by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Friday February 03, 2017 @02:44PM (#53796995)
Competition is generally regarded as a good thing. When these people stay in the USA, they generally depress wages and send all the money they earn back to their home countries anyway, which does the rest of the US economy no good at all. Really I'm not sure we should even have any sort of H1-B program at all.
Not only that, it is clear that some of these people support foreign nationalism while at the same time saying the US shouldn't be nationalist, Its okay for China and India to look out for their people, but the US is "Racist" if it looks out for its people.
Hey, if it were ONLY the top of the folks in the fields, I don't think we'd have a problem with it...it is the drones coming over and sucking up the regular jobs there ARE people that can work on here...and driving wages down.
If we have the H1B or other visas only for those that make say over $130K/yr, then that would help things a great deal....that way we let in the brains, but keep out the drones...
I agree with this. There is a need for H1b's but there needs to be a minimum amount associated to make sure it truly is professionals. What also needs to be done is to tie that number to a specific index so that 20 years from now we are not in the same boat again.
Not just truly professionals, there needs to be no domestic talent which is unlikely because H1B's tend to have cookie cutter diplomas and actually learn from the domestic talent which supposedly doesn't exist. At the top or the bottom if there are people here who can do the job, including older more experienced people tech likes to discriminate against, there shouldn't be even 1 H1B until every one of them is employed.
Maybe because foreign students were brought up to understand that education is a privilege, not a right, and they actually want to be in the classroom and want to learn?
The American kids just want to pay their tuition and get a passing grade, in between weekends of partying.
What I don't understand is how foreign students can be taught by our schools, why can't american kids learn from them as well?
Because there are not enough people in the U.S. that are interested in tech, so they choose other career paths.
TFS:
Otherwise, we train workers from countries like China and India and then send them back to those countries to set up tech ecosystems that compete with Silicon Valley.
The simple solution, don't allow student visas from other countries! Those foreigners can't learn from our schools and then go back and create tech ecosystems if they can't get into our schools.
"Because there are not enough people in the U.S. that are interested in tech"
On the contrary, there are plenty and american kids do learn (about as well as anyone, tech is a field where degrees are useless in most areas and people begin learning on the job). There is no shortage of tech talent in the US, this is a total fabrication. There IS some level of scarcity in the sense that there are few enough talented people out there that they can command high salaries and have leverage at the bargaining table, that is what these companies want to fix.
Or just good people who want the job driving the wages down.
I personally just took a job last month, where I told them out right, I want the Software Engineering job they are offering, and in addition to everything I'll bring to the table, that I also offered to work for them for a less than market rate (Basically a 50% paycut from previous job and about 20% under median rates).
Needless to say, I got the job. And also encouraging friends to start doing the same. If we want to compete with those that want to
I personally just took a job last month, where I told them out right, I want the Software Engineering job they are offering, and in addition to everything I'll bring to the table, that I also offered to work for them for a less than market rate (Basically a 50% paycut from previous job and about 20% under median rates).
Needless to say, I got the job. And also encouraging friends to start doing the same. If we want to compete with those that want to work for less, we need to be willing to work for less. And I chose work for a lot less money, at a job I'll enjoy.
You've discovered the approach that everybody in academia uses, which is why academic positions pay (at most) half of what industry positions pay.
Did your living expenses halve themselves to match your income? Devaluing your skills for the win! The management, who aren't in a race to the bottom, really appreciate the money you've freed up for their extra bonuses.
Thought this was satire, then read your other posts.
You are advocating for deflation and a recession. If your technical skills are anything like your understanding of basic economics, then you will end up costing that suckered company a lot more than the cost of your salary. Jesus Christ.
I know people in certain VERY new fields where american companies have more job openings than there are qualified people on earth for those jobs. These jobs would all pay well in excess of $150K/year and would not cost any american a job. It would actually create a lot more job for americans since each engineer/scientist hired usually results in more support jobs at the company (due to being able to make more products).
However due to how the H1-B system is abused it is really hard to get the people you need
"I know people in certain VERY new fields where american companies have more job openings than there are qualified people on earth for those jobs."
Then you probably have an dramatically over inflated sense of qualified. There are likely dozens of other professions people could step out of and adapt under the tutelage of anyone that dramatically over inflated definition includes and do just fine in far far less than five years. A huge part of the problem is companies need to develop the talent they need and instead they are trying to dump the job on universities. The method of learning used in universities is the antithesis of the mindset and kind of skill at learning that is the defining characteristic of someone with the talent to perform the tasks most of these H1B's are performing well.
Being unqualified and having to figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly is exactly what is creating the environment which cultivates the talents we are looking for. We are perfectly capable of hiring untested and unqualified talent and throwing into the fire under experienced people here if we drop this mindset that every seat must be filled with a god and the ageism that pushes out the best talent in the industry to shape those inexperienced people.
The US never need H1Bs, we were doing better without cheap exploitable low quality labor.
The visa program in the US is severely broken and should be shutdown now.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Friday February 03, 2017 @03:38PM (#53797643)
Hey, if it were ONLY the top of the folks in the fields, I don't think we'd have a problem with it...it is the drones coming over and sucking up the regular jobs there ARE people that can work on here.
This, exactly this.
In my team, we have two Indians on F1-OPT visas, who tried to get an H1-B in April. Both did not get selected in the lottery. These guys are newgrads, and very, very mediocre as wel. Definitely not top of the top, more top of the bottom. We had better candidates who were also citizens, but HR decided to hire these two because they are nice and cheap and we should be able to train them ourselves. It's been 18 months and they have yet to become productive.
