Donald Trump wants to raise the minimum wage for H1b
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It's a company owned by a well known company with excellent benefits. These are full time, permanent positions and 'full relocation' is posted in the offer.
There is some viable reason. I can't tell what it is from what you've said, but something is making that position undesirable.
And I've been in a company of a lot more than 1200 employees that moved. From CA to AZ.
I have always thought this was a GREAT idea. The H1b visa is to find talent worldwide that cannot be found in the US. If that is true then why are these people being paid lower than US workers?
I not only agree with this, I have been thinking it is needed for quite awhile.
The company I work for has a large and growing number of Indian tech workers, some employees and some contractors. I don't know exactly what each is paid, but I do get the impression its likely one sixth of what the equivalent American worker is paid. What does that do? Encourages the managers to hire more and more of these people. The folks are harder to communicate with and are usually very inexperienced. But they promise the managers the world while underdelivering time after time.
I believe that making people pay the same regardless of where they are from would force:
1. equity in wages
2. less over-hiring of inexperienced workers
3. happier American workers who aren't constantly training folks and correcting mistakes
I fear if American companies and managers continue to exploit these people in this way, we are headed for yet another "civil rights movement" but this time with the underpaid Indian born employees demanding their equal rights and pay eventually anyway. Why wouldn't they?
The science and tech industries are unique in a way most people don't want to talk about. They are hard to do and require a much higher than average IQ to be good at them. To be a good engineer at a high tech company, I'd say you have to be smarter than the average doctor. You need to be good at things like abstract reasoning, creative design, and scientific comprehension which are skills way beyond those of the average person.
If I really had to put a number on it I'd say you need at least a 120 IQ to be in the high tech industry. That's the 90th percentile. To get a PhD in STEM you probably need a 130 IQ, which is the 97th percentile.
So you can't just say, there are unemployed Americans out there - they will retrain into tech jobs. They can't retrain. The job is beyond them. If it was within their abilities, they probably would have excelled at school in the first place and not been unemployed.
The figures above about ratios in graduate STEM departments are totally true, and it's not because of differences in career aspirations that Americans are outnumbered. China and India each have over a billion people, and moreover their populations are younger than ours. Given such a huge population, the top 5% or so is numerically huge, bigger than the top 5% in the USA.
American scientists and engineers are still lucky and very well trained. They have choices that H1Bs don't have.
I've written much of this elsewhere since it's the economic reality of the 21st century. If you need 97th percentile intelligence to do a job plus the training, work ethic, and communications/interpersonal skills, an employer is going to have to pay dearly for that. It's why we have income stratification.
I disagree about the H1B part. The US has 330 million people. Do the math. That means it only has 10 million 97th percentile people. Asia has a 4.4 billion people. They have 100+ million 97th percentile people. This is basic supply & demand economics. If you allow 97th percentile people from Asia in on H1B visas, they're competing against our native-born 97th percentile people. It has a large impact on compensation levels.
It has an even bigger impact on US citizens who aren't in the 97th percentile. You have 97th percentile Asians on H1B visas competing against you and getting paid pennies on the dollar.
I'm a career development engineer who has mostly spent my career in telecom. I've had job titles like Chief Architect and VP of Technology. Since the Great Recession, that has all vaporized. Telecom R&D is done by Asians either in Asia or by H1B people in the US. I'm still able to earn a good living but it's not by being the lead technical guy leading a group of engineers in an office building. That's now some Chinese, Taiwanese, or Korean guy in an office building in those countries. Whenever I'm asked about career decisions from a bright kid in their teens, I steer them away from anything that can easily be outsourced or where they can be easily replaced by H1B workers. The FDA is an enormous trade barrier and one of the few we have left beyond the defense industry. I suggest people target biotech.
The science and tech industries are unique in a way most people don't want to talk about. They are hard to do and require a much higher than average IQ to be good at them. To be a good engineer at a high tech company, I'd say you have to be smarter than the average doctor. You need to be good at things like abstract reasoning, creative design, and scientific comprehension which are skills way beyond those of the average person.
If I really had to put a number on it I'd say you need at least a 120 IQ to be in the high tech industry. That's the 90th percentile. To get a PhD in STEM you probably need a 130 IQ, which is the 97th percentile.
So you can't just say, there are unemployed Americans out there - they will retrain into tech jobs. They can't retrain. The job is beyond them. If it was within their abilities, they probably would have excelled at school in the first place and not been unemployed.
