4 ms·

The cold truth is some companies simply like H1Bs since it’s a form of indentured servitude. There are plenty of US tech workers to fill most roles. Probably on

by JCM9 1y ago

The cold truth is some companies simply like H1Bs since it’s a form of indentured servitude. There are plenty of US tech workers to fill most roles. Probably only ~10% of roles with an H1B would meet the bar for being unable to find a qualified US worker. It’s no coincidence that Amazon has more than double the number of H1Bs in corporate tech roles than the next biggest user. They’re not exactly broadly known for being a great place to work in tech. However, with H1Bs Amazon has a lot more power over making tech workers tolerate stupid stuff that makes these jobs much less attractive to top-tier US tech talent with more mobility.

slowmovintarget 1y ago
Yes, and for software, remote work actually... works. Have a few in-person meetups in a year, but most of the day-to-day is git, Slack, and Zoom (or equivalent).
- alephnerd 1y ago
  If I can hire someone remotely in San Antonio, why can't I hire someone remotely in São Paulo as a result? This is why the offshoring boom happened since COVID - remote-first proved that async works well enough, which made offshoring more enticing. Now that sponsoring 10 H1B visas is guaranteed to cost $1M, I may as well spend that much to open an office abroad, get 7 figure tax credits per employee, and pay a lower salary.
  - notmyjob 1y ago
    The median school teacher in the Bay Area (teachers are the typical go to example of low paid educated labor) makes about 700k over the 6 year time span of an h1b. 100k is literally nothing, and not just in the Bay Area, it’s a painful joke to those who know about the issue.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      My mom is a teacher here in the Bay. Schools were never sponsoring work visas because there are credential requirements. The difference is, that $100k on top of the 30-40% premium on top of base salary means a $150k employee went from costing $210k to $310k almost overnight. The math for sponsoring someone on any work visa was already growing tenuous against offshoring, but this rule change sealed the deal by giving FP&A a number it can use to justify that it is much cheaper to offshore.
      - notmyjob 1y ago
        Your mom wasn’t a math teacher I presume. An h1b is 6 years, so divide your 100k by six and account for inflation which is high and will continue to be high under the current (incompetent? sociopathic?) regime.
    - danaris 1y ago
      ...no, that level of high prices/wages/cost of living really is just in the Bay Area. Median teacher salaries in the US are around $63k/yr. If you were to hire one at that rate on an H1B visa for 6 years, the $100k visa cost would be nearly a quarter of the total cost of their hire. (Assuming, of course, that the declaration that it only needs to be paid once per visa remains true, and that Trump doesn't change it on a whim later on, which are absolutely not safe assumptions.)
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        Also, no school district is sponsoring a work visa. I've never seen that happen in my life. > Median teacher salaries in the US are around $63k/yr Also the average salary for Bay Area teachers in the good school districts in my experience. Educators are severely underpaid in California.
        notmyjob 1y ago
        Again public or NEAs own summaries. My point was not that the unionized k12 system is abusing h1b (thank God for unions!) it was that teacher salaries are the exemplar of being under paid.
      - notmyjob 1y ago
        In California, statewide, it’s about 100k as of a few years ago. This is public data so you can check if you have the skill to do so. Are h1b distributed evenly by state? Think about it for a minute or just go check the data if you have the high skill needed to do so.
  - apercu 1y ago
    I suppose economically, sure. But you know what happens if you employ people in your country? Everyone's quality of life improves and your country is stronger and wealthier. But that doesn't seem to matter to the capital class, they'd rather make a shit hole out of where they live and then escape to their bunkers. :)
    - Sabinus 1y ago
      If a member of the capital class hired local prompted by your comment they would be out-competed and go out of business due to the lower costs if their off-shoring competition. If you want to induce a behaviour in thousands you change the law, wagging your finger at them isn't going to work.
      - apercu 1y ago
        That just tells me you have never built a company with local people and treated them right. I have made a ton of money fixing outsourcing problems or translating requirements - mostly India but also South America, Romania and Russia.
        alephnerd 1y ago
        There's a reason Wiz is HQed and developed in Tel Aviv and not Tiburon.
  - dabockster 1y ago
    > If I can hire someone remotely in San Antonio, why can't I hire someone remotely in São Paulo as a result? Because the person in Brazil would be able to steal your IP and you'd have no financial, legal, or emotional recourse since they're across an international border. Big tech is continuing to find this out the hard way when countries like China and India somehow clone their products in record time. By hiring in the same country you reside in, you have access to your legal system to protect you and your business interests. And it can also protect your own ego as well (if you have one). And for the USA specifically, it is also really about the people here. Tech is a surprisingly human industry, and Americans have the humanity and grit to pull it off. > pay a lower salary Nothing is stopping tech from doing this right now to American workers. Remember that those higher paying firms do false positive hiring - they reject way more people than they pull in. If you do the reverse and adjust your operations to account for more workers that "aren't good but aren't bad either", you'd probably perform even better than offshoring.
    - HankStallone 1y ago
      Right, nothing's stopped offshoring for a few decades, especially since the Internet became global. That's why I say what can be offshored pretty much has been. I even know some companies who did it years ago and reversed the policy after it didn't work out as well as they expected. So higher costs on importing workers might prompt a bit more offshoring, but not much, because if those companies thought those jobs could be done offshore, they'd already be there.
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        > nothing's stopped offshoring for a few decades Async development at scale (and especially for revenue generating IP) was still not proven until COVID. Additonally, the reverse brain drain in much of China, CEE, Israel, and India only kicked off in the late 2010s, and the COVID layoffs and subsequent rehiring made it easier to open an office abroad. > because if those companies thought those jobs could be done offshore, they'd already be there Every job that would have gone to someone who requires some kind of work sponsorship can now be justified with a hiring abroad. I'd recommend reading tfa, and as someone who is on a couple boards, trust me when I am saying that offshoring is now going to go in hyperdrive.
gubbler 1y ago
[flagged]

by JCM9 1y ago

slowmovintarget 1y ago

Yes, and for software, remote work actually... works. Have a few in-person meetups in a year, but most of the day-to-day is git, Slack, and Zoom (or equivalent).

