Updates to H-1B

https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-strengthens-h-1b-program-allowing-us-employers-to-more-quickly-fill-critical-jobs

by sul_tasto • 2 years ago

461 1264 2 years ago

uscis.gov

pseingatl• 2 years ago

Cancel the program.

It's not needed.

It's used to game the system.

It's not supposed to be a backdoor to a green card.

garyfirestorm• 2 years ago

lmao, what do you mean by backdoor? how else would someone legally immigrate?

toast03• 2 years ago

Some people get upset that someone on a 'non-immigrant' 'temporary employment' visa can apply for permanent residency, although that is allowed by the H1-B program.

Otherwise, one could immigrate through a different visa; there are some employment visas that are explicitly intended for those with intent to immigrate. Or like a family or lottery visa, I guess.

I think it's possible to have a permanent residency application sponsored by an employer from abroad, but especially if the candidate is from China, India, Mexico or the Philipines, the timelines make even less sense than H1-B timelines (submit your application in a two week window near the beginning of March, for the chance to start in October). I don't know too many places that want to commit to a hire that can't start for 7 months, although it's not unreasonable for those on post graduate visas with work eligibility.

ganeshkrishnan4• 2 years ago

The rabid chants went from: we need to stop illegal immigration and make sure everyone enters legally

To:

We need to make sure we only allow valuable immigrants that add to the economy

To:

Cancel this program. They are gaming the system.

You can choose the game to play but you can't choose the rules of the game.

geodel3• 2 years ago

but you can't choose the rules of the game.

Well you of course can. These rules are set by government and they have power to change as they see appropriate.

dbbk• 2 years ago

How do you propose hiring tech talent then

observationist• 2 years ago

Right, the desperate need for talent is the reason these programs are used so heavily. It's not discounted salary and cost savings in benefits, insurance, and other areas for non-permanent employees, or having leverage over immigrant employees in negotiations. Corporations only ever use these programs to get the absolute best of the best and they absolutely aren't abused to bypass the stricter regulations and requirements for citizen employees. /s

There's nothing wrong with brain draining other countries and incentivizing legal immigration for work visas and H1B style programs. We should want to be the best place in the world to work. This shouldn't come as a detriment to the citizens of the US. Legal immigration and jobs programs need to be better. The H1B program suppresses legal citizen wages as well as immigrant wages because companies are able to use the threat of deportation as an effective negotiation tactic. Companies use immigrants for cheap professional labor, and if the immigrant pipes up, they get let go. With everything in tech life being designed around pushing people into paycheck to paycheck lifestyles, this can wreck someone's life through no fault of their own if they do something like ask for a raise, or better health insurance.

In turn, if citizen employees try to negotiate, the company can replace them with more immigrant workers unless or until they can hire local replacements at the company's preferred rate of pay.

We need a cleaner, easier path to citizenship, without the endless bureaucratic nightmare that is the current system. We need better work visa programs, so that people who legitimately make the world a better place aren't penalized for arbitrary technicalities, while at the same time recognizing the sovereignty of the US and reasonably protecting borders.

Sometimes countries need to be overthrown, and the US shouldn't act like a pressure release valve for dictators. We also shouldn't be in the business of regime management or perpetuating political nightmares that causes a lot of illegal immigration, as well.

TLDR; There's no shortage of US tech talent. The problem is that we've painted ourselves into a regulatory corner - in order to be competitive, companies have to shortchange payroll by abusing migrant salaries. To fix it, we must strengthen migrant rights so companies can't hang the threat of deportation over employee's heads, and reduce the financial burden of hiring citizens, so you get the same bang for your buck regardless of the immigration status of the employee.

Microsoft and Lumen and FAANG and all the tech industry titans shouldn't have penny pinching strategies designed to bump stock prices using methods that are fueled by human suffering. Get rid of those options and stop blindly implementing systems where the incentives are so obviously awful.

__loam• 2 years ago

They could try hiring one of the hundreds of thousands of citizens they laid off over the past 3 years.

happytoexplain7• 2 years ago

By offering wages appropriate for the economy your fellow citizens are accustomed to, as opposed to the economy citizens of other nations are accustomed to.

VirusNewbie2• 2 years ago

no, just make it an auction system with compensation.

ritcgab5• 2 years ago

Guy who born with natural citizenship is too privileged to imagine how hard it is to get a green card.

carlosjobim3• 2 years ago

Everybody is born with natural citizenship.

lubujackson2• 2 years ago

Great comeback, except you completely ignore the point (its purpose is not meant to be a backdoor) and attack him for... being an American?

Instead of telling everyone else to check their privilege, maybe check your expectations. The world doesn't owe anyone anything. Claiming your desires are everyone else's problem is a deeply self-centered way to view the world.

happytoexplain7• 2 years ago

This is a hideous tone that will do nothing but antagonize proud citizens and sour voters on the idea of generosity.

Thoughtful discourse is predicated first on basic respect.

JSteph224• 2 years ago

how hard it is to get a green card

It should be hard.

jeffhuys2• 2 years ago

Psst, the societal opinion on this has shifted.

We shouldn’t feel bad about protecting ourselves.

asdasdsddd• 2 years ago

What is the correct pathway to green card for a worker immigrant?

throwaway4847625• 2 years ago

America does not owe the world a green card.

0x4576• 2 years ago

Yeah, you have no idea of the process of getting green card via h1b works.

You can ditch the US, get permanent resident status in Canada, become Canadian citizenship, get TN visa to work in the US if you want to and someone who thinks that h1b is a backdoor to a green card will be just starting on green card paperwork. And that's if there are no issues with application.

This is all after participating in h1b lottery for years. Trust me, it's an extremely slow and painful way of getting a green card. If h1b is your way to a green card, it means either: you're already married, you have no idea what are you doing.

It's no a backdoor in any way, person move to the US for work and builds a life here, accumulate assets, I think it's pretty reasonable to give those people a way to settle in the US permanently in these cases.

The program needs to be revamped because it's not working in the way it's sold to voters.

screye3• 2 years ago

not supposed to be a backdoor to a green card

So...what's the front door to the green card ? How does one arrive legally to the nation with the highest [1] historic immigration rate of any nation in the world ?

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/net...

tartoran4• 2 years ago

Does anybody know what are the updates are in layman terms?

ganeshkrishnan4• 2 years ago

here it is https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/uscis-announces...

I read through it and even asked chatgpt for summary and it looks like "passport is now required" and "one beneficiary one draw" that is if you put in multiple petitions it will only consider you once.

I thought Elon was talking nonsense when he mentions frivolous government rules but reading these h1b changes makes me question my own sanity about the government "rules" which they aptly named it as "Final rule" (wtf?).

impish9208• 2 years ago

Some highlights from the Federal Register:

2. Bar on Multiple Registrations Submitted by Related Entities

DHS will not finalize the proposed change at 8 CFR 214.2(h)(2)(i)(G) to expressly state in the regulations that related entities are prohibited from submitting multiple H-1B registrations for the same individual. On February 2, 2024, DHS published a final rule, “Improving the H-1B Registration Selection Process and Program Integrity,” 89 FR 7456 (Feb. 2, 2024), creating a beneficiary-centric selection process for registrations by employers and adding additional integrity measures related to the registration process to reduce the potential for fraud in the H-1B registration process. In that final rule, DHS states that it “intends to address and may finalize this proposed provision [expressly stating in the regulations that related entities are prohibited from submitting multiple registrations for the same individual] in a subsequent final rule,” but that “[m]ore time and data will help inform the utility of this proposed provision.” 89 FR 7456, 7469 (Feb. 2, 2024). Initial data from the FY 2025 H-1B registration process show a significant decrease in the total number of registrations submitted compared to FY 2024, including a decrease in the number of registrations submitted on behalf of beneficiaries with multiple registrations.[1]

This initial data indicate that there were far fewer attempts to gain an unfair advantage than in prior years owing, in large measure, to the implementation of the beneficiary-centric selection process.[2]

Under the beneficiary-centric selection process, individual beneficiaries do not benefit from an increased chance of selection if related entities each submit a registration on their behalf. As such, DHS has decided not to finalize the proposed change pertaining to multiple registrations submitted by related entities.

C. Summary of Costs and Benefits

DHS analyzed two baselines for this final rule, the no action baselines and the without-policy baseline. The primary baseline for this final rule is the no action baseline. For the 10-year period of analysis of the final rule, DHS estimates the annualized net cost savings of this rulemaking will be $333,835 annualized at a 2 percent discount rate. DHS also estimates that there will be annualized monetized transfers of $1.4 million from newly cap-exempt petitioners to USCIS and $38.8 million from employers to F-1 workers, both annualized at a 2 percent discount rate.

blahblahgov• 2 years ago

Yup, as expected. Not dealing with the effects of clustering. Great job GOV. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1fyx9hp/cognizant...

addicted2• 2 years ago

Looks like that’s going through the legal system so is already illegal?

You can’t make a rule that says “hey don’t break the rules”.

That seems logically fallacious.

lukeramsden• 2 years ago

Can't read the full article due to paywall but ostensibly it's due to bias rules on race and not visa rules? Sounds like visas being abused and then backstopped by unrelated rules does not mean the visa rules shouldn't be fixed.

r-johnv• 2 years ago

Several positive outcomes, including expanding cap-exemption to non-profit and other research institutions, and stronger enforcement mechanisms.

patrickhogan12• 2 years ago

Ah, classic regulatory theater. The administration, after 4 years of not introducing these changes, is now suddenly scrambling to roll them out. They’re dropping them right before a major transition, with an implementation timeline conveniently set for after the transition.

It’s a clever little maneuver. When the inevitable reversal happens, they can show up at fundraising galas telling donors, “We tried! We were so close! It’s just those baddies who always come along and pull the rug.”

lesuorac3• 2 years ago

Eh downvote.

The USG has to go through a very length period of coming up with a proposed rule. Allowing comments to be made about it, adjusting (or not) the rule based on those comments, and then finally submitting the final rule.

Nobody at USCIS wrote this document yesterday and published this today. This is the result of years of work. Do you seriously expect the USG to shut down anything they don't think they can finish under the current administration?

fasdfdsava• 2 years ago

Maybe it's a total coincidence that this final rule takes effect the Friday, January 17 and Trump's inauguration is Monday, January 20th. But I sort of wonder.

akira25014• 2 years ago

has to go through a very length period

Doesn't the bottom of this announcement describe a previous rule that was announced in January 2024 and then implemented in March 2024? Interesting that rules process was far more rapid than this one.

xiphias2• 2 years ago

It's not the only last minute thing the administration does that it could have done before:

- Launched rockets from Ukraine - remote work contracts extended to 2029 after Elon + Vivek wants people to RTO - TikTok ban

And the classic answer is always the same here: ,,it was all planned for years'' (sure, but the decision is made after the elections on purpose)

wat10000• 2 years ago

We all know how a distant deadline can make us slack off. Then suddenly the deadline is in three months instead of four years, you’ll discover a bunch of things you could do faster.

That’s not to excuse the slowness, but I imagine this stuff was in process for a while.

tssva3• 2 years ago

The decision regarding TikTok was not made after the election and the law was passed with strong bi-partisan support.

frankzinger• 2 years ago

I'm surprised to see somebody presumably on the Republican side complaining about norm violations.

jonny_eh2• 2 years ago

Regardless, these are good changes, I hope they stick around.

rbanffy16• 2 years ago

The administration, after 4 years of not introducing these changes

They might have spent the last four years negotiating what exactly the changes would ideally be. Government doesn’t work well with the “let’s see what sticks approach”.

patrickhogan12• 2 years ago

Negotiating with who?

This is an executive power. USCIS - the President can modify regulations, such as how H-1B applications are processed or the criteria used in selection lotteries.

eweise2• 2 years ago

It will make Trump look great reversing a policy that steals good paying jobs from Americans.

intermerda• 2 years ago

Capitalism is good! No not like that!

cyberax5• 2 years ago

Ah, classic regulatory theater.

No, the classic people not understanding how the government works.

These are changes that were done through the rule-making process, not legislation. The rule-making process is (by design!) VERY SLOW to give the stakeholders a chance to voice their opinion.

Typical rules take about 2 years to be implemented. And I guess Biden hoped to get a real immigration reform that would have made these changes unnecessary.

root_axis2• 2 years ago

Unlikely to be reversed. The incoming president's largest donor strongly favors a larger and more dynamic H1-B work force.

n144q6• 2 years ago

The same president used coronavirus as an excuse to ban all H1B entries.

sitkack• 2 years ago

Anything to keep wages down.

khazhoux• 2 years ago

It’s fascinating how many government policies take 3 years and 11 months to implement.

pfannkuchen• 2 years ago

To play devil’s advocate, many if not most software projects that launch on time press right up against the deadline.

Work expands to fill the space available, as they say.

Jcampuzano25• 2 years ago

3 years and 11 months or 7 years and 11 months, conveniently with no middle ground in between.

kylehotchkiss• 2 years ago

I’m very happy for everybody on H1-B whose live this improves! Does this include renewal in USA?

But as an American the “bonafide job requirement” makes me nervous. We have a massive ghost job problem that really needs to be a federal crime. Will this make that worse?

packetlost• 2 years ago

Yeah, there really needs to be some worker protection legislation makes ghost jobs a crime.

lazide6• 2 years ago

It already is. It just isn’t enforced by the DOL/ICE. (Those offers need to actually be legitimate, or it’s fraud).

vsskanth2• 2 years ago

they mean "bonafide job offer". What is happening right now is staffing agencies (mainly in India) mass file H1B applications for all their staff, and then once they get picked in the lottery, they find assignments in the US and file the entire petition after. This heavily disadvantages non-staffing companies who file H1Bs for their staff outside the country or those in the US on F1 visas for actual jobs.

This change is meant to close that loophole. This used to not be a problem, because you had to file the entire petition BEFORE you enter the lottery, but now you just pay some nominal fee and get your name in, leading to a highly profitable situation for staffing companies.

ziddoap2• 2 years ago

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/18/2024-29...

The tweet is a super brief summary, reproduced below.

Founders can self petition (& spouses can work)

  - Own >50% of the entity, or have majority voting rights

Roles tied to research institutions cap-exempt

  - Organizations where fundamental research is a key activity now qualify
  - Startups can hire researchers (AI, health, hardware) year-round

Students get seamless transition

  - Cap-gap work authorization extended to April 1
  - Prevents employment gaps for F-1 OPT to H-1B switch

Faster H1-B transfers for job changes

  - Flexibility to start working immediately upon petition filing

Clarification of specialty role

  - Less strict on the direct link between degree/job responsibilities
  - Recognizes that AI may require multiple academic background

Cracking down on fraud

  - Stricter compliance rules
  - Employers must demonstrate a bona fide job exists
  - Site visit codified: refusal to comply = petition denial

dang• 2 years ago

(This was originally posted in the other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451271, but it's useful here too)

wooque• 2 years ago

Founders can self petition

Wait, so I can just open LLC and get H1B visa for it? There have to be conditions and limitations, otherwise it will be misused.

tacker2000• 2 years ago

Yea thats what I also thought. Opening an LLC is pretty easy.

ramarnat3• 2 years ago

You'd still have to comply with the H1-B rules for the job you are petitioning for, like the duties you are performing, the salary requirements etc. And the legal costs of doing the petition.

Now, misuse could come if you are independently wealthy and can self fund, but at the end of the day if you are doing that in the US, the economy still benefits.

admissionsguy• 2 years ago

So can I now go to SF, set up an LLC, and get the sweet SF dev rates?

punksatoni3• 2 years ago

** Wait, so I can just open LLC and get H1B visa for it? There have to be conditions and limitations, otherwise it will be misused.

No, you have to first post a job posting at a low salary, preferably with an in-office requirement in a HCOL city. If you get applicants, give them Leetcode Hard and no one will pass.

Then, when no one applies or passes the interview, you claim there is a shortage.

Viola!

i_have_an_idea• 2 years ago

I'm legitimately interested in this.

