For a while I wasn't sure if this was just some "talking point." Then one day, on a hiking meetup, I met a guy who was ranting about his job that was to write "oddly hyper-specific job descriptions that might seem to make no sense" to bring in cheaper h1b candidates.

So yeah, it's a problem.

Years back I had a college friend who was hired on an OPT visa. When they wanted to convert his visa to H1B (I think) they kept getting suitable candidates so had to rewrite the requirements so its only suited to him. He confided this to me as he felt bad but really needed that job.

Let’s rephrase this story a bit.

A company hires someone out of college, trains them and has them working and integrating into the company for about a year and a half, but then the government, because of a literal lottery, requires them to randomly replace them with someone else.

And you’re surprised a company that has spent all that money and resources on hiring someone and with the known hit or miss nature of hiring wouldn’t want to replace them with a random new candidate?

Edit: And it gets better. They don’t need to replace the person if someone else accepts the job. They need to get rid of that employee who they are happy enough to be spending tens of thousands of dollars on that they wouldn’t need to on their citizen counterpart, even if their possible replacement didn’t accept the job. Merely if the possible replacement’s resume fit the minimum requirements of the job.

That’s why companies rewrite the position to be hyper specific. Because if there is anyone else available eho can meet the bare minimum who applies for the job, even if they aren’t interested in it and will never accept an offer, they are required to get rid of their existing multi year employee who they are happy with.

There is no “opt” visa it’s “optional Practical training”. It’s for a limited duration after he graduates also the rules are sketchy if he Would be let back into the country if wants to travel home to see family . If the employer wants to continue his employment he has no choice but to go on H1b. And then H1b has its own requirements and problems with it. Try to understand a lot of people “abusing” the system have not other legal recourse to keep their lives going.

> Try to understand a lot of people “abusing” the system have not other legal recourse to keep their lives going.

That is probably because other countries make it even harder for people to immigrate.

The job description stuff doesn't have much to do with H-1B's - it has to do with green cards.

My previous boss would openly brag about doing this, while he was doing it.

For those who encounter this in their travels and want to do something about it:

https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud

https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/uscis-tip-form

I guess this is indeed an issue. I’m a manager and I am trying to hire. 100% I’d rather find a person who can start in a couple of weeks than several months for a candidate who needs immigration. But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview. We pay in excess of 300k for all roles so it’s not like we are trying to find cheap talent.

Something isn't adding up here, even in areas with high COL people are clamoring for jobs like that. I'm not saying it never happens, something just doesn't sound right.

Also, the vast majority of people on H1-Bs that I've worked with are quite... average. It's nothing against them, but I doubt they were blowing people away in the interview. Many of them do have better attitudes, though.

That's not to say that there aren't exceptional examples, or a given candidate was bad, but we absolutely could of hired some kid from university, or a mid-senior level from a US company. They just tend to have more demands.

It's not exactly a secret the main reason for the program, is to lower wages here. ie. keep the wages of nationals in check. Of course, you also get access to a better deal on labor, and people that want the job very badly.

I could be off base, but many of the people I've worked with on H1-Bs simply cause less political problems. It's not necessarily a cultural thing, as I'm including many different countries. They have the threat of deportation hanging over their head.

Off-topic, but just a tip. "could of" is never correct (nor is "would of" or "should of").

Or could-have, which I think is more applicable in the sentence you're correcting. Or am I missing some obscure grammar rule?

No you aren't missing anything. "could of" (and its cousins "would of" and "should of") are common mistakes made (interestingly) almost exclusively by English-as-first-language speakers (my observation, so don't ask for citations I don't have any), since they sound similar to "could have", "would have" and "should have" particularly in "native" English accents (I'm thinking North American and UK especially).

I've never seen "could-have" (hyphenated) though. I don't think that's right either.

It's the contraction of could have. "I could've been a contender Charlie!"

It's just misspelled. 'Could've' is a standard contraction.

I did misspell it in my comment. It definitely should have (should've? :) ) been written as "could have".

"Could-have" is misspelled? Or "could of"?

It's "could have" or "could've".

Right

Maybe your recruiting to get interviewers into your pipeline and the interview process just isn't that good. Or perhaps nobody wants to work at your company. Bad management? Bad glassdoor reviews? Don't engage with the local tech scene?

