Immigration is about talent, not costs • Hacker News Board

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#621

Post by codeonfire » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 3:50 AM UTC

ahomescu1 wrote: post #620

codeonfire wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. In America we deplore things like bribery, oppression of women, caste systems, rule of law, human trafficking, honor killings, etc. We will impose that social contract on anyone who migrates here. Even if you are Sir Elton John, you are just Elton John here. If you bring slave servants to the US and enslave them here, as has happened, you'll be thrown in prison. It's not about language.

> In America we deplore things like [...], rule of law, [...] Is that supposed to be in there, or did you mean something else?

oops, was too early when I typed.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#622

Post by inflagranti » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 3:54 AM UTC

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #485

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…

Man, you make me ashamed to call myself American. What are you so afraid of? Have you ever been to a nice Indian restaurant in Sunnyvale? I'm glad those ethnic conclaves exist. Also, from a strictly moral perspective, the attitude that you deserve special treatment based on the fact that you were born within an imaginary closed cell on a map just isn't justified. What makes you so special versus someone from Asia wit…

> What makes you so special versus someone from Asia with better skills? I'm supposed to hire you because ... what? We share the same passport and so I owe you some special heightened loyalty beyond what I owe any human being born on our common planet?

Well said!

This is what always makes me quite sad and angry every time there's a discussion about immigration. Shouldn't we as a society be past this entitled way of thinking? Why does anyone deserve a job more just because he already was lucky enough to be born in a rich country like the US? Sure, allowing in people from other, often poorer countries might reduce the local wage slightly, maybe even take a job opportunity from some local developer, but so what? That developer is still very well of and the possible wage reduction that US workers might have to live with is minimal, but the gain for the immigrant from the poor country is huge! How about a bit of social conscience and empathy for your fellow humans?

The H1B is already heavily restricted to 65k per year, which is a ridiculously low number for the US so I don't see this being able to do much harm in the first place (Switzerland, a way smaller country has roughly that immigration per year), but it will allow at least some people the chance at a great opportunity. Admitably, the way the H1B currently gives to much power to the employer, but many people here seem to strongly argue against immigration in general which I just cannot understand.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#623

Post by TheMagicHorsey » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 5:28 AM UTC

nhayden wrote: post #605

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, you make me ashamed to call myself American. What are you so afraid of? Have you ever been to a nice Indian restaurant in Sunnyvale? I'm glad those ethnic conclaves exist. Also, from a strictly moral perspective, the attitude that you deserve special treatment based on the fact that you were born within an imaginary closed cell on a map just isn't justified. What makes you so special versus someone from Asia wit…

One could make the argument that Americans deserve American jobs more than foreigners because the vast majority of Americans have been contributing to American society their entire lives through their work and taxes and will most likely continue to until their death. Foreigners come to the US having never been part of the society that made the job possible.

By that logic, someone in Arizona has no claim to a job in California.

In fact, someone in Sacramento has no claim on a job in San Francisco.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#624

Post by mailshanx » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 5:33 AM UTC

vladtaltos wrote: post #583

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of the CV/pattern recognition talent shortage you're describing is because of an unwillingness to consider candidates who don'match exactly. That is, do you have a condition where something like only "PhD in Machine Learning with extensive CV experience" resumes are considered when it is arguably the case that, e.g., "MS/PhD in math/engineering/physics with programming experience" would be equally able to do…

I myself have electronics engineering background (telecommunications sub-specialty), 5 others are similarly with ee backgrounds and 3 or 4 people are from applied maths departments. I believe we have only 2 mechanical eng people and the rest is CS guys. It's not resume or education background bias. However, if you're going to pay in the 150k-200k euro range to somebody, you naturally want them to have relevant experi…

How do i get in touch with you? I have honed my math / ML skills over many years in academic research - we should definitely talk!

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#625

Post by bduerst » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 5:57 AM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #378

bduerst wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article linked to was an opinion piece against immigrants, hence the context. I also eluded to there needing to be evidence, which the op piece didn't really provide.

if you don't have evidence that h1bs are widely abused, and used to drive down wages, it's for no other reason than you're too lazy to google. It's also telling that you tar a neutral reporting piece discussing the impact of h1b visas as anti-immigrant, I guess because how else could you discredit it. I mean, right there in the very article you seem to have read is this: ComputerWorld revealed last week that the top…

If I'm too lazy, then enlighten me with your work ethic. Show the evidence already or stop being crass.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#626

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 8:39 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #601

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're charging 3x whatever they paid, that pushes up prices for the companies hiring the body shops, which incentivizes finding cheaper competitors to body shops in the labor market -- like hiring domestic workers, for example. The pricing mechanisms of the market will optimize out a balance.

