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On February 02 2017 00:53 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2017 00:46 Trainrunnef wrote:On February 02 2017 00:39 LightSpectra wrote:On February 02 2017 00:36 oneofthem wrote:
problem with that view is that once you cant import cheap labor, you can outsource the cheap work. it is also far more difficult to stop cross border exchange of coding etc work within one company. Outsourcing an entire IT team is a lot of work. It's easy to do for tech support, but not for entire programming/engineering teams. It's easy for Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle, etc. to fire a bunch of people and replace them with H1Bs, it wouldn't be so easy for them to fire all of their workers and rehire in India/China. That issue only applies in certain fields. Think of chemists, engineers, business managers, plant managers etc.Plenty of those jobs need hands on oversight and wouldn't be subject to the outsourcing of the work. All of these highly compensated positions are getting handed to the best applicant possible, which sometimes is an international applicant with an H1B. How many thousands or tens of thousands of those jobs could have been given to a domestic worker that just needed someone to see their potential and give them the tools to succeed. That's not really true, there's a fair bit of outsourcing going on in R&D nowadays where you operate as a virtual company and outsource the actual execution of experiments to other companies. There's a lot of European and Chinese companies that do contract work. Here's a paper that gets into it (I have to admit I didn't read the whole paper, just part of it): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240890/
I havent had a chance to read through the whole paper, but that seems like it focuses mostly on pharma, which definitely doesn't have to be performed in the US, or even manufactured in the US for that matter. If you look at plant chemists for oil companies or glue companies, or whatever other organization that manufactures within the US, you need skilled folks on site managing the day to day operations. Sure you could find a way to outsource it if you really wanted to, but I don't think that is the goal of most companies. they just want to be competative in the market and turn a profit. If we could induce internal training to reach that end, I am sure they would be happy to comply.
I do concede that I have no idea exactly how to implement this, but I think its a conversation that needs to be had.
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"Let companies take indentured servants or they will go get indentured servant labor abroad."
Great system we have here, isn't it?
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On February 02 2017 01:01 Trainrunnef wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2017 00:53 Logo wrote:On February 02 2017 00:46 Trainrunnef wrote:On February 02 2017 00:39 LightSpectra wrote:On February 02 2017 00:36 oneofthem wrote:
problem with that view is that once you cant import cheap labor, you can outsource the cheap work. it is also far more difficult to stop cross border exchange of coding etc work within one company. Outsourcing an entire IT team is a lot of work. It's easy to do for tech support, but not for entire programming/engineering teams. It's easy for Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle, etc. to fire a bunch of people and replace them with H1Bs, it wouldn't be so easy for them to fire all of their workers and rehire in India/China. That issue only applies in certain fields. Think of chemists, engineers, business managers, plant managers etc.Plenty of those jobs need hands on oversight and wouldn't be subject to the outsourcing of the work. All of these highly compensated positions are getting handed to the best applicant possible, which sometimes is an international applicant with an H1B. How many thousands or tens of thousands of those jobs could have been given to a domestic worker that just needed someone to see their potential and give them the tools to succeed. That's not really true, there's a fair bit of outsourcing going on in R&D nowadays where you operate as a virtual company and outsource the actual execution of experiments to other companies. There's a lot of European and Chinese companies that do contract work. Here's a paper that gets into it (I have to admit I didn't read the whole paper, just part of it): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240890/ I havent had a chance to read through the whole paper, but that seems like it focuses mostly on pharma, which definitely doesn't have to be performed in the US, or even manufactured in the US for that matter. If you look at plant chemists for oil companies or glue companies, or whatever other organization that manufactures within the US, you need skilled folks on site managing the day to day operations. Sure you could find a way to outsource it if you really wanted to, but I don't think that is the goal of most companies. they just want to be competative in the market and turn a profit. If we could induce internal training to reach that end, I am sure they would be happy to comply. I do concede that I have no idea exactly how to implement this, but I think its a conversation that needs to be had.
Yeah it's a fair point, I mostly wanted to bring up that this issue isn't specific to just the CS field and as technology continues to improve companies will find more and more ways to move jobs to the cheapest possible option.
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What do you guys think the over/under is on how long those 900 State Department employees who signed the dissent memo regarding Trump's executive order will keep their jobs?
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On February 02 2017 01:17 xDaunt wrote:
What do you guys think the over/under is on how long those 900 State Department employees who signed the dissent memo regarding Trump's executive order will keep their jobs?
I don't think they will be fired for just that. But I do expect a slow but definite departure from them as time goes on.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On February 02 2017 01:17 xDaunt wrote:
What do you guys think the over/under is on how long those 900 State Department employees who signed the dissent memo regarding Trump's executive order will keep their jobs?
uh i'm more interested in an over/under on how long the state department exists.
On February 02 2017 01:02 LegalLord wrote:
"Let companies take indentured servants or they will go get indentured servant labor abroad."
Great system we have here, isn't it?
this is why regulation has to be international to be effective. the basic conditions for creating this situation is the higher level of development. there's a lot of surplus labor that is capable of performing the work.
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On February 02 2017 00:27 Danglars wrote:As of twenty minutes ago, Senate Republicans changed rules to confirm Steven Mnuchin at Treasury and Rep. Tom Price as at HHS. Democrats had been boycotting the vote and previously one member of each party had to be present to take a vote. Bodes well for Sessions' eventual confirmation. TheHill
Looks like Republican concern for ethical conflicts is nil.
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On February 02 2017 01:25 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2017 00:27 Danglars wrote:As of twenty minutes ago, Senate Republicans changed rules to confirm Steven Mnuchin at Treasury and Rep. Tom Price as at HHS. Democrats had been boycotting the vote and previously one member of each party had to be present to take a vote. Bodes well for Sessions' eventual confirmation. TheHill Looks like Republican concern for ethical conflicts is nil.
