hiring fresh grads, it should be an American. There's plenty of them.
It seems like only 63 companies have an average salary above 130k and 1937 companies have average salaries below 130k.
With only 11641 H1b's being at companies with an average salary above 130k and 476425 below the cap.
So this is going to free up a bunch of h1b's at the top end of the sepctrum.
This is a good but flawed move. In very high COL places like NYC and SFBA $130k is barely a living wage unless you can put up with a 2h commute. OTOH, in low COL markets (eg. KC) this eliminates H1-Bs from consideration for most entry-level positions. For many markets in the middle (an example doesn't come to mind, perhaps Los Angeles?) where $130k+ is a decent salary for an entry-level position this new minimum work…
You do not need to commute 2h for reasonable housing -- I lived in Brooklyn (which, for me, was a very comfortable 25m door-to-door commute), and was very happy there.
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I get the impression that this new bill is like putting lipstick on a pig which is the current system. I was hoping the amendments to the H1-B bill would be one of the silver linings of a Trump presidency, but I guess not anymore.
I've commented on this before, at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13433540 I'm copying the comment below: --- I'm on an H-1B, and the thing that infuriates me about the dialogue on this is that they are effectively trying to ban skilled immigration, and exclude people like me from coming. If you don't qualify for the family-based or refugee route, employment-based immigration is the only viable pathway. The amo…
The changes aimed at fixing the abuse of the system by consultant "super companies" are going to affect ppl who finish their studies and get paid a market-level salary at their first gig which in most cases still won't come close to 130K.
These are typically well adjusted folks with drivers licenses, their own apartments/houses/families even (so they need to make more than 5 TCS consultants cramped in a studio apartment) etc. One would think they'd be in the batch of prime candidates for the long-term or even permanent immigration.