We should admire H1B visa holders: they have come a long, long way from home to do these jobs.

Wow that would be ironic and zyx's head would explode.

Ken, you're clearly of the opinion that there are more useless, unproductive idiots in the world than not.  I don't believe that you think all people are equally improvable with the right education, or anything like that - so this isn't correctable through telling people to go back to school or what have you.  So - what do you think the lot of that mass of people who aren't as intelligent or productive as you and don't deserve to have jobs should be?  Should they just shut up and starve to death quietly?

Allons-y!

Call me crazy but I'm hesitant to base policy on an anecdote. And globalization in this case is merely a euphemism for profit maximization.

Profit has its place, but to set it up as the end-all and be-all of all human activity is insane. Literally insane, as in psycho.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it" ~Sinclair

Well the good thing about that is that globalization is helping to make labor prices about the same, that's why it's not as prudent to outsourcing tech jobs anymore as the people overseas are beginning to want similar wages for their skills.

But the big thing about H1B is about the type of relationship the employer and employee have. And that is one where the employer can almost completely dominate the employee. The employee basically has little or no recourse. Actually, the most basic recourse isn't available either: leaving the company for another job.

H1Bs and unpaid internships are the new indentured servitude.

"So, they set up a project with Indian coders in Delhi working online with subject experts in Singapore. The training program was designed by an American in Chicago, who oversaw the first class roll-out from Manila. Not an H1B in sight. Welcome to the 21st century."

And that worked?  In my experience the clusterfuck of miscommunication and the poor skills/experience of offshore resource results in an obscene amount of rework and severe quality issue.  So much so that you could probably replace five of the offshore resources with a single competent US programmer, and get more done.

Though I've had better experience with H1Bs, the ratio is probably still two or three to one.

They're probably all gainfully employed doing the work that Americans refuse to do.

I am shitfitter; hear me roar.

How many of those are entry level jobs?  Or is this another case of "they'll only hire people with experience, but there's no way to get any experience"?

I can't speak for ckm, but where I work (also silicon valley), somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of our hires are fresh out of school and we also have a substantial internship program recruited from around the country.  Entry level pay is generally in the $70K-$80K range, interns maybe a little less (and obviously pro-rated).

How many of those ask for so many years of experience in something that they would have to have started using it before it was invented?

People really need to stop reading requirements listings so literally.

How many of those list large numbers of skills to the point where few applicants have that exact combination of skills?  Or alternately, how many of those require very specific skills that only a handful of people actually have?

Srsly?  See above.  Its a description, not a damn checklist.  "Smart people who get things done" is probably a little too vague, but that's mostly what companies are looking for when it comes to engineers.  Specialization never hurts, but that usually is just a byproduct of experience.

How many of them have massive amounts of overtime?

I usually work about 30-40 hours per week at the office plus some WFH and email time and have unlimited vacation (sort of) - its a results-only work environment, just get your work done and manage your tasks effectively and it is all cool.  If you want to take a vacation, take a vacation.  If you're sick, stay home.  If you're burned out, take a few days off.  Want to work vampire hours, go for it.