24 ms·

Not Everyone in Tech Cheers the H-1B Visa Program

263 points by Cbasedlifeform 10y ago

arikrak 10y ago
If they reduce H-1B visas, can't large companies just hire more people overseas? How would you make companies hire more Americans?
- learc83 10y ago
  It's already much cheaper to pay a programmer overseas than to hire someone on an H-1B. If the jobs companies are using H-1Bs for were easy to offshore, they would already be doing it. Obviously reducing the number of H-1Bs will change the math, so that a few jobs may move overseas, but there are many advantages to having employees in the US.
- sverige 10y ago
  Evidently, having devs live in SV is important enough that companies pay enough so that their employees can afford the hyperinflated cost of living in the Bay Area. So I don't think it's the case that anyone would be making them hire more Americans; rather, by limiting the ability for companies to hire people from overseas who will work for less, the theory is that they will hire the people who already live in the US, presumably people who already have citizenship. The interesting thing will be whether SV will be willing to absorb the (presumably) higher labor rates for these citizens. Their other options will be to outsource the jobs or to develop more infrastructure in less costly areas of the US. This is the most plausible explanation of the theory, unless of course you believe the version where the motivation for H-1B hires isn't purely economic, but rather that there just aren't enough Americans available who can do the work.
  - threeseed 10y ago
    > the theory is that they will hire the people who already live in the US, presumably people who already have citizenship Another option is that companies simply don't hire at all i.e. they wind back projects and reduce potential growth opportunities. I've actually seen this first hand so always a bit mindful of seemingly simple or obvious decisions. Especially since permanent staff who are OPEX and increase headcount are very different to contract staff who are CAPEX and don't. And many H1B visas are quite willing and happy to be contractors since the US may not be their life long home. That's very different for a US citizen.
  - scholia 10y ago
    A lot of US companies were founded or co-founded by immigrants including Google (Brin), Yahoo (Yang), eBay (Omidyar), PayPal (Levchin, Thiel, Nosek), WhatsApp (Koum), Tesla (Musk), Radioshack (Deutschmann), Comcast (Aaron), Nordstrom (Nordstrom), Colgate (Colgate), DuPont (DuPont), Kraft (Kraft), Pfizer (Pfizer), Procter & Gamble (Procter & Gamble) and AT&T (Bell). Apple was co-founded by the son of a Syrian from Homs, and Intel wouldn't be the company it is today without Hungarian-born refugee Andy Grove. Companies founded or co-founded by the children of immigrants include Walt Disney (from Canada), Oracle (Russia and Iran), IBM (Germany), Boeing (Germany), 3M (Canada) and Home Depot (Russia). More than 40% of the Fortune 500 in 2010 were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. If the US blocks immigration, it will be much worse off. If the best people go to other countries, those countries will probably end up much better off.
    - herbst 10y ago
      To be fair in my POV you are all just immigrants. When someone in europe knows about his 500 year history he also usually considers himself part of his origin culture and does not claim to be 100% whatever his passport says. Fucking 500 years. Most beers i like exist for longer.
      - refurb 10y ago
        To be fair in my POV you are all just immigrants. That argument gets us no where. If you go back far enough, everyone is an immigrant everywhere in the world except for a small group of sub-saharan africans. And even in that case, they probably migrated. It's adds nothing to the conversation.
        herbst 10y ago
        If you think so ok. That exact thought you explain is something i like to keep in mind it is a easy objective thought to show that we are all just humans
    - sverige 10y ago
      Right, but I don't believe any of those people came here on an H-1B visa. And it seems like many of the best and brightest are still trying to get into the US, though right now perhaps fewer than previously. I'm not arguing against immigration. Heck, I don't even think that the current administration is against immigration. (Yes, I know this is not the popular view of the current administration here on HN.) My point was that the H-1B program is basically built on the hypocrisy that these are jobs that cannot be filled without bringing in immigrants because no one here has the skills. It seems pretty obvious that the reality is that the H-1B program is built to enable employers to bring in high-skilled workers at a steeply discounted rate, and to keep them steeply discounted by preventing the immigrants from looking for better jobs once they get here. If this were untrue, I wouldn't read so many comments and even articles about how people here on H-1B visas ought to have the right to find another job. In other words, make the program declare its real intentions. But that would never fly, because politically it would be unpalatable to people in any part of the political spectrum, with the possible exception of the <1% of those who profit from H-1B employees.
- scholia 10y ago
  At the moment, you have American IT workers training overseas workers to replace them. That's true of IBM and Disney that I know of, and there could well be more.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - stevetursi 10y ago
    Hertz, too. We had to train our overseas IBM replacements as a condition of receiving our severance.
- bdcravens 10y ago
  The same way SF companies aren't hiring developers in Houston at a lower cost. If employee cost is the issue, then a company is abusing the H-1B. It's for filling skill gaps, not lower costs.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  The outlook changes drastically depending on whether technology is a revenue driver or a cost center at your company.
intrasight 10y ago
The visa system is prone to abuse as long as it is the sponsoring company that controls the visa. The visa should be issued to the individual and be valid for a fixed length of time.
- sverige 10y ago
  Of course, doing this would almost entirely eliminate the economic incentive for companies to bring in foreign workers since they would be free to negotiate better deals once here, which would rapidly reduce the demand for H-1B visas by US companies and the number of foreign workers who come to the US under that program.
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    Simple solution from signing-bonus land. Sponsoring company offers to pay your visa fees. If you quit before X months you owe it back. X is defined by regulation, and should be linked to costs and value added, not the term of the visa.
    - sandworm101 10y ago
      No. No employee should be in dept to thier employer. If you want them to stay with you, treat and pay them well. It is a fine line between paying visa fees and debt bondage. Everyone should be free to walk away from a bad employer.
      - hirsin 10y ago
        Walking away from a bad employer is exactly what this allows. Today that's very difficult and can result in losing the visa entirely, while in the visa fee scenario you're just out some money (which is exactly the same as in the signing bonus example). Would it be more palatable if the employer did not pay the visa fees but did have a signing bonus equal to the visa fees?
        10y ago
DickingAround 10y ago
Am I the only one here who thinks that a person has a basic right to work with whoever and wherever they want regardless of their birthplace? Is discriminating against someone based on where they were born somehow less of a fallacy than discriminating based on skin color, etc. ?
- WildUtah 10y ago
