The problem is when it’s someone pumping out code, or doing tech support for half the cost of the local competition.
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
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.
Beneficial to owners of capital in said country. Not so beneficial to non owners of capital (also usually labor sellers) in said country.
Yes, like a lot of immigration, it is entirely about wage suppression to benefit owners and shareholders.
Not even remotely true, outside of unskilled labour work
> Like if Google is struggling to hire L3 entry level engineers, can't they just offer $1 million/year salary?
They can, but that won't suddenly make more people who are qualified for L3 entry level engineering positions to sprout into existence
It may cause people to re-skill to try and chase those positions.
It probably will have engineers from their competitors come to work for them
But then their competitors are in the same position facing a labour shortage. The shortage hasn't gone away!
In the long term perhaps, but not in the short term. Bidding wars over an inadequate supply of suitably-skilled labour are good for those workers, but they aren't good for the economy or society as a whole.
