Concerned about H-1B Visa? Just export the work instead of importing the employees
Thrilled with any sign of restrictions in the H-1B visa program? Maybe it is the best time to reconsider the offshore outsourcing instead of getting the best brains to the USA?
When central administration official drafted new executive order aimed at overhauling the H-1B work-visa program, the HR teams in IT and High-Tech industry were almost as shocked, as investors — the sector stocks were down 1% after the news.
According to the Bloomberg, employers sought more than 13,000 computer programmers and IT specialists with H-1B visas in 2016, making coders about 12% of all H-1B applications certified. As visa ties the legal status to the single employer, it is a commonly used tool of hiring talented coders in highly competitive HR environment of the Silicon Valley. Unsurprisingly, CEOs of Microsoft, Apple, Uber, Netflix and Tesla Motors heavily opposed the changes and Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai was first to condemn the new policy.
Luckily both for employees and employers of the Silicon Valley, the terms of visa in 2018 remain unchanged, with a great uncertainty around further upcoming years. The question is — for how long hiring the talent on the other continent and bringing it to the USA will be possible and affordable?
Racing with Google
The IDC data is clear about the tech workforce in upcoming years. With more than 60% of APAC 1000 largest enterprises considering digital transformation as the key component of their corporate strategy. It means, that hiring talented coders from Asia-Pacific region may get more troublesome.
According to the Microsoft report, more than 1 million IT positions will be unfilled in 2020 in the sole US. As hiring of talented coders will become more and more challenging, the smaller companies will have to race against Google, Uber or Apple in offering the developers better work conditions and wages.
Furthermore, providing the good wage in the Silicon Valley (and generally in all the US) is not that easy, when it comes to paying the developers. With the increasing cost of living, hiring someone to work in-house becomes more and more challenging. That applies also to H-1B visa workers, transferred to the US, forced to find affordable housing and hoping to have the high quality life of a software developer in the USA, no matter the country they had come from.
And the last but not the least — hiring someone is a big bunch of problems. Providing the social security, benefits, dealing with vacancies, sicknesses or other work disruptions may be as challenging as the training and onboarding the new member of the crew.
Considering all the uncertainty with IT labor market, visas and a global shortage of skilled programmers, maybe it is the best time to consider the exporting the work instead of importing the workers.
Offshore and outsource
In the center of the idea of the outsourcing is paying for the solution instead of paying for skills, that are ready to use. It is a great mental shift compared with hiring skilled coders, as the costs are more flexible and agile. When the software development skills are being outsourced, it is much easier to scale process, with hiring more coders only for a few key projects.
What’s more, offshore IT software houses work on multiple projects for businesses around the world, getting unique expertise and out-of-box view. Unlike the locally hired software developers, the European offshore software houses provide not only the code but also the business consulting services.
As the offshoring is typically associated with India and Asian software houses, there is another direction worth considering — the Eastern Europe. According to the Business Insider report, Polish software developers are 3’rd best in the world with exceptional performance in Java. Combined with the much lower cost of living in Poland than in the USA and dollar-zloty exchange course, companies get the best value for affordable money with the company like Ideamotive waiting ready to code and solve the IT problems. No visa, no housing and no social security required.
Originally published at ideamotive.co on April 10, 2017.
