Raising the H1B cap has everything to do with creating downward pressure on wages. There are plenty of tech workers, but not enough cheap ones. Lots of companies also want experts in specific technologies instead of getting a good generalist who can learn quickly.
If you are in tech in the US and don't mind making less money for what you do keep supporting legislation for more H1B's. Just don't complain when you become a commodity, are required to dress "business casual" and cannot work remotely. The reason it is good to work in tech is because companies have incentives to make it a good place for you to work.
If your skills are something that is easy to find those benefits will go away. Most companies are not going to give you these benefits out of the goodness of their heart in today's environment. If they did then the average Wal-Mart worker would be making a lot more and have much better benefits.
There are good reasons to believe that raising the number of H-1Bs create a downward pressure on wages. Yet, as cynicalkane mentions here, there are good reasons to believe that letting more smart people work on tech is beneficial for almost everyone involved.
The solution, IMO, is to try remove causes of wage depreciation due to H-1Bs. Right now, tying the petition (and GC) to the employer is the primary cause for this. Opposing this, instead of a blanket disapproval of H-1B program as a whole, looks to be a more tactically sounder approach. The employers who are asking for H-1Bs as a form of cheap labour will oppose this, showing their true colors. But those employers who are genuinely seeking smart employees should have no problems with it.
This isn't a zero sum game for you and the H-1B visa holders. The H-1B and other skilled labor visas select for individuals who are intelligent, mobile, and entrepreneurial.
Those individuals and their families are here temporarily unless they can secure a green card (a tremendously difficult process that requires limiting their employment choices, handicapping them in their earning potential compared to you). Most Americans expressing your sentiment have no idea how much hassle immigrants have to go through in this process or every time they cross the border.
Historically, the United States has relied on this enrichment process to invigorate its economy with not just cheap migrant labor, but cheap entrepreneurial, technological, and scientific expertise. Many countries have suffered severe brain drain at the hands of the US precisely because of H-1B and other immigration policies. The US owes its technological and scientific leadership in many, many sectors to these skilled immigrants, who had to come here to get the environment they could thrive in. Their potential would have been wasted elsewhere.
Look around you. Many of the companies that constitute your labor market are built by people who took a chance and risked everything to move to the States, or people who moved here as their children. They helped the technology industry and the US as a whole to innovate its way out of the anti-utopia you describe, and will continue to play a key role in our worldwide technological leadership. They deserve to be here.
>If they did then the average Wal-Mart worker would be making a lot more and have much better benefits.
But tech people seem quite okay with buying things made in China, and third world countries. When was the last time someone bought a router that was 40% more expensive but made in the USA? How many of the people who upvoted your comment made it the top comment ever check for a Made in USA sticker for their clothes or furniture even if it was expensive? Screw the low skilled compatriots so that you can afford higher spec MacBook and a Starbucks coffee, right?
Google/Motorola learnt the above lesson very fast with the Moto X which was assembled in the US and now that facility is closed because of bad sales inspite of a big advertising campaign.
So tech workers take full advantage of everything else becoming a commodity and now want to prevent the global tech labor supply affecting their already comparatively high wages so that computing/software stays expensive for the rest of society?
Next up, restrict open source software and remote work from other countries so that there is more work for tech workers and wages stay high?
Won't artificially high salaries affect startups, where a few thousand bucks can easily kill a promising startup that needs time to grow?
Restricting H1B visas will increase offshoring, which means the folks won't be paying local taxes in the US including State Unemployment, Social Security and Medicare taxes(they're not eligible for benefits though).
As a left-libertarian it always disappoints me to see this attitude. But political opinions have always been about incentives, always about expressing your position in an in-group, and it's amusing in a depressing sort of way to see how peoples' political philosophies switch when their interests are at stake. In particular, it seems to be common among hackers to be very libertarian except when they feel threatened in their jobs, then you hear them talk about unions and protectionism and regulation and so on.
I think it's very selfish to oppose H1B visas. America is wealthy compared to almost everywhere, and phenomenally wealthy compared to many of the places these H1B workers come from. Furthermore, the best thing for the US in the long run is to import as many smart people as it can. The best thing for us in the long run is to import as many smart people as we can. There are economists who dispute increasing immigration, but there is to my knowledge no serious argument against importing smart people.
Again, there is to my knowledge no economist, who anyone takes seriously, who would say "The USA needs to import fewer tech workers". It's a gain for everyone except the worker being "replaced", and that's a fallacy anyway because the economic pie is not zero-sum.
