441–450 of 1001 posts
I wonder if switching from a lottery to an auction would help curtail some of the abuse? That is, for each position a company wants to fill with a non-citizen they also have to bid on the visa fee they're willing to pay. The highest ~7,000 bids that month are accepted and paid to the government in exchange for a visa. We could debate things like sealed-bid versus open auction and uniform-price versus paying your bid…
Surprised by all the negativity here. The USA benefits enormously from skilled immigration: "doubling the size of the US H1B visa program increases US and EU growth by 4% in the long-run" From a recent paper here: https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10...
You have to first answer why few locals outside Stanford-Berkeley-MIT-CMU are hired out of school. Is it because all non-top-4 schools under prepare students? Is it before foreign workers are that much better? Or is it because companies are looking for underpaid workers they can abuse and keep in a state of limbo? If CS degrees from non-top-4 schools are not valuable, best to get that out so US students are not study…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. While I tend to agree, this is a bit of a straw man. You can have tons of people looking for work who aren't qualified for the job - which is (I think) the FAANG argu…
FAANG companies have been laying people off at the moment, so it doesn't seem they are exactly suffering from a lack of workers. Until a year or so ago some of these companies were hiring people without any real work for them, just to deprive their competitors of talent.
FAANG will argue that they are laying off people with skills they don't need, and there's a lack of people with skills they do need.
Call them out and make a convincing argument that this is BS.
Don't cry out: BUT SOME AMERICAN WAS FIRED AND THEY'RE STILL HIRING!
This isn't a sound argument.
Surprised by all the negativity here. The USA benefits enormously from skilled immigration: "doubling the size of the US H1B visa program increases US and EU growth by 4% in the long-run" From a recent paper here: https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
H1B doesn't test for skill. It is a lottery. And judging from the skill of hundreds of H1Bs I've worked with, it is a failure of a system.
where the F do you work when you are surrounded by “hundreds of H1Bs” - at the airport’s baggage claim when they arrive?
A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.
Well, tech companies claim that they cannot find good enough workers to fill their positions. But "good enough" is a subjetive classification. I can always create a test for which you are not good enough, it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have. And that's what tech companies have done for years. They'll aways craft a contrived interview process that will classify most people as not "good enough" and use this a…
A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.
Good news: the USCIS makes this data available! [0] Google, Microsoft and Meta definitely look for (and hire!) US applicants. One can reasonably have a gripe with the consulting companies on there (Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, etc.) but they don't represent 90-95% of H-1B issued. [0] https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...
A lot of my batch (all H1b masters) when to Meta and Amazon. All of them were paid 200k+ right out of masters, one was even paid 430k. So is the claim that if these H1bs did not exist, companies would pay 250k+ to those out of masters? And 500k+ to exceptional candidates? If OpenAI was legally allowed to hire anyone from India, China etc, would they stop providing 800k+ salaries? In fact, we know from experience that this is not true because if you go to OpenAI’a website they explicitly mention apply from wherever you want and they will handle immigration. And you also see that they did successfully hire some folks from remote countries with exorbitant salaries.
A much simpler explanation, is that in tech companies employees are not a cost center but a profit generation center. And so tech companies are not looking to save costs by paying H1bs less, but are simply looking to hire the best and pay whatever is needed to keep them. Market competition tends to determine salaries far more than employee labour pool, especially when talent is always in short supply.
This theory also seems more correct to me, in that it predicts places where H1b labor would shortchange existing tech workers. It would be wherever employees are a cost center, legacy businesses that need software but would like to just get it done as cheaply as possible. By definition most of these companies would not be FAANG adjacent, but would instead be companies like say Target that needs simple software that works reasonably well at a low cost. An equitable solution then would be to put a flat minimum salary on H1b’s, say 200k, that would remove most of the cases where H1bs are hired to short change Americans, and not affect much of the talent hiring that big tech does. It’s only negative affect would be on startups, which generally pay low salaries, but would now have to pay high salaries for immigrants.
A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.
My employer cannot hire H-1Bs. You must be a US citizen to work for my company. No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed. You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance. You don't have to get one if you don't want to as there is usually plenty of uncleared work to go around, but you have to be eligible in case that goes away and we need to put you in for a clearance. We cannot find qualified appl…
Nope. Not doing it. Not going to argue politics, but this is a huge RED FLAG for a lot of people. And I feel I don't need to submit to mandatory drug testing as well.
>The most harmful thing the products I build do is quantify in precise detail how climate change is dooming us all
Then why is it classified? How separate is your branch from the weapons branch, that you acknowledge exists?
A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.
My employer cannot hire H-1Bs. You must be a US citizen to work for my company. No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed. You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance. You don't have to get one if you don't want to as there is usually plenty of uncleared work to go around, but you have to be eligible in case that goes away and we need to put you in for a clearance. We cannot find qualified appl…
You pay well, but not so much.
You search for qualified applicants but can hire a student.
You require linear algebra but ok with technical writer.
Looks like your managers don't know who they need to hire or don't want to really hire.