24 ms·

A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently look

• toomuchtodo 2y ago
  There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay. If it is taking more than 30-60 days for workers to find a role, there are enough workers domestically.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay. That and companies are just hilariously bad at finding workers they want to hire for nebulous reasons. I have no doubt even if my company hired 95% of the workers it had marked down as "no hire" they'd be able to squeeze a salary's of value worth out of each of them (well, if management is competent, which it tends to not be). I'm sure those of us who've been around long enough can all attest to some side of seeing form of this dysfunction. I'm more than happy to reject them for selfish reasons, of course, like "I don't want this person on my team" or "this person seems like an asshole" or "I don't want to teach this person their third language after java and typescript". Etc. I mean there are terrible interview candidates out there, but the people who literally can't code at all tend to be easy to filter out. I'm curious if there's any way to observe the salary margins that separate the top of the labor market from the bottom. Surely there are. That would probably give a big signal as to how much undue attention is given to, e.g., Senior vs Junior developers and American workers vs H1Bs. I'd put money that some of this complaining about lack of labor is actually not wanting to hire fresh grads and eat the cost of training when they'd be just fine. (Also the H1B thing, but that's already discussed to death)
    • throwaway7783 2y ago
      Okay, I have interviewed hundreds of people in the last decade, and I can tell you that most are not good enough. There are companies that are downright abusing H1B for wage suppression, but as a startup founder, I will try my hardest to avoid hiring people who I have to squeeze their salary's worth and still get mediocre results (nothing to do with citizen or not - I had this experience with a Canadian contractor - just not worth it). I have been successful in liberating money from VCs and create jobs, and I want the best people that money can buy. Turns out, there are great American and non-american candidates who are willing to work for the money I can offer. Also in my experience, I hardly even get resumes from Americans for backend jobs. Frontend is different and I get a LOT of American resumes. Our frontend engineering, PS, CX, Sales and Marketing is all-american, and backend is a mix of american, greencard, H1b - because thats all I get in the resume pipeline. If I have to cut costs, I will have to cut the team in US and move the jobs to a low cost region regardless of their citizenship status.
      • dowager_dan99 2y ago
        >> If I have to cut costs, I will have to cut the team in US and move the jobs to a low cost region regardless of their citizenship status. Read that sentence again. If you're hiring an American team in the Us, and cutting in the US, it's not regardless of citizenship - unless you're abusing the H-1B program
      • lubujackson 2y ago
        "Not good enough" or not good enough to pass your leet code gauntlet that has nothing to do with the day-to-day role? Because those aren't the same thing. Also don't discount interview stress - I read that psychologically the most difficult thing to do is be on stage in front of people and do complex math problems... which is basically what live coding tests are.
        • afavour 2y ago
          I hate leet code gauntlets too but I don't see what it has to do with hiring immigrant workers. No matter your status you are equally vulnerable to failing a code gauntlet test.
  • thatfrenchguy 2y ago
    There's a shortage of applicants with the skills that companies need. Engineers, like most qualified workforce, aren't interchangeable.
    • toomuchtodo 2y ago
      This is not what the data shows [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Also, the efforts of many US firms recently to grow their India and LATAM presence [6] demonstrates this is for cost reasons, not a lack of qualified workforce. Companies will hire contractors from IT outsourcers and similar to launder the labor cost cramdown operation. IT unemployment is ~6% [7], why are we issuing any H1Bs beyond exceptional, highly compensated talent (~$300k-$500k/year and up)? [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-cognizant-h1b-visas-discriminates-us-workers/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-cognizant-h1b-visas-... | https://archive.today/jaXNo https://archive.today/jaXNo [2] https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage-theft-in-the-h-1b-program/ https://www.epi.org/publication/new-evidence-widespread-wage... [3] https://cis.org/North/Unlikely-Sources-Confirm-Wage-Suppression-H1B-Program https://cis.org/North/Unlikely-Sources-Confirm-Wage-Suppress... [4] http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/05/economists-h-1b-visas-suppress-wages http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2015/05/economists-h-1b-vi... [5] https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/h1b.pdf https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/h1b.pd... [6] https://stig.net/latam-outsourcing-destination-us-companies/ https://stig.net/latam-outsourcing-destination-us-companies/ [7] https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-unemployment-hits-6-amid-overall-u-s-jobs-growth-bc2f2915 https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-unemployment-hits-6-amid-ove...
      • throwaway7783 2y ago
        I mean, If I have an India or LATAM presence, why would I hire in the US at all, even H1Bs? Unemployment rates mean nothing if its a skills job. Eng #1 is not the same as Eng #2. You can see this plainly in interviews. Our hit rate for engineering is roughly 1 in 20 - purely based on the skill match. So 6-7% unemployment might as well mean they are not good enough?
        • 2y ago
  • dingnuts 2y ago
    > There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay Translation: companies would rather have underpaid immigrants as indentured servants to exploit than Americans who can demand higher wages
    • rtpg 2y ago
      A problem solved if visas are not associated to employers, because then an employer couldn’t hold onto the employee like this.
      • TechDebtDevin 2y ago
        No. Because it still floods the job market with off short talent that is willing to work for 30% less. Construction workers arent tied to a single employer (usually) and that drops the price of labour across the board even in union dominated markets.
        • NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
          The simple solution is for the government to put a tax on the visa. For each H1-B the company does, they pay the government an additional $200,000 per year (or some other large, arbitrary sum). If they really need them that badly, they'll pay up. What I think happens is that they discover they don't need them quite so much.
          • mgkimsal 2y ago
            Tariffs on visas?
          • throwaway48476 2y ago
            Great idea
            • aprilthird2021 2y ago
              It's one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard on this site frankly. For how "meritocratic" HN claims to be, they are totally fine with basically eliminating all competition in their own job sphere. Imagine how quickly business trust in the government would go down if the government mandated a $200k head tax on H1Bs. It's absurd and only here would anyone hear it and think it makes sense
  • yodsanklai 2y ago
    > There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay If you want the best candidates, it makes sense to have a wider pool of recruitment.
    • kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
      They're not hiring "the best". They want compliant serfs who are trapped with the promise of a greencard sponsorship someday.
  • amykhar 2y ago
    That is absolutely what these kinds of Visas are NOT supposed to be addressing.
  • thephyber 2y ago
    > If it is taking more than 30-60 days for workers to find a role, there are enough workers domestically. This makes no sense, even if I agree with your first statement. Not every company is willing to completely retrain a worker for something outside of their core competency. Lots of candidates simply aren’t competent, or even reliable employees. Lots of companies would rather a position go unfilled than make a bad hire that is very expensive to fix.
    • throwaway2037 2y ago
      > outside of their core competency I don't mean to point a finger at you, but this term is basically a weasel term at this point... because the "core competency" grows as large as necessary for these companies to complain that they cannot find qualified candidates. In truth, they are not willing to train people missing some skills at the fringe. The original post from someone who works on satellite tech (surely dual-purpose to create killer robots, or whatever) decided to throw into the "core competency" mix that good/solid linear algebra was required. What a farce. I am sure that less than 1% of their work requires it. You can just have one PhD on the wider team that writes all that codes... well, sketches it out, then everyone else integrates it or refines it.
      • thephyber 2y ago
        Your entire comment could have been “that phrase is subjective”. Every company makes lots of subjective decisions during hiring, I agree.
  • dmayle 2y ago
    This is why H1-B visas should have a minimum salary requirement equal to 20% over whichever is greater, median salary for the role in the industry, or median salary for the role in the company (and whichever is greater, US-wide, or local pay scale). This way, a company is always incentivized to find local talent, but when they are actually unable to, they have a path to find the expertise they need. The U.S. could relax restrictions on H1-B, lowering red tape, and removing a lot of churn that comes with the H1-B program
    • aprilthird2021 2y ago
      In general, H1B visas do have such provisions. At least in CA most jobs must provide a salary range. Even if every H1B is the lowest of the range in those postings, that alone means there are many many jobs which fit your criteria.
      • janalsncm 2y ago
        The ranges are way too low then. I checked H1B salaries and I found the following in San Jose (median rent approx $2200 for 1BR): FLEXON TECHNOLOGIES INC Database analyst: $60k DATA TRACE INFORMATION SERVICES LLC Software engineer: $65k PRIMARIUS TECHNOLOGIES US LLC DATA ANALYST $72k ZOOM VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS INC AI SCIENTIST $74k HBI SOLUTIONS INC DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR $75k BEACONFIRE STAFFING SOLUTIONS INC COMPUTER SYSTEMS ENGINEER $88k https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=san+jose&year=2024 https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=&city=san+jose&year=2... Sort by salary ascending and you will see what I mean. These are blatant violations. We know how much software engineers should make. Do the immigrants know they are moving to one of the most expensive cities in the US?
        • sciencesama 2y ago
          Taking advantage of the system !!
        • mlinhares 2y ago
          The good ones do and use this as a way to get through the door.
• Spivak 2y ago
  I feel like this whole issue could be solved short order if we agreed that not being able to find qualified applicants at a given fixed price does not a shortage make. It's the same with the "fast food shortage," I bet the shortage would dry up real fast at $50/hr so all we're really doing is haggling over price. If in order to hire a H1-B at a salary of x you had to offer US workers 2x with say a $100k floor on x then I bet Americans would show up.
  • sunshowers 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • LPisGood 2y ago
      It seems to me that there is a dichotomy between that or allowing companies to continue to snub US workers for vulnerable foreign labor. Maybe you could escape the dichotomy by requiring H1-B workers to be in the 5% paid employees at a company or something.
      • sunshowers 2y ago
        No, what needs to happen is to give workers mobility. H1B workers are preferentially hired at some firms because of their lack of mobility — they're easier to abuse than other workers. Addressing that would let everyone be on an equal footing and share the benefits of agglomeration (immigration increases supply and demand!) It would also be far more just and equitable.
        • throwaway48476 2y ago
          Parents idea is better.
        • LPisGood 2y ago
          I think from a US citizen perspective, you don’t want to be equitable with people on a Visa program, because the low COL areas where many of the people on H1-B visas come from inherently makes them more willing to accept less than their US counterparts.