As a computing specialist who makes a very generous income from a large US employer, I am an expert in a specific technology. I've also been in the position of trying to hire developers with similar skill sets. As a result, I might bring a slightly different perspective.
I am a US citizen. As you point out, I don't need to dress "business casual" and I can (and do) work remotely, and the pay is good.
But in some specialties, developers are scarce in the US. They're probably also scarce worldwide, but the greater wages available here could entice them to immigrate.
In my niche in particular it's hard to find good developers for anything like reasonable wages. And in my specialty, it's not possible for a typical "generalist" to just hop in and learn quickly; for what I do, you'd need a broad background in C, C++, cross-platform issues, Windows, Android NDK, and Unix-ish development environments, as well as real-time/game experience. Someone missing any of those would have a steep learning curve.
I hear stories of developers making $500k+ per year, or getting job offers worth millions. At that level, then yes, I think we could stand to see a bit of downward pressure on salaries. I'm not quite there myself, though at my salary's current rate of growth I could see hitting that threshold in ten years or less.
That said, I do actually agree that H1B workers are often illegally used to pay below-market salaries. [1] I don't know how to combat this other than through better monitoring and stronger enforcement of the law. (For example, if an employer is found to be paying less than they should, forcing them to retroactively pay the difference in wages+penalties to any affected employees would be a strong motivator to pay them enough.)
Currently, H1B workers need to be paid 100% of the "prevailing wage"; maybe a higher threshold like 110% (or pick a number that makes sense) would convince critics that these workers are really hard to find in the US? Because if you can't find someone locally for 110% of the "prevailing wage" then that's a compelling argument that they aren't here.
[1] "Employers affirm in the labor condition application that the wage offered to the applicant is at least as high as that paid by the employer for the same type of job, and the number equals or exceeds the prevailing wage for the job in the same geographical area" http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/h1b-visa-requirements.html
[edit] added comment about "hire a generalist" not being good enough
The part about being a commodity, wearing business casual and not working remote is something that I experienced early in my career. So my thoughts and fears of that time keep me motivated. All of us in tech right now are pretty lucky, but I suspect there are people in the industry that never experienced groveling for a job or having to toe the line. The idea of having to put on a tie or show up at exactly 9am is simply laughable! But, were the balance to change I have no doubt that is what we will all be doing. I've been enjoying the ride as much as anybody, but I'm sometimes surprised it's lasted even this long.
Though I don't really agree with keeping the ride going by blocking immigration. I'm just not ready to join up with the "they took our jobs" crowd, even though it my be in my own, selfish interest. It doesn't seem that having an artificial shortage of workers is ultimately a good thing.
No one seems to realize how hard it is to immigrate to the United States. If you don't have a close relative (parent, sibling, or child) and are not fleeing persecution, it is quite incredibly hard to immigrate to the United States.
The pathway to a green card (permanent residency), for nearly everyone else (i.e. skilled immigrants) involves getting an H-1B or L-1 first, and then asking their employer to sponsor them for permanent residency.
So when I hear anti-H1B rants, what I'm hearing is hatred towards immigrants and immigration in general, that seem to be coming from people who have forgotten their own heritage.
Agree with the downward pressure point. Personally, i think its a good thing. American companies (including start-ups) now have a larger pool of talent to hire from without paying Wall street salaries. However, I disagree that H1Bs are somehow cheaper. I was paid the same wage as my American counter-parts when I was at AMZN.
As far as I can tell, programming talent is distributed evenly all over the world. So why does the US have such a large software industry? Because a lot of the top talent worldwide wants to come here and work. Places like Silicon Valley have a far-outsized share of the top 5% of talent.
That's the single reason our industry can command high wages -- you can certainly hire overseas developers cheaper but it's hard to find the same kind of talent concentrations our tech centers have. Even though you need to pay way more to hire in the US (and remember, software is an industry where people are your big cost) companies still find it worthwhile to build things here.
For those of us who are US citizens, this is a bonanza. There is a huge, highly-compensated industry in our back yard. And we're already allowed to work anywhere we want in it, no years of paperwork needed. We're not even forced to move oceans away from our families or work in a second language.
The H1B/L1's etc that you would send home? Guess what -- they will be competing against you anyway, just sitting in a different country. There won't be any H1B rules requiring pay equity with US citizens, and many of those countries have lower costs overall. They will be providing more downward pressure on US wages, not less. Plus they won't even be paying US taxes any more.
