
Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa' - matthewphiong
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/28/microsoft_immigration_proposal/
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beedogs
It's utterly fucked how restrictive and exploitative the US immigration system
really is.

It cost me about $5000 of my own money and a year and a half of my own time to
become a permanent resident of Australia, with no advanced degree and no cash
reserve needed. That route is literally _impossible_ for potential U.S.
immigrants. You either have to marry your way in, play the greencard lottery,
have a PhD, or buy your way in via an investor-class visa.

The alternative, if you can get one, is an H1-B visa that ties you to a single
employer who's free to take full advantage of your situation for half a
decade. And this is what Microsoft wants more of.

~~~
seppo0010
The H1-B is not tied to a single employer. But it only allows one month in
case of lay off.

~~~
akurilin
Aren't there restrictions on switching companies once your GC application has
been filed?

~~~
seppo0010
> If a foreign worker in H-1B status quits or is dismissed from the sponsoring
> employer, the worker must either apply for and be granted a change of status
> to another non-immigrant status, find another employer (subject to
> application for adjustment of status and/or change of visa), or leave the
> US.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa>

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wheelerwj
this is total bs. MS has a massive work force of contract workers who are paid
poorly and get treated worse and i am pretty certain that other companies do
the same. If they took that 10k ($60m usd total)bounty and applied it to legit
training in the US they would have a better, cheaper, and more loyal workforce
and the money would stay local.

This notion that we have to hire over-seas is not correct at all and while I
am all in favor or the immigration of foreign skill/knowledge/work ethic into
the US, to call it a 'crisis' is nothing more than a publicity stunt to pull
attention away from the fact that they are outsourcing jobs when they could be
paying that money into the local economies.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
I worked at a bank. We needed a team of six people with advanced and specific
skills. We could only find four. We tried to import two more. Computer at
immigration said no. So we cancelled the offer to the four and hired six in
Singapore. That unit has now grown to twenty-five of which five had to be
pulled in from India. That's how reality works.

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toyg
A one-off $10K fee per hire is chump change, compared to the alternative: if
your H1-B costs 50K per year + 10K one-off, he's still _much_ cheaper than a
US-based developer who wants 60K per-year -- and that's not exactly the top
going rate.

Corporations understand Marx much better than workers ever did.

~~~
SeckinJohn
It is not legal to underpay H1Bs. They literally should not be able to fill
those positions with Americans if they are complaining about this.

~~~
toyg
I'm curious to know which sort of rocket science Microsoft does that is not
taught at US universities.

Of course they are unable to fill positions _at a given salary level_. It's
quite hard to find tomato-pickers at slave-like wages.

~~~
barrkel
I don't think you're fully informed. Sometimes it's difficult to get qualified
applicants at all, at any salary level. A lot of developers are more
interested in the specifics of the job, product, company etc. than the salary
(once it meets a certain minimum floor); and for other jobs, the specific
knowledge and experience needed is very scarce. If there are 20 people
qualified for a job and 21 open positions, no salary level is going to fill
all the positions.

I had a H-1B visa once upon a time, but I never moved to the US. The company
wanted me to, but I preferred London to Santa Cruz. Didn't stop me working for
the company remotely, paid out of their UK sales office. Now I don't know what
proportion of H-1Bs are like that - a global search to fill a local position -
but it's definitely non-zero.

(The reason I'm pushing back on this is because I don't want HN to be a happy
home for the same sad sack of devs Slashdot hosted when I last frequented
there some years ago; "dey took our jerbs" was a constant refrain any time
H-1B came up.)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Oh, I dunno. American software hiring is blatantly broken. I've been there,
I've seen it, submitting my resume half a dozen times to the same companies to
finally get an interview and, yes, eventually, a job offer.

But the first five times being told that the company has no matches for me.

Meanwhile, the company complains it can't find engineers.

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mtgx
Why do work visas even have to cost this much? I understand US is going
through a job crisis, but I fear it's getting too protectionist. Protectionism
never has good results in the long term.

~~~
mseebach
So, what's being proposed here is a tax on fairly rich people who can't vote.
For "should", it shouldn't cost anything, or, at least, not more than a turist
visa (I think ETSA is something like $14).

There is some sense in the idea that the native population should be protected
against unfair competition, but there is no evidence that this is the issue -
Microsoft (and many other tech companies) legitimately can't fill these jobs,
so there's literally no downside to opening the floodgates [of eligible
H1-Bs].

~~~
wheelerwj
i don't know how they can't fill these jobs. There are 12 million people out
of work, you telling me MS can't figure out a win-win solution?

~~~
mseebach
Let's see. At 6000 positions and 12 million out of work, you only need to skim
off the top 0.05% of the workless to fill these position. Since Microsoft is
willing to pay $10k for the visa alone, that is, not including other
recruitment expenses, surely you can charge a fee of $10,000 for each
referral, and make a total killing as a recruitment agent for Microsoft.

In other words: basic economics disagrees with your assertion.

~~~
gaius
There's a number missing from your calculations: the cash value to an
unscrupulous employer of having an employee who is utterly beholden to them in
the way an H1B is but a citizen/resident alien is not.

~~~
beedogs
You're the first one to hit on the real reason: these workers are stuck with
Microsoft as an employer for years. If they quit, they have to leave the
country.

This basically buys Microsoft six thousand wage slaves, in the very most
literal sense of the term.

~~~
gaius
The H1B system is a textbook case study in regulatory capture
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture>

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JoeAltmaier
All the political chestbeating -protecting America against foreign labor -
seems pretty silly when discussing skilled jobs like software. Its like,
you're in a lifeboat and trying to get to shore and 3 rowers short. People are
clamoring to get into your boat - first thing, you ask them what country
they're from? WTF?

Lets draw a new political circle containing everybody/anybody who can program.
Lets call it New Abrainica. Let them all have free visas wherever they wish on
the planet. How does this hurt anyone? Oh sure, temporarily some lame spot
will have trouble getting someone to move there to work. But now they can also
move the job to where the programmers are! Or get remote workers.

Hey, this already sort of happens. So what's the real issue? I'm not sure, but
this conversation keeps coming up.

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checoivan
On the upside there are more visas, the side effect is it makes it harder for
early startups to hire H1Bs due to the increased cost. 10K for the H1 plus 15K
for the green card. Usually both are done together or really close since you
need a green card application in place to extend an H1 past 6 years. That's
25K per employee only for processing vs ~ 2K today.

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malandrew
What do people think about making companies pay a significant premium salary
(25%) to H1-B visa holders over US citizens? Seems like this would allay
concerns over companies using H1-B visas to keep salaries down. Basically
companies would use H1-B visas when an equivalent people cannot be hired
domestically. If this approach works then maybe eliminating caps is possible,
since it should be a somewhat self-correcting system.

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dschiptsov
How many years could pass, until they will figure out and develop a the same
development process that brings Linux kernel and other wonders to us - a
collaboration of engineers around the globe?

But wait, that means all you need is gcc, emacs, git sometimes ssh and
internet connection and Paypall (sic.) account? How could they sell all that
disconnected from reality, bloated crap they produce, spending billions per
year?

The answer is quite easy - in order to get 200+k salaries and bonuses managers
must maintain this bloated hierarchy and fabric-style sweatshops. Otherwise,
who needs them?

But the real question is - why we still care about MS? Who cares about old
Nokia phones or Delphi or Java or things like Novell Netware?))

