4 ms·

Well, that's my point. In theory, this program is intended to provide US employers with employees who have skill sets that they cannot find here. In practice,

by sverige 10y ago

Well, that's my point. In theory, this program is intended to provide US employers with employees who have skill sets that they cannot find here. In practice, it's ludicrous to think that the vast US university system cannot produce employees with whatever skills are in demand, so workers must be imported from countries that have much smaller education complexes. The reality is that many US employers don't want to pay market rate for those skills. I would argue that this is especially true in tech. The same or similar forces are at play at the bottom end of the labor market, which is what has driven much of the illegal immigration through the southern border.

herbst 10y ago
Dont get me wrong. But to my understanding these visas would be used by a lot of people from countries with way better education systems. Hence the whole reason for this. Edit:// as example. Right now barely any swiss tech pros consider the U.S. as interesting destination. A lot of husstle for just minimal more pay.
- sverige 10y ago
  I would prefer to live in Switzerland over Silicon Valley too. And a generation ago I might have argued that the US education system was as good or better than Switzerland's, but I can't make that argument now. But it's still better than most places, and certainly good enough to provide qualified workers.
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  As a Swiss working abroad (in Berlin right now), it's not always about pay, two years ago I interviewed with a dozen of companies in the US because there are just so many more opportunities.
  - herbst 10y ago
    True that. But there are many options outside of the U.S. that are less complicated to reach. Like berlin, schengen makes it easy
    - hocuspocus 10y ago
      Yes indeed. And high salaries don't make up for everything. And these days companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon,... are increasing their engineering headcount in Europe (they must realize how cheap European engineers are with the strong USD :) Sadly in my case I was applying for jobs at companies that are relatively big but concentrate their developers in the silicon valley.
      - herbst 10y ago
        If i learned one thing in switzerlands IT is that it is easy to earn a lot but also relatively easy to earn more than enough while still having a lot of free time and beeing able to enjoy your job. I just throw in the money argument because almost always i say anything against SV someone comes with the money argument ;)
    - geodel 10y ago
      > But there are many options outside of the U.S. that are less complicated to reach.. Less complicated to reach if one is based in EU or is from USA, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland. So basically 85% world population is excluded from working there.
- geodel 10y ago
  It is not about education system. It is the dream of lots of third world natives to have a shot at 'dream life' in the first world. So any kind visa including asylum, religious freedom etc are prone to misuse and exploitation.
  - herbst 10y ago
    Yeah i cant disagree that this opens missuse but i also dont really see the issue. Except a few countries (like the U.S. recently) the world is pretty free already and shit did not go to crazy until a certain war made basically a complete country moving west at once. The general consent, except the phanatic freaks, was "we've done that, we deserve that"
toast0 10y ago
> In practice, it's ludicrous to think that the vast US university system cannot produce employees with whatever skills are in demand, so workers must be imported from countries that have much smaller education complexes. Many of the students in the US universities need a work visa to work for a US employer. I've worked with several people who finished a US degree, and apply for an H-1B visa for when the OPT visa runs out. As far as I can tell (I didn't read everyone's posting), their wages were comparable to mine, so it doesn't feel like a cost savings move to me.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  > ... their wages were comparable to mine, so it doesn't feel like a cost savings move to me. The logic is that employers would have to invest more in their employees (training, scholarships, salaries) to get the number and kinds of employees they want. To the extent that all salaries are equal, there is equal treatment. But increasing the supply of labor does help employers keep costs down at the expense of others (like almost-qualified U.S. workers who can't find employment).
akiselev 10y ago
> In practice, it's ludicrous to think that the vast US university system cannot produce employees with whatever skills are in demand, so workers must be imported from countries that have much smaller education complexes. No, it's ludicrous to think that a vast network of overpriced liberal arts colleges with chronic grade inflation can produce enough high quality engineers and scientists for the largest economy in the world, especially when the majority of its industrial capacity is in high value add manufacturing like aerospace and defense, clean(er) energy, pharmaceuticals, and other specialized fields. The rest of the world takes education a lot more seriously than we do and even though they may not be ranked highly by the US News World Report, the rest of the world's universities easily produce enough talent in their top 3% to leave the bottom 80-90% of US STEM graduates completely jobless, at any salary. Paying someone more after they graduate isn't going to make an 18 year old take their education seriously and the best universities in the world can't help a student body obsessed with everything but their education. It baffles me to no end that a few H1B immigrants from some podunk mining university in Siberia can bang out a complex PCB on their own faster than the vast majority of MIT/Caltech/Stanford EE graduates I know. Even though the latter have a year+ of internships each under their belt, they're useless without months or years of on the job training. When they do get that training, they're still years behind someone who had no choice but to work 40 hours a week while going to school in a poor country with few prospects. This isn't a hypothetical: I've met and worked with half a dozen different people in SoCal from the same Siberian mining university (because it was one of the few in the Soviet Union without institutional anti-Semitism) who came here shortly after graduating to fill long empty mid-to-senior level engineering positions. None were underpaid or exploited and many filled positions that their employers were actively trying to fill for years. I'm sure that higher salaries would push a few people in the direction of STEM fields, and a few of those would be capable of filling positions that an immigrant would take. If the salaries went high enough, I bet it might even obviate the need for skilled immigration entirely but Americans as a nation just don't want to pay the price, full stop. It would mean doubling the amount of money we give out in research grants, let alone every other corner of our economy. Just look at a variety of goods in Italy or France: the public is willing to pay more per article of clothing or furniture so there is a large industry of highly paid artisans with job security and high quality of life, willingly supported by consumers. Disclaimer: the above probably does not apply to a significant portion, if not majority, of annual H1Bs because they go to Tata, Infosys, and other sweatshops. Those are absolutely abuses of the Visa program meant only to depress wages. Edit to add some more concrete info: based on my parents' old high school/undergrad textbooks and my own experiences, the average American STEM college student spends the first few years of undergrad catching up to the level of a good but not great high school junior in the Soviet Union. Five year dual BS/MS degrees including institute R&D were the norm back then so how do you think the average 23 year old Soviet graduate stacked up to the best 20-anything American? The level of education doesn't even compare.
geodel 10y ago
Well the reality is that US needed to offer labor market access to countries where they wanted US products access. When times were good nobody bothered about H1 value etc but in tough economic times labor market access is one of the top concerns of politicians. The low level details of salary, duration, mountain of paperwork etc for visa were adjusted as per demand and supply.

