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

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

#311

Post by chrishacken »

valuearb wrote: post #273
Chris2048 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

He was a japanese physicist, lost his job when Supercollider project canceled. Instead of going back to Japan, I was able to hire him as lead graphics engineer on a Macintosh imaging product, he was super creative in developing unique graphics effects and his product became our biggest and most profitable. The company grew to 140 employees, his team was 20, but it's reasonable to think about a quarter of the workforc…

So how much were you paying him? (Last week?) there was an article about someone trying to double the H1B minimum wage to $140k; surely if this physicist is as important as you say he is, you were compensating him around that figure, no?

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

#312

Post by sodafountan »

pmoriarty wrote: post #113

Oh that vicious liberal media. They're really sticking it to him, aren't they?

You do realize that half of the reason this post is noteworthy is because it's so out of the ordinary that The Huffington Post agrees with Trump right?

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

#313

Post by BrooklynRage »

mseebach wrote: post #310

Every time the topic comes up, I wonder how many of the HN'ers who are cross at H-1B workers because they are depressing wages are intellectually consistent (and honest) enough to accept that this position is part and parcel of the same system of nationalist thought that leads to a wall to Mexico and steeply increased tariffs on chinese import; of "America First"? If you find yourself reconciling the idea of protecti…

Protecting against wage competition for H-1Bs: More money for me (U.S. citizen / permanent resident tech worker).

In favor of free trade: Cheaper goods for me.

It all boils down to "which collection of policies help me maximize my stuff?" Most people seem to take a more pragmatic approach, valuing tangible things over intellectual consistency.

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

#314

Post by mi100hael »

tkahnoski wrote: post #272
danenania wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about simply allowing H-1Bs to change jobs if they get an offer from another company, and giving them a sufficient window to find something new if they leave their current company? The no-recourse indentured servitude relationship that makes people dependent on a company for their residency takes away all the employee's negotiating power. If we could change this, I expect that wages would begin to even out.

They can. It's just painful and depending on the competency of both companies legal counsel, it can take months. We've had employees accept offers with a start date, only the visa transfers weren't finished yet so they started MONTHS after the expected start date.

The other problem is that AFAIK the 10-year-long Green Card clock resets if they change jobs, so there's a strong incentive not to leave.

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

#315

Post by chrishacken »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #39
t1o5 wrote: post #29

ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers. I have worked in one of those firms and I have friends in many other firms. These are not Indian body shops, these are American companies. Everyone's topic of discussion when we hangout is how our H1B visas were being exploited and there is nothing we could do abou…

That is amazing! However I would like to point out, H1B is not only for Silicon Valley. There are many automotive companies which require foreign talent in specialized fields. Very smart people with multi-disciplinary knowledge are nowhere to be found in auto sector. Signal Processing and vibrations and programming and control systems understanding etc. is required to deal with things like active noise control which…

I believe the proposed solution to the H1B issue was to simply increase the minimum wage for H1B's to $140k. If a company is bringing over top-talent that is irreplaceable; surely that salary is justified. Otherwise, they probably don't need you as bad as they say they do.

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

#316

Post by Apocryphon »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #282
throwawaydbfif wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what happens. The hiring bar is so arbitrarily high that companies can say there's a shortage when they reject 5-10 good applicants for every position. In a true labor shortage this would be completely unsustainable. Trying to justify rejecting 90% of your good applicants to avoid "false negatives" and extending that logic to say that there's a shortage... Obviously retarded if you think about it.

Hardly. If the cost of 10 interviews exceeds the cost of 1 bad hire, then my 90/99 filter is probably worth it. If you think it's retarded, try and work out the arithmetic yourself.

Does that include the accounting for recruiter salaries, the time taken away from employees to conduct interviews, etc.? You'd think that CA being an at-will state would encourage more performance-related terminations. Fail early, fail fast- with your talent pool.

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

#318

Post by kemiller »

IgorPartola wrote: post #305
klipt wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clinton accepted $675,000 from Goldman for 3 talks Okay, I get it, Clinton bad etc. But Trump has appointed tons of people from Goldman to his administration[1] and filed an executive order against financial industry regulations[2] - you know the regulations put in place after the last Wall Street crash, to prevent a similar crash? Can we stop pretending that Trump isn't bought off by Goldman now? [1] http://www.ny…

Not a Trump fan at all here, but technically I think it's more the other way around. Trump is buying up Goldman, rather than they buying him. I have yet to see a clear line of influence from Goldman to Trump personally. It seems more like he's hiring old buddies for potential future favors from them. Reverse lobbying! You heard it here first!

How is giving Goldman people government positions buying them if not by giving them the power to set rules as they like? It's not like they are in it for the cushy gov't benefits.

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

#319

Post by nostrademons »

It's worth putting in a shout-out to Lofgren's H1B bill:

https://lofgren.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentI...

Far from "emasculating" it like the article suggests, the "bucketing" system in Lofgren's bill is designed to put upward pressure on all wages, including those of American citizens. The way that it works is that positions paying in the top 2/3 of the average wage for their geographical area will get priority over those that pay only the average wage, regardless of how much they pay their H1Bs. (And within the bucket, they get priority based on how much more than the prevailing wage they pay the H1B worker.) This prevents companies from bidding up the price of their H1B workers only, and forces them to raise wages for all of their American citizens as well in order to take advantage of the market-based allocation of H1Bs.

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

#320

Post by warbaker »

throwawaydbfif wrote: post #24
zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

The endless talent shortage is a farce. Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field. I would say the opposite is true based solely on hiring practices. Look at Google for example, who hire around 1/5000 people that apply. The shortage is artificially maintained because it works in companies favor. It…

Tech companies have a strict interview process because a mediocre engineer is actively harmful.

At most companies, the hiring manager and interviewers, who are predominantly other engineers, get to decide whether or not to hire a candidate. There simply isn't a mechanism for upper management to manipulate the process in the way you suggest.

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