> We pay in excess of 300k for all roles

If it's in excess of $300k for all roles it sounds like a Netflix type company or Netflix itself. I highly doubt nobody wants to work for that company.

Did u miss the part where he said “they don’t make it in the interview “?. It’s not about handing out a job because there is one ...there is a interview process and quite a rigorous one when it comes to FAANG companies. They don’t go out seeking cheap labor.

Without more context it's hard to know what the problem is there, but I strongly doubt it's that there is "no" talent locally available to start within a couple of weeks, whether it's a US citizen or foreign national with an existing work visa.

A small list of things that people may consider:

- competitive salary. 300k is one thing in (for example) Kansas City, but completely another in the Bay Area or New York City where it's not uncommon for senior roles to deliver at least a third again, if not more.

- the ethics of the company - does it engage in questionable behaviour? For example spying on users, building weapons, formenting unrest via algorithmic news feeds and so forth?

- the fundamental health of the company from a financial and existential perspective.

- does the company have a local reputation for being a poor place to work? For example, is it a bureaucracy where no-one can get anything done? Does it have a notoriously poor work-life balance, "face time" expectations, a culture where the loudest or most senior voice always prevails in decisions? What does Glassdoor (or levels.fyi) say about it?

- are the technologies you're hiring for overly specific? Are your job ads a buzzword bingo of "nice to have" frameworks, libraries or practices? Do the ads make it clear that experience in them is not required, provided you can learn them quickly thanks to experience of concepts or adjacent technologies?

Even in the Bay Area or NYC, $300K is a pretty nice salary unless the requirements are unusual (seniority, special skills, etc.)

Do you have any postings describing the roles you're hiring for? My email is in my profile if you don't want to share here.

I find it odd that you don't put any contact info in your profile, then. It's totally free advertising.

> But there are rarely any local applicants and even when there are they don’t make in the interview

What exactly does the work involve, if it is so difficult to either find candidates or give a candidate with some missing skills a few weeks to learn something new?

The answer here is to actually fix the system with compassion rather than suspend it and harm everyone using it.

I'm not unbiased: I'm a former H1B visa holder and wasn't underpaid at all. I promise you we exist! It's not a fun situation to be in... if you have a pending green card application (up to a certain point in the process) you can't change jobs easily. And if you come from some countries (India, in particular) you have a wait of ten years or more before receiving your green card.

It feels like a collision of a bunch of otherwise unrelated decisions that ultimately harms both immigrant and native workers and only benefits companies. It's all fixable, but like so many things in the US right now, not politically possible.

Not sure why you are downvoted . Can somebody who is downvoting this person, actually care to type what you found offensive or incorrect .

If you’re from India the current expected wait to get your green card, no exaggeration, is closer to 50 years.

Indeed, a friend offered to introduce me to a lawyer who would help me hire H-1Bs instead of similarly qualified residents. The gist was you have to figure out the unique qualities of the person you want to hire, and then construct interviews for the required X candidates such that these other candidates would not be as qualified across these trumped up unique qualifications / skills.

How much are companies expecting to save by going this route? Is it dramatic?

They don’t save.

The abuse happens through contractors.

Companies hiring full time H1B employees directly will not save money because there is no incentive to and they have to pay the government additional fees simply for the H1B visa, and they have to almost certainly have an immigration team, or at a bar minimum a lawyer on retainer to keep up with the immigration stuff.

My company applied for an employee I manager’s permanent residency (she is on an H1B visa which has a limit of 6 years unless you apply for a permanent residency). The application process costs the company 30k on a one time basis, including fees to the government, lawyer fees, and associated expenses.

They do save.

Its not in salary that you see the money. The savings are in training and legal costs.

The average tenure of an HB1 is much longer than a US citizen. Turnover is lower for obvious reasons.

Threats of litigation , etc are much lower too. I havent seen a single HB1 sue their employer. Similarly, i have seen multiple US citizens sue employers, and almost always without merit (often it was to stave off termination, retaliate, etc).

There is alson some risk in a US worker. There is a lot of entitlement even at the high end. I have seen many native engineers and even PMs hit bars every other afternoon...on a 3pm weekday. These were people close to 200k year.

