5 ms·

Silicon Valley Engineer Testifies on Need to Retain Talented High-Tech Students and Professionals

8 points by felipe 18y ago

mynameishere 18y ago
Blahdy blah blah blahdy blah blah blah lower my labor costs please kthxbye.
- timr 18y ago
  I'm torn. We already pay for foreign citizens to get graduate degrees from US schools (via NIH, NSF, DARPA funding, etc.), so why shouldn't we encourage them to stay here after they're done? But yeah, there need to be provisions in these laws to ensure that foreign employees are paid no less than Americans.
  - cconstantine 18y ago
    I see no reason for this. If someone from <not-USA> is interviewing for a development position, and quite simply isn't as good why not pay them less? They may even be technically talented, but if they have a hard time communicating in the office's native language that's gonna hurt everyone's productivity and business owners should be allowed to lower compensation for that. I understand they are willing to work more for less, but they have some significant hurtles to overcome as it is. We are a nation of immigrants based on fair competition.
  - geebee 18y ago
    I actually disagree with the notion that the US pays for the graduate educations of foreign nationals. This is a misconception that is easy to exploit in a population that thinks of graduate school as something like undergraduate, law, business, or medical school. Graduate students in engineering are generally producers of wealth for universities. For example, I recently left a job where I was paid over 100K a year (in addition to benefits and stock) to write code that built mathematical optimization models based on data stored in large RDBMSs. Now, I don't actually think the pay was especially great considering the skill set (and I got a hefty raise when I left), but I know foreign grad students who were doing essentially the same thing for a research stipend that probably amounted to less than 20K/year, no benefits, stock, nothing (other than the possibility of a PhD after many years of servitude). If these folks had the right to leave the university without screwing up their visas, they'd probably be making six figures in private industry like me (I left once I got my MS). Sure, yeah, I suppose we should try to keep these folks here when they graduate, but the notion that the US has somehow put itself out to provide a grad education for foreign engineering students is baloney. We take them in precisely at the moment they become net contributors, and not a moment earlier. Universities save huge $$$ by indenturing grad students from overseas.
    - timr 18y ago
      I don't know what to tell you. You're just wrong if you think that the US doesn't pay for the graduate education of foreign nationals. I can name at least a half-dozen foreign doctoral students and post-docs, whom I know personally, who are/were on NIH and NSF funding. It's not a "notion" -- it's a real phenomenon. Now, granted, maybe these people will contribute to the GDP someday, indirectly, through their current research. But that's an argument to encourage them to stay here, not to fund their education and force them to go back home when it's time to get a job.
      - cconstantine 18y ago
        I think the point of your post's parent is that they are paid, but compared to how much they could be making in the private sector they are working slave-wages. Unless you think the work they are doing as grad students is worth less than what they're payed (slave-wages) the balance works out that we are getting more from them than they get from us.
        timr 18y ago
        That's his point, but it's an irrelevant one to my argument. The gains we get from paying for research are hypothetical. Research is an investment. Nobody expects it to turn an immediate profit, or even generate a revenue of any significance -- which is great, because it usually doesn't, and most academic research isn't commercially viable anyway. When we pay for foreign students to earn advanced degrees, only to kick them out of the country once they've graduated, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. Why are people having such a difficult time understanding this?
        cconstantine 18y ago
        ah, reading comprehension... I can has some? You are more correct than I am :)
        timr 18y ago
  - felipe 18y ago
