431–440 of 655 posts
If supply goes up, price goes down.
It may be better for employers, and the economy as a whole depending on how you measure, but it is not in the best economic interest of those already selling their development labor.
I really want to believe this, but I'm not sure that I do. Of course the tech companies want to hire people from overseas; being able to hire someone from India for half the cost but have them live in the US so there's some level of accountability/trust is a no-brainer. Huge new, cheap talent pool. But, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, c…
I think it's important for all startup founders to realize that non-executive salaries in the U.S. tech industry have been incredibly distorted by the illegal wage fixing practiced over the last 10-15 years. The wage fixing set an artificial ceiling on programmer salaries. And if it's now stopped, we should expect a major correction over the next 5 years as market wages adjust. I'm hopeful that recent salary increase…
Now the equity and/or options are a completely different ball game.
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I wonder where do you get your data for "hire someone from India for half the cost". Of all the facts thrown around - this is easily verifiable - http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php If you ignore those employed on hourly basis, a majority of people on H1B are paid quite well. Apart from salary and benefits - add Visa processing fees for their Kids and Spouse as well (which can easily amount to > 30k+) I think people und…
I'm a dev manager at a prominent employer of software engineers and I did a search for my company at your link. I can't speak for other employers, but it appears that salaries for H1-Bs are ~25% lower than what I know Americans to be making at those same job titles. Half is almost certainly an exaggeration, but to deny that there's an H1-B discount is equally disingenuous. On the topic of the essay, I worry that Paul…
I find it hard to believe. In large companies HR establishes salary levels (usually bands) which are tied to titles or levels within the career ladder. Does your company negotiate each compensation package on a one-off basis?
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I wonder where do you get your data for "hire someone from India for half the cost". Of all the facts thrown around - this is easily verifiable - http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php If you ignore those employed on hourly basis, a majority of people on H1B are paid quite well. Apart from salary and benefits - add Visa processing fees for their Kids and Spouse as well (which can easily amount to > 30k+) I think people und…
The real problem with h1b is that it appears to be primarily used to offshore jobs to other countries. The largest users of h1b visas are firms that bring people to the US for a period of time to get trained, then have them return to their country of origin, offshoring the work (see for example http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-02-08/work-visas-ma... ) So, tossing H1B would be a great start at immigration refo…
Minor detail, but if it's the same employer in both countries, they don't need to apply for H1, L1 would do the trick. It's also not subject to a cap and is much cheaper administratively.
So if companies are using H1 program for foreign employee training, that's a very inefficient practice.
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Or maybe interview them before hiring? :)
Well, will great programmers line up at the "great programmers" H1B line? Probably not. Will the government screen applicants in order to increase the concentration of "great programmers"? Hah. There are no means available to us to increase the concentration of great programmers in a pool of programmers without great cost, and this inevitably means that in order to get more great programmers, one has to go through mo…
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Here's a related question that I never see addressed: how big of a programmer shortage do you think there would be if salaries were 50% higher? All the talk seems to assume that the makeup of industry is utterly inelastic. Fine, maybe your small company in Cleveland can't go out tomorrow and hire 10 A+ developers, but do people really not believe that if starting salary for an A+ developer was $150k, or whatever, tha…
> but do people really not believe that if starting salary for an A+ developer was $150k, or whatever, that we might get more high-achievers First, US is already the third country in list for highest paid programmers, there is not much room to grow. Second, Companies are in business, not for charity. Companies are there for profit so if they could hire a beginner programmer for 50k, they should, otherwise they would…
1. There is, as dictated by the law of supply-and-demand, not an undersupply of good programmers, otherwise good programmers would be in a negotiating position such that they would reject your 50k offer for a 150k offer elsewhere; or
2. The market cannot support this hypothetical company's business model. If my restaurant fails because labor costs leave me overrunning my revenue, few people would argue that is evidence we need immigration reform so I can find cheaper labor.
It looks to me like the solution to the problem is simple. Just have a "high tech visa" with no number limit, but one simple requirement: The company requesting the job needs to be offering something like 150% (or 200% or whatever makes sense) the average salary of the US workforce, or in their state. This will ensure that the visa will only be offered for skills that are difficult to find in the USA (or the specific…
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Charity has limits. When you're using terms which are very heavily politically and emotionally loaded to label people who disagree with you, you're going to get that sort of response back. You can't be deliberately uncharitable to people and then say, "But you should be charitable when you respond!"
"Charity" as in the Principle of Charity has a specialized meaning. It isn't about being nice (though we should do that too). It's about keeping discussions substantive. Since that is the raison d'etre of Hacker News threads, I do indeed think we can expect HN commenters to be charitable in this sense.
This just isn't a substantive post. It's full of loaded language, highly questionable assertions, and doubtful anecdotes.
It's like the other irony that we use tariffs to 'protect' domestic industry and embargoes to 'punish' foreign industry, yet they are merely different words for the same thing.