by sverige 10y ago

herbst 10y ago

Dont get me wrong. But to my understanding these visas would be used by a lot of people from countries with way better education systems. Hence the whole reason for this. Edit:// as example. Right now barely any swiss tech pros consider the U.S. as interesting destination. A lot of husstle for just minimal more pay.

sverige 10y ago
I would prefer to live in Switzerland over Silicon Valley too. And a generation ago I might have argued that the US education system was as good or better than Switzerland's, but I can't make that argument now. But it's still better than most places, and certainly good enough to provide qualified workers.
hocuspocus 10y ago
As a Swiss working abroad (in Berlin right now), it's not always about pay, two years ago I interviewed with a dozen of companies in the US because there are just so many more opportunities.
- herbst 10y ago
  True that. But there are many options outside of the U.S. that are less complicated to reach. Like berlin, schengen makes it easy
  - hocuspocus 10y ago
    Yes indeed. And high salaries don't make up for everything. And these days companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon,... are increasing their engineering headcount in Europe (they must realize how cheap European engineers are with the strong USD :) Sadly in my case I was applying for jobs at companies that are relatively big but concentrate their developers in the silicon valley.
    - herbst 10y ago
      If i learned one thing in switzerlands IT is that it is easy to earn a lot but also relatively easy to earn more than enough while still having a lot of free time and beeing able to enjoy your job. I just throw in the money argument because almost always i say anything against SV someone comes with the money argument ;)
  - geodel 10y ago
    > But there are many options outside of the U.S. that are less complicated to reach.. Less complicated to reach if one is based in EU or is from USA, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland. So basically 85% world population is excluded from working there.
geodel 10y ago
It is not about education system. It is the dream of lots of third world natives to have a shot at 'dream life' in the first world. So any kind visa including asylum, religious freedom etc are prone to misuse and exploitation.
- herbst 10y ago
  Yeah i cant disagree that this opens missuse but i also dont really see the issue. Except a few countries (like the U.S. recently) the world is pretty free already and shit did not go to crazy until a certain war made basically a complete country moving west at once. The general consent, except the phanatic freaks, was "we've done that, we deserve that"

