I predict this will end with the wholesale revision of the H1B program, not its intensification but rather its limitation. I really wonder if Musk and Vivek, by “showing their cards” so publicly at this point with the predictable backlash, are really on the other side of this debate and completely on board with revamping an out of control government program. These guys are not stupid.
Hello and thank you for finding and explaining what the numbers and graphs of readable
numbers actually means. I read to the end. Ernst & Young should be hiring foreigners in the foreign countries where EY has a presence, but not bring foreigners here, where financial services degree candidates for hire are plentiful.
A guess on what E&Y is doing, along with the rest of the Big 4 accounting companies. They are using it to expose foreign employees to U.S. companies. The idea being at the end of 2-3 years they go back to their own country having graduated to private industry. In private industry they then hire their Alma Mater. My guess the big 4 have little interest in extended employment and dealing with visas and green cards.
Oh, I see. I think. Do you think that E&Y are just using U.S. H1-B as a cost-benefit corporate marketing service? 600 or so foreign hires isn't much compared with the tech designers' tens of thousands. These accountant new hires would be paid much higher than the majority of tech hires, do you think? Thank you for your clarity on the matter, which isn't addressed in general news posts.
Yes, it’s how the big 4 accounting firms operate. They have their alumni hire them, and alumni go to work for clients.
Big 4 staff salaries in the U.S. are set by level, and as far as I know, people on visas get paid the same as US non visa employees.
I’m just remembering stuff my wife experienced 24 years ago, and my daughter more recently in Silicon Valley.
I don’t know about the consultancy side. The big horror/ crime with h1b is companies is in tech, and companies doing outsourcing in the U.S. using h1b’s to replace us workers to save costs.
Very helpful data, Ray. The H-1B program seems like one of those things that is a good idea in theory, but falls apart in its implementation with all the attendant fraud and abuse.
My wife worked for years with a consulting firm that had two legally-distinct (and appropriately 'walled off') divisions, one that placed highly-cleared individuals and contractors into large government contracts, with the other engaged in standard techie placements. In order to protect its far-more-lucrative government business from any reputational hits within the GovCon community stemming from its techie placements of H-1Bs, the firm ran its H-1B processes in the way the program originally intended, i.e., with individualized unfulfillable-need analyses and a written justification for each hire going into the file. She certainly was surely surprised when she went fully private-sector and discovered what a friends-and-family racket the program had become for corporate bean-counters.
When I first read news about the Musk-Ramaswamy aggresion against regular working people who believe in fair play---which their government hasn't given them for way too long---I felt disgusted, wondering why I bothered to study current events at all. But more and more, I think Donald Trump is playing with fire against the whole
structure of citizen support which he worked tirelessly to build into a beautiful architectural wonder, with its own bell tower: Oval Office election success. If Trump was selling the American people a huckster's MAGA dream, everyone will attack him for being uncredible, not only about labor issues and nation-wide immigration destructive non-enforcement, BUT Trump will lose credibility and public support for every aspect of his governing authority. His support base will walk away; the Republican party will refute his leadership to go its own way (the uniparty way); all Democrats, leftists, and all of the "mis-named democratic institutions" will gain immediate popular strength to oppose and reject Trump's policy iniiatives; and every foreign country, banking institution, and here-to-fore U.S. ally will undermine the newly minted No. 47 Pres. through the next four years. Foolish if Trump chooses to ignore the people who voted for his election victory because they believed his campaign promises. Deadly for his legacy, because his betrayal will not be forgotten.
A wise man I know once told me that the entire venture capital space consists of people figuring out ways to privatize public goods.
Quote
Mojave Art Club @MojaveArtClub 59m
Perhaps the greatest revelations for most normal people, especially MAGA Trump supporting/Right-Wing twitter is the sheer fact that almost to a man, the entire "Elite business" people are all hucksters, fraudsters and cheats. Amazing community note by the way.
Won’t get fooled again. I trust no one. I no longer put my trust and faith in some mere mortal hustling for money and votes. Not even this potus elect. At the end of the day, he is a politician. A little different than the others maybe, but still a politician after all. While I eagerly cast my vote for him in a deep blue state over the other, this whole H1B issue is a reminder. George Carlin comes to mind. “It’s a big club, and I’m not in it.” Fook ‘em all.
Amongst the informed there is a growing realization we’ve been had, again. Trump ran a good race and the hucksters surrounding him provided cover for others to embrace a switch in who gets to dole out the favors and who gets protected while they enrich themselves at our expense and oppress us further.
Please do not get demoralized by the grift (with Trump's blessing)---it is still just word arguments at this time. Add your voice to others who are demanding immigration reform with a renewed commitment to favor every qualified American worker for every available job. Citizen activism is just like election support activism---your voice with all of our voices will be given attention. Congress is notorious for sleight of hand---but not any more, if public pressure is loud enough speaking out against fraud and unfair preferential treatment.
Read Sundance this morning---didn't know if Suzy Wiles declaration on no clown-show types allowed entry into Trump 2.0 was a dig at fringe issues, or un-savvy persons, like the former staff hires from Trump's Apprentice show. But I do want to see discussion of this breach of unity in national purpose from Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance---as interviewer, interviewee, or conversationalists---because these two men epitomize "populist American" agency in the authority/influencer celebrity class.