Maybe you shouldn't let HR make your hiring decisions.
That is an utterly unAmerican thing to say, and quite frankly treasonous. Letting HR make your hiring decisions is a fundamental part of how American corporations work.
That is an utterly unAmerican thing to say, and quite frankly treasonous. Letting HR make your hiring decisions is a fundamental part of how American corporations work.
I work at an American tech company in Silicon Valley. I have never had HR tell me that we should hire one candidate over another. HR's job is to be the recruiter. To sift through the resumes, and find potential candidates to bring in for interviews. It is the job of the interviewing team, and the team manager to decide who they want to hire. Only then, does the hiring manager work with HR to determine the salary they are willing to offer.
HR's job is to be the recruiter. To sift through the resumes, and find potential candidates to bring in for interviews.
HR's job is to apply a simple string matching algorithm to the incoming resumes and pass along the ones that have the most matches to the posting, typos and all. How can you possibly be a project lead or senior scientist if you don't list Microsot [sic] Office on your resume? And Facebook isn't going to post to itself all day, after all...
If you're just looking at the applications that you're getting from HR, you're missing out on almost all of the cream.
Maybe you shouldn't let HR make your hiring decisions.
Agreed. If HR is making your hiring decisions, no wonder you have shitty talent. This is not an H1-B issue, this is a you and your company are doing it wrong issue.
Maybe you shouldn't let HR make your hiring decisions.
And this is the crux of the problem. PhBs (per Dilbert) and HR making hiring decisions. I'm retired from one of the top defense contractors - I constantly saw totally unqualified candidates and hires. Bosses and idiot new hires who tried to convert 2M lines of MatLab/Simulink code (which produced a binary) to MathCAD! No, I'm not jesting - a MathCAD sales sails droid got to a Veep about how MathCAD was cheaper than MatLab/Simulink and told him it could replace it. These alternative facts propagated do
It is truly a farce.. Your example is perfect for how its being used... while the people that interface with the government keep saying there isn't enough homegrown talent to fill the job but yet companies are hiring for lower salaries..
if they want talent that is not available in the US they should be willing to pay wages in the upper 10%(ish) of the field..
Companies that use HB1 visa's should also pay a higher tax rate to offset the damage they are doing to the economy... After all if the "Talent" is that
And yet you said yourself, they're not on H1-B. F-1OPT is specifically for people in their position - who have studied here and want to get practical experience in the workforce. If you don't like them, blame whoever hired them.
We even have a special visa just for that situation too. the h1-o visa. The b visa is nothing more than a way to depress wages in most areas.
I recently went through a layoff. All 20 of the h1b guys found new jobs within a week. The ranged from meh programmers to 'just hire them don't worry about it' The 10 or so Americans. 7 took MUCH less paying jobs and it took them 6 months. 3 are still looking. 2 of those 3 are *very* good programmers. The kind of programmer you say 'oh yeah hire that guy he is
I have a problem with it at the top and bottom, we have people here who can work both at the top AND the bottom of fields. The proposed changes don't cut the number outright, they just cut the financial incentive to use H1Bs when you could use domestic talent at domestic wages. We have people here who can fill the top positions, they have to send their people here to learn how to do the work from us. Just put a stop to the age discrimination in tech and the talent pool opens dramatically with the added bonus
I agree with the concept of the H1B--it allows US companies to recruit top talent from around the world. But I have a hard time believing that there are 65,000-85,000 people a year [uscis.gov] who fit that description. Heck, "Operation Paperclip" [wikipedia.org] only brought in 1500 people and we started a space program with that!
As I have said a number of times even paying a fixed relatively large salary like that, while better than what we have now, I feel doesn't go far enough. And no I am not being sarcastic. I like to contact my congress critters from time to time on this issue and in doing so I like to use the arguments that tech CEOs use. You know that there is a shortage, these people are critical, we can't find any American with the skills, etc. as well as pointing out what the H-1B program is for. Why not use their own rh
What's the point of sending them a letter littered with your impressions? You care enough about it to write, but not enough about it to provide any kind of data to back up your back napkin claims? All that is, is like, your opinion, man.
As an american, in the tech sector - I am actively trying to drive down wages in the Tech sector. I put myself, and others to take jobs at state median wages (So 55k for a Sr Software Engineer in California). It makes us more marketable. We can command any position we desire, (they get a $180k value for $55k). It shows that Americans are willing to work for reasonable wages, rather than inflated "We're tech" wages. Suitable for longer term. And, it allows us to start developing market forces, applications, a
Sorry, but I didn't dedicate my life to software engineering to allow myself to be exploited for somebody else's gain. And in case you're wondering, no, I do not have difficulty finding work at a wage I believe to be fair.
The problem is that the quality of H1B workers is generally poor. Most of them are constantly on the phone asking for assistance with a job they are supposed to have qualifications for. All one has to do is look at the advancement that the US had achieved before the tax incentive to hire visa workers.
If we have the H1B or other visas only for those that make say over $130K/yr, then that would help things a great deal....that way we let in the brains, but keep out the drones...
