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Nish Sivakumar wrote: Well, that may or may not be so.
Just to be be clear - it is so with some of the companies mentioned.
Apple, Google and several others were actively engaged with each other to keep competition for employees down.
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America has a secret weapon[^] by Michio Kaku, I thought this was an eye opener.
Along with Antimatter and Dark Matter they've discovered the existence of Doesn't Matter which appears to have no effect on the universe whatsoever!
Rich Tennant 5th Wave
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Interesting.
As a non US citizen how do I take advantage of this. Preferably without leaving my living room? 
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I agree, stats is VERY interesting - how the hell one indian company occupied 40% while people from other countries wait for years to get this H1-B? If USA don't want to sing and dance next 50 years without food, they should stop "importing" indian "supposed to be" programmers and start improving local specialists.
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Nish, you failed to mention in the OP that you have a horse in this race. You, as mentioned elsewhere, are involved in tech recruiting currently correct? I am sure that was just an oversight though.
The reality is the H-1B hires making the 100K+ at the big tech firms are taking jobs that would probably cost the tech firms 200K+ to hire a native to fill. To just say "well look at how well these folks are paid surely this cannot be holding down wages" is patently disingenuous.
Companies in general and tech companies in particular collude to hold down developer wages; this is a fact.
Hiring good talent is easy if a company is willing to pay for it. The problem is that people at companies like to redline developers into price brackets and interestingly enough wont pay more than that - none of them will. It's no longer a supply/demand situation. If the free market was actually at work here software developers would make a lot more in the US. It is greed and collusion imo.
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Rowdy Raider wrote: Nish, you failed to mention in the OP that you have a horse in this race. You, as mentioned elsewhere, are involved in tech recruiting currently correct? I am sure that was just an oversight though.
Uhm not really. I have been involved in hiring software engineers for my team, but I am not a recruiter. And I've never been involved in hiring someone on an H-1B, which is interesting as I was myself once an H1-B visa holder.
Well the Microsoft positions were for software developers, and senior software developers. I don't think they'd be paying 200K+ to hire a native (I know many natives that work there ). Also these positions are usually filled by someone with 3-4 years of experience and even for Seattle, 110K is a very good salary.
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Microsoft is one of the companies named in the scandal. So yes you are correct they obviously would not pay 200K+ because they can just import foreigners instead - plus lets not forget they're colluding with the other tech firms *specifically* to avoid paying those kinds of salaries.
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I read that article, it seems to imply that they have an agreement to not hire each others' devs. It doesn't really say they use H-1B hires to lower wages. That said, I am curious here - do you really think a 25 year old writing 40 hours of C++ needs to be paid 200K?
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The no hire agreements are a pretext to build a case under which firms can lobby for more H-1B's. The H-1B holders even if they come in making roughly the same as their US counterparts still have the effect of suppressing wages. Because obviously to hire similar native talent these companies would have to compete against each other for said talent - that competition would logically result in higher wages.
I'll be honest the 200K figure is something I pulled out of thin air - not what I think people ought to make. That said should a 25 year old working 40 hours a week writing C++ get paid 200K+ a year? My answer is it depends. If that 25 year old is writing code that will literally have life/death consequences then yes I want the pay to be as much as it takes to find the best talent.
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Thanks, some good points there. I've read anti H-1B sentiments on forums before, but many of those are posted by people with views so extreme that they dilute their own cause. So it was nice to read some well balanced opinions from you.
I am mostly neutral about these things. I just fancy myself to be good enough to not be affected by wage suppression or other similar tactics. Of course, it's possible I may be wrong about myself
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To be clear I am not against the concept of H-1B visa's to the contrary I have met and worked with some fine folks from other countries. The concept is actually genius really - bring more smart talented people to the US... its a no brainer.
What bothers me are the fallacies so commonly used to argue for more H-1B's. I would be happy to support that case if companies could find an argument that doesn't amount to US citizens are too stupid/lazy/stubborn/etc. to fill these jobs so we need to import somebody. I feel that companies are beginning to abuse the H-1B visa program, using it as a tool to suppress wages rather than bring smart talented people to the US.
