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Comment by obviouslynotme | Hacker News Reader

I remember the first time I walked into the "residence" for a major contractor's H1B visas. They were packing a dozen people in a 3 bedroom apartment in a bad area of town. You then see how they are treated by their companies at work, and it disgusts me.

This is why you can't have second-class citizens like this. They are terrified to go for help if they even know how. It's even worse for undocumented workers. At least they can quit though. H1B workers are tied to their sponsors, which has to stop.

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As a person who used to live like that in the US when I worked there. Its just how it is. US work opportunity is very expensive/valuable for us third world people(in my case India). Its like 70 rupees for a single dollar!!!. Time and opportunities are 70 times more expensive. Every minute, and every purchase matters. You have to make a dent every time you hit.

Its like the most important period of your life. There is little time for non-serious stuff.

You likely won't get a chance again. Even if you do office politics and get visas, you still need to beat the lottery and visa interview. Given how precious the opportunity and what you get out of it. You have to do all that.

Yeah, but take it from American point of view: you're purposely accepting life (and probably work) conditions that few Americans would accept willingly. So you're lowering their living standards and probably their average pay, because your negotiating power is really weak.

More than that, if you consider that the third world probably has 4-5 billion people, many of which would want to live in the US (~350 million people), this creates a scaling issue.

I'm not even American, but I can understand why they consider this a problem.

The issues is that their solution ios backwards.

Immigrants don't take jobs for less, when no government is breathing down their necks. If you have a competitive market - there's no need for government to create artificial monopolies.

It's complete bullshit that billions want to live in US. Billions want a safe and prosperous life... and would stay home, if that's possible to achieve. US isn't some land of honey rivers or gold mountains.

If you want a case study on how unrestricted migration occurs - look at EU.

On one side we have Ireland and on the other side we have Romania. There's complete freedom of migration for Romanians to Ireland. Just buy a one way ticket for 50Eur, basically.

EU is proof that you don't need quotas or restrictions to control migration at all. And immigrants have only a small impact on incomes.

This is a nice use case to study how human behavior works when there's no quotas/limits.

I often say that unlimited calls means people talk less, not more. On the similar lines offering unlimited learning and self improvement budgets to your employees means people will likely spend them less, but more relevant training and development would happen.

A very similar argument can be made about unlimited sick leaves too.

When something is free people don't feel the need to rush and fill the quotas/limits. They use/spend per relevant needs and scenarios now that they know they always have an option to use the thing when they need it.

Numbers control us better than any regulation.

They say that you have unlimited - then you don't rush to use up. (But unlimited, needs to be actually unlimited)

And for example of migration - if your cost of moving to a new place and working there is reasonable, you're less likely to stay there if it becomes a bad place. Many cases demonstrate this, last being, massive wave of repatriation of people from Eastern Europe during the financial crisis.(And numerous internal migration waves in large countries)

- by reasonable cost I mean that you don't need to spend X thousands of dollars and wait 6-36 months for a permit

I'm Romanian. There are 20 million Romanians and ~300 million people in the rich Western countries. And I don't know if you noticed, but the EU is very restrictive about adding new members. It took Romania 10 years to become a EU member.

Plus Romania is average by world standards (GDP per capita per country), which means that half the world's countries (and probably 80% of the world's population) are poorer or much poorer.

So what's your point?

That Romanians should be kicked out of EU because they are stealing "R jerbs"?

Well, if you ask many people in Western Europe, they shouldn't have even been accepted. The average salary, even in PPP terms, was about 30% of the Western European ones back in 2007. In absolute terms, salaries were even worse (probably 10% in 2007, something like 25% now), and absolute terms matter because many things are imported.

After huge growth, the average salary in PPP terms is now about 50% of the Western ones. Romanian workers in the West have definitely depressed the average salaries in several fields.

And that's with somewhat controlled migration.