If our real goal is to increase the number of workers who can fill those $130k/yr jobs we most likely need to bring those workers to the US far earlier than when they can command that kind of salary (outside of Silicon Valley that is). The 24 year olds making $80k/yr today are the future 34 year olds making $150k/yr. They will arguably build more experience in the US than in their home countries, so we need both current elite workers and future elite workers to come to the US via our various immigration pro
When it's got to the "why bother trying" situation it's a bit of a problem. Back when I was an undergraduate the introductory CS subject was the one engineering students enrolled in to meet girls (less than 1% female vs 51%). Now there is a much greater percentage of women studying first year engineering than CS. The tedious "bro" culture where people only employ those who may as well be clones of themselves and a pile of other things resulted in the women leaving the IT sector not being replaced. I see m
The people trying to sell us on H1B's are always giving these examples of high-end, specialized career jobs where you really might have a tough time finding enough qualified people in America. But the H1B owners I actually witness doing jobs are taking up an awful lot of "rank and file I.T." positions doing basic coding, web design, computer or network support, or server support roles.
Furthermore, it doesn't really make sense that our colleges and universities are supposedly "good"
Wrong. Kill the H1B program all together. H1B depresses wages by not allowing that employee to freely move. IOW, they are vertual slaves.
Instead, add another 15k green cards as well as move another 10k to a program in which companies can sponsor ppl to come over, but may not make any deals with them regarding length of employment or pay or future hikes, etc.
Also, only companies that have HQ here may use this service. IOW, if a subsidiary of a foreign company, or you are a foreign company, you get no say
Somebody on/. mentioned the proposal is in the works to instead of lottery simply sort the H-1B applicants by salary. Hiring a $40K wage slave? Back of the line. A $200K PhD genius? Front of the line. The brilliance of it is forces the companies to compete, driving H-1B wages up for top talent. For everyone else, if you need to gamble on $100K for your H-1B who may not get in the 50,000 limit or you pay $90K to hire locally, then the choice is clear.
Btw for people who say there's no local talent -- I imagi
In addition, US nationalism or "putting America first" is the only way that America will become great again. Donald J Trump will go down in history as the greatest president since Anthony Jackson and I expect that we'll see him on currency within the decade.
Lol! You wingnuts are so cute when you're delusional.
Trump will fail spectacularly because he can't work with people. He thinks everyone works for him. He can't even coordinate his own party's direction or keep his administration on the same page.
The tragedy is it will take us 20 years to clean up Trump's mess, provided we live that long.
Lil' Blakey is just pissed that he will no longer be able to circumvent his responsibilities as an American, bypassing other Americans to hire foreign developers at $30K any more.
Not only that, it is clear that some of these people support foreign nationalism while at the same time saying the US shouldn't be nationalist, Its okay for China and India to look out for their people, but the US is "Racist" if it looks out for its people.
There are probably a great number of things the Chinese and Indian governments do which US citizens should rightfully be outraged and ashamed of if the US government started following suit, not just nationalist protectionism.
Oooh, look poor old Arch Mike is off his meds again, spouting his alt-right crap. You realise youre an irrelevant deluded cunt dont you Mike, if it wasnt for the fat fuck 4chan Trump trolls, you would be at -1.
You should be more concerned with being a good role model. Nationalism is only a force for good when its interests happen to align with the preservation or advancement of civilization. Using it as justification to marginalize a group of underpaid, exploited fellow nerds is foolish, and will not be viewed kindly by history. It also won't give anyone back their jobs; those will just leave with the companies that created them, along with the GDP.
The whole trickle down thing only works proportional to how connected to the economy you are. if you're middle class and have a job, a little tiny bit maybe. if you're poor or have no job, then not at all. Almost no matter what is done will work out as a benefit for the wealthy.
When you don't insource the jobs, you outsource them. If you don't import the workers, the jobs will be sent out. Then the other workers will stay away, not paying US taxes, and keeping the "intelligence" they gain for themselves, to eventually overtake the US. If the work is going to Bob in Elbonia, it's better to import Bob for the job, than export the job to Elbonia and have Bob do it there.
I like it. We should tax all corporations which derive at least 60% of their revenue from the US for 100% of their revenue with no deduction for any tax paid elsewhere. And the company share of payroll taxes/unemployment etc should be due even on their foreign workers so if they keep outsourcing they'll eventually fund indefinite unemployment letting us not have to work at all.
Maybe not that result but that result is unlikely to happen, offshoring wouldn't be very cost effective under this scheme and neither would most of the international tax dodges being used by companies who are actually deriving most of their revenue in the US without paying the taxes in the US.
That doesn't work well for many things because the reason these workers are so cheap is their domestic markets are poor and have poor infrastructure. By the time you've changed that you've built the place up enough to have a domestic market services those nations for these workers and it wouldn't make sense to send them over here. We on the other hand are the wealthiest nation in the world and have the manufacturing and technical knowledge to produce everything we need, plenty of bodies to fill the roles, a
They are when you are talking about connectivity back to where the consumers are in the US. Latency on a connection to India/China is terrible and will always be terrible because physics. And Detroit doesn't have a good enough infrastructure and connectivity to support most technical operations. Also, in India the major cities are worse than Detroit particularly in the parts where you'd save anything moving your tech operations. China actually has parts which are far superior to anything you find in the US
They are when you are talking about connectivity back to where the consumers are in the US.
How do you mean? I've worked for a variety of international companies, and connections to the consumers are always good. Yes, sometimes you have to use Google Drive, or One Drive, or some other cloud file service that's replicated around the world, but two people editing the same file at the same time on opposite sides of the world is trivial in India, China, and even Detroit.