The idea that by driving the world's top talent out of the country will mean that US programmers will be living like kings is a silly myth. All it would demonstrate is how mobile those jobs are. If you wanted to keep working in your field, maybe you'd have to become the emigrant.
But I know that ultimately I'm just wasting keystrokes here. The anti-H1B bias in our industry just seems to grow and grow. People think that Silicon Valley and similar places are some naturally occurring money geyser -- if only we just put a "natives-only" sign on it we'd keep it all for ourselves. (And it goes without saying that by "natives" they're perversely talking about people whose great-grandparents immigrated from Europe) I think the endgame is that the US tech industry will eventually die, and programming wages will mostly equalize with the third world. The tighter you grab it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
Personally if I ran immigration policy it would be completely the opposite -- if you're a high-achieving STEM graduate with a US company dying to hire you I would hand you a passport before you had the chance to change your mind. It's so much better for the US when smart people are benefiting our economy, not competing against it.
I've been thinking about this subject for a few years now. Like many HN'ers, I work deep inside the tech industry. I'm also fortunate enough to have watched the operations of dozens of different companies.
I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers. I'm not talking about managing projects, or how to coach or train. I mean the whole thing. The technology sector of the economy has no idea of exactly how many workers, in what configuration, it needs for accomplishing any job.
Weird situation, I know. But where that leaves us is a lot of "open" job positions that are little more than unfulfilled wishes. Sure would be nice to have another 40 guys on the helpdesk. Would that be as nice as 10 more developers? Who knows? Or -- we've got that big government project coming up, so we'll need at least 500 IT workers. Why do we need it? Who knows? It's a big project. It should have a lot of people on it, right?
The implications of this is that there's a huge downward pressure on wages. People want a certain number of tech workers, but there's no market pressure to hire them or even to lay them off if they've hired too many. They just want a certain number. So what they really want is really cheap, disposable workers that they can easily swap in and out as the political winds inside a company changes. The U.S. labor market isn't really geared for that.
* disposable workers that they can easily swap in and out as the political winds inside a company changes*
This is a very underestimated point. most hiring is not about skill or productivity. But about building a political base within an organization.
In some areas, this means hiring friends, fraternity brothers, or members of some other in/niche chohort. In other areas it means hiring people of a different stripe. It also shows up in HR very often as the term "head count", which an asset quota that is horstraded amongst managers. Headcount brings with it both momentum and inertia. And is a favorite tool useful for building subtle forms of leverage in an organization.
Its useful to be aware of these dynamics in places like startups and politics because they exist there, too.
>I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers
It's not just the tech industry, almost all companies struggle to measure productivity, especially as a comparative measure. People like salesmen do have defined metrics like sales, but it's harder to do that for people in HR and Accounting, for example.
There are an enormous variety of STEM degrees, particularly the "science" part, that have little economic value relative to the number of people with degrees produced e.g. marine biology. In many of these STEM fields the expected wage is essentially lower middle class because the supply of graduates greatly outstrips jobs.
Not everyone with a STEM degree is a computer scientist or an engineer. If you are one of the countless thousands of people with a low-value science degree then not only are there few jobs at any pay scale but you will likely make more money doing something else in any case.
Anyone who is smart enough to calculate the differential of equations is smart enough to see there's little money in those jobs.
You see this in practice. STEM graduates do 3 things, in my experience. Work in management, work in IT, and work in academia. I wouldn't count on any of having up-to-date science knowledge except the academic ones.
"U.S. Senator accuses Microsoft of not treating workers as the generic cogs they are"
"'When I go down to the market to get some workers, I always check the label', says the Senator, 'it's our patriotic duty to acquire locally produced workers'"
As someone working in the US on a H1B I am against raising the cap. Instead I think this visa should be replaced with one that can not be used by consulting companies and offers a short clear path to a green card.
The main problem is that the majority of people on this visa are being used as tools to drive down US wages. These are the people working for consulting shops in the middle of no where making below market wages while being forced to do mind numbing work.
It is very hard for someone in a situation like this to switch jobs. Their is also no incentive for their employers to sponsor them for a green card until they absolutely have to. It's not uncommon to find people spending close to a decade being one step away from being deported.
