H-1B Visa Use Soared Last Year At Major Tech Firms (phys.org) 93
"Even as the White House began cracking down on U.S. work visas, major Silicon Valley technology firms last year dramatically ramped up hiring of workers under the controversial H-1B visa program," reports the Mercury News.
Menlo Park-based Facebook in 2017 received 720 H-1B approvals, a 53 percent increase over 2016, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, which obtained federal government data. Mountain View's Google received 1,213 H-1B approvals, a 31 percent increase. The number of H-1B approvals at Intel in Santa Clara rose 19 percent and Cupertino-based Apple received 673, a 7 percent increase.... [E]xperts say the data doesn't show how many additional H-1B contractors tech companies may get from staffing agencies or outsourcing companies. In response to this news organization's inquiries, Facebook said it does not publicly discuss its use of H-1B workers or contractors. Google, Apple and Intel did not respond to requests for information about their use of H-1B workers or contractors....
Amazon chalked up the largest increase in H-1B approvals, with 2,515 in 2017, a 78 percent leap. Microsoft received 1,479 approvals, an increase of 29 percent. Neither company responded to a request for comment.
A distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon's School of Engineering at Silicon Valley believes that the threat of a U.S. crackdown on H-1B visas may simply have prompted companies to secure as many visas as possible while they could.
Amazon chalked up the largest increase in H-1B approvals, with 2,515 in 2017, a 78 percent leap. Microsoft received 1,479 approvals, an increase of 29 percent. Neither company responded to a request for comment.
A distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon's School of Engineering at Silicon Valley believes that the threat of a U.S. crackdown on H-1B visas may simply have prompted companies to secure as many visas as possible while they could.
STEM, it's a job machine (Score:1)
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Been gainfully employed in my field for two decades. Watched humanities major friends work service jobs unrelated to their fields.
Good for You!
I've watched my sister-in-law with her art degree and then MBA in Marketing get an executive job in Marketing get an awesome job and get five figure bonuses on top of her six figure income.
While the company she works for send jobs over-seas. So, who's the smart one now?
Oh! BTW, most of the techies are Indians at her company.
Java programing is a commodity. FYI.
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Java programing is a commodity. FYI.
Most STEM jobs are a commodity. The skills are increasingly ubiquitous, so the only way to compete is on price.
The only future in STEM is for those knowledgeable and talented enough to build the coming generations of tools that automate away the bulk of STEM jobs and turn their tasks into idiot-proof services.
Most newly minted STEM prospects are “educated” in applying templates and snapping together components. They are just a stopgap.
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Script kiddy skills are. Deep programming skills aren't, and are unlikely to ever be. Automation will take them before they could ever become a commodity, barring a truly radical change in programming technology.
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Compared to the humanities... yep, it sure the hell is.
Been gainfully employed in my field for two decades. Watched humanities major friends work service jobs unrelated to their fields.
STEM creates jobs. The entire mobile device industry employs vast numbers of people in highly paid jobs, and that's just one small corner.
Also Been employed in STEM fields for two decades. Got a humanities degree and used the skills and experience to teach myself how to program.
When STEM is tapped out due to oversupply of labor and outsourcing, I will jump to the next emerging field thanks to my generalized education.
Good luck to all you one-trick-ponies in you effort to prevent the world from changing.
"threat of a U.S. crackdown on H-1B visas" (Score:1)
Well duh.
Re: just like ins co (Score:1)
Which is why single payer is a better solution. We all pay in and can access the system when we need it. See Medicare.
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Tesla sells shorts now? What type? straight cut booty shorts, super cheeky, Daisy Dukes, Daisy Ducks (Daisy Dukes made from white jeans)?
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especially if they hire the low-paid, low-quality, dog-eat-dog mentality substitutes for those uppity Democrat-voting athiest liebrul haters in Silicone Valley.
Google doesn't want to miss anymore China opportunities because of some shitty opinionated fucks in their offices.
And neither does Zuckerberg.
You should probably seek some help for your anger issues. This is not normal. You'll find life is really great when you stop believing the BS you've been shoveling.
H-2B visas are up as well (Score:4, Interesting)
Get 'um while you can! (Score:5, Insightful)
Get 'um while they're still "cheap" and while you can!
This is a loop hole should have been tightened up long, long ago. It should be a tool used to encourage companies to invenst in their own employees, re-tooling them with the skills the company needs; not used as a reason to go looking to effectively off-shore work.
At best, it should be a stop-gap measure while you train up local talent to fill the position long-term.
This is a numbers game, currently, to corporations. If these numbers become less and less appealing, then they'll turn to other solutions that include increasing local skills and building local talen.