"How do you mean? I've worked for a variety of international companies, and connections to the consumers are always good. Yes, sometimes you have to use Google Drive, or One Drive, or some other cloud file service that's replicated around the world, but two people editing the same file at the same time on opposite sides of the world is trivial in India, China, and even Detroit." That depends on the filetype actually. But I'm going to assume you mean text and especially code. That is a task that is suited to
Google cache is in every country in the world. If you don't like the local performance, you can buy your own Google cache appliance. Bandwidth to China is not "low". You are asserting technical problems that don't exist to mask political problems. I currently work for a company with offices in China and India. Local Internet is not that bad.
Accents is an issue. Though, my biggest problem with foreign workers is they over-estimate their grasp of English. ESL is misunderstood. In India, they are coac
"Netflix enters every market with local servers, and as such, the streaming is fast, even in a place like China" No kidding, they do that because they have to. A Google cache appliance isn't going to help with anything but browsing the web... I'm not really sure The only way it makes sense with Netflix or most US industry to open up shop in India or China closing up shop in the US if they were opening shop to sell to Indians/Chinese. It would not work for Netflix to stream to the US from China because there
Yes. They learned that if they don't have their own CDN with great local peering already, Comcast will shut down their links and charge them money to get to their customers. After learning 3rd world extortion techniques in the US, they don't open shop anywhere until they've defended against those tactics.
A Google cache appliance isn't going to help with anything but browsing the web..
Which is most of what the users in an office do.
I'm not really sure The only way it makes sense with Netflix or most US industry to open up shop in India or China closing up shop in the US if they were opening shop to sell to Indians/Chinese.
Wal-Mart has large offices in China (I've been to one). And aren't big on selling to Chinese. Can you figure that one out?
It would not work for Netflix to stream to the US from China because there is too much latency the pipes between the two nations aren't fat enough to carry that massive load of traffic.
"We do not produce enough technically qualified candidates in this country,"
Complete Bullshit.
What they mean is..."We do not produce enough technically qualified candidates in this country that we can pay low wages and hold hostage with H1-B visas"
The only people tech wages are low for are people that are shit. If you're even half way competent you can trivially demand a good salary in tech.
But the part you quoted is right, there just aren't enough of those good people about. The problem is folks like you are assuming you're qualified for roles you're not qualified for, and assume you deserve salaries that you've not worked for.
I can see when you're in your own bubble why you'd think that, but to those of us who have actually put the effort in to bec
as someone who has a mix of both H1B and american workers under his care, I can tell you this: if you want high end technical labor, we simply DO NOT have enough qualified candidates here in the united states. We eat up EVERY SINGLE ONE that we can get our hands on that is an american citizen or has permanent resident status that is qualified when we have an opening, because going through the process of hiring high end candidates is time consuming and a drain on your resources. If you think we're paying t
Out of curiosity, what do you think of replacing H1B with 15k needed skill new greencards / year?
In addition, it would only be open to companies with American based HQ.
Add to this, offering greencards to all American trained PhDs in needed fields ( I.e. will not be offered to say English or art ).
By removing the H1B, you remove the slavery of it. By not allowing non USA companies, then it means that companies that pay taxes here are the ones getting a say.
Someone please mod the above up, he's nailed why people who are forever in danger of losing their visa at the whim of their employer are more attractive to a certain kind of boss than a local employee.
it is funny how many ppl gripe about the fact that their pay went down, while never noticing the fact that these H1Bs are paid a fraction of what we are paid. That is slavery in every sense of the word.
NASA couldn't find enough qualified people either. So they trained them.
Back in the day I worked at a place that had traineeships and scholarships. Not enough engineers in a few years time due to upcoming retirements? No problem - find some bright kids and pay them to go to university. Put them to work on their holidays. That sort of thing used to happen a lot and some very successful companies did very well that way. My current workplace is doing that on a very small scale, but one decent scientist t
as someone who has a mix of both H1B and american workers under his care, I can tell you this: if you want high end technical labor, we simply DO NOT have enough qualified candidates here in the united states.
Nah, you're just a cheap, lazy bastard. You said so yourself:
we're talking about someone with the background and knowledge to actually do the work that we need to do without spending years training them.
Either pay for what you need or train someone to do what you need. Anything else is unearned corp
See, that implies that we don't have lower end engineers learning these skills that we've hired also, which is false, because we most certainly do. But the competition for these candidates is fierce, so we can't get people to do the work right now that needs to be done while we train them. Your ability to not grasp the obvious is astounding.
Your ability to not grasp the obvious is astounding.
That's your problem in a nutshell: I do grasp the obvious. Either pay market rates for what you want, or train employees to do what you want. Anything else is an unearned corporatist sense of entitlement. You know, like I said the first time.
H1-B is fine if it was setup & used as it is advertised. "We can't find local people with specific skills". However, this quickly turned into "We can't find cheap people with skills". Big companies could claim "clean hands" during layoffs, because they hired a contracting agency that was mostly H1-B.
You can fix this with: 1. Requiring companies to pay the actual local rate for people with skill X AND above 100,000 (adjust for inflation). 2. An additional salary tax on H1-Bs that pays for enforcement of th
Nope. Get rid of H1B and create 15k newgreen CARDS for needed skills only. Also, only allow companies that are HQ here to use these. That means subsidiaries of foreign companies would not get that.
We should also be subsidizing training and education to improve our domestic workforce. We're not going to suddenly wake up one day and have enough workers by luck, we need to be creating them.
Not just that, but they are on a temporary work visa. So we educate them give them hands on experience and then ship them back all the while rotating in a constant pool of fresh new comers.