• strongpigeon 2y ago
  Good news: the USCIS makes this data available! [0] Google, Microsoft and Meta definitely look for (and hire!) US applicants. One can reasonably have a gripe with the consulting companies on there (Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, etc.) but they don't represent 90-95% of H-1B issued. [0] https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employer-data-hub https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...
  • pnw 2y ago
    One might have more than just a gripe with Infosys given they recently admitted to defrauding the visa system over decades and paid a record $34m fine. How many Americans lost out on jobs as a result? We'll never know. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/indian-corporation-pays-record-34-million-fine-settle-allegations-systemic-visa-fraud https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/indian-corporation-pays-re...
    • strongpigeon 2y ago
      It’s worth saying though that this fine is for lying and abusing the B-1 visas (to circumvent H-1b limitations). That being said I still believe there are a lot of issues with these companies regarding their H-1bs in the first place.
      • pnw 2y ago
        I'm willing to wager that a company breaking the law for B-1 visas is also abusing the law for H1B visas, they just haven't been caught yet.
  • guiomie 2y ago
    Actually, looking at your link, Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon are all in the top 10... on the link you shared, am I missing something?
    • strongpigeon 2y ago
      My point was that those companies are indeed in the top 10, and those companies also look at and hire US applicants. This was in response to the commenter’s point that they’d be surprised if 5-10% of H1Bs listing even considered US applicants.
• aylmao 2y ago
  I wonder if this shortage has to do with the recent strong swing back to in-office work
  • warkdarrior 2y ago
    Well, what is a company supposed to do if local candidates do not want RTO? It seems logical to hire workers who are OK with RTO, especially if they are outside of the country and clearly willing to relocate for RTO.
    • ziddoap 2y ago
      >Well, what is a company supposed to do if local candidates do not want RTO? Well one option, of course, would be not forcing staff to return to office.
      • simoncion 2y ago
        Perhaps while also noticing both the record profits made over the past four years, as well as the fact that many of those working from their home office have had nothing but glowing performance reviews over those past four years...
    • tokioyoyo 2y ago
      It just takes the negotiation power from the employees though. The question is, whether it’s more important to make the employees happy or the businesses. Both have valid cases.
• eru 2y ago
  Talking about a shortage of local applicants is really irrelevant and at most a distraction. It's the old 'the foreigners are taking our jobs' routine.
  • liontwist 2y ago
    So is it true or false?
    • eru 2y ago
      The number of people in the labour force has change quite a lot over the centuries, and the number of people gainfully employed has tracked that quite closely. Ie unemployment has been relatively low and stable. (Despite eg women joining the labour force en mass over the course of the 20th century, or all the baby boomers, etc.) That suggest the null hypothesis that to a first approximation the number of jobs is determined by the number of workers available. More workers seem to somehow lead to more jobs. (Immigration changes the number of workers, yes. But that's about it.)
      • liontwist 2y ago
        what about the particulars? What kinds of jobs are growing? Are any groups underemployed? Are standards of living increasing? For who? > More workers seem to somehow lead to more jobs. Imagine the US merged with Canada and Mexico. The number of jobs would probably go up until we reached a similar level of unemployment. Would everyone be better off? Is that what economic growth looks like?
        • eru 2y ago
          > What kinds of jobs are growing? That's an interesting question. You can look up the statistics online. Eg I imagine we have a lot more baristas these days, but fewer people making buggy whips than 200 years ago. > Are any groups underemployed? What do you mean by underemployed? As long as the unemployment rate isn't 0%, mathematics will tell you that you'll find some people who are 'underemployed', yes. > Are standards of living increasing? For who? Yes, living standards are increasing at the moment for most people around the globe. (Basically for anyone who's not living in a failed state like Cuba or North Korea, or in an active war zone.) > Imagine the US merged with Canada and Mexico. The number of jobs would probably go up until we reached a similar level of unemployment. All three countries already have both people and jobs before the merger. Right away, the combined unemployment rate would be a (weighted) average of the previous unemployment rates in these three areas. Over time things might change, depending on what exactly what gets merged. If there's free migration between all three territories, GDP would go up a lot. Unemployment would probably mostly stay the same as before, but details depend on whether the new merge entity would take its labour laws from Canada, the US or Mexico, and a million other details. > Would everyone be better off? Virtually everybody, yes. Obviously, with hundreds of millions of people involved, you'll find a few here and there who will be worse off for almost any policy you can think of. > Is that what economic growth looks like? I'm not sure what you mean?
• semiquaver 2y ago
  > I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants. But H1B employers are required to certify that they took good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for these positions and were unable to find qualified candidates to hire. You really think a business would do that? Just go to the government and tell lies?
  • pnw 2y ago
    Yes, some of them have been doing it for decades. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/indian-corporation-pays-record-34-million-fine-settle-allegations-systemic-visa-fraud https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/indian-corporation-pays-re...
  • HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    Yes - it seems this is routinely done for H-1B positions. You meet the requirement for having advertised the job by running an ad for 1 day in the back of the fisherman's chronicle. You tailor the job description so closely to the H-1B candidate you've already decided to hire, that it'd be easy to defend why you rejected other candidates (should they inconvenience you by seeing the ad and applying).
