What is the position of the presidential candidates on H-1B visas ?
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I don't know how expensive living there is, but my first impression is that you guys were overpaid to begin with. I'd be lucky to get half that here and it's not like the Netherlands is some cheap shithole.
There is some truth in that. In the 90s, even people with rudimentary HTML, Perl, and/or VB/ASP skills were making 130-150K salaries. They were experienced (many had 20+ years). But, at the end of the day, their skillset was not particularly unattainable, most decent programmers could get to their level in a few months time. Things would have been different if programming did not become so easy, and the IDEs so smart. If everyone had to write C/C++ and Assembler, and use command line compilers and tools, there'd be very few programmers who could even do their job at a minimal level, and that way they could have commanded doctor/surgeon-level salaries :-)
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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No matter the outcome, I don't really see this as a big deal for software developers. Software (especially that distributed on the internet) crosses boundaries pretty freely. There is not a lot of difference between software written in the US and sold in the US versus software written in India and sold in the US. It's not like a sandwich shop where the product needs to be made where it is consumed.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that... - Harvey
Yeah, it's an inevitable future reality that programmer salaries will normalize across the world. Even India's considered expensive these days and companies are trying other cheaper countries (from a cost of living angle).
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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In 2014, the U.S. approved more than 370,000 H-1B applications. The flood of cheap foreign workers is killing compensation for software developers. In the DC region, I am seeing rates from the early 90's. In the 90's, rates were easily $40-80/hr. I think it is worse in the Seattle area. If we have a tech worker shortage, why are we at $40-80/hr 25 years later ? I want to know which candidate will shut this down ?
...thanks primarily to the ability to pay their imported workers on H-1B visas between 30 percent and 50 percent less than the prevailing American wage rate for that job.
...it's no surprise to discover that politics and business are familiar bedfellows, ...the list of the top 10 companies who apply for H-1B visas. In 2014, while six were Indian ... the rest were all American. Deloitte, IBM, Accenture, and Microsoft made up the remainder of the top 10, while Ernst & Young and Google sneaked into 11th and 12th places
Southern California Edison IT workers 'beyond furious' over H-1B replacements Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements ... For you South Park fans: "They took our jobs! They took der jerbs!! Durka durr!!"
Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes form bad judgment.
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"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined" - Homer
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Yeah, it's an inevitable future reality that programmer salaries will normalize across the world. Even India's considered expensive these days and companies are trying other cheaper countries (from a cost of living angle).
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
It does not have to be an inevitable future. Outsourcing companies tried to send the work overseas. It was a disaster due to distance and communications difficulties. Outsourcing efforts were abandoned and replaced with in-sourcing. We bring cheap labor in and keep them in the US solving the communications problem. This is a simple supply and demand issue. Econ-101. By swamping supply with a cheap commodity, you depress the price.
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Companies like Microsoft and Google actually use this Visa in the spirit of the law. Example, Microsoft filed for 4575 H-1B Visas in 2016 at an average salary of $122,641 (not including bonuses / perks). Google filed 4048 at $127,898. Apple had 1514 applications averaging a salary of $136,876. Facebook's average salary was $140,578. These are very good salaries, specially when you consider that most of these workers are in their mid-20s and so starting at an intermediate role. The Indian outsourcing companies pay way lower wages though. Infosys filed for 33,289 Visas at an average pay of $79,201. Tata had 16,553 apps at $69,648. IBM filed 13,600 at $83,248. Obviously those salaries still look good on paper, and are way above average wages for the typical American, just below-par for IT workers. Typically, most H-1B workers have spouses who are also technology graduates, so most of them get their own H-1bs that same year or the following year. Even at a relatively poor salary of 70K an year, that's still a household income of $140K which puts them in a very top bracket (in the country). Also consider that a vast majority file for permanent residency and eventually naturalize and become Americans (process can take 10-12 years though). Source : Top 100 H1B Visa Sponsors -2016 H1B Visa Report | MyVisaJobs.com[^]
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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ClearChannel has not filed for any H-1B Visas in 2016 (nor in 2015) - just looked them up. I wonder if they may perhaps have outsourced the work to a vendor company like Infosys or TCS.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
I quit there in 2013. There were an awful lot of Indian programmers moving in (I had to train my replacement). Same deal - cheap labor to replace Americans. They obviously had the local talent available, and actively chose to replace them with foreigners.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
Posting rules for The Lounge[^]
4. No politics (including enviro-politics[^]), no sex, no religion.
As JSOP said, posts like this belong in the Soapbox. EDIT: And as if by magic, the thread is now in the Soapbox. :)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
Richard Deeming wrote:
... no sex ...
