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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

Have there been attempts at pumping H1B money and similar efforts into schools?

I've always wondered if we want minorities to code and we are worried about job loss in the US, why not stop dumping money into hiring foreigners and instead dump it into CS programs at community colleges?

It would take some time before you could build up a domestic work force as talented as foreigners, but would it not solve several issues? Or is it just not practical for other reasons?

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It's not the business responsibility to train Americans/Europeans/Indians. A business has to respond to it's shareholders who don't ask the question "How many of our nationality/religion/race have you employed" but "What's the share price"

It's the government's responsibility to train people and H1b failure is government's responsibility. Most companies dont even pay tax, do you really expect them to hire ONLY Americans?

Why would they when they can hire/outsource their work for half the cost.

Most big business have at least half their profits from outside the US. I remember IBM Global surpassing US profits when I used to work for IBM.

Cracking down on H1b is a bandaid over brain cancer. Fix the rot in education system, make education free, invest in tech else the big Businesses have no obligation to stay in US and pay more to do the same job (H1b or locals)

Businesses used to hire and train. There was once loyalty within corporate America. That is dead.

>Businesses used to hire and train. There was once loyalty within corporate America. That is dead.

I cannot debate this. However given our current situation and seeing our progress the rightful way would be for the government to invest more into education. Saudades is not going to help us. Being more pragmatic and planning accordingly will be much more beneficial

>invest more into education

I suggest the opposite. The reason college tuition is so high is because the government backs those loans. Remove the government backing of loans thus lessening the availability of capitol to the educational system and I think you will find it will become vastly more affordable.

I am in India and the govt doesn't back any student loan yet college tuitions have ridiculously skyrocketed, heck, I paied less for my one yr college tuition than qhat my cousin is paying for his daughter's playgroup (I paid 50k INR for 1yr tuition and my neice's playgeoup charges 75k INR, don't know what the fuck they teach)

That's less than $800 US isn't it? To compare a year of school here probably averages 10K USD a year or 668,325 INR.

No, it is around $ 1250

I am talking about playgroup!! And 75k is the least costly PLAYGROUP, playgroup is before starting nursery :P

Oh my God, 10k $ per year! That is way too costly, Indian colleges have reached 1/3 or your school's fees, my counterparts at private institutions were paying 1/3 and I have heard that people now in college are paying as far as 1/2 of what you have mentioned, so it is catching up.

> The reason college tuition is so high is because the government backs those loans.

This is patently false. Which nullifies the rest of your suggestion.

https://studentloans.gov suggests otherwise. They are called subsidized loans.

More data here: https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans/subsidized-unsubsid...

I am not debating the existence of subsidized loans. I am questioning the correlation b/w subsidized loans and high tuition which you seem to be making.

e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-r...

Do you disagree that subsidized loans would increase demand, or do you disagree that increased demand would raise prices?

> make education free

How is it not already? The tech industry in particular has made sure it is.

Why do you think is it not employers responsibility to train its staff ? do you imagine the stork delivers trained employees in the night ?

> "What's the share price"

Which is at least partially based on public perception of the company.

> It's the government's responsibility to train people

That's... a weird thing to say. I like to think of myself as an adult. I chose the discipline to study, got loans (yes), graduated, and paid them off. The university I went to was private. At no time did the government tell me what to do.

It is the peoples responsibility to go into programs that will get the decent jobs. If those programs are full, they can ask for new colleges or universities to be made. Or, they can study themselves.

I've hired a number of self-taught programmers. They're not much different from people with university degrees.

Shareholder Theory is not the only lens to view the responsibilities of a business. Stakeholder Theory describes a much wider range of accountable parties including employees, communities, government, and the environment. Under Stakeholder Theory, a company would indeed have an obligation to its employees and community to train new workers. (see corporate governance in Germany as an example)

Jobs aren't a zero-sum game. There's no fixed quantity of jobs that are being taken by immigrants and could be filled by American students appropriately trained.

An industry grows when it has supply and demand. There's nearly infinite demand for IT, the way I see it - everything is turning into information. The primary supply for IT is people. Immigration will increase the size of the industry and increase the number of places available for American students as well.

