13 ms·

Laid-off IT workers muzzled as H-1B debate heats up

141 points by grej 11y ago

discardorama 11y ago
If I'm reading the situation correctly, the foreign workers are NOT on H1-B, but on internal "company transfer" visas. The way it works (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) is that the company, say TCS, brings in workers from India in the B1 (?) visa category, which is unlimited and for internal company transfers. It then sends these workers (who are still working for TCS) to the client's site. This way, they avoid the H1-B mess altogether.
- jpollock 11y ago
  L1 is the internal company transfer. It's actually a quite nice visa, spouses can work on that visa.
  - praneshp 11y ago
    I think it doesn't have a market wage requirement though. I'm not sure.
    - jedmeyers 11y ago
      It does not, however as of 2012 it is quite hard to prove that the worker skills are essential to the company in a way that only transfer will fill the skill gap. Also L1s are not allowed to change employers so de facto it's an indentured servitude.
- randcraw 11y ago
  " Immigration Innovation Act of 2015 or the I-Squared Act of 2015 Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to establish an annual cap on H-1B nonimmigrant visas (specialty occupations) at between 115,000 and 195,000 visas depending upon market conditions and existing demand. (The current annual H-1B cap is 65,000.) " https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/153 https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/153 Seems unambiguous.
- outworlder 11y ago
  It doesn't have a hard limit, but it has much stricter requirements. It is not enough for the company to simply want to transfer you, you must possess skills that can't be found anywhere else (mostly, proprietary knowledge). You need a very strong case. That's L1-B. L1-A (manager) has different requirements. But in any case you need to be high up in the org chart. "Project manager" won't cut it. It gets harder the more you hire. Say you are the only one who knows about technology X (i.e., you created it). It is easy to make your case. It won't be as easy when you are employee #100. Also, after a certain percentage of workers are on that visa, the fees get much higher. I don't think it has minimum wage requirements, but good luck getting a low salary approved. You are supposed to have a unique skill set and proprietary knowledge, after all. Disclaimar: I'm on L1B.
LorenPechtel 11y ago
Why do I have a nasty feeling that Disney's severance contract was written by a H1-B lawyer? Whoever it is I think will be looking for a new job if they aren't already.
- pc86 11y ago
  I think that's unlikely since it doesn't include the prohibitions against disclosure or disparagement common in these agreements.
- bobmno 11y ago
  I wondered if someone WANTED this to spread and intentionally left it out.
- protomyth 11y ago
  Disney's contract did not have the non disparagement clause, Northeast Utility did.
hwstar 11y ago
This is a race to the bottom. Most companies today prioritize the satisfaction of the stakeholders as follows: C-Level Management->Shareholders->Customers->Employees In this environment, one must be financially prepared to retire early once you reach your 50's because you will likely be replaced. Replacement by H-1B's is just a symptom of a greater underlying problem: The need to enrich management and shareholders. Instead of C-corporations which put profit above everything else, we need more public benefit corporations (B-corps) which have balanced priorities.
- ovi256 11y ago
  And which investor, when put before the choice of supplying capital to a C-corp or a B-corp, will willingly choose the entity that admits having his ROI as a lower priority than the other, all other things being equal ? By this logic, we could see B-corps in niches where capital is not a strategic advantage. The search for these niches is left as an exercise for the reader.
  - dev1n 11y ago
    The public absolutely would invest if it meant these B-corp's have solid, steady, long term focused growth.
    - hippich 11y ago
      or C-corps taxes more and international tax avoidance loopholes are closed. But i guess both of these would be hard to make happen
  - kingmanaz 11y ago
    There are some funds which target such investors. For example, the Parnassus Endeavor fund: "The Parnassus Endeavor Fund normally invests at least 80% of its net assets(plus borrowings for investment purposes) in companies believed by the Fund’s investment adviser (Adviser) to provide good workplaces for their employees. Companies with good workplaces usually are able to recruit and retain better employees, and perform at a higher level than competitors in terms of innovation, productivity, customer loyalty and profitability. While no company is perfect, the Adviser makes a judgment as to which companies have good workplaces based on factors such as respectful and fair treatment of employees, employee satisfaction and engagement, pay and benefits, family-friendly policies, and support for volunteerism and philanthropy." Social investing as well as religious funds also put a higher priority on certain ethical criteria rather than overall profitability. The motive for investing in these funds depends on what one recognizes as their highest end.
randcraw 11y ago
You do wonder how much of the "silence" on this issue is due to all major US media outlets now being owned by large corporations who don't want this issue to see the light of day. To wit, how much of the American government's dysfunction is made possible by today's captive press?