I'm fine here then. I'm married.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Posting rules for The Lounge[^]
4. No politics (including enviro-politics[^]), no sex, no religion.
As JSOP said, posts like this belong in the Soapbox. EDIT: And as if by magic, the thread is now in the Soapbox. :)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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I disagree. Accounting for benefits, $130K is about $80/hr - give or take. I made $80 and hour in 1996. If we had a tech shortage, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and the others would be paying higher salaries.
Well, these are not experienced-level salaries, given these guys are 25-26 at most when they get there. Also, some of the economics is not that simple. A company may have a certain budget for a position. Often, higher-ups won't just increase that budget just because you cannot get someone with the expected skills. Having done hiring at multiple companies in the past decade or so, I've always had trouble even getting good resumes. At work, we use an assignment-approach to filter out the good candidates, and it's an extremely small number of people who pass that filter.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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Even back in my days as a chemist these H-1B visas were a disgrace. Positions would be offered with very specific qualifications (which should force the pay way up) and then they'd low-ball the pay. Since no US citizen would take the job (basically more because the criteria were so carefully designed) they could then hire the low-wage flunky they had waiting offshore in the wings.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
I remember that too. I was a chemist in the 80's. Just starting out in NJ. This guy who had actually immigrated from Egypt, used to complain about Indians coming in and keeping wages so low. I did not understand then - I was young and stupid. Later in as an IT worker, I met an H-1B who was making one-half the prevailing wage as an Oracle DBA. I asked why he worked so cheap. He explained, he could not look for a new job because the company held his visa. If he left the company, he had to leave the country. H-1B is another name for indentured-servitude.
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I quit there in 2013. There were an awful lot of Indian programmers moving in (I had to train my replacement). Same deal - cheap labor to replace Americans. They obviously had the local talent available, and actively chose to replace them with foreigners.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Sounds like they were contractors. So they'd be employees of a company like Infosys and would work for your former company as contract developers.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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This belongs in the soapbox. For the record, though, this H1B replacement happened to ClearChannel developers as well.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
...unless it's about Brexit. That's just fine. :rolleyes: ;P
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. ~ Ronald Reagan
Well no, it wasn't. All of that should have been in the Soapbox as well. But for some reason, we (mostly) seemed to turn a blind eye to it.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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It does not have to be an inevitable future. Outsourcing companies tried to send the work overseas. It was a disaster due to distance and communications difficulties. Outsourcing efforts were abandoned and replaced with in-sourcing. We bring cheap labor in and keep them in the US solving the communications problem. This is a simple supply and demand issue. Econ-101. By swamping supply with a cheap commodity, you depress the price.
It depends on how companies manage the outsourcing. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. have offices in India, Europe, Canada, etc. With constant communication, and with people from here actually going to those outsourced countries to meet the team face to face, that can help a lot.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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Well, these are not experienced-level salaries, given these guys are 25-26 at most when they get there. Also, some of the economics is not that simple. A company may have a certain budget for a position. Often, higher-ups won't just increase that budget just because you cannot get someone with the expected skills. Having done hiring at multiple companies in the past decade or so, I've always had trouble even getting good resumes. At work, we use an assignment-approach to filter out the good candidates, and it's an extremely small number of people who pass that filter.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
I think you are falling into a logic trap. H-1Bs make labor cheap. Therefore, prevailing wages are cheap. But you are paying prevailing wages, so H-1B does not depress wages. How come so many smart people do not understand basic economics ? If you limit the availability of a commodity, it becomes more expensive. Consider, if H1-B's did not exist, the US would have less tech workers(I have no idea the real number, but my guess is in the millions). For a company to hire an IT worker, they would have to pay more. That makes the prevailing wage higher. You are still paying the prevailing wage, but American IT workers are making more money.
