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On February 01 2017 15:32 LegalLord wrote: There are H1B recipients that are what they are meant to be: high-skilled workers. But there is also a large and important part of the recipients that are just bottom feeders hired for being indentured servants, and those need to go.
But this response is kind of like going "You have a rash on your arm, better chop it the fuck off first thing"
In this case it would be more like a gangrenous limb, which you should indeed chop off.
Your experience with H1B might be much worse than mine, but I have had nothing but good things to say about the people we use onshore(as oppose to Offshore, who suck)
Do we really have that many Americans looking for tech jobs that we are really getting fucked over by H1B?
Again, there are the high-quality folk and the bottom feeders. If you see only the high-quality folk you might not think the system is broken. But abuse of the system for indentured servant labor is rampant, and it leads to a rather unfortunate situation for a lot of locals.
Long story short, I myself wouldn't mind the "get rid of all of them" solution. Those that are worth keeping can be given a green card in an expedited "talent quota" process.
I for one am totally in favor of coming down hard on H1Bs. Basically, the H1B visa holder is to the tech industry as Mexican illegal immigrants have been to agriculture.
There is a lot of stuff put out by big SV companies about how there aren't enough skilled American tech workers. They do this mostly in order to provide for the excuse to use H1Bs, because they can pay foreign workers less cash, give fewer benefits, and the foreign workers are locked into the job at that particular company.
However there are lot of Americans who take the rhetoric at face value. They don't realize it is mostly designed to prop up the legal fiction that grants cheap foreign labor. In the last 5ish years alone this has resulted in a truly enormous glut of fresh graduates in CS, with a very poor job market available to them, because all of their jobs are getting taken by H1B visa holders.
If Trump comes down very hard on H1Bs I for one will be overjoyed.
How exactly are H1B abused? I mean it costs shitton of money to have someone relocate to US (from Europe, India, China etc.) one would think that companies are not that keen on spending money and would gladly hire someone local if that was possible...
On February 01 2017 16:57 TheLordofAwesome wrote: There is a lot of stuff put out by big SV companies about how there aren't enough skilled American tech workers. They do this mostly in order to provide for the excuse to use H1Bs, because they can pay foreign workers less cash, give fewer benefits, and the foreign workers are locked into the job at that particular company.
As far I'm aware, it's not actually the big, most reputable Silicon Valley companies that really abuse the H-1B system. By and large they still pay a ton even to H-1B holders because they can, and paying more than your competition gets you the best talent. In these cases they also probably are actually getting better talent for their buck. If we're comparing, say, a Tsinghua graduate from China with a state university grad from the US, I would expect a skill gap between the two. The most reputable SV companies get access to the best foreign talent through their reputation, so it's not inconceivable that they are getting more skilled foreign hires.
It's mostly the smaller less reputable companies that are more likely to abuse the system because they can't outcompete Google or Facebook for the best talent so they have to cut corners somewhere. When Google says the H-1B program gets them better talent than if they only hired domestically, I don't think they're lying. It's just that Google sees the hiring process through a different lens than most Silicon Valley companies because everyone's heard of Google.
On February 01 2017 16:57 TheLordofAwesome wrote: There is a lot of stuff put out by big SV companies about how there aren't enough skilled American tech workers. They do this mostly in order to provide for the excuse to use H1Bs, because they can pay foreign workers less cash, give fewer benefits, and the foreign workers are locked into the job at that particular company.
As far I'm aware, it's not actually the big, most reputable Silicon Valley companies that really abuse the H-1B system. By and large they still pay a ton even to H-1B holders because they can, and paying more than your competition gets you the best talent.
It's mostly the smaller less reputable companies that are more likely to abuse the system because they can't outcompete Google or Facebook for the best talent so they have to cut corners somewhere.
Yeah, you are probably right about that. I have seen smaller companies where the workforce is quite literally 90% H1B holders and the code quality in general is pretty low. The abuse of the H1B system is quite ridiculous. If Trump cut H1B program by 80% or more I would be overjoyed.
I will say that I don't expect that the H-1B changes will affect the biggest SV companies anyway. They already mostly pay beyond the salary threshold regardless. It's mostly a question of whether increasing the barrier to entry for startups is worth cleaning up hiring practices among the companies really abusing the system. That said, the startup culture in Silicon Valley is hugely dysfunctional to begin with, so it wouldn't surprise me if it's a good thing in the long run either way.
On February 01 2017 16:57 TheLordofAwesome wrote: There is a lot of stuff put out by big SV companies about how there aren't enough skilled American tech workers. They do this mostly in order to provide for the excuse to use H1Bs, because they can pay foreign workers less cash, give fewer benefits, and the foreign workers are locked into the job at that particular company.
