271–280 of 684 posts
thank god, I've seen a lot of americans rejected especially POC of varied backgrounds turned down in favor of some H1B nonsense to often it really impacts the ability for folks to rise up and move to new industries
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All H1B salaries are public: https://h1bdata.info/ It's possible (maybe even likely) that title deflation is happening, but based on my experience the salaries are definitely in line with the pay ranges for each job title (I worked at Amazon for 3 and a half years, so I have some first and second hand information on pay.) If nothing else it's a great resource to see the unfiltered payscale at SV companies.
Thanks for the data. I see comments across threads on HN that say that H1-B hires are common. What is the incentive to hire them then? Are professionals in the US really that ill-equipped? I guess there is a bit of cognitive dissonance with FAANG complaining about no qualified workers but then FAANG only hired people who went to Stanford or Harvard and such.
Americans are plenty smart, but they are only 4% of the world population. American companies compete on an international stage and not having access to the other 96% of talent would be a competitive disadvantage.
My common sense frustration here is how can the US possibly have a critical shortage of developers on languages that are 20 to 50 years old? We have the third highest population in the world and claim to have excellent education, and these are high paying jobs at 2x-3x the national average yearly income. So what qualifies the shortage? Is it like agriculture where Americans are too entitled for the work? Are American…
'How and Why Government, Universities, and Industry Create Domestic Labor Shortages of Scientists and High-Tech Workers'
https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/Weinstein-GUI_N...
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I don't know that that's true, any source for that? If countries are opening up for tourists (!) I don't see why not for immigration.
Name one country that has opened for tourists or has recently (as in the last week or two) said they will open for tourists.
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Reposting my response from a different thread: Every time you file an H1B Visa, you pay something called a ACWIA Fee (“American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998”). For employers who have between 1-25 full-time workers, the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act fee is $750. For employers with 26 or more full-time employees, the fee is $1,500. [1] This fee was established to fund t…
Free college I guess. Oh wait... That’s a very interesting thing, I had no idea. So a sensible thing to do would be to increase that fee substantially and have it go straight to subsidizing degree programs that aren’t creating enough home grown talent. In other words, the company should expect to pay close to market rate per H1B plus the fee. We remove the incentives to abuse the program for cost reduction, and strai…
what's different now? they're legally required to do both as of now.
Are you telling me that the H1-B that is hired doesn't do any work and free-loading off the American economy without paying any taxes (like Social Security, which they don't get to access).
Could you share what that job posting was? I'd love to look at it, if you suspect a violation, you should report it.
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For a while I wasn't sure if this was just some "talking point." Then one day, on a hiking meetup, I met a guy who was ranting about his job that was to write "oddly hyper-specific job descriptions that might seem to make no sense" to bring in cheaper h1b candidates. So yeah, it's a problem.
My previous boss would openly brag about doing this, while he was doing it.
"A comprehensive literature review, in conjunction with employment statistics, newspaper articles, and our own interviews with company recruiters, reveals a significant heterogeneity in the STEM labor market: the academic sector is generally oversupplied, while the government sector and private industry have shortages in specific areas."
https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-ste...
"Our examination shows that the STEM shortage in the United States is largely overblown. Guestworker programs are in need of reform, but any changes should make sure that guestworkers are not lower-paid substitutes for domestic workers."
https://bloustein.rutgers.edu/new-analysis-finds-no-shortage...
"Sixty percent of H-1B positions certified by the U.S. Department of Labor are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation."
https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wa...
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It's just silly... even if you're a nationalist, isn't the prospect of bringing over talented people from foreign countries to work in America and help our companies profit plus deprive their home countries of their skills a really, really good thing?
As a nationalist, I think it would be better for those other countries to keep their skilled workers and so benefit. I think every nation has a right to its own existence, space, and policies. And they also get to decide what's right for them 'as a people'. Always optimizing for performance of 'the economy' is not in the best interest of the actual citizens of this country.
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How much are companies expecting to save by going this route? Is it dramatic?
There seems to be a mix. Which is part of the problem with the national debate / conversation. There are companies who found the absolute best in the world that they have to have. So they need that H1-B to get the job done and hire the best person. Then there are companies who just want to contract out super cheap labor, so they do thousands of H1-B applications hoping a few hundred make it through, then the they cha…
I’m flooding this thread a bit, but I’ve always been a little confused by the consultancy firms. Is there a clear difference between off shoring and H1B? Or is it mostly the same thing for these companies, with different margins for each.