
Ask HN: Why do you hire H1-B workers instead of natives? - KnowNothings
Why do you companies not exercise your duty to your own country and hire foreign nationals for American jobs?
======
romanhn
There is no such duty to hire non-foreign-nationals. I do however have duty to
my company to make the best hiring decisions, so I'm not going to pass on a
perfectly qualified candidate with an H1B and cross my fingers that I'll find
a similarly qualified candidate who also happens to be a citizen soon. The
opportunity cost can be quite dramatic. We pay H1Bs the same as anyone else,
so technically they end up costing more - sometimes this offsets said
opportunity cost, often it does not.

I also don't hire for "American" jobs. They are just jobs and if you can do
it, I don't care about your race, ethnicity, origin, preference of Star Trek
to Star Wars, etc. On a macro level, I believe there's more value to the US
with the foreign nationals bringing their labor and keeping its products here
rather than competing with US companies from overseas. Let's not forget that
these foreign nationals pay taxes and spend money in the US as well.

~~~
sgrove
Hear hear! I want to work with really good people that I like, communicated
well with, and are excited about what they're doing (among other attributes as
well). It's fairly rare that I come across someone with all of those
qualities, but when I do, I don't care about nationality, etc.

H1Bs (and O-visas, etc.) tend to be more expensive than otherwise just hiring
someone local. I'm not looking for someone cheap, as other commenters have
infuriatingly speculated. In fact, I actually think that's a very dangerous
path to go down, as you'll either find

1\. Someone who isn't very good (or else they wouldn't work for sub-market
rates) 2\. Someone who is very good, but doesn't know their value - in which
case, you'll lose out on your investment once they find you've been screwing
them over.

I also don't understand why - if I like someone enough - I can't just hire
them to come work in the US, regardless of national origin, assuming I pay
enough. I suppose there's a danger of pay-for-play there, but I can't believe
the trouble I've had working with amazingly talented people because they
didn't have a recognized masters degree.

Finally, `exercise your duty to your own country` is an inherently suspect
phrase that makes me suspicious about the thought process behind that lead up
to it.

~~~
KnowNothings
If you are an American based company you should only be hiring American
Citizens.

~~~
romanhn
Stop trolling. You have ignored the arguments provided in this thread and have
produced zero arguments of your own. This could have been an interesting
discussion, but instead the thread has been rightfully flagged.

~~~
KnowNothings
All because I don't circle jerk the H1B program and support leftist logic does
not mean I'm trolling.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
So I'm curious here cause I'm not quite certain. What is lefist logic in this
instance? Also, are there any objective metrics that align with the idea that
American companies should only hire American citizens? For example, are such
companies more profitable, efficient, or politically powerful?

~~~
bobosha
Also it's important to point out many american companies have significant
portions of their revenues ex-US. e.g. GE/GM/Cisco etc have 60-70% of revenues
from outside the US.

------
jellicle
Cheaper, duh. As a corporation, you want all of your corporate inputs to have
multiple suppliers and heavy competition to supply you. That gives you low
prices for your inputs. You want your outgoing product to be a monopoly, or
nearly so - that gives you high prices for your outputs.

It has long been understood in the U.S. that pulling workers from remote areas
strongly depresses local wages. You don't want any tightness in labor supply.
You also don't want your workers to organize, since again, this causes
tightness in labor supply. The transcontinental railroads brought in Chinese
workers, not because they were superlative workers or in any way superior at
driving track spikes than the Irish were, but only to drive down the wages
demanded by the Irish. Today farms prefer Mexican workers, not because locals
can't pick apples, but only because it drives down the wages demanded. This
cycle repeats throughout history.

And this is why wages for programmers, etc., haven't gone up at all in the
last 15 years (and probably never will again). The supply of programmer labor
is being managed to always exceed the local demand, keeping wages flat.

------
spoonie
Why do fruit farmers hire foreign labour rather than American labour? I
suspect the reasons are similar even if the paperwork at the border is
different.

------
allfou
You're obviously trolling but here is something you could learn:

H1-B = 62'000 Visa allocated per years

Last Oct about 160'000 new jobs where created in the US (270'000 during the
month of June for example).

Under Obama (8 years) 9 million jobs were created total, which is above 1
million jobs per year. So, 8 x 62'000 = 496'000 H1-B under Obama. Versus 9
million new jobs in the US...

