This is using statistics to tell a preconceived story. Underlying this a notion that foreign workers are simply “imported” like they are dug out of the ground or something. How do these STEM OPT people find jobs? Guess what. They interview like everyone else does.
1: Every big tech interview I have been in the visa status is not even a question in the interview process. There is just a simple gate that “can you legally work in the US”? The hiring committee is not even thinking about visa (that’s a HR problem)
2: Are there confounders in that foreign workers are less likely to negotiate? Absolutely.
3: are there confounders in that people who come to US for study are likely already a self selected bunch who are striving to succeed? What are the typical grade distributions between foreign STEM students and US STEM students? Is grade a confounding variable? What happens if we control for GPA?
And finally does H1B abuse happen? Absolutely.
There is a lot of nuance that are not captured by surface level statistics. But nuance does not make outrage.
I think that nuance is fairly unwarranted when you observe the American system through the lens the laws ask you to view it through.
The American H1B system isn't about importing foreign workers that do a good job, it's about importing foreign workers that do a job no American could do. The system demands you look for some American do do the job first, and only if you fail to find one can you import one from overseas.
In that view, all the talk about GPA fall flat, because it doesn't matter if the foreign worker is better than an American worker, you are supposed to pick the American worker anyway.
Foreign workers are much more likely to agree to do illegal things, including kickback schemes. Unwind this shit and start over. Indian contracting companies big and small have fucked it all up.
"We need to stop pretending that flooding the labor market with foreign workers is somehow beneficial to American students."
I do not think anyone is making that point. Clearly a gated and scarce employee pool is always in the advantage of the employee.
You can agree or not, but the point is expanded availability of highly skilled labor from CS Graduates benefits the US companies hiring them, not just by removing some scarcity in the supply, but also having an expanded talent pool increases quality available.
From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry, or have them starting and staffing competition in their home countries? "Brain drain" fueled by unlimited reserve currency dollars is very real.
Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US. Having worked with academics from around the globe, including US, I can state with some certainty the US degree courses are not qualitatively very different from what is available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost (US education costs are insane!). But they do carry the implicit promise of an easyer way to higher paying US jobs.
So all in all, everyone in the US benefits from the system, except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.
As a someone who came to the US as a foreign worker, I just want to make one correction. When you say:
> From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry, or have them starting and staffing competition in their home countries?
This doesn't happen nearly as often as you probably think. Starting a company in many countries (including my birth country in Latin America) is very difficult. Not only there is no financing, but the justice system is also slow to resolve inevitable contract disputes. Additionally, government regulations crush advanced businesses to the point where it's really difficult for companies to compete internationally. The US remains one of the best places to start a tech company.
Given this, many smart people in my home country decide to work for the government in highly-paid paper-pushing roles, throwing away years of study and computer expertise.
There’s a third option besides unlimited H1Bs, etc and completely restricted market — which is preferencing US natives.
And this problem isn’t reserved to CS grads — but represents 2/3rds of prospective middle class US citizens experiencing a worse outcome. Which contrary to your glib dismissal, is politically unstable.
There are a whole lot of weasels who are adding a bunch of filler words and alternate phrasing to stuff that amounts to something akin to that point or some point built around that core.
>From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry,
If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?
>Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US.
First off, most H1B workers do not have american degrees so this blanket assertion is laughable on its face.
Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.
>except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.
Now reconcile this with the prevailing HN wisdom that the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe.
What makes one ok but not the other? This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.
"the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe" uh, nope. That the billionaires should pay their share of taxes, and thy are definitely not "middle class" by any sane definition. And so is in Europe too. I'm sorry that I don't buy this fake antagonization, we all know the really wealthy pay next to zero taxes claiming all kinds of loopholes they created for themselves. Actually that would be a good measure to define middle class: those who _still_ pay taxes are middle class, and once you get the taxes decreasing it's a sign you moved into the riches land.
> If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?
If it does what now? Fearmongering that intentionally whips up nativist xenophobia might do that. I'm not seeing how work visas in themselves would do it.
> Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.
I honestly don't know which institutions and people you're talking about. I can think of several fundamentally different candidates.
> This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.
You're being self-contradictory. Either you have principles to which you hold regardless of whether "this nation is in the shit", or your only "principle" is "do whatever works to keep you out of The Shit(TM)". Which isn't really a very inspiring principle. Anyway, as soon as you start doing things for instrumental reasons, you lose your deontologist card.
