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H1B compete with the newly graduated college students. Before people say that there’s no problem with STEM graduates finding a job, I’ll counter that many of my

by jmpman 7y ago

H1B compete with the newly graduated college students. Before people say that there’s no problem with STEM graduates finding a job, I’ll counter that many of my coworkers 20 years ago didn’t have STEM degrees, and were previously English majors, business majors, etc. They were people with technical aptitude who realized they had picked a field of study that didn’t quite suit their financial aspirations. They were able to get an entry level IT job and move up. Now those jobs are filled by H1B.

Dude2040 7y ago
Basically cross-train on private sector money and time. There should be a "don't follow your dreams" social campaign.
- duality 7y ago
  If a company is okay with employees "cross training" is that a problem? They're not forced to train employees, but the good ones will.
- zeperoni 7y ago
  That's difficult when there is a motivation and purpose glut. Lot's of people/kids struggling to find connection and purpose. They hope they can achieve this through higher learning.
  - asark 7y ago
    An alienation epidemic. Everyone wants a job that's at least one of: personally meaningful, or clearly helpful to others. Also it should pay the bills well enough to gain you housing somewhere with decent schools. Good friggin' luck.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      > Everyone wants a job that's [..] clearly helpful to others. I can imagine no better symptom to show how utterly sick the current economic system is, than that it takes luck to find a job where one is helpful to others and paid well. Helping others in exchange for money is supposed to be the basis of the free market!
joelbluminator 7y ago
Why can't a 28 American with an English major do a coding bootcamp and find an entry level job? I'm sure if he's reasonable intelligent and ambitious he can. There aren't that many h1b's around competing with him, most American jobs aren't h1b jobs.
- lemcoe9 7y ago
  Why is "do a coding bootcamp" the common refrain from tech workers trying to help non-tech people?
  - luckylion 7y ago
    Because it's a way into tech for non-tech people? This wasn't, as far as I understood, a general suggestion for all English majors, but for those that allegedly used to be able to simply start in tech jobs 20 years ago. Now they may need a bit of prior knowledge, which boot camps can help with.
  - SuperPaintMan 7y ago
    Because tech work is magical and plentiful regardless of where you are and everyone can become a programmer /s
    - joyeuse6701 7y ago
      I do believe that if you can learn to read and write, you can learn to program.
    - downrightmike 7y ago
      The drive into getting more people to code is to increase the supply and lower pay.
  - hobofan 7y ago
    Because the barrier to entry is still quite low. While maybe not "Anyone who could spell HTML could get a job" low, as said in another comment here, it's still so low that I'd wager a decently clever person with a good 3 month bootcamp can get a _entry-level_ job.
pmiller2 7y ago
20 years ago was a special time. Anyone who could spell HTML could get a job. Things are different now and the bar is a bit higher. Today’s equivalent of the English and business majors are boot camp grads.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  The bar is higher because there's free (or near free) specialized education overseas and not domestically. Why pay to train entry level employers when the tax payers of X country will do it for you for free? Take away the subsidized labor pool and watch that bar fall back to the floor.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    There was free and low cost education available overseas 20 years ago. I don’t buy your argument.
    - linuxftw 7y ago
      20 years ago, I'm willing to bet the number of IT degrees overseas was a small fraction compared to today. Over the last 20 years the market has reacted to the conditions available and lead to the situation we have now.
      - pmiller2 7y ago
        You may be "willing to bet," but this is just you asserting that your premise is true. Do you have any data? My claim that free and low cost university-level education was available outside the US is easily verifiable with a 10 second Google search.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    > there's free (or near free) specialized education overseas and not domestically. There's free specialized education available on the internet for anyone who is an autodidact.
  - 7y ago
JJMcJ 7y ago
Not just 20, but all the way back from the beginning of programming until perhaps the mid 80s. English majors, telephone company employees who were getting a bit old to climb poles, bright high schoolers who got trained in the military, science grad school dropouts, etc etc, and somehow code got written.
rotskoff 7y ago
It's probably worthwhile to think about scale in this context: There are only 85000 H-1B visas issued each year by the US; 20k of those are reserved for people with advanced degrees [1]. Given that there are an estimated 3.87 million software developers working in the USA [2], this seems unlikely to be the root cause of the inability of some graduates to find entry level software jobs. 1. https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-fiscal-year-fy-2020-cap-season https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-worker... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...
- roel_v 7y ago
  How is it possible that 2.5% of the workforce is a programmer? One out of every 40 people?
  - rotskoff 7y ago
    It's a good question: you can see a fairly granular breakdown of the workforce by industry [here](https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm). There are about 5.1 million people working in "Computer and mathematical occupations", the majority of whom are developers.
    - 7373737373 7y ago
      I created a tree map out of it: https://void4.github.io/allgermans/americans.html https://void4.github.io/allgermans/americans.html Previously, one with all Germans: https://void4.github.io/allgermans/Germany.html https://void4.github.io/allgermans/Germany.html
      - xxandroxygen 7y ago
        man a first look at that tree map made it seem strangely mis-represented... like there is no way there are that many dental assistants. Pro tip for viewers: zoom all the way out
davidw 7y ago
I'd look at our own problems rather than trying to blame immigrants, who have always been part and parcel of the US economy. Indeed, many of those companies wouldn't be around were it not for immigrants, since they not only work for companies, but also found them and of course purchase their products and services.
- AimForTheBushes 7y ago
  H1Bs are not meant for immigration. Their purpose is to fulfill a void in the highly educated work force by employing a temporary, foreign worker. I think his point has some validity since H1Bs can replace local workers with lower paying H1B substitutes. Yes, this isn't allowed but it happens all the time.
  - davidw 7y ago
    It's crucial to keep in mind that this is not a zero sum game. There is not a fixed lump of labor to be divided up.
    - AimForTheBushes 7y ago
      I don't agree that it's a major problem to underemployment- especially not the massive underemployment referenced in the article. But I still think it's a problem that should be corrected.
CydeWeys 7y ago
Plenty of H1B holders create jobs as well. The economy isn't a pie of fixed size with everyone fighting over a limited number of slices. Overall, immigration has been a net boon to the US's economy, including the creation of many jobs.
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  Net boon to the economy in terms of GDP, but it does have some negative effects on wages and employment.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Not necessarily. A lot of immigrants are job creators. Think of how many startup founders are foreign, and have created a lot of money and jobs for a lot of people. Hell, look at how well represented foreigners are in the upper echelons of the FAANGs. Even Sergey Brin was born in Moscow.
    - Mikeb85 7y ago
      > A lot of immigrants are job creators. And a lot aren't. There's a reason you throw away outliers in statistics.
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        If every job creator is an outlier, and you throw away all outliers, then there should be zero jobs in existence. Clearly your methodology is flawed.
neonate 7y ago
>Now those jobs are filled by H1B How do you know that? I doubt this claim. Plenty of people still teach themselves programming and get jobs.
conanbatt 7y ago
You have another option for people of your ideological inclination: ban any software product that is made outside of the us. Inevitable, consumers will have to turn to the domestic market which will inflate the salaries you are so interested in protecting. Once that works, you can advance further and ban free open-source, including platforms like Github. Free labor is the enemy of high wages. You can increase salaries even more by regulating licenses and limiting how many people can be software engineers or write code at all. And then you can keep going, and ban high use of computing power: you will need more labor to compensate the inefficiencies of wasteful, environment harming, computer processing. Success is guaranteed!

