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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 ab

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.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    I think that's an excellent description of the market dynamics at play. What I disagree with is the assumed lack of agency on the part of the buyers in the labor market. If the market determines it's not advantageous to pursue a STEM PhD then participants won't. The market is not broken, labor consumers simply need to offer a high enough price to incentivize more participants to acquire the STEM PhD's they desire.
hiram112 5y ago
> 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. I would imagine this is a symptom of immigration abuse more than a rationale for more of these visas, as if often touted. Besides tech, US universities are probably the biggest abuser of the foreign worker / visa pipeline. Not only for workers themselves, but the educational system itself now caters to inflated tuition paying foreigners who know they'll be awarded, on top of their degree, an OPT or similar visa that will allow them to chain it to another longer term method like Perm residence, marriage, H1B, etc - such that they'll be here for decades with the ability to remain and work and (push down wages for citizens), even though the original deal was they were coming here to study for 2 years and then go back home. If you were a smart 20 year old American deciding on your major, and you noticed that 90% of the tech classes were foreigners, what would you do? And furthermore, the graduate tech programs didn't even seem to want you, because they knew they could get a foreigner to pay 2x as much tuition and / or work twice as hard, because the gov't was allowing the college to essentially "sell" a work visa along with the diploma to the foreign students. If I were advising some bright 20 year old, I'd tell them to run from academia and tech as fast as they can - use their smarts in law or medicine where you'll make 2x as much with 2x the respect, and you won't be competing against millions of foreign workers in your own country.

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.
- kfprt 5y ago
  I think that's an excellent description of the market dynamics at play. What I disagree with is the assumed lack of agency on the part of the buyers in the labor market. If the market determines it's not advantageous to pursue a STEM PhD then participants won't. The market is not broken, labor consumers simply need to offer a high enough price to incentivize more participants to acquire the STEM PhD's they desire.

hiram112 5y ago

> 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. I would imagine this is a symptom of immigration abuse more than a rationale for more of these visas, as if often touted. Besides tech, US universities are probably the biggest abuser of the foreign worker / visa pipeline. Not only for workers themselves, but the educational system itself now caters to inflated tuition paying foreigners who know they'll be awarded, on top of their degree, an OPT or similar visa that will allow them to chain it to another longer term method like Perm residence, marriage, H1B, etc - such that they'll be here for decades with the ability to remain and work and (push down wages for citizens), even though the original deal was they were coming here to study for 2 years and then go back home. If you were a smart 20 year old American deciding on your major, and you noticed that 90% of the tech classes were foreigners, what would you do? And furthermore, the graduate tech programs didn't even seem to want you, because they knew they could get a foreigner to pay 2x as much tuition and / or work twice as hard, because the gov't was allowing the college to essentially "sell" a work visa along with the diploma to the foreign students. If I were advising some bright 20 year old, I'd tell them to run from academia and tech as fast as they can - use their smarts in law or medicine where you'll make 2x as much with 2x the respect, and you won't be competing against millions of foreign workers in your own country.