Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

I have to put out a ghost job req and interview every person applying within reason for every green card a direct report is applying for. I have to show there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job

The main problem is: even if the interviewee knocks it out of the park, is an amazing engineer, I still am not interested in firing my OPT/h1b team member who can still legally work for 2-3 years. So while I will deny their green card application and not submit it, I also won’t hire the interviewee

Wait, this isn't clear to me. Are the interviewees citizens? So you're interviewing citizens to prove that there aren't any who can fill your jobs but even when they clearly could fill the job you don't hire them? Seems like the requirement of proving "there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job" is going to be near impossible for the government to enforce

At the last startup I worked at, our CTO was on a visa.

To satisfy the "no one in the US can fill the CTO role", they took out an advertisement in a San Francisco newspaper classifieds so they had evidence that they attempted to find a US citizen / permanent resident CTO.

Obviously there were no applicants.

CTO actually makes sense for an h1b though, it’s a high paying job that can depend greatly on the technical and creative skills of the individual and how they mesh with the company.

The problem is when it’s someone pumping out code, or doing tech support for half the cost of the local competition.

No, this is backwards

CTO is not such an exceptional role that you can convince me that a company couldn't find a single person in America who would be qualified to take it

It's also a highly sought after role, so people would generally be willing to relocate for a role like that

H1Bs are designed to fill labour shortages, where your local labour market is saturated and you are struggling to find local talent or attract talent from further away, so you can import workers

Using a visa designed to fill labour shortages for an executive position like CTO is frankly an abuse of the system

But arguably any labor shortage can be fixed by just having way higher wages.

Like if Google is struggling to hire L3 entry level engineers, can't they just offer $1 million/year salary? Then of course they will get the people they want.

To me, the point of H-1B and similar programs isn't "we can't get the individual staff we need". It's rather that at a society-wide level, having more software engineers at an overall lower salary can be more beneficial to the country than fewer engineers at a higher salary. And I feel that the success of Silicon Valley kind of shows this: if we didn't have any immigrants to the US, maybe the salaries would have been higher, but there is simply no chance SV would have reached the scale it has.

> It's rather that at a society-wide level, having more software engineers at an overall lower salary can be more beneficial to the country than fewer engineers at a higher salary.

Beneficial to owners of capital in said country. Not so beneficial to non owners of capital (also usually labor sellers) in said country.

It's not so binary. Economic growth and prosperity does benefit a broad swath of society.

For non-workers the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, while for workers the disadvantages outweigh the benefits.

If your income is from owning capital or from real estate value increase or from government benefits, then anything that can reduce the price of things you want to buy is a benefit. This is a large part of the population.

If your income is from working and producing goods and services, then getting paid less is a negative that is far worse than the positive from cheaper things.

Many people have their foot in both camps. Their main source of income is from their real estate appreciating in value, while working is just a means to pay off the old mortgage so that they soon can get a new cash out by mortgaging at a higher value.

It's very much also economic warfare waged by the elderly against the young. The elderly own almost all capital and are interested in increasing it. Keeping the young as poor as possible is excellent for them, so as to keep them from being a threat to their wealth and power.

Workers aren't monolithic.

I'll be the first to admit that the disadvantages outweigh the benefits for specific workers. NAFTA sucked for autoworkers. H1B visas suck for IT and software workers.

I think other types of workers benefit more than the portrait you paint, and not just the capital owners.

Unless you are a utilitarian (I'm not), I agree there is a valid debate on how much policy should disadvantage a small group for "the greater good".

Sure, I benefit that a washing machine costs $600 instead of $6000. That benefit is small in comparison with if my yearly income would be double. In almost all possible scenarios, higher wages are better than cheaper goods. You cannot improve your economic situation by purchasing cheap consumer goods, but you can do it with higher income.

Sure, but $600 washing machines for 300 million Americans is a hell of a lot more benefit than your one income.

And double yearly income for 150 million working Americans is a hell lot more benefit for them than the $600 washing machine.

Indeed. And we should absolute pick that if we are presented with those two options.