Immigration is about talent, not costs
aerofs.com
Immigration is about talent, not costs
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Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#2For "real" technology companies like AeroFS, that use a small fraction of the H-1B quota, it's about talent. For body shops like Infosys, WiPro, Tata, etc that use up the vast majority of the H-1B visas it's absolutely about cost.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#3> Just a few hours later, Vox published an article titled These tech interns are probably making more than you are where they shared a tweet showcasing candid salaries at various tech companies, some larger, some smaller:
That is a kind of a bullshit argument though isn't it, that "hey look, the interns (supposedly half-able, incompetent newbies) are getting paid so high!! We have such wonderful salaries in tech!"
It's a lie, a total misrepresentation of the facts. The interns are usually super programmers themselves. I mean, for instance, when Alex Gaynor was "interning" at Quora he ported Quora to run on PyPy. He's a really big contributor to projects like Django and PyPy. When he's "interning" at your company he's probably more able than a lot of other folk you could find, and he should be getting very big bucks. So this argument is really just complete hogwash. A good amount of times I see the interns training employees rather than the other way around (as it should be).
Secondly, they're interning in the valley, where "boarding" costs are about equal to costs of getting a mansion in a midwestern city in a reasonably safe and fun neighborhood. When you're "making 90k" in the valley you have the quality of life worth ~60k in a midwestern city. If anything, they are underpaid.
edit: minor revision on figures for clarity of argument; though I do agree with moc down below when he says "If you're comparing suburbs (Silicon Valley) to suburbs, the discrepancy is much greater and I'd say that $90k/CA ~= $40k/Midwest"
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#4> Over the history of the company, zero of our hiring decisions have been made on a cost-savings basis.
Every decision is a cost/benefit analysis. If costs aren't a factor in your hiring, then raise your salary offers. How hard will it be to attract great engineers if you start offering $5M/year?
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#5For "real" technology companies like AeroFS, that use a small fraction of the H-1B quota, it's about talent. For body shops like Infosys, WiPro, Tata, etc that use up the vast majority of the H-1B visas it's absolutely about cost.
Exactly. Why do you think the quotas were used up so quickly? It wasn't because 65,000 startups were each trying to hire one foreigner.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#6Great post.
But I'd like to make a point that addresses an underlying assumption from the blog post.
Most people who would like to see the H1-B system reformed or limited do not also want to limit the immigration of highly technical people. Full stop.
The H1-B system is gamed and unfortunately the OP lost out because of it. I'd really like to see the OP advocating for reform instead of mindless expansion so that companies who really need the technical talent can get it and not become losers of the system and take the easy way out of advocating for expansion.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#7For "real" technology companies like AeroFS, that use a small fraction of the H-1B quota, it's about talent. For body shops like Infosys, WiPro, Tata, etc that use up the vast majority of the H-1B visas it's absolutely about cost.
AeroFS is inside ValleyBubble, so they see it from that perspective. But yeah the rest of the industry just wants cheap code grinders to pump out CRUD.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#8A blanket statement like that simply isn't true. I can look in several tech offices and draw conclusions. Are there exceptions, sure. Therefore, H1B should be reserved for the talent you speak of. Why are we bringing QA engineers on H1B? We can train a large portion of these jobs here through programs like Hack Reactor. But we aren't, we are looking for simple fixes.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#9Great post. But I'd like to make a point that addresses an underlying assumption from the blog post. Most people who would like to see the H1-B system reformed or limited do not also want to limit the immigration of highly technical people. Full stop. The H1-B system is gamed and unfortunately the OP lost out because of it. I'd really like to see the OP advocating for reform instead of mindless expansion so that comp…
Reform can come in many forms, not the least of which is increasing the visa cap. I do think taking a look at companies that are abusing the system is very important, as is taking a look at what we classify as "highly skilled labor". Looking online, many of the companies that fall into the top-100 visa sponsors are respectable technology companies. In 2014, Microsoft was #8, Google was #12, Intel #15, Oracle #15, Amazon #20, Apple #23. At the same time, of course, Infosys looks to be #1 by a wide margin. That's likely a problem.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#10> Just a few hours later, Vox published an article titled These tech interns are probably making more than you are where they shared a tweet showcasing candid salaries at various tech companies, some larger, some smaller: That is a kind of a bullshit argument though isn't it, that "hey look, the interns (supposedly half-able, incompetent newbies) are getting paid so high!! We have such wonderful salaries in tech!" It…
actually, I am not claiming at all that interns are half-able, incompetent newbies. Some of our best work has been done by people interning with us, and I think our past interns will vouch for that. That being said, it is true that intern salaries are generally lower than full time salaries (although the gap is shrinking, IMO), and intern salaries are good indicators of full time salaries in tech.