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Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#11

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wheelerwj wrote: post #3

this is total bs. MS has a massive work force of contract workers who are paid poorly and get treated worse and i am pretty certain that other companies do the same. If they took that 10k ($60m usd total)bounty and applied it to legit training in the US they would have a better, cheaper, and more loyal workforce and the money would stay local. This notion that we have to hire over-seas is not correct at all and while…

I worked at a bank. We needed a team of six people with advanced and specific skills. We could only find four. We tried to import two more. Computer at immigration said no. So we cancelled the offer to the four and hired six in Singapore. That unit has now grown to twenty-five of which five had to be pulled in from India. That's how reality works.

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#12

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wheelerwj wrote: post #9
mseebach wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. At 6000 positions and 12 million out of work, you only need to skim off the top 0.05% of the workless to fill these position. Since Microsoft is willing to pay $10k for the visa alone, that is, not including other recruitment expenses, surely you can charge a fee of $10,000 for each referral, and make a total killing as a recruitment agent for Microsoft. In other words: basic economics disagrees with your…

how did you arrive at that? are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already? Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead.

This implies it would be profitable for you to loan these people $40 to $50k to get this training and then (a) profit off the loans and (b) turn around and sell the finished product (the upgraded workforce) to Microsoft. It's the logic of subprime houses for subprime people (or, more sensitively, the diamond in the rough mindset).

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#13

Post by mseebach »

wheelerwj wrote: post #9
mseebach wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. At 6000 positions and 12 million out of work, you only need to skim off the top 0.05% of the workless to fill these position. Since Microsoft is willing to pay $10k for the visa alone, that is, not including other recruitment expenses, surely you can charge a fee of $10,000 for each referral, and make a total killing as a recruitment agent for Microsoft. In other words: basic economics disagrees with your…

how did you arrive at that? are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already? Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead.

> are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already?

You brought up the fact that there are 12 million workless, as a counter to Microsoft's desire to hire H1-B labor. If that's not to suggest they could fill those positions, what's the relevancy?

> Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead.

Uhm, 40-50k a year is more expensive than full-time Harvard tuition. That does change the argument a little bit.

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#14

Post by lusr »

gaius wrote: post #10
mseebach wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. At 6000 positions and 12 million out of work, you only need to skim off the top 0.05% of the workless to fill these position. Since Microsoft is willing to pay $10k for the visa alone, that is, not including other recruitment expenses, surely you can charge a fee of $10,000 for each referral, and make a total killing as a recruitment agent for Microsoft. In other words: basic economics disagrees with your…

There's a number missing from your calculations: the cash value to an unscrupulous employer of having an employee who is utterly beholden to them in the way an H1B is but a citizen/resident alien is not.

You've nailed it. As a highly skilled foreigner who's looking to emigrate, most employment visas in the countries I've looked at effectively force you to become a slave to the company sponsoring you for at least 5 years before you can even begin claiming residence status; the H-1B visa is one such visa [1].

Whilst that may be okay if you're in your early 20s or from a country with very limited options, for an older person with greater skills living a relatively good life (e.g. a high-level contractor in South Africa) it's not particularly appealing as the cost-benefit analysis isn't very positive.

Ironically, these are probably precisely the people you want emigrating to your country - people with a proven track record who are ready to settle down and want to create a future for their immediate family, spending and investing everything they earned in the same country -- not young people who have nothing to lose and will probably send the bulk of their earnings back out of the country to their families in poorer nations, and who will potentially bring the rest of their (non-skilled) family in on family visa arrangements. (Of course this is somewhat a generalization, but I think on average it holds true.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Criticisms_of_the_pro...

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#15

Post by beedogs »

gaius wrote: post #10
mseebach wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. At 6000 positions and 12 million out of work, you only need to skim off the top 0.05% of the workless to fill these position. Since Microsoft is willing to pay $10k for the visa alone, that is, not including other recruitment expenses, surely you can charge a fee of $10,000 for each referral, and make a total killing as a recruitment agent for Microsoft. In other words: basic economics disagrees with your…

There's a number missing from your calculations: the cash value to an unscrupulous employer of having an employee who is utterly beholden to them in the way an H1B is but a citizen/resident alien is not.

