4 ms·

I have worked with brilliant H1B holders and also with manifestly mediocre ones. And even a couple "net negative" employees. To the best of my knowledge all o

by biztos 6y ago

I have worked with brilliant H1B holders and also with manifestly mediocre ones. And even a couple "net negative" employees. To the best of my knowledge all of them played the game diligently and got their green cards, and many of them got their citizenship. Good for them, and in many cases good for us. But I absolutely did not see any greater level of talent among the H1B's than any other cohort in SF/SV. While I'm very happy to work with people from all over the world, I do think that H1B has been used to get a lot of people in who aren't any better than your local City College grads. In addition to that being radically against the national interest, it's also really unfair to the "brilliant visa holders" you have had the good fortune to work with.

bialpio 6y ago
The problem in the US, as I understood it, is that there is shortage of workers in IT [1]. To me, it sounds like turning off the stream of potential workers, without fixing the underlying issue. With the current rules (85k H-1Bs a year), it would take 10 years for immigrants to fill all the spots. There may be a lot of untapped talent left in the US (based on under-representation of women, that's a discussion for another time), but somehow, the vacancies are not getting filled - what gives? In addition, it seems that even currently, H-1B program has rules to make sure the wages paid are fair [2] - if they are not, it sounds like a problem with enforcement, or with how prevailing wages are calculated. To me, based on [3], it does not look like calculating the prevailing wage is the problem. [1] "In the past three months, U.S. employers had about 918,000 unfilled IT jobs, according to IT trade group CompTIA." - https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-got-talent-just-not-enough-in-it-11571168626 https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-got-talent-just-not-en... [2] "Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater." - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b [3] https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1132&area=42660&year=21&source=1 https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1...
- f1refly 6y ago
  You have to realize that there really isn't a "shortage" of workers in the computer science field. Companies like to pretend like there is, but really it's just about pressing salaries in the long run. I have a friend here where I live who is a well-qualified java backend dev, not completely socially inept but who couldn't find a job in two months now after his previous company didn't renew his contract. This is not an outlier, I have spoken with lots of software engineers who had trouble finding work even in the next big city here, despite 50+ "open" positions. In reality, most of those spots are either a) nonexistend, the company just wants a stream of new applicants in case they can get their hands on a cs master for like 2k/month or b) pro forma because they're required by some policy to open the position to outsiders to fulfill a quota. In my experience the lack of IT workers is bullshit and anyone perpetuating it is either unknowing of the real world or acting in malice.
  - tester34 6y ago
    "Here" we tend to say that there's always shortage of __specialists__(senior, ninja, shaman devs).
    - ticviking 6y ago
      Isn't that nearly always the case, in every field? I know guys on landscaping who say the same about senior workers who know how to deal with more exotic plants. In education this phenomenon is a huge part of why poorer schools suck, experienced teachers move to the suburbs as soon as possible.
  - bialpio 6y ago
    The problem is that it is anecdotal. I have been frequently approached by my skip level manager and asked if I know anyone that we could hire since we have headcount that's open for months (this was MSFT) and we won't be able to work on everything we wanted to. This is also something I heard from other people (managers) as well. So now how do we measure if the shortage is real or not? Your gut feeling?
- sage76 6y ago

by biztos 6y ago

bialpio 6y ago

The problem in the US, as I understood it, is that there is shortage of workers in IT [1]. To me, it sounds like turning off the stream of potential workers, without fixing the underlying issue. With the current rules (85k H-1Bs a year), it would take 10 years for immigrants to fill all the spots. There may be a lot of untapped talent left in the US (based on under-representation of women, that's a discussion for another time), but somehow, the vacancies are not getting filled - what gives? In addition, it seems that even currently, H-1B program has rules to make sure the wages paid are fair [2] - if they are not, it sounds like a problem with enforcement, or with how prevailing wages are calculated. To me, based on [3], it does not look like calculating the prevailing wage is the problem. [1] "In the past three months, U.S. employers had about 918,000 unfilled IT jobs, according to IT trade group CompTIA." - https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-got-talent-just-not-enough-in-it-11571168626 https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-got-talent-just-not-en... [2] "Employers must attest to the Department of Labor that they will pay wages to the H-1B nonimmigrant workers that are at least equal to the actual wage paid by the employer to other workers with similar experience and qualifications for the job in question, or the prevailing wage for the occupation in the area of intended employment – whichever is greater." - https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b [3] https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1132&area=42660&year=21&source=1 https://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1...

f1refly 6y ago
You have to realize that there really isn't a "shortage" of workers in the computer science field. Companies like to pretend like there is, but really it's just about pressing salaries in the long run. I have a friend here where I live who is a well-qualified java backend dev, not completely socially inept but who couldn't find a job in two months now after his previous company didn't renew his contract. This is not an outlier, I have spoken with lots of software engineers who had trouble finding work even in the next big city here, despite 50+ "open" positions. In reality, most of those spots are either a) nonexistend, the company just wants a stream of new applicants in case they can get their hands on a cs master for like 2k/month or b) pro forma because they're required by some policy to open the position to outsiders to fulfill a quota. In my experience the lack of IT workers is bullshit and anyone perpetuating it is either unknowing of the real world or acting in malice.
- tester34 6y ago
  "Here" we tend to say that there's always shortage of __specialists__(senior, ninja, shaman devs).
  - ticviking 6y ago
    Isn't that nearly always the case, in every field? I know guys on landscaping who say the same about senior workers who know how to deal with more exotic plants. In education this phenomenon is a huge part of why poorer schools suck, experienced teachers move to the suburbs as soon as possible.
- bialpio 6y ago
  The problem is that it is anecdotal. I have been frequently approached by my skip level manager and asked if I know anyone that we could hire since we have headcount that's open for months (this was MSFT) and we won't be able to work on everything we wanted to. This is also something I heard from other people (managers) as well. So now how do we measure if the shortage is real or not? Your gut feeling?
sage76 6y ago