[bactrian]

Microsoft hires thousands of H1B workers for generic roles like project manager and software developer.

Do you really think there aren’t Americans that could fill those roles? Of course there are but it would cost more. A true shortage would not affect Microsoft at all. They have as much money as anyone.

This is a dirty secret of tech that you can’t discuss without being labeled racist or xenophobic no matter how untrue that is.

[ActsJuvenile]

I have hired a few H1-Bs, and here is how the first step goes:

Before you file for a H1-B visa with USCIS, employer needs to get Department of Labor (DOL) certification. Employers have to advertise the job in local media for 30 days. Jobs have to offer median salary for the given skill based on DOL numbers (Roughly $104K per year).

All resumes received, and interview notes must be included in DOL application for labor certification. If a qualified American applied for the job, DOL rejects the certification request.

I would love to hear where you see a material flaw in this process. To me it signifies there is a real talent shortage.

[raincom]

Here is the flaw, material or otherwise: (a) companies post jobs with descriptions that filter out all but the candidate they are filing for DOL certification. Next time, look at your company postings with exacting requirements: 3 yrs of experience in the stack A, 5 years in the language X, 6 years in Y, etc. That's how the game is played. (b) During green card processing, I have seen companies setting up fake interviews only to disqualify whoever comes for the interview. I was a victim of that.

[ActsJuvenile]

I have seen pretty much every company be guilty of (a), so it is hard to regulate it away.

(b) seems downright malicious and/or stupid. Why conduct fake interviews if employer is going to pay the same amount? Especially when you future foreign worker won't be able to work for you till next October at the earliest?

[raincom]

(b) is to file I-140 for those who have been already on H1B. If I were an employer, and if I wanna apply for I-140 for one of my employees who is on H1B, I need to do that.

[nradov]

I don't think you understand what the word "shortage" means. A shortage logically cannot persist in a free market unless some external factor is artificially constraining supply or restricting prices. There is no supply constraint; unlike physicians or lawyers there is no formal training or certification required for software developers (outside of a few secret or safety-critical positions). And the government hasn't placed any limits on salaries. If there was a true shortage then we would be seeing huge increases in compensation, which obviously isn't happening. Perhaps you're just not willing to pay the market clearing price.

As for talent, that's basically a myth. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myt...

[majormajor]

The way I've seen people bypass these requirements is by advertising a highly specific job with attributes very few people will match exactly.

[jldugger]

> Employers have to advertise the job in local media for 30 days

So like, newspapers nobody reads? A website you really hope nobody finds? There's a wide variety of strategies to claim you found no applicants. Don't have to take my word for it, consultants at Cohen & Grigsby go in far more detail: https://web.archive.org/web/20150725212924/http://www.ethics...

[ActsJuvenile]

This is why DOL review is part of the process. Reviewer will reject the application if you are publishing IT job ads on FarmersMingle.com.

[jldugger]

How about the Mercury News?

[perryh2]

I have worked at companies in the past that actively rejected all applicants (Americans included) to the job postings, even if they were qualified. These were entry/mid-level PM and software engineering positions.

[pandaman]

> Employers have to advertise the job in local media for 30 days.

Are you sure? It's only true if by "local media" you literally mean a piece of paper on a board in the break room.

>All resumes received, and interview notes must be included in DOL application for labor certification.

You are definitely confusing PERM with H1B. PERM (certification for EBGC) requires advertising, interviewing and is, essentially, a process of proving that there are no Citizens or Resident Aliens willing to take the job. For H1B DOL just certifies that the wages you are paying are adequate for the position. Plus there is a requirement to inform your own employees about the H1Bs, which is done by positing these jobs in "local media" (in one company I've seen those posted in a closet, which also contained a soda machine so it had some foot traffic).

[dominotw]

Flaw is this: employers are guaranteed loyalty on h1b for that price. So a local cannot compete with that /

[supergarfield]

This is not really true: the main limiting factor with H1-B visas is the yearly cap; as others have said, the rest of the requirements are normally easy to check off (especially if you already have an H1-B).

Since you are not subject to the H1-B cap when reapplying if you are already on an H1-B, and since there is so much demand for tech jobs, it's not clear that H1-B tech workers have to be loyal to their employer.

[dominotw]

you have to be loyal once you apply for your green card. most ppl on h1b don't want to leave after 6 yrs so they apply for their greencards.

[lowbloodsugar]

Local media. Median salary.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Do you really think there aren’t Americans that could fill those roles?

