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Comment by oneplane | Hacker News Reader

That's a nice fantasy, but the intended usage of H1-B is still in effect: there are plenty of americans that simply do not have the skill for the job, or that do not want to do the job.

Of course the system gets abused, that's par for the course in the united states with all the lobbying. But that doesn't mean that a company is going to suddenly use non-existent local workforce to do the job. At the same time, if it really was just displacing locals for profit, that same could probably be done by just moving an entire department out of the country.

There is only one real way to resolve it effectively: be the better option.

If you are trying to apply some weird protectionism construction instead of simply being the best option, it just ends up hurting everyone.

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They will want to do the job if it pays better. Others will want to go to school to earn the skills. It's just supply and demand. It strikes me as silly that it's next to impossible for an average STEM grad in the US to actually pass the interview process at most of our largest tech companies. Why are they here then, other than to drive up the cost of SV real estate.

Why would offshoring the department hurt everyone though? Does "everyone" only count US residents?

> if it pays better That's just trying to compare skilled people to unskilled labour workers. That's not how it works (unless you count counter-productive enterprise setups).

If you were to make such a comparison you'd have to take all of the non-technical parameters in to account:

- communication

- culture

- values

- productivity

- intrinsic motivation

- team fit

Those would pretty much remove most of the 'canned workers' people seem to point to from the conversation, as well as most of the enterprise 'consultants' and the like (i.e. Deloitte)

If you want to include them, you would have to set the bar much lower, but then you also should make sure that the provisioning that government program for visas explicitly mentions that. At the same time, the 'interview process' is just bad as far as I've heard and experienced. 90% of the people you interact with and the activities you attend have nothing to do with the actual work or work context. At the same time, those kids that did some school work and now think they instantly get a job that happens to use the same words in their postings as the words they used to label their classes simply have a disconnect between theory and reality. But that's more of a general American thing than purely college-to-job flows being bad.

I teach at a University. Our grads in CS and engineering certainly do flow directly to jobs. But not FAANG except a few. Either way though, and despite what college-dropout CEO's may think, our universities actually do teach our students what they need to know for their job description. If you are curious how well they know the topic, check their grades. We tested them thoroughally already. Normal human interviews consist of chats with the candidate to discuss projects they worked on and their interests.

In the defense industry they can't hire internationals. Not coincidentally, this how interviews at those companies mostly go. And they plan for a lot of training of new hires to boot. Needing a hire to be productive their first day is a necessity for startups, not massive companies like Apple/Amazon/Intel/etc. They're just being cheap.

And that's why the silly methods for the FAANGS don't work (I think I described those, not the more normal organisations -- but that's not what the visas target or are being lobbied for AFAIK). Or perhaps they do work, but simply not as an entrance for students. The FAANG postings are still worded similar to the more 'normal' jobs, but are very different.

Replying to myself: maybe that is working as intended for them, keep new people out and filter for those who can withstand meaningless grind during their work?

What do they actually want? I'm so curious.

I have no idea, and I don't think they know it themselves with all the siloing going on.

> be the better option

When I say jump you say how high!

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