8 ms·

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 pay

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.)
    - pbh101 10y ago
      (I didn't read the article yet, but): There is a difference between proponents and critics describing the same activity in different terms and noting that different companies treat the system differently and that it is roughly bimodal: "Google's" use and "Infosys'" abuse. I interpreted the two quotes you pulled as the former.
      - jasode 10y ago
        >There is a difference between proponents and critics describing the same activity The 2 quotes I pulled for 2 different categories are not describing the same activity: "top talent to America" != "less expensive, temporary staff members" The "top talent innovative products" is intended to describe Google or Tesla hiring a rare PhD scientist from Germany to work on deep machine learning or automated driving algorithms. The "less expensive, temp staff" is meant to describe loophole abuses like Infosys.
      - strgrd 10y ago
        > (I didn't read the article yet, but) reddit.com is that way --->
    - projectramo 10y ago
      I have to agree with @ericseppanen here. It is true that the NYT article mentions the proponents and the critics, but they conflate the companies themselves. In other words, it sounds like the proponents and critics are talking about the same phenomenon. Farther along it becomes even clearer when they say suppressing wages is good for the economy but at what cost. "In other words, it’s true that cheaper labor helps employers increase profits and grow, and having more skilled workers in the United States contributes to economic innovation. But at the same time, individual American employees do face more salary pressure from newcomers who will work for less. And in some cases, they risk losing their jobs entirely, especially older employees who earn higher salaries." @ericseppanen's point is that the two groups are not the same. (A lot of the other critics in the HN comment section also seem to argue that the innovative tech companies are doing the same thing as the outsourcers.)
  - jasonlotito 10y ago
    Not the OP, but it was brought up several times, though it wasn't the focus of the article. I'd quote each area, but I'm on mobile, and considering the number of different areas I'd have to quote, it would be annoying. Suffice it to say, it's in there and your criticism is unwarranted.
- andresgottlieb 10y ago
  FYI: 'Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."' https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - strgrd 10y ago
    But he didn't read the article in full, and made an uninformed opinion that is now at the top of the comment section... Bad comments need to be put on blast. Save your rule book for something more inane.
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      "The article mentions that." would still be appropriate then. Rulebook still good.
      - simonebrunozzi 10y ago
        A better way, in this case, would be "It seems that you might have not read the article properly, as ... "
        Chris2048 10y ago
        Why? It's just closer to antagonism, which is what the guidelines seem to seek to prevent.
ericseppanen 10y ago
More pretty graphs here about the big outsourcing firms' H1B salary distributions: https://www.axios.com/h1-b-salaries-2228205505.html https://www.axios.com/h1-b-salaries-2228205505.html
- ropiku 10y ago
  Also those are cash salaries, tech companies also give generous share-based compensation. While share count is guaranteed (offer/contract) their $ value is not so they cannot be counted.
  - marxmarv 10y ago
    For most employees, that's not compensation, but speculation.
    - ropiku 10y ago
      I get your point but I was talking about public companies since they were mostly mentioned in the article for which shares are convertible to cash right away.
ebbv 10y ago
> while the Googles and Microsofts of the world support a program that allows them to hire top engineers from all over the globe. Yes, and exploit those workers with lower salary than they deserve because those workers only have a small sliver of the job market available to them that their US Citizen competitors do. The H-1B program is terrible for all employees and only benefits employers, which is why you see big corporations like Microsoft and Facebook pushing to remove caps on it. Not because they generous but because they would love to have more engineers who are underpaid and have a very hard time leaving the company for years until they can one day become citizens (and from what I understand the path to citizenship for an H-1B worker is not easy despite them being extremely productive and high contributing members of society.)
- refurb 10y ago
  The H-1B program is terrible for all employees and only benefits employers This is patently untrue when it comes to companies like Google or Microsoft. I came to the US on an H1-B. As I'm sure you can imagine, people talk about their salaries. I compared mine to my colleagues who were US citizens. We were all paid about the same. I'm pretty sure these companies would get busted if managers were informed by HR that "this person is going to get a smaller raise since they are on an H1-B".
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    I'm glad genuinely glad you came to the U.S. and found gainful employment. I have many friends, some very close, that likewise have come to the U.S. and the U.S. is better for it. That being said, even if the salaries are all the same, it doesn't mean that wages are not suppressed. If you import supply and demand stays consistent, prices drop. I think the burden of proof is on the people saying otherwise to prove that importing tens of thousands of engineers doesn't suppress wages. In other words, if large corporations couldn't import H1B workers, they'd have to do other things to get their work done, and those things would probably involve raising wages for especially skilled engineers. Or perhaps by investing in other productivity measures (better dev tools, better hardware, more administrative assistants, etc.).
thinkcontext 10y ago
I've been toying around with the idea that some sort of auction might be a good way to distinguish between efforts to find the best and efforts to undercut the local market. That seems borne out by the salary graph in the article you cited, outsourcing companies offering lower pay than the tech companies themselves.
koolba 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). That's an eloquent way of saying, "This is why we can't have nice things.".

