Me and many other people commented here when the whole thing started that layoffs in a time of record profits and cashflows were basically a strategy to keep salaries low. At this point I honestly don't know how innocent one has to be to think that everything is an organic coincidence and not an orchestrated move.
Companies colluding to make the life of workers worse and boost their profits, that has never happened before in the history of humanity.
I always have a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to conspiracy stuff like this, but it's not like they weren't busted before.
Apple and Google were caught red handed for their secret anti-poaching agreement (With the Jobs/Schmidt emails leaked to prove it). All these CEOs are in the same social circles, it's not a big reach to think they chat with each other behind the scenes about things like RTO, Layoffs, etc.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
— Adam Smith
Keep salaries low? This is one of the boomiest industries, with truly insane salaries, with years of employee-favorable conditions.
Beyond that, we’re in for years of macroeconomic reckoning for unresolved asset bubbles in the 2000s and horrendously bad COVID policy. Laying off makes sense. Sometimes you hire to backfill roles or for strategic teams. Sometimes an H1b is the correct hire.
>This is one of the boomiest industries, with truly insane salaries
How many software developers can, in a reasonable timeframe, buy a house in the place they live and support alone a family of four people? Then the truly insane salaries you are talking about are not really that insane.
>Laying off makes sense. Sometimes you hire to backfill roles or for strategic teams. Sometimes an H1b is the correct hire.
Developers are seen by companies as over expensive peons and they have been maneuvering to turn the whole field in an low cost industry. I hope you are younger than 30 to still hold such a naïf worldview.
This is the only part of the article that matters, and even it is a stretch:
> Just a month after Sundar Pichai announced Google’s plan to cut 12,000 jobs around the world in January, the company filed applications for H1B visas to hire software engineers, analytical consultants, user experience researchers and other roles from outside the United States, with several requests aimed for new Google employees to join in August, the report states. Google parent Alphabet owned Waymo too has reportedly filed similar H1B applications to hire engineers.
The article fails to mention and actual H1B requests by the others, just lumps them in with the layoffs.
It's not really being submitted in good-faith. My advice is to flag submissions with edited titles, and ignore the obvious outrage porn. It seems to work, more often than not.
Generally not supposed to say this out loud, but being the only American on an all H1B team at these companies can be absolutely brutal. Very alienating, always missing out on back channel communications, no sympathy for missteps
I'm a manager of a team that's mostly H1Bs at Google. It's mostly fine but a few of them just refuse improve their English, and it's frustrating spending hours every day just being an English teacher to an engineer who writes at a 5th grade level. The problem with hiring too many H1Bs is they speak to each other in Chinese and thus take forever to become proficient at communicating with the rest of the company.
Also, I'd call into question the credibility of this article. Google pays H1Bs the same as Americans as far as I know. What Google is doing is hiring a large number of engineers in India. These people I assume are paid much less than American engineers.
As someone with some exposure to Chinese characters as a Japanese speaker, I’ve had the please to casually glance a WeChat group and realize some of the back channel Chinese from my teammates was joking about trying to get me fired.
(Edit: my also Chinese manager dealt with it very well and that person left the company after some time)
Interesting, isn't it considered impolite to speak in a language that someone in the group doesn't understand?
When I was in Germany, Germans even texted their SO in English in case I glance over their phones. Maybe the group I was in was exceptionally welcoming but everywhere in Europe where I lived(EU, non-EU, UK etc.) it was always considered rude to speak a language that others don't understand and everyone always tried their best to speak in English as a lingua franca.
If I happen to be in a working group that speaks multiple languages, I would definitely raise the question of speaking a common language in a work environment because you can't all be on the same page when your communications are patchy.
I find it interesting that H1B implies Indian or Chinese workers. As a South African I don't know why you don't hire more English speakers that would be H1Bs. I myself have tried to get an H1B and so far the door has been closed.
It's been easier for me to move to a European country where I had to learn another language.
I’m not American and don’t live in America (I presume by “America” you mean the United States?), but shouldn’t it be “… refuse to improve their English”?