- seivan 11y ago
  Depends if the people running the press sides with Government A or Government B.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ck2 11y ago
Can you imagine being forced to train your replacement? Holy hell. I couldn't do it, I'd starve first. And can you imagine sitting with and being trained by someone that you knew you were causing them to lose their job? Corporations making people hate each other, it's the American way. Those H1B replacements should be keeping those American flags - what other country would allow this kind of nonsense to happen.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  Yeah, I'm not sure how the folks in charge expect those being fired to do anything but the absolute bare minimum required by their contract.
- IndianAstronaut 11y ago
  >what other country would allow this kind of nonsense to happen. Trade is a 2 way street. If the west wants Indian and Chinese markets open to their goods (western brands are ubiquitous in those places), they will want concessions on services and immigration quotas. Recent pushes by the US to open India's retail sector would have wiped out millions of jobs, much more than the few thousand complained about here.
- analyst74 11y ago
  Or you can negotiate a nice bonus/severance and good references for the favor of training your replacement, provided that you are willing to quit on the spot.
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    Good luck with that. If you're being laid off and your replacement is already lined up for you to train, you're not really in a very good negotiating position. Plus, a company that would put you in that situation probably doesn't understand or care about the value of your knowledge before they've already felt the pain of losing you.
- theklub 11y ago
  Maybe you'd leave out some important information when training your replacement.
supergeek133 11y ago
You know I think this has been a debate for longer than just H-1B. Take consulting companies and the recent huge expansion of companies like TATA/TCS. I've worked for two companies now that completely replaced their operations teams with TCS, and it's been a disaster each time, but it's cheaper and the tradeoff in ops quality doesn't matter when you have millions in labor off the bottom line instantly. It's much easier to see that than any negative perception or lost sales.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
anon987 11y ago
How does someone sniff out companies like this during an interview or pre-screen?
- seivan 11y ago
  Look into their employee turnover. Five people quit in a single quarter in a company of 30~ people. That doesn't require sniffing. It would choke you.
- hwstar 11y ago
  It's really hard to tell without working there as employee. What most people do not realize, is that you need to be in a position to quit a job if you find it doesn't work for you. Too many people live paycheck to paycheck and are not in a position to do this.
Zikes 11y ago
Is the US Government not also to blame for this? I had thought that one of the major rules about immigrant worker visas was that they can only be granted for workers whom are doing a job for which no available citizen worker can be found.
- mingfli 11y ago
  No, that only applies to green card applications through work. General work visas don't usually have this restriction.
  - st3v3r 11y ago
    H-1B explicitly does.
    - mingfli 11y ago
      Umm, no it doesn't. http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupation/understanding-h-1b-requirements http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupatio...
    - ConfuciusSay 11y ago
      It doesn't, it's a misconception. You see often enough companies hiring H1-B's, have their American equivalents train them, and then fire the American workers.
- titomc 11y ago
  " no available citizen worker can be found. " H1B stipulates this. Here is how the companies work around this. The ADs that they put for this position should have the salary too. The salary will be the bare minimum specified by the Department of Labor for that work location. eg: Arizona I think its not more than 62K per year. There will not be any American worker who will be willing to work for that. So the AD will yield zero American applicants for that position and thus they hire an H1B worker. If your company has H1B workers, go to to your company's public notice boards usually in the break rooms. You can find notices like "Labor condition application for a foreign worker". Take a look at the second page or the third one and see the salary for that position. Usually it will be a bare minimum or minimum + ~10K.
mring33621 11y ago
Not sure how a simple statement of, "I was a full-time employee of company XYZ until I was laid off, with severance, after training my H1B contractor replacement," is at all disparaging. It is simply a statement of fact.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  I assume you're talking about these paragraphs: > Leo Perrero, an IT worker at Disney who was laid off after training his foreign replacement, says non-disparagement agreements hinder the debate over the H-1B visa. Without such agreements, "you would have a lot more people speaking out - real human beings with real stories, not just anonymous persons speaking out," said Perrero. > "Their freedom of speech is being taken away from them with the non-disparagement agreements," he said. Stating a fact is probably not disparaging. (Not a lawyer; I dunno.) But that's not a debate, either. If you want to debate about it, you basically have to say that this act hurt you, which may count as disparaging or discrediting your former employer.
