No doubt h1b is abused. Corporations use it to structurally underpay tech labor. Shame to anyone defending this abuse as some sort of pro immigration policy - it hurts both domestic workers and underpays migrant labor. The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?
> shame to anyone defending this abuse as some sort of pro immigration policy.
In what way is it not pro-immigration? Perhaps you mean "pro-immigrant"? In that case, your view is cogent, but I guess this just exposes that pro-immigration policy isn't necessarily good for the immigrants that it welcomes.
Immigration benefits capital. For example, as Federal Reserve Vice Chair Bowman indicated [0], immigration creates housing inflation.
> what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?
None of it? The way I see it is every top tier programmer in America is already employed.
I think the inevitable outcome would just be the big multi-nationals (FAANG in particular) would just hire more in their international offices and spread out their engineering org more instead of remaining so American heavy and using immigration to centralise staffing.
There probably isn't a world where these huge companies decide to simply not take advantage of the global talent pool, if they don't exploit it someone else will and they can't have that.
> The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?
I mean, the other question is: how many US jobs exist because of folks who came to the country on H1B? Clearly none of the big tech companies would exist in the scale they are without us.
With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates compared to pre 2015. Of course its nuanced between training that companies used to offer etc.
No the solution is hiring American workers and implementing strict on soil laws for pii just like other countries are doing (India for example).
I have learned a great deal and been enriched by my friendships with foreign born workers, but to act like h1b workers come “ready to perform software engineering duties” at any higher rate than new grad higher is funny.
I’ve been chewing on this for fifteen years, now. There is no pretty or simple or even palatable answer, just a bunch of proposals with tradeoffs.
1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to…
2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers. It’s absolute protectionism, which means you just shift the negative trends (“credential” mills in particular) onto domestic shores. Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.
3) Unionize the technical trades. This lets the professionals set skill and comp floors, potentially offload benefits burdens to the Union itself rather than the fickleness of the employer, and even undermines the “contractor class” of companies deflating labor through precarious contracts by setting floors industry-wide. The downside is that Unions, like any power structure, can and will corrupt with time and incentive, leading to jams in the marketplace - less an issue in the age of AI, but still one worth noting.
4) Taxation. Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American? No tax breaks for you, pay up. This is a very bad idea on its face, because companies will just shift the transaction offshore to dodge that rule and gum up everything else in the process, but some form of punitive tax scheme for exploiting social safety nets in lieu of fairly compensating workers is sorely needed to stop, if not begin reversing, the current wealth pumps. For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program as a means of depressing their pay has robbed taxpayers of billions, increased the national debt, and robbed workers of the fruits of their labor. It must be fixed, somehow.
There’s a number of other policies to get into, but that’s the “highlight reel” as it were. The important thing to keep in mind is that the status quo only works for the monied interests, and neither the H-1B workers coming in nor the Americans being shoved onto welfare programs for corporate greed. If a program or system enriches the rich while harming everyone else, it’s a bad system, and needs to be replaced rather than overhauled. Will it be painful? Yes. Will it piss people off? Of course. Will it feel like nobody really won? Ideally, because that means it’s balanced compromise rather than a gift package.
Clearly the real problem in America is the industry with the fastest growing number of jobs, along with the fastest growing salaries coming off a base where it was already one of the highest paid jobs, all numbers which don’t even include equity payments, despite this being an industry which pays far more in equity relative to any other industry.
