<story><title>IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers</title><url>http://cis.org/miano/ibm-cost-difference-too-great-business-not-look-h-1b-workers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>greggman</author><text>If there&apos;s a smoking gun for IBM great, fine $$$$$$$ IBM. But my personal anecdotal experience is that the companies I&apos;ve worked for pay the same for HB-1 vs local. They don&apos;t look at it as trying to find cheap employees. They look at as trying to find qualified employees anywhere, world wide.&lt;p&gt;Companies I&apos;ve worked for, Virgin Games (run by a British immigrant), Shiny Entertainment (also run by a British immigrant and seemed like &amp;#62; 50% foreigners). Naughty Dog had at least 5 or 6 foreigners of 30 employees when I was there. The owner even made a point of showing us the first hire&apos;s salary and asking us if we knew any locals that were qualified for the job that wanted the job so that he was sure he was above the law.&lt;p&gt;A few years later that hire went on to co-found Ready At Dawn which was founded by 3 immigrants. I have no idea how many of their employees are foreign.&lt;p&gt;I have seen one company, Interplay, abuse their power over a foreign employee by threatening to pull their visa support for him before if he didn&apos;t do X (I think X was stop some un-work related outside music activity). He ended up marrying his local GF and then got the hell out of that company.&lt;p&gt;The company I currently work for, as far as can tell, has a similar position. We&apos;ll hire anyone that applies that can convince us they can do the job. Finding them is hard. There may be tons of qualified people but either they aren&apos;t applying, they can&apos;t write a resume that makes it look like they&apos;re qualified, or they can&apos;t convince us in the interview that they are qualified.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rada</author><text>The H1B issue is not simply salary as measured in absolute numbers. Naked salary numbers may be the visible tip of the iceberg but there are bigger issues to consider.&lt;p&gt;1. Most H1B workers are under 30, and most unemployed American programmers are over 35. This is by far the biggest part of the iceberg, made invisible by the fact that these people drop out of statistics.&lt;p&gt;2. Visa handcuffs are not slavery per say, but close enough. (If you think that&apos;s an overly dramatic statement, you are probably not an immigrant from some place you &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; don&apos;t want to be, like me, or someone whose family  will quite literally starve if you don&apos;t send them money). People endure getting beat up by their husbands for 5 years straight for the sake of a green card, so there is no doubt they will endure long working hours and much more.&lt;p&gt;3. The whole &quot;shortage of IT talent&quot; hysteria is way overblown when you look at the actual numbers. Just one example, latest DICE salary report:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://media.dice.com/report/2012-2011-dice-salary-survey/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://media.dice.com/report/2012-2011-dice-salary-survey/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contrast the opening sentence:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Technology professionals enjoyed their largest annual salary growth since 2008, according to the 2012-2011 Salary Survey from Dice, the leading career site for technology and engineering professionals. &lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;... with the actual numbers:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;After two straight years of wages remaining nearly flat, tech professionals on average garnered salary increases of more than two percent, boosting their average annual wage to $81,327 from $79,384 in 2010.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, let&apos;s see. While the inflation is chugging along at ~3% per year, we get 2 flat years, followed by a 1% increase? So basically, we make &lt;i&gt;less&lt;/i&gt; money each year?&lt;p&gt;Is the tech industry an economic miracle? Are programmers the one must-have product whose prices get &lt;i&gt;lower&lt;/i&gt; when it&apos;s in short supply and the buyers have pockets full of cash? Or is there a simpler explanation?</text></comment>
<story><title>IBM: The cost difference is too great for business not to look for H1B workers</title><url>http://cis.org/miano/ibm-cost-difference-too-great-business-not-look-h-1b-workers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>greggman</author><text>If there&apos;s a smoking gun for IBM great, fine $$$$$$$ IBM. But my personal anecdotal experience is that the companies I&apos;ve worked for pay the same for HB-1 vs local. They don&apos;t look at it as trying to find cheap employees. They look at as trying to find qualified employees anywhere, world wide.&lt;p&gt;Companies I&apos;ve worked for, Virgin Games (run by a British immigrant), Shiny Entertainment (also run by a British immigrant and seemed like &amp;#62; 50% foreigners). Naughty Dog had at least 5 or 6 foreigners of 30 employees when I was there. The owner even made a point of showing us the first hire&apos;s salary and asking us if we knew any locals that were qualified for the job that wanted the job so that he was sure he was above the law.&lt;p&gt;A few years later that hire went on to co-found Ready At Dawn which was founded by 3 immigrants. I have no idea how many of their employees are foreign.&lt;p&gt;I have seen one company, Interplay, abuse their power over a foreign employee by threatening to pull their visa support for him before if he didn&apos;t do X (I think X was stop some un-work related outside music activity). He ended up marrying his local GF and then got the hell out of that company.&lt;p&gt;The company I currently work for, as far as can tell, has a similar position. We&apos;ll hire anyone that applies that can convince us they can do the job. Finding them is hard. There may be tons of qualified people but either they aren&apos;t applying, they can&apos;t write a resume that makes it look like they&apos;re qualified, or they can&apos;t convince us in the interview that they are qualified.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nullc</author><text>I&apos;ve seen many kinds of H1B employment. People with excellent skills and experience being paid competitive wages, people with reasonable skills being exploited at low wages at the clear expense of locals, and people who were hardly qualified to warm a seat being pulled in to pad up some contract as cheaply as possible.  As usually when you paint with broad strokes you cover some dissimilar surfaces.&lt;p&gt;But at the core the employment market is about supply and demand. Increases in supply relative to some demand decreases what a rational party will pay. It doesn&apos;t matter how kind, qualified, equally paid, etc.  The increase in supply weakens the employees negotiating position.&lt;p&gt;Are the employees entitled to the &apos;artificial&apos; supply limitation created by national boundaries?  Is it socially beneficial to reduce those barriers?  Do increases in supply protect the industry and leave all employees better off in the long run and cause little harm because the demand is already so great?  What policy decisions can mitigate the harm and maximize the benefits? These are interesting questions.&lt;p&gt;But I don&apos;t think there is any real room to question if H1B&apos;s— no matter how well managed— harm employees short to medium term financial interests.</text></comment>