ones_and_zeros

The points I've seen and agree with for an argument against an auction is:

- It is a tacit acceptance of the falsehood that there is a skills shortage.

- It ultimately relies on scarcity of visas. There will be a number of visas to auction off and this number will become a political football that is tweaked and tweaked until it is meaningless. What is the point of an auction if there are a million visas being auctioned off?

- It does not address the corporate/education institution partnership loophole.

Ultimately if they are the best and brightest the visas should be given to the employee not the employer and, if the employee wants, they should be put on a fast track to a green card as soon as they start (6 mo-1 year)

Hey man, I know this is probably stressful for you and I don't want to be adding to that for you. I'd be willing to take this offline if you'd like but can you please not call me a liar, immigrant-hater, accuse me of being a ball of hatred or that I hate immigrants from the depths of my heart?

I think you know all that isn't true and I think the readers can see through those accusations and it ultimately devalues your input to the discussion.

(For the record I want an automatic green card for skilled immigrants and a higher bar for what counts as a skilled immigrant. I want a massive expansion of refugee immigration into the US. I want automatic green cards for unskilled immigration where they have created roots in the US)

This feels like a straw man, I did not make the argument that founders will retain all of the value. Obvious the economy is complex but corporate profits and executive pay are at all time highs. Employees are capturing less and less of the revenue stream. Now, founders may not retain their ownership but the ownership will remain in the hands of the class of the wealthy.

(I think it is a weak point for me to make, but I'm pretty sure there won't be Uber drivers in 20 years, probably not in 10.)

I'll take a stab at a response:

- The argument against H1B isn't an argument against immigration or immigrants, it is an argument against corporate welfare. This pretty much negates all of the points the author makes (We all agree immigrants provide diversity, some are net positives on the economy, sometimes talent doesn't exist in the US, etc)

- H1Bs aren't allowed to start companies, so this point is moot

- It isn't surprising that many companies are founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. The entire nation is made up of immigrants. The same point that could be made is that most rank and file worker drones are immigrants or children of immigrants.

- startups valued at more than 1 billion dollars? OK...

- "Uber, Tesla and Palantir, had created thousands of jobs and added billions of dollars to the American economy" and those dollars in the economy are concentrated in hands of the very wealthy on the backs of immigrants.

- I love Stripe, but I have a hard time believing he couldn't find "engineers and executives" already in the US to "create a novel machine-learning system to detect fraud; and it had to convince regulators and other businesses that it was safe and legal to process payments through Stripe"

I think the point of this project is to replace the people, not necessarily to make software for people to use. Software is just means to an end.

> There is no way SV would have grown to what it is now without foreign talent. So the shortage has been real for the last 30+ years. Not sure why this point is still controversial.

Is this a fact or a feeling? Economics allows us to directly measure these things and the price of labor hasn't gone up in the last 30 years at rates indicating a shortage with executive pay and corporate profits at all time highs.

> Then the problem might be with how long the gov takes to process these things, and not with the H1B visas?

I think his point was the visa system is designed to take advantage of the inefficiencies in the bureaucracy to the benefit of the employer.

> Younger people are more willing to move to another country. Also, many students apply for an H1b after their F1 runs out, so of course you get younger people.

If the H1B visa didn't exist there wouldn't be as many foreign students.

You should read his blog, he makes repeated coherent arguments against the H1B visa system and its detrimental effects on the employment outlook for older citizens. He is a CS professor at a respected US university and has an interesting perspective.

Since it is an OpEd, the title is chosen by the editor not the author.

Here is the summary straight from the horses mouth: https://lofgren.house.gov/uploadedfiles/high_skilled_bill_sx...

A few points:

- This does not raise the salary requirement to $130k/yr. This only applies to employers that do not want to do the extra paper work for "attestations regarding recruitment and non-displacement of U.S. workers"

- It takes a "market based" allocation strategy which allows "cash bonuses and similar compensation" to be included. This is a joke.

- Startups and small businesses will get 20% of the visas. It'll be interesting to see how this is gamed

- This does not fix the Corporate/Higher Ed partnership loophole

- This does not fix the power imbalance between visa holders and employers

I personally don't see this bill going anywhere. Zoe just needs to look like she is doing something.

This is a tough comparison since, as far as I can tell, you park the bike anywhere. So there is no incentive like most city bike sharing systems to get it to a kiosk that acts as a big lock. I'm done with my ride, I get off, stop my ride on my phone, and walk away leaving the bike where it is...

I see a few factors in my friends (mid to late 30s, east coast city) that leads me to believe there won't be a mass exodus to the burbs:

- They aren't having children at all

- They are having children very late, essentially already settling in the city

- They are having fewer children if any

- Since all of the jobs are in the city, they are optimizing commute times

- The burbs housing stock are all 40+ year old homes that need significant system updates

- I don't see the unbridled consumerism the boomers had, less stuff = less requirement of space

Extraordinarily unscrupulous.

> The prevailing wage comes from a chart: you don't just do research or come up with it.

