Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

huffingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 490 posts

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#261

Post by valuearb »

relics443 wrote: post #59

I think an issue lost in the discussion is that citizens are losing jobs because of this. I'm all for the plight of the immigrant, but as an American, my concern is first and foremost with my fellow countrymen.

Hiring H1B visa holders creates jobs in america. The product created by the one I hired employed 20 people in high paying jobs. There are multiple billion dollar companies in SV employing thousands of americans founded by H1B holders. Do we want those companies to have been built in India?

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#262

Post by ChicagoDave »

I can't count how many colleagues I've talked to that are in a stuck-employer situation. Some are happy, but some are miserable. I'm also aware that some of the people with H1-B's are family members that actually don't know anything about technology and don't belong in any job anywhere in technology.

I'm also aware (being 53) that my livelihood is directly tied to the number and type of H1-B visas in the U.S. I can't stand Trump, but on this issue he has a valid beef.

It's all a cluster-F and the system should be changed to treat foreign workers well and to make sure U.S. workers have opportunities.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#263

Post by brendangregg »

The article mentions reseting the green card clock as a way to render workers de facto indentured servants, but unfortunately that's not the only way. One immigration lawyer explained this all to me as "cost effective employee retention". Fixing salaries is good, but I wonder about fixing immobility as well.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#264

Post by valuearb »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #101
sulam wrote: post #46

Speaking as someone who has hired H1-B's in the past, there really do seem to be two tiers. There's the companies/organizations that are truly abusing the system and then there are the traditional tech companies who are happy to hire anyone qualified, no matter where they are from, and pay and promote them the same as other employees. They also sponsor green cards. Competition between these employers has gotten to th…

They are only being paid fair market value because the H-1Bs are suppressing the fair market value. Without the H-1Bs you would have had to pay more, and that "more" would have been the fair market value. You say "matching Netflix offers is very expensive": again, no, matching Netflix offers is the fair market rate, and without H-1Bs, the rate would be higher. Indeed, unless you are a well known company, you should e…

The market rate is a mix of factors. Including the cost of shipping the work overseas. Would you rather have the same engineer work in Bangalore or California?

I'm an engineer and don't think my wages should be artificially increased by keeping smart immigrants that would benefit this country out.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#265

Post by valuearb »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #14

Having worked in a ton of different large corporations that have large H1-B employee populations, I can say this is completely true from my experience. In the last three places (including my current employer) there were huge swaths of H1-B's from India. After some long lunches and happy hours, I found out that a) they're being paid significantly less than I was and b) two of the three companies wouldn't sponsor them…

Where I've worked we paid H1B similarly. Remember, that the visa process isn't free, it's an additional cost to the company so paying a little less isn't unreasonable.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#266

Post by Chris2048 »

valuearb wrote: post #198
davidf18 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all of the political candidates, only Trump and Sanders spoke out against H1-B visa abuse used to depress wages. (Former) Presidential Candidate Senator Marco Rubio of Florida wanted to triple the number of H1-B visas to 250,000 from 85,000 and accepted $2 million donation from Disney. Disney of Florida had recently replaced 250 US IT workers with foreigners on H1-B. Trump especially spoke out against this move. C…

The "depressing wages" point is dumb. These engineers will still be part of the labor pool, they'll just be doing work for our foreign competitors. And HP can still hire them, do you want them to just open up more space in Bangalore, or would you rather those wages go to US based locations? And it's not a zero sum game. One of my H!B hires had unduplicatable skills and created about 20 high paid jobs in our company.…

> One of my H!B hires had unduplicatable skills and created about 20 high paid jobs in our company

Can you give details so it can be judged if this is true, and if so how common/relevant it is?

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#267

Post by throwawaydbfif »

shas3 wrote: post #226
dxhdr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this fixation on Silicon Valley is dumb The tech industry accounts for the vast majority of H1B visas: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2017-H1B-Visa-Category.asp...

"vast majority" still excludes tens of thousands of people. These are real people with real families and real jobs in real companies, not just some statistical data points.

So a fix for 90% of the problem is out because it's bad for a small percentage? Everything is a trade-off, a solutions for the vast majority of cases outweighs the inconvenience on a small minority

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#268

Post by Apocryphon »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #61
jarsin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total BS. I have seen this first hand both as a hiring manager and as an applicant. I have been rejected from jobs based on totally insane interview questions that have nothing to do with the job. In one case I interviewed at 2 competitors. One gave me nothing but trick whiteboard questions, the other emphasized my experience and gave me a real world interview. I was rejected by the whiteboard company and hired by th…

You bring up another reason why 90% of applications might be rejected: false negatives. Consider a hiring filter which rejects 90% of good applicants and 99% of bad applicants. In such a world, consider a population of 10 good applicants. These 10 applicants will go on 100 interviews, be rejected on 90 of them and each will find a job. So in this world where every applicant finds a job , you still get 9/10 applicatio…

Seems like it's because the industry has accepted that there's a fixed number of good applicants, and so employers are engaged in a zero-sum game to dig them out, overlooking the notion that average programmers can become better with guidance.

This seems to agree with your (anecdotal, and likely biased [1]) experience.

Spolsky's observations are no less anecdotal and no more data-driven than the previous poster's experiences.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#269

Post by valuearb »

davidf18 wrote: post #214
valuearb wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "depressing wages" point is dumb. These engineers will still be part of the labor pool, they'll just be doing work for our foreign competitors. And HP can still hire them, do you want them to just open up more space in Bangalore, or would you rather those wages go to US based locations? And it's not a zero sum game. One of my H!B hires had unduplicatable skills and created about 20 high paid jobs in our company.…

Did you read the article? Many tech jobs can't be done effectively in India or overseas with low quality labor for any number of reasons. The 250 American workers for Disney had their jobs replaced in the US, not by overseas workers. > "These engineers will still be part of the labor pool, they'll just be doing work for our foreign competitors" Well, let them work for Samsung instead of Apple then. > "One of my H!B h…

Letting them work for Samsung lowers our standard of living.
Post reply on HN