I can't be the only person from the Midwest who noticed that list of internship rates.
Fuck me, I'm getting paid half that per month. WTF.
Immigration is about talent, not costs
31–40 of 644 posts
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#32Woah, now that's how you do it!
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#33Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots. Decide on some number of business/talent based visas to be issued each year. Then do a rolling auction of the visas. If a person gets a visa, comes to America, but then does not like their job and goes home, the company gets a prorated refund. If the person stays more than five years, they get a green card automatically and are free…
Seems fair enough.
However, this would also mean that startups would likely find it impossible to earn H1-B's in competitive fields, as a fair amount of the compensation is future-loaded.
Or, to put it another way: who's going to win a bidding war for Employee X, Microsoft or {Startup Working to Become Microsoft}?
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#34> 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…
Purely on the informative side: why are these people called "interns" when it looks more like they're straight-up "contractors" or "employees"? Is this just a convenient fiction?
Most of them are worthless; of any given intern class at a first tier technology company (e.g., Apple), only ~1-5% will actually be offered a full time job.
Those 1% are worth every penny, but you simply don't know who they are until you give the entire intern class the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#35My grandparents were all immigrants who didn't need to jump through hoops to come in. IMO, this should still be possible. I think we should have a open lottery that meets 95% of immigration demand, and have some sort of competitive/fast-track process for skilled workers that would weed out the bodyshops. That said, this post is crafted marketing nonsense. For example, a statement like this from a company founder is r…
>My grandparents were all immigrants who didn't need to jump through hoops to come in. IMO, this should still be possible. I think we should have a open lottery that meets 95% of immigration demand, and have some sort of competitive/fast-track process for skilled workers that would weed out the bodyshops.
Doesn't US have a green card lottery?
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. It's strange to read these kinds of articles. The author doesn't seem to realize that he is describing his own personal preferences, and not anything about society at large. All you need to do is look at the top recipients of visas and you will understand what the game is.
This brings up an interesting question. The reasoning for bringing talent over from abroad, does it make sense ethically? I'm greatly irked by the idea of a young and ambitious Indian/Nigerian/Chinese/Russian guy or girl coming here to... optimize ad targeting at Facebook, he/she should stay in India or Nigeria, because by golly Nigeria NEEDS that person much more than us. We can do fine with Facebook advertising alg…
I get where you're coming from, but are you really going to base policy on that? That would be bizarrely condescending: "Sorry, it would be advantageous for our economy and for your personal well-being for you to enter our country, but we've decided you owe it to your homeland to stay." Not to mention that it wouldn't be effectual if other first-world countries didn't play along.
The genius who comes from Nigeria to the States to write some code is going to pick up skills and connections that will prepare them to go back and have a tremendous impact back in their home country. Maybe many won't; maybe many will stay here, optimize some small metric for Facebook, and be fat and happy. And that's a shame compared to the outcome where they go fix up their homeland. But hey: any one of us could go spend our lives living in and trying to improve a third world country, regardless of where we're born. Why should the folks who happen to be born there be forced into it?
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#37Talent supply in fact reduces costs, so the two are in fact, tied together.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#38It's about a mix of things. First of all, intern salaries are typically set at ~90-100 percent of full-time salary (but without bonus or equity). So these people who are freaking out about intern salaries are missing the point. They assume that if "even an intern" makes $8,000 per month, that every full-time employee makes $200k+. No, it's not like that. It's like this: we properly pay interns with an entry-level sal…
> However, I take umbrage to the assholes who complain about a general "talent shortage" but won't look twice at a programmer over 35.
Over 35 or off the coasts. It seems like companies would rather go across an ocean for talent than across the country.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#39I applaud your efforts for hiring for talent, but you aren't making a fair discussion of the issue. Of course you can select for talent when you're a small company and you are doing all the hiring yourself. But as others have pointed out, the debate about a shortage of tech workers vs. H1-B workers isn't about you, it's about companies like Accenture and IBM that have 200-300k workers and _are_ looking at it from a cost perspective.
Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs
#40Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots. Decide on some number of business/talent based visas to be issued each year. Then do a rolling auction of the visas. If a person gets a visa, comes to America, but then does not like their job and goes home, the company gets a prorated refund. If the person stays more than five years, they get a green card automatically and are free…
Seems fair enough. However, this would also mean that startups would likely find it impossible to earn H1-B's in competitive fields, as a fair amount of the compensation is future-loaded. Or, to put it another way: who's going to win a bidding war for Employee X, Microsoft or {Startup Working to Become Microsoft}?
Smaller companies benefit later, after the initial five years, when an employee brought in by Microsoft is free to join a startup. And also indirectly due to generally increased supply.