My point is: controlled migration is there for a reason. Building a working state is extremely difficult and takes a lot of time. It's a very fragile and delicate thing. Once you've managed to build it... you really don't want to upset the balance.

"Should not have been accepted" - is typical xenophobia. It's not an argument at all.

What sectors have seen a depression of salaries as a direct result of Romanians entering the market? And you have the huge hurdle of proving that those salaries are depressed specifically because of the Romanian labor, and not because Asian products or other global trends.

Also - restricted migration fails to attract the right labor, driving up the cost of labor unnecessarily. Sometimes it gets ridiculously stupid... to the point that local consumers(also local labor) cannot afford to consume products, because local labor(also local consumers) refuses to work for less. It gets to a point where local businesses cannot pay their local labor and invest into productivity gains(required to keep the pay high enough).

It's a complex clusterfuck... and blaming Romanians or Mexicans is just an easy "solution".

Did you miss the part about me being Romanian? :-)

I understand. Apart from sharing a apartment with 9 - 12 other people.

But you have to understand, this doesn't necessarily mean we don't have fun. When I was in Bay Area, I knew a dozen ways to save up money while having fun. I didn't own a car, because the company gave me a VTA pass. I knew how to cheaply explore places around Sunnyvale, CA. I knew how to reach SFO, and explore places there for cheap. Where you could eat cheap. This also means, investing in quality and frugal stuff. A good $14 for jeans pants at costco(bought from a friend's costco card of course), buy a pair, and buy a pair of t-shirts. Then may be timberland shoes. Invest in a good jacket. Now your clothing is covered for years. A bag of basmati rice costs $15, and lasts at least 2 - 3 months, invest in a good rice cooker and making curry with veggies easy by buying produce at local farmers market. Meat is kind of cheap in US too. Sometimes you just skip meals(think of intermittent fasting as a side effect). Also you can buy a room heater for around the same price at Target. There are lots Chinese/Mexican barber shops around Sunnyvale/Santa Clara that give $8-$10 haircuts. I knew to scavenge through mail boxes, to pick up coupons. Then of course one kid gave me a whole coupon bunch for lyft, and uber eats and eat for free for long. etc etc.

I took good care of my health, so only once did I have to go to the doctor, and I didn't even pay a single dollar, they just asked me to continue taking TUMS.

Is it hard, yes. I mean I was once caught in a thunderstorm and it was too cold to tolerate, and I once missed the last bus back home. Could have taken Uber but decided to save $3 and walked 4 miles in dark and cold, missed because I had to pick up free food at office so the my back pack was heavy. I even at a point could hear my own footsteps which freaked me out real bad, it felt numb walking in the cold. Then of course you have to wake up at 5 in the morning, because you want to take the 7:15 bus as the breakfast is free at office. Its cold that early in the morning, I had tons of janitorial staff as friends because I would travel with them in the VTA and again meet them at office. I remember it almost feels like the cold seeping into your very bones. One day I relocated to a new place and I was sleeping in the hall, the room heater broke down- It felt like my toes would fall off. It was really really cold.

Then there's tons of time and self reflection you get in that much minimalism, loneliness and it kind of touches your soul to its core.

Then you also save a lot of money you can send back home, that in the hopes when you run out of visa time and eventually return, you will have some money to invest and make something out of it. Did it take a toll yes. I'd be barking mad to try all this again. But I don't regret it for a minute. I got a chance which only one in millions get, and I made most out of it. I learned tons from smart people, worked and pushed my self to the extremes I gave everything I had in me. I would always make it a point to visit universities and companies to get a idea of the scale and ambition of the US civilization. I have immense admiration and respect for the American people, and I am always thankful for the opportunity.