  No. Lots of people who haven't thought about the consequences for their nation or their families or who simply don't care agree with you. It's especially common among young people that want to display their virtuous radicalism and who haven't ever really had to pay for the bad consequences of anyone's actions.
  - themagician 10y ago
    It's more common among young people because they aren't yet invested in entitlements. Most people think of SS and other entitlements as being something they have earned and they don't want them shared with others. Everyone wants a handout. Most people just want to pretend like they earned it.
    - ap3 10y ago
      How else would one view the Social Security program that you are paying into? You can even go into SSA.gov and see how much you have "earned".
      - lend000 10y ago
        Except that it won't be around when I qualify. World's biggest ponzi scheme.
      - ajdlinux 10y ago
        It's interesting looking at the US Social Security system coming from a country (Australia) where the social security system doesn't have the facade of being a contributory system and is funded entirely out of general tax revenue - there's no such thing as "paying in" to the social security system. There's still a bit of an attitude of "I've paid my taxes, now I deserve my pension", but the system doesn't act as a piggy bank for you to save up over time. (For that, we have a mandatory minimum 9.5% superannuation/401k-equivalent contribution that you invest in shares/property/bonds etc.) In my mind, this is fairer than the US system, but there is a good case to be made that keeping elements of a "contributory" system helps to maintain political support for the welfare state among people who are a bit more, um, selfish. (An interesting piece I read a while ago that describes how the "contributory" nature of Australia's social security system in the 1940s was actually just a cover for a general tax increase: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-27/berg-chifleys-political-time-bomb-70-years-in-the-making/5480154 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-27/berg-chifleys-politica...)
Alex3917 10y ago
I have a certain level of sympathy for unemployed Americans who the government could be retraining as technology workers. There are some H-1B workers who legitimately have skills that are highly valuable and uncommon within the U.S., but the majority seem to employed by large contracting firms who specialize in bringing in folks to perform relatively simple labor. I have much less sympathy for folks already in the tech industry who are complaining about this. Tech is basically the most overpaid career there is. And not because it's especially hard or valuable, but because as soon as some CEO starts getting the idea that they could be the next Mark Zuckerberg then all rational thought goes out the window. Hiring developers is basically rich people's version of blowing all their money on lottery tickets. The entire industry is completely unregulated despite putting the nation's critical infrastructure and economy in grave danger, which artificially drives up wages by externalizing the risk onto everyone else. And H-1B workers are placing basically zero downward pressure on wages as far as I can tell.
- raquo 10y ago
  > The entire industry is completely unregulated despite putting the nation's critical infrastructure and economy in grave danger, which artificially drives up wages by externalizing the risk onto everyone else. I don't see how adding regulations to ensure safety of critical infrastructure could possibly reduce developer wages. If anything, they'd be increased because now you need more of them and they need more skills.
  - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
    I work in WA and there is no state-required professional certification for software engineers, so no one needs to sign-off on anything safety-critical (where no-other class of professional engineer would either, like a HIPAA/PCI compliant system as opposed to avionics engineering), and that does concern me - because I would like the opportunity to both have the skills for safety-critical work and to be recognised for it. I feel it's important now with IOT vulns and data/privacy security, and as a side-effect those jobs are often legally unexportable.
- chaostheory 10y ago
planetjones 10y ago
This is wage dumping. The article explains the problem perfectly i.e. a 130K job is replaced by a 60K job. Call this globalisation and efficient markets if you like. However, on a personal note, if Trump manages to put in place policies to make it more of a level playing field and stops some of the greed which CEOs apply when replacing jobs with outsourcing contracts then I think he may have found a policy which will carry a lot of favour with middle class workers.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  Just given the timing of the business cycle, Trump is likely to face a recession or at least a stagnation by the time he's working on reelection in 2020. There's very little he can do about it now: Most economists believe it takes almost four years for fiscal policy to affect the business cycle and two years for monetary policy. And Trump won't be appointing his own Federal Reserve chairman to set monetary policy until 2018 at the earliest. But Trump can take action that will open up jobs and raise wages for American workers even in the face of a recession. He can deport illegal aliens and cut off the H-1B and L cheap professional visa categories. That would create a lot of working class and lower-tier professional jobs for Americans fast.
  - scholia 10y ago
    Yup. All those unemployed miners from Ohio are going to move to California and become maids, pool cleaners, burger-flippers and agricultural workers.
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      OH and CA aren't swing states.
      - hirsin 10y ago
        Ohio is one of the most notorious swing states. 538 lists them as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin
andrewclunn 10y ago
The outsourcing is another issue, as any tech job that can be telecomuted will be moved overseas (with the exception of security risk aversion factors, like with HIPA compliant organizations and such). What this allows is for foreign workers to come to the U.S. too work for less at jobs that require that a person be on-site. Then they have no power to negotiate, as they're here at their employer's whim. If there are going to be worker's protection laws, that I as a citizen am guaranteed, and which raise my cost, then allowing for a loop hole like this is pricing me out of decent work. Come on President Trump, raise that price cap and end this loophole!
ericseppanen 10y ago
It's unfortunate that most of the people writing about the problems with H-1B visas can't distinguish between companies that hire the best they can get (and paying competitive salaries), and outsourcing companies that file a ton of applications (and pay their employees much less). This approach seems deliberately lazy, as though it's some kind of head-scratcher that the displaced IT support guy hates his outsourced replacement; while the Googles and Microsofts of the world support a program that allows them to hire top engineers from all over the globe. I find it especially galling that this NYT writer can't make the distinction, given their paper did a great article about H-1B abuse by outsourcing firms: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcing-companies-dominate-h1b-visas.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcing...
- cwilkes 10y ago
  Did you read the article? That was brought up in there.
  - ericseppanen 10y ago
    Sorry, where? I'm not seeing it.
    - jasode 10y ago