If your principle actually is "stay out of The Shit by any means necessary", then you have to prove that what you want to do actually works to keep you out of The Shit. Starting by defining what "The Shit" means to you. Maybe what works is building up industry.
What you've offered only works on exactly the same kind of "principles" as doing things "to build up US industry".
An actually principled approach to H1Bs might, for instance, be to convert them into permanent residencies or citizenships, because indentured servitude is ugly on principle. That'd also have the practical effect of making people less beholden to specific employers, thus reducing the negative effect on anybody they might be competing with, but that's not the principled part unless you can say what actual, specific principle it serves.
... and, by the way, for any actually reasonable definition, your nation (no longer mine) wasn't particularly "in the shit" until recently. Just normal fluctuations. It hasn't actually even really landed in "the shit" yet, although the people running Trump have succeeded in breaking its last hold on the the catwalk over the shit vat.
"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream, has become less solid for recent graduates trying to find that first job."
As opposed to what? All the other recent graduates with non-engineering degrees who are drowning in job offers? It's tough out here for everyone. This kind of hyperbole doesn't help.
"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream"
It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it. People went after _software_ engineering degrees when they saw a bunch of 20 year olds in Mountain View with 6 figure incomes. The other branches of engineering have always been hit or miss.
And "American Dream" - really? Has anyone used that term unironically since The Great Gatsby came out?
> It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it.
You must be joking, although I can't interpret the second half of the sentence. University is absolutely sold as a product giving you a chance at employment in the US, even if the "education" is completely unrelated to the work.
I applaud the courage to call out this as a problem. With that said I believe that there is a lot more nuance on this issue than the article is willing to provide, or more importantly research needed to be done to be rigorous on this topic. There definitely is some truth here about the H1B1 program in the job market. There are some companies who are absolutely shameless abusers too. I think that all of us working in the industry know that a comp sci degree alone is not enough to provide the training for many of these roles.
As an aside, I think there's another equally important issue that should also be raised along with employment. A large number of our graduate+ degrees in STEM go to foreign nationals. The issue is not providing education to foreign nationals in and of itself, but that many of these degrees (public schools) are funded by tax payers, and we are depriving our country of an educated population while educating citizens in other countries who compete with our country globally. Private schools can and should do whatever is in their mission, but public schools should have some accountability to our citizens and tax payers. We all have a right to get value for the money that we put into things like our public university system, which is supposed to be training future leaders of our country.
Of course with that longwinded answer I have to say... Tech is like the weather, just wait for a minute its all going to change anyway, so don't stress all of this.
Generally speaking, foreign students subsidize public universities by paying full sticker price for tuition, whereas US students are either in state (paying less) or often receive scholarships and support.
Foreign students are not stealing “slots” from Americans. If anything, their tuition dollars make more slots available.
Assuming funding correlates to more slots, which is not really true. The number of important professors to take mentorship from, the number of research lab slots are certainly lagging the increased funding, if increasing at all.
The money might be going into nicer buildings or administrative costs, but it's also a white elephant once the foreign funding dries up as the domestic situation improves for many internationals. After which then these universities find themselves in major trouble.
That's like trying to apply "the average american gets 20% of their fiber..." type nutrition information to a 500lb obese person.
It's probably true but not really meaningful in the broader context.
With the current easy money federally backed loans US university funding model the foreign students are just easy money on top of an already screaming money printer more than a noteworthy subsidy of their operations.
I won’t get into h1b which gets plenty of air time, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone wanting to eliminate OPT. This is beyond idiotic. Foreigners come and get educated in the US; if we didn’t have OPT they’d have to go back to their home country and contribute there. Instead with OPT we give them a chance to integrate into American companies, making the US more competitive as a whole. This is a massive strategic advantage. Places like MIT/CalTech/CMU are heavily made up of foreigners. We need the best and brightest minds from the world; only pulling from 350M vs 8B is a giant mistake.
One of the big advantages US has is that it's on the receiving end of brain drain. A lot of the best talent worldwide wants to go to US, learn in the US and work in the US.
The STEM OPT _extension_ is an additional year on top of the one year that all graduates get. I believe the article is arguing for getting rid of that extension, not all OPT.
More like they come to America because there aren't enough opportunities or good enough facilities back at home, get years of experience and knowledge, then go back home and start a billion dollar business that starts competing with said American companies they were just working for.
Soham got 5 jobs. More than 5 jobs... He kept them for a while too.
