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I always find the concept of technology worker immigration to be a rather strange scenario. How the hell can the US be so dependent upon immigrants for work wh

I always find the concept of technology worker immigration to be a rather strange scenario. How the hell can the US be so dependent upon immigrants for work when there are so many Americans wanting to work for big technology companies? This begs the question: Are Americans workers too incompetent at technology development? If so what is the cause of that problem?

branchless 9y ago
It's solely to surpress wages.
- austincheney 9y ago
  I can promise you I am not experience anything remotely close to wage suppression or competition for employment. Perhaps this could be true for junior positions, but at the other end there are lots of opportunities available. That being said if you honestly believe there is wage suppression then I recommend programming outside of office hours and getting as much practice as possible so that you can rise to a senior position where such problems are absent.
  - jasonlotito 9y ago
    Tech companies like Google, Apple, etc. have a well known history in working together to suppress wages. You might be making a lot, but that doesn't mean you couldn't be making more.
    - austincheney 9y ago
      That was just in the valley. I work for a company that makes more money than Google (Alphabet) and fortunately don't live anywhere near the valley. That also has nothing to do with immigration.
      - jasonlotito 9y ago
        It impacted salaries for everyone in the industry. I don't live in the valley, and it impacted me. I didn't say it had anything to do with immigration. But it does have to do with suppressing wages, which is what they comment you were replying to was suggesting as a motive. My point being that tech companies have a history of this.
      - walshemj 9y ago
        If the high payers collude it has a knock on effect on the entire industry - its basic stats.
        gowld 9y ago
        When some companies offered reduced wages, Facebook sucked up all the price-sensitive top talent for a few years, until companies got wise.
        walshemj 9y ago
        But not as high if there was no collusion
jorblumesea 9y ago
Incompetent? No. Willing to work at the salary that employers want to ideally pay? No. American software engineers with American degrees are expensive. Employers see engineering as a cost sink and want to do everything possible to reduce budgetary pressures. While some visa workers are incredibly talented (see: most of google's visa hires) most are just cheaper. Look at Cognizant, Tata, Infosys etc. Just look at who is getting all of the visas from the program and it's clear what it's actually being used for. Importing cheap overseas labor and/or outsourcing, usually in tandem.
- adamrezich 9y ago
  Interesting that this and other comments like it are being downvoted, I see nothing untrue or offensive about what you've written.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    It makes no sense. What is happening to people who are being replaced by cheaper immigrants. They either 1. Left tech due to low salaries from immgration. I don't think this is true because tech still pays higher than almost any other field. 2. Working in tech for low(er) salary, which contradicts the orignal claim that only reason for importing tech workers is for lowering salaries.
    - NotSammyHagar 9y ago
      I am conflicted about talking about this, because I'm a us citizen software engineer and benefit from the shortage. I love to read the perspective of someone on the other side. I think there are these different kinds of tech workers. For lack of a better term lets call them IT staff and software engineers. IT staff builds some new systems but mostly puts pieces together to solve problems. This kind of job is easier to replace with moderately skilled foreign tech workers, maybe even working remotely, there's more supply here for this kind of worker. Then there is the harder to find software engineers who can work on new software from scratch, perhaps with more experience in this kind of worker. There's an incredible demand for this kind of person, that's unquenchable at least today (perhaps it used to be infinite for it staff but no longer). We really do need more of the second category of workers. Certainly a little smaller supply of workers means higher salaries, but when you need double the supply, you can restrain growth of the industry.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
America has plenty of tech workers, but needs even more of them because high tech has become a major pillar of the economy. So the US doesn't need to be dependent on immigrants as long as it is willing to pare back its high tech industry by a factor of 2 or so.
s2g 9y ago
Brining in workers like this helps the tech industry by both increasing the talent pool and draining the talent in other countries.
klipt 9y ago
Think of it this way - does a global company like Apple or Google want to hire just from the best in the US, or the best in the world? If they hire from the best in the world, is it better for America if those hires are in the US paying US taxes, or overseas paying taxes to some other country?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  Should the US government cater only to multinational corporations? Even when doing so leads to a declining quality of life for its citizens?