    > We already pay for foreign citizens to get graduate degrees from US schools I think this is a tiny minority, and in fact foreigners don't even have access to subsidized loans (I know that because I fully paid for my education by myself and with personal loans -- I definitely looked for other kind of loans and grants)
    - timr 18y ago
      I can't speak for undergrads, but a huge number of foreign grad students and post-docs are being paid off of NIH and NSF budgets.
      - felipe 18y ago
        Could you please share some numbers? Is this the case for the high-tech industry in specific (the argument is around high-tech workers) I have a grad degree. Certainly I didn't get any help at all, and I don't know any one in my class who got any kind of NSF grants. I studied with someone who got a grant from his govt employer, but he is American.
        bbgm 18y ago
        I can't speak for CS, where the coverage isn't as good, but pretty much all scientific PhDs work in labs that are NIH funded. In most cases, students (foreign or otherwise) end up doing a TA for 2-3 years and then get funded by their PI's research grant. For example, in my lab every grad students stipend and tuition fee came out of my advisor's grants. Then again in the sciences, if you want to do any meaningful research you have to do a PhD. I was one of the few who was lucky to avoid doing a postdoc (which in most cases is mandatory to try and get a faculty or industry research position). Note that I'd do that PhD 100 times out of 100. Was a ton of fun.
- cbryan 18y ago
  I don't think its about lowering labor costs. A highly-skilled foreign born worker can still command as much as his native born counterpart. I do think that this is about retaining talented workers and bolstering our knowledge-centric economy. These people are motivated enough to come to the US and succeed, we should try to keep them.
  - cconstantine 18y ago
    I agree. It's easy to find people who kinda know how to program. It's really hard to find talented programmers. Why tell employer's they can't hire someone because they happen to have citizenship somewhere else? Besides, one of the bases of capitalism is that in any trade both parties should gain. If a company wants to hire someone at salary $X that means the company expects to get $X+K value out of that person. Assuming the company bets right that means we are adding value to the American economy.
    - mynameishere 18y ago
      Damnit people, as the quantity supplied goes down, the price goes up, which encourages production. You have two kinds of production: Internal and external. Internal means: People entering the labor market through various means. External means: Immigration. Unlike importing products from China, importing people comes with various externalities. Here's a recent example of what you can get: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7461099.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7461099.stm or, by contrast: http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/01/05/kuala.2.t.php http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/01/05/kuala.2.t.php ...unending political nightmares.
      - cconstantine 18y ago
        I fail to see how reparations for Apartied in South Africa and affirmative action in Malaysia have to do with foreign workers in America. We are in a world-economy, this is part of the deal. I understand that I'm arguing for working 1) with people I can't understand, and 2) for less money. It's just how the game works. edit: I despise doing The Wrong Thing (tm) because it looks good politically. Maybe that makes me a bad politician, but I work in software development, not politics. Let the politicians worry about politics.
- felipe 18y ago
  I have never met any high-tech immigrant worker who complained about making less than others. I, for one, know for a fact that my salary was compatible to other with similar skills and experience Maybe you are talking about offshored jobs, that's a whole different story. If anything, we (immigrant workers) are helping to keep jobs in the US!
  - bbgm 18y ago
    Don't know about the majority, but I've always been paid a bit more than industry average
felipe 18y ago
The reason I posted this article is because I have first-hand experience as a foreign-born worker who immigrated via a work-visa and eventually got my masters here in the US. The fact is that the immigration process for high-skilled workers is very long, cumbersome, and one must be pretty motivated to stay. I know many high-skilled people who were not able to stay even though they wanted to.

