6 ms·
I wish every one of these stories would talk about that there are at least a couple of different kinds of h1b's. Facebook mostly or only has employees doing rea
by NotSammyHagar 10y ago
I wish every one of these stories would talk about that there are at least a couple of different kinds of h1b's. Facebook mostly or only has employees doing real, original work. But companies like Tata just are hiring for basic, mostly non-creative IT work. The second category (I think) is much more likely to lead to displacement of native workers. It's at least much more questionable. But h1b's at Microsoft or Google of Facebook are doing real creative work. We need to somehow change H1B to account for this. You can see it reflected in the data, where the average pay of the worker indicates whether is the 'creative category where we would like to hire all we can', or whether its in the more it-like programmer.
Maybe I should add a disclaimer that although I haven't worked at facebook, I worked at some of the other large comps similar to facebook and have seen this difference.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoThere is only one kind of H1B work: that which requires special skills that are hard to find in the domestic labor force. Any other use is a violation of the visa requirements and it is disgusting that the State department ignores it's own rules in issuing these visas for work that clearly isn't of such a rarefied nature that it requires special guest workers.
- NotSammyHagar 10y agoThere are a lot of companies that do manage to hire people in the non-expert category though, and that is what screws up the situation.
- FireBeyond 10y agoThere are lots of companies who do. But that's ignoring the elephant in the room, the "Big 3" Indian consulting firms who somehow manage to snag nearly 40% of the entire nation's allocation of visas.
- patrickg_zill 10y agoIf you think about it, it is a sophisticated form of rent-seeking - the Big 3 get the visas, so they are able to supply the workers, so they have to be the ones to get paid.
- pmorici 10y agoMaybe they consider being able to work for substantially below market wages a "special skill". I can do a lot of things across both hardware and software but the one thing I'm really bad at is working on someone else's problem for peanuts.
- jmspring 10y agoI worked at a startup where the company didn't hire the low skill H1Bs, but the engineering manager was hell bent on outsourcing things. It started logically with "support" type areas that should have been easy boiler plate. The firm failed at that (blew back on engineering, mostly me, to fix it). Despite the failures, he tried to push for more responsibility (core features) for the same company. I said no with facts in a meeting, he looked at the CTO, and despite said engineering manager being my boss, the CTO sided with me. Outsourcing can be done well strategically. A firm from the same country (but with specific skills, not a generalist shop) was able to deliver optimized assembly code for me over a holiday break. I saw it as a present. I think there are companies that do try to do the right thing around the visa situation. That said, there are individuals at small and large companies that try and push an agenda to either hire H1Bs or outsource ... every time I've encountered such individuals, it felt like they were getting their beaks wetted in the process.
- Buge 10y agoThe obvious way to make H1B work for the high end software engineers is to approve applicants based on highest paid applicant first, instead of via a random lottery. It's fairly clear to me that this would be beneficial for the long term success of the United States. It's unclear to me what it would do to short term salaries for highly paid software engineers. Would it lower their salaries due to an increase in supply of very talented software engineers, or would it raise their salaries as companies get into bidding wars over H1B visas.
- NotSammyHagar 10y agoUsing high pay as a decision maker on who gets in makes sense, and it incentivizes things in the right direction. But you don't get a list of everyone all at once applying for a single year, do you? Maybe we need to have a monthly "auction" where the high pay gets through first. Who could argue with that?
- mcrae 10y agoActually you do get them all at once I believe! The current mechanism is a lottery which is executed in early April. It could be replaced with an auction as you propose.
- outworlder 10y agoOnly if you group by occupation. Unless translators are paid the same as Bay Area software engineer.
- fredophile 10y agoYou don't need to group by occupation. If there is a shortage of translators then their wages should go up. As their wages increase more people will see translation as a desirable career. If wages increase enough for them to be competitive for H1B positions that would be an indication that there really is a shortage of local translators.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- threeseed 10y agoMany of the type of IT people Tata et al are hiring are in roles in which native workers either (a) don't want to do or (b) aren't trained to do. Specifically BAU type roles where there is no creativity, diversity, career prospects e.g. Oracle/Teradata DBAs, Legacy J2EE Systems, Basic System Administration etc. And sure they could hire younger, junior developers but actually they aren't suited because companies don't want fresh ideas or innovation or a new technology. They just want someone to keep the lights on. I've hired dozens of people in these roles and it's hard to argue against Tata etc. From the companies perspective it works well.
- pyrophane 10y agoYou can get people to literally haul garbage for a living if you give them a good salary, health care, and decent job security. I don't buy the whole "native workers don't want to do this" argument. Employers don't want to pay enough to entice native workers.
- ashwinaj 10y agohttp://latinosreadytovote.com/wages-rise-california-farms-americans-still-dont-want-job/ http://latinosreadytovote.com/wages-rise-california-farms-am... > Some farmers are even giving laborers benefits normally reserved for white-collar professionals, like 401(k) plans, health insurance, subsidized housing and profit-sharing bonuses. Full-timers at Silverado Farming, for example, get most of those sweeteners, plus 10 paid vacation days, eight paid holidays, and can earn their hourly rate to take English classe Care to explain?
- pyrophane 10y agoI read the article you posted. The argument that "Americans don't want these jobs even when you up the wage and add benefits" is only supported by a couple of anecdotes from growers who have an interest in maintaining the supply of foreign laborers, and I don't think that is sufficient to make the point. I would maintain that there is a wage at which a sufficient number of Americans would be willing to do farm labor. Whether that would raise the price of crops beyond what consumers are willing to pay for them is another question entirely. As an aside, I'm not opposed to foreign workers in the US, but I do find the argument that they are needed because "there aren't any Americans who want to do this" to be a bit disingenuous.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- reaperducer 10y agoI can't speak to Facebook, but all the H1B's I knew from Microsoft were drones at best. U of W churned out hundreds of people each year who would have loved to have those jobs.
- balls187 10y agoCollege grads churned out by UW seem just as drone-like as H1B's.
- virmundi 10y agoThat's the point. The H1B program should bring the best and brightest to the US due to a lack of skills and or availability in the high skilled areas. Drone work is by definition not high skilled areas. Therefore the H1B folk should not be here. Those jobs would then go to the drone college kids, or to some outsourcing firm. That is the intent of the law.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ganfortran 10y ago
- jordache 10y agocreative threshold is subjective though. How do you draw the line? What is an easy litmus test that the bureaucrats can apply