9 ms·

It's just silly... even if you're a nationalist, isn't the prospect of bringing over talented people from foreign countries to work in America and help our comp

It's just silly... even if you're a nationalist, isn't the prospect of bringing over talented people from foreign countries to work in America and help our companies profit plus deprive their home countries of their skills a really, really good thing?

dx87 6y ago
If H-1B visas were being used how they were intended, they would be a good thing, but we often see them used as a way to get cheap labor, or even directly replace American workers. The company I work at has H-1B junior web developers, hardly "very niche, hard to fill" positions that they can't find any qualified Americans to do.
- alexandercrohde 6y ago
  For a while I wasn't sure if this was just some "talking point." Then one day, on a hiking meetup, I met a guy who was ranting about his job that was to write "oddly hyper-specific job descriptions that might seem to make no sense" to bring in cheaper h1b candidates. So yeah, it's a problem.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    My previous boss would openly brag about doing this, while he was doing it.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      For those who encounter this in their travels and want to do something about it: https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form
  - pkaye 6y ago
    Years back I had a college friend who was hired on an OPT visa. When they wanted to convert his visa to H1B (I think) they kept getting suitable candidates so had to rewrite the requirements so its only suited to him. He confided this to me as he felt bad but really needed that job.
    - weyland108 6y ago
      There is no “opt” visa it’s “optional Practical training”. It’s for a limited duration after he graduates also the rules are sketchy if he Would be let back into the country if wants to travel home to see family . If the employer wants to continue his employment he has no choice but to go on H1b. And then H1b has its own requirements and problems with it. Try to understand a lot of people “abusing” the system have not other legal recourse to keep their lives going.
      - pkaye 6y ago
        > Try to understand a lot of people “abusing” the system have not other legal recourse to keep their lives going. That is probably because other countries make it even harder for people to immigrate.
    - addicted 6y ago
      Let’s rephrase this story a bit. A company hires someone out of college, trains them and has them working and integrating into the company for about a year and a half, but then the government, because of a literal lottery, requires them to randomly replace them with someone else. And you’re surprised a company that has spent all that money and resources on hiring someone and with the known hit or miss nature of hiring wouldn’t want to replace them with a random new candidate? Edit: And it gets better. They don’t need to replace the person if someone else accepts the job. They need to get rid of that employee who they are happy enough to be spending tens of thousands of dollars on that they wouldn’t need to on their citizen counterpart, even if their possible replacement didn’t accept the job. Merely if the possible replacement’s resume fit the minimum requirements of the job. That’s why companies rewrite the position to be hyper specific. Because if there is anyone else available eho can meet the bare minimum who applies for the job, even if they aren’t interested in it and will never accept an offer, they are required to get rid of their existing multi year employee who they are happy with.
- jgalt212 6y ago
  Indeed, a friend offered to introduce me to a lawyer who would help me hire H-1Bs instead of similarly qualified residents. The gist was you have to figure out the unique qualities of the person you want to hire, and then construct interviews for the required X candidates such that these other candidates would not be as qualified across these trumped up unique qualifications / skills.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    How much are companies expecting to save by going this route? Is it dramatic?
    - fountainofage 6y ago
      There seems to be a mix. Which is part of the problem with the national debate / conversation. There are companies who found the absolute best in the world that they have to have. So they need that H1-B to get the job done and hire the best person. Then there are companies who just want to contract out super cheap labor, so they do thousands of H1-B applications hoping a few hundred make it through, then the they charge a local rate, but pay the employee a fraction and reap the profits.
      - runawaybottle 6y ago
        So the second example I’m assuming is the operating model of companies like Accenture, Cognizant, etc. I’m flooding this thread a bit, but I’ve always been a little confused by the consultancy firms. Is there a clear difference between off shoring and H1B? Or is it mostly the same thing for these companies, with different margins for each.
        blntechie 6y ago
        Truth be said the consultancy companies barely make any or in fact lose money with the H-1Bs and they make way more margin on offshoring. But customers want people near them for various reasons and the offshoring doesn’t generally work well without boots on the ground. So the H-1Bs are loss leaders with actual money being made in offshoring instead.
