13 ms·

Arguing with strangers on the Internet is not something I enjoy, so I'll just point out some details of this that I either didn't cover or that were apparently

by sulam 10y ago

Arguing with strangers on the Internet is not something I enjoy, so I'll just point out some details of this that I either didn't cover or that were apparently overlooked. 1) We actually did match Netflix's offer in total comp, by offering Bob a mix of base salary and stock that exceeded the total value of their Netflix offer significantly. The difference is that Netflix's offer was all cash. It is very hard to compare a Netflix offer to a pre-IPO Twitter offer except in hindsight. Bob, a market participant, ended up picking the better offer. 2) I truly question whether H1-B's are lowering the fair market value at the tech companies I've worked at, have had offers from, or have had to counter offers from. Via these three means I've gotten a good handle on what people pay at the top tech companies in SV, and as far as I have been able to determine the supply of H1-Bs who can get through an interview process is so greatly outstripped by the demand for such engineers, there is effectively no impact to salaries. H1-Bs are a very small proportion of SV hiring, and are probably even smaller outside SV, _except_ for the companies that I called out in my initial post on this thread who I agree are abusing the system. Engineers working at those firms aren't showing up in my recruiting pipeline, much less getting offers, so they have zero impact on the market for top engineering talent. If you're trying to say that the addition of even a single qualified candidate into the hiring pool lowers what we pay a developer, you don't understand how engineering hiring works at tech companies.

lowbloodsugar 10y ago
I applaud you for paying H1B the same as your other employees. I was an H1B myself in SV. My experience, and those of my peers, differs greatly from your experience. To answer some of your points here: > It is very hard to compare a Netflix offer to a pre-IPO Twitter offer except in hindsight. No, its not hard. There's overwhelming evidence that the expected future value of a pre-IPO start-up is zero. Its a lottery. Might as well contract "we'll buy you a lottery ticket every week you are an employee". >If you're trying to say that the addition of even a single qualified candidate Is that what I said tho? What about 80,000 candidates? What about 30,000 candidates that are hired by contracting organizations with the express purpose of moving US jobs offshore? Isn't that the antithesis of H1B visas? Isn't that perjury?
- sulam 10y ago
  Your last example is an instance of the other class of employer I mentioned. They are clearly abusing the system. I would love for the H1-B to be fixed so that they aren't able to take advantage, although I think the law of unintended consequences may well kick in. The proximate thing that would do for the H1-Bs I've known is make it so that they aren't sweating bullets to see if they got lucky in the lottery. Re: future value being zero, um, no. You can argue that the expected value is low, but it's certainly not zero. I personally am financially independent because of Twitter's IPO, and I've been through another IPO since which has made me money. People at Google did well in their IPO, Facebook people also did well. Some IPOs people didn't do so well (Box is the most well-known recent example, but there are many where people ended up with 10's or maybe 100's of thousands of dollars when they were hoping for millions -- still not zero tho). And speaking of lotteries -- lottery tickets generally have lower expected value, but even in this example there are exceptions. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million... Then there are the startups where you don't go public, but get acquired by a public company. Those often net the staff something meaningful tied to hitting a post-acquisition milestone. They may not be directly tied to stock (common shareholders get wiped out), but it is correlated. So even in some significant percentage of the failure cases you aren't wasting time negotiating for more stock. At any rate, if you truly believe stock is worth nothing and should be completely discounted, fine. You're not Bob. Bob believed differently, behaved according to his belief, and most importantly Bob did better financially because of his decision -- and in a relatively short time frame.
  - lowbloodsugar 10y ago
    And here's Lloyd [0]. Lloyd won $5m. Does Lloyd's experience inform us about buying lottery tickets any more or less than Bob's? Is Bob representative? Hey, look, if you can get a full salary, benefits and stock, then you're not losing anything. But anyone who sacrifices salary in the expectation that the stock options are going to be bigger is just playing the lottery. [0] http://www.calottery.com/media/press-releases/press-release?Item={1987F4CC-291F-4A70-8C00-01E441A12CE5} http://www.calottery.com/media/press-releases/press-release?...

by sulam 10y ago

lowbloodsugar 10y ago

I applaud you for paying H1B the same as your other employees. I was an H1B myself in SV. My experience, and those of my peers, differs greatly from your experience. To answer some of your points here: > It is very hard to compare a Netflix offer to a pre-IPO Twitter offer except in hindsight. No, its not hard. There's overwhelming evidence that the expected future value of a pre-IPO start-up is zero. Its a lottery. Might as well contract "we'll buy you a lottery ticket every week you are an employee". >If you're trying to say that the addition of even a single qualified candidate Is that what I said tho? What about 80,000 candidates? What about 30,000 candidates that are hired by contracting organizations with the express purpose of moving US jobs offshore? Isn't that the antithesis of H1B visas? Isn't that perjury?

sulam 10y ago
Your last example is an instance of the other class of employer I mentioned. They are clearly abusing the system. I would love for the H1-B to be fixed so that they aren't able to take advantage, although I think the law of unintended consequences may well kick in. The proximate thing that would do for the H1-Bs I've known is make it so that they aren't sweating bullets to see if they got lucky in the lottery. Re: future value being zero, um, no. You can argue that the expected value is low, but it's certainly not zero. I personally am financially independent because of Twitter's IPO, and I've been through another IPO since which has made me money. People at Google did well in their IPO, Facebook people also did well. Some IPOs people didn't do so well (Box is the most well-known recent example, but there are many where people ended up with 10's or maybe 100's of thousands of dollars when they were hoping for millions -- still not zero tho). And speaking of lotteries -- lottery tickets generally have lower expected value, but even in this example there are exceptions. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million-to-hedge-bets-in-lottery.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/25/us/group-invests-5-million... Then there are the startups where you don't go public, but get acquired by a public company. Those often net the staff something meaningful tied to hitting a post-acquisition milestone. They may not be directly tied to stock (common shareholders get wiped out), but it is correlated. So even in some significant percentage of the failure cases you aren't wasting time negotiating for more stock. At any rate, if you truly believe stock is worth nothing and should be completely discounted, fine. You're not Bob. Bob believed differently, behaved according to his belief, and most importantly Bob did better financially because of his decision -- and in a relatively short time frame.
- lowbloodsugar 10y ago
  And here's Lloyd [0]. Lloyd won $5m. Does Lloyd's experience inform us about buying lottery tickets any more or less than Bob's? Is Bob representative? Hey, look, if you can get a full salary, benefits and stock, then you're not losing anything. But anyone who sacrifices salary in the expectation that the stock options are going to be bigger is just playing the lottery. [0] http://www.calottery.com/media/press-releases/press-release?Item={1987F4CC-291F-4A70-8C00-01E441A12CE5} http://www.calottery.com/media/press-releases/press-release?...