      >most of the people writing about the problems with H-1B visas can't distinguish My response assumes you're saying the journalist of the NYT piece is among "most of the people" not able to make a distinction between the 2 categories you laid out. category 1: >between companies that hire the best they can get (and paying competitive salaries), NYT article: "Proponents of the H-1B system argue that it is an important vehicle to attract top talent to America. After coming to the United States, these visa holders may apply their skills to start new companies or create new, innovative products" category 2: >and outsourcing companies that file a ton of applications (and pay their employees much less). NYT article: "The H-1B program’s critics say the system provides a way for American companies to turn over technology departments to outsourcing companies. These are gaming the system to snap up the visas so they can replace American workers with less expensive, temporary staff members." It seems the NYT journalist has correctly distinguished both categories. (There are more paragraphs in that article that add more details about both categories but I only copypasted 1 example of each.)
jeffdavis 10y ago
I am confused by the article. The examples given are examples of outsourcing, which doesn't require visas at all, right?
addicted 10y ago
I think it's funny that people complain that the H1B visa program are "shipping jobs abroad" when by being a visa program, the whole point is to allow people to work in the US. No one is going through all the trouble to enter a 10% lottery to "ship jobs abroad" when actually shipping jobs abroad requorws no visa, and requires no minimum 60k payment. Now, this doesn't mean there aren't problems with the H1B program. By making workers so dependent on their employers (for example, if an H1B visa holder gets laid off or fired they have to leave the country immediately without legally having the opportunity to find a new job) it most likely drives down wages slightly, but the "sending jobs abroad" rhetoric is little more than xenophobic sloganeering which only serves to distract people from the actual problems related to the H1B (the power differential between the employers and the employees, and the ridiculousness of a lottery system which benefits those who can flood the system with applications as opposed to actual companies that need good workers).
- Clubber 10y ago
  By shipping jobs abroad, I believe most people think they are taking jobs held by US nationals and giving then to foreign nationals, regardless of where they fill a seat.
  - cr1895 10y ago
    >regardless of where they fill a seat But this seat-filling is important. A person who is hired for a job shipped abroad is not living in the US, paying taxes in the US, buying groceries, spending money, etc etc. A non-American brought into the US is participating and contributing to the economy just as any American worker is.
- jeremyjh 10y ago
  Local employees are part of the equation. The body shops like Infosys and Tata always have onsite workers who interact with the client and then use their offshore teams to perform the work. Many clients are not capable of using offshore resources in any other model due to time zone and language barriers. The onsite typically works around two hours a night beginning at 10 PM to resolve all the questions and issues from offshore.
known 10y ago
Try hiring Politicians on H1B
DVassallo 10y ago
> "We are at a disadvantage as Americans," Ms. Hatten-Milholin said. This is so ridiculous. A disadvantage against who? By any rational measure, it's the H1-B holders that are at a huge disadvantage against Americans.
- trome 10y ago
  We are at a cost disadvantage.
- geebee 10y ago
  I'd take a softer stance against the statement, though I do disagree with it. As a Californian, I'd have trouble signing away my right to leave the software field for the next 7 years, or granting to my employer the right to have me deported if I quit my job. Employers may prefer employees who they know have limited legal rights to participate as free members of the work force. In fact, the US has a long (and at times, horrendously ugly) history of programs to import workers who aren't free to choose the circumstances of their own lives. Because US citizens can't give up certain rights, they may be at a disadvantage where it comes to getting jobs where employer control over a worker's residency rights have become the norm. After all, why would you hire a free person who can threaten to leave during salary negotiations, when you can instead hire someone who depends on you for the right to live and work in the US? Of course, I'd never, ever make that trade. I'd rather switch fields, or avoid that field altogether. This may account for some of the aversion to software development careers we observe among people who do are free as individuals to live and work in the US without corporate "sponsorship"
deleted 10y ago
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chetanahuja 10y ago
Irony of only focusing on tech jobs when talking about H1-B is two-fold: 1) Tech jobs (especially in software fields) are some of the easiest to do remotely. Creating higher barriers to H1-B visas will only create higher incentives to let those same workers work from their home countries instead of bringing them all the way to the US. The unintended side-effect of course is that this is actually cheaper for the employers, siphons spending outside the US economy and to the extent this is believed to be zero-sum market (it's not), you have to believe that this will depress the job market here. 2) Software is not the only field H1-B jobs are used in. There are whole categories of jobs where $130K salary is absurdly high even for top candidates (without any visa restrictions). Case in point, academic researchers and scientists.
- deleted 10y ago
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Fazilka 10y ago
The Trump administration should consider voiding all existing H1-B visas, without exception, and enforcing that all holders return to their home countries, before being eligible to re-obtain a H1-B under new, fairer rules. I know more than a handful of very qualified 40+ folk who were laid off over the last couple of years, and told quite frankly, and with no words being minced, that they were too expensive for the company, so their jobs were being "out-sourced" to cheaper/younger workers. Most H1-B holders are from pretty desperate circumstances and put up with just about anything, at least until they obtain their GCs.
- arjie 10y ago
  The market's pretty hot for tech jobs. I'm surprised they can't get hired.
  - drpgq 10y ago
    Maybe there needs to be some form of a blank screen for ageism as for hiring for orchestras. Probably pretty hard to implement.
  - dukeluke 10y ago
    That's the thing. Most new tech jobs are only being created in the tech hubs of the country. The rest of the country is seeing a decline in good IT jobs.
- on_and_off 10y ago
  seriously ? >Most H1-B holders are from pretty desperate circumstances and put up with just about anything so because they have already endured a lot in order to get their H1B, it is ok to force them out of the country ?
- scient 10y ago
  Maybe your 40+ folk are not that qualified then? Or maybe the demand for their specific skillsets is not as high as you assume it to be? The attitude itself is pretty telling already. Market sets the demand, not your hopes, wishes and wet dreams. Either way blaming on their employment issues on legal immigrants is just another form of the immigrant xenophobia thats up for display more and more under the Trump administration.
deleted 10y ago
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subhrm 10y ago
I was a part of the Infosys offshore team (India) that took the transition from Eversource energy's IT department (mentioned in the article). I clearly remember now, how disappointed, sad and gloomy were the members of the departing team.
- trome 10y ago