I'm a European, white male but a lot of what you write resonates with me because of my background:

I specifically remember walking well over 10kms in biting cold on a particular new years day early morning to get back to the farm to take care of my responsibilities, having pasta and corn (with grated cheese sometimes) for as a typical dinner etc, stretching pizzas out to last 2-3 days etc. To the annoyance of my family some of these habits stick hard even today :-)

Oh, and pretend it didn't matter when someone lost my my "new" (at that time) 3310 cell phone that I had got second hand from a another friend (who again had assembled it from broken ones that he had gitten hold of :-)

>>To the annoyance of my family some of these habits stick hard even today :-)

At the risk of sounding like a Meninist. I have to say one of the big reasons why Indian men leave behind families at home back in India, is because some of these struggles just can't be expected to be shared by their families. It just gets too much after a while, and after that you just have to keep up with it on sheer will power.

It takes a toll both on your body and mind.

I realize that in order to undergo some struggle analogous to this the American citizens have to undergo Navy Seals training or something. Or they run Ultramarathons just to create the human yearning for struggle and story :) And the attrition rate there is quite high.

Thanks for sharing your story. It reminds me of my father who experienced similar things in the 1960's: arriving to America with basically nothing, a network of friends, some skills and the ability and willpower to do demanding work. He immigrated, but there's a lot of similarity to what you experienced.

If I may ask, what has been your career path since your H1B days?

I was on L1-B. I had to return to India due to a combination of several problems including the Visa issues. Some people just get filtered out of the race. As an Indian it takes more than just a Visa to settle in the US. You have to be in the good books of your bosses if you want to move up in the GC category chain, which involves making it into inner power circles of office politics where the plum budgets get allocated. Its a complex equation of age+politics+luck+health+family situations etc. The equation becomes less favorable to you as you enter the 30s.

People like me, just do our time and return to India. The company was happy to let me continue working from Bangalore office.

Working in the Bay Area was a net positive for me. You learn so much from working with the smartest in the world. Everything changes, your motivation, drive, ambition, your imagination gets re-modelled as to what's possible and how far you can go. I have learned tons due to access to a awesome peer group. I used to visit Stanford and just walk there so many times just to be in the company and see the specialness of the place. My imagination itself has evolved. I learn to take failure less fatally, and take more chances these days.

For this reason alone, I advice young people at work and friends circle to try and work in Bay Area, even if its a short stint. Its a net positive to one's career.

In terms of concrete steps, I've been promoted at work. I learned to swim(Thanks to the hiking I did around Bay Area, all those people who were so focussed on fitness had a good effect on me).I had good savings for a head start in my peer/age group. I also made decent real estate investments in India. I had a start up in Bangalore before moving to Bay Area, now I want to start up sometime again. I have read dozens of books, and have developed appetite for taking on hard projects at work. My eventual plan is to be financially independent, so that I can have mental space to take time off and do things and projects I like. So I'm working on it.

Who knows what's next for all for us due to COVID and what else is to follow. But my experience in the past failing and getting up so many times tells me, as long as one is interested in doing work, learning and have immunity to handle tough times, general direction is always a upwards trajectory.

But I'd like to come back and again work in the Bay Area. This time around not that much for money but just for working with smart people.

Sometimes I really wonder. What stops people in US in other states to buy a ticket and relocate to Bay Area.

In the end how much did you really save?

Well part of the reasons for all this is my salary was low, and I set myself fairly ambitious savings goals. But in Bay Area, rents are brutal and eat into most of your savings. In some cases even with sharing accommodation with people you end up paying like 15% - 25% of your paycheck(added utilities, general toiletries, home utilities, starting furniture, utensils and other expenses). Then of course internet expenses, phone bills, and coins for the washing machine. Add food and transit. I lived fairly minimal, like I didn't even have a mattress/comforter(sleeping on home carpet, with a pillow), given I was changing residence every 8 months. Only real things I owned was phone, laptop, clothes and a harmonica.

Its not constant, because during yearly bonus time you make a little extra. And when you visit home, you carry some gifts for people back there. I also made sure family back home was taken care off really really well.

But I was able to save a lot. Like able to go close and sometimes above 60% of the net paycheck most months. Keep in my I arrived to us with $200, a job and a suitcase with clothes.