    • throwaway173460 2y ago
      When you get a chance please look up the difference between H-1B and PERM.
    • angott 2y ago
      There are no newspaper ads involved in the H-1B program. There is a separate process (LCA) to ensure the H-1B worker is paid the prevailing wage in the location where they're hired. It relies on the Department of Labor making such determination. Newspaper ad is required for PERM, which is part of the green card process.
  • vetrom 2y ago
    "Good faith" by the letter of the law is often established by chichanery like posting job ads with nebulous requirements in print newspapers, requiring mail in resumes, and slowrolling a process. Not lies, strictly, but I see plenty of evidence pointing to the 'fake job' phonemena that seems to be discounted, like this example: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Intuit-firing-up-ads-in-local-newspaper-to-hire-h1b-after-low-performer-layoffs%E2%80%9D-XVO7WmfJ https://www.teamblind.com/post/Intuit-firing-up-ads-in-local... Filtering out real information from data and anecdata is a challenge at the best of times, but I am ill convinced of the honesty of most of the recruitment market.
• bdangubic 2y ago
  there is limited number of H1B visas that are issued each year (as if I have to even say this)... so they won't make a dent if you are correct with "the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work." we abolish the program and boom, 65k people out of this apparently HUGE number of US developers looking for work won't make a dent... so this argument holds absolutely no water ...
  • _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    ...other than... you know... the entire point of the H1B visa program... is to get talent the US DOESN'T already have ...
    • bdangubic 2y ago
      I am not arguing the merits/purpose of the program. just the silly that this program is affecting US population tech (un)employment
    • Aperocky 2y ago
      Well, if there aren't such programs people like Elon or Satya and Pichai might have never started out. You look at them as being successful and exceptional today (regardless of some of the more questionable antics and decisions), when they just started, it's hard to argue that you can't find similar, exceptional talent in the US. But if you shut off that valve, they would not be here 25 years later.
      • slaw 2y ago
        Elon, Satya and Pichai didn't arrive on H1B visa.
        • fragmede 2y ago
          Interestingly, Staya Nadella did use the H1B program, in an unconventional way. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-once-190000258.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-o...
• ashconnor 2y ago
  As a non-immigrant to the United States, I don't really buy into the idea that companies prefer H1B candidates purely for financial reasons. The H1B process is frankly a rigid, unreliable and time-consuming process. It's hard for even Canadians and Mexicans to find jobs in the US and we have access to the supposedly easy to obtain TN visa. Australians too with E3. I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have other benefits to employers such as longer tenure due to the restrictions of moving jobs. Which in itself should be an argument for further liberalization say by giving I140 approved petitioners access to EADs.
  • lupusreal 2y ago
    > I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have other benefits to employers such as longer tenure due to the restrictions of moving jobs. That is a financial motive. Companies don't want to pay the kind of compensation which would induce employees to be loyal to the company, and so they use H1B quasi-indentured servitude as a cheaper alternative.
    • gmueckl 2y ago
      It doesn't quite work that way. H-1B employees need to have above average compensation or their field. This is part of the application process.
      • simoncion 2y ago
        > H-1B employees need to have above average compensation or their field. In the past decade or so, I have personally worked with an H-1B in the SF Bay Area who was working a full-time software position advertised as requiring a Master's degree, but was making something like $120k/year. "Must be making above the median pay for the position" might be the way it's SUPPOSED to work, but it's clear that it doesn't ALWAYS work that way.
        • gmueckl 2y ago
          How long ago was this? If it was long enough in the past, 120k might have been enough. If not, the employer simply broke the law.
• closeparen 2y ago
  Only in the context of H1B does anyone conceive of tech workers as having a binary condition called "qualified." In white-collar jobs worth having, impact scales essentially infinitely with skill. You aren't looking for people who are merely capable of some baseline, you are looking for the best. The world is much bigger than America, so even if Americans are very good, many of the best are still foreigners.
  • silisili 2y ago
    I agree with this in theory, but in practice... I've worked directly with probably 50 or so H1B folks in my career. I can only think of a few I'd call exceptional. Just like Americans, most were a mixed bag from good to terrible. So the idea and argument of best of the best is sound, but it's definitely not being used solely that way.
    • throwaway48476 2y ago
      The idea of 'best of the best' relies on the assumption that it is measurable which history has shown that it is not.
      • closeparen 2y ago
        I mean, this is basic VC logic: because the returns are power law distributed, and it's very hard to know in advance which ones are going to hit, you should probably invest at least a little bit in anyone who seems basically plausible. Imagine having denied a visa to Sergey Brin!
        • throwaway48476 2y ago
          Money is measurable, engineer quality is not. Sure with a smaller startup you could average amongst the engineers but it's an imprecise value. The million threads on leetcode and interview are proof positive engineer valuation is hard. It's all well and good to gamble when someone else, the public, is picking up the tab.
• onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  > A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination. While I tend to agree, this is a bit of a straw man. You can have tons of people looking for work who aren't qualified for the job - which is (I think) the FAANG argument. It's not like FAANG is paying less than what most unemployed techies are looking to make.
  • HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    FAANG companies have been laying people off at the moment, so it doesn't seem they are exactly suffering from a lack of workers. Until a year or so ago some of these companies were hiring people without any real work for them, just to deprive their competitors of talent.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      I tend to agree, but this is another straw man. FAANG will argue that they are laying off people with skills they don't need, and there's a lack of people with skills they do need. Call them out and make a convincing argument that this is BS. Don't cry out: BUT SOME AMERICAN WAS FIRED AND THEY'RE STILL HIRING! This isn't a sound argument.
      • danans 2y ago
        > FAANG will argue that they are laying off people with skills they don't need, and there's a lack of people with skills they do need. They are laying off workers (permanent residents and H1Bs alike) mostly to cut costs while all their competitors are doing it, thereby saving face. Additionally they are signalling to investors that they are focused on cash generation and only investing in areas they think will serve that end in the near term. Finally, they are preparing for a future where they need fewer workers per unit of revenue and profit growth, but in the short term, that just means a higher workload for those workers that remain.
• coliveira 2y ago
  Well, tech companies claim that they cannot find good enough workers to fill their positions. But "good enough" is a subjetive classification. I can always create a test for which you are not good enough, it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have. And that's what tech companies have done for years. They'll aways craft a contrived interview process that will classify most people as not "good enough" and use this as evidence that there are not enough workers available, so they will get the opportunity to expand the pool of workers as much as they want.
  • black_13 2y ago
    [dead]
  • ponector 2y ago
    When company says they cannot find good enough people to hire it really means they cannot find cheap enough people.
    • lokar 2y ago
      Not true IME from working and hiring at several tech companies. They pay at top of market. They would save a ton on comp if they gave up on h1 candidates and hired the best they could find locally. I know popular sentiment here is often that there is no real difference between these candidates, and the standards are arbitrary. That is simply it true. There are vast differences in engineering talent. Some people are truly amazing compared to the median candidate.
  • aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Every dev interview process I've been a part of has not included consideration of the applicant's citizenship status. The interview process has many flaws, but it is not contrived to tailor itself towards H1Bs at the expense of citizens. At least, not at the companies I've worked at, which are household names. At TCL or Wipro? Sure, those are blatant offenders of the H1B visa.
    • janalsncm 2y ago
• harichinnan 2y ago
  It’s really simple test. Dig into unemployment numbers for skill shortages. If your industry only has an acceptable level of unemployment filings, then it qualifies as an industry eligible for H1B. Within the industry, each company would interview you on SV style data structures and algorithms. If you don’t make the interview, you are not qualified. The foreigner who could pass such a qualifying test would then get the job and visa is an accessory here.
• snakeyjake 2y ago
  My employer cannot hire H-1Bs. You must be a US citizen to work for my company. No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed. You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance. You don't have to get one if you don't want to as there is usually plenty of uncleared work to go around, but you have to be eligible in case that goes away and we need to put you in for a clearance. We cannot find qualified applicants. I've had this conversation many times on HN so here are some preemptive responses: No, we don't make weapons for the military. Well, we do but not my part of the company. The most harmful thing the products I build do is quantify in precise detail how climate change is dooming us all. No, our positions aren't ghost positions. Yes, we are willing to train someone who is motivated. We won't re-teach linear algebra to a developer applicant but we will pay a tech writer to go to school nights/weekends to get a degree in engineering (me, I did that). Yes, we have extensive high school and college work-study/internships and participants make $72k/yr. with full benefits for the duration of the program. That pipeline is actually successful. No, you can't work remotely. You (even programmers!) have to touch the things we build in order to build them and nobody has an ISO certified clean room in their house. Yes, we pay well. No, we don't pay as much as Meta. We build components for satellites that have been sold to space agencies and purchased by various departments/ministries of the environment, not your personal information to advertisers-- one party has more money to spend than the other. We have shortages in mech/EE/Aero, shortages in software, and critical shortages in engineering technicians. One issue is that we expect programmers to remember linear algebra and have more than the ability to shovel frameworks on top of each other until a phone app comes out the other side.
  • taurath 2y ago
    [flagged]
  • pizzalife 2y ago
    >No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed. You are not a US person as a visa holder. You are however a US person if you have permanent residency (green card).
  • geertj 2y ago
    Why linear algebra? Honest question, i have not seen this as a specific requirement before.
• thephyber 2y ago
  Then you should support this rule change: > Finally, the rule strengthens program integrity by codifying USCIS’ authority to conduct inspections and impose penalties for failure to comply; requiring that the employer must establish that it has a bona fide position in a specialty occupation available for the worker as of the requested start date; clarifies that the Labor Condition Application must support and properly correspond with the H-1B petition; and requires that the petitioner have a legal presence and be subject to legal processes in court in the United States.
• booleandilemma 2y ago
  H-1B is a scam for hiring Indian developers who then become beholden to the companies they work for. That's it.