My old boss in academia went through a “hire tons of Chinese chemists” phase and it got so bad he just had to eventually ban Chinese from being spoken in the lab. That seemed to work well and their English improved greatly and understanding in the lab went up. When they went back to China, hopefully they got more out of their experience here also. They learned new techniques instead of just doing things the same way they had always done them.
I don't know about google but at my fortune 500 company they are technically paid the same but clearly paid less in reality. A bunch of them are at lower levels then they should be based on experience and skills.
Things have changed in India. In these top companies, engineers get as much as 1/3rd of the pay here. That’s relatively much better given the cost of living in India.
Being the odd one out also makes you a target for things like PIP quotas. It's very disturbing to watch, especially as managers try to justify it with phony evidence to save their own.
My ex gf is here on H1B and so is all her friend group. I feel bad for her situation, it adds a layer of stress but the way they treat the visa is disrespectful to Americans I think. For example, they are generally of the mindset that Americans are stupider and lazier than them which is why they are here. So they will vent their frustrations on Americans by calling us stupid and lazy and entitled because we have citizenship but they do all the work. It's not a healthy way to view this country or their coworkers. They take the "nation of immigrants" line too far and act as if their American coworkers are basically their inferiors but who were lucky enough to happen to have citizenship. I always tried to provide a different perspective to no avail.
Ie, cardholding need be blind to recruiters.
Ie, insteadof <Do you have work authorization?> as the first question [no less], it need be enforceably ILLEGAL to try fish info on it.
In practice that can't be fully done without also blinding a lot of other things. but having Single Market enforced by law certainly will reduce the paygap found today in equal lvl-to-lvl comparisons (top x% vs top x%; differing only in cardholding).
re "vent" "disrespectful"; I contend that those folks actually trying to be assholes are Americans. It's likely the comparison you saw was just done in a neutral and nonhurtful manner/intention, albeit not of PC enculture.
The only scenario where this makes sense is if the "all H1B team" is all from the same country / speaks the same language. The issue is not "all H1B", it's the lack of diversity in the team.
Why "not supposed" to say out loud? Sounds simply as a problem of the only X on a team of Ys. Cultural (and other) differences can be hard, it is just a fact of life.
Think of it as being in the shoes of a lonely non-American in the country of Americans, if that is any consolation.
Yes, the grandparent comment also describes the common immigrant experience on a team where the others are native speakers of the work language. It’s not intentional prejudice, but just the wrong kind of accent can leave you excluded because the others start to feel that verbal communication is “harder” with you around.
Social posturing in certain cultures is very different from Euro rooted cultures in a way that you don’t notice until you are immersed in it for awhile. I personally found this aspect extremely hard to work with, and it seems to guide communication to a surprising degree.
It’s not as if it’s directly attributable to an H1B but if a group has eight Indian people on it chances are they’ll converse in their native language from time to time and it’s quite possible they’ll have a group chat and a close relationship (given their shared similar circumstances). Not difficult to see how an outsider might feel excluded.
That said, that same group often faces exclusion in the wider company (and coming together is often in reaction to that), so it’s kind of miserable for everyone.
My last couple of jobs(non tech) almost everyone I talked to on a daily basis was ESL. It was great as an introvert because they could talk around me and about me while I kept to myself. Now Im in tech with all English speakers there's no escape from the slights. Id love to be only a team of ESL people, because now it's like highshcool. The only time they talk to me now is for baiting too cute by half questions and comments.
It happens in the UK too. For example a friend of mine was taken advantage of by the boss who was not hesitant at all to remind her that her existence in the country depended on his approval; so she had to do long hours with unreasonable tasks for little pay.
I’ve been the only US citizen on a team and now I am on a team with exclusively white, remote employees. I’ve watched my current team build the worst systems I’ve ever seen while constantly congregating themselves.
I don’t think the companies in question let people go based on performance or any other logical criteria. They saw an opportunity to unload and they did.
