7 ms·

Couldn't companies also use the 6 years that they employ a foreigner to train an American worker to fill the position? A bachelors program is only 4 years and t

by kfprt 5y ago

Couldn't companies also use the 6 years that they employ a foreigner to train an American worker to fill the position? A bachelors program is only 4 years and the company could sponsor it if they were in such desperate need.

rus20376 5y ago
top comment so far! exactly correct! believe it or not companies would actually hire junior staff and train them up on the job and promote from within. let 's get back to that.
- sushid 5y ago
  Companies do this all the time. Present day. They don't hire new grads thinking they're staff engineers on day 1. They hire them to train them up and promote them within the company.
joshka 5y ago
Do you perceive this is an either/or proposition?
sushid 5y ago
These roles are varied and not traditionally new grad roles. The qualification requirement is also not just a degree. It can be something like 3+ experience with some infra tooling. Lastly, I think we'd all agree that a graduate with the same degree can have varied performance and there's no guarantee that some sponsored person will come back with the degree and the skills they clearly need ASAP.
- kfprt 5y ago
  They claim they are in desperate need and that's why they have to hire foreigners. Surely 6 years is enough time for them to rectify the situation if it were as desperate as they claim. If they can't find a solution in 6 years then they are either unmotivated or unwilling. This is their problem, not ours. If your business was to collapse in 6 years why would you not spend that time finding a solution.
  - random314 5y ago
    Checkout levels.fyi to see the salaries offered by Facebook. Facebook is not a university offering training. The job is not similar to plumbing where after a couple of months of "training" one person becomes fungible with another one.
  - darth_avocado 5y ago
    Because you’re assuming a static system. If everything stopped moving, you need x people, x us citizens that you could train, you had 6 years where the people stay with you, and you have a guarantee that after you put 6 years the people will stay with you till you get back what you invested in these people, then yes that is a viable situation. However, things move and move fast. And it’s not like companies don’t try to find solutions, they do, but they balance them with their need to stay competitive in the market. That is why you see initiatives all around.
    - kfprt 5y ago
      If you have both money and time and can't/won't find a solution then your business deserves to fail. That's capitalism. If everyone plays by the same rules then there is no competitive disadvantage. I am an optimist and believe that American corporations will rise to the challenge of reduced H1B abuse.
      - darth_avocado 5y ago
        Sure everyone will play by the same rules in the local market and there wont be competitive advantage. But the world simply wont wait around for it. You’ll have the same labor working on similar problems, just not in America. Just look at how big tiktok is now. Facebook cannot afford to not hire and stick to domestic competitors.
        kfprt 5y ago
        Facebook does not get a vote. Whether or not they can afford something is immaterial. On a separate note America's real competitive advantage is size. America can clone tiktok if need be.
closeparen 5y ago
I think success at this kind of work has more to do with traits than with education or experience per se. Probably there are some Americans with the traits who are undereducated for preventable reasons.
- kfprt 5y ago
  Traits? What traits? Is the implication here that Americans aren't hard workers? That's the only interpretation that parses.
  - dang_p3n1s 5y ago
    americans aren’t particularly hard workers… Does that “parse”…?
  - closeparen 5y ago
    The intelligence and conscientiousness required to do high-end software engineering work may well be uniformly distributed. But I think we're probably at a point where there's more capital looking to hire people like this, than there are Americans like this.
    - kfprt 5y ago
      So most Americans are lazy and stupid? Only 7.7% of Americans work in tech, what about the other 92.3%, what are they? Note that's 7.7% of the workforce not population. https://connect.comptia.org/content/research/cyberstates-2020 https://connect.comptia.org/content/research/cyberstates-202...
      - mmarq 5y ago
        We would be lying to ourselves if we pretended that we could turn all the Jobseeker’s Allowance material into software developers with some training, just for the sake of not hiring a Mexican or a Rumanian.
        5y ago
darth_avocado 5y ago
Unfortunately a lot of these jobs aren’t exactly jobs that you can train someone from 0. These are jobs that require advanced education and the ability to be able to grasp certain concepts. They can’t just train anyone, but they can train university students in certain majors, which tbh they already do. All of these companies hire a TON of fresh grads, which is exactly what you’re saying, training someone to do the job. Why wouldn’t they? It’s cheaper to hire a university grad in the USA than get an experienced professional from abroad. However, if you look closely, even that pipeline is kind of skewed. Very few Americans pursue advanced degrees, and even when they do, they concentrate towards business or some other non stem course. My Phd cohort consisted of 12 people out of which 7 were non citizens.
- kfprt 5y ago
  I've yet to see an argument as to what the problem is that they can't fix in 6 years and an amount of money equal to a tech salary. It seems more likely the problem is that they want to underpay. If H1B was restricted to advanced degrees such as PhD's I doubt many people would complain. It would certainly be more in line with the intent of the program. Why more Americans don't pursue STEM PhD's is an excellent question. Do you have any insight on that?
  - darth_avocado 5y ago
    A couple of things. To get to STEM PhDs, you need STEM undergrad and master’s. If you look at what degrees people pursue, STEM degrees are less as compared to other majors. You can’t become a AI/ML PhD with an undergrad degree in History. That pipeline needs fixing. Plus, getting college degrees is expensive. People who have a STEM degree only feel a need for advanced degree if their careers aren’t doing that well. Why would you give up a high paying job to go into debt? If things are doing great, why change anything? And last but not the least, market dynamics. If you spend 5 years to get a PHD + 2 years of Master’s, you get a higher paying job than a fresh undergrad, but people with 7 yoe get paid a lot more than that because they develop a different set of skills by then. It isn’t a very lucrative proposition for most Americans.
lacker 5y ago
Couldn't companies also use the 6 years that they employ a foreigner to train an American worker to fill the position? The large tech companies are hiring thousands of software engineers each year and just want the best talent they can get. Maybe 75% of them hired to work in the US are US citizens. Sure, you can train new people, and they do train new people all the time. But you won't be able to get the same quality of software engineer if you restrict yourself to only US citizens - that's just common sense, adding more restrictions makes the recruiting job harder. Now, the theory behind an H1-B is that you're supposed to be able to hire immigrants if they are bringing a valuable skill to the US. These immigrants are bringing a valuable skill to the US. It's just that the law imagines you have a single position to hire and doesn't make sense for situations like "we need to hire 5000 people with this skill set and there are only 4000 Americans that we could find with it". What immigration laws should actually do is enforce that companies aren't underpaying immigrants compared to Americans. That will discourage companies that really only want immigrants so they can be cheap. You could even add on a $10,000 fee per immigrant, paid by the company, to get the green card. That would make immigrants more expensive than US citizens, thus giving companies a financial incentize to hire Americans when possible. But for the large tech companies, who really are bringing exceptionally skilled people to the US, I think they would be happy to pay this fee instead of dealing with all risk and chaos in the current immigration system.
- kfprt 5y ago
  > The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals Large tech companies employ millions, they can't all be the best. Tech workers aren't special, they're fungible. The H1B program exists for temporary shortages but has been abused as an immigration program which it was never designed for. I'm fine with a fee based program but make it $1M. $10k is peanuts. If they're as special as the companies claim then they'll be happy to pay it. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b