Just a random, unhelpful ping into this conversation to point out that the economics of billing out a programmer for "3x" (I assume you mean "3x the fully-loaded cost of the programmer as an FTE for the consultancy, broken out by hour") is a lot more complicated than this thread makes it sound. Companies aren't simply using those "3x" contractors as a shortcut to avoid finding and hiring full-timers. A big chunk of t…

Sure, great. Honestly, I don't mind what companies want to do with contractors and contracting. I've been a contractor for a short time. If a big chunk of the 3x is business value created, great, go ahead.

My only actual point here is that rather than trying to tailor a visa just for the special needs of Silicon Valley start-ups, we should be tailoring high-skilled work-visa programs for letting the market decide what constitutes high-value work, viz: work that people will pay a lot for.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#627

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 8:44 AM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #472

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presented with an individual, it actually doesn't matter whether the problem was nature or nurture. What matters is what you can do about it now. But that's the problem. Doing something with the late 30s unskilled laborer with no job is something we might be able to just break even on, or at least not lose too much in retraining for humanitarian reasons, and doing that is arguably better than abandoning those peopl…

Letting people take the jobs that best fit them, the world over, means more jobs are better done sooner, which means more resources available to do things like retrain. None of this has much to do, anymore, with the question of whether there is "demand for average human brains", incidentally.

> Letting people take the jobs that best fit them, the world over, means more jobs are better done sooner, which means more resources available to do things like retrain.

But we're not talking about the world over. Allowing unlimited immigration is good for the immigrants but bad for the existing citizens.

And you're running straight into equality fallacy. Equality is not an unambiguous good. When most people are poor, making everyone equal just makes everyone poor. There is a threshold past which people can stop worrying about where their next meal is coming from and instead make investments in the future of the world. The ideal eventual outcome is for everyone to be above that level, but if you flatten the world-wide income graph today then nobody is and the people who are are the only ones who can drag everyone else up. In the meantime the distinction between who gets to be a citizen of a first world country and who doesn't is inherently arbitrary and unfair, but it's still a choice that has to be made.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#628

Post by godzilla82 » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 10:21 AM UTC

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…

Lets be intelligent. Salaries for the H1Bs are low because the H1B visas are very exploitative. So, instead of forcing companies to hire local labour, force the government to remove the restrictions and salaries will rise.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#629

Post by dllthomas » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 5:02 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #627

dllthomas wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting people take the jobs that best fit them, the world over, means more jobs are better done sooner, which means more resources available to do things like retrain. None of this has much to do, anymore, with the question of whether there is "demand for average human brains", incidentally.

> Letting people take the jobs that best fit them, the world over, means more jobs are better done sooner, which means more resources available to do things like retrain. But we're not talking about the world over. Allowing unlimited immigration is good for the immigrants but bad for the existing citizens. And you're running straight into equality fallacy. Equality is not an unambiguous good. When most people are poo…

The reasoning you quoted has nothing to do with equality. Don't make things up just because you find them easier to argue against.

The reasoning was: If you force jobs to be filled by people who are not as good at them, we collectively get less work done. Assuming that work tends to be useful, that means we collectively have fewer resources available.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#630

Post by exelius » Thu, Dec 04, 2014, 5:26 PM UTC

hkarthik wrote: post #554

exelius wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a problem unique to the bay area. You don't have to live in the bay area to be a developer.

I work for a Bay Area based company, but I work remotely in Dallas, TX and I can assure you that this problem isn't unique to the Bay Area. It's just that the numbers skew lower. Here in Dallas, many employers scoff at paying more than $80K/year for a senior developer when they can get an H1B for $50-60K. A lot of this relates to the total capital available, as well as the lower cost of living, but the trend is the s…

Well, you get what you pay for (again, exempting professional services/staffing firms from this because they don't operate in the labor market under the same rules as individuals). If you offer $60-80k/yr, you're not going to get great developers. If the market rate is $80k and they're offering $60k for H1B developers, that's actually illegal (though unfortunately rarely enforced).

But many projects don't need great engineers: they just need people who can write code that implements business requirements. Someone with a technical certification may be fine for this (which is usually all these offshore developers have anyway). I would argue that it's insane to pay $100k/yr for this kind of work: from a macro perspective, other skilled labor fields such as accounting are equally challenging, but accounting salaries are much lower. If we trained developers like we do accountants, our economy would likely be more productive.