Another way to look at it: if restrictions on high skill tech immigration tighten, then tech companies that would have been founded in America will instead be founded elsewhere.

This is more true of software than of any other industry, because software is built mostly with human capital which can cross borders fairly easily.

I agree with your conclusion (that tech companies will move), but don't agree with your reasoning.

It is exactly the opposite. Capital crosses borders much more easily than human capital. There are all kinds of impediments for human capital moving (visas, lack of money for travel, ties to families and friends). That is why, if it becomes even harder (because of travel restrictions), that tech companies will move.

Upon further reflection, I think it's not so much about human vs physical capital (and I agree with your point), but about IT workers vs other types of workers.

If a company of 5 Indian software engineers is booted out of the US, they can get together anywhere else in the world and still develop a product to the same standard. By contrast, other workers have "stickier" skills that tie you to a specific country. An Indian aerospace engineer may find it hard to find work in India, for example.

In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year.

In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year.

Gee, I wonder why businesses want to employ foreigners and why foreigners want to work for US companies. Hmmmmm

Exactly. Running a business is nightmare. Sometimes I wished I was in the 9-5 daily grind. Top that with asking to pay more than market rates and most startups would collapse.

44% of unicorn startups in Silicon Valley employ H1b or were started by them. And a lot of them Iran too(which was strangely banned by Trump)

The Iran thing is too bad. Besides our governments not getting along, it's possibly the most advanced, moderate, and educated Muslim majority country in the middle east. Maybe second to Turkey, but Iran seems to have a lot more engineers.

I've known a few Iranian engineers and both of them were excellent. They didn't talk about politics either, the ones that come over here at least obviously don't have anything against the US.

I'm under the impression that people coming for work or business wouldn't have anything against the US.

Honestly, both Khomeini and Ahmadinejad did quite well in convincing many countries that Iran isn't so "moderate". And violating the Vienna Convention/embassy extraterritoriality is rarely good for diplomatic relations. There were also U.N. sanctions in place until roughly a year ago. So downplaying it as "not getting along" is a bit of an understatement. But I'm also hopeful relations will improve in the future.

How big were these unicorns before they started employing h1bs? I wouldn't count this visa as a big win for startups, because most startups can't afford to enter the lottery, even if they're going to be profitable in the future.

> 44% of unicorn startups in Silicon Valley employ H1b or were started by them.

And a lot of bright and hardworking people are losing out on visas so that large chop shops can make better profits

Are you referring to unicorn startups funded with venture capital money? Most of those companies don't have to worry about being profitable in the near short term (<2 years). Snap Inc. raised $2.5 billion dollars or so and has around 300 employees. I'm having a hard time believing a company that raised over $2 billion dollars, has 300 employees and doesn't have to worry about turning a profit will run out of business if they paid their software developers market rates.

If you were to replace the higher paid positions with lower paid outsourced positions the allure of Silicon Valley would be lost entirely to me. The talent would simply move elsewhere.

I don't understand why you're favouring a race to the bottom in terms of salary in terms of benefits to a business. It makes our talent go elsewhere.

I'm not favoring a race to the bottom but I understand the allure of getting better talent for cheaper. And the allure of getting pay more than you currently are getting.

Sure cost of living in SV is higher, but saving 5% of 100k is a lot more $$$ than 15% of 24k. And you're exposes to better opportunities.

That's the thing though, the h1b aren't getting 5% of 100k, they're getting 5% of 60k and bringing down the demand for locals. Unless these people are worth the money, then businesses should be expected to pay the money. So in short if they plan to raise number of h1b visas, the salary minimum should be significantly and from my understanding it already has.

What is wrong with a race to the bottom? Less salary means more profit for businesses and/or cheaper products

I sell my labor in exchange for money, and so it's in my interest for wages to be as high as possible, if not higher.

Sure, it's in your interest for your wages to be as high as possible, but does this maximize overall welfare?

By banning competition, the H-1B person's wage and the employer's profits go down and the product price increases.

How much depends on the relative elasticities.

