Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I work in the software industry and we hire inferior American workers more often than filling needs with foreign workers with better software skills. We do it for ease of hiring and employee culture mostly, but we are certainly taking a hit with the training time some of these workers need. We could probably improve our bottom line significantly by truly hiring the best and brightest (which exist outside of the US in many situations).
Huh, I thought it was Americans training their H1-B replacements (like for Disney)
If you guys want the best and brightest, maybe you'll pay higher salaries
Besides, training employees extensively, was something that employers used to do, before outsourcing and insourcing
Maybe your company needs to come up with a better way to attract superior workers.
Sure, but if your name isnt Apple, Google, etc. you arent even in the same hemisphere when it comes to attracting the best talent. Im sure you are aware there is a significant shortfall in the number of qualified people for all of the open software engineering positions available. We do the best we can with attracting talent but we cant compete with the salaries of SV or top tech so the candidates we find are lesser experienced or more generalized and we have to train them. We dont always have the luxury of time to find the best people and we dont have the name recognition where people are banging on our door.
Quote:
Huh, I thought it was Americans training their H1-B replacements (like for Disney)
If you guys want the best and brightest, maybe you'll pay higher salaries
Besides, training employees extensively, was something that employers used to do, before outsourcing and insourcing
See my comment above about higher salaries.
Regarding training, yes it is something we do, but the software industry is moving a million miles per hour. This isnt manufacturing where we can train someone and they can perform the job forever. Software tech changes too rapidly. We would love to have people who can come in and contribute immediately. We spend the time to train and potentially that person's job is obsolete within a year because of platform change or different revenue stream.
All that said, I do agree the H1B system is in need of a overhaul. What wont work is relying exclusively on American workers because we dont have enough and many arent skilled enough to contribute quickly - we need the ability to bring in foreign workers who have the skills and experience. Its not going away especially as the US becomes predominantly a high-tech industry. Also, get your kids software skills ASAP.
Last edited by mvarghese84; 02-04-2019 at 10:58 AM..
Sure, but if your name isnt Apple, Google, etc. you arent even in the same hemisphere when it comes to attracting the best talent. Im sure you are aware there is a significant shortfall in the number of qualified people for all of the open software engineering positions available. We do the best we can with attracting talent but we cant compete with the salaries of SV or top tech so the candidates we find are lesser experienced or more generalized and we have to train them. We dont always have the luxury of time to find the best people and we dont have the name recognition where people are banging on our door.
You don't need to match Silicon Valley salaries -- those salaries are what they are due to a ridiculous cost of living. Offer fair market value and a reasonable work environment, flexible work hours and some work from home, and you'll attract people that are better than the typical H1B. I've worked at many local companies that "get it", yet many still don't.
That's the problem with the H1B program, it was designed to bring needed super-talents to the US, but it RARELY, if-ever does that, it only draws foreigners willing to work for a cheaper wage. The typical H1B worker, in terms of technical skill is no better (often inferior when communication skills are considered) than the typical American worker.
I'm not trying to offer a solution to attracting better people other than to say you get what you pay for and the market works itself out. I'm just saying if you feel like you are supplementing the lack of talent with H1Bs who are skilled only at portraying themselves as talented, it's not going to work.
H1Bs are often willing/able to work for less, and some companies will say "well with a budget of $whatever I can hire X American workers or Y H1Bs, so you do the math". But the fundamental problem is that the salary offered for each position is too low to begin with, limiting the number of good American candidates that are willing to apply -- in come the H1Bs. Then after the the H1Bs have created their own clique, to the point where nobody else can even understand what they're talking about, the word on the street is out that the employer is one to avoid, then of course the employer complains they cannot find talent after they have a bad rep for being an H1B cluster...
who is against legal immigration, please raise your hand.
Oddly enough, a fairly large percentage of the responses since have expressed some form of that opinion.
Its a weird paradox, where most americans love the idea of "legal immigrants", ( For example here's the most recent Pew Poll on the topic ) but somehow hate the way most legal immigrants get here in the first place
My suspicion is its because the only media coverage of employment based immigration is stories like the one this thread is ostensibly about. Stories about fraud and abuse are the only one's that get mileage (if it bleeds it leads I guess).
