Denial of H1-B visas to India’s largest IT services exporters at all-time high
economictimes.indiatimes.com
economictimes.indiatimes.com
We ban commenters who break them and have had to do so several times in this thread.
If you have offered sizeable equity packages (and have a nice office (or cushy remote benefits) and decent modern tech stack) then even the most boring startups can attract the best - so what is your company doing?
These days, while compensation and equity are of course important, there are other things (e.g. get to work on a wide array of stuff, no "big company" crap, etc.) that are likely going to be the real drivers in being able to attract talent.
Also, TERMS of the stock grants also matter. For example, if the options can be held for 10 years after departure from the company, that would make them more valuable. For the first 1-5 hires it may not make a difference because they'd probably do an 83b and buy all their stock right away, but for the next 5-15 hires the Series A price may still mean they'd need to put several or tens of thousands into their options, which not everyone can do.
Startups could also attract talent by offering atypical work hours (not arriving during rush hour traffic would be nice) or many other things, but they typically aren't willing to do that... for whatever reason. I've personally offered to work at startups in the evening for about 50% of my hourly-equivalent rate for 20 hours per week (so 1/4 of a salary for 1/2 of an employee), and they've not been interested. Until companies are willing to be unconventional to attract talent, I say the cries of "talent shortage" are not genuine. If there was a shortage, they'd be willing to be more flexible than most of them are.
Problem is the "big company" stuff you are mentioning is no longer limited to big companies. I see the unicorns of the world trying to act like big companies from mimicking org structures to leetcode puzzles in interviews to downlevelling (our Level N is Level N + k at BigCo X). All this while asking candidates to slog it out for 10+ years before their quantum money is worth something tangible. Equally BigCos for what they are worth are extremely alluring by ensuring one does not live perpetually on ramen and BigCos also do a lot of things so you can move around reasonably (sure not as fluidly). Additionally given BigCos (at least the one I am in) value diversity and collaboration a lot the "bigco"ness is getting more and more of a strawman argument!
What would be ideal for me is startups of say 5-10 folks with roughly similar skill levels (and hence equity) with a really decent shot at a successful exit in a 2-4 year time frame. Where do you find these that are happy with such an exit instead of trying to become a unicorn and not stop until they take over the world by any means necessary?
Aka, paper money, that you have less than 1% of getting. Even if startup doesn't go bust, things like liquidation preferences will screw people unless they're VC or founders.
Startup stock grants are exciting mostly to people new to the SV. If you've been here for a while, you know how badly cards are rigged against engineers.
For instance: only a fool would think that a $500k equity package, based on eg a 409a evaluation, is anything like a $500k equity grant at a FAANG. Because the latter is cash and the former is lottery tickets.
What do you mean by the Stanford part?
There are obvious significant advantages to prestige, etc but most companies don't insist on it.
Then you don't deserve to get those people. If you are paying below market rates, well honestly it sucks to be you, and I don't particularly care if you lose employees.
Instead, the only thing that I care about is getting higher salaries for engineers.
If anyone can volunteer a better source that would be much appreciated.
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...
You can see that non-consultancy firms like Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook all have approval rates close to 99%.
The country numbers are also skewed because someone from countries other than India/China, say France, shows only once or twice in your data before they get their green card and don't have to renew their work visa.
This is because of the hard cap of 7% per country for work green cards regardless of the size of the country. i.e countries with a billion plus people have the same 7% limit as tiny countries.
When a friend applied post-9/11, they didn’t even use up the quota each year.
Salary is quite irrelevant. It seems like a large cohort of USCIS officers are trying to eliminate everyone on the H1B, and this is being encouraged by the Trump administration. The sad thing is that denials are completely arbitrary and random, and depends on who looks at the case. I know one person who got approved (for a job as a SWE), soon after graduating from college (transitioning from OPT), despite a low (~100k) salary. So some people get lucky, and slip through the cracks, so to speak.
But in general, USCIS isn't judging cases by their merit, they're not treating jobs with high salaries favorably; the general attitude of this administration seems to be that: if you're from another country, we don't want you here, no matter how well-qualified or well-paid you are.
Reading things like this on HN reminds me to put the screen away and go outside and breathe some fresh air.
https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/comparison/san-fra...
https://legalservicesincorporated.com/can-i-apply-for-a-gree...
[1] https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/978/~/how-to-ob...
As a Canadian who worked in the US for 4.5 years I'd say it's exactly the opposite. The only disadvantage I found working in the US compared to Canada was the absurd process for getting a green card whilst on an H1-B, which is why I now live in Australia.
Otherwise the US was better in every way to Canada: - weather (SoCal) - salary - job opportunities - cost of living - health care (granted provided as part of the package by my employers)
There's a reason most of the top CS graduates in Canada end up in the US.