- untog 6y ago
  The answer here is to actually fix the system with compassion rather than suspend it and harm everyone using it. I'm not unbiased: I'm a former H1B visa holder and wasn't underpaid at all. I promise you we exist! It's not a fun situation to be in... if you have a pending green card application (up to a certain point in the process) you can't change jobs easily. And if you come from some countries (India, in particular) you have a wait of ten years or more before receiving your green card. It feels like a collision of a bunch of otherwise unrelated decisions that ultimately harms both immigrant and native workers and only benefits companies. It's all fixable, but like so many things in the US right now, not politically possible.
  - downvoteme1 6y ago
    Not sure why you are downvoted . Can somebody who is downvoting this person, actually care to type what you found offensive or incorrect .
  - addicted 6y ago
    If you’re from India the current expected wait to get your green card, no exaggeration, is closer to 50 years.
- jusonchan81 6y ago
  I guess this is indeed an issue. I’m a manager and I am trying to hire. 100% I’d rather find a person who can start in a couple of weeks than several months for a candidate who needs immigration. But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview. We pay in excess of 300k for all roles so it’s not like we are trying to find cheap talent.
  - hckr_news 6y ago
    Maybe your recruiting to get interviewers into your pipeline and the interview process just isn't that good. Or perhaps nobody wants to work at your company. Bad management? Bad glassdoor reviews? Don't engage with the local tech scene?
    - akhilcacharya 6y ago
      > We pay in excess of 300k for all roles If it's in excess of $300k for all roles it sounds like a Netflix type company or Netflix itself. I highly doubt nobody wants to work for that company.
      - weyland108 6y ago
        Did u miss the part where he said “they don’t make it in the interview “?. It’s not about handing out a job because there is one ...there is a interview process and quite a rigorous one when it comes to FAANG companies. They don’t go out seeking cheap labor.
  - dennis_jeeves 6y ago
    > But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview What exactly does the work involve, if it is so difficult to either find candidates or give a candidate with some missing skills a few weeks to learn something new?
  - jen20 6y ago
    Without more context it's hard to know what the problem is there, but I strongly doubt it's that there is "no" talent locally available to start within a couple of weeks, whether it's a US citizen or foreign national with an existing work visa. A small list of things that people may consider: - competitive salary. 300k is one thing in (for example) Kansas City, but completely another in the Bay Area or New York City where it's not uncommon for senior roles to deliver at least a third again, if not more. - the ethics of the company - does it engage in questionable behaviour? For example spying on users, building weapons, formenting unrest via algorithmic news feeds and so forth? - the fundamental health of the company from a financial and existential perspective. - does the company have a local reputation for being a poor place to work? For example, is it a bureaucracy where no-one can get anything done? Does it have a notoriously poor work-life balance, "face time" expectations, a culture where the loudest or most senior voice always prevails in decisions? What does Glassdoor (or levels.fyi) say about it? - are the technologies you're hiring for overly specific? Are your job ads a buzzword bingo of "nice to have" frameworks, libraries or practices? Do the ads make it clear that experience in them is not required, provided you can learn them quickly thanks to experience of concepts or adjacent technologies?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sixothree 6y ago
  We have h1b employees at our company. If we were to lose them right now it would be a significant disruption. Personally, I can't take time out of my job to train employees - which in our case could easily take three months. I can't even imagine us finding and hiring some at this time. These guys are an absolute asset to the company.
  - RhysU 6y ago
    Does your company not already grow skills over time? One should already be training (or coaching) individuals regardless of their present skill levels.
    - TheCoelacanth 6y ago
      That's a very uncharitable reading of what they said. They presumably spent time training these people. They can't afford to train up a bunch of new people because someone decided that they need to be kicked out of the country for no good reason.
      - RhysU 6y ago
        I am saying that they should already have a "training time allocation" built into their role and that they could choose to use it for remedial skills. That is, individually having time for training should be a moot point. Now, if the business can survive in the meantime is a different matter. But the business has no choice in the matter. And the business is not alone in the matter. Which probably makes that a moot point too. I don't claim that it will be easy. "I can't train people" doesn't compel me as a broadly satisfactory counterargument for the above reasons. That sentiment itself is not charitable making it hard for me to read it charitably.