~~~
dugditches
I'm fairly certain people qualifying for H1-B's that are 'requiring
theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized
knowledge in a field of human endeavor' are competing for the glut of those 9
million jobs. Come on.

While OP's post isn't a very good one, you can't throw numbers like that at
it. How many of those 9 million jobs are fulfilling, full time, well paying ,
etc. Isn't underemployment a big problem in the US?

~~~
allfou
You don't like numbers and facts, then let's take it to the next level.

Majority of the Dev community in the San Francisco Bay Area (for example) is
of Asian/Indian descent. We're not even talking about foreigners here.
Children of immigrants (immigrants who probably came through H1-B) - the
second generation, American citizens.

So, bringing people via H1-B actually helps fulfilling "high-level" jobs with
American citizens. Does it make sense?

------
Gys
For the same reasons as why (for example) more women and minorities should be
hired: a diversified team is more successful in the long run.

[https://www.thebalance.com/cultural-
diversity-3306201](https://www.thebalance.com/cultural-diversity-3306201)
[https://www.asme.org/engineering-
topics/articles/diversity/m...](https://www.asme.org/engineering-
topics/articles/diversity/more-diverse-personalities-mean-more-successful)

~~~
KnowNothings
Those countries have a duty to their own people. American jobs for American
citizens.

~~~
bobosha
Define an "american job"

------
sankyo
This is not true in all cases, but H1B workers show up to work hard, show
strong understanding that they are being paid to do a job as opposed to being
entitled for some lifestyle, and have more respect for the hierarchy of the
org. They will tend to stick around for a while too, and not be job hoppers.
It is saddening to see them exploited as basically indentured servants.

On the flip side, they do not challenge authority when they know a better way
to do something, their educational foundation is not as solid because of too
much focus on rote memorization, and tend to let interpersonal problems fester
instead of escalating because they cannot imagine speaking out of their place
in the hierarchy.

The top tier of Home country employees are great, but once you get to the
lower part of tier 2 and tier 3, they tend to have an attitude of "what can
the company do for me?" , Instead of "What can I do for the company?" And they
start feeling like dead weight.

Of course these are all generalizations and there are exceptions everywhere to
what I have said.

------
corysama
In the gaming industry, there is recently a large pool of low-skill workers
graduating from game specialty schools. But, that wasn't the case ten years
ago. We had to hire whoever we could find with skills and (not just with)
interest in working in gaming.

There has never been a large enough talent pool of highly skilled people
working in gaming. We still need to find them all over the world. Europe and
Russia have a lot of very smart, underpayed devs. Every visa worker I've
worked with has been very skilled, loved living and working in the US, and
most were trying to become highly skilled, highly paid, highly-tax-paying
citizens of the US.

Before the inevitable "you'd find more people if you paid more", I've seen the
numbers of many, many games. 90% of the non-marketing budget goes to non-
management devs already. Games are notorious for being difficult to be
profitable already. Customer awareness is the biggest challenge of
profitability. So... if you have any suggestions on where to get more money to
pay devs, I'd love to hear them.

------
lifesucks1
Its cheap indentured labor as simple as that. H1B is supposed to be speciality
based positions for skills which are not available locally. Tell me why all
the junior developers are H1b. Don't you feel if americans are given the same
opportunity for these positions they will not do well. Things are getting so
bad out there these days that most jobs are never advertised but they pickup
H1B by default so no US citizen ever gets a chance to apply or even compete
for these jobs.

------
raverbashing
You should be asking Tata and other IT service providers this question (and
maybe Disney)

Now ask Microsoft, RedHat, Google, Intel (and others) why are they hiring H1Bs
and you might have a surprise

~~~
theshadowmonkey
I worked for one of the big names mentioned above(not IT services) and I am a
H1B myself with a masters from a US university. And most of the H1Bs I know
are on par or more qualified than their peers, most of them educated here at
top tier universities and paid equally or more than American counterparts. So,
why then should you not hire H1B workers when they add equal or more value?

------
garyfirestorm
[http://www.firstpost.com/world/immigrants-we-get-the-job-
don...](http://www.firstpost.com/world/immigrants-we-get-the-job-done-
hamilton-cast-delivers-sharp-message-to-mike-pence-3114042.html)

------
prisionif
if you answer why there are american companies milking till the last drop of
our natural resources I can answer why we get your jobs.

