>Sure, if you attract them away from their current job. Then what happens to the company that had their employee taken away? As a hiring manager? that is not

>Sure, if you attract them away from their current job. Then what happens to the company that had their employee taken away? As a hiring manager? that is not my concern. But from a societal perspective, there are a few things the company that is outbid can do. 1. they can raise their own wages. Note, this does increase the availability of workers through several mechanisms. most obviously, more people will enter the field as wages go up, but that takes a while. More immediately? you have people that have the skills who can also do another job. For example, my partner does embedded linux development, mostly on arm. But, my partner could also do my job (I'm a SysAdmin) - and usually do it rather better than I am. Right now, the embedded stuff pays about 10% more than the sort of sysadmin gigs I can get, reflecting the required skills. But if there were suddenly more demand for SysAdmins? if you paid enough, I'm sure you could get my partner to take a SysAdmin job. This is an important part of how Capitalisim allocates labor efficiently. Yeah, I could work as an apprentice motorcycle mechanic. I'm probably pretty good, I mean, for an apprentice. I'm not at journeyman level yet. If being a motorcycle mechanic paid better than being a SysAdmin? I'd probably spend the time and effort to get my motorcycle repair skills up to snuff. 2. they can train. This increases the pool of workers rather more quickly than increasing wages. This is what I do when I need to hire technical people, and I can't afford market rates. Find people that you think have the attributes to do the job, once they have some help and practice. From a corporate perspective, both of these things are just a matter of money. And so is going through the work to get a H1B.