  • dosinga 2y ago
    ah yes, like the CEOs of Google and Microsoft
  • meme3 2y ago
    I’m just an outside observer but I would say it’s probably not all a scam. Most of it absolutely is though. Generally I just see a lot of unfocused writing in this thread. Even the reply to your post is an attempt to muddy the waters with some ambiguous statement. I guess this is a community of developers and we tend to have difficulty with politics and the real world :-)
  • heeen2 2y ago
    There may be many Indians, but when I was on h1b me and my colleagues were from Germany, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, India. All of those moved on to other companies, even multiple times and/or went through the green card process. The salary I got was ok for bay area standards, certainly not rockstar level but would make jaws drop in Germany. For me it was an amazing opportunity and I would recommend it to anyone to do for a while.
• ivalm 2y ago
  We don’t support h1b, of the last 3000 applicants we had only 1 was qualified. It’s super hard to hire strong swe.
  • JSteph22 2y ago
    What kind of salaries are you offering though...
    • ivalm 2y ago
      We are seed stage startup, we post salary range 130-180k + competitive equity for mid to senior level fully remote.
  • memtet 2y ago
    [dead]
  • gedy 2y ago
    3000 applicants we had only 1 was qualified Not snarking, but you either have a needlessly arbitrary bar, or you've left the applicant pool up to people unqualified to gather applicants (non technical young HR, etc)
    • bfung 2y ago
      Na, the 3000 sounds the like normal flood of LinkedIn type apply now button presses. The real number for them is probably the next few parts of the hiring pipeline after those resumes are scanned and filtered.
    • ivalm 2y ago
      It’s LinkedIn jobs board + HN who is hiring. Everyone who applies tends to have some development experience. We interviewed maybe 30 best resumes out of the 3k applicants. Lots of people fail relatively basic python or typescript coding challenge, a few fail basic “designs an api” round. We did filter a few people in culture match but thats rare, most fail the technical rounds.
• sciencesama 2y ago
  Well they charge you more ! Us is famous for not hiring programmers aged above 50 cuz they are expensive !!
• CoastalCoder 2y ago
  I used to work for the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Centers, and it was a pretty good experience. U.S. citizens (and perhaps some dual-citizens) might want to look into such places (Navy warfare centers, NRL, ARL, etc.) TL;DR: The top starting pay is about $150k IIRC, which I'm told is somewhat below what a well-funded defense contractor will pay for really good people. But I worked with some great people, the work was interesting, and it was located in a medium-cost-of-living area. I left because of the siren call of the startup scene, and frustration with some bureaucratic stuff. But in retrospect I actually liked working there the best.
• tshaddox 2y ago
  But it also doesn't jibe with the reported difficulty US tech companies experience trying to hire US developers.
  • memtet 2y ago
    [dead]
• JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Sorry, on what planet are we onshoring H-1B work? What company can manage the H-1B process but can’t remote to Ukraine or Colombia? Or capitalise their dev expense, inefficiently, granted, with AI? In a post-remote world these jobs aren’t competing with on-shore labor. This is a populist pitch in the mould of iron work to Pennsylvania.
  • GoToRO 2y ago
    The companies that do RTO. Logically, you are right but this is not how those CEOs operate.
  • danans 2y ago
    > What company can manage the H-1B process but can’t remote to Ukraine or Colombia? Or capitalise their dev expense, inefficiently, granted, with AI? All of those are also happening, plus H1-B competition. Offshoring to low-cost countries is more common for maintenance work, or work that is not core to the business or its product innovation. H1-B workers are often very good at what they do, every bit as good as permanent resident workers, which is precisely why they are competition for permanent resident workers, whether in office or remote.
• aprilthird2021 2y ago
  It's definitely more than 5-10% if you just include FAANG who pay far higher than most average US citizen devs make in salary to both H1Bs and citizen devs.
• sciencesama 2y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/economicCollapse/comments/1hgghdb/former_cia_officer_explaining_american_economic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/economicCollapse/comments/1hgghdb/f...
• jmyeet 2y ago
  Here's a reform I'd like to see: if you've had layoffs in the last 24 months, you as an employer are ineligible to apply for or sponsor or hire an H-1B visa holder for any similar position and "similar" here is broad. Big Tech, for example, treats SWEs as largely interchangeable. Make a SWE redundant and you can't hire another SWE--anywhere in the country--who is a visa holder for 24 months. You can buy your way out of this by paying any redundant SWE 3 years of salary and benefits. Let's see how necessary layoffs really are.
  • sgerenser 2y ago
    This sounds good in theory, but I suspect it would cause companies to mostly switch from layoffs to aggressive performance management (i.e. firing for “poor performance”, stack ranking, etc.)
• rayiner 2y ago
  It’s a scam. It’s the same thing as “we’d pay $8 for avocados if it wasn’t for illegal immigrants” with flowery language.
• onetimeusename 2y ago
  They are required to by law but I saw something odd once. My company published the job they wanted an immigrant to fill in some weird printed newspaper that I doubt had much readership if any so obviously they got no offers. Then they take that and say they couldn't find a citizen for the role so they had to get an immigrant. I still question if maybe I missed something because if what I saw is true, it really breaks the spirit of the law. Obviously HR and managers handled it all and they don't tell me details like that but I found out about it later when I witnessed a form sent to the Dept. of Labor for someone I knew.
  • Bjorkbat 2y ago
    That’s pretty common and not actually limited to H1-Bs I know universities will do this with certain open positions where they already have a candidate in mind but are required to advertise an opening, can’t remember the specifics why though. Same with RFPs. Really easy system to defeat.