I'd be fascinated to hear more if you're open. It's a very common (populist) framing in the US that we have Literally The Worst Healthcare System Ever and every other developed country has a better one- I'd love to hear your perspective as a dual
I had the usual PPO plan when I worked as a SW engineer in the US. It was fine given that my wife and I were young and healthy. We still paid a couple of thousand dollars out of pocket when our son was born after a perfectly normal delivery which was a bit annoying, but again I could afford it so no big deal.
However, our next door neighbour, who was an American citizen and worked as a courier, did not have health insurance provided through his employer which was almost certainly a contributing factor to him dropping dead of a heart attack in his mid 40s leaving behind a wife and young son. I think it's safe to assume that his life expectancy would have been higher if he'd lived in a country like Canada or Australia where there is universal healthcare, especially for potentially life threatening conditions.
I think it's unfortunate that Canada is used as the most common comparison in the universal healthcare debate in the US since (even as a Canadian) I think the Canadian healthcare system is worse than pretty much any other developed country except the US!
I'm currently living in Australia where I think the healthcare system is excellent since it combines a base universal healthcare system with a parallel private system with relatively affordable private insurance (which I pay for myself, it's totally separate from your employer). This model is similar in most other West countries (e.g., UK, Germany, France, Sweden (!)), the notable exception being Canada where there is no meaningful private healthcare option, unless you can afford to pay cash in the US, which e.g. a former boss of Vancouver did. So it makes it more difficult for Americans to claim the Canadian system is better when the fact is that many (albeit relatively wealthy) Canadians jump the public queue in Canada by going to the US.
What boggles my mind is that a seemingly large number of companies, who are priced entirely out of the market in SV, still try and compete there, rather than opening an office in Salt Lake City, Atlanta, etc.
Plenty of local talent, and the low end of the SF payscale is fiercely competitive in any of the above, largely because the cost of living is half-or-less of anything in the Bay.
You won't have to pay Google-in-Mountain-View competitive wages, sure, but you do need to be competitive against the general tech market, inclusive of SV remote companies.
Assume a reasonably skilled, experienced software engineer. According to Indeed's Salary Search[1], in San Francisco, they could reasonably expect to hit an annual salary of USD 170k at Companies That Are Not Google, whereas in Salt Lake City, that number drops to USD 90k.
USD 90k is well below the bottom of the market in the Bay, and is near-as-makes-no-difference half of what our hypothetical engineer would make in SF.
In terms of raw-cost-of-living, sure, those numbers work out. However, people do like to also build up their savings account, and that's where things fall apart.
Post-tax, the SF salary will net you USD 110k. Your annual cost of living will run you somewhere around USD 77k. In Utah, you'll net USD 64k post-tax, and your annual living expenses will run you somewhere around USD 48k.
Rent is 70% higher in SF, and cost-of-goods is 20% higher, but you also don't need to own a car or pay for car insurance, both of which you will need in Salt Lake.
In SF, our hypothetical engineer will be able to bank USD 33k annually, more if they contribute to a 401(k) or other tax-deferred savings vehicle. In Salt Lake, that number drops down to USD 16k per annum.
That's a massive gap, which is often similarly reflected in long-term compensation -- e.g., the engineer in SF might see USD 100k+ in annual stock options, whereas the one in Salt Lake will probably see half that.
To be competitive on salary, that Salt Lake company would need to lay USD 120k on the table. That's 30% less than in SF -- plus all the other operational savings -- but not "half", which is what "market" seems to be at present.
It is apparently tough to find "quality talent" say some here; I did get a job offer with a nice compensation package in just two weeks when I recently started applying places and the word I heard was that it was competitive on employer's side.
Offshoring is what is happening and will accelerate. Search the article for 'Toronto'.
I have sympathy for cash poor startup founders, but offering substantial equity works wonders. Like a real amount, not something that rounds to 0. It's hard to feel bad for someone who wants to keep all the upside and not pay a good salary. Someone making 500k elsewhere should be a key hire, so spend or dilute yourself accordingly.
It's a short term vs long term balance. As an American you should want US to remain dominant in the startup ecosystem. Restricting startup access to skilled workers is counter-productive in the long run, even if it serves your short-term interests.
One would assume that the business still pays taxes, bills, rent etc.
It's still a net gain to the economy, especially when the alternative is for the work to go overseas.
Unironically yes. Thats is what they should do. If you pay below market wages, well sucks to be you, I don't care if you complain.
But to give an actual good face alternative, they could hire lower skilled employees from non-traditional backgrounds, and train them up.
BTW we got RFE equally for people that are from Europe and India.
PS: because it was brought up by someone in this thread, we don’t employ immigrants to save money. Check any of my “who is hiring” posts [0] and you can see, that we pay equally across the US to all employees based on their skill level. We bring immigrants because we’re having hard times finding skilled workers locally. The competition for talent is quite brutal and we just can’t pay the same as FAANG.
My guess is you’re making the same mistake so many companies do. Hyper focused on tech X rather than Y or Z. Refusal to train for a month, but would rather wait a year and chase HB1s to nowhere. i.e. Looking for a unicorn instead of developing them.
