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The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

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Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#71

Post by chrisseaton »

klipt wrote: post #63
chrisseaton wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Investors want me to get traction with $2M, our needed engineers are at $600-$800k comp (300 base) how do I make it work? Are you admitting that you want to hire H1B in order to find cheaper people? If you can't find any local people to employ, then either you put your hand in your pocket to afford international or you can't afford to do business and your business model is broken.

Aren't all startup business models "broken" (unprofitable) in the early stages? That's why they require so much investor money to grow to the point of profit.

If you can't run your business legally then you shouldn't run it.

We could make the same arguments to argue for startups not having to follow health and safety law because it makes it harder to be profitable.

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#72

Post by juniper_strong »

dmode wrote: post #47
juniper_strong wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> L4 total comp at Google, or E4 salaries at Facebook, is about $260K/year ... Average total comp for a software engineer in Dallas is $110K/year You're using average (median I hope) salary for Dallas vs. high end salaries for San Jose. You used indeed.com for the Dallas salaries, if you use them for San Jose you get an average of 150K. Too lazy to run the numbers but obviously that would change the calculation quit…

$260k is a low end salary

According to the resource that was used for Dallas salaries, 150K is the average San Jose salary.

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#73

Post by juniper_strong »

nostrademons wrote: post #61
juniper_strong wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> L4 total comp at Google, or E4 salaries at Facebook, is about $260K/year ... Average total comp for a software engineer in Dallas is $110K/year You're using average (median I hope) salary for Dallas vs. high end salaries for San Jose. You used indeed.com for the Dallas salaries, if you use them for San Jose you get an average of 150K. Too lazy to run the numbers but obviously that would change the calculation quit…

The comment I'm replying to specifically mentioned Facebook, hence I'm using (low-end) Facebook salaries.

The comment mentioned Facebook but that doesn't mean you should compare Facebook salaries in San Jose to non-Facebook salaries in Dallas.

Compare Facebook salaries in San Jose to Facebook salaries in Dallas, that would be a fair comparison. Compare median salaries in San Jose to median salaries in Dallas, that would be a fair comparison.

Compare Facebook salaries in San Jose to median salaries in Dallas, that is not a fair comparison and you know that, you are wasting my time by making me type it out for you, you know full well that that is not a fair comparison.

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#74

Post by ab_testing »

I don’t understand why USCIS and other tech forums spend so much time and energy on H-1B rules.

How is it possible that 85K non immigrants with no rights are blamed for decimation of entire tech sectors.

For comparison , the US allows one million immigrants (green card holders ) every year into the United States . Most of these immigrants come over in the family based immigration category. They are free to take any job, start any business and do any legal activity as US citizens.

Yet it is the H-1B visa holders that are blamed for lowering of wages in the tech and engineering sectors and we spend a lot of political energy to make life difficult for them.

Also whenever articles related to H-1B are posted, the most upvoted comments are usually comments that point to gross changes to the H-1B program. Those are just pipe dreams. There has been no meaningful legislation changes to H-1B program in over two decades and I don’t think that there is political capital to make those changes .

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#75

Post by tehlike »

chrisseaton wrote: post #66
tehlike wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you run a business before?

I don't know what point this question is trying to make? Are you asking me if I know how hard it is to run a business while following the law? I'm sure it is. Do you think that absolves you from following it?

There's nothing wrong with tapping in on a cheaper labor, and that has nothing to do with "business model being broken". Ambitious ideas need a lot of money, you take investment, depending on your finances, you contract some work abroad. A lot of startups made it work, eventually they brought people on H1B, but don't mix up their initial stage with later stage.

Business model doesn't have to work initially. Facebook didn't have one for a long time.

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#76

Post by HarryHirsch »

dilyevsky wrote: post #69
HarryHirsch wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just talk to someone who has been on H1-B. Your ears will ring for days after. He will tell you what he put up with, and then he will tell you what colleagues and friends of his put up with. It's safe to assume that you are poorly informed, just go talk to some people on H1-B.

I was on h1b and know a dozen or more people who were/are on one. Your comment is pure fud

Rachel would disagree: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/09/08/visa/

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#77

Post by kofejnik »

inesta wrote: post #13
thechao wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never understood why H1-B applications weren’t sorted by compensation (salary): higher salaries go first. Seems like a trivial way to prevent visa farming.

Won't that unfairly benefit big companies?

Nothing unfair about that; salary is a very direct measure of demand for specific skills

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#78

Post by Kalium »

amf12 wrote: post #30
H-1Bravo wrote: post #15

Auction, auction, auction - but not with fees, with salaries. Set a cap on number of entrants, and then "auction" the slots. Adjust the cap on entrants annually. No showing of specific market need required, or educational background of the applicant. Just criminal background and health checks on the applicant. The bid is the (gross) pay of the role with a minimum commit of 36 months. Winning bids are paid to the empl…

I like some of your points, and H1B desperately needs a revamp. However, a direct unadjusted salary based auction is a non-starter for the following reasons: - Non tech professions also hire people on H1Bs and don't pay as well as FAANG-likes do. - Wages are generally lower in non bay area locations. Employers in low COL areas might lose out to those in high COL areas. > Employees who voluntarily quit or are terminat…

> I like some of your points, and H1B desperately needs a revamp. However, a direct unadjusted salary based auction is a non-starter for the following reasons:

In both cases, the obvious response is that they need to pony up, lose out, or find a way forward that's not an H1B. This strikes me as an intended result of this approach, not some accidental side-effect.

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#79

Post by dragonwriter »

thechao wrote: post #8
whoisjuan wrote: post #5

A someone who benefited from the H1-B program I’m 100% behind the idea of adding higher wages requirements. I went to Carnegie Mellon and met some of the smartest people there and it crushed my heart seeing some super talented people lose on the lottery several times and be forced to go back home when they already had an employer in the US paying them 100k+ and willing to go great lengths to keep them. I was lucky en…

I’ve never understood why H1-B applications weren’t sorted by compensation (salary): higher salaries go first. Seems like a trivial way to prevent visa farming.

> I’ve never understood why H1-B applications weren’t sorted by compensation (salary)

Because further narrowing the firms that benefit would have the effect of narrowing political support for the industrial subsidy represented by the H-1B, so the longer-term interests of those who would have a short-term benefit by such a narrowing are served by sacrificing that benefit to shore up support for the benefit they derive even with the visas less concentrated in their hands.

Re: The next US president won’t be great for H-1B visas

#80

Post by jlokier »

kofejnik wrote: post #77
inesta wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't that unfairly benefit big companies?

Nothing unfair about that; salary is a very direct measure of demand for specific skills

> salary is a very direct measure of demand for specific skills

Only economic demand. Not demand in the more common meaning as need.

See the other comment about H-1Bs being for nurses too.

They aren't going to be offered FAANG salaries but that doesn't mean the country doesn't need nurses.

It means there isn't enough money in the part of the system that pays for nurses to compete with FAANG salaries to get them (and all the consequences of that, such as having to pay all other nurses FAANG salaries as well).

If you followed the chain I guess you could argue that the economic demand for advertising is higher than economic demand for healthcare, like it or not. But that would be a really screwed up way of assessing the best way to assign H-1B visas for the benefit of the country.

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