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Updates to H-1B

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Re: Updates to H-1B

#501

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…

[flagged]

Re: Updates to H-1B

#502
post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”…

You are actually proving my point. If there are 4.8 million developers who are not commanding Meta salaries, and they "pay well" it should be fairly straightforward to get labor.

It's simple: the more picky you are the more you will have to pay. The GP admitted the upper bound of Meta, which is a company that is sustainably operating in the same country. If you cannot compete in a labor market, either raise your product pricing or be more efficient. If not, you will make less profit and/or go out of business, which is an appropriate outcome most of the time.

No one is entitled to their business model.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#503
post #94

Cancel the program. It's not needed. It's used to game the system. It's not supposed to be a backdoor to a green card.

Guy who born with natural citizenship is too privileged to imagine how hard it is to get a green card.

>how hard it is to get a green card

It should be hard.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#504
post #410

Earlier 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

That just means that if you’re going to hire someone on a VISA you can’t discriminate which country they’re from. I believe there is some protection against discriminating against greencards, but not visas

Recent green card holders, asylees, and refugees get federal protection, except when a law requires or permits otherwise. The other commenter’s company has a blanket rule of allowing none of these categories. Approximately this got SpaceX into trouble with the DOJ recently.

Some state or local laws offer additional protections beyond federal law, including NYC for all immigration statuses, except as required or allowed by other applicable laws. (So, for example, NYC doesn’t pretend that companies have to hire people who don’t already have employment authorization.)

Re: Updates to H-1B

#505
post #410

Earlier 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…

> 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

It is required by law. Most likely through prohibitions for "exporting" defense technology, which can be very broad. "Exporting" can consist of having a casual conversation with a non-"US Person" or having a document visible on your desk.

"Secret" classification is really mild, about 5 million people have one.

>The law prohibits employers from hiring only U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents unless required to do so by law, regulation or government contract.

At these workplaces it will be a combination of all 3 of law, regulation, and government contract.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#506
post #410

Earlier 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…

> 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

To be fair, he never said "every single role at your company requires a secret clearance." He has specifically mentioned that you can get by even without them. You have misquoted.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#507

Seem like sensible changes, though more is still needed. Requiring H1B holders to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism. The per-country caps also seem like a throwback to the early 1900's era immigration exclusion policies. Re: the concerns over "immigrants taking our jobs!". As a native-born American working in a large tech company today - the threat is very clearly not from H1B's and other…

To some extent this is what Section 174 is about.

If you hire US-based engineers working on R&D (most software engineers) then you amortize their pay over 5 years. Foreign-based engineers working on R&D get amortized over 15 years.

You get to expense 3x as much for domestic engineers compared to foreign engineers. This means you need to pay more taxes upfront for having a foreign R&D team, which is bad for cashflow. Your company could be losing money (unprofitable) but still owe corp income taxes because of Section 174.

If the gov charged "tariffs" on foreign labor or services provided, especially for certain countries that labor is typically outsourced to, or certain types of labor/services (e.g. support, engineering, etc), that'd probably be an effective way to discourage offshoring.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#508

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…

I've looked at jobs at places like this (some requiring quite high clearance) and the pay is hilariously bad, and I don't make anywhere near peak FAANG rates (or work in FAANG)

50% pay cut for a DevOps/SRE role requiring a Q clearance (DoE version of Top Secret I think)

You can't find employees because the job isn't exciting (you're probably not NASA) and the pay is bad. Maybe your recruiters are bad too.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#509
post #360

Earlier 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…

If someone is a software developer who has done non-trivial things and linear algebra but not recently and needs to be refreshed, do you provide time/training to refresh on the math skills?

I’d imagine that the rusty candidate could refresh themself on linear algebra in what, two three-hour evenings before the interview.

Re: Updates to H-1B

#510

Earlier 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…

You didn't name your employer for someone who might be interested. Perhaps visibility is one reason you can't find anyone? I applied to a similar position locally this year. I far exceed their requirements and experience and I got rejected at the application stage. And the same goes for nearly all of other places I applied to. Hiring has most definitely changed over the years. They are not just looking for "qualified…

>I applied to a similar position locally this year. I far exceed their requirements and experience and I got rejected at the application stage.

Could be "This one is overqualified, we can't pay that much" or "He doesn't have experience in the exact thing we need." Or just that they want a qualified applicant but they've got lots of options.

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