I run a one-man consulting business from the EU. I sometimes hire freelancers. I work with US clients anyway. Does that mean I can open a US llc and move?

geraldwhen• 2 years ago

I’ll believe it when I see it. Until then, I look forward to teaching H1B recipients to turn on a computer.

paxys2• 2 years ago

- Site visit codified: refusal to comply = petition denial

Wonder how this works for remote-only positions/companies.

kccqzy• 2 years ago

What's the reason for cap-gap extension to April 1? I thought that the government fiscal year starts on October 1, so H-1B statuses take effect on that date and therefore the extension is only needed until October 1. What is the motivation here?

woodson• 2 years ago

Roles tied to research institutions cap-exempt
- Organizations where fundamental research is a key activity now qualify
- Startups can hire researchers (AI, health, hardware) year-round

That’s a good change. I’ve seen ML researchers (PhDs) who led DARPA funded projects as principal investigator while working for a for-profit company not being selected for H-1B (lottery and cap) and having to leave the US.

Andrew_nenakhov2• 2 years ago

I wonder if it is possible to found a US company and open a bank account for it while being a resident of Russian Federation, and then self-petition yourself for a visa....

FateOfNations• 2 years ago

Establishing a company in the US is easy, but you'd have difficulty finding a bank willing to do business with a brand new company with Russian beneficial owners (at least in the current geopolitical climate).

laidoffamazon9• 2 years ago

Expect this to be rolled back fully on January 20

KerrAvon2• 2 years ago

Unclear. They're not going to be consistent or competent, and the intent of everything they do will be to either part out the government to their friends, weaponize the US government against perceived enemies. And they might reward people who kiss the ring by granting exceptions.

Really, given the premise, anyone sane should kill H-1B entirely for tech:

"The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States"

There is no shortage of qualified US software engineers. CS schools are full. The very concept is ridiculous. Kill this law, liberalize immigration instead.

KerrAvon2• 2 years ago

Also, there are going to be endless, endless lawsuits on everything, because everything they do is going to violate either the Constitution or existing US law. I'm not sure how much that will slow them down.

n144q6• 2 years ago

CS schools are full

I guess you never paid any attention to the nationality of students enrolled in CS classes.

commandlinefan3• 2 years ago

... not that it was _ever_ used that way, since its inception.

parineum• 2 years ago

Why?

laidoffamazon9• 2 years ago

Trump in term 1 was the most hostile to legal immigration President in decades and that was before he started slandering Haitians with legal status

halyconWays• 2 years ago

He ran on a platform of easier legal immigration.

laidoffamazon9• 2 years ago

I think you are excessively credulous and that’s the most polite I can be.

I’m a natural born citizen that’s the wrong skin color and I’m planning on carrying my passport everywhere come Jan 21 - I’m not going to chance being thrown into the back of a BORTAC van.

n144q6• 2 years ago

Funny I see this kind of misguided comments all the time.

Their immigration policy is never only about illegal immigration. Do you actually think it is possible to tighten immigration policy without affecting H1B?

If you need evidence, just look at what happened between 2017-2021. H1B denial & RFE rates were way up, and the administration tried multiple times to roll out policy that significantly restrict the eligibility of H1B visas. They even used coronavirus as an excuse to issue travel bans on H1B. How is that making legal immigration easier?

ashconnor6• 2 years ago

Read the RAISE Act if you think that the incoming administration is going to be easier on legal migrants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAISE_Act

rat87• 2 years ago

No he ran on an explicitly racist and ANTI Immigrant (yes including legal immigrants!) platform.

See https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77l28myezko

ajsidncjcnbd• 2 years ago

Trump has said he’d like to “staple green cards to diplomas”. Despite what the media portrays, he’s not pro American, pro white, pro nazi, whatever.

He’s owned by a different slice of the parasitic ruling class that, while opposed to some of the goals the Biden admin was for, still share a common theme of not caring about the average American at all. He has probably the most pro Israel cabinet we’ve ever seen and appears to be cozying up with big tech (thiel, musk, zuckerberg, etc).

If he was truly pro American H1-B would be thrown out and we’d require these companies that are wildly profitable to invest in educating American workers. H1-B is used to exploit both foreign and domestic labor to the benefit of a tiny population of capital holders.

creer3• 2 years ago

Wouldn't attaching green cards - or at least temporary work permits - to US university degrees be a positive change compared to employment agencies / contractor firms trying to sneak in piles of people without such degrees and screening? That would be a good response to the issue of training (ideally) highly qualified smart people and then kicking them out.

cma2• 2 years ago

Didn't Trump try to prevent even greencard holders from returning if they were from overseas from the wrong religious area of the world, after promising a Muslim ban? And was then only stopped by courts? Or am I misremembering that?

bdangubic18• 2 years ago

If he was truly pro American H1-B would be thrown out and we’d require these companies that are wildly profitable to invest in educating American workers. H1-B is used to exploit both foreign and domestic labor to the benefit of a tiny population of capital holders.

This is exactly right and exactly why Trump won't do anything about it... when you surround yourself will billionaires you'll want to make this that this tiny population of capital holders prospers even further :)

JackYoustra15• 2 years ago

I mean, that's how you end up with Qian Xuesen and every high-tech chinese program succeeding

root_axis2• 2 years ago

Unlikely. Elon heavily favors more H1-Bs. If they roll it back, they'll introduce their own version that is even more favorable to those that gain by suppressing tech worker salaries.

umanwizard3• 2 years ago

What does this change, if anything, for software engineers at FAANG and similar companies?

Cerium• 2 years ago

This is key: "Flexibility to start working immediately upon petition filing"

Currently workers are often abused since the system puts intense pressure to keep a job and don't move around.

throwaway4847625• 2 years ago

I expect a lot of H1B applicants creating shell corporations.

roughly2• 2 years ago

Well, they’ve passed the “culture” part of the citizenship test, then

throwaway4847625• 2 years ago

H1B isn't citizenship.

binarymax• 2 years ago

From what I understand you also need to be able to pay yourself a $60,000 salary minimum, from that LLC. If people can do that, then power to them and let them stay!

If you're worried about people shortcutting a line to get a visa by injecting money into the US economy, again by somehow getting 60K into the LLC to pay the salary of the recipient, this is also a win.

So what is the problem here exactly?

jpollock2• 2 years ago

Allowing spouses to work on a H4 visa is a HUGE change.

It was a big problem for our family.

itissid• 2 years ago

And obama made that happen in his last days in office in Dec 2015/Jan 2016

jpollock2• 2 years ago

I thought that was specifically for when you were waiting for the residency permit, not a random H4.

vsskanth2• 2 years ago

Spouses on H4 cannot work unless the primary H1B has an approved I-140 immigrant petition. It's not automatic.

fakedang• 2 years ago

Seems like the current admin trying to stuff all the laws right in time for the next admin to dismantle...

Oh no, the 50% rule won't be exploited sir.

autoexecbat• 2 years ago

I hope it says that they remain above 50%

frgtpsswrdlame• 2 years ago

Regarding this part:

Clarification of specialty role

  - Less strict on the direct link between degree/job responsibilities

  - Recognizes that AI may require multiple academic background

You really won't need to clarify whether the role is a specialty one or not if you just increase the minimum wage for H1Bs. I really don't know why we don't have some rule that pins H1B wages to like the 90th percentile wage.

bombcar2• 2 years ago

It would be exceptionally easy to solve the "H1B problem" by making sure that H1Bs are more expensive than local talent; then they really only would be used when local talent doesn't exist.

richwater• 2 years ago

Yet even more ways for corporations to underpay native, domestic workers.

physhster• 2 years ago

How so?

hgs3• 2 years ago

It's supply and demand economics: if there is a low supply of workers and a high demand for them, then employers are supposed to compete for them with more pay, more benefits, training/education, etc. When the supply of workers is artificially increased, then companies have less incentive to compete. It becomes a buyer's market for employers.

nosequel• 2 years ago

Roles tied to research institutions cap-exempt

And in comes a flood of "Research Software Engineer" roles

cflewis• 2 years ago

Yeah, I wonder what that is going to ground out to. With the AI race, basically anything tangential is research, at least in the definition of "doing something scientific-looking that's not been done before". That could include a _lot_ of companies from massive to tiny.

rorytbyrne2• 2 years ago

As a working scientist, this is a hugely underserved category in academic/industry science. This would be very welcome.

crmd2• 2 years ago

It’s never been clear to me why this program exists in the first place, other than to put downward pressure on US STEM wages. What am I missing?

creer3• 2 years ago

You are missing that it is used a lot in spite of that process (1) being a major administrative headache for the users, both employees and employers, (2) costly compared to hiring "locals" although that's moderated by perhaps lower salary with not a huge amount of evidence, and (3) rather unpredictable and risky for both employees and employers.

You don't see the need but perhaps the users do.

whatshisface3• 2 years ago

Hypothetically it exists to allow companies to hire singular overseas experts like von Braun or Einstein that don't have domestic equivalents. It has become totally accepted to lie on the application though and now it is used to hire Java developers.

mportela• 2 years ago

I believe that's the O-1 visa, not the H-1B.

strongpigeon9• 2 years ago

That is incorrect. People with exceptional abilities are covered under EB-1 green cards (and O-1 visas). H-1B was created to bring people in specialty occupations requiring a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. A Java developer definitely meets the bar (with the right degree or experience).

returningfory22• 2 years ago

This piece of misinformation seems to be trotted out every time H-1B is discussed. H-1B is not for "extraordinary ability", the O-1 is. The H-1B is just designed for regular workers in a "specialty occupation". This is how Congress designed it in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

remarkEon14• 2 years ago

You're not missing anything. Other than that, seemingly, STEM roles are the only industry where the laws of supply and demand do not apply, and a positive supply shock of something does not, for some reason, drive down the price.

jandrese2• 2 years ago

If a supply shock doesn't drive down the price then it suggests that the supply constraint was larger than than the shock and that the market was being artificially constrained to prevent the prices from rising to meet demand.

sunshowers5• 2 years ago

Have you engaged with the Card vs Borjas literature at all? We learn about the world by studying it, not by simply thinking about it from one's armchair.

Aperocky5• 2 years ago

STEM roles already pay incredibly well in this country, and even more so if you compare it globally.

What is the downward price shock you're talking about? What do you think the salary would or should be, assuming all H1B worker are magically gone the next day?

renewiltord2• 2 years ago

The program exists to get skilled workers into the US. It has done this well. There are few other programs to get them in and onto a pathway to permanent residence and citizenship. STEM wages don't exist in a vacuum. Increased utility to the US economy is more important than them. The US government rightfully determined that having people like Elon Musk here makes this nation more competitive. Likely the effect was also to increase software engineering compensation but that's harder to tell.

strongpigeon9• 2 years ago

It's enabling companies to bring highly skilled individuals to work in the USA rather than having them open offices in other countries.

carlosjobim3• 2 years ago

If it's about urgently needed skills, then anybody who has a H-1B visa is of course the highest paid worker in his or her company. Right?

margorczynski• 2 years ago

That's how it is marketed to the masses. From what I hear from many US citizens it actually looks quite different in reality.

rbanffy16• 2 years ago

For the “highly skilled” there’s the O-1 visa.

jonny_eh2• 2 years ago

Global competition exists. If US companies can't hire the best, others will. I hope you don't assume that all the best workers/researchers are born within US borders.

vouaobrasil• 2 years ago

I don't think countries should hire the best. Pretty good should do. They should foster a greater sense of community within their borders. Now, I'm not against immigration. I myself am an immigrant. But I think there's too much global fluidity and not enough attention paid to taking care of one's own.

throwaway4847625• 2 years ago

The best people are in no small part a product of their environment. You can have the best people but with no resources they won't be productive.

grumple2• 2 years ago

Do you think the average H1B or other visa holder in STEM is among “the best”? I’m forced to hire non-American engineers (contractors) because my company is too cheap to pay for and commit to paying American workers full time for a couple of years. There are certainly a ton of qualified Americans who can work for us (fully remote) for not much more money, and their native English skills would make them objectively better at the position. I would even hire juniors straight out of school, but the corporate bs gets in the way.

s1artibartfast14• 2 years ago

You are mixing up purpose and effect. The purpose is to provide more and cheaper STEM workers. The effect is downward pressure on wages.

Phrased differently, the goal is to help industry, not hurt workers. Hurting some workers is an acceptable cost, not the goal.

One idea is that having a thriving industrial ecosystem helps those same workers more than the downward pressure.

InsideOutSanta3• 2 years ago

As somebody who does not live and work in the US, it seems plausible to me that the H1B system helps prevent other countries from obtaining similar talent hubs as Sillicon Valley. A lot of the talent is in the US, which attracts more companies, which attracts more talent, which means it's easier to go to the US and work there and start companies there than to do it anywhere else.

tssva3• 2 years ago

If the purpose is cheaper STEM workers than downward pressure on wages is a goal and not just an effect.

danans13• 2 years ago

phrased differently, the goal is to help industry, not hurt workers. hurting some workers is an acceptable cost, not the goal.

The phrase "help industry" has many dimensions. The simplest of course is that by increasing labor supply and suppressing wages it increases profit margins, rewarding shareholders.

Another important function is that by having more workers overall in the US, it increases the productivity of the domestic industry itself, due to increased competition for jobs driving up the productivity of the average worker. This in turn makes the industry more competitive vs its equivalents in other countries.

The average worker (whether permanent resident or temporary/H1B) who doesn't have significant investments likely doesn't receive much of those productivity gains, since they mostly go to capital owners.

Long term, it boosts returns to capital while capping returns to labor, the same trend noted by Thomas Piketty some years back.

cibyr• 2 years ago

The purpose of a system is what it does.

HDThoreaun• 2 years ago

The US owes much of its success to its ability to poach talent from other countries. By letting all the people who would start competing firms move to the US instead international competition is reduced and the products built in the US are better.

BeetleB8• 2 years ago

Software is one of the few STEM fields where one can get a fantastic job with just a Bachelor's. In most other engineering fields, a MS gives you a significant boost, and a PhD may do so as well.

The reality is that in most of those fields, few Americans get an MS/PhD. Go to a typical engineering department and you'll often see the majority of advanced degree students are foreigners.

So it's a question of: Do we want to continue to train foreigners, only to not have them contribute to the US economy?

If you move out to the pure sciences, you pretty much need a PhD to get a good career. Once again, a big chunk, if not the majority, are foreigners.

Look around at the highly skilled folks you see who are not of US origin, and you'll find most of them are in the US due to the H1-B program (only a tiny percentage come via other programs like the O visa).

Yes, H1-B is often abused, but this is the reason it exists. It's a lot harder to get an H1B visa and then permanent residency if your degree is in the humanities, for example.

memtet• 2 years ago

Ooh yes, let's address next how US top universities are all profit machines incentivized to take as many foreigners as possible, driving up the tuition they can charge so US citizens can't afford to get degrees. Let's do talk about how if you get a part time job to be able to pay for college then they yank your financial aid.

bradlys5• 2 years ago

Isn't it well known that the main reason that most foreigners have advanced degrees is because that's how they get into the country legally in the first place?

I don't see many people getting employed straight out of undergrad from India or China and moving to the US directly. They get their advanced degree here first to get into the country then they get employed...

stackskipton• 2 years ago

I think vast majority of Americans not going on to higher education is because system is so screwed up due to debt and unlimited student visas.

Debt means most Americans go "I need to enter into the job market so I can pay off these debts".

Also, alot of foreign students are willing to work/study insane hours because visa hanging over their head. I have a friend who got MS in Engineering but didn't want to continue because he looked at what's required and started talking with his mentor about his PhD. His mentor said it's 996 schedule and if you don't want to, I can likely find a student visa student who will.

charlie0• 2 years ago

The reason why foreigners get those degrees is because it's a way for them to stay in the USA longer. I have a friend who didn't win a renewal for their H1B and they signed up for a master's program and applied for a different VISA. So yeah, some foreigners get them because their hands are forced.

breadwinner2• 2 years ago

US tech exports in 2018 was $338 billion. Tech is our biggest export by far. Think of the US tech industry as a siphon that sucks in wealth from foreign countries. Would you want to make that siphon bigger or smaller?

If you want to make that siphon bigger — and more competitive — how would you do it? By limiting the people that can work in tech to whoever companies can hire locally, or by bringing in the smartest people from around the world?

PessimalDecimal• 2 years ago

Does "The US" siphon that money off? Or Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. siphon that money off? And where and to whom does it go from there?

