H1B is not about finding geniuses, this is O-1 Visa program. The H1B exists to find laborers in areas where we have a shortage of qualified people in US. Given the fact that in many fields we have lots of American graduates that struggle to get jobs, H1B currently has no legitimate purpose in America. It should be abolished entirely.
They both have similar roles, but O-1 is an immigrant visa and H-1B is a non-immigrant visa (a temporary worker visa). Everything else is downstream of that.
The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
111–120 of 127 posts
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#112The open secret of the H1B program is that the credentials are fake. The system whitewashes candidates to provide the illusion of these credentials, but they are in fact no more qualified than an American candidate.
There is also no guarantee that the people you hire do not have criminal or psychological issues because these things are not checked or shared internationally. For example, a woman in my college got killed by a foreign PhD student because she rejected his romantic advances. I also find people can have high degrees of education on paper but hold beliefs that seem more aligned with people in the 50’s. I don’t want to work with people who think yelling and obeying the boss blindly is appropriate.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your ability to consistently cite relevant sources/articles in your comments is impressive to me. It's a sign of a well informed person. Keep it up!
Thank you for the kind words. I remember everything I’ve ever read, it’s simply how fast I can aggregate links and threads based on keywords from HN search and my internal knowledge base/graph. Objective data, evidence, and facts are important as a shared foundation to discuss upon.
> I remember everything I’ve ever read
How's that possible? Any tricks you can share?
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#114One of the issues is conflation of IT jobs and High Tech jobs. Those making laws don't understand the difference -- they are all "computer jobs" to them. IT does not require immigrant labor. Companies such as Infosys and Tata don't need to be operating in the US. There are plenty of US workers available to do the job. But High Tech is different. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US. The US le…
where do satya and sunder fall in that spectrum. sundar started out as regular project manager and satya as lowly engineer. neither of them were world leading researchers.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for the kind words. I remember everything I’ve ever read, it’s simply how fast I can aggregate links and threads based on keywords from HN search and my internal knowledge base/graph. Objective data, evidence, and facts are important as a shared foundation to discuss upon.
> I remember everything I’ve ever read How's that possible? Any tricks you can share?
[deleted]
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#116Let me put it this way: the US school system sucks. It produces great drama artists, athletes, and marketing specialists but not STEM professionals. You can see it here: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37 - just 6% of US school graduates go to study engineering (there are almost no foreign-born students doing bachelors in the US). This has been the case since forever. So more than half of the STEM gradua…
The US is a big country so it's hard to generalize. But if you take the "default" US culture, it has been either ambivalent or hostile toward nerds for a long time. People who rightly point this out get shouted down as being anti-American (see Ramaswamy's infamous post). They shouldn't shoot the messenger. They should help their kids tinker with cool garage experiments.
It's not just the culture, it's the school system. Nerds are distrusted pretty much everywhere. But if you have a school system that rewards achievement in STEM disciplines, you get better outcomes in STEM disciplines (see: China, xUSSR countries, India, South Korea).
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a playbook someone on X published (and bragged about it). Borderline fraudulent imho. So even though O-1 is intended for extra ordinary abilities, it's far from one.
O-1 is about as far as you can get these days. Just search O-1 on x.com and see the type of people that have it - often designers, 'product' folks, etc. working for no-name YC startups.
The no name yc startup is fine, but the qualifications / proof of extraordinary ability is just non existent.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support [...] Working in non-FAANG corporate America, these types of roles are the only thing thing I've ever seen H1B hires used for. They've run the gamut from incompetent to quite good, but none have ever been the "best and brightest". It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers.
> It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers. We basically do not have a left wing party in this country. We have a center right party with "progressive" social views that has a few economic left-wingers under its tent, and then we have a reactionary right party.
Bullshit. Our left wing party has to moderate itself to be electable, but talk to Democrats about where they would like things to be and you will find out you are completely wrong. On healthcare. On social safety nets. On human rights. You are just 100% wrong, I'm guessing because the makeup of the United States doesn't allow the outcomes you want reality has you wrongly blaming Democrats. But the reality of the American voter base doesn't mean the party and party members putting in the slow/hard work of changing things are center right.
What you are saying is like saying the people feeding the poor during the limited schedule a city allows don't really care about feeding the poor because if they did they would do it at all hours. No, they are putting in the hard frustrating work, even when the limits they have to work withing suck.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#119There's no such thing as an innate most qualified person. Zuck was never the most qualified to be CEO of Meta. He is now, because of what he's done. At the same time there's an infinite number of jobs he is poorly qualified for.
Strict qualification can only be measured in a extreme niche cases. You founded an area of research, so you're the most qualified to work on that at Google. You have a massive Linux project, then maybe Torvalds or his core maintainers are the only ones who fit.
But outside of that, people become qualified because of what they do, and before they did it, they were unqualified.
As an example, I'm sure there are many people at OAI and Ant who are today world experts at research and training and infra. But they became that by just doing the job. Take their same resume from 5 years ago and they may not even reach the interview if they applied for the same role. The what does qualified mean, how do you measure and define it?
Countries need to develop their own talent and individuals need to develop themselves.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about you but I am fully supportive of the $100k H1B fee. In addition, I am considering voting Republican because of the disregard of qualified U.S. citizens. This is despite me not leaning towards that party in particular. The biggest problem I see is that companies just directly hire abroad now. All engineers at Amazon music have been fired and replaced with Indian workers abroad.
Dont be fooled. The Repugnant Party doesn't give a damn for the worker either. Its all just talk to get you to vote for them. The Dumbocrats try to sell their story by claiming they support DEI to sucker those who lean that way into voting for them. Both parties are for the corporate overlords 100%.
But which party (or faction of it) is at least talking about it? You can find corporate rent seekers in both parties sure.