And there you have a step-by-step blueprint on how to undermine the efforts of local talent pools to stand out in favor of saving tens of thousands of dollars and hire an H-1B.
2. A huge percentage of H1B engineers you will probably interact with went to school here, typically with Masters degrees etc. So I am not convinced their talents as far as writing ruby/$foo language applications are any worse than an equivalent undergrad. In the bay area at least, the term local is a farce. A majority of citizens move here from the rest of the country. As far as a native is concerned, we are all techies driving up the market.
Of course, I think the H1B is exploitative in other ways than money. It is indentured labor. I may pay Johnny American and the immigrant the same salaries, but the immigrant once fired needs to find a job the next day or is out of status. The American can go on unemployment etc. The two weeks when my company decided to dither on whether they wanted to layoff people or not was stressful for all. However, the immigrants were the ones who had to decide whether to pack their bags after spending 4-5 years building roots in this country.
Also, sure a huge percentage of H1Bs are utilized by software shops based offshore to bring people here on short term projects. This is startup world though. How much of your work are you going to outsource to India?
Yeah, you should disallow that. If you push them out, then Joe SixPack would be able to make much more money for writing JS and Ruby code and bring US economy forward.
Wow so off base its funny, that's the blanking problem.
1) You SHOULD disallow that. Why tolerate a system that creates incentives for that kind of abuse.
2) "dirty immigrant bastards" - You're assigning a point of view that the commenter isn't advocating at all. Protectionism is generally more about looking into the future and being scared for your ability to continue at your standard of living and less about disliking certain kinds of people.
And to add my own anecdote to this discussion without siding with anyone else's viewpoint (because I'm a special snowflake with my own nuanced opinions): I've worked at companies that chronically underpay H1B workers. The ones that got fair pay were the ones that were brave enough to demand it.
That is really a different issue. The law says that there is a baseline salary to be met. Now anything above that is what the employee should be negotiating. There are enough American/women/$minority engineers who get underpaid because they suck at negotiating. That doesn't necessarily mean discrimination exists.
Policies for people, written by corporations. Clearly this is a good thing for us long term.
Now, there are shops out there that abuse the system- importing thousands of developers from India and paying them below the market rate. But they are the exception to the rule (and yes, should be shut down) - the company in this post is nothing like that. It's like accusing everyone that takes disability benefit of being a fraud.
From the pic, it appears to be an otherwise lily-white company. Presumably if they had found the right domestic hire, they would have made it, rather than jump through all H-1B hoops described. He must have been a lot better than their other options.
If this hire pushes local talent pools to work hard and do better, isn't that a good thing? If local talent pools expect to get through life on their trust fund, or get a job simply because they're white and US-born, that's not a formula for long-term success (for the country).
> out in favor of saving tens of thousands of dollars and hire an H-1B.
What evidence do you have that they saved tens of thousands of dollars with an H1B? They spent over 5000$ in legal fees just trying to get the H1B.
Also, it's very hard for me to look better pay as a native could do. Even the ones making 10k more than i do already left...
Without wanting to sound like an asshole here, you are within the salary range for your position- maybe the difference between you and your coworkers is performance based? Why not just get a job elsewhere?
Also the other company that wanted to hire me didn't want to go thru the h1b thing.
But mostly because I'm still a sucker believing in non written promises.
Americans face this issue too.
> Also the other company that wanted to hire me didn't want to go thru the h1b thing.
Life is filled with disappointments; such is the nature of life.
> But mostly because I'm still a sucker believing in non written promises.
I am not clear how you are getting shafted because you are an immigrant then. An American who is naive would also get shafted.
If you are not in a major tech hub, your pay is going to be low, and the ability for your employer to abuse you is going to be high given the small market of jobs. This applies to both natives and immigrants alike.
You are also unlikely to be in a market where companies are willing to pull out the stops to find qualified talent. In the Bay Area, Seattle, Austin, NYC, etc, I have found the majority of companies willing to consider visa requirements when hiring. The competition for candidates is fierce enough that this is a non-issue.
As an international in this country also, just get out of that job. If they've violated a non-written promise before, they will do so again. As you mentioned yourself, the natives at your company are treated poorly too - but they have left for greener pastures where you have not. There is no shortage of high-paying tech jobs in this country, even when you limit the search to companies that will sponsor a visa.
