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Comment by whathaschanged | Hacker News Reader

If they're creating jobs and then bemoaning the lack of developers and the need to import more foreign talent to fill those roles,then no,they aren't creating jobs.

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Even if this were true, the jobs they create are now subject to US taxes.

I would like to see proof that these jobs could not be created by US citizens who don't need to be imported from other countries.

Because you say you can't obtain the labor and skills locally doesn't not make its so.

EDIT: @maxerickson (cause of those darn HN throttling limits)

Because I want to see US citizens employed before importing labor for jobs that supposedly have no candidates in country, if we're building policy.

I'd love to know how can you provide such proof or what you would expect as proof. We've advertised for a senior programmer position for months and had very little local(national) uptake. Almost nothing. Then we hired someone from abroad, but 99% because they were one of few people who actually applied.

Does that mean that we could never ever fill this position with a local person? How do you prove that?

What makes it more complicated is that it's extremely easy for someone to say "just offer 2x the salary and someone will come" - and that's probably true, but it's extremely ignorant of other market factors in the area.

> We've advertised for a senior programmer position for months and had very little local(national) uptake. Almost nothing. Then we hired someone from abroad, but 99% because they were one of few people who actually applied.

What pay are you offering for the role?

> What makes it more complicated is that it's extremely easy for someone to say "just offer 2x the salary and someone will come" - and that's probably true, but it's extremely ignorant of other market factors in the area.

It is easy to say that when labor law isn't favorable to importing labor from other countries, which as a US citizen I am in favor of. If your business can't support a wage that attracts talent without importing someone from another country, perhaps that's a problem with the business fundamentals.

As a citizen of my country, my fellow citizens are my primary concern, not someone's business. We all have our ideals that have been shaped by our life experiences.

This might be a surprise, but there are your "fellow citizens" who run a business too, it's not an "us vs them" issue.

>>What pay are you offering for the role?

Any answer to that would just trigger a reply of "just pay more" which I don't believe is the answer to the problem. Mostly because in a finite labor pool there's always going to be a shortage and a bidding war will lead to anyone knowing what a keyboard looks like being worth 6-digit salaries.

> This might be a surprise, but there are your "fellow citizens" who run a business too, it's not an "us vs them" issue.

This is not a surprise, but also, it doesn't provide a pass to want labor at below market clearing prices. You have listed a role, and it has gone unfilled for quite some time; you are not paying enough, but do not like the market conditions that allow for the scenario to play out. If you truly believe the salary you're offering is competitive for the role, I encourage you to continue to list the role until you fill it.

Employers have become accustom to cheap labor over the last decade; now that the labor market has tightened, it will take them some time to adapt to the conditions. [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-06/it-s-boom...

Tongue in cheek; Masters required, Ph.D. preferred, 10 years experience in Rust, must be willing to relocate, 7 years experience with Windows 10 required, generous salary starting at $60,000/year.

Not too long ago, I was helping a friend find a job and was a bit startled by some of the requirements. One that really stuck out was needing a few years of experience in a Java version that was still in the beta phase. (I think it was 8.)

I don't know if it's an HR issue, a communications issue, or what... I'd speculate that it is intentional, so that they can claim they can't find local talent and justify hiring from abroad. Call it a hunch...

I'm not sure why companies are so against training, but I suppose that's a topic for another thread.

The aversion of modern tech companies, and companies in many industries besides, to training new hires is mind-boggling. I suppose in the startup world the lack of resources to do so is in part justifiable. So resources end up being poured bidding for the few qualified senior engineers instead. Or lobbying to continue to be able to hire from abroad.

Same thing at my company. We've been trying to fill out our team roster for the better part of a year and ended up hiring from overseas to find the talent and relocate them to the region.

To be fair, we didn't have zero local interest, but the applicants we did get were a fairly interesting parade of awful.

Why ask that question first?

Why not ask first whether this program will prevent any US citizens from creating jobs?

What if both can happen simultaneously? Imagine the horror of even more jobs.

Maybe because American have been told this 'rising tides lift all boats', immigrants create more jobs, wealth, etc. bullshit for 30 years now, and we're' actually no longer willing to buy it since it apparently hasn't been the least bit true for most of us.

At this point, I'm willing to risk potential some lost jobs and GDP, which never seems to benefit anyone I know, and in exchange, shut down the H1b and other immigration scams.

Very few individuals pay taxes equal to, or greater than, their costs.

It would be better if the jobs the created were performed by the many qualified American citizens. The 'lack of qualified Americans' is a total lie.

This is, and has always been, about labor arbitrage, plain and simple.

People who have spent much of their careers hiring people all seem to agree that people who can do the job effectively are hard to find at any price. You may have a different definition of 'qualified'.

My comment should have been clearer. By 'train' I mean train applicants who are somewhat qualified, but not fully qualified.

There are 2+ decades of anecdotes about poorly qualified programmers from India and China arriving here as H1Bs. The poorly trained Americans should be getting these jobs instead.

Even if a large quantity of the workers are foreign, they do spend truckloads of their fat paychecks in the US. Or what you are saying is that trickle-down economy doesn't apply to foreigners, then?

Trickle-down economy does not apply to anybody in any case.

That's my point. However, this is not what anti-immigration folks usually believe.

Don't be too sure about that. The right-wing populism that's been spreading internationally isn't exactly neoliberal in its outlook. Those agitating against H-1Bs aren't hand in hand with those calling for supply-side economics. There are different varieties of right-wing just as there are different types of left-wing.

I don't ever send money to friends and family in another country. They all do. Which worker benefits this nation more?

Foreign remittances are estimated at around $50B yearly[1]. Trump's proposed estate tax repeal (death-tax) would cost $200B, while his corporate tax reform would cost $3.7T (that's trillion with a T)[2]. It's important to remember that remittances are NOT tax money. Who's whacking the economy again?

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/us/politics/immigrants-fin...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/26/us/politics/w...

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