The major benefit of reducing or eliminating the H1B visa program is that those companies can continue to do well, and Americans can do well along with them.

whereismyacc3• 2 years ago

you can grow the sector. there's not a fixed supply of jobs. getting more talented people into your economy will likely just lead to more companies, more agglomeration effects etc. it's good.

idontwantthis• 2 years ago

I think you should ask why any feature of our immigration system exists. Each way is cruel, byzantine and expensive for no discernible benefit to anyone except the directors of those programs.

rbanffy16• 2 years ago

It’s also designed to attract talent from other countries. You didn’t have to invest in their education, so that part comes for free.

sunshowers5• 2 years ago

Education. Learning. Expertise.

As Asimov pointed out, "[t]here is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been." American culture is profoundly anti-intellectual. Every Dunning-Kruger rando thinks they have something valuable to contribute to every discussion.

Cumpiler694• 2 years ago

American culture is profoundly anti-intellectual.

Then why are US tech companies the most successful?

eweise2• 2 years ago

That's exactly the reason. I don't remember working with any H-1B visa people in the 90s then the dotcom boom happened and demand soared. A couple years later I started working with H-1B engineers and my salary flatlined for over decade since.

outworlder2• 2 years ago

The program exists to brain drain other countries of talent. It's very successful at that.

bdangubic18• 2 years ago

65k or 80k or say even 250k GLOBALLY per year is going to “brain drain” 8+ billion Global population? Yup, you got it, that’s what US is doing…

nirav723• 2 years ago

Bringing over 10K java developers a year is going to brain drain other countries of java developers?

hector_vasquez• 2 years ago

Put simply: It is in the national interest to have the world's most talented technologists here. It is yet more in the national interest that they work here, for us, and not for our enemies. One of the best ways we can compete with China is to attract their best and brightest with our free society and high wages.

dboreham3• 2 years ago

Imagine developing the atomic bomb with just US born scientists.

JackYoustra15• 2 years ago

Tech exists in a globally competitive market: the companies will exist where the skilled workers are, and the tax benefits will occur there. The US's large immigration rate is a precondition for maintaining its tech dominance and all of the benefits thereof.

h1bgamer3• 2 years ago

This H1B program is gamed so hard its a joke at this point.

I personally witnessed someone that submit multiple applications that this person won the H1B lottery. This person even had fake office, fake business address, etc for the fake entities.

I already reported it, but no action has been taken. This person is now happily employed in the US using H1B.

Unethical life pro tips but work: for those of you trying to get H1B, just submit multiple applications to multiple "companies". There are services like this out there, just need to find out where.

Good luck. This nation is for plunder.

mksreddy2• 2 years ago

Didn’t the rule change last year where all applications by same person is considered as one?

h1bgamer3• 2 years ago

Yup but they actually can't check.

JonoBB• 2 years ago

According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42451726, this is much less of a thing than before.

JackYoustra15• 2 years ago

is being employed for a salary considered plunder now?

AcerbicZero• 2 years ago

[flagged]

9999000009992• 2 years ago

I'd rather have H1-B visas be a 5 year unrestricted work permit.

America needs to keep attracting the world's best and brightest, but linking it to a specific employer is problematic. Opens up employees to mistreatment.

I'd say charge a straight up fee, 500k upon approval. That gets you 5 years, if your wiz making 400k a year it's a great deal.

daveguy• 2 years ago

If you're trying to get the best and brightest why would you charge 500 thousand dollars?! I don't care what kind of wiz you are, that's prohibitive.

9999000009992• 2 years ago

You need to already have means otherwise your out competing the lower end of the tech sector.

mksreddy2• 2 years ago

I thought it is a terrible idea from first sentence. Last paragraph completely changed my mind.

jandrese2• 2 years ago

I hate that it is time restricted at all. Just make it a green card program with a path to citizenship outright. Brain drain the rest of the world. Instead we are providing work experience to our future competitors.

aylmao10• 2 years ago

I worked many years under H1B, but moved out of the USA. Unsure if I'll come back, technically I still have time on my H1b, but man, it's just so stressful to lay roots knowing they're conditional on all sorts of ticking clocks and hoops to jump.

I like working at early stage startups— works pretty well with H1B but it makes the process of getting a green card via work complicated. Some people can deal with all that stress, I just rather not.

remram2• 2 years ago

If you need to already set up the business that can generate 500k in your home country before coming here, you do the opposite of bringing value and innovation to the US. You have already given most of that to the home country.

aylmao10• 2 years ago

I suspect most people that have a business that can generate $500k in their home country probably wouldn't want to move to the USA at all.

Unless their business generates way more than $500k, in which case they'd probably be moving as businessmen, not as skilled workers.

bastardoperator3• 2 years ago

Are we actually doing that though? I managed H1-B employees at Verizon and honestly it felt like a scam. They weren't the best and brightest despite being awesome people in general, and they were also getting exploited by the company in terms of compensation. The only one benefitting seemed to be Verizon.

whereismyacc3• 2 years ago

would they have preferred not being able to live/work in the US at all?

codegeek• 2 years ago

"charge a straight up fee, 500k upon approval."

There is already a work visa for that called EB5 even though the requirement is $1M (800K for rural areas) and you will need to hire 10 American workers. Plenty of rich people from other countries are using that already.

bubblethink7• 2 years ago

800k in investment gets you a green card. And you may even make a return on that investment. Why would anyone pay 500k for participating in a pageant ?

hparadiz• 2 years ago

The biggest loop hole for not being allowed to hire non citizens or permanent residents is not the H-1B. It's actually B2B contracts that have absolutely no restrictions what so ever.

At least the H-1B lets us keep some tax revenue.

29athrowaway• 2 years ago

The new administration will likely reform USCIS around eligibility criteria rather than speed of processing and these reforms will be undone as quickly as Mayorkas is gone.

DataDaemon• 2 years ago

I wonder how many people will move from socialism & bureaucracy Europe to the US.

varjag• 2 years ago

Approximately none on top of the usual migration patterns.

Eumenes• 2 years ago

Vast majority of H1bs are from India, and China. Only a few hundred per year from EU countries.

kqgnkqgn• 2 years ago

Seem like sensible changes, though more is still needed. Requiring H1B holders to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism. The per-country caps also seem like a throwback to the early 1900's era immigration exclusion policies.

Re: the concerns over "immigrants taking our jobs!". As a native-born American working in a large tech company today - the threat is very clearly not from H1B's and other visas. The threat to American tech jobs is when US tech companies choose to build out offices in lower cost of living countries (and I'm very much including Europe in that, I think that's even a bigger problem).

It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US, regardless of whether they are citizens. Americans are eligible for those jobs, and that money stays within our economy. Versus employing workers elsewhere, where American's can't easily be hired, and those resources leave the US.

If we want to keep opportunities here - that's the issue we should be focus on fixing. What regulatory steps could we advocate for that would address this risk? Immigration is the wrong problem, and the focus on that in certain populist circles really demonstrates they are rather out of touch from what's actually happening in the industries that are driving the US economy today.

Threadbare• 2 years ago

Following the sun is a win, faster project delivery and lowered cost of development

kelnos2• 2 years ago

Follow the sun is great for on-call rotations, but I'm my experience, for regular project work, the need for a handoff each day ends up being too much overhead. The teams in vastly different time zones wind up working mostly independently on completely different projects.

rbanffy16• 2 years ago

It brings its own set of communication and cross-cultural challenges.

pdntspa• 2 years ago

That's for stuff that requires 24/7 support, not some harebrained project management technique that will make all your teams hate you

akira25014• 2 years ago

to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism.

I always took it as a means of proving they still could return somewhere if necessary. Which is a reasonable thing to assure on a visa.

kelnos2• 2 years ago

That's pointless. They need to prove they have somewhere to return to while regretting their visa that lets them... not return there? Dumb.

Ultimately it just wasted time and money, and causes lots of stress, for no useful purpose.

bubblethink7• 2 years ago

No, this was post 9/11. It has nothing to do with immigration policy. The collective jerking after 9/11 led to many bad policies, including this one. Biden half assedly tried to go back to the pre 9/11 state of "stateside renewal" but it went nowhere.

rbanffy16• 2 years ago

It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US

I used the same argument in Brazil to support a strong free software preference in all government functions. Support from voters in Redmond wouldn’t get anyone re-elected in Brazil.

fmeyer• 2 years ago

Then we got RedHat using the same strategy to sell support for the government :D

remarkEon14• 2 years ago

It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US, regardless of whether they are citizens. Americans are eligible for those jobs, and that money stays within our economy. Versus employing workers elsewhere, where American's can't easily be hired, and those resources leave the US.

I want to pick on this point, because it's the general refrain about this topic. If there is some thing that American workers can't do in an in-demand field, and the government sets up a system to allow non-citizens to do those jobs, most people will say that this "helps" America. But does it? If the education pipeline is inadequately preparing Americans for being competitive in this in-demand field then perhaps that is the problem that should be addressed. Right now it feels like we have a (highly suspect) "labor shortage" that is addressed via immigration, which doesn't send a signal back to the educational/training infrastructure that they're doing something wrong.

chabons• 2 years ago

I don't have statistics, but given the student visa -> H-1B pipeline changes, it would seem there are a number of H-1B holders who are educated in US colleges (either at the undergrad or graduate level). This indicates that the problem is not entirely a training gap.

hash8726• 2 years ago

The US is only 4% of the world's population, so there's an enormous number of extremely smart people who live outside its present borders. I don't think anyone believes that even the world's greatest educational system can bring all of its students up to an extremely high level of general intelligence. We should be letting very smart people born outside the US emigrate here, which is a win-win for everyone involved

titanomachy9• 2 years ago

The median American is not smart enough to do complex software engineering, just like they're not smart enough to be a doctor or college professor. All cognitively demanding jobs compete for the same (probably single-digit) percent of the workforce. Better education could certainly prepare more people to do these jobs, but it's not a given that there are enough smart people in the domestic workforce to do all the cognitively-demanding jobs.

If thousands of the smartest people from the rest of the world want to move to the US and fill these gaps, doesn't that make America better off overall?

upbeat_general• 2 years ago

I think a lot of these comments don’t properly capture the benefit. The more skilled workers, the more startups/companies, not to mention smarter people.

But the effect is bigger than that, by allowing skilled immigration, it makes US universities and tech companies the best in the world, at the very least seen as such, which has tremendous larger effects.

It’s not a coincidence that we have the largest tech industry, and it’s not because we magically have smarter people.

hedora• 2 years ago

Honestly, the US needs to (and used to) do both. We should have a world-class public education system, and we should aggressively get the best and the brightest people to move here.

It seems unlikely we’ll do either of those things moving forward. At least China’s investing in green tech, I guess.

BJones122• 2 years ago

The per-country caps also seem like a throwback to the early 1900's era immigration exclusion policies.

Canada does not have that and it is going very poorly. Lots of people are calling for the implementation of the same policy.

aylmao10• 2 years ago

How is not having a per-country cap going poorly in Canada?

i18nsoftware3• 2 years ago

How would have the same policy had any effect in Canada? Country caps in the US don't change anything about who can enter the country, they only affect who gets permanent residency.

Hilift• 2 years ago

leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism

Not really. This is really Customs and Border Patrol/Immigration way of saying, you can always do the default/what everyone else does. You can leave and return six months of the year. The key is leave (which they do), they are already declared non-immigrant, and are self-sufficient.

outworlder2• 2 years ago

Not sure what you are talking about. This is about H-1B, aka dual-intent visas. You can have immigrant intent.

Also, if you leave for six months, how are you even working in the US? Which is the point of the visa.

cute_boi3• 2 years ago

The per-country caps is very important. Otherwise, you will see flood of same people which makes everything biased.

xtreme• 2 years ago

It's a policy based on unsound reasoning. Why is India treated as a monolith when it is more diverse than the EU in terms of linguistic and cultural diversity? If tomorrow India magically broke off into 30 separate states, all the same people who have been waiting for decades would be immediately eligible for green cards. How does it make any sense?

a13n• 2 years ago

To some extent this is what Section 174 is about.

If you hire US-based engineers working on R&D (most software engineers) then you amortize their pay over 5 years. Foreign-based engineers working on R&D get amortized over 15 years.

You get to expense 3x as much for domestic engineers compared to foreign engineers. This means you need to pay more taxes upfront for having a foreign R&D team, which is bad for cashflow. Your company could be losing money (unprofitable) but still owe corp income taxes because of Section 174.

If the gov charged "tariffs" on foreign labor or services provided, especially for certain countries that labor is typically outsourced to, or certain types of labor/services (e.g. support, engineering, etc), that'd probably be an effective way to discourage offshoring.

mlindner4• 2 years ago

Per-country caps remains an absolutely good idea. The goal of immigrants should be to integrate into the society they are joining. Without per country caps you can start creating strange enclaves and you get some of the issues Canada is having.

i18nsoftware3• 2 years ago

Having people who have been living in the country for decades, but have the threat of leaving anytime they get fired from job or due to visa issues doesn't encourage them to "integrate into the society they are joining".

If anything, the way the country caps work in the US right now make integration harder, because no matter how much they try to integrate and be part of the local community, they could be kicked out at any time. That just encourages people to have one foot out the door at all times.

alienallys• 2 years ago

India has roughly twice the population of Europe and is just as diverse. Treating India as a single, homogeneous entity because it's one country overlooks its vast cultural, linguistic, and demographic diversity—comparable to that of Europe. If diversity justifies country caps, it doesn't apply to India. Clinging to such policies seems outdated.

If India were divided into smaller countries like Europe, the same South Asian population, culture, and diversity would persist, but the artificial constraints tied to the name "India" would disappear.

maeil• 2 years ago

Re: the concerns over "immigrants taking our jobs!". As a native-born American working in a large tech company today - the threat is very clearly not from H1B's and other visas. The threat to American tech jobs is when US tech companies choose to build out offices in lower cost of living countries (and I'm very much including Europe in that, I think that's even a bigger problem).
It's much much better for America if tech companies hire workers in the US, regardless of whether they are citizens. Americans are eligible for those jobs, and that money stays within our economy. Versus employing workers elsewhere, where American's can't easily be hired, and those resources leave the US.

Makes me wonder how many people gladly support this while at the same time clamoring against the EU's DMA and other regulations and fines it imposes on SV companies.

What you're saying is of course absolutely true! I like how plainly you've stated it, because the directness makes clear to people just how awful of a deal it is for the EU and other countries where US tech companies make enormous profits without hiring any significant number of locals.

I've lived in both the EU which suffers from the above, as well as a place where protectionism and barriers helped strongly restrain US tech and "artificially" give opportunity to local players. The latter has worked out so much better for every party involved except US tech.

newsclues2• 2 years ago

Per county caps are good protection for your culture.

Canada suffered because a lack of caps.

It leads to a concentration that can be overwhelming.

grecy• 2 years ago

Requiring H1B holders to leave the country to renew paperwork is an insane anachronism

FWIW every country requires you leave and come back to change or renew visa status. The computers and processes are all setup at points of entry and just aren’t designed for people that don’t physically leave/enter.

It’s so common the guys at the us/Canada land border call it “flagpoleing” because you literally drive a u turn around the flagpole and go back. I’ve done it a dozen times, even driving 4 hours each way in a gnarley winter storm into Alaska and back to Canada at -45.

maowtm• 2 years ago

Not the UK at least, as someone who has done a completely in-country switch from student to skilled worker. In fact you are not allowed to leave the country when your application is in progress (leaving would cancel it).

workfromspace• 2 years ago

every country requires you leave and come back to change or renew visa status

Not true for EU, either.

In fact, how it works in EU is (for non-EU citizens):

- Get a D visa (for residency)

- Get into the country

- Get a temporary residence permit which is for up to 5 years

- Renew residence permit when it's about to expire or basis (employment, study) is changed - WHILE being in the country.

HarHarVeryFunny5• 2 years ago

A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination.

I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.

toomuchtodo3• 2 years ago

There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay. If it is taking more than 30-60 days for workers to find a role, there are enough workers domestically.

PittleyDunkin4• 2 years ago

There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay.

That and companies are just hilariously bad at finding workers they want to hire for nebulous reasons. I have no doubt even if my company hired 95% of the workers it had marked down as "no hire" they'd be able to squeeze a salary's of value worth out of each of them (well, if management is competent, which it tends to not be). I'm sure those of us who've been around long enough can all attest to some side of seeing form of this dysfunction. I'm more than happy to reject them for selfish reasons, of course, like "I don't want this person on my team" or "this person seems like an asshole" or "I don't want to teach this person their third language after java and typescript". Etc.

