54 ms·

Immigration is about talent, not costs

• cletus 12y ago
  In my experience H1B visas generally fall into one of two pools: 1. Getting skilled talent from overseas. You simply can't get enough of these people locally. These go to Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc; 2. Cheap labour for bodyshops. The problem here isn't (1) but (2). IMHO the problem has two primary causes: 1. Prevailing wage determinations are a joke; and 2. Lack of mobility, particularly the essentially indentured servitude system that is employer sponsored permanent residency. The last is particularly important. The queue for green cards is based on country of birth and some countries have deep queues, particularly China, India, the Phillipines and Mexico. The way it works is you can have a 3 year H1B twice for a total of 6 years. If your employer starts the green card sponsorship at least a year before your (final) H1B expires you can stay indefinitely. You cannot then move employers or, to some degree, have significant changes in job responsibilities. You can't move (geographically) either. Green card sponsorship works in essentially two phases. The first is LC (labor certification). This is where the queue and per-country quotas exist. Depending on category, if you're from India you might be waiting 5-7+ years for this. The second phase is essentially automatic and takes 6-12 months. Now the LC phase has some huge variables. You can get randomly audited (DOL estimates 30% of LC applications will be audited and they randomly audit some so employers don't game the system, so they claim). Those audits can lead to further questions. This cycle can (and does) continue for years in some cases. All this time the employee simply cannot move and has absolutely no bargaining power with their employer. The solution here is to give employees mobility and make green cards essentially automatic after a given period of employment, combined with no limits on H1B renewal. If you still want a per-country quota (and that sounds like something the US would continue to want), then after, say, 3-5 years on work visa you automatically enter the queue for permanent residency and when your number comes up, you just get it. Fact is, many foreigners are willing to work for essentially slave wages in the hopes of a better life for them and their children. The current system isn't slavery in the classic sense but I'd certainly call it indentured servitude. As for the idea that "they're stealing our jobs" [tm], let me just add my personal perspective as someone who's interviewed: There are many people out there masquerading as programmers/engineers who have utterly no business drawing a paycheck for such. I'd even go so far as to say the majority. People who can actually program are in high demand, regardless of country of origin and they're simply aren't enough of them. Employing them from overseas does not (IMHO) hurt local talent. Demand exceeds supply. Even bodyshops are a symptom. Many companies, particularly Fortune 500 companies and governments at every level, are willing to accept high-priced inccompetence-to-mediocrity that is the norm for "consultants" and vendors. This isn't a zero sum games. The real long term danger is that the US, as a whole, seems to take their preeminence in technology as a given. At some point you'll reach a tipping point where it just makes sense to invest in technology elsewhere. We're not there yet. Far from it. But it could happen. In 1800 the US had a population of ~2M. In 1900 it was ~50M. In those 100 years the US transformed from an agrarian backwater to an industrial superpower largely on the back of immigration. I understand the desire to shut the doors. This is pervasive at every level from immigration to the ridiculous NIMBYism that is rampant in the Bay Area. It's ultimately short-sighted however.
• squozzer 12y ago
  Certainly Yuri simplified his argument - he may have hired for talent first, then maybe "fit", but he also had to consider costs. After all, he probably couldn't justify paying a hire 1 billion USD per year. So cost is a constraint, even if in Yuri's mind it's somewhat trivial. And while Yuri's story is well-told and has a happy - if not completely triumphant - ending, it's not that instructive regarding immigration policy. Doubling H1s probably wouldn't have helped, maybe something like 5x would have. How would THAT affect salaries? You don't need a Nobel in economics to figure it out. But let's talk about Yuri's solution - is it really that bad a deal for Yuri, AeroFS, or the US? Not really. Yuri might wish for his hire to be closer - we are social animals, always looking for butts to sniff - but we live in the 2010s, not the 1950s. AeroFS has a new office, congrats! It's now an international company! And the US - we can cry about losing another taxpayer, but the additional contribution of one or even thousands of decent-earning workers doesn't really add much to the economy, especially when they require the services of a government that has been in serious fiscal trouble for as long as I can remember.
• oskarth 12y ago
  Regardless of the content (which is interesting), the "discuss on HN" link at the end of the article prompts you to submit the article to HN, thereby giving it free upvotes. This is a dark pattern and not a practice we should encourage. Flagged, and I encourage other people to do the same.
• TheCoelacanth 12y ago
  For "real" technology companies like AeroFS, that use a small fraction of the H-1B quota, it's about talent. For body shops like Infosys, WiPro, Tata, etc that use up the vast majority of the H-1B visas it's absolutely about cost.
  • mark-r 12y ago
    Exactly. Why do you think the quotas were used up so quickly? It wasn't because 65,000 startups were each trying to hire one foreigner.
  • api 12y ago
    AeroFS is inside ValleyBubble, so they see it from that perspective. But yeah the rest of the industry just wants cheap code grinders to pump out CRUD.
  • yurisagalov 12y ago
    I agree that what's happening with Infosys/Tata/WiPro requires a serious look. I also think that today demand for high skilled workers far outstrips the 65,000 quota that Infosys/Tata/WiPro abuse. We should be addressing both, and fixing both. I don't know how to address the Infosys/Tata/WiPro problem, but I do believe that not increasing the H-1B quota is not doing anyone else any favors, either.
    • TheCoelacanth 12y ago
      I'm all for allowing more skilled workers to immigrate, but not on the terms of the H-1B visa. The H-1B visa gives too much power to the employer. Workers should be able to move to a different company without going through a bureaucratic process and without their green card application resetting, and they should not have to leave the country if they are out of work for a few months.
  • lmg643 12y ago
    Agreed. It's strange to read these kinds of articles. The author doesn't seem to realize that he is describing his own personal preferences, and not anything about society at large. All you need to do is look at the top recipients of visas and you will understand what the game is.
• selmnoo 12y ago
  > Just a few hours later, Vox published an article titled These tech interns are probably making more than you are where they shared a tweet showcasing candid salaries at various tech companies, some larger, some smaller: That is a kind of a bullshit argument though isn't it, that "hey look, the interns (supposedly half-able, incompetent newbies) are getting paid so high!! We have such wonderful salaries in tech!" It's a lie, a total misrepresentation of the facts. The interns are usually super programmers themselves. I mean, for instance, when Alex Gaynor was "interning" at Quora he ported Quora to run on PyPy. He's a really big contributor to projects like Django and PyPy. When he's "interning" at your company he's probably more able than a lot of other folk you could find, and he should be getting very big bucks. So this argument is really just complete hogwash. A good amount of times I see the interns training employees rather than the other way around (as it should be). Secondly, they're interning in the valley, where "boarding" costs are about equal to costs of getting a mansion in a midwestern city in a reasonably safe and fun neighborhood. When you're "making 90k" in the valley you have the quality of life worth ~60k in a midwestern city. If anything, they are underpaid. edit: minor revision on figures for clarity of argument; though I do agree with moc down below when he says "If you're comparing suburbs (Silicon Valley) to suburbs, the discrepancy is much greater and I'd say that $90k/CA ~= $40k/Midwest"
  • yurisagalov 12y ago
    actually, I am not claiming at all that interns are half-able, incompetent newbies. Some of our best work has been done by people interning with us, and I think our past interns will vouch for that. That being said, it is true that intern salaries are generally lower than full time salaries (although the gap is shrinking, IMO), and intern salaries are good indicators of full time salaries in tech.
    • anthony_d 12y ago
      The thing is that a highly paid intern in no way refutes the argument that immigration is about cheap labor. The argument is that 1) because domestic labor is expensive companies want to increase H1B's as a way to decrease cost 2) if you didn't mind paying more you could find domestic labor. The highly paid intern is an point in favor of #1. Nothing in the article disputes the basic economics of #2. Sure there is competition for talent, there is competition in every facet of business. The trick is to find the ratio between how much value a business extracts from a resource and how much value the business provides to the resource; that ratio needs to stay above 1.