  If they are older, and aren't white & male, they likely have a long, potentially multi-year search ahead of them to find employment. Especially if they specialized in the operations of Eversource's software, and not in software development, that is going to put them in a really crappy position when applying at other local employers.
  - subhrm 10y ago
    Yes, you are right.
nul_byte 10y ago
I looked into H-1B after being offered a senior technical role in the CTO office of a big networking vendor (based in the valley). I turned down the role. I would have to enter a lottery to get a visa and then have my visa tied to my role at that company. For me as someone with two young children and an already good life in the UK, it was far to uncertain for me.
klunger 10y ago
In Norway, if you are on a knowledge worker visa, your salary needs to be competitive. This amount increases each year with inflation. As an American working in Norway, I have to say that this is how it should be done in the US . My Norwegian coworkers do not resent me because I was not hired because I am any cheaper than they are. And, I get a salary that allows me to meet the high cost of living here. If companies were allowed to pay foreigners significantly below industry standard, it would be a disaster. I don't understand why this is still standard practice in the US. Oh wait, I do understand: it allows companies to pay less for labor and pad their profit margins. But it is bogus, and this is one Trump initiative I can get behind.
- greggman 10y ago
  The hb-1 visa does require the same salary same as norway http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/h-1b-employers-what-wage-must-you-pay.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/h-1b-employers-what-w...
  - Clubber 10y ago
    I believe it is currently a minimum of $60K / year, which was established in 1989 and not updated since. Companies in the US (and the government too) tend to skirt laws justifying the misdeeds as, "we interpret the law differently." In other words, some shops will gladly pay a senior software engineer $60K a year, claiming they are something else like tech support. There are plenty of examples of other methods some companies use.
    - refurb 10y ago
      The minimum salary is based on the Labor Department's "prevailing wage" which is informed by a survey of current salaries. It's based on a given role and geographic location. Yes, you may find some prevailing wages are lower than what Google pays, but that shouldn't be surprising since high paying tech jobs don't represent the average wage.
      - 10y ago
perseusprime11 10y ago
I would love to see a New York Times or Washington Post article on H1-B that is based on interviews from those who are abused either by these consulting companies that pay low wages or the impact it has on driving down overall wages of American worker while the tech companies reap reward profits.
KAdot 10y ago
Keep in mind that H-1B visa is almost the only legal way for skilled workers to immigrate to the United States. Unlike other visa types, H-1B requires the applicant to have at least bachelor’s degree. At the same time USCIS issues about 650,000 family-based immigration visas and 120,000 visas for refugees every year.
- 0xcafecafe 10y ago
  And the number for employment based immigration visas is 140,000.
  - KAdot 10y ago
    Yes, but usually you have to get H-1B or L-1 visa first.
Dowwie 10y ago
I have vivid memories of what 2003 was like for me, a computer science grad who entered the workforce just as management's solution to control a new, major cost center (IT) was taking hold. Many of the DevOps functions that you celebrate today were considered commoditized and consequently eligible for offshore tech consultancy. I watched middle-aged, highly skilled professionals train their low-cost, unskilled replacements after being explicitly told by HR/management that their severance packages required their complete cooperation during their "employment transition". This was at Merrill Lynch during its heyday.
- nicholas73 10y ago
  That explains why Merrill Edge has the shittiest trading interface of all the online brokers I've used.
zobzu 10y ago
im a hb1 worker paid 150000/y. this is slightly less than some colleagues, slightly more than others (though slightly less qualified arguably) it ist is hard to find qualified employees for that job. the last person we found works remote from canada, because that's all we could find that had the right minimum skillset and was available at all. for the past 2y we no longer hire via h1b. why? because we cant. the chance than an applicant gets a visa is now ridiculously low. this is because of the flooding and first come first serve system this article is mentioning: we can submit for 2 or 3 100-150k jobs a year. others submit thousands at 60k no chance. (this is because we do not fire lower skill jobs to replace em by h1b)
- humanrebar 10y ago
  > it ist is hard to find qualified employees for that job ...at that salary. $150k sounds like a lot, but adjusted for cost of living, it's fairly middle-of-the-road salary for senior engineers in, say, Texas. In fact, it would be an effective downgrade in quality of life for many. Your employer could easily poach those engineers by calling them up and offering $225k or more, offering housing vouchers, etc. I'll note that I'm assuming SF or NYC as your location. If you're in Texas, Atlanta, etc., I withdraw all of the above.
  - dominotw 10y ago
    > ...at that salary. Wouldn't this rule out exploring all the ideas that are only viable at a particular price point. Wouldn't low cost countries out innovate us at that price point.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      Or the U.S. could stop locating its biggest software shops in the most expensive zip codes in the country. But, yes, keeping costs down is entirely about protecting business models. Changes would force business models to adjust. For example, employers might have to start retraining almost-qualified domestic workers instead of importing workers who have a too-particular list of jargon on their resumes.
auvi 10y ago
can anybody tell me the legal implications to start a US based company as a foreigner? Is it possible to start one in F-1 OPT and later file for H1-B?
Friedduck 10y ago
@ericseppanen, I agree, that there seem to be two distinct practices. I experienced the latter, where a company performed wholesale off-shoring of several thousand jobs. I don't understand how the stewards of that program approve such visas when they're clearly being used to replace existing workers (i.e., the argument that you can't find qualified locals is demonstrably false.) My other hard-won conclusion: the companies that do this don't recognize the long-term impacts. They're less capable, less competitive, and their outsourcing partners can become their overlords. The outsourcers gain considerable negotiating leverage, and any attempt to unseat them becomes economically impossible. What can we do about it? Look at the policies that make American employment unappetizing. The cost of benefits (principally health care.) Regulations that make it difficult to fire poor performers. Finally, there's a feedback mechanism here. I saw many leave technology because they perceived that the opportunities were all moving off-shore.
- throwaway4job 10y ago
  The primary cost difference is salary. They are outsourcing from a country where people are paid $100k to one where people are paid $10k. The health benefits are a tiny fraction of it. It's absurdly easy to fire poor performers. Anybody who complains otherwise is, honestly, a terrible employer and/or woefully uninformed.
MR4D 10y ago
Crazy idea... How about a one line regulation: You pay whatever you want to your H1B employee. For every dollar under some limit (say, $130K) you pay that dollar to Uncle Sam. At least it would keep them honest, since any cheating would be a tax violation.

