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0 pointsElysianEagle10y ago0 comments

Removing the cap would be a boon for employers but would seriously undermine wages for software devs here, I imagine.

India and China each graduate many times more software engineers each year than does the US. Many, perhaps even most, would love to work and stay in the US.

With a massive influx of engineers in a short span of time, I can't see how wages would remain where they are now in areas like NYC and SF. This is probably exactly what the Facebooks et al want, I guess.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

dennisgorelik10y ago· 2 in thread

> seriously undermine wages for software devs here

Not really.

Competent devs are not cheap anywhere. In order to noticeably lower wages in the US you need to bring a lot of software developers from other countries.

But the supply of software developers is quite limited.

Besides, as soon as wages start to move downwards, software development products start going down in cost (or go up in quality). That increases sales of software and increases demand for more software developers.

lifesucks110y ago

This is not true I am a dev and have been doing development for 15 years till I was forced to change my career. Reason not one big IT shop or Consulting companies want to hire anyone with experience. They want to hire the cheapest H1b's to do coding. Since they accept such low salaries and everyone claims they are a coding expert. In reality it is bodies vs the rates. So if the clients are willing to pay 100 dollars per hour and it costs you 30 dollars per hour by hiring a H1b. You pocket the 70. Since these guys do such a bad job now you can milk the client for all the bug fixes etc for the crappy job. Since there is no easy proven way to evaluate quality other than the number of tickets closed it just does not matter. At no point am I referring to companies in silicon valley like Google, FB, AMZN etc. This is for the consulting industry in the rest of the country where this gets completely misused.

I have seen most of my fellow programmers change their career since having 15 years of experience is bad thing because we are not willing to work for 60K.

dennisgorelik10y ago

What did you (and your friends) change your career to?

Is it to management of lower skilled developers?

bduerst10y ago· 2 in thread

>seriously undermine wages for software devs here, I imagine.

How? They can only be approved if they're getting paid the same or more than existing software devs.

dj_axl10y ago

> they're getting paid the same or more than existing software devs.

Ha. Look at some writeups of the SoCal Edison outsourcing, for example. U.S. citizens making $95K were replaced with H1-B workers earning $60-65K, and that's generously estimating the lower salaries. Tata and Infosys might pay their workers closer to $40-50K.

https://www.google.com/search?q=socal+edison+h1b+wages

bduerst10y ago

That's a non-issue.

They're currently under investigation for violating the immigration labor laws surrounding the H1B [1].

It's a different problem than the cap or the problem in the article. You're always going to have agencies trying to abuse a system regardless of whether there is a cap or not, and they will be investigated and penalized accordingly.

http://www.natlawreview.com/article/commentary-tata-consulta...

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tankerdude10y ago

I have no qualms about removing the cap but one simple condition: Pay rate is at least 90th percentile for the company or the industry as a whole, which ever is greater. The more you hire (and if your company is a consultant company), the higher the salary gets pushed up because according to the corporation, it can't find skilled workers to do the job. Well, if you can't, then they must be quite valuable, so you should then compensate them and pay for it. It'll be a bit costly, according to the company, is worth it because there's no one else to do the work.

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