When these people stay in the USA, they generally depress wages and send all the money they earn back to their home countries anyway, which does the rest of the US economy no good at all.
This is beyond ridiculous - especially the part "they send all money to home countries". When they buy houses, automobiles, send their children to school, pay taxes etc. they are a net contributor to the society. And what they do with their money is none of anyone's business...they may send it to their home countries, donate to a Trump charity, or they may go to Las Vegas.
You can make a valid argument H1B program needs tweaking, but you don't have to add gross generalizations, untruth and FUD to the mix.
You're right that they were over generalizing but I think there's no disputing that h1-b workers export more money than American workers. I think this is an important factor that is mostly ignored by people who are for free trade.
The effects of increased export of our money is substantial and each individual who does it, contributes to the problem.
This is beyond ridiculous - especially the part "they send all money to home countries". When they buy houses, automobiles, send their children to school, pay taxes etc. they are a net contributor to the society. And what they do with their money is none of anyone's business...they may send it to their home countries, donate to a Trump charity, or they may go to Las Vegas.
Yes, you are beyond ridiculous. If you went overseas to take a higher paying job but knew you would be going back home in two years, wo
The GoDaddy CEO got his argument backwards. H1B visa holder must leave after 6 years. We in fact force them to leave after training them to set up competition in a foreign country. We should attract skilled workers who wish to become permanent residents or ultimately citizens.
The idea I hear floated by the Trump team raising the mimimim wage of an H1B visa holder to 130k from the current 60k is a great start.
H1B has become a scam by the major Indian IT firms who dangle supposedly cheaper services in front o
"Otherwise, we train workers from countries like China and India and then send them back to those countries to set up tech ecosystems that compete with Silicon Valley."
So f***ing what. These assholes want their precious liberal democratic order at the expense of Americans - wrong move, bit them in the ass.
I really do not believe that they suppress wages. Sadly, the USA wages are not world competitive. The USA has almost completely priced itself out of the world market. Get your university and health care costs in line with the rest of the world and the manufacturing will return. Canada and other countries produce many many qualified PHD and Master Degree graduates at a cost to the student of 12 to 15k$
I don't see the problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, it is clear that some of these people support foreign nationalism while at the same time saying the US shouldn't be nationalist, Its okay for China and India to look out for their people, but the US is "Racist" if it looks out for its people.
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
If we have the H1B or other visas only for those that make say over $130K/yr, then that would help things a great deal....that way we let in the brains, but keep out the drones...
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I agree with this. There is a need for H1b's but there needs to be a minimum amount associated to make sure it truly is professionals. What also needs to be done is to tie that number to a specific index so that 20 years from now we are not in the same boat again.
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe because foreign students were brought up to understand that education is a privilege, not a right, and they actually want to be in the classroom and want to learn?
The American kids just want to pay their tuition and get a passing grade, in between weekends of partying.
Re: (Score:0)
What I don't understand is how foreign students can be taught by our schools, why can't american kids learn from them as well?
Because there are not enough people in the U.S. that are interested in tech, so they choose other career paths.
TFS:
Otherwise, we train workers from countries like China and India and then send them back to those countries to set up tech ecosystems that compete with Silicon Valley.
The simple solution, don't allow student visas from other countries! Those foreigners can't learn from our schools and then go back and create tech ecosystems if they can't get into our schools.
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:0)
That would drive the costs of our schools down too. This is a problem at so many levels.
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, there are plenty and american kids do learn (about as well as anyone, tech is a field where degrees are useless in most areas and people begin learning on the job). There is no shortage of tech talent in the US, this is a total fabrication. There IS some level of scarcity in the sense that there are few enough talented people out there that they can command high salaries and have leverage at the bargaining table, that is what these companies want to fix.
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Or just good people who want the job driving the wages down.
I personally just took a job last month, where I told them out right, I want the Software Engineering job they are offering, and in addition to everything I'll bring to the table, that I also offered to work for them for a less than market rate (Basically a 50% paycut from previous job and about 20% under median rates).
Needless to say, I got the job. And also encouraging friends to start doing the same.
If we want to compete with those that want to
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Starting with YOU!
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:0)
Yes, because people should be taxed on money they didn't make! You are a dumb ass.
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I personally just took a job last month, where I told them out right, I want the Software Engineering job they are offering, and in addition to everything I'll bring to the table, that I also offered to work for them for a less than market rate (Basically a 50% paycut from previous job and about 20% under median rates).
Needless to say, I got the job. And also encouraging friends to start doing the same.
If we want to compete with those that want to work for less, we need to be willing to work for less.
And I chose work for a lot less money, at a job I'll enjoy.
You've discovered the approach that everybody in academia uses, which is why academic positions pay (at most) half of what industry positions pay.
Did your living expenses halve themselves to match your income? Devaluing your skills for the win! The management, who aren't in a race to the bottom, really appreciate the money you've freed up for their extra bonuses.
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Thought this was satire, then read your other posts.
You are advocating for deflation and a recession. If your technical skills are anything like your understanding of basic economics, then you will end up costing that suckered company a lot more than the cost of your salary. Jesus Christ.
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I know people in certain VERY new fields where american companies have more job openings than there are qualified people on earth for those jobs. These jobs would all pay well in excess of $150K/year and would not cost any american a job. It would actually create a lot more job for americans since each engineer/scientist hired usually results in more support jobs at the company (due to being able to make more products).