The HB1 is a shield against that risk (or poor hiring), and thats savings too

There seems to be a mix. Which is part of the problem with the national debate / conversation.

There are companies who found the absolute best in the world that they have to have. So they need that H1-B to get the job done and hire the best person.

Then there are companies who just want to contract out super cheap labor, so they do thousands of H1-B applications hoping a few hundred make it through, then the they charge a local rate, but pay the employee a fraction and reap the profits.

So the second example I’m assuming is the operating model of companies like Accenture, Cognizant, etc.

I’m flooding this thread a bit, but I’ve always been a little confused by the consultancy firms. Is there a clear difference between off shoring and H1B? Or is it mostly the same thing for these companies, with different margins for each.

Truth be said the consultancy companies barely make any or in fact lose money with the H-1Bs and they make way more margin on offshoring. But customers want people near them for various reasons and the offshoring doesn’t generally work well without boots on the ground.

So the H-1Bs are loss leaders with actual money being made in offshoring instead.

Consultancy firms often have an offshore team in a lower cost country (India, Phillipines, Mexico). The consulting firm typically employs a few people in the US on H-1B visas, contracted to the client, for communication with the offshore team, onsite support for the client, and generally managing things.

But the client often has their own employees on H-1B visas as well. This is unrelated to either offshoring/consulting.

Eg. Take a company like Apple. Apple hires employees on H-1B visas and pays them well.

But also Apple uses consulting firms (both US-based and offshored) for specific projects/functions. These workers are not Apple employees. They are employees of the consulting company -- or in some cases, there is a chain of contracts where they are employed by one company, which contracts them out to a consulting firm, which then contracts them out to end client (Apple).

Just at first glance, that seems like a whole lot of middle men.

We have h1b employees at our company. If we were to lose them right now it would be a significant disruption.

Personally, I can't take time out of my job to train employees - which in our case could easily take three months. I can't even imagine us finding and hiring some at this time. These guys are an absolute asset to the company.

Does your company not already grow skills over time? One should already be training (or coaching) individuals regardless of their present skill levels.

We grow skills. That's one reason they are so valuable. And we cross train. Everyone is able to take over for another employee at any time. But now is not the time. I just can't stomach losing our H1B members or any dev right now.

We are in the health IT sector and you may not know this (because it surprises most everyone) but there is an absolute revolution happening in healthcare. We're approaching version 5 of FHIR. And I'd guess 99% of the devs on HN are like "what the heck is FHIR". It's a core standard for exchanging healthcare data. And it's literally the tip of an iceberg. And that's my personal dilemma as a lead developer.

Speaking of skill growth, devs attended FHIR Dev Days last week, CCDA Implementation-athon a few weeks before that, and the FHIR Connectathon a week before that.

None of us are in the office and since we have formed personal relationships over the last few years we know how to "get stuff done". AFAIK we treat every employee well enough they have few reasons to leave. Now is not the time for us to lose a dev. Any dev.

I just ask the government to stop being jerks and let us ride out this covid year without too much more upset...

That's a very uncharitable reading of what they said. They presumably spent time training these people. They can't afford to train up a bunch of new people because someone decided that they need to be kicked out of the country for no good reason.

I am saying that they should already have a "training time allocation" built into their role and that they could choose to use it for remedial skills. That is, individually having time for training should be a moot point.

Now, if the business can survive in the meantime is a different matter. But the business has no choice in the matter. And the business is not alone in the matter. Which probably makes that a moot point too.

I don't claim that it will be easy. "I can't train people" doesn't compel me as a broadly satisfactory counterargument for the above reasons. That sentiment itself is not charitable making it hard for me to read it charitably.

You can always do what companies like yours have already done to residents: Have the H1B visa holders train the residents, and leave the H1B visa holders out of a job. Does that sound unpleasant to you? Trust me, anyone on the shorter end of any stick isn't going to like it. My question is, why preference H1B holders over residents?

I'm not sure you're making an argument in good faith here.

Still feel free to see my response just below. That said I'm not management but our devs are smart and knowledgeable and I'm sure are getting offers from other companies. And I like to think they are treated well and I hope I get to work with them for a long time to come.