- floppydisk 11y ago
  The problem is, if the statement is word in a very open ended manner and the firing company perceives the comments as disparaging in any way, they come after you. The company could argue revealing they're completely replacing departments with outsourced staffing as detrimental to the company's reputation due to the stigma associated with outsourcing. They go to court and whip out multiple blog posts/forum comments/editorials to prove their point. Now you're stuck. You're helping perpetuate a damaging stigma against your former employer that negatively impacts their business reputation. Doesn't matter if it's "fact" or not. Is the fact disparaging? They might also get you on NDA violations if your NDA includes not revealing corporate staffing strategies. IAMNAL but I've been around enough to know it's possible to spin anything with an open-ended clause.
st3v3r 11y ago
It should be absolutely illegal to place any kind of condition on severance pay.
- wang_li 11y ago
  Then they'd just lower the amount offered.
- hwstar 11y ago
  The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying the company in a bad light. If anti-disparagement clauses were made illegal, fewer companies would offer severance.
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    > The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying the company in a bad light. If anti-disparagement clauses were made illegal, fewer companies would offer severance. Then let's make anti-disparagement clauses illegal and severance packages mandatory. Companies afraid of bad press may then be motivated to be even more generous than they would have otherwise. Not only would they have to pay you enough to sign, they'd have to pay you enough to make you happy enough that you don't speak against them. They'd only have a carrot but no stick. Frankly, if a company doesn't want to be portrayed in a bad light, it should endeavor to avoid doing things worthy of disparagement.
    - hwstar 11y ago
      I agree 100% on your last sentence. As for making severance statutory in the US; that will be a uphill battle.
  - greenyoda 11y ago
    "The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying the company in a bad light." Probably a more important reason for offering severance is to insure against former employees suing the company (for wrongful dismissal, discrimination, sexual harassment, etc.). Most severance agreements demand a "general release of liability" in return for the severance payment. (Of course, that doesn't shield the company from criminal liability if anything they did was actually illegal, e.g., wage theft.)
qihqi 11y ago
H1-B and Outsourcing to offshore are two completely different things. As outsourcing means hand part of a job to contactor firm which could either be local or foreign. Foreign contracting firm don't need visas, and local contracting firm can either hire Americans or sponsor visas. The real problem is that a foreign worker should not get paid less doing the same job American do. That will kill the incentive and it's also very inhumane and racist to pay less for the same work based just on citizenship.
- jobu 11y ago
  It's never made sense that H1B Visas are awarded by lottery instead of salary. In a lottery system a company can game the system by applying for thousands of visas. If they were to do it based on highest salary it would offer U.S. workers more pay protection, and it would still allow companies to bring over the high-quality talent they need.
  - hwstar 11y ago
    The entities in power want a cheap obedient labour force. They don't want expensive stellar performers as much as they want low salary employees with a sword of Damocles hanging over their head. H-1B coupled with employment at-will is a powerful combination to keep the H-1B employee in control.
  - untog 11y ago
    The problem with that is that it would immediately prioritise areas with a high cost of living - San Francisco, New York, etc.
    - Eridrus 11y ago
      Yes, if companies in lower cost of living areas want more people, they will have to increase how much they pay; if they can't match "market" H1B rates they could increase their pay until they can recruit people from other areas of the US. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
titomc 11y ago
H1B worker here. I understand the sentiments of being replaced by an H1B worker. I just want to emphasize that the worker is not be blamed for this. The fault is with the H1B system & the consultancies which exploit the H1B system. 1. The H1B visa is supposed to be a "skilled visa". But currently this visa is purely based on luck and not on skills & that's how many bad apples game the system. The DOL approves LCA based on minimum wages. The consultancies just pay the minimum wages and bring in the H1B employee. This minimum wage should be increased to match the salary of a skilled American worker. So that this exploitation will stop. eg: (the salaries are approximate) In Arizona , the minimum annual salary for LCA is 62K, the average salary paid to an American worker is 115K. Consultancy firms like TCS,Infosys and many other local "one room" consultancies pays 62K and bring in H1B employees because 62K is the minimum stipulated by Department of Labor. Increasing this minimum 62K to a realistic salary like 115K will stop this abuse. 