However due to how the H1-B system is abused it is really hard to get the people you need
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you probably have an dramatically over inflated sense of qualified. There are likely dozens of other professions people could step out of and adapt under the tutelage of anyone that dramatically over inflated definition includes and do just fine in far far less than five years. A huge part of the problem is companies need to develop the talent they need and instead they are trying to dump the job on universities. The method of learning used in universities is the antithesis of the mindset and kind of skill at learning that is the defining characteristic of someone with the talent to perform the tasks most of these H1B's are performing well.
Being unqualified and having to figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly is exactly what is creating the environment which cultivates the talents we are looking for. We are perfectly capable of hiring untested and unqualified talent and throwing into the fire under experienced people here if we drop this mindset that every seat must be filled with a god and the ageism that pushes out the best talent in the industry to shape those inexperienced people.
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Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, if it were ONLY the top of the folks in the fields, I don't think we'd have a problem with it...it is the drones coming over and sucking up the regular jobs there ARE people that can work on here.
This, exactly this.
In my team, we have two Indians on F1-OPT visas, who tried to get an H1-B in April. Both did not get selected in the lottery. These guys are newgrads, and very, very mediocre as wel. Definitely not top of the top, more top of the bottom. We had better candidates who were also citizens, but HR decided to hire these two because they are nice and cheap and we should be able to train them ourselves. It's been 18 months and they have yet to become productive.
H1-B is a farce.
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Maybe you shouldn't let HR make your hiring decisions.
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you shouldn't let HR make your hiring decisions.
That is an utterly unAmerican thing to say, and quite frankly treasonous. Letting HR make your hiring decisions is a fundamental part of how American corporations work.
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That is an utterly unAmerican thing to say, and quite frankly treasonous. Letting HR make your hiring decisions is a fundamental part of how American corporations work.
I work at an American tech company in Silicon Valley. I have never had HR tell me that we should hire one candidate over another. HR's job is to be the recruiter. To sift through the resumes, and find potential candidates to bring in for interviews. It is the job of the interviewing team, and the team manager to decide who they want to hire. Only then, does the hiring manager work with HR to determine the salary they are willing to offer.
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HR's job is to be the recruiter. To sift through the resumes, and find potential candidates to bring in for interviews.
HR's job is to apply a simple string matching algorithm to the incoming resumes and pass along the ones that have the most matches to the posting, typos and all. How can you possibly be a project lead or senior scientist if you don't list Microsot [sic] Office on your resume? And Facebook isn't going to post to itself all day, after all...
If you're just looking at the applications that you're getting from HR, you're missing out on almost all of the cream.
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Quite true in most corporations.
HR really means Hindering Resources...
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Maybe you shouldn't let HR make your hiring decisions.
Agreed. If HR is making your hiring decisions, no wonder you have shitty talent. This is not an H1-B issue, this is a you and your company are doing it wrong issue.
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hiring (Score:0)
Maybe you shouldn't let HR make your hiring decisions.
And this is the crux of the problem. PhBs (per Dilbert) and HR making hiring decisions. I'm retired from one of the top defense contractors - I constantly saw totally unqualified candidates and hires. Bosses and idiot new hires who tried to convert 2M lines of MatLab/Simulink code (which produced a binary) to MathCAD! No, I'm not jesting - a MathCAD sales sails droid got to a Veep about how MathCAD was cheaper than MatLab/Simulink and told him it could replace it. These alternative facts propagated do
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It is truly a farce.. Your example is perfect for how its being used... while the people that interface with the government keep saying there isn't enough homegrown talent to fill the job but yet companies are hiring for lower salaries..
if they want talent that is not available in the US they should be willing to pay wages in the upper 10%(ish) of the field..
Companies that use HB1 visa's should also pay a higher tax rate to offset the damage they are doing to the economy... After all if the "Talent" is that
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And yet you said yourself, they're not on H1-B. F-1OPT is specifically for people in their position - who have studied here and want to get practical experience in the workforce. If you don't like them, blame whoever hired them.
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We even have a special visa just for that situation too. the h1-o visa. The b visa is nothing more than a way to depress wages in most areas.
I recently went through a layoff. All 20 of the h1b guys found new jobs within a week. The ranged from meh programmers to 'just hire them don't worry about it' The 10 or so Americans. 7 took MUCH less paying jobs and it took them 6 months. 3 are still looking. 2 of those 3 are *very* good programmers. The kind of programmer you say 'oh yeah hire that guy he is
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:0)
Who wants to go into tech just to compete with the cheap foreigner. Its a losers game. And a self perpetuating system.
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We have people here who can fill the top positions, they have to send their people here to learn how to do the work from us. Just put a stop to the age discrimination in tech and the talent pool opens dramatically with the added bonus
Re:I don't see the problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly.
I agree with the concept of the H1B--it allows US companies to recruit top talent from around the world. But I have a hard time believing that there are 65,000-85,000 people a year [uscis.gov] who fit that description. Heck, "Operation Paperclip" [wikipedia.org] only brought in 1500 people and we started a space program with that!
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What's the point of sending them a letter littered with your impressions? You care enough about it to write, but not enough about it to provide any kind of data to back up your back napkin claims? All that is, is like, your opinion, man.
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As an american, in the tech sector - I am actively trying to drive down wages in the Tech sector. .
I put myself, and others to take jobs at state median wages (So 55k for a Sr Software Engineer in California)
It makes us more marketable. We can command any position we desire, (they get a $180k value for $55k).
