4 ms·

Everyone here complains, "I've said it before it's broken". Alright, that's easy to say, implement a better solution then? I can't think of any. How is merit g

by didibus 10y ago

Everyone here complains, "I've said it before it's broken". Alright, that's easy to say, implement a better solution then? I can't think of any. How is merit going to be measured? Prove me there can be a rule set that performs better. That's where I'd like the conversation to be at.

lovich 10y ago
If you put floors on the salary for H1Bs that are higher than the prevailing wage then the companies using H1Bs will self select the more skilled employees. Right now a H1B employee costs less than a local American so companies who are price sensitive go for the H1B's. If you flip the cost on that companies will only go after H1B's if they really have some skill that they cannot get locally
- didibus 10y ago
  But how do you normalize that? If you cap at 100k, you prevent almost all non Californian companies from hiring abroad. It's a bit like the minimum wage problem.
jmgao 10y ago
Just rank by salary and pick the top N? There's plenty of things to bikeshed over, like how to adjust for cost of living, but I don't see how you could argue that this could be any worse than literal random chance.
- didibus 10y ago
  You imply normalizing across role and geography is trivial, but it's not. Maybe you're smarter then me though, so please proceed to detail your rule set. Btw, this is the only scheme I think could be better, but I actually don't hear a lot of people bringing it up. And when I think more about it, I'm not sure it's possible to implement. Lotterie is in a way a solution to the normalization problem. Given two companies in different places, both who've interviewed a different candidate and believe they merit to get the job, and are both willing to pay a different amount for the candidate. You could say, instead of attempting to normalize and risking possibly high false positive, we will randomly distribute. That's a normalization scheme.
whack 10y ago
I agree. I can think of two proposals which are both superior to the current system. A) Get the rid of the H1B cap, and set the minimum income requirement to $100k/year. If you're smart enough and talented enough that someone is willing to pay you 6 figures, you would be an asset to this country and there will always be room for you here. B) Keep the H1B cap, and auction off the visas using annual salaries. If there are more applicants than visas, the people who get paid the most will get the visa. I won't pretend that either proposal is perfect, but it's sure better than the current broken system.
- didibus 10y ago
  I think for A, you'd have to still normalize and keep reviewing the threshold yearly. 100k is junior salary for SDE in SF for example. B has the normalization problem full blown. I'm thinking all we could do is cap outsourcing companies. If you don't plan on having the employee work on your own products, then you're limited to a smaller number of foreign hires a year.
  - whack 10y ago
    > "you'd have to still normalize and keep reviewing the threshold yearly. 100k is junior salary for SDE in SF for example." I agree about reviewing the threshold yearly, and indexing for inflation. Why normalize for region though? Why should companies in SF be penalized by the visa system just because they pay high salaries? I stand by my earlier assertion that anyone whom a company deems valuable enough to pay six figures, is valuable enough to be an asset to this nation.
    - didibus 10y ago
      > Why should companies in SF be penalized by the visa system just because they pay high salaries? Well 100k in SF is not equal to exceptional talent. So for 100k, you'd bring engineers who don't fit your definition of "deserving to be here". While 100k in say Nashville, well that's definitly going to be someone exceptional if a Nashville company is willing to spend it on them. So in SF, to infer that the candidate truly merits to be here, he needs to be expanssive to those companies, and 100k in SF is not.
kccqzy 10y ago
An easy solution is to make the probability of getting the H1B lottery proportional to the proposed salary. You would think that companies would be willing to pay more for better talent, so salary could be a useful measure of talent. Maybe then add some normalization with respect to the median salary for that particular industry and locality.
- didibus 10y ago
  You've got my favorite proposal so far. It would still allow the occasional oddball, but would bias towards companies who truly show desire to acquire the talent. I'm not convinced we can conceive a normalization scheme that wouldn't end up unwillingly benefiting certain companies and industries and states over others though.

by didibus 10y ago

lovich 10y ago

If you put floors on the salary for H1Bs that are higher than the prevailing wage then the companies using H1Bs will self select the more skilled employees. Right now a H1B employee costs less than a local American so companies who are price sensitive go for the H1B's. If you flip the cost on that companies will only go after H1B's if they really have some skill that they cannot get locally

didibus 10y ago
But how do you normalize that? If you cap at 100k, you prevent almost all non Californian companies from hiring abroad. It's a bit like the minimum wage problem.

jmgao 10y ago

Just rank by salary and pick the top N? There's plenty of things to bikeshed over, like how to adjust for cost of living, but I don't see how you could argue that this could be any worse than literal random chance.

didibus 10y ago
You imply normalizing across role and geography is trivial, but it's not. Maybe you're smarter then me though, so please proceed to detail your rule set. Btw, this is the only scheme I think could be better, but I actually don't hear a lot of people bringing it up. And when I think more about it, I'm not sure it's possible to implement. Lotterie is in a way a solution to the normalization problem. Given two companies in different places, both who've interviewed a different candidate and believe they merit to get the job, and are both willing to pay a different amount for the candidate. You could say, instead of attempting to normalize and risking possibly high false positive, we will randomly distribute. That's a normalization scheme.

whack 10y ago

I agree. I can think of two proposals which are both superior to the current system. A) Get the rid of the H1B cap, and set the minimum income requirement to $100k/year. If you're smart enough and talented enough that someone is willing to pay you 6 figures, you would be an asset to this country and there will always be room for you here. B) Keep the H1B cap, and auction off the visas using annual salaries. If there are more applicants than visas, the people who get paid the most will get the visa. I won't pretend that either proposal is perfect, but it's sure better than the current broken system.

didibus 10y ago
I think for A, you'd have to still normalize and keep reviewing the threshold yearly. 100k is junior salary for SDE in SF for example. B has the normalization problem full blown. I'm thinking all we could do is cap outsourcing companies. If you don't plan on having the employee work on your own products, then you're limited to a smaller number of foreign hires a year.
- whack 10y ago
  > "you'd have to still normalize and keep reviewing the threshold yearly. 100k is junior salary for SDE in SF for example." I agree about reviewing the threshold yearly, and indexing for inflation. Why normalize for region though? Why should companies in SF be penalized by the visa system just because they pay high salaries? I stand by my earlier assertion that anyone whom a company deems valuable enough to pay six figures, is valuable enough to be an asset to this nation.
  - didibus 10y ago
    > Why should companies in SF be penalized by the visa system just because they pay high salaries? Well 100k in SF is not equal to exceptional talent. So for 100k, you'd bring engineers who don't fit your definition of "deserving to be here". While 100k in say Nashville, well that's definitly going to be someone exceptional if a Nashville company is willing to spend it on them. So in SF, to infer that the candidate truly merits to be here, he needs to be expanssive to those companies, and 100k in SF is not.

kccqzy 10y ago

An easy solution is to make the probability of getting the H1B lottery proportional to the proposed salary. You would think that companies would be willing to pay more for better talent, so salary could be a useful measure of talent. Maybe then add some normalization with respect to the median salary for that particular industry and locality.

didibus 10y ago
You've got my favorite proposal so far. It would still allow the occasional oddball, but would bias towards companies who truly show desire to acquire the talent. I'm not convinced we can conceive a normalization scheme that wouldn't end up unwillingly benefiting certain companies and industries and states over others though.