2. There is no easy job portability for H1B workers. Switching jobs on H1B is a precarious act and if something goes wrong, you will have to be out of the country immediately, no grace period. So to be on the safer side, many H1B employees stay silent and accept lowball offers. They also have kids who are going to school and a spouse who cannot work because they are on H4. So H1B workers job portability is not really easy. Make H1B jobs portable without any strings attached. So that if an H1B employee is paid less and abused by the employer. He/She can switch jobs easily. So this will prevent H1B abuse by the employers and they will think twice before low balling an H1B worker. 3. H1B is a dual intent visa. Once the employer starts GreenCard process for the worker. The H1B worker is literally on shackles. The rules are so strict that the worker cannot change jobs easily. Cannot accept promotions or title change for years. The worker silently accepts this because he/she has a family & kids to support just like any other American worker. All I want to convey is: The H1B employee is not be blamed for this. The very rules of the H1B system are being gamed by the consultancy companies from India. Stopping H1B system is not the solution because all the large companies in US has huge dependency on H1B employees. So to stop this abuse, 1. Increase the minimum wages to a more realistic one. 2. Stop lottery system and grant visas based on top salary. 3. Make the H1B job easily portable.
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  Replacing the lottery with a salary-based assignment seems like just common sense to me. Why should we allow over someone the employer says is worth $62k, when we could allow over someone the employer says is worth $110k? As a bonus, it means that the minimum wages aren't relevant, since supply and demand of skilled international workers will set the lowest wage that gets admitted to the US. This rule would unfortunately favor employers in high cost-of-living areas over low COL ones. Employees are approximately ambivalent between taking home $5k/mo and paying $2k/mo in rent, and taking home $4k/mo and paying $1k/mo in rent. But, the higher rent + higher pay scenario will get admitted well before the lower rent + lower pay. It also incentivizes putting as much of the compensation in salary as possible, and as little as possible in other benefits.
davidw 11y ago
This video came out yesterday, about immigration. I think it's worth a watch, and the economics behind it are good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHCT2bUjwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHCT2bUjwg My views: http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/ http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs...
- ones_and_zeros 11y ago
  He lost me with his first false equivalency. To keep with his basketball analogy, imagine a basketball league with a separate farm system. There is an unspoken agreement that the farm system will train basketball players and when the major league needs them the farm system will get a percentage of the players salary. Now the major league teams are using players that didn't go through the farm system, and are only playing garbage time (80% of H-1Bs are paid on the lower 2 tiers of the DOL pay scale). So young people and families see that the farm system isn't really all that viable and so they either don't participate or chose a different sport all together. Ultimately the farm system dries up... I also skimmed your views, and I'd like to address the straw man in your moral section. People that are against H-1B aren't trying to keep out other people. I'd prefer that if we do indeed have a shortage which requires special immigration visas that we have actual hard evidence of the shortage first and if the data shows it then to focus on encouraging employers and education institutions to train citizens first. If that can't be done, I'd rather we automatically give citizenship to those that we deem are vital to our economy instead of keeping them in immigration limbo that is the H-1B system.
  - davidw 11y ago
    > People that are against H-1B aren't trying to keep out other people. You wouldn't know that from reading comments in places like HN. Your point about citizenship (it could be a green card or a different visa, too) is a good one: by giving people with a work visa the freedom to move around, they're no longer beholden to one employer, and their wages will rise to the market rate.
  - NhanH 11y ago
    > I also skimmed your views, and I'd like to address the straw man in your moral section. People that are against H-1B aren't trying to keep out other people. I'd prefer that if we do indeed have a shortage which requires special immigration visas that we have actual hard evidence of the shortage first and if the data shows it then to focus on encouraging employers and education institutions to train citizens first. If that can't be done, I'd rather we automatically give citizenship to those that we deem are vital to our economy instead of keeping them in immigration limbo that is the H-1B system. Yes, but the majority of people against H-1B are not proposing or pushing a feasible alternative. Let me just state a short argument here: currently ,there is no simple way for a programmer being offered a $300k salary to immigrate to the US within a reasonable timeframe (let's say <6 months). EB-x will take years depending on your country of origin (and still takes 1-2years even without waiting, just for the processing time alone). Said programmer will not qualify for O-1 (O-1 requires specific types of achievement/ popularity). L-1 requires you to stay with the company abroad for at least a year.
