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Immigration is about talent, not costs

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Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#231

Post by thrwy10 »

ep103 wrote: post #226
thrwy10 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely, positively hurts local labor - naturalized citizens - etc. Without a doubt. I disagree with this statement. I am on an H1 and know several other people who are on H1s and can testify that this is a generalization. There are many ways to end up on an H1, overseas body shops is one avenue and American grad schools are another. Most H1s I know, myself included, graduated from good schools, have worked har…

>I disagree with this statement Most studies find that you are wrong though. I am sure that you and the people you know are very skilled, and worked hard to get to your current position for that reason. But overall, H1 employees are paid significantly less, and many, many firms specifically refuse to hire local talent in order to fill positions through this program. If the visa was given to the employee, not the comp…

> Most studies find that you are wrong though.

Could you paste a link to those studies (unbiased or bipartisan) to support my wrongness. I've read opinions and emotional outbursts but am yet to find concrete evidence to support it. Until then I go by my own experience.

Yes, there are firms that get blanket visas. Yes, there are some people who deliberately abuse this sytem. But that is a generalization of few examples.Yes, giving visas to the employee rather than employer is better (Canadian, Australian systems is are an example). DOL's PERM process is what makes it more exploitative than not and is rampant with abuse. That needs to change, the H1 on its own is not indentured servitude.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#232

Post by geekam »

manticore_alpha wrote: post #86

Look HNers, let's be honest with each other. There's a lot of H1B's on here. You have friends overseas who you want to see succeed in the Bay Area. In my experience at many tech companies in the Bay Area, H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only - to get skilled engineering/STEM labor -- and to exploit connections (primarily Indian/Pakistani) among these workers to continue to get cheap labor. It absolutel…

I have said this before here and I will do that again. What hurts the market is L1 visa. H1 visa holders are almost in the same boat as local talent. Why? Because there is a government dictated minimum prevailaing wage that companies have to adhere to. I am yet to meet an H1B who is earning less than his/her peers (within an area, experience, skillset and education).

However, I have met a lot of L1 visa holders (primarily from India) who come here from companies like Wipro, TCS, Cognizant, IBM, Microsoft etc. who are paid lower wages because there is no such scrutiny with L1 visas. Lumping both visas in the same category is a huge mistake.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#233

Post by tankerdude »

Time and time again, this type of article pops up. Time and time again, it's about economics, and the solution has ALWAYS been about economics. It's just that the companies that the political machines don't want to talk about it.

Like I've said in the past, and it is a simple solution that would make people like AeroFS happy is to have an economic one: Your H1-B employee must be paid in the >95% (or more) percentile in the field, or in your company, no which ever is greater. All salaries must be compared to that of senior engineers or higher.

That's when the real "need" shows up and that will weed out the bogus H1-B gamers and get real value from it. Now, if we are still capping out on H1-Bs even with this rule, then we can then agree that there is a "tech workers shortage".

Before then, we all know it's either using improper induction (one brown cow) or examples to try and prove a contradiction (has always been invalid), or they are flat out lying.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#234

Post by unprepare »

hnnewguy wrote: post #138
stretchwithme wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definition of shortage on Google: a state or situation in which something needed cannot be obtained in sufficient amounts. Doesn't mention anything about not paying the market price. Those not willing to pay the market price can't buy a loaf of bread. It is prices that incentivize people to provide what we need. And when the bubble pops, prices will tell people the opposite. Either way, its just a market condition th…

> Doesn't mention anything about not paying the market price. That's the flaw in that definition. Price is the most important factor. Edit: If price isn't accounted for then what isn't in a shortage at prices just greater than free?

A shortage is a lack of supply, a company unwilling to pay above $X is not a shortage of supply, it is a shortage of demand.

If we have a shortage of carrots, we dont have enough carrots at ANY price. If people are unwilling to pay 5$/LB for carrots but thats what they cost in the store, that is not a shortage.

What this discussion is about is substitute goods[1] replacing standard goods. In this case US workers are the standard goods, and they are being replaced by foreign workers, or substitute goods at lower cost.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_good

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#235

Post by DINKDINK »

LordHumungous wrote: post #193
jarjoura wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a hiring manager, I can promise you that your generalizations are sweeping and full of misplaced emotional verbiage. Since it is my job to hire the best candidate and even though my company gives me access to a world of engineers, I will still try to find the best with the least amount of friction. That means, someone who already lives here and can start as soon as possible with the least amount of demands. Talent…

Your anecdotal experience doesn't change the fact that H1B workers are paid less than American workers for comparable positions. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h...