I want immigration reform not the perpetuation of a half baked visa that favors big companies and allows immigrants to be easily exploited. In summary I think talented people should be encouraged to work in the US but on an equal footing to everyone else. Raising the H1B cap is not immigration reform.
Why hire local talent when you can get a foreigner who will work for cheaper? (Not to mention the foriegner will also work under the shadow of having to go back to their country if they get fired..)
While there might be a good argument for this, I've never seen proof that it was not being abused.
1) If it was the same in OTHER PROFESSIONS then I'd be ok - but it's not. Professionals licensed to practice in their country cannot immigrate and practice here - they end up resorting to things like becoming cab drivers etc (not that there's anything wrong with being a cab driver - but if you went to university for a solid profession then it's not a good result). Allow accountants, doctors, lawyers accredited in their countries to come and be able to become licensed here and push down their wages for the rest of us, then we can talk. This keeps supply in their field down and their wages up.
2) These visas do not incentivize corporations to RETRAIN their employees. Yes the specific technology changes but the ability to understand how to interact, program, maintain, etc do not (in relation).
3) Is AGEISM a management or a worker problem? Sure, it's up to the worker to keep up to date, but I've seen plenty of examples where ageism is more a problem of the industry. Somebody who is 40+, has a CompSci degree, worked in the industry for 15-20 years, gained wisdom is somehow worthless because they don't know the exact specific technology.
These visas are a bandaid to a problem that tech corporations themselves created. They don't retrain their valuable workers with outdated skills and instead look to foreign countries for a quick-fix out of their mess.
Keep up the high wages and you'll continue to see an increase in CompSci enrollment. Then pay to retrain your (good) employees for the latest technology and you'll keep them. Corporations have options, they're just more motivated at the H1-B candy then something that benefits everyone.
A large pool of H1B quota is being misused for sure. Instead of those mediocre or low tech workers, if more highly skilled workers are let in, I guess it would be better and we can manage with current allotted quotas.
I've long wondered why they don't allocate the slots (however many are politically palatable) via some kind of bidding system, e.g. highest-salary-filled-first, instead of the current first-come-first-served system. There is a "prevailing wage" requirement, intended to ensure that H1B is used to bring in workers where there's a shortage, not merely to undercut wages. But that's hard to police. And there is a more market-oriented way of allocating the slots to where genuine shortages exist: look at revealed preferences in the form of how much companies are willing to pay for a worker. If a company is willing to offer $150k to an H1B worker, I'm willing to believe there is actually a shortage of that person's skills. If they're only willing to offer $60k, I'm less convinced this offer is filling a skill that suffers from a major national shortage.
As someone going through the US immigration process at the moment, the real issue as far as immigration reform goes should not be raising the H-1B cap, but rather fixing the insane greencard backlog. At the moment its pretty common for people to have to spend over a decade waiting in a legal limbo with an uncertain future.
In addition to this, requiring companies to sponsor greencards for all H1-B workers would go a long way toward stopping those who are simply looking for cheap captive labour and would leave the pool open to those companies who are legitimately looking for skilled workers in good faith.
According to the minimicrosoft[1] blog comments, yes they have.
UK perspective: absolutely no chance of visas for people outwith EU if you are in a redundancy situation locally. Endof. I'm surprised this could even be happening.
Disclaimer: I live in a 50:50 city, in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood where the 'recent immigrants' are Polish.
Aren't 12,000 of the 18,000 mostly overseas jobs at Nokia Devices in Finland? And 6000 doesn't seem that high based on the churn at most big tech companies between people leaving, layoffs and firings.
And it's kinda funny that Satya would've himself been on a work visa when he worked at Sun or at Microsoft, perhaps the senator is implying that poor Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced with a foreign worker? :)
Looks like a flamebait headline and article by the same guy at ComputerWorld who seems to be on a crusade against H1B, as part of a personal crusade or for page views (these articles seems to invariably make it to the Slashdot front page).
[+] [-] lgleason|11 years ago|reply
If you are in tech in the US and don't mind making less money for what you do keep supporting legislation for more H1B's. Just don't complain when you become a commodity, are required to dress "business casual" and cannot work remotely. The reason it is good to work in tech is because companies have incentives to make it a good place for you to work.
If your skills are something that is easy to find those benefits will go away. Most companies are not going to give you these benefits out of the goodness of their heart in today's environment. If they did then the average Wal-Mart worker would be making a lot more and have much better benefits.
