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Comment by notyourwork | Hacker News Reader

> (how easy is it to replace a CS PhD working on LIDARs for self driving cars?)

I have no problem with specializations but how many are in the US doing full stack web or general application development. It seems to me the problem is not surrounding engineers who specialize in a minority field like LIDAR. The problem is when you have a team of 15 engineers building a web application platform and 13 are H1Bs.

Also, don't take this the wrong way because I welcome you and any other H1B with open arms. I do however, personally feel there are a more companies taking advantage of the situation than not.

Curious what you or any other H1B employee feels about this point of view?

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> Curious what you or any other H1B employee feels about this point of view?

I'm quite biased, because I failed the H1B lottery. Took me a good while to get a different work visa (and LPR now). So take this with a grain of salt.

From the perspective of somebody working in a niche where I (via companies I work with), would immediately hire anyone qualified in that niche, be it a USian or not, I agree. Trying to hire specialists (abroad, because there none available in the US) and then being unable to get H1Bs for them, is quite frustrating; especially when you see companies/people getting H1Bs in roles with plenty local candidates/low specialization.

PhD in CS at a top university in the US and from India originally. To be honest, from my perspective, the H1B basically doesn't exist (unless I'm working at a university which doesn't have a quota). No way am I gonna gamble on getting lucky with the lottery vs just seeking more stable circumstances outside the US.

H1B success rate isn't that bad. If you got hired at Facebook or some other big tech company, they would figure something out, even if that meant holding in Vancouver or London to qualify for an easier to get transfer visa.

> doing full stack web

Is there really an abundance of really qualified full stack web developers? I met a lot of incompetent US citizens claiming to be full stack devs.

What's your definition of full stack? Anyone that knows a back end language, sql, html and a bit of css and javascript is a full stack web developer.

The going expectation for professional résumés is about honesty and modesty. What you say on that piece of paper should reflect what you would be able to come in the next day and be productive doing.

I interviewed over 15 applicants for just front end development last week and not a single one of all the 6-page résumés from candidates who all apparently have their masters was honest: only 5 even knew what JSON is.

I hear these stories all the time, and yet the value of these degrees seem to hold steady, while experience is often discounted.

Are these graduates? Are they real developers or people that know html, css and photoshop thinking their front end devs? Have they spent their lives in big companies that are still in xml land?

That's all the excuses I can think of. Some of them may be honest, just ignorant.

They generally don't have a clue, or sometimes have had job titles like "Software Engineer" but all they did was basic GUI testing, which is also the case at my company.

Is it possible you aren't offering a wage that attracts talent? You seem to be implying that Indian labor is smarter/more qualified than US labor. In my experience, (hiring in Phoenix) that is simply not the case if you're willing to pay the prevailing wage.

Yeah, this was my first though too. Even outside of the US you see companies wondering why they can't find good local talent, except they're offering wages too low for any qualified applicant to live on. Pay peanuts, you get monkeys (or the extremely desperate/exploited).

I believe that might be part of the problem, but when I joined under this same role I was being fairly compensated, so it might be mixed.

I would have thought JSON was more a back end

That's "JavaScript Object Notation," as in, how to use objects in JS.

one of those things .... most people in the pipeline should know.... since it's a data container format.

I think you need to be able to debug a crash of the web server or kernel. This means C and at least a bit of a clue about assembly.

I suppose it's OK to not be able to debug a hypervisor.

On the other side of things, probably you also ought to be a competent artist and writer.

"a crash of the web server or kernel"

That rules out 99% of people who are successfully doing the work right now.

It rules out 99% of the people successfully doing something which they claim to be "full stack". They might be great at their jobs, but I don't consider them "full stack". Low-level stuff is always part of the stack.

I guess there has been a sort of grade inflation on "full stack". When I go looking in the "Who wants to be hired?" threads for people, my reaction to seeing "full stack" is that the person is almost certainly exaggerating to an extreme. Real "full stack" is super uncommon, but it sounds impressive I guess. It's just not very believable.

I think you're missing the "web developer" part of the full stack. It means you know all tmthe stack required for web development.

Either way, aren't debugging crashes with c/ASM still taught at uni? Or is the idea of using gdb too much these days?

Crash of the web server => read the log and find where you made a typo in the config file

crash of the kernel => google the last error lines (hope you have one)

> I met a lot of incompetent US citizens claiming to be full stack devs.

Does this imply that H1B employee's are guaranteed to be more competent? I don't think it does and also extrapolating your experience to conclude on an entire population of people is hardly justified.

Not at all, I know a number of folks on H-1Bs, L-1s and other visas that are barely able to do their jobs correctly.

I was just sharing an anecdote.

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