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Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

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Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#51

Post by jarsin »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #31
throwawaydbfif wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The endless talent shortage is a farce. Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field. I would say the opposite is true based solely on hiring practices. Look at Google for example, who hire around 1/5000 people that apply. The shortage is artificially maintained because it works in companies favor. It…

Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field. Joel Spolsky explains why this does not imply what you think it implies. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html tl;dr; Imagine 1 low quality developer who applies to 9 places and gets rejected. There's also 1 high quality developer who appl…

Total BS. I have seen this first hand both as a hiring manager and as an applicant. I have been rejected from jobs based on totally insane interview questions that have nothing to do with the job. In one case I interviewed at 2 competitors. One gave me nothing but trick whiteboard questions, the other emphasized my experience and gave me a real world interview. I was rejected by the whiteboard company and hired by the competitor. My first day on the job I sat down and commited code that ended up in production the very next day and did that for many years afterwords.

I have also hired people that had to pass insane interviews due to the company culture and watched them fail at being a developer. I know many good devs that cannot pass these interviews that would run circles around these super whiteboard problem solvers.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#52

Post by mavelikara »

t1o5 wrote: post #38
untog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a counter-point (not saying your experience is incorrect at all), I've worked in the US on an H1B and was compensated very well, as were my co-workers. The system allows abuse, but doesn't guarantee it. I do wonder if the employees you mention know that an H1B is transferrable between employers. It's a time consuming process, but I'd love to see more people take advantage of those who abuse the visa by gettin…

> H1B is transferable between employers Its not easy as it sounds. Being a single that time, I have transferred my H1B myself and it was a nightmare. I had sleepless nights and uncertainty. My GreenCard process was reset. Any H1Bs who knows about the system really well will not risk transferring because of the risks to their green card process. There is no honest company which pays a fair salary for H1Bs. If you see…

I agree with your general point here.

> There is no honest company which pays a fair salary for H1Bs.

..

> I have a huge circle of friends in many companies. We discuss our salaries and issues openly. Not one of them says that they are paid equal to their American colleagues.

I am not your friend, just a random person on internet. But I am on H-1B, and if this offers any solace, I know that I am paid par with my American colleagues. My boss is on H-1B; both he and I have American and H-1B employees reporting to us.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#53

Post by ryandrake »

zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

The "Shortage of Engineers" myth that just won't die. If you're going to claim there's a shortage of a good, you need to mention the price you're willing to pay. I want a new BMW for $10K, but can't find one. Therefore there's a shortage of BMWs.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#54

Post by garyfirestorm »

t1o5 wrote: post #38
untog wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a counter-point (not saying your experience is incorrect at all), I've worked in the US on an H1B and was compensated very well, as were my co-workers. The system allows abuse, but doesn't guarantee it. I do wonder if the employees you mention know that an H1B is transferrable between employers. It's a time consuming process, but I'd love to see more people take advantage of those who abuse the visa by gettin…

> H1B is transferable between employers Its not easy as it sounds. Being a single that time, I have transferred my H1B myself and it was a nightmare. I had sleepless nights and uncertainty. My GreenCard process was reset. Any H1Bs who knows about the system really well will not risk transferring because of the risks to their green card process. There is no honest company which pays a fair salary for H1Bs. If you see…

The rules have been changed, if youre not aware. Lot of my friends have moved between jobs on H1B. There's no uncertainty there. Moving after approved i140 prevents the greencard process from resetting.

I work in autosector and my salary is definitely equal or higher than my coworkers.

edit: i am on H1B

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#55

Post by whoiskevin »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #32
at-fates-hands wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. Mainly because we have over 7 million people unemployed. The controversy is why are we bringing in so many foreign workers when we have so many people out of work here? The argument basically comes down to what would we need to do to get…

Realistically, most of our 7 million unemployed are unemployed by choice. They are unwilling to do many jobs they perceive as being "below their station" and they are unwilling to move to places where the jobs are. We need to import a better working class to pay for our leisure class since pushing our leisure class into work is considered socially unacceptable. Here's a great first person account of this: http://www.…

Again a few examples that are often used to justify calling 7 million people lazy. If the visas are being used for for cash register and pumping gas jobs (how many states pump gas for you?) then this might make some sense but these are just isolated events and fit a narrative convenient to corporations to justify many practices that are mainly beneficial to the corporation.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#56

Post by anjc »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #27
ones_and_zeros wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. Is this a fact or a feeling? Economics allows us to directly measure these things and the price of labor hasn't gone up in the last 30 years at rates indicating a shortage with executive pay and corporate profits at all time highs. > Then…

Economics allows us to directly measure these things and the price of labor hasn't gone up in the last 30 years... Real compensation per hour (for workers as a whole) has gone up 40% since 1987. This number is adjusted for inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB Pay in software has been rising more rapidly than pay for the country as a whole. Is this even remotely in doubt? http://insights.dice.com/201…

There are studies performed on this stuff by actual economists out there, to save you using self-reporting surveys from online recruitment companies.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...

http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages-mi...

>The average hourly wage for college-educated workers in computer and math occupations rose 5.3 percent over 11 years, from $37.27 in 2000 to $39.24 in 2011 (in 2012 dollars), which translates to an average wage increase of less than half a percent per year. If a labor shortage existed in these occupations, one would expect wages to rise sharply as employers try to lure scarce workers to their firms.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#57

Post by CodeSheikh »

"..the company can’t prevent the departure of Americans.." this is part of the problem. I have seen people (especially young ones) jumping ships in less than six months from startup to startup in SV because of the competitive market salary. Even though larger companies can take this hit but for a startup of <10 employees this can prove to be very detrimental. I agree that Indian consultancies have been abusing the H1B program for a while now, and even though American companies pay them same or actually more (consultant hourly rates are always on the higher end), these consultancies keep the lion share to themselves and pay minimum to the consultant. The problem is not just with immigrants (both educated from US colleges and brought in by the Indian consultancies) but also nomadic nature of young American tech labor. Should there be some sort of collateral such as one year contract? Probably not a welcoming idea in a free market of USA.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#58

Post by conjectures »

Bartweiss wrote: post #25
zzleeper wrote: post #12

> Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently false There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial. > most Silicon Valley firms sponsor their H-1B workers, who hold a temporary visa, for U.S…

> there is a “talent shortage” among Americans I see a bait and switch conducted here all the time, where thinkpiece writers will count up the number of annual graduates in Computer Science (or sometimes Information Technology in general), subtract the number of new software jobs per year, and conclude that we have massive overproduction of programmers. This is obviously stupid, but I keep seeing it. It ignores CS gr…

Yup. If we had mature education systems our governments would hire economists to get proper estimates of labour market requirements for different skill sets.

Re: Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Using H-1B Visas to Pay Low Wages to Immigrants

#60

Post by d--b »

program_whiz wrote: post #34

Ok what's the suprise here? If you give companies a chance to get cheaper "mostly the same" labor without a downside, or maybe with the upside they can't leave, they're going to take it. That's why I do believe globalization and the availability of huge amounts of cheap unregulated labor does hurt American jobs and industry. Its not xenophobia, its just common sense. I think if you look past any ideas of racism, xeno…

It's not obvious at all. Shipping lower skilled jobs to other countries mean higher margins for US companies. Which is good in itself for the US economy. Buying manufacturing from other countries means it's easier to sell stuff to them as well, which is also good to US economy. The fact is that the US has a very good overall economy, so maybe one has to look at the issue of redistribution of wealth for instance.

Economy-wise, the problem is a lot more complex than what you make it appear. You can't just say: economically speaking it makes sense to close the borders...

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