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No matter how you frame the issue, call it an abuse, or try to solve it, I don't think anything will change other than some minor adjustments. Jobs are not goin
by techk 10y ago
No matter how you frame the issue, call it an abuse, or try to solve it, I don't think anything will change other than some minor adjustments. Jobs are not going to magically appear or wages rise.
India/China has a huge supply of engineers across the board (good, bad, senior, junior etc.,). And US companies always want to maximize their profits. So increasing the bar on H-1B visas will increase the quality of H-1B's making their way to US.(very competent, hard working, willing to work for lower wages in the initial years).
This is a huge benefit for technology companies who can directly recruit from these countries for US offices, which they were not doing before due to lottery uncertainties, and instead had to rely on L-1 route. (recruit for local office, then transfer)
As for the other US jobs that were being filled by low skilled H-1B's, they will simply move offshore/nearshore/remote or replaced by AI in few years. This is a big win for consulting firms as their offshore profitability per employee is 3 times higher than onsite. Given a choice, they would want all their employees offshore, and the only reason they had to bring in some % of H-1B's was on the US client companies request, which they may do away with now.
Bottomline: Protectionism did not work for manufacturing, and will not work for Tech either.
- tangocom 10y agoProtectionism does work. Just ask the Lawyers and the Airline pilots. The reason software engineers are not paid as well now is because we don't have a Bar association or Labor union to keep out the low rate foreign competition.
- aub3bhat 10y agoLawyers and Pilots, hahhahahaha. I guess you are completely out of loop on unemployment among Lawyers. And Airline Pilots are even worse off. So no some magical unicorn union isn't going to fix massive oversupply of intelligent Chinese and Indians, if America tries another not directly named Chinese Exclusion Act (The White House just tried that with Muslim Ban), then maybe its Canada who will benefit.
- nova22033 10y ago>The reason software engineers are not paid as well The annual mean wage for Software engineers is higher than that for lawyers and pilots. https://www.bls.gov/oes/2015/may/oes_nat.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/2015/may/oes_nat.htm
- tangocom 10y agoPlease double-check the link you posted on mean salaries: Programmers $98K Lawyers $136K Airline pilots $136K (not including big retirement benefits) The link you posted proves the point I was making.
- techk 10y agoYou are partly right. Protectionism may work for jobs which need physical presence or security clearance. (lawyers, doctors, teachers, government/defense/aviation employees). But I am not so sure it will work for Tech jobs, which can be moved anywhere in the world. IaaS platforms make it even trivial.
- ericd 10y agoIt can help in the short term, but it can also kill the competitiveness of the companies they work for, leading to worse long term outcomes for everyone.
- ern 10y agoThis is a big win for consulting firms as their offshore profitability per employee is 3 times higher than onsite. Given a choice, they would want all their employees offshore, and the only reason they had to bring in some % of H-1B's was on the US client companies request, which they may do away with The clients probably have a reason for wanting consultants onsite. Many modern software development processes ("agile methodologies") require ongoing communication between a customer and developers. This is a lot harder remotely, especially when you factor in language differences and time zones. So a significant number would probably pay more to keep a local dev team.
- techk 10y agoI agree that clients prefer/want their consultants onsite and many of the companies won't compromise on this. But for the ones where cost is the primary factor, they would just keep the critical people onsite. (Onsite coordinator, architect guy etc.,). Regarding timezone, consulting firms already run several projects matching US time. The whole thing is so complex and has so many facets that there is no straight forward solution to it.