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With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X
by 650 8mo ago
With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates compared to pre 2015. Of course its nuanced between training that companies used to offer etc.
- whatwhaaaaat 8mo agoNo the solution is hiring American workers and implementing strict on soil laws for pii just like other countries are doing (India for example). I have learned a great deal and been enriched by my friendships with foreign born workers, but to act like h1b workers come “ready to perform software engineering duties” at any higher rate than new grad higher is funny.
- Suppafly 8mo ago>No the solution is hiring American workers This, I don't understand how we have tons of un- and underemployed American workers and yet somehow businesses have convinced the government that they need to import workers.
- sumedh 8mo agoIts the same in Australia. Australian universities make billions and lobby the government to import students from developing countries, the agents of these universities tell the students that getting jobs and a permanent resident visa is easy, just pay the huge fees and you will get the chance to live your dreams in a developed country.
- silisili 8mo agoThe answer isn't one a lot of people are willing to talk about, but personally, I don't care. The problem isn't "businesses", it's other Indians. They take entire tech orgs over, then only hire each other. They make up bizarre reasons why US workers won't fit while spamming H1B applications. Before you grab your pitchforks, or try to dox me for racism one, please understand it's not all Indian people, obviously. There are so many in the US, and the majority are good people. But there's an extremely clear pattern that's emerged that you'd have to be blind not to see.
- greenavocado 8mo ago[flagged]
- aa-jv 8mo agoIn other less racially charged terms, we can see the West also as having a serious addiction to dignity culture. Take Australia, for example. You will easily get into fisticuffs with your average Australian whose dignity you affront, through any means.
- bigfatkitten 8mo agoThe pattern I’ve seen emerge is that the only successful candidates just happen to be of the same ethnolinguistic background as the hiring manager. Merely being Indian is not enough.
- ta9000 8mo agoThat’s still discrimination.
- bigfatkitten 8mo agoI’m not sure how my post could be taken to suggest otherwise.
- gymbeaux 8mo agoI suspect this has happened to me at least once. I was a shoe-in, checked all of the boxes, recruiter was saying they really wanted me, and then for the final interview they brought in a mid level guy who asked me questions unrelated to the role (purely a Data Engineer role but he was asking me about the intricacies of ML models). All interviewers were Indian. I would wager they ended up hiring another Indian guy for the role. I would imagine this happens to people of color all the time so I don't "mind" in that sense. The bigger issue to me is U.S. citizens unemployed because roles are filled by H-1B people (which is difficult to prove, but the evidence seems to indicate).
- throwaway2056 8mo agoTrue. But the common man on the street wants things to be cheap. This is not sustainable unless on imports cheap h1b (or other overworked foreigners). Edit: This is not meant to support h1b. Ideal case - people that are not on H1B and work in these companies - contact your CEO/managers. People don't do that. Instead are happy to argue (or downvote) here.
- hshdhdhj4444 8mo agoWhy were those underemployed and unemployed people getting hired as tech workers for the past 2 decades when it’s one of the highest paying jobs in the country already? Is our discipline so trivially easy that the only barrier to being hired is choosing to do so?
- dr-detroit 8mo ago[dead]
- thisislife2 8mo agoYou missed the obvious - foreign workers can be exploited by paying them less. Are there Americans with an engineering degrees that are also willing to work for 10+ hours daily, at $150,000 annually, for a job that usually pays $200,000 to $300,000? That is all the H1B (in IT at least) is about - cheap labour, and a potential immigrant pool. Blaming Indians or other Asians for this (like some others do here) is just stupid politics. "Indians hire Indians" is just Indians following company policy to hire cheaper labour.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoThis is so much bubble thinking. The average senior developer in America barely make $150K. Most will never see $200K inflation adjusted in their entire career. Hell the way comp has stagnated for software engineers in tier 2 cities - where most work at banks, insurance companies, “the enterprise” - may never see $200K nominally. You can even look and see what most YC companies pay their “founding engineers”. Yes I know what BigTech an adjacent makes. Been there done that.
- ecshafer 8mo agoPeople always make the huge salary argument. But youre totally right. Your average senior engineer in US is making $130k. These $300k salaries are relatively rare. But people hire H1B to pay them $90k and save on benefits and salary.
- jen20 8mo agoThe monetary saving is almost never the reason - the inability to push back on whatever crazy half-assed, maybe illegal horse shit that an incompetent manager wants to be done without blowing up their entire lives is the reason they are hired.
- thisislife2 8mo agoYes, these are probably inflated. I should have clarified these are example figures. Note though the $150k I quoted is a factual figure - there are other jobs in IT besides developer for which H1Bs are hired too. For example, I had system administration or database administration in mind and the $150k I cited is what some H1Bs I know in this field earn in NY today, in telecom or finance. Interestingly, when one of my friend on H1B in Texas became a US citizen, he immediately got an offer with a $50k pay hike from another firm. Another thing to keep in mind is that most H1Bs in IT are contract workers. The outsourcing firm may charge $150K for their work, but the actual salary to the worker will be way less. So there is indeed often a big pay gap when you go through the actual convoluted way this system works.
- ulfw 8mo agoAnd American software shouldn't be bought by foreign entities/customers anymore. Because why would we? Just make it only by Americans and sell it only to Americans and see how that goes.