    - sixothree 6y ago
      We grow skills. That's one reason they are so valuable. And we cross train. Everyone is able to take over for another employee at any time. But now is not the time. I just can't stomach losing our H1B members or any dev right now. We are in the health IT sector and you may not know this (because it surprises most everyone) but there is an absolute revolution happening in healthcare. We're approaching version 5 of FHIR. And I'd guess 99% of the devs on HN are like "what the heck is FHIR". It's a core standard for exchanging healthcare data. And it's literally the tip of an iceberg. And that's my personal dilemma as a lead developer. Speaking of skill growth, devs attended FHIR Dev Days last week, CCDA Implementation-athon a few weeks before that, and the FHIR Connectathon a week before that. None of us are in the office and since we have formed personal relationships over the last few years we know how to "get stuff done". AFAIK we treat every employee well enough they have few reasons to leave. Now is not the time for us to lose a dev. Any dev. I just ask the government to stop being jerks and let us ride out this covid year without too much more upset...
solarkraft 6y ago
> even if you're a nationalist Not if you're a racist, though.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Is this being greyed down because folks just don’t want to consider the possibility that straight up racism might be just as much a part of this or did it touch a nerve for some parties who saw themselves getting called out?
  - nine_zeros 6y ago
    > Is this being greyed down because folks just don’t want to consider the possibility that straight up racism might be just as much a part of this? There are folks on HN who are either covertly racist or simply delusional that their thoughts about policies come from some other place besides racism.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      There are likewise concerted efforts to get white nationalist taking points on the front page and painted as reasonable in the related threads. You see new accounts and sub-500 accounts that congeal around them almost every time.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 6y ago
    It was probably downvoted because it was a reflexive flamewar style comment rather than a thoughtful, substantive one. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      There's something to that, it's admittedly not hugely insightful. Is it "reflexive", "flamewar style"? I wouldn't classify it as such, since the option presented is an in my opinion a real possibility. It may be a bit harsh and inciting for a rational discussion however, so maybe vsareto's subtlety is more appropriate here. Generally I'm happy this place is moderated strictly to keep the discussion civil. That there doesn't seem to be a will (there are no dead comments under mine, as far as I can see) to allow a direct discussion on american racism feels a little weird, but is over all understandable.
vsareto 6y ago
Those people don't think foreigners are as skilled as their own. This is hard to unwind after decades of American Dream and USA #1 propaganda
- theduder99 6y ago
  haha, it's not propaganda. it is truth. USA is still #1 destination thus nobody is unwinding anything. the brain drain is real.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  I had seen lots of H1B foreigners while myself worked in US, for couple of years. Most of them were brought not even H1B but on B1 Visa or J1, were employed illegally and produced bad code.
kthxbye123 6y ago
Not if your conception of the nation only includes white people...
- tridentlead 6y ago
  There it is
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
claudeganon 6y ago
“Nationalism” in the US is about using fictive in-groups to inflict pain on others. There’s no rational calculation. It’s just about demonstrating the in-group’s ability exert power over out-groups.
- theduder99 6y ago
  lol! I'll never understand where these people's pessimism comes from.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
The type of nationalism that is currently a component of the Republican platform can better be described as xenophobic nativism. The nationalist counterargument is going to be that US companies have gotten away with not investing in employee training and instead ship trained workers from overseas to do jobs that could have been held by trained Americans.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gorbachev15 6y ago
As a nationalist, I think it would be better for those other countries to keep their skilled workers and so benefit. I think every nation has a right to its own existence, space, and policies. And they also get to decide what's right for them 'as a people'. Always optimizing for performance of 'the economy' is not in the best interest of the actual citizens of this country.
- ChristianBundy 6y ago
  Why are you a nationalist?
  - gorbachev15 6y ago
    I think each nation[0] should be entitled to make decisions for themselves and have a right to run their state the way they see fit. I wouldn't presume to move to, say, Japan and then start telling them that they're doing things wrong. [0]https://www.etymonline.com/word/nation https://www.etymonline.com/word/nation
    - argomo 6y ago