by jmpman 7y ago

Dude2040 7y ago

Basically cross-train on private sector money and time. There should be a "don't follow your dreams" social campaign.

duality 7y ago
If a company is okay with employees "cross training" is that a problem? They're not forced to train employees, but the good ones will.
zeperoni 7y ago
That's difficult when there is a motivation and purpose glut. Lot's of people/kids struggling to find connection and purpose. They hope they can achieve this through higher learning.
- asark 7y ago
  An alienation epidemic. Everyone wants a job that's at least one of: personally meaningful, or clearly helpful to others. Also it should pay the bills well enough to gain you housing somewhere with decent schools. Good friggin' luck.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    > Everyone wants a job that's [..] clearly helpful to others. I can imagine no better symptom to show how utterly sick the current economic system is, than that it takes luck to find a job where one is helpful to others and paid well. Helping others in exchange for money is supposed to be the basis of the free market!

joelbluminator 7y ago

Why can't a 28 American with an English major do a coding bootcamp and find an entry level job? I'm sure if he's reasonable intelligent and ambitious he can. There aren't that many h1b's around competing with him, most American jobs aren't h1b jobs.

lemcoe9 7y ago
Why is "do a coding bootcamp" the common refrain from tech workers trying to help non-tech people?
- luckylion 7y ago
  Because it's a way into tech for non-tech people? This wasn't, as far as I understood, a general suggestion for all English majors, but for those that allegedly used to be able to simply start in tech jobs 20 years ago. Now they may need a bit of prior knowledge, which boot camps can help with.
- SuperPaintMan 7y ago
  Because tech work is magical and plentiful regardless of where you are and everyone can become a programmer /s
  - joyeuse6701 7y ago
    I do believe that if you can learn to read and write, you can learn to program.
  - downrightmike 7y ago
    The drive into getting more people to code is to increase the supply and lower pay.
- hobofan 7y ago
  Because the barrier to entry is still quite low. While maybe not "Anyone who could spell HTML could get a job" low, as said in another comment here, it's still so low that I'd wager a decently clever person with a good 3 month bootcamp can get a _entry-level_ job.

