101–110 of 440 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Won't this just dramatically shrink the number of initial work visas given out? Because you'll have to assume each one is now just a green card with extra steps.
Why do we need a quota for qualified people getting work visas (or green cards) at all? We don't.
I'm a little surprised to see a number of anti-immigraiton comments on this thread, some of which you could describe as reactionary. The US is and always has been a country of immigrants. Your idea of who is and isn't an immigrant is simply a question of what time window you choose. In 1800, the US had a population of ~2 million. by 1900 it was ~50 million. You want to guess how itt got that way? Let's dispense of th…
This is a platitude not an argument about whether hiring tech workers from foreign countries is good for them or for US citizens.
I also don't think the value you're expressing is historically supported.
> Profits tend to fall so they want to suppress costs to maintain profits. That's it.
We have internal emails from major tech companies showing that the CEOs are conscious about how these decisions affect the labor pool and their control of it (as well as competitors). So we already know there is a plurality of motivations going on in backroom discussions.
Why the lack of curiosity?
> Restricted immigration actually lowers wages. Why? Because it allows employs to pay undocumented workers less
You just said it lowers illegal immigrants pay, not the citizens. Also this example is from the bottom of the labor market, not Electrical Engineers.
> This filled an economic need.
Yes, farm businesses would prefer to pay cheaper people without rights or benefits. That's the need it's filling.
> Unions increase non-union wages.
Being pro-union seems incompatible with the rest of your post. you think unionized companies would be with hiring some illegal immigrants on the side who aren't protected by the union?
Expect further downward pressure on US tech salaries.
Intuitively, yes; factually (looking at the last 30 years of tech), categorically false. Tech begets tech, tech jobs beget tech jobs. Personally, I think we are not remotely close to “peak software” in particular.
> According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74% of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born abroad. In 2000, only 29% were.
> Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000 jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we created 100,000 engineering positions in the last decade, we’ve also displaced 88,000 domestic engineers.[1]
> American tech workers are getting pushed out, and they aren’t coming back
If the downward pressure on salary in American software jobs is so extreme that salaries frequently go all the way to zero, while there is a countervailing upward pressure on salary among Indian no-job-yets, why do we say it's "categorically false" that there is a downward pressure on American software salaries?
[1] Note that this is what you expect from a pricing shift, not an increase in the value created by the work. The quantity of software labor purchased has gone up and sellers are being forced out. If the driver of increased quantity-of-jobs were increased value created, you would see sellers entering the market, not leaving.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d be curious to hear opinions on why this large compensation discrepancy exists. AFAIK, my company has never considered outsourcing to remote Euro workers. Is there a perceived difference in engineer quality? Time difference?
Having worked in the EU and the US, here are some differences that I think are relevant for global employers: - The hiring pool is much smaller than in the US, one reason is probably demographics and lack of skilled immigration. This makes it less attractive to hire/grow there. - Labor regulation is much more strict. It's legally hard and expensive to lay off workers in Germany, for example. - Taxes are much higher t…
Is a few months notice [0] too much to ask? You can fire anyone you want, you're just going to wait a little bit or pay their remaining salary if you want them gone immediately. There is nothing legally hard about it. The hardest part is probably that you have to physically mail the layoff notice, but nothing prevents you from just directly giving it to them straight into their hands to be perfectly compliant with the law. Also, most of these laws only apply to companies with employee counts in the double digits. Not to small startups hiring their third employee.
I'm an Australian citizen who has lived in the US for over 20 years, gotten degrees from Yale and Berkeley. I've worked as a software engineer for over 10 years and am currently a cofounder. I'm so put off by the immigration process in the US that I have decided to leave the US permanently. Don't worry - i still work for the same US based company remotely from a more cost effective nation. I just don't pay your taxes…
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I'm an Australian citizen who has lived in the US for over 20 years, gotten degrees from Yale and Berkeley. I've worked as a software engineer for over 10 years and am currently a cofounder. I'm so put off by the immigration process in the US that I have decided to leave the US permanently. Don't worry - i still work for the same US based company remotely from a more cost effective nation. I just don't pay your taxes…
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However, since the US doesn't really want me to be physically IN the US, I will simply continue loving the US from afar. I will maintain equity in US companies, I will take US capital and I will sell to US customers, and continue making US great! I just will do it without paying US taxes because I'm not located in the US. I love Australia too but that's for my health and retirement plan.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The economy is not a zero sum game. The US created literally all relevant consumer technology in the last 30 or so years and demand for tech talent has exploded ever since. Having a competitve sector/ economy which regularly pushes the edge of innovation and hence expands demand (both on sell and supply side) is actually what keeps salaries up. This logic is as deeply flawed as often as it comes up.
Yes it is. Every foreign employee getting that tech job is a US citizen from the Midwest not getting it. Fuck this dishonest talking point, I know people coding since high school working at Toyota plants while people from overseas with entry level skill sets have employers move them to the west coast and land jobs (for whatever reason.) It’s favoritism, it’s cronyism, it’s a nation putting its own struggling people l…
No offense, but maybe your resume didn't reflect that you had the skills required.
The companies I worked at and now portfolio companies of mine pay Bay Area market rate to both citizens and non-citizens.
We hire noncitizens because we didn't find the right talent we need.
>“You don’t have any accomplishments,” the lawyer told him. “You don’t have a patent, or even a product.” That scolding spurred Sanjay to make a list of what he needed to do to achieve his goal of staying permanently. He improved the technology his AI-based firm was developing, expanded its customer base, and filed for a U.S. patent, which was awarded earlier this year. In May those efforts paid off, allowing him to…
As a US citizen interested in improving the visa process who regularly interfaces with policymakers, propose an objective rubric that is better and I will get it in front of policymakers. Can't guarantee an outcome, will guarantee the effort. Patent quota is bullshit, but also "I know talent when I see it" (even though I do and how I hire) isn't going to fly. Sorting hats are hard, Goodhart's Law, etc. High level, yo…
Simple and objective.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The economy is not a zero sum game. The US created literally all relevant consumer technology in the last 30 or so years and demand for tech talent has exploded ever since. Having a competitve sector/ economy which regularly pushes the edge of innovation and hence expands demand (both on sell and supply side) is actually what keeps salaries up. This logic is as deeply flawed as often as it comes up.
The myth is that these measures must be taken because of "shortages of workers" when there are plenty of US citizens in STEM who are underemployed. This narrative is purely a lobbying effort.
Where, exactly?
Unemployment rate among STEM graduates is half of that of the general population [0]. Salaries are also substantially higher [1], and keep getting higher [2].
[0] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-unemployment...).
[1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-median-wage-....
[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433814-000-most-ste...