^^THIS!!
Look at the Education, Parenting, and Teaching forums. People applauded when schools removed higher level math from the curriculum. There are parents calling for less homework for their children. There are teachers upset because they have to pass the math component of the Praxxus to get certification.
American are choosing to dumb themselves down. All the while, the world is getting more and more technologically advanced.
To all those who are saying to "just pay more," correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we talking about jobs that are paying anywhere from $50k-$100k even for these alleged low paid visa holders?
Are we saying that Americans are thumbing their noses at $70k jobs? In a global economy?
I fear if American companies and managers continue to exploit these people in this way, we are headed for yet another "civil rights movement" but this time with the underpaid Indian born employees demanding their equal rights and pay eventually anyway. Why wouldn't they?
They won't because they are paid just enough to have things to lose. There is just enough hope that they will climb the ladder and land a permanent position with fairer pay. Also there's a cultural component, which I'm not qualified to expand on but I suspect there's some respect for social systems ingrained in most Asian cultures in some form or another.
You only need to turn to see what Americans haven't done, especially considering our culture of independence and alleged rebelliousness, during personnel and wage cuts to see that tolerance for abuse is far greater than most of us realize. It will likely be very reasonable too, not due to failures in character. I have also heard stories about what some offshored programmers are paid and accept, despite producing excellent work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffD
I've written much of this elsewhere since it's the economic reality of the 21st century. If you need 97th percentile intelligence to do a job plus the training, work ethic, and communications/interpersonal skills, an employer is going to have to pay dearly for that. It's why we have income stratification.
I disagree about the H1B part. The US has 330 million people. Do the math. That means it only has 10 million 97th percentile people. Asia has a 4.4 billion people. They have 100+ million 97th percentile people. This is basic supply & demand economics. If you allow 97th percentile people from Asia in on H1B visas, they're competing against our native-born 97th percentile people. It has a large impact on compensation levels.
It has an even bigger impact on US citizens who aren't in the 97th percentile. You have 97th percentile Asians on H1B visas competing against you and getting paid pennies on the dollar.
I'm a career development engineer who has mostly spent my career in telecom. I've had job titles like Chief Architect and VP of Technology. Since the Great Recession, that has all vaporized. Telecom R&D is done by Asians either in Asia or by H1B people in the US. I'm still able to earn a good living but it's not by being the lead technical guy leading a group of engineers in an office building. That's now some Chinese, Taiwanese, or Korean guy in an office building in those countries. Whenever I'm asked about career decisions from a bright kid in their teens, I steer them away from anything that can easily be outsourced or where they can be easily replaced by H1B workers. The FDA is an enormous trade barrier and one of the few we have left beyond the defense industry. I suggest people target biotech.
About 97th percentile people, suppose we convert that to a set of linear standards arbitrarily using today's distribution as the baseline. Uniformly educating a larger portion of our own population will result in skewing the distribution so that the equivalent of 97th percentile pool could be increased.
People are not fixed resources and can change over time. Those with the innate potential and desire to improve will do so if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, that university level opportunity is very expensive and therefore a lot of American potential is wasted as a result. We seem to accept that abandoning potential is the right way to go about it and I acknowledge that because there are a lot of unknown variables involved, sorting out the most cost effective way to tap that potential is a daunting task. I'm just saying that we potentially have what we need so I don't think the argument "we don't have the numbers needed" is really valid. I do accept that H1Bs are much more convenient. It's not unlike arguing about remaining oil reserves, which changes with how accessible they are.
In addition, I would argue that there are a lot of skills and knowledge that should have been transferred down to the grade school level long ago but our traditions prevented us from adapting beyond the reading, math, writing and basic history that have always been the core of education in the US. Perhaps we don't need 97th Percentile people and 90th Percentile is fine if the pool was higher quality to begin with. The processes that improve that pool to begin with costs money and infrastructure though.
Regarding the biotech part: Only if you're an engineer. Not hot for people with undergrad bio degrees though some do okay if they survive for long enough. R&D is constantly getting pinched too so even bio/chem PhD project leaders are frequently getting cut when their projects are cancelled.
So you can't just say, there are unemployed Americans out there - they will retrain into tech jobs. They can't retrain. The job is beyond them. If it was within their abilities, they probably would have excelled at school in the first place and not been unemployed.