263 points by Cbasedlifeform 10y ago

If they reduce H-1B visas, can't large companies just hire more people overseas? How would you make companies hire more Americans?

learc83 10y ago
It's already much cheaper to pay a programmer overseas than to hire someone on an H-1B. If the jobs companies are using H-1Bs for were easy to offshore, they would already be doing it. Obviously reducing the number of H-1Bs will change the math, so that a few jobs may move overseas, but there are many advantages to having employees in the US.
sverige 10y ago
Evidently, having devs live in SV is important enough that companies pay enough so that their employees can afford the hyperinflated cost of living in the Bay Area. So I don't think it's the case that anyone would be making them hire more Americans; rather, by limiting the ability for companies to hire people from overseas who will work for less, the theory is that they will hire the people who already live in the US, presumably people who already have citizenship. The interesting thing will be whether SV will be willing to absorb the (presumably) higher labor rates for these citizens. Their other options will be to outsource the jobs or to develop more infrastructure in less costly areas of the US. This is the most plausible explanation of the theory, unless of course you believe the version where the motivation for H-1B hires isn't purely economic, but rather that there just aren't enough Americans available who can do the work.
- threeseed 10y ago
  > the theory is that they will hire the people who already live in the US, presumably people who already have citizenship Another option is that companies simply don't hire at all i.e. they wind back projects and reduce potential growth opportunities. I've actually seen this first hand so always a bit mindful of seemingly simple or obvious decisions. Especially since permanent staff who are OPEX and increase headcount are very different to contract staff who are CAPEX and don't. And many H1B visas are quite willing and happy to be contractors since the US may not be their life long home. That's very different for a US citizen.
- scholia 10y ago
  A lot of US companies were founded or co-founded by immigrants including Google (Brin), Yahoo (Yang), eBay (Omidyar), PayPal (Levchin, Thiel, Nosek), WhatsApp (Koum), Tesla (Musk), Radioshack (Deutschmann), Comcast (Aaron), Nordstrom (Nordstrom), Colgate (Colgate), DuPont (DuPont), Kraft (Kraft), Pfizer (Pfizer), Procter & Gamble (Procter & Gamble) and AT&T (Bell). Apple was co-founded by the son of a Syrian from Homs, and Intel wouldn't be the company it is today without Hungarian-born refugee Andy Grove. Companies founded or co-founded by the children of immigrants include Walt Disney (from Canada), Oracle (Russia and Iran), IBM (Germany), Boeing (Germany), 3M (Canada) and Home Depot (Russia). More than 40% of the Fortune 500 in 2010 were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. If the US blocks immigration, it will be much worse off. If the best people go to other countries, those countries will probably end up much better off.
  - herbst 10y ago
    To be fair in my POV you are all just immigrants. When someone in europe knows about his 500 year history he also usually considers himself part of his origin culture and does not claim to be 100% whatever his passport says. Fucking 500 years. Most beers i like exist for longer.
    - refurb 10y ago
      To be fair in my POV you are all just immigrants. That argument gets us no where. If you go back far enough, everyone is an immigrant everywhere in the world except for a small group of sub-saharan africans. And even in that case, they probably migrated. It's adds nothing to the conversation.
      - herbst 10y ago
        If you think so ok. That exact thought you explain is something i like to keep in mind it is a easy objective thought to show that we are all just humans
  - sverige 10y ago
    Right, but I don't believe any of those people came here on an H-1B visa. And it seems like many of the best and brightest are still trying to get into the US, though right now perhaps fewer than previously. I'm not arguing against immigration. Heck, I don't even think that the current administration is against immigration. (Yes, I know this is not the popular view of the current administration here on HN.) My point was that the H-1B program is basically built on the hypocrisy that these are jobs that cannot be filled without bringing in immigrants because no one here has the skills. It seems pretty obvious that the reality is that the H-1B program is built to enable employers to bring in high-skilled workers at a steeply discounted rate, and to keep them steeply discounted by preventing the immigrants from looking for better jobs once they get here. If this were untrue, I wouldn't read so many comments and even articles about how people here on H-1B visas ought to have the right to find another job. In other words, make the program declare its real intentions. But that would never fly, because politically it would be unpalatable to people in any part of the political spectrum, with the possible exception of the <1% of those who profit from H-1B employees.
scholia 10y ago
At the moment, you have American IT workers training overseas workers to replace them. That's true of IBM and Disney that I know of, and there could well be more.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- stevetursi 10y ago
  Hertz, too. We had to train our overseas IBM replacements as a condition of receiving our severance.
bdcravens 10y ago
The same way SF companies aren't hiring developers in Houston at a lower cost. If employee cost is the issue, then a company is abusing the H-1B. It's for filling skill gaps, not lower costs.
prostoalex 10y ago
The outlook changes drastically depending on whether technology is a revenue driver or a cost center at your company.

intrasight 10y ago

The visa system is prone to abuse as long as it is the sponsoring company that controls the visa. The visa should be issued to the individual and be valid for a fixed length of time.

sverige 10y ago
Of course, doing this would almost entirely eliminate the economic incentive for companies to bring in foreign workers since they would be free to negotiate better deals once here, which would rapidly reduce the demand for H-1B visas by US companies and the number of foreign workers who come to the US under that program.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  Simple solution from signing-bonus land. Sponsoring company offers to pay your visa fees. If you quit before X months you owe it back. X is defined by regulation, and should be linked to costs and value added, not the term of the visa.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    No. No employee should be in dept to thier employer. If you want them to stay with you, treat and pay them well. It is a fine line between paying visa fees and debt bondage. Everyone should be free to walk away from a bad employer.
    - hirsin 10y ago
      Walking away from a bad employer is exactly what this allows. Today that's very difficult and can result in losing the visa entirely, while in the visa fee scenario you're just out some money (which is exactly the same as in the signing bonus example). Would it be more palatable if the employer did not pay the visa fees but did have a signing bonus equal to the visa fees?
      - 10y ago

DickingAround 10y ago

Am I the only one here who thinks that a person has a basic right to work with whoever and wherever they want regardless of their birthplace? Is discriminating against someone based on where they were born somehow less of a fallacy than discriminating based on skin color, etc. ?