• robrenaud 12y ago
  > Over the history of the company, zero of our hiring decisions have been made on a cost-savings basis. Every decision is a cost/benefit analysis. If costs aren't a factor in your hiring, then raise your salary offers. How hard will it be to attract great engineers if you start offering $5M/year?
  • anthony_d 12y ago
    Exactly. Offer $5M/year and you'll have more resumes than you can read in a year.
• djb_hackernews 12y ago
  Great post. But I'd like to make a point that addresses an underlying assumption from the blog post. Most people who would like to see the H1-B system reformed or limited do not also want to limit the immigration of highly technical people. Full stop. The H1-B system is gamed and unfortunately the OP lost out because of it. I'd really like to see the OP advocating for reform instead of mindless expansion so that companies who really need the technical talent can get it and not become losers of the system and take the easy way out of advocating for expansion.
  • yurisagalov 12y ago
    Reform can come in many forms, not the least of which is increasing the visa cap. I do think taking a look at companies that are abusing the system is very important, as is taking a look at what we classify as "highly skilled labor". Looking online, many of the companies that fall into the top-100 visa sponsors are respectable technology companies. In 2014, Microsoft was #8, Google was #12, Intel #15, Oracle #15, Amazon #20, Apple #23. At the same time, of course, Infosys looks to be #1 by a wide margin. That's likely a problem.
• dude3 12y ago
  A blanket statement like that simply isn't true. I can look in several tech offices and draw conclusions. Are there exceptions, sure. Therefore, H1B should be reserved for the talent you speak of. Why are we bringing QA engineers on H1B? We can train a large portion of these jobs here through programs like Hack Reactor. But we aren't, we are looking for simple fixes.
  • dude3 12y ago
    Last month I was ridding in an Uber and the driver told me he was a Math Teacher. He said that all his students wanted to do was code all day long. He asked me if I wanted to come into class and just tell the kids about my job etc., they would "love that". I was thinking to myself. Here is a math teacher in the middle of Silicon Valley asking me (no one special by any means) to come in and talk to the kids. Why don't other companies and CEO's currently do the same? Given the dire problem that they claim there is, they should be out there getting kids interested in these jobs. Some of these kids could be working in 2 years (probably before any legislation would actually go through). Bring them to the Facebook or Google offices and get them interested and motivated. Finally, ensure that they can actually have at least a median paying job in the field. I think we should look at coding like vocational schools. You see all those programs about getting a degree to repair cars. What about getting degrees to do QA and code? It works in Germany very well, especially for kids who don't go to college. According to the math teacher, the demand and interest is there. So why don't we do something for the future generations rather than look for a short term fix?
    • VLM 12y ago
      There's too many artificial barriers in the market to hiring those kids. They're not ALL going to graduate from Stanford, for example.
      • morenoh149 12y ago
        You don't have to be a compilers expert. Yes the supply of experts in ML/CV/compilers may be small worldwide. But I believe the current situation is a symptom as well of negligence on the part of these large tech companies. It's much cheaper to train locally and hire. Microsoft, apple, google et al should join forces to establish a vocational school in the bay area. Make it a 2 year program. I bet you'd get great engineers if Hack reactor, general assembly et al are any indicator.
• bokonist 12y ago
  Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots. Decide on some number of business/talent based visas to be issued each year. Then do a rolling auction of the visas. If a person gets a visa, comes to America, but then does not like their job and goes home, the company gets a prorated refund. If the person stays more than five years, they get a green card automatically and are free to work wherever they please or start their own company. If a Facebook or YC want the talent, they can bid up the price and pay for the talent. The government doesn't have to worry about in which professions there is a "scarcity" or a talent shortage. If there is a real shortage of valued workers, businesses will bid for visas for those types of workers. It will work itself out. But this system will prevent the body shops from racing to the bottom by using H1-B's as disposable indentured servants.
  • hackerboos 12y ago
    >Seems like the sensible solution would be to auction off the immigration quota slots Sounds like a great way to skew immigration in favour of big business and completely screw over start ups and SMBs.
    • tmorton 12y ago
      Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone.
      • teacup50 12y ago
        Pricing an artificially scarce resource does.
        • UK-AL 12y ago
          Its going to be a scare resource regardless of bidding. At least bidding will allocate to some correlation to real need since people pay more for critical skills.
      • forrestthewoods 12y ago
• Spooky23 12y ago
  My grandparents were all immigrants who didn't need to jump through hoops to come in. IMO, this should still be possible. I think we should have a open lottery that meets 95% of immigration demand, and have some sort of competitive/fast-track process for skilled workers that would weed out the bodyshops. That said, this post is crafted marketing nonsense. For example, a statement like this from a company founder is ridiculous: "In fact, the restrictions on H-1B visas make that entire topic moot since highly skilled talent must meet strict wage requirements set by the US government based on prevailing wages in the county you're hiring the person into, in the skill-level and profession of that person." Let's be real here. Every big bank and insurance company has battalions of "Senior Programmer/Analysts" churning out J2EE for $35k/year or less. "Prevailing wage" is a term of art that doesn't mean what it sounds like it ought to.
  • hcho 12y ago
    >My grandparents were all immigrants who didn't need to jump through hoops to come in. IMO, this should still be possible. I think we should have a open lottery that meets 95% of immigration demand, and have some sort of competitive/fast-track process for skilled workers that would weed out the bodyshops. Doesn't US have a green card lottery?
    • maerch 12y ago
      Yes, but it is tedious. It takes about two years (this October you applied for 2016) and your winning chances are between 1 and 2%.
    • k-mcgrady 12y ago
      Yes but it's very difficult to win. There are two 'rounds'. You have about a 1% chance of winning round one and then a 50% chance of an interview (which you must pass). It's a route I've tried 6 times now with no luck (and it's an annual event).
    • Spooky23 12y ago
      Yes, but the quotas are too low. We literally have 5 million Mexicans living in the US as second class people without access to worker protections and other institutional things. It's a situation that shouldn't exist. My grandparents came here in the 1930's and 1940's. In those days, entry was pretty trivial. No reason why it shouldn't be that way again.
• starfishjenga 12y ago
  If this guy is starved for talent couldn't he just increase what he's willing to pay and steal people from other tech companies? (There are a number of people who would be willing to jump ship for the right #s I'm sure.) This seems to be where BusinessWeek is correct. At the end of the day engineers should be getting paid more.
  • shas3 12y ago
    And Indian H1B workers who match those skills for the high-skill / high-paying jobs will settle for less than industry average? Also, in the current system, even if he wants to steal people from other tech companies, there is a good chance those people are on H1B, and that it will be exceedingly hard to steal them without immigration problems (particularly if they are, as is likely, to have a green card application in process.)
  • cryoshon 12y ago
    Exactly. They complain about a lack of talent, but really they're complaining about the high price of talent and the difficulty of enticing strong talent. If they're not willing to pay enough to entice someone reputable to switch, they figure that a political solution is cheaper.
  • tmarthal 12y ago
    There are only a handful of Yann LeCuns in the world. You can't just duplicate certain technical expertise. This isn't about developer X using framework Y; this is about research level PhDs (and equivalent) that cannot continue work for a US-based company because of visa issues.
    • RhysU 12y ago
      So have said companies fund research fellowships/projects producing PhDs with the skillsets they want. Then pay enough to entice them to join the company. The US DoE does this specifically because it cannot hire non-citizens.
    • AngrySkillzz 12y ago
      Look at the numbers; the vast majority of H1B are not research level PhDs working on unsolved problems.
• supercanuck 12y ago
  Funny, I only see 3 companies he listed in the Top 100 on this particular list: http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx Could that be maybe the H1-B's are not going to the right companies? Why are interns making more in salary than the H1-B's? The issue I have is not with Immigration, it is with the H1-B System. Because of the limited supply of H1-B's and the nature of them to tie the visa holder to an employer with the carrot of a green card (some day), is ripe for abuse by suppressing wages, which appears to be exactly what is happening. The supply of H1-B's is not necessarily the problem, it is the nature that they tie them to a particular employer. The offer of a "green card" some day, has value or acts as a bonus that citizens cannot compete with, so H1-B's salaries can be lower because the promise of a green card has value.
