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H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

economist.com

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Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#21

Post by planetjones »

Is this disagreeing with Blake Irvine. See

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2017/02...

This is the man who refers to H1B visas as genius visas. I have worked with many Indian outsourcing companies and while talented people do exist, calling their employees genius is wholly inaccurate (as would be calling most software devs in the Western world genius).

I did laugh when I read irving's original post on LinkedIn and some former employer of GoDaddy expressed just how Mr Irving was using his H1B allocation I.e. to get the same job done for less dollar...

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#22

Post by Swizec »

mootothemax wrote: post #17
Swizec wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year. In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year. Gee, I wonder why businesses want to employ foreigners and why foreigners want to work for US companies. Hmmmmm

>In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year. >In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year. Come on, you've got to compare like with like. In Montana, the median is ~$60,000, and in Georgia ~$80,000. [0] and [1] Here in Poland, I can find decent enough programmers who'll accept $2k/month salary. Their English will be poor, and typically they'll be based in…

Looked it up yesterday. Average engineer salary in capital of Slovenia is 2000/month.

Caveat is that everybody who's good is a self emplpyed freelancer working for US companies. So statistics don't capture them. I'd wager the average for those is around 5000/month.

Freelancer flat rate tax in slovenia is 4% if you make under 100k. That part is nice but makes all my friends unambitious. Always found that part unfortunate.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#23

Post by witty_username »

ardy123 wrote: post #8
Swizec wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year. In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year. Gee, I wonder why businesses want to employ foreigners and why foreigners want to work for US companies. Hmmmmm

If you were to replace the higher paid positions with lower paid outsourced positions the allure of Silicon Valley would be lost entirely to me. The talent would simply move elsewhere. I don't understand why you're favouring a race to the bottom in terms of salary in terms of benefits to a business. It makes our talent go elsewhere.

What is wrong with a race to the bottom? Less salary means more profit for businesses and/or cheaper products

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#26

Post by ismail-khan »

barrkel wrote: post #9
aaron-lebo wrote: post #3

Have there been attempts at pumping H1B money and similar efforts into schools? I've always wondered if we want minorities to code and we are worried about job loss in the US, why not stop dumping money into hiring foreigners and instead dump it into CS programs at community colleges? It would take some time before you could build up a domestic work force as talented as foreigners, but would it not solve several issu…

Jobs aren't a zero-sum game. There's no fixed quantity of jobs that are being taken by immigrants and could be filled by American students appropriately trained. An industry grows when it has supply and demand. There's nearly infinite demand for IT, the way I see it - everything is turning into information. The primary supply for IT is people. Immigration will increase the size of the industry and increase the number…

Another way to look at it: if restrictions on high skill tech immigration tighten, then tech companies that would have been founded in America will instead be founded elsewhere.

This is more true of software than of any other industry, because software is built mostly with human capital which can cross borders fairly easily.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#27

Post by skocznymroczny »

mootothemax wrote: post #17
Swizec wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year. In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year. Gee, I wonder why businesses want to employ foreigners and why foreigners want to work for US companies. Hmmmmm

>In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year. >In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year. Come on, you've got to compare like with like. In Montana, the median is ~$60,000, and in Georgia ~$80,000. [0] and [1] Here in Poland, I can find decent enough programmers who'll accept $2k/month salary. Their English will be poor, and typically they'll be based in…

In Poland, when talking about salaries, we're using before tax ("brutto"). After tax is about 4/5 of the original salary ("netto").

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#28

Post by mootothemax »

Swizec wrote: post #22
mootothemax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year. >In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year. Come on, you've got to compare like with like. In Montana, the median is ~$60,000, and in Georgia ~$80,000. [0] and [1] Here in Poland, I can find decent enough programmers who'll accept $2k/month salary. Their English will be poor, and typically they'll be based in…

Looked it up yesterday. Average engineer salary in capital of Slovenia is 2000/month. Caveat is that everybody who's good is a self emplpyed freelancer working for US companies. So statistics don't capture them. I'd wager the average for those is around 5000/month. Freelancer flat rate tax in slovenia is 4% if you make under 100k. That part is nice but makes all my friends unambitious. Always found that part unfortun…

> Looked it up yesterday. Average engineer salary in capital of Slovenia is 2000/month.

Yeah, and it's difficult to know who reports stuff accurately, whether that takes into account people living in backwaters vs. fancy offices in Ljubljana etc. etc. etc.

For what it's worth, some Slovenians seem to be reporting healthy salaries here, although as you say, there's a good number of self employed there (and workers in Ljubljana definitely affect the average... or the other way around, you know what I mean):

http://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/slovenia

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#29

Post by mootothemax »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #27
mootothemax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year. >In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year. Come on, you've got to compare like with like. In Montana, the median is ~$60,000, and in Georgia ~$80,000. [0] and [1] Here in Poland, I can find decent enough programmers who'll accept $2k/month salary. Their English will be poor, and typically they'll be based in…

In Poland, when talking about salaries, we're using before tax ("brutto"). After tax is about 4/5 of the original salary ("netto").

> In Poland, when talking about salaries, we're using before tax ("brutto"). After tax is about 4/5 of the original salary ("netto").

You do that, and I'm really happy that you do; I've had far too many confusing situations caused by people quoting netto instead, it's definitely common enough that it's something I look out for.

Re: H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

#30

Post by koolba »

What's the argument against using an auction for H1-B visas rather than a lottery? That'd maximize the tax collected from their salaries and ensure the salaries are on par with the going rate for said workers. Arguably it's in the interests of everyone besides companies trying to get cheaper labor via H1-B visas.

The only counterpoint I've ever heard is "It's not fair for company XYZ in low cost of living Podunk, USA because we can't compete at those high salaries against banks / SV / expensive cities". So what? I doubt they can compete against the ability of TCS or Infosys to game the system and get the lions share of the visas either.

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