You don't need to move to a new city every week. You just need to move once, to a market that has more choice, therefore fewer incentives for abuse.
Disclosure: I spent five months in an H1B. At one point, I was three days before my green card interview. My company kept dithering on whether I would be laid off or not. A layoff would have met all the work done for my green card would have gotten fucked because I would become out of status immediately. Now I didn't get laid off and got the green card. Yet, that system continues to exist because companies don't want to change that; immigrants are too scared to protest. An immigrant from India/China goes through 5+ years of this. That is the key advantage from an employer's perspective. Not a few thousand dollars. But the ability to get these people working all the time under threat of deportation. Also, it doesn't matter how good you are. Getting a good new job takes time.
When I changed jobs I had no difficulty negotiating for a competitive salary - I think in part due to an H1B transfer being much less intimidating (and cheaper) than an initial sponsorship. Maybe you should start talking to other employers?
This can easily be used as leverage against an H1-B Visa holder in most situations.
edit: what I meant by transfer is that your new petition is not subject to H1B caps and you don't have to appear before a US embassy right away as one has to for the first time.
This seems to contradict what you're saying.
The transfer does not usually fall under the quotas that the original application falls under. It is also slightly cheaper and is processed more quickly. So an employee can move freely any time they want if the new company is willing to spend a thousand dollars or so.
Most of the H1bs that are denied are ones where the candidate work as a consultant (or a body shopper). I have never heard of H1bs of reputed technology companies being denied.
I'm interested to hear your argument about adding to the local talent pool and how you would have just "walked next door" unless the next company had an open h1b position.
I would also like to point out that an H1b hire should be the last resort for most employers ; there is very little cost savings and the legal fees eats into that. Not to mention that once you hire an H1B , the native employees often feel ill at ease and will typically demand a raise. Team cohesion will be at risk. The H1B hire must have enough talent to justify all the hassle. If an employer just wants to get work done for cheap, they should simply outsource tasks to Elance or oDesk.
My main point is that the h1B system treats you like a second class resident at the whims of corporations, contrary to its stated claims to just exist to bring in talented individuals to fill positions that cannot otherwise be filled by locals.
I certainly agree with the "should" you've posted, but I get contacted by companies looking for people to do PHP for $12 an hour. Sure it's maybe an ok option for some person from another country with more limited opportunities, but it ultimately hurts all of us by weakening our collective bargaining position vs the outsourcers.
You may be saving tens of thousands of dollars if you outsource the job, but hiring an employee to work in the USA is different.
As mentioned elsewhere, his salary was posted on the bulletin board. It was $48K at the same time I was being paid $80K. $32,000 fits my definition of "tens of thousands of dollars".
The problem with the H-1B discussion is that H-1Bs are heavily bimodal. You have the highly paid foreign workers that Google, Facebook, et al like to hire. They're paid very handsomely for their work, and generally work in areas where the job market is healthy, giving employers disincentives to abuse their position.
Then you have the barely-paid foreign workers that Wipro and Infosys try to bring in, who are legitimately abused by their shitty employers and have their legal status wielded over them as a weapon.
The main problem is that nearly everyone involved in the discussion has only seen one side, and vehemently deny that the other side even exists. If your industry experience has been with a lot of the Wipro, Infosys type, you will foam at the mouth about the evils of H-1Bs. If your industry experience has been on the Google/Facebook/Microsoft side, you will patently deny anything bad exists, because in your world it really doesn't.
This is also why the H-1B discussions never go anywhere useful. The loudest people in the room are convinced that their reality is the only and complete reality.
Let me counter your points, but I will do my best to keep it short. Mainly because I've done my research, and I don't feel like having a forum argument with someone that obviously thinks they are superior with their labeling people like me...the "loudest in the room".
1. "They're paid very handsomely for their work"
Can you show me the article where H1B's are paid 10%/20% or more over the prevailing market rate of their greencard holder/American peers for a given title at a given company? I'd love to read that. Visas are for skilled labor shortages. We all know in economics 101 when demand exceeds supply, prices go UP...not even or down, but UP. We are in agreement or not there?
