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Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

thehill.com

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Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#251

Post by dyauspitr »

nyolfen wrote: post #214
kccqzy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lure of H-1B is not really the money savings. Go look at the graduating class of computer science students at large universities. A large fraction are international students. Universities thrive on them since they pay the most tuition and are generally not allowed any financial aid. Companies want to hire them in addition to U.S. citizens. That's it. No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens…

> No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens different wages on that basis. larger pool means lower wages. this is so fundamental and obvious that it feels like i'm being gaslit when i see shit like this.

The US needs immigrants. We need the best and the brightest. Those are the folks starting the new job creating companies. That’s what keeps us so innovative. The H1B is a good gauntlet through which we can get those immigrants. Ended it is shortsighted.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#252

Post by PhantomHour »

kccqzy wrote: post #206
1024core wrote: post #202

A lot of these problems could be solved if H1-B's were given out in order of salary (I think there's such a proposal going around recently). And by that I mean: something like a Dutch auction. Give H1-Bs to the top 85K paying jobs (maybe normalized to SoL in the region, I'm sure the BLS has some idea on how to do it). The lure of H1-Bs is the money savings, and the fact that if you're on an H1-B, you're practically a…

The lure of H-1B is not really the money savings. Go look at the graduating class of computer science students at large universities. A large fraction are international students. Universities thrive on them since they pay the most tuition and are generally not allowed any financial aid. Companies want to hire them in addition to U.S. citizens. That's it. No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens…

It's not strictly about the money. (Though it is absolutely also about that)

> Dealing with unexpected job terminations (fired or laid off) is the problem.

Herein lies the problem. This gives employers absolutely massive leverage over the employees, which lets them coerce things like ridiculous unpaid overtime and downright abuse.

Even if you pay the same nominal salary, the H-1B is "cheaper" if you can force them to work 60-80h whereas a top-class American is just going to demand 40h weeks. (Though in practice, those extra hours rarely see increased productivity, so whether it's actually cheaper for outputs obtained is up for debate.)

Contrast: Europe. Tech salaries are low by US standards, but you don't see as much of the outsourcing & migrant worker hype around it. European labour laws mean you can't set up a sweatshop in your branch office, and European migrants to the US won't put up with labour abuses as much.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#253

Post by coredog64 »

pessimizer wrote: post #142
ares623 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why DEI is so important. It’s a blunt tool, but still a tool, to short circuit the basic human desire to be within their network.

That's not what DEI does in practice. When you move away from merit hiring, you just end up hiring the minorities in your social network. Who, if they're from an "underprivileged" group, are usually even more privileged within that group than you are in yours, or else they wouldn't have met you. i.e. you're in the top 20% of white people hiring from the top 1% of black people.

At Amazon how I saw this work out was that we hired African immigrants rather than ADOS African-Americans.

Hilariously, we had an executive who said that his goal was to have the demographics of his division more closely resemble that of America. Until someone realized that South Asians are approximately 2% of the US population and were 50% of his division.

It's been years since I checked, but for non-DC jobs, Amazon's demographics are significantly less white than America as a whole. That's mainly Asians being hired in place of ADOS African-Americans and hispanics.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#254

Post by tomhow »

alephnerd wrote: post #241
tomhow wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post in an inflammatory style or make swipes at the HN community. We don't know what "a large portion of HNers" think about any topic. Controversial topics bring out the people who feel the strongest about that topic, but the people commenting are only a tiny share of the whole community. Your point about the different reactions people have to different kinds of immigration controversies is valid, but to…

I understand, but why is similar moderation not extended when "H1Bs" come up on HN? To be brutally honesty, why is it acceptable to bash H1B abuse but not B1/2 or VWP abuse on HN. In both cases, it is employers mislabeling and potentially breaking immigration and labor laws, yet it is acceptable to talk derogatorily about those on H1Bs and not on other visas, even though rates of visa misuse are consistent across mos…

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I understand where you're coming from.

Our role is not to moderate for or against any "side" in a debate. Our role is to uphold the guidelines, so that anyone with a reasonable position on any topic has fair opportunity to express it.

My perception from moderating HN for years is that there is generally much more criticism toward companies (including/especially Silicon Valley companies) for exploiting H1Bs than there has been towards holders of those visas.

But if you see evidence that contradicts that (i.e., comments that are unkind towards visa-holders or that discuss them in any way that breaks the guidelines), you can certainly flag them and email us so we can take a look. We can only moderate what we see and there's a lot of stuff that we don't see.