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Misleading title? (Score:5, Informative)
H1B use isn't up: there is an annual cap on H1B visas.
What's changed is that "Major tech firms" are getting the visas which must have reduced the number of H1B visas that were assigned to the outsourcing companies such as Tata, HCL, Infosys, etc..
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I should note that this is a good thing. Those major firms are less likely to be engaged in visa fraud and are more likely to pay real comparable wages.
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LOL, OK
Re:Misleading title? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've on the right track, but you've got cause and effect backwards.
The number of H-1B's is fixed, as you've said.
With the recent changes, it's much harder for outsourcing companies and others who were abusing the system to get their applications approved. As a result, they get less of the fixed (well, capped) number of visas.
This leaves more to go to others, which means that Facebook, Google, etc - who's applications will all fit well within the requires - see a higher percentage of their applications approved. What the article fails to mention is the number of applications each of these companies made, which while it might have been higher than past years, almost certainly wasn't as large an increase as their number of accepted applications.
As for a labor shortage, there is not generally a shortage of tech people in the bay area. However there absolutely IS a shortage of skilled tech people, especially in certain fields. It's easy to ignore that distinction. Getting 100 (or 1000) resumes for a job isn't helpful if none of them are qualified...
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Unicorns are hard to find. But somehow we can always find them overseas ;)
For these companies? Nope. The factor here is the interviewing process of SV companies. Recently I was told to pick a date for Microsoft in September for my onsite interviews. I was told that the technical interviews would go all day and I had to give between 4-5 technical interviews, before and after lunch. These interviews are hard and split into multiple stages right from 2-3 rounds of phone screens/online tests and then an entire day of onsite interviews. This eliminates most of the candidates, so the
Re: Misleading title? (Score:1)
Sadly, those interviews all too often fall into trivia traps. What syntax does this API call use? How about that one? Fine if you are hiring a single discipline specialist, but absurd if you are looking for a multidiscipline integrator. I'm not gong to spend a month going through the cracking the coding interview book to memorize those "correct" answers. That just makes me waste memory space on specific implementations instead of general concepts. I don't cate how memalloc works, just that it does when cal
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I doubt those company file for H1B if they're not 99% sure to get it. They have better to do than wasting their time and money on visa applications, so they pour a lot of money to get H1Bs and they need to be sure they'll get it.
Quite the opposite of consulting firms which business model *is* to flood the application system and get as many lambda person approved as they can. Those don't care who gets the visa, it's a matter of numbers only.
So finally H1Bs are used for their original purpose : get skilled
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The s
They were all blonde (Score:2)
I guess.
As a former H-1B and current Green Card holder (Score:5, Informative)
I was always paid the prevailing rate, and the other H-1Bs I've worked with get the same. Put it this way, they're able to get on the housing ladder in Silicon Valley. They're also really smart! Indian, German, Chinese, Canadian, British (like me), they've all been good colleagues. There may well be plenty of poor quality H-1Bs at outsourcing companies, but I've never worked anywhere that used them.
I've given enough job interviews in my time and have always recommended people by merit. If there were more qualified Americans applying for these jobs, they'd be getting hired. I recommended plenty of Americans and they usually worked out well. Sponsoring H-1Bs is expensive and a pain in the ass. Companies don't do that unless they have to. They also have to keep dealing with it because the time to get a green card has grown from about 3 years (when I did it 15 years ago) to over a decade in many cases.
And don't give me that ageism thing. I'm 45 and have no trouble getting hired, and neither did the older candidates I recommended. When you're growing fast you want all kinds of people, and the varied experience and attitudes they bring make everyone more productive.
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Canucks can get TN-1 VISAs, part of NAFTA. $50 application fee, 1 hour wait at the border, must have a 3+ year degree + 3 years experience, and a letter from the employer is essentially enough.
This is indeed a good thing, because those Canucks aren't tied to a company, and therefore can't be abused, and therefore won't cause wages to drive down compared to an H1B visa which chains the employee to a firm, and can allow for forced overtime/reduced wages/threats of "you're outta here!".
If a TN-1 applicant get
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Australian E3 now on a green card. My experience is the same. I was imported into a good tech company and paid the same wage as a local.
We get that (Score:5, Insightful)
In more left leaning states like Canada and Germany that's not so bad. Your contributions to the economy are spread around in the form of public infrastructure, education and single payer healthcare.