I’m happily employed on the east coast working remotely now. Had to pick up a new skill or two. Never used Solr before, now I have. Took a few weeks to get proficient in between other responsibilities.
I’m glad you found a better opportunity than us.
Just maybe a note. If you read my original post, all are our existing employees or transfers.
The reality is, any good programmer can screen another programmer within 15 minutes. A conversation about there last implementation, the challanges and how they responded to them is a good start.
Coding professionally is an expression of ones self. A missing semi-column is tell, not a linting issue.
> The competition for talent is quite brutal and we just can’t pay the same as FAANG.
You don't have to pay immigrants less in order to be saving money by employing immigrants. The whole point is that by expanding the labor pool, you're reducing salaries and negotiating power for everyone.
That's not what the H1-B system was designed for. It was designed to facilitate hiring folks with specialized skills you can't get locally. E.g. you want to hire an Indian person who did his PhD on something relevant to a project you're working on.
Rather, you're leveling it by expanding the labor pool to include the rest of the world, aka via globalization. Not inherently bad imo, but I could understand why someone patriotic would find this problematic.
The alternative to fewer H1B visas is not just hiring Americans. In fact, hiring Americans is far less likely than simply hiring Indians and letting them work in India. Or, as is happening increasingly, having Chinese and Indian employees who were educated in the US, move to Canada.
Semantics. In economic terms, it's expanding the labour pool.
You could also just directly apply to a position that happens to be in Canada, e.g. https://careers.google.com/locations/toronto/?hl=en
By the way, you actually might not need any FAANG (or other Canadian employer) help: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
Most businesses are at equilibrium. There is no choice of "hire locally and pay them well or hire globally and pocket the difference". The choice is "hire globally and expand" (and eventually hire more locals), or "hire locally and stay small, or even get out of business".
I don't think offshoring to India is a real worry. They lack the rule of law and stable business environment of countries like the US and Canada. Nobody with sensitive IP would outsource their core business there. If offshoring worked well, even with H-1Bs being allowed, companies would already prefer keeping Indian employees there with lower salary and COL, but they don't.
I also have a hard time believing fully remote work will ever be more than a niche thing. Shared context and serendipitous discussion of ideas are so important.
If anything it will greatly help the local economy, and increases tax revenue for local, province and federal govts.
>If offshoring worked well, even with H-1Bs being allowed, companies would already prefer keeping Indian employees there with lower salary and COL, but they don't
What makes you think they don't?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_India
Headcount is 6500.
It can just be expanded to include more jobs if it keeps getting harder and more expensive to hire in the US.
Brain drain from India to US currently hinders it, but if the rules keep getting tougher, retaining talent in India or attracting them to Canada becomes easier.
Remember when lots of people thought high quality cars couldn't be made in Japan or South Korea?
Regarding Canada becoming a hub for offshore workers, back in 2007:
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2663608/microsoft-vancouve...
A couple of years ago:
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/trumps-immig...
2018: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/microsoft-might-be-forced-to...
>I also have a hard time believing fully remote work will ever be more than a niche thing. Shared context and serendipitous discussion of ideas are so important.
Isn't GitLab 100% remote?
I think Github has like 60% of people remote as well.
Also, the Linux kernel has been developed with people being fully remote for the most part.
These folks are getting market-rate positions -- since I'm in flyover country, there are no FAANG competitors here.
Agreed, but that won't stop companies from trying anyway. From my experience, a lot of large companies can't really tell that their remote setups aren't really working.
[Edit] Added to word 'Agreed'.
There are numerous start ups that have setup shop here (humanapi, scalable press, grainchain, brightcove, wizeline among many others).
Given the time zone closeness and culture similarities, it is normally a win-win situation.
My company even moved someone from India who lost his H1B to work here. Apparently it's easier.
> we don’t employ immigrants to save money... the competition for talent is quite brutal and we just can’t pay the same as FAANG.
No, no, we're not doing it to save money...we just can't pay the local market rate so we import cheaper workers. But it's not to save money.
Almost nobody can compete with the comp provided by FAANG. Do you want 5 companies running everything in your life? Isn’t far enough already?
Finance pays better than anyone else, and yet people apply for jobs with non-finance firms.
There are plenty of skilled people out there -- they're just getting top dollar for their skills.
The fact that salaries are so high for skilled engineers is an indication of the labor shortage.
There are not many people that could work for us at the scale we run. [1]
[0] https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2018/06/22/video-search...
But your argument was that H-1B favors small companies and hurts large ones. So if Google agreed with your argument they would oppose H-1Bs.
edit: quoted doh's comment
If you are worried about retention, a non-compete agreement is an option considering you are deliberately investing resources into hiring them for a position they are currently unqualified for.
I signed such an agreement and have been enjoying a nice career ever since.
Problem with training is not just cost, but mostly time. If you need to grow the business but your employees are not ready to for the scale, there is not much you can do about it. A few companies died because of this, notably Digg and Friendster.
[0] https://www.sanjosebusinesslawyersblog.com/are-non-compete-a...
