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A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

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Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#41

Post by geebee »

therealwill wrote: post #19

Sponsoring an H1-B employee, in theory, is always more expensive than an hiring a local because not only do you have to pay an H1-B visa employee the same wage as a local you also have to pay the lawyer and visa fees. Often times employers will also have to provide an employment contract guaranteeing x number of years of employment in order to increase chances of visa approval. In practice, this is not the case. H1-b…

Also, that's assuming that the company couldn't have hired by going substantially above the market rate. If there's a talented person you could hire who insists on 150K a year, when "market rate" is 100K a year, sure, you save a bundle by sponsoring an H1B.

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#42

Post by PaulHoule »

moron4hire wrote: post #38
PaulHoule wrote: post #9

I am a member of the IEEE Computer society (and not the ACM) precisely because IEEE opposes H-1B expansion. This is not necessarily a "litmus" test for me, but it is a sign that the IEEE is sticking up for engineers and not the financiers of tech industry.

IEEE has also supported legislation (that they've gotten to pass in my home state) to require licensing of software developers, that the sorts of companies that use H-1Bs would not be held to.

That sort of thing could help with the "market for lemons" in software developers, and also could raise our social status which would mean we have more support standing up to wrong decisions on the part of management and thus, fewer project failures.

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#43

Post by jws0111 »

This article and some of the comments here make it seem like having a H1B is a terrible situation to be in.

I have a H1B. I work for major tech company in the Bay Area. I have a salary in the six figures which is about twice what I would earn back home. I was excited to come to America and work for a company I admire in their Silicon Valley headquarters and the H1B lottery was the only way for me to do so.

Without H1B I wouldn't have had this opportunity. I don't feel like its indentured servitude, I have a salary which I believe is higher than the average market wage and is more than my American peers because the company is paying all of my visa expenses and the fees related to me pursuing a green card. I've been promoted once already in the 18 months since I arrived and received a related salary bump. If I wanted to leave and goto a different company, most in the bay area would allow me to transfer my visa so I could work for them.

H1B is not a problem for America or "engineer's wages". Abuse of the system is. Lets focus on curtailing that abuse and not on victimising H1B employees who may be very happy and grateful for the opportunity to pursue their own version of the American dream.

Spare a thought for those who had the job offer of their dreams, from that "brand name company" in an exciting field, and the opportunity to move to America, only for everything to fall through when they didn't get selected in the lottery. That is surely not right. Can't we come up with a system where American companies can hire who they want, where talented people can work for fair wages, and where individuals can get the opportunity to move to America, as despite all its failings, it is still an highly attractive place to live.

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#44

Post by joelwilliamson »

It seems auctioning H1-Bs to companies would let the companies that can't find enough talent to hire at market price, and force companies that just want cheap talent to pay for Americans. Solicit bids from every company stating how many visas they want and how much they will pay for each one. If Google wants 5000 visas and is willing to give the government $200K for each visa, while Infosys is only willing to pay $40K per visa then Google should get 5000 visas and Infosys can try for whatever is left.

If there is an actual shortage of necessary talent, companies should be willing to pay whatever it takes to get visas for qualifying workers. If they just want to save money, this will show up in the low prices they are willing to pay for a visa.

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#45

Post by PaulHoule »

bsbechtel wrote: post #20
PaulHoule wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some familiarity with the "job shops" that hire a lot of H-1Bs, they do advertise for jobs in the US but I will say that the basic business model is something like "charge the customer $120 an hour and pay somebody $35 an hour to do the work" (Now there is some overhead, so this is not as bad as it sounds, but it is pretty bad.) One thing that is fairly shocking is the low pay rates for people with skills that…

My questions is why can't someone else offer these same programmers >$35/hr and steal them away? What's the friction in the market preventing this?

The H-1B program itself. It is a bureaucratic thing that is easier to do if you do lots of them.

Although the Andressen Horowitzes are going to stand up for the rights of capital against workers (and against social mobility in general), if only to make it easier to do deals and to get kudos on the editoral page of the Wall Street Journal, "startup" companies don't hire H-1Bs. They are almost all hired by the likes Wipro, Infosys and IBM -- at least the first two pay the CEO at Indian rates. (Note that VC's are also deferential to the landlords and property developers that contribute to the housing crisis in the bay area since the first rule of being "respectable" is to respect other "respectable" people.)

The overhead is real and not entirely waste. The best indian dev shops have CMM 5 certification which is a matter of having a lot of process and management, so they do make up for whatever weaknesses they have by throwing more labor (both line work nad management) at the problem. They get good results, but it is not that much cheaper than the competition, particularly given that the cost of living has gone way up in Bangalore.

Also I think programmers are bad negotiators. I have definitely seen people doing the same work in the same area with pay varying by a factor of 2, very different working conditions, and sometimes with or without health insurance. (Funny the guys who didn't offer health insurance did offer a lot of free pizza)

Also, these guys in India would have a hard time working up business in another country without some help from the the business folks, so they are getting some value.