Maybe AI changes everything, but there is no evidence that immigration has hurt Americans working in software over the past few decades given that software salaries have been growing faster than any other job in the U.S., but also (and this is critical), it’s been rising faster than salaries in any other comparable country as well, including countries with strong tech industries but limited immigration in the industry such as France (the other country with almost as high growth as the U.S. in software dev salary is the UK, which also has high immigration).
it's an own goal end of day - led by myopic thinking about foreigners stealing the jobs
a foreigner worker pays taxes, rent & other bills thereby contributing and circulating money in the economy
now if that foreign worker stays in their home country - yes - they might get paid less - but who losses overall ? the country that would've imported labor or the worker ? - it's always the country - hence why brain drain is devastating.
remember the foreign worker only gets a better life - but losses social connections, culture etc
the countries & companies wouldn't be sponsoring these things if ultimately it didn't benefit them & them only
The solution is simple, but unpalatable to us. With AI, SWE-1 becomes a minimum wage job, with SWE2 (1.5X), SWE3 (2X) and SWE4 (3x). With such a rationalization we will retain more of the work here, or this will move. Government policies cannot control this as it will mean losing tech hegemony.
Is it worth taking a hit on higher compensation for longer term peace of mind?
This site explain that H-1B is abused, which is rarely disputed and there are ways to make it less prone to abuse. It doesn't tell that there is no shortage of skilled workers.
$196k average at Capital One? Even with HCOL, that's a very good salary. I feel like they could certainly find competent citizens willing to work for that wage...
The H-1B system is obviously flawed. For some reason, we've decided to tie the ability to live where you want and take advantage of your pursuit of happiness to having an employer. This creates massive power imbalances that are avoided by not engaging in national segregation policies. We don't demand that anyone born on this side of the border do anything like what people born somewhere else have to - how can a law applied differently based on how you were born be just?
This is a cool website and it highlights just how little data is out there regarding H-1B visas. There's some data on a government website but it's usually several years out of date if memory serves. It's basically impossible to prove that companies are abusing the H-1B program without hacking into their servers or someone whistleblowing.
Here are a couple of common misconceptions about H-1B visas:
- "H-1B workers must be paid the same as U.S. citizens" - The issue is companies can hire, say, staff engineers from India as SWE IIs or whatever. As we all know, tech hiring is a mess and it's trivial to place a candidate higher or lower than they really are.
- "Companies cannot hire from the H-1B program if there are U.S. citizens able to fill the role." - There are some asterisks to this statement. Companies can favor H-1B workers over U.S. workers so long as H-1B workers make up less than 15% of their total headcount. And again, it's trivial to build an interview pipeline that tends to filter out U.S. candidates. Heck, leetcode style interviewing has done a phenomenal job of keeping U.S. citizens out of FAANG. It's actually quite clever - design an interview process so difficult and irrelevant to the actual job requirements that most qualified individuals wouldn't bother applying. Anyone who's left probably has special circumstances motivating them to push through and grind leetcode for months, et al. (like not having to go back to their home country).
I think the spirit of the H-1B program is great. Makes total sense. But as is tradition, there are loopholes that allow abuse... and frankly, companies like Meta and Amex and JP Morgan have an obligation to minimize expenses and maximize profits. It's the same with the tax code - loopholes out the ass, but can we really blame companies for exploiting them? It's legal.
Exposed what ? It has brought some great talent to the country and helped with talent immigration for sure, everyone knows it. There is a phase when there is a sacrifice for the candidate but then people change jobs even when green card processing is throught the stages.
No. The talent shortage is not a myth.
The unemployed/underemployed American programmer that can actually keep up is a myth. Everyone good (without additional baggage) is either a) employed or b) could be employed whenever they feel like it.
If you aren't good enough then don't be surprised the companies prefer an immigrant. You don't get an automatic American free pass for having less skills, experience, interviewing poorly, etc.
i.e skill issue.
Ending immigration for tech would simply mean far more global workers/offshoring in order to access the top tier talent via different means as that is the real reason all along.
Wage suppression was the old (and now largely incorrect) story. The visa is still exploitive, it should be amended to be a 10 year visa that is independent of employment so immigrants aren't screwed by layoffs.
Work at faang/etc. I don’t see any notable difference between immigrant and non-immigrant. Arguably, one could say the Americans are better because they typically have less education and still manage to do the same job. Somehow managing to do the same job but with less training? That sounds like someone who is “better” to me.