I understand that this was an amazing opportunity for you, but your every response in this sub-thread has just cemented the argument that someone like yourself going to the States reinforced the idea that "accepting life (and probably work) conditions that few Americans would accept willingly. So you're lowering their living standards and probably their average pay".

This not meant as a personal dig at you, I'm glad that it worked out well for you.

>>reinforced the idea that "accepting life (and probably work) conditions that few Americans would accept willingly.

You are either incredible naive or just blind to the plight of your own country men. Do you know how many homeless people there are in the Bay Area? Have you ever seen black people working at Target or Walmart? Have you bothered talking to janitors at your office. Try talking to these people and see how life is going on for them. Sure its not comparable to what I did, but they have their own struggles and life is quite hard for them. Try talking to them and see what they think about those 'rich guys'(programmers).

The living standards you talk about are really for white people hailing from upper middle to rich class white families. Not every one has a $1.5 million home in San Ramon, Cupertino or Morgan Hill. Not everyone has a Tesla and a minivan for kids.

I'm not lowering the standards for anybody, If Im living that way, then there are already people for whom the VTA pass, coupons and timberland shoes were made. I'm just fitting in. You also can't fault me for not spending money like the way others do. If things in your society came at minimal standard of living acceptable to everyone, then everyone would be already living at those standards.

So tomorrow if people waiting tables at Starbucks or janitors took up programming jobs and lived like me, what would you do? Ban programming jobs for them, and reserve only for people who live the way you like?

Also what will you do about things like 'ramen profitability', or people like Elon Musk who at many times have stared at personal bankruptcy and have slept on their office floor.

The existence of a system that allows for companies to pay foreign labor well below market puts a downward pressure on compensation for everyone in industries that take advantage of it.

You mention that there are Americans who also struggle but I fail to see how that’s an argument in favor of systematic underpaying of foreign workers who are bound to a single employer (modern day indentured servitude). It’s the job of the government to improve the lives of its citizens and to protect their jobs, not to help foreign nationals improve their lives or to help businesses boost their profits at the expense of American salaries.

I’m all for immigration and fair pay. I’ve done it myself. But I don’t want to have to live as you described if at all possible. And I prefer that if you are talented enough to make it to the USA then you should be able to profit equally like Americans.

If forcing companies to pay equal salaries for foreign nationals stops the inflow of H1Bs, then this means that there are Americans capable of filling the job market. It there’s still unmet need for talent, then foreign nationals will be brought in at fair salaries

Well of course. As American citizens, its up to you to decide whom you wish have in your country. Its entirely acceptable even if you say one no should be allowed. I definitely won't make point on the lines of 'immigrants built America', its your decision. Nor am I saying that its the job of the US government to improve the lives of people over the globe. Though I believe even without others asking for it, or their consent, Americans are more than happy 'spreading democracy all over the world'.

But you can't stop any one living the way they want. There will always be people who will run/swim the extra miles, lift the extra weights, study the extra hours, eat ramen, do more than one job, walk/sleep in the cold, do the side gigs, moonlight their companies in garages. This is not slavery or anything. Slavery is stripping away people's rights without their consent, under the threat of violence. This just people wanting an edge over other humans. And regardless how you wish to live your life, there will always be people looking for that edge.

Lastly, I don't thing anyone living their life any way effects your standard of living. Your wages and compensation are decided based on how much effort your willing to put to get into a FANG. People who are willing to do that already make lots of money in a place like Bay Area.

The best thing about America, is the society goes lots of distance and makes it easy for people to do anything they want. So that at the end of the you are left with your own choice to make whatever life you want to. No immigrant is coming in your way of 'pursuit of happiness'

If you want to earn more money and want to know what's preventing you from getting it, you only have to look at the mirror.

The point the others are making isn’t about your standard of living, but your compensation.

If you hadn’t been tied to a single employer, maybe you would have gotten a job with an employer who paid more. You would have been able to reach your savings goal without living so frugally. Your employer at the time was comfortable paying you a relatively small amount because you couldn’t go anywhere else.

