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America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

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Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#151

Post by landryraccoon »

ALittleLight wrote: post #100

My intuition is that H1B and similar programs hurt my personal compensation as a domestic provider of skilled labor. My reasoning is that less supply of skilled labor should result in increased cost - which gets paid to me. I understand it's better for the companies and perhaps the economy as a whole to import labor, but it seems worse for me. Is there research on this subject or something I'm missing?

This intuition only holds as long as you believe there is zero chance of new large competitors arising in other countries.

If protectionism causes a rival to Google to be viable in other countries, that could hurt your salary prospects back home quite a bit.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#152

Post by drdrey »

QuercusMax wrote: post #81
2_listerine_pls wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with a CS degree can write a fizzbuz

Wow, didn't realize this was a comedy site. Speaking from personal experience, the number of people with multiple years of experience and multiple degrees in CS (usually BS and MS) who can't pass FizzBuzz is really high .

What is the explanation? Presumably, to get a CS degree you had to solve problems harder than FizzBuzz, no? Are we suggesting these people cheated their way to a CS degree?

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#153

Post by dunpeal »

geff82 wrote: post #149

You want good healthcare, good salary, the real Autobahns, good houses and you are talented, have at least a bachelor in IT and are willing to try something out? Come over to Germany. Honestly, no I other country I know of has such a fast and well thought out way to permanent residence for foreign talent than Germany. If you are interested in working here, drop me a message to eriklistserve at gmail dot com.

Correct me if I'm wrong, a friend of mine who looked into it, all he could get in Berlin was less than half his American salary, while his taxes were very substantially higher.

His take-home would have been slashed by about 70%, so he gave up the idea. Have things changed since then?

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#154

Post by enraged_camel »

calvinbhai wrote: post #150

I agree with what Kerr is suggesting. It makes a lot of sense. I also agree with a many Americans who are anti-H1b that it suppresses wages, hence makes it attractive to higher foreign workers, quite often for jobs that are not truly state of the art, but do require the technical know how. This is why it makes sense for the H1-B to be a highest paid gets first kind of a visa. That way there's a strong incentive to no…

>>In fact, I think a better way would be to give two 3-year temporary green cards. if at the end of 6th year if the person still has job, it becomes a permanent job.

No, the entire reason companies get away with paying H1Bs below market rate is because the visa is tied to employment.

It needs to be decoupled so that visa holders can freely and easily switch jobs without worrying about losing their status.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#155

Post by EmbarrassedFuel »

nradov wrote: post #67
Kephael wrote: post #7

The supply of technical workers is artificially limited by Leetcode style interviews. There doesn't seem to be an actual supply side limitation, especially not at the entry level.

Decades ago tech companies like IBM would hire entry-level software developers with zero coding experience based on the results of aptitude tests. Then they put the new employees through internal boot camps. There's no reason a similar approach couldn't work today. Employers just generally got lazy about workforce development while the economy was slower and they had an unlimited supply of applicants.

In the uk I often see posts for graduate programmer positions with essentially this arrangement: words to the effect of “candidates need not have experience coding but should show a willingness to learn and deep interest in tech” etc.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#156

Post by x0x0 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #154
calvinbhai wrote: post #150

I agree with what Kerr is suggesting. It makes a lot of sense. I also agree with a many Americans who are anti-H1b that it suppresses wages, hence makes it attractive to higher foreign workers, quite often for jobs that are not truly state of the art, but do require the technical know how. This is why it makes sense for the H1-B to be a highest paid gets first kind of a visa. That way there's a strong incentive to no…

>>In fact, I think a better way would be to give two 3-year temporary green cards. if at the end of 6th year if the person still has job, it becomes a permanent job. No, the entire reason companies get away with paying H1Bs below market rate is because the visa is tied to employment. It needs to be decoupled so that visa holders can freely and easily switch jobs without worrying about losing their status.

Or both?

ie grant them to people being paid the highest wages first, and limit the h1b holder to mandatory 1 year employment with the sponsoring company then 5 years of free to switch at will.

We'd still be willing to sponsor as we aren't keeping h1bs via the visa; we keep employees because they want to work here. The pain with sponsoring isn't the cost; it's the time and uncertainty. Sponsoring costs compare favorably to the standard 25% a contingency recruiter charges.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#157

Post by El_Flanagan »

ransom1538 wrote: post #82
firedrakerage wrote: post #11

I do not typically post, but these suggestions seem like genuine improvements to the existing system: "Kerr suggests allocating H-1Bs not by lottery as they are now, but by salary — the more that a company is willing to pay for a foreign worker, the quicker they can get a visa." "A second change would be to allow H-1B workers to apply for permanent residency green cards on their own, without having to be sponsored by…

I just wish it was reciprocated. I would like to work in Spain (no really). If I work in Spain, the US should open a spot for someone from Spain to work in the US. You want to hire someone from Turkey? No problem, find someone in the US to move to Turkey. You could allow companies to even grease the wheels, "Work from Turkey and get a 30k / year extra free bonus stipend!! yay!!"

I dont know about Turkey, but at Spain 30K/year wont be your bonus. Will be you salary. And consider it good salary.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#158

Post by geebee »

jki275 wrote: post #138
geebee wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this either. There is an interesting blog post that suggests maybe some programmers get tripped up because they want to find a more clever way to do it: http://www.gayle.com/blog/2016/1/fizzbuzz-youre-doing-someth... It doesn't sound like this is the problem, though, in all the cases. It sounds like someone who majored in CS was unable to write this. Which seems inconceivable to me. And yeah, "inco…

You don't even need algorithms or data structures -- it's a cs101/151 problem at best. When I first saw the problem the solution appeared self evident to me -- I've been coding since the 80s, but still. It's just a simple problem and writing the pseudocode for a question like it ought to be almost second nature to anyone who has done any coding at all. I know people confuse CS and IT/CIS, but even at that, those majo…

I agree, you don't need data structures for fizz buzz. In fact, I think it would be tough to pass data structures if you weren't at the level where you could write fizzbuzz, so it's more or a pre-req. I have trouble imagining what is taught in a CS program that doesn't have a course in data structures and algorithms. How can it be CS?

That said... I keep hearing about fizzbuzz, and I'm not sure what I think of the complaint. I hear something along the lines of "We need to do technical screening because you wouldn't believe how many people can't do fizz buzz", but the questions aren't fizz buzz, they're "find all matching subtrees in a binary tree", often at the whiteboard, in 45 minutes. I'm not saying that this is (or isn't) unreasonable, just that there's an awful big difference between fizz buzz and the kind of questions I've encountered in a typical tech interview.

Re: America’s Need for Skilled Immigrants Isn’t Going Away

#160

Post by iguy »

landryraccoon wrote: post #151
ALittleLight wrote: post #100

My intuition is that H1B and similar programs hurt my personal compensation as a domestic provider of skilled labor. My reasoning is that less supply of skilled labor should result in increased cost - which gets paid to me. I understand it's better for the companies and perhaps the economy as a whole to import labor, but it seems worse for me. Is there research on this subject or something I'm missing?

This intuition only holds as long as you believe there is zero chance of new large competitors arising in other countries. If protectionism causes a rival to Google to be viable in other countries, that could hurt your salary prospects back home quite a bit.

So the US should vacuum up all talent so hard it has no chance to coalesce elsewhere? I'm not sure this is a viable or even desirable strategy.

The most likely competitors are in China. The actions of the Chinese government have much much more to do with this than the actions of the US.

Historically, attempts to keep a lead by any other path than leading ahead haven't worked well.

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