I mean there are terrible interview candidates out there, but the people who literally can't code at all tend to be easy to filter out.

I'm curious if there's any way to observe the salary margins that separate the top of the labor market from the bottom. Surely there are. That would probably give a big signal as to how much undue attention is given to, e.g., Senior vs Junior developers and American workers vs H1Bs. I'd put money that some of this complaining about lack of labor is actually not wanting to hire fresh grads and eat the cost of training when they'd be just fine. (Also the H1B thing, but that's already discussed to death)

thatfrenchguy2• 2 years ago

There's a shortage of applicants with the skills that companies need. Engineers, like most qualified workforce, aren't interchangeable.

dingnuts• 2 years ago

There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay

Translation: companies would rather have underpaid immigrants as indentured servants to exploit than Americans who can demand higher wages

yodsanklai• 2 years ago

There is a shortage of applicants willing to work at what companies want to pay

If you want the best candidates, it makes sense to have a wider pool of recruitment.

amykhar• 2 years ago

That is absolutely what these kinds of Visas are NOT supposed to be addressing.

thephyber4• 2 years ago

If it is taking more than 30-60 days for workers to find a role, there are enough workers domestically.

This makes no sense, even if I agree with your first statement.

Not every company is willing to completely retrain a worker for something outside of their core competency. Lots of candidates simply aren’t competent, or even reliable employees. Lots of companies would rather a position go unfilled than make a bad hire that is very expensive to fix.

dmayle• 2 years ago

This is why H1-B visas should have a minimum salary requirement equal to 20% over whichever is greater, median salary for the role in the industry, or median salary for the role in the company (and whichever is greater, US-wide, or local pay scale).

This way, a company is always incentivized to find local talent, but when they are actually unable to, they have a path to find the expertise they need. The U.S. could relax restrictions on H1-B, lowering red tape, and removing a lot of churn that comes with the H1-B program

Spivak• 2 years ago

I feel like this whole issue could be solved short order if we agreed that not being able to find qualified applicants at a given fixed price does not a shortage make.

It's the same with the "fast food shortage," I bet the shortage would dry up real fast at $50/hr so all we're really doing is haggling over price. If in order to hire a H1-B at a salary of x you had to offer US workers 2x with say a $100k floor on x then I bet Americans would show up.

BurningFrog2• 2 years ago

On a market with free pricing there are, pretty much by definition, no shortages or surpluses.

Instead prices go up or down until supply and demand meet.

So talking about "shortages" in this context doesn't really make sense to me. Yet that's the terminology in this field, and the resulting confusion is unavoidable.

eru4• 2 years ago

I feel like this whole issue could be solved short order if we agreed that not being able to find qualified applicants at a given fixed price does not a shortage make.

It could be solved by realising that letting immigrants in, especially highly skilled ones, is good for the country (and for the immigrants!), independent of anything like a 'skills shortage'.

HarHarVeryFunny5• 2 years ago

So then call the H1-B program what it is - a way for US tech companies to depress wages to the point that you can't afford to live the US, unless it's a bunch of H-1B holders living together in a house share.

The same goes for offshoring for jobs. Lovely for shareholders and the CEO's bonus, but not so great for US residents having to compete with them who are paying US cost of living, not Indian/etc overseas cost of living.

It'd be nice if the US government would pass laws benefiting its own citizens/residents rather than corporations.

strongpigeon9• 2 years ago

Good news: the USCIS makes this data available! [0]

Google, Microsoft and Meta definitely look for (and hire!) US applicants. One can reasonably have a gripe with the consulting companies on there (Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, etc.) but they don't represent 90-95% of H-1B issued.

[0] https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employe...

pnw3• 2 years ago

One might have more than just a gripe with Infosys given they recently admitted to defrauding the visa system over decades and paid a record $34m fine. How many Americans lost out on jobs as a result? We'll never know.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/indian-corporation-pays-re...

guiomie• 2 years ago

Actually, looking at your link, Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon are all in the top 10... on the link you shared, am I missing something?

philosopher123• 2 years ago

If you filter out Information only ( which i am being conservative because this does not include healthcare and other sectors ) that is about 20K high paying IT Jobs. This def smells funny that they cannot find "quality" candidates in US that can build APIs and do FE work. Maybe out of that 20K workers, 500 might be actually be doing something special but rest are doing the work that does not need any specialization.

darth_avocado7• 2 years ago

Not sure if this is only fresh visas or includes visa renewals. Because of the country caps in the naturalization process, you have people from some countries have to renew visas again and again while they wait for naturalization. Given that H1b is only 3 years, for companies like Google and Facebook, you could have a situation where they are just trying to retain employees who have been with the company for a while.

jmyeet3• 2 years ago

H-1B abuse is a real problem but not by Big Tech. The offenders are the bodyshops like Tata and Infosys.

The bodyshops flood USCIS with Indian-born applicants because they don't really care who gets approved and who doesn't. Those that get approved get a US job. The system is designed to stop employers abusing the power this gives them over employees. They fail in a number of ways.

First, part of the process is a Prevailing Wage Determination to make sure the employee isn't underpaid for that job in that geographical area. There is abuse here at the bodyshops where (IIRC) employees are paid less or not at all if they aren't currently farmed out to a third-party. This should be policed but I don't think it is, at least not effectively.

Second, the real abuse comes from the H1B -> Green card pipeline. H1B visas don't have per-country quotas. Green cards do (max 7% per country as determined by the country you were born in, not your actual citizenship). Because so many H1B holders are Indian-born, the backlog for Green cards for Indian-born applicants is decades long.

Now you can stay with an employer beyond your 6 years (the usual limit of 3+3 for H1B visas) if you have a pending PERM application. The employee can't really leave. If they do they have to file their whole PERM case again (but they retain their priority date at least) so this becomes like indentured servitude almost.

Nobody has really addressed this H1B abuse nor dealt with the huge backlog. A few years ago there was a bill that sought to address some of the issues by essentially removing the per-country quota but the net effect would be that for many years, nobody but Indian-born applicants would get green cards (because they have earlier priority dates). And that bill died in Congress.

But back to Big Tech: they abuse this system too but not so egregiously.

If you wander around any Big Tech office you will find likely a cork board in some obscure corner of some floor with little traffic. It will have a bunch of job postings on it. If you look in the physical newspaper for your area, you will also find them.

Why are these here? To "prove" that the employer could not find a US permanent resident or citizen to fill that particular position. You have to advertize that position through a number of channels and those channels are chosen to receive the fewest applicants because who in 2024 applies for a SWE job from a physical newspaper? If you do apply, there is a whole process to exclude you from the position. You'll be too qualified or under-qualified or your salary expectations won't match the advertisement. Or they'll find some other reason to strike you.

All of this theater is so someone else's PERM application with USCIS can go through.

To me this is also abuse.

ta_11382• 2 years ago

A non-trivial part of the issue with consulting companies is the long wait for many to turn an H-1B into a green card. If you are going to need many years of continuous employment without ever getting hit by a layoff (which risks a gap in employment), the immigrant might be better of with the consulting company, as they might end up the bench, or just count as employed but not getting any hours.

If the road from H-1B to permanent residency was shorter and more reliable, the advantages of the consulting companies would shrink.

The same as if we didn't end up having to rely on lotteries. Hiring a candidate and hoping for an H-1B is quite annoying if you don't have them on staff in another country, or they are working for you in the US from an F-1. Those consulting companies that have large offices in India can happily submit large amounts of applications of people they already have in India, and be OK with 2/3rds of them not winning said lottery. A smaller company just can't play that numbers' game

VirusNewbie2• 2 years ago

I have also met teams at FAANG where a foreign born boss’s team is 90% or more H1-Bs from their origin country. Kind of suspicious.

aylmao10• 2 years ago

I wonder if this shortage has to do with the recent strong swing back to in-office work

warkdarrior• 2 years ago

Well, what is a company supposed to do if local candidates do not want RTO? It seems logical to hire workers who are OK with RTO, especially if they are outside of the country and clearly willing to relocate for RTO.

eru4• 2 years ago

Talking about a shortage of local applicants is really irrelevant and at most a distraction.

It's the old 'the foreigners are taking our jobs' routine.

liontwist7• 2 years ago

So is it true or false?

semiquaver• 2 years ago

  > I'd be surprised if more than 5-10% of H-1B positions are ones where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants.

But H1B employers are required to certify that they took good faith steps to recruit U.S. workers for these positions and were unable to find qualified candidates to hire.

You really think a business would do that? Just go to the government and tell lies?

pnw3• 2 years ago

Yes, some of them have been doing it for decades.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/indian-corporation-pays-re...

HarHarVeryFunny5• 2 years ago

Yes - it seems this is routinely done for H-1B positions. You meet the requirement for having advertised the job by running an ad for 1 day in the back of the fisherman's chronicle. You tailor the job description so closely to the H-1B candidate you've already decided to hire, that it'd be easy to defend why you rejected other candidates (should they inconvenience you by seeing the ad and applying).

vetrom• 2 years ago

"Good faith" by the letter of the law is often established by chichanery like posting job ads with nebulous requirements in print newspapers, requiring mail in resumes, and slowrolling a process.

Not lies, strictly, but I see plenty of evidence pointing to the 'fake job' phonemena that seems to be discounted, like this example: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Intuit-firing-up-ads-in-local...

Filtering out real information from data and anecdata is a challenge at the best of times, but I am ill convinced of the honesty of most of the recruitment market.

bdangubic18• 2 years ago

there is limited number of H1B visas that are issued each year (as if I have to even say this)... so they won't make a dent if you are correct with "the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work."

we abolish the program and boom, 65k people out of this apparently HUGE number of US developers looking for work won't make a dent... so this argument holds absolutely no water ...

_DeadFred_2• 2 years ago

...other than... you know... the entire point of the H1B visa program... is to get talent the US DOESN'T already have ...

ashconnor6• 2 years ago

As a non-immigrant to the United States, I don't really buy into the idea that companies prefer H1B candidates purely for financial reasons. The H1B process is frankly a rigid, unreliable and time-consuming process.

It's hard for even Canadians and Mexicans to find jobs in the US and we have access to the supposedly easy to obtain TN visa. Australians too with E3.

I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have other benefits to employers such as longer tenure due to the restrictions of moving jobs.

Which in itself should be an argument for further liberalization say by giving I140 approved petitioners access to EADs.

lupusreal2• 2 years ago

I'm more inclined to believe that H1B workers have other benefits to employers such as longer tenure due to the restrictions of moving jobs.

That is a financial motive. Companies don't want to pay the kind of compensation which would induce employees to be loyal to the company, and so they use H1B quasi-indentured servitude as a cheaper alternative.

closeparen6• 2 years ago

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.

silisili2• 2 years ago

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.

calculatte7• 2 years ago

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.

onlyrealcuzzo2• 2 years ago

A supposed shortage of qualified US applicants for tech jobs, especially software developers, doesn't jibe with the huge numbers of US developers currently looking for work, including highly experienced older workers suffering from age discrimination.

While I tend to agree, this is a bit of a straw man.

You can have tons of people looking for work who aren't qualified for the job - which is (I think) the FAANG argument.

It's not like FAANG is paying less than what most unemployed techies are looking to make.

HarHarVeryFunny5• 2 years ago

FAANG companies have been laying people off at the moment, so it doesn't seem they are exactly suffering from a lack of workers. Until a year or so ago some of these companies were hiring people without any real work for them, just to deprive their competitors of talent.

coliveira4• 2 years ago

Well, tech companies claim that they cannot find good enough workers to fill their positions. But "good enough" is a subjetive classification. I can always create a test for which you are not good enough, it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have. And that's what tech companies have done for years. They'll aways craft a contrived interview process that will classify most people as not "good enough" and use this as evidence that there are not enough workers available, so they will get the opportunity to expand the pool of workers as much as they want.

ponector3• 2 years ago

When company says they cannot find good enough people to hire it really means they cannot find cheap enough people.

aprilthird202118• 2 years ago

Every dev interview process I've been a part of has not included consideration of the applicant's citizenship status. The interview process has many flaws, but it is not contrived to tailor itself towards H1Bs at the expense of citizens. At least, not at the companies I've worked at, which are household names. At TCL or Wipro? Sure, those are blatant offenders of the H1B visa.

harichinnan• 2 years ago

It’s really simple test. Dig into unemployment numbers for skill shortages. If your industry only has an acceptable level of unemployment filings, then it qualifies as an industry eligible for H1B. Within the industry, each company would interview you on SV style data structures and algorithms. If you don’t make the interview, you are not qualified. The foreigner who could pass such a qualifying test would then get the job and visa is an accessory here.

snakeyjake5• 2 years ago

My employer cannot hire H-1Bs.

You must be a US citizen to work for my company. No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed.

You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance. You don't have to get one if you don't want to as there is usually plenty of uncleared work to go around, but you have to be eligible in case that goes away and we need to put you in for a clearance.

We cannot find qualified applicants.

I've had this conversation many times on HN so here are some preemptive responses:

No, we don't make weapons for the military. Well, we do but not my part of the company. The most harmful thing the products I build do is quantify in precise detail how climate change is dooming us all.

No, our positions aren't ghost positions.

Yes, we are willing to train someone who is motivated. We won't re-teach linear algebra to a developer applicant but we will pay a tech writer to go to school nights/weekends to get a degree in engineering (me, I did that).

Yes, we have extensive high school and college work-study/internships and participants make $72k/yr. with full benefits for the duration of the program. That pipeline is actually successful.

No, you can't work remotely. You (even programmers!) have to touch the things we build in order to build them and nobody has an ISO certified clean room in their house.

Yes, we pay well.

No, we don't pay as much as Meta. We build components for satellites that have been sold to space agencies and purchased by various departments/ministries of the environment, not your personal information to advertisers-- one party has more money to spend than the other.

We have shortages in mech/EE/Aero, shortages in software, and critical shortages in engineering technicians.

One issue is that we expect programmers to remember linear algebra and have more than the ability to shovel frameworks on top of each other until a phone app comes out the other side.

throwaway4847625• 2 years ago

What is your definition of qualified.

UncleOxidant4• 2 years ago

No, you can't work remotely. You (even programmers!) have to touch the things we build in order to build them and nobody has an ISO certified clean room in their house.

What part of the country are you in?

mfer• 2 years ago

If someone is a software developer who has done non-trivial things and linear algebra but not recently and needs to be refreshed, do you provide time/training to refresh on the math skills?

WaitWaitWha• 2 years ago

I understand your struggle. I have worked with US and non-US orgs that are in similar boat.

In my experience this is often and at least in part a self-inflicted wound. As you describe your side of the business, it should not restricted, but it is. Maybe? Not enough detail to be certain.

What I see time and time again is business not willing to implement proper DLP, labeling and isolation of restricted things. Instead, they just throw everything into a single bucket, because it is quicker, faster, some of the risk and compliance is shifted to third party, and initially cheaper.

In short, a US, UK, Aus company that does government contracts will just force everyone into NOFORN, on-prem requirements (because DFARS, CMMC, CE+, Essential 8, or whatever). It is way quicker to do this for entire company than actually label data, isolate environment and resources, and so on.

geertj• 2 years ago

Why linear algebra? Honest question, i have not seen this as a specific requirement before.

buckle80172• 2 years ago

You might believe that you don't make weapons, but nobody else does.

You're building satellite components, which I'm quite certain are dual use.

p1esk• 2 years ago

Yes, we pay well. No, we don't pay as much as Meta.

How well do you pay? If I were at Meta, my total comp would be 500-600k. I make half that at a small startup. Can you afford me?

briffle• 2 years ago

Do you offer to sponsor people to get their security clearance? many jobs I see in the sysadmin space want someone who already has clearance, and are not willing to do the process of getting someone their clearance.

calculatte7• 2 years ago

You didn't name your employer for someone who might be interested. Perhaps visibility is one reason you can't find anyone?

I applied to a similar position locally this year. I far exceed their requirements and experience and I got rejected at the application stage. And the same goes for nearly all of other places I applied to. Hiring has most definitely changed over the years. They are not just looking for "qualified applicants". There is something else going on.

CoastalCoder2• 2 years ago

You must be a US citizen to work for my company. No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed.

