331–340 of 487 posts
I love the blatant racism of HN. Everyone loves to rip on the H1-B, which is predominantly used by Indians, but no one seems to give a shit about the TN visa. Aren't those Canadians stealing your precious American jobs too?
Please don't generalize about the HN community in this way, particularly as you choose to be part of it.
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Fixed link: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx The new bill will take "cash bonuses and similar compensation" into account. A rock bottom offer from FB/Google/... to new grads in the bay area is typically 160k.
I don't believe it. Maybe if you add up all the initial grants, but those vest over 4 years but I would bet a rock-bottom offer to a new grad is more like $120k/year or even $100k/year. Still ample for an H1B (well, under other bills) but I suspect this will put significant upward pressure on salaries in the tech industry.
But even without that, given the total compensation, I'm sure it'd be easy for said companies to extend offers that are over $130k in cash on paper, since it includes bonuses.
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It relies on the companies own estimate of the value of those bonuses... but bonuses are discretionary and the value of private company stock can be hard to determine. So you could have a salary of $90k, $10k of healthcare benefits, and $30k worth of "assumed" bonuses in the form of options, restricted shares, etc. which: a) you're not certain to get anyway (because they're bonuses) b) might not really be worth $30k
> the value of private company stock can be hard to determine The IRS uses 409A valuation. These valuations have been high enough to cause huge AMT burden to engineers. Sam Altman etc have written about it; Zoe Lofgren herself has been trying for years to fix it. Why do you think it is a joke?
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I don't see any reason why h1b visa holders shouldn't have a high bar to reach. The whole point of the program is to bring the best of the best, not the average or mediocre, which could likely be filled by an American somewhere.
130k salary is absurdly high amount of money for people outside of IT and finance. Stop living in a bubble. It will price out a lot of talent that will be forced to leave the country. Wich is a huge mistake for American society.
And if they don't, that doesn't make the situation any worse. It's impossible to get a H1B VISA right now and they have zero chances to get one, because the quota is ridiculously low and they are all taken by the Indian sweat shops, on top of requiring 1-2 years ahead for the procedure.
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>Consider someone who has just finished their PhD in a relevant area. Why? The H1B is supposed to bring in high skilled labor not new grads. If 80K is the going market rate for someone with those skills then you will be able to find someone to do the job for 80K. Artificially suppressing wages is the reason you can't find anyone to do the job for the "reasonable" rate. A pay spike will draw more people in to the fiel…
Hate to break it to you but someone with a PhD is not a 'new grad', they have often been working in a high pressure job for ~5 years post graduation, usually required to do teaching, assist on their supervisor's research projects (lots of grunt coding), and do research and write a thesis. In this hypothetical, their value comes from having specific expertise on top of general skills. There is no guarantee you will be…
Then they'll have no problem to get a 130k jobs.
Looks like a good thing. Companies won't be able to pretend that they are fresh inexperienced workers and pay them peanuts.
Reading the article it doesn't sound like this bill does anything to make it easier for the employee to find a different job once they are here (e.g. Making it easier for other employers to take on sponsorship of the H1-B visa.) The article says this bill makes it easier for students to get a path to citizenship but doesn't say anything about H1-B workers. I also don't think the salary requirement is necessarily a wi…
> The article says this bill makes it easier for students to get a path to citizenship but doesn't say anything about H1-B workers. My understanding of the text is that it just makes student visas "dual-intent". This would allow prospective students to get an F-1 visa without having to prove that they have no intention of staying back after completing their degree. It's an open secret that a large percentage of stude…
This also includes employment-based Greencard. Currently you would need to obtain a H-1B before you could apply for employment-based permanent residency as EB-1, EB-2, EB-3 etc (assuming you reside in the US).
My understanding is that this removes the common pattern of having to get a H-1B before being eligible for employment-based immigration petitions. Additionally experience obtained during university and on the F-1 Optional Practical Training (OPT) would count towards the experience requirements for EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, etc.
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It is awful when you get hit by this. Modern tax law absolutely wrecks startup founders who are not already rich. It's quite stunning.
It's generally not founders who get screwed by AMT related consequences. Founders should have 83-b'd shares, not vesting options.
And for Engineers and Designers it's even harder.
It is very wrong to treat employees as investors when they're invariably taking major income hits to be there.
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Absolutely! I completely agree. But what stops the consultancies from doing this without actually ever letting it to fully vest?
Same for the cash bonuses. All the workers might underperform and never see the bonus.
Suppose Tata pulls exactly what you describe. Do you think that stands a half a chance in hell of standing up to scrutiny by DoL?
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Well, if we are going by anecdotes, then all the H1B workers I know have been extremely talented, culturally assimilated, make more than 130k workers. Can you see why we don't rely simply on anecdotes in this forum? I'm certainly not denying the existence of a problem. I am pointing out the flaw in your reasoning that simply raising the minimum salary will benefit American society (Businesses + Workers). It won't, be…
I'm not sure how you're completing misreading what I'm saying. I also work with brilliant H1-B holders that surely make more than $130K and are worth every penny. Each of them have skills that simply aren't available nearby. That's what the system's meant for. I have also seen it used in incredibly abusive ways. Bumping the minimum salary to $130K would remove the profit motive of using them to undercut the local lab…
$50k is still a lot of money, especially to live in Iowa. And to answer your question: yes, there are people who would do that.
Perhaps I was not clear, it is my mistake. I'm not advocating keeping the minimum salary desperately low, or lowering it than what it currently is. 130k seems rather unreasonable though.
Whoever is working on the bill is disconnected from reality and the damage it is doing long term here. Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science.. Oh it's hacker news :) Now walk into any major university science department. See who the newly minted PhD students are in biology, chemistry, physics, math ... Most are foreigners. This bill will send them home after they gra…
> Why's everyone so focused on IT? Everyone can learn how to code, it's not a real science. I think that's exactly why people are focusing on IT. The H-1B program is meant to allow companies to hire foreigners with rare skills that are hard to find domestically. In reality it's abused to import cheap labor and undercut average American workers doing common work like building applications or administering systems. The…
You're applying your software-dev tainted view of salaries to the sciences - how much do you think a typical PhD-holding research scientist earns?