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Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

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Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#471

Post by calculatte »

lupire wrote: post #434
calculatte wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up that "prevailing wage". It's a deep discount compared to the real world. Minimum for a Software Developer in SF: $113,444 https://h1bgrader.com/

What do you think that is wrong? H1B devs at FAANG companies are paid far more.

The same FAANG companies found guilty of depressing wages through collusion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Your question is why is it wrong to depress wages? Yeah, really tough question.

Now consider OPT visa workers which are being paid even less, plus companies get an extra 8-10% discount because they don't have to pay Social Security and Medicare. There is no shortage of skilled workers here. Only corporate greed.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#472

Post by bell-cot »

ein0p wrote: post #353
bell-cot wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H1B auctions are perfect, so long as you want to maximize the total dollars "saved" by American businesses, by hiring cheaper foreign workers. But if you actually want a way to hire top-skill foreign workers in specialties where America is short on local talent? No, sorry. 99.5% of specialties don't and won't pay enough to win an auction where Big Tech has opened its checkbooks.

Yes, then those specialties will have to pay Americans more, rather than dump cheap foreign workers into the labor market. It's by design.

So the moment that someone wants to hire a bilingual child care worker who has a fairly obscure second language (vs. English/French, English/Spanish, English/German, etc.), you think it's perfectly reasonable to 10X the pay rate?

Ditto if a museum is hosting an exhibition of art from some tiny country, and wants a few docents who can read the inscriptions?

Ditto if ...

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#473

Post by commandlinefan »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #83
indoordin0saur wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, this isn't clear to me. Are the interviewees citizens? So you're interviewing citizens to prove that there aren't any who can fill your jobs but even when they clearly could fill the job you don't hire them? Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce

Yes, h1b hiring practices have been shady at best for atleast a decade. For everyone that just doesn’t want to fire a coworker there is someone taking advantage of cheap labor that is easier to control under the threat of deportation. The h1b program is supposed to be for people at the top of their field so they can skip the normal visa line, but it is commonly used to save money through exploitation. A long time ago…

I've been programming since the early 90's, and back then pretty much all my coworkers were other US citizens. I started to notice a shift toward the mid 90's and then, by the late 90's, they were practically all Indians on H1B visas. Nobody from Russia, China, El Salvador, Brazil, Japan, Botswana, Ethiopia or even Bangladesh or Pakistan - virtually every programmer I met was an Indian citizen in the US on an H1B visa. I saw this across ten employers in two different states. Every tech conference I went to, regardless of city, was full of Indian citizens with heavy accents, and me.

There's a prevailing belief that US employers prefer H1B visa holders because they'll work cheaper and not complain about poor working conditions but if that's true... why computer programmers, specifically? Why are there _any_ Americans in the organization? Surely the product owners, project managers, scrum masters, HR staff, janitors, facilities maintenance, receptionists, directors, VPs and CEOs could be filled cheaper and less complainier by an H1B visa holder too?

I have yet to find a plausible explanation why specifically computer programming (and no other career) is dominated specifically by Indian citizens (and no other nationality).

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#474

Post by newaccount74 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #420
newaccount74 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone? I live in Austria and you can fire people for pretty much any reason. You have to give them 6 weeks notice, and there are some extra protections for people who are old or who have disabilities and who have been working for your company for a long time, but even then you can fire them. You can even fire people for getting sick a lot. And that's assuming you directly hire…

Wow, I am genuinely shocked by this post. I had no idea. Honestly, I assumed that most central European countries have reasonably strong labour laws that make it difficult to fire employees. Let us assume that your post is (mostly) true. How does Austria have such a large, robust, stable middle class without strong labour protections, or a wide/deep social safety net? Or does Austria have the equivalent of "Flexcurit…

Labour protections doesn't mean you are protected from being fired.

You have to pay people the minimum salary depending on their trade, you have to give them 5 weeks of vacation, pay overtime, pay for health insurance and so on.

Employers can't exploit their employees, but employees still have to do their job.