WildUtah 10y ago
No. Lots of people who haven't thought about the consequences for their nation or their families or who simply don't care agree with you. It's especially common among young people that want to display their virtuous radicalism and who haven't ever really had to pay for the bad consequences of anyone's actions.
- themagician 10y ago
  It's more common among young people because they aren't yet invested in entitlements. Most people think of SS and other entitlements as being something they have earned and they don't want them shared with others. Everyone wants a handout. Most people just want to pretend like they earned it.
  - ap3 10y ago
    How else would one view the Social Security program that you are paying into? You can even go into SSA.gov and see how much you have "earned".
    - lend000 10y ago
      Except that it won't be around when I qualify. World's biggest ponzi scheme.
    - ajdlinux 10y ago
      It's interesting looking at the US Social Security system coming from a country (Australia) where the social security system doesn't have the facade of being a contributory system and is funded entirely out of general tax revenue - there's no such thing as "paying in" to the social security system. There's still a bit of an attitude of "I've paid my taxes, now I deserve my pension", but the system doesn't act as a piggy bank for you to save up over time. (For that, we have a mandatory minimum 9.5% superannuation/401k-equivalent contribution that you invest in shares/property/bonds etc.) In my mind, this is fairer than the US system, but there is a good case to be made that keeping elements of a "contributory" system helps to maintain political support for the welfare state among people who are a bit more, um, selfish. (An interesting piece I read a while ago that describes how the "contributory" nature of Australia's social security system in the 1940s was actually just a cover for a general tax increase: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-27/berg-chifleys-political-time-bomb-70-years-in-the-making/5480154 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-27/berg-chifleys-politica...)

Alex3917 10y ago

I have a certain level of sympathy for unemployed Americans who the government could be retraining as technology workers. There are some H-1B workers who legitimately have skills that are highly valuable and uncommon within the U.S., but the majority seem to employed by large contracting firms who specialize in bringing in folks to perform relatively simple labor. I have much less sympathy for folks already in the tech industry who are complaining about this. Tech is basically the most overpaid career there is. And not because it's especially hard or valuable, but because as soon as some CEO starts getting the idea that they could be the next Mark Zuckerberg then all rational thought goes out the window. Hiring developers is basically rich people's version of blowing all their money on lottery tickets. The entire industry is completely unregulated despite putting the nation's critical infrastructure and economy in grave danger, which artificially drives up wages by externalizing the risk onto everyone else. And H-1B workers are placing basically zero downward pressure on wages as far as I can tell.

raquo 10y ago
> The entire industry is completely unregulated despite putting the nation's critical infrastructure and economy in grave danger, which artificially drives up wages by externalizing the risk onto everyone else. I don't see how adding regulations to ensure safety of critical infrastructure could possibly reduce developer wages. If anything, they'd be increased because now you need more of them and they need more skills.
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  I work in WA and there is no state-required professional certification for software engineers, so no one needs to sign-off on anything safety-critical (where no-other class of professional engineer would either, like a HIPAA/PCI compliant system as opposed to avionics engineering), and that does concern me - because I would like the opportunity to both have the skills for safety-critical work and to be recognised for it. I feel it's important now with IOT vulns and data/privacy security, and as a side-effect those jobs are often legally unexportable.
chaostheory 10y ago

planetjones 10y ago

This is wage dumping. The article explains the problem perfectly i.e. a 130K job is replaced by a 60K job. Call this globalisation and efficient markets if you like. However, on a personal note, if Trump manages to put in place policies to make it more of a level playing field and stops some of the greed which CEOs apply when replacing jobs with outsourcing contracts then I think he may have found a policy which will carry a lot of favour with middle class workers.

WildUtah 10y ago
Just given the timing of the business cycle, Trump is likely to face a recession or at least a stagnation by the time he's working on reelection in 2020. There's very little he can do about it now: Most economists believe it takes almost four years for fiscal policy to affect the business cycle and two years for monetary policy. And Trump won't be appointing his own Federal Reserve chairman to set monetary policy until 2018 at the earliest. But Trump can take action that will open up jobs and raise wages for American workers even in the face of a recession. He can deport illegal aliens and cut off the H-1B and L cheap professional visa categories. That would create a lot of working class and lower-tier professional jobs for Americans fast.
- scholia 10y ago
  Yup. All those unemployed miners from Ohio are going to move to California and become maids, pool cleaners, burger-flippers and agricultural workers.
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    OH and CA aren't swing states.
    - hirsin 10y ago
      Ohio is one of the most notorious swing states. 538 lists them as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin

andrewclunn 10y ago

The outsourcing is another issue, as any tech job that can be telecomuted will be moved overseas (with the exception of security risk aversion factors, like with HIPA compliant organizations and such). What this allows is for foreign workers to come to the U.S. too work for less at jobs that require that a person be on-site. Then they have no power to negotiate, as they're here at their employer's whim. If there are going to be worker's protection laws, that I as a citizen am guaranteed, and which raise my cost, then allowing for a loop hole like this is pricing me out of decent work. Come on President Trump, raise that price cap and end this loophole!

ericseppanen 10y ago

It's unfortunate that most of the people writing about the problems with H-1B visas can't distinguish between companies that hire the best they can get (and paying competitive salaries), and outsourcing companies that file a ton of applications (and pay their employees much less). This approach seems deliberately lazy, as though it's some kind of head-scratcher that the displaced IT support guy hates his outsourced replacement; while the Googles and Microsofts of the world support a program that allows them to hire top engineers from all over the globe. I find it especially galling that this NYT writer can't make the distinction, given their paper did a great article about H-1B abuse by outsourcing firms: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcing-companies-dominate-h1b-visas.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcing...