As far I'm aware, it's not actually the big, most reputable Silicon Valley companies that really abuse the H-1B system. By and large they still pay a ton even to H-1B holders because they can, and paying more than your competition gets you the best talent. In these cases they also probably are actually getting better talent for their buck. If we're comparing, say, a Tsinghua graduate from China with a state university grad from the US, I would expect a skill gap between the two. The most reputable SV companies get access to the best foreign talent through their reputation, so it's not inconceivable that they are getting more skilled foreign hires.
It's mostly the smaller less reputable companies that are more likely to abuse the system because they can't outcompete Google or Facebook for the best talent so they have to cut corners somewhere.
From my own experience the big companies want to hire the best employees that they can, and don't really care about where the employees are from. They pay what the applicant is worth - Same for US and Foreign. If the US applicants are actually better then others, they will get hired.
On February 01 2017 16:57 TheLordofAwesome wrote: I for one am totally in favor of coming down hard on H1Bs. Basically, the H1B visa holder is to the tech industry as Mexican illegal immigrants have been to agriculture.
There is a lot of stuff put out by big SV companies about how there aren't enough skilled American tech workers. They do this mostly in order to provide for the excuse to use H1Bs, because they can pay foreign workers less cash, give fewer benefits, and the foreign workers are locked into the job at that particular company.
However there are lot of Americans who take the rhetoric at face value. They don't realize it is mostly designed to prop up the legal fiction that grants cheap foreign labor. In the last 5ish years alone this has resulted in a truly enormous glut of fresh graduates in CS, with a very poor job market available to them, because all of their jobs are getting taken by H1B visa holders.
If Trump comes down very hard on H1Bs I for one will be overjoyed.
Google/FB/Apple/insertSFstartuphere all pay very competitive wages for H1-B and TN workers, equivalent to their American counterparts. Infosys is not representative of SV companies. The shortage of talented engineers is very real. IME, many of the new grad hires, even at Google, are quite disappointing, and still we can't hire enough good software engineers.
I'm not sure why you think there is a glut of CS graduates and a dearth of jobs. All the top students in my class get multiple competing offers, the middle of the pack typically get into a startup or Microsoft/Amazon, and the bottom of the class works in IT. Finding employment in tech has never been easier.
On February 01 2017 16:57 TheLordofAwesome wrote: I for one am totally in favor of coming down hard on H1Bs. Basically, the H1B visa holder is to the tech industry as Mexican illegal immigrants have been to agriculture.
There is a lot of stuff put out by big SV companies about how there aren't enough skilled American tech workers. They do this mostly in order to provide for the excuse to use H1Bs, because they can pay foreign workers less cash, give fewer benefits, and the foreign workers are locked into the job at that particular company.
However there are lot of Americans who take the rhetoric at face value. They don't realize it is mostly designed to prop up the legal fiction that grants cheap foreign labor. In the last 5ish years alone this has resulted in a truly enormous glut of fresh graduates in CS, with a very poor job market available to them, because all of their jobs are getting taken by H1B visa holders.
If Trump comes down very hard on H1Bs I for one will be overjoyed.
I work in tech and I can explain this a bit better I think so you see both sides.
Where established tech companies lack talent is at the top end of the experience and education ladder. Senior (generally 10+ years of industry experience) engineers and/or academia with relevant skills to whatever you need is what H1Bs should be designed for. Removing H1Bs is bad because these are the guys that command 200k+ salaries in SV and do so for a very good reason, there aren't enough of them in America, and if they're not working, it's because they choose to not work.
The issue is primarily with Indian outsourcing companies. These are the companies like Infosys that apply for a disproportionate amount of H1Bs and fill them with people with about the level of experience as your average grad with a co-op term and pay them less.
I'm in favour of a salary minimum, 125k salary would be a fair middle ground. It's enough that it mostly eliminates the Indian abuse, while still being able to find reasonably specialized tech workers and bring them over on a H1B ex. Masters focusing on machine learning and heavy project based academic or industry experience would get that easily. It'd restrict hiring of the visa to silicon valley and San Fran but it's a reasonable sacrifice to stop the bullshit elsewhere.
On February 01 2017 16:57 TheLordofAwesome wrote: There is a lot of stuff put out by big SV companies about how there aren't enough skilled American tech workers. They do this mostly in order to provide for the excuse to use H1Bs, because they can pay foreign workers less cash, give fewer benefits, and the foreign workers are locked into the job at that particular company.
As far I'm aware, it's not actually the big, most reputable Silicon Valley companies that really abuse the H-1B system. By and large they still pay a ton even to H-1B holders because they can, and paying more than your competition gets you the best talent. In these cases they also probably are actually getting better talent for their buck. If we're comparing, say, a Tsinghua graduate from China with a state university grad from the US, I would expect a skill gap between the two. The most reputable SV companies get access to the best foreign talent through their reputation, so it's not inconceivable that they are getting more skilled foreign hires.
