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Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

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Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#71

Post by rtpg »

gragas wrote: post #47
static_noise wrote: post #15

I don't see what makes workers born in America more important than workers born in any other country. Everybody should get the same chances.

The thing is, Indians and Chinese are fleeing their countries because it's so much worse there. If life was better in their countries, they would stay. But it's not. So instead of trying to help their fellow citizens, they run away and make Americans pay the cost.

"pay the cost": People are coming to America to work for American companies, make American goods, pay American taxes.

A job is not a handout, it's (supposed to be, at least) beneficial to both sides of the relationship.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#72

Post by salasrod »

dragonwriter wrote: post #39
ebola1717 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that technology has always been a bigger displacer of jobs than immigration. H1B allows 65K immigrants per year. Much more than that is displaced by self-driving cars, warehouse automation, etc.

> H1B allows 65K immigrants per year. H-1B allows zero immigrants per year, because it's a non-immigrant visa.

You are wrong, the H1B is a Dual intent visa, which means it can be used by non-immigrants as well as people trying to immigrate into the country.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#73

Post by virmundi »

jordache wrote: post #61
YR372zm87 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, workers born in the USA are more important to me. I care more about my neighbor's employment status, safety, and happiness than the family down the street. I care more about the guy down the street than the family across town... etc etc etc... I care more about some family in some US state that I'll never visit than a family over in India. The closer they are to me, the more their success and problems…

but these h1b holders live in your town, and possibly your next door neighbor. gotcha!

Only because they are here by breaking the intent and possibly the letter of the law. If they are here because they have real skills, great. I care while they're here. If they are drones used to illegally displace workers, boot them out. The reason it's not an "everybody's equal" thing is that a person in another country has less of chance of directly contributing to the betterment of the US. A native US has a higher impact since they are in the ecosystem. So given the Bayesian odds, I'll back the native.

Edited for grammar

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#74

Post by fredophile »

outworlder wrote: post #25
Buge wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious way to make H1B work for the high end software engineers is to approve applicants based on highest paid applicant first, instead of via a random lottery. It's fairly clear to me that this would be beneficial for the long term success of the United States. It's unclear to me what it would do to short term salaries for highly paid software engineers. Would it lower their salaries due to an increase in suppl…

Only if you group by occupation. Unless translators are paid the same as Bay Area software engineer.

You don't need to group by occupation. If there is a shortage of translators then their wages should go up. As their wages increase more people will see translation as a desirable career. If wages increase enough for them to be competitive for H1B positions that would be an indication that there really is a shortage of local translators.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#75

Post by calvinbhai »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #63
dragonwriter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> H1B allows 65K immigrants per year. H-1B allows zero immigrants per year, because it's a non-immigrant visa.

It is dual intent for a reason. It's why my parents are citizens, in fact (and by extension, myself).

your parents were lucky. Any indian starting a green card process now, will be staring at a 20+ yr duration to get one. So, at least for India born people, it should be considered as a non-immigrant visa.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#76

Post by davidw »

reaperducer wrote: post #42
outworlder wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had a big corporate job where they had us train our h1b and then laid us off This is indeed ridiculous. But how often does that happen? More specifically, how many companies go to the trouble of hiring H1B workers in lieu of local workers and then make the current workers train the replacements? if the worker being trained was actually a contractor for one of those big indian IT companies, then it makes more s…

Happened to me last year, too. And it's not just big companies. In my case it was a firm with only about 30 employees. But outsourcing (in my case to India) has become so easy that companies of almost any size can do it.

H1B is someone coming here, not outsourcing. Fewer H1B's probably means more outsourcing, for companies who are just looking at cutting costs and not looking at quality a lot. Not that there aren't great people to outsource work to, but we all know the kind of company we're talking about that isn't seeking that.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#77

Post by stevenwoo »

outworlder wrote: post #23
delbel wrote: post #14

The h1b program is out of control. We've got Americans who need jobs. I've had a big corporate job where they had us train our h1b and then laid us off. I've also worked for H1B's in America who hired me through upwork. They would outsource their job to me, that's pretty messed up when you fully think that out.

> I've had a big corporate job where they had us train our h1b and then laid us off This is indeed ridiculous. But how often does that happen? More specifically, how many companies go to the trouble of hiring H1B workers in lieu of local workers and then make the current workers train the replacements? if the worker being trained was actually a contractor for one of those big indian IT companies, then it makes more s…

Usually companies have a severance package with a non disclosure so it's going to have be bad enough for people to sue for it to make the news like Disney and the 250 IT workers in Florida.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/disney-...

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#78

Post by ylem »

ganfortran wrote: post #58
reaperducer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to Facebook, but all the H1B's I knew from Microsoft were drones at best. U of W churned out hundreds of people each year who would have loved to have those jobs.

Well highly skilled not doesn't mean the job is not repetitive. In case of Microsoft, why would a local fails to an alien in such case, if they are both qualified? I cannot think of a reason why corporate would go straightly prefer aliens over locals. H1Bs do bring the whole market price down, but for individuals, aliens are more expensive I believe because of the legal cost. Maybe some locals are just not good enoug…

What is the churn rate for H1bs compared to locals? My understanding is that it is challenging for H1bs to change jobs, so that could be a strong incentive.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#79

Post by YR372zm87 »

jordache wrote: post #61
YR372zm87 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, workers born in the USA are more important to me. I care more about my neighbor's employment status, safety, and happiness than the family down the street. I care more about the guy down the street than the family across town... etc etc etc... I care more about some family in some US state that I'll never visit than a family over in India. The closer they are to me, the more their success and problems…

but these h1b holders live in your town, and possibly your next door neighbor. gotcha!

I care less about them than they natives they displaced by getting visas handed out for reasons other than their intended purpose.

I know my next door neighbors. Not H1B holders.

Don't be an troll.

Re: Facebook: greater than 15% of employees are H1Bs

#80

Post by davidw »

These threads always have a great mix of:

* Subtle racism.

* Zero-sum thinking.

* Specifically, the lump of labor fallacy.

* People not realizing that code is about the easiest thing in the world to ship back and forth between different countries: if a company is hell-bent on being cheap, they'll outsource rather than bring someone in.

* A stunning lack of perspective on the benefits that immigrants bring to the economy and culture.

* A lack of historical perspective in a country founded by immigrants. There were 0 restrictions prior to 1860-something, and then it was something racist to keep the Chinese out.

* General fuzziness in terms of economic thinking. "let's have an auction for the 10113 spots the government makes available!" - without thinking that 10113 is some magic number some bureaucrat made up with little to no relationship to the real world.

This continues to be my go-to article as one of the better takes on immigration: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...

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