  - landryraccoon 9y ago
    Every American's quality of life will go down when the next generation of tech companies that dominate the world economy come out of China and not the US because they can attract better people.
    - HillaryBriss 9y ago
      Can you explain that more? Does quality of life go down in every country which doesn't "attract better people?" Did quality of life go up in China because it "attracted better people" or were there other reasons? One of the things your comment made me think about is the US citizens I know who have relocated to other "less developed" countries in order to make their quality of life go _up_. Does the quality of life for people in Japan go down because Google is headquartered in the US? As a US resident, would my quality of life go down if Microsoft were headquartered in India, Facebook in Singapore, Google in Denmark, and Apple in Japan? It all seems rather complicated and murky.
    - gowld 9y ago
      Chinese companies may attract better people, but people who live outside of China don't find China attractive.
e9 9y ago
Disclaimer: I've been on H1B for 8 years and transferred it many times to big and small companies. My observations: 1. USA has plenty of talent and they don't need generic engineers from other countries. 2. H1B workers are not underpaid 3. Only reason tech companies praising H1B is because their hiring process is broken. They select arbitrary interview questions and determine competency based on them. This is total bs and they end up passing on super intelligent US citizens then make bs claim that there are not enough tech talent in the USA. 4. USA does need specialists but they would come on O-1 visa anyways so H1B is not in picture here.
raverbashing 9y ago
They are not incompetent, but if you're looking for the top performers (not saying it's the case with most H1Bs) you shouldn't restrict yourself to only Americans
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dhanvantharim1 9y ago
I live in Canada but I am sure the hiring situation is not that different in USA,we had a job posting for Software devs and QA for almost 7 months in my previous work place, at one point we even told a candidate what topics we want them to study and be ready to talk but nah... this candidate came with zero preparation and it was after 7 months we found some one we liked (in terms of knowledge and fit). Just because a lot of people are waiting for jobs doesn't mean companies will hire them.
tanilama 9y ago
I see this as a failure of the US's public education system, and a twisted reward system. The education seems focus heavily on making students happy/comfortable with themselves, and congratulate them on ever tiny achievements. Thus hard stuff like STEM is now avoided, because not good at them is definitely not the problem of the students, but the subjects themselves. Also the culture seems to discriminate against people who do have an interests in those topics, and punish them by isolation. This deceptive system isn't really doing a good job that prepares students with self-confidence. Instead it cultivates an unique entitlement to blame the system for any personal issues. Which is the exact opposite of east asian system. I think education needs to be repurposed as means to obtain knowledge through learning and a lot of practices. And as a selective system, the competitiveness of education shouldn't be avoided, where some people will achieve higher and access better resources and there is nothing wrong with it. US's universities still have much of that perspective of education intact, but the high school education and below is just bad, and leave a lot of people unprepared.
- geebee 9y ago
  As an alternative viewpoint, the RAND institute (a historically very pro-immigration organization) concluded that the American aversion to graduate degrees in STEM fields is rational and market driven[1]. In other words, STEM graduate degrees are not competitive with professional and other degree paths available to academically talented people in the US who have choice. Americans, by this theory, aren't putting the effort into this difficult field because other grad degrees offer shorter completion times, lower attrition rates, higher pay, and better career stability. Part of the purpose of the H1b is to create a pool of workers who don't have that freedom of choice, whose right to live and work in the US is controlled by tech corporations. This is why I, along with a lot of others who would describe themselves as pro-immigration, don't support the H1B program. We're more than ok with talented people coming into the US, but see no reason why we should specifically use our immigration system to increase the number or STEM graduates above. Let people make their decisions according to their interests and market signals. If that means they don't become software developers in Silicon Valley in the numbers tech CEOs think they should, that's the market's answer. [1]https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html
mFixman 9y ago
H1-B employees tend to come from the best universities from all over the world. There are plenty of MIT and Stanford grads working at these companies, but the US has a large amount of graduates who decided to study STEM in worse universities with the promise of Ivy League salaries but without the skills. The vast majority of foreign applicants to H1-B jobs get rejected, and stay in their home countries.