I can speak based on Netherlands where I work now. If an employee is performing below expectations, then a conversation needs to be had(documented), given a chance to improve or change course. If after an extended period of attempt, the decision to let that employee go still holds, then they may.
However, the above reasoning cannot be made for several employees at once (like the layoffs that occurred).
To do an American style layoff, the government will insist on the company to document the reasons why, and in most cases, take away the choice for the company to choose which employee they can let go. Which makes it very unattractive. So, if a company wants to let go of several people at once, they typically offer good severance packages and request the employees to quit.
We have labour protections in the UK and this isn't a big problem. We can't fire people on manager whims and tantrums, and there is more accountability in the process, but not a problem or an obstacle to firing people who are not capable or performing.
First, there is the initial probation period. 80% of the people who won't perform, won't perform in the initial months. You just need a veto system or objective managers and it's easy to let slackers go. A lot of managers are soft on their employees and let them pass probation even if their performance is somewhat poor and, frankly, sometimes it's obvious it will continue to be poor. This is a mistake. So long as the company doesn't make these mistakes, this solves 80% of the matter.
Secondly, employees can be put on probation again, or on personal improvement plans. Yes, it can be done for actual performance reasons, not only Google-style. They can then fail these periods if their performance doesn't improve. But once again, this needs to be done with a clear head and accountability. This solves another 10% of the matter.
Thirdly, you can demote employees so that their pay matches their effort. This probably needs some foresight as demotion requires consent from the employee, if I recall. But if that consent is given as part of the employment contract, it's another way to make things just. You pay someone who underperforms less, you use that cash to hire people who perform. This option mitigates the perceived problem in firing under-performers even more.
In short, so long as there is good evidence that the employee was underperforming, it's not a problem. There are small peculiarities around dealing with this and not exposing the company legally beyond reason. But that's true for everything. Just don't be a clueless asshole about firing employees, do it when there really is a good reason, and it will all be fine.
There are, of course, employees who are vindictive or abuse these laws. But then again, a vindictive employee or one willing to abuse the company into keeping them around is a global problem. Some small % of people will just do these things everywhere - labour protections or not.
If they are not performing their job, they will be fired.
Unless by “low performers” you mean the supposedly weakest pawn in some “feelings-based” CEO’s desperate attempt to increase profits. And when that overpaid asshole realizes that he doesn’t actually have any ideas or other ways of impressing the board (which conveniently also consist of overpaid CEOs that think that desperately squeezing employees is the only way forward), shuffling around employees whose jobs he doesn’t understand in the slightest, becomes the way to seem actionable.
It’s far easier to get rid of an employee not doing their job, than it is to get rid of a delusional billionaire CEO or boardmember.
The real question is how do we get rid of these abysmal, low performing CEOs/boardmembers who hide behind idiotic ideas that fuck around with their employees lives or depend on exploiting people from poorer countries, to cover up their own ineptitude?
(And no, “shareholders” are just an effigy, conjured to represent private equity and geriatric pension funds, represented by a handful of investment bankers. It’s by definition a dysfunctional market, because the number of actors are tiny, and contained within the same industry. I mean, Adam Smith literally warned us about this…)
> I want to work with people from my town, not people from halfway across the world.
And I want to work with the brightest people from all over the world. I guess we are at an impasse and are best off leaving subjective preferences out...
Brightest in the world definitely isn’t what H1B recruits on. It recruits on who is the most desperate to do hundreds of leetcode problems in order to stay in the country.
Go figure, people who want to stay in the country will jump through some ridiculous hoops and we’re all worse for it.
I have never found a reason to believe any folks on H1B are smarter than their non-H1B peers. By any stat, never seen it.
Do you want to work with them even if that means a lower salary? Surely, since you’re among the “brightest in the world” you understand that labor prices are set by supply and demand. The H1B process increases the labor supply and thus decreases the price of labor.
Are you asserting that there is enough American talent to satisfy the job market and that they are being unjustly suppressed? It’s an interesting idea. Do you have any reading relevant to the topic that supports this assertion?
Absolutely. And I would go even further and say that many of the people we hire from overseas aren't even that good. They're just cheap labor and that's what makes them attractive.
