5 ms·

Auction, auction, auction - but not with fees, with salaries. Set a cap on number of entrants, and then "auction" the slots. Adjust the cap on entrants annuall

Auction, auction, auction - but not with fees, with salaries. Set a cap on number of entrants, and then "auction" the slots. Adjust the cap on entrants annually. No showing of specific market need required, or educational background of the applicant. Just criminal background and health checks on the applicant. The bid is the (gross) pay of the role with a minimum commit of 36 months. Winning bids are paid to the employee (i.e. as regular income) over the first 36 months or until their employment with the sponsor ends, whichever comes first. (The fee paid is de minimis, just what's required for processing.) Employees who voluntarily quit or are terminated are free to take any other job paying at least what the sponsor's job paid, provided they do so within 3 months. The new employer does not need to bid or sponsor them. If the employee can't find a new role, they have to leave. In any case sponsor then pays the remaining bid/salary to the government over the remainder of the 36 month term. After 5 years keeping your nose clean and remaining employed making more than the starting pay at entry, get a green card and eligibility to apply for naturalization. At a stroke this would eliminate the abuses of H1-B - lowball salaries, exploitative conditions - and open a legitimate market for global talent. The sponsor has a strong incentive to vet the applicant and not abuse them, as they are on the hook for 3 years of comp whether or not they retain them.