We didn't lie to comp sci grads, they have the skills to DO the job, but the interview is a whole other skill that they have to learn. There is a gauntlet to be run of goofy interview questions and qualifiers. I dont know any one in the last few years who hasn't gone back to leetcode and the like to brush up if they needed to look.
Staff doing nothing or not pulling their weight is far more common than people think. Managers are resistant to firing staff, not because of HR, or emotional reasons. Rather many of them don't want to deal with the judgement of their peers (why did you make the bad hire to start with), and the judgement of their team/group. Office politics at the director level and above in a large organization is BRUTAL.
There are a lot of errors in that article. Like line 1, the idea that foreign students get jobs before Americans do. Quite the opposite in real life. Go to any school, and see the employment rates in that school for US vs foreign students.
Also H1B pays FICA taxes, that exemption is only for OPT. The OPT exemption can be easily removed.
That first point is not comparing students, it is saying that the H1B visas issued that year all have jobs lined up (which is a requirement of the visa). Those jobs are what the new graduates would normally be competing for.
And you have to apply to get that job. And the vast majority of companies would prefer a US citizen or an LPR for that job, because there is no guarantee that you will get the visa approved.
Grad students (foreign and non-foreign) also don't pay FICA (or at least, they didn't when I was in grad school). Not that it matters much, grad student pay is nothing to dream about.
Readit News
1: Every big tech interview I have been in the visa status is not even a question in the interview process. There is just a simple gate that “can you legally work in the US”? The hiring committee is not even thinking about visa (that’s a HR problem)
2: Are there confounders in that foreign workers are less likely to negotiate? Absolutely.
3: are there confounders in that people who come to US for study are likely already a self selected bunch who are striving to succeed? What are the typical grade distributions between foreign STEM students and US STEM students? Is grade a confounding variable? What happens if we control for GPA?
And finally does H1B abuse happen? Absolutely.
There is a lot of nuance that are not captured by surface level statistics. But nuance does not make outrage.
The American H1B system isn't about importing foreign workers that do a good job, it's about importing foreign workers that do a job no American could do. The system demands you look for some American do do the job first, and only if you fail to find one can you import one from overseas.
In that view, all the talk about GPA fall flat, because it doesn't matter if the foreign worker is better than an American worker, you are supposed to pick the American worker anyway.
The ‘mandatory interviews for Americans’ are just transparent scams.
I do not think anyone is making that point. Clearly a gated and scarce employee pool is always in the advantage of the employee.
You can agree or not, but the point is expanded availability of highly skilled labor from CS Graduates benefits the US companies hiring them, not just by removing some scarcity in the supply, but also having an expanded talent pool increases quality available.
From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry, or have them starting and staffing competition in their home countries? "Brain drain" fueled by unlimited reserve currency dollars is very real.
Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US. Having worked with academics from around the globe, including US, I can state with some certainty the US degree courses are not qualitatively very different from what is available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost (US education costs are insane!). But they do carry the implicit promise of an easyer way to higher paying US jobs.
So all in all, everyone in the US benefits from the system, except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.
> From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry, or have them starting and staffing competition in their home countries?
This doesn't happen nearly as often as you probably think. Starting a company in many countries (including my birth country in Latin America) is very difficult. Not only there is no financing, but the justice system is also slow to resolve inevitable contract disputes. Additionally, government regulations crush advanced businesses to the point where it's really difficult for companies to compete internationally. The US remains one of the best places to start a tech company.
Given this, many smart people in my home country decide to work for the government in highly-paid paper-pushing roles, throwing away years of study and computer expertise.
There’s a third option besides unlimited H1Bs, etc and completely restricted market — which is preferencing US natives.
And this problem isn’t reserved to CS grads — but represents 2/3rds of prospective middle class US citizens experiencing a worse outcome. Which contrary to your glib dismissal, is politically unstable.
There are a whole lot of weasels who are adding a bunch of filler words and alternate phrasing to stuff that amounts to something akin to that point or some point built around that core.
>From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry,
If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?
>Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US.
First off, most H1B workers do not have american degrees so this blanket assertion is laughable on its face.
Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.
>except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.
Now reconcile this with the prevailing HN wisdom that the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe.
What makes one ok but not the other? This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.
At this point, software job opportunities are pretty low on the list of things tearing the nation apart.
If it does what now? Fearmongering that intentionally whips up nativist xenophobia might do that. I'm not seeing how work visas in themselves would do it.
> Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.
I honestly don't know which institutions and people you're talking about. I can think of several fundamentally different candidates.
