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Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

There are 100K H1-Bs a year and 4 million grads a year in the US. Anyone who thinks H1-Bs are actually contributing to their inability to find a job is a moron.

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But those H1Bs all come for a very narrow set of work - mostly software development or other adjacent roles. So your 4 million figure that counts all graduates in all fields doesn't make sense when we talk about tech.

There are around 100k U.S CS graduates . You're telling me 100k H1-Bs don't make any impact on them?

You're counting only CS bachelors, in reality there's 400K graduates a year in software engineering fields.

There's also only 60,000 H1-Bs a year for private companies.

Lastly the majority of H1-Bs doesn't go to software engineering jobs, it's around 30-50%.

There's also basically no US company hiring juniors via H1-Bs, so yeah, I'm saying it doesn't make any meaningful impact.

30K H1-Bs versus 400K grads...

The way you handled those numbers makes me think you have leadership potential, perhaps even U.S presidency material

> There's also only 60,000 H1-Bs a year for private companies.

Actually, more like over 80,000. They have a separate pool for people with advanced degrees (MS or higher) in tech fields.

Agree with everything else.

-85,000 NEW visas granted each year, not including renewals - The mass majority of those are going into the tech/software - there are only around ~100k CS graduates each year - H1B workers will take much lower salaries and benefits than their US citizen counterparts.

And H-1Bs are easier to overwork and abuse because the threat of deportation and the dangling carrot of citizenship are very powerful motivators that don't exist with US citizens.

have you been inside a big tech company? there arent many american fresh grads working there, its mostly foreign

No it is true. But H1B is only a portion of it. OPT is unlimited and gives the employer the incentive of not paying FICA tax. Plus OPT candidates are willing to accept a fraction of the salary in the hopes that they can convert to H1B. Plus there are several other visa types being abused H4 EAD, CPT, O1.

On top of all that the commonplace practices of ethnic nepotism and hiring kickbacks.

I think many engineers are extremely naive about what is going on in the industry, which is why these abuses only continue to increase.

Spend some time processing tech job applications and you’ll realize you’re wrong

Take a walk through South Lake or San Francisco and he'll realize he's wrong.

only about 100k of those 4 million graduates are in computer science. more candidates applying for a limited number of jobs makes things more competitive and difficult for those applying understanding that doesn't make someone a moron.

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