[coliveira]

You should understand that your logic can be used to prove that any profession is in short supply. Exceptional accountants are in short supply, so we should hire them in droves from India. Exceptional cab drivers are in short supply too, so we should have a visa waiver to bring them from Europe...

[m52go]

Exceptional people in any profession are in short supply. Isn't that a true statement?

Whether that justifies hiring internationally and issuing visa waivers, I'm not sure, but good people sure are hard to find regardless of industry.

[eli_gottlieb]

>Exceptional people in any profession are in short supply. Isn't that a true statement?

It equivocates on whether by "exceptional" and "short" we mean absolute standards or relative ones. If we use relative terms, "exceptional" (say, the top 1%) people are by definition in short (only 1% of the total) supply.

Of course, 1% of a large population can still be quite substantial.

[Cookingboy]

Your statement is ridiculous. I'm not going to discuss the demand for accountants and cab drivers or the differences between engineering job and cab driver, but your assumption of there are plenty of exceptional accountants in India and exceptional cab drivers in Europe is unfounded.

Why would Indian accountants be experts with U.S. accounting practices and tax laws? Would they be amazing at dealing with customers and auditors? What makes you say they'd be more cost effective than American accountants?

Why would European cab drivers be more effective than American cab drivers? If you put one of those crazy taxi drivers from Eastern Europe here he'd get arrested within hours. Would they provide better customer service when they don't even speak English?

Where as for Engineers, good engineers from China and India are just as good at their subject as anyone and culture barrier is not really a big concern when you are dealing with pure technology, so of course it makes sense to hire top engineers from other countries.

[ones_and_zeros]

If good engineers from China and India (or really anywhere) are just as good at their subject as anyone else then preference should be given to the citizen, but it's actually the reverse in practice, and that is by design.

If the foreign engineers are really that good then why do most of them do low level work with low status positions for 70k/year? Sounds like poor use of the "best and brightest" to me...

[Cookingboy]

There is no preference when it comes to hiring Top Tier engineers. Here at Google we try to hire everyone that can pass the interviews, if you are a U.S. Citizen that doesn't require Visa sponsorship then it's all the much better. I've never ever heard of anyone losing their job to foreigners in top Silicon Valley companies.

I never said foreign engineers are better, I said top ones are just as good as top ones here. Most of them work in low level positions for 70k a year but that's true for most American engineers as well. Cost would obviously play a big role for jobs of those level.

But I was replying to the comment about exceptional talent, not the overall job market.

What makes you think they WOULDN'T be as good? I've casually worked with some top tier Engineers from Baidu and Alibaba before this job and I'd say they'd have no problem landing a good position at Google or Facebook any day.

[coliveira]

When you start looking a the implications of the fallacies of "talent in short supply", all these crazy ideas start to crumble. A large number H1B visas in this country are used by temporary agencies that bring workers to do jobs for low pay. This doesn't seem to be the pool of bright programmers that their proponents have in mind.

[yen223]

A lot of foreign workers are willing to work for less money, in exchange for a H1-B visa.

Why are they willing to do that? Because H1-Bs are scarce.

Why is it scarce? Because a lot of Americans have decided that H1-Bs should be limited, because they fear foreign workers coming over and working for less money.

[coliveira]

There is nothing ridiculous in this statement. You are talking about "exceptional" workers, not about normal or even bad workers. Exceptional workers are in short supply in any profession. According to the logic of software industry, the solution should be to import workers from other nations, because then we would have access to the best of the best.

Of course it is not like that. Software engineers from India or China are on average as good as the ones in the US. If something could make a difference is education. Now, if engineers in the US are not as good the ones coming from Asia, the country should do something to fix this issues first by paying more and educating them in a superior way.

[Cookingboy]

Read the comment I replied to, he was talking about exceptional cab drivers and exceptional accountants, thus making his statements ridiculous.