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Immigration is about talent, not costs

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Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#331

Post by bluishgreen »

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…

"ethic-neuveau-ghettos .. insulating themselves rather than assimilating" Usually the kids assimilate pretty well, and thats mostly how it works, has always worked with non-europeans. You can't expect these people to wake up one morning, and do a running jump while yelling 'muricaaa!!' and assimilate in a flash. From my experience, most of them want their kids to assimilate while setting up personal thresholds for themselves as to how much they can/want to buy in. You'd be surprised, the country can learn a thing or two from these peoples, for eg. many of these folks come from places where evolution is common sense, and high-schools don't give people life long depressions from which people never recover.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#332

Post by DINKDINK »

jakevn wrote: post #282
DINKDINK wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Companies can take advantage of situations for profit, and that's their right, but the argument needs to be qualified so that we aren't speaking past one another. Are we talking about "should be able to" or "it's the right (for whatever definition of right) thing to do"? I'm going to go with the latter since I have little opinion on the law. For example, a company has the right to ask its programmers to work 80 hours…

"Should companies be taking advantage of low wages in other countries instead of paying market value?"

If someone leaves a programming job in India to take a programming job in the USA, they're implicitly saying, This is a better deal for me. The only unethical/anticompetative practice was that someone created an artificial barrier (often pushed through legislation because of xenophobia) to keep "others" out. If you don't think we should the USA should be hiring talented people from India, do you think California should prevent people from Seattle from working in California?

Where would you draw the line?

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#333

Post by r00fus »

jtzhou wrote: post #306
fataliss wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A decent home in a good school district is around $2.5m in the Bay Area, so $250k before taxes might get you qualified for a mortgage (provided you saved $500k for a down payment). $100k, while above U.S. median household income, would not go very far in the Bay Area. Even in Eastern Europe, there are places with very high standards of living for talented developers, such as Prague or Warsaw. With the EU, Berlin, Vie…

You can buy a SFH for much less than $2.5m (more like $1m) in good school districts (the best districts are more like $1.5m+). Perhaps not in Mission San Jose, Los Altos Hills or in San Francisco proper, but many many places with a good commute to most of the valley.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#334

Post by kmonsen »

geekam wrote: post #232
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 (prim…

This is very, very true. L1 seems like a good deal since your spouse can work, but ends up being really bad since you have no negotiating power at salary adjustment time.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#335

Post by xxxyy »

skadamat wrote: post #204
jkyle wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're looking at with those offers is likely a PhD in computer science or engineering who specialized in something those companies want. Those aren't what you think of as internships done by Sophomores or Juniors in college. They're an extended interview of a highly sought after expert in their field. Both of the candidate by the company and vice versa. That's why the offers look more like salaries. Also, those…

Haha they are definitely sophomores and juniors in college. CS undergrads from top 20 CS programs are getting offered that much for summers, I've witnessed these offers from a lot of my friends.

I wouldn't maybe laugh, but can confirm.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#336

Post by jtbigwoo »

Squarel wrote: post #297
300bps wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First you said: it is not that they are looking for "cheap labour" Then you said: The company is based in Seattle and they are facing increasing competition from Microsoft and Amazon mostly who are sucking up all of the talent in the area, whilst other smaller startups and companies struggle to hire people because the bigger companies are offering more money. Your second statement contradicts your first statement. Wh…

Only if you define the market rate as "That paid by those with the deepest pockets", in which case, you may find the price of a gallon of milk to be somewhat different than what you expect.

>> Only if you define the market rate as "That paid by those with the deepest pockets",

This is exactly what market rate means. That's why apartments are so expensive in SF or NY.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#337

Post by vegabook »

If we accept that maximum utility (that is, the jargon economists use for maximum human fulfilment) is not only about maximum output, then the idea that we should open all our borders to the lowest bidder, becomes invalid.

What is in the interests of corporations is not what is in the interests of our society.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#338

Post by davidw »

Retric wrote: post #308
codegeek wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But I don't want to have so many immigrants that we can't turn them all into Americans. I want immigrants who respect womens' rights, consider racists to be social pariahs, find corruption to be intolerable, embrace gays, etc" If I understand you correctly, you are making the assumption that things like respecting women's rights etc. are primarily an American virtue and not as much with other cultures ? I would agre…

The core problem is bribery is both a way of life for more than 1/2 the worlds population and a huge economic drain. If you mix say 200 million people from China and 200 million from India you would quickly end up with yet another society where bribery is the norm. Granted the cap on immigration is probably well below the cultural assimilation rate, but just because we could accept say 2 million people a year does no…

People said the same thing about Italian and Irish immigrants 100 years ago. And yet, things didn't fall apart.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#339

Post by gjm11 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #304
dashboardfront wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you're "making 90k" in the valley you have the quality of life worth 30k in a midwestern city. Not true at all, yet this is constantly repeated like it's fact. Look up indifference curves and consumption bundles. You're ignoring microeconomics. For anyone that doesn't assign excessively high utility towards housing size, 90k in the valley is a much better quality of life than 30k in a midwestern city. This is…

If you want your comparison to be equally valid wherever you make it, you have to use the same basket of goods everywhere you go. Otherwise, I can't tell whether you are comparing apples to oranges or pears to grapefruit. When I look at the numbers for that basket of goods that I currently consume, and price it out for San Francisco, I find that it is completely unattainable for anything less than 3 times what I curr…

I agree that there's a big transparency benefit to using the same basket everywhere, but I don't think that actually gives the most realistic answer.

Imagine that every day, for every meal, you eat spaghetti carbonara. You'd be almost as happy eating linguine with pesto, but you happen to have a slight preference for spaghetti carbonara. Now you move somewhere else where, for whatever reason, spaghetti is 100x the price and every other ingredient is only 2x the price. Are you suddenly 100x poorer? No, much nearer 2x, because you'll just switch from spaghetti to linguine. You'll be slightly worse off than 2x because, darn it, you preferred spaghetti, but only slightly.

Moving to San Francisco from (say) Minnesota is a bit like that. Housing is a bajillion times more expensive, so you'll have to make do with a lot less of it, but unless housing is the only thing you care about that doesn't mean you're a bajillion times worse off. You do need some housing, and many other things are also more expensive, so there's no argument that you're worse off in SF for any given level of income. But not by the factor the price of housing would suggest.

(A couple of other remarks about this sort of comparison. 1. The richer you are, the less these things matter -- if you're putting a substantial fraction of your income into investments, those don't change in price at all just because you move to San Francisco. 2. Relatedly, if you are able to buy a house rather than renting, you're not as much worse off as the eyewatering price of the house would suggest -- because later on you can move out of San Francisco, sell that house, and get the money back again.)

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#340

Post by bduerst »

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...

This is patently false, and a common misunderstanding of immigrantion laws by U.S. citizens.

>Requirement 4 - You must be paid at least the actual or prevailing wage for your occupation, whichever is higher.

http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupatio...

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