toast0 10y ago

> In practice, it's ludicrous to think that the vast US university system cannot produce employees with whatever skills are in demand, so workers must be imported from countries that have much smaller education complexes. Many of the students in the US universities need a work visa to work for a US employer. I've worked with several people who finished a US degree, and apply for an H-1B visa for when the OPT visa runs out. As far as I can tell (I didn't read everyone's posting), their wages were comparable to mine, so it doesn't feel like a cost savings move to me.

humanrebar 10y ago
> ... their wages were comparable to mine, so it doesn't feel like a cost savings move to me. The logic is that employers would have to invest more in their employees (training, scholarships, salaries) to get the number and kinds of employees they want. To the extent that all salaries are equal, there is equal treatment. But increasing the supply of labor does help employers keep costs down at the expense of others (like almost-qualified U.S. workers who can't find employment).

akiselev 10y ago

> In practice, it's ludicrous to think that the vast US university system cannot produce employees with whatever skills are in demand, so workers must be imported from countries that have much smaller education complexes. No, it's ludicrous to think that a vast network of overpriced liberal arts colleges with chronic grade inflation can produce enough high quality engineers and scientists for the largest economy in the world, especially when the majority of its industrial capacity is in high value add manufacturing like aerospace and defense, clean(er) energy, pharmaceuticals, and other specialized fields. The rest of the world takes education a lot more seriously than we do and even though they may not be ranked highly by the US News World Report, the rest of the world's universities easily produce enough talent in their top 3% to leave the bottom 80-90% of US STEM graduates completely jobless, at any salary. Paying someone more after they graduate isn't going to make an 18 year old take their education seriously and the best universities in the world can't help a student body obsessed with everything but their education. It baffles me to no end that a few H1B immigrants from some podunk mining university in Siberia can bang out a complex PCB on their own faster than the vast majority of MIT/Caltech/Stanford EE graduates I know. Even though the latter have a year+ of internships each under their belt, they're useless without months or years of on the job training. When they do get that training, they're still years behind someone who had no choice but to work 40 hours a week while going to school in a poor country with few prospects. This isn't a hypothetical: I've met and worked with half a dozen different people in SoCal from the same Siberian mining university (because it was one of the few in the Soviet Union without institutional anti-Semitism) who came here shortly after graduating to fill long empty mid-to-senior level engineering positions. None were underpaid or exploited and many filled positions that their employers were actively trying to fill for years. I'm sure that higher salaries would push a few people in the direction of STEM fields, and a few of those would be capable of filling positions that an immigrant would take. If the salaries went high enough, I bet it might even obviate the need for skilled immigration entirely but Americans as a nation just don't want to pay the price, full stop. It would mean doubling the amount of money we give out in research grants, let alone every other corner of our economy. Just look at a variety of goods in Italy or France: the public is willing to pay more per article of clothing or furniture so there is a large industry of highly paid artisans with job security and high quality of life, willingly supported by consumers. Disclaimer: the above probably does not apply to a significant portion, if not majority, of annual H1Bs because they go to Tata, Infosys, and other sweatshops. Those are absolutely abuses of the Visa program meant only to depress wages. Edit to add some more concrete info: based on my parents' old high school/undergrad textbooks and my own experiences, the average American STEM college student spends the first few years of undergrad catching up to the level of a good but not great high school junior in the Soviet Union. Five year dual BS/MS degrees including institute R&D were the norm back then so how do you think the average 23 year old Soviet graduate stacked up to the best 20-anything American? The level of education doesn't even compare.

geodel 10y ago

Well the reality is that US needed to offer labor market access to countries where they wanted US products access. When times were good nobody bothered about H1 value etc but in tough economic times labor market access is one of the top concerns of politicians. The low level details of salary, duration, mountain of paperwork etc for visa were adjusted as per demand and supply.