cwilkes 10y ago
Did you read the article? That was brought up in there.
- ericseppanen 10y ago
  Sorry, where? I'm not seeing it.
  - jasode 10y ago
    >most of the people writing about the problems with H-1B visas can't distinguish My response assumes you're saying the journalist of the NYT piece is among "most of the people" not able to make a distinction between the 2 categories you laid out. category 1: >between companies that hire the best they can get (and paying competitive salaries), NYT article: "Proponents of the H-1B system argue that it is an important vehicle to attract top talent to America. After coming to the United States, these visa holders may apply their skills to start new companies or create new, innovative products" category 2: >and outsourcing companies that file a ton of applications (and pay their employees much less). NYT article: "The H-1B program’s critics say the system provides a way for American companies to turn over technology departments to outsourcing companies. These are gaming the system to snap up the visas so they can replace American workers with less expensive, temporary staff members." It seems the NYT journalist has correctly distinguished both categories. (There are more paragraphs in that article that add more details about both categories but I only copypasted 1 example of each.)

jeffdavis 10y ago

I am confused by the article. The examples given are examples of outsourcing, which doesn't require visas at all, right?

addicted 10y ago

I think it's funny that people complain that the H1B visa program are "shipping jobs abroad" when by being a visa program, the whole point is to allow people to work in the US. No one is going through all the trouble to enter a 10% lottery to "ship jobs abroad" when actually shipping jobs abroad requorws no visa, and requires no minimum 60k payment. Now, this doesn't mean there aren't problems with the H1B program. By making workers so dependent on their employers (for example, if an H1B visa holder gets laid off or fired they have to leave the country immediately without legally having the opportunity to find a new job) it most likely drives down wages slightly, but the "sending jobs abroad" rhetoric is little more than xenophobic sloganeering which only serves to distract people from the actual problems related to the H1B (the power differential between the employers and the employees, and the ridiculousness of a lottery system which benefits those who can flood the system with applications as opposed to actual companies that need good workers).

Clubber 10y ago
By shipping jobs abroad, I believe most people think they are taking jobs held by US nationals and giving then to foreign nationals, regardless of where they fill a seat.
- cr1895 10y ago
  >regardless of where they fill a seat But this seat-filling is important. A person who is hired for a job shipped abroad is not living in the US, paying taxes in the US, buying groceries, spending money, etc etc. A non-American brought into the US is participating and contributing to the economy just as any American worker is.
jeremyjh 10y ago
Local employees are part of the equation. The body shops like Infosys and Tata always have onsite workers who interact with the client and then use their offshore teams to perform the work. Many clients are not capable of using offshore resources in any other model due to time zone and language barriers. The onsite typically works around two hours a night beginning at 10 PM to resolve all the questions and issues from offshore.

known 10y ago

Try hiring Politicians on H1B

DVassallo 10y ago

> "We are at a disadvantage as Americans," Ms. Hatten-Milholin said. This is so ridiculous. A disadvantage against who? By any rational measure, it's the H1-B holders that are at a huge disadvantage against Americans.

trome 10y ago
We are at a cost disadvantage.
geebee 10y ago
I'd take a softer stance against the statement, though I do disagree with it. As a Californian, I'd have trouble signing away my right to leave the software field for the next 7 years, or granting to my employer the right to have me deported if I quit my job. Employers may prefer employees who they know have limited legal rights to participate as free members of the work force. In fact, the US has a long (and at times, horrendously ugly) history of programs to import workers who aren't free to choose the circumstances of their own lives. Because US citizens can't give up certain rights, they may be at a disadvantage where it comes to getting jobs where employer control over a worker's residency rights have become the norm. After all, why would you hire a free person who can threaten to leave during salary negotiations, when you can instead hire someone who depends on you for the right to live and work in the US? Of course, I'd never, ever make that trade. I'd rather switch fields, or avoid that field altogether. This may account for some of the aversion to software development careers we observe among people who do are free as individuals to live and work in the US without corporate "sponsorship"

deleted 10y ago

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chetanahuja 10y ago

Irony of only focusing on tech jobs when talking about H1-B is two-fold: 1) Tech jobs (especially in software fields) are some of the easiest to do remotely. Creating higher barriers to H1-B visas will only create higher incentives to let those same workers work from their home countries instead of bringing them all the way to the US. The unintended side-effect of course is that this is actually cheaper for the employers, siphons spending outside the US economy and to the extent this is believed to be zero-sum market (it's not), you have to believe that this will depress the job market here. 2) Software is not the only field H1-B jobs are used in. There are whole categories of jobs where $130K salary is absurdly high even for top candidates (without any visa restrictions). Case in point, academic researchers and scientists.

deleted 10y ago
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Fazilka 10y ago

The Trump administration should consider voiding all existing H1-B visas, without exception, and enforcing that all holders return to their home countries, before being eligible to re-obtain a H1-B under new, fairer rules. I know more than a handful of very qualified 40+ folk who were laid off over the last couple of years, and told quite frankly, and with no words being minced, that they were too expensive for the company, so their jobs were being "out-sourced" to cheaper/younger workers. Most H1-B holders are from pretty desperate circumstances and put up with just about anything, at least until they obtain their GCs.

arjie 10y ago
The market's pretty hot for tech jobs. I'm surprised they can't get hired.
- drpgq 10y ago
  Maybe there needs to be some form of a blank screen for ageism as for hiring for orchestras. Probably pretty hard to implement.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  That's the thing. Most new tech jobs are only being created in the tech hubs of the country. The rest of the country is seeing a decline in good IT jobs.
on_and_off 10y ago
seriously ? >Most H1-B holders are from pretty desperate circumstances and put up with just about anything so because they have already endured a lot in order to get their H1B, it is ok to force them out of the country ?
scient 10y ago
Maybe your 40+ folk are not that qualified then? Or maybe the demand for their specific skillsets is not as high as you assume it to be? The attitude itself is pretty telling already. Market sets the demand, not your hopes, wishes and wet dreams. Either way blaming on their employment issues on legal immigrants is just another form of the immigrant xenophobia thats up for display more and more under the Trump administration.

deleted 10y ago

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subhrm 10y ago

I was a part of the Infosys offshore team (India) that took the transition from Eversource energy's IT department (mentioned in the article). I clearly remember now, how disappointed, sad and gloomy were the members of the departing team.

trome 10y ago
If they are older, and aren't white & male, they likely have a long, potentially multi-year search ahead of them to find employment. Especially if they specialized in the operations of Eversource's software, and not in software development, that is going to put them in a really crappy position when applying at other local employers.
- subhrm 10y ago
  Yes, you are right.