      Geopolitics is inevitable: everything's interlinked--trade, laws, defense, research--everything. If a nation wants to persist and prosper, it needs to play the game; being an aloof loner or a blatant bully won't get you far.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        It wont get you very far seems to ignore centuries of aloofness and often very bad behavior being rewarded with great success.
        argomo 6y ago
        Conquest fell out of fashion with the bomb; it's all proxy wars, psyops, and deniable covert/cyber attacks now. Slamming the door on H-1B’s (while it might be nice for my own income) weakens American companies and sends world talent elsewhere, like China. Who's only too happy to fund infrastructure in Greenland/Africa/Europe to extend soft power across the globe while siezing harder power closer to home (Hong Kong, South Sea expansionism, etc). Sitting out the game isn't an option, and going at it alone ain't much better.
treis 6y ago
If that's what we were doing then it would be a good thing. But what companies are mostly doing is bringing over average people so that they can pay them less than Americans.
- bobdole12345 6y ago
  That's funny, because my visa had issues because I was "too highly paid for the job". But then they decided they could add a machine learning tag to it, and it was fine.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
P_I_Staker 6y ago
No, it's just a way to bring in cheap labor, and bring salaries down. That's it. It's very rarely the case that there's genuinely no one here that can do the jobs. It's widely know that companies are making no legitimate attempt to hire a citizen. I'm not saying this is a good move, and I'm not commenting on the morality of it (ie. who says someone from another country shouldn't be competing for your job)
- tesin 6y ago
  I understand it must be comforting to issue a blanket statement like that, but I it's just simply not universally true. I was hired on an E3, next job transitioned to H1-B and now have a green card. My work has directly enabled the hiring of three Americans. Is the H1-B perfect? Of course not. But on both occasions there were no other candidates, and when I was hired on H1-B I got a mandated higher salary to meet expected pay rates.
- bobdole12345 6y ago
  How is that possible, given that these people are paid above the prevailing wage? That's literally one of the requirements for the Visa, the minimum has been repeatedly raised to address this problem. So? Want to explain that to me?
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    If you classify someone as foo and have them do bar you can pay them above the prevailing rate for foo while actually being below the prevailing rate for bar. It can also serve as a way for third party to earn a sizable chunk of that persons wages which would be a less likely scenario for someone hired stateside.
    - addicted 6y ago
      Why would they agree to be paid under when they are in tech where companies until at least a year ago were fighting for employees? They could literally cross the street in SF and land a better job at a better price. I mean, for a country that prides itself on free markets, it’s remarkable that you believe that free markets simply stop working. And here’s the kicker. An H1B employee costs a company a lot more than a resident because of government fees and lawyer costs. So if you have a citizen and an H1B holder drawing the same salary, it actually means the company values the H1B holder far more than they do the citizen.
hyper0perator 6y ago
Companies profit but citizens lose out. Those two entities should not be conflated. This is akin to the outsourcing of many industries such as pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to countries that do not have the same worker or health regulations as the US. The visa workers are second-class citizens and exploited by companies to keep cost low. It undermines all workers and in the long run undermines all nations involved. Take the US's relationship with China manufacturing where China has some of the worst pollution and is one of the largest world polluters as they do not adhere to any of the same regulations that nations of the west adhere to. Currently there is the narrative that the US has a shortage of talented STEM. This is untrue. The shortage is due to a skewed labor market that suppresses opportunity for US citizens in the same way that a US manufacturer wouldn't be able to compete against a Chinese manufacturer not because we don't have the technology, demand, or resources, but that the difference in regulations makes it more costly.
- bobdole12345 6y ago
  No, the only party I feel exploited by is the US Government, who holds my ability to come and go, and change jobs easily hostage. Oh, and I have to pay taxes to a government that actively torments me with ever changing requirements and absurdity. And I don't get to vote or own property on my current Visa. This is why I push for the opening of offices outside the US in every company I work in.
akhilcacharya 6y ago
> companies profit plus deprive their home countries of their skills a really, really good thing? These are the same people who claim that people should immigrate legally, but then close all legal avenues of immigrating.
Thorentis 6y ago
Profit isn't the only important thing in life. If there are skills lacking in the market, they will eventually be learnt. Filling demand for CRUD app creation engineers instantly, is just another example of our instant-gratification culture manifest in business.