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#46

Post by beat »

Klockan wrote: post #21
beat wrote: post #6

Once when debating the poor quality of programmers with a friend, I said "You know how dumb the average programmer is? By definition, half are even dumber!" He responded, "Only half? Do you mean the mean, the median, or the mode?" And there's the rub. There may not be a shortage of engineers, but there's a serious shortage of good engineers. And I'm not sure more H1B will solve that problem.

H1B's earn at least standard wages, so companies wouldn't bring them here if they weren't noticeably better than average.

As someone who has worked with and hired many H1Bs, that hasn't been my experience at all. If anything, the median quality is significantly worse than American programmers. Green card workers tend to be much better than H1Bs, although "better than average" still doesn't apply.

The problem is definitely the median, not the extremes. Top-quality foreign programmers are absolutely as good as top American programmers. It's in the middle that things go sour. There are many reasons for this, both cultural and business. The big business problem is that H1Bs are hired from body shops to supply large numbers of staff quickly at a price target, so they rarely get to work on interesting, challenging projects. Whatever projects they're on are dragged down by the poor quality of their teammates, so they don't get to challenge themselves and excel. It's also aggravated by their body shop employers rewriting their resumes in an absolutely generic fashion for maximum buzzword compliance, denying the workers a chance to shine and specialize to potential employers.

So the interview process consists of starting with a generic technology set, and then spending five minutes or so on technical questions to see if they actually know their ass from a hole in the ground or not (they usually don't). If they do, the process can proceed normally. But without a resume that shows any individuality, it's a huge waste of time for the interviewers to weed through all the crap. This adds to the perception of poor quality.

Yeah, it's a real problem.

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#47

Post by PaulHoule »

davidw wrote: post #36

I wrote this to have a standard thing for these threads: http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs... Short version: opening things up to people willing to work, and lifting the restrictions on H1B workers are the best options, morally and economically. Excluding people who happen to have been born in the wrong place, or the wrong color, or female or whatever, is a bad idea.

I am happy to give them green cards, not happy with the H-1B program.

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#48

Post by beat »

geebee wrote: post #39
drcube wrote: post #37

You mean "a scheme to deflate artificially high engineers' wages"? If you can't compete with foreigners working in your field, you can't compete. I'm concerned with the indentured servitude we're putting H1Bs under, but not with the fact that they're working here instead of China or India. There isn't a "shortage" of STEM workers in the US, but that's no reason to support protectionist policies.

I think the argument is that we should simply treat engineers and programmers the same way we treat all other workers in the US. Nobody is lobbying for special protections for engineers, just a level playing field. The US currently accepts 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year, and the engineers among them are most welcome to work here with minimal licensing and red tape (this isn't the case for…

I doubt the average high school student considering a career in engineering is worrying about market distortion from uneven regulation.

The percentage of women going into computer science in college has dropped precipitously since the 1980s. Why is that?

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#49

Post by beat »

jws0111 wrote: post #43

This article and some of the comments here make it seem like having a H1B is a terrible situation to be in. I have a H1B. I work for major tech company in the Bay Area. I have a salary in the six figures which is about twice what I would earn back home. I was excited to come to America and work for a company I admire in their Silicon Valley headquarters and the H1B lottery was the only way for me to do so. Without H1…

Great story! That's what I love about immigration - bringing people like you here. America needs people with your attitude.

Re: A scheme to lower engineers’ wages

#50

Post by humanrebar »

jws0111 wrote: post #43

This article and some of the comments here make it seem like having a H1B is a terrible situation to be in. I have a H1B. I work for major tech company in the Bay Area. I have a salary in the six figures which is about twice what I would earn back home. I was excited to come to America and work for a company I admire in their Silicon Valley headquarters and the H1B lottery was the only way for me to do so. Without H1…

> H1B is not a problem for America or "engineer's wages". Abuse of the system is.

I'm sympathetic. I really am. I have a lot of friends working on visas, both now and in the past. But I just don't see the economics of this. How can adding hundreds of thousands of people in any field not depress wages, at least in the short-to-medium term.

Why do I care? I want young Americans to go into IT and engineering in general. They are becoming more interested because wages and job security have been improving (at least relative to other careers, I'm not sure about in absolute terms). If we open the valve and flood the market, wages will be affected. Maybe they won't shrink, but maybe they'll be stagnant. And maybe the job security isn't quite as good.

When I was in school, many people didn't go into IT because investment bubbles and trends in offshoring made IT work seem like a bad bet. There was skepticism that IT would provide a good long-term career. I don't see how importing hundreds of thousands of technology workers won't do the same thing.

So, again, I really want people all over the world to have opportunities, but I feel my concerns should be for the future of the young people around me. They don't have another America to move to when their prospects get stale or bleak. They're already here.

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