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Immigration is about talent, not costs

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Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#261

Post by lnkmails »

deskamess wrote: post #179
lnkmails wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the other side, I see a lot of over paid "local" workers that spend a lot of time talking and doing no work. Why don't you take your honesty to your bosses and tell them that they are abusing the H1B system to save money? This is my biggest problem with honesty that comes with anonymity. Look, I am not saying there is no abuse of H1B. That is not the government's problem nor it is the problem of the immigrants.…

If the market is willing to pay you $X (at most) then that is your market value. Not more, not less. If you see someone getting paid $X, you need to try and figure out how he/she got there. Why put your efforts/thoughts into how you can drive down that persons salary? There is no such thing as over paid. Just what you are willing to accept given your constraints. With the current H-1B system there are constraints. In…

Personally, I never had a problem with my salary because I am good at what I do and I project my skills honestly. Salary negotiations involve negotiation skills that a lot of fellow immigrants don't have or don't care about. But when I see their work outperform local workers who are paid more but actually complain a lot about salary, I really get pissed. I have worked with really smart local workers who have all told me they don't feel threatened by immigrant workers. Likewise, I never have felt that someone can exploit me because I am on H1B. But honestly I have far less flexibility in moving jobs which unfortunately seems the only way to get more money in America. So long term I lose. Unlike you, I do think there is a thing called over paid. It is when your value/dollar ratio is exorbitantly high.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#262

Post by Torgo »

makmanalp wrote: post #135
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…

Without commenting on your opinions, let me touch upon one point you make: > I've worked at multiple companies (managed their websites) -- where we would temporarily post a job description to appear that it was a fair playing field for local workers -- when in reality that position was definitely, absolutely going to be filled by a cheaper, exploitable H1B visa position. Alyandon below also says: > I worked as a cont…

To support his claim here's a video of a law firm advising companies on exactly how to craft employment ads to hire only foreign workers and not hire Americans even if they are qualified. In fact he even says it explicitly, the goal is to not hire a domestic worker, and getting a suitably experienced domestic worker applying for the job is considered a failure state of the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

It tells you where to place your ads so that they are "publicly visible" but nobody sees them, and how to craft them to the exact skillset of the foreign worker you're already going to hire.

They say that they are complying with the letter of the law, but they are not because the law requires you to make a good faith effort to hire domestically and they are telling you how to reject those candidates even if they apply.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TC...

"our goal is clearly to not to find a qualified and interested US worker."

I understand the skepticism on HN because many people are working in places where real high-end work is being done. But I worked in the Midwest for over eight years and we had guys brought in to do Apache Struts work, and half the time I had to teach them how to do it. Maybe part of the reason some of you guys who really need qualified foreign workers are getting squeezed is because other companies are screwing you by fraudulently hiring. Why weren't the people in that video above ever prosecuted? They're on video admitting to crimes.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#263

Post by gumby »

tankerdude wrote: post #233

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…

The author of the article areas with you! He says that hiring an H1-B is MORE expensive -- not only do you have to pay what the DOJ considers the prevailing wage for the area and the job but you have to pay legal bills, relocation, interview costs, a lot of personnel time plus you have to wait frigging forever to be able to finally employ the person.

His experience is exactly my experience too: I have hired a lot of H1-Bs (perhaps 5-10% of all the hires I've done over the years) and they were always a last resort because at the end of the day they cost so damned much.

I don't see anything wrong with this. Hire a local if you can, just like shopping locally if you can.

(I suppose if you're a commodity contractor shop hiring people to write Java code as the front end of a billing system, the situation might be different -- that's the programming equivalent of hiring a gardener and I assume in most cases skills aren't considered that important).

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#264

Post by refurb »

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.

That's why H1B's should have a significant minimum requirement for the salary (depending on place).

They do already. It's called the prevailing wage and it's based on what is currently being paid for those positions.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#265

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

foldr wrote: post #225
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the U.S. has nearly unlimited room to accept immigration Says who? The permanent ecologically sustainable population of the U.S. is under 200 million. Supporting the current population at the current standard of living involves running down aquifers and top soil and fisheries. We could certainly cram in 600 million at a far lower standard of living. Why should the people favor a reduced lifestyle? Where exactly are…

The US has a very low population density. There's tons of room for new housing.

Are you deliberately missing the point? The ecological impacts of sustaining human settlements go far beyond housing sites. The American west is overstretched for water. Much of the land west of the Mississippi is effectively already overpopulated.

Beyond ecological concerns, you can't add people without compromising the lifestyle of people already here. Go ahead and ask people in most cities if they want their town to be a lot more like Los Angeles. The answer 90% of the time will be No. But that's what's happening anyway.