by kfprt 5y ago

rus20376 5y ago

top comment so far! exactly correct! believe it or not companies would actually hire junior staff and train them up on the job and promote from within. let 's get back to that.

sushid 5y ago
Companies do this all the time. Present day. They don't hire new grads thinking they're staff engineers on day 1. They hire them to train them up and promote them within the company.

joshka 5y ago

Do you perceive this is an either/or proposition?

sushid 5y ago

These roles are varied and not traditionally new grad roles. The qualification requirement is also not just a degree. It can be something like 3+ experience with some infra tooling. Lastly, I think we'd all agree that a graduate with the same degree can have varied performance and there's no guarantee that some sponsored person will come back with the degree and the skills they clearly need ASAP.

kfprt 5y ago
They claim they are in desperate need and that's why they have to hire foreigners. Surely 6 years is enough time for them to rectify the situation if it were as desperate as they claim. If they can't find a solution in 6 years then they are either unmotivated or unwilling. This is their problem, not ours. If your business was to collapse in 6 years why would you not spend that time finding a solution.
- random314 5y ago
  Checkout levels.fyi to see the salaries offered by Facebook. Facebook is not a university offering training. The job is not similar to plumbing where after a couple of months of "training" one person becomes fungible with another one.
- darth_avocado 5y ago
  Because you’re assuming a static system. If everything stopped moving, you need x people, x us citizens that you could train, you had 6 years where the people stay with you, and you have a guarantee that after you put 6 years the people will stay with you till you get back what you invested in these people, then yes that is a viable situation. However, things move and move fast. And it’s not like companies don’t try to find solutions, they do, but they balance them with their need to stay competitive in the market. That is why you see initiatives all around.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    If you have both money and time and can't/won't find a solution then your business deserves to fail. That's capitalism. If everyone plays by the same rules then there is no competitive disadvantage. I am an optimist and believe that American corporations will rise to the challenge of reduced H1B abuse.
    - darth_avocado 5y ago
      Sure everyone will play by the same rules in the local market and there wont be competitive advantage. But the world simply wont wait around for it. You’ll have the same labor working on similar problems, just not in America. Just look at how big tiktok is now. Facebook cannot afford to not hire and stick to domestic competitors.
      - kfprt 5y ago
        Facebook does not get a vote. Whether or not they can afford something is immaterial. On a separate note America's real competitive advantage is size. America can clone tiktok if need be.