Interesting, never heard about that. Any place where I can read more about it?
Friendster http://highscalability.com/blog/2007/11/13/friendster-lost-l...
There are, of course, others. Twitter wasn't far from meeting the same fate. That's (partially) why Dorsey was fired.
HB-1 was made for people like my friend - a highly qualified PhD and not cheap contractors shipped in packs from overseas. I'm kind of glad that this racket is being closed for good.
There are also EB-1 green cards that might qualify her since she has a PHD, but they're usually for the STEM field. I have no idea why this is relevant to H1B visas which serve a different purpose.
If an administration is cracking down on software shops, that doesn't necessarily mean it's because they want to make those visas easier to get for anyone else.
Despite all her merits, though, life as a musician is financially much harder than that of a software engineer. For visa purposes, unfortunately, you want to make sure people can get by on their own. I hope things work out for her.
Disclaimer: I'm on H1B too, graduated from Rice CS.
As such, they should make the salary requiement something like twice the rate of whichever is greater: market rate for the role, the highest salary paid to any non-H1B employee at that company in the same role.
At that point, you can relax (not remove) the H1B cap, because it makes it cheaper to hire locals, so companies will only seek out H1Bs when there really are talent shortages.
Easy, just give all your H1B software developers the official role of "janitor".
The real way to solve this is with a higher salary floor, or even better, a salary auction.
Take places like Japan, negligible work immigration but wages haven't really been growing along with productivity.
Japan has work immigration, they dont call it work immigration, they call it technical internship.
Canada has a stricter immigration requirements than US. Its just that there is a huge demand for visas so it gets backlogged.
> the current salary requirement (min 60k)
That's not actually what it is. You have to submit the job for a "labor market opinion" (if I recall the name correctly) that tells you the prevailing wage for that job in your area.
Big companies like Apple, JP Morgan, Blackrock, Coca Cola, Visa, Verizon and dozens of others are also very negatively impacted.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/23/news/companies/business-rou...
Full text of their Business Roundtable letter to DHS about work visas and the list of signatories:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/brt.org/archive/letters/Immigration...
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Re...
Same reason you can’t get a green card through the lottery if your from Canada - it’s only open to under-represented countries.
If you only receive immigration from only one country, it is easier for these newcomers to associate and become a political force that can change your status quo. Whereas if immigration is diverse, this situation is more complicated.
This does not make much sense. People get green cards, not countries. Imagine if you were at the DMV and each region of your city had its own queue. People coming from the smaller parts leave in 5 minutes, and people hailing from the larger parts have to wait 8 hours for their turn. It's their fault for living in a more populous place?
What did the people in the smaller areas do to deserve their faster queue compared to others, except being born at a certain place?
Work visas should be about the person who passes the interview, is selected and is able to hold said job.
Imagine if there was a company with a white CEO who was only hiring/putting other whites into high level positions because they happen to be in a majority white area. If that makes you cringe, you should have the same reaction regarding this.
Diversity = various countries/peoples around the world getting a fair chance
Not diversity = Only Indians get work visas
If 90% of a town is white and 10% is black, 9:1 is a fair ratio for executive boards on average. Anything else would mean that the probability of a person holding a board position given their race would be different for different races. Imagine if every company in Mombasa was required to have an even split between white and black: being born white would guarantee you any job you wanted because you would be competing with less than 1% of the population, while in contrast every other ethnicity would be crowded in to half the number of jobs. In fact if racial quotas were instituted in Kenya and every race was given the same percent quota, 98% of Kenyans would be forced to be unemployed.
Diversity is generally considered a positive thing for companies and countries. Also there have been complaints that US is poaching the best people from other countries so diversity helps moderate that.
The US sets US law to serve US interests, so I don't see how that would be a motivation.
India is easily the most internally diverse country in the world. There is also the fact, that literally 15% of the world's population resides here.
The current "diversity" heuristic is too naive to promote any real diversity.
>Countries like the United States and Canada are far more heterogenous
That's only in the media and big cities.
It was done so that countries with large numbers of eligible immigrants don't dominate the immigrant mix in any category (it's per category, not global), which is a really stupid idea (it systematically prevents legal supply and demand from aligning, even as far as they could within the aggregate limit, by artificial restriction, which as anyone whose studied price controls know, creates illegality.)
https://scholars.org/brief/how-legacies-racism-persist-us-im...
US immigration law has always been racist.
Even if Congress kicks out all the rest of nationalities and gives 100% cap to Indians, the wait times will drop only once but then keep growing indefinitely. (And this does not yet account to how many more will be inspired by that, as right now long wait times presumably deter a lot from even trying.)
There is no fix for this that does not involve a huge lot of Indians failing at their immigration attempt. The core problem is that they are just trying too hard: India applies 8.5x more people per %population than France, 14x more than Germany etc. No Congress can fix that.
Sure, 7% cap for a country that makes 17% of the world seems a bit unfair. But increasing it to the fair 17% or even to unfair 100% will still be peanuts in the long run. The reality is that a person born in India is being screwed not as much by bias in immigration policies but only by other persons born in India.