It shows that Americans are willing to work for reasonable wages, rather than inflated "We're tech" wages. Suitable for longer term.
And, it allows us to start developing market forces, applications, a
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If we have the H1B or other visas only for those that make say over $130K/yr, then that would help things a great deal....that way we let in the brains, but keep out the drones...
If our real goal is to increase the number of workers who can fill those $130k/yr jobs we most likely need to bring those workers to the US far earlier than when they can command that kind of salary (outside of Silicon Valley that is). The 24 year olds making $80k/yr today are the future 34 year olds making $150k/yr. They will arguably build more experience in the US than in their home countries, so we need both current elite workers and future elite workers to come to the US via our various immigration pro
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Back when I was an undergraduate the introductory CS subject was the one engineering students enrolled in to meet girls (less than 1% female vs 51%). Now there is a much greater percentage of women studying first year engineering than CS. The tedious "bro" culture where people only employ those who may as well be clones of themselves and a pile of other things resulted in the women leaving the IT sector not being replaced. I see m
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That's what I think, too.
The people trying to sell us on H1B's are always giving these examples of high-end, specialized career jobs where you really might have a tough time finding enough qualified people in America. But the H1B owners I actually witness doing jobs are taking up an awful lot of "rank and file I.T." positions doing basic coding, web design, computer or network support, or server support roles.
Furthermore, it doesn't really make sense that our colleges and universities are supposedly "good"
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:2)
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Somebody on /. mentioned the proposal is in the works to instead of lottery simply sort the H-1B applicants by salary. Hiring a $40K wage slave? Back of the line. A $200K PhD genius? Front of the line. The brilliance of it is forces the companies to compete, driving H-1B wages up for top talent. For everyone else, if you need to gamble on $100K for your H-1B who may not get in the 50,000 limit or you pay $90K to hire locally, then the choice is clear.
Btw for people who say there's no local talent -- I imagi
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In addition, US nationalism or "putting America first" is the only way that America will become great again. Donald J Trump will go down in history as the greatest president since Anthony Jackson and I expect that we'll see him on currency within the decade.
- Archangel Michael -
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Lol! You wingnuts are so cute when you're delusional.
Trump will fail spectacularly because he can't work with people. He thinks everyone works for him. He can't even coordinate his own party's direction or keep his administration on the same page.
The tragedy is it will take us 20 years to clean up Trump's mess, provided we live that long.
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Holy shit do you ever have a persecution complex!
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Lil' Blakey is just pissed that he will no longer be able to circumvent his responsibilities as an American, bypassing other Americans to hire foreign developers at $30K any more.
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Not only that, it is clear that some of these people support foreign nationalism while at the same time saying the US shouldn't be nationalist, Its okay for China and India to look out for their people, but the US is "Racist" if it looks out for its people.
There are probably a great number of things the Chinese and Indian governments do which US citizens should rightfully be outraged and ashamed of if the US government started following suit, not just nationalist protectionism.
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Oooh, look poor old Arch Mike is off his meds again, spouting his alt-right crap. You realise youre an irrelevant deluded cunt dont you Mike, if it wasnt for the fat fuck 4chan Trump trolls, you would be at -1.
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:2)
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:2)
It's even worse (Score:1)
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:0)
Regarding qualifications. Much of it has to do with experience. While our college grads can't find work = can't build experience.
Its a catch 22 to keep producing foreign workers that send all thier money OUT of the USA.
This is a problem at so many levels.
Thank you president trump for rackling this truely racist issue discriminating against our own citizens
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By competition they mean a competition where the US is certain to lose. I don't like losing, let's not do that.
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:0)
I doubt a win for corporations will trickle down to society at large, though losing does tend to be everybody's problem.
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A win for companies means more money flying overseas, never to be seen again. Look at Apple, for example.
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:0)
Apple have made a shed load of money by selling products abroad and had nothing to do with them sending money or of the USA, tit.
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The whole trickle down thing only works proportional to how connected to the economy you are. if you're middle class and have a job, a little tiny bit maybe. if you're poor or have no job, then not at all. Almost no matter what is done will work out as a benefit for the wealthy.
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If the work is going to Bob in Elbonia, it's better to import Bob for the job, than export the job to Elbonia and have Bob do it there.
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Next up, a tax on offshoring.
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Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:2)
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They are when you are talking about connectivity back to where the consumers are in the US.
How do you mean? I've worked for a variety of international companies, and connections to the consumers are always good. Yes, sometimes you have to use Google Drive, or One Drive, or some other cloud file service that's replicated around the world, but two people editing the same file at the same time on opposite sides of the world is trivial in India, China, and even Detroit.
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That depends on the filetype actually. But I'm going to assume you mean text and especially code. That is a task that is suited to
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Accents is an issue. Though, my biggest problem with foreign workers is they over-estimate their grasp of English. ESL is misunderstood. In India, they are coac
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No kidding, they do that because they have to. A Google cache appliance isn't going to help with anything but browsing the web... I'm not really sure The only way it makes sense with Netflix or most US industry to open up shop in India or China closing up shop in the US if they were opening shop to sell to Indians/Chinese. It would not work for Netflix to stream to the US from China because there
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No kidding, they do that because they have to.
Yes. They learned that if they don't have their own CDN with great local peering already, Comcast will shut down their links and charge them money to get to their customers. After learning 3rd world extortion techniques in the US, they don't open shop anywhere until they've defended against those tactics.
A Google cache appliance isn't going to help with anything but browsing the web..
