Foreign STEM Workers in USA with Visas 8

[Tunalover]

I went on a job interview recently for an engineering position. When I was led through the "sea of cubicles" (but with low walls so you can see everybody) I noticed probably 75% of the workers appearing to be of central asian decent. Of course I don't have a problem with people from this part of the world and many of them could have been US citizens (I'm a caucasian born in the USA). But when I was offered the job the pay was substantially lower than at my current position. I made an appointment with the HR manager to discuss the offer. When I met with her in her office I noticed lots of paperwork on her desk having to with US H1B visas. She didn't budge from the salary offering in that meeting. A salary negotiation never took off the following week and I declined the offer.

It then clicked with me. All that H1B visa paperwork on her desk (sloppy of her to leave it on her desk for others to see) could mean the company sponsors many non-citizens with H1B visas and pays them less than US citizens. Not only that, these workers are always skating on thin ice because, with the stroke of a pen, the company could revoke their sponsorship. Of course they will always be on their best behavior and put forward their best effort so they can further their chances to immigrate!

Are non-citizens taking away STEM jobs from US workers!? It sure looked that way at this company!

Tunalover

 

[berkshire]

Msn News summarized the bill this way this morning.
" After the new president banned refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Microsoft and others railed against the move, saying it violated the country’s principles and risked disrupting its engine of innovation. Trump’s next steps could strike even closer to home: His administration has drafted an executive order aimed at overhauling the work-visa programs technology companies depend on to hire tens of thousands of employees each year. 
If implemented, the reforms could shift the way American companies like Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. recruit talent and force wholesale changes at Indian companies such as Infosys Ltd. and Wipro Ltd. Businesses would have to try to hire American first and if they recruit foreign workers, priority would be given to the most highly paid."
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[cranky108]

Sort of if you need them, then payup? Or pay them well?
Well you said you need them.

 

[rotw]

In some EU countries, skilled worker visa are granted to foreigners provided their salary does not drop below a certain threshold (accelerated route). The route of conventional work permit to foreigner requires to prove that the employer did not succeed to hire a local during a certain time. Its a long process and does not succeed very often. Through the accelerated route, the minimum threshold can be set relatively high, that is depending on the country. One consequence this has is that it narrows down drastically the number of job opportunities that qualifies for skilled worker visa. Such system in itself is a form of slavery when the work permit is tied to residence (and generally it is). So when people have a desire/need to change job, say just to escape from a burnout or any sort of harassments (which cannot be coped with anymore), the job opportunities are limited inherently because of the salary threshold. There is no competitive advantage the foreign employee can claim over a local on salary grounds in this case so competition is mostly on competency. Certainly designed in this way, it forces employers to pay people decent money which contributes to avoid a sort of "depravation" to the society which in itself is not a bad attempt. The problem I personally see with that way of regulating things is that at the end of the road, you are dealing with human beings. Employees can have ups and downs with their life. In some cases, making a break or going for part time employment could help cope with things when the wind blows against you. Such a system does not allow for operating in low regime or pulling the brake at any moment, unless people go via the medical route, which is also made very tricky. Sorry its a bit off topic as the OP is about USA; just wanted to share this.

 

[IRstuff]

One expects that if you are looking for the cream of the crop that you would have to pay a premium because of scarcity; the notion that you had to hire someone from outside, but are paying them run-of-the-mill wages is just pure crock.

$130k might actually still be low for Silicon Valley. This year's going rate for INTERNS is $8k/month or equivalently, $96k/yr. If an intern, who is, at least, ostensibly better than average, making that, then the truly gifted ought to be making much more. Programmers with only 2 years experience can command $130k this instant. If the government really wanted to curtail H1B entries, then they need to figure out how to grow the real talent at home, and the rest of us better be ready to see salaries drop.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[canwesteng]

I'm sure there is lots of programming talent in the states, but probably not a lot of it wants to work in the bay area for 130k, and I bet none of them would work there for 60k.

 

[hokie66]

Sounds like a common sense approach to me. I wonder why the supposedly labor friendly Democrats never thought of it.

 

[canwesteng]

Zoe Lofgren is a democrat, and she introduced the bill to double H1B minimum salary, so it looks like they did think of it. Chuck Grassley, a republican, introduced a similar bill 1-2 years ago though, so I guess there's support on both sides of the aisle.