If you are looking for someone to blame for you not getting your dream job, blame it on employers instead of the government. Companies like Verizon and Wells Fargo almost never hire anyone on a visa. Go work for those companies. Oh wait, they do hire foreigners with a green card. Are you going to find a company that only hires US-born citizens like the requirement for the US President?
Many countries offer work visas (for many good reasons), although they are often used in unintended ways. It is very much a stretch to say these programs shouldn't exist at all because they "take away" jobs.
Also, if half of the people you work with are on H1B, very likely you are not in a midwest "town" with 3,000 population, but rather a decent metropolitan area with a large immigration population, and the company you work is of decent size. I wouldn't be surprised if even half of the Americans in your company relocated from a different "town".
Finally, I like working with people that are productive and easy to communicate, instead of looking at which country they come from or their visa status. If anything that's my boss's concern.
Therefore, if you want to actually see any change, maybe (1) become the CEO of your company, fire all H1B and only hire US citizens (2) join a different company (3) start your own company, or at least (4) call your senator and advocate for anti-immigration bills, or sue USCIS, instead of posting these useless and borderline racist comments on HN.
Sounds impractical to me. In fact every company I've worked for is flooded with non-Americans. It would be tough to find a company that only hires Americans.
I think a better solution is to end H-1B. Nobody is forcing people to come here.
US has historically low unemployment past several years so idk who you think they are taking jobs away from but most let go are almost immediately re-hired elsewhere. With little to no slack in the local unemployment pool it only makes sense to hire from elsewhere.
These companies do business all over the world (read: take money away from other companies in those countries). I'm not sure why Google having a lot of people from other countries is bad if it makes money from those countries).
(Btw, I see your point and am not necessarily criticizing it. However, you do see that these companies operate globally and having the workforce reflect that should be considered ok?)
Because you compete with other businesses. If labor regulations allow companies to do X, and one or more companies actually do X, then others have to follow suite and do X or be undercut. It’s simply the prisoner’s dilemma but the prisoners are companies and exploiting labor is defecting.
I abhor any system that results in second hand citizens, such as the H1B program. It suppresses the general welfare, in service of capital. If I were able to, I'd give everyone in the program an immediate option for citizenship, and then cancel it.
Yes, literally everyone but employers is worse off because of the system. It depresses wages for everyone. The limitation of worker supply might even hurt employers enough to make up for their benefits as well. Like tariffs, this hurts everyone involved because of misguided, protectionist instincts.
H1Bs aren’t second hand citizens, and canceling the H1B program would trigger an immediate humanitarian crisis, not to mention completely shut off America’s main advantage in innovation; the idea that we don’t care where you’re from if you’re great at what you do.
> we don’t care where you’re from if you’re great at what you do.
Yes, that’s true but isn’t what is happening here. They’re not bringing in H1Bs for their talent, they’re firing US workers so they bring in H1Bs to do the same job, but cheaper.
That may be the original idea, but the focus on the worker and ignoring their lives and family is brutal. Moving between jobs or location is difficult. Going outside the country may land people in trouble. It’s not slavery, but feels like one at times. Of course, it’s a choice, but they do live as second hand citizens.
There's nothing really new in this article. These companies hire H1B's all the time. There is no evidence that they are low paid. I was an H1B at [FAANG] and I had a bigger salary and more stock options than most of my teammates (not sure why, but I think I was more aggressive in asking for raises). I also received help to get my green card quickly.
Here's how it works in practice: You create a job posting that's buried on your careers page and has so many very specific requirements for an underleveled role (because it's custom-made for the H1B person you want to hire) that no local worker can possibly meet them all. Then you half-heartedly phone screen a few people to check the box before throwing up your hands and saying, "We tried and weren't able to find any local workers; we have no choice but to hire an H1B!"
This could all be fixed by making H1B visas an auction system, but all the H1B legislation changes I've seen have been half-hearted at best.