dx87 6y ago

If H-1B visas were being used how they were intended, they would be a good thing, but we often see them used as a way to get cheap labor, or even directly replace American workers. The company I work at has H-1B junior web developers, hardly "very niche, hard to fill" positions that they can't find any qualified Americans to do.

alexandercrohde 6y ago
For a while I wasn't sure if this was just some "talking point." Then one day, on a hiking meetup, I met a guy who was ranting about his job that was to write "oddly hyper-specific job descriptions that might seem to make no sense" to bring in cheaper h1b candidates. So yeah, it's a problem.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  My previous boss would openly brag about doing this, while he was doing it.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    For those who encounter this in their travels and want to do something about it: https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form
- pkaye 6y ago
  Years back I had a college friend who was hired on an OPT visa. When they wanted to convert his visa to H1B (I think) they kept getting suitable candidates so had to rewrite the requirements so its only suited to him. He confided this to me as he felt bad but really needed that job.
  - weyland108 6y ago
    There is no “opt” visa it’s “optional Practical training”. It’s for a limited duration after he graduates also the rules are sketchy if he Would be let back into the country if wants to travel home to see family . If the employer wants to continue his employment he has no choice but to go on H1b. And then H1b has its own requirements and problems with it. Try to understand a lot of people “abusing” the system have not other legal recourse to keep their lives going.
    - pkaye 6y ago
      > Try to understand a lot of people “abusing” the system have not other legal recourse to keep their lives going. That is probably because other countries make it even harder for people to immigrate.
  - addicted 6y ago
    Let’s rephrase this story a bit. A company hires someone out of college, trains them and has them working and integrating into the company for about a year and a half, but then the government, because of a literal lottery, requires them to randomly replace them with someone else. And you’re surprised a company that has spent all that money and resources on hiring someone and with the known hit or miss nature of hiring wouldn’t want to replace them with a random new candidate? Edit: And it gets better. They don’t need to replace the person if someone else accepts the job. They need to get rid of that employee who they are happy enough to be spending tens of thousands of dollars on that they wouldn’t need to on their citizen counterpart, even if their possible replacement didn’t accept the job. Merely if the possible replacement’s resume fit the minimum requirements of the job. That’s why companies rewrite the position to be hyper specific. Because if there is anyone else available eho can meet the bare minimum who applies for the job, even if they aren’t interested in it and will never accept an offer, they are required to get rid of their existing multi year employee who they are happy with.
jgalt212 6y ago
Indeed, a friend offered to introduce me to a lawyer who would help me hire H-1Bs instead of similarly qualified residents. The gist was you have to figure out the unique qualities of the person you want to hire, and then construct interviews for the required X candidates such that these other candidates would not be as qualified across these trumped up unique qualifications / skills.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  How much are companies expecting to save by going this route? Is it dramatic?
  - fountainofage 6y ago
    There seems to be a mix. Which is part of the problem with the national debate / conversation. There are companies who found the absolute best in the world that they have to have. So they need that H1-B to get the job done and hire the best person. Then there are companies who just want to contract out super cheap labor, so they do thousands of H1-B applications hoping a few hundred make it through, then the they charge a local rate, but pay the employee a fraction and reap the profits.
    - runawaybottle 6y ago
      So the second example I’m assuming is the operating model of companies like Accenture, Cognizant, etc. I’m flooding this thread a bit, but I’ve always been a little confused by the consultancy firms. Is there a clear difference between off shoring and H1B? Or is it mostly the same thing for these companies, with different margins for each.
      - blntechie 6y ago
        Truth be said the consultancy companies barely make any or in fact lose money with the H-1Bs and they make way more margin on offshoring. But customers want people near them for various reasons and the offshoring doesn’t generally work well without boots on the ground. So the H-1Bs are loss leaders with actual money being made in offshoring instead.
untog 6y ago
The answer here is to actually fix the system with compassion rather than suspend it and harm everyone using it. I'm not unbiased: I'm a former H1B visa holder and wasn't underpaid at all. I promise you we exist! It's not a fun situation to be in... if you have a pending green card application (up to a certain point in the process) you can't change jobs easily. And if you come from some countries (India, in particular) you have a wait of ten years or more before receiving your green card. It feels like a collision of a bunch of otherwise unrelated decisions that ultimately harms both immigrant and native workers and only benefits companies. It's all fixable, but like so many things in the US right now, not politically possible.
- downvoteme1 6y ago