Just to clarify, being a dual U.S. citizen (e.g., U.S.-Canadian, U.S.-Irish) doesn't necessarily prevent a person from obtaining a U.S. "SECRET" security clearance.

pseudocomposer• 2 years ago

What’s your company? What exactly do you pay? I haven’t done linear algebra in a while but certainly remember enough from graphics programming (and of course physics and linear algebra proper) in undergrad. Feel free to check out and contact me via any of the routes available on my GitHub: https://github.com/JonLatane

drivingmenuts• 2 years ago

You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance. You don't have to get one if you don't want to as there is usually plenty of uncleared work to go around, but you have to be eligible in case that goes away and we need to put you in for a clearance.

Y'all should probably make that clear. Usually, the moment I see something like that as a job requirement, I move on. Not because I may or may not qualify, but because I honestly don't remember a lot of the information required and because it's not clear that I can work in a non-weapon-building role. Probably should offer refresher courses in linear algebra - I've been a developer for 25+ years and have never knowingly used it.

dcrazy2• 2 years ago

You must be a US citizen to work for my company. No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed.

This is illegal under IRCA unless another law or government contract mandates it. [1] If every single role at your company requires a Secret clearance, then I question how separate “your part of the company” really is from the part that makes weapons.

[1] https://www.eeoc.gov/national-origin-discrimination

macNchz• 2 years ago

Do you drug test? Sounds like a place that might. A fairly significant proportion (though definitely not all) of the best developers I've ever worked with would simply pass over places that seem like they would.

michaelsshaw3• 2 years ago

You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance

Nope. Not doing it. Not going to argue politics, but this is a huge RED FLAG for a lot of people. And I feel I don't need to submit to mandatory drug testing as well.

The most harmful thing the products I build do is quantify in precise detail how climate change is dooming us all

Then why is it classified? How separate is your branch from the weapons branch, that you acknowledge exists?

ponector3• 2 years ago

So many contradictions!

You pay well, but not so much.

You search for qualified applicants but can hire a student.

You require linear algebra but ok with technical writer.

Looks like your managers don't know who they need to hire or don't want to really hire.

b8• 2 years ago

Defense contractors have loads of entry level jobs, but most require you already have a clearance (e.g. wanting US Army 17c or IC vets) or certifications which cost $500+ plus. Many don't sponsor a clearance, because it takes a long time, high chance of the application not passing and because they may just use you to get a clearance and job hop to a higher paying job.

Defense contractor jobs are the only ones I've seen that haven't been outsourced overseas yet, but good luck getting a CJO for one that will sponsor a clearance and actually getting cleared.

A top tier three letter agency sponsored me for TS SCI FSP and it took 9 months after the conditional job offer (CJO) after 10+ offers of personal interviews with me not counting my old jobs, college and friends/acquaintances just for them to cancel my app for "other traits, conduct or behaviour" and to reapply after a year.

I heard other applicants on the free bus ride that it was their 3rd or 4th try at the polygraph or that the agency forgot about them so they had to a Congressional inquiry after 2 attempts prior etc.

It's a lot of BS and I've tried for a few years now to work for the federal government and military, but they just don't want me. I've given way more effort than normal folks, so honestly screw them.

0086b416f1032• 2 years ago

We cannot find qualified applicants.

Your company is incompetent. I've applied to hundreds of companies like yours within Huntsville, AL in the past year, rejected or ghosted all the time.

Defense morons will talk about how hard their work is and how they can't find anyone to do it. Completely skip over how prevalent affirmative action is in their hiring process; who were you guys interviewing in 2020? Why is the defense small business base completely dominated by veterans who stack 10% disability ratings and minorities with a preferred SBA sticker on their website?

Complete joke of an industry.

xerxesaa• 2 years ago

I'm a U.S. citizen and I've applied to plenty of these types of jobs. Had an offer at Palantir previously but would not take that now due to ethical concerns.

I'm an older worker in management. Willing to be hands on. Not looking to get paid as much as Meta (I've worked there too) but also don't want something that pays peanuts. Willing to relocate to many places.

Genuinely curious where I can find such jobs.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

I once worked in defense as well and it could be that the pay is insultingly low with immense hassle and responsibility (do this thing wrong and you goto jail). I'll only consider going back if a new major conflict starts.

dec0dedab0de2• 2 years ago

I passed on a bunch of jobs that required clearance, because getting it sounded like a nightmare.

Your paragraph at the end sounds like maybe your company culture is also a problem.

tgma7• 2 years ago

We cannot find qualified applicants
No, we don’t pay as much as Meta.

So, essentially, you are seeking special treatment from US citizens. I’m not saying this is always unreasonable, but you’re in the territory of a centrally planned economic decision, and in the US philosophy that is supposed to be done minimally.

Maybe the right thing is for your company to shut down or change their line of business, freeing up the labor for Meta.

DanAtC• 2 years ago

Security clearances are a giant hassle. Why go through all that for less than FAANG pay?

hankchinaski• 2 years ago

In other words you are looking for people who are willing to get paid less what they are worth

monksy• 2 years ago

So do you discriminate against people that consume substances, on their own unpaid time, legal in the location they live at?

You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance. You don't have to get one if you don't want to as there is usually plenty of uncleared work to go around, but you have to be eligible in case that goes away and we need to put you in for a clearance.

shiroiushi3• 2 years ago

Where is your workplace located? Perhaps it's in a crappy place that no one wants to live in, and you should look at relocating.

colechristensen2• 2 years ago

I've looked at jobs at places like this (some requiring quite high clearance) and the pay is hilariously bad, and I don't make anywhere near peak FAANG rates (or work in FAANG)

50% pay cut for a DevOps/SRE role requiring a Q clearance (DoE version of Top Secret I think)

You can't find employees because the job isn't exciting (you're probably not NASA) and the pay is bad. Maybe your recruiters are bad too.

brandonmenc2• 2 years ago

Yes, we pay well.

Not enough, apparently.

No, you can't work remotely.

You'll have to pay even more for this.

No, we don't pay as much as Meta.

So again, not enough.

biztos5• 2 years ago

Not to pile on, but if linear algebra is really a part of the day-to-day job and not some manager’s mistaken idea of a proxy for more general talent, then you’re hiring specialists and the pool will not be that large. People who remember all their math and enjoy it and can also code, are also very employable at all the AI companies and departments, including at Meta.

And how do you know if someone’s eligible for security clearance without applying for it? (Other than the obvious “be a US citizen, don’t be a spy” part.)

jtcurlin• 2 years ago

I’ve applied to a variety of your positions each cycle for the past 3 years. New grad, clearance-eligible US citizen from a mid-range state school with a historically strong defense/gov. connection. I have multiple internships, a math minor, and my standout project is a rendering engine with a physics/collision system. I’ve never had or expected a remote option, and 70k (outside of the extreme-COL areas) sounds fantastic.

Your company has never offered me a phone screening. Seeing claims that Northrop is in sort of qualified candidate crisis when myself and many applicants I know of similar profiles are lucky to get so much as a rejection email is borderline infuriating.

phkahler• 2 years ago

What city or state?

sigbottle• 2 years ago

:/ Never got into embedded programming or engineering, maybe I should though. Invested too many of my math skills in theoretical computer science

Never too late to learn etc. etc.

atlgator4• 2 years ago

The pool of Americans that can qualify for a clearance is very small. You'd be surprised how many people have poor credit, bad debt, foreclosures, foreign connections, drug use and/or arrest history. It's not a fair comparison to the applicant pool available to your typical industry business. When I got my TS out of college, the OPM agent went to my old frat house and interviewed people at random, then went to my girlfriend's sorority house and interviewed random people there. It can be brutal.

mint2• 2 years ago

What’s your companies general location? Do you have an office where tech talent wants to work? Location is an important part of a competitive employment offer.

And I highly doubt linear algebra is a day to day requirement for a typical worker. Sounds like a case of expecting chauffeurs to know how to build a drive train from scratch.

klipklop• 2 years ago

Yes, we pay well.

Let's hear some numbers for junior, mid and senior. I bet they are not great.

sensanaty2• 2 years ago

I'm not USAian, but everything you described to me makes the job sound miserable, especially compared to the competition.

The clearance I won't comment on, as I have no clue what it involves. Presumably though, this means randomized drug tests which is IMO a complete violation of privacy. Also, I'm probably wrong but it gives me the impression that despite your reassurance that you aren't building weapons systems, ya kinda are.

And as you said, a part of your company makes weapons. That will automatically cause many people to be disinterested, for better or worse.

Ghost positions

In my experience, gov't jobs are the worst when it comes to fake job postings that only exist as a cover for internal promos. Might be different in the states, but I doubt it.

Yes, we are willing to train someone who is motivated. We won't re-teach linear algebra...

Wait, so will you train them or not? You won't refresh someone on linear algebra which most people haven't touched since their uni days, but you'll put a technical writer through university to become an engineer? Which one is it? Then later on you say the algebra thing is a hard requirement. How do these statements make sense together?

Can't work remotely

This is an automatic disqualifier for many people, for many reasons. I get that you're working with space hardware in clean rooms, but if this means people have to move to the middle of nowhere (or just move, period) and commute for 2 hours each way, then you're disqualifying tons of people, when their alternative is a job where they can work remotely with all the benefits that entails. I'd personally rather be dead than be forced to commute ever again.

We pay well

Define well? Especially with everything else I commented on, is it really "well", if they can join a much less frustrating job and get paid more? Also you sound quite snarky about working at Meta. I'm no fan of FAANG, but if we're talking compensation, I think the snark is unwarranted given the situation.

We expect programmers to remember linear algebra and have more than the ability to shovel frameworks on top of each other...

Again, snarkiness and derision. A bit of a dumb position to take when you're admitting that the easier job not only pays (dramatically) more, but has better conditions (remote work, no clearance-related BS) as well.

No wonder you can't find qualified individuals, your comment alone makes it sound like a miserable job where you're working for bean counters that want to inspect the cloudiness of your piss while forcing you to waste half your life driving to the office and back without extra compensation, while they get to see other, less skilled engineers "glue frameworks together" for double the pay and quadruple the happiness. And I find it rich to comment on advertisers when your company makes weapons that literally kill people. Something about reaper missiles and glass houses comes to mind here.

beambot• 2 years ago

Yes, we pay well.

Prove it. What city are you in, and what is total comp for software engineer & hardware engineer with 20 years of experience?

I worked in national defense. It was a pain in the ass: shit pay, worst politics, massive tolerance for incompetence & mediocrity, meeting hell, and secrecy (necessary, but "need to know" gatekeeping wasnt at times).

kennyloginz• 2 years ago

Hi, How can I get in touch with your hiring department?

profsummergig• 2 years ago

Curious re: "linear algebra".

What kind of understanding is needed? A basic understanding? It's a vast and unending subject.

And there are well known software apps that do linear algebra these days. Do you folks use a particular software to do it?

Engineering Technician: what does an hour in the life of such work look like?

Thanks.

fn-mote2• 2 years ago

Wow, I was all ready to look you up in your profile ... until I read all of the follow-up responses.

I knew it was too good to be true.

teeray• 2 years ago

We won't re-teach linear algebra to a developer applicant

Why not? Isn’t this just part of your ramp-up if it’s a niche qualification? We re-teach networking to developers who probably forgot it—that’s a semester course, easily. If you’re not willing to invest in candidates that are 90% of the way there, then you’re perpetually going to have difficulty hiring.

crystal_revenge2• 2 years ago

We cannot find qualified applicants.

It's not just that you're restricted to US Citizens.

You point out all the issues in your post:

You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance

So, even though I'm adult and it's legal in my state, I can't smoke weed now and then? Oh and depending on the project may be subject to a polygraph... sounds fun!

No, we don't make weapons for the military.

Every.. government... defense... contractor has this speech. Why even pretend that you're not in the war business, which ultimately means killing people? Honestly I would be more comfortable working for an org that wasn't afraid to admit what they do. Making moral compromises is not uncommon in tech, and I don't judge people that choose to do so, but I do judge those that pretend that they're not.

No, you can't work remotely.

I've worked remotely virtually my entire career, including for the Federal government. You may have a good reason for this requirement, but it absolutely shrinks your pool. You don't even mention location, but I'm guessing it's not in a top city like NYC or SF.

Yes, we pay well.

And yet you never give a range. Last time I worked for a DARPA contractor, Google (this was the earlier days) basically hired every elite member of the R&D team in a weekend (exaggerating here, but not much) since both the pay and work was drastically better.

One issue is that we expect programmers to remember linear algebra

Ah great, unjustified ego to boot! I'm sold!

I'm a US Citizen, work in a remote small company doing opensource work largely for the good of the world, likely paid roughly the same, it's nobody's business if I want to smoke weed, and most of the team has a quantitative PhDs (but would blush to mention it) and those that don't could easily teach a course on linear algebra.

I'm just one engineer, but I can't imagine applying at company like you describe. You might have better success hiring qualified applicants if you at least admitted how unattractive such a place is to the many engineers I've work ed with who use linear algebra everyday and tried to find some compromise.

inamberclad• 2 years ago

Ball?

csomar• 2 years ago

Yes, we pay well.
No, we don't pay as much as Meta.

Are you saying you pay well as comparing to the local McDonalds? That being said, my guess you can't find "qualified applicants" is because you are putting too many restrictions and paying too little. So you end up with students who will take anything and then you come here to complain about the lack of talent.

ramrunner0xff• 2 years ago

similarly i am in this ridiculous position. I am a security engineer, wanting to work in vulnerability research. Got an EB2-NIW green card due to my skills being valuable for the national interest. Can't even get an interview because all vulnerability researcher positions require TS clearance... I guess i will just have to wait 4 more years for the citizenship, but it's a pity.

choppaface• 2 years ago

We cannot find qualified applicants.

By chance has your employer posted on HN who’s hiring?

remarkEon14• 2 years ago

No, we don't pay as much as Meta.

Ah, well. Nevertheless...

loeg3• 2 years ago

A lot of people don't want to have to get a security clearance for a mediocre pay job.

randmeerkat• 2 years ago

We cannot find qualified applicants.

What’s the name of your employer?

eigendreams3• 2 years ago

By definition a US Person would not have a visa, since that qualifier only applies to US nationals, permanent residents (which do not need nor have a visa, permanent residents do not apply for admission after status is granted), refugees or asylees.

RHSeeger3• 2 years ago

We won't re-teach linear algebra to a developer applicant but we will pay a tech writer to go to school nights/weekends to get a degree in engineering (me, I did that).

Why? Linear Algebra is certainly something that can be learned faster than a degree in engineering. I expect the average software developer (someone that can understand algorithms) can achieve competency in less than a semester's worth of time. If someone is a good developer, learning specific skills sets for the domain is pretty normal.

mcmcmc2• 2 years ago

The hard truth is that too many people can’t pass the drug test required for security clearance, and that does narrow your applicant pool.

llm_trw• 2 years ago

You have to be eligible for a Secret security clearance.

Having had to go through one of those: yeah no shit. Not everyone enjoys a colonoscopy without anesthesia.

You (even programmers!) have to touch the things we build in order to build them and nobody has an ISO certified clean room in their house.

I do, a keg at any rate, but given that I can't get a security clearance because of the people I hung out to build one - yeah.

achenet• 2 years ago

I'm a programmer, I know linear algebra (I actually have a master's degree in maths). I grew up in Houston, lived there from 1998 to 2010, but never got a citizenship owing to some of my father's medical issues disqualifying us from a green card.

If you're willing to sponsor me for a green card and wait five years, and you're located in a city I'd actually like to live, I might come work for you :)

mr_toad• 2 years ago

programmers to remember linear algebra

Programmers who know linear algebra probably also know basic calculus & stats, so now you’re competing with companies hiring ML engineers.

briandear2• 2 years ago

If you doubled the pay you’d probably have more applicants than you could ever hope for. And why don’t you pay as much as Meta? The defense industrial complex can pay retired generals massive salaries to sit on boards, they can hire the most expensive lobbyists on the Hill. The defense department specifically can’t even pass an audit. They have so much money going out that they can’t even count it. And let’s take Raytheon for example, have you seen the operating margins? They’re huge. So even with these “critical shortages,” somehow they are immensely profitable. If shortages are affecting those margins, then there should be plenty of money to pay “critical” people more. Revenue per employee at Raytheon for example is almost $420,000. For typical manufacturing companies, a “good” number is $300,000. So a “critical” employee is worth a lot more than they’re being paid and there are probably a lot of employees that are dead weight and keeping them around means less money to pay the shortage areas.