 

[rotw]

IRstuff,

I don't see where the value is with Facebook in the sense that its always a page with some sort of chain of comments where people happily disclose their privacy views to the rest the world. A bit caricatured I know. The topic is not Facebook but its a good one. When I studied mechanical engineering I had to deal with challenging concepts, mathematics etc.. I found it more tedious than computer science, but that's just me (no disrespect). One company I used to work for had to downsize its staff just because they were not making enough profit despite all of the talented engineers on board. If I am to make an exaggerated comment, I would tend to say that Facebook is taking advantage of people credulity... when some of them are willing to disclose their whole intimacy they sell themselves short as the mother company is making billions on their back. I don't say Facebook value is zero - No. Some advertisement on technical companies / products can be useful. But privacy and low profile can be important to people. Of course people are free to behave on different core / set of values - this is not debatable and that is not the point. What I just don't buy is the value and ethics behind this industry as I think there must be a connection between the two. If I look at a company like Westinghouse or GE, just as examples, I see legacy to society, technical advancement and I am happy about the ethics (there is no easy way). To me it is obvious that the wealth cumulated in such a strange industry as Facebook and this contemporary paradigm is passed through to the employee in a way or another (when reflecting upon the 130k figure for a green software engineer...). This is all very personal (and moral) opinion, its a larger debate. But please, people, don't not take this as an offense.

 

[IRstuff]

I would guess that unless you log in to FB 5 times a day, it has no value nor meaning to you.

But, the value is not just for FB; the same applies to Google, Uber, Lyft, Apple, etc. The salaries have to be competitive, so if FB is paying that much, so are the others.

As for legacy, you are only pointing physical legacies. FB has excellent algorithm development in voice recognition, natural language processing, language translation, image processing, neural network algorithms, object recognition, which are all cutting edge.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[hokie66]

canwesteng,

I don't know anything about Zoe Lofgren, but the article which IRstuff linked says she is a Republican. Her statement that her bill closely followed the Trump administration approach threw me off as well. My bad.

 

[KENAT]

https://lofgren.house.gov/

Democratic "Representing California's 19th District Silicon Valley's Cities of San José, Morgan Hill, and Gilroy"

https://lofgren.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398125

- Bit more complex than "$130k" and with some geographical allowance.

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[hokie66]

The Indian companies providing most of the workers are not happy.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/31/technology/india-h1b-visa-trump-tech-companies/index.html

 

[canwesteng]

hokie - a bit off topic, but when news articles say Rep. (name here), they usually mean representative. Pretty common misunderstanding though, since that is also the abbreviation for republican.

 

[hokie66]

I understand that. But this article, in the International Business Times, which is a UK publication, called her a "Republican California congresswoman". My mistake for believing what I read, sometimes. I should know better. A few times in my life, I have been closely involved with a news story, and never once has the reporting been accurate.

 

[canwesteng]

My bad, I only skimmed the article before googling a different source to look into it

 

[rotw]

Quoted
As for legacy, you are only pointing physical legacies. FB has excellent algorithm development in voice recognition, natural language processing, language translation, image processing, neural network algorithms, object recognition, which are all cutting edge.
Unquoted

Of course, even a mafia boss would claim, and rightfully, his enterprise generated some benefits to the local community (by analogy). They may have sponsored PhD's or medicine doctorates at times - if you look closely. All thought, relatively speaking I tend a bit of respect for a (traditional) mafia boss as they tend to have some bare minimum of shame. I don't endorse mafia - its plain wrong. Sorry what was the point? recognition algorithms oh yes...

 

[IRstuff]

GE also has the legacy of benefiting from the manipulation of tax laws so that the CEO and his family could take trips on the corporate jet and only have to pay commercial fares, even though they were the only passengers.

FB is hardly the Mafia. I picked FB simply because I know a bit about them Google's legacy already includes its search engine and Maps. The genXers can't even begin to imagine how we navigated our world prior to Google Maps; and can't conceive of carrying around 4 pounds of paper just to find a single address. If you think that's not sufficient, I can sell you a couple of Thomas Bros. REAL CHEAP.



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