r/biotech • u/Acceptable-March-487 • 4d ago
Elon and Vivek are right about H-1B visas and this is also true for Biotech jobs Rants 🤬 / Raves 🎉
You have certainly heard of both fellas advocating for top talent from overseas to come and work in America.
I am seeing so many top talent from Asia and some parts of Europe working in Biotech in the US. They are working hard to achieve the next milestones and we should be happy they are in America.
American culture gives Dean the class clown all the attention instead to Lee the whiz-kid.
It’s nice to see a long overdue major shift with the upcoming administration coming.
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u/chobani- 4d ago edited 4d ago
In addition to the very valid comments about the US job market currently, I’d like to add a statistic I saw recently that nearly 80% of H1Bs are given to tech and engineering workers. Just quickly scrolling through the USCIS ranking of H1Bs by employer in 2024, I couldn’t find a single biotech company in the top 40 (I might’ve missed one, but the vast majority were tech/engineering/consulting).
The government hands out very few H1Bs to biotech companies and the total number is capped every year. I’m not sure why we should expect that to change much. All issues with the visa system aside, the majority of demand is clearly coming from other sectors.
Regardless, a pretty naive post if you’ve any awareness of the current state of the biotech market and the clear surplus of domestic talent desperately looking for jobs.
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u/Euphoric_Meet7281 3d ago
Nice of you to assume OP doesn't know what they're doing by pushing for even more cheap, disposable talent
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u/chobani- 3d ago
I was being generous with the benefit of the doubt, but yeah, you’re likely right.
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u/Acceptable-March-487 3d ago
I know exactly what’s going on. It’s not cheap Labour. Those who are coming are the top brains of their respective countries. If a company needs a top-skilled worker but only receives applications from the domestic market who are low-performers then this is unacceptable. Science should not be slowed by populism. And I mean far-right and far-left.
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u/Some_Promise4178 4d ago
With the large number of layoffs in Biotech this year. Increasing the number of H-1B visas just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
They need to reform the whole process since it’s exploitive which is exactly what Elon wants. Foreign workers who have their visas tied to their jobs, will work 60+ hours a week, for sub market rate pay.
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u/Ducks_have_heads 4d ago
The same is said for low skilled and illegal immigrants... The only difference is Musk benefits from the H1B through cheap talent.
If he made his billions in an industry that relied on manual labour he'd be all for increasing low skilled immigration and pathways for illegals immigrants.
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u/SuddenExcuse6476 4d ago
With PhDs applying for RA roles, the last thing we need is more H-1Bs.
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u/dwntwnleroybrwn 3d ago
To be fair a lot of PhDs should and need to spend time as RAs. I've worked with too many that are clueless once they leave their tiny bubble.
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u/SuddenExcuse6476 3d ago
Hot take right there.
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u/dwntwnleroybrwn 3d ago
I've had to baby sit a lot of PhDs in my time. Hell, I even had to arrange a field trip for the PD gang. You shouldn't have to hold someone's hand to help them understand why a 5L batch is not the same as a 1,000L batch. Or how operators can't spend an 8hr shift 100% focused maintaining pressures and flows on a home made UF/DF skid.
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u/SuddenExcuse6476 3d ago
Perhaps this sector just needs to normalize training people.
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u/Euphoric_Meet7281 3d ago
Lol we can blame bitter PhDs for that one too.
"Why should I spend my valuable time training an RA on a new skill when they already make so much money despite not having to deal with the PhD and my age-related erectile dysfunction/vaginal dryness??"
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u/AltoClefScience 4d ago
I'm all for immigration of highly motivated and talented employees, but H-1B is a shitty and often exploitative system. It's manipulated to get immigrants to work long hours for below-market rates, by holding their immigration status over them. And any requirements to pay "market wages" and attempt to recruit American citizens are laughable and trivially circumvented by many companies.
I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of expansion if it included real reform, with enough teeth to prevent the majority of common abuses. But I doubt that's what we're going to see here...
FWIW the worst abuses I've heard about are in IT and software engineering, where there are entire sectors dedicated to contracting out cheap H-1B labor. Are there similar situations in biotech - maybe the some of the cheapest CROs are trying to game the H-1B system?
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u/seebol 4d ago
The cheapest CROs have their entire science team based in China, India, or other low cost of living countries, while only having a small marketing / customer service team in America.
I understand the H-1B employees can be exploited, but it's also a shame that some world-class international PhD graduates from top schools like MIT have trouble finding employers willing to put them into the visa lottery system due to the likelihood of not winning the lottery.
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u/carbon4203 4d ago
Completely agree. My company opened an r and d lab in India instead of our site in the US this year.
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u/AltoClefScience 3d ago
it's also a shame that some world-class international PhD graduates from top schools like MIT have trouble finding employers willing to put them into the visa lottery system due to the likelihood of not winning the lottery.
True enough, but that's more a failing of academia training >3x the actual number of PhDs needed as professors or industry scientists. Plenty of US citizen MIT graduates are also struggling to find employment, though the international graduates certainly have it harder. Thing is even doubling the number of H-1B visas under the current system won't change much for the biotech companies that might be considering hiring someone international - there's still a significant likelihood of not winning the lottery.
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u/SonyScientist 3d ago edited 3d ago
Uh no.
This market is flooded with capable American citizens looking for jobs. Elon and Vivek wanting H1-Bs in a flooded market is just so they can:
- Supersaturate the market and lower wages across the board.
- Weaponize the H1-B as a form of racial and national discrimination as a matter of government policy.
If you don't think #2 is a legitimate concern, look at the demographics of groups, departments, or even companies headed by Chinese individuals. Doubling visas will allow such individuals to import more foreign workers under the guise of "we can't find talent needed here in the US" when in reality 他们更喜欢和来自自己文化的人一起工作. Their choice to do so is antithetical to the entire concept of integration in the United States as a melting pot of different people and culture.
I can point to four different instances of it happening in my own career, at four different companies, and can identify a few other companies on the market where the demographics of the company are obviously and painfully discriminatory.
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u/CommanderGO 3d ago
It kind of depends on how selective is the process of getting an H1B visa and how does the visa process filter out people that look impressive on paper, but lack any practical or technical abilities. It doesn't make sense to bring in more H1B visa holders for management roles when they were better as individual contributors and can't manage more than one person or can't actually contribute much as a manager.
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u/Mother-Annual6100 3d ago
If you said that Elon was opposing H-1Bs all of the people in this thread would instead be writing novels about how we need more H-1Bs
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u/Additional_Rub6694 4d ago
With how many layoffs there have been, why do we need to create more visas to bring in talent? We already have a surplus of talent. All Elon and Vivek are trying to do is bring in cheap labor for their companies, ideally people they can abuse and manipulate because they’ll be scared of losing their visa status.