This idea that there is a ton of land for new urbanization is obviously wrong. The good land is all in use. What's left is semi-arid, flood plain, or unsuitable in other ways. You can't just stick people out in a prairie or desert or on an Appalachian hill top. You have to ship in food and pipe out the sewage. That's not economically viable most places.

The one area of the country that could actually support a higher population density is the great lakes region, but it's in fact slowly depopulating at the moment. Immigrants are not moving to Erie, PA. They are moving to places like NYC and cities in California. So this point that there is available land is a pointless academic discussion unless you want to impose soviet style internal passports.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#266

Post by refurb »

guyzero wrote: post #150
manticore_alpha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't say it's trivially easy, but with determination it can be done.

Ha, funny guy. The US immigration system is shit. Explain to me how someone can become a permanent resident or a US citizen who is current a citizen & resident of Canada, India or the Philippines. H1-B visas are the most straightforward way for someone with an education to get a job and permanent residency in the US. O and L visas are not universally applicable. Family sponsorship isn't always possible. Not everyone…

It's not like the UK, Canada or Australia which have point-based immigration systems. The US has very few ways for a competent, educated immigrant to enter the country.

The US and Canada both have immigration caps for different resident visas. And they are very similar between the two countries.

A more appropriate way to describe the current situation is that demand for entry into the US is far below available supply.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#267

Post by pm90 »

x0x0 wrote: post #65
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #2

For "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.

Yuri is wrong. h1b is absolutely about costs -- unless they claim (a somewhat fantastical claim) there is nobody in the US at all who could fit their needs. A claim which is trivially untrue. Those people exist and could be hired. Why isn't Yuri hiring them? Because of the price they demand. In fact, the way you can tell this is bs and it is entirely about price is AeroFS opened a canadian subsidiary! I wonder how mu…

>Yuri is wrong. h1b is absolutely about costs -- unless they claim (a somewhat fantastical claim) there is nobody in the US at all who could fit their needs. A claim which is trivially untrue. Those people exist and could be hired. Why isn't Yuri hiring them? Because of the price they demand.

Excuse me, he is just a guy with a company, not some demi-God who has access to a list of all qualified people out there.

When people say: "Hey, there's talent in the US! Look hard and you will find it!", you are kinda missing the circumstances under which he is operating.

First, the cost. Are you suggesting he offer $1 million for a job that used to go for $200,000 just because he can't find anyone? That is flawed economics and a blind faith in the market. The market is not perfectly elastic. We're talking about people, and not mass-produced goods or primary, replaceable material (Iron, Coal etc.). He probably can't operate profitably at those prices.

Second, people are super diverse, and from personal experience, its very very hard to find the right kind of people for any job. If he's found someone who works well for the company, he's very lucky and realizes that. All he wants to do is to bring him to his main office so that he can possibly be more efficient and productive, and the current US labor laws are not letting him do so.

>In fact, the way you can tell this is bs and it is entirely about price is AeroFS opened a canadian subsidiary! I wonder how much that cost. At a guess, $30k? So apparently $30k is less than the premium required to pry engineers out of dropbox or box.

What if engineers working at dropbox are perfectly happy where they are? How do you know that he hasn't tried that? Does he even have time to court all the employees of dropbox; he probably has much better things to do with his time.

>Or god forbid, train someone.

Anecdotally, this is false. I admit I've worked only for 2 American companies so far, but both of them have been incredibly involved with the local community; hiring many entry-level engineers, giving internships to students from community colleges and organizing learn-to-code events on premises.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#268

Post by thrwy10 »

thedufer wrote: post #241
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 don't think the point you take issue with is really debatable. The only way it could not be true if there is actually no one in the local labor market who can do the job, and that's a very difficult argument to make. Outside of that, every H1 is a job a citizen isn't getting. You didn't touch on this at all, so I'm not really sure what your point is. I think you're debating a strawman.

> The only way it could not be true if there is actually no one in the local labor market who can do the job, and that's a very difficult argument to make. Outside of that, every H1 is a job a citizen isn't getting.

Does that mean being a citizen entitles one to a job regardless of qualification? Also, does that mean 100% of the US should be employed before bringing in foreign workers? I think such generalizations are far fetched. The conspiracy theory that claims that H1s are all low paid workers falls flat when examined closely.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#269

Post by hkarthik »

exelius wrote: post #239
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…

> But the reality is that we need a deep bench of competent developers willing to work for substantially less than $100k a year.

And there we have it. You want developers to continue to be happy with less than $100K salaries while the costs of local housing skyrockets by 20% year over year.

Clearly that won't work for developers hitting their 30s and wanting to start a family or those with families already.

So you're left with hiring the young, highly educated, and unattached. Hence the move to hire H1Bs from overseas.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#270

Post by bitroliest »

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've been on an H1B visa before. This has been my experience. You forgot to mention it's a tether to keep talent in a given company also.
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