  • jarek 12y ago
    > Why are interns making more in salary than the H1-B's? Much of intern salary is de facto recruiting budget. It's probably the best way to identify desirable employees and get a chance to sell your company to them.
• imglorp 12y ago
  Notice OP is hiring in SF. Does aerofs want remote workers? They'd open up several orders of magnitude more applicants if they would do so.
  • yurisagalov 12y ago
    We prefer local as much as possible. But, we do now have a Canadian office, so... :)
    • nraynaud 12y ago
      as a European, I think I'd rather live in Canada, it seems like a nicer country.
• CodeSheikh 12y ago
  I understand the true benefits of hiring true talents for a true companies. Companies like Infosys, WiPro, Tata are sucking up resources and literally providing modern day pseudo-slave labor. Govt just need to either stop giving H1-Bs to these companies or give them a small percentage. These companies are killing the talent based immigration for everyone else.
• CodeSheikh 12y ago
  I understand the true benefits of hiring true talents for true companies. Companies like Infosys, WiPro, Tata are sucking up resources and literally channeling modern day pseudo-slave tech labor. Govt just needs to either stop giving H1-Bs to these companies or give them a small percentage. These companies are killing the talent based immigration for everyone else.
• deleted 12y ago
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• michaelochurch 12y ago
  It's about a mix of things. First of all, intern salaries are typically set at ~90-100 percent of full-time salary (but without bonus or equity). So these people who are freaking out about intern salaries are missing the point. They assume that if "even an intern" makes $8,000 per month, that every full-time employee makes $200k+. No, it's not like that. It's like this: we properly pay interns with an entry-level salary, unlike the soft industries (e.g. publishing, media) that have an oversupply of qualified but unimpressive hipsters who'll take the job for free, and we pay interns for their work because it's the right thing to do, and (for as much flak as I give the tech industry) that's one area where we do the right thing. It annoyed me when Valleywag attacked intern salaries. There's so much to impeach the Valley for, but paying interns properly isn't one of them. Second, we don't really know what software salaries would be without the H1-B program. The program may or may not be depressing wages, but we don't know right now. Third, I'm all for high-talent immigration, and I'm sure that there are good companies who treat their H1-B workers well. Some don't, and it's the body shops that are getting the negative attention. With the bad actors, more than it is about costs or talent at the bad-actor companies, it's about deference to authority (or, "disinclination to agitate"). The H1-B program keeps the worker captive, and that's more valuable to the company than any wage depression. Programmer salaries aren't high enough for anyone to care about shaving a few percentage points off entry-level figures, but a lot of these tech companies do want people who are captive-- or, better still, young (age discrimination is a part of this issue, as well) and perceived to be culturally disinclined to challenge managerial authority. My problem, on this issue, isn't with the H1-B program, although it should be reformed. (A high-talent immigration program must, by definition, be unconditional on month-by-month employment status.) I certainly don't have a problem with a company like AeroFS that needs to hire a foreign worker to fill a niche. However, I take umbrage to the assholes who complain about a general "talent shortage" but won't look twice at a programmer over 35. They're being disingenuous to the point of being unethical. Instead of being honest about their economic interests ("good people cost more than we want to pay") they're attempting to play the Existential Risk Card ("talent shortage"). It's vile to make that claim.
  • vonmoltke 12y ago
    > However, I take umbrage to the assholes who complain about a general "talent shortage" but won't look twice at a programmer over 35. Over 35 or off the coasts. It seems like companies would rather go across an ocean for talent than across the country.
• angersock 12y ago
  I can't be the only person from the Midwest who noticed that list of internship rates. Fuck me, I'm getting paid half that per month. WTF.
  • nichochar 12y ago
    Welcome to the tech bubble brother.
  • shaurz 12y ago
    Same here mate (I'm in England though). On the plus side I live figuratively in my mother's basement so my costs are practically nothing. And I'm not exactly hot talent material either, but I have been in the same job for 6 years (my initial salary was about 1/3rd of these, excluding the housing allowances).
  • teacup50 12y ago
    Have you looked at Bay Area rent lately?
    • angersock 12y ago
      Somebody's got to take advantage of these kids. More seriously--there's a lot of talent outside that place, and if companies were willing to pay those same wages (or even 80%) elsewhere in the country, this "talent shortage" would disappear as soon as the first paycheck cleared.
      • linkregister 12y ago
        Companies do pay about 80% elsewhere. NYC (100%), Northern Virginia (80%), and Central Maryland (80%) come to mind. And some of the big companies (Amazon, Google, HP, Microsoft) recruit across the country, offering full relocation.
  • jkyle 12y ago
    What you're looking at with those offers is likely a PhD in computer science or engineering who specialized in something those companies want. Those aren't what you think of as internships done by Sophomores or Juniors in college. They're an extended interview of a highly sought after expert in their field. Both of the candidate by the company and vice versa. That's why the offers look more like salaries. Also, those "housing" offers are ridiculous. A 1 bedroom here can cost you 2k/mth easy. A flat, $1,500. I wouldn't be surprised if they're staying in corporate housing and those are just estimates of the value in the internship "package".
• ratsimihah 12y ago
  Woah, now that's how you do it!
• bfrog 12y ago
  Talent supply in fact reduces costs, so the two are in fact, tied together.
• noddingham 12y ago
  I applaud your efforts for hiring for talent, but you aren't making a fair discussion of the issue. Of course you can select for talent when you're a small company and you are doing all the hiring yourself. But as others have pointed out, the debate about a shortage of tech workers vs. H1-B workers isn't about you, it's about companies like Accenture and IBM that have 200-300k workers and _are_ looking at it from a cost perspective.
• deleted 12y ago
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• nichochar 12y ago
  As an H1B person, who has incredibly talented (french, actually) friends who did not get the lottery, I can back up the veracity of this article 100%. And it is very upsetting to me that this lottery even takes place. How does it even make sense? This system was designed for the world of 20 years ago, when people barely ever travelled outside of their country.
  • xxxyy 12y ago
    Last year I had pending offers from a couple big SV companies, all of them at around $200k/year. Same goes for many of my friends (I have just graduated). Did not get any job due to H1B shortage. I will stay in Europe for now, as I am not interested in being humiliated by such an absurd system. America, fix your immigration.
• carsongross 12y ago
  The Silicon Valley privilege bubble is on farcical display here. The immigration that bothers the vast majority of Americans (and, indeed, the native populations in all countries) is low-skilled immigration that swamps lower-income communities and drives down wages for the middle and lower classes. At this point I cannot help but think that the conflation of these two different types of immigration is intentional.
  • jnbiche 12y ago
    Yeah, try being a hard-working, competent, solidly middle class 45-year old software developer who has been laid off from his job at BigCorp in SmallCity, Midwest, probably because BigCorp is bringing in a wave of L1 employees who "understand the technology" better. SmallCity sees an average of 1-2 software jobs posted on Monster a month, some of which aren't even real jobs. His only options are to uproot his family, and take the risk of moving out to SV where he has no friends, family, or support system, and try to learn Javascript so he can fit in at some ping-pong playing start-up, or watch his family slowly descend into semi-poverty on his wife's 20,000/year secretary/policewoman/teacher salary (if the family is lucky enough to have a working mother). I know it's hard to believe, but in much of the country, software engineering (and even "real" engineering) jobs are always not jobs that carry extravagant upper-middle class salaries. Outside of SV and large cities, most software developers, even very competent ones, are solidly middle class, making considerably less than doctors, lawyers, bankers, and other members of the "professional" upper middle classes.
    • LLWM 12y ago
      Or to work remotely. Or to start his own business. Or find work in another industry. Or do one of a million other things.
