H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by vecinu » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 1:51 AM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #114

zzleeper wrote: post #98

I went through the entire comment thread and feel like you guys are missing a lot of the H1B benefits by focusing just on tech and the effect of the Indian consultancies. Most PhDs, specially in STEM, math, stats, econ, etc. are not American. And almost all of them end up with a H1B visa at some point if they remain in the US. It might be lottery based if you go to work at any firm, or quota-free if it is in academia…

> (how easy is it to replace a CS PhD working on LIDARs for self driving cars?) I have no problem with specializations but how many are in the US doing full stack web or general application development. It seems to me the problem is not surrounding engineers who specialize in a minority field like LIDAR. The problem is when you have a team of 15 engineers building a web application platform and 13 are H1Bs. Also, don…

> doing full stack web

Is there really an abundance of really qualified full stack web developers? I met a lot of incompetent US citizens claiming to be full stack devs.

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

#172

Post by anarazel » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 1:52 AM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #114

zzleeper wrote: post #98

I went through the entire comment thread and feel like you guys are missing a lot of the H1B benefits by focusing just on tech and the effect of the Indian consultancies. Most PhDs, specially in STEM, math, stats, econ, etc. are not American. And almost all of them end up with a H1B visa at some point if they remain in the US. It might be lottery based if you go to work at any firm, or quota-free if it is in academia…

> (how easy is it to replace a CS PhD working on LIDARs for self driving cars?) I have no problem with specializations but how many are in the US doing full stack web or general application development. It seems to me the problem is not surrounding engineers who specialize in a minority field like LIDAR. The problem is when you have a team of 15 engineers building a web application platform and 13 are H1Bs. Also, don…

> Curious what you or any other H1B employee feels about this point of view?

I'm quite biased, because I failed the H1B lottery. Took me a good while to get a different work visa (and LPR now). So take this with a grain of salt.

From the perspective of somebody working in a niche where I (via companies I work with), would immediately hire anyone qualified in that niche, be it a USian or not, I agree. Trying to hire specialists (abroad, because there none available in the US) and then being unable to get H1Bs for them, is quite frustrating; especially when you see companies/people getting H1Bs in roles with plenty local candidates/low specialization.

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

#173

Post by flukus » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 1:58 AM UTC

vecinu wrote: post #171

notyourwork wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (how easy is it to replace a CS PhD working on LIDARs for self driving cars?) I have no problem with specializations but how many are in the US doing full stack web or general application development. It seems to me the problem is not surrounding engineers who specialize in a minority field like LIDAR. The problem is when you have a team of 15 engineers building a web application platform and 13 are H1Bs. Also, don…

> doing full stack web Is there really an abundance of really qualified full stack web developers? I met a lot of incompetent US citizens claiming to be full stack devs.

What's your definition of full stack? Anyone that knows a back end language, sql, html and a bit of css and javascript is a full stack web developer.

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

#174

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 1:59 AM UTC

nirav72 wrote: post #159

TP4Cornholio wrote: post #148

"Given that the unemployment rate for college graduates sits at 2.5%, it is fair to say that most native workers displaced by H-1Bs land on their feet." Working at starbucks with a huge debt load is landing on your feet?

Do those Starbucks workers have a technical background? If yes and they're still working for starbuck wages, then there is something wrong.

I think that's the point--something is very wrong here. Plenty of U.S. people have technical backgrounds who are under-employed and/or have abandoned the field due to low job prospects.

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

#175

Post by anarazel » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 2:00 AM UTC

erispoe wrote: post #155

dmitrygr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, nobody wants that effect. We want the PhDs. What we do not want it companies that bring in cheap barely-qualified labour for cost-cutting. This hurts the people brought in (they are stuck in bad jobs with bad pay and no way out). This hurts the local workers who cost too much compared to this effectively-slave-labour. The hard part changing the rules such that PhDs and other productive uses of H1B do not su…

All these effects are the product of workers being stuck in their jobs through the H1B program. Give H1B workers the same rights as American workers and they will compete on the same terms, getting a competitive salary and not bringing wages down. If someone's got an H1B, it's because there's demand for the job, unsatisfied by US workers, wether at the original company requesting the visa or in the industry in genera…

> All these effects are the product of workers being stuck in their jobs through the H1B program. Give H1B workers the same rights as American workers and they will compete on the same terms, getting a competitive salary and not bringing wages down.

I strongly agree on the general sentiment. But I think you'd continue to need some restrictions, otherwise it'll end up as a means to pay companies to get a US visa. Get visa, switch to a different company with way lower salary, etc. Similarly you could have arrangements where companies move people to cheaper subsidiaries after getting the initial visa.

I presume you'd have to have continuing salary requirements, possibly requiring that the next job's salary is higher than previous ones. That'd have the issue that you could trap somebody by giving a way above market salary, but that seems a fairly remote problem.

> Also, ban H1B outsourcing.

Not sure about that in general. There's plenty of work where it just doesn't make sense to have a full-time employee in a company, but you want somebody available on a regular basis. But it's also quite commonly misused.