This is not correct. The 250k includes people who got their first H1B in 2006 till date but have to renew every 3 years. Those are work visa renewals while they wait. The yearly demand is much lower. There is a 85K cap on all new H1Bs. Only 70% go to tech sector. However some governments and nonprofits are excluded from the cap, but the nowhere as high as 250k. Which is why the rest of your comment is wrong.
>Even if Congress kicks out all the rest of nationalities and gives 100% cap to Indians, the wait times will drop only once but then keep growing indefinitely. (And this does not yet account to how many more will be inspired by that, as right now long wait times presumably deter a lot from even trying.)
>There is no fix for this that does not involve a huge lot of Indians failing at their immigration attempt. The core problem is that they are just trying too hard: India applies 8.5x more people per %population than France, 14x more than Germany etc. No Congress can fix that.
Not true again. After 8 to 10 years it will fix itself because the system is first come first served. i.e If a French or German person apply on January 1 2029, they will get their GC before everyone from India that applied after Jan 1 2029.
Actually that would be true even today if the law passes. The French citizen who applies on Jan 1 2020 will get his gc before the Indian citizen who applies on Jan 2, 2020. It's just that if the law passes, they won't get to cut ahead to directly in front of the line, before people waiting since 2009.
It's like going to a DMV. Regardless of how bad the crowd is or where you drove from, you get a token number and no one that came after you gets a GC before you can. The initial wait for some will be high initially because there are people waiting for a long time.
100% of the total cap is used every year. The cap is not changing, the number of applicants is not changing (grows, actually), so the backlog will keep growing with no change at all. How exactly the cap is allocated to nationalities is irrelevant.
You can write a simple simulation of a DMV office that gets more new people every day than it can serve per day, and prove that the line grows indefinitely regardless if it's FIFO or capped or whatever.
The only true fix to the indefinite growth of wait time is to change the spammable lottery/FIFO system to something like merit-based (like Canada) or salary auction, which grants all the cap to highest scored people and rejects everyone else.
It's very relevant actually. It drives hiring decisions - plenty of reasons to hire people born in India (and to some extent China) because they won't get full employment rights for a long time. And this has a feedback loop (the longer the wait time for some people, the greater the incentive to seek and hire those people). This is actually bad for people born anywhere else and want to find a job here, including US-born.
There can be no "true fix" because the legislative process involves compromise. There was plenty of criticism of the 2013 Senate bill (S. 744) for example. Perhaps there will be another such attempt a decade from now, but it's stupid to wait for speculative future compromises instead of fixing one issue at a time.
In any case, fixing the country cap issue is not incompatible with any of the points based proposals - AFAIK Canada does not make people wait longer based on where they were born.
https://www.sanjoseinside.com/2019/08/07/house-passes-zoe-lo...
“For the next 10 years, more than 90 percent of the employment-based green card will go to citizens of one country”
This is so unfair to citizens of other countries.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Indian immigrants. What they've been through is not tenable in the slightest. I think lifting the cap all together will be a better solution for everyone?
Why should a person get priority just because they are from a certain country?
Instead, everyone should be treated exactly the same.
There is a saying about how treating people equally, looks like oppression to the people who were at the top before.
Not sure how it's unfair. The bill has a clause that anyone currently waiting will not be impacted.
>I think lifting the cap all together will be a better solution for everyone?
Not sure if you're serious. Even adding a few new green cards is politically impossible in the current climate. Just imagine the attack ads on TV for the next election.
1. The system is unfair in the first place -- Indian's quota is not in proportion to their population.
2. The bill tries to flush the queue, that leads to:
2.1 The perpetuation of this unfair system.
2.2 Other people who will still use this system get unfairly treated.
https://www.lanereport.com/115492/2019/07/the-bottom-line-bu...
Really wonder who thought this was a great idea.
Of course the cap should be abolished altogether, but while it exists the system is deeply unjust.
The El Paso shooter mentioned that proposed law in his manifesto as letting in many more new foreign workers after listening to fake news from Fox News and Breitbart, when it does nothing of that sort. Also that the Senate passed it.
The last thing we want is more bad information.
I worked for some time in a professional masters program that mostly has non-US enrollment, despite being in flyover land. To complete it costs a fair bit, though it's lower-priced than similar such programs on the coasts, and when you get out especially if you're an American student you're often looking at $90k+ for starting salary (depends on a few factors). It's a very remunerative field.
But we just can't get many US students in! We've been trying to figure it out. US students mainly come in when they've reached a point at their company where they have a manager who says, You need these additional skills -- go to school to get them, and we'll pay. I'm not talking "learn JavaScript library blah", I'm talking stochastic calculus. The school part really is helpful because there's a ton of theory that you don't learn by doing the practical applications.
US citizen grads are placed so fast. There's no such thing as a sure bet, but this grad program is a high-expected-value bet. And yet we just... can't... get... Americans.