Trump is a one-term president; he can do whatever he wants; afterwords, back to normal swamp if we are not careful. Tech elites versus everyone else; in 1968 my math labs at KU were all from india; ed visas were converted to H-1B for employment. We took a long time to get here and it will take a while to unravel it; Ray-soca has already pointed to Musk solution; about the best we can hope for. If you push too hard, most of these businesses can relocate outside the US and continue hiring. How do starlinks, spacex and tesla employee numbers stack up? US versus other countries. If you can telecommute you can can code/develop from anywhere on the planet.
Thanks. The bottom line, duh! is that the "abuses" of the H-1B program are a feature, not a bug. This is typical for so many government programs--they're put into law with the understanding that they'll be too complex or big to actually control or monitor. That's done intentionally.
One thing to keep in mind is that while accounting for 'profitability' is a key component of overall enterprise valuation (one way to look at the value of a company is to determine its value as a multiple of earnings), it is also a key component of management incentive compensation.
In Musk's (and David Sacks' and Vivek Ramaswamy's) tech world management compensation is composed of salary and incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is the amount managers are paid in bonus, stock or options or similar awards and it generally far exceeds the portion of overall compensation paid in base salary. The value of this incentive compensation is largely determined by a multiple of 'earnings'. Of course, the definition of 'earnings' is subject to manipulation, but the point is that 'employee costs' are extremely important, not only to the company's 'bottom line' but also to the calculation of earnings for determination of management incentive compensation.
One can argue that there is no other 'number' more important to senior managers than the calculation of earnings for purposes of the incentive compensation component of their total compensation package.
The “cloud” is used by many companies to lower their IT costs. They put everything into the cloud. Of course, they are then subject to the inevitable price increases and the tying of their software to proprietary cloud solutions from which they will never be able to extract themselves.
I predict this will end with the wholesale revision of the H1B program, not its intensification but rather its limitation. I really wonder if Musk and Vivek, by “showing their cards” so publicly at this point with the predictable backlash, are really on the other side of this debate and completely on board with revamping an out of control government program. These guys are not stupid.
Another area that uses cheap foreign labor - universities. J1 visa.
284,486 In 2024!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-1_visa
Data on H1b’s:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1873174358535110953
Hello and thank you for finding and explaining what the numbers and graphs of readable
numbers actually means. I read to the end. Ernst & Young should be hiring foreigners in the foreign countries where EY has a presence, but not bring foreigners here, where financial services degree candidates for hire are plentiful.
A guess on what E&Y is doing, along with the rest of the Big 4 accounting companies. They are using it to expose foreign employees to U.S. companies. The idea being at the end of 2-3 years they go back to their own country having graduated to private industry. In private industry they then hire their Alma Mater. My guess the big 4 have little interest in extended employment and dealing with visas and green cards.
My daughter and wife both worked in the big 4/6.
Oh, I see. I think. Do you think that E&Y are just using U.S. H1-B as a cost-benefit corporate marketing service? 600 or so foreign hires isn't much compared with the tech designers' tens of thousands. These accountant new hires would be paid much higher than the majority of tech hires, do you think? Thank you for your clarity on the matter, which isn't addressed in general news posts.
Yes, it’s how the big 4 accounting firms operate. They have their alumni hire them, and alumni go to work for clients.
Big 4 staff salaries in the U.S. are set by level, and as far as I know, people on visas get paid the same as US non visa employees.
I’m just remembering stuff my wife experienced 24 years ago, and my daughter more recently in Silicon Valley.
I don’t know about the consultancy side. The big horror/ crime with h1b is companies is in tech, and companies doing outsourcing in the U.S. using h1b’s to replace us workers to save costs.
I agree with you, it's a serious crime. Cognizant and InfoSys I am familiar with only by pervasive web advertisements. Thanks, again,
very much.
Very helpful data, Ray. The H-1B program seems like one of those things that is a good idea in theory, but falls apart in its implementation with all the attendant fraud and abuse.
My wife worked for years with a consulting firm that had two legally-distinct (and appropriately 'walled off') divisions, one that placed highly-cleared individuals and contractors into large government contracts, with the other engaged in standard techie placements. In order to protect its far-more-lucrative government business from any reputational hits within the GovCon community stemming from its techie placements of H-1Bs, the firm ran its H-1B processes in the way the program originally intended, i.e., with individualized unfulfillable-need analyses and a written justification for each hire going into the file. She certainly was surely surprised when she went fully private-sector and discovered what a friends-and-family racket the program had become for corporate bean-counters.
What does this say about our political system, the way policies are decided, legislation is passed, etc.?
