This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
H1Bs now require a $100k payment per year (I believe, seeing some remarks saying it might be per visa) to the government due to Donald Trump executive order, plus if you are currently overseas and hold a H1B you need to pay $100k effective immediately on your next entry into the USA if you are not within the country by the 20th of September.
As a foreign non-Lawyer I don't know how effective this is going to be/liable to be immediately derailed in the courts, but I do think it's a positive step towards ensuring skilled immigration is used for the genuinely effective instead of ye olde 'I can import a foreigner who I have more power over at a 10% discount rate to domestic workers'. I'm also deeply skeptical of the 'productivity' of the vast majority of tech H1B hires and wish them the best of luck in attempting to offshore the competencies required to make AI-powered Grindr for Daily Fantasy Sports
This may be "directionally correct" but it's too much and too sudden. This is currently positioned as a direct fuck-you to H-1B holders and the companies who hire them, with policy goals secondary. If they want to fix the abuse problem long term of companies underpaying H-1B, they can put a sliding salary tax for companies hiring under the median H-1B wage, up to a cap on the median wage. E.g. if you pay your tech guy 100k and median is 130k, then pay an addition 15k to the government.
Currently there are two problems:
H-1B allows us to do it by attracting the best and brightest from other countries. ~100-200k H-1B holders in the country is only 0.1% of the 160M workforce, which is evidence that it is used to attract exceptional talent, for the most part. Top companies like FAANG plays by the book here, they do not generally pay H-1Bs less than local talent, they just want the best people.
This is the problem the administration should fix by adding taxes and fees.
The difficulty is to solve both problems at once. I don't think the program is perfect, but effectively killing it will be detrimental to the US in the long term. Yes, instituting a 100k/year fee on top for every H-1B employee will effectively kill this program.
I think this policy actually seems pretty reasonable, if you are a company that is using this program to hire exceptional people you can afford it(google earns like 2 million per employee). If you have been abusing it to run your IT help desk then you won’t be able to do so any more. If it’s a lot more expensive it will also mean that it’s easier to get an H1Bs visa since the system won’t be flooded with applicants as it is now.
Access to the us labor market should be expensive. There a lot of negative externalities associated with the kind of inequality the us has now and enacting policies which increase wages are one of the best ways to address this. As an aside if you want to understand how detrimental this program has been in terms of suppressing wages for technical professionals just go onto https://www.clearancejobs.com/ and look at how much more these roles pay compare to similar roles in other industries where hiring foreigners is mostly prohibited.
The policy is "directionally correct" but the effective date should be pushed back several months to lessen the immediate shock and the dollar amount has to be reduced to be more effective at encouraging good behavior while discouraging the bad ones.
Even FAANG can't afford 100k on top. The median total comp for an experienced engineer (IC4, IC5) is somewhere around 300k-400k and adding 100k on top of that means H-1B is effectively dead in the water. From personal experience working at big tech companies, it's not the H-1Bs that scare me, it's the off-shoring. Even at FAANG, I'm seeing entire teams getting moved to Brazil and Europe, and for head counts to only be assigned to non-US locations. Eliminating H-1Bs will only hasten this move.
Can you quantify exactly how much the gap is? I looked around and it seems like for comparable roles at Boeing, the salary is in the ball park of median H-1B tech salary. If the difference is small, like 10-20k, then it's more appropriate to levy a smaller fee than 100k.
So either the compentencies only exist with the absolute best of the best who need to be onshored for elite FAANG activities... or they can find some random guys in Brazil to do it for pennies on the dollar?
The problem for the US is that the guys in Brazil are not spending their salaries in the US, they are spending them in Brazil. You want companies to leak money back into the national economy. A guy on an H-1B visa doesn't send it all as remittance to his home country. He's spending it on rent, groceries, gas, and coffee-flavored sugary milk from the nearest coffee shop.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link