> Roles tied to research institutions cap-exempt And in comes a flood of "Research Software Engineer" roles
As a working scientist, this is a hugely underserved category in academic/industry science. This would be very welcome.
Updates to H-1B
491–500 of 1001 posts
Re: Updates to H-1B
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> We cannot find qualified applicants > No, we don’t pay as much as Meta. So, essentially, you are seeking special treatment from US citizens. I’m not saying this is always unreasonable, but you’re in the territory of a centrally planned economic decision, and in the US philosophy that is supposed to be done minimally. Maybe the right thing is for your company to shut down or change their line of business, freeing up…
There are 4.8 million developers in the US most of them are not making Meta salaries and I would say that 80% will never see 200K inflation adjusted in thier lives.
Instead of going to levels.fyi go to salary.com and choose any major city in the US that is not on the west coast.
No most developers don’t get RSUs or anything else aside from their salaries and maybe a bonus.
And before someone replies that I’m “bitter”. No I’m good, I’m 50. I did my stint at BigTech and I don’t have the shit tolerance level to deal with the politics of any large company.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#493A 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…
So do you discriminate against people that consume substances, on their own unpaid time, legal in the location they live at?
> 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.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
So then call the H1-B program what it is - a way for US tech companies to depress wages to the point that you can't afford to live the US, unless it's a bunch of H-1B holders living together in a house share. The same goes for offshoring for jobs. Lovely for shareholders and the CEO's bonus, but not so great for US residents having to compete with them who are paying US cost of living, not Indian/etc overseas cost of…
It's racist to prefer citizens over non-citizens though. The US government should pass laws benefiting all people of the world equally.
Governments exist to take care of their own citizens—that’s their main job. Citizens pay taxes, follow the laws, and contribute to the country, so it makes sense for a government to prioritize their needs. That’s not racist; it’s just how countries work.
If a government tried to treat everyone in the world the same, it wouldn’t be able to meet the needs of its own people. Things like healthcare, schools, and public services are paid for by citizens, so they have to come first.
Also, preferring citizens isn’t about race. Citizenship is something anyone can earn, no matter where they’re from. Calling it racist mixes up two very different things.
It's hard not to break the rules in replying to something like this.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you drug test? Sounds like a place that might. A fairly significant proportion (though definitely not all) of the best developers I've ever worked with would simply pass over places that seem like they would.
You aren't getting a clearance if you can't pass a drug test.
Plenty of people can pass a drug test. That's not the issue I guarantee it. It might slightly help their hiring but it's not the root cause of difficulties, and I seriously doubt compensation is a root cause either.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the bit that I've always found confusing. When it comes to blue collar jobs, people in the upper echelons will gladly advocate the wonders of millions of people entering the job market to compete with Americans. But as soon as it's their own market that introduces additional competition, they will advocate "just pay people more, the job seekers exist, just not at the wages employers are offering, this extra c…
There are many, many blue collar jobs which Americans don’t want to do at the prevailing wages (or at all). Agriculture is a prime example of this. There are relatively few high skilled, high paying jobs which Americans don’t want to do.
>at the prevailing wages...
...which are where they are in no small part due to decades of immigration policy.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can be inferred that they’re making satellites, or at least satellite components. It’s pretty likely that vector math will be involved in some of the software being written in that context. In particular, if anything they write involves navigation (which is a lot of things when it comes to satellites, from actually maneuvering to observation correction) you need to have a pretty good understanding of linear algebr…
Sure, but there's a huge spectrum between "mild competence" and "can recite strang's verbatim". My experience is that companies emphasizing specific math skills beyond normal professional baselines typically expect the latter despite usually offering the same (or lower) salaries than the former.
strang's would be something that is entry level in terms of linear algebra.
I think they should clarify whether they want somebody that has passed a linear algebra class with high marks based on something like strangs' entry level book before...or are on the cutting edge of graduate level linear algebra research. It's not clear from the post and I suspect that might be an issue.
Give me a couple months and I could recite strangs entry level textbook. I passed that class with an A+. But I could not become a PhD level maths student with a linear algebra research focus in that amount of time.
There are multiple very different ways to interpret a requirement for being competent in linear algebra.
Knowing everything covered in strangs introduction to linear algebra is actually quite low on the potential list of requirements and could be self studied.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You must be a US citizen to work for my company. No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed. This is illegal under IRCA unless another law or government contract mandates it. [1] If every single role at your company requires a Secret clearance, then I question how separate “your part of the company” really is from the part that makes weapons. [1] https://www.eeoc.gov/national-origin-discrimination
Companies can chose to not sponsor visas. That’s not illegal.
True, but they aren’t allowing recently admitted permanent residents, asylees, and refugees, all of whom have federal protections against immigration status discrimination in employment.
Some places like NYC offer legal protections in this area to all categories of immigration status, of course within what applicable federal and state law requires and allows. Federal law allows preferring citizens over equally equalities noncitizens, requiring employment authorization to already exist, and complying with any specific legal requirements for restricting certain jobs to citizens. NYC law respects all of this. But overall NYC is totally allowed to, and does, add protections beyond federal law.
Re: Updates to H-1B
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Not sure if this is only fresh visas or includes visa renewals. Because of the country caps in the naturalization process, you have people from some countries have to renew visas again and again while they wait for naturalization. Given that H1b is only 3 years, for companies like Google and Facebook, you could have a situation where they are just trying to retain employees who have been with the company for a while.
You can only renew an H-1b once (as there is a 6 years limit for H-1b). However, if you have an approved I-140 with a priority date in the future (as is often the case with people from India or China) you can keep on extending your H-1b (which doesn't count against the cap).
Re: Updates to H-1B
#500A 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…
Where is your workplace located? Perhaps it's in a crappy place that no one wants to live in, and you should look at relocating.