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India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

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Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#51

It's about time. Say what you will about Trump's other policies, but it's high time someone took an ax to the H-1B program. The level of abuse I've witnessed from it over the years is heinous; foreign workers essentially working as indentured servants, with the only beneficiaries being corporations using their cheap labor and the foreign consultancy firms that farm them out. I'll be interested to see what changes get…

this culture of abusing your workers spills out into the US workforce as well. i've known people (us citizens) who have had to send lawyer letters to get their invoices paid by these consultancy firms, who aren't used to getting pushback from their servants. sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars for high end work.

of course the bad behavior stops immediately when they get a nice little letter with an american law firm's name at the top of it.

they're scumbags.

Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you used to pay $50k for low-end tech jobs, you can probably find someone in the US to do it for $70k. The H1B is meant to fill skill gaps, NOT save money on those skills. If a company can't operate by paying market rates, that's a business model problem.

So that change in business model will likely mean more outsourcing of jobs. The fundamental goal of any company is to save money.

And if outsourcing leads to lower quality, then that tactic would be abandoned by a successful business model in favor of a better way to save money.

Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure exactly about loss of jobs, but I do remember this Oracle story making the rounds: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-10/ex-oracle...

Thanks, but I think that classifies under discriminatory practice. Not exactly an immigration issue.

True. Posted as reference to the pay grade perceptions around H-1Bs.

Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#55
post #35
post #23

130k is indeed too high. To fight the most egregious abusers 100k would have been enough. Not everybody works in Silicon Valley IT, and even there the indian bodyshops offered only Many other industries rely on foreign talent, and many cannot pay 130k, but 100k would be fine IMHO.

130K in Kansas City >> 130K in SF. Hope they take geography into consideration.

Even better imagine houston where there is no state tax. There's no way one can pay 130K.

Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#56

Trying to play a devil's advocate, I might be downvoted here right away. Disclosure: I am not going to be affected by this, but I do work in tech industry. 1. With the decline of low-wage tech workers, where do you think the mundane/non-value added work they do will go? Not everything will/can be outsourced, and you don't want to your USD 130K employee to do that. There is a real scarcity of tech skilled workers in t…

> Is there a credible research about the loss of jobs due to H1B and it is not just an availability heuristic?

Yes. Look there: http://h1bdata.info/topcompanies.php

You'll see that the vast majority of VISAs are taken by miserable cheap indian consulting firms.

Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#57

Trying to play a devil's advocate, I might be downvoted here right away. Disclosure: I am not going to be affected by this, but I do work in tech industry. 1. With the decline of low-wage tech workers, where do you think the mundane/non-value added work they do will go? Not everything will/can be outsourced, and you don't want to your USD 130K employee to do that. There is a real scarcity of tech skilled workers in t…

"There is a real scarcity of tech skilled workers in the US."

That is a blatant falsehood it only exists due to "culture fit" where you can only hire a skilled tech worker if they're also a 20-something white male Stanford grad living in SV or maybe NYC.

Try just considering hiring a person of color or a woman. There's a hell of a lot of them, they're not much worse at their jobs than the young white boys, but on the coasts they are not allowed in the industry at this time.

No matter how far left wing tech people socially signal, that kind of person will never ever hire a woman or PoC. Yet here in the TrumpenReich rural heartland far from the coasts I've worked with a cool (South AFAIK) Korean dude and a Jamaican and I know some awesome female IT professionals.

If you want to hear about how great women and PoC are, you have to move to the coasts, but if you want to actually get a job with women and PoC you need to go right wing heartland, which sounds weird but is so true.

I live in one of the most segregated metro areas in the country far from the coasts, yet my neighborhood has a higher percentage of blacks than Google employees has a percentage of blacks. Huh. Klan-land is more diverse than coastal tech, you wouldn't guess that from how far left they talk.

I know I sound harsh but PoC and women are wasting their time trying to get jobs on the coasts; tech industry is far too racist and sexist to hire them. They can get jobs away from the coasts and in my experience they do really well.

My experience with decades of corporate speak indicates that corporations always talk the opposite of what they do. In the heartland we don't have "womens coding classes" and PoC outreach because we don't need them, instead of providing lip service we actually hire them instead.

Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#58
I think it will affect US more in negative way. I may be wrong but it's my perspective. The companies will do more outsourcing and the companies like TCS, Infy will not bring people in US. We are living in communication age and their is nothing can be done remotely. So why I need to pay double when I can do same work with 1/4 of salary.Many captive companies already sending less people to US.

In other words US will get less talent and less benefit of talented engineers from India, China. More and more work go outside the more loss of US.

Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you used to pay $50k for low-end tech jobs, you can probably find someone in the US to do it for $70k. The H1B is meant to fill skill gaps, NOT save money on those skills. If a company can't operate by paying market rates, that's a business model problem.

So that change in business model will likely mean more outsourcing of jobs. The fundamental goal of any company is to save money.

I think some businesses lose sight of the true fundamental goal of a business: make money. Saving money is secondary.

Re: India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas

#60
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 2 years exp in medium sized product company (which has global market) in India. I have developed iOS apps, react app, web app in django (basically full stack). have experience in python, java, javascript and swift. I applied for few good colleges (UCSD, UT Austin, Carnige Mellon, GATech, Arizona state) to specialize in Machine Learning in US. Should I change my plans (I have to spend anywhere from 40-90 lakh R…

ex-H1B here, You have good skills, once you graduate, you will have to depend on your luck to get into the H1B system currently. Why don't you get MS from good universities in Canada and enter the express entry immigration system which values your skills unlike H1B system which depends on luck ?

Yeah Canada seems like a safer place for foreigners right now. US visas and even green cards are no longer worth as much because Trump has demonstrated he is willing to invalidate them at his whim.

Trump just now barred from entry (effectively deported) all visa holders (including H1-Bs) from 7 Muslim countries who happened to be outside the US for vacation when his Executive Order hit. He also tried to do the same to green card holders (but the courts stood up to him so he backpedaled).

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