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No, in actual practice we're doing both. Like I said before, anyone who portrays the current H-1B issue as purely one-sided is either underinformed or is pushin

No, in actual practice we're doing both. Like I said before, anyone who portrays the current H-1B issue as purely one-sided is either underinformed or is pushing an agenda. 134,780 H-1B visas were approved in 2012, what is the distribution of salaries? The fact that the US let 134,780 people into the country last year says absolutely nothing about how many of these people are cheap, barely-qualified foreign labor, and how many are the multi-platinum award winning rock stars. It's quite obvious to even a lay observer that both categories of hiring are occurring in large amounts in this pool, but almost no one is willing to address the balance. Painting the entire H-1B pool with a single brush is, to be blunt, extremely ignorant of how it actually is in reality. And seeing the state of the industry, a simple mean would be an inaccurate picture also, given the extremely lopsided distribution (i.e., lots of people making $200K, lots of people making $60K). What would be far more useful is an actual, comprehensive look at the distribution of H-1B visas. The total count is meaningless except in the populist "raaaah our jerbs!" way.

VLM 14y ago
"almost no one is willing to address the balance." Ah I think I see our minor disagreement. My belief is the vast majority of the eighth of a million per year are NOT elite rock star caliber based on some crude estimates about graduation rates and so forth. I don't believe we have the educational capacity, world wide, to graduate 250 million computer science grads every 20 years outside the USA such that the elite top 1% from each graduating class year eventually H1Bs over into the USA. Even if we really did have 250 million outside the USA CS grads every 20 years, why would a perfect 100% of the 1% come here? The percentage of elite hires almost by definition must be so low in that eighth of a million, so as to be a rounding error approx zero. That doesn't mean Mr Anecdote doesn't exist or they're evil or imply any political ridiculousness, it just means that elite level coders are such a tiny fraction of the population that shoving them into the debate sideways is intentionally derailing the real debate about the vast majority of people involved. Beyond discussing the present and past, if we imploded the H1B system from an eighth of a million to perhaps two thousand, almost certainly the two thousand who actually survive the process would almost certainly be the elite 1% supercoders, so even pretty far out "solutions" would have no effect on supercoders, making it even less relevant to debate supercoders. Another interesting way to put it, is most countries allow anyone in if they post enough money. I don't know what the USA charges, but $1M would be more than any other country I've ever heard of. So for a mere $2B, if H1B were utterly eliminated, you could still let all the supercoders in under the wealthy people rule at minimal cost. After all, if you're willing to pay $350K/yr for a supercoder, posting $1M for a wealthy person immigration is only about three years total cost. Talking about the tiny population of supercoders is simply a distraction.
TheCoelacanth 14y ago
> how many are the multi-platinum award winning rock stars Probably none. The actual rock star level people can get O visas, which don't have a quota.

VLM 14y ago

"almost no one is willing to address the balance." Ah I think I see our minor disagreement. My belief is the vast majority of the eighth of a million per year are NOT elite rock star caliber based on some crude estimates about graduation rates and so forth. I don't believe we have the educational capacity, world wide, to graduate 250 million computer science grads every 20 years outside the USA such that the elite top 1% from each graduating class year eventually H1Bs over into the USA. Even if we really did have 250 million outside the USA CS grads every 20 years, why would a perfect 100% of the 1% come here? The percentage of elite hires almost by definition must be so low in that eighth of a million, so as to be a rounding error approx zero. That doesn't mean Mr Anecdote doesn't exist or they're evil or imply any political ridiculousness, it just means that elite level coders are such a tiny fraction of the population that shoving them into the debate sideways is intentionally derailing the real debate about the vast majority of people involved. Beyond discussing the present and past, if we imploded the H1B system from an eighth of a million to perhaps two thousand, almost certainly the two thousand who actually survive the process would almost certainly be the elite 1% supercoders, so even pretty far out "solutions" would have no effect on supercoders, making it even less relevant to debate supercoders. Another interesting way to put it, is most countries allow anyone in if they post enough money. I don't know what the USA charges, but $1M would be more than any other country I've ever heard of. So for a mere $2B, if H1B were utterly eliminated, you could still let all the supercoders in under the wealthy people rule at minimal cost. After all, if you're willing to pay $350K/yr for a supercoder, posting $1M for a wealthy person immigration is only about three years total cost. Talking about the tiny population of supercoders is simply a distraction.

TheCoelacanth 14y ago

> how many are the multi-platinum award winning rock stars Probably none. The actual rock star level people can get O visas, which don't have a quota.