- whatwhaaaaat 8mo agoWhy can India make on soil law but not the US? Should we boycott anything from India because of the on soil laws?
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoHow are you going to make a law telling companies with offices and that do business internationally that they must hire Americans? As far as PII, any reasonable company only lets a select few developers see production data anyway. You just don’t let non Americans go near production if you work in an industry where that is necessary
- orangecoffee 8mo agoThe solution is simple, but unpalatable to us. With AI, SWE-1 becomes a minimum wage job, with SWE2 (1.5X), SWE3 (2X) and SWE4 (3x). With such a rationalization we will retain more of the work here, or this will move. Government policies cannot control this as it will mean losing tech hegemony. Is it worth taking a hit on higher compensation for longer term peace of mind?
- lou1306 8mo agoThen why companies aren't offering minimum-wage SWE-1 jobs already? Could it be that the output of an AI tool still needs a modicum of skill and craft to evaluate?
- orangecoffee 8mo agoInternships are these, and are getting longer. I'm also thinking this is what will stop the transfer of roles to another part of the world. Of course using AI is a skill. But the effort needed to get there is becoming lower and lower.
- brainwad 8mo agoInternships at my employer pay 6 figures. I've never seen a minimum wage SWE internship.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo agoHell I had an internship in 1995 and they paid $10 an hour then and provided housing. For context, my take home was $650 every two weeks - my total quarterly tuition at school and the next year the cost to rent a one bedroom in the northern burbs of Atlanta.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- lou1306 8mo agoWell not exactly. An internship is a temporary position, which people mostly just take to improve a CV at an early career stage, or as a fallback after being laid off. A "minimum wage job" is... A job.
- ReptileMan 8mo agoSending CIA assassins to ceos that have offshoring plans?
- stego-tech 8mo agoI’ve been chewing on this for fifteen years, now. There is no pretty or simple or even palatable answer, just a bunch of proposals with tradeoffs. 1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to… 2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers. It’s absolute protectionism, which means you just shift the negative trends (“credential” mills in particular) onto domestic shores. Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs. 3) Unionize the technical trades. This lets the professionals set skill and comp floors, potentially offload benefits burdens to the Union itself rather than the fickleness of the employer, and even undermines the “contractor class” of companies deflating labor through precarious contracts by setting floors industry-wide. The downside is that Unions, like any power structure, can and will corrupt with time and incentive, leading to jams in the marketplace - less an issue in the age of AI, but still one worth noting. 4) Taxation. Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American? No tax breaks for you, pay up. This is a very bad idea on its face, because companies will just shift the transaction offshore to dodge that rule and gum up everything else in the process, but some form of punitive tax scheme for exploiting social safety nets in lieu of fairly compensating workers is sorely needed to stop, if not begin reversing, the current wealth pumps. For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program as a means of depressing their pay has robbed taxpayers of billions, increased the national debt, and robbed workers of the fruits of their labor. It must be fixed, somehow. There’s a number of other policies to get into, but that’s the “highlight reel” as it were. The important thing to keep in mind is that the status quo only works for the monied interests, and neither the H-1B workers coming in nor the Americans being shoved onto welfare programs for corporate greed. If a program or system enriches the rich while harming everyone else, it’s a bad system, and needs to be replaced rather than overhauled. Will it be painful? Yes. Will it piss people off? Of course. Will it feel like nobody really won? Ideally, because that means it’s balanced compromise rather than a gift package.
- hallole 8mo ago
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- TitaRusell 8mo agoMost people want to stay in their own country with their own culture and close to their friends and family. In my own country we are actually seeing people GO BACK to Asia because places like Vietnam now have a viable middle class lifestyle.
- foogazi 8mo ago> Most people want to stay in their own country with their own culture and close to their friends and family. But not all people otherwise we would all live in one giant city. Some are willing to greave the frontier in search of better outcomes: the early American Colonists, those that expanded west-ward into California, even the early Silicon Valley workers were all willing to move H1Bs and international workers are not most people
- dzonga 8mo agoit's an own goal end of day - led by myopic thinking about foreigners stealing the jobs a foreigner worker pays taxes, rent & other bills thereby contributing and circulating money in the economy now if that foreign worker stays in their home country - yes - they might get paid less - but who losses overall ? the country that would've imported labor or the worker ? - it's always the country - hence why brain drain is devastating. remember the foreign worker only gets a better life - but losses social connections, culture etc the countries & companies wouldn't be sponsoring these things if ultimately it didn't benefit them & them only
- dr-detroit 8mo ago[dead]
- hshdhdhj4444 8mo agoClearly the real problem in America is the industry with the fastest growing number of jobs, along with the fastest growing salaries coming off a base where it was already one of the highest paid jobs, all numbers which don’t even include equity payments, despite this being an industry which pays far more in equity relative to any other industry. Maybe AI changes everything, but there is no evidence that immigration has hurt Americans working in software over the past few decades given that software salaries have been growing faster than any other job in the U.S., but also (and this is critical), it’s been rising faster than salaries in any other comparable country as well, including countries with strong tech industries but limited immigration in the industry such as France (the other country with almost as high growth as the U.S. in software dev salary is the UK, which also has high immigration).