Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WSJ: H-1B Visas Keep Down U.S. Tech Wages, Study Shows

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–57 of 57 posts

Re: WSJ: H-1B Visas Keep Down U.S. Tech Wages, Study Shows

#51

Post by Eridrus »

scott00 wrote: post #36
Eridrus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an argument that can be used to argue that shortages cannot exist for anything you can buy. The same rough argument could be used to argue that food shortages cannot exist. I'm pretty sure the word shortage already implies that there is a shortage at the market price, not at an arbitrary price.

I see your point, and thinking about it helped clarify my thinking, so first, thank you for that. I think another way of phrasing my opinion is that the US labor market is a large, reasonably efficient market; that it's reasonably well modeled by a simple supply and demand model; and that discussing it in other terms obscures the important issues. The notion of a shortage is fundamentally incompatible with a simple s…

I think labour markets are some of the least efficient markets that exist. Without immigration it takes at least 4+ years for extra supply to become available based on increasing prices. And when you hire someone you really don't know what you're getting, particularly in software.

Constraining supply increases salaries precisely because it takes supply so long to incorporate information.

On top of that, supply and demand is a pretty leaky abstraction, I don't expect it to be very accurate in such a nonideal market.

Re: WSJ: H-1B Visas Keep Down U.S. Tech Wages, Study Shows

#52

Post by xiaoma »

bobdole1234 wrote: post #46
xiaoma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "What I don't get is why they don't just raise the minimum pay for H1-B visas." That was a key part of Trump's proposed bill. IRRC, the proposal is to increase the minimum from $60k to $130k. Interestingly $60k in 1989 was worth what $117k is in 2017. In other words, given current inflation rates, it's very likely that the new minimum will be the 2020 or 2021 equivalent of the original minimum. That would suck for…

This ignores the wild disparity in wages across the US. Not every company is in a place where they can find enough local customers to support a 2x increase in their salary costs. While that has been made somewhat better by the reach of the Internet it's still going to be a powerful force to move companies from lower density areas where it's almost impossible to recruit, and into high density areas that already have t…

>"You're effectively fucking middle America into relocating both their people and businesses."

I haven't taken anyone's job, I'm sensitive to wage disparities, I support companies letting people work remotely and I'm not doing anything at all to middle America.

Re: WSJ: H-1B Visas Keep Down U.S. Tech Wages, Study Shows

#53

Post by sumitgt »

richardlong wrote: post #24
sumitgt wrote: post #16

I feel that there are some core issues that can fix the problem: 1) Solve the Green-Card backlog issue that forces people in the backlog to stick with their current jobs. This is a major thing, that is not talked about more often. 2) Simple merit/salary based priority queue to grant VISAs. I have never quite understood why there is this urge to entirely get rid of it instead of fixing it to do what it was originally…

Giving H-1Bs expedited green cards only accelerates the decline of the price of skilled labor.

@richardlong: I'm not even talking about expedited GCs. Even the normal GC process is horribly broken for people who are born in India.

Look up "Green Card backlog India" related searches. Currently it would anywhere from 15 to 35 years for a H1-B from India to get a Green Card after their Perm is filed.

Re: WSJ: H-1B Visas Keep Down U.S. Tech Wages, Study Shows

#54

Post by mvf0 »

bobdole1234 wrote: post #45
thatWasntFun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for pointing this out. Not two weeks ago I was "hired" by a firm to do some consulting for them, during which time they extracted data on "how" to solve a problem (NLP related) and then flew in some dude form India to code the solution. I made a decent wage. For two days. He undoubtedly was a faste progrmmer than me, but fuck if we both didn't get used. I live in a state that thinks the word union means tha…

So, by your own words, the guy who replaced you was better at the actual job you were supposed to do? I'm going to guess you have no idea what his compensation actually was, but you're assuming it's low.

If the guy that replaced him was that much better than him, that that person should be treated like a first class citizen. Right now H-1B workers are treated like indentured servants and labor abuse is rampant.

Re: WSJ: H-1B Visas Keep Down U.S. Tech Wages, Study Shows

#55

Post by bobdole1234 »

xiaoma wrote: post #52
bobdole1234 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores the wild disparity in wages across the US. Not every company is in a place where they can find enough local customers to support a 2x increase in their salary costs. While that has been made somewhat better by the reach of the Internet it's still going to be a powerful force to move companies from lower density areas where it's almost impossible to recruit, and into high density areas that already have t…

> "You're effectively fucking middle America into relocating both their people and businesses." I haven't taken anyone's job, I'm sensitive to wage disparities, I support companies letting people work remotely and I'm not doing anything at all to middle America.

Most of the problem with middle America not having jobs is brain drain.

There's no jobs because it's very hard to find people to fill key roles.

But there's no people to fill key roles because there's no longer any jobs, and they're in more populous centers.

If you're pushing policy that prices the few businesses there out of the remaining pools they can hire from, you might as well just close up the middle of the country and admit defeat.

Re: WSJ: H-1B Visas Keep Down U.S. Tech Wages, Study Shows

#56

Post by bobdole1234 »

scott00 wrote: post #49
bobdole1234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that labour is perfectly re-locatable and everyone has perfect pricing information. Google literally does offer $1 million salaries for the right positions, the problem is that most of the people who could make that work have already been recruited. Which is why they pay interns six figures to show up for what amounts to a long job interview, to make sure they get all the new talent the moment it's minte…

What positions at Google pay $1M/year? FWIW, my rant was not intended as a rant against immigrants, just a rant against people that spin their personal or corporate financial interests as a national crisis.

There's a surprisingly large cross section of people paid extremely well in Google.

The company is heavily automated and very profitable, which means they can attribute those profits to the humans largely responsible for them with accuracy that isn't often seen outside finance. The bonus structure is extremely kind to the highly productive.

Re: WSJ: H-1B Visas Keep Down U.S. Tech Wages, Study Shows

#57

Post by scott00 »

bobdole1234 wrote: post #56
scott00 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What positions at Google pay $1M/year? FWIW, my rant was not intended as a rant against immigrants, just a rant against people that spin their personal or corporate financial interests as a national crisis.

There's a surprisingly large cross section of people paid extremely well in Google. The company is heavily automated and very profitable, which means they can attribute those profits to the humans largely responsible for them with accuracy that isn't often seen outside finance. The bonus structure is extremely kind to the highly productive.

I'd really like to hear some specifics on this. What kind of job descriptions do they have? Roughly how many are there? Are they executives, managers, or individual contributors? Does this only happen in bonus form for extraordinary performance, or can new hires start with the expectation of comp at this level? I regularly hear stories about non-executives getting 7 figure paydays in trading and investment banking. I hear stories about non-executive tech people getting 7 figure pay days due to startup liquidity events. This is the first I've ever heard of something like this at an established tech company.
Post reply on HN