But there is also a big area of the economy where employers ignore the law and treat employees like shit. For example, service workers are not generally treated well in Austria, and many are afraid of losing their job so they don't complain to the authorities.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#475

Post by dustyventure »

projectazorian wrote: post #168
dustyventure wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce It's extremely easy to enforce with taxes that ensure the company is paying at least 1X0% of the highest market rate for the position. If they don't find an alternative to paying it is a necessary hire.

The requirement to pay market rate already exists and it's very easily gamed, eg. by under-leveling people or hiring them in under a related (but lower paid) role that doesn't reflect their actual responsibilities.

There's no premium financing proper adversarial regulatory agency there. If the IRS is not taking its special ~30% of 300+ workers salaries there's a best effort by a regulatory body that's viewed as a waste of tax payer money if it just checks a few technicalities.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#476

Post by consteval »

freeone3000 wrote: post #287
gigel82 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop it, no one "values things besides salary", and you know it.

I value a good manager, a fun team, an actual PTO policy I can use, and cool projects to work with at about $40,000 a year. Salary is valuable but it is not the only valuable thing.

Salary is the most valuable thing, however. Because I would happily take a salary of 1 billion dollars with an awful manager and a no-fun team. And, conversely, I would never take a job with the best people on planet earth for a salary of one dollar.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#477

Post by calculatte »

zjdixhxjzkz wrote: post #75
indoordin0saur wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, this isn't clear to me. Are the interviewees citizens? So you're interviewing citizens to prove that there aren't any who can fill your jobs but even when they clearly could fill the job you don't hire them? Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce

It is. Best case scenario H1Bs allow companies to avoid training citizens. Worst case (and most common) H1Bs are more exploitable labor compared to citizens. H1Bs etc just suppress citizens wages and increase profits of capital holders. There’s a very very tiny % that actually aren’t replaceable domestically.

This is an excellent point and a real litmus test. If there really were a labor shortage companies would be providing training programs to build that labor force.

Instead they post job descriptions so niche only a liar could technically qualify.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#478

Post by n_ary »

Whelp, here in EU, we have certain big names, who constantly post vacancies which will never be filled but continues to be perpetually re-posted. If you send an application, they will also do some interviews and eventually find minor reasons to reject you at last stage if you are a solid candidate, or earlier steps if you have lackings.

I worked with one of the HR people from one such places, if they were correct, it is mostly the quota and budget. Basically, they get a specific budget each year and they need to spend it, so they post old vacancies to with new shine not only on their own sites, but also on various commercial places(Xing/StepStone/Indeed/Linkedin/Monster etc.) to burn that budget and hold interviews to show that they are trying to fill their hiring quota for the year. It is just a fake practice, because if the budget remains unused at the end of the year, then it'll be reduced next year and if they did not perform enough posting and interviews, then personnel in hiring department will not get promoted or will get bad reviews due to low quota coverage.

Not sure how real it is, but it can be related or one face of the story.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#479

Post by [deleted] »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #339
hollerith wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what I would naturally expect to happen in the absence of consistent heroic efforts by the authorities to prevent it.

If that is happening widely, surely there will be some data to support that right? Authorities do enforce H1B provisions proactively. https://www.uscis.gov/scams-fraud-and-misconduct/report-frau... https://cis.org/North/Apple-Hit-25-Million-Penalty-Favoring-... https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/11/06/h-1b-visa-fraud-leads... > absence of consistent heroic efforts Will that apply to every law in society or just to H1B…

[deleted]

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#480

Post by dilyevsky »

gadders wrote: post #379
dilyevsky wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, if only we could mint experienced devs from thin air, your model would be perfectly sound!

Or maybe, devs could move from Company A to Company B that would pay them more money. What a terrible world that would be to live in. Or companies in, say, SF could let people work remotely from Pittsburgh.

And what would company A do at that point?

> Or companies in, say, SF could let people work remotely from Pittsburgh.

Hold up, didn’t you say it was “clearly unethical” if local devs are available?

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