When I first read news about the Musk-Ramaswamy aggresion against regular working people who believe in fair play---which their government hasn't given them for way too long---I felt disgusted, wondering why I bothered to study current events at all. But more and more, I think Donald Trump is playing with fire against the whole
structure of citizen support which he worked tirelessly to build into a beautiful architectural wonder, with its own bell tower: Oval Office election success. If Trump was selling the American people a huckster's MAGA dream, everyone will attack him for being uncredible, not only about labor issues and nation-wide immigration destructive non-enforcement, BUT Trump will lose credibility and public support for every aspect of his governing authority. His support base will walk away; the Republican party will refute his leadership to go its own way (the uniparty way); all Democrats, leftists, and all of the "mis-named democratic institutions" will gain immediate popular strength to oppose and reject Trump's policy iniiatives; and every foreign country, banking institution, and here-to-fore U.S. ally will undermine the newly minted No. 47 Pres. through the next four years. Foolish if Trump chooses to ignore the people who voted for his election victory because they believed his campaign promises. Deadly for his legacy, because his betrayal will not be forgotten.
Armchair Warlord @ArmchairW 38m
A wise man I know once told me that the entire venture capital space consists of people figuring out ways to privatize public goods.
Quote
Mojave Art Club @MojaveArtClub 59m
Perhaps the greatest revelations for most normal people, especially MAGA Trump supporting/Right-Wing twitter is the sheer fact that almost to a man, the entire "Elite business" people are all hucksters, fraudsters and cheats. Amazing community note by the way.
Won’t get fooled again. I trust no one. I no longer put my trust and faith in some mere mortal hustling for money and votes. Not even this potus elect. At the end of the day, he is a politician. A little different than the others maybe, but still a politician after all. While I eagerly cast my vote for him in a deep blue state over the other, this whole H1B issue is a reminder. George Carlin comes to mind. “It’s a big club, and I’m not in it.” Fook ‘em all.
Amongst the informed there is a growing realization we’ve been had, again. Trump ran a good race and the hucksters surrounding him provided cover for others to embrace a switch in who gets to dole out the favors and who gets protected while they enrich themselves at our expense and oppress us further.
Please do not get demoralized by the grift (with Trump's blessing)---it is still just word arguments at this time. Add your voice to others who are demanding immigration reform with a renewed commitment to favor every qualified American worker for every available job. Citizen activism is just like election support activism---your voice with all of our voices will be given attention. Congress is notorious for sleight of hand---but not any more, if public pressure is loud enough speaking out against fraud and unfair preferential treatment.
Read Sundance this morning---didn't know if Suzy Wiles declaration on no clown-show types allowed entry into Trump 2.0 was a dig at fringe issues, or un-savvy persons, like the former staff hires from Trump's Apprentice show. But I do want to see discussion of this breach of unity in national purpose from Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance---as interviewer, interviewee, or conversationalists---because these two men epitomize "populist American" agency in the authority/influencer celebrity class.
Trump is a one-term president; he can do whatever he wants; afterwords, back to normal swamp if we are not careful. Tech elites versus everyone else; in 1968 my math labs at KU were all from india; ed visas were converted to H-1B for employment. We took a long time to get here and it will take a while to unravel it; Ray-soca has already pointed to Musk solution; about the best we can hope for. If you push too hard, most of these businesses can relocate outside the US and continue hiring. How do starlinks, spacex and tesla employee numbers stack up? US versus other countries. If you can telecommute you can can code/develop from anywhere on the planet.
Elon tweeted his agreement with two big changes —a salary cap and a pay-to-play fee— and called the H1-B system “broken” and needing major reform.
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/appomattox-monday-december-30-2024?
Techno believes it’s high time to drop the H1-B all together, using only the “O” visa for superlative cases. Compelling arguments! Vivek take note:
https://technofog.substack.com/p/h-1b-and-cheap-foreign-labor
Thanks. The bottom line, duh! is that the "abuses" of the H-1B program are a feature, not a bug. This is typical for so many government programs--they're put into law with the understanding that they'll be too complex or big to actually control or monitor. That's done intentionally.
Yes, more corruption.
How material are H-1B to the bottom line? Is tech profitability, or potential, smoke and accounting maneuvers boosted or required by H-1B hires?
One thing to keep in mind is that while accounting for 'profitability' is a key component of overall enterprise valuation (one way to look at the value of a company is to determine its value as a multiple of earnings), it is also a key component of management incentive compensation.
In Musk's (and David Sacks' and Vivek Ramaswamy's) tech world management compensation is composed of salary and incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is the amount managers are paid in bonus, stock or options or similar awards and it generally far exceeds the portion of overall compensation paid in base salary. The value of this incentive compensation is largely determined by a multiple of 'earnings'. Of course, the definition of 'earnings' is subject to manipulation, but the point is that 'employee costs' are extremely important, not only to the company's 'bottom line' but also to the calculation of earnings for determination of management incentive compensation.
One can argue that there is no other 'number' more important to senior managers than the calculation of earnings for purposes of the incentive compensation component of their total compensation package.
IT is seen as a cost center so lowering the cost by outsourcing to h1b’s ir hiring them direct is seen as useful to the bottom line.
Unfortunately a dysfunctional IT department can kill a company.
The “cloud” is used by many companies to lower their IT costs. They put everything into the cloud. Of course, they are then subject to the inevitable price increases and the tying of their software to proprietary cloud solutions from which they will never be able to extract themselves.