True, no one should say that unemployed Americans should simply "retrain" into tech jobs. (I don't know who is saying such a blanket statement, anyway.)
Instead, the underemployed Americans should attend the retraining for tech jobs. Developer boot camps, for example, are ideal for high-IQ high-EQ liberal arts types working as baristas and temps. Upon completion these individuals receive salaries more in line with their overall intelligence.
Society benefits as these people move up and out: with minimum-to-moderate wage positions now vacated, the legit unemployed can then accede to these jobs and go from there.
The good old fashioned way to deal with a labor shortage in one sector is to raise wages. If the demand is high and the shortage is persistent, then people will obtain the necessary skills to do those jobs. It won't take long.
YES, this.
I hear about a shortage of qualified applicants at my work. The truth is we don't pay enough and are not in a location with enough of a draw for people to accept lower pay for work they can get elsewhere in more lucrative locations for the same pay. I've told the higher ups this - we either need to pay more - like 20-30% more, required to make them move here, or accept that we will not get the kind of applicants they dream of and we'll have to make do.
For a vast number of H1b visa holders pay even if poor is still vastly more than they could earn in India, China or wherever. Those countries have huge surpluses of various engineers and others with STEM skills and thus wages aren't spectacular even by native standards.
The larger prize for most is getting themselves and possibly spouses/family on USA soil. Once here they will scheme, connive and otherwise do whatever to see to it they remain. Everything from marrying a US citizen to starting their own business.
For a vast number of H1b visa holders pay even if poor is still vastly more than they could earn in India, China or wherever. Those countries have huge surpluses of various engineers and others with STEM skills and thus wages aren't spectacular even by native standards.
Actually, they don't. I've been involved in the tech outsourcing game for many years. Two decades ago, an experienced Software Engineer in Shanghai cost about $30K in total compensation. Last year, we were paying them $80K and they were very tough to retain because they could walk across the street for more money. About 5 years ago, we opened an office in Wuhan where we could hire university grads on the cheap. A new hire PhD software engineer cost $30K on an apprenticeship-style program. It was damned tough to retain them after a couple of years without doubling their pay because they'd bail out to much higher paid jobs. With costs converging on $100K in China and the enormous problems we have managing projects there, a China outsourcing strategy is looking less and less attractive.
The university system in China cranks out a finite number of STEM people. The limiting factor isn't the population base, it's the number of university seats. Part of the recent China economic meltdown problem is that their relative scarcity of high skill employees has driven up wages and made the country a bit less competitive. They're not seeing that incredible double-digit growth. They still have a growth rate the first world would love to see but it's no longer the enormous yearly spike of the last 20+ years. When you're used to double-digit every year, single digit growth looks disastrous.
I work for a Korean company at the moment. They just opened up a development center in Vietnam. Korea is now becoming expensive enough that they are seeking out lower labor cost places. We all remember "Japan, Inc" of 1990 when it looked like they were on a trajectory to take over the world. Today, they have a lingering banking/property crisis that hasn't been solved in 15+ years, staggering national debt, and an aging/contracting population problem where 50 years from now, they're going to shrink by almost 50% in population and be a nation of old people. Taiwan and Korea are on a less severe trajectory but they have the issue, too.
We have some seriously smart people in this country with many of them looking for a good job/career to support their families and secure their future with. I find it VERY hard to believe that there is talent elsewhere in the world that cannot be found in our own country.
That's exactly what it has to do with, and nothing else. To believe otherwise is pure ignorance, or flat out stupidity.
As far as getting rid of this terrible, terrible option for companies to save money at the expense of middle America, I just want to see a heavy tax burden placed on any company employing off-shore workers when perfectly capable Americans are available to fill the jobs. Or as another poster said, when American jobs are cut and foreigners are employed in their place. Tax the hell out of 'em until they learn their lesson that personal greed does nobody any favors.
Right. Something has to be done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Item1of1
I believe H1B sponsors are already required to pay a "prevailing wage" (which can in fact be higher than what a local worker would be paid).
However, the high level of control employers have over their H1B hires justifies the extra cost.
So, you have H1B for hi tech jobs and low tech, you have the illegals. Something to think about when you are deciding what your future holds. You lose the hi tech position and can't even get a job doing janitorial work to keep from becoming homeless. A major reason to listen to what Mr. Trump is saying as yes, the companies could move out of the country but if they need US business, there are things a strong, intelligent leader can help make happen to handle that also.
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