Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 414 posts

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

#311

Post by geebee »

alexmingoia wrote: post #288
geebee wrote: post #243

The economist proposes getting rid of the rule that requires H1B workers remain within the company that sponsors them That sounds reasonable, but why then require that a company sponsor an immigrant in the first place? Why not let that immigrant choose where he or she will work? In fact, why not let the immigrant choose what to study, where to work, where to live, all in response to market signals? People have posted…

This is the moral, practical, and efficient solution. It's disheartening to see so many smart people blame H1B immigration for "harming" the tech econonomy, when the tech industry has comparatively high salaries and low unemployment. The amount of vitriol towards people trying to get by in life is unwarranted.

It really is unwarranted. Every now and then I like to take the opportunity to say this as well, since I am very critical of the H1B program.

The US doesn't have a good immigration system, and if you don't have family reunification or a few other avenues, there isn't much left for you, even as a skilled worker. We don't have a "I'm a skilled and decent person, I'd contribute a lot, and I'd like to live and work in the US" program.

Yeah, I completely get it. This is the only game in town for some really good people. No way would I blame someone using this path, considering their limited options.

The nice thing that I really believe that we can solve this problem by expanding personal freedom and limiting corporate power over people's lives. The sad thing is, that's probably why it hasn't happened and continues to not happen.

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

#312

Post by almightykrish »

loph wrote: post #103

This one sentence says it all: "The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500. In contrast, America’s five biggest tech firms—Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft—submitted just 31,000 applications, and proposed to pay their workers a median salary of…

Ex TCS employee here: Not only the employees are paid meagerly, the benefits most seem to have are literally nothing.

Health and Medical Coverage are very poor. Provides only basic coverage. No Life Insurance. Never heard of anyone being paid overtime. Most employees of these companies would be mostly working in odd hours to manage off shore teams.

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

#313

Post by vikascoder »

kls wrote: post #32
planetjones wrote: post #21

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 pos…

The problem is the incentive system. I have never been known for my lack of directness and in given so, I used to work with an Indian developer who was very good at his job. So one day I just flat out asked him, I said Karthick why do a good portion of Indian developers suck, his response floored me. Without missing a beat he responded, look it's a misaligned incentive system. When I go back to India the first questi…

I am sorry but your token Indian is not entirely wrong but also not entirely correct. First of all regarding your broad hypothesis,(which comes with a good dose of judgment on the side), "why do a good portion of Indian Developers suck". To quote a similar question, I would ask you "Why are great portion (50%) of Americans turned racist in 2017?". But I won't ask that question because as I know, things in life for which you have a high confidence in having a fantastic one line explanation usually turns out that those are crappy theories. Hence I don't believe in one line explanations to complicated questions.

Putting that aside, there is a Fundamental Law of Incompetence which says, "In any random sample of a group of people in any country, the amount of incompetents is a constant". We have a lot of so called incompetent people because A) you may probably outsource to the cheapest bidder/contractor B) We have 1.3 billion people, of course a large number are incompetent. I have worked with outsourcing teams in Romania, and the law still holds, I have worked in Germany and the US, and the law still holds. It has yet to happen that I have walked into a country and observed, "Holy shit, so many geniuses are around here, what kind of Cola do you guys drink?". Now you may know that there are other "legit" multinationals who have captive R&D Centers in India which are awesomely working cause hey each country has a thick creamy layer of talent and those companies employ them. Case in point, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Google, Adobe's big campus near Delhi, Amazon etc etc. Plus a whole slew of startups popping up in India. So your token Indian thinks that all of those people are retarded?

What irks me about your guy is not that he is spouting what is the common understanding of the lot. But you are possibly talking to a regular uninformed guy with pet peeves about family and caste system. I know quite a few of those. What those kids need is a spinal surgery.

Did he mention how crap the infrastructure is in most of the Universities in India? How shoddy the teaching is? Oh it all starts with the School system, which is the base factory of parent/caste/society oppressed individuals who just blame everything else than their own free will to progress and learn in life. That's the reason why so many smart people tend to migrate in order to do a Masters or a Phd program because University Research does not exist in India (even in the top 10 universities).

The boom in IT sector in India circa 1995 was a god send for so many impoverished but educated Indians who could now afford to literally have a decent work environment and pay and that brought so many of us out of poverty. The much derided call centers brought employment to a range of blue collared workers who put their balls to the walls and attempted and mastered not only fluent English to some extent but to copy the American Accent. Now all these whiny newly born Indians with their trust funds piss all over that fact. I know you may think outsourcing is bad and call centers sucked, but hey market forces will decide that. No one asked any US multinationals to make your underwear in China, they all did by their own free will. The world economy will shift focus to something else.

I by no means want to engage with you harshly, you have a genuine curiosity about the subject but I would implore people on hacker news at least to think about the World in a more refined way.

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

#314

Post by azinman2 »

monksy wrote: post #293
jlj wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people I've worked with came to the US on H1-B's sponsored by the big outsourcing firms, then they move to one of the above mentioned companes. Presumably they move to those companies for better pay and working hours. And they have processes in place to handle the H1-B transfers. There is a lot of prestige with landing a job at those companies too. It's not everyone who can do that though, these folks are the up…

> huge supply of people overseas wanting those jobs so that they can get their foot into the US and then find something better That's not really a good justification of claiming that the US Supply is more than what the current market holds. With that same arguement, a business could claim: Banana processing in Costa Rica costs $0.5/hr, so that means that we should have that as a ceiling in the US for the same job. It…

> It's apples and oranges.