I think it's the math. So many Americans are just scared of math. Some of our Chinese students "know" they're "just bad at math" but they don't see that as a particular obstacle; just need to study harder. Americans tend to see it as an inborn anatomical characteristic or something. But also it's the cost of a master's after taking on the crushing load of undergrad debt. Some of our students got their bachelors degrees for free in their home countries & then just had to float the cost of this masters, which is less tuition-wise than 3 years of state college.
There are more structural problems than just "companies, you should grow your own talent". I agree companies should do more: but if we really wanted a US society that fostered technical excellence, we could make sure our schools did that. We've made sure our schools foster football excellence, for instance.
And to get back to the direct topic: we're seeing a ton of RFEs for our grads, and there is no other masters' program that does this stuff within a state and a half of us. You've got to drive 8 hours to get to the next one.
1) Your entire culture/society has turned away from STEM fields. Everybody is only interested in making money via Media/Management/Finance and any other way to "get rich quick". The pursuit of knowledge is gone. This is quite sad given that your previous generations did much to develop and spread scientific temper throughout the world.
2) Americans also suffer from major self-entitlement. In a global world, the fact that your previous generations were scientific top-dogs does not guarantee you the same status without working for it. You have to compete and prove yourselves worthy. So when the industry brings them face-to-face with reality they lose heart and start blaming everybody else for their predicament.
3) Americans are averse to hard-work. Here the Chinese/Indians wipe the floor with them. It is a standard joke in the Tech. Industry that while the Chinese/Indians do the actual work, the Americans are only good for bullshitting in Management/Marketing/Sales roles. Whatever happened to the "American Work Ethic"?
4) It is now a truism that much of the Tech Industry work has been "commoditized" and the barrier to entry has gotten lower. Most workers are mere "Craftsmen" rather than "Engineers/Scientists". For example, i have worked alongside PhDs in Physics/Mathematics/Biology etc. and their output was comparable to mine (no PhD) simply because the domain did not need their specialization. Most of the Software Industry is like this.
I just wish that the current/future generation of Americans would take a good hard look at themselves and make the necessary changes to their society to build themselves up again instead of blaming "immigrants" and everybody else.
Note that what i described above exists in the "middle strata" i.e. the vast majority of work/jobs which have been commoditized and thus has a lower barrier to entry. As an example, i may consider myself as an experienced super-duper "Systems Programmer"(limited jobs) but given that the number of jobs in "Web Development" are at-least a few orders of magnitude greater than in "Systems Development", i would need to learn Web Technologies and compete with kids half my age if i want to earn a salary and keep a roof over my head. Generalize this to competing with developers throughout the world and i have a major problem. Therefore in order to make myself more attractive to clients i need to bring lots more to the table like Experience, Hardwork, Humble mentality, Willingness to learn and Getting things done. The necessary change has to come from within. No amount of blaming H1Bs or others is going to help me.
Incidentally, the above viewpoints were explained to me by a Microsoft HR person himself! It came as a shock initially but over time i have come to accept it and learned to change my expectations.
I didn't know what RFE is, posting it for other readers as well.
USCIS makes an inquiry called a request for evidence, or RFE, when they require additional evidence to make a decision on a H1B case. ... An RFE can be for information about either the beneficiary or the petitioner, or both. After receiving an RFE, you have up to 90 days to submit documents proving your case.
From https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-worker... , one of the following must be true for it to be considered a specialty occupation:
> Bachelor’s or higher degree or its equivalent is normally the minimum entry requirement for the position
> The degree requirement for the job is common to the industry or the job is so complex or unique that it can be performed only by an individual with a degree
> The employer normally requires a degree or its equivalent for the position
> The nature of the specific duties is so specialized and complex that the knowledge required to perform the duties is usually associated with the attainment of a bachelor’s or higher degree.
With today's world of bootcamps for entry level software development being more and more common - I really wonder if this is still the case. A bachelors degree is helpful... it signals that a person is willing to work on a multi year program to complete something that has a wide range of requirements... but it's not essential. I work with a person who has a degree in physics and another who went from truck driver to registered nurse to working on medical records software.
Digging into this question, https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/files/nativedocume... - 70% of all H1-B visas are going to computer related occupations.
I would consider the bulk of H1B to be about suppression of worker rights (and salary)
I now remote consult from my home country. I still get employers who figure they should pay me less since I live in a cheap country but it's much easier to negotiate when they can't kick me out of the country.
You come into the US, but entirely as a kind of guest worker. You demonstrate you have great skills and work ethic, but there’s no path to permanent residency or citizenship. The relationship turns exploitative. So you go back home and do great things there instead of here in the US.
We could have had a smart, productive addition to the American workforce through a more thoughtful approach to immigration. Instead we gave you up to your home country. Your home gain a skilled and experienced knowledge worker bolstered with your experience at a US tech giant, we cycle in the next H1B to repeat the cycle.
Any country that doesn't make it easy for the world's best and brightest to come is missing out and having gone through the US immigration process there is so much low hanging fruit to fix things without adding any pressure to the system.