If there are patterns or trends of these kinds of comments, then the more you can show us, the better, so we can develop approaches to identifying and dealing with them.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#255

Post by coredog64 »

whatever1 wrote: post #231

For some visa types, companies are obligated to prove that they advertised the position to American citizens. Failed, hence they needed the foreigner. This is a huge dealbreaker for campus hires, and specifically masters/PhDs who are, well, by definition, specialized in their field and hence very rare. So you recruit at her graduation the girl who has done groundbreaking research in deep neural nets and is the key to…

For every job like that, there's 100 jobs that are "Write basic Java CRUD app against RDBMS backend"

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#256

Post by cryo28 »

whatever1 wrote: post #231

For some visa types, companies are obligated to prove that they advertised the position to American citizens. Failed, hence they needed the foreigner. This is a huge dealbreaker for campus hires, and specifically masters/PhDs who are, well, by definition, specialized in their field and hence very rare. So you recruit at her graduation the girl who has done groundbreaking research in deep neural nets and is the key to…

And what percentage of H-1Bs are these PhDs with groundbreaking research backgrounds? The vast majority of the H-1Bs are hired by a handful of consulting firms (mostly indian) to do mundate SWE/IT jobs that don't require any special skills but a few months of bootcamp.

Also, don't forget that truly exceptional researchers can self-file for green-card using national interest waiver categories: EB1NIW, EB2NIW don't require employee sponsorship.

So, I think your point is moot.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#257

Post by tziki »

thephyber wrote: post #240
1024core wrote: post #202

A lot of these problems could be solved if H1-B's were given out in order of salary (I think there's such a proposal going around recently). And by that I mean: something like a Dutch auction. Give H1-Bs to the top 85K paying jobs (maybe normalized to SoL in the region, I'm sure the BLS has some idea on how to do it). The lure of H1-Bs is the money savings, and the fact that if you're on an H1-B, you're practically a…

This conflates high education specialists with high earnings. It’s probably not completely uncorrelated, but only giving H1-Bs to the highest paying reqs which need them starves all of the other reqs of any possible candidates. I understand that H1-Bs are currently likely to create an abusive relationship with the visa-ed employee, but just because you have identified a valid diagnosis doesn’t mean your suggested pre…

Exactly this. Top 1% of artists earn about as much as the average software engineer. Ranking people purely based on salary is turning h1b into a visa for people in specific professions.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#258

Post by coredog64 »

savorypiano wrote: post #117
surgical_fire wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the wage suppression Do immigrants earn less than locals? My impression is that the salary is similar. I am not in the US, but I rejected job offers from across the pond in the past and the salary seemed to be on the level with what I know is paid in the US for that position. My guess is that what they like in H1B workers is that they are sort of stuck with that employer, as changing jobs under such a Visa can be t…

This is the wrong logic. Immigrants can make exactly the same as natives and still suppress wages. Fundamentally how prices are set is someone sets a price, and if there are no takers they change the price. If a company offers a salary, and they bring in an H1-B to fill the role, they don't have to raise the salary. Over time it suppresses the wage.

Something else worth mentioning is that the companies are conferring a valuable benefit that they generally don't have to pay for: The promise of US citizenship for the employee and (eventually) their family.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#259

Post by alchemical_piss »

coredog64 wrote: post #255
whatever1 wrote: post #231

For some visa types, companies are obligated to prove that they advertised the position to American citizens. Failed, hence they needed the foreigner. This is a huge dealbreaker for campus hires, and specifically masters/PhDs who are, well, by definition, specialized in their field and hence very rare. So you recruit at her graduation the girl who has done groundbreaking research in deep neural nets and is the key to…

For every job like that, there's 100 jobs that are "Write basic Java CRUD app against RDBMS backend"

[dead]

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#260

Post by aleph_minus_one »

mpyne wrote: post #248
nyolfen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens different wages on that basis. larger pool means lower wages. this is so fundamental and obvious that it feels like i'm being gaslit when i see shit like this.

Well it's because by this logic we should just stop Americans from studying for computing jobs as well, that way those who remain will have higher wages. Just as the Luddites tried to stop the rise of industrialization that threatened to bring the skills they used to employ to the wider public at lower costs. The real answer is that immigrants create enough economic demand to be net positive even for Americans, for m…

> Well it's because by this logic we should just stop Americans from studying for computing jobs as well, that way those who remain will have higher wages.

At least if these other Americans are from a different "tribe" than your own, this does not sound like a dumb strategy if people from your own "tribe" are deeply ingrained in programming jobs. :-D

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