[Immigration] Changes to temp visas

That is correct. We do not have enough IT workers. This is well known - and many many companies such as Google have already moved their R&D (tech) labs overseas. So you can continue to live in your bubble or not. Your choice.

 

I agree with the productivity piece somewhat and have seen the trade-offs.

Keep in mind though, the H1B candidates are that are going to be forced back offshore are also your better tech professionals. The cost to productivity of on shore will rise (lower candidate supply as the change intended) but at the same time the cost to productivity ratio of offshore should fall (both due to higher productivity talent pool and lower cost from less competition to bring on shore H1B).

I'm not sure what the tipping point or it's scale will be, but the secondary effect from this has to be that the attractiveness of offshore vs. onshore should increase as a result of less H1Bs.

 

They should pay more and adjust as should happen in a capitalist market. Then people will sacrifice their living conditions to move to a crappy place. Hiring cheap foreign labor hurts our economy by letting companies off too easily and giving them no incentive to raise wages. You want nuance, there is your nuance.

Americans first. Bringing in cheap foreign labor is not a solution that benefits the American labor force.

Companies should have to prove they exhausted all options before being allowed a foreign visa exemption. If it is a matter of no one in the US can perform the job, then bring them in. If an American is around who can perform this task, sorry but you should have to raise your wages or just not hire the person and go without.

Yes there is room for exceptions, but in most cases firm lines should be drawn to keep out people who prevent wage growth. Wage growth is lagging badly right now and foreign labor is not the solution. Forcing companies to compete in the existing labor market will make a dent in this problem though.

 

Live in a bubble? I work in tech in Houston. Where do you work that doesn't have enough tech workers? Show me a news article where IT graduates are getting hiring bonuses because of high competition for labor. I'll agree that there are not a lot of tech workers who want to work for H1B level wages. That's kind of the point to the whole discussion.

If your company wants reasonably priced American talent, don't run your IT factory in places like Silicon Valley where the cost of living is so high.

 

Gutter Snipe on fire today. Your input is interesting. Keep it up.

My two cents on all of this... AND a bit off the main topic.

As someone following Seattle, Austin, and Silicon Valley real estate closely, amongst other markets, I can tell you that tech is actually driving the costs higher in those cities where they cluster together (and their success is what is hurting them now with some markets overheating and other problems). Tech companies would do well to spread out more. They risk losing workers to other cities with cheaper costs of living. A lost of people do not want to live in the Bay Area for example and are happy to go to Seattle where they get to keep more money. Even San Antonio is poised to take Austin businesses away because housing costs are so much better.

How do you think the tech side of things will affect Houston? Do you think the H1B1 visa ban hurts us locally?

 

There's IT and then there is computer engineering. There are no shortage of coders. There are a shortage of domestic computer engineering talent though.

 

I'm not a CompE... So?

 

As someone who works in IT in Houston, here is what I see:

• There are very few people of any nationality for higher level IT jobs. Data and Enterprise Architects, Tech Dev Leads, Infrastructure engineers, SKILLED project managers (not PMOs or spreadsheet pushers), Data modelers, Data scientists, data engineers, Enterprise Analytics developers...these types of jobs are extremely difficult to fill. If you post one of these jobs, you'll get 50 applications and MAYBE 1 or 2 are remotely qualified. Salaries for these jobs are easily in the 125-175 range at a lot of companies, if not more. If its an H1B applicant that is qualified, I'm all for it.
• The IT service companies DO flood the market with cheaper talent to lower their costs. I've seen it all over the place. You hire Accenture, IBM, TCS, Wipro, Infosys...you KNOW you will have a 20/80 on/off shore mix. What you don't expect is the 20% onshore resources to be 22 year old H1B visas that don't know anything...just warm bodies that won the H1B lottery. THIS is where the system is gamed and THIS is where changes need to be made.

 

I can tell by your post that you aren't doing anything remarkable in your job.

I work for a tech start-up - nearly all the top senior folks are foreigners. The junior folks are Americans. It is very hard to find IT talent that is capable of building a business anywhere. The U.S. isn't putting out the top talent though. The kind of coders that can really build innovative things is too rare.

You see tech as a commodity. I see tech as a game changer.

 

You're a very stupid person.

 

Black Americans are not being shafted by H1-Bs. In fact, the type of companies global or massive enough to outsource H1-Bs at the very least have the mindset to hire non-white employees to professional roles due to less of a reliance on social fit, networking or nepotism.

 

I'm sorry, I couldn't leave the troll under the bridge.

You are arguing for the border case where it is these amazing people that we just can't find in America and casually or directly insulting those who disagree with you. (Attacking the person, not the argument)

We are pointing out the massive and obvious case with occurrences in the tens of thousands, and trying to have a civil discussion about it. Who do you think has more credibility here?

 

Because of viewpoints based on ignorance and just outright lies. Is that so hard for you to understand?

Complaining about too many asians in tech is harming latins and blacks is just a pathetic attempt to rationalize racist views. The reality is that there is a dearth of people to fill tech jobs - and tech workers do earn a premium because of it. And the best talent is overseas - from markets where being good with computers makes you attractive, not a nerd to be picked on as it does in America. That's the real reason we lack tech workers.

 

So Infosys (the largest H1B user in the US) just announced it is hiring 10,000 workers in the US. My partners that I work with in Infosys told me that this announcement was coming a couple of weeks ago and is in direct response to Trump. Infosys is feeling big time pressure through back channels from the US government and while they were going to hire into 4 technology centers anyways, they are hiring vastly more US workers than originally planned.

According to the partner, they feel like their license to operate in the US is dependent on hiring more US workers over the next few years due to the Trump administration and this first 10,000 (up from like 2,000 originally planned) is just the first announcement of several over the next year or two.