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> Because it's being used to drive wages down and American workers are getting fired from their jobs. Following the same logic, my manager up to Sundar Pichai

> Because it's being used to drive wages down and American workers are getting fired from their jobs. Following the same logic, my manager up to Sundar Pichai is driving down my wage and stripping me of opportunity. If they didn't exist, I would have been a Google CEO and earned $200M a year? That's absurd

joe_the_user 5y ago
H1b pulls in lots of people. The majority get "chewed up and spat out" and go back to their home country. A minority indeed can make it, going to consultant/entrepreneur etc. There's no reason for a high tech American worker to view this situation as remotely in their particular interests. No only does it lower but it allows companies to maintain their grueling coding schedule, a system that burns out a whole lot of people.
- addicted 5y ago
  The math simply does not add up. There are approximately 4million software developer jobs in the US. There are only 65k H-1B visas given out every year. And not all of them even go to software engineers (doctors, finance professionals, etc. all enter through the H-1B route). And the H-1B visa lasts a maximum of 6 years. Let's be generous and assume all 65k visas are going to software professionals. That means at any point of time, you only have 390k H-1B visa holders (this is not correct, but I will get to that a little later). So your claim is that 390k visa holders are driving down the wages for the 4 million software professionals? More damning is the fact that we are talking about an industry where people can and did work remote and offshore, and there are over 20million software professionals in the world. A software engineer working in Kiev is far more likely to have an impact on US software engineer wages than the 10% who may be on an H-1B in the US. Furthermore, the US software engineer's wage is kept higher by the fact that the same engineer is working for Microsoft for 125k minimum in Seattle, than they are working for Microsoft for closer to 50-60k in Microsoft's massive Hyderabad campus. I did mention the exceptions. 1) Visa abuse. The late 2000s and early 2010s saw a lot of visa abuse. However, by the mid 2010s both the Obama and Trump administrations cracked down on this, and it's fairly trivial at this point. 2) EB1 visa holders. Due to the fact that the US immigration system was last updated in 1990, you have a situation where Chinese and Indians are singled out when they have an approved green card petition and forced to wait years and decades. As a hack, on the backs of the approved green card, which the US is unable to actually give them, they are given a much worse offering of an H-1B which has inflated H-1B numbers. But these are not a reflection of the H-1B visa, and more a reflection of the failure of Congress to fix the green card process. This does inflate H-1B numbers quite a bit, but the article is talking about how the administration is missing an opportunity to greatly resolve precisely this issue. The 100k green cards that the administration is wasting instead of giving to already approved green card applicants, would almost certainly reduce the number of H-1B holders by an almost 1:1 relationship almost immediately.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    Your statement above is either confused or intentionally deceptive [this post edited as I tried to parse your claim]: "US has just over 580,000 H-1B visa holders, says USCIS" [1] The figure you quote, 65K, is, (as you do say) the number of H-1bs issued per year. But that's not comparable to 4+ million statically existing software jobs and contrasting the two figures gives the wrong impression - the impression that H-1bs don't impact software job market where clearly they do. -- Could 500K influence a job market of 4 million? Obviously, notably when they are concentrated in certain area but just generally, you don't need another 4 million to change a supply and demand equation. Given this, I'd say the rest of your argument falls apart. I'd note that I'm not "anti-H1b", I'm anti the entire sweat shop system I describe above. I'd agree with other posters who suggest H1b holders should be able to choose the employer as soon as they enter the country. [1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigration/us-has-just-over-580000-h-1b-visa-holders-says-uscis/articleshow/76676250.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigratio...
axiolite 5y ago
> That's absurd Uhh, yes... What you said is certainly absurd. It has no relation to my comment, however. H1-B visas are being used very directly to drive down wages. US workers are fired from their jobs, replaced by H1-B visa "contractors" and left to go find other jobs, or sometimes offered the option to apply for their old jobs, at reduced wages. One of the stated requirements for H1-B visas is that they will not replace a US worker, but that is being quite flagrantly violated. The program is constantly abused and needs to be completely ended and replaced.
- belltaco 5y ago
  Yea the 20% unemployment rate in tech and 30K/yr tech salaries prove your point. /s
  - effingwewt 5y ago
    Both your statement and parent's are both true. H-1s are being used to drive down tech wages, and are also used as a way to create indentured servitude in that the worker leaves or is fired they lose their visa. At the same time tech is and has been vastly overpaid, WFH is bringing wages down too. The overpaid tech argument was always 'well you need engineers and you'need to be in SV so you need to pay whatever FAANGs are. But that bubble is bursting before our eyes, and just like last pop, they simply can't believe it until the end.
    - ericd 5y ago
      Oh? Is there a salary bubble pop in progress that I’ve been missing? Or at I misunderstanding your statement?
      - effingwewt 5y ago
        Quite. As soon as the big companies started switching to WFH and employees left for places with lower COL, said businesses began lowering waged based on physical location. This immediately proved the wages were artificially inflated, and were the effect of SV madness. With location being of less importance, the need to hire only the best seemes to have waned (not really it was always a bs rhetoric). I've said repeatedly that programming is to this bubble what web designers were to the last. I've also said it's not some magic language like some pretend it is, I made sure all three of my children picked up various programming languages from a young age. As always, I could be wrong, I just call it how I see it.