  Not sure why you are downvoted . Can somebody who is downvoting this person, actually care to type what you found offensive or incorrect .
- addicted 6y ago
  If you’re from India the current expected wait to get your green card, no exaggeration, is closer to 50 years.
jusonchan81 6y ago
I guess this is indeed an issue. I’m a manager and I am trying to hire. 100% I’d rather find a person who can start in a couple of weeks than several months for a candidate who needs immigration. But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview. We pay in excess of 300k for all roles so it’s not like we are trying to find cheap talent.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  Maybe your recruiting to get interviewers into your pipeline and the interview process just isn't that good. Or perhaps nobody wants to work at your company. Bad management? Bad glassdoor reviews? Don't engage with the local tech scene?
  - akhilcacharya 6y ago
    > We pay in excess of 300k for all roles If it's in excess of $300k for all roles it sounds like a Netflix type company or Netflix itself. I highly doubt nobody wants to work for that company.
    - weyland108 6y ago
      Did u miss the part where he said “they don’t make it in the interview “?. It’s not about handing out a job because there is one ...there is a interview process and quite a rigorous one when it comes to FAANG companies. They don’t go out seeking cheap labor.
- dennis_jeeves 6y ago
  > But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview What exactly does the work involve, if it is so difficult to either find candidates or give a candidate with some missing skills a few weeks to learn something new?
- jen20 6y ago
  Without more context it's hard to know what the problem is there, but I strongly doubt it's that there is "no" talent locally available to start within a couple of weeks, whether it's a US citizen or foreign national with an existing work visa. A small list of things that people may consider: - competitive salary. 300k is one thing in (for example) Kansas City, but completely another in the Bay Area or New York City where it's not uncommon for senior roles to deliver at least a third again, if not more. - the ethics of the company - does it engage in questionable behaviour? For example spying on users, building weapons, formenting unrest via algorithmic news feeds and so forth? - the fundamental health of the company from a financial and existential perspective. - does the company have a local reputation for being a poor place to work? For example, is it a bureaucracy where no-one can get anything done? Does it have a notoriously poor work-life balance, "face time" expectations, a culture where the loudest or most senior voice always prevails in decisions? What does Glassdoor (or levels.fyi) say about it? - are the technologies you're hiring for overly specific? Are your job ads a buzzword bingo of "nice to have" frameworks, libraries or practices? Do the ads make it clear that experience in them is not required, provided you can learn them quickly thanks to experience of concepts or adjacent technologies?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sixothree 6y ago
We have h1b employees at our company. If we were to lose them right now it would be a significant disruption. Personally, I can't take time out of my job to train employees - which in our case could easily take three months. I can't even imagine us finding and hiring some at this time. These guys are an absolute asset to the company.
- RhysU 6y ago
  Does your company not already grow skills over time? One should already be training (or coaching) individuals regardless of their present skill levels.
  - TheCoelacanth 6y ago
    That's a very uncharitable reading of what they said. They presumably spent time training these people. They can't afford to train up a bunch of new people because someone decided that they need to be kicked out of the country for no good reason.
    - RhysU 6y ago
      I am saying that they should already have a "training time allocation" built into their role and that they could choose to use it for remedial skills. That is, individually having time for training should be a moot point. Now, if the business can survive in the meantime is a different matter. But the business has no choice in the matter. And the business is not alone in the matter. Which probably makes that a moot point too. I don't claim that it will be easy. "I can't train people" doesn't compel me as a broadly satisfactory counterargument for the above reasons. That sentiment itself is not charitable making it hard for me to read it charitably.
  - sixothree 6y ago
    We grow skills. That's one reason they are so valuable. And we cross train. Everyone is able to take over for another employee at any time. But now is not the time. I just can't stomach losing our H1B members or any dev right now. We are in the health IT sector and you may not know this (because it surprises most everyone) but there is an absolute revolution happening in healthcare. We're approaching version 5 of FHIR. And I'd guess 99% of the devs on HN are like "what the heck is FHIR". It's a core standard for exchanging healthcare data. And it's literally the tip of an iceberg. And that's my personal dilemma as a lead developer. Speaking of skill growth, devs attended FHIR Dev Days last week, CCDA Implementation-athon a few weeks before that, and the FHIR Connectathon a week before that. None of us are in the office and since we have formed personal relationships over the last few years we know how to "get stuff done". AFAIK we treat every employee well enough they have few reasons to leave. Now is not the time for us to lose a dev. Any dev. I just ask the government to stop being jerks and let us ride out this covid year without too much more upset...