I once applied to work a government project for a subcontractor and they were adding “headcount” simply because the terms of the subcontract required a specific number of people regardless of the amount of work required. They were essentially hiring people to do almost nothing. I spent over 3 months waiting for a response. Apparently their critical shortage wasn’t that critical because the hiring process was so long and convoluted and subject to “contract renewals,” that I simply gave up and went to work for someone else.

I could go on for days about the extreme waste and oftentimes outright fraud that happens in government contracting, subcontracting, and sub-sub contracting. And despite formerly having a TS/SCI clearance, any job in the “McLean Area,” pays less than most startups. And jobs in places like Huntsville pay even less. Even overseas work in “austere” environments pays less than a junior developer at Stripe. And you don’t get potentially shot at at Stripe — And I don’t have to work 100 levels deep for contractors or contractors of contractors on site using often circa 1996 development practices and lowest-bidder equipment managed by IT departments that seem to be led by dinosaurs and it can take weeks or months to simply requisition a dev server even within an unclassified cloud environment.

Why to do that for salaries/benefits that are lower than I could get as a janitor at Netflix?

Make the workplace/work environment and benefits compelling and you’ll get more applicants. Small startups literally have better benefits. You also don’t have to endure a Tier 5 investigation — the outcome of which entitles you to a job that pays so little comparatively.

hilux2• 2 years ago

No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed.

FYI, a "US person" means a US citizen or a Permanent Resident.

ponow5• 2 years ago

Define competence. What fraction of graduates in EE and CS from top 50 schools would you regard as competent?

newsclues2• 2 years ago

Have you tried recruiting people in school in mathematics programs?

You’ve repeatedly mentioned being unwilling to train linear algebra skills, but will train other things, so go recruit math nerds.

grumple2• 2 years ago

What you’re saying just doesn’t jive with the experience devs have when applying for jobs. You hear horror stories about juniors applying for hundreds of jobs. They are absolutely qualified for entry level work - they have CS degrees.

I have experienced applying for dozens, including those posted to HN: most won’t respond at all. Maybe months later you’ll get an auto-reject message. Or you’ll go through several interviews not to be selected, even while passing technical assessments. My colleagues and friends have similar experiences.

miningape• 2 years ago

ISO certified clean room in their house

Well it's not ISO certified, and its more of a box than a room. But yes I do actually have access to a sterile (not sanitised) environment at home.

I can't work for you on account of my SA citizenship though. It looks like my only option to get that kind of clearance is to start my own company.

greentxt4• 2 years ago

Look, by "won't reteach" you give it away. Those who are not rusty in linear algebra will tend to be recent grads, younger people who are probably not looking for a boring defense job with no remote somewhere in Alabama. Those jobs appeal to people who may have had enough time to forget how to implement a SVD without googling.

rgbrenner2• 2 years ago

We cannot find qualified applicants. ... [a bunch of requirements] ... No, we don't pay as much as Meta. ... [some more requirements]

The shortage on $5000 ferarris continues as well.

antonvs• 2 years ago

Since more skilled immigration can't solve the requirement, what is it you think would help?

You (even programmers!) have to touch the things we build in order to build them

This sounds like an excuse. You think it's completely impossible to write code for some embedded device, robot, whatever remotely? Hire some cheaper remote hands, set up some telework equipment, voila now you can hire from all over the country.

I did development for a scanning optical microscope, was only once even in the same room with one, and even then never got to touch it.

Of course once that issue is eliminated, the security theater one will be raised next. People might be working from their bed next to a Russian honeypot or whatever. National security types tend to have vivid imaginations in that respect, and have to justify all their rules to themselves. The end result? "We can't find qualified applicants."

Btw I'm technically qualified, and in no way a security risk to the US, but you wouldn't be allowed to hire me. Perhaps the feds should figure out a way of doing security screening for foreign nationals. "Must be a citizen" seems like lazy bureaucratic BS. As if citizens can't be security risks?!

jfwuasdfs• 2 years ago

Yes, we have extensive high school and college work-study/internships and participants make $72k/yr

This is below COL in many areas. If you increase this to 125k like Bucees then you should be able to draw in more candidates.

Jcampuzano25• 2 years ago

Without concrete numbers, all of this is worthless. How much do you pay for the roles you have a shortage, and where are you located so it can be compared with the market rate.

If your pay is anywhere below minimum 75th but more realistically 90th percent market rate in your area your answer is obvious and you are just BSing or your employer is gaslighting you to keep pay down.

All the criteria (required security clearance, no opportunities for remote work, knowledge of skills not used very much outside of schooling without allowances for relearning on the job, only US citizens, etc) you listed automatically creates a hurdle to entry that isn't made up for without significantly higher pay than market rate.

DiggyJohnson6• 2 years ago

Sounds like we work in similar worlds. I completely agree with your experience. I think its a balanced mixture of compensation and qualified applicants.

pizzalife• 2 years ago

No "US Persons" (visa holders) or foreigners allowed.

You are not a US person as a visa holder. You are however a US person if you have permanent residency (green card).

sir0010010• 2 years ago

Hello! Say a developer applied with ~10 years experience without a technical or quantitative degree but have self studied and feel they have a solid understanding of linear algebra using textbooks and online resources such as the Strang course from Opencourseware - would you still interview someone in this situation?

0xffff2• 2 years ago

No, you can't work remotely. You (even programmers!) have to touch the things we build in order to build them and nobody has an ISO certified clean room in their house.

This is just plain wrong. I'm wrapping up on a project where I wrote significant chunks of the flight software for a moon rover while being 99% remote. If you're requiring software engineers to be onsite regularly for non-cleared work, your process sucks, no exceptions.

ETA: By the way, I personally only went fully remote due to covid (although I moved away from the office and have no plans to return), but some of my coworkers have been remote for well over a decade, and this is a government agency. I've seen way better setups in private industry.

rurp2• 2 years ago

As a counterpoint I've been involved with several companies in recent years that did not have a particularly difficult time hiring similar candidates. The only clear difference was that these jobs were remote friendly.

It's impossible to say for sure from the outside but a few factors that might be making it difficult for you to hire:

- A lot of tech workers value remote work these days.

- You aren't based in a location with a large enough talent pool for the work you do.

- Your company doesn't pay as well as you think, or has other details that turn off some potential applicants.

- It could be variance. There's a lot of randomness in the job market.

AlchemistCamp• 2 years ago

We won't re-teach linear algebra to a developer applicant but we will pay a tech writer to go to school nights/weekends to get a degree in engineering (me, I did that).

Do you consider developer applicants who learned linear algebra on their own or through a product like Math Academy?

Google, MS and other large tech companies do.

michaelcampbell• 2 years ago

No, you can't work remotely. You (even programmers!) have to touch the things we build in order to build them and nobody has an ISO certified clean room in their house.

I get that this is a legitimate requirement here, but in many companies it just isn't. And this is a huge limiting factor. The way housing is nowdays, no way I'm moving for a job without a relo package.

This isn't necessarily "we can't find qualified applicants", but rather "...that we will pay enough to make this switch"

chipsrafferty10• 2 years ago

You can't find qualified applicants to work on poor quality technology.

MrSkelter2• 2 years ago

This is a flaw in the system. Candidates from 5-eyes partners should be able to get any clearance necessary. I know from experience that Lockheed has a lot of non US nationals working on secret projects which require clearance. During the F-35 program a ton of Brits were involved, both for the avionics components made in the UK, and as test pilots for VTOl (where Brits were preferred given Harrier experience and their acknowledged skill as the best pilots of that type).

I don’t know why Brits, Canadians, kiwis and Aussies can’t get cleared for you guys. They are getting cleared at every level all the time. NSA, CIA, etc.

thephyber4• 2 years ago

Then you should support this rule change:

Finally, the rule strengthens program integrity by codifying USCIS’ authority to conduct inspections and impose penalties for failure to comply; requiring that the employer must establish that it has a bona fide position in a specialty occupation available for the worker as of the requested start date; clarifies that the Labor Condition Application must support and properly correspond with the H-1B petition; and requires that the petitioner have a legal presence and be subject to legal processes in court in the United States.

booleandilemma• 2 years ago

H-1B is a scam for hiring Indian developers who then become beholden to the companies they work for. That's it.

dosinga• 2 years ago

ah yes, like the CEOs of Google and Microsoft

meme3• 2 years ago

I’m just an outside observer but I would say it’s probably not all a scam. Most of it absolutely is though.

Generally I just see a lot of unfocused writing in this thread. Even the reply to your post is an attempt to muddy the waters with some ambiguous statement. I guess this is a community of developers and we tend to have difficulty with politics and the real world :-)

heeen2• 2 years ago

There may be many Indians, but when I was on h1b me and my colleagues were from Germany, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, India. All of those moved on to other companies, even multiple times and/or went through the green card process.

The salary I got was ok for bay area standards, certainly not rockstar level but would make jaws drop in Germany. For me it was an amazing opportunity and I would recommend it to anyone to do for a while.

ivalm3• 2 years ago

We don’t support h1b, of the last 3000 applicants we had only 1 was qualified. It’s super hard to hire strong swe.

JSteph224• 2 years ago

What kind of salaries are you offering though...

gedy• 2 years ago

3000 applicants we had only 1 was qualified

Not snarking, but you either have a needlessly arbitrary bar, or you've left the applicant pool up to people unqualified to gather applicants (non technical young HR, etc)

011000112• 2 years ago

Yep. We pay a lot. We are a company you've heard of and we're doing well. For our systems engineering roles, we've had a hell of a time finding good people. Plenty of interviews with folks who turn out not to know basic C programming or systems level algorithms.

It seems like systems level programmers are either firmly employed somewhere else or have switch roles to an easier domain. I know I've considered going back to Python programming where I can make the same money with a lot less work.

sciencesama3• 2 years ago

Well they charge you more ! Us is famous for not hiring programmers aged above 50 cuz they are expensive !!

CoastalCoder2• 2 years ago

I used to work for the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Centers, and it was a pretty good experience.

U.S. citizens (and perhaps some dual-citizens) might want to look into such places (Navy warfare centers, NRL, ARL, etc.)

TL;DR:

The top starting pay is about $150k IIRC, which I'm told is somewhat below what a well-funded defense contractor will pay for really good people.

But I worked with some great people, the work was interesting, and it was located in a medium-cost-of-living area.

I left because of the siren call of the startup scene, and frustration with some bureaucratic stuff. But in retrospect I actually liked working there the best.

tshaddox• 2 years ago

But it also doesn't jibe with the reported difficulty US tech companies experience trying to hire US developers.

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

Sorry, on what planet are we onshoring H-1B work? What company can manage the H-1B process but can’t remote to Ukraine or Colombia? Or capitalise their dev expense, inefficiently, granted, with AI?

In a post-remote world these jobs aren’t competing with on-shore labor. This is a populist pitch in the mould of iron work to Pennsylvania.

GoToRO• 2 years ago

The companies that do RTO. Logically, you are right but this is not how those CEOs operate.

danans13• 2 years ago

What company can manage the H-1B process but can’t remote to Ukraine or Colombia? Or capitalise their dev expense, inefficiently, granted, with AI?

All of those are also happening, plus H1-B competition. Offshoring to low-cost countries is more common for maintenance work, or work that is not core to the business or its product innovation.

H1-B workers are often very good at what they do, every bit as good as permanent resident workers, which is precisely why they are competition for permanent resident workers, whether in office or remote.

aprilthird202118• 2 years ago

It's definitely more than 5-10% if you just include FAANG who pay far higher than most average US citizen devs make in salary to both H1Bs and citizen devs.

sciencesama3• 2 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/economicCollapse/comments/1hgghdb/f...

jmyeet3• 2 years ago

Here's a reform I'd like to see: if you've had layoffs in the last 24 months, you as an employer are ineligible to apply for or sponsor or hire an H-1B visa holder for any similar position and "similar" here is broad.

Big Tech, for example, treats SWEs as largely interchangeable. Make a SWE redundant and you can't hire another SWE--anywhere in the country--who is a visa holder for 24 months.

You can buy your way out of this by paying any redundant SWE 3 years of salary and benefits.

Let's see how necessary layoffs really are.

sgerenser3• 2 years ago

This sounds good in theory, but I suspect it would cause companies to mostly switch from layoffs to aggressive performance management (i.e. firing for “poor performance”, stack ranking, etc.)

rayiner8• 2 years ago

It’s a scam. It’s the same thing as “we’d pay $8 for avocados if it wasn’t for illegal immigrants” with flowery language.

onetimeusename3• 2 years ago

They are required to by law but I saw something odd once. My company published the job they wanted an immigrant to fill in some weird printed newspaper that I doubt had much readership if any so obviously they got no offers. Then they take that and say they couldn't find a citizen for the role so they had to get an immigrant. I still question if maybe I missed something because if what I saw is true, it really breaks the spirit of the law. Obviously HR and managers handled it all and they don't tell me details like that but I found out about it later when I witnessed a form sent to the Dept. of Labor for someone I knew.

Bjorkbat• 2 years ago

That’s pretty common and not actually limited to H1-Bs

I know universities will do this with certain open positions where they already have a candidate in mind but are required to advertise an opening, can’t remember the specifics why though. Same with RFPs.

Really easy system to defeat.

bubblethink7• 2 years ago

What you are talking about is PERM. That's a requirement that the department of labor has established. When you want to hire an immigrant permanently, DOL requires that you take out an ad in a Sunday newspaper. It benefits the lawyers and the government greatly as this is a good source of revenue for both of them. As far as the actual job goes, that job was never open. The person is already working for the company on a visa. DOL just makes them do this dog and pony show before they can hire them permanently. These regulations are a few decades old and were never updated.

Spooky237• 2 years ago

Developers aren’t fungible, and are hard to hire. Try getting a bunch of people to sling some boring Java or mainframe code. They don’t exist.

The trap with the older worker is a guy wants $250k, but will perform at the level of a $75/hr body shop guy. Skills don’t align - that’s always the risk of engineering.

vaxman• 2 years ago

Haha, you're so wrong, Spooky23. Older workers love doing "boring" work that younger workers do not enjoy. What's more, a 1337 definition of "senior level" that I used back in the day was the ability to walk into a project and not have the urge to begin rewriting everything, something virtually every non-senior level worker (and many senior idiots) may have the urge to do. Here in the (dystopian) future (from my perspective), you can go on YouTube to watch a video about "How to write the clean code, by Uncle Bob" (cringe) and "My life as a Senior level Dev" (uber cringe). Please make a note of it.

While here, adding that we need Executive action to ban H1B workers and tariff BPOs at 250% from countries that have not ratified the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I speculate that even Elon Musk Actual will approve of this restriction.

Lastly, to avoid posting a response to another comment, going to mention that there is nothing quite like having a head-hunter with an accent that sounds roughly like he is talking with a rotary egg-beater jammed into his mouth call you up and ask you a series of disqualification questions for a position that he already has sourced from offshores labor pool (so as to check the box that he personally certifies there are no American workers qualified for the work). Their customer doesn't want to know how the sausage is made, they just want cheap bodies for unimportant low-level work and this is what it takes under the current Law. I actually have a friend who was paid very well to let an H1B follow him around for several months learning his job before he was let go and lost his home, wife and wound up moving in with his parents. He went to the US Government to complain and ended up at Google for a while before moving on to a Unicorn.

If the H1B have side-hustles like starting Zoom, doing what Satya did, or their spouses create incredible non-tech businesses, that's really great..but what about all the American peeps (AND THEIR KIDS) that were jipped out of that opportunity by lax enforcement of America's laws, only to ultimately hear "See, we need to keep letting so many H1B people and their criminal recruiters warehouse them in apartments and work for dog food because so many of them have gone on to create such tremendous economic activity for America" (ie, a self-fulfilling prophecy).

heartbreak• 2 years ago

The trap with the older worker is a guy wants $250k, but will perform at the level of a $75/hr body shop guy.

Casual ageism as if it won’t be you one day

commandlinefan3• 2 years ago

wants $250k, but will perform at the level of a $75/hr

So... literally what we've been saying about the H1B visa program for decades? That Americans _are_ available with the skillset you need, but not willing to work for the wages you're offering, so you bring somebody from overseas, which is actually illegal per the H1B rules that never get enforced?

stego-tech• 2 years ago

My sentiments exactly. The visa is highly exploitative by design, so it selects cheap labor from abroad at the expense of workers at home. Any posturing by employers claiming they can’t find qualified domestic applicants or governments claiming they’re protecting workers is hogwash.

