Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation • Hacker News Board

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#171

Post by vonmoltke » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

ActsJuvenile wrote: post #93

automated_toast wrote: post #8

I for one am ecstatic about this. I want less competition for my role, not more. It is hard to compete when the top 5% of every other economy comes in and crowds me out.

Doctors vs Software Engineers are very interesting case studies in my eyes. AMA (American Medical Association) has successfully lobbied congress to cap residencies at 100K a year, essentially restricting supply. Foreign doctors have to go through a gauntlet of exams, tests, and licenses that keeps market from being flooded with cheaper talent and diluting local doctor salaries. Software Engineers have failed to unite…

> AMA (American Medical Association) has successfully lobbied congress to cap residencies at 100K a year, essentially restricting supply.

The AMA is opposed to the current cap, and has been active in both lobbying for increasing Medicare funding for residencies and in building up alternative sources of funding residencies: https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-con...

This seems to be a persistent myth on HN. Do people just assume the AMA's position hasn't changed in 23 years?

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#172

Post by hedora » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

hogFeast wrote: post #84

etrabroline wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many foreigners seeking to immigrate to the US see anything short of total open boarders as white supremacy. Americans caring about, protecting and developing our own workforce is the great evil of our day.

What is also funny is that settled immigrants often have more right-wing views about immigration than people born into that society. This doesn't appear to happen in the US because of the history and the significant levels of illegal immigration today but, where I am, the group most in favour of controls on migration are settled immigrants. It seems very odd to say limiting immigration is white supremacy. The US has…

When Trump quoted “When the looting starts the shooting starts” he was encouraging lynchings. Look up the history.

Along with numerous, more damning allegations, John Bolton says Trump is encouraging the Chinese to build death camps to house their ethnic minorities.

Boltan is a senior republican. He served in every republican administration since Regan. In fact, he’s also a racist, so it’s pretty clear he’s not some closet lefty plant. According to Wikipedia:

> From 2013 until March 2018, Bolton was chairman of the far-right anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute, which is prominent for disseminating false anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim information.

It’s not like this is the only time a member of Trump’s inner circle has blown a whistle. His former Secretary of Defense compared Trump to the Nazis in writing two weeks ago.

How much evidence will it take for you to pay attention to what Trump has been doing? Every mainstream news outlet consistently (except Fox, they’re inconsistent) runs stories about Trump’s racism and ties to white supremacists.

He purged a large percentage of his administration and the republican house and senate for opposing him.

His political campaign and immediate family regularly use Nazi imagery to support his campaign.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#173

Post by damnyou » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #6

H1B visas provide employers every incentive to lie to import cheap talent and work them hard. There are ways to meet the very real need to import the best brains from around the world. But H1B isn't set up to do this very effectively. Off the top of my head, a better option would be to allow immigration with a $60k bond to the government that has to be paid down at $1k/month by the current employer. With the employee…

Plenty of people that grew up lower middle class in their home countries now making 500k a year on H1s at FAANGs.

H1s benefit the immigrants the most, and any analysis that centers anything other than the immigrants is deeply inhuman.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#174

Post by btilly » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

throwawaygh wrote: post #67

btilly wrote: post #6

H1B visas provide employers every incentive to lie to import cheap talent and work them hard. There are ways to meet the very real need to import the best brains from around the world. But H1B isn't set up to do this very effectively. Off the top of my head, a better option would be to allow immigration with a $60k bond to the government that has to be paid down at $1k/month by the current employer. With the employee…

Really, we should just enforce the original intent of the H1B. 1. Companies that import labor when they had a perfectly acceptable local candidate should face severe fines, and Justice should be given a real budget for running these investigations as a matter of course. And the burden of proof to demonstrate you needed to import labor should be pretty high. If you don't do this, then H1B abuse will happen. 2. Compani…

Companies that import labor when they had a perfectly acceptable local candidate should face severe fines...

Who defines acceptable local candidate?

Anyone who has interviewed candidates knows that are always a lot of local candidates who think that they are qualified for the job who you don't want for any of a variety of reasons. I don't want the government telling me that I can't hire the sysadmin I want because there is a Java programmer who thinks he can administer Unix systems. Because computers are computers, right?

Alternately I don't want to be told that I have to hire someone with a particular degree rather than the high school dropout who is self-taught and whose open source projects demonstrate ability to me. Government tends to be very impressed by certificates that industry insiders know well don't mean squat.

Companies should be forced to pay H1Bs significantly above prevailing wage, where "prevailing wage" is interpreted liberally instead of conservatively.

A modest proposal. If H1Bs are at the quota and someone else wants to hire an H1B worker and pay more than you're paying, you should get the choice between giving up your worker's spot (they can continue working for you remotely) or upping their pay. Without setting any particular dollar figure this would create salary competition among H1Bs that would take spots away from the worst of the sweatshops.

I don't think that would be much of a fix. But it would be an improvement.

I actually don't believe that ending the tie to an employer will help. I mean, we should do it anyway, but the abuse will continue.