solarkraft 6y ago

> even if you're a nationalist Not if you're a racist, though.

dvtrn 6y ago
Is this being greyed down because folks just don’t want to consider the possibility that straight up racism might be just as much a part of this or did it touch a nerve for some parties who saw themselves getting called out?
- nine_zeros 6y ago
  > Is this being greyed down because folks just don’t want to consider the possibility that straight up racism might be just as much a part of this? There are folks on HN who are either covertly racist or simply delusional that their thoughts about policies come from some other place besides racism.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    There are likewise concerted efforts to get white nationalist taking points on the front page and painted as reasonable in the related threads. You see new accounts and sub-500 accounts that congeal around them almost every time.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 6y ago
  It was probably downvoted because it was a reflexive flamewar style comment rather than a thoughtful, substantive one. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    There's something to that, it's admittedly not hugely insightful. Is it "reflexive", "flamewar style"? I wouldn't classify it as such, since the option presented is an in my opinion a real possibility. It may be a bit harsh and inciting for a rational discussion however, so maybe vsareto's subtlety is more appropriate here. Generally I'm happy this place is moderated strictly to keep the discussion civil. That there doesn't seem to be a will (there are no dead comments under mine, as far as I can see) to allow a direct discussion on american racism feels a little weird, but is over all understandable.

vsareto 6y ago

Those people don't think foreigners are as skilled as their own. This is hard to unwind after decades of American Dream and USA #1 propaganda

theduder99 6y ago
haha, it's not propaganda. it is truth. USA is still #1 destination thus nobody is unwinding anything. the brain drain is real.
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
I had seen lots of H1B foreigners while myself worked in US, for couple of years. Most of them were brought not even H1B but on B1 Visa or J1, were employed illegally and produced bad code.

kthxbye123 6y ago

Not if your conception of the nation only includes white people...

tridentlead 6y ago
There it is
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

claudeganon 6y ago

“Nationalism” in the US is about using fictive in-groups to inflict pain on others. There’s no rational calculation. It’s just about demonstrating the in-group’s ability exert power over out-groups.

theduder99 6y ago
lol! I'll never understand where these people's pessimism comes from.

MisterBastahrd 6y ago

The type of nationalism that is currently a component of the Republican platform can better be described as xenophobic nativism. The nationalist counterargument is going to be that US companies have gotten away with not investing in employee training and instead ship trained workers from overseas to do jobs that could have been held by trained Americans.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gorbachev15 6y ago

As a nationalist, I think it would be better for those other countries to keep their skilled workers and so benefit. I think every nation has a right to its own existence, space, and policies. And they also get to decide what's right for them 'as a people'. Always optimizing for performance of 'the economy' is not in the best interest of the actual citizens of this country.

