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H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

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Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#31

Post by belltaco »

tracer4201 wrote: post #18
belltaco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that it will make it easier for employees stuck in a bad spot due to employee abuse to switch jobs. Lets say they join the company you cite and the boss dumps 80 hours a week worth of work every week and doesn't pay overtime. Currently it's a huge hassle and risky to switch jobs, so that employee may continue thus hurting the job market. If you give the employee the visa, they can shop around for jobs lik…

>My point is that it will make it easier for employees stuck in a bad spot due to employee abuse to switch jobs. Sure. I think that's fair, but getting a work visa should be harder in the first place. One of my previous companies got IT workers heavily through a big contracting company. We received folks who: 1) Didn't understand their domain 2) Couldn't communicate in English, neither verbal or written This person c…

How do you enforce that at a govt level when companies okay with it? Why didn't your company ask for interviews of contractors? We are seeing a free market failure here that is better fixed by companies rather than complicated and cumbersome regulation.

How will USCIS and consulate officers be able to do a better job determining if someone is suitable to work in a company than the company themselves? Why should tax dollars be spent because companies are too lazy or incompetent to filter and vet people they are hiring?

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#32

Post by mavelikara »

maxxxxx wrote: post #12
belltaco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that it will make it easier for employees stuck in a bad spot due to employee abuse to switch jobs. Lets say they join the company you cite and the boss dumps 80 hours a week worth of work every week and doesn't pay overtime. Currently it's a huge hassle and risky to switch jobs, so that employee may continue thus hurting the job market. If you give the employee the visa, they can shop around for jobs lik…

In my company most H1 workers that come from Infosys and others are mainly there because they are cheap and not because they are "highly qualified" as the intent of H1 is. If Infosys just had to pay market rates they would lose competitiveness and open up visa spots for the people who truly deserve one.

You Infosys colleagues might be slightly underpaid than you, but not by much. But real cost saving Infosys offers to your employer is the team that works offshore. Your Infosys colleagues are acting as bridges between that team and yours.

Infosys made almost $11B in 2018. They are not going to sweat the salary of few H-1B engineers. If American engineers, or Indian ones having Green Card, will do the job - liaison the communication between onshore and offshore teams - they will hire those if H-1Bs are not available. Or, your employer might move the whole operation to India, laying off the onshore team.

TL;DR: You are probably barking up the wrong tree. The "cheap" H-1Bs you hear about are hired by American staffing companies, not outsourcers.

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#33

Post by mavelikara »

tracer4201 wrote: post #5
mavelikara wrote: post #3

> The Department of Homeland Security wants to switch the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the proposed rule change, which would — somewhat counterintuitively — improve the odds for those highly educated workers > ... with a master’s or doctoral degree from an American college or university This is a welcome change. But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mi…

>But this biases the playing field in favor of those graduating from American degree mills. Undergrad is very expensive in the US, even at some public universities. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this put American graduates at a disadvantage? If I attend a US public university and pay via loans, I'm now competing for a job with Indian and Chinese students who completed a graduate program (anecdotally, these can…

> Undergrad is very expensive in the US, even at some public universities. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this put American graduates at a disadvantage?

Sorry, I realized that I missed a word there when I wrote that line. I meant:

> But this biases the playing field in favor of those immigrants graduating from American degree mills.

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#34

Post by davidw »

hughperkins wrote: post #27
davidw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who picks how many spots to auction off? Is there any rational basis for that number or is it just some kind of random 'out of your ass' political thing? https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-numbe...

Just set it to equal the current number of h1b slots

What basis does the current number have in reality?

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#35

Post by stale2002 »

belltaco wrote: post #16
oh_sigh wrote: post #9

Why not just go to an auction system, where the group that is going to give the highest salary gets the visa? You could adjust it for CoL so all H1Bs don't end up in SF and NYC. What would be bad about this system?