Isn't this richer people banning much poorer people (immigrants) from competing with them?

> does this maximize overall welfare

I'm not a utilitarian.

>In Slovenia an engineer with 10 years of experience makes $24,000/year.

>In Silicon Valley an engineer with 0.5 years of experience makes $100,000/year.

Come on, you've got to compare like with like. In Montana, the median is ~$60,000, and in Georgia ~$80,000. [0] and [1]

Here in Poland, I can find decent enough programmers who'll accept $2k/month salary. Their English will be poor, and typically they'll be based in the middle of nowhere.

If I want to hire someone good in the capital city, Warsaw, I'll need to look at paying a minimum of $4-$5,000/month -> ~$50 - ~$60,000/year.

(I've no idea what it costs to live in Montana; I'd hazard a guess that combined with a (freelancer's) 19% flat tax rate + $300/mo social security, your savings will grow faster here than there)

One other area of confusion can be salaries quoted before and after tax. I know it's common to use after tax figures in Poland, and I'm not sure if your $24k is after tax; the figures you read about jobs in the US are definitely before tax.

[0] https://www.sokanu.com/careers/computer-programmer/salary/Mo...

[1] https://www.sokanu.com/careers/computer-programmer/salary/Ge...

Looked it up yesterday. Average engineer salary in capital of Slovenia is 2000/month.

Caveat is that everybody who's good is a self emplpyed freelancer working for US companies. So statistics don't capture them. I'd wager the average for those is around 5000/month.

Freelancer flat rate tax in slovenia is 4% if you make under 100k. That part is nice but makes all my friends unambitious. Always found that part unfortunate.

> Looked it up yesterday. Average engineer salary in capital of Slovenia is 2000/month.

Yeah, and it's difficult to know who reports stuff accurately, whether that takes into account people living in backwaters vs. fancy offices in Ljubljana etc. etc. etc.

For what it's worth, some Slovenians seem to be reporting healthy salaries here, although as you say, there's a good number of self employed there (and workers in Ljubljana definitely affect the average... or the other way around, you know what I mean):

http://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/slovenia

In Poland, when talking about salaries, we're using before tax ("brutto"). After tax is about 4/5 of the original salary ("netto").

> In Poland, when talking about salaries, we're using before tax ("brutto"). After tax is about 4/5 of the original salary ("netto").

You do that, and I'm really happy that you do; I've had far too many confusing situations caused by people quoting netto instead, it's definitely common enough that it's something I look out for.

Americans always name salaries in bruto.

>If I want to hire someone good in the capital city, Warsaw, I'll need to look at paying a minimum of $4-$5,000/month

Do you work at Google by any chance? I'd say a gross salary of $5000 is close to the ceiling pay for a developer in Poland, in Krakow/Wroclaw even $4000 is more than most employers would pay, not to mention your "middle of nowhere" [0] [1] And if you're looking for a remote worker what difference does their location make?

Sources(in Polish):

[0] http://gazetapraca.pl/gazetapraca/1,120733,16021624,Wysokie_...

[1] http://www.pulshr.pl/wynagrodzenia/place-w-polsce-2016-19-br...

The IT salaries in post-Communist EU countries is like getting spat in the face.

Surely applies to all salaries in the countries, though?

For remaining salaries it's even more humiliating.

H1B applicants have to be paid prevailing wage, I wonder where the notion of cheap h1b workers comes from.

  H1B applicants have to be paid prevailing wage

In theory, yes. In practice, research has shown otherwise: http://www.workpermit.com/news/research-finds-us-h1b-visa-ho...

Interesting. That does not reflect what I have seen at my company.

"We can find an American for this job!" What salary are you offering? "$60k, that's the prevailing wage."

Then there must be a shortage, here's your H1.

If that "prevailing wage" were $100k, there wouldn't be a shortage.

Prevailing wages for the job title they are hired for. What they do is classify them as "junior programmer" and have them replace a senior programmer.

That money belongs to businesses. Pumping it into schools is called a "tax raise". Have there been attempts? I'm sure.

Why would i as an employer who needs help right now place my budget into onshore folks who will be beneficial 10 years from now?

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