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Rowdy Raider wrote: Because obviously to hire similar native talent these companies would have to compete against each other for said talent - that competition would logically result in higher wages.
Not to forget of course that it is much harder for the H1B to change jobs.
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Nish Sivakumar wrote: do you really think a 25 year old writing 40 hours of C++ needs to be paid 200K?
Do you think a 29 year old needs to be one of the 100 richest people on the planet?
A software developer, just like a plumber, cashier and day laborer needs to be paid what the market conditions dictate. Otherwise it isn't a "free market".
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Rowdy Raider wrote: Hiring good talent is easy if a company is willing to pay for it.
Not true, in my experience. We were offering salaries well above industry average and got 100s of resumes but only a handful were remotely hirable. A lot of people think they are very good at writing software, and when they are turned out they assume it's because the company was doing some kind of dummy interview.
There may be companies that play wage suppression tactics, but I've never worked for one. So my experience may not reflect yours.
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And that ladies and gentlemen is text book redlining.
Also, and not to be mean/rude to you Nish, just because you have a hard time hiring people doesn't mean it is hard to high technical talent in general.
I am willing to accept that it is hard for you to hire within the given price constraints artificially imposed on you by the business owner/sponsor though.
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The CCC answer is CONFETTI
---------------------------------
Obscurum per obscurius.
Ad astra per alas porci.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur .
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It was! See DD's post about confetti 
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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I am embarrassed to say, I still don't get it completely 
One day I aspire to having a signature.
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Snippet in paper about post-match shower
Confetti is just cut cup paper: Snippet in paper
Tradiitionally thrown over [showered] the bride and groom after their marriage [post-match]
Quite a nice clue!
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Watched the first ten seconds, thought "stop whining and go outdoors" and closed it.
Was it worth watching any more?
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Only if you like rhyming whinging
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Seems like the typical video trying to be deep, meaningful and profound, with matching music and so on.
Complete and utter sh*t. I'm sure this is great - if you're a hormonal teenage girl.
ps: all of those videos are made to make money. The sad thing is we fall for it every single time.
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CarefulCoder wrote: form an opinion...
I did. It's utter horsesh*t!
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I got my Chromecast, and I've been playing with it for a week now, on and off. So I thought I'd let you know how I got on.
You may remember, I wanted to replace my media player because the HDD is starting to get loud, and that's never a good sign. So I wanted (ideally) to be able to play videos from my NAS instead, direct to the TV.
Does it work? Yes, mostly.
It needs an HDMI input on the TV, and a USB for power, or the supplied external PSU. The box includes a short HDMI extension, incase the body of the Chromecast won't fit in the socket on the TV, and a 1.5m USB to micro USB cable (which is either way too long if you use the TV USB, or annoyingly slightly short if you use the PSU...)
Setup is easy: really easy. Plug it in and follow the instructions. Piece of cake, except for entering my WLan password, but that's my fault for making it so complicated...
Played with lots of software for Android, and a couple for the PC - ended up with LocalCast on Android and Plex on the PC (though I have removed Plex as I don't want to do on-the-fly transcoding)
LocalCast seems to play from anywhere - it supports DLNA/UPnP, and SMB addresses, so once I'd fed in the NAS IP and login details it was a happy bunny.
It works: start a video from the tablet, watch it on the TV. You can use the tablet as a remote, or turn it off. Hi-Def works fine. You can also cast music, and any video that plays in Chrome - so YouTube casting works fine as well.
Now running the LocalCast Beta, since it supports the tablet in landscape mode rather than just portrait.
There are annoyances. It doesn't play AVI at all, and it plays some MKV but not all, and doesn't seem to play any sound from them at all. It plays MP4 and M4V files brilliantly. Unfortunately, my ]previous media player didn't like MKV files for a long time, so I have a large collection of AVI files, so I'll have to either re-rip them, or transcode the AVI files (which takes a while with Handbrake).
The executive summary: Good. £30 is a good price for this - it works, in some ways better than the box it replaces, which cost a damn sight more than that! Wish it played AVIs though...
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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