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Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

Except that this isn't the truth. H1B imported engineers aren't the best in their field, working for top wages. They're middling-low, working for below-average wages. They pull down wages for the entire software engineering field by about 6%, say the studies.

If H1B's are really the best software engineers in the world, why are they being hired for less than the average wages in the U.S. for average engineers?

I appreciate that there's a persistent media myth that H1B is about getting "top" engineers, but this has been thoroughly, totally debunked and should be roundly mocked whenever it shows up.

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Truly world-class engineers can be brought to the US on O visas. H1Bs are trying to fill a need for good or even great, but not amazing, engineers. Which is why it's a tragedy that so many of the spots go to shitty outsourcing firms for mediocre wages.

Depending on the field getting an O visa can be exceptionally hard as they are intended for exceptional people. One of my clients has four or five employees with O visas and these people are all top of their field including a nobel laureate. You could easily be in the top 5% of your field and get rejected for an O.

Yes, that's the idea.

Sure, but most people here are not really talking about world class engineers.

They could not get O visa for Linus Torvalds. Not amazing enough, eh?

I haven't seen anything about Linus applying for an O visa and getting denied. Where can I read about that?

From what I remember lawyers advised against O as he had no chance without publications.

I was going to say exactly this. As an ex-H1B myself working for a top firm, I can guarantee you I was in no way top of the line at the time. I was very much equivalent to every other average USA top 5 CS school graduate working with me at the company, and that's to say, not particularly impressive in any way.

Moving to SF/SV and working with the startup and open source communities has really opened my eyes to what a "top engineer" really means, and I sure as hell wasn't one (or surrounded by them) at BigCorp.

Real top talent is really hard to get hold of, and the dozens of thousands of H1Bs are absolutely not that top 5%.

The way I see it, H1B is a way to get slightly cheaper decent labor for big enterprise firms, and you occasionally luck out and get a few great gems in there. Even better if you can lock them in to your company for 10 years waiting for the green card to get approved.

While it's true that the bulk of H1B are bodies for Indian body shops it's not a problem with H1B, it's the problem with the corrupt government issuing visas to body shops.

And it's true that H1B's are not the best engineers in the world. However many of the best engineers in the world are H1Bs.

It's true based on what data, exactly?

H1b distribution is public record.

> Except that this isn't the truth. H1B imported engineers aren't the best in their field, working for top wages. They're middling-low, working for below-average wages.

That's a blanket statement. There's a difference between the H1B mill contracting firms and H1Bs that are directly recruited by top companies, and paid on par with their American employees. The H1B mills give genuinely talented workers who fully deserve their positions a bad name, and that's a real shame.

Glad someone pointed that out. That distinction seem to be constantly forgotten in this debate. Top companies recruit H1Bs using the same process they use to recruit Americans.

I take exception that argument because, well, I'd like to think of myself as an exception. I arrived in the US as an H1B and while it's difficult to talk about my skills objectively, I am certainly not paid below-average wages.

I don't doubt that the majority of H1B visa holders are as you say. But the system can work correctly- I and many others I know are hopefully proof of that. So, "totally" debunked? No.

There is a separate visa for top tallent. H1B's are randomly assigned because it's about body's not tallent. Which is not to say we don't get top tallent randomly, but if your paying 400k/year you don't need to risk the H1B lotto.

PS: you only need 3 on that list and 4, 6, and 8 are not that hard to meet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa

Did you miss the comment that Linus Torvald didn't qualify for O visa.

Any idea when this was? He is a US citizen which takes a long time, so this must have been a while ago. Depending on when he was denied he could easily not met the qualifications.

It's been when he got job in Transmeta in early 2000s. At that time he has already been very well known.

You obviously have not been involved in O visa process otherwise you'd known that the qualifications for O visa are chiefly publications (other qualifications would be academic awards, involvement with awarding those awards and such). So any PhD can get one while a programmer who is not into writing books and articles for peer reviewed journals has no chance.

That seems indicate a flaw in the O visa process, in terms of its ability to recognize outstanding talent, rather than the need to expand a lottery based system not designed to bring the "best and brightest." A best and brightest program should also include a hard compensation floor. $120K is far from an elite level wage for a SV SW Engineer, but I suspect even that would be a non-starter for the interests lobbying for an expanded H1B program.

Well, if you have better ideas how to identify "best and brightest" that can be implemented by bureaucrats, backed by paper trail and not easily exploitable - everyone would be happy to hear it. O1 works for scholars quite well it's just programmers are not usually scholars so they are out of luck here.

H1B already has salary floor and protections against body shops built in. The problem is with enforcement: most recipients of H1Bs are working for "consulting" companies (Tata, IBM, Wipro, L&T, Cognizant etc) and one can safely guess that these people are going to be contracted out, something that you should not be able to do on H1B. However the USCIS ignores this and keeps stamping these visas.

I've known H1Bs whose salaries were laughably below the median salary for a top SW Engineer in SV. A hard salary floor would be analogous to the AMT for income tax, ensuring that actual salaries reached a minimum acceptable level.

The desire for tech companies to underpay the very people who make this industry possible simply does not represent a crisis for me. The non-poaching arrangements between major tech giants demonstrates their desire to hold down engineering compensation.

If bringing the best sw engineers to America is truly a priority, and I would say that it should be, then that problem should be solved as it has been for scholars. The argument that the H1-B program is that solution is disingenuous at best.

Right now the DOL is supposed to set the minimum salary for H1B, judging by your dissatisfaction it's not doing this job. Why do you think it's suddenly going to be better if you set some arbitrary figure for salary? Not to mention the H1B is not exclusively for programmers, is it going to be $120K for everybody, including nurses and models?

> If bringing the best sw engineers to America is truly a priority, and I would say that it should be, then that problem should be solved as it has been for scholars.

The problem with programmers is that there is no objective criteria for what is "best". There is hardly one for scholars. Scholar criteria are objective but they do not select the best, it's assumed that you would not want to bring sub-par scholars yourself. It's same with other skilled professions - you can only verify they have skills objectively, it's impossible to verify they are the best. So I am not making argument that H1B is bringing only the best and nobody else.

However I don't see a practical way to bring the best without getting also a bunch of fake resume "consultants". Personally I don't care much - "consultants" cannot do my job so they are not competing with me. I am just a bit annoyed with the people who barely can open a text editor and copy/paste code calling themselves "sw engineers".

Source?

I'm questioning it simply because I remember from browsing US News stats during my grad school applications that pretty much every graduate department in STEM fields was 20-50% foreign students. I only looked at the top 20-30 schools, but that's a pretty substantial cohort. Maybe there are sweatshops out there that hire middling-low candidates at below market wages, but it's hard to dismiss the presence of a large pool that certainly ARE the best in the field.

Being in graduate school has nothing to do with being the best in the field. Very few American-educated STEM majors (or, at least in CS) go on to grad school since they can easily get the same job with a BSc as a foreign student with a MS.

Getting a masters can help fast-track you in the visa process and make your resume more attractive for employers who are largely ignorant about Indian/Chinese/etc education systems. It's more of a competitive necessity for a foreign student.

It's not a necessary or sufficient condition, but it's a good signal that you're at least above average if you're at a top 30 grad program. I'd say the majority (but not all) of those foreign students would at least escape the 'low-middling' categorization.

P.S. We may be coming from different perspectives since I'm a mechanical engineer. A grad degree does make a significant difference there. Also, I was talking about both MS and PhD students.

P.P.S. I may have gone overboard in saying 'best' in the field. I merely meant good.

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