• arca_vorago 12y ago
  I don't like the logic or lack thereof in this article. There are lots of claims made on the backhand that never get followed up with any sort of quantification or citation. Maybe this company hires for talent and not costs, but every place I've been hires for both, so to pretend costs aren't factored in seems to be an oversight. My personal experience is that it is generally true that H-1B is used by companies to get the same level of expertise with reduced cost, and to me the issue still stands that for every immigrant that gets hired, an American is potentially out of job. The worst I saw this was at a genetics lab, and while we would fly people in from all over the country, we had a sizable percentage of H-1B's. Perhaps there is some other math that I haven't seen that shows a H-1B worker ends up contributing to the local economy by a factor, but the primary offset I see with that is most of the time they are sending large portions of their money to their home country, because they may be able to get their wife here but the rest of the family is still OCONUS. What it all boils down to is a disruption in the standard accepted economic model in this globalized world. Companies aren't forced to be "patriotic", and will seek to optimize profit (and if that means hiring better talent from elsewhere at a cheaper price, so be it). This outlook though, conflicts with what I understand of the history and purpose of corporations. In the days of the British East India company (on of the first "Company's"), the monarchy retained the right to revoke letters patent or royal charter, because the corporation was designed to profit the country and not just the corporation. This idea seems to have been lost and we live in an age where neo-tech globalized fuedalism seems to be around the corner because it has been lost.
• netcan 12y ago
  From a simple, static economic perspective cost and availability the number of qualified candidates available to you are inversely correlated. Any influx of candidates brings down salaries. Theoretically, there is no such thing as a shortage. It is always true that you can find more programmers by paying more. Beat all those internship offers and you will get plenty of quality interns. Both of these positions are true but dishonest. That's a static and simple perspective though. In the real world ceterus is not parabus. Widening your search net to include people educated and experienced elsewhere has value. "Production" is not limited by a simple demand-price function, but by ideas and execution. There are also a lot of "impossible to measure but undeniably there" effects brought on by trade in goods, migration of people and such. Hubs have a vibrancy to them that have been obvious to observers since ancient times. People are not commodities like coal or lead. Price dynamics are real, but the don't capture everything. There is a rising tide element that is almost certainly substantial. The industry's success, creates opportunities for employees. I'm not American, so I don't have a dog in this. But, it seems to me that the US got to where it has gotten to by being a dynamic hub sucking up the vibrant and ambitious of the world.
• manticore_alpha 12y ago
  Look HNers, let's be honest with each other. There's a lot of H1B's on here. You have friends overseas who you want to see succeed in the Bay Area. In my experience at many tech companies in the Bay Area, H1B Visas exist for one reason, and one reason only - to get skilled engineering/STEM labor -- and to exploit connections (primarily Indian/Pakistani) among these workers to continue to get cheap labor. It absolutely, positively hurts local labor - naturalized citizens - etc. Without a doubt. This is not a Xenophobic reaction, it's simply reality. I've worked at multiple companies (managed their websites) -- where we would temporarily post a job description to appear that it was a fair playing field for local workers -- when in reality that position was definitely, absolutely going to be filled by a cheaper, exploitable H1B visa position. It happens all-the-fucking-time. There's standard, normalized ways immigrants have come to the US for a long time now. There's absolutely no talent shortage in the Bay Area, provided you can pay (and your ideas are interesting) We also don't need any more of the divisive ethic-neuveau-ghettos we're seeing in the south bay, cupertino and east bay with communities insulating themselves rather than assimilating.
  • ntakasaki 12y ago
    >It absolutely, positively hurts local labor - naturalized citizens - etc. Without a doubt. So does buying hardware that's made overseas. Interesting that this argument is made now, but how many local programmers ever bought anything electronic which was a little more expensive but made in the US instead of overseas? Why do software jobs deserve protection but hardware jobs do not? The amount of hypocrisy here is nauseating.
    • jazzyk 12y ago
      Why do CEO jobs deserve protection and {...} do not? Why do physician jobs deserve protection and {...} do not? Either we make the US job market open for all types of jobs, or have the same rules applied to all professions. Right now, there are many jobs that are heavily protected (how many CEOs/Wall Street types are H1B?), while others are not.
      • 12y ago
• olegious 12y ago
  Have a friend- early 20s, speaks 5 languages, graduated from one of her country's top law schools, worked in corporate law, received a full scholarship to do a decent LLM program in the USA- she finished the program with a 4.0. She won a green card, but when it came time for her to interview for the green card she was told- "we filled the Eastern Europe quota." So now she's getting kicked out of the US, shouldn't the goal of an immigration system be to attract and retain the best and the brightest?
  • dude3 12y ago
    True, but lawyers have the American bar associations, unlike programmers, that keep competition low. Doctors have the similar American Medical Association.
  • k-mcgrady 12y ago
    >> "She won a green card" I'm guessing this was through the DV Lottery program? If so I agree that the goal of immigration should be to attract the best and the brightest but there are plenty of ways to do that. The DV program is the only avenue for people who haven't had a chance in life to become the best and brightest yet - it's their only way in. Your friend could presumably get in on a work visa which, considering her qualifications, shouldn't be difficult. The DV program is a lottery and the only way for people who don't meet the strict requirements of the other visas to get in. Even when you win your chance at acceptance is 50/50 as they issue 2x the number of winning entries as they have visas available to account for people who win and change their mind or get in via a spouse.
    • uniformlyrandom 12y ago
      Right now, getting a GC through L1/H1 path is extremely painful (again, H1B lottery + huge delay in actually getting a GC + painful employment-based GC process). You can try EB1, but good luck proving "extraordinary abilities" in the tech sector. DV is a nice 'instant jackpot' option. Some people I know were playing DV even when they had EB GC pending. Small percentage of those won the GC, and opted for DV (paid out of pocket) instead of waiting for company-sponsored EB.
• stretchwithme 12y ago
  The more highly skilled labor enter a free economy, the greater the demand for lower skilled labor. Of course, the opposite is also true. That's because there is a demand for both from the other. An economy with an abundance of workers with no skills presents opportunities to the skilled. And vice versa. I think it makes more sense to attract the highly skilled. Competition and wars are won with technology and the more people we have comfortable with technology, the faster we'll be able to adapt to the inevitable innovations that are coming.
• geebee 12y ago
  Unfortunately, this post discusses the expenses and difficulty of hiring, but doesn't provide any information about the compensation offered, nor do I have any real sense of what the position requires. Are they offering 200k for an entry level crud developer? Are they offering 100k for someone with a PhD in Math, an extensive 10+ background in high scale software development at a large silicon valley company, and intricate knowledge of cutting edge data science algorithms? I understand that this information is difficult to release for all kinds of reasons. But without it, it's essentially impossible to evaluate why this company is having trouble filling the position, or whether the added costs for dealing with the visa process are considerably less than the higher salary it might cost to hire someone already authorized to work in the US.
