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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

#102
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

H1B actually is visa that is easier to change jobs, compare with other visa like L1 which is tied to the employer. But u might be right that foreign worker are indeed in general more insecure about their job, thus might stick with the same company longer. But that is marginal edge, foreigner in general is no where close to compete with local in language skill and culture fit, which are all decisive factors in making a hiring decision.

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

#103

I wish every one of these stories would talk about that there are at least a couple of different kinds of h1b's. Facebook mostly or only has employees doing real, original work. But companies like Tata just are hiring for basic, mostly non-creative IT work. The second category (I think) is much more likely to lead to displacement of native workers. It's at least much more questionable. But h1b's at Microsoft or Googl…

Many of the type of IT people Tata et al are hiring are in roles in which native workers either (a) don't want to do or (b) aren't trained to do. Specifically BAU type roles where there is no creativity, diversity, career prospects e.g. Oracle/Teradata DBAs, Legacy J2EE Systems, Basic System Administration etc. And sure they could hire younger, junior developers but actually they aren't suited because companies don't…

You hire junior developers for those roles because you can pay them less and find the people who work well in your environment, get rid of the ones who don't, and leave the rest to decide for themselves whether they can find something they like about the entry-level work (and somehow continue to live on that wage) or go somewhere else once they have more experience on their resume.

I've been through so many long cycles of trying to find someone to fill a developer role where it would have been so much simpler if we could have started with someone who understood the environment and work load up front, rather than finding people who went back to the job search 3 or 4 weeks into it because it wasn't working out (but they were usually smart enough to get another job offer before they quit). I would almost prefer to take someone with little or no programming experience who works in my office with a desire to learn and a strong work ethic and give them the programming job, hire 2 or 3 more people to answer phones on a help desk, and save everyone the pain of reading resumes and interviewing for a developer who ends up negotiating a higher salary, socializing at the help desk from 8 to noon, managing their social media empire from 1 to 5, and either quitting or (somehow) getting fired after a few months so we can start all over again.

Yes, I have to train someone, perhaps even more than I would have to train someone who comes on board with some applicable experience, but the alphabet soup that goes out on my job postings isn't easy to replicate on resumes, and doesn't guarantee that I won't need to review the material with them anyway.

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

#104
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the sentiment "I will always put my fellow whites first" bad but the sentiment you espouse not?

That is a truly poor application of logic. It's not about being white, it's about living in the same social and economic communities. You really do not understand why a person might care more about what happens to their literal neighbor than someone half way across the world? From where I am sitting, you are using race as a way to be deliberately inflammatory. Not a good look.

I can see how, in this example, using race doesn't really serve to clarify the issue. I definitely understand why a person might care more about their neighbor. In fact, I care more about my neighbors (or my family members). However, that doesn't relieve me of my duty to respect the negative rights of others. For instance, I'm not allowed to murder someone halfway across the world because it benefits my family members. Likewise, I am arguing that I am not allowed to prevent X from hiring Y because my daughter would like the job.

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

#105

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. This would grant a massive advantage to companies like Google and Facebook over smaller companies, and more generally to geographic locales and parts of the industry with higher pay. In terms of economic and competitive impact for those companies and f…

...and that financial firepower, and resulting ability to outbid everybody else, comes because they're using their workers more productively than anybody else. Successful companies should be able to command the best, most scarce resources -- that's just efficient asset allocation, and is the entire point of the free market.

Well, it's not entirely efficient allocation, if you take the daring leap to assume that rents in certain areas are not totally subject to free market forces. I know a number of people who suggest they take home more by working in the Midwest metros than they would in equivalent jobs in the West Coast hubs.

It's possible that living in a high cost West Coast metro area is itself some sort of benefit, or at least better in ways we can't deduce by salary means alone. One alternative would be to keep the existing lottery system, and simply allow visa holders more latitude to switch employers. At which point any firms flooding the lottery with underpaid and underqualified applicants would see themselves out the door.

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

#106
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of like, "As a white person, white people are more important to me."? Do you think it is permissible for your town to pass a law that requires your neighborhood coffee shop to preferentially hire a barista from your town? Let me quote the parable of Sam and Marvin by the philosopher Michael Huemer to explain why I don't think your reasoning works. Excerpted from - http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/immigration.htm…

> Sort of like, "As a white person, white people are more important to me."? Not at all. Because being born with skin pigmentation is not the same as building a community together, that shares local resources and markets.

Your view seems to be that some communities are allowed to prevent outsiders from working in the jurisdiction of those communities in order to accrue modest economic advantages for community members. It seems like communities that share local resources and markets do have this property and communities that share skin pigmentation do not.

Why?

Typically people belong to multiple communities, say family, city, state, world. What kinds of actions are permissible in order to secure modest economic advantages to each of the these communities? What if there is a dispute between the various jurisdictions. What if the "world community" votes overwhelmingly in favor of open borders? What if a NYC block (which is certainly a community that shares local resources and markets) votes to ban black people from living/working there? Why is this wrong but the American community banning Indians from working in America not?

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

#107
post #80

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 econ…

>> 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.

I am wondering what does it have to do with the issue in 2017?

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

There is also a stunning lack of perspective on the consequences of the ungovernable migration.

(not US citizen)

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

#108
post #80

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 econ…

I'm wondering too.. Also 15% is not that much.

If you are only looking for "the best" around the globe. I would except something like that in this range...

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

#109
post #3
post #2

Sounds like it is time for Facebook to buy some congressmen.

Buying congressmen is expensive. Maybe instead, Facebook can just slowly take over the news industry and then control what people see.

Naw, it's actually pretty cheap, with a great ROI

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forge...

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

#110
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the sentiment "I will always put my fellow whites first" bad but the sentiment you espouse not?

What's wrong with caring about your fellow taxpaying citizens who's vote might affect you more than someone that's possibly displacing them? If you really think everyone is so equal, then why is it okay to put your family first?

"What's wrong with caring about your fellow taxpaying citizens who's vote might affect you more than someone that's possibly displacing them?"

? H1B holders pay as much tax as citizens do (more, in fact, given they cannot benefit off Social Security, but still have to contribute to it). AND they don't get to vote.

What's the argument in this case?

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