You may be correct about many US programmers not keeping up, but the H1Bs I've seen in action, other than being more compliant, didn't seem to be much better and often worse.
"Top Talent". Ya, no not generally. Not from H1B. May get OK talent from time to time.
When the incentives are so strong for a company to hire someone who will remain loyal for less pay, skills is definitely not the issue. The company can invest in the employee that is smart enough (and utterly unskilled), even if it costs them $100k up front.
billsunshine|13 days ago
jollyllama|13 days ago
In what way is it not pro-immigration? Perhaps you mean "pro-immigrant"? In that case, your view is cogent, but I guess this just exposes that pro-immigration policy isn't necessarily good for the immigrants that it welcomes.
Immigration benefits capital. For example, as Federal Reserve Vice Chair Bowman indicated [0], immigration creates housing inflation.
[0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bowman20260...
jpgvm|13 days ago
None of it? The way I see it is every top tier programmer in America is already employed.
I think the inevitable outcome would just be the big multi-nationals (FAANG in particular) would just hire more in their international offices and spread out their engineering org more instead of remaining so American heavy and using immigration to centralise staffing.
There probably isn't a world where these huge companies decide to simply not take advantage of the global talent pool, if they don't exploit it someone else will and they can't have that.
throwaway2056|13 days ago
thatfrenchguy|13 days ago
I mean, the other question is: how many US jobs exist because of folks who came to the country on H1B? Clearly none of the big tech companies would exist in the scale they are without us.
650|13 days ago
whatwhaaaaat|13 days ago
I have learned a great deal and been enriched by my friendships with foreign born workers, but to act like h1b workers come “ready to perform software engineering duties” at any higher rate than new grad higher is funny.
stego-tech|13 days ago
1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to…
2) Data Sovereignty Schemes. American’s data can only be processed inside American borders by American (or Green Card) workers. It’s absolute protectionism, which means you just shift the negative trends (“credential” mills in particular) onto domestic shores. Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.
3) Unionize the technical trades. This lets the professionals set skill and comp floors, potentially offload benefits burdens to the Union itself rather than the fickleness of the employer, and even undermines the “contractor class” of companies deflating labor through precarious contracts by setting floors industry-wide. The downside is that Unions, like any power structure, can and will corrupt with time and incentive, leading to jams in the marketplace - less an issue in the age of AI, but still one worth noting.
4) Taxation. Companies that do 90% of their business in America but whose workforce (contractors, consultants, and FTEs) aren’t 90% American? No tax breaks for you, pay up. This is a very bad idea on its face, because companies will just shift the transaction offshore to dodge that rule and gum up everything else in the process, but some form of punitive tax scheme for exploiting social safety nets in lieu of fairly compensating workers is sorely needed to stop, if not begin reversing, the current wealth pumps. For-profit business models predicated on shunting workers onto every possible social welfare program as a means of depressing their pay has robbed taxpayers of billions, increased the national debt, and robbed workers of the fruits of their labor. It must be fixed, somehow.
There’s a number of other policies to get into, but that’s the “highlight reel” as it were. The important thing to keep in mind is that the status quo only works for the monied interests, and neither the H-1B workers coming in nor the Americans being shoved onto welfare programs for corporate greed. If a program or system enriches the rich while harming everyone else, it’s a bad system, and needs to be replaced rather than overhauled. Will it be painful? Yes. Will it piss people off? Of course. Will it feel like nobody really won? Ideally, because that means it’s balanced compromise rather than a gift package.
