Comment by malvosenior | Hacker News Reader

Comment by malvosenior | Hacker News Reader

They’re not overreacting. My analysis of employee-level U.S. Census Bureau data and qualitative interviews show that U.S. tech workers over age 40 have good reasons to be concerned about how globalization affects their career longevity. In addition to competing with greater numbers of skilled foreign workers, older tech workers are now also more likely than younger workers to lose their jobs when technical work moves overseas.

All that said, it would be a mistake to rein in U.S. immigration policy. Here’s why.

The largest and most prominent visa category for employment-based immigration to the United States is what’s known as the H-1B visa. Some 90% of H-1B visa recipients are individuals under age 40.7 Typically, economists analyze the effects of immigration through an apples-to-apples comparison of immigrants and nonimmigrants in the same general age and education bracket who are looking for employment. However, peer displacement doesn’t appear in that data set because the salary differences between workers with H-1B visas and domestic employees of similar ages and skills are minimal (in part due to a law requiring companies to pay an H-1B worker the “prevailing wage” for the position).

I don't see how it follows that adjusting the US immigration policy is a "mistake". Isn't the increased supply of workers putting downward price pressure on salaries? Even if H1B requires a prevailing wage, that wage will go down to meet the increased supply of talent that additional developers bring.

The rest of the article is behind a paywall. Presumably they have justified their earlier statement.

Your reasoning sounds reasonable, but it falls for the lump of labor fallacy. Having more smart and talented people makes our society better off, not worse. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/opinion/lumps-of-labor.ht...

That might be the case but that NYT opinion article didn't cite any research to back up its assertions.

It's pretty hard to imagine how more developers wouldn't lower salaries though. I say this as someone who's done a lot of hiring. It's really hard to find good people and they can command a premium (fair market wage). Being able to hire H1Bs helps hiring managers but I don't think it helps developer salaries at all.

The "NYT opinion article" is written by a Nobel prize winner, and he's describing the opinion that most economists hold towards the lump of labor fallacy.

If you're curious to learn more, there's plenty that come up in a simple Google search.

> It's pretty hard to imagine how more developers wouldn't lower salaries though

This is the textbook definition of the lump of labor fallacy.

I mean, it's also not the case that labor markets are immune to supply and demand. As always, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

The whole point of the "lump of labor fallacy" is that growing the workforce will increase both the supply and demand. This is why unemployment is comparable across 1900 and 2000 America, despite the population exploding.

The answer isn't always somewhere in the middle. If someone tries to convince you that the Earth is flat or that climate change isn't happening, I would hope that you will lend more credence to the experts instead of believing the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Utility is maximized for society as a whole when the workforce grows. However, my utility is not equal to society's. In fact, selfishly speaking, I would be better off if h1b was shut down, licensure roles introduced, etc etc.

As someone who's hired many people on H1B visas, I strongly disagree. There was always local talent that could do the job I needed, I just didn't have budget for them. If hiring an H1B worker wasn't an option, the company would have had to pony up for the more expensive developer.

H1Bs also distort the market because getting a sponsored visa is a huge deal for a lot of people. Yes they may make slightly less than market but they have the ability to come to the US legally and have all of the paperwork filled by the hiring company (and legal support).

As another commenter mentioned, they're also locked into your company and can't quit without leaving the country. Another win for hiring managers.

None of this is good for local talent though. It's absolutely naive to believe that the supply of labor has no impact on its cost.

> There was always local talent that could do the job I needed, I just didn't have budget for them.

So you're saying that you willfully violated federal law by bringing in guest workers for cost reasons alone.

There's always domestic talent available. You just need to pay for it. Most companies look for ways around that including H1B and hiring jr developers and hoping for the best.

"Being able to hire H1Bs helps hiring managers" for sure, but H1B need to be sponsored by the firm they're working for, with the implied threat of losing their residency right if they can't keep that job. It's blatantly exploitative and not a free market at all, so the "lump of labor argument" doesn't apply in this case. Basically, any support for the H1-B program in its current form means you're supporting a race to the bottom in workers' rights.