It's mostly the smaller less reputable companies that are more likely to abuse the system because they can't outcompete Google or Facebook for the best talent so they have to cut corners somewhere. When Google says the H-1B program gets them better talent than if they only hired domestically, I don't think they're lying. It's just that Google sees the hiring process through a different lens than most Silicon Valley companies because everyone's heard of Google.
It's really just Infosys abusing H1-B's in the valley, and it's a known shithole. Microsoft gets a lot of them as well, but compensates pretty fairly. IBM isn't an SV company. AFAIK, none of the start-ups shortchange their H1-B's, even the smaller ones. Even start-ups have trouble finding skilled software engineers, and lowballing your potential hires is a great way to lose them to the competition.
There are certainly companies elsewhere abusing H1-B, but SV is a great example of why the H1-B program is important to US tech innovation. US tech companies basically get to cherrypick the best engineers from around the world.
I didn't mean to imply that startups short-change their H-1Bs, only that they're likely to be hit as collateral damage through legislation that is meant to correct abuse.
On February 01 2017 10:48 GGTeMpLaR wrote: Apparently he's (SCOTUS nominee) being called a copy of Scalia
Is that good or bad?
depends what your goals and beliefs are. for the republicans, it's what they wanted so good. for dems, it's poor but not terrible, more as a result of the nomination having been stolen from them than of issues iwht the nominee themself. if there weren't a problematic history with this nomination it'd probably be regarded as fine or at least acceptable. with particulars depending on which issues you care about most (not sure of the finer details of what scalia is said on the various issues)
People need to stop saying it was "stolen" because it wasn't. Maybe he should have had a hearing, but the GOP still controlled the senate. The chance Garland got confirmed was approx. 0%
So what. The senate has a job, and they refused to do it. Clearly American people don't care, so a valid response is to escalate. The senate majority isn't filibuster proof, so Democrats can filibuster Gorsuch (and absolutely everything else that the Republicans oropose) until they're blue in the face. Why? Because apparently that's the new way of doing things: party before country.
In fact, taking this a bit further, let's employ all the Republicans' weapons. Government shutdown. Start a Drumpf birther movement. Hell, circulate conspiracy theories that he secretly eats babies. I haven't seen a baby leave the White House since he took office.where are all the babies? Anything and everything is apparently fair game in DC.
Of course, I disagree with this being a good idea, because my goal is not to win in this shitty partisan contest, but to govern the country.
But GH may have had a point all along. It may have to get really appallingly bad before people see reason. I dunno. GH? What do you think Democrats should do in Washington for the next 4 years?
This whole conversation implies that economics is zero-sum and jobs are limited in supply, and/or that compensation levels for native cs workers is more relevant than the overall strength of the economy. I'm not convinced that either of these is true.
On February 01 2017 18:21 warding wrote: This whole conversation implies that economics is zero-sum and jobs are limited in supply, and/or that compensation levels for native cs workers is more relevant than the overall strength of the economy. I'm not convinced that either of these is true.
the second in particular is true for people who voted for Trump though.
Apparently we forgot about the loser's bracket. For this tournament the 3rd/4th place match is after the finals.
The event will be about the ACA.
Hopefully Sanders is ready to be what the Democrats need. Republicans aren't going to be negotiating any more than they did with Obama in office. So it's either help Republicans pass their agenda, or fight tooth and nail, hope he shows Democrats what fighting for what you believe in (when it's actually right) looks like.
More people support a government option than support either repealing or fixing the ACA. The argument on the hill isn't even about what the majority of people actually want.
All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country
The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.
That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens
The main problem in all economies in the world are the current hierarchy structure (triangle). It implies that people high up in the hierarchy can grab some of the marginal value of output of those below, which creates incentives for CEOs to hire as skilled people as possible to the lowest wage rates possible (so they can grab more of the value of the output).
If hiearchies were forced by law to be circular instead, where the total profits (or losses) were divided amongst the circle by slowly increasing the dividend from 0 and up until one person accept it as income, each member would be satisfied in the end.
A secondary problem is that education is not free (more or less). That means whenever there is a over-supply of type A workers, some of them cannot re-educate themselves. This leads to protectionism (as we see both in the US and EU right now).
The funny thing about Trump is that the situation will absolutely not improve. Obama was heading in the right direction but all that work will likely be obliterated.
the h1b thing, it's not just about the salary floor but giving the immigrant worker more security and protections from abuse, such as employers getting them here on a nominally high wage and then lowering it. h1b workers and other types of employment visa workers are far more accepting of abuse and having their careers dictated to than american workers, who are seen as potential competitors down the line.
democrat legislators would do well to push for labor protections in these sort of bills.
the bill also seems to only affect infosys and the like with the definition of H1B dependent firms.
EPT