Which is most of what the users in an office do.
I'm not really sure The only way it makes sense with Netflix or most US industry to open up shop in India or China closing up shop in the US if they were opening shop to sell to Indians/Chinese.
Wal-Mart has large offices in China (I've been to one). And aren't big on selling to Chinese. Can you figure that one out?
It would not work for Netflix to stream to the US from China because there is too much latency the pipes between the two nations aren't fat enough to carry that massive load of traffic.
Latency is irrelevant to streami
Utter Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
"We do not produce enough technically qualified candidates in this country,"
Complete Bullshit.
What they mean is..."We do not produce enough technically qualified candidates in this country that we can pay low wages and hold hostage with H1-B visas"
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"We do not produce enough technically qualified candidates who will work for peanut and 120 hour week in this country". fix that for you.
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The only people tech wages are low for are people that are shit. If you're even half way competent you can trivially demand a good salary in tech.
But the part you quoted is right, there just aren't enough of those good people about. The problem is folks like you are assuming you're qualified for roles you're not qualified for, and assume you deserve salaries that you've not worked for.
I can see when you're in your own bubble why you'd think that, but to those of us who have actually put the effort in to bec
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as someone who has a mix of both H1B and american workers under his care, I can tell you this: if you want high end technical labor, we simply DO NOT have enough qualified candidates here in the united states. We eat up EVERY SINGLE ONE that we can get our hands on that is an american citizen or has permanent resident status that is qualified when we have an opening, because going through the process of hiring high end candidates is time consuming and a drain on your resources. If you think we're paying t
Re: Utter Bullshit (Score:2)
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Someone please mod the above up, he's nailed why people who are forever in danger of losing their visa at the whim of their employer are more attractive to a certain kind of boss than a local employee.
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So they trained them.
Back in the day I worked at a place that had traineeships and scholarships. Not enough engineers in a few years time due to upcoming retirements? No problem - find some bright kids and pay them to go to university. Put them to work on their holidays. That sort of thing used to happen a lot and some very successful companies did very well that way. My current workplace is doing that on a very small scale, but one decent scientist t
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Nah, you're just a cheap, lazy bastard. You said so yourself:
Either pay for what you need or train someone to do what you need. Anything else is unearned corp
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See, that implies that we don't have lower end engineers learning these skills that we've hired also, which is false, because we most certainly do. But the competition for these candidates is fierce, so we can't get people to do the work right now that needs to be done while we train them. Your ability to not grasp the obvious is astounding.
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That's your problem in a nutshell: I do grasp the obvious. Either pay market rates for what you want, or train employees to do what you want. Anything else is an unearned corporatist sense of entitlement. You know, like I said the first time.
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H1-B is fine if it was setup & used as it is advertised. "We can't find local people with specific skills". However, this quickly turned into "We can't find cheap people with skills". Big companies could claim "clean hands" during layoffs, because they hired a contracting agency that was mostly H1-B.
You can fix this with:
1. Requiring companies to pay the actual local rate for people with skill X AND above 100,000 (adjust for inflation).
2. An additional salary tax on H1-Bs that pays for enforcement of th
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:2)
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:2)
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IOW, they are not permanent.
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Not just that, but they are on a temporary work visa. So we educate them give them hands on experience and then ship them back all the while rotating in a constant pool of fresh new comers.
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When these people stay in the USA, they generally depress wages and send all the money they earn back to their home countries anyway, which does the rest of the US economy no good at all.
This is beyond ridiculous - especially the part "they send all money to home countries". When they buy houses, automobiles, send their children to school, pay taxes etc. they are a net contributor to the society. And what they do with their money is none of anyone's business...they may send it to their home countries, donate to a Trump charity, or they may go to Las Vegas.
You can make a valid argument H1B program needs tweaking, but you don't have to add gross generalizations, untruth and FUD to the mix.
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:0)
Those are not foreign workers. People still don't know how to differentiate between citizens, aliens, and foreign workers.
You my friend are rediculiously stupid.
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:1)
You're right that they were over generalizing but I think there's no disputing that h1-b workers export more money than American workers. I think this is an important factor that is mostly ignored by people who are for free trade.
The effects of increased export of our money is substantial and each individual who does it, contributes to the problem.
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Yes, you are beyond ridiculous. If you went overseas to take a higher paying job but knew you would be going back home in two years, wo
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:0)
The GoDaddy CEO got his argument backwards. H1B visa holder must leave after 6 years. We in fact force them to leave after training them to set up competition in a foreign country. We should attract skilled workers who wish to become permanent residents or ultimately citizens.
The idea I hear floated by the Trump team raising the mimimim wage of an H1B visa holder to 130k from the current 60k is a great start.
H1B has become a scam by the major Indian IT firms who dangle supposedly cheaper services in front o
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"Otherwise, we train workers from countries like China and India and then send them back to those countries to set up tech ecosystems that compete with Silicon Valley."
So f***ing what. These assholes want their precious liberal democratic order at the expense of Americans - wrong move, bit them in the ass.
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:2)
I really do not believe that they suppress wages. Sadly, the USA wages are not world competitive. The USA has almost completely priced itself out of the world market. Get your university and health care costs in line with the rest of the world and the manufacturing will return.
Canada and other countries produce many many qualified PHD and Master Degree graduates at a cost to the student of 12 to 15k$
What does a doctorate degree cost in the US?
Re: I don't see the problem. (Score:2)
False statement
Senior technologists earn same or more, because they are better qualified.