If we really valued this foreign labor, we’d make permanent residency a requirement of the visa rather than block it. Of course, if we offered immigrants permanent residency status then companies would have to pay them substantially more, which is the whole point of the H1B.

baby• 2 years ago

Yes. I got my internship in Chicago (J1), later failed the H-1B because of the lottery (twice) so had to leave, spent a year and half in England and managed to get back on a Greencard. Now I have citizenship. I created a startup also.

Now, was I essential to the US? Probably not. They probably could have found someone else.

I'm not sure if that's good enough to say I should not have been accepted here.

m00x9• 2 years ago

I do coding interviews 2-3x/week for a private, but large company.

We do not lack candidates, but we lack qualified candidates. Most people that I interview have no clue how software actually works. Most are leetcode monkeys or just really awful.

We mostly hire seniors because of the industry we're in, but we've started hiring interns and juniors due to the lack of decent candidates.

We'd love to hire US candidates, but there's just a huge lack.

throwaway20376• 2 years ago

If this true, why doesn't FAANG have the same problems? I noticed that your post did not discuss any of the negatives about your company or its offers. When I have struggled in the past to hire, it is always because my company or its offers were pathetic. Pretty simple. If your company or offers are weak, then your candidate pipeline will (likely) be weak.

ponector3• 2 years ago

Decent candidates have more opportunities. Decent candidates have already a decent job. Why should they apply to your company?

alecco• 2 years ago

The majority look for leetcode monkeys more than experience. I gave up applying because of that.

mrep3• 2 years ago

From your other comment, you pay $400-700k for L4-L6.

Since your company is private what percent of that is liquid (cash or RSUs you can immediately sell for cash). Also, what locations are you hiring in?

Cause, if you are asking me to move to the outrageous housing market that is the bay area only to make half my money in shitty stock options that might not evaluate to anything, than I think I found your problem.

Aleksdev• 2 years ago

Yes, I don’t understand this either. Nowadays you have to be a senior just to get an entry level position in the USA. There are plenty of mid level developers that are struggling to find a job.

I guess it will be interesting times ahead. I recommend everyone to keep their skills sharp!

phendrenad2• 2 years ago

Friend of mine worked for a Fortune 500 company that was playing an interesting game: They would open a job req with a narrow set of qualifications. If a US citizen showed up and matched the qualifications, they would hire them, then eliminate their position 6 months later. But then they'd slightly change the job qualifications to exclude that person, and try again. (It seemed like it was part of some lobbying effort to say "Look how many job openings we can't fill!")

thumbsup-_-• 2 years ago

There are plenty of software engineers but many of them may not be qualified for the currently open jobs. So, yes, there are open jobs and there are unhired americans but programs like H1-b make even more highly talented pool of people available which in turn increases innovation and productivity in economy.

So, it's not just a plain numbers game, it's more about innovation, productivity, talent pools and of course, capitalism.

bigmattystyles• 2 years ago

You get top talent from abroad compared to an average citizen; seen through that lens, is a good thing.

steelframe• 2 years ago

where the hiring company has even looked for US applicants

I've worked at a company where >90% of the technical interviews I conducted were H1-B hires. It makes perfect sense for a tech company to bias the applicant deck in this way for a few reasons. They're willing to accept a lower comp package. Once they're onboard, they will generally keep their head down, do whatever they're asked to do, and accept whatever working conditions they get without complaining. That said, I've known several brilliant H1-B workers. However I've noticed that they rarely stick their neck out and challenge the status quo, which can lead to bad ideas receiving unquestioning and persistent efforts to implement in spite of the writing being on the wall about that project's inevitable demise.

I've worked at companies that hire primarily non-H1-B workers, and I can tell you that the amount of complaining about working conditions in particular at those companies was a couple of orders of magnitude more raucous. The end result of a complacent workforce was a soulless office with ubiquitous infrared sensors, no available meeting spaces, a microkitchen stocked with a pittance of moldy food, and with floating workstations where the equipment was chronically broken or missing.

danielktdoranie• 2 years ago

Exactly, it's creaper to fire foriegn workers as they will work for much less. It's a racket. I hope the Trump adminstration cracks down on this. Employers need to prove there's no available and qualified applicant beofore the H-1B is approved. They also need to prove they are paying the same to a domestic applicant as they would a foreign candidate.

joshfraser• 2 years ago

There is no one over 40 playing in the NBA. Is that due to age discrimination as well?

sotix• 2 years ago

It certainly stinks as a software engineer laid off in January who has struggled to find work. The hiring bar is too high at every company. They’re actively looking for reasons to eliminate you rather than reasons to pass you. That mindset leads to an overly cynical evaluation. I find it crazy to be rejected before an initial screening at a company I’ve been referred to, yet it has happened a few times.

At this point I feel like I’m relying entirely on luck and hoping for someone to pay it forward by “taking a chance” on me even though I feel perfectly capable. Surely there’s a single company that I could work out for despite not having 5 years of experience.

MrSkelter2• 2 years ago

I was an H1-B in the late 90s. I have been a US citizen for over a decade.

I come from an extremely wealthy Northern European country integral to founding the United States and English is my first language. I was not compelled to emigrate for a “better life”. I gave up a lot to be in the US.

H1-Bs are designed for abuse. There is no shortage of skilled workers. It’s just that immigrants are cheap.

I was hired in my country from a pool of over 500 for one of two jobs. Once accepted it took close to a year to do the legal paperwork. My sponsoring company was paying lawyers $600 an hour twenty years ago to get the work done. Despite being absolutely squeaky clean they easily invested 25k per applicant then.

When I arrived my pay tripled. I was earning 50-60k in the US and had been under 20 before. That was very low in my home country but it was a starting position and wages are lower outside the Us for myriad reasons even though living standards on low wages are higher.

The kicker was that similarly skilled Americans to myself were all earning 6 figures then. The industry I was in had a strong base in NY and the company that hired me was in LA. Their options were to pay 100k plus and relocate Americans from NY, or pay half that and relocate Europeans.

Better yet we were more qualified than the average American (as they got to pick the very best) and we were tied to them by the legal work and thus “indentured”. If we wanted to leave them we had to go home or find more sponsorship.

On arrival my colleague and I immediately realized we were both overqualified and under paid (pre internet this was much harder to discover). We ran rings round the locals. When our visas needed renewal the company “advertised” our jobs by placing printed sheet behind notice boards and claimed that was sufficient. It was a complete con.

Ironically I didn’t last very long. Given my skills and experience I found companies willing to sponsor my ViSAs and green card (which my first company sponsored for me also). So I was able to move around and establish myself.

In short the system has always been abused. The idea is good but as long as companies can choose to pay non competitive rates to immigrants they will do so and lie about the true state of the market. That’s what the system does and the purpose of a system IS what it does. It’s just lowering wages by importing skilled foreigners.

FL33TW00D• 2 years ago

Surprised by all the negativity here.

The USA benefits enormously from skilled immigration: "doubling the size of the US H1B visa program increases US and EU growth by 4% in the long-run"

From a recent paper here: https://academic.oup.com/qje/advance-article-abstract/doi/10...

tokioyoyo4• 2 years ago

It’s a slowdown in tech recruitment, so it is fair for citizens to think for themselves first. There are quite a lot of candidates that can fulfill most of the roles, and it has bad optics when the government tries to prioritize others.

Disclaimer: I don’t live in the states, but I can understand the frustration.

ponty_rick3• 2 years ago

That would work in the short term. In the long term, jobs would leave the USA so companies won't have to deal with immigration uncertainties.

hx8• 2 years ago

Tech isn't a zero sum game, it's a growth market. If some H-1B talent helps grow a company faster, then they can increase their own citizen employee count faster.

punksatoni3• 2 years ago

You have to first answer why few locals outside Stanford-Berkeley-MIT-CMU are hired out of school. Is it because all non-top-4 schools under prepare students? Is it before foreign workers are that much better? Or is it because companies are looking for underpaid workers they can abuse and keep in a state of limbo?

If CS degrees from non-top-4 schools are not valuable, best to get that out so US students are not studying useless degrees.

doug_durham• 2 years ago

That's simply not true. You have no data to back that cynical view.

titanomachy9• 2 years ago

At the moment, at least in the trillion-dollar web companies, it seems not many people are being hired straight out of school at all. A new grad would have to really stand out to get hired in a field of experienced candidates. The potential cost savings of hiring a new grad doesn't seem to matter much to these companies.

In the past, I've seen a lot of new-grad hires from the top 30 or so schools, but not so many from the top 5. More likely Michigan, Maryland, or Washington than Stanford or MIT (I'm on the West Coast). Pandemic-era Stripe was an exception, they seemed to hire only top 5, but they were also offering outrageous pay at that time.

Someone graduating from a school not in the top 30 probably needs to adjust their expectations away from Google or Meta, at least for a first job, unless they have good connections and interview very well.

Back to your original point though, I think it's plausible that most schools not in the top 30 (charitably, top 50) are actually incapable of some combination of (1) attracting sufficiently smart and motivated students and (2) educating them adequately.

8f2ab37a-ed6c3• 2 years ago

This is the bit that I've always found confusing. When it comes to blue collar jobs, people in the upper echelons will gladly advocate the wonders of millions of people entering the job market to compete with Americans.

But as soon as it's their own market that introduces additional competition, they will advocate "just pay people more, the job seekers exist, just not at the wages employers are offering, this extra competition only depresses American wages".

Which one is it? Is it "competition for other classes, no competition for my class please"?

macintux• 2 years ago

There are many, many blue collar jobs which Americans don’t want to do at the prevailing wages (or at all). Agriculture is a prime example of this.

There are relatively few high skilled, high paying jobs which Americans don’t want to do.

n144q6• 2 years ago

I am not surprised.

People don't like the fact that they actually need to be competitive in skills to get a job. Had there been no H-1Bs, they could submit a resume and immediately get a job offer!

No joke. I look around in my company, Indians and Chinese (among others) are good at their jobs and do amazing work.

Some people just don't like that. They blame not being able to get a good job offer on Indians taking away the opportunity, not themselves being good developers.

This post is the place where they can vent.

acedTrex• 2 years ago

You have had a very different experience with h1b workers then I have.

pknomad• 2 years ago

It's also missing the point. The verbiage around H1B is "to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities", not artificially inflate competition for jobs. This issue was contentious even during the good times and I'm not surprised that it's flaring up during the bad times.

There are plenty of smart and excellent workers who come mainland China and India for sure but there are plenty of people who don't or come through the abuse of the program.

UniverseHacker7• 2 years ago

As an academic scientist in the USA, it is an amazing opportunity to work with bright people from all over the world. I feel lucky that I am from the place where this happens, and I don't personally have to travel overseas for it- but certainly would if I hadn't been from here. The scientists that come here from all over the world make discoveries that help everyone, but the companies that spin out of them usually end up US based and are a major driver of the economy. When we do hiring, it is only about 1/4 of the time or so I would say that we get a highly qualified applicant that is a US citizen.

returningfory22• 2 years ago

Yeah. Do people really think that Silicon Valley would be such a huge economy (and a huge job creator for US citizens) if the US had never allowed immigrants to work there?

liontwist7• 2 years ago

Which came first?

blululu• 2 years ago

There were >100000 layoffs at tech companies in the last 4 years because companies “overhired”. The government is finally taking action to address a “labor shortage” in this sector, because these same companies cannot find anyone to hire? Something doesn’t add up here but a lot of people who have been given a pretty raw deal.

nopcode• 2 years ago

How is it possible that the labour force suddenly produced all those tech workers domestically during a pandemic?

What's not adding up is the qualifications of those people that got overhired.

happytoexplain7• 2 years ago

I find it hard to believe you are surprised. In disagreement, sure. Surprised? This is an enormous, dramatic issue. People on both sides rightfully perceive it as borderline existential.

liontwist7• 2 years ago

Who benefits from that growth of the native population is unemployed or underemployed?

xingped• 2 years ago

Really? You're surprised? You're surprised that a country and industry continuing to suffer from ongoing layoffs after layoffs, both stealth and honest, could possibly be negative about their government saying "yeah, let's bring in _more_ foreign workers while our own citizens can't find or keep their jobs"? The audacity!

citrin_ru• 2 years ago

As person who is not currently trying to immigrate to the US I have mixed feelings. One one hand I wish all best to people who do want to move to the US, on other hand a non-broken H-1B could accelerate brain drain from the country I'm living in (which will be one more blow to already struggling economy).

sneed_chucker3• 2 years ago

"The USA benefits..."

Who actually benefits?

Glyptodon2• 2 years ago

Are they accepting them in descending order of total compensation yet?

ashconnor6• 2 years ago

This would be a great way to starve every industry outside of tech of H1B workers.

bradlys5• 2 years ago

The working conditions for Americans suck due to this fucking program. People come here to live subservient lives and bring along a toxic culture of submission. The level of ass licking that I see on the regular is akin to a well known Korean airline going into the side of a mountain. It is insane the level of deference you will find.

All this hype about the "smartest, brightest, etc." is nonsense. I've worked with hundreds of engineers in SV who are all on H1B. They are no better than anyone else. My main complaint with them is that their work is fine but the culture they bring is insanely toxic and does not allow for any psychological safety at all. I know enough people in industry for a long period of time to know that it wasn't always this way. There were always problems but it has hit a level that is insane. The fact that an American is a minority nationality when in almost any US tech company is bonkers.

sfblah3• 2 years ago

I'm in favor of immigration generally, but I actually agree with the cultural argument here. The toxic culture really shows up in interviewing. Recently I've repeatedly had to deal with interviewees obviously cheating with AI tools. Also, while I agree that folks on H-1 visas are around the same qualification-wise as citizens, I also agree that their primary interest is always their visa, not doing a good job as an employee.

JackYoustra15• 2 years ago

Yeah, I think that the solution here is to make the visa easier though? If they don't worry about it then they won't be so focused on it.

cute_boi3• 2 years ago

I wish USCIS was very strict about those guys who is coming in H1b from India incapable of doing anything and hire guy from india to do all their work.

asoneth3• 2 years ago

I wonder if switching from a lottery to an auction would help curtail some of the abuse?

That is, for each position a company wants to fill with a non-citizen they also have to bid on the visa fee they're willing to pay. The highest ~7,000 bids that month are accepted and paid to the government in exchange for a visa.

We could debate things like sealed-bid versus open auction and uniform-price versus paying your bid but whatever details we pick I suspect this would allow us to discover which companies are actually desperate for skills and which primarily use it as a cost-savings measure.

(I'm also curious how much H-1B visas would cost if there was a market: thousands of dollars? tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? more?)

punksatoni3• 2 years ago

Yes it would.

This would prevent abuse of foreigners who are underpaid. It would also allow most of the applicants to go to good jobs (FAANG) which can pay premiums salaries.

Reverse auction is the best way to go. Good for foreigners, good for top companies, economically the best option.

huevosabio• 2 years ago

Probably hundreds of thousands. A big reason master programs can command such a massive price tag is that they are tickets to enter the US labor market.

It also has the benefit of giving the government an incentive to increase the quota to get more revenue.

cheriot• 2 years ago

This is the simplest way to improve the H1-B system!

dragonwriter• 2 years ago

The simplest way to improve the H-1B system is to abolish it.

The better but slightly less simple way is to abolish it (and a bunch of other employment-related visa categories), but also allow individuals who aren’t personally barred from entry because of past misconduct, etc., but who are not eligible (or wish to bypass wait times) for admission under other existing visa categories to pay an fee (which others, including employers, can subsidize if they wish, but gain no special power over future status by so doing) for a limited term, renewable employment-eligible status that becomes eligible to transition to permanent residency automatically after a set time in status. (This also fixes a number of other problems in the immigration system beyond the H-1B.)

Aperocky5• 2 years ago

Think you would also lose everyone that's not working in IT/finance in an instant (or until whenever their visa expires).

The biologist, geologist, physicists and the likes.

diebeforei4852• 2 years ago

Lottery only applies for initial employment, not for renewals.

Most physicists and biologists and geologists work in universities or labs or other institutions, which are cap-exempt anyway and don't go through the lottery.

darth_avocado7• 2 years ago

Remember, H1B isn’t always about tech, even if we’d all like to pretend it is. You’ll have to have separate bidding process for different occupations, otherwise you’ll end up with a system where Facebook will get all the visas, while in some cases, doctors would not be sponsored.

