Re:H-1B: Oracle favored hiring foreign graduates of US colle...
by briandear on Saturday January 26, 2019 @12:58AM
(#19005022)
> While I've heard that H1Bs are brought over to depress wages, although there is no data to back that up.
Then why would Disney fired experienced workers to H1Bs? Where the H1Bs that the experienced workers actually trained, more experienced? Clearly not. There is no universe where it could be argued that Disney had a shortage of skilled workers given that they fired the very skilled workers they claimed a shortage of.
> My company interviews hundreds of people, settling for 'good enough' and yet struggles to fill many open positions.
You know how you don't struggle to fill open positions? You raise the salary offered, improve the benefits, the working conditions. Netflix doesn't have a shortage of workers, but Cisco might. Compare the pay differences between those two companies and you'll quickly understand what "shortage" really means. I find it extremely hard to believe there's a shortage of entry level sysadmins, yet you'll find plenty of H1Bs working sysadmin jobs while experienced Americans sit on the sidelines because their salary requirements are too high (meaning, they expect something more than $75k per year in the Bay Area.) That doesn't define a shortage -- those workers do exist but H1B is cheaper.
Of course, there are outliers like those ultra-genius Nobel winner-level people -- however, there's an "O" visa for that category of extraordinary high achiever. Your average H1B is not particularly extraordinary. I've never in my life met anyone working for Infosys that I'd trust to program an alarm clock, let alone trust with mission critical code. However, I've also worked with a few extraordinary H1Bs -- people far smarter than I'll ever be -- but those are certainly the exception in terms of statistics of the visa.
Then why would Disney fired experienced workers to H1Bs? Where the H1Bs that the experienced workers actually trained, more experienced? Clearly not. There is no universe where it could be argued that Disney had a shortage of skilled workers given that they fired the very skilled workers they claimed a shortage of.
> My company interviews hundreds of people, settling for 'good enough' and yet struggles to fill many open positions.
You know how you don't struggle to fill open positions? You raise the salary offered, improve the benefits, the working conditions. Netflix doesn't have a shortage of workers, but Cisco might. Compare the pay differences between those two companies and you'll quickly understand what "shortage" really means. I find it extremely hard to believe there's a shortage of entry level sysadmins, yet you'll find plenty of H1Bs working sysadmin jobs while experienced Americans sit on the sidelines because their salary requirements are too high (meaning, they expect something more than $75k per year in the Bay Area.) That doesn't define a shortage -- those workers do exist but H1B is cheaper.
Of course, there are outliers like those ultra-genius Nobel winner-level people -- however, there's an "O" visa for that category of extraordinary high achiever. Your average H1B is not particularly extraordinary. I've never in my life met anyone working for Infosys that I'd trust to program an alarm clock, let alone trust with mission critical code. However, I've also worked with a few extraordinary H1Bs -- people far smarter than I'll ever be -- but those are certainly the exception in terms of statistics of the visa.