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IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

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Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#31

Post by varjag »

flog wrote: post #25
varjag wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true, throughout most of Europe your work permit is tied to your employment until you qualify for permanent residence permit (typically after 3 years).

Is this a recent thing? I'm in the UK under a Tier 1 (a points based, highly skilled migrants visa) and can work almost without restriction (I can't be a doctor or professional sports person). Even under the working holiday maker there were no restrictions to your employer.

UK is in many ways a special thing; as un-European as a EU country can get.

I am in Norway and have a number of migrant friends throughout Scandinavia and mainland Europe. It's all very similar, with exception of Swiss (where permanent residence for a worker is nearly unobtainable).

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#32

Post by mbesto »

fxm4139 wrote: post #24

I find this extremely hard to believe. I completed two internships at IBM in my undergrad years when I was here on an F1 visa (international student visa). While I was on my F1 visa, I was making more than a lot of my American counterparts and lesser than others who were doing internships as well. The only things that factored into pay were the number of credits you completed in college, and whether you were a return…

IBM has nearly a half million employees. I would suspect that their stance on visas is not completely consistent across all areas of the business. For example, I would only have to assume that GTS is much more inclined to go for H1B folks than say, GBS.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#33

Post by 001sky »

In addition to this, companies are required to pay the prevailing wage for that profession and location to foreign workers

Part of the game, then, is keeping market prices low/stable by managing shortage. I think this is being overlooked. Lots of H1B coming in will keep prices from rising, by impacting the depth of market at the Bid/Ask. Sort of Econ 101. So the "cost difference" can also be understood as the difference in higher base-costs being avoided. =/

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#34

Post by aristus »

greggman wrote: post #11

If there's a smoking gun for IBM great, fine $$$$$$$ IBM. But my personal anecdotal experience is that the companies I've worked for pay the same for HB-1 vs local. They don't look at it as trying to find cheap employees. They look at as trying to find qualified employees anywhere, world wide. Companies I've worked for, Virgin Games (run by a British immigrant), Shiny Entertainment (also run by a British immigrant an…

It may not be true for smaller companies hiring the fastest guns in the West (or the East, as may be). But I assure you that the "visa discount" is real. The most common form is to hire someone who really should be at level N at level N-2 instead, and get as much level N work out of them as you can. For example, an architect working as a draftsman, or a managing editor working as a reporter.

I've seen people with 10+ years of experience having their pay cut from $17/hr to $15/hr, and told that they should be grateful to have a job. Again, this may not be common at small companies who need rarified skills, but it does happen.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#35

Post by sturadnidge »

flog wrote: post #25
varjag wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true, throughout most of Europe your work permit is tied to your employment until you qualify for permanent residence permit (typically after 3 years).

Is this a recent thing? I'm in the UK under a Tier 1 (a points based, highly skilled migrants visa) and can work almost without restriction (I can't be a doctor or professional sports person). Even under the working holiday maker there were no restrictions to your employer.

The Tier 1 was a different, independent visa - I think varjag is referring to the UK work permit system which works as described (except for the time length, which used to be 5 years but is now only 2 years) and has been that way for many years.

The Tier 1 doesn't actually exist anymore, basically the only way you can work in the UK without EU citizenship or an ancestry visa is via a sponsored visa.

In fact the rules just changed recently for the worse - if you are working in the UK under a sponsored visa, the time no longer counts towards settlement. Under the old work permit system, you were still tied to a company but at least after 5 years you could apply for indefinite leave to remain (which is exactly what i did a few months ago).

I don't know why anyone in their right mind would work in the UK with (a) the inability to easily change employers and (b) the inability to settle after X number of years. Obviously not a problem for EU citizens or ancestry visa holders, but for the rest of us...

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#36

Post by Xixi »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #3

Tough economics questions: To what extent would these people still be willing to work for cheap if we let them immigrate and become legitimate Americans with a simple, easy process? Are they just willing to work for less in general, or is there a pattern of monopsonistic exploitation or other similar exploitation due to the legal process surrounding the H1-B process and how it is attached to an employer sponsor? If t…

As a former H1-B (coming from France, and now living in Japan) who used to work in a Hedge Fund in NYC, I would say that there are three factors at play:

• an H1-B holder doesn't have much leverage for negotiation if she really wants to stay in the US, as resigning (or be let go) foolishly means going back home,

• US salaries in IT jobs are much much higher than salaries for equivalent positions in Europe, so even if you are making less than Americans you are usually happy,

• more personal and somewhat related to the first point: foreigners (at least the non native english speaker ones) tend to stick with other foreigners. Not by choice, it tends to happen very naturally from what I observed, and in my opinion has a lot to do with speaking abilities. If you don't know American workers, you don't know their salaries, so it's somewhat harder to know your actual market value. And by the time you expand your network to American people you are well under way to get your Green Card...