There are actually even more arcane requirements like placing a job ad in a Sunday newspaper with a certain distribution. The ads have bizarre keywords that make it borderline impossible to determine the real job. Those regulations are controlled by the DOL.
Because both political parties have donors that benefit from H1Bs and it's beyond just tech companies. Even the angry orange man has his hotels applying for H1B visas. Fucking hotels.
One of my friends saw a job the other day. It was a non academic, non R&D, run of the mill marketing position that required… a PhD???. The pay was also pretty pathetic with the start of the range probably not much more than a PhD stipend. I was wondering at first if credential inflation had reached its peak, but someone else suggested it was H1B bait.
I've personally noticed that H1B tech workers get paid significantly lower than others. It's a shameful business practice and obviously also really hurts the competitiveness of non-visa workers.
My guess is that there's no clear market rate for any position. Companies can always say there's a wide range between lowest and highest paid for any given role.
Market rate is based on the national median. So yeah... they do get paid more than the median, but far less than a developer where they work. It's why H1 workers tend to get hired in high paying areas. That's when it's worth it. If they can swing remote, it might be worth it. I've had a California company "lowball" me and I cackled at my amazing raise internally.
A PERM (permanent labor certificate) actually requires prevailing wage for a specific job position at a specific area. Just go check this website: https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages
It depends on the company and I would bet my life’s savings that if a discrepancy exists at Google, it is not intentional. I have many American friends, friends on TN visas, and friends on H1Bs and we are transparent about our pay (to protect each other from poor business practices). Being involved in the process there are so many legal barriers and red tape and people take it all seriously.
H1B holders will get paid less over time due to not being able to leave companies at the drop of a hat. A similar but less significant effect holds for TN visas. I have not once seen any significant pay discrepancy for two comparable software engineers at the same company based on visa status.
I wonder if it's different in the public sector? I'm at a university and (pay transparency) earn pretty much equivalent to equivalently experienced colleagues. (Edit: in the Midwest)
In theory yes, but not in practice. Job roles are often downplayed. The basic mechanism where titles, roles, and pay are kept in sync because people will jump to new jobs breaks down in the H1B system.
Yea the market rate definitely has shenanigans. And I almost wonder if the "response" to a made up ad with low ball number is used to declare it's a valid market rate.
Case in point, when I graduated 15 years ago. There was a big H1B software farm (Accenture maybe?) That randomly emailed. 2 year contract job, $30k/year out of NYC.
Yea....not a reasonable salary even 15 years ago lmao
15 years ago I interviewed at Electronic Arts. They did this same thing. I wasn’t a recent college grad. I had a family to support. They offered me the job but at 60% of what I asked for. They were shocked when I told them to go eat dirt.
Readit News
Companies colluding to make the life of workers worse and boost their profits, that has never happened before in the history of humanity.
Apple and Google were caught red handed for their secret anti-poaching agreement (With the Jobs/Schmidt emails leaked to prove it). All these CEOs are in the same social circles, it's not a big reach to think they chat with each other behind the scenes about things like RTO, Layoffs, etc.
Beyond that, we’re in for years of macroeconomic reckoning for unresolved asset bubbles in the 2000s and horrendously bad COVID policy. Laying off makes sense. Sometimes you hire to backfill roles or for strategic teams. Sometimes an H1b is the correct hire.
How many software developers can, in a reasonable timeframe, buy a house in the place they live and support alone a family of four people? Then the truly insane salaries you are talking about are not really that insane.
>Laying off makes sense. Sometimes you hire to backfill roles or for strategic teams. Sometimes an H1b is the correct hire.
Developers are seen by companies as over expensive peons and they have been maneuvering to turn the whole field in an low cost industry. I hope you are younger than 30 to still hold such a naïf worldview.
Deleted Comment
> Just a month after Sundar Pichai announced Google’s plan to cut 12,000 jobs around the world in January, the company filed applications for H1B visas to hire software engineers, analytical consultants, user experience researchers and other roles from outside the United States, with several requests aimed for new Google employees to join in August, the report states. Google parent Alphabet owned Waymo too has reportedly filed similar H1B applications to hire engineers.