branchless 9y ago

It's solely to surpress wages.

austincheney 9y ago
I can promise you I am not experience anything remotely close to wage suppression or competition for employment. Perhaps this could be true for junior positions, but at the other end there are lots of opportunities available. That being said if you honestly believe there is wage suppression then I recommend programming outside of office hours and getting as much practice as possible so that you can rise to a senior position where such problems are absent.
- jasonlotito 9y ago
  Tech companies like Google, Apple, etc. have a well known history in working together to suppress wages. You might be making a lot, but that doesn't mean you couldn't be making more.
  - austincheney 9y ago
    That was just in the valley. I work for a company that makes more money than Google (Alphabet) and fortunately don't live anywhere near the valley. That also has nothing to do with immigration.
    - jasonlotito 9y ago
      It impacted salaries for everyone in the industry. I don't live in the valley, and it impacted me. I didn't say it had anything to do with immigration. But it does have to do with suppressing wages, which is what they comment you were replying to was suggesting as a motive. My point being that tech companies have a history of this.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      If the high payers collude it has a knock on effect on the entire industry - its basic stats.
      - gowld 9y ago
        When some companies offered reduced wages, Facebook sucked up all the price-sensitive top talent for a few years, until companies got wise.
        walshemj 9y ago
        But not as high if there was no collusion

jorblumesea 9y ago

Incompetent? No. Willing to work at the salary that employers want to ideally pay? No. American software engineers with American degrees are expensive. Employers see engineering as a cost sink and want to do everything possible to reduce budgetary pressures. While some visa workers are incredibly talented (see: most of google's visa hires) most are just cheaper. Look at Cognizant, Tata, Infosys etc. Just look at who is getting all of the visas from the program and it's clear what it's actually being used for. Importing cheap overseas labor and/or outsourcing, usually in tandem.

adamrezich 9y ago
Interesting that this and other comments like it are being downvoted, I see nothing untrue or offensive about what you've written.
- dominotw 9y ago
  It makes no sense. What is happening to people who are being replaced by cheaper immigrants. They either 1. Left tech due to low salaries from immgration. I don't think this is true because tech still pays higher than almost any other field. 2. Working in tech for low(er) salary, which contradicts the orignal claim that only reason for importing tech workers is for lowering salaries.
  - NotSammyHagar 9y ago
    I am conflicted about talking about this, because I'm a us citizen software engineer and benefit from the shortage. I love to read the perspective of someone on the other side. I think there are these different kinds of tech workers. For lack of a better term lets call them IT staff and software engineers. IT staff builds some new systems but mostly puts pieces together to solve problems. This kind of job is easier to replace with moderately skilled foreign tech workers, maybe even working remotely, there's more supply here for this kind of worker. Then there is the harder to find software engineers who can work on new software from scratch, perhaps with more experience in this kind of worker. There's an incredible demand for this kind of person, that's unquenchable at least today (perhaps it used to be infinite for it staff but no longer). We really do need more of the second category of workers. Certainly a little smaller supply of workers means higher salaries, but when you need double the supply, you can restrain growth of the industry.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

America has plenty of tech workers, but needs even more of them because high tech has become a major pillar of the economy. So the US doesn't need to be dependent on immigrants as long as it is willing to pare back its high tech industry by a factor of 2 or so.

s2g 9y ago

Brining in workers like this helps the tech industry by both increasing the talent pool and draining the talent in other countries.