They’re not asking immigrants to live more lavishly. They’re asking for immigrants to be paid more so there’s less downward pressure on wages.

I am an H1B at a FAANG with top paying TC but I just fail to understand why Americans have to live this lifestyle. I get surprised when my fellow colleagues tell me than even with their high TC they don't get to save and live paycheck to paycheck. It's not a better lifestyle but just lack of financial education. American Capitalism and peer pressure is what it is.

I agree that h1b abusing employers have to be stopped and we need to raise the bar for h1b's but lets not make this a discussion about forcing a unhealthy lifestyle on immigrants.

>they don't get to save and live paycheck to paycheck. It's not a better lifestyle but just lack of financial education.

Expense will expand to cover whatever income you have. It doesn't matter how rich you are, if you are not careful you can spend your entire income and have nothing left. There are some very poor people in the world saving surprising amounts of money (for their income - when you make a dollar a week saving a few pennies is amazing)

> It doesn't matter how rich you are, if you are not careful you can spend your entire income and have nothing left.

Really? I mean, I hear people (especially SV people) say this all the time but I make a fraction of what they claim to and I rarely even have to think about money.

You are a minority from what I can tell. Most people spend whatever cash they get. Which is why automatic savings plans are commonly recommended - if the money is never seen you don't spend it.

I'm not sure the above is entirely bad - when you die the money is gone. (this is a religious question - not all agree) You need some savings for unexpected, retirement, planted larger expenses, and other situations. Beyond that, if you have money left over that you didn't spend you wasted your time at work: get a life.

Born here in the US. Grew up in California. I would have loved to have it as good as our visa friend above (while in the US). Growing up poor can be rough. I can spin a sob story that literally has had folks from across the world reach out and say that they teared up.

When I finally broke into programming as a career at nearly 30, my life changed. A couple years into it, I found out I was making 80% of a new hire QA dev on visa where their salary had to be posted in the break room or something. As a back end engineer who was part of a team of 4 writing code that was earning our company over $50M a year, I was surprised that she was making substantially more than me. Turned out minimum salary visa stuff protected her from my salary.

I’m now doing better than most, but I’d expect that there are many like me who would just were/are unaware they could make it comfortably as a software developer.

Not sure where I was going. Something about more poor Americans would accept those jobs and live crappy conditions if they new how to get them. Those conditions are just “life” for many of us.

>>Something about more poor Americans would accept those jobs and live crappy conditions if they new how to get them.

I feel you.

Inertia can be hard to overcome, and if you are coming from a context and are used to your current social conditioning, breaking out of a self defeating loop can be hard. And you deserve credit for making it despite all the problems.

But poverty is subject to social conditions where you live, and poverty in the US != poverty in India. In fact the definitions of poverty are not even remotely same.

I would wager that an employer would just shift their office overseas, rather than be forced to increase wages. See what happened to manufacturing around the world.

By and large, I think its a quid-pro-quo between the US wanting foreign markets to sell into, and other countries wanting to sell their products, as well as human-resource-services into the US market. But, the US is a saturated market, and so the only growth is in emerging markets. Which also translates indirectly to 401(k) growth...

Almost all of those people you saw there are now living in pretty enviable situations for most Americans.

Calling these 'guest houses' as people living in second class of the society is as incorrect as calling the residents of Pied Piper house in 'Silicon Valley' as 'living like second class citizens'.

Silicon Valley is satire, and meant to make fun of the idea, and even on that standard, they aren't as cramped as the parent comment is referring to.

Not from there nor do I know the place by any means, but didn't Bill Gates call Silicon Valley (the series) pretty close to the truth?

I'm just genuinely curious

It's about 90% accurate with 10% creative license.

Similar conditions do exist in actual startup Incubators.

I saw this too for a company in Minnesota.

They were sending their money home to India as well.

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