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Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

Only in the context of H1B does anyone conceive of tech workers as having a binary condition called "qualified." In white-collar jobs worth having, impact scales essentially infinitely with skill. You aren't looking for people who are merely capable of some baseline, you are looking for the best. The world is much bigger than America, so even if Americans are very good, many of the best are still foreigners.

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I agree with this in theory, but in practice...

I've worked directly with probably 50 or so H1B folks in my career. I can only think of a few I'd call exceptional. Just like Americans, most were a mixed bag from good to terrible.

So the idea and argument of best of the best is sound, but it's definitely not being used solely that way.

The idea of 'best of the best' relies on the assumption that it is measurable which history has shown that it is not.

I mean, this is basic VC logic: because the returns are power law distributed, and it's very hard to know in advance which ones are going to hit, you should probably invest at least a little bit in anyone who seems basically plausible. Imagine having denied a visa to Sergey Brin!

Money is measurable, engineer quality is not. Sure with a smaller startup you could average amongst the engineers but it's an imprecise value. The million threads on leetcode and interview are proof positive engineer valuation is hard.

It's all well and good to gamble when someone else, the public, is picking up the tab.

What tab? H1B engineers are definitionally employed, usually in the upper tax brackets.

Unpriced externalities. Housing is unaffordable in no small part due to immigration. Opportunity cost for Americans workers.

Generally the government manages the economy to make things 'easy' but not necessarily reflecting the true cost of any behavior.

Housing is unaffordable because tech brings high-paying jobs into regions that don't want housing growth. Whether the people coming to fill those jobs and throw those salaries around in the housing market are from India or from Wisconsin hardly matters, except that it's more comfortable for local governments to be overtly hostile to the Wisconsinites.

Housing requires land which inherently does not scale.

Accepting that premise for a moment, why would the land around Bay Area offices scale any better for Americans than for H1Bs? If the opportunities simply go to Americans, you have exactly the same geometry problem. If the Americans who refill those roles do so at higher wages, the supply-and-demand imbalance gets even worse.

Ultimately there exists more foreigners than Americans. American employees are more willing to create jobs outside the bay area.

So then the h1b hires will go to jobs outside the bay area, reducing pressure on housing prices in the bay area.

Tech companies have N openings in the bay area. They will fill these openings. Whether they fill the openings with people moving from India or Mississippi has zero effect on the pressure on the bay area housing market.

My understanding is Sergey was just along for the ride and Larry was the one with the unique insights (pagerank) and led Google through the early years as CEO.

Most people are missing the fact that there’s a whole immigration economy on the other end, it’s not a passive storefront (that was banned in the 19th century). People want to immigrate, but the people who are best at immigrating aren’t necessarily best at their job.

How have you only worked with 50 or so H1B in your career? It's either not been long, or you didn't work at any large tech companies (the ones who use this visa the most)

I don't jump much, I've worked for 3 companies in 20 years.

They were smallish companies, 1000ish employees. Only one had H1B, and there were more than 50, but never worked with most enough to pass judgment one way or another.

H1B doesn't test for skill. It is a lottery. And judging from the skill of hundreds of H1Bs I've worked with, it is a failure of a system.

where the F do you work when you are surrounded by “hundreds of H1Bs” - at the airport’s baggage claim when they arrive?

You are forgetting the dimension called "time" Mr. Angry But Dense.

you’ve been working since 1776? other than immigration attorney no F’ing person has worked with “hundreds of H1Bs” so you can cut the crap

You've clearly never worked in a large tech company.

The size of company you work in doesn't matter beyond a certain fairly small size. The only way anybody could work with hundreds of people at all (and have a justified informed opinion about them) is to have a long career in a place or places with very high turnover.

Professors might hit those numbers because having informed opinions about their students is a large part of their job and they see large turnover by definition. Directors could have a chance, but even there I'd say hundreds is actually unusual, unless your standards for quality of opinion are low.

And then that's all people, not just H1-B holders.

Then call me Mr Outlier.

Because large tech companies with a large cohort of H1B + tendency to frequently reorg + career level with impact with large reach means I have indeed worked with hundreds.

Sorry bro, you don't get to deny my actual experience.

no one is buying what you are selling so you should not be selling it :)

even if you were the largest outliers on the planet you could not possibly collaborate with hundreds in a way where you get to know much about them. even if you said “tens of h1b’s” it would be a hard sell :)

I think very many people are confusing H1B and straight outsourcing of talent. While there is some overlap, they are not nearly the same.

Ive worked with both, and very few of the H1bs were below average. Otherwise they aren't worth sponsoring.

There was a time in the mid 2000s when the Infosys/TCS/wiPros of the world were gaming the H1B to bring offshore bodies onshore.. but most of that died off as far as I see.

The H1B fraud from places like Infosys is alive, well, and bigger than ever.

Alive and well. https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/h1b_visa_fraud/

Companies caught cheating the lottery https://archive.ph/Ey3e8

Outsourcers rampant abuse https://www.infoworld.com/article/2241196/proof-that-h-1b-vi...

SV companies discriminating against Americans https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/10/07/h-1b-visa-company-sup...

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