Interestingly, companies can provide their own wage surveys in order to justify the salary on an LCA. They aren't required to use the DoL wage data. [0]

"For the H-1B, H-1B1, and E-3 programs, employers have the option of using one of three wage sources to obtain the prevailing wage: (1) requesting a prevailing wage from the NPWC; (2) using a survey conducted by an independent authoritative source; or (3) using another legitimate source of information."

Larger companies are using #3. Since it is so vague and there isn't any oversight within the program they are able to manipulate the survey to provide results to their benefit while still claiming "We pay the prevailing wage! (according to our shady wage survey)"

[0] https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/pwscreens.cfm

I didn't downvote you but I think you see the issue with your statement yourself. HN does not censor words.

While name calling is completely childish it is most certainly tolerated by other users on HN (Do a search for "is a [insert derogatory word]" site:news.ycombinator.com. Steve Jobs is called an asshole in every HN thread.

For sure ochurch stepped on toes here but one thing he was passionate about is improving the profession of software development and in general the tech industry and he saw MMs actions really harming the profession and the industry. I obviously think HN is worse off without his commentary.

Indeed. I recently found out Michael O'Church was banned from HN because he called her the c word because of the anti-worker policies she implemented at Yahoo. (somewhat indirectly, and I'm hesitant to use it myself for fear of being banned).

Yes a price increase is a first order effect of demand increasing. In capitalist economies demand is great because of the second and third order effects.

Nothing will change, the industry won't suffer. There is a new crop of fools every May.

Umm... https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

> 963 people have been shot and killed by police in 2016

And that is just shootings, never mind other methods of murder.

My high school in Massachusetts had a school to work program too. I left school early to go bag groceries at my local supermarket...

My guess is immigration was the main reason those tech executives accepted the invitation. My bold bet is Trump removes or significantly hinders the H-1B system but enacts a new program giving green cards to any foreigner that earns a masters degree in the US, which is basically the nightmare scenario for any Trump supporter.

> hot tech

your bias is showing.

I'm not sure what you consider hot tech but I can assure you whatever it is it is based on tech that has been around for ages and has just been rebranded. I find that people that hop from "hot tech" to "hot tech" don't ever build up a depth of knowledge and understanding to tackle hard problems in an elegant way. It is essentially a major contributor to the 1 year of experience repeated 10 times phenomena.

I'll tell you what you came here to hear, get out.

Everybody says they are "gearing up for a series A" and many many business never get a series A, never mind one that sounds like it is in such a mess.

Unless you have some insider knowledge (hockey stick growth, profit, etc) that the series A is guaranteed, it's not coming and will be used to bait you along.

Ha don't jump to conclusions so quickly. We spend > $50k/mo on AWS and you better believe our solution architects deeply understand our product and architecture.

Eh, Bill Clinton passed NAFTA with a smile on his face. He should have demanded:

- 12 months family leave

- shorter work days

- mandatory 6 weeks vacation

- universal health

- etc

And then negotiate from there. But he didn't and the democrats in power at the time didn't. They were too busy patting themselves on the back for figuring out that cozying up to corporate America would allow them to compete with the Republicans.

Then someone with a background in Economics should understand the benefits do not accrue evenly. When developed nations trade with developing nations, the middle class of the developed nation loses.

This is partly why the neoliberal playbook the democrats having been running backfired. Sure, open up trade, but ensure that the wealthy people and large corporations don't accrue all of the benefit.

This can be done in a number of ways but none of them were even attempted, it was just good for business == good for america, period.

It is possible to win an election with only 22% of the popular vote. Have you seen this: http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/the-trouble-with-the-electoral-c...

Due to the way the electoral college gives small population states more electoral votes comparatively, votes in small population states have more weight.

And they had 8 years to fix it but I don't think I heard a peep from them about electoral reform.

I don't get it?

Can you explain to me what direction the country voted to move in? I'm really really trying to understand but all I see for the Trump voters is more economic pain under Trumps policies and I think will ultimately lead to more division as they dig their heels in as more time passes where they don't see the change they want. Trump supporters were sold the idea that illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, non-white people, muslims and gay people were a threat to the country and their livelihood. Removing these "threats" as Donald Trump has proposed will only benefit those at the top. So where does that leave us? Putting the screws to the perceived threats even more?

Interesting Ctrl+F Sanders: 35, Clinton: 49, Trump: 70.

> Among candidates in recent decades who entered the campaign with no money, no organization, and no national following, Sanders fared better than nearly all of them. Sanders’ initial low poll numbers marked him as less newsworthy than Clinton but, as he gained strength, the news tilted in his favor.

This is revisionist history. I think the issue I and many of my friends have is that he did have organization and did have a national following but lacked the appropriate media coverage still. I can't comment on money but I'll concede that Hillary had more money based on the fact that they have essentially been raising money for her campaign for the past 10 years. Maybe, just maybe, Clinton had better poll numbers because she had more media coverage?

Anecdotally, I remember the morning commute that I decided to never give a dime of my money to NPR when Sanders' landslide win in NH was covered, but the panel all agreed that his campaign was a no go due to Hillary having the super delegates locked up...

I don't think AWS allows you to do nested virtualization. Perhaps they have a hack?