• DigitalSea 12y ago
  The experience for getting a working visa in the US is absolutely atrocious, and let me preface this with the fact I am Australian and Australia offers an E3 visa which allows you to work in the US indefinitely for the sponsoring company. It doesn't have the same issues as a H1-B visa (lottery, restrictions on when you can apply), but offers just as much flexibility and power. I am currently a remote worker for a US company. The company have expressed they would like for me to come over and work full-time and permanently with their company as an actual employee. The kicker is: I have no degree and I don't quite have the 12 years needed experience to qualify for the visa either. This puts me in a difficult position. I have about 8 years experience in web development, my title is actually "front-end developer" and there is no degree in front-end development or even web development herein lies an issue with how eligibility for visas are determined, the H1-B included. You basically are expected to have a degree in something even if it doesn't relate to your job exactly. If I had a degree in arts or something, I would be able to get an E3 visa just like that because all they see is the paper and go: here you are. In the instance of this particular company, it is not that they are looking for "cheap labour" they are offering quite a decent relocation bonus, monthly expenditure for housing and other benefits, the issue is competition for them. The company is based in Seattle and they are facing increasing competition from Microsoft and Amazon mostly who are sucking up all of the talent in the area, whilst other smaller startups and companies struggle to hire people because the bigger companies are offering more money. Apparently Facebook also are in that list, but you really only hear of Microsoft and Amazon mostly taking the talent. The particular skill-set they are looking for is another thing. They needed someone with Java experience, AngularJS, React.js and the basics of web down-pat. There are other people out there with similar skills, but if you know Java especially, Amazon who are big users of the language, will scoop you up before the for sale sign has even been put up. It is at the point where it works out cheaper for the company to offer a decent salary, relocation costs, monthly housing costs and pay for my flights from Australia than it is for them to match the salaries being offered by the other heavyweights in the area. That is how crazy things have become. Not to mention the salary being offered is twice that of what I would get from any employer here in Australia for my skill-set and experience. I am sure that a few companies are taking advantage of working visas, but it isn't fair to lump all companies into the same bucket. Some companies legitimately need to hire outside country hires to compete. I think there definitely needs to be reform. Companies who want to hire candidates like me face challenges because of strict and archaic requirements for obtaining a visa. Even visas that make it easier like the E3 still have the same eligibility criteria which for people like me who are self-taught puts us into a tricky spot. Then you have Canada. They make it so incredibly easy to come over and work as an Australian. Provided you have enough funds and a clean criminal history you can get a working holiday visa for up-to 24 months. No degree required, no archaic process, an actual visa that lets you work and gives you rights. While this isn't permanent, it goes to show, how fundamentally different the US and other countries are when it comes to visas.
• candybar 12y ago
  This is a false dichotomy, because cost and talent are related - either this is about minimizing the cost of talent at a fixed level of talent, maximizing the talent at a fixed level of cost, or something in between. It's completely implausible that for a small company, the amount of talent they need cannot be had at any cost without immigration. I'm extremely sympathetic to the economic argument that there is no such thing as shortage and companies simply need to pay up to get the talent they need. What does exist, on the other hand, is the cost of labor gap between other countries and the US, which can in the long term make American companies less competitive and cause companies to move projects overseas at the margin, whether by outsourcing or through foreign subsidiaries. What's in the the best interests of the US is a careful balancing act that ensures neither the flooding of the labor market with cheaper labor, nor erosion of American competitiveness through extreme cost differences.
• JSno 12y ago
  "cheaper, exploitable H1B visa " this man concluded the discussion.
• ausjke 12y ago
  I read somewhere a few years ago about the statistics, India took about 47% of the H1Bs, China took about 17%. India's IT agencies or staffing companies somehow get a lot of the H1Bs then offload some works to India, or fly in H1Bs from Inda to CA, don't know how that exactly works, but it does offer a lower H1B wage, maybe that's one reason they have so many H1Bs, I don't really know. For most other countries, H1Bs are hard to get, and those individuals are normally hired by USA companies directly(not via a staffing agency or something like India's huge IT companies' branch office), these guys are paid decently and low-wage is not an option. I'm trying to say the H1b-low-cost does exist for some cases, people abuse the system whenever they can. Meanwhile, many other H1B hires are paid the same as citizens, if not better, especially when they're hired by a local company directly.
• UncleChis 12y ago
  Not sure why it is not mentioned enough in media coverage, but one big reason of the H1B visa shortage is the mass applications from consultancy companies (all I know are Indian based, but there might be more). There was a report that these consultancies have about 25% - 33% H1Bs quota each year. They are the ones who get large margin by paying employees cheap, even though on paper these employees could get much higher from "customer companies". And you know how they work? My friend spent 2 weeks at a consultancy, and they gave her some projects to MEMORIZE while they were polishing her resume. They have bunch of customers, so one memorizing can be used for many interviews! True story. The government should fix this first!
• fiatmoney 12y ago
  The list of H1B visas is available, along with job titles, employers, and salary. http://www.h1bwage.com http://www.h1bwage.com The modal H1B visa goes to a pure body shop, for a salary that is not at all above average.
• jpetersonmn 12y ago
  Complete BS article. How can supply of talent not be tied to cost.
• mattxxx 12y ago
  The discussion about H1B's is becoming so polarized. As an Engineer, I want to work with other good engineers <period>. You can really good talent from abroad - or you can get really bad talent that costs less. So it's not black-and-white. I think whatever systems are in-place are undermining talent, in a field where it's so hard to see how good a worker is before they come aboard. So it's not even about external vs. domestic talent; it's the hiring that is fucked.
• qwerta 12y ago
  In my experience talented people have many options and US is not the best choice.
• joelaaronseely 12y ago
  Let's go further. This country was founded on immigrants. This country is powerful because of the wonderful hard-working immigrants who have come to this country and seen opportunity and seized it with both hands and their teeth. It's not the lazy, entitled, molly-coddled, citizens who would rather watch endless episodes of real-world who made this country great (and yes, I, sadly, fall in that category). It is the people who came here with nothing and worked as hard as they could for themselves and their families who keep reinventing this country. We should welcome as many hard-working immigrants into this country as we can. From an economic perspective it makes sense, too. My wife came with her family from Vietnam in 1991. They were given 1 year of public assitance of $1100 per month. There were 11 people living in a rented house that didn't speak a word of English. Since that time they have grown up, gone to college (and paid for it through working side-jobs), become nurses, optometrists, and doctors. The return the US is getting on their pitiful $13K investment 20 years ago is an annuity worth $Millions in taxes alone! Sign me up for that kind of investment!
• rdlecler1 12y ago
  As a Canadian, I'm all for a better immigration system. I think it makes the US stronger, but going on AngelList I see a lot of talented engineers. I have difficulty believing that Google, Facebook, and Amazon are struggling to find talent. Immigration would help startups though.
• ta75757 12y ago
  There was an article submitted here a long time ago, it's title was: "Fuck you, pay me." I find it applicable here as well. If programmers were paid like doctors, more talented people would start considering programming over med school or finance as a career. And then you would have more "talent". That's economics, that's capitalism. (Yes, laws hindering immigration are a trade barrier, and hiring immigrants is "more efficient" and therefore "better for consumers". But free trade advocates tend to only favor free trade for them. See, e.g. farming subsidies.) So the question is, who deserves the money more, the developers or the CEOs and shareholders? Well, in our system today, the money goes to whoever has more power and fights harder for it. So, as a developer, I'm inclined to fight for my side, just as OP is fighting for his.
  • otoburb 12y ago
    The phrase originated from the movie Goodfellas (1990), and then was brought back into the memesphere when Mike Monteiro (co-founder of Mule Design Studio) used that phrase in a fun yet forceful presentation[1]. [1] http://vimeo.com/22053820 http://vimeo.com/22053820
• dannyr 12y ago
  Having worked for startups in SF/SV and non-startups in DC and San Diego, exploiting H1Bs are more common in the latter. I know of some companies reporting a fair wage to IRS/Labor Department but actually paying the employees a lot less.
• bquinlan 12y ago
  A lot of the comments assume that there are only two choices: hire a local American worker or hire an immigrant. But, as the article shows, there is a third choice: hire outside of the US. Giving this third choice, I don't think that restricting H1B visas in some fashion (either through cost or availability) will necessarily have the effect of increasing domestic wages. It may have the opposite effect and drive companies to open up shop outside of the US - Microsoft opened up a development shop in Canada for just this reason [1] and my understanding is that Microsoft would strongly prefer that all of its employees be in one location. The biggest risk would be that American companies start choosing non-US locations as their engineering center-of-gravities because they want to avoid the coordination costs of distributed development without losing the ability to hire non-American workers [2]. [1] http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/11/07/MSWord/ http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/11/07/MSWord/ [2] This already happens at a small scale already. I know of a SF-based startup that moved their engineering organization to Europe because they couldn't get visas for key team members.
  • IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    I suspect countries like Canada will absolutely thrive because of their more open immigration policies. Also immigrants create jobs. http://www.economist.com/news/business/21576101-start-ups-founded-immigrants-are-creating-jobs-all-over-america-jobs-machine http://www.economist.com/news/business/21576101-start-ups-fo...
• tankerdude 12y ago
  Time and time again, this type of article pops up. Time and time again, it's about economics, and the solution has ALWAYS been about economics. It's just that the companies that the political machines don't want to talk about it. Like I've said in the past, and it is a simple solution that would make people like AeroFS happy is to have an economic one: Your H1-B employee must be paid in the >95% (or more) percentile in the field, or in your company, no which ever is greater. All salaries must be compared to that of senior engineers or higher. That's when the real "need" shows up and that will weed out the bogus H1-B gamers and get real value from it. Now, if we are still capping out on H1-Bs even with this rule, then we can then agree that there is a "tech workers shortage". Before then, we all know it's either using improper induction (one brown cow) or examples to try and prove a contradiction (has always been invalid), or they are flat out lying.
  • DINKDINK 12y ago
    What about the (cost to hire a local) + (costs of employing that local person annually) = (cost to hire a H1B) + (costs of employing that H1B person). The cost to hire that h1B person is going to be much higher and hence the lower wage.
  • gumby 12y ago
    The author of the article areas with you! He says that hiring an H1-B is MORE expensive -- not only do you have to pay what the DOJ considers the prevailing wage for the area and the job but you have to pay legal bills, relocation, interview costs, a lot of personnel time plus you have to wait frigging forever to be able to finally employ the person. His experience is exactly my experience too: I have hired a lot of H1-Bs (perhaps 5-10% of all the hires I've done over the years) and they were always a last resort because at the end of the day they cost so damned much. I don't see anything wrong with this. Hire a local if you can, just like shopping locally if you can. (I suppose if you're a commodity contractor shop hiring people to write Java code as the front end of a billing system, the situation might be different -- that's the programming equivalent of hiring a gardener and I assume in most cases skills aren't considered that important).
    • 12y ago
• ebbv 12y ago
  That's great that AeroFS is hiring worldwide based solely on talent, but I can tell you from experience working at Ford, that is not the case among massive corporations. They are purely trying to exploit the wage differential between the US and India, Pakistan and others.
  • Jacky800 12y ago
    Ford is not a 100% knowledge based industry.
• mbondr 12y ago
  H1B is about bigotry, not costs, and especially talent. It's about a lack of young, practically white, males.
  • 10098 12y ago
    wat
• diogenescynic 12y ago
  I've worked for tech companies and a law firm that was in the top 4 in global immigration. The worker shortage is a myth. It doesn't exist. When a company claims they can't find a US worker they are lying and going through 'recruitment efforts' for Green Card and I-140 applications. HR uses a list of skills from the H1B they wanted to hire and then tailor a job posting to that exact list of skills in order to disqualify local applicants. By claiming they can't find a US worker they can bring in their wage slave who will be an indentured servant. They will use that person's visa and green card as a carrot to wave in front of their face to make them go along with violating labor laws. "Someday you'll be a US citizen if you just put up with this for a little bit more!" They string this out into a decade long process often. Oracle and Yahoo were the worst offenders. Anyone who is 'pro-immigration' is just an unknowing tool for multi-billion dollar conglomerates. Immigration has been turned into a public subsidy for the richest corporations. Then you have outsourcing companies like Cognizant regularly scooping up 50% of the H-1b lottery: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2489146/technology-law-regulation-offshore-firms-took-50-of-h-1b-visas-in-2013.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2489146/technology-law-... It's pretty disingenuous to claim there isn't a US worker, the companies have no intent to hire an American. Their entire business model is built around outsourcing the work. Now if you want to talk to me about legalizing farm workers I have no problem with that. I think it's pretty disgusting we have this shadow economy built on third class workers that we all benefit from and know exists. Unfortunately they don't have the tech industry lobbying for them like the H-1B holders do. There's a reason Silicon Valley lobbies for more H-1bs but not Greencards: http://online.wsj.com/articles/michael-s-malone-the-self-inflicted-u-s-brain-drain-1413414239 http://online.wsj.com/articles/michael-s-malone-the-self-inf... The problem with freedom of labor and open borders is that it's usually just one way. How many Americans are going to work abroad in India? How many Canadians are going to work in China? It's feel-good rhetoric but ultimately it's just an excuse to flood richer nations with workers from poorer nations. I'd be all for this system if there was some kind of tit-for-tat program where India gets as many visas given to them as they give to us proportionally--but it will never happen. If STEM and engineers are so in demand why have their wages stagnated? Why has the average income actually dropped in Silicon Valley? There's a disconnect in what they claim is happening and what is really happening.
  • 12y ago
• induscreep 12y ago
  I don't understand what everyone is up in arms about. H1B visas increases the supply of programmers. You don't exactly need a CS degree to be a programmer, so there are a lot of programmers. If people are complaining that H1B visas depress wages, then the correct solution is unionization/collective bargaining. I'm sorry, but programmers are a dime a dozen nowadays. Talent ALWAYS commands a higher pay - H1B or not. Everything seems completely fair to me.
  • deleted 12y ago
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• briandear 12y ago
  Doesn't remote working make this less of an issue now? Unless you're dealing with hardware, there is very little empirical evidence to detract from the effectiveness of a remote workforce.
• bhangi 12y ago
  I suspect that the majority of the cases where H-1B workers are paid less than the prevailing wages are at body shops like Wipro, TCS and yes, IBM. IMHO one potential fix for the situation could be to disallow (or at least make it sufficiently expensive) for a company to hire an H-1B worker for any third party work -- that is, if company A hires a worker, then the worker would have to work on company A's premises only and that any such work cannot be sold to third parties on a time and material basis. Yes, enforcement will be difficult and there will be clever ways of circumventing the regulations, but I honestly see no other solution except to cut out H-1B altogether. Which, IMHO would be cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Having been in a position of trying to hire engineers in this market, the AeroFS experience is spot on. And yes, we should completely get rid of L-1. I agree that it is one channel that is exploited by the body shops.
• StylusEater 12y ago
  > There's a certain amount of tech talent at any given technical ability level available worldwide, and only a fraction of it is in the US. And that is the "crux" of the problem. There will always be a shortage of great engineers/programmers/anything ... isn't that why we call them "great"? I'm more concerned with pipeline. Companies continually push for these changes with reckless regard for grooming local talent. We're experiencing an artificial shortage because the global pool of "great talent" isn't getting bigger fast enough and it never will ... such a joke.
• deleted 12y ago
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• Joky 12y ago
  When I was struggling with the H1B lottery and was considering the options with my Lawyer, she told me that an the company could apply for EB2 directly. You don't need to be working here to enter the process. Of course EB delays depends on the skill (EB1, EB2, EB3...) and the country of origin. But for a European, it can be done quite quickly. Especially, the company does not need a candidate to do the first part (labor certification) if I understood correctly, so assuming that this part is done a French candidate (as mention in the article) could be hired in a matter of months. My lawyer just told me that companies does not go this way because it is a little bit more costly, but also because if they get someone on H1B first, they can lock him inside for years while processing the EB, limiting his leverage to ask for raise or changing jobs.
• zb 12y ago
  The problem with H1-B is that it's not even a speed bump for those it is supposedly trying to stop, while it's a total road block for everyone else. If all you care about is rotating in another 19000 warm, cheap bodies every year then you have no worries: just submit 40000 applications every year and roll with whatever comes out of the lottery. If, on the other hand, you are like the author and want to hire one particular person with a specific skill set, you have a roughly 50% chance of being able to do that in between 6 and 18 months from any given point in time. (Note that there's no way to do it in less than 6 months.) The system works well only for the very companies that are exploiting it. I know that the US missed out on 2.5 years of tax revenue that it could have had from me had I not moved to another country that made getting a work visa trivial because of this issue. That worked out great for me, but I still struggle to see how it made America better off.
