[bigcostooge]

I’m not the poster, but I’ve worked with literally hundreds of H1B workers directly, and while some were ~decent developers, the majority were not.

Even the decent developers had no special skills that would qualify them for an H1b visa, however.

With a 0% rate of qualified H1b recipients in my own experience, I can imagine that the “conference room” statement would be true.

[mavelikara]

I am a hiring manager at an SV tech company. I have interviewed and hired many engineers on H-1B visa. They all, in my understanding, posses the required " theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor". The number of such hires definitely fill the biggest conference rooms I have seen. Also, when I attend reputable tech conferences, many speakers I meet are on H-1B.

That being my experience, I don't think the claim made by OP is true. Evidently, we have different understanding of what constitutes specialized skills. Why is a good developer not considered to posses "specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor"?

[megaman22]

Because that should be table-stakes for the profession.

And too many H1-Bs are just awful. I don't necessarily blame them individually, but it's a perverse suboptimal system.

If I ever run my own business, I'm going to put a 300-800% price hike on any work where I have to interface with Tata or Cognizant, or ATT Global Services, or the other kinds of consulting bodyshops that currently employ the vast majority of H1-Bs. At least for non-repeat business. Find a decent team and giving them normal rates or better would make sense, but there are others you wouldn't touch with a thirty foot pole made of rolled hundred dollar bills.

It is just not worth the headache dealing with that caliber of people, and the cultural impedance. Unless they are willing to pay through the nose.

[mavelikara]

> Because that should be table-stakes for the profession.

By your definition, most of the 736 players who played in FIFA 2018 world cup few weeks ago do not posses any special athletic skills - they merely posses skills that are table-stakes for their profession. Yet, most reasonable people would not hesitate to call those players elite athletes.

What I am trying to point out is that H-1B is not about finding that outstanding developer. These are people who have a high level of skill in a specialized occupation.

Edit: you expanded on you original one-liner with anecdote. I am quoting the one-liner I was reponding to here.

[megaman22]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that educated, competent workers in useful fields are exactly the kind of people you would want to have immigrate and become permanent citizens. So the whole H1-B charade is rather stupid from that perspective- if they are really effective workers that cannot be found domestically, why put them into a shitty indentured servitude?

You deal with too many sub-par people that tick a certain box, and your estimation of people that tick that box naturally goes down. There are very good people that are chained at companies with H1-B visas, but it is hard to battle what Bayes' Theorem tells you.

[null000]

The main problem I have with H1-B visa use cases (or at least my perception and understanding, based on the fact that I regularly see 8x2 grids of H1-B visa application stacks that go as deep as 2 novels posted as required by law at my work) is that they're mostly a vehicle to reduce wages or arbitrarily discriminate against otherwise qualified native applicants.

In the former case, H1-B visa holders are basically 100% dependent on their employers for continued employment - if they lose it for whatever reason, they get deported. This leads to flagrant abuses on behalf of the employers - demanding overtime & lower wages that they couldn't demand from those employees' domestic counterparts.

In the latter case, I work at one of the various companies that prides themselves on having an extremely high hiring bar. Of course, this doesn't really mean we hire the absolute best, it just means that we toss a lot of applicants in the bin because they weren't able to put on as good of a dog and pony show as expected - our interview process does not even kind of resemble what people at my company do on a day to day basis, or even measure the skills it takes to really succeed. So, of course, when we exhaust the local talent pool through arbitrary pickiness, we just add in the labor pool from abroad, rather than just... you know, reconsider our hiring standards and maybe give people who are already here, qualified, and looking for a good job one of those good jobs. This in turn dilutes the labor market - people who would have gotten that cushy job through merit are pushed down into positions that don't require as much luck to get, and the people who would have gotten those jobs are pushed into the jobs where you pretty much just have to chat up the interviewer, and so on.

This whole inane process is pretty much the cause of the absurdity of the American tech industry, where you either get super lucky and wind up in a lower-mid 6 figure job with crazy benefits, or you wind up in a mid- to low- 5 figure job where your boss both shits on you constantly and simultaneously doesn't really understand what you're doing day to day anyway. There's a middle ground, but like barely if my last job search is anything to go off of.

[mavelikara]

> Personally, I'm of the opinion that educated, competent workers in useful fields are exactly the kind of people you would want to have immigrate and become permanent citizens. So the whole H1-B charade is rather stupid from that perspective- if they are really effective workers that cannot be found domestically, why put them into a shitty indentured servitude?

I don't disagree with you on these points.

My disagreement was to the unsubstantiated assertion by User23 that the number of engineers who qualify for H-1B in spirit and letter would be a handful.

[User23]

There are 265 million professional soccer players according to FIFA* and 736 were in the world cup. If the US accepted foreign developers at the same rate, that is 0.00027%, then of the 14.6 million that would be 41 individuals rounding up. So yes, they would comfortably fit in a large conference room.

*https://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/bcoffsurv/emaga_9...

[TheCoelacanth]

You are misreading that document tremendously. It states that 265 million people are actively involved in playing football, not professionally, just playing in any way. That number includes "professional footballers, registered players over the age of 18, registered youth players under the age of 18, futsal players, beach soccer players and unregistered occasional players".

[maxxxxx]

265 million professional soccer players?

Are you sure? 5% of the world population plays soccer professionally?

[mavelikara]

Let me repeat the question I asked above - why is a good developer not considered to posses "specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor"?.

[whath1breal]

I don't think the violations of H1-b law are coming from the clause you quoted.

It's coming from the parts about: 1) the employer must try to hire Americans first for the job and needs to be able to show that they haven't been able to hire Americans for the job 2) if the employer laid off people in essentially similar jobs recently before or after the H1-b application, the application is not supposed to go through 3) they need to pay the H1-bs the same wage as similar non-H1-b people at the company, or the prevailing wage of the area (whichever is greater)

I have personally seen all of these violated, would not be surprised if the vast majority of H1-bs are violating at least one of them. It's violated intentionally and everyone is doing it, because they can hire H1-bs cheaper and they have better retention (or less job mobility). Frankly it's a disgrace.

I personally am not anti-immigrant and would prefer the immigration laws to be more efficient, and spread the immigration over a wider range of jobs, instead of disproportionately affecting my profession (software engineering).

[masonic]

How many of your interviewees were over age 45 and had full working status (citizens or permanent residents)?

[mavelikara]

About half of the candidates I have interviewed have full working status. About 10% of the candidates were, in my estimate, over 45 years.

Slightly over half my team have full working status, and about 1/5th of the team is over about 40 years.

[jogjayr]

See this other comment for an explanation of why you might not have worked with any decent engineers who were on H1B: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17615528

Your experience doesn't mean that good engineers on H1B don't exist in large numbers. You just haven't encountered any.