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I think you are falling into a logic trap. H-1Bs make labor cheap. Therefore, prevailing wages are cheap. But you are paying prevailing wages, so H-1B does not depress wages. How come so many smart people do not understand basic economics ? If you limit the availability of a commodity, it becomes more expensive. Consider, if H1-B's did not exist, the US would have less tech workers(I have no idea the real number, but my guess is in the millions). For a company to hire an IT worker, they would have to pay more. That makes the prevailing wage higher. You are still paying the prevailing wage, but American IT workers are making more money.
If those large outsourcing companies were prevented from importing 1000s of lower cost workers, that would certainly increase wage levels. That said, I don't think it's a good idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Visa should continue to exist, so we can bring a specific candidate into the country if we really need to hire him or her. Perhaps set max limits per company (proportionate to their size), set minimum salary levels, do more through documentation checks, etc.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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There is some truth in that. In the 90s, even people with rudimentary HTML, Perl, and/or VB/ASP skills were making 130-150K salaries. They were experienced (many had 20+ years). But, at the end of the day, their skillset was not particularly unattainable, most decent programmers could get to their level in a few months time. Things would have been different if programming did not become so easy, and the IDEs so smart. If everyone had to write C/C++ and Assembler, and use command line compilers and tools, there'd be very few programmers who could even do their job at a minimal level, and that way they could have commanded doctor/surgeon-level salaries :-)
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
Your assumptions are faulty. If it is so easy to code HTML, Perl, C# or whatever, then why do we need more H-1B's ? Why isn't every unemployed American becoming a programmer ? Teach yourself Perl in 21 days! Because it is not easy -- in any language. Some are easier than others, but thinking logically and crafting quality software is not easy. It requires a certain mindset and way of thinking. H-1B's are being brought in to keep wages low. It is good for the big companies profits, but bad for the actual American worker.
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Your assumptions are faulty. If it is so easy to code HTML, Perl, C# or whatever, then why do we need more H-1B's ? Why isn't every unemployed American becoming a programmer ? Teach yourself Perl in 21 days! Because it is not easy -- in any language. Some are easier than others, but thinking logically and crafting quality software is not easy. It requires a certain mindset and way of thinking. H-1B's are being brought in to keep wages low. It is good for the big companies profits, but bad for the actual American worker.
Yeah, I am not disagreeing with you that totally eliminating the Visa would be best for American citizens working in software (not for the employers) :-) Obviously, we'd still have to deal with offshore outsourcing, specially to Canada, where they have no limits on work Visas. Microsoft often hires in their Vancouver location when they cannot get an H-1B Visa for a candidate. They get him a Canadian work permit and hire him there instead. Honestly though, despite all these wage suppressions and abundance of cheap labor, the really skilled guys I know all have good high paying jobs. If you look at the top guys on CP (from the States), they are all in lucrative positions. I think the worst affected are the bottom 10% of this country's IT labor market.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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No matter the outcome, I don't really see this as a big deal for software developers. Software (especially that distributed on the internet) crosses boundaries pretty freely. There is not a lot of difference between software written in the US and sold in the US versus software written in India and sold in the US. It's not like a sandwich shop where the product needs to be made where it is consumed.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that... - Harvey
There is a huge difference. The communications barrier due to language and distance directly impacts the success of a project. Outsourcing IT work was tried and the failures were spectacular. If the work was being done in India, there would be no need of H-1B's. But companies want the work done in the US. That is why we have H-1B's.
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Well no, it wasn't. All of that should have been in the Soapbox as well. But for some reason, we (mostly) seemed to turn a blind eye to it.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
It's been a good civil discussion so far though. Once in a while, it's nice to discuss these topics here, specially since they do affect the technology industry.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
