What company is that?
That's not how DEI looked to me. In the places I've worked, DEI consisted of policies meant to force organizations to hire underqualified applicants so long as they were members of certain demographics, i.e. a variant of affirmative action.
From observing the public behavior of the current regime and it's war against DEI, it itself seems to be lazer-focused on hiring unqualified morons whose most important quality is loyalty to the supreme leader. Methinks merit was never the goal, and DEI was just a figleaf to get angry culture warriors to turn out and vote for them.
The DEI policies I’ve seen were careful to emphasize that diversity should be a factor only when several candidates are otherwise competitive, and the focus should be on reducing interviewer bias towards hiring people like themselves so the company can benefit from a wider range of experience among employees.
As part of the staff I was included in various hiring processes. And I can assure you I haven't seen even the slightest sliver of someone being hired based purely on DEI without having the qualifications to back it up. In fact most of the times we had to throw out those candidates, because they lacked in one way or another against non-DEI candidates.
Turns out even the most left-leaning people prefer working with competent colleagues, who would have thunk..
I file the whole DEI thing as right wing myths without basis in reality. All we hear is vague stories. You know my dogs aunt knows a guy who said on facebook..
For most professions (not talking about professions with rigorous licensing and training like pilots and doctors), I would argue that the idea of a “qualified” candidate has been taken too far and is used as a construct of social hierarchy.
A DEI program done right will recognize this. For example, someone who isn’t fluent in upper middle class corporate speaking and etiquette may not be considered “qualified” even though they are more than capable of doing the job. This disproportionately affects minority and lower income groups. A good DEI program can train hiring committees to look past issues like that and focus on skills and traits that lead to success in the role.
As a side note, I think it’s clear that affirmative action wasn’t performed fairly at many college institutions, especially competitive ones, but corporate DEI has almost no relation to those programs and how they operate. Corporations have no real functional equivalent to the college application process. Universities are dealing with volumes on a completely different scale with completely different end goals.
I used to work for a manager who would blatantly say "I will not hire a white person for this position". Of course, it wasn't an official policy to exclude people based on race. I'm pretty sure that would be illegal? But in practice, some hiring managers would sometimes reject or not even consider candidates of certain races. I've also seen people on hiring panels lower standards explicitly because of "diversity" (but to be fair, only when the candidate was on the fence of hire/no-hire).
Look, the reality is we live in a country where being white makes every aspect of your life a little easier. If you just "let" people hire whoever, they're gonna hire more white people than they should, because they are white. They've done studies on this - even just having a non-white sounding name on your resume slashes your odds of getting hired in half!
The idea that we somehow, at sometime, had an "equal" system is just not true. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s whenever - these were times by, and for, the white man. No DEI, but actually yes we had extreme DEI, in the opposite direction. Hence why DEI was then created.
And before I hear anything, I'm white. I just have eyeballs and the ability to look around me.
Returning a nation to former greatness is a strong story, especially among those who never benefited from that hypothetical greatness. If you ask those politicans to make their promise of a return to greatness more concrete, they often can't even point at a point in time where the nation was great. And when they do you it usually involves prior atrocities where one class of people was beneath the others.
Excuse me for being vague and open here, but I purposely tried to tell it in a way that works for all countries with whose neo-fascists movements I had experiences with, so Geemany, Austria, Italy, Serbia and now unfortunately also the United States of America.
You're thinking of equality. The Equity of DEI is different from that.
But I think you’re right overall, or to put it differently, certain people want to redefine what it means to be American in a way that funny enough, would have excluded large chunks of the Trump administration if applied out when their ancestors got here.
The America that limited citizenship to free White persons, and had an effectively Whites-only immigration policy until 1965 [1]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...
We are at a point now where passing laws as were passed during the civil rights movement is completely unthinkable. Even laws advancing equality that were passed in the late 20th century are pretty unthinkable in today's environment. There revanchist movement has control of the government, the media, and much of society.
Even the lauded Abraham Lincoln advocated for the removal of freed Blacks, and made several attempts at it [2], and in the Douglas-Lincoln debates said: I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. [3]
(His opponent, Stephen Douglas, was even more opposed to the idea.)
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h490t.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery#Co...
[3] Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, pp. 235-236
I suppose folks from India and China make up the bulk of the applicants, and a high percentage of the people who end up getting the visas.
My life could have been completely different if I did get an H-1B. Oh for the path not taken.
I hope there is someone who received it in my stead, who now is wonderfully happy and successful in the US.
Is it fair? Not really. Most people lose. I also lost. But, such is the reality we live in.
Some people don't want anybody to come in, others want just the brain drain but nobody else, others want cheap unskilled workers, others want open borders. And this is just a small sample.
Nothing against "homegrown" talent, but let's be real - US is getting cream of the crop talent from other countries.
(And that's just AI, not do the same for other fields. Many of these people started as regular engineers and devs., and didn't come to the through the EB-1B/Einstein visa. Just a regular H-1B. And many on student visas.)