> This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.
You're being self-contradictory. Either you have principles to which you hold regardless of whether "this nation is in the shit", or your only "principle" is "do whatever works to keep you out of The Shit(TM)". Which isn't really a very inspiring principle. Anyway, as soon as you start doing things for instrumental reasons, you lose your deontologist card.
If your principle actually is "stay out of The Shit by any means necessary", then you have to prove that what you want to do actually works to keep you out of The Shit. Starting by defining what "The Shit" means to you. Maybe what works is building up industry.
What you've offered only works on exactly the same kind of "principles" as doing things "to build up US industry".
An actually principled approach to H1Bs might, for instance, be to convert them into permanent residencies or citizenships, because indentured servitude is ugly on principle. That'd also have the practical effect of making people less beholden to specific employers, thus reducing the negative effect on anybody they might be competing with, but that's not the principled part unless you can say what actual, specific principle it serves.
... and, by the way, for any actually reasonable definition, your nation (no longer mine) wasn't particularly "in the shit" until recently. Just normal fluctuations. It hasn't actually even really landed in "the shit" yet, although the people running Trump have succeeded in breaking its last hold on the the catwalk over the shit vat.
As opposed to what? All the other recent graduates with non-engineering degrees who are drowning in job offers? It's tough out here for everyone. This kind of hyperbole doesn't help.
"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream"
It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it. People went after _software_ engineering degrees when they saw a bunch of 20 year olds in Mountain View with 6 figure incomes. The other branches of engineering have always been hit or miss.
And "American Dream" - really? Has anyone used that term unironically since The Great Gatsby came out?
There was a whole “Learn to Code” pitch from politicians saying that literally anyone could have a good job if only they learned to code.
You must be joking, although I can't interpret the second half of the sentence. University is absolutely sold as a product giving you a chance at employment in the US, even if the "education" is completely unrelated to the work.
As an aside, I think there's another equally important issue that should also be raised along with employment. A large number of our graduate+ degrees in STEM go to foreign nationals. The issue is not providing education to foreign nationals in and of itself, but that many of these degrees (public schools) are funded by tax payers, and we are depriving our country of an educated population while educating citizens in other countries who compete with our country globally. Private schools can and should do whatever is in their mission, but public schools should have some accountability to our citizens and tax payers. We all have a right to get value for the money that we put into things like our public university system, which is supposed to be training future leaders of our country.
Of course with that longwinded answer I have to say... Tech is like the weather, just wait for a minute its all going to change anyway, so don't stress all of this.
Foreign students are not stealing “slots” from Americans. If anything, their tuition dollars make more slots available.
The money might be going into nicer buildings or administrative costs, but it's also a white elephant once the foreign funding dries up as the domestic situation improves for many internationals. After which then these universities find themselves in major trouble.
It's probably true but not really meaningful in the broader context.
With the current easy money federally backed loans US university funding model the foreign students are just easy money on top of an already screaming money printer more than a noteworthy subsidy of their operations.
Guaranteed jobs? Sir, this is not France ;)
I won’t get into h1b which gets plenty of air time, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone wanting to eliminate OPT. This is beyond idiotic. Foreigners come and get educated in the US; if we didn’t have OPT they’d have to go back to their home country and contribute there. Instead with OPT we give them a chance to integrate into American companies, making the US more competitive as a whole. This is a massive strategic advantage. Places like MIT/CalTech/CMU are heavily made up of foreigners. We need the best and brightest minds from the world; only pulling from 350M vs 8B is a giant mistake.
If the US is a great place with more opportunity, then the pressure is to stay versus go back. When the US becomes anti-foreigner, then we all lose.
We didn't lie to comp sci grads, they have the skills to DO the job, but the interview is a whole other skill that they have to learn. There is a gauntlet to be run of goofy interview questions and qualifiers. I dont know any one in the last few years who hasn't gone back to leetcode and the like to brush up if they needed to look.
Then you get posts like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079183
https://emaggiori.com/employed-in-tech-for-years-but-almost-...
Staff doing nothing or not pulling their weight is far more common than people think. Managers are resistant to firing staff, not because of HR, or emotional reasons. Rather many of them don't want to deal with the judgement of their peers (why did you make the bad hire to start with), and the judgement of their team/group. Office politics at the director level and above in a large organization is BRUTAL.
Also H1B pays FICA taxes, that exemption is only for OPT. The OPT exemption can be easily removed.