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Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

The particular anecdote in this article almost seems anti-convincing to me... It suggests a job that should get challenged:

> For Centro, a company in Chicago that makes technology for ad agencies [...] applied for visas for three young employees who already had the legal right to work for a limited time after graduating from college.

> To Clark's eyes, the position — which consisted of writing algorithms and required knowledge of multiple programming languages as well as a solid understanding of relational data storage systems — wasn’t a borderline case.

I dunno, that sounds a hell of a lot like a fluffed-up description of an entry-level junior web-dev.

A server-side language + JavaScript + SQL queries. Not exactly the skill set that requires you to go head-hunting overseas.

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This is all theater in 99.999% of the cases. I mean, the legal requirement is to prove you can't hire anybody with these exact specs in the US. It's usually complete bullshit - of course you could find an SQL programmer or a Javascript developer in the US, those are not extinct yet, and of course, you do not need any special unique knowledge to fill up a junior position, or at least not one any competent developer can't gain in a month. What happens is that you already know that particular person, maybe hired him as a freelancer, maybe did some contract work, maybe did it as a student, or maybe just like that person for that position. Or maybe it's just a bit cheaper.

So what you do is your write a tailored job description, which apparently requires exactly the same skill set the person you want to hire has, up to specific versions of the database system, you "publish" it, go through the motions (without really making an effort to hire anybody - it's usually not very hard for a knowledgeable HR person to do) and in a while you can get your H1B.

Pretty much everybody knows it's a game - the pretense that the only reason foreign people are hired is because there is absolutely not a single matching candidate anywhere in the US is false, but it is impossible to prove. But the game continues because the industry does need the influx of foreign talent, and the only politically viable excuse is the one we have. So we have this game.

Yup cant stand journalism today. Straight up mouthpiece for the rich.

Why did they not ask the company what the wage for that position is. How many people in Chicago did they interview. Did they interview anyone over 50 who has that exact experience? Did they approach anyone currently working in similar jobs and offer them raises and other benefits to entice them over?

Truth is the Company did none of those things so the good loyal journalist won't ask those questions.

The problem is that you think they went out and investigated this topic then wrote about the results of their investigation. In reality, they had a narrative and agenda they wanted to pitch and then went out to find confirmatory evidence, while largely discarding contradictory evidence.

Relevant: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

> Did they interview anyone over 50 who has that exact experience

probably not. Why would they interview that person for what sounds like an entry level position?

You're talking as if there are only two parties here: owners (rich) and tech workers (not rich). But tech workers are well above the average US income. The unspoken group in your argument is the consumer, who on average is poorer than the tech workers. Lowering tech wages with H1B visas helps the consumers as well as the owners, because it makes the marginal tech product less likely to fail.

You might still think that the workers have the strongest claim. But as with most protectionism, there's more to consider.

You seem to be assuming that lowering tech wages will lead to more participation by labor overall, but I think that it will instead just lead to companies lining their coffers with the savings realized by replacing an equal number of positions with lower-paid H1-B workers.

I feel there's an apples-to-bytes comparison in there, given that the marginal cost for another instance of the same software is negligible.

This is especially true when you're talking about the non-institutional "poor consumer", as opposed to a company having customized or proprietary software made just for them.

It doesn't even sound particularly fluffed up. Most new grads that took a database course would probably fit that description. There are plenty of people qualified around.

The way I read it, stuff like "knows multiple programming languages" is intended to sound impressive to readers who don't know any.

I'm just assuming that somebody in the chain that produced this article deliberately sought to make the job sound more selective and prestigious than it really is.

Yeah, I figured that was the intention. But, ugh.

Yea general public thinks of programming languages in terms of human languages.

Learning one is super hard, learning two is almost impossible.

You're right. "Multiple programming languages" and RDBMS skills aren't exactly rare. Those are very poor reasons to hire someone.

Here are the real reasons they probably wanted to hire him: He's smart enough to do well on his SATs/GREs and go to a good university. He's hard working and conscientious enough to get a good GPA while in University. He's got great recommendations from his classmates, former employers and/or professors. He knows his stuff well enough to get through an interview pipeline that most others fail to get through.

There's one problem though. None of the above are considered valid reasons to hire someone on a H1B. The Stanford grad who knows Java inside and out, has a 4.0 GPA, a perfect SAT score, and amazing side-projects and recommendations... according to the law, he's just a cog, perfectly interchangeable with any CS graduate who manages to graduate with a C+ average.

Hence why companies have to come up with other ridiculous reasons for wanting to hire this guy. Because the real metrics that any rational person would take into consideration, are all considered inadmissible. If you start fighting with a guy who has one hand tied behind his back, don't be surprised if he doesn't follow proper boxing decorum.

That's a nice appeal, but on reflection that case isn't actually virtuous.

What you have described is not an employer who is just violating letter of the law in some harmless defiance of red tape... No, that employer is deliberately breaking the spirit of the law too.

The H1-B exemption is intended to allow for immigrant workers when domestic supply doesn't exist. Not "when you really really like a dude."

We can think of numerous instances where the law is sufficiently dysfunctional, that citizens take it upon themselves to work around it. On the trivial side, most Americans knowingly drive over the speed limit, and consume alcohol when they are underage. On the more serious side, today's sanctuary cities and slavery-era underground-railroads are both intended to subvert federal laws in support of deportation/slavery. Do you think that it's immoral to disobey the law under any circumstances? If not, how do you go about deciding when it's ok to disobey the law?

I like how the heading of the article already tells me what I am supposed to be thinking. No time for subtlety or convincing - just start with the hammer blow, "make life hell". And then don't bother with convincing arguments - you already know new regulations are "living hell", what else do you need?

And from what I get in the article - which is not very rich on details - the "living hell" is that the government occasionally asks for proof of what is supposed to be already proven in the visa app - that there's no possibility of hiring the same talent in the US - and which everybody who dealt with it knows is kind of sham and not how it actually works.

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