Nah, the employer will happily get rid of the US headcount and rehire the same guy in their home country or UK/Canada etc while paying a third of the salary. Zero employer is going to pay $100k.
At big tech companies they are already paying $200k or more than they'd pay the same worker in their home country for existing H-1Bs. An extra $100k might tip the scale for some but not for all.
The most likely outcome is that body shops can no longer afford H-1Bs, but big tech still can.
> The most likely outcome is that body shops can no longer afford H-1Bs, but big tech still can.
For publicly-held large tech, the equation isn't about affordability but about maximizing shareholder dividends. Moving jobs overseas has long been the preferred means to that end.
Sure, but they have always been able to do that. It's always been cheaper to hire employees overseas than to employe H-1Bs here. Making H-1Bs more expensive increases the delta and probably makes it more attractive for some jobs. But clearly there is some value in employing people in the US or they would have already moved the jobs.
> Sure, but they have always been able to do that.
I think the newness (some period before 2020) of tech in general tended to intimidate those legacy shareholder groups who got in early. And I suspect that early shareholding was often dominated by employees, etc (not sure tho).
I think those interests plus the proximity to adjacent industries created strong interest in US Gov's (now-former) incentives to create to bring many of the best minds here.
We've dialed back all the above. We've put truly hostile interests in power that are weaponizing Gov assets & millions of supporters - against every manifestation of immigration. Our actual outcomes are flavored with rising Gov violence and populist animosity toward (mostly non-white) immigrants and those associated with them.
Considering what and where we are, I absolutely see this high-paying, historical class of jobs being shipped overseas.
Cheap labor exists because there is a demand for it. Body shops don't pay those wages - companies who hire those bodies from body shops do. So, body shops are going to raise prices accordingly.
"You need someone to manage your Oracle/SAP ERP systems and do a horrible job of it? And that person needs to be here locally? That will be an extra $60k from our last contract because we cannot bring in cheap bodies now." (assuming they eat $40k of the costs)
In the meantime rural medical centers will be devasted because many teams are made of H1B doctors.
H1B certainly requires more government oversight. But doing their jobs or applying critical thinking skills isn't a criteria for this administration.
>Amazon has over 10k H1B workers. Think about how much money it means.
Something like 0.3% of their yearly profit.
They're already paying probably somewhere near $200k a year more. Clearly it's not for no good reason. Clearly there is some advantage to employing them here if they are already willing to pay $200k more than they have to.
An extra $100k doesn't erase whatever that value is. The question is, is employing them here worth $200k to Amazon, but not $300k? Likely the case for some employees, but almost certainly not all.
It's exactly like the tariff war with china. India refused to put sanctions on russia (who helped india in its wars with pakistan, who received help from USA), so now trump is saying we don't want your people in here. The outcome is probably going to be similar to the tariff war as well. They'll start out with totally absurd bullshit and then come down to something more reasonable. Maybe $10-20k per worker per year. From the point of view of the state, humans are just another resource, like crude oil. If you don't have something, you import it. And what's happening right now is haggling at the global scale. It's just a bunch of gorillas thumping their chests. Nobody cares about the citizens.
Exactly, so this $100K fee shouldn't change anything that isn't already happening. If they could ship the jobs elsewhere that you're worried about, they would have already?
They are, and increasingly so for the past 2-3 years. I guess you have not been paying attention.
I know as a matter of fact that my company and other companies almost exclusively create new headcounts in India/UK/Germany. US headcounts are only for replacement or as exceptions. Even some replacement headcounts are moved overseas.
Exactly, so this $100K fee shouldn't change anything that isn't already happening. If they could ship the jobs elsewhere that you're worried about, they would have already?
Certainly some will, but if we have learned anything from the 1990-Now, it is that remote R&D doesn't always save money or even work effectively at all.
The pressure to juice short-term dividends is as ceaseless as gravity or oxidation. It has to be overcome before lessons-learned can transform into wisdom-based outcomes.
As someone who works with colleagues from India (like, physically in India), I don't see any reason the company keeps me over some other random guy in India, to be honest.
A big change from then to now for remote collaboration is better connectivity in general, and technology such as Zoom and Teams. But how do you handle the time zone difference? That has always been the issue I've seen with any kind of real-time collaboration with contracrors or employees in India. If it's work that doesn't involve that, then what is the big difference now? Github? Slack?
If companies like airbnb allow you to work from anywhere in the world, it means timezone is not a problem. It definitely needs some investment though.
> what is the big difference now?
What is the difference between pre-2020 full-time in-office, vs 3 day or even fully remote? Nothing, in my opinion (CEOs don't agree though). If people are productive with 3 days in office, that could have been the norm before 2020.
All you need is someone actually making it happen.
