Hah. Funny as hell:
Smasharoo wrote:
1. You've never had anything to do with H1B professionally, in any way. However, you know a dude.
Have I personally filled out the paperwork for an H1B visa? No. Do I personally know people who are working on H1B visa and talk with and work with them every single day? Yes. Seriously, where do you think you're going with this? I literally work in an office building where about 60% of the workers are foreigners.
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2. I've recommended it be used to save money on certain roles because it's dramatically cheaper than paying domestic market rates.
Certain roles? Sure. I'm not going to defend the absurd position that 100% of all foreigners hired to do jobs in the US are earning enviable salaries. But you're arguing that
none of them are. Which is equally absurd.
I know for a fact that there are several hundred employees just in the building I work in (ok, two attached buildings) that are earning salaries that people in the US would be happy to earn. The problem is that we have college graduates struggling to find jobs that pay $30-$40k/year, while we're paying to import workers to work at jobs earning $50-$80k/year. And you don't think that maybe this is a problem with our education not matching up with the job market?
I'm not sure what to say to that. This is such a well known and understood problem in the tech industry that it's startling to think that someone would not only not be aware of it, but would actively deny that it's happening. I suppose that explains why there appears to be so much brain death on this issue politically as well though. If someone like you, with no direct interest other than ideological stubbornness will engage in this level of denial, I can only imagine that politicians with a much larger direct stake in maintaining the fallacy of foreign versus domestic jobs markets (and education) will be that much worse. Seriously. It's a problem and everyone is looking in the exact wrong directions.
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3. Basic, near comatose economics should make it clear that it's close to impossible that in a nation of 300 million people, a company can't find 10 engineers or data scientists.
We can't find
thousands of engineers to fill the jobs. Probably tens of thousands of jobs nationwide. That's a lot of college graduates who could have those jobs, if only they had the right skills.
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What they might have difficulty doing is finding 10 of them work for peanuts.
And yet, we have college graduates stuck working jobs that pay less than we're paying these h1b employees. So that kinda disproves your point. Are you seriously trying to argue that a kid right out of college with an engineering degree will turn down a $50k/year starting salary? You clearly have no freaking clue what this market looks like.
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Tell your lunch friends to just offer more money to fill those roles, and watch the qualified applicants roll in.
You really don't get it, do you?
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The *average* starting salary out of college with an undergrad degree in comp sci/engineering is close to $70k.
$60-70k/year sure. What's your point? Test and Design Engineers tend to start around $60k. When you calculate the total cost to employ an h1b employee it ends out being more than the cost to employ a domestic employee at the same job (at least these kinds of jobs). I know you want it to be about some kind of cruel exploitation, but the fact is that there really aren't enough qualified workers to fill these jobs. I just don't know how much more clearly I can say this.
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Asking those people to work for $50k is a @#%^ing joke.
If someone can't find a job in their field that pays more, then asking them to work for $50k is not a joke at all. As I said, there are a ton of college graduates who would absolutely jump at a $50k/year starting position. You are seriously out of touch if you think otherwise. All the averages and wage sites in the world doesn't change that fact. There is a disconnect between the skills kinds coming out of our education system have and the skills the job market needs.