The US immigration system is surprisingly liberal but in the wrong places.
WTF are you talking about? Workers can only bring their spouse and unmarried children under 21[1]. Even citizens and permanent residents can only sponsor their parents, children and siblings for immigration[2], not grandparents and cousins.
[1] https://www.immihelp.com/h4-dependent-visa/
[2] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/sponsoring-family-me...
> As a general rule, it is impossible to obtain U.S. green cards for one’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and more extended relations – unless you can create a chain of relationships so that a more immediate family member can petition for them. For example, instead of petitioning for a grandparent, a U.S. citizen could petition for his or her parents; and they could, after receiving a green card and eventually U.S. citizenship, petition for their parents (your grandparents).
https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/who-is-e...
The numbers fully support this too as I mentioned there are far more skilled workers with Visas and green cards vs family members/relatives in Canada than the US:
> Contrary to conventional thinking, it could be argued the U.S. system is more “compassionate” than Canada’s. Almost seven in 10 of those who settle lawfully in the U.S. are close relatives of previous immigrants. Each U.S. immigrant on average sponsors 3.5 family members.
> Canada, meanwhile, restricts “family reunification” immigrants to about one in five. Canada mostly picks immigrants to boost economic expansion. Two of three immigrants are brought in because of their skills and education. Trump’s plan, created by son-in-law Jared Kushner, copies Canada’s reasoning.
US = 70% family/relatives, Canada = 70% skilled workers
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-wha...
Our immigrant communities are famously successful too. In large immigrant communities like Brampton outside of Toronto, Hindus often rank #1 in income per capita, beating out Christians, Jews, atheists, etc. The Chinese communities in Richmond Hill, Markham, and Mississauga are also very successful. You can't drive through those neighbourhoods without seeing Mercedes and Teslas parked everywhere.
That isn't true with the H1B. You are allowed to apply for permanent residency while you have it.
From that sense, it's good to scrutinize these so that genuine applications have a better shot at the lottery.
The problem is, the third party placers are playing a numbers game. No individual is critical in their H1B apps, they just need to have 22% approved so they can fill their body slots.
The smaller legit direct hire firm has often invested a lot in a potential H1B usually after really trying very hard to get non visa folks in. The denials there are brutal.
In addition to depressing wages this corrupt system sucks for the H1B workers too. They can't earn more at another company unless they return to their home countries and reapply to the system all over again. Which is absurd.
The only barrier I see is the capital to create competing startups, but places like China may be well on the way to doing a “head transplant” on much of the work they have already been doing.
Discuss, pro / con?
All the companies in the article are well-known abusers of the H1B visa, and a primary reason why Indians using the system as intended at top companies have the huge Green Card backlog.
You'll find endless discussions about those companies dating way before Trump.
The interviews are a scam. You interview a person who seems decent but someone else will show up in their place. I had one interview where the person obviously wasn’t the one coding. He couldn’t actually describe what his code does. :)
Typically management in these companies aren’t technical folks, and they have no idea what to look for.
- Quality gets cut before features.
- Engineers are yanked and shuffled from one urgent priority to another with no sense of ownership and no time for craftsmanship, leading to garbage codebases.
- Mentorship and development fall by the wayside, making it even more important to get senior talent from outside, yet we still don't.
- Management eventually spins up a team in a more favorable country, which leads to a lot of annoying off-hours videoconferencing at best, possibly even loss of status as the "center of gravity" for your area.
- They company starts looking downmarket for labor, giving you less competent coworkers.
- Higher pay is directly offset by higher likelihood of a layoff; you shuffle all the excess into your emergency fund just to maintain the same level of security.
Just like a scarcity of doctors is good for doctors, but bad for patients.
If the USA had only one doctor, we would't magically be able to treat everyone by using the one doctor "more efficiently", rather only the super rich would get treatment.
So not all bad.
The value of the programmers is equal to all the people their programs replace, but yet, they are paid less than a single one of the individuals they replace.
Our society doesn't properly value programmers. If it did, there wouldn't be an H1-B issue. There are more Americans who want to be doctors than America will legally allow to exist. There's no cap on how many programmers there can be, yet America throws its hands up in the air wondering why.
The answer is obvious: America doesn't value programmers appropriately.
You can't say, "We can't afford to pay what programmers are worth." How about pay sales people less. Why do sales people get 30% commissions? Why do CEO's get millions?
The only real solution to the problem is to properly value the work and pay for it.
This is known as 'teleradiology' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleradiology )
The H1-B abuse is based on corporate lies. It's hard to claim that you need H1-B workers when you're replacing existing workers and even having the fired workers train their replacements.
In many cases they move people who have lost their work visa extensions after working for 5 to 10 years, yet haven't received their greencards because of country quotas.
Example:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/microsoft-might-be-forced-to...
FWIW, I'd love to get a decent sized property with internet, away from the city and traffic and pollution, and be able to work full time remotely.