I'm really hoping Democrats will use obstructionism as a tool to make gains against these sorts of ethical violations. I'm against obstructionism for obstructionism's sake, but I'm wouldn't be opposed to doing it for the sake of forcing procedural changes that should be bipartisan, but tend not to be because at a particular moment one party benefits from the rule and one doesn't (though which is which changes often).
Unfortunately I'm guessing obstructionism will just lead Republicans to doing more and more ethical violations or very short sighted rule changes so I don't know if even that would work really.
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On February 02 2017 01:25 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2017 00:27 Danglars wrote:As of twenty minutes ago, Senate Republicans changed rules to confirm Steven Mnuchin at Treasury and Rep. Tom Price as at HHS. Democrats had been boycotting the vote and previously one member of each party had to be present to take a vote. Bodes well for Sessions' eventual confirmation. TheHill Looks like Republican concern for ethical conflicts is nil.
Ethics only apply to female bodies, all else is free for all.
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I'm interested to see if Tillerson has what it takes to head an agency openly opposed to his boss's aims.
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On February 02 2017 01:47 Danglars wrote:
I'm interested to see if Tillerson has what it takes to head an agency openly opposed to his boss's aims.
The interesting thing is that its really not all that reasonable to just clean house and start fresh. It would be a monumentally ineffective agency. So what is more likely is a somewhat compromise. But what in the world would that even look like?
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On February 02 2017 01:47 Danglars wrote:
I'm interested to see if Tillerson has what it takes to head an agency openly opposed to his boss's aims.
The news folk seemed to be interested in highlighting his oil connections and his unwillingness to answer questions he didn't know the answer to, but I liked what I saw: a career (corporate) diplomat who had his eye on reforming and rethinking the major policies of the organization. I think he'll do fine.
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https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/trump-may-soon-sign-executive-order-re-vamping-h-1b-visa-program/
Thankfully H1Bs are likely to be going up to a minimum of 100k-132k, depending on the version which goes through, pretty much straddling my guess of 125k earlier.
It doesn't really affect the big SV companies at all, but really hits the outsourcers hard which is the entire point of raising the bar.
Hopefully, this is enough to fix the visa so it works. Thinking about it more, I'm a fan of a two tier system, where a limited number of licenses are available from 125k-200k similar to how it is now, and anyone with a 200k+ salary can come in on a H1B - high salary visa since that'd allow for actual talent to come in and work with fewer limitations.
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The other problem is that a "minimum salary" favors absurd COL areas like SV (where COL is double that of sane normal cities) and making it hard for anyone else.
I feel that the solution is on the "legal status" side rather than on the "how much they are paid" side. If immigrant workers are entitled to the same legal rights and can switch jobs the same as locals, then they won't really be a problem.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the salary figure you see in h1b discussions isn't even a hard floor, it just saves companies a lot of paperwork.
see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13530120
there's also a quota limit to number of h1bs, but certain conditions make it possible to offer a h1b position outside of the quota limits. there's this higher ed-corporate partnership thing that some places do that can make a h1b cap exempt
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On February 02 2017 02:02 LegalLord wrote:
The other problem is that a "minimum salary" favors absurd COL areas like SV (where COL is double that of sane normal cities) and making it hard for anyone else.
I feel that the solution is on the "legal status" side rather than on the "how much they are paid" side. If immigrant workers are entitled to the same legal rights and can switch jobs the same as locals, then they won't really be a problem.
I agree with this, it seems like a win for both the foreigners and the US public if H1B visa workers have the ability to switch jobs somehow.
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On February 02 2017 02:02 LegalLord wrote:
The other problem is that a "minimum salary" favors absurd COL areas like SV (where COL is double that of sane normal cities) and making it hard for anyone else.
I feel that the solution is on the "legal status" side rather than on the "how much they are paid" side. If immigrant workers are entitled to the same legal rights and can switch jobs the same as locals, then they won't really be a problem.
But you see, that's also a problem; that's basically opening the doors to globalized race-to-the-bottom salaries.
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On February 02 2017 00:49 Logo wrote:Also I asked yesterday if Sean Spicer was bad at his job or if the administration had changed their mind on targeting US civilians. Some people said it was the latter, so I'm sorry to let you know that Sean Spicer is just *really* *really* bad at his job: Show nested quote +
White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters earlier in the day that “no American citizen will ever be targeted” when asked whether the Trump administration would deliberately go after U.S.-born people with ties to extremists.
The statement represented a break with policy set under the Obama administration.
But a White House official later clarified that “U.S. policy regarding the possible targeting of American citizens has not changed.”
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/317234-white-house-walks-back-assertion-military-wont-target-us-civilians-overseas
Does it surprise anyone that a guy who said we shouldn't call it a ban after himself publicly calling it a ban is totally incompetent at his job? There's pretty much no reason to believe anything Spicer says is representative of the administration at this point without waiting to see if he corrects himself.
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The annual cap for H1b visas seems to be 65k. Sorry but how does that even warrant an abuse discussion? That's virtually nothing.
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On February 02 2017 00:27 Danglars wrote:As of twenty minutes ago, Senate Republicans changed rules to confirm Steven Mnuchin at Treasury and Rep. Tom Price as at HHS. Democrats had been boycotting the vote and previously one member of each party had to be present to take a vote. Bodes well for Sessions' eventual confirmation. TheHill
doesn't look so good to me from what the article says. while I do think the dems should've been at the meeting; it also looks like there are some significant issues with those 2 nominees which need to be explored more.
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EPT
