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New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

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Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#51
I worked at a company that depended heavily on one of the major 4 Indian suppliers. Their employees were treated like garbage. they would bring them here for months at a time. It was like indentured servitude. they lived in a bunk house and worked all day and slept and a bus picked them up and they worked. 6 days a week. If they fucked up, they were gone the next day. All for the chance to make it here.

Once we added a resource and had a sham hiring process in which the supplier supplied an expert with no less than 10 pages of experience in our niche project. To his credit, he did not lie to me, and told me he could try to figure it out but had not worked on the product, but that he needed to do well. We were forced to hire him

Later our team slated to replaced by that firm to maintain a major product while we went to green field stuff. I resigned and my team flew the coup over the next year or

Disgusting

we should have a tax or tariff on "W2" employees or firms outsourcing labor. Minimally a tax that helps pay for our social safety net. We depend on new employed young people and sending that work afar does not help us.

Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#52
post #29

It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society, it seems.

If you believe that the market sets prices via supply and demand in general, do you believe this is true for the labor market as well? If not, why?

Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#53
post #2

Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure. Every time we had a layoff some portion would be replaced with H1B. Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid. I know its anecdotal but sharing to see if anyone has seen similar.

> Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure.

> Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid.

Yes.

Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#54
post #21

The H1B problem could be fixed overnight if the government handed them out by a simple test of ability rather than an idiotic lottery. Having world class researchers and engineers who command million dollar salaries enter the same line as a $60K worker at a slop factory like Infosys or TCS is beyond idiotic. And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups, and US tech needs…

> And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups

Does it though? It seems like it would drive away the $60k worker, and the companies hiring the million dollar worker would pay it without second thought.

Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#56
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's a really good way to handle it that would actually follow the intent of the program. You can't find someone to do a job? Then you need to compete on wage with other companies to bring someone in. Or, you know, raise your salary for local employees.

A simple stack rank and cut has the problem of where to draw the line. Also, how to value pre-ipo stock There are other good options as well (an auction, etc). They all have problems, but there are mitigations. It could be vastly improved even if it’s not perfect. It’s just the will to do it.

Another problem: different industries and roles natohace different pay ranges.

If you decide on a single pay cutoff software engineers will starve everyone else out. And there are of course great, well paid people in other hard to hire industries.

Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#57
post #30
post #2

Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure. Every time we had a layoff some portion would be replaced with H1B. Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid. I know its anecdotal but sharing to see if anyone has seen similar.

Not my experience in big tech and HFT. We spent a ton of time and effort trying to find anyone to our standards, never able to find enough. H1B (and other work visas) were generally better and more Sr compared to locals we found. They got paid as much or more than everyone else. When we had great people we could not get here we would instead build a team overseas, taking a bunch of other jobs with them.

[deleted]

Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#58
post #41
post #21

The H1B problem could be fixed overnight if the government handed them out by a simple test of ability rather than an idiotic lottery. Having world class researchers and engineers who command million dollar salaries enter the same line as a $60K worker at a slop factory like Infosys or TCS is beyond idiotic. And a high visa fee ultimately hurts more than it helps because it drives away both groups, and US tech needs…

The government can’t measure ability

So then why do they hand out visas that require “extraordinary ability”?

Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#59
post #30
post #2

Not surprising, H1B for my entire career was a cost cutting measure. Every time we had a layoff some portion would be replaced with H1B. Every H1B that shared their salary with me has been underpaid. I know its anecdotal but sharing to see if anyone has seen similar.

Not my experience in big tech and HFT. We spent a ton of time and effort trying to find anyone to our standards, never able to find enough. H1B (and other work visas) were generally better and more Sr compared to locals we found. They got paid as much or more than everyone else. When we had great people we could not get here we would instead build a team overseas, taking a bunch of other jobs with them.

Both can be true.

Finding the top 1% gets better results if you have a wider net.

Finding the cheapest 20% does too...

Re: New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore

#60
post #29

It's funny how quickly tech employees turn MAGA when it comes to qualified immigration. Bad zero-sum intuitions about work abound across all strata of society, it seems.

This isn't a MAGA thing. H1-B is a bad program.

I have no problem with someone getting a green card, citizenship, TPS, etc in the US. I think there should be a lot faster routes for that. Let the software devs come in and become citizens or permanent residents, I don't care about that.

What I do care about is the fact that H1-B locks immigrants to a company and tie their residence in the us to their employment. That means they'll accept lower wages and worse working conditions as they can't simply quit and switch jobs. The entire thing is designed to suppress wages in general.

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