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> I've worked with a few H1-B holders in Silicon Valley and they're awesome. I see your point, but you can't group all H1-B holders in the same boat. The ones
by mbrumlow 8y ago
> I've worked with a few H1-B holders in Silicon Valley and they're awesome.
I see your point, but you can't group all H1-B holders in the same boat. The ones you worked were awesome, but I am sure many have worked with ones that were not awesome. I will note, I have worked with a few awesome H1-B holders too, but I won't fall for ALL being the same.
> If you are, like me, a software engineer, you should cheer every immigrant. They aren't competitors, they are complements and create more jobs.
It's hard for me to read this without thinking you are just virtue signalling. This is because across the board you can hear about skilled US engineers not getting the job, but yet find the companies that opted not to hire a US engineer has a ton of H1-B visas. You can't have a tech shortage, and at the same time have skilled workers in the same country struggling to get a good paying job in tech. This is also coupled with huge swaths of tech jobs being shipped overseas to the same places we are getting flooded with H1-B holders.
You could say -- well maybe the H1-B holders were more skilled? Maybe... But even if they were it is still a disservice to the US employees as they will not be given the opportunity to improve and hone their skills.
I also feel that people overlook the extra value a company has for hiring a H1-B over a citizen, even if they have the same skill and are paid the same. They get stickiness. There is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of stress moving from job to job. So often H1-B holders stay longer at companies when working conditions change for the worse.
> And if you are in SV consider that more than half of public tech companies were created by 1st and 2nd generation immigrants. 1st generation founders include Sergey Brin, Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Stewart Butterfield, Sebastion Thrun, and Patrick and John Collison.
I don't think it is a good idea to conflate immigrants to H1-B holders. While many of them do stay and become permanent residence, many of them also go back to the country they hailed from. I don't have the time right this second, but I do wonder how many of the immigrants on your list were in H1-B programs vs other routes of immigration.
- mywittyname 8y agoIt's much harder to get an H1-B anymore. The people who manage to get one are mostly top-tier talent that are either battle-tested (rose through the ranks at a consulting firm) or are very good, domain experts. It's like saying, not every former Google developer is awesome. It might be true, but the bar to get a job there is so high that the person is very likely to be awesome.
- mbrumlow 8y ago> It's like saying, not every former Google developer is awesome. It might be true, but the bar to get a job there is so high that the person is very likely to be awesome. It's not a high bar, but the right shape. There is a difference.
- joshe 8y agoAt every level, high skilled, medium skilled, and low skilled, immigrants tend to increase jobs and wages for natives. This is the rough consensus of economists. There is lots of work to make this even more true, of the flavor "ok if we are only bringing in 1 million immigrants, who does this best". H1-B and student visas a consequence of that thinking.
- mbrumlow 8y agoWhile I see others saying economist say different. But I would like to point out higher wages may be the result. But this normally comes at a cost of fewer citizen employees. I don't see how you can argue H1B creates more jobs. But I can at least see how it might change pay for those not replaces or passed over.
- mountainofdeath 8y agoNot a single one of those are H1-B. In the Sergey Brin and Max Levchin, and myself cases, our parents were under special refugee visas that literally took an act of congress to pas (thank you Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society).