sunshinerag 6y ago
This is brilliant.
RyJones 6y ago
I really like this plan. Perhaps the salary could go into escrow up front, to make the hook set harder on employers?
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  Having to provide even a single year of salary up-front (or the 36 month commitment that the parent comment suggested) would be prohibitive to all but the large companies.
amf12 6y ago
I like some of your points, and H1B desperately needs a revamp. However, a direct unadjusted salary based auction is a non-starter for the following reasons: - Non tech professions also hire people on H1Bs and don't pay as well as FAANG-likes do. - Wages are generally lower in non bay area locations. Employers in low COL areas might lose out to those in high COL areas. > Employees who voluntarily quit or are terminated are free to take any other job paying at least what the sponsor's job paid, provided they do so within 3 months. 3 months is generally not enough time to find a new job, finish immigration transfer formalities. This small duration to find a new job also leads to a lot of scams to maintain status.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > Wages are generally lower in non bay area locations. Employers in low COL areas might lose out to those in high COL areas. Maybe it's time to start valuing employees on the value they add instead of some arbitrary rent price! The talent is global after all.
  - powersnail 6y ago
    That would increase the cost of business because it encourages people to move away from big cities and big companies no longer get to have a concentrated fishbowl of talents. They need to open more offices, or use more remote workers. I personally like that world; but I doubt the companies would. They’d rather just pay more salary to balance out the high rents, so people keep swarming to its location.
- klipt 6y ago
  > Wages are generally lower in non bay area locations. Employers in low COL areas might lose out to those in high COL areas. Well what is the goal of immigration? Having more immigrants in high COL areas would maximize taxes paid by immigrants, which seems like one reasonable goal.
- Kalium 6y ago
  > I like some of your points, and H1B desperately needs a revamp. However, a direct unadjusted salary based auction is a non-starter for the following reasons: <snip> In both cases, the obvious response is that they need to pony up, lose out, or find a way forward that's not an H1B. This strikes me as an intended result of this approach, not some accidental side-effect.
chabons 6y ago
There's a lot of this that I like, but wouldn't the auction just create a single market rate for H1-B employees that's independent of the market rate for the position they're filling? The clause where the employer has to pay the govt the remaining salary if the employee leaves early sounds like it's designed to encourage employers to pay more to discourage that, but I'm not sure what incentive other employers would have to pay more than the H1-B market rate to hire H1-B visa holders who are already here when they could pay the market rate to hire a new visa holder.
bernulli 6y ago
So only visa for FAANG and finance? Who is going to work outside of New York and Silicon Valley? Who is going to work at the universities?
- nitwit005 6y ago
  You can always segment by job category.
  - bernulli 6y ago
    I know. And by local median income, and by national interest, and by .... My point is that the ‘simply auction it off’ approach is bad. [edit: typo]
ibains 6y ago
I have a startup, 4 in US, 10 in India - top tier engineers. I just hired my first H1B - while we pay well - bidding and salary escrow will just favor the big 5 - they are starving startups of talent in bay area any way. Investors want me to get traction with $2M, our needed engineers are at $600-$800k comp (300 base) how do I make it work? Regulation has unintended consequences. As an example trying to save retails investors from fraud means IPOs are fewer and large investors get all the growth. Not to make this political, but highly educated and highly paid “employees” voting for “career politicians” and “bureaucrats” seriously overestimate their understanding of issues and competence. They are missing data points and should lean to minimum regulation. Recent changes asking H1 to be paid >40th percentile of salary instead of 17th percentile seems sensible and enough.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Investors want me to get traction with $2M, our needed engineers are at $600-$800k comp (300 base) how do I make it work? Are you admitting that you want to hire H1B in order to find cheaper people? If you can't find any local people to employ, then either you put your hand in your pocket to afford international or you can't afford to do business and your business model is broken.
  - klipt 6y ago
    Aren't all startup business models "broken" (unprofitable) in the early stages? That's why they require so much investor money to grow to the point of profit.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      If you can't run your business legally then you shouldn't run it. We could make the same arguments to argue for startups not having to follow health and safety law because it makes it harder to be profitable.
  - tehlike 6y ago
    Have you run a business before?
innagadadavida 6y ago
> Auction, auction, auction This is how labor was brought in from Africa not too long ago. I agree a market solution is probably the least unfair one. But, as a country, America should not make the same past, historical mistakes.
dilyevsky 6y ago
If you have an auction based distribution all that will happen is faang and other big cos will get all their h1b offers filled (something like 2/3rds are denied now bc they lose the lottery). This won’t affect the salaries at all bc they already pay much more than everyone else there. Nurses, university staff and yes some bodyshops will be shit outta luck. American new grads will find it even harder to land a job at faang and will have to settle for startups and smaller shops instead. Not sure if that’s really what we want...
cafard 6y ago
So perhaps I own a factory or two in the Republic of Elsewhere. I think it prudent to get one of my kids over to the USA. I call up a tech company in the US and make the following offer: you hire my kid, I'll pay the salary and enough over that to hire somebody to do that job, and a generous sweetener above that. In practice, I suppose somebody with that kind of money has other options. Still the proposal seems open to abuse.

sunshinerag 6y ago

This is brilliant.

RyJones 6y ago

I really like this plan. Perhaps the salary could go into escrow up front, to make the hook set harder on employers?

nrmitchi 6y ago
Having to provide even a single year of salary up-front (or the 36 month commitment that the parent comment suggested) would be prohibitive to all but the large companies.

amf12 6y ago

I like some of your points, and H1B desperately needs a revamp. However, a direct unadjusted salary based auction is a non-starter for the following reasons: - Non tech professions also hire people on H1Bs and don't pay as well as FAANG-likes do. - Wages are generally lower in non bay area locations. Employers in low COL areas might lose out to those in high COL areas. > Employees who voluntarily quit or are terminated are free to take any other job paying at least what the sponsor's job paid, provided they do so within 3 months. 3 months is generally not enough time to find a new job, finish immigration transfer formalities. This small duration to find a new job also leads to a lot of scams to maintain status.