klipt 9y ago

Think of it this way - does a global company like Apple or Google want to hire just from the best in the US, or the best in the world? If they hire from the best in the world, is it better for America if those hires are in the US paying US taxes, or overseas paying taxes to some other country?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
Should the US government cater only to multinational corporations? Even when doing so leads to a declining quality of life for its citizens?
- landryraccoon 9y ago
  Every American's quality of life will go down when the next generation of tech companies that dominate the world economy come out of China and not the US because they can attract better people.
  - HillaryBriss 9y ago
    Can you explain that more? Does quality of life go down in every country which doesn't "attract better people?" Did quality of life go up in China because it "attracted better people" or were there other reasons? One of the things your comment made me think about is the US citizens I know who have relocated to other "less developed" countries in order to make their quality of life go _up_. Does the quality of life for people in Japan go down because Google is headquartered in the US? As a US resident, would my quality of life go down if Microsoft were headquartered in India, Facebook in Singapore, Google in Denmark, and Apple in Japan? It all seems rather complicated and murky.
  - gowld 9y ago
    Chinese companies may attract better people, but people who live outside of China don't find China attractive.

e9 9y ago

Disclaimer: I've been on H1B for 8 years and transferred it many times to big and small companies. My observations: 1. USA has plenty of talent and they don't need generic engineers from other countries. 2. H1B workers are not underpaid 3. Only reason tech companies praising H1B is because their hiring process is broken. They select arbitrary interview questions and determine competency based on them. This is total bs and they end up passing on super intelligent US citizens then make bs claim that there are not enough tech talent in the USA. 4. USA does need specialists but they would come on O-1 visa anyways so H1B is not in picture here.

raverbashing 9y ago

They are not incompetent, but if you're looking for the top performers (not saying it's the case with most H1Bs) you shouldn't restrict yourself to only Americans

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dhanvantharim1 9y ago

I live in Canada but I am sure the hiring situation is not that different in USA,we had a job posting for Software devs and QA for almost 7 months in my previous work place, at one point we even told a candidate what topics we want them to study and be ready to talk but nah... this candidate came with zero preparation and it was after 7 months we found some one we liked (in terms of knowledge and fit). Just because a lot of people are waiting for jobs doesn't mean companies will hire them.

tanilama 9y ago

I see this as a failure of the US's public education system, and a twisted reward system. The education seems focus heavily on making students happy/comfortable with themselves, and congratulate them on ever tiny achievements. Thus hard stuff like STEM is now avoided, because not good at them is definitely not the problem of the students, but the subjects themselves. Also the culture seems to discriminate against people who do have an interests in those topics, and punish them by isolation. This deceptive system isn't really doing a good job that prepares students with self-confidence. Instead it cultivates an unique entitlement to blame the system for any personal issues. Which is the exact opposite of east asian system. I think education needs to be repurposed as means to obtain knowledge through learning and a lot of practices. And as a selective system, the competitiveness of education shouldn't be avoided, where some people will achieve higher and access better resources and there is nothing wrong with it. US's universities still have much of that perspective of education intact, but the high school education and below is just bad, and leave a lot of people unprepared.

geebee 9y ago
As an alternative viewpoint, the RAND institute (a historically very pro-immigration organization) concluded that the American aversion to graduate degrees in STEM fields is rational and market driven[1]. In other words, STEM graduate degrees are not competitive with professional and other degree paths available to academically talented people in the US who have choice. Americans, by this theory, aren't putting the effort into this difficult field because other grad degrees offer shorter completion times, lower attrition rates, higher pay, and better career stability. Part of the purpose of the H1b is to create a pool of workers who don't have that freedom of choice, whose right to live and work in the US is controlled by tech corporations. This is why I, along with a lot of others who would describe themselves as pro-immigration, don't support the H1B program. We're more than ok with talented people coming into the US, but see no reason why we should specifically use our immigration system to increase the number or STEM graduates above. Let people make their decisions according to their interests and market signals. If that means they don't become software developers in Silicon Valley in the numbers tech CEOs think they should, that's the market's answer. [1]https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html

mFixman 9y ago

H1-B employees tend to come from the best universities from all over the world. There are plenty of MIT and Stanford grads working at these companies, but the US has a large amount of graduates who decided to study STEM in worse universities with the promise of Ivy League salaries but without the skills. The vast majority of foreign applicants to H1-B jobs get rejected, and stay in their home countries.