The trouble with us here in America is that very, very little of our tax dollars make it back to us. More than half of them is just wars and servicing the debt from those wars. We aren't gaurnteed health care or an education for ourselves or our children. What's more since employers can access well trained people like yourself without paying the taxes to maintain higher education systems we've been cutting public college funding for 2 decades now, resulting in massive debt burdens. But you don't have a choice but to take on that burden because if you don't have an advanced degree the companies can and will hire an H1-B instead so they don't have to train...
The problem with America is that every single aspect of our lives is predicated on the quality of our jobs. Anything that gets in the way of that is a disaster for us. No, it shouldn't be that way, but it is. So that for the average American bringing in foreign labor hurts us because none of what you bring make it down to us here in the trenches. There's folks who want to change that, but so far they're in the minority.
It's an irrational system, but if you're forced to live in an irrational system then you do what can only be called rational irrational things.
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People use hospital emergency rooms as their doctors when they get sick or have minor problems.
You fail to ask yourself, "Why do people do this?"
The answer is that it's too expensive to get general and pre-emptive care.
And it is these high prices that private insurance companies have to deal with.
You've got it exactly backwards: The high prices are caused by private insurance companies extracting their profits from the flows between patients and health care providers.
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but you're still lowering market rates. Supply and demand dictate that. Your presence in the market increases supply, lowering demand. It also discourages training and investment in local talent.
Labour markets don't work like that, you can't compare skilled employees to commodities.
I've recently accepted a job overseas. The company couldn't find anyone locally and is paying me above market rate. Because they have filled that key role they can now employ even more people to do related jobs, from unskilled labour right up to electrical engineering and even marketing.
The alternative to employing me is not training and investing in local talent. That would mean delaying new products and falling behind
For the top end you're right (Score:4)
As a worker I don't really care if my country falls behind because my country's success doesn't belong to me. The companies use offshore tax havens to hide any of the benefits and monopolize the profits. We gave up on any sort of social contact here in America went all in on "supply side" economics, aka trickle down.
Again, the issue here is that the interests of the American ruling and working classes are no completely at odds with each other. This is less true in Europe & Canada where the ruling class is still held to some standard of a social contract. Here it's every man for himself. Your presence in my economy benefits the upper class, but it actively hurts the working class. Baring a huge shift in my countries politics that's not going to change. I'm well aware that's a completely messed up situation, but I have no idea how to change it. At least not on a time scale that matters to me and my family.
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Yeah, it's going to be a disaster (Score:3)
If this keeps up they're going to find themselves a di
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So, why do other old Americans and I cannot get IT jobs then?
Herein lies the problem (Score:2)
H1-B is, at its core, a mechanism for re-distributing wealth from richer countries to poorer ones. Which doesn't sound like a bad thing, until I look more closely. Then I see the companies that are importing cheap labour, are simultaneously taking advantage of tax breaks, concessions, and taxation-funded infrastructure. So to a fairly large extent, the companies aren't re-distributing their own wealth - they're exporting money that taxpayers legitimately expect to be spent in their own jurisdictions and for
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H1-B is, at its core, a mechanism for re-distributing wealth from richer countries to poorer ones. Which doesn't sound like a bad thing, until I look more closely. Then I see the companies that are importing cheap labour, are simultaneously taking advantage of tax breaks, concessions, and taxation-funded infrastructure. So to a fairly large extent, the companies aren't re-distributing their own wealth - they're exporting money that taxpayers legitimately expect to be spent in their own jurisdictions and for their own interests.
There should be two classes of corporations. Those that oink away at the public tax trough, should be required to hire locally. Those who DON'T get tax breaks and other government subsidies, can hire whomever they want from wherever they want. I can't think of a single major corporation that falls into that second category - and I'm pretty sure that category would remain empty even if my 'two classes' idea was actually implemented and enforced. So why aren't we forcing corporations to hire locally? I guess it's because government isn't "by the people, and for the people". That needs to change.
If you really think about it, it is actually the opposite.
A foreign country's tax payers bears all the costs of raising a child, 15+ years of education and then US just swoops in and gets to use the most productive years of the engineer. On top of that, US gets to choose the most best engineers of those who want to come.
H1Bs also have to pay taxes. Also have to spend money on housing, transportation, health care that goes into the local economy. On top of that, they cannot be displacing an American emp
Trump? (Score:3)
Crackdown on H1B factories like Infosys and Wipro (Score:2)
If you crackdown on the bogus H1B companies, that leaves a lot more for the legitimate (high-paying) companies that really are trying to bring in the best of the rest of the world.
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Should not be allowed to be contracted out (Score:2)
Note that this means that if a company like tata wants to hire H1Bs here, then it can only be for their own local work, not for work brought in-house. The sam