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H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

h1bexposed.tech

71–80 of 110 posts

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#71
post #64
post #58

No. The talent shortage is not a myth. The unemployed/underemployed American programmer that can actually keep up is a myth. Everyone good (without additional baggage) is either a) employed or b) could be employed whenever they feel like it. If you aren't good enough then don't be surprised the companies prefer an immigrant. You don't get an automatic American free pass for having less skills, experience, interviewin…

> The unemployed/underemployed American programmer that can actually keep up is a myth. Is your argument that the H1-B folks are better? That hasn't been my experience.

My argument is that the H1Bs meet the bar to be hired at their respective companies. Neither pool is inherently better but availability matters.

There are only so many American engineers that meet said bar, they are all either employed or choosing not to be employed.

The ones that don't meet the bar are either employed by smaller employers with lower bars that don't use H1B anyway or yes, maybe unemployed or transitioning to a new industry because they couldn't hack it.

The mythical group I am saying doesn't exist is engineers that are somehow perfectly capable of meeting FAANG bar but are somehow being displaced by H1B. That group doesn't exist.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#72
post #2

With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates comp…

Most people want to stay in their own country with their own culture and close to their friends and family. In my own country we are actually seeing people GO BACK to Asia because places like Vietnam now have a viable middle class lifestyle.

> Most people want to stay in their own country with their own culture and close to their friends and family.

But not all people otherwise we would all live in one giant city. Some are willing to greave the frontier in search of better outcomes: the early American Colonists, those that expanded west-ward into California, even the early Silicon Valley workers were all willing to move

H1Bs and international workers are not most people

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#73

No doubt h1b is abused. Corporations use it to structurally underpay tech labor. Shame to anyone defending this abuse as some sort of pro immigration policy - it hurts both domestic workers and underpays migrant labor. The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?

> what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?

None of it? The way I see it is every top tier programmer in America is already employed.

I think the inevitable outcome would just be the big multi-nationals (FAANG in particular) would just hire more in their international offices and spread out their engineering org more instead of remaining so American heavy and using immigration to centralise staffing.

There probably isn't a world where these huge companies decide to simply not take advantage of the global talent pool, if they don't exploit it someone else will and they can't have that.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#74
post #2

With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates comp…

I’ve been chewing on this for fifteen years, now. There is no pretty or simple or even palatable answer, just a bunch of proposals with tradeoffs. 1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to… 2) Da…

After Tiananmen Square we let Chinese students in the USA stay. I gained a ton of great colleagues during that time. No one freaked out, no one cared. We need to bump up immigration and remove the artificial power H1B/sponsorship gives companies. Perhaps the difference was that those new Americans weren't able to bring their families in due to Chinese policy so racists didn't SEE a huge visible difference?

2. Rural states were what you state already historically. Hence the existence of the rust belt. The existence of lots of towns who's manufacturing was outsourced from Clinton on. They were already this model, just with small/midsize factories and/or call centers.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#75
post #73

No doubt h1b is abused. Corporations use it to structurally underpay tech labor. Shame to anyone defending this abuse as some sort of pro immigration policy - it hurts both domestic workers and underpays migrant labor. The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?

> what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported? None of it? The way I see it is every top tier programmer in America is already employed. I think the inevitable outcome would just be the big multi-nationals (FAANG in particular) would just hire more in their international offices and spread out their engineering org more instead of remaining so American heavy and using imm…

Many of the top tier companies (meta, Amazon, google, microsoft etc) have had massive layoffs in the 10's of thousands range. Those workers were top tier programmers. So you need to be quite delusional or uninformed to have your view point on the work force.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#76
post #70
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work at faang/etc. I don’t see any notable difference between immigrant and non-immigrant. Arguably, one could say the Americans are better because they typically have less education and still manage to do the same job. Somehow managing to do the same job but with less training? That sounds like someone who is “better” to me.

You are proving my point - FAANG hires the top tier talent, and makes extensive use of both the global talent pool and sponsoring immigration in order to meet their needs. The Americans you work with (along with your other co-workers) meet the bar. If there were more Americans that met the bar they would employ them before taking on all the extra work and cost of immigration. I'm not talking about Americans you work…

You’re not really responding to my point. I’ve told you that Americans are in faang and don’t have the same level of education as all the immigrants. This goes in the face of what you’re saying. Americans by your measure are more intelligent and require less education to achieve the same results. (Entry to faang and doing the same quality of work)

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#77
post #73

No doubt h1b is abused. Corporations use it to structurally underpay tech labor. Shame to anyone defending this abuse as some sort of pro immigration policy - it hurts both domestic workers and underpays migrant labor. The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?

> what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported? None of it? The way I see it is every top tier programmer in America is already employed. I think the inevitable outcome would just be the big multi-nationals (FAANG in particular) would just hire more in their international offices and spread out their engineering org more instead of remaining so American heavy and using imm…

“Top tier programmer”

Apple employees thousands of H1Bs, many of them literally push buttons and file bug reports all day and don’t know how to code or barely know how. I know this because I’ve worked with teams of them for a decade at Apple.

These are not top tier talent type people, this is work that my mom could do, but Apple can pay much less by bringing people over from India, Pakistan, China to do this work instead of finding Americans to do it.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported? I mean, the other question is: how many US jobs exist because of folks who came to the country on H1B? Clearly none of the big tech companies would exist in the scale they are without us.

H1B was created in the 90s. The industry had been around for nearly 50 years at that point.

You are being downvoted but you are totally correct. The tech industry existed before the H1B and was growing rapidly. There’s no evidence at all that the industry would have stopped growing without the H1B or that any company started by an H1B wouldn’t have been started by an American.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported? I mean, the other question is: how many US jobs exist because of folks who came to the country on H1B? Clearly none of the big tech companies would exist in the scale they are without us.

H1B was created in the 90s. The industry had been around for nearly 50 years at that point.

how many people were in the industry/needed 50 years prior? compared to 40 years later? any growth?

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been chewing on this for fifteen years, now. There is no pretty or simple or even palatable answer, just a bunch of proposals with tradeoffs. 1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to… 2) Da…

> 2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers. How would this work with basically any foreign service?

Isn't the _point_ that it doesn't?

But to throw out one idea: a "safe harbour" style scheme that allows exporting this kind of work to places with equivalent policies could work.

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