New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

Post by jackweirdy » Tue, Jan 31, 2017, 4:33 PM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #28

readhn wrote: post #22

Whoever is working on the bill is disconnected from reality and the damage it is doing long term here. Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science.. Oh it's hacker news :) Now walk into any major university science department. See who the newly minted PhD students are in biology, chemistry, physics, math ... Most are foreigners. This bill will send them home after they gra…

You are exactly right. Single minimum wage doesn't make any sense considering there is such a wide gap between IT and everything else. However keeping minimum wage to the 1989 level hurts H1B IT workers more because many of them literally end up getting just that even if they qualify for far more. I guess the issue is not solvable easily because to create job titles and assign it minimum wage number that is, say, at…

Post by webmaven » Tue, Jan 31, 2017, 4:34 PM UTC

princetontiger wrote: post #175

zeroxfe wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a New Yorker, $130k is not "barely a living wage", unless you have a really distorted definition of "living." 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.

$130K is not barely livable.

Post by khuey » Tue, Jan 31, 2017, 4:37 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #206

mavelikara wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the value of private company stock can be hard to determine The IRS uses 409A valuation. These valuations have been high enough to cause huge AMT burden to engineers. Sam Altman etc have written about it; Zoe Lofgren herself has been trying for years to fix it. Why do you think it is a joke?

It is awful when you get hit by this. Modern tax law absolutely wrecks startup founders who are not already rich. It's quite stunning.

Post by webmaven » Tue, Jan 31, 2017, 4:37 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #155

webmaven wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sentiment - we don't need to keep every foreign grad - is basically stack ranking applied by the government instead of big business. Put another way, the government is basically forcing companies to adopt stack ranking for certain classes of employees.

Post by readhn » Tue, Jan 31, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

mi100hael wrote: post #207

readhn wrote: post #22

Whoever is working on the bill is disconnected from reality and the damage it is doing long term here. Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science.. Oh it's hacker news :) Now walk into any major university science department. See who the newly minted PhD students are in biology, chemistry, physics, math ... Most are foreigners. This bill will send them home after they gra…

> Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science. I think that's exactly why people are focusing on IT. The H-1B program is meant to allow companies to hire foreigners with rare skills that are hard to find domestically. In reality it's abused to import cheap labor and undercut average American workers doing common work like building applications or administering systems. The…