ChristianBundy 6y ago
Why are you a nationalist?
- gorbachev15 6y ago
  I think each nation[0] should be entitled to make decisions for themselves and have a right to run their state the way they see fit. I wouldn't presume to move to, say, Japan and then start telling them that they're doing things wrong. [0]https://www.etymonline.com/word/nation https://www.etymonline.com/word/nation
  - argomo 6y ago
    Geopolitics is inevitable: everything's interlinked--trade, laws, defense, research--everything. If a nation wants to persist and prosper, it needs to play the game; being an aloof loner or a blatant bully won't get you far.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      It wont get you very far seems to ignore centuries of aloofness and often very bad behavior being rewarded with great success.
      - argomo 6y ago
        Conquest fell out of fashion with the bomb; it's all proxy wars, psyops, and deniable covert/cyber attacks now. Slamming the door on H-1B’s (while it might be nice for my own income) weakens American companies and sends world talent elsewhere, like China. Who's only too happy to fund infrastructure in Greenland/Africa/Europe to extend soft power across the globe while siezing harder power closer to home (Hong Kong, South Sea expansionism, etc). Sitting out the game isn't an option, and going at it alone ain't much better.

treis 6y ago

If that's what we were doing then it would be a good thing. But what companies are mostly doing is bringing over average people so that they can pay them less than Americans.

bobdole12345 6y ago
That's funny, because my visa had issues because I was "too highly paid for the job". But then they decided they could add a machine learning tag to it, and it was fine.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

P_I_Staker 6y ago

No, it's just a way to bring in cheap labor, and bring salaries down. That's it. It's very rarely the case that there's genuinely no one here that can do the jobs. It's widely know that companies are making no legitimate attempt to hire a citizen. I'm not saying this is a good move, and I'm not commenting on the morality of it (ie. who says someone from another country shouldn't be competing for your job)

tesin 6y ago
I understand it must be comforting to issue a blanket statement like that, but I it's just simply not universally true. I was hired on an E3, next job transitioned to H1-B and now have a green card. My work has directly enabled the hiring of three Americans. Is the H1-B perfect? Of course not. But on both occasions there were no other candidates, and when I was hired on H1-B I got a mandated higher salary to meet expected pay rates.
bobdole12345 6y ago
How is that possible, given that these people are paid above the prevailing wage? That's literally one of the requirements for the Visa, the minimum has been repeatedly raised to address this problem. So? Want to explain that to me?
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  If you classify someone as foo and have them do bar you can pay them above the prevailing rate for foo while actually being below the prevailing rate for bar. It can also serve as a way for third party to earn a sizable chunk of that persons wages which would be a less likely scenario for someone hired stateside.
  - addicted 6y ago
    Why would they agree to be paid under when they are in tech where companies until at least a year ago were fighting for employees? They could literally cross the street in SF and land a better job at a better price. I mean, for a country that prides itself on free markets, it’s remarkable that you believe that free markets simply stop working. And here’s the kicker. An H1B employee costs a company a lot more than a resident because of government fees and lawyer costs. So if you have a citizen and an H1B holder drawing the same salary, it actually means the company values the H1B holder far more than they do the citizen.

hyper0perator 6y ago

Companies profit but citizens lose out. Those two entities should not be conflated. This is akin to the outsourcing of many industries such as pharmaceuticals and medical supplies to countries that do not have the same worker or health regulations as the US. The visa workers are second-class citizens and exploited by companies to keep cost low. It undermines all workers and in the long run undermines all nations involved. Take the US's relationship with China manufacturing where China has some of the worst pollution and is one of the largest world polluters as they do not adhere to any of the same regulations that nations of the west adhere to. Currently there is the narrative that the US has a shortage of talented STEM. This is untrue. The shortage is due to a skewed labor market that suppresses opportunity for US citizens in the same way that a US manufacturer wouldn't be able to compete against a Chinese manufacturer not because we don't have the technology, demand, or resources, but that the difference in regulations makes it more costly.

bobdole12345 6y ago
No, the only party I feel exploited by is the US Government, who holds my ability to come and go, and change jobs easily hostage. Oh, and I have to pay taxes to a government that actively torments me with ever changing requirements and absurdity. And I don't get to vote or own property on my current Visa. This is why I push for the opening of offices outside the US in every company I work in.

akhilcacharya 6y ago

> companies profit plus deprive their home countries of their skills a really, really good thing? These are the same people who claim that people should immigrate legally, but then close all legal avenues of immigrating.

Thorentis 6y ago

Profit isn't the only important thing in life. If there are skills lacking in the market, they will eventually be learnt. Filling demand for CRUD app creation engineers instantly, is just another example of our instant-gratification culture manifest in business.