ones_and_zeros 11y ago
The major issue with the H-1B isn't the Indian consultancies, who contribute to some of the more egregious abuses, but the regular tech companies: The Intels, Microsofts, IBMs, EMCs, Googles, Facebooks, Amazons, etc. It's not that they are replacing employees that are citizens it's that they are preferring the H-1B and OPT for open positions. Modern tech corporations have been automated to the point that the biggest cost is labor, so they are now spending a lot of effort to address this cost. The claim that there is a STEM shortage is a myth invented by these corporations in order to lobby and expand these programs. They operate within the letter of the law but not in the spirit, with misleading job advertisements and preferential hiring practices. This becomes a self fullfilling prophecy in that the smart people who are paying attention are driven away from technology.
- curiousDog 11y ago
  Umm, no. If you've worked at Facebook/Amazon/Google, you'd know that is not true. They do not prefer H1-Bs over citizens. They simply hire people who pass interviews. Also, what makes you think the industry's smartest people aren't working at these companies? I'd say on the contrary, they have the smartest folk in the CS industry at these companies.
- mrsharpoblunto 11y ago
  Not true, the numbers clearly show that its consultancy companies that take up the vast majority of the H1B quota. http://foreign-employment.findthedata.com/ http://foreign-employment.findthedata.com/ Microsoft is the first big 'tech' company on the list at no. 11 with 3600 applications. Compare that to Infosys which had over 23,000 applications, or Tata with 14,000. Its also conspicuous that the consultancy companies pay much less and seem to apply for drastically less green card labour certs as a percentage of H1B's than the tech companies.
gorbachev 11y ago
These companies are doing something blatantly illegal. The H1-B program was designed to prevent abuses like these. It looks like enforcement is sorely lacking.
theklub 11y ago
I love that a power company is outsourcing its IT. Isn't that a security concern?
- jcslzr 11y ago
  Not really, foreigners governments are minions of the US Military, it just for war reasons they are painted as real enemies. In reality any country fighting the US in any way would be like being a skinny kid who fights Mike Tyson in his prime and Mike Tyson has a bat and a gun and the referee is Tyson Mother.
  - crpatino 11y ago
    The problem with that approach is that while Mike Tyson keeps flexing his muscles and banging heads around the neighbourhood, some scrawny nerdy type is quietly toying in his basement with ultralight drones and shrapnel grenades. I think if most people around here agrees that Big Old Industries can be "disrupted", there is no reason to think that the same cannot happen to Big Old Geopolitics. Not to say that Tyson's mom does not have her own nerds working in her own garage, but the scenario is probably more complex that what you made it out to be.
    - aws_ls 11y ago
      Time-frames. You imply major changes in geopolitics which typically need multiples of 100s of years. No body can plan for that long a period - they can sure pretend to. Such changes, often come undetected until we are well into or past them, so useful for anthropoligists and historians. Another example of a still larger time-frame are geographical and ecological changes (multiples of 10,000 years) IMHO, the GP's argument is relevant to time-frame of politics/policies in a few years/decades. Post 2nd world war and more so end of cold war era. Its US which rules the world, and so GP is quite right (found the Tyson example, hilarious).
- AndyNemmity 11y ago
  That's a funny statement given how many "homeland security" style companies are entirely outsourced on premise.
johngalt 11y ago
I'm completely in favor of H-1B. I've been trying to hire an American CEO for years, but there is a critical shortage of CEOs (willing to work for a reasonable salary). I'm certain there are plenty of MBAs we could import to fix this shortage.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  I know it's a joke, but the absolute last thing this world needs is more MBAs.
- uglysexy 11y ago
  willing to work for a reasonable salary Reasonable salary to you is different from reasonable salary to a highly qualified CEO. Also, you should revisit your idea of qualifications. There are many VP/SVP level folks who are fully qualified to be CEO given the chance. CEOs weren't born CEOs. There were promoted to that position.
archlight 11y ago
In singapore, work permit class are all based on salary you earn and associated rights. EP1 above 8k you can apply long term visa for your parents. EP2 above 6k you can think about applying permanent residency. SP you cannot bring your own spouse. WP you cannot marry to local. It is a bit brutal. but effective. IT outsourcing is like training you while you on pay. once entry level engineers get experienced and they will ask to migrate to US. eventually a local hire become out of job. Things I don't understand is why all these IT jobs require degree. why cannot we train school dropout to do the works? don't listen to outsource company when they say we have 80% graduate/16% masters/4% PHD etc. see what skills you really want.