  • bubblethink 2y ago
    What you are talking about is PERM. That's a requirement that the department of labor has established. When you want to hire an immigrant permanently, DOL requires that you take out an ad in a Sunday newspaper. It benefits the lawyers and the government greatly as this is a good source of revenue for both of them. As far as the actual job goes, that job was never open. The person is already working for the company on a visa. DOL just makes them do this dog and pony show before they can hire them permanently. These regulations are a few decades old and were never updated.
    • shitlord 2y ago
      I wonder why US citizens aren't regularly exploiting this. Subscribe to the newspaper, apply to the job, and sue the company when they ignore you.
      • tiznow 2y ago
        No expert on this, but in my estimation the nature of the law and process makes it hard to sue unless you're a one-to-one match with the job posting or invented part of the tech stack being used. Companies across various industries pass up on qualified people every day.
• Spooky23 2y ago
  Developers aren’t fungible, and are hard to hire. Try getting a bunch of people to sling some boring Java or mainframe code. They don’t exist. The trap with the older worker is a guy wants $250k, but will perform at the level of a $75/hr body shop guy. Skills don’t align - that’s always the risk of engineering.
  • vaxman 2y ago
    Haha, you're so wrong, Spooky23. Older workers love doing "boring" work that younger workers do not enjoy. What's more, a 1337 definition of "senior level" that I used back in the day was the ability to walk into a project and not have the urge to begin rewriting everything, something virtually every non-senior level worker (and many senior idiots) may have the urge to do. Here in the (dystopian) future (from my perspective), you can go on YouTube to watch a video about "How to write the clean code, by Uncle Bob" (cringe) and "My life as a Senior level Dev" (uber cringe). Please make a note of it. While here, adding that we need Executive action to ban H1B workers and tariff BPOs at 250% from countries that have not ratified the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I speculate that even Elon Musk Actual will approve of this restriction. Lastly, to avoid posting a response to another comment, going to mention that there is nothing quite like having a head-hunter with an accent that sounds roughly like he is talking with a rotary egg-beater jammed into his mouth call you up and ask you a series of disqualification questions for a position that he already has sourced from offshores labor pool (so as to check the box that he personally certifies there are no American workers qualified for the work). Their customer doesn't want to know how the sausage is made, they just want cheap bodies for unimportant low-level work and this is what it takes under the current Law. I actually have a friend who was paid very well to let an H1B follow him around for several months learning his job before he was let go and lost his home, wife and wound up moving in with his parents. He went to the US Government to complain and ended up at Google for a while before moving on to a Unicorn. If the H1B have side-hustles like starting Zoom, doing what Satya did, or their spouses create incredible non-tech businesses, that's really great..but what about all the American peeps (AND THEIR KIDS) that were jipped out of that opportunity by lax enforcement of America's laws, only to ultimately hear "See, we need to keep letting so many H1B people and their criminal recruiters warehouse them in apartments and work for dog food because so many of them have gone on to create such tremendous economic activity for America" (ie, a self-fulfilling prophecy).
• stego-tech 2y ago
  My sentiments exactly. The visa is highly exploitative by design, so it selects cheap labor from abroad at the expense of workers at home. Any posturing by employers claiming they can’t find qualified domestic applicants or governments claiming they’re protecting workers is hogwash. If we really valued this foreign labor, we’d make permanent residency a requirement of the visa rather than block it. Of course, if we offered immigrants permanent residency status then companies would have to pay them substantially more, which is the whole point of the H1B.
• baby 2y ago
  Yes. I got my internship in Chicago (J1), later failed the H-1B because of the lottery (twice) so had to leave, spent a year and half in England and managed to get back on a Greencard. Now I have citizenship. I created a startup also. Now, was I essential to the US? Probably not. They probably could have found someone else. I'm not sure if that's good enough to say I should not have been accepted here.
• m00x 2y ago
  I do coding interviews 2-3x/week for a private, but large company. We do not lack candidates, but we lack qualified candidates. Most people that I interview have no clue how software actually works. Most are leetcode monkeys or just really awful. We mostly hire seniors because of the industry we're in, but we've started hiring interns and juniors due to the lack of decent candidates. We'd love to hire US candidates, but there's just a huge lack.
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    If this true, why doesn't FAANG have the same problems? I noticed that your post did not discuss any of the negatives about your company or its offers. When I have struggled in the past to hire, it is always because my company or its offers were pathetic. Pretty simple. If your company or offers are weak, then your candidate pipeline will (likely) be weak.
    • m00x 2y ago
      Plenty of candidates, just not many that are good. We're fintech, so it's boring. We don't do AI and we don't move fast and break things because that would cost us more than we'd make. We just move faster than the competition. Similar companies would be Stripe/SoFi.
  • ponector 2y ago
    Decent candidates have more opportunities. Decent candidates have already a decent job. Why should they apply to your company?
  • alecco 2y ago
    The majority look for leetcode monkeys more than experience. I gave up applying because of that.
