[mehrdada]

Or you may fail at interviews because for you it’ll be conducted in English vs their native language. Not a hypothetical. At least an anecdote. Old colleague casually admitted to this despite company policy.

Also note that most interviews are known to be more extreme than the actual job needs: e.g. leetcode is the interview; random CSS manipulation is the actual job. I wonder how hard would it be to teach a top 15% high schooler in America to do that stuff.

[copperx]

Top high schoolers can develop algorithms. The average high schooler can manipulate CSS, no problem.

[throwawaygh]

Right. Most software engineering isn't the sort of hard-to-source skilled labor that the H1B program was intended to provide. Until we can be honest about that and have a real healthy debate about allowing the sort of mid/low skill labor that smart high schools can do, our immigration will continue to suck and breed resentment on all sides.

NB I'm pro-mid/low skill immigration. But these H1B conversations are intractable without first pointing out that, if the goal is low/mid skill immigration, then we need to fight for a new visa class aside from the H1B.