• dragonwriter 12y ago
  The issues tech companies have with immigration are about costs. The argument that is about "talent" that the AeroFS blog post makes is not about talent distinct from cost, its about AeroFS's preference to not bear the cost (including time, financial cost, and risk) of developing talent to a particular experience level and their preference to have that done for them, and the fact that they found someone for whom that was done in a way they liked and that -- except inconveniently situated with regard to immigration. If we were honest that the issues in immigration (on both sides) are about costs (except for those that are about outright racism), then we could address them more effectively. There is a fairly direct value to immigrants and to certain others (e.g., in the case of those with pre-arranged employment, as would have been the case for the worker AeroFS write about, to their employers) of admitting specific immigrants. There are also social costs and benefits of admitting immigrants. (This also applies to non-immigrant visas, includingthe H-1B, which are, in a sense, peripheral to the issue of immigration, though its mostly what the tech industry is focussing on when discussing "immigration", which is one of many disconnects between the tech industry and the wider society.) The basic structure of our immigration system -- in terms of the various immigration major categories and the decisions about which of them are unlimited and which are limited by quotas -- represents a judgement about the balancing of the social costs and benefits. Without challenging that basic judgement, there are sensible reforms that could be made which make the system better for everyone. The simplest that I see is to eliminate all the hard quotas in the family-based immigrant visa categories, and simply decide, in each category, on a fee to be assessed for supernumerary (above the now-soft quota) immigrants. (Generally, this should follow the structure of the family preference categories, with the more distant relation categories having higher fees.) Instead of changing the structure of employer-sponsored immigrant visa categories, and to address some of the non-immigrant economic visa categories (particularly H-1B), what I'd strongly suggest is creating a separate no-quota (that is, all fee-based) individual immigrant visa category for candidates who are neither barred from immigrating to the US nor qualified in any of the existing family preference categories, with the highest fees, and allow economic entrants for work that is neither seasonal nor short-term to use that (and eliminate the non-treaty based non-immigrant visa classifications that this provision replaces, particularly the H-1B), while keeping the existing quota-restricted employer-sponsored immigrant visa categories. If a company wants to give an employee an payment (up-front or in arrears) to cover the fee as a supernumerary immigrant (in either a family preference class or the new open class), they could through a relationship governed under contract law, but they'd get no special position with respect to the employee under immigration law. This would address any "talent" issue that isn't about cost that the tech industry has with H-1B limits (or that industry in general has with the limits in employer-sponsored immigrant visa categories), address those issues that are about costs by providing a direct mechanism by which the social cost of the cost savings to industry are internalized in the transaction, address the problems with hard quotas that cause real problems in the family preference categories which are both drivers of illegal immigration and undermine the entire purpose of family-centered immigration policy, and provide funds to address the social costs associated with the overall level of immigration.
• vegabook 12y ago
  If we accept that maximum utility (that is, the jargon economists use for maximum human fulfilment) is not only about maximum output, then the idea that we should open all our borders to the lowest bidder, becomes invalid. What is in the interests of corporations is not what is in the interests of our society.
• tenpoundhammer 12y ago
  If this is only about talent then lets ensure that foreign workers are paid equally and have the same rights as US workers. Let's see how many H1-B's are handed out then.
• digitalzombie 12y ago
  It's about getting bare minimum talent and paying them less than the American counterpart. If this become like the film VFX industry we as programmers are doom. Life of Pi, made millions and the VFX company behind it bankrupt. If they keep on pushing for the immigration HB Visa stuff. We should all form a Union. VFX is screwed cause they didn't have a union from the beginning and now it's much harder.
• yogin 12y ago
  There is another visa you can use to work legally in the US for 18 months, it's the J visa. It's suppose to be a "training/internship" visa, and is a good way to wait for other chances at an H1B, or a GC lottery (you never know). The US has a 2 year clause that prevent some countries from staying in the US at the end of their 18 months, but I was lucky it didn't apply to me. I was lucky to get my H1B last year right at the end of my J1 visa, my application arrived on April 1st, and considering the number of applications they received, they flipped a coin to see if I was going to be considered... luckily I won the toss! There's definitely a need for a change somewhere, increased quota, new immigration laws... I also agree that it's about talent, every company is looking to hire talent, unless they're cheaping out (fortunately I haven't met any of these companies). Most companies I know (mostly startups) are actually looking at the local markets first, but are willing to consider foreigners if they are worth it. They don't mind the cost.
• sre_ops 12y ago
  Of course it is about talent and not pay - in order to get to a discussion about pay candidates need to be tall enough to ride this bus. Unfortunately, in the native "candidates" tend to flunk that.
• mkramlich 12y ago
  I'd argue that both the pro and con positions on this issue are correct. Because there are, roughly speaking, two sub-markets within the larger unified whole. Let's call them the upper market and the lower market. The upper market is about the supply-vs-demand of the best engineers/programmers/techies. The lower market is composed and driven by the supply-vs-demand for the cheapest people who can ostensibly fill those roles, however poorly, as long as they are (or appear to be, in near term) adequate for the need at hand. Therefore speaking in broad strokes: yes, if you're a US citizen/resident whose skills/talents/accomplishment are effectively in that lower market, then globalization is likely to hurt you in terms of employment prospects in a tech field. However, if you're in the upper market supply-side, globalization is more likely to help, esp if you market yourself very publically and globally, and independently from any specific employer -- for example, get yourself some kind of top ranking on some forum or in search results on a given topic, or write a book on it, create/lead or contribute to a popular FOSS project, etc. You may not have full control of your destiny, we each have different mixes of strengths or handicaps, but to some extent you do have a choice as to whether to put yourself into that upper market's supply pool, or the lower. And there are lots of people world-wide desperate for money or to get their foot in the door, thus they flood that lower market, even if later some percentage of those same folks may transition into the upper one. And a new "sucker" is born every second, world-wide. The OP's author is clearly writing from the POV of that upper market's demand side. He's correct for his segment. A different conclusion about the impact of H1B visas (and off-shoring) can also be correct, if about that lower market's supply-side. All good. No conflict. disclaimer/caveat: obviously speaking in broad strokes, and thinking at strategic level. (And I wish I never had to point that out on HN.)
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• general_failure 12y ago
  Can someone tell me how the author managed to start a company with a H1B? I thought this is not possible without the founder relinquishing ownership of the company. Did I miss something?
• Sorgam 12y ago
  What if the H1B visas were not for foreigners, but for US people from other states? Would people still be making the same arguments? California companies hiring cheap midwest talent and disadvantaging the rightful locals of their jobs and high salaries. People are still people, no matter what country they're from. To restrict immigration for work means you're saying some people, through no fault of their own, deserve to earn less money by working in their own country. Any time you say "I'd hire a local over a foreigner", you're effectively being racist. It might not be their race specifically, but their nationality, the identity of their parents, their wealth (to do their own immigration), etc. This is still discriminating based on something the person has no control over. It's still saying "people similar to me deserve more good things in life than people I can't relate to" or "people in my in-group deserve to be treated better than members of out-groups".
  • tiagocesar 12y ago
    It's ironic how companies and countries want to operate globally, and in the same sentence they come with something like this.
  • MagicWishMonkey 12y ago
    These businesses benefit greatly from our strong economy/infrastructure/judicial system, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to favor American workers over foreigners. There's nothing racist about that. I don't have a problem with a company hiring foreign labor, but I do think there should be strict limitations as long as our unemployment rate is >2-3%.
  • cellis 12y ago
    Any time you say "I'd hire a local over a foreigner", you're effectively being racist. And if someone says "I'd hire a foreigner over a local", what does that make those hiring managers? What if that is the prevailing opinion in SV?