The article fails to mention and actual H1B requests by the others, just lumps them in with the layoffs.
It's not really being submitted in good-faith. My advice is to flag submissions with edited titles, and ignore the obvious outrage porn. It seems to work, more often than not.
Dead Comment
Also, I'd call into question the credibility of this article. Google pays H1Bs the same as Americans as far as I know. What Google is doing is hiring a large number of engineers in India. These people I assume are paid much less than American engineers.
(Edit: my also Chinese manager dealt with it very well and that person left the company after some time)
When I was in Germany, Germans even texted their SO in English in case I glance over their phones. Maybe the group I was in was exceptionally welcoming but everywhere in Europe where I lived(EU, non-EU, UK etc.) it was always considered rude to speak a language that others don't understand and everyone always tried their best to speak in English as a lingua franca.
If I happen to be in a working group that speaks multiple languages, I would definitely raise the question of speaking a common language in a work environment because you can't all be on the same page when your communications are patchy.
It's been easier for me to move to a European country where I had to learn another language.
I am wondering how did they manage to pass the Google's hiring committee?
Ie, cardholding need be blind to recruiters. Ie, insteadof <Do you have work authorization?> as the first question [no less], it need be enforceably ILLEGAL to try fish info on it.
In practice that can't be fully done without also blinding a lot of other things. but having Single Market enforced by law certainly will reduce the paygap found today in equal lvl-to-lvl comparisons (top x% vs top x%; differing only in cardholding).
re "vent" "disrespectful"; I contend that those folks actually trying to be assholes are Americans. It's likely the comparison you saw was just done in a neutral and nonhurtful manner/intention, albeit not of PC enculture.
It is possible to be impolite, ungrateful, obnoxious and correct.
This a big news to me.
Dead Comment
Think of it as being in the shoes of a lonely non-American in the country of Americans, if that is any consolation.
It’s always the goal, after all.
Deleted Comment
That said, that same group often faces exclusion in the wider company (and coming together is often in reaction to that), so it’s kind of miserable for everyone.
It’s not “confiscating passports” level but it’s definitely exploitative.
Dead Comment
This is madness.
I can speak based on Netherlands where I work now. If an employee is performing below expectations, then a conversation needs to be had(documented), given a chance to improve or change course. If after an extended period of attempt, the decision to let that employee go still holds, then they may.
However, the above reasoning cannot be made for several employees at once (like the layoffs that occurred).
To do an American style layoff, the government will insist on the company to document the reasons why, and in most cases, take away the choice for the company to choose which employee they can let go. Which makes it very unattractive. So, if a company wants to let go of several people at once, they typically offer good severance packages and request the employees to quit.
First, there is the initial probation period. 80% of the people who won't perform, won't perform in the initial months. You just need a veto system or objective managers and it's easy to let slackers go. A lot of managers are soft on their employees and let them pass probation even if their performance is somewhat poor and, frankly, sometimes it's obvious it will continue to be poor. This is a mistake. So long as the company doesn't make these mistakes, this solves 80% of the matter.
Secondly, employees can be put on probation again, or on personal improvement plans. Yes, it can be done for actual performance reasons, not only Google-style. They can then fail these periods if their performance doesn't improve. But once again, this needs to be done with a clear head and accountability. This solves another 10% of the matter.
Thirdly, you can demote employees so that their pay matches their effort. This probably needs some foresight as demotion requires consent from the employee, if I recall. But if that consent is given as part of the employment contract, it's another way to make things just. You pay someone who underperforms less, you use that cash to hire people who perform. This option mitigates the perceived problem in firing under-performers even more.
In short, so long as there is good evidence that the employee was underperforming, it's not a problem. There are small peculiarities around dealing with this and not exposing the company legally beyond reason. But that's true for everything. Just don't be a clueless asshole about firing employees, do it when there really is a good reason, and it will all be fine.
There are, of course, employees who are vindictive or abuse these laws. But then again, a vindictive employee or one willing to abuse the company into keeping them around is a global problem. Some small % of people will just do these things everywhere - labour protections or not.