In the meanwhile let me offer the first article to refute the exact argument of why companies say they need H1B's in the first place.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/01/study-stem-immigrants-are-n...
Let me offer a second, as I feel generous: http://lionoftheblogosphere.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/the-cas...
Hello potatolicious, in a field of obvious shortage, wages are FLAT, did you catch that? FLAT. That doesn't sound "very handsomely" to me.
2. Now on to your second point "In what ways do the business models of Wipro, Tata, and Infosys resemble what is being described in the blog post, though?"
The discussion here is clearly based on "kenjagi And there you have a step-by-step blueprint on how to undermine the efforts of local talent pools to stand out in favor of saving tens"
Kenjagi, I wish I could've put the way you did. Brilliant, you got 40 comments from one sentence, that's what truth brings.
We have an immigration system with endemic issues around fraud. Do we need an article to further prove that. Here's the first one off Google, I didn't read it, I know it'll confirm my argument here. I can send you 40 more if you like. Just send me one where the H1Bs are paid so generously over the local talent due to shortages.
http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/us-senator-introduces-...
So we have a system that's broken, in any normal circumstance this would force a state/city/or country to investigate the issue, and possibly freeze the program. Most definitely not increase the program, as what we have currently happening, but then again Google/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon are writing the laws. Let's try a simple question, do Google/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon want to pay more for labor? Yes or No? Let me know what you think. I'm expecting yes, from your comments.
"resemble what is being described in the blog post" If you don't think this suppresses wages for US citizens, green card holders, and Visa workers, startup or not, you have no idea how labor markets work.
Visas, suppress wages for the people here and the people that come here. We are in the same boat.
I don't expect a reply, maybe you will talk down to me again, I don't know. In the outside chance I do get a reply with refuting evidence, I will gladly bring in the other 40 or so articles further supporting my case. I can bring UE data in, but that would rather shatter any argument you have left. I'll bring that last.
"The main problem is that nearly everyone involved in the discussion has only seen one side"
Don't assume what I know and what I don't know, because you are dead wrong. I've been researching this for the past year.
Your reply has nothing to do with potatolicious's point, which is that there are companies like Google which don't hire foreign workers for the sake of underpaying them. That's not the business model there.
What you're talking about is different. If increased supply of high-quality workers pushes wages downward a bit, that's not an act created by Google or other individual employers -- that's a macro effect you get even when they're paying any given foreign worker the same that they'd pay a local worker.
No, they just wrote the law to:
" increased supply of high-quality workers pushes wages downward a bit"
That's whats in Congress today.
Can you give me the citation where "there are companies like Google which don't hire foreign workers for the sake of underpaying them"
Can you show me just one article where the H1b's are above a prevailing wage? Or that is the actualy truth?
Why would I link to an article. In what, a newspaper? Is that supposed to be taken seriously? Like the article you linked with their joke chart bracketing all H1B's at all levels of age and experience in a comparison with all native workers at all levels of experience?
You literally linked to TechCrunch and a blogspam. And expect people to take you seriously.
And a prevailing wage in what, exactly? In the set of good software developers? In the set of all software developers? In the set of everybody working in "IT"? Your demands aren't even well-specified.
And if they were well-specified, would you have a convincing argument? No. Because it's not a problem that the foreign workers arrive in the same distribution of skill level that existing workers have. Only if you're selfish would you see that as a bad thing.
Whether a person can leave the job or not with their visa still doesn't address the overall premise that visas suppress wage growth.
At the very minimum these articles site a study, and there are more than 1.
And what about NPR? You should read that, and put your bias aside.
What you think and feel I am sure is valid, but has little value in the context of the overall immigration problem and argument.
I still don't see how you know Google pays above or at market rate.
We live in a global economy.
First of all, it is illegal for a company to pay a H1B employee less than the "standard wage" for the position in question.
But leaving legal issues aside, a large proportion of H1B employees have actually completed their education at some of the top schools in the US and around the world. I have seen many of them quickly rise to the top of their teams and compensated more than many in the "local talent pools".
Disclaimer: I am another early H1B employee at a startup here, and my company has certainly not saved any money by hiring me instead of a citizen. I like to think that the value I brought in has more than compensated for the extra costs.