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.)
  - pbh101 10y ago
    (I didn't read the article yet, but): There is a difference between proponents and critics describing the same activity in different terms and noting that different companies treat the system differently and that it is roughly bimodal: "Google's" use and "Infosys'" abuse. I interpreted the two quotes you pulled as the former.
    - jasode 10y ago
      >There is a difference between proponents and critics describing the same activity The 2 quotes I pulled for 2 different categories are not describing the same activity: "top talent to America" != "less expensive, temporary staff members" The "top talent innovative products" is intended to describe Google or Tesla hiring a rare PhD scientist from Germany to work on deep machine learning or automated driving algorithms. The "less expensive, temp staff" is meant to describe loophole abuses like Infosys.
    - strgrd 10y ago
      > (I didn't read the article yet, but) reddit.com is that way --->
  - projectramo 10y ago
    I have to agree with @ericseppanen here. It is true that the NYT article mentions the proponents and the critics, but they conflate the companies themselves. In other words, it sounds like the proponents and critics are talking about the same phenomenon. Farther along it becomes even clearer when they say suppressing wages is good for the economy but at what cost. "In other words, it’s true that cheaper labor helps employers increase profits and grow, and having more skilled workers in the United States contributes to economic innovation. But at the same time, individual American employees do face more salary pressure from newcomers who will work for less. And in some cases, they risk losing their jobs entirely, especially older employees who earn higher salaries." @ericseppanen's point is that the two groups are not the same. (A lot of the other critics in the HN comment section also seem to argue that the innovative tech companies are doing the same thing as the outsourcers.)
- jasonlotito 10y ago
  Not the OP, but it was brought up several times, though it wasn't the focus of the article. I'd quote each area, but I'm on mobile, and considering the number of different areas I'd have to quote, it would be annoying. Suffice it to say, it's in there and your criticism is unwarranted.
andresgottlieb 10y ago
FYI: 'Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."' https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- strgrd 10y ago
  But he didn't read the article in full, and made an uninformed opinion that is now at the top of the comment section... Bad comments need to be put on blast. Save your rule book for something more inane.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    "The article mentions that." would still be appropriate then. Rulebook still good.
    - simonebrunozzi 10y ago
      A better way, in this case, would be "It seems that you might have not read the article properly, as ... "
      - Chris2048 10y ago
        Why? It's just closer to antagonism, which is what the guidelines seem to seek to prevent.

ericseppanen 10y ago

More pretty graphs here about the big outsourcing firms' H1B salary distributions: https://www.axios.com/h1-b-salaries-2228205505.html https://www.axios.com/h1-b-salaries-2228205505.html

ropiku 10y ago
Also those are cash salaries, tech companies also give generous share-based compensation. While share count is guaranteed (offer/contract) their $ value is not so they cannot be counted.
- marxmarv 10y ago
  For most employees, that's not compensation, but speculation.
  - ropiku 10y ago
    I get your point but I was talking about public companies since they were mostly mentioned in the article for which shares are convertible to cash right away.

ebbv 10y ago

> while the Googles and Microsofts of the world support a program that allows them to hire top engineers from all over the globe. Yes, and exploit those workers with lower salary than they deserve because those workers only have a small sliver of the job market available to them that their US Citizen competitors do. The H-1B program is terrible for all employees and only benefits employers, which is why you see big corporations like Microsoft and Facebook pushing to remove caps on it. Not because they generous but because they would love to have more engineers who are underpaid and have a very hard time leaving the company for years until they can one day become citizens (and from what I understand the path to citizenship for an H-1B worker is not easy despite them being extremely productive and high contributing members of society.)

refurb 10y ago
The H-1B program is terrible for all employees and only benefits employers This is patently untrue when it comes to companies like Google or Microsoft. I came to the US on an H1-B. As I'm sure you can imagine, people talk about their salaries. I compared mine to my colleagues who were US citizens. We were all paid about the same. I'm pretty sure these companies would get busted if managers were informed by HR that "this person is going to get a smaller raise since they are on an H1-B".
- humanrebar 10y ago
  I'm glad genuinely glad you came to the U.S. and found gainful employment. I have many friends, some very close, that likewise have come to the U.S. and the U.S. is better for it. That being said, even if the salaries are all the same, it doesn't mean that wages are not suppressed. If you import supply and demand stays consistent, prices drop. I think the burden of proof is on the people saying otherwise to prove that importing tens of thousands of engineers doesn't suppress wages. In other words, if large corporations couldn't import H1B workers, they'd have to do other things to get their work done, and those things would probably involve raising wages for especially skilled engineers. Or perhaps by investing in other productivity measures (better dev tools, better hardware, more administrative assistants, etc.).

thinkcontext 10y ago

I've been toying around with the idea that some sort of auction might be a good way to distinguish between efforts to find the best and efforts to undercut the local market. That seems borne out by the salary graph in the article you cited, outsourcing companies offering lower pay than the tech companies themselves.

koolba 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). That's an eloquent way of saying, "This is why we can't have nice things.".