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H1B workers are supposed to be people with qualifications that are in short supply in the United States. The unspoken part is that the "qualification" employers
by roarcher 1y ago
H1B workers are supposed to be people with qualifications that are in short supply in the United States. The unspoken part is that the "qualification" employers are so desperately searching for is usually the willingness to work for peanuts.
- pessimizer 1y agoThis has been "proven wrong" by geniuses pointing out that Americans who work in the same jobs as the H1Bs are also making peanuts.
- Saline9515 1y agoThen restricting the supply of workers ready to work for peanuts will force companies to raise their salaries to hire.
- TechnicalVault 1y agoOr if the job is an outsourceable one that can be provided as a service then they will outsource it to a company overseas and still pay peanuts. The only reason they'll raise wages is if they have to, aka the service cannot be done elsewhere or automated.
- Saline9515 1y agoA lot of jobs require or are better done on-premises, which is why they hire H1-Bs. Outsourcing is already cheaper, by far, especially if you want to go to the third-world.
- fancyfredbot 1y agoA lot of people really hate RTO and love WFH
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoIf your company doesn't need domain experts/doesn't change to the point these people can be remote... you are a zombie company and will be replaced by someone that does utilize domain experts/dynamically changes all the time with conditions. Even with just a factory, when I moved from dev to IT, getting my people to understand our users by going out to the floor and sitting with people we were able to greatly improve efficiency in a way no remote IT could.
- tracker1 1y agoThey already are... Generally insourcing is to reduce the friction of doing so, because application managers and product owners don't want to relocate to the countries they're doing the outsourcing with.
- Balinares 1y agoIsn't H-1B contingent on compensation in line with the local median for the role?
- jalapenos 1y agoIt is contingent on you documenting your going through the motions of pretending to keep compensation in line with "the local median".
- redserk 1y agoAfter graduating college I joined a company that paid generally below-market for everyone and had a significant number of H-1B employees and contractors. The benefits were legendary but the pay was 20-30% lower than what was around. I don’t have evidence of wrongdoing but I’ve occasionally wondered if it was some kind of scheme.
- jdlshore 1y ago“Legendary” benefits (especially healthcare) are extremely expensive. It’s plausible that the average total compensation was the same, or even more, than other companies. The trick is that not everyone gets the same value from those benefits.
- WorldMaker 1y agoIt's a bit of a catch-22 because if you add enough lower compensated employees you shift the local median lower. If "everyone" in the local area is hiring more cheaper H-1Bs that gives you a chance to hire even more H-1Bs for even cheaper. Averages can be a fun game that way. Even if you try to pin it to the median that does not include H-1Bs, you still are letting the market compete on labor cost and that competition can still affect the local median. Companies decide all the time that they could hire, for example, 2 H-1Bs for the cost of one "senior" local developer, encouraging that local developer to maybe only ask for 1.5x "an H-1B" to remain competitive in that market. Iterate that enough in hiring decisions and companies still have more control of that local median than labor does. I don't know if there is a "fair" way to set the cost of labor for an H-1B, but "local median" or any other average-based math is probably not it.