6 ms·

Of course, doing so will do very little to nothing for American workers. Companies who want the top talent will go where the top talent lives, and this may just

Of course, doing so will do very little to nothing for American workers. Companies who want the top talent will go where the top talent lives, and this may just speed up the process (one example could be a simple adjustment to hire more folks in Vancouver, for example). Somehow, some people in the US forget that yesterday's immigrant is today's citizen.

camccar 6y ago
Meh. America can tax companies leaving to make it profitable to stay
dudul 6y ago
> Somehow, some people in the US forget that yesterday's immigrant is today's citizen. Playing devil's advocate here, because I myself went through the H1B -> GC -> citizenship path, but why would the US worker care if he can't get a job/fair pay because of today's immigrant? And this is not immigrants (not technically correct when applied to H1B btw) fault. The problem is how game-able this all process/legislation is.
blisterpeanuts 6y ago
I was wondering the same thing; can't U.S. based companies just hire outside the country? Offices today are highly distributed and virtual already.
Traster 6y ago
I'm not straight out saying you're wrong, but I don't see the evidence that this is obviously true. There's an equally compelling line of logic that by removing H1-B visas you create less supply for those jobs in the US, driving up wages for local workers and encouraging more local people to train up to take those jobs - because of the higher rewards. Will companies just immediately decide to hire in another country? Well, some of them might, but if wages go up 5% is that really going to force companies overseas? Running an international organisation is hugely expensive. So maybe wages go up and basically no jobs are lost to overseas. What if removing these options to basically steal talent from overseas meant companies needed to sponsor more university programmes to get the qualified staff they need? I find it quite compelling that the first order effect of H1-B visas is to give large corporations an easy way of driving down wages by hiring cheaper overseas workers who are willing to take lower wages than the locals in order to earn their citizenship, and that benefits company profit margins at the expense of native workers. I'm willing to believe that the net effect is actually different and you get some magical efficiency effect that makes everyone richer, but I think that actually needs to be demonstrated rather than assumed.
- curiousllama 6y ago
  I recently worked as a consultant doing back office talent sourcing work. It is a stated, explicit ambition in the industry to offshore & automate as much work as humanly possible. You're thinking, reasonably, that companies aren't going to go through the trouble of immediately opening a whole office in Bangalore for a few QA testers. You're right. They're either going to (1) offshore to an MSP (2) automate or (3) just not do QA, and (without realizing) just let bad code get written. Now that IT is working remotely anyway, why the heck NOT call Cap Gemini? Presto - we have QA. Who cares if they're in Penang?
  - Traster 6y ago
    The obvious answer is that the companies that have their QA in Penang fairly quickly learn that the 7,500 engineers in Penang that you got for the price of 20 engineers in the US not only don't do the QA correctly, they're actively making the quality worse by DDOSing the engineers in the US with jira tickets. Then you find out that the senior management outsourced core activities to Penang, and before you know it you're on 14nm++++++ and angry US engineers are being forced to fly to Penang and figure it out, and the CEO is being blackmailed into a resignation using an office affair as a pretext. May have gotten a bit too specific with my hypothetical there.
    - raverbashing 6y ago
      But it doesn't need to be Penang It can be Canada. It can be Mexico or South America. It can be Eastern Europe. Yes, it will be more expensive (but maybe not overall), and there will be fewer "yes-men" and less bottom-kissing but more actual work done and maybe better communications since time zones overlap.

camccar 6y ago

Meh. America can tax companies leaving to make it profitable to stay

dudul 6y ago

> Somehow, some people in the US forget that yesterday's immigrant is today's citizen. Playing devil's advocate here, because I myself went through the H1B -> GC -> citizenship path, but why would the US worker care if he can't get a job/fair pay because of today's immigrant? And this is not immigrants (not technically correct when applied to H1B btw) fault. The problem is how game-able this all process/legislation is.

blisterpeanuts 6y ago

I was wondering the same thing; can't U.S. based companies just hire outside the country? Offices today are highly distributed and virtual already.

Traster 6y ago

I'm not straight out saying you're wrong, but I don't see the evidence that this is obviously true. There's an equally compelling line of logic that by removing H1-B visas you create less supply for those jobs in the US, driving up wages for local workers and encouraging more local people to train up to take those jobs - because of the higher rewards. Will companies just immediately decide to hire in another country? Well, some of them might, but if wages go up 5% is that really going to force companies overseas? Running an international organisation is hugely expensive. So maybe wages go up and basically no jobs are lost to overseas. What if removing these options to basically steal talent from overseas meant companies needed to sponsor more university programmes to get the qualified staff they need? I find it quite compelling that the first order effect of H1-B visas is to give large corporations an easy way of driving down wages by hiring cheaper overseas workers who are willing to take lower wages than the locals in order to earn their citizenship, and that benefits company profit margins at the expense of native workers. I'm willing to believe that the net effect is actually different and you get some magical efficiency effect that makes everyone richer, but I think that actually needs to be demonstrated rather than assumed.

curiousllama 6y ago
I recently worked as a consultant doing back office talent sourcing work. It is a stated, explicit ambition in the industry to offshore & automate as much work as humanly possible. You're thinking, reasonably, that companies aren't going to go through the trouble of immediately opening a whole office in Bangalore for a few QA testers. You're right. They're either going to (1) offshore to an MSP (2) automate or (3) just not do QA, and (without realizing) just let bad code get written. Now that IT is working remotely anyway, why the heck NOT call Cap Gemini? Presto - we have QA. Who cares if they're in Penang?
- Traster 6y ago
  The obvious answer is that the companies that have their QA in Penang fairly quickly learn that the 7,500 engineers in Penang that you got for the price of 20 engineers in the US not only don't do the QA correctly, they're actively making the quality worse by DDOSing the engineers in the US with jira tickets. Then you find out that the senior management outsourced core activities to Penang, and before you know it you're on 14nm++++++ and angry US engineers are being forced to fly to Penang and figure it out, and the CEO is being blackmailed into a resignation using an office affair as a pretext. May have gotten a bit too specific with my hypothetical there.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    But it doesn't need to be Penang It can be Canada. It can be Mexico or South America. It can be Eastern Europe. Yes, it will be more expensive (but maybe not overall), and there will be fewer "yes-men" and less bottom-kissing but more actual work done and maybe better communications since time zones overlap.