closeparen 5y ago

I think success at this kind of work has more to do with traits than with education or experience per se. Probably there are some Americans with the traits who are undereducated for preventable reasons.

kfprt 5y ago
Traits? What traits? Is the implication here that Americans aren't hard workers? That's the only interpretation that parses.
- dang_p3n1s 5y ago
  americans aren’t particularly hard workers… Does that “parse”…?
- closeparen 5y ago
  The intelligence and conscientiousness required to do high-end software engineering work may well be uniformly distributed. But I think we're probably at a point where there's more capital looking to hire people like this, than there are Americans like this.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    So most Americans are lazy and stupid? Only 7.7% of Americans work in tech, what about the other 92.3%, what are they? Note that's 7.7% of the workforce not population. https://connect.comptia.org/content/research/cyberstates-2020 https://connect.comptia.org/content/research/cyberstates-202...
    - mmarq 5y ago
      We would be lying to ourselves if we pretended that we could turn all the Jobseeker’s Allowance material into software developers with some training, just for the sake of not hiring a Mexican or a Rumanian.
      - 5y ago

darth_avocado 5y ago

Unfortunately a lot of these jobs aren’t exactly jobs that you can train someone from 0. These are jobs that require advanced education and the ability to be able to grasp certain concepts. They can’t just train anyone, but they can train university students in certain majors, which tbh they already do. All of these companies hire a TON of fresh grads, which is exactly what you’re saying, training someone to do the job. Why wouldn’t they? It’s cheaper to hire a university grad in the USA than get an experienced professional from abroad. However, if you look closely, even that pipeline is kind of skewed. Very few Americans pursue advanced degrees, and even when they do, they concentrate towards business or some other non stem course. My Phd cohort consisted of 12 people out of which 7 were non citizens.

kfprt 5y ago
I've yet to see an argument as to what the problem is that they can't fix in 6 years and an amount of money equal to a tech salary. It seems more likely the problem is that they want to underpay. If H1B was restricted to advanced degrees such as PhD's I doubt many people would complain. It would certainly be more in line with the intent of the program. Why more Americans don't pursue STEM PhD's is an excellent question. Do you have any insight on that?
- darth_avocado 5y ago
  A couple of things. To get to STEM PhDs, you need STEM undergrad and master’s. If you look at what degrees people pursue, STEM degrees are less as compared to other majors. You can’t become a AI/ML PhD with an undergrad degree in History. That pipeline needs fixing. Plus, getting college degrees is expensive. People who have a STEM degree only feel a need for advanced degree if their careers aren’t doing that well. Why would you give up a high paying job to go into debt? If things are doing great, why change anything? And last but not the least, market dynamics. If you spend 5 years to get a PHD + 2 years of Master’s, you get a higher paying job than a fresh undergrad, but people with 7 yoe get paid a lot more than that because they develop a different set of skills by then. It isn’t a very lucrative proposition for most Americans.

lacker 5y ago

Couldn't companies also use the 6 years that they employ a foreigner to train an American worker to fill the position? The large tech companies are hiring thousands of software engineers each year and just want the best talent they can get. Maybe 75% of them hired to work in the US are US citizens. Sure, you can train new people, and they do train new people all the time. But you won't be able to get the same quality of software engineer if you restrict yourself to only US citizens - that's just common sense, adding more restrictions makes the recruiting job harder. Now, the theory behind an H1-B is that you're supposed to be able to hire immigrants if they are bringing a valuable skill to the US. These immigrants are bringing a valuable skill to the US. It's just that the law imagines you have a single position to hire and doesn't make sense for situations like "we need to hire 5000 people with this skill set and there are only 4000 Americans that we could find with it". What immigration laws should actually do is enforce that companies aren't underpaying immigrants compared to Americans. That will discourage companies that really only want immigrants so they can be cheap. You could even add on a $10,000 fee per immigrant, paid by the company, to get the green card. That would make immigrants more expensive than US citizens, thus giving companies a financial incentize to hire Americans when possible. But for the large tech companies, who really are bringing exceptionally skilled people to the US, I think they would be happy to pay this fee instead of dealing with all risk and chaos in the current immigration system.

kfprt 5y ago
> The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals Large tech companies employ millions, they can't all be the best. Tech workers aren't special, they're fungible. The H1B program exists for temporary shortages but has been abused as an immigration program which it was never designed for. I'm fine with a fee based program but make it $1M. $10k is peanuts. If they're as special as the companies claim then they'll be happy to pay it. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b