[+] [-] mavelikara|11 years ago|reply
The solution, IMO, is to try remove causes of wage depreciation due to H-1Bs. Right now, tying the petition (and GC) to the employer is the primary cause for this. Opposing this, instead of a blanket disapproval of H-1B program as a whole, looks to be a more tactically sounder approach. The employers who are asking for H-1Bs as a form of cheap labour will oppose this, showing their true colors. But those employers who are genuinely seeking smart employees should have no problems with it.
[+] [-] ak217|11 years ago|reply
Those individuals and their families are here temporarily unless they can secure a green card (a tremendously difficult process that requires limiting their employment choices, handicapping them in their earning potential compared to you). Most Americans expressing your sentiment have no idea how much hassle immigrants have to go through in this process or every time they cross the border.
Historically, the United States has relied on this enrichment process to invigorate its economy with not just cheap migrant labor, but cheap entrepreneurial, technological, and scientific expertise. Many countries have suffered severe brain drain at the hands of the US precisely because of H-1B and other immigration policies. The US owes its technological and scientific leadership in many, many sectors to these skilled immigrants, who had to come here to get the environment they could thrive in. Their potential would have been wasted elsewhere.
Look around you. Many of the companies that constitute your labor market are built by people who took a chance and risked everything to move to the States, or people who moved here as their children. They helped the technology industry and the US as a whole to innovate its way out of the anti-utopia you describe, and will continue to play a key role in our worldwide technological leadership. They deserve to be here.
[+] [-] ntakasaki|11 years ago|reply
But tech people seem quite okay with buying things made in China, and third world countries. When was the last time someone bought a router that was 40% more expensive but made in the USA? How many of the people who upvoted your comment made it the top comment ever check for a Made in USA sticker for their clothes or furniture even if it was expensive? Screw the low skilled compatriots so that you can afford higher spec MacBook and a Starbucks coffee, right?
Google/Motorola learnt the above lesson very fast with the Moto X which was assembled in the US and now that facility is closed because of bad sales inspite of a big advertising campaign.
So tech workers take full advantage of everything else becoming a commodity and now want to prevent the global tech labor supply affecting their already comparatively high wages so that computing/software stays expensive for the rest of society?
Next up, restrict open source software and remote work from other countries so that there is more work for tech workers and wages stay high?
Won't artificially high salaries affect startups, where a few thousand bucks can easily kill a promising startup that needs time to grow?
Restricting H1B visas will increase offshoring, which means the folks won't be paying local taxes in the US including State Unemployment, Social Security and Medicare taxes(they're not eligible for benefits though).
[+] [-] cynicalkane|11 years ago|reply
I think it's very selfish to oppose H1B visas. America is wealthy compared to almost everywhere, and phenomenally wealthy compared to many of the places these H1B workers come from. Furthermore, the best thing for the US in the long run is to import as many smart people as it can. The best thing for us in the long run is to import as many smart people as we can. There are economists who dispute increasing immigration, but there is to my knowledge no serious argument against importing smart people.
Again, there is to my knowledge no economist, who anyone takes seriously, who would say "The USA needs to import fewer tech workers". It's a gain for everyone except the worker being "replaced", and that's a fallacy anyway because the economic pie is not zero-sum.
[+] [-] SomeCallMeTim|11 years ago|reply
I am a US citizen. As you point out, I don't need to dress "business casual" and I can (and do) work remotely, and the pay is good.
But in some specialties, developers are scarce in the US. They're probably also scarce worldwide, but the greater wages available here could entice them to immigrate.
In my niche in particular it's hard to find good developers for anything like reasonable wages. And in my specialty, it's not possible for a typical "generalist" to just hop in and learn quickly; for what I do, you'd need a broad background in C, C++, cross-platform issues, Windows, Android NDK, and Unix-ish development environments, as well as real-time/game experience. Someone missing any of those would have a steep learning curve.
I hear stories of developers making $500k+ per year, or getting job offers worth millions. At that level, then yes, I think we could stand to see a bit of downward pressure on salaries. I'm not quite there myself, though at my salary's current rate of growth I could see hitting that threshold in ten years or less.
That said, I do actually agree that H1B workers are often illegally used to pay below-market salaries. [1] I don't know how to combat this other than through better monitoring and stronger enforcement of the law. (For example, if an employer is found to be paying less than they should, forcing them to retroactively pay the difference in wages+penalties to any affected employees would be a strong motivator to pay them enough.)