Would they fill them at a similar level of quality? That is to say, if you forced similar wages on both and removed the cost of bringing someone from overseas into the country, would the employer hire the foreigner? If so, I see the visa programme as fulfilling one of its roles: adding to the American braintrust. If not, you have a point.

Most studies I've seen don't attempt to answer this question, instead devolving to the easier-to-answer if useless "could they have found an American who met the job requirements".

[slantedview]

> Would they fill them at a similar level of quality? That is to say, if you forced similar wages on both

Forcing certain wages on American workers is not the way that H1B is intended to work which is basically the point here. H1B is ostensibly intended to allow employers to fulfill roles that cannot be filled at any salary by US workers.

[oh-kumudo]

If anything, coders aren't the ones who are under paid in US. Their salary are HIGH.

To be the devil's advocate, the H1B visa is created specifically for the purpose to bring down the cost of employers, by opening up to global talent supply, no matter under what disguise. And software industry seems to me is exactly the sector what H1B is intended to apply on.

[wolfgke]

The interesting metric is "salary - costs of living". Since the costs of living are very high in SF, they are not paid that well.

[oh-kumudo]

Not every programmers are living in SF.

And I do think it is misleading to say programmers' salary is not high because of the cost-of-living. Cost-of-living applies on EVERYONE, there are many waiters/drivers/artists living in SF, and I don't believe they get additional rebate because they are not doing computer work.

[wolfgke]

> Do you really think there aren’t Americans that could fill those roles? Of course there are but it would cost more.

"Shortage" means that even if you pay insane salaries, you will not get a qualified employee. Thus a thought: make it a requirement for H1B workers that they are paid, say, 3 times what the average of a typical salary for a related job is. This way companies can solve their shortages via H1B, but they will only do it to stop shortages of qualified workers (for an insane price) and not to reduce costs.

[jldugger]

By your definition, is it ever possible to have a labor shortage? As long as there's one qualified individual who doesn't already work for you, there should be some "insane salary" that would entice them, no?

[wolfgke]

> By your definition, is it ever possible to have a labor shortage?

Yes, it is quite possible, though not common. Centrally jobs, where you need highly intelligent people with qualifications that only very few have (and are insanely hard to get) or an insane amount of experience.

Think of people with decades of experience developing chip architectures from ground up (example: Jim Keller).

Think of willing to apply mathematicians of Field-medalist quality to work on your insanely hard problems (example: Microsoft Research (Station Q) applied Michael Freedman to work on the mathematical foundation for topological quantum computers; or it is well-known that Terence Tao also does consulting work for the NSA (source: http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/terence-tao-the-mozart-of... )).

Or think of gurus in AI/machine learning of an above-ordinary-human level of competence.

[jldugger]

And how many visas do you think this "literal world expert" definition would allow? 200?

[wolfgke]

> And how many visas do you think this "literal world expert" definition would allow? 200?

I can only do Fermi estimates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem ) on this kind of question - which surely many people on HN can do better than me.

But I am aware of companies that actually do have this kind of problem (not in the extreme of my previous post, where I exaggerated my point somewhat to make it more marked):

They are looking for some kinds of people with some very specific and rare qualifications who are rare and hard to find and if they really do find such people, they of course pay such people really well. In other words: Their problem really is finding such people and not the money. So in this case there is a shortage of people and not of money.

[albertoavila]

I feel that hard to believe, if anything, I would say foreign workers are more expensive than local talent, in big tech firms they are paid just the same as Americans, but they come with added expenses due to international relocation, visa feeds, etc.

* I might be biased thou, since I work on the US under a work Visa.

[rrhd]

No, you are just being paid a pittance and working 80 hour weeks.

Didn't you realize that. Oh and that guy they dragged out of your office when you arrived was the American you totally replaced.

[stale2002]

"Jobs that Americans could fill" is not what people are talking about when they talk about H1B abuse.

H1B abuse is when you do things like pay people the minimum salary as required by law, and THEN set up some illegal contract with the employee that says that if you leave before 2 years, the engineer has to pay back 10s of thousands of dollars.

Or another common thing that happens is that the same company will submit a person multiple times through shell companies, so that the person has an unfair advantage in the lottery.

[justboxing]

Not sure why you are getting downvoted, but this

> THEN set up some illegal contract with the employee that says that if you leave before 2 years, the engineer has to pay back 10s of thousands of dollars

is true, and VERY prevelant with Indian 'Companies' [called 'Bodyshoppers'] that abuse the H1B visa program. Some even hold your passport hostage (which is also VERY ILLEGAL). Again, speaking from personal experience of some of my Indian friends who came here on H1B around the same time as me...