The program is also used to employ people that won’t quit when they are mistreated because their family’s existence in the country depends on continued employment.
Should India be able to send more soccer teams to the World Cup also?
Let’s say hypothetically India has 10,000 A+ candidates, and Thailand has 1,000 A+ candidates. India’s limit is 5,000 candidates and Thailand’s limit is 500 candidates based on population difference or other factors like diplomatic relations.
Half of India’s most qualified aren’t getting in while all of Thailand’s most qualified candidates are getting in plus 500 less qualified candidates.
So all else being equal if you’re very qualified you’ll have a better chance to win the lottery just by being born in a different country.
The limit should be there to prevent the industry from further concentration and becoming a subsidiary of a foreign government like India. There is a national security element to this also.
You can argue that it’s been perverted and that’s fine but several intelligent people in this thread have already suggested foolproof methods for ensuring we only fill unfillable positions. That is to say, it’s a noble program that everyone supports and is fully capable of fulfilling its intended goal.
What’s your source?
Student -> regular dev/engineer -> promoted to lead/researcher/manager (or jump to another company for those positions).
If they didn't come to the US on a student VISA, or H1-B to begin with, they wouldn't have been able to follow the path they did.
If the supposed benefit of H-1B is getting top researchers from other fields, why do we allow body shops to fill the annual quota with low skill workers?
Like, shouldn't we be in favor of rules will which will shift the balance of H-1B recipients towards the highest skilled (and probably highest paid) workers, instead of a lottery that rewards spamming the system with the greatest number of people who technically have a bachelor's degree?
It seems like a rules change could actually increase the number of very highly qualified people coming to America.
Indians are already very integrated in tech, so networking benefits. If Indians prefer to hire Indians, makes sense that more Indians want to give it a shot.
If these were high value workers neither of these things would be true.
It's funny how easily the argument flips between that and "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.", so long as it leads to the desired conclusion.
It’s a massive cultural difference. I’ve much preferred the individuals who chose to live in NYC as they seem to be a much more outgoing, social, welcoming, and open type of person. The type of individuals that go to SV and are from these two countries seem the complete opposite.
How about a French language teacher? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=french&city=&year=202...
Pay more? Even on language learning sites there is variability on language and location. So if french language is that important so should the compensation be. You US will end up like Quebec https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/23-quebec-business-o...
But there are also companies that are just looking for talent that they can't easily find in the US. I had an H-1B working in Investment Banking and was paid a high salary after business school. Most of my classmates did not want to go into banking. I was ranked a top performer year after year, put in hundred-hour weeks and provided actual value to the bank, clients, and the US economy.
Economies generally want high-skilled, high-salary immigrants. The H-1B can and should be a program for that. Literally everyone benefits.
It should also enable a path to citizenship. Right now, those high-skilled workers get a lottery with ~30% odds, another try at 40% odds if they have a graduate degree, and then six years working for Uncle Sam before they're kicked out of the country.
There's no path to a green card unless your employer chooses to sponsor you, at which point you are even more at their whims than during your H-1B stint and obviously there's a massive imbalance in that relationship.
And because I believe offering solutions is more valuable than just criticizing, here's my relative non-controversial suggestion for the program:
• Country quotas
• Minimum salary of [$175-200k/year] (pick your number)
• H-1B workers should be allowed to easily switch jobs, so long as the job is still above the minimum salary. (Giving workers flexibility reduces the possibility of abuse. Currently you have 30-days to find a job or you have to leave the country.)
• Spouses of H-1B workers (H-4 visas) should get a work permit with no minimum salary (They're currently not allowed to work at all. They don't need a salary minimum because their visa is tethered to the H-1B already, and it's better (for everyone) to have them work some job rather than no job.)
• H-1B can self-petition a green card after X years working in the US (personally I'd say 3 years, but 5 may be more palatable to the general public)
• H-1B visas should be good for 5 years instead of the current 3. They should also be allowed to extend for another 5 years, so 5+5 instead of 3+3.
How would this impact... say... Foreign Language Instructors? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=foreign+language+inst... or school teachers? https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=teacher&city=&year=20...
As for Foreign Language Instructors, I would argue that should be a different visa category altogether. Probably an O-1C type visa (which doesn't exist today). Someone with a specific skill set that is unavailable in the US by definition.
But IANAL.
If it was the case that we needed to restrict the supply... those reports would suggest a different story.
The pressure on teacher salary is more often limited by state and local government rather than the availability of teachers.
There is a problem there with teacher salaries and the number of them available to hire - but making it so that it would be impossible for a school in a city in rural North Carolina to hire teachers ( https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=vance+county+public+school... ) that they're having difficulty with finding people to work there isn't necessarily the answer.
And to the "but they're only paying $40k - of course no one is going to work there. That's slightly above the median household income for the area (and almost twice the per capita income).
