41–50 of 57 posts
Another article explaining how colleges graduate twice as many STEM workers as there are jobs. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/the-bogus-high-tech... EDIT: (from the article) "Currently, U.S. colleges graduate far more scientists and engineers than find employment in those fields every year — about 200,000 more — while the IT industry fills about two-thirds of its entry-level positions with guest workers." O…
On the list of reasons to hate trump the H-1B is pretty far down. Especially since the proposals so far wouldn't hurt the companies who aren't abusing the system.
I feel that there are some core issues that can fix the problem: 1) Solve the Green-Card backlog issue that forces people in the backlog to stick with their current jobs. This is a major thing, that is not talked about more often. 2) Simple merit/salary based priority queue to grant VISAs. I have never quite understood why there is this urge to entirely get rid of it instead of fixing it to do what it was originally…
Giving H-1Bs expedited green cards only accelerates the decline of the price of skilled labor.
You can see this today. Look at the number of GC sponsorships by companies that treat H-1B employees well (Google, Microsoft, etc...) vs the consulting companies like Infosys and Tata. They have no interest in getting their employees green cards because then they have no power over them.
Public service announcement: There is no such thing as a labor shortage. Having trouble hiring developers? Offer a salary of $1 million per year. Your new problem will be job applicant crowd-control. Whenever an employer reports a labor shortage they mean they can't find enough people to take jobs AT THE WAGE THEY ARE WILLING TO PAY. Lest you brand me a red shirt-wearing Das Kapital-waving pinko commie, let me lay an…
Google literally does offer $1 million salaries for the right positions, the problem is that most of the people who could make that work have already been recruited.
Which is why they pay interns six figures to show up for what amounts to a long job interview, to make sure they get all the new talent the moment it's minted.
If you make it more difficult to recruit people from untapped populations abroad, they won't pay lower tier people more, they'll open offices aboard to capture their acceptable talent.
So yes, there is a shortage of talent that meets the bar. While everyone trained as a book keeper can almost certainly fill any book keeper role, not everyone trained as an engineer can actually fill any role. Not just because some people are shitty engineers, it's because engineering involves spending long periods of time learning domain knowledge that isn't transferrable, even setting aside the fact there are literally thousands of types of engineer.
Another article explaining how colleges graduate twice as many STEM workers as there are jobs. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/the-bogus-high-tech... EDIT: (from the article) "Currently, U.S. colleges graduate far more scientists and engineers than find employment in those fields every year — about 200,000 more — while the IT industry fills about two-thirds of its entry-level positions with guest workers." O…
Thank you for pointing this out. Not two weeks ago I was "hired" by a firm to do some consulting for them, during which time they extracted data on "how" to solve a problem (NLP related) and then flew in some dude form India to code the solution. I made a decent wage. For two days. He undoubtedly was a faste progrmmer than me, but fuck if we both didn't get used. I live in a state that thinks the word union means tha…
I'm going to guess you have no idea what his compensation actually was, but you're assuming it's low.
What I don't get is why they don't just raise the minimum pay for H1-B visas. It might not fix all issues for this type of visa in the long run. But the fact that the minimum pay was set in 1989 seems like an obvious issue to me. This would seem to be corroborated by the numbers. The lottery system is arguably the worst part of it, it punishes companies who carefully and rigorously select candidates and rewards compa…
> "What I don't get is why they don't just raise the minimum pay for H1-B visas." That was a key part of Trump's proposed bill. IRRC, the proposal is to increase the minimum from $60k to $130k. Interestingly $60k in 1989 was worth what $117k is in 2017. In other words, given current inflation rates, it's very likely that the new minimum will be the 2020 or 2021 equivalent of the original minimum. That would suck for…
Not every company is in a place where they can find enough local customers to support a 2x increase in their salary costs. While that has been made somewhat better by the reach of the Internet it's still going to be a powerful force to move companies from lower density areas where it's almost impossible to recruit, and into high density areas that already have the bulk of the talent and customers.
You're effectively fucking middle America into relocating both their people and businesses.
I feel that there are some core issues that can fix the problem: 1) Solve the Green-Card backlog issue that forces people in the backlog to stick with their current jobs. This is a major thing, that is not talked about more often. 2) Simple merit/salary based priority queue to grant VISAs. I have never quite understood why there is this urge to entirely get rid of it instead of fixing it to do what it was originally…
Giving H-1Bs expedited green cards only accelerates the decline of the price of skilled labor.
Adding skilled labour can allow more opportunities to add more skilled labour jobs.
Without the extra slack, there's no opportunity. Part of what makes Silicon Valley work is that there's a lot of talent that is somewhat slack to allow for new companies to get started.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "What I don't get is why they don't just raise the minimum pay for H1-B visas." That was a key part of Trump's proposed bill. IRRC, the proposal is to increase the minimum from $60k to $130k. Interestingly $60k in 1989 was worth what $117k is in 2017. In other words, given current inflation rates, it's very likely that the new minimum will be the 2020 or 2021 equivalent of the original minimum. That would suck for…
This ignores the wild disparity in wages across the US. Not every company is in a place where they can find enough local customers to support a 2x increase in their salary costs. While that has been made somewhat better by the reach of the Internet it's still going to be a powerful force to move companies from lower density areas where it's almost impossible to recruit, and into high density areas that already have t…
Some Australian visas have a condition that you must spend 2 years in a regional area, maybe the US and its states can have the condition that you must work in some certain regions for X years.
Public service announcement: There is no such thing as a labor shortage. Having trouble hiring developers? Offer a salary of $1 million per year. Your new problem will be job applicant crowd-control. Whenever an employer reports a labor shortage they mean they can't find enough people to take jobs AT THE WAGE THEY ARE WILLING TO PAY. Lest you brand me a red shirt-wearing Das Kapital-waving pinko commie, let me lay an…
This assumes that labour is perfectly re-locatable and everyone has perfect pricing information. Google literally does offer $1 million salaries for the right positions, the problem is that most of the people who could make that work have already been recruited. Which is why they pay interns six figures to show up for what amounts to a long job interview, to make sure they get all the new talent the moment it's minte…
FWIW, my rant was not intended as a rant against immigrants, just a rant against people that spin their personal or corporate financial interests as a national crisis.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that it's poorly defined, but I would argue that a shortage at the market price implies that buyers would buy more at the market price if more of it was available. We're pretty comfortable talking about shortages in consumer markets when we would buy things at the stated price, but can't because it is sold out (eg Pixel phone shortages), so I'm not sure why we can't say a similar thing about labour.
> I would argue that a shortage at the market price implies that buyers would buy more at the market price if more of it was available. That can just be a current price below the equilibrium market price; I'd argue that a shortage is a specialized instance of that resulting from a transitory decrease from long-term supply (or increase from long-term demand) that is expected to revert to normal. But if you need annual…
Theoretically, couldn't it also be that demand is consistently growing faster than anticipated (even after whatever corrections are made upon discovery that it previously grew faster than anticipated)?