Yeah, how awful it would be for America if the world's brightest become citizens.

I'm all for the best and brightest becoming citizens, but we should offer visas for the most in-demand, high salary professions first. We can tell from salaries that the shortage of CEOs, lawyers and hedge fund managers is much more acute than the shortage of programmers and engineers.

Since when do CEOs, lawyers, and hedge fund managers ever have visa problems?

Certain categories of US visas can basically be bought, but it is not cheap.

I think michaelt was being ironic.

I would think you are responding to a sarcastic comment.

I don't know about lawyers and hedge fund managers but CEOs are able to manipulate their own pay and avoid accountability due to their position of power within a company. The labour market has no bearing on someone who effectively writes their own paycheck.

That isn't at all what the H-1B Visas are being used for in practice. They are being used for cost cutting and facilitating outsourcing.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/04/03/176134...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/silicon-valley-h...

Indentured Servantry sounds like a plan B.

NBD is H1-B fails.

Along with 10 million physical laborers, just to kick in the teeth of the middle class a bit more.

The middle-class doesn't benefit Silicon Valley. Cheap nannies on the other hand...

You're aware Jan, the CEO and other founder, is a Ukrainian immigrant, right?

My point was more that he was here, is good enough to get past all of the phone screens, probably did pretty well in person, but was passed over. My thinking is more that large companies with many open positions might want to consider the person for another position at least.

In 2007 Facebook was not in the club of "large companies with many open positions", just another startup on University Avenue with some series B in the bag.

...and therefore would have even more of an incentive to hire local.

Which they did http://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/231332

He didn't fit their needs. If he doesn't and H-1B workers do, they should get the job.

Yeah because with the engineer crunch and all, there clearly just aren't quality folks out there. :-\

Let's drive down wages first with lots of visas and companies colluding to not recruit amongst themselves.

Unfortunately, there aren't. Or, rather, there are, but not easy to find and not so many. Not enough for the amount of work that is out there.

Bullshit. If you are turning down people for "culture fit" or perceived ramp-up time, there is no shortage.

You are assuming "culture fit" is just an excuse to interview somebody, waste all that valuable time on evaluating them and then reject them under a transparent ruse. Why would a company do that, where's a upside in that? Culture fit is a real thing and if the person does not fit the team, it would be an expensive mistake to hire that person. Shortage of talent does not mean the company would hire anybody. It just means it is hard to find people that they want to hire. There could be plenty of people that they don't want to hire, still.

I'll second this. I recently interviewed at a bunch of companies and couldn't get any offers. The interviews are getting ridiculous - we all know how pointless the coding questions are getting by now. Companies are too picky, in part because there's so much labor supply. I know there are loads of H1Bs around here, SV is like a third-world country.

if your comment is intented to mean 'foreigners are coming over stealing our jobs', feel free to leave it as it is. Otherwise, you might wanna rephrase what you wrote..

I'm in SV with an H1B. I'm not from a third world country though, I'm from Canada. Even if I was from Africa or Asia, so what? If goods can easily cross borders these days, why not people?

If the government doesn't want to protect my interests, fine. Don't take my taxes either.

But it is in your interest to allow people to cross borders. In many ways.

Here's one: What if you wanted to move to another country? Don't assume that everything will always be going super great in your current country. Other countries will be more likely to accept you if your current country accepts citizen of the other country. Free trade!

>SV is like a third-world country

???

Lol looks suspiciously like racism.

Startups are picky, large employers are less so. Try Cisco or Intel.

> Startups are picky, large employers are less so. Try Cisco or Intel.

I hope this is sarcasm.