Unless by “low performers” you mean the supposedly weakest pawn in some “feelings-based” CEO’s desperate attempt to increase profits. And when that overpaid asshole realizes that he doesn’t actually have any ideas or other ways of impressing the board (which conveniently also consist of overpaid CEOs that think that desperately squeezing employees is the only way forward), shuffling around employees whose jobs he doesn’t understand in the slightest, becomes the way to seem actionable.
It’s far easier to get rid of an employee not doing their job, than it is to get rid of a delusional billionaire CEO or boardmember.
The real question is how do we get rid of these abysmal, low performing CEOs/boardmembers who hide behind idiotic ideas that fuck around with their employees lives or depend on exploiting people from poorer countries, to cover up their own ineptitude?
(And no, “shareholders” are just an effigy, conjured to represent private equity and geriatric pension funds, represented by a handful of investment bankers. It’s by definition a dysfunctional market, because the number of actors are tiny, and contained within the same industry. I mean, Adam Smith literally warned us about this…)
The program takes jobs away from Americans and should be illegal.
I want to work with people from my town, not people from halfway across the world.
And I want to work with the brightest people from all over the world. I guess we are at an impasse and are best off leaving subjective preferences out...
Go figure, people who want to stay in the country will jump through some ridiculous hoops and we’re all worse for it.
I have never found a reason to believe any folks on H1B are smarter than their non-H1B peers. By any stat, never seen it.
Many countries offer work visas (for many good reasons), although they are often used in unintended ways. It is very much a stretch to say these programs shouldn't exist at all because they "take away" jobs.
Also, if half of the people you work with are on H1B, very likely you are not in a midwest "town" with 3,000 population, but rather a decent metropolitan area with a large immigration population, and the company you work is of decent size. I wouldn't be surprised if even half of the Americans in your company relocated from a different "town".
Finally, I like working with people that are productive and easy to communicate, instead of looking at which country they come from or their visa status. If anything that's my boss's concern.
Therefore, if you want to actually see any change, maybe (1) become the CEO of your company, fire all H1B and only hire US citizens (2) join a different company (3) start your own company, or at least (4) call your senator and advocate for anti-immigration bills, or sue USCIS, instead of posting these useless and borderline racist comments on HN.
Nobody forces you to work with people from across the world, quit your job and find one that only hires people from your town
As it is, the H1B system only benefits H1Bs in a limited manner at the cost of American citizens. All so that rich investors can make more money.
I think a better solution is to end H-1B. Nobody is forcing people to come here.
(Btw, I see your point and am not necessarily criticizing it. However, you do see that these companies operate globally and having the workforce reflect that should be considered ok?)
and then you will probably figure out yourself that you need the H-1Bs
There’s plenty of companies though that don’t do h1b. Major telcos, defense contractors (those are us citizen only), a lot of small hedge funds, etc.
Too bad people from your town are not smart enough.
Jokes aside, the irony of this assertion coming from an American is too rich. Wondering why "23andMe" was such a popular term not that long ago.
We clearly need to reform our immigration system.
Yes, that’s true but isn’t what is happening here. They’re not bringing in H1Bs for their talent, they’re firing US workers so they bring in H1Bs to do the same job, but cheaper.
Break up ALL big tech.
Generally, I'm opposed to any type of class distinction.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-class_citizen#
This could all be fixed by making H1B visas an auction system, but all the H1B legislation changes I've seen have been half-hearted at best.
My guess is that there's no clear market rate for any position. Companies can always say there's a wide range between lowest and highest paid for any given role.
H1B holders will get paid less over time due to not being able to leave companies at the drop of a hat. A similar but less significant effect holds for TN visas. I have not once seen any significant pay discrepancy for two comparable software engineers at the same company based on visa status.
Case in point, when I graduated 15 years ago. There was a big H1B software farm (Accenture maybe?) That randomly emailed. 2 year contract job, $30k/year out of NYC.
Yea....not a reasonable salary even 15 years ago lmao