Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

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I don't love the way H1Bs are structured either, but the notion that "Americans created it we should keep it" is silly.

Of course, H1Bs can't start companies, so that's not a very good way to look at things - if you don't legally allow category x to do y how many xs are going to do y? A better question is how many could.

But let's just talk about employees. I know I've worked at companies in the past in which the backbone of the work (not all of it, but an important part) was done by H1Bs, and we wouldn't have been able to complete that work and be solvent without the (brilliant) folks that had come over on H1Bs doing it. Those, say, 25 H1B jobs created jobs for hundreds of other folks.

So I'm just wary of thinking that everything is a zero sum game or that immigration is "taking jobs" of "Americans."

And you wonder why companies can't be assed to re-train the workforce.

Because training is expensive and hard and not what companies have traditionally done.

I run a school, and we have had employers pay for training of dozens of employees. It happens quite frequently.

US companies used to always train their employees. It was the cost of doing business.

The reason they do not do so now is because employees, for obvious reasons, have no loyalty to companies, and tend to jump ship after being trained. But again, this is because US companies changed from a lifetime model of employment to layoffs and offshoring for quarterly stock bumps.

Force companies to use domestic labor, create a culture where employees aren't constantly worried they'll be canned the next time sales are low, and I bet you'll get good employees who would be willing to learn and stay for the long-term.

Worth it? I doubt it.

It's a supply chain issue. Software engineer demand might spike unexpectedly, and for startups, that might mean growing from a handful of employees to a hundred in a short period of time.

Can that startup afford to relocate or remotely train a couple hundred out of work Americans for say, a year, pick the top half of those, and offer them packages?

Maybe? Would a year's training be enough? I don't know, but I doubt it's cost effective for spiky demand in labor.

This sort of supply issue should best be solved by the government, which has a vested interest in the employment of its taxpayers, or an NGO or some other organization. Not the companies in question.

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