Why does no one talk about the effects on the immigrants themselves? How much do they level up their technical and language skills? Are they able to support their families better? Are their kids now living in a less polluted environment (good for lifelong physical health) and in abundance, not scarcity (good for lifelong mental health)? How integrated are they in their local communities? How well do they form social bonds, both within their culture and across cultures? How different are they from family-based immigrants?
Surely we should care the most about the people whose lives are impacted the most?
(This is a rhetorical question, it's qwhite obvious what the reasons are.)
There's not shortage of workers for companies willing to (1) pay market competitive rates and (2) hire older (i.e. over 40) workers.
Rules on how American's should be able to hire people, or humiliating and excruciating bureaucratic processes goes against the very fabric of what America was supposed to be about.
The way America treats is foreigners is world renowned for abusive, expensive and unpredictable. It shames everyone who appreciates freedom of association. For all the rest, the petty happiness of the mediocre.
Soon people will no longer be complaining about Infosys and Tata Consulting but instead about Toptal, GitLab and Zapier - and there will be no regulatory way to stop them.
Politicians can only protect your jobs for so long.
Disney had their IT department literally training their H1B replacements before being laid off. That was blatantly illegal. Nothing happened to them. How may other companies got away with this without notice because they weren't as stupid as Disney?
We can rake Zuck across the coals but Disney is untouchable. That's what politicians care about.
E.g They almost turned a routine matter into a catch-22 where it turns people requesting for work visa extensions while following all rules into criminals and putting them into the criminal court system.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/07/11/new-u...
They only backed down on that aspect after backlash from several big companies in the form of a letter addressed to DHS, but the other things in that letter still continue.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/23/news/companies/business-rou...
Err.. Wasn't Apple involved in wage-fixing along with Google (and Intel and Adobe)?[0] Apple isn't particularly credible in this regard, not when the result of a badly run H1B program would happen to be exactly what Apple was illegally trying to do.
[0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/03/apple_wagefixing_cl...
When they are already set up offshore and they look for new hires, do you think they will hire first in SV/NYC or in their Canada/India offices? Same with layoff preferences, they would prefer to lay off people in the more expensive location. And maybe hire someone new in the cheaper location.
This will affect a lot of non-tech local jobs both at the company like HR and cafeteria, and jobs in the local economy.
>Not to mention Apple has a 99% approval rate for h1b apps
Then why do you think Tim Cook personally signed this letter?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/brt.org/archive/letters/Immigration...
It isn't just about approval rates, it's about being able attract the best foreign talent, people being stuck in green card queue for a decade+ with no end in sight, not getting visas in consulates etc.
As the pay rises, the tendency and pressure to offshore increases. It will start slowly, but as more competitors do it, will accelerate.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/trumps-immig...
Hacker News indeed
Is there any reason why we shouldn't encourage companies to bring valuable employees to America, instead of encouraging them to outsource development to other countries? Obviously we have to solve the problem of H-1B farms depressing wages and harming employees by hanging the Sword of Damocles that is deportation over their head but proper H-1B usage is a benefit to local economies.
Our tax dollars at work.
In 10-20 years there will be one viable immigration policy: closed borders. This is an inevitable corollary to the climate crisis.
In other words, if you're trying to better your life by relocating to a better place, get into pace - now.
and access to cheap workers
Let's be honest here.
I'm not sure how this is "Making America Great Again".
H1B visas are awesome for the west and terrible for the countries the immigrants come from. Brain drain is crazy
You dont think second-order effects of actions are relevant? You don’t think it’s relevant that we’re brain draining other countries, and that it might actually make those countries and their citizens WORSE OFF? Why are you so committed to your shallow level of analysis? Why don’t you care about the poor people in the countries that the H1B guys leave behind as they travel to America to enrich the USA?
I bet H-1Bs are the only time many people get so bothered about the global poor. Imperialism and colonialism have caused much more harm to poor people in India or wherever than a bunch of smart people seeking a better life.
It's similar to how unauthorized immigration is the only time many right-wing people start caring about homeless US citizens. US tax and transfer policy has caused much more harm than all unauthorized immigrants combined, of course. Right-wing arguments here can at best be described as motivated reasoning.
That’s impossible to quantify because those people seeking a better life also abandon their home countries.
LOL dude, what do you think remittances are gonna do other than pay for their kids to get educated JUST SO WE CAN BRAIN DRAIN THEIR KIDS TOO?
I don’t understand why the left is not anti-immigration because immigration so obviously hurts developing countries through brain drain.
Do you actually dispute that colonialism has caused more harm than emigration? Wow. Holy shit.
> LOL dude
I'm not a dude.
There are large parts of the left that are anti-immigration. They are also all bigoted. Nationalism is bad. Internationalism, caring about all workers, is good.
Edit: oh right. You're the one who talked about "rapid" "onset" gender dysphoria the other day. Silly me to engage with you again.
But actually I know many local (US citizen) Silicon Valley programmers who don’t support those programs. They know that more workers means lower salaries for everyone.