joe_the_user 5y ago

H1b pulls in lots of people. The majority get "chewed up and spat out" and go back to their home country. A minority indeed can make it, going to consultant/entrepreneur etc. There's no reason for a high tech American worker to view this situation as remotely in their particular interests. No only does it lower but it allows companies to maintain their grueling coding schedule, a system that burns out a whole lot of people.

addicted 5y ago
The math simply does not add up. There are approximately 4million software developer jobs in the US. There are only 65k H-1B visas given out every year. And not all of them even go to software engineers (doctors, finance professionals, etc. all enter through the H-1B route). And the H-1B visa lasts a maximum of 6 years. Let's be generous and assume all 65k visas are going to software professionals. That means at any point of time, you only have 390k H-1B visa holders (this is not correct, but I will get to that a little later). So your claim is that 390k visa holders are driving down the wages for the 4 million software professionals? More damning is the fact that we are talking about an industry where people can and did work remote and offshore, and there are over 20million software professionals in the world. A software engineer working in Kiev is far more likely to have an impact on US software engineer wages than the 10% who may be on an H-1B in the US. Furthermore, the US software engineer's wage is kept higher by the fact that the same engineer is working for Microsoft for 125k minimum in Seattle, than they are working for Microsoft for closer to 50-60k in Microsoft's massive Hyderabad campus. I did mention the exceptions. 1) Visa abuse. The late 2000s and early 2010s saw a lot of visa abuse. However, by the mid 2010s both the Obama and Trump administrations cracked down on this, and it's fairly trivial at this point. 2) EB1 visa holders. Due to the fact that the US immigration system was last updated in 1990, you have a situation where Chinese and Indians are singled out when they have an approved green card petition and forced to wait years and decades. As a hack, on the backs of the approved green card, which the US is unable to actually give them, they are given a much worse offering of an H-1B which has inflated H-1B numbers. But these are not a reflection of the H-1B visa, and more a reflection of the failure of Congress to fix the green card process. This does inflate H-1B numbers quite a bit, but the article is talking about how the administration is missing an opportunity to greatly resolve precisely this issue. The 100k green cards that the administration is wasting instead of giving to already approved green card applicants, would almost certainly reduce the number of H-1B holders by an almost 1:1 relationship almost immediately.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Your statement above is either confused or intentionally deceptive [this post edited as I tried to parse your claim]: "US has just over 580,000 H-1B visa holders, says USCIS" [1] The figure you quote, 65K, is, (as you do say) the number of H-1bs issued per year. But that's not comparable to 4+ million statically existing software jobs and contrasting the two figures gives the wrong impression - the impression that H-1bs don't impact software job market where clearly they do. -- Could 500K influence a job market of 4 million? Obviously, notably when they are concentrated in certain area but just generally, you don't need another 4 million to change a supply and demand equation. Given this, I'd say the rest of your argument falls apart. I'd note that I'm not "anti-H1b", I'm anti the entire sweat shop system I describe above. I'd agree with other posters who suggest H1b holders should be able to choose the employer as soon as they enter the country. [1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigration/us-has-just-over-580000-h-1b-visa-holders-says-uscis/articleshow/76676250.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigratio...

axiolite 5y ago

> That's absurd Uhh, yes... What you said is certainly absurd. It has no relation to my comment, however. H1-B visas are being used very directly to drive down wages. US workers are fired from their jobs, replaced by H1-B visa "contractors" and left to go find other jobs, or sometimes offered the option to apply for their old jobs, at reduced wages. One of the stated requirements for H1-B visas is that they will not replace a US worker, but that is being quite flagrantly violated. The program is constantly abused and needs to be completely ended and replaced.

belltaco 5y ago
Yea the 20% unemployment rate in tech and 30K/yr tech salaries prove your point. /s
- effingwewt 5y ago
  Both your statement and parent's are both true. H-1s are being used to drive down tech wages, and are also used as a way to create indentured servitude in that the worker leaves or is fired they lose their visa. At the same time tech is and has been vastly overpaid, WFH is bringing wages down too. The overpaid tech argument was always 'well you need engineers and you'need to be in SV so you need to pay whatever FAANGs are. But that bubble is bursting before our eyes, and just like last pop, they simply can't believe it until the end.
  - ericd 5y ago
    Oh? Is there a salary bubble pop in progress that I’ve been missing? Or at I misunderstanding your statement?
    - effingwewt 5y ago
      Quite. As soon as the big companies started switching to WFH and employees left for places with lower COL, said businesses began lowering waged based on physical location. This immediately proved the wages were artificially inflated, and were the effect of SV madness. With location being of less importance, the need to hire only the best seemes to have waned (not really it was always a bs rhetoric). I've said repeatedly that programming is to this bubble what web designers were to the last. I've also said it's not some magic language like some pretend it is, I made sure all three of my children picked up various programming languages from a young age. As always, I could be wrong, I just call it how I see it.