• jaimeyap 12y ago
  There are a lot of flawed zero-sum arguments going on in this thread. Do the people that are so vocally against the H1B program really believe that the US tech industry would be where it is without H1B workers? Simply put, giving US companies access to the best and the brightest from around the world has made the US the global hub for technology. Any wage suppressive influences should be weighed against the overall growth of the industry as a whole. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook. ALL of them have been hugely impacted by foreign workers. Our industry would be much much smaller than what it is without the H1B program. As a tech worker, your take is of a MUCH MUCH larger pie because of the ability to hire the best in the world in one place. To the extent that there are companies out there that exploit the H1B program to hire indentured "slave" labor. We should be directing our criticism at those bad apples. Discuss ways to crack down on that, instead of channeling pseudo racist, xenophobia at non-american workers. Also... the entire premise of "us versus them" seems ridiculous to me. Why not make the "them" be "us". You have highly educated, skilled people wanting to become tax paying and productive citizens. H1B is a road to a green card, and eventually naturalization. It's better for America to increase the population of motivated, skilled, and intelligent people. This drives the economy!
• morekozhambu 12y ago
  lolz..! but talent always comes at a cost unless it comes from the third world.
• keerthiko 12y ago
  I think chanting "talent shortage" as many Silicon Valley tech companies do is hurting the immigration reform cause rather than helping. Also lobbying to increase the size of the pool makes no sense - it's just going to get fill the insatiable desire of body shops like Wipro, Infosys, TCS etc that are the main cause for tech salary undercuts -- by mass importing workers who jump ship asap willing to take low pay. One of the things we really need is for a skilled graduate or immigrant to be allowed freedom of employment. This stops driving salaries down, because employees then aren't bound to an employer to get their green card or maintain their legal status (giving the employer freedom to put the salary where they want because of desperation). Yes, the H1B portability exists in theory, but in practice they're unusable - with only 60 days of legal unemployed time between jobs, having to secure a new offer before initiating the transfer process, and having any active green card application processes (which can take more than 5 years usually) killed if you transfer, we might as well pretend the portability option doesn't exist. I would also like to note this reformed H1B shouldn't be awarded to the body-shop-type employers (basically anyone employing over 40% immigrants and over 100 people). Technically this clause exists today, but these body shop companies have a lot of phantom "US Citizen" employees to bloat their total employee numbers and then all the actual staff is imported. Those practices need to be audited more closely at least for the larger companies and curbed. At the very least, I think it makes sense for someone who has spent 4 or more years in US in the capacity of a student to be given freedom of employability a little more easily, without restricting them to having to go to one of very few employees that can secure them a H1B visa now and commit the first 5-10 years of their career at that one place (or leave the country) to stop being treated worse than illegal immigrants. More importantly, I think the process needs to recognize the fact that there is no room for company founders, other than the atrocious O1 process which is expensive and time consuming and subjective. I personally believe anyone who can demonstrate basic intent to create a job and shows qualifications for it (maybe after operation of the company for some period of time) should be given a visa with weird restrictions on salary and job title and whatnot, with an audit clause for every 2 years or something. All the existing visa programs are extremely constrained for most founder circumstances (which are quite varied, because founders are supposed to be about finding creative ad hoc solutions). Disclaimer: Cofounder of a silicon valley startup gone digital nomad because of 2 failed H1B attempts and not being able to justify 2-4 months company-wide paychecks to apply for an O1+lawyer.
• EdSharkey 12y ago
  H1B visas create indentured servants with no guarantees of the payoff of citizenship. If you're an advocate of this, then you're one of the villains who exploits your fellow man in an uncommon harsh way. Just calling it the way I see it.
• btbuilder 12y ago
  I have interviewed & screened a lot of developers both H1B (looking to transfer), greencard holders and US citizens. I can't say that I noticed any correlation between immigration status and mediocrity. I suppose if H1B was organized in a way to prefer highly skilled individuals then I should have seen a higher percentage of skilled H1B applicants. I often wonder whether H1B should be restricted to full time employee relationships rather than also allowing sub-contracts (with provided evidence of a pending contract). If someone is top talent it should be in the interest of final party to offer a full time position. Either way I firmly believe it is important that if the US is to maintain its lead in tech that there should be as few barriers as possible to getting top talent into the country. The problem is that it is hard to introduce a bureaucratic process that is free of fraud and yet filters out those who aren't "highly skilled". I find educational requirements for visas fairly meaningless (I hired one top developer who skipped college entirely), I find academic requirements for things like Extraordinary Ability category (e.g. published in journals, named on a patent etc) as uncommon in software. Frankly software companies themselves make mistakes during hiring so I don't know how we can expect the government to do better; It's comparable to the patent office. I'm surprised to hear that some software engineers working in the Bay Area think that wages are depressed. Look at the mean salary of households in the bay area compared with the rest of the state. side note: unless green card process is started H1B is only renewable once for a total stay of 6 years.
• coldtea 12y ago
  Immigration is also about stealing talent (a precious resource) from countries.
• Jacky800 12y ago
  Automate agriculture using robots. Move in to the post-economic era as fast as possible. That's the only solution. What can computer programmers do to achieve this. Spend time daily on machine learning and contribute to ML projects.
• known 12y ago
  H1B's are better at solving/finding a workaround for dead-end projects.
• hoapres 12y ago
  Uh No. It's not possible but the only way to be sure is to "clone" the US into a NON H1B from 1988 and let that evolve to 2014. The probable result would have been an increase in wages (in real terms) along with a LOT less population growth in Silicon Valley. No one wants to come out and say it (but I will and do so) but we are changing on an almost DAILY basis the racial composition (O.K. I am going to get flamed as a racist but so be it) the US IT (which includes software engineering workforce) from mostly caucasian Americans to Indians. WORSE Is that the apartment rents are at $3K+ per month because 10+ Indians (not being sarcastic) are stuffed into 1BR apartments.
• hoapres 12y ago
  This will NEVER happen. Let's assume for arguments sake that these H1Bs are truly the "best and brightest" WELL Then they SHOULD be paid like the best and brightest. Using approximate numbers, let's say that the average salary for a software engineer is $100K. O.K. Have the employer pay a MINIMUM of 125% of that to an H1B. The H1B gets $125K a year which only seams reasonable as the H1B "obviously" is SO BRIGHT to command a HIGHER salary. WAIT, WAIT That WILL NOT happen because this is all ABOUT COST.
• throwaway832975 12y ago
  If H1-B holders could freely change employers then I'm pretty sure that Amazon for one would be a better place to work. As far as I could tell they could only get away with treating engineers like they did because the latter had nowhere else to go (the vast majority are H1-B holders, not because of any local shortage, I suspect, but because they are so exploitable).
• fakeironman 12y ago
  I went through IT trade school and no one was interested in how well I could program a router, switch, or how well I could manage an exchange server, GPO, or any of that bullshit. They want senior everything, when I was a junior. Can't find senior in the USA? Go to another country for it and lobby hard for it. Companies no longer need to invest in the local population, like they use to, they do enough spending billions in Washington DC. Why not bitch and moan about not enough H1-B or any other green card crap? Here is proof that the tech industry doesn't give a flying rats ass about the USA and why I want out. Lobbying figures per company. 2014 ------- Google Inc $13,050,000 Facebook Inc $7,350,000 Microsoft Corp $6,080,000 Oracle Corp $4,860,000 Hewlett-Packard $3,939,000 Entertainment Software Assn $3,821,138 IBM Corp $3,800,000 Amazon.com $3,190,000 Apple Inc $2,920,000 Intel Corp $2,822,000 2013 ------- Google Inc $14,060,000 Microsoft Corp $10,490,000 Oracle Corp $7,190,000 Hewlett-Packard $6,921,692 Facebook Inc $6,430,000 IBM Corp $5,950,000 Entertainment Software Assn $5,210,000 Intel Corp $4,393,750 Amazon.com $3,456,831 Apparently they make too much money and trying to buy Washington like every other industry. But people in the USA are too dumb to want to shake the system.