[odux]

There are actually four large “buckets” on H1B usage in software. First are the “regular” software jobs. At the large tech players or other regular companies (eg a software job at a bank). Like you said, there is a lot of supply due to layoffs and not a lot of demand. H1Bs in this area are also limited this year due to this. Second are the college graduates. Once you complete a STEM degree as a foreign student you get three years of OPT which is for all practical purposes a work permit to work in STEM jobs (with some conditions). If the student (now employee) needs to continue working for the company in the US after this they need a H1B or a green card. Most genuine companies apply for H1B for these employees the moment they join and because it is a lottery keep doing it in the hope that the employee gets a H1B and continues working. These are not new jobs but people in jobs for up to 3 years that the company wants to continue employing and does not intend to layoff. Supply and demand plays a smaller part here.

Third are the outsourcing companies, TCS, Accenture and the like. These companies have people in India and contracts with large Us companies. They predict some number of demand for moving people from India to US (to help support the rest of the offshore team, to replace a higher paid employee at the US company with a lower paid employee of the contracting company etc). These companies will mostly but just barely follow the law (they have also been caught and paid files) and will use all loopholes available to them. These are the biggest “abuses” you see in the press. While the general “abuse” news in the press is about these companies replacing American workers with lower cost H1B employees the other problem is they are not catering to current demand but predicting work at a “client” based on current or future contract, creating “job openings” based on this (which they can, it is their own company) and flooding the lottery.

The fourth are smaller body shops and “consulting” companies in the US. These also predict demand and “create jobs” to enter applicants to the lottery. But the difference is typically the companies in the third category don’t get the employees to the US if there is no “client project” (as in, real demand) and even if they they do, they have the means to pay the minimum required pay the H1B demands - they are big enough to afford a bench of employees. The companies in the fourth category will get people to the US first on fake, or near-fake demand and then pitch them to “clients”. In the meantime the employee is not paid the companies skirt the law in all ways as possible to continue “holding” the employee. They also refuse to share paperwork with the employee (preventing them from moving jobs) and sometimes have the employees pay for the H1B which is illegal (but gets to the grey area if they get the payment in India before the employee travels to the US).

There is very less demand today in the first category. The second category is not much related to demand. Most of the “abuse” happens in the third (by volume) and fourth (by severity). Abuse in quotes because a lot of this is in the gray areas of legality and sometimes outrightly legal but not “right”.

[NovemberWhiskey]

People in the F1 + OPT category (second category from above) are really the most unjustly treated by the current process.

Oftentimes, these are people who have come to the US aged 18, lived here through a four-year college degree, maybe a masters; have subsequently been employed for up to two years (for STEM grads) for their OPT; and then have to compete on a like-for-like basis with candidates who are living abroad.

It's ridiculous. You've spent your entire adult life in the US and you have to participate in a lottery to keep your job.

[FrustratedMonky]

Thank You.

I did not realize about the 3 year college graduate category.

But does the law make these buckets? Or is there one H1-B bucket and you are categorizing the buckets by industry and types of companies that hire H1-B.

Don't you think that the 3 year college student bucket, and the generally other buckets, would suppress jobs/salary of the local US population?

They would be competing against US students graduating.

I am wondering about the supply/demand analysis. Do you think that the jobs in bucket 3 and 4, the outsourcing companies and smaller body shops, don't impact US based SW/CompSci employees? I'm just thinking with the current glut of US based people looking for jobs, and new US graduates, that they might also be applying to these companies, and be competing against the H1-B employees.

[eropple]

> Don't you think that the 3 year college student bucket, and the generally other buckets, would suppress jobs/salary of the local US population?

Only if you can find somebody to hire--because it's important to realize that H-1B applies to more than just computer touchers.

Before we got married, my wife was on an OPT. Her employer was not used to hiring foreign nationals, but they literally couldn't find somebody who would be willing to do the job. My wife is a special-education teacher at a school for very difficult kids, and not a programmer. That's not a common skillset and it's a very stressful job that almost nobody wants. (Turnover at her job is close to 100% per year, and is over 100% per year in some roles.)

The school isn't going to pay more for a probably-mythical candidate; the money doesn't exist. But kids need teachers.

Tech workers are absolutely a different story and causing some impact on the local tech-worker economy (but probably less than most people think; my employer just hires in India when it can now, instead, so no local businesses get paid by people working here), but every road that seems to be currently on the table seems to indicate that the overwhelming desire in the louder quarters isn't "fix tech-worker H-1B", it's "they terk er jerbs, kill H-1B". Which scans, given that when we get really honest about it; the spiciest reaction to H-1B, in my experience, is that it's dual-intent.

So even with the best of intentions (not those ones), touching the system is hard. The political valence is fraught, the system itself is complex and has a lot of moving parts, and the core assumptions being bandied around about job availability and supply curves are just not proven--or, probably, provable.

[FrustratedMonky]

It is easy to forget that H1-B applies to lot more than tech workers.

Is there any statistics on the break down between the jobs types?

I'd think with all the outcry over 'taking jobs'. That maybe the law should be adapted to have different quotas and rules for different industries.

[eropple]

> I'd think with all the outcry over 'taking jobs'. That maybe the law should be adapted to have different quotas and rules for different industries.

Probably should, but you would have to have the votes. In an environment where approximately half of the House and the Senate needs right-wing, nativist "heartland" votes to exist, it's unlikely to shift the calculus in favor of delivering benefits to American software developers: a demographic generally perceived as generally centrist to liberal (so why would they vote for Republicans if they helped improve this?), already well-off (so why do they need the help?), and chiefly coastal (so are they even in these votes' jurisdiction?).

[odux]

I am categorizing them because each have their own background. For the law it is one big bucket.

The theory is that there is enough demand and not enough supply of people to fill this demand. In practice there is a lot of nuance. It is a messy outdated system that is being stretched and abused.

Some of them are: US colleges like foreign students due to the money they bring in. This is not going to stop. H1B employees in the third and fourth categories are paid less compared to the US employees and even compared to the first category. So there is an intrinsic demand. These companies also don’t intend to hire US workers. They “prefer” foreign workers due to a variety of reasons, some in the legal grey area, some not legal. Some are: These employees are there to help run the offshore workforce so they want someone who understands the culture and work with them, even better if this is somewhere who was actually offshore and can come to the US and act as a bridge. They also use this as an incentive for the employees in India and elsewhere. They don’t want to pay more. Like I said some are in the legal grey area and use loopholes. There is a recent lawsuit against TCS related to this. These jobs are not going to stop unless US companies stop outsourcing because these jobs (and they being fulfilled by foreign workers) are fundamental to how the outsourcing model is run by these companies.

My personal opinion is the first and second categories do not suppress jobs and salaries of US workers. These companies pay the same for both and a lot of times actually spend a net higher amount of money on the foreign workers due to the H1B overhead and fees involved (a fee when applying, renewals every 3 years, applying for green card etc). These employees also tend to be good at what they do.

The third is where the vast majority of suppression comes from. And the fourth is where the vast majority of skirting the law happens.

[anukin]

There are lot of people in the second group who got fired during the layoffs of 2023. They are very much subjected to the same supply demand curve. In fact they are subjected more to it than the experienced developers. After the layoffs, the market seems to have taken a K shape. Experienced developers are very much in demand and inexperienced ones are not in demand. Most of the college grads and even masters students are part of the inexperienced developers group. I personally know masters students who got layed off while the folks with bachelors and higher work experience are still working. The first bucket in your answer is barely affected in last layoffs as most of them are experienced developers. The second is the most affected.