8 points by felipe 18y ago

mynameishere 18y ago

Blahdy blah blah blahdy blah blah blah lower my labor costs please kthxbye.

timr 18y ago
I'm torn. We already pay for foreign citizens to get graduate degrees from US schools (via NIH, NSF, DARPA funding, etc.), so why shouldn't we encourage them to stay here after they're done? But yeah, there need to be provisions in these laws to ensure that foreign employees are paid no less than Americans.
- cconstantine 18y ago
  I see no reason for this. If someone from <not-USA> is interviewing for a development position, and quite simply isn't as good why not pay them less? They may even be technically talented, but if they have a hard time communicating in the office's native language that's gonna hurt everyone's productivity and business owners should be allowed to lower compensation for that. I understand they are willing to work more for less, but they have some significant hurtles to overcome as it is. We are a nation of immigrants based on fair competition.
- geebee 18y ago
  I actually disagree with the notion that the US pays for the graduate educations of foreign nationals. This is a misconception that is easy to exploit in a population that thinks of graduate school as something like undergraduate, law, business, or medical school. Graduate students in engineering are generally producers of wealth for universities. For example, I recently left a job where I was paid over 100K a year (in addition to benefits and stock) to write code that built mathematical optimization models based on data stored in large RDBMSs. Now, I don't actually think the pay was especially great considering the skill set (and I got a hefty raise when I left), but I know foreign grad students who were doing essentially the same thing for a research stipend that probably amounted to less than 20K/year, no benefits, stock, nothing (other than the possibility of a PhD after many years of servitude). If these folks had the right to leave the university without screwing up their visas, they'd probably be making six figures in private industry like me (I left once I got my MS). Sure, yeah, I suppose we should try to keep these folks here when they graduate, but the notion that the US has somehow put itself out to provide a grad education for foreign engineering students is baloney. We take them in precisely at the moment they become net contributors, and not a moment earlier. Universities save huge $$$ by indenturing grad students from overseas.
  - timr 18y ago
    I don't know what to tell you. You're just wrong if you think that the US doesn't pay for the graduate education of foreign nationals. I can name at least a half-dozen foreign doctoral students and post-docs, whom I know personally, who are/were on NIH and NSF funding. It's not a "notion" -- it's a real phenomenon. Now, granted, maybe these people will contribute to the GDP someday, indirectly, through their current research. But that's an argument to encourage them to stay here, not to fund their education and force them to go back home when it's time to get a job.
    - cconstantine 18y ago
      I think the point of your post's parent is that they are paid, but compared to how much they could be making in the private sector they are working slave-wages. Unless you think the work they are doing as grad students is worth less than what they're payed (slave-wages) the balance works out that we are getting more from them than they get from us.
      - timr 18y ago
        That's his point, but it's an irrelevant one to my argument. The gains we get from paying for research are hypothetical. Research is an investment. Nobody expects it to turn an immediate profit, or even generate a revenue of any significance -- which is great, because it usually doesn't, and most academic research isn't commercially viable anyway. When we pay for foreign students to earn advanced degrees, only to kick them out of the country once they've graduated, we're cutting off our nose to spite our face. Why are people having such a difficult time understanding this?
        cconstantine 18y ago
        ah, reading comprehension... I can has some? You are more correct than I am :)
        timr 18y ago
- felipe 18y ago
  > We already pay for foreign citizens to get graduate degrees from US schools I think this is a tiny minority, and in fact foreigners don't even have access to subsidized loans (I know that because I fully paid for my education by myself and with personal loans -- I definitely looked for other kind of loans and grants)
  - timr 18y ago
    I can't speak for undergrads, but a huge number of foreign grad students and post-docs are being paid off of NIH and NSF budgets.
    - felipe 18y ago
      Could you please share some numbers? Is this the case for the high-tech industry in specific (the argument is around high-tech workers) I have a grad degree. Certainly I didn't get any help at all, and I don't know any one in my class who got any kind of NSF grants. I studied with someone who got a grant from his govt employer, but he is American.
      - bbgm 18y ago
        I can't speak for CS, where the coverage isn't as good, but pretty much all scientific PhDs work in labs that are NIH funded. In most cases, students (foreign or otherwise) end up doing a TA for 2-3 years and then get funded by their PI's research grant. For example, in my lab every grad students stipend and tuition fee came out of my advisor's grants. Then again in the sciences, if you want to do any meaningful research you have to do a PhD. I was one of the few who was lucky to avoid doing a postdoc (which in most cases is mandatory to try and get a faculty or industry research position). Note that I'd do that PhD 100 times out of 100. Was a ton of fun.
cbryan 18y ago
I don't think its about lowering labor costs. A highly-skilled foreign born worker can still command as much as his native born counterpart. I do think that this is about retaining talented workers and bolstering our knowledge-centric economy. These people are motivated enough to come to the US and succeed, we should try to keep them.
- cconstantine 18y ago
  I agree. It's easy to find people who kinda know how to program. It's really hard to find talented programmers. Why tell employer's they can't hire someone because they happen to have citizenship somewhere else? Besides, one of the bases of capitalism is that in any trade both parties should gain. If a company wants to hire someone at salary $X that means the company expects to get $X+K value out of that person. Assuming the company bets right that means we are adding value to the American economy.
  - mynameishere 18y ago
    Damnit people, as the quantity supplied goes down, the price goes up, which encourages production. You have two kinds of production: Internal and external. Internal means: People entering the labor market through various means. External means: Immigration. Unlike importing products from China, importing people comes with various externalities. Here's a recent example of what you can get: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7461099.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7461099.stm or, by contrast: http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/01/05/kuala.2.t.php http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/01/05/kuala.2.t.php ...unending political nightmares.
    - cconstantine 18y ago
      I fail to see how reparations for Apartied in South Africa and affirmative action in Malaysia have to do with foreign workers in America. We are in a world-economy, this is part of the deal. I understand that I'm arguing for working 1) with people I can't understand, and 2) for less money. It's just how the game works. edit: I despise doing The Wrong Thing (tm) because it looks good politically. Maybe that makes me a bad politician, but I work in software development, not politics. Let the politicians worry about politics.
felipe 18y ago
I have never met any high-tech immigrant worker who complained about making less than others. I, for one, know for a fact that my salary was compatible to other with similar skills and experience Maybe you are talking about offshored jobs, that's a whole different story. If anything, we (immigrant workers) are helping to keep jobs in the US!
- bbgm 18y ago
  Don't know about the majority, but I've always been paid a bit more than industry average

felipe 18y ago

The reason I posted this article is because I have first-hand experience as a foreign-born worker who immigrated via a work-visa and eventually got my masters here in the US. The fact is that the immigration process for high-skilled workers is very long, cumbersome, and one must be pretty motivated to stay. I know many high-skilled people who were not able to stay even though they wanted to.