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#37

Post by netcan »

nullc wrote: post #30
greggman wrote: post #11

If there's a smoking gun for IBM great, fine $$$$$$$ IBM. But my personal anecdotal experience is that the companies I've worked for pay the same for HB-1 vs local. They don't look at it as trying to find cheap employees. They look at as trying to find qualified employees anywhere, world wide. Companies I've worked for, Virgin Games (run by a British immigrant), Shiny Entertainment (also run by a British immigrant an…

I've seen many kinds of H1B employment. People with excellent skills and experience being paid competitive wages, people with reasonable skills being exploited at low wages at the clear expense of locals, and people who were hardly qualified to warm a seat being pulled in to pad up some contract as cheaply as possible. As usually when you paint with broad strokes you cover some dissimilar surfaces. But at the core th…

I definitely think that the instinct in increased supply = lower prices is a good starting point.

But, there's some danger in overly simple economic thinking, especially when we talk about labour markets. For example, you would think that around a hub of science & engineering universities* there would be an oversupply of engineers. Someplace where there aren't many engineering schools would be the place with the highest salaries. That's clearly not the case.

Demand for some professions (like doctors) is fairly fixed. For other things it appears to spring up around supply.

*This assumes that the universities are not themselves a market reaction.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#38

Post by Reebz »

fxm4139 wrote: post #24

I find this extremely hard to believe. I completed two internships at IBM in my undergrad years when I was here on an F1 visa (international student visa). While I was on my F1 visa, I was making more than a lot of my American counterparts and lesser than others who were doing internships as well. The only things that factored into pay were the number of credits you completed in college, and whether you were a return…

Nothing to do with credibility, certain positions are indexed by the Department of Labor which require a base salary and base experience. Highly likely that you did not meet the requirement as a fairly new employee or the base salary was too high for them to justify hiring you.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#39

Post by varjag »

sturadnidge wrote: post #35
flog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a recent thing? I'm in the UK under a Tier 1 (a points based, highly skilled migrants visa) and can work almost without restriction (I can't be a doctor or professional sports person). Even under the working holiday maker there were no restrictions to your employer.

The Tier 1 was a different, independent visa - I think varjag is referring to the UK work permit system which works as described (except for the time length, which used to be 5 years but is now only 2 years) and has been that way for many years. The Tier 1 doesn't actually exist anymore, basically the only way you can work in the UK without EU citizenship or an ancestry visa is via a sponsored visa. In fact the rules…

It's obviously a populist move; making life complicated to skilled workers is perhaps the worst way to fight illegal migration. I've been to the UK last year for friends wedding; obtaining even a visitor visa was a humiliating process only a cavity search short from prison experience.

So many people in EU/EEC somehow hold this idea that getting residence in their country is as easy as simply applying for it: probably the outcome of public debate where some points of view are very selective and simplistic.

Re: IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers

#40

Post by _delirium »

makmanalp wrote: post #22

disclaimer: It's possible that I end up being an H-1B worker eventually, I'm a foreigner working in the US, and I'm working on a website that helps people like me. > H-1B workers are cheaper than Americans — "and the cost difference is too great" for IBM not to look for foreign workers first. The H-1B statutes are designed to allow employers to legally pay H-1B workers less than Americans and IBM (and a lot of others…

In addition to this, companies are required to pay the prevailing wage for that profession and location to foreign workers, so that they can not undercut Americans (or at least that was what was intended).

I have no idea how prevalent it is, but the mechanism I've heard for getting around these rules is to hire someone at a lower title than what they're qualified for, and then pay them the prevailing wage for that position, with the informal expectation that they'll do higher-level work in actuality (if for no other reason than to avoid boredom). For example, you hire someone at a game company into a QA position, but they're actually a graphics programmer, and once they're hired they sort of start doing more graphics programming even though it's not in their job description.

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