  • mrep 2y ago
    From your other comment, you pay $400-700k for L4-L6. Since your company is private what percent of that is liquid (cash or RSUs you can immediately sell for cash). Also, what locations are you hiring in? Cause, if you are asking me to move to the outrageous housing market that is the bay area only to make half my money in shitty stock options that might not evaluate to anything, than I think I found your problem.
• Aleksdev 2y ago
  Yes, I don’t understand this either. Nowadays you have to be a senior just to get an entry level position in the USA. There are plenty of mid level developers that are struggling to find a job. I guess it will be interesting times ahead. I recommend everyone to keep their skills sharp!
• phendrenad2 2y ago
  Friend of mine worked for a Fortune 500 company that was playing an interesting game: They would open a job req with a narrow set of qualifications. If a US citizen showed up and matched the qualifications, they would hire them, then eliminate their position 6 months later. But then they'd slightly change the job qualifications to exclude that person, and try again. (It seemed like it was part of some lobbying effort to say "Look how many job openings we can't fill!")
• thumbsup-_- 2y ago
  There are plenty of software engineers but many of them may not be qualified for the currently open jobs. So, yes, there are open jobs and there are unhired americans but programs like H1-b make even more highly talented pool of people available which in turn increases innovation and productivity in economy. So, it's not just a plain numbers game, it's more about innovation, productivity, talent pools and of course, capitalism.
• bigmattystyles 2y ago
  You get top talent from abroad compared to an average citizen; seen through that lens, is a good thing.
• steelframe 2y ago
  > where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants I've worked at a company where >90% of the technical interviews I conducted were H1-B hires. It makes perfect sense for a tech company to bias the applicant deck in this way for a few reasons. They're willing to accept a lower comp package. Once they're onboard, they will generally keep their head down, do whatever they're asked to do, and accept whatever working conditions they get without complaining. That said, I've known several brilliant H1-B workers. However I've noticed that they rarely stick their neck out and challenge the status quo, which can lead to bad ideas receiving unquestioning and persistent efforts to implement in spite of the writing being on the wall about that project's inevitable demise. I've worked at companies that hire primarily non-H1-B workers, and I can tell you that the amount of complaining about working conditions in particular at those companies was a couple of orders of magnitude more raucous. The end result of a complacent workforce was a soulless office with ubiquitous infrared sensors, no available meeting spaces, a microkitchen stocked with a pittance of moldy food, and with floating workstations where the equipment was chronically broken or missing.
• danielktdoranie 2y ago
  Exactly, it's creaper to fire foriegn workers as they will work for much less. It's a racket. I hope the Trump adminstration cracks down on this. Employers need to prove there's no available and qualified applicant beofore the H-1B is approved. They also need to prove they are paying the same to a domestic applicant as they would a foreign candidate.
• joshfraser 2y ago
  There is no one over 40 playing in the NBA. Is that due to age discrimination as well?
• sotix 2y ago
  It certainly stinks as a software engineer laid off in January who has struggled to find work. The hiring bar is too high at every company. They’re actively looking for reasons to eliminate you rather than reasons to pass you. That mindset leads to an overly cynical evaluation. I find it crazy to be rejected before an initial screening at a company I’ve been referred to, yet it has happened a few times. At this point I feel like I’m relying entirely on luck and hoping for someone to pay it forward by “taking a chance” on me even though I feel perfectly capable. Surely there’s a single company that I could work out for despite not having 5 years of experience.
• MrSkelter 2y ago
  I was an H1-B in the late 90s. I have been a US citizen for over a decade. I come from an extremely wealthy Northern European country integral to founding the United States and English is my first language. I was not compelled to emigrate for a “better life”. I gave up a lot to be in the US. H1-Bs are designed for abuse. There is no shortage of skilled workers. It’s just that immigrants are cheap. I was hired in my country from a pool of over 500 for one of two jobs. Once accepted it took close to a year to do the legal paperwork. My sponsoring company was paying lawyers $600 an hour twenty years ago to get the work done. Despite being absolutely squeaky clean they easily invested 25k per applicant then. When I arrived my pay tripled. I was earning 50-60k in the US and had been under 20 before. That was very low in my home country but it was a starting position and wages are lower outside the Us for myriad reasons even though living standards on low wages are higher. The kicker was that similarly skilled Americans to myself were all earning 6 figures then. The industry I was in had a strong base in NY and the company that hired me was in LA. Their options were to pay 100k plus and relocate Americans from NY, or pay half that and relocate Europeans. Better yet we were more qualified than the average American (as they got to pick the very best) and we were tied to them by the legal work and thus “indentured”. If we wanted to leave them we had to go home or find more sponsorship. On arrival my colleague and I immediately realized we were both overqualified and under paid (pre internet this was much harder to discover). We ran rings round the locals. When our visas needed renewal the company “advertised” our jobs by placing printed sheet behind notice boards and claimed that was sufficient. It was a complete con. Ironically I didn’t last very long. Given my skills and experience I found companies willing to sponsor my ViSAs and green card (which my first company sponsored for me also). So I was able to move around and establish myself. In short the system has always been abused. The idea is good but as long as companies can choose to pay non competitive rates to immigrants they will do so and lie about the true state of the market. That’s what the system does and the purpose of a system IS what it does. It’s just lowering wages by importing skilled foreigners.