There does need to be a larger discussion about the funding of education. Making it so that the schools can't hire anyone who would need a visa because they're having difficulty hiring there - I don't believe that is the right answer.
I still think the core problem is low salaries. Comparing to median household or per capita income isn't necessarily accurate because jobs don't all place the same demands on workers, so workers don't choose solely based on income.
My point is one of "if fixing of H-1B abuse is solved by changing it to be an auction based on compensation, it will negatively impact all of the companies that use the H-1B for roles other than those that can compete with Big Tech software developers for compensation."
There are a lot of people out there on a H-1B visa working for companies that have gone through the process of trying to hire a US citizen first and failed to find anyone for that role (that isn't a software developer).
There are classifications for companies that employ a lot of H-1B visa holders. It is known as a H-1B-dependent employer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B-dependent_employer
If the goal is to limit the fraud and abuses ( here's how to report https://www.uscis.gov/scams-fraud-and-misconduct/report-frau... ) then further regulating and auditing companies in that classification would be the first place to start rather than trying to change the visa itself.
Yes, this is playing whack-a-mole with "shut down one fraudulent consultancy and another one pops up."
However, a significant component of this is that companies have difficulty managing projects and staff outside of their core competencies. We need to migrate from one ERP system to another - you get the professional services for the ERP company which in turn brings in a consultancy to do the project. It isn't entirely reasonable for the original company to try to staff up FTEs to do it (and them lay 3/4ths of them off when the project is complete and it goes to a maintenance level of work).
Low salaries - by themselves - are not the problem. There are fields that don't pay as well as Big Tech software developer. There are also companies that have much lower revenue per employee than Big Tech companies ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=revenue+per+employee+%2... ) and trying to match Big Tech compensation would bankrupt them.
Yes, but I still think those positions are better solved by increasing the salary for those positions.
Even if you don't believe that, the H-1B as it exists today is trying to do too many things at once and it's failing at most of those. My specific policy proposal is on fixing it for the use case of finding high-skilled workers for high-paying jobs US citizens do not want to do today.
I'm not at all against having other visa programs to solve other needs, including temp workers for tech consulting gigs, teachers or anything else, for that matter. I'm 100% pro immigration, as is anyone who understands Economics.
Of course they could also just hire them with higher wage and tell Congress that they have option to make a small dent in the defense budget by passing that law.
Did you also ignore the country quotas bullet?
I shouldn't need to say this, but I'm not Indian.
It won't solve all immigration woes, but it will do a great deal to keep the country competitive.
Until local grads are fully employed, H1B should be limited to a fixed and equal amount per country per year. That’s fair. No more Indian managers hiring only Indian H1Bs. If they need the foreign talents so much let them hire some Irish or South Korean H1Bs.
I'd actually support more skilled immigration if we could get rid of the consulting firms
Edit to clarify slightly: if your concern is 'skilled immigration', I would like to gently but firmly state that most of the developers that work for the consulting firms are just not very good. Sorry. If you're in a hiring capacity at a tech company at all, everyone knows that the Wipro guys who work on 6 month contracts doing Java at Fortune 100 companies cannot pass even the simplest tech screen. Yes it makes me sound like a jerk to say this, but they're not 'highly skilled'
> An eligible H-1B worker can change employers as soon as the new employer’s nonfrivolous H-1B petition is properly filed with USCIS.
The current system works like if every tourist had to first ask Disney to apply for their visa before coming to Orlando.
Using pay as the article is mentioning would force a natural market clearing mechanism into the system (if you really want that person you may not get them if another company is willing to pay more for the H1B slot).
Also, H1B began in the 90s.
But there is the risk people might game the system to take advantage of that framework (though that sounds like a higher hurdle than the H1B charade now).
There isn’t an easy answer but for sure what exists now isn’t working.
OPT is mostly only useful to give you extra tries on the H-1B, since the current system is a lottery. Since that lottery is once a year, OPT also makes it easier for employers to hire you at any given time so that you can wait for the next lottery. But no employer is hiring an OPT with an expectation that they will leave in 1 or 3 years, so the H-1B is still what everyone anchors on.
There's basically no way to get a green card straight after an OPT. There's also no way to extend an H-1B past it's 3+3 years.
There is one type of software engineer who creates software to keep running without any maintenance. Or with a very small number of people. They create software that operates logically and is essentially self documenting.
There’s another group of people who create software with no regard to the amount of mindless busy work that is required to maintain it. It seems like their primary goal is to create more work, not to actually solve the problem.
From years of direct observation and experience, people in the first group are those who are not concerned about being deported.
The ones in the second group are people who will do absolutely anything to stay in this country.
This change is so obvious that's it's incredible that it hasn't been implemented yet. Auction off the H1-B visas based on how much federal income tax the role will pay and let the market sort it out.
As I say above- just get rid of visas for consulting companies instead, and everything else fixes itself
sownkun•4h ago
zihotki•4h ago
* - low paid skilled workers who don't have right to say no to 60h work weeks.