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Comment by strikelaserclaw | Hacker News Reader

I've worked with H1 software engineers in the past, their skills ranged from highly capable to not very capable (same distribution i found among American software engineers), but one thing that stood out to me was how hard they worked for their average to below average wages due to the fact that they feared getting laid off and being sent back to their home countries. I knew a guy who was at the beck and call of our then manager almost 24/7, this definitely creates unhealthy expectations in the labor market in general.

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> but one thing that stood out to me was how hard they worked for their average to below average wages due to the fact that they feared getting laid off and being sent back to their home countries.

Part of me wonders whether this is also because of their expectations for a reasonable salary/conditions. If you come from a country where wages are much lower than in the US, even a terrible wage from a tech company must seem like an amazing one.

This then makes the comparison even more stacked towards the H1 worker. Of course they'll 'work harder' for that wage, it seems like a decent one for them and (as mentioned), there's a risk of being sent back. Meanwhile any US based employee you can get for similar money will probably be far below average in terms of skills/mindset, since no one with any real expertise will work for these wages.

If I want to hire:

A smart graduate from EPFL, Polytechnique or ETH Zurich who interned at CERN and has contributed to the Linux kernel for a software engineering job at a unicorn startup

A grad from a second tier "technical college" in India with a visa refusal rate of ~90% for a job doing manual UI testing and QA for a body shop

my only path forward is H1. They'll both be listed as "computer related occupations" and apply for the same visa in the same quota. Does that makes any sense to anyone?

Fixing the immigration is needed to address these issues, but so far it’s been impossible to pass anything meaningful in congress and different parties have their own pet agendas.

> due to the fact that they feared getting laid off and being sent back to their home countries

> this definitely creates unhealthy expectations in the labor market in general.

I have always assumed this was the goal; a way to skirt labor laws/protections and overtime normalize overworking and manager worship because American workers are "lazy".

I can't stand the abuse of H1Bs. While I may have personal feelings on labor from immigration, these people are still people.

In a similar flavor I never liked it when I worked at $BIGCO and people treated you differently if you were an employee v a contractor. It wasn't a privacy or trust-level thing - it was just social status stupidity.

As a F-1 OPT holder who is starting at a job with $200k base and almost double that in TC, I hate the claim that H1B is abusive. Can you tell me how I am being abused by my employer, who has helped me through every step of the way?

No, I don’t think H-1B is abusive, it’s an opportunity for hardworking people to prove themselves just as, or more capable than the locals. I don’t think you’re truly concerned about my wellbeing, I think you’d just rather have my job.

You've misread something here. They didn't say it was inherently abusive, they said they hate seeing people abused because of it.

I don’t think having to work hard is abusive. Investment bankers famously work 70, 80 hour weeks voluntarily. Why can’t software engineers work a bit more than 40 hours a week if they wanted to? The ‘low pay’ that people claim is well above market average in most of the world, and above the median US income. People are mostly happy to have the opportunity to work here.

I think that complaints of abuse are thinly veiled xenophobia. You pretend to be helping us, but you just want to protect your own overly inflated salaries from market forces.

Wow :) You should save this comment and revisit it when you are 35ish. This attitude is exactly what companies want. It's Apple charging $1000 for a phone, and makes (say) $300 profit but you willingly hand over $1500 to them. Would you do that?

I've worked very hard to get to where I am, so working hard isn't difficult for me. I chose to work here because it provides the best life for me, not because anyone forced me to. Would you rather take this choice away from me?

No one is talking about taking that choice away from you.

What you think is "best for you" changes for a lot of people over time. Meanwhile, using my iphone analogy again, you are merely raising the cost of a phone for those who "just want a phone". ie, you are raising the expectations for employers who will expect more people to work for 40+ hours, while getting paid for 40.

If you are from a country with a long waiting time for a US green card, you should really look at a moving to another developed country, or marrying a local.

But investment bankers are not threatened by expulsion from the country where they've placed their roots and want to live. Which increases the already disproportionate power employers have over their employees, and make H1Bs more prone to abusive workplaces.

I don't feel threatened by expulsion by my employer. Instead, I feel threatened by xenophobic people and policies like the sitting president and recent US immigration policies. If you want to help people like me, why not fight for easier immigration policies and make it easier for people like me to stay here?

The reason I don't like the H1B program is because it makes it so hard for people like you to stay here. It's designed, by law, to kick you out after 3 to 6 years.

Well actually, I get to start the application for green card after 2 years of employment. Unfortunately, I have to wait many years for my green card date to arrive due to the strict restrictions on green card availabilities. The H-1B is actually designed to encourage workers to apply for a green card for permanent residency, but it seems the whole process is designed to be as long and torturous as possible.

I agree. I think there should be a single, general-purpose "I'm a skilled worker and I'd like to work in US long-term" visa; the process should move quickly enough for new college graduates to get it, and once someone has the visa they should be able to stay in the US for as long as they'd like without extra steps or restrictions.

I support the hiring of H1-B Visa employees to fill jobs that can't be filled by US citizens.

However, I'm not in favor of the common practice where employers make no attempt to hire a US citizen and instead hire an H1-B employee who is willing to work for peanuts.

That doesn't mean I'm a xenophobe.

What are you arguing against? Where are you seeing anyone defend xenophobic immigration policies in the posts you are replying to?

That’s the real “skills gap” tech companies mean. Americans are too aware of the game.

Most office job coding work these days is filling out templated layers of indirection via frameworks and APIs.

Google doesn’t have an information advantage. It has a capital advantage. It’s the same old math belying all those algorithms.

They’re trying to sell the idea they possess an information advantage over less developed nations as Americans/westerners don’t buy their story anymore. They’re bored and gonna charge more to fill in the new templates of indirection.

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