Currently, H1B workers need to be paid 100% of the "prevailing wage"; maybe a higher threshold like 110% (or pick a number that makes sense) would convince critics that these workers are really hard to find in the US? Because if you can't find someone locally for 110% of the "prevailing wage" then that's a compelling argument that they aren't here.
[1] "Employers affirm in the labor condition application that the wage offered to the applicant is at least as high as that paid by the employer for the same type of job, and the number equals or exceeds the prevailing wage for the job in the same geographical area" http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/h1b-visa-requirements.html
[edit] added comment about "hire a generalist" not being good enough
[+] [-] jakejake|11 years ago|reply
Though I don't really agree with keeping the ride going by blocking immigration. I'm just not ready to join up with the "they took our jobs" crowd, even though it my be in my own, selfish interest. It doesn't seem that having an artificial shortage of workers is ultimately a good thing.
[+] [-] winter_blue|11 years ago|reply
The pathway to a green card (permanent residency), for nearly everyone else (i.e. skilled immigrants) involves getting an H-1B or L-1 first, and then asking their employer to sponsor them for permanent residency.
So when I hear anti-H1B rants, what I'm hearing is hatred towards immigrants and immigration in general, that seem to be coming from people who have forgotten their own heritage.
[+] [-] jahewson|11 years ago|reply
Then there are not enough tech workers: supply and demand.
> Lots of companies also want experts in specific technologies instead of getting a good generalist who can learn quickly.
Then there are not enough experts either, though you try to blame this on the companies: how cheeky of them to hire more knowledgable people!
[+] [-] curiousDog|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bodyfour|11 years ago|reply
That's the single reason our industry can command high wages -- you can certainly hire overseas developers cheaper but it's hard to find the same kind of talent concentrations our tech centers have. Even though you need to pay way more to hire in the US (and remember, software is an industry where people are your big cost) companies still find it worthwhile to build things here.
For those of us who are US citizens, this is a bonanza. There is a huge, highly-compensated industry in our back yard. And we're already allowed to work anywhere we want in it, no years of paperwork needed. We're not even forced to move oceans away from our families or work in a second language.
The H1B/L1's etc that you would send home? Guess what -- they will be competing against you anyway, just sitting in a different country. There won't be any H1B rules requiring pay equity with US citizens, and many of those countries have lower costs overall. They will be providing more downward pressure on US wages, not less. Plus they won't even be paying US taxes any more.
The idea that by driving the world's top talent out of the country will mean that US programmers will be living like kings is a silly myth. All it would demonstrate is how mobile those jobs are. If you wanted to keep working in your field, maybe you'd have to become the emigrant.
But I know that ultimately I'm just wasting keystrokes here. The anti-H1B bias in our industry just seems to grow and grow. People think that Silicon Valley and similar places are some naturally occurring money geyser -- if only we just put a "natives-only" sign on it we'd keep it all for ourselves. (And it goes without saying that by "natives" they're perversely talking about people whose great-grandparents immigrated from Europe) I think the endgame is that the US tech industry will eventually die, and programming wages will mostly equalize with the third world. The tighter you grab it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
Personally if I ran immigration policy it would be completely the opposite -- if you're a high-achieving STEM graduate with a US company dying to hire you I would hand you a passport before you had the chance to change your mind. It's so much better for the US when smart people are benefiting our economy, not competing against it.
[+] [-] badman_ting|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|11 years ago|reply
I think the real problem here is that the tech industry does not know how to manage their workers. I'm not talking about managing projects, or how to coach or train. I mean the whole thing. The technology sector of the economy has no idea of exactly how many workers, in what configuration, it needs for accomplishing any job.
Weird situation, I know. But where that leaves us is a lot of "open" job positions that are little more than unfulfilled wishes. Sure would be nice to have another 40 guys on the helpdesk. Would that be as nice as 10 more developers? Who knows? Or -- we've got that big government project coming up, so we'll need at least 500 IT workers. Why do we need it? Who knows? It's a big project. It should have a lot of people on it, right?
The implications of this is that there's a huge downward pressure on wages. People want a certain number of tech workers, but there's no market pressure to hire them or even to lay them off if they've hired too many. They just want a certain number. So what they really want is really cheap, disposable workers that they can easily swap in and out as the political winds inside a company changes. The U.S. labor market isn't really geared for that.
[+] [-] 001sky|11 years ago|reply
This is a very underestimated point. most hiring is not about skill or productivity. But about building a political base within an organization.
