81–90 of 123 posts
I am so torn on this. On one hand, I spent 10 years on H1B in the US and the amount of H1B abuse that goes on is crazy. On the other hand, I would not have received my H1B under current guidelines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easiest solution is stack rank all H1b applicants by salary and fill the quota with based on ranking. Top talent in theory should be making the most money so we wouldn't risk losing them.
Hmmm. I have a friend who has an extremely specific PhD and was offered a job in Atlanta, for a position that would be hard to fill otherwise as his expertise is quite unique. So on one hand, you have a person with unique expertise, but on the other, he would be joining as a junior, so he would be paid a great salary - for that level. But he would be competing for visas with Seniors who will be paid more at other com…
H1b visas have primarily been used by consulting companies to bring in less expensive junior engineers ( [1] http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
You are right. For the 85K visas, there were ~240K applications. If 30% of them were for senior engineers, then with these new stricter directives all 85K visas go to them, thereby increasing the supply of senior engineers. Otherwise there would have been 30K senior engineers and 55K junior engineers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It causes incremental demand for H1-B visas from H-4 dependents whose specialized skills were not sufficient to warrant an issuance of an H1-B visa in the first place. This could be happening at the expense of more qualified H1-B candidates without physical presence in the country, as well as at the expense of citizens and permanent residents.
> whose specialized skills were not sufficient to warrant an issuance of an H1-B visa in the first place And how this changes if you apply for H1B while in US (on H-4)? Are the requirements softened?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if laws of economics in such a complex system were easy to guess. The more likely scenario in my opinion is American companies more aggressively moving their jobs to India and even other related business to more visa friendly countries like Mexico. My employer has already moved his QA department to India full fledge putting freeze on all QA hiring in USA. Easily 10-15 jobs lost.
Company I'm at (and building up a team at) is currently ramping up our QA/SDET efforts here in the US, as my belief is that we want the Quality Engineers to be as close as possible to the regular engineers (to the extent possible) - for maximum benefit (rapid iterations, faster to fail, higher velocity). Been interviewing a ton of QA/SDET candidates over the last few weeks, and a challenge is that so few (regardless…
However my main concern is that because the lawmakers don't understand the intricacies of the ecosystem, they might create laws that implement blanket restrictions on software engineers across different domains (that have real shortage in the US market) and salary bands. The earlier proposal for 130k salary band also doesn't make sense since the cost of living, and the salaries, vary widely across different cities.
For example I work at a startup working on some niche technologies and we have had real difficulties hiring good people even though we pay way above market wage for the location (NC).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
H1b abusing consulting companies tend to pick the job title with the lowest average compensation no matter what, since the official job title governs allowed salary limits in H1b. This is why the average salary for a "software consultant" is so much lower than most other titles. These companies all pile on the same lightly used job title to synergistically lower the average salary. I don't think it has anything to do…
They also invented some new job titles: http://www.jobsintech.io/immigration_companies/infosys-limit...
No matter how you frame the issue, call it an abuse, or try to solve it, I don't think anything will change other than some minor adjustments. Jobs are not going to magically appear or wages rise. India/China has a huge supply of engineers across the board (good, bad, senior, junior etc.,). And US companies always want to maximize their profits. So increasing the bar on H-1B visas will increase the quality of H-1B's…
Protectionism does work. Just ask the Lawyers and the Airline pilots. The reason software engineers are not paid as well now is because we don't have a Bar association or Labor union to keep out the low rate foreign competition.
The annual mean wage for Software engineers is higher than that for lawyers and pilots.
As an Indian software engineer on H1B I totally support this idea. I see a lot of Indians working with the consulting companies where entire departments are staffed by H1B workers on low (65-70k) salary. That kind of work is degrading even for the engineers who don't get any raises, are overworked and have very few benefits. But this is how things are. However my main concern is that because the lawmakers don't under…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmm. I have a friend who has an extremely specific PhD and was offered a job in Atlanta, for a position that would be hard to fill otherwise as his expertise is quite unique. So on one hand, you have a person with unique expertise, but on the other, he would be joining as a junior, so he would be paid a great salary - for that level. But he would be competing for visas with Seniors who will be paid more at other com…
Isn't that a market based solution though? Nothing against your friend but if a company is willing to spend more on a senior than your friends company is going to pay him, that indicates that the senior is more valuable to economy