pmiller2 7y ago

20 years ago was a special time. Anyone who could spell HTML could get a job. Things are different now and the bar is a bit higher. Today’s equivalent of the English and business majors are boot camp grads.

linuxftw 7y ago
The bar is higher because there's free (or near free) specialized education overseas and not domestically. Why pay to train entry level employers when the tax payers of X country will do it for you for free? Take away the subsidized labor pool and watch that bar fall back to the floor.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  There was free and low cost education available overseas 20 years ago. I don’t buy your argument.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    20 years ago, I'm willing to bet the number of IT degrees overseas was a small fraction compared to today. Over the last 20 years the market has reacted to the conditions available and lead to the situation we have now.
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      You may be "willing to bet," but this is just you asserting that your premise is true. Do you have any data? My claim that free and low cost university-level education was available outside the US is easily verifiable with a 10 second Google search.
- malandrew 7y ago
  > there's free (or near free) specialized education overseas and not domestically. There's free specialized education available on the internet for anyone who is an autodidact.
- 7y ago

JJMcJ 7y ago

Not just 20, but all the way back from the beginning of programming until perhaps the mid 80s. English majors, telephone company employees who were getting a bit old to climb poles, bright high schoolers who got trained in the military, science grad school dropouts, etc etc, and somehow code got written.

rotskoff 7y ago

It's probably worthwhile to think about scale in this context: There are only 85000 H-1B visas issued each year by the US; 20k of those are reserved for people with advanced degrees [1]. Given that there are an estimated 3.87 million software developers working in the USA [2], this seems unlikely to be the root cause of the inability of some graduates to find entry level software jobs. 1. https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-fiscal-year-fy-2020-cap-season https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-worker... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph...

roel_v 7y ago
How is it possible that 2.5% of the workforce is a programmer? One out of every 40 people?
- rotskoff 7y ago
  It's a good question: you can see a fairly granular breakdown of the workforce by industry [here](https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat11b.htm). There are about 5.1 million people working in "Computer and mathematical occupations", the majority of whom are developers.
  - 7373737373 7y ago
    I created a tree map out of it: https://void4.github.io/allgermans/americans.html https://void4.github.io/allgermans/americans.html Previously, one with all Germans: https://void4.github.io/allgermans/Germany.html https://void4.github.io/allgermans/Germany.html
    - xxandroxygen 7y ago
      man a first look at that tree map made it seem strangely mis-represented... like there is no way there are that many dental assistants. Pro tip for viewers: zoom all the way out

davidw 7y ago

I'd look at our own problems rather than trying to blame immigrants, who have always been part and parcel of the US economy. Indeed, many of those companies wouldn't be around were it not for immigrants, since they not only work for companies, but also found them and of course purchase their products and services.

AimForTheBushes 7y ago
H1Bs are not meant for immigration. Their purpose is to fulfill a void in the highly educated work force by employing a temporary, foreign worker. I think his point has some validity since H1Bs can replace local workers with lower paying H1B substitutes. Yes, this isn't allowed but it happens all the time.
- davidw 7y ago
  It's crucial to keep in mind that this is not a zero sum game. There is not a fixed lump of labor to be divided up.
  - AimForTheBushes 7y ago
    I don't agree that it's a major problem to underemployment- especially not the massive underemployment referenced in the article. But I still think it's a problem that should be corrected.

CydeWeys 7y ago

Plenty of H1B holders create jobs as well. The economy isn't a pie of fixed size with everyone fighting over a limited number of slices. Overall, immigration has been a net boon to the US's economy, including the creation of many jobs.

Mikeb85 7y ago
Net boon to the economy in terms of GDP, but it does have some negative effects on wages and employment.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Not necessarily. A lot of immigrants are job creators. Think of how many startup founders are foreign, and have created a lot of money and jobs for a lot of people. Hell, look at how well represented foreigners are in the upper echelons of the FAANGs. Even Sergey Brin was born in Moscow.
  - Mikeb85 7y ago
    > A lot of immigrants are job creators. And a lot aren't. There's a reason you throw away outliers in statistics.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      If every job creator is an outlier, and you throw away all outliers, then there should be zero jobs in existence. Clearly your methodology is flawed.

neonate 7y ago

>Now those jobs are filled by H1B How do you know that? I doubt this claim. Plenty of people still teach themselves programming and get jobs.

conanbatt 7y ago

You have another option for people of your ideological inclination: ban any software product that is made outside of the us. Inevitable, consumers will have to turn to the domestic market which will inflate the salaries you are so interested in protecting. Once that works, you can advance further and ban free open-source, including platforms like Github. Free labor is the enemy of high wages. You can increase salaries even more by regulating licenses and limiting how many people can be software engineers or write code at all. And then you can keep going, and ban high use of computing power: you will need more labor to compensate the inefficiencies of wasteful, environment harming, computer processing. Success is guaranteed!