nul_byte 10y ago

I looked into H-1B after being offered a senior technical role in the CTO office of a big networking vendor (based in the valley). I turned down the role. I would have to enter a lottery to get a visa and then have my visa tied to my role at that company. For me as someone with two young children and an already good life in the UK, it was far to uncertain for me.

klunger 10y ago

In Norway, if you are on a knowledge worker visa, your salary needs to be competitive. This amount increases each year with inflation. As an American working in Norway, I have to say that this is how it should be done in the US . My Norwegian coworkers do not resent me because I was not hired because I am any cheaper than they are. And, I get a salary that allows me to meet the high cost of living here. If companies were allowed to pay foreigners significantly below industry standard, it would be a disaster. I don't understand why this is still standard practice in the US. Oh wait, I do understand: it allows companies to pay less for labor and pad their profit margins. But it is bogus, and this is one Trump initiative I can get behind.

greggman 10y ago
The hb-1 visa does require the same salary same as norway http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/h-1b-employers-what-wage-must-you-pay.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/h-1b-employers-what-w...
- Clubber 10y ago
  I believe it is currently a minimum of $60K / year, which was established in 1989 and not updated since. Companies in the US (and the government too) tend to skirt laws justifying the misdeeds as, "we interpret the law differently." In other words, some shops will gladly pay a senior software engineer $60K a year, claiming they are something else like tech support. There are plenty of examples of other methods some companies use.
  - refurb 10y ago
    The minimum salary is based on the Labor Department's "prevailing wage" which is informed by a survey of current salaries. It's based on a given role and geographic location. Yes, you may find some prevailing wages are lower than what Google pays, but that shouldn't be surprising since high paying tech jobs don't represent the average wage.
    - 10y ago

perseusprime11 10y ago

I would love to see a New York Times or Washington Post article on H1-B that is based on interviews from those who are abused either by these consulting companies that pay low wages or the impact it has on driving down overall wages of American worker while the tech companies reap reward profits.

KAdot 10y ago

Keep in mind that H-1B visa is almost the only legal way for skilled workers to immigrate to the United States. Unlike other visa types, H-1B requires the applicant to have at least bachelor’s degree. At the same time USCIS issues about 650,000 family-based immigration visas and 120,000 visas for refugees every year.

0xcafecafe 10y ago
And the number for employment based immigration visas is 140,000.
- KAdot 10y ago
  Yes, but usually you have to get H-1B or L-1 visa first.

Dowwie 10y ago

I have vivid memories of what 2003 was like for me, a computer science grad who entered the workforce just as management's solution to control a new, major cost center (IT) was taking hold. Many of the DevOps functions that you celebrate today were considered commoditized and consequently eligible for offshore tech consultancy. I watched middle-aged, highly skilled professionals train their low-cost, unskilled replacements after being explicitly told by HR/management that their severance packages required their complete cooperation during their "employment transition". This was at Merrill Lynch during its heyday.

nicholas73 10y ago
That explains why Merrill Edge has the shittiest trading interface of all the online brokers I've used.

zobzu 10y ago

im a hb1 worker paid 150000/y. this is slightly less than some colleagues, slightly more than others (though slightly less qualified arguably) it ist is hard to find qualified employees for that job. the last person we found works remote from canada, because that's all we could find that had the right minimum skillset and was available at all. for the past 2y we no longer hire via h1b. why? because we cant. the chance than an applicant gets a visa is now ridiculously low. this is because of the flooding and first come first serve system this article is mentioning: we can submit for 2 or 3 100-150k jobs a year. others submit thousands at 60k no chance. (this is because we do not fire lower skill jobs to replace em by h1b)

humanrebar 10y ago
> it ist is hard to find qualified employees for that job ...at that salary. $150k sounds like a lot, but adjusted for cost of living, it's fairly middle-of-the-road salary for senior engineers in, say, Texas. In fact, it would be an effective downgrade in quality of life for many. Your employer could easily poach those engineers by calling them up and offering $225k or more, offering housing vouchers, etc. I'll note that I'm assuming SF or NYC as your location. If you're in Texas, Atlanta, etc., I withdraw all of the above.
- dominotw 10y ago
  > ...at that salary. Wouldn't this rule out exploring all the ideas that are only viable at a particular price point. Wouldn't low cost countries out innovate us at that price point.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    Or the U.S. could stop locating its biggest software shops in the most expensive zip codes in the country. But, yes, keeping costs down is entirely about protecting business models. Changes would force business models to adjust. For example, employers might have to start retraining almost-qualified domestic workers instead of importing workers who have a too-particular list of jargon on their resumes.

auvi 10y ago

can anybody tell me the legal implications to start a US based company as a foreigner? Is it possible to start one in F-1 OPT and later file for H1-B?

Friedduck 10y ago

@ericseppanen, I agree, that there seem to be two distinct practices. I experienced the latter, where a company performed wholesale off-shoring of several thousand jobs. I don't understand how the stewards of that program approve such visas when they're clearly being used to replace existing workers (i.e., the argument that you can't find qualified locals is demonstrably false.) My other hard-won conclusion: the companies that do this don't recognize the long-term impacts. They're less capable, less competitive, and their outsourcing partners can become their overlords. The outsourcers gain considerable negotiating leverage, and any attempt to unseat them becomes economically impossible. What can we do about it? Look at the policies that make American employment unappetizing. The cost of benefits (principally health care.) Regulations that make it difficult to fire poor performers. Finally, there's a feedback mechanism here. I saw many leave technology because they perceived that the opportunities were all moving off-shore.

throwaway4job 10y ago
The primary cost difference is salary. They are outsourcing from a country where people are paid $100k to one where people are paid $10k. The health benefits are a tiny fraction of it. It's absurdly easy to fire poor performers. Anybody who complains otherwise is, honestly, a terrible employer and/or woefully uninformed.

MR4D 10y ago

Crazy idea... How about a one line regulation: You pay whatever you want to your H1B employee. For every dollar under some limit (say, $130K) you pay that dollar to Uncle Sam. At least it would keep them honest, since any cheating would be a tax violation.