I both believe that it would help, and that the abuse would continue. I see value in limiting how much abuse employers can get away with.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#175

Post by AlchemistCamp » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #160

adrr wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just stack rank h1b applicants by salary instead of using a lottery system? That forces the income levels up which should benefit Americans workers as well.

If you did that you'd favour profitable industries (say computing) over areas with actual shortages (say Arabic translators in Detroit). You'd also make it impossible for areas with low cost of living (Detroit) to be allocated any H1B visa. It's one of those perennial proposals that always come up but are really poorly thought out when you look into it.

If there were "actual shortages" of Arabic translators in Detroit as you suggest, market forces would drive wages up until enough people with the skills were sufficiently motivated to move to Detroit.

In the case of a long-term, widespread shortage, rising salaries would lead to a widespread increase in people training to enter the industry. This is exactly what's been happening with software the past several years.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#176

Post by hkai » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

padiyar83 wrote: post #33

gbronner wrote: post #5

H1B is terrible for the employees, and for those who work alongside them. Companies try to slow down green cards, and use H1Bs as virtual indentured servants. They also fake looking for Americans- in practice, many of the jobs are earmarked for a specific person, and you are wasting your time applying for it. Losing your job as an h1b requires you to leave almost immediately, which isn't great for anyone. Hopefully t…

This will fuel the "remote anywhere" trend that's already underway. If a H1b engineer in US suppresses wage growth, wait until the same engineer can do the work for 1/3rd the cost from his own country, especially when everyone in the team is remote.

Here's an extensive discussion on HN about this - why it seems like a gold mine when you can hire engineers for $600/month, but it rarely works out:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23402788

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#177

Post by hkai » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #99

dclowd9901 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this like it’s that easy. We have remotes working in Singapore and Australia, and it is a far cry from “easy” to work with these people either due to timing constraints, language barriers or other aspects that disrupt fluid communication.

> language barriers Americans couldn't comprehend the perfect English spoken in these countries? (Sorry - couldn't resist!) Edit: In case people don't get it, it used to be a common joke that Americans had poorer English than well educated foreigners. Definitely for written, but even occasionally spoken English. I've worked with at least 3 people who were either from Singapore or from Malaysia but educated in Singapo…

Ay mate I couldn't catch ya?

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#178

Post by 6DM » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

christiansakai wrote: post #142

umvi wrote: post #78

There are 2 sides to every coin. It can be frustrating/demoralizing to American software developers as well, when they go to interview for a job, to see they are competing with an absolute flood of Indian and Chinese H1Bs. Then, when all of your interviewers are Chinese and Indian as well and you don't get the job, you sort of feel like the victim of favoritism and that you've been pushed out of your own country's in…

Well if you don't perform well on interviews then why expect we hand the job to you? These Indians, Chinese, Russians, Brazilian developers are more willing to grind Leetcode and study until insanity (solving 300 Leetcode problems is not uncommon) and will kill majority of interviews out there. They came here to study hard, from 3rd world countries, and they did it. Study hard, work hard, be smart, and we welcome you…

Let's be honest, after passing through ridiculous interview questions and being hired I am frequently disappointed at what's on the other side. I have nothing against foreigners and wish them the best. H1B's are routinely abused and this in turn creates a toxic environment. This only makes the code quality worse as devs rush, creating even more technical debt as they go. Maybe they killed themselves to get here, but I'm not seeing sterling results in their work.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#179

Post by mighty_mighty » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

georgeburdell wrote: post #163

gbronner wrote: post #5

H1B is terrible for the employees, and for those who work alongside them. Companies try to slow down green cards, and use H1Bs as virtual indentured servants. They also fake looking for Americans- in practice, many of the jobs are earmarked for a specific person, and you are wasting your time applying for it. Losing your job as an h1b requires you to leave almost immediately, which isn't great for anyone. Hopefully t…

When I was a new grad, I interviewed at Qualcomm for an embedded software job. I studied hardware, and was very up-front with the hiring manager in the phone screen, and he responded “not to worry about it”. I was flown out to do an on-site interview, and the first thing that struck me, sitting in the lobby for 20 minutes while my first interviewer arrived, was that 100% of the employees who walked through the front…

This is over the board racist comment! Re-read your comment by replacing "Indian" with "Black" and see how you feel about it.

Re: Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation

#180

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #175

HarryHirsch wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you did that you'd favour profitable industries (say computing) over areas with actual shortages (say Arabic translators in Detroit). You'd also make it impossible for areas with low cost of living (Detroit) to be allocated any H1B visa. It's one of those perennial proposals that always come up but are really poorly thought out when you look into it.

If there were "actual shortages" of Arabic translators in Detroit as you suggest, market forces would drive wages up until enough people with the skills were sufficiently motivated to move to Detroit. In the case of a long-term, widespread shortage, rising salaries would lead to a widespread increase in people training to enter the industry. This is exactly what's been happening with software the past several years.

[deleted]