alephnerd 1y ago
If I can hire someone remotely in San Antonio, why can't I hire someone remotely in São Paulo as a result? This is why the offshoring boom happened since COVID - remote-first proved that async works well enough, which made offshoring more enticing. Now that sponsoring 10 H1B visas is guaranteed to cost $1M, I may as well spend that much to open an office abroad, get 7 figure tax credits per employee, and pay a lower salary.
- notmyjob 1y ago
  The median school teacher in the Bay Area (teachers are the typical go to example of low paid educated labor) makes about 700k over the 6 year time span of an h1b. 100k is literally nothing, and not just in the Bay Area, it’s a painful joke to those who know about the issue.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    My mom is a teacher here in the Bay. Schools were never sponsoring work visas because there are credential requirements. The difference is, that $100k on top of the 30-40% premium on top of base salary means a $150k employee went from costing $210k to $310k almost overnight. The math for sponsoring someone on any work visa was already growing tenuous against offshoring, but this rule change sealed the deal by giving FP&A a number it can use to justify that it is much cheaper to offshore.
    - notmyjob 1y ago
      Your mom wasn’t a math teacher I presume. An h1b is 6 years, so divide your 100k by six and account for inflation which is high and will continue to be high under the current (incompetent? sociopathic?) regime.
  - danaris 1y ago
    ...no, that level of high prices/wages/cost of living really is just in the Bay Area. Median teacher salaries in the US are around $63k/yr. If you were to hire one at that rate on an H1B visa for 6 years, the $100k visa cost would be nearly a quarter of the total cost of their hire. (Assuming, of course, that the declaration that it only needs to be paid once per visa remains true, and that Trump doesn't change it on a whim later on, which are absolutely not safe assumptions.)
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      Also, no school district is sponsoring a work visa. I've never seen that happen in my life. > Median teacher salaries in the US are around $63k/yr Also the average salary for Bay Area teachers in the good school districts in my experience. Educators are severely underpaid in California.
      - notmyjob 1y ago
        Again public or NEAs own summaries. My point was not that the unionized k12 system is abusing h1b (thank God for unions!) it was that teacher salaries are the exemplar of being under paid.
    - notmyjob 1y ago
      In California, statewide, it’s about 100k as of a few years ago. This is public data so you can check if you have the skill to do so. Are h1b distributed evenly by state? Think about it for a minute or just go check the data if you have the high skill needed to do so.
- apercu 1y ago
  I suppose economically, sure. But you know what happens if you employ people in your country? Everyone's quality of life improves and your country is stronger and wealthier. But that doesn't seem to matter to the capital class, they'd rather make a shit hole out of where they live and then escape to their bunkers. :)
  - Sabinus 1y ago
    If a member of the capital class hired local prompted by your comment they would be out-competed and go out of business due to the lower costs if their off-shoring competition. If you want to induce a behaviour in thousands you change the law, wagging your finger at them isn't going to work.
    - apercu 1y ago
      That just tells me you have never built a company with local people and treated them right. I have made a ton of money fixing outsourcing problems or translating requirements - mostly India but also South America, Romania and Russia.
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        There's a reason Wiz is HQed and developed in Tel Aviv and not Tiburon.
- dabockster 1y ago
  > If I can hire someone remotely in San Antonio, why can't I hire someone remotely in São Paulo as a result? Because the person in Brazil would be able to steal your IP and you'd have no financial, legal, or emotional recourse since they're across an international border. Big tech is continuing to find this out the hard way when countries like China and India somehow clone their products in record time. By hiring in the same country you reside in, you have access to your legal system to protect you and your business interests. And it can also protect your own ego as well (if you have one). And for the USA specifically, it is also really about the people here. Tech is a surprisingly human industry, and Americans have the humanity and grit to pull it off. > pay a lower salary Nothing is stopping tech from doing this right now to American workers. Remember that those higher paying firms do false positive hiring - they reject way more people than they pull in. If you do the reverse and adjust your operations to account for more workers that "aren't good but aren't bad either", you'd probably perform even better than offshoring.
  - HankStallone 1y ago
    Right, nothing's stopped offshoring for a few decades, especially since the Internet became global. That's why I say what can be offshored pretty much has been. I even know some companies who did it years ago and reversed the policy after it didn't work out as well as they expected. So higher costs on importing workers might prompt a bit more offshoring, but not much, because if those companies thought those jobs could be done offshore, they'd already be there.
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      > nothing's stopped offshoring for a few decades Async development at scale (and especially for revenue generating IP) was still not proven until COVID. Additonally, the reverse brain drain in much of China, CEE, Israel, and India only kicked off in the late 2010s, and the COVID layoffs and subsequent rehiring made it easier to open an office abroad. > because if those companies thought those jobs could be done offshore, they'd already be there Every job that would have gone to someone who requires some kind of work sponsorship can now be justified with a hiring abroad. I'd recommend reading tfa, and as someone who is on a couple boards, trust me when I am saying that offshoring is now going to go in hyperdrive.

gubbler 1y ago

[flagged]