908B64B197 6y ago
> Wages are generally lower in non bay area locations. Employers in low COL areas might lose out to those in high COL areas. Maybe it's time to start valuing employees on the value they add instead of some arbitrary rent price! The talent is global after all.
- powersnail 6y ago
  That would increase the cost of business because it encourages people to move away from big cities and big companies no longer get to have a concentrated fishbowl of talents. They need to open more offices, or use more remote workers. I personally like that world; but I doubt the companies would. They’d rather just pay more salary to balance out the high rents, so people keep swarming to its location.
klipt 6y ago
> Wages are generally lower in non bay area locations. Employers in low COL areas might lose out to those in high COL areas. Well what is the goal of immigration? Having more immigrants in high COL areas would maximize taxes paid by immigrants, which seems like one reasonable goal.
Kalium 6y ago
> I like some of your points, and H1B desperately needs a revamp. However, a direct unadjusted salary based auction is a non-starter for the following reasons: <snip> In both cases, the obvious response is that they need to pony up, lose out, or find a way forward that's not an H1B. This strikes me as an intended result of this approach, not some accidental side-effect.

chabons 6y ago

There's a lot of this that I like, but wouldn't the auction just create a single market rate for H1-B employees that's independent of the market rate for the position they're filling? The clause where the employer has to pay the govt the remaining salary if the employee leaves early sounds like it's designed to encourage employers to pay more to discourage that, but I'm not sure what incentive other employers would have to pay more than the H1-B market rate to hire H1-B visa holders who are already here when they could pay the market rate to hire a new visa holder.

bernulli 6y ago

So only visa for FAANG and finance? Who is going to work outside of New York and Silicon Valley? Who is going to work at the universities?

nitwit005 6y ago
You can always segment by job category.
- bernulli 6y ago
  I know. And by local median income, and by national interest, and by .... My point is that the ‘simply auction it off’ approach is bad. [edit: typo]

ibains 6y ago

I have a startup, 4 in US, 10 in India - top tier engineers. I just hired my first H1B - while we pay well - bidding and salary escrow will just favor the big 5 - they are starving startups of talent in bay area any way. Investors want me to get traction with $2M, our needed engineers are at $600-$800k comp (300 base) how do I make it work? Regulation has unintended consequences. As an example trying to save retails investors from fraud means IPOs are fewer and large investors get all the growth. Not to make this political, but highly educated and highly paid “employees” voting for “career politicians” and “bureaucrats” seriously overestimate their understanding of issues and competence. They are missing data points and should lean to minimum regulation. Recent changes asking H1 to be paid >40th percentile of salary instead of 17th percentile seems sensible and enough.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Investors want me to get traction with $2M, our needed engineers are at $600-$800k comp (300 base) how do I make it work? Are you admitting that you want to hire H1B in order to find cheaper people? If you can't find any local people to employ, then either you put your hand in your pocket to afford international or you can't afford to do business and your business model is broken.
- klipt 6y ago
  Aren't all startup business models "broken" (unprofitable) in the early stages? That's why they require so much investor money to grow to the point of profit.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    If you can't run your business legally then you shouldn't run it. We could make the same arguments to argue for startups not having to follow health and safety law because it makes it harder to be profitable.
- tehlike 6y ago
  Have you run a business before?

innagadadavida 6y ago

> Auction, auction, auction This is how labor was brought in from Africa not too long ago. I agree a market solution is probably the least unfair one. But, as a country, America should not make the same past, historical mistakes.

dilyevsky 6y ago

If you have an auction based distribution all that will happen is faang and other big cos will get all their h1b offers filled (something like 2/3rds are denied now bc they lose the lottery). This won’t affect the salaries at all bc they already pay much more than everyone else there. Nurses, university staff and yes some bodyshops will be shit outta luck. American new grads will find it even harder to land a job at faang and will have to settle for startups and smaller shops instead. Not sure if that’s really what we want...

cafard 6y ago

So perhaps I own a factory or two in the Republic of Elsewhere. I think it prudent to get one of my kids over to the USA. I call up a tech company in the US and make the following offer: you hire my kid, I'll pay the salary and enough over that to hire somebody to do that job, and a generous sweetener above that. In practice, I suppose somebody with that kind of money has other options. Still the proposal seems open to abuse.