Comment by 0xfeba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xfeba | Hacker News Reader

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Yup. I've said it before[1][2] and people just kept replying "Oh but we hire them for their talent, therefore everyone does."

I work at a run of the mill SaaS company. We have 60% H-1Bs devs here as contractors from a certain contracting company (more in QA). They live paycheck to paycheck. I get paid, literally, twice as much (I've seen the H-1B Labor Condition Applications for ones we hire directly--The contracting companies pay likely about as much but take some 20% of their salary).

We don't hire them because they are particularly talented. I've been on interview calls with ones from the contracting companies, all their resumes are the same [3]. They are just code monkeys. Our company does it to save costs, period. Upper management knows nothing of the mythical man-month.

The system is being rampantly abused.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13521791

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13525766

[3] - http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/theyll-sponsor-america...

"The contracting companies pay likely about as much but take some 20% of their salary)."

Having worked as a contractor, I've seen that number typically between 33% and 50%. Staff Augmentation is a horrible, horrible business. The firms also end up stuffing the hiring managers inbox with a bunch of resumes of unqualified candidates to box out other competing firms. No one wins except the abusers of what could be a positive program.

My bill rate vs what I accepted from my firm in comp (salary+benefits) was roughly a 35% markup in Washington, DC between 2011 and 2013. I was working as a software dev in mostly Python and Javascript on web properties.

"I've been on interview calls with ones from the contracting companies, all their resumes are the same"

That's starting to drive me nuts. We have to work with a limited set of contracting companies. Whenever we post a new job we get 20 of the same resumes. I usually immediately delete the ones that say "used try/catch statements" but other than that there is no way to distinguish between them.

It was a weird moment for me when I first tried searching a candidate's objective statement. I found ~10 other resumes indexed online with the same objective statement, followed by the job-tips site from which they had copied the sample word-for-word.

I know that's an extreme case, but it's pretty bizarre when you start seeing literally identical content on different resumes.

So these contracting companies themselves send out resume to job post a companies makes? For example, received 20 CV for a job posted and all of them could have been sent from the same contracting company?

That does happen, but I don't think it was the case here. I think this was just about people cribbing off the same tips sites and one another's resumes because they came through similar spheres.

I dislike poor working and visa condition as much as, if not more than, anyone else. But other than that I don't really see the problem. You're saying that the people you're hiring aren't particularly talented and get payed less. Not everyone can go to the right school, learn the right languages and get accepted to companies that pay $100k with perks.

It sound like, other than fixing some of the things with H-1B, what really should happen is some sort of easier O (-1A) visa with mainly a salary requirement.

"Not everyone can go to the right school, learn the right languages and get accepted to companies that pay $100k with perks."

Getting employed at these companies has nothing to do with "going to the right school and learning the right language".

Of course it does? It's getting better, but companies like Google have been very honest with that they (at least in the past) preferred hiring from top schools. The "right language" is of course a bit simplified, but some experiences are definitely seen as more favorable although it's not clear they are. Often more academic or community knowledge over practical or enterprise. As far as I know it's much easier to get hired by such a company early with based on your academic record and "culture fit" than it is later in life trough experience, as the median age also indicates. What are you basing your opinion on?

> You're saying that the people you're hiring aren't particularly talented and get payed less.

No I'm saying a citizen fresh grad dev starts at 60-80k at my company, but a H1-B via a contracting company with "5 years experience" (which is a crapshoot but they usually have some experience) gets paid 40-50k. They do the same work.

Considering other factors that is still a fairly small adjustment. I meant what I said that the conditions should be fixed. It should, for instance, be easier for people to change jobs and find jobs on the open market. That would make salaries somewhat more competitive.

But that doesn't mean everyone are going to make the same salaries. Foreigners are always going to be more willing to pay their dues, be less knowledgeable of the local market and have more variable skillets.

People are talking about fixing H-1B by things like salary requirements. That isn't so much fixing it as excluding one set of people and giving preference to another set of people.

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