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Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

thehill.com

261–270 of 571 posts

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

#261
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Top 1% of artists have the O1 route, not the H1B route.

Tying H1B to salary is imo a reasonable solution for most companies. Thing is, in that case, most companies would simply resort to bringing in more L1 employees.

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

#262
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That seems like a fair way for the free market to address things, no? If you need special carve outs, create a new type of Visa for those special cases. The immigrants are all going to be paying taxes on their earnings. If you can boost H1B salaries by an average of $20k/yr by doing a price auction, that brings govt revenue and maybe even gives opportunities to balance the budget by creating more H1B slots.

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

#263
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your country sold you down the river 30 years ago. Jm2c but I think the harsh truth is that US while having a decently sized population of good software engineers, it is still nowhere near the required amount. Thus, many companies would rather give 150/200k to someone who's actually good at it and will be impressed by that money rather than some half assed US graduate who only went into SE because he wanted a cushy…

We could also give them a clear, short path to citizenship if we didn't have enough. Instead we do our best to keep it as chaotic as possible so that those SWE we need can't push for 175/225k

> We could also give them a clear, short path to citizenship if we didn't have enough.

The USA currently potentially hasn't enough programmers. If the market tide changes, one of course wants to be able to send these superfluous work migrants back to their home countries.

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

#264
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Top 1% of artists have the O1 route, not the H1B route. Tying H1B to salary is imo a reasonable solution for most companies. Thing is, in that case, most companies would simply resort to bringing in more L1 employees.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Econ 101: increased supply lowers prices (wages).

Thats some Wealth of Nations every worker can move the same number of bricks reductive thinking. I have been in the valley for 25+ years, and worked with a ton of visa holders. The majority of them were better educated and all well compensated for the work they did. The fact that many of them stayed for green cards and citizenship says a LOT. There is a reason that the boss of both google, and MS came through these p…

No it isn’t.

There are two instances on this website where supply and demand seemingly do not apply. Wages in tech engineering, and housing costs. Specific carve outs are always made to make the conclusion that, for some reason, this positive supply (workers) and demand (housing) shock has no or marginal impact on wages and housing respectively. It’s very odd since most here work in roles where supply and demand of course apply so it’s not like people are unfamiliar with the math here.

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

#266
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Genuinely curious: why do we need H1B visas for artists? My understanding is that H1B visas are meant to cover highly-skilled work that can't be done by locals, and "art" doesn't seem like a field with a shortage of local candidates?

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

#267
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…

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…

> 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.

Europe actually has had more direct export of the jobs. No need of specialist visas when the jobs were already exported away to EE. The EU allowed for companies to arbitrage away tech jobs to relatively poorer countries in the EU. And there's very little need for native top talent as there's very little native innovation happening within the EU in software - it's only a fraction of the amount happening in the US. And that's why those who can often tend to work for American companies in the EU, or migrate if they can.

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

#268
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…

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

#269

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…

It’s interesting that the U.S. picked an employer-driven model, which effectively outsources immigration selection to firms. That’s efficient for demand-matching, but it concentrates bargaining power in ways that a points-based model avoids.

The practical effect of an H1-B is to act as a non-compete, punitive termination clause, and a time bounded employment contract. These are very expensive terms to ask for in conventional US employment contracts - most of them are now effectively banned for standard W-2 workers. Forcing top wage earners to compete with illegal employment terms does not seem reasonable.

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

#270
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does the US have such a shortage of artistic talent we have to hire abroad for it?
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