Why would you expect them to be paid the same. Should something that ships from Alaska cost the same as something shipped from your next door neighbor?

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#236

Post by pyrophane »

mavelikara wrote: post #47
bokonist wrote: post #12

Seems 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…

Along similar lines, the cost of sponsoring H-1Bs should grow exponentially with the fraction of the company's workforce that is on H-1B, beyond a small threshold.

I'm imagining large companies spawning multiple smaller entities to game the system and get around this.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#237

Post by ntakasaki »

ep103 wrote: post #224
halflings wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only" ; "it's simple reality" ; "Without a doubt" ; "It happens all-the-fucking-time" ; "There's absolutely no talent shortage in the Bay Area" Presenting something as a fact doesn't make it one. You're basically saying that American tech companies should only hire Americans. That the facebook, Google, Mozilla, ... shouldn't hire smart people from other countries. As…

You're entire post is based on a strawman argument. OP didn't say that companies shouldn't hire non-American talent. He said companies should hire non-American talent through traditional immigration proceedings, and that the H1B program lends itself to an exploitative employer-laborer relationship, that ultimately serves to unfairly lower industry pay rates.

>He said companies should hire non-American talent through traditional immigration proceedings,

What traditional immigration proceedings are you people talking about? Get a company employee to marry him/her and bring them here on a green card?

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#238

Post by fataliss »

zerr wrote: post #171
manticore_alpha wrote: post #86

Look HNers, let's be honest with each other. There's a lot of H1B's on here. You have friends overseas who you want to see succeed in the Bay Area. In my experience at many tech companies in the Bay Area, H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only - to get skilled engineering/STEM labor -- and to exploit connections (primarily Indian/Pakistani) among these workers to continue to get cheap labor. It absolutel…

Fully agree. That's why H1B's should have a significant minimum requirement for the salary (depending on place). I'm in eastern Europe and I wouldn't even remotely consider Bay Area jobs with less than 250K annual income (base salary + bonuses). Even for other places, it shouldn't be far from that number for me to decide to relocate to US... So yes, there is a shortage of talent who are willing to work for cheap.

Oh my, I would be curious to know what kind of company offers you such a high living standard in Easter Europe for you to throw any opportunity under the insane amount of 250k... If I agree that you need more in the SV to live comfortable than probably anywhere else in the world, 250k$/year is an insane amount of money.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#239

Post by exelius »

manticore_alpha wrote: post #86

Look HNers, let's be honest with each other. There's a lot of H1B's on here. You have friends overseas who you want to see succeed in the Bay Area. In my experience at many tech companies in the Bay Area, H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only - to get skilled engineering/STEM labor -- and to exploit connections (primarily Indian/Pakistani) among these workers to continue to get cheap labor. It absolutel…

> There's absolutely no talent shortage in the Bay Area, provided you can pay (and your ideas are interesting)

There actually is a talent shortage in the Bay Area. If there was no talent shortage, prices for local labor would be lower. If there wasn't a talent shortage, it wouldn't be possible for me to hire a developer from India, pay to fly him out here, put him up in a hotel in Mountain View for 6 months - all for significantly less than it would cost to hire a local developer.

H1Bs are just the tip of the iceberg. The companies that are pros at this use L1 visas. H1Bs require you to pay a similar wage to the local wage, but L1s have no such requirement. So you can take a developer working in India for $20k/yr and ship him to the US. The consulting company charges them out at the local market rate and pockets the difference. I've seen projects with margins approaching 80% due to this.

The visa system is completely broken, this much is true. But it's really a symptom of the fact that the labor market in the US is not training the types of workers it needs. We train a lot of developers and many of them think they're rock stars. But the reality is that we need a deep bench of competent developers willing to work for substantially less than $100k a year. Those developers exist in other countries, and so the work is going there.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#240

Post by ebbv »

That's great that AeroFS is hiring worldwide based solely on talent, but I can tell you from experience working at Ford, that is not the case among massive corporations. They are purely trying to exploit the wage differential between the US and India, Pakistan and others.
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