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

#176

Post by yks » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 2:01 AM UTC

idaw wrote: post #124

I'm intrigued between the contrast of a sanctuary city, like Los Angeles, and various tech companies in LA hiring H1B employees. My roommate's on an H1B but he can't just quit his tech job and work on a startup, despite having a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank and being a very successful developer. Yet there are organizations like Define American, whose founder is an undocumented worker, encouraging people t…

H-1Bs are law-abiding people and therefore the easiest immigrant group to attack, unlike illegals they will leave when told so.

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

#177

Post by Clubber » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 2:03 AM UTC

zobzu wrote: post #67

gragas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Like all the other executive orders, it’s just words The hypocrisy here is truly disgusting. One moment, executive orders are the end of the world. The next moment, they don't mean anything at all. If a person can't see past this man's partisanship, then they are hopeless; when reason and logic are out the window, it's over. For those who want evidence from the mouth of Chuck Schumer himself [1]: >Schumer said that…

Fking A. It's the problem right now: anything Trump says is horrible. If he says A "its the end of the world" If he says B "its useless" On the same topic. It doesn't matter what he says, these people will shut him down. Result? he might be bad, terrible - who knows. Nobody trusts anyone or anything anymore - because all sources lies so much it's too unreliable.

This is exactly how I feel. The news is so sensationalized it's ridiculous. As a thought experiment, read the news headlines from a Trump speech, then watch the actual speech. They focus on a sentence or two and ignore the rest of the speech. Yes, he said something stupid, but what else did he say?

Perfect example is the Spicer gas thing. Had he said Hitler didn't use gas on the battlefield, he would have been completely right. In WWI they used gas a lot and everyone expected Hitler to do so. Many theorize it was because Hitler himself was gassed in WWI. What else did Spicer say? You'll have to watch the press conference to find out, the news sure isn't going to tell you. That's subversive as hell.

I don't particularly care for Trump, nor any politician for that matter, but I don't like being treated like a child by the news (left and right).

For what it's worth, many companies have been using H1B to lower wages. That's all that's on their spreadsheets. They're sold on other things like, "you can ramp up when you need it," and, "you never have to worry about losing people because we have redundancy and will train the new person," but that's all BS. I think it will raise US wages and equity packages for at least the next 10 years or so. 10%, 30%, 50% maybe. I'll take that. They've been suppressed for 20.

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

#178

Post by gragas » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 2:07 AM UTC

jeffjose wrote: post #146

txmx2000 wrote: post #140

Americans don't get PhDs because graduate schools are flooded with applications from those trying to gain entry to the US. Once in industry foreigners tend to hire only members of their own race further discouraging Americans from pursuing advanced degrees. I think it's disgusting that you say you're contributing to my country as though, without you, these positions would go unfilled because Americans aren't intellig…

> Americans don't get PhDs because graduate schools are flooded with applications from those trying to gain entry to the US. Once in industry foreigners tend to hire only members of their own race further discouraging Americans from pursuing advanced degrees. That's not true. The American Universities don't choose to admit foreign students just because. The good schools always try to balance the mix of students admit…

>That's not true. The American Universities don't choose to admit foreign students just because. The good schools always try to balance the mix of students admitted into the program.

Then why do Indians make up more than 30% of my school's CS program, despite them making up less than 1% of the US population?

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

#179

Post by anarazel » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 2:08 AM UTC

CriticalSection wrote: post #169

anarazel wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So H1Bs would end up only working in NYC, Bay Area etc and only for the big players. Not good either.

I guess they'll just have to settle for (horrors!) American workers.

Meh. If H1B were reshaped to actually be for specialist workers as it was intended (at least by some), then that's a lot easier said than done. I got to the US on a temporary work visa (not H1B because of loosing the lottery), and I'd find positions for somebody with my and a bunch of other specializations several times over.

By auctioning based on salary you're preferring areas with absurd costs of living - which is a) not where you necessarily need to get more people making the problem worse b) reinforcing economic inequality between areas of the country.

If there's a company needing some specialist somewhere with a saner cost of living, and they tried to find such a specialist, offering above market wages, what exactly is the benefit of not them having to pay twice or thrice the effective salary of somebody in SF/NYC?

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

#180

Post by gumby » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 2:09 AM UTC

H-1s are hard to bring in if you're a startup. On one hand, that's as it should be (the country is insane not to give preference to locals) but on the other hand is painful (since not everybody locally has the needed skills).

And it's impossible if you have non-tech requirements (like the native foreign language teachers we tried to bring in when I was on the school board -- the allotment ran out in October yet teachers are recruited in march-may to start in August).

With emotions so high it's hard to say "the big consultancies are abusing / destroying H-1" without people thinking you're saying either "H-1 is bad for America" or "I'm a troglodyte who hates H-1". H-1 is pretty good for all concerned, actually, if you follow the rules.

Note (not really a disclaimer): despite saying, which I believe, that the big consultancies are abusing H-1, I have friends at Infosys, Tata, Birla etc.