[rrhd]

Holding someone's passport should be prison time, and not a small amount.

[rrhd]

They will also just flood the process with applications then hire anyone who actually gets one.

That shouldn't be cheap.

[tybit]

For international companies either they import overseas skilled employees to their headquarters (e.g Microsoft) and/or they open up offices in other countries where those skilled employees can work(e.g Google).

There's a pretty good argument for the US to import those skilled employees rather than export those jobs. But as a non US citizen, I'd be more than happy for H1B workers to be more restricted and have more big tech companies open offices in my country.

[innagadadavida]

In addition to technical skills, there are other considerations: 1. Diversity. 2. Cultural fit. 3. Results. Companies know better what they want/need -- not some loud random strangers on the internet, and definitely not the government/USCIS. That said, driving down US wages should definitely be punished as it is illegal.

[praneshp]

> Do you really think there aren’t Americans that could fill those roles

The onus is on you (or an authority) to show that that they ignored Americans. I'm sure they could hire a person of any nationality to put a body on the seat, but probably not someone who could solve their whiteboard problems. I'm especially biased about MS because I failed to clear their interview twice.

I downvoted your other comment about Google (that's now dead) because I thought you were making nonsensical claims with zero evidence; I don't think your comments were racist or xenophobic.

[hackits]

Curious any reason why you failed the interview twice?

[praneshp]

Atrocious performance the first time. Probably a close miss the second time; I was not too happy with 2/5 interviews.

[hackits]

Congrats on getting to the interview phase. I've heard horror stories of Microsoft interview process and reluctant to go through their interview meat grinder.

[praneshp]

If I remember correctly, the initial phone screen was a joke. They literally just asked me to code fibonacci once, and something similar the other time. All the interviewers themselves were nice to me, etc.

[rrhd]

Best interview experience I've ever had. They had me do a quick online thing then come to an event with a bunch of people. No waiting around for weeks between each stage, no multiple phone screens, no waiting for weeks after for a yes/no.

[nevir]

Yes, there's a shortage of qualified software developers, at least.

[alexanderstears]

There's a shortage of qualified software developers like there's a shortage of steinway pianos in my house.

There's not enough available at the price I want to pay. So sad. The market's clearing but not for me. Pay more or adjust my expectations.

[rrhd]

How much would google have to pay for you to go work there?

I'd hazard a guess they don't lose most people due to pay issues.

[alexanderstears]

Ha, I'd have to get a golden parachute to work there. Some SJW googler would try to scalp me within 30 minutes of me saying the problem with policing in America is the lack of secret police. And the problem with airport security is that it's reluctant to embrace differential scrutiny.

[rrhd]

> Some SJW googler

or someone who doesn't want to live in a totalitarian hellhole.

[alexanderstears]

No - people who don't want to live in a totalitarian hellhole know that scalping is totalitarian hellhole stuff.

SJWs agree that they hate white cismen's hellholes but they just hate white cismen. SJWs love diverse hellholes.

[wolfgke]

Why not simply open offices in other countries instead?

[nevir]

It's often hard to split work between countries effectively (especially in large corporations). A lot of the larger & more impactful projects tend to be done at a home base - for political or logistical reasons.

Speaking from experience at Amazon & Google.

[SubuSS]

I don't know which part of Amazon you worked for - but this was totally done in Amazon: We had/have major pieces of kindle, aws, payments et. built out of India. I worked for one of those teams for two years. Amazon is so big that segmenting like this isn't a big deal at all.

I am all for shutting the door on under-qualified engineers being hired just because they will work for much lower wages, But applying the same rule to companies like Amazon / Microsoft etc would just mean work moves to those offices.

Personally I moved here because the team I wanted to work for was here (DynamoDB - given my history building storage engines before). I stayed because of the quality of life / opportunities. I mean if my visa gets revoked, I would sell my house etc here, pick up my money and probably end up in Canada / Europe offices of Snap anyway.

I try not to attach myself to material stuff too much, I'd like to think I can make the best out of wherever I am, improve when I can. But not many (including my family) are like that. They like the security provided by a good immigration policy - means this will only take high paying jobs away from here.

[wolfgke]

> It's often hard to split work between countries effectively (especially in large corporations)

How do you come to claim "especially in large corporations"? I would intuitively rather believe that it is much harder in small companies.

[netheril96]

They do, in addition to importing talents to the US.