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Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

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Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#61

Post by yummyfajitas »

jarsin wrote: post #51
yummyfajitas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field. Joel Spolsky explains why this does not imply what you think it implies. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html tl;dr; Imagine 1 low quality developer who applies to 9 places and gets rejected. There's also 1 high quality developer who appl…

Total BS. I have seen this first hand both as a hiring manager and as an applicant. I have been rejected from jobs based on totally insane interview questions that have nothing to do with the job. In one case I interviewed at 2 competitors. One gave me nothing but trick whiteboard questions, the other emphasized my experience and gave me a real world interview. I was rejected by the whiteboard company and hired by th…

You bring up another reason why 90% of applications might be rejected: false negatives.

Consider a hiring filter which rejects 90% of good applicants and 99% of bad applicants. In such a world, consider a population of 10 good applicants. These 10 applicants will go on 100 interviews, be rejected on 90 of them and each will find a job. So in this world where every applicant finds a job, you still get 9/10 applications being rejected.

This seems to agree with your (anecdotal, and likely biased [1]) experience.

[1] "I got rejected after an interview, therefore hiring is broken" is a perennial topic on HN.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#62

Post by t1o5 »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #39
t1o5 wrote: post #29

ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers. I have worked in one of those firms and I have friends in many other firms. These are not Indian body shops, these are American companies. Everyone's topic of discussion when we hangout is how our H1B visas were being exploited and there is nothing we could do abou…

That is amazing! However I would like to point out, H1B is not only for Silicon Valley. There are many automotive companies which require foreign talent in specialized fields. Very smart people with multi-disciplinary knowledge are nowhere to be found in auto sector. Signal Processing and vibrations and programming and control systems understanding etc. is required to deal with things like active noise control which…

"lottery based skilled visa" sums it up.

I am not assuming that you are in Detroit. I used to work remotely for an Automotive company in Detroit for their telematics unit. Some colleagues I know commute from Windsor.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#63

Post by untog »

t1o5 wrote: post #38
untog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a counter-point (not saying your experience is incorrect at all), I've worked in the US on an H1B and was compensated very well, as were my co-workers. The system allows abuse, but doesn't guarantee it. I do wonder if the employees you mention know that an H1B is transferrable between employers. It's a time consuming process, but I'd love to see more people take advantage of those who abuse the visa by gettin…

> H1B is transferable between employers Its not easy as it sounds. Being a single that time, I have transferred my H1B myself and it was a nightmare. I had sleepless nights and uncertainty. My GreenCard process was reset. Any H1Bs who knows about the system really well will not risk transferring because of the risks to their green card process. There is no honest company which pays a fair salary for H1Bs. If you see…

I have done the transfer. It is not difficult if you find a company willing to pay for lawyers to handle it for you. But yes, if you are only in the first phase of your green card application you will be set back.

And I promise you, there are companies that pay a fair amount to H1B workers. I have worked for four of them myself. I don't know what kind of companies you work for or where in the country you are, but they exist.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#64

Post by whoiskevin »

ars wrote: post #15
youdontknowtho wrote: post #4

Blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes...

So when he does something you disagree with, he's evil? When he does something you agree with he's still evil, he just did it accidentally? And this is your chosen approach regarding people who disagree with you?

Honestly he is not evil but he is unstable and childish. We should not normalize anything he says. It is dangerous to allow hime to be normalized. He is not normal and a POTUS that spends time on his old reality TV show, lying about illegal voting, etc. is not acceptable.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#65

Post by d--b »

relics443 wrote: post #59

I think an issue lost in the discussion is that citizens are losing jobs because of this. I'm all for the plight of the immigrant, but as an American, my concern is first and foremost with my fellow countrymen.

You really think there is not enough jobs for American software developers?

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#66

Post by mavelikara »

CodeSheikh wrote: post #57

"..the company can’t prevent the departure of Americans.." this is part of the problem. I have seen people (especially young ones) jumping ships in less than six months from startup to startup in SV because of the competitive market salary. Even though larger companies can take this hit but for a startup of <10 employees this can prove to be very detrimental. I agree that Indian consultancies have been abusing the H1…

> Should there be some sort of collateral such as one year contract?

It would be a fair deal if employers also agree to let go of employee only with many months of severance payment.

Also, startups using vesting schedules to incentivize people to stay.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#67

Post by arjie »

anjc wrote: post #56
yummyfajitas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics allows us to directly measure these things and the price of labor hasn't gone up in the last 30 years... Real compensation per hour (for workers as a whole) has gone up 40% since 1987. This number is adjusted for inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB Pay in software has been rising more rapidly than pay for the country as a whole. Is this even remotely in doubt? http://insights.dice.com/201…

There are studies performed on this stuff by actual economists out there, to save you using self-reporting surveys from online recruitment companies. http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i... http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages-mi... >The average hourly wage for college-educated workers in computer and math occupations rose 5.3 percent over 11 years, from $37.27 in 2000 to…

2000? At the peak of the dot-com boom?

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#68

Post by coulix »

sulam wrote: post #46

Speaking as someone who has hired H1-B's in the past, there really do seem to be two tiers. There's the companies/organizations that are truly abusing the system and then there are the traditional tech companies who are happy to hire anyone qualified, no matter where they are from, and pay and promote them the same as other employees. They also sponsor green cards. Competition between these employers has gotten to th…

+1

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#69

Post by chroem- »

ansy wrote: post #42

Could H-1B be more effective? Yes. It could definitely be more fair to the visa holder and do a better job of attracting and retaining the most skilled workers. But I also think it's totally wrong to say we don't have a technology labor shortage. The best evidence of this are the salary numbers for people with math and science degrees. It's not because physics and math suddenly got more valuable. It's because tech is…

>But I also think it's totally wrong to say we don't have a technology labor shortage. The best evidence of this are the salary numbers for people with math and science degrees. It's not because physics and math suddenly got more valuable. It's because tech is so starved for labor it's hiring people from different disciplines to do the job and it's actually brought the average salaries in line with CS and engineering graduates.

This series of claims is so different from the reality that myself and many others have observed that I don't even know where to begin. Physics graduates are literally jumping off of buildings because of how poor their employment prospects are. Can you provide any sources for the statements you just made?

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