There are no stories about the number of startups founded by immigrants, immigrant CEOs of top tech firms, or the doctors (usually on H1B) working in under-served areas, the researchers/professors in Universities/EPA/CDC, the patents/publications by H1B holders, none of that gets any news-coverage. I suspect as a result the average american (including most on this thread sadly) has an incomplete and unfairly biased perspective on the program. That's my $0.02 anyway. Again this is not to deny that there is abuse, misuse and fraud in the program that needs attention. But focusing only on that paints an incomplete picture.
The poster who mentioned that lower qualified/capable American candidates are preferred in the software industry to higher qualified immigrant workers, is 100% spot on. If your experience is otherwise, its most likely in the context of outsourcing/body-shop type employers (which is a problem no doubt).
The wages were $118,071 for Indian immigrants, $111,172 for Chinese immigrants, and $90,422 for the rest of the world. Indian and Chinese applicants have wage offers that are $27,649 and $20,750, respectively, more than other applicants. Yet Chinese and Indian immigrants must wait much longer than immigrants from the rest of the world.
Maybe Indians and Chinese should just "immigrate" from Mexico...problem solved!!
J/K....sorta.
The biggest issue I've seen with Indian immigrants is they like to live around each other and you get these large subdivisions that are full of 1st gen immigrants who don't know how to assimilate into being American. Their kids are good as they attend schools and quickly adapt but it's an issue from what others have told me about buying into one of the communities that they've taken over.
It would seem a better solution is to scrap the H1B program and just go to a system that awards green cards to more from those areas with higher skills. Wait...wasn't that the POTUS plan?
The biggest issue I've seen with Indian immigrants is they like to live around each other and you get these large subdivisions that are full of 1st gen immigrants who don't know how to assimilate into being American. Their kids are good as they attend schools and quickly adapt but it's an issue from what others have told me about buying into one of the communities that they've taken over.
That’s typical of first gen immigrants from many cultures—including my own family. Not an Indian specific thing.
Maybe Indians and Chinese should just "immigrate" from Mexico...problem solved!!
J/K....sorta.
The biggest issue I've seen with Indian immigrants is they like to live around each other and you get these large subdivisions that are full of 1st gen immigrants who don't know how to assimilate into being American. Their kids are good as they attend schools and quickly adapt but it's an issue from what others have told me about buying into one of the communities that they've taken over.
It would seem a better solution is to scrap the H1B program and just go to a system that awards green cards to more from those areas with higher skills. Wait...wasn't that the POTUS plan?
I think that's why they were called "Little Italy" and "Chinatown", but I could be wrong.
It would seem a better solution is to scrap the H1B program and just go to a system that awards green cards to more from those areas with higher skills. Wait...wasn't that the POTUS plan?
In my opinion, yes this would be a better approach.
The plan you are most likely referring to wasn't Trump's but Tom Cotton's (that Trump "blessed"), and yes it would greatly benefit folks like me. In my understanding this bill has 0% chance of passing because it contains various "poison pills" that no member from the democratic party (or many moderates from the republican side for that matter) would agree to. Like halving the quota for family reunification based green-cards (its what the program was called before the recent attempts at re-branding it as "chain migration"). While this would be a great bargain for folks in my predicament, I do understand that it is unacceptable to many others.
And this isn't the first such plan, there was similar reform as part of the "gang of eight" immigration reform in 2012/13, and even as far back as President Bush there was a similar plan that was opposed by democrats because it took green-cards from the "diversity lottery" and reassigned it to PhD graduates from American universities. Legal immigrants continue to get stuck in the middle of the immigration battle. Anyway I'll stop rambling.
Quote:
I don't doubt it, but due to shear numbers the Indian subculture is quite strong in certain areas (not sure about Raleigh, more specifically Dallas).
I had a 50/50 shot on shear and didn't want to look it up because I've gotten internet lazy and just let autocorrect guess .
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Maybe your company needs to come up with a better way to attract superior workers. 