And here I thought it was bananas all along.

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

#315

Post by vkou »

ma2rten wrote: post #173
loph wrote: post #103

This one sentence says it all: "The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500. In contrast, America’s five biggest tech firms—Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft—submitted just 31,000 applications, and proposed to pay their workers a median salary of…

I work at Google on an H1-B. I can confirm that Google pays foreign workers exactly the same as American employees on the same level, which is above market. I suspect that the number quoted is only base salary, includes lower cost locations in the US and professions other than Software Engineers. Another thing is that this number is the salary when the person got hired, but any other number you can find will be curre…

I also work at Google on an H1-B (Formerly TN-1). I can also confirm that Google pays foreign workers exactly the same (Salary, stock, bonus, vacation, benefits) as Americans.

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

#317

Post by mememachine »

canttestthis wrote: post #302
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by "these companies" you mean Facebook, Google, etc, because they are paying the going rate by paying $152k. That just confirms the OPs first point, that TCS, Wipro and Infosys, with their 30,000 Visas avg. ~$70k, are massively abusing the system. Its about time these companies were prosecuted for lying to the government: Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001 makes it a crime to: 1) knowingly and willfully; 2…

And it disproves OP's other point (the one he even highlighted in italics): > None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn.

However it still leaves the impression that H1Bs are doing more bad than good

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

#318

Post by Chris2048 »

arjie wrote: post #78
koolba wrote: post #30

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, US…

The objective of the visa is to enable business. It is beneficial to America that business flourishes in America. If a pharma business is viable only if it pays $100k to its researchers and if it is being hamstrung by lack of researchers in America it doesn't matter that a software engineer can charge $200k for his services. The pharma researchers may argue that this should present an upward price pressure on their s…

> If a pharma business is viable only if it pays $100k to its researchers and if it is being hamstrung by lack of researchers in America it doesn't matter that a software engineer can charge $200k for his services.

True, but in another sense, more people will train to be software engineers than pharma researchers? educated people are the common resource? Why should anyone train to go into pharma, when they could earn more as sw devs?

> their industry isn't solely driven by salaries alone

what does this mean?

> if there are only 100 researchers and there are 1000 jobs

Are jobs are not equal. Ultimately, there are only 100 jobs willing to pay a higher salary. Consider an auction, there are not really millions of buyers willing to buy an iphone (at $1), there is just one, the rest lost interest once the price point had been hit.

I understand, an industry can still be hamstrung by lack of employees, but

a) Would this be different in the US compared to other countries? If not, all similar industries will be equally slow to progress; No problem for the rare employees living in good times.

b) If the industry is desirable, people will begin to train for it, or be encouraged to train; high salaries will be just one incentive. In the meanwhile, the growth of the fledgling industry can be helped via investment: this investment could help provide aforementioned training, and also help pay for foreign labour at higher cost than than native, so as not to undercut native labour - hence the nonviable industry is subsidised until labour supply catches up.

> it is advantageous to have more researchers since more jobs filled leads to more successful companies which leads to growth

"job creation" theories are dangerous, much like trickle-down economics. It's easy for the wealthy to act in their own interest by promoting flawed justifications of this nature. I agree, certain high-skilled jobs actually fuel certain struggling industries than actually bootstraps industry in a way that makes existing workers more valuable, especially locally (vs nationally); but I can see how this line or argument, which applies to rare cases, can be abused to argue similar effect where it is not the case; Is is also the case that there would be an point where the visas must stop (when the benefit ends), which again it would be easy to manipulate - you'd need strict criteria to make it fair.

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

#319

Post by pedrosorio »

reloop wrote: post #236
0xfeba wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I've said it before[1][2] and people just kept replying "Oh but we hire them for their talent, therefore everyone does." I work at a run of the mill SaaS company. We have 60% H-1Bs devs here as contractors from a certain contracting company (more in QA). They live paycheck to paycheck. I get paid, literally, twice as much (I've seen the H-1B Labor Condition Applications for ones we hire directly--The contracting…

I dislike poor working and visa condition as much as, if not more than, anyone else. But other than that I don't really see the problem. You're saying that the people you're hiring aren't particularly talented and get payed less. Not everyone can go to the right school, learn the right languages and get accepted to companies that pay $100k with perks. It sound like, other than fixing some of the things with H-1B, wha…

"Not everyone can go to the right school, learn the right languages and get accepted to companies that pay $100k with perks."

Getting employed at these companies has nothing to do with "going to the right school and learning the right language".

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

#320

Post by zeveb »

anarcticpuffin wrote: post #183
Panini_Jones wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of those salaries listed are competitive with what a non-H1B (read citizen or permanent resident) would earn. As a new grad interviewing for software engineering positions at FB, Google, Etc., I make exactly the same amount as my U.S. peers who have also received offers. Moreover, how do you know that the SE level of the H1B hires is exactly that of the pool from which Indeed.com calculates their averages? Wha…

One of the arguments I see repeated here against hiring H1-B junior developers is that they: a) Aren't qualified as the best and brightest since they're still inexperienced b) Took a university seat from an American citizen [1] Firstly, my response to these is going to treat the $65k/year as a soon-to-be-solved problem. It's making the whole program look bad at the expense of talented people and the American economy,…

> As a country, we want the world's greatest minds to reside here.

I'd say, rather, that as a country we (should) want the world's greatest minds to become American, not just reside here. I don't just mean in terms of legal citizenship, but rather in terms of mindset and culture. I don't think it's good for us to import smart people whose ideals are opposed to our own.

Post reply on HN