H8crilA• 2 years ago

How is that resolved now? Uniform probability sampling across all requests, regardless of occupation?

liontwist7• 2 years ago

Good. There is no shortage of doctors except the one created by accreditation cartel.

asoneth3• 2 years ago

I'm curious what makes you think tech workers would monopolize the top spots? I would expect that companies desperate for experts in medicine, research, engineering, law, business (which, like tech, already pay high salaries) would be similarly willing to pay a premium to be able to hire the best from other countries.

superfrank3• 2 years ago

I actually think that could end up having the opposite effect in lower paying fields.

An mid level engineer at Google averages $280k/yr according to levels. A principal mechanical engineer at Boeing averages $170k/yr according to levels. If Google can pay an H1-B engineer 70% of what a non H1-B employee would get ($196k), they can bid up to 80k and still save money.

Since Boeing is going for a high level employee who actually highly skilled, it's less likely that they would be able to underpay their candidate, but even if they could pay their H1-B employee 70% of the market rate ($117k), they only have ~$50k to before they hit the break even point.

Obviously if the person is highly skilled and Boeing actually needs them it would make sense to bid beyond the break even point, but Boeing needs to be more choosy than Google. In that scenario, Google should put every single L4 candidate up for and H1-B because if even one gets their bid accepted it saves them money. Boeing actually has to decide which candidates they're willing to overpay for which will result in a smaller pool of mechanical engineers being put up for H1-B visas.

ponty_rick3• 2 years ago

Only the base salary counts, not the total comp. That 280k/yr sounds like total comp - includes base+bonus+RSUs. The average base would be more along the lines of 150k-190k.

throwaway20376• 2 years ago

    > Since Boeing is going for a high level employee who actually highly skilled

"actually": Are you saying that mid-level engineer at Google making ~300K/yr is not actually highly skilled?

asoneth3• 2 years ago

The implication that companies use H1-B visas primarily to find candidates willing to work for less (e.g. 70%) of a qualified domestic candidate seems like the underlying loophole we should try to close, not just the "fairness" of allocating which companies and fields deserve to exploit this loophole.

But your post raises a good point that money is an imperfect proxy for "value" -- a company with high profit margins can outbid leaner companies (or nonprofits) for a visa, even if the relative value of that visa to the rich company is not as high as it would have been to the other companies.

Three thoughts in response:

First, this "unfairness" doesn't seem unique to a visa auction. Isn't it already "unfair" that mediocre developers at Google earn more than expert mechanical engineers at Boeing?

Second, assuming H1-B visas lower average salaries in the fields where they're used most, then if this program ends up primarily applying to the highest-paid positions (like mid-level engineers at Google) then this might end up reducing some of the "unfairness" above.

Third, I wonder which scheme (lottery or auction) Boeing and their hypothetical H1-B candidate would prefer themselves. Tech companies already game the system and let other companies fight for scraps so having a more predictable (if expensive) pathway may end up being slightly preferable to all parties.

ponty_rick3• 2 years ago

Why not just auction on the candidate's salary instead of paying a tax to the government who will burn your money anyway.

pjfin123• 2 years ago

An auction is a great idea. If a foreign worker is valuable enough then companies should be willing to pay up for them. Then the American People can benefit in multiple ways, we get the revenue paid into the auction, and we get the economic benefits of high skill foreign workers. Let the market decide.

Currently the lottery gets spammed by IT outsourcing firms: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-staffing-firms-game-...

The American People built this country into the economic powerhouse it is today; we should reap the benefits of all this economic activity not random outsourcing firms.

testfrequency2• 2 years ago

Honestly insane how much racist rhetoric I’m reading online (and surprisingly now HN) regarding this news...

I suppose 2025 is starting early.

edit: case in point, downvoted for simply saying I’m noticing a lot of racism from the (you know who) crowd - as all the comments against this are often followed with “trump will fix this” or “your country needs birth control” or “india shouldn’t be allowed to get visas”

UniverseHacker7• 2 years ago

I am slowly coming to grips with the fact that this is a genuine widespread hate movement, and the average person that supports it deeply feels this hatred, and personally blames their problems on anyone from another country, culture, or skin color- and doesn't believe those people deserve to be treated as human. I couldn't be more disappointed, angry, and terrified about what comes next.

testfrequency2• 2 years ago

Right there with you.

Also now seeing my comment is shadowbanned.

HN has really been pretty strong in silencing “counterpoints” as of late. No idea why the moderation team would read a comment like mine and feel compelled to hide it, for simply saying there’s a lot of hate speech regarding this topic. There’s still tons of comments on this thread that are very accusatory of foreigners abusing a fully legal system and logical path towards becoming an american citizen.

edc1172• 2 years ago

Far too extreme a view. I'm very unhappy with the H1-B program and how it has been used to depress wages for engineers, but I understand (and agree with) the need for us to compete globally and not stagnate. I have nothing but respect for a lot of overseas engineers and have worked with some very intelligent, kind, generous individuals in my time.

What I strongly oppose is - and I've seen this up close and personal three times in the last five years - large companies or investment companies buying/merging smaller companies, then gradually offshoring/firing (about 10-20% per year) US jobs in favor of overseas jobs while keeping their customer base. These companies, their revenue streams, their customers exist because of US employees and engineers, and yet they're thrown out at the first chance because someone overseas will do the work for less (often one third of a US salary). This is a complete betrayal of the people who worked to build these companies in the first place. These revenue streams would not exist without them.

H1-B is used in a very similar way: they get anyone they can over here, and pay them 10-20% less than a US counterpart, then use that to justify lower wages/raises to existing employees.

I agree that some people unfairly blame the overseas engineer, but don't simply write them off as racist or hateful - they're having their livelihoods taken from them, and leadership is very good at hiding or shifting blame.

souvlakee• 2 years ago

If you're interested in judging others' work in hackathons for your O1 or EB1a, email me at halloumee [at] proton [dot] me.

nojvek• 2 years ago

They still left the multiple applications for one person rule.

Seems the lobby was strong to allow consultancies like Tata and wipes to continue what they are doing to get most of cap.

jmspring• 2 years ago

If there are US Citizens available (even if not local), H1s should not be a consideration. Period.

JackYoustra15• 2 years ago

Frictional unemployment exists, so this effectively bars H1s.

JasserInicide• 2 years ago

Sentiments like this make someone automatically racist/xenophobic now. God forbid someone care about their fellow countrymen over foreigners...

rayiner8• 2 years ago

Why is this dropping the week before Christmas.

sashank_1509• 2 years ago

I always see a lot of people arguing that H1bs are taking away jobs from qualified Americans by willing to work long hours and work cheaper. That may be true, but in my brief exposure to the tech industry it does not feel true because the salaries and perks are so high, it doesn’t seem like tech companies are exploiting workers and hiring “cheap H1b labour”.

A lot of my batch (all H1b masters) when to Meta and Amazon. All of them were paid 200k+ right out of masters, one was even paid 430k. So is the claim that if these H1bs did not exist, companies would pay 250k+ to those out of masters? And 500k+ to exceptional candidates? If OpenAI was legally allowed to hire anyone from India, China etc, would they stop providing 800k+ salaries? In fact, we know from experience that this is not true because if you go to OpenAI’a website they explicitly mention apply from wherever you want and they will handle immigration. And you also see that they did successfully hire some folks from remote countries with exorbitant salaries.

A much simpler explanation, is that in tech companies employees are not a cost center but a profit generation center. And so tech companies are not looking to save costs by paying H1bs less, but are simply looking to hire the best and pay whatever is needed to keep them. Market competition tends to determine salaries far more than employee labour pool, especially when talent is always in short supply.

This theory also seems more correct to me, in that it predicts places where H1b labor would shortchange existing tech workers. It would be wherever employees are a cost center, legacy businesses that need software but would like to just get it done as cheaply as possible. By definition most of these companies would not be FAANG adjacent, but would instead be companies like say Target that needs simple software that works reasonably well at a low cost. An equitable solution then would be to put a flat minimum salary on H1b’s, say 200k, that would remove most of the cases where H1bs are hired to short change Americans, and not affect much of the talent hiring that big tech does. It’s only negative affect would be on startups, which generally pay low salaries, but would now have to pay high salaries for immigrants.

basiccalendar742• 2 years ago

this is a well-studied tradeoff with immigration. high-skilled immigration helps US economy and innovation but low-skilled immigration depresses wages for citizens. you are making this distinction for a narrow case i.e. tech.

JackYoustra15• 2 years ago

show me the study for broad-spectrum lasting wage depression for low-skilled immigration? The mariel boatlift study shows basically no effect: https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf

schappim• 2 years ago

It's encouraging to see DHS attempting to update the H-1B program in ways that address longstanding pain points like the unpredictability of transferring jobs, the complexity around defining a "specialty occupation," and the painfully slow application processes. The US economy benefits when companies can more easily hire and retain the talent they genuinely need, rather than having the system incentivise questionable staffing practices or endless guesswork over whether a given degree is "close enough" to the job description.

However, this final rule doesn't magically solve the deeper structural issues. For example, the per-country caps on green cards still leave many H-1B workers stuck in decades-long queues if they're from certain countries. That reality discourages risk-taking, entrepreneurship, and long-term roots,something that runs counter to the very idea of welcoming skilled people. While allowing spouses to work and making it easier to switch roles will improve day-to-day life for some, the broader immigration pipeline remains complicated and slow.

The real test will be in implementation and enforcement. Will the new definitions and stricter oversight actually reduce abuse by staffing firms who've flooded the lottery with dubious registrations? Will the simplified criteria for specialty occupations translate to smoother hiring and fewer headaches for workers and employers alike?

In short: good steps, but we're still a long way from a truly balanced system that reliably identifies, welcomes, and retains global talent without leaving them in extended legal limbo. It's progress, but the ultimate success depends on how these rules play out in the real world,and whether future administrations build on these changes instead of rolling them back.

moosedman• 2 years ago

Well I'm never voting for a Democrat ever again. Doesn't matter what the GOP does.

JackYoustra15• 2 years ago

how about an insurrection? Would the fake electors scheme do it for you?

janalsncm5• 2 years ago

The number one issue software engineers should care about is using foreign talent to undercut wages. A cursory look at H1B salaries shows this is rampant.

There’s a big difference between “we can’t find any talent” and “we can’t find any talent at our price point”. The former should be granted an H1B. The latter is abusing the system.

rm_-rf_slash• 2 years ago

Is a startup that has to make do with the funding it has abusing the system by hiring an H1B?

“Raise more money” is not an acceptable or reasonable answer.

valicord2• 2 years ago

A cursory look at H1B salaries shows this is rampant.

Where does one get a cursory look at H1B salaries? If you're referring to various websites that publish H1B petition data, then you might be interested to know that they don't show actual salaries, only the minimum amounts that the company is required to pay by law. The actual salary can and often is higher, based on the specific employee negotation/performance/etc, same as any regular non-H1B job.

laptopdev• 2 years ago

Shoe horn-y

SaintSeiya• 2 years ago

Great, as if we needed more outsourcing, I cannot even get a single interview despite being an ex FAANG software developer, unemployed for more than a year. Not even for entry level jobs. The final nail in the coffin.

cadamsau• 2 years ago

For everyone who thinks H-1B and its ilk make it possible to hire foreign workers at below what citizens are paid - have a look on your favorite search engine for:

“Prevailing wage condition”

It’s a requirement that’s part of the Labor Condition Application wherein based on the location you’ll work (the “Metropolitan Service Area” or MSA) to be granted a visa your employer must prove they’ll pay you above publicly available and published minimum wages for each job title.

These wages are public. If you have a problem with what they’re permitted to pay H-1B workers, the published prevailing wages are what you have a problem with. Spoiler though: they’re actually pretty accurate.

Here is one example of how hard it is to underpay workers on visas: during the pandemic, workers on visas were not legally allowed to be furloughed, because they would run the risk of not meeting the prevailing wage that year, putting the employer out of compliance with the LCA and subject to fines in the event of an audit. So what happened in practice was negotiated unpaid leave or in most cases the US gov covered wages via programs like PPP.

Now this is all out the window if the published prevailing wage for a given occupation is too low or the employer somehow sneaks one by the consular officials approving petitions - by selecting a title too junior for the applicant’s years of experience, for example. There will always be anecdata that makes this seem like a huge problem so be wary because one story does not a trend make. As mentioned above, by and large the prevailing wages are pretty on point with what American citizens are paid.

The reality of the way this system works is it’s WAY more technical than fearmongerers would have you believe. Visa holders are very much NOT undercutting anyone and the H-1B is not a completely broken system - even though the lottery and the fraudulent applications cause hell for applicants and employers it does basically do what it’s intended to do. So besides the exploitative situation these changes seem to proactively address, it mostly works and alongside the O-1 and a few other visa categories, has played a key role in the US’ ongoing supremacy in AI and many other industries.

Source: Australian citizen spent over 6 years working in SF on an E-3 visa which is very similar to H-1B.

willcipriano• 2 years ago

Hire junior aerospace engineer with senior aerospace experience. Subject engineer to working conditions and long hours that domestic labor wouldn't tolerate. Get 1.5 - 3 senior aerospace engineers for the price of 1 junior.

JackYoustra15• 2 years ago

let them all in! People can earn three times more just by being in the US and we benefit by lower inflation.

EDIT: I encourage people to read two stories

Qian Xuesen - what happens when you deport skilled laborers

https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf - one of the first studies on immigration econ effects on wages. A good starting point

darkhorse222• 2 years ago

No offense to the very hardworking H1B guys I've worked with, but I'm not a fan because they'll do anything the company says. They are used as scabs to undermine developers leverage. This was especially clear during RTO. It's the same issue of manufacturing stuff in china. Of course an H1B will be a good puppet, if you threaten to fire them you're sending them back home to another country!

webninja• 2 years ago

100%.

ggm• 2 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but the vast amount of illegal and semi legal migrant workers being exploited suggests what the US needs is a visa system for unskilled labour, not for skilled.

Why does everyone think the cure to the worlds ills is to have more doctors and not more toilet cleaners? People can die from dirty hands on doorknobs faster than from smoking: Basic sanitation work, food work is important. If current US residents won't do this stuff, pick food, clean up, then isn't the answer to bring them in or do we really prefer to have them live in a twilight, semi-illegal world? Really?

ein0p• 2 years ago

Biden (or whoever actually runs the country, since it's most definitely not Biden) is trying to undermine Trump's plan to turn H1-B into an auction, which is how it should be run, IMO. That's all there is to it. This will be canceled next year.

gadders• 2 years ago

This is just the result of lobbying by big business so they can import cheap labour to suppress wages.

zeroc8• 2 years ago

I'm a highly specialized software developer with 30 years of experience.

I could save our customer, a huge US entity, a lot of money by moving to the states for the duration of the project. I don't have a college degree though, which seems to be a requirement for the H1-B.

What a bummer.

xpl3• 2 years ago

There is L1 visa that does not require a degree. And there is no quota/lottery. It requires you to work for a U.S. employer overseas for at least a year though.

JCM9• 2 years ago

Will probably get undone in the first 10 minutes of the next administration.

rednafi• 2 years ago

H-1B is a terrible visa. I went through it with a few of my peers. Working in the US is great, but it’s not the only option. I moved out after two years and settled somewhere that values stability over the churn-and-burn culture. Couldn’t be happier.

witnesser25• 2 years ago

I can say sth: - particularly in SC market, the computer science or related areas (almost all JDs have this sentence). The 'related areas' brought in so many in-qualified that even can not answer what is a truth-table (we are not the DOJ). - The whole thing has been abused for decades "."

witnesser25• 2 years ago

Also many anxious parents with children graduated from UC etc with absolute CS,CE degrees staying at home.

witnesser25• 2 years ago

The companies hiring H-1x should publish all job hiring process (interviews, exams questions) at least at closing to all candidates. Thus it is subject to "objective" review.

witnesser25• 2 years ago

I mean it won't be difficult to use gen ai to analyze where a candidate is compared to the peers. So it is a 'objective' offer or rejection.

witnesser25• 2 years ago

Particularly for public-list companies (no security clearance needed etc), they should 'open-source' or 'wiki' their hiring process to 0-opacity.

Updates to H-1B

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