TitaRusell|13 days ago
In my own country we are actually seeing people GO BACK to Asia because places like Vietnam now have a viable middle class lifestyle.
hshdhdhj4444|12 days ago
Maybe AI changes everything, but there is no evidence that immigration has hurt Americans working in software over the past few decades given that software salaries have been growing faster than any other job in the U.S., but also (and this is critical), it’s been rising faster than salaries in any other comparable country as well, including countries with strong tech industries but limited immigration in the industry such as France (the other country with almost as high growth as the U.S. in software dev salary is the UK, which also has high immigration).
unknown|13 days ago
[deleted]
dzonga|13 days ago
a foreigner worker pays taxes, rent & other bills thereby contributing and circulating money in the economy
now if that foreign worker stays in their home country - yes - they might get paid less - but who losses overall ? the country that would've imported labor or the worker ? - it's always the country - hence why brain drain is devastating.
remember the foreign worker only gets a better life - but losses social connections, culture etc
the countries & companies wouldn't be sponsoring these things if ultimately it didn't benefit them & them only
ReptileMan|13 days ago
dr-detroit|13 days ago
[deleted]
orangecoffee|13 days ago
Is it worth taking a hit on higher compensation for longer term peace of mind?
citrin_ru|13 days ago
jetskii|13 days ago
hshdhdhj4444|13 days ago
alexb_|13 days ago
xnx|6 days ago
US laws aren't meant to solve the lottery of birth.
CaliforniaKarl|13 days ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47028155
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038665
gymbeaux|13 days ago
Here are a couple of common misconceptions about H-1B visas:
- "H-1B workers must be paid the same as U.S. citizens" - The issue is companies can hire, say, staff engineers from India as SWE IIs or whatever. As we all know, tech hiring is a mess and it's trivial to place a candidate higher or lower than they really are.
- "Companies cannot hire from the H-1B program if there are U.S. citizens able to fill the role." - There are some asterisks to this statement. Companies can favor H-1B workers over U.S. workers so long as H-1B workers make up less than 15% of their total headcount. And again, it's trivial to build an interview pipeline that tends to filter out U.S. candidates. Heck, leetcode style interviewing has done a phenomenal job of keeping U.S. citizens out of FAANG. It's actually quite clever - design an interview process so difficult and irrelevant to the actual job requirements that most qualified individuals wouldn't bother applying. Anyone who's left probably has special circumstances motivating them to push through and grind leetcode for months, et al. (like not having to go back to their home country).
I think the spirit of the H-1B program is great. Makes total sense. But as is tradition, there are loopholes that allow abuse... and frankly, companies like Meta and Amex and JP Morgan have an obligation to minimize expenses and maximize profits. It's the same with the tax code - loopholes out the ass, but can we really blame companies for exploiting them? It's legal.
karakoram|10 days ago
iberator|12 days ago
(I'm not from USA)
Madmallard|13 days ago
should be pretty obvious
our corporations have been systematically ruining things for the average American for quite a while now
whatever1|13 days ago
[deleted]
mekekdkxkxkx|13 days ago
[deleted]
srameshc|13 days ago
sumedh|13 days ago
Finding employers who will sponsor is not easy so the employees are essentially locked to the sponsoring company, dont complain too much.
jpgvm|13 days ago
If you aren't good enough then don't be surprised the companies prefer an immigrant. You don't get an automatic American free pass for having less skills, experience, interviewing poorly, etc.
i.e skill issue.
Ending immigration for tech would simply mean far more global workers/offshoring in order to access the top tier talent via different means as that is the real reason all along.
Wage suppression was the old (and now largely incorrect) story. The visa is still exploitive, it should be amended to be a 10 year visa that is independent of employment so immigrants aren't screwed by layoffs.
bradlys|13 days ago
mythrwy|13 days ago
"Top Talent". Ya, no not generally. Not from H1B. May get OK talent from time to time.
vdqtp3|13 days ago
Is your argument that the H1-B folks are better? That hasn't been my experience.
givemeethekeys|13 days ago
commonsense45|12 days ago
Interesting lack of evidence for someone who calls themselves "Principal Software Engineer".
Joseph Glanville your name is in my notes in case I ever come across your application. Signed, a hiring manager.
profdevloper|13 days ago
[deleted]