In some areas, this means hiring friends, fraternity brothers, or members of some other in/niche chohort. In other areas it means hiring people of a different stripe. It also shows up in HR very often as the term "head count", which an asset quota that is horstraded amongst managers. Headcount brings with it both momentum and inertia. And is a favorite tool useful for building subtle forms of leverage in an organization.
Its useful to be aware of these dynamics in places like startups and politics because they exist there, too.
[+] [-] ntakasaki|11 years ago|reply
It's not just the tech industry, almost all companies struggle to measure productivity, especially as a comparative measure. People like salesmen do have defined metrics like sales, but it's harder to do that for people in HR and Accounting, for example.
[+] [-] bavcyc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|11 years ago|reply
Not everyone with a STEM degree is a computer scientist or an engineer. If you are one of the countless thousands of people with a low-value science degree then not only are there few jobs at any pay scale but you will likely make more money doing something else in any case.
[+] [-] waps|11 years ago|reply
You see this in practice. STEM graduates do 3 things, in my experience. Work in management, work in IT, and work in academia. I wouldn't count on any of having up-to-date science knowledge except the academic ones.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] icebraining|11 years ago|reply
"'When I go down to the market to get some workers, I always check the label', says the Senator, 'it's our patriotic duty to acquire locally produced workers'"
[+] [-] drdeadringer|11 years ago|reply
Organic might be nice for a few more decades, but let's not discriminate against our upcoming robot overlords too much.
[+] [-] htormey|11 years ago|reply
The main problem is that the majority of people on this visa are being used as tools to drive down US wages. These are the people working for consulting shops in the middle of no where making below market wages while being forced to do mind numbing work.
It is very hard for someone in a situation like this to switch jobs. Their is also no incentive for their employers to sponsor them for a green card until they absolutely have to. It's not uncommon to find people spending close to a decade being one step away from being deported.
I want immigration reform not the perpetuation of a half baked visa that favors big companies and allows immigrants to be easily exploited. In summary I think talented people should be encouraged to work in the US but on an equal footing to everyone else. Raising the H1B cap is not immigration reform.
[+] [-] eyeareque|11 years ago|reply
While there might be a good argument for this, I've never seen proof that it was not being abused.
[+] [-] lgleason|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mountbob|11 years ago|reply
2) These visas do not incentivize corporations to RETRAIN their employees. Yes the specific technology changes but the ability to understand how to interact, program, maintain, etc do not (in relation).
3) Is AGEISM a management or a worker problem? Sure, it's up to the worker to keep up to date, but I've seen plenty of examples where ageism is more a problem of the industry. Somebody who is 40+, has a CompSci degree, worked in the industry for 15-20 years, gained wisdom is somehow worthless because they don't know the exact specific technology.
These visas are a bandaid to a problem that tech corporations themselves created. They don't retrain their valuable workers with outdated skills and instead look to foreign countries for a quick-fix out of their mess.
Keep up the high wages and you'll continue to see an increase in CompSci enrollment. Then pay to retrain your (good) employees for the latest technology and you'll keep them. Corporations have options, they're just more motivated at the H1-B candy then something that benefits everyone.
[+] [-] srameshc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _delirium|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrsharpoblunto|11 years ago|reply
In addition to this, requiring companies to sponsor greencards for all H1-B workers would go a long way toward stopping those who are simply looking for cheap captive labour and would leave the pool open to those companies who are legitimately looking for skilled workers in good faith.
[+] [-] drpgq|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithpeter|11 years ago|reply
UK perspective: absolutely no chance of visas for people outwith EU if you are in a redundancy situation locally. Endof. I'm surprised this could even be happening.
Disclaimer: I live in a 50:50 city, in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood where the 'recent immigrants' are Polish.
[1] http://minimsft.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/18000-microsoft-jobs-...
[+] [-] kordless|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wfjackson|11 years ago|reply
And it's kinda funny that Satya would've himself been on a work visa when he worked at Sun or at Microsoft, perhaps the senator is implying that poor Ballmer shouldn't have been laid off and replaced with a foreign worker? :)
Looks like a flamebait headline and article by the same guy at ComputerWorld who seems to be on a crusade against H1B, as part of a personal crusade or for page views (these articles seems to invariably make it to the Slashdot front page).
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=computerworld+h...
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] moogoo|11 years ago|reply
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