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At risk of opening that whole debate again...

Are there really no qualified local candidates, or are there no qualified local candidates who can also solve theoretical CS problems on the spot while pretending they're not doing it from memory?

Or qualified local candidates who refuse to lie and say they only took 3 hours on the take-home exercise?

I personally think this is the real problem. Companies dismissing qualified candidates as "unqualified" because they are too lazy to evaluate candidates based on their skills, and would rather throw brainteasers at them instead.

For every 100 candidates a CS job gets, probably 80 are truly unqualified, 20 are truly qualified, but only 2 were both qualified and could pass an arbitrary list of brainteasers.

And that lie lets managers run around saying "see, we can't hire enough talent! Skills shortage!" (where "skills" means "brainteaser skills", not software development skills)

I agree with this. I think they are overlooking qualified candidates because they do not meet certain requirements. Especially in the government space.

Then they hire H1B people who look good on paper.

This to me is a huge problem. And it upsets me greatly because its unfair and counter-productive.

In the past, I've done dual-track interviewing where candidates could choose either a (paid!) evaluation project or a traditional technical interview. Even then, the vast majority of applicants could not perform at a suitable level.

Have you actually done hiring? The truth is that there really is a shortage of qualified applicants (at least, at existing prices). I've literally never met a fellow hiring manager who thought there was a surplus of good engineers.

I have never been a hiring manager, but I have been a developer asked to evaluate candidates in interviews for multiple companies, and I've seen my own employer turn away qualified candidates. I've also been an employee at companies who institute hiring policies their own current employees would not pass, and then claim new candidates are unqualified based on those policies. Neither of these are particularly unusual.

I've also been a person applying to jobs, where I know I'm fully qualified (usually because I already do the same thing in the same way for a competitor) and where I'm told "we think your a good culture fit, but we're worried about your technical abilities". I can't know exactly why they said that, but when I've showed working code they say their happy with, but I know I struggled on their brainteaser questions, it feels safe to infer.

So, I've seen qualified candidates turned away because they were "unqualified" (but they really weren't), from both sides of the table. I'm not claiming there is a huge surplus of engineering out there, but there is no real shortage either. There are enough engineers, just not enough employers willing to hire them.

This view is popular to get hashed around, since it makes everyone feel good. But the reality is that many/most algo questions being asked, are very basic. If you don't know how to use binary search or a heap to solve a basic problem, that already raises enough of a question mark that I don't want to hire you.

People always push it to the extreme and mention some very difficult algo question they were asked, and say how it's irrelevant. And if you have been asked a question like that, I agree it's irrelevant and that sucks.

But having a basic understanding of algorithms and data structures is important to writing decent software. Can we please stop pretending like expecting people to roughly know and understand the content of the freshman data structures course is some kind of unreasonable expectation?

Or qualified local candidates who just need a few weeks to months of training with Ruby on Rails because they're used to programming microcontrollers instead?

(That was me a few months ago.)

From the companies standpoint, there is a lack of local candidates who can prove they are qualified. Proving it is important because if the company gets it wrong it will costs $XXX,XXX or more and probably more than a year to figure it out. This makes them understandably risk adverse.

I know, I know, we go over this too much on HN. But... isn't half the sentence missing when you say they can't find qualified local candidates without mentioning the pay?

What positions were you trying to fill, and what pay and working conditions were you offering?

Supply and demand are not suspended just because it's tech. There's a huge amount of demand, but not much supply for highly skilled software developers at $75k a year in San Francisco. There's a huge supply at $500k a year, but considerably less demand.

Exactly. It's meaningless to discuss a "shortage" without mentioning the price offered. I say there's a shortage of new BMWs--I am willing to pay $10K for one.

Although there are companies that import warm bodies for cheap, there're many companies that hire immigrants for the same salary and perks as locals. The problem with these conversations is that we all come with anecdata.

From what I can see, for San Francisco, the brunt of H1Bs (which is not the totality of foreign nationals, doesn't include L1s and T1s) in San Francisco in 2016 earned a salary in the 100K-150K range[1] (without accounting for extra perks like food, health and stock grants). Is that low? High? I don't know, but it seems in line with what I would have expected. Keep in mind that that's the salary, you have to add the cost of actually bringing that person to the US (lawyers, relocation, temp housing, etc.).

As for the BMW, you can get a 10 year old one for that price[2].

[1]: http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=Software+Engineer&city...

[2]: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sfc/sss?sort=pricedsc&ma...

My problem with paying the "market rate" is that if there's a shortage, this is probably a sign that the market rate is too low.

"Is it too low?" That isn't really for me to say. Generally speaking, it isn't for the government to say either. In a market economy, the market determines this. I see no reason to put corporations in control of the immigration system, with the power to decide who is allowed to come here and what jobs they're allowed to work, just because they don't like the market's answer.

> In my very limited experience with companies that hires H1B to fill programming jobs, it's because they can't find qualified local candidates.

> All the really qualified people are in the bay area working for tech startups, etc...

> So a company outside of the bay area would have to bring in H1B workers who are willing to live in the area.

So the answer to a lack of local candidates is to start reaching across oceans? How about elsewhere in the massive expanse of North America, where many people don't even need a visa or can get one much more easily?

They can't find qualified local candidates in the same way that I can't tie my own shoes if I cut both of my hands off.

There are plenty of qualified candidates out there. But as you mentioned, they are mostly already working somewhere else, for someone else. In order to hire them, you need to offer more or better than they already get. That isn't all just a salary number, but almost everything has a conversion rate.

Guest workers on a non-immigrant visa are simply cheaper to employ. As are young, unmarried, childless, and inexperienced workers.

It's fundamental economics. Supply is not a single fixed quantity, but a function of price. Likewise for demand. Where they cross, the market clears. Everyone willing to pay more than the clearing price gets an employee, and everyone willing to work for less than the clearing price gets hired. If you can't find a job, you are asking for too much money, and if you can't find an employee, you are offering too little.

Companies deliberately set criteria that guarantee a local search for candidates will fail, in order to save money on labor costs by hiring an imported candidate more cheaply. That is the heart of the unease surrounding H1B laborers. If the company truly cannot find suitable local candidates, the person they do find is in a great position to ask for more pay. If they need you that much, they should be paying more than any local would even dream of asking for, right?

Does that happen? Are H1B workers paid more than their local equivalents?

Given those numbers.. the problem is the salary. It does not matter that it's Sacramento; it's still California. And, honestly, as a fresh out of college dev, why would I go to Sacramento for 40k when I can go to the valley for 3x that, and still come out ahead?

It actually does matter a lot. That's just how income works in different locals. The cost of living in Sacramento is very different than the Bay Area.

If you want to see how stark the difference is, look at the compensation calculator gitlab developed: https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/developer/