You're the first one to hit on the real reason: these workers are stuck with Microsoft as an employer for years. If they quit, they have to leave the country.

This basically buys Microsoft six thousand wage slaves, in the very most literal sense of the term.

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#16

Post by mseebach »

gaius wrote: post #10
mseebach wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. At 6000 positions and 12 million out of work, you only need to skim off the top 0.05% of the workless to fill these position. Since Microsoft is willing to pay $10k for the visa alone, that is, not including other recruitment expenses, surely you can charge a fee of $10,000 for each referral, and make a total killing as a recruitment agent for Microsoft. In other words: basic economics disagrees with your…

There's a number missing from your calculations: the cash value to an unscrupulous employer of having an employee who is utterly beholden to them in the way an H1B is but a citizen/resident alien is not.

For certain values of "utterly". The willingness and ability to sponsor H1-Bs is the norm, rather than the exception, in larger tech companies.

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#17

Post by mseebach »

lusr wrote: post #14
gaius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a number missing from your calculations: the cash value to an unscrupulous employer of having an employee who is utterly beholden to them in the way an H1B is but a citizen/resident alien is not.

You've nailed it. As a highly skilled foreigner who's looking to emigrate, most employment visas in the countries I've looked at effectively force you to become a slave to the company sponsoring you for at least 5 years before you can even begin claiming residence status; the H-1B visa is one such visa [1]. Whilst that may be okay if you're in your early 20s or from a country with very limited options, for an older p…

From the link:

Historically, H-1B holders have sometimes been described as indentured servants, and while the comparison is no longer as compelling, it had more validity prior to the passage of American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000.

And in the section on American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000:

Because of AC21, the H-1B employee is free to change jobs if they have an I-485 application pending for six months and an approved I-140, if the position they are moving to is substantially comparable to their current position. In some cases, if those labor certifications are withdrawn and replaced with PERM applications, processing times will improve, but the person will also lose their favorable priority date. In those cases, employers' incentive to attempt to lock in H-1B employees to a job by offering a green card is reduced, because the employer bears the high legal costs and fees associated with labor certification and I-140 processing, but the H-1B employee is still free to change jobs.

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#18

Post by wheelerwj »

mseebach wrote: post #13
wheelerwj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how did you arrive at that? are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already? Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead.

> are you implying that if it was feasible it would be done already? You brought up the fact that there are 12 million workless, as a counter to Microsoft's desire to hire H1-B labor. If that's not to suggest they could fill those positions, what's the relevancy? > Microsoft could invest 40-50k a year into people who qualify for retraining either in house or at local universities and still come out ahead. Uhm, 40-50k…

cool, so MS can send 6000 people to harvard for a CS degree while having them work on some menial code/internship in the mean time.

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#19

Post by gaius »

beedogs wrote: post #15
gaius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a number missing from your calculations: the cash value to an unscrupulous employer of having an employee who is utterly beholden to them in the way an H1B is but a citizen/resident alien is not.

You're the first one to hit on the real reason: these workers are stuck with Microsoft as an employer for years. If they quit, they have to leave the country. This basically buys Microsoft six thousand wage slaves, in the very most literal sense of the term.

The H1B system is a textbook case study in regulatory capture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Re: Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

#20

Post by mseebach »

beedogs wrote: post #15
gaius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a number missing from your calculations: the cash value to an unscrupulous employer of having an employee who is utterly beholden to them in the way an H1B is but a citizen/resident alien is not.

You're the first one to hit on the real reason: these workers are stuck with Microsoft as an employer for years. If they quit, they have to leave the country. This basically buys Microsoft six thousand wage slaves, in the very most literal sense of the term.

Read my reply to lusr. Your use of the word "literal" isn't exactly warranted.
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