I'm on the SMR editorial team — we've removed the paywall on this, so you should have access to the full article now.

A related effect is that almost all H-1B's count as "diverse" in HR statistics. If so, then currently there would be intense pressure to hire the H-1B candidate over a citizen, even if the former required a higher salary.

I have some skin in this game. I was rejected at Google for mysterious reasons after passing the all-day and hiring committee. No way to know, but I am indeed pale, male, and stale (and a citizen). If you look at Google's own diversity reports, their fraction of people like me has falling like a stone for several years now.

Wow, a troubling rationale. They’ve doubled in size in the last five years, your rejection, and an increase in diversity do not equate to not hiring white people. They just didn’t hire you.

I’d find it concerning to jump at anti-immigrant rhetoric so quickly.

Both I and my wife are second generation immigrants. I have no issues with immigrants at all, and I've worked my entire career besides H-1Bs and other PRs. If you had asked me five years ago, I'd have expressed a (somewhat naive) wish that we just drop national borders altogether, for the purposes of immigration. (I'm a bit more sanguine these days.)

I wasn't aware that Google was still growing that fast. That makes the reduction in the proportion of non-diverse employees a little more credible. On the other hand, it makes the sibling poster's thought (headcount reduction) a little less credible.

Obviously, they didn't hire me, and in the end, I have no idea why. They probably barely know why themselves.

No comments on your take on why they did not hire you but just curious who can override the hiring committee at google?

Seems weird they go through so much trouble hiring and it still comes down to one person giving their ok?

Google's hiring process is set up to prevent as many false positive hires as possible, at the expense of false negatives. It's pretexted under the assumption that a bad hire is more detrimental/harder to fix than missing a few good hires. Eric Schmidt talks about it in How Google Works.

It's an intense process for sure. I interviewed with Google and made it through the process for a Linux admin job they had at Ashburn, VA, which was near to where I was living at the time (Reston). I had worked at the UUNet data center for almost 5 years at this point, but I took a job with a government contractor instead, as the pay was over 10k higher and the job a better fit. Google interview processes are no joke. It takes forever and the interview questions and practicals you get can make you doubt yourself. I don't regret not taking that job. I knew the guy who eventually filled that role and he said the job was very intense and very busy.

My understanding is that there's a final "executive review", which is almost a rubber stamp, in that only one or a few percent are nixed at this level. In the early days, supposedly it was literally Sergei and Larry. These days, I imagine it's the head of the division in question, or perhaps one of their direct underlings. Or, perhaps, (plot twist), they pump the entire thing through an ML model. :-)

One thing I've learned in my (long) career is that wealthy companies don't really need to care about how much they burn during the hiring process. (For starters, your labor is free to them at this point.) That's just the way it is.

> I was rejected at Google for mysterious reasons after passing the all-day and hiring committee. No way to know, but I am indeed pale, male, and stale (and a citizen).

There is no evidence to support this. Google headcount is a scarce resource / bottleneck for a lot of teams, so it's just as likely the headcount was reallocated or reorged during your hiring process. There's also more than one hiring committee for some roles/teams, and you may have been vetoed by the second.

I was told that I was rejected at final executive review, supposedly due to a general property of my resume that many might hear as a euphemism for "too old". Particularly annoying, since that property was in plain view from day one.

As I said elsewhere, I can only guess at the true story. And it turned out to be a good thing--I found a better job (for me).

I think my original point stands, though. H-1Bs are almost by definition "diverse", and in the current cultural environment that makes a difference. Unless one is living under a rock, it's impossible to miss the advantage that that gives in the hiring market.

Your original point is still cognitive bias. You were likely vetoed by the executive hiring committee who reviews the resume, the work, the answers to interview questions, and and any other information in your hiring packet - with the specific reason for vetoing is not typically shared. Making it to the hiring committee does not guarantee hiring, nor does it guarantee you were the only one going through interviews for the position.

The fact that you have reasoned yourself into a position to blame immigrants for failing the hiring process, without evidence, shows prejudice. I think even you subconsciously know this on a certain level because of your using a throwaway.

See sibling replies, if you like.

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