The big companies with huge pockets will set up shop in small low CoL places and squeeze out smaller research companies out of talented graduate students in high expertise niche fields like research in EE, AI etc. They will be able to outbid anyone local easily since they're already paying a lot for them in SF/NYC/DC/Seattle/Portland/Austin etc.

Yes, they might do this.

I am confused as to why you think this is a bad thing. I think it would be an amazing development that would only help engineers to get paid more.

If these nich fields aren't able to afford to pay engineers the market salary, then I say screw them. They deserve the negative consequences.

Nothing would make me happier than for employers who are underpaying people, to be punished.

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#36

Post by mycodebreaks »

oh_sigh wrote: post #9

Why not just go to an auction system, where the group that is going to give the highest salary gets the visa? You could adjust it for CoL so all H1Bs don't end up in SF and NYC. What would be bad about this system?

It'll put startups at disadvantage. Very hard to compare equity compensation with liquid compensation big companies offer.

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#37

Post by belltaco »

stale2002 wrote: post #35
belltaco wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big companies with huge pockets will set up shop in small low CoL places and squeeze out smaller research companies out of talented graduate students in high expertise niche fields like research in EE, AI etc. They will be able to outbid anyone local easily since they're already paying a lot for them in SF/NYC/DC/Seattle/Portland/Austin etc.

Yes, they might do this. I am confused as to why you think this is a bad thing. I think it would be an amazing development that would only help engineers to get paid more. If these nich fields aren't able to afford to pay engineers the market salary, then I say screw them. They deserve the negative consequences. Nothing would make me happier than for employers who are underpaying people, to be punished.

They are research labs that are hiring Masters students and PhDs just out of college, working on cutting edge technologies. Salary alone doesn't mean talent.

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#38

Post by brucehoult »

As a person from New Zealand without an advanced degree (from anywhere) but with 30+ years industry experience (and previously granted an H-1B in 2001), this seems like the wrong way to tackle the problem of Indian body shops.

I was selected in this year's lottery in April and am still waiting for them to start processing the case -- according to their web site it could easily take until sometime in February, ten months after submitting the paperwork. Thank goodness I'm able to do contract work for the company remotely in the meantime.

As for pushing US salaries down ... my salary is well into six figures, thank you. And was, even in my previous job, in Moscow.

If you want to hinder the Indian meat market companies, how about putting in a per country quota, as there is for Green card?

Or, just get moving with the proposed increase in the minimum salary from $60k to $130k. I'm above that already, but apparently most of the Indians aren't.

And the processing times are criminal. It's probably going to be a year from submitting the paperwork until actually moving to the US -- and with six months of the three years of the visa (starting October 1) already gone.

Getting the Russian equivalent "Highly Skilled Specialist" visa (3 years, plus one 3 year renewal, minimum salary 2 million rubles a year) only took two months.

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#39

Post by nxc18 »

brucehoult wrote: post #38

As a person from New Zealand without an advanced degree (from anywhere) but with 30+ years industry experience (and previously granted an H-1B in 2001), this seems like the wrong way to tackle the problem of Indian body shops. I was selected in this year's lottery in April and am still waiting for them to start processing the case -- according to their web site it could easily take until sometime in February, ten mon…

Some companies would be decimated (literally) by a move from 60k to 130k... But it would definitely cut down on abuse or result in a big raise for the locals.

Re: H-1B visa shift may favor tech companies

#40

Post by stale2002 »

belltaco wrote: post #37
stale2002 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they might do this. I am confused as to why you think this is a bad thing. I think it would be an amazing development that would only help engineers to get paid more. If these nich fields aren't able to afford to pay engineers the market salary, then I say screw them. They deserve the negative consequences. Nothing would make me happier than for employers who are underpaying people, to be punished.

They are research labs that are hiring Masters students and PhDs just out of college, working on cutting edge technologies. Salary alone doesn't mean talent.

No, salary alone does not mean talent.

Instead, I am arguing that these theoretical research labs do not deserve to have any talent if they do not pay that talent market salary.

I want these research labs to get screwed. I hope that they fail. Because they deserve it.

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