141 points by grej 11y ago

If I'm reading the situation correctly, the foreign workers are NOT on H1-B, but on internal "company transfer" visas. The way it works (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) is that the company, say TCS, brings in workers from India in the B1 (?) visa category, which is unlimited and for internal company transfers. It then sends these workers (who are still working for TCS) to the client's site. This way, they avoid the H1-B mess altogether.

jpollock 11y ago
L1 is the internal company transfer. It's actually a quite nice visa, spouses can work on that visa.
- praneshp 11y ago
  I think it doesn't have a market wage requirement though. I'm not sure.
  - jedmeyers 11y ago
    It does not, however as of 2012 it is quite hard to prove that the worker skills are essential to the company in a way that only transfer will fill the skill gap. Also L1s are not allowed to change employers so de facto it's an indentured servitude.
randcraw 11y ago
" Immigration Innovation Act of 2015 or the I-Squared Act of 2015 Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to establish an annual cap on H-1B nonimmigrant visas (specialty occupations) at between 115,000 and 195,000 visas depending upon market conditions and existing demand. (The current annual H-1B cap is 65,000.) " https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/153 https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/153 Seems unambiguous.
outworlder 11y ago
It doesn't have a hard limit, but it has much stricter requirements. It is not enough for the company to simply want to transfer you, you must possess skills that can't be found anywhere else (mostly, proprietary knowledge). You need a very strong case. That's L1-B. L1-A (manager) has different requirements. But in any case you need to be high up in the org chart. "Project manager" won't cut it. It gets harder the more you hire. Say you are the only one who knows about technology X (i.e., you created it). It is easy to make your case. It won't be as easy when you are employee #100. Also, after a certain percentage of workers are on that visa, the fees get much higher. I don't think it has minimum wage requirements, but good luck getting a low salary approved. You are supposed to have a unique skill set and proprietary knowledge, after all. Disclaimar: I'm on L1B.

LorenPechtel 11y ago

Why do I have a nasty feeling that Disney's severance contract was written by a H1-B lawyer? Whoever it is I think will be looking for a new job if they aren't already.

pc86 11y ago
I think that's unlikely since it doesn't include the prohibitions against disclosure or disparagement common in these agreements.
bobmno 11y ago
I wondered if someone WANTED this to spread and intentionally left it out.
protomyth 11y ago
Disney's contract did not have the non disparagement clause, Northeast Utility did.

hwstar 11y ago

This is a race to the bottom. Most companies today prioritize the satisfaction of the stakeholders as follows: C-Level Management->Shareholders->Customers->Employees In this environment, one must be financially prepared to retire early once you reach your 50's because you will likely be replaced. Replacement by H-1B's is just a symptom of a greater underlying problem: The need to enrich management and shareholders. Instead of C-corporations which put profit above everything else, we need more public benefit corporations (B-corps) which have balanced priorities.

ovi256 11y ago
And which investor, when put before the choice of supplying capital to a C-corp or a B-corp, will willingly choose the entity that admits having his ROI as a lower priority than the other, all other things being equal ? By this logic, we could see B-corps in niches where capital is not a strategic advantage. The search for these niches is left as an exercise for the reader.
- dev1n 11y ago
  The public absolutely would invest if it meant these B-corp's have solid, steady, long term focused growth.
  - hippich 11y ago
    or C-corps taxes more and international tax avoidance loopholes are closed. But i guess both of these would be hard to make happen
- kingmanaz 11y ago
  There are some funds which target such investors. For example, the Parnassus Endeavor fund: "The Parnassus Endeavor Fund normally invests at least 80% of its net assets(plus borrowings for investment purposes) in companies believed by the Fund’s investment adviser (Adviser) to provide good workplaces for their employees. Companies with good workplaces usually are able to recruit and retain better employees, and perform at a higher level than competitors in terms of innovation, productivity, customer loyalty and profitability. While no company is perfect, the Adviser makes a judgment as to which companies have good workplaces based on factors such as respectful and fair treatment of employees, employee satisfaction and engagement, pay and benefits, family-friendly policies, and support for volunteerism and philanthropy." Social investing as well as religious funds also put a higher priority on certain ethical criteria rather than overall profitability. The motive for investing in these funds depends on what one recognizes as their highest end.

randcraw 11y ago

You do wonder how much of the "silence" on this issue is due to all major US media outlets now being owned by large corporations who don't want this issue to see the light of day. To wit, how much of the American government's dysfunction is made possible by today's captive press?

seivan 11y ago
Depends if the people running the press sides with Government A or Government B.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ck2 11y ago

Can you imagine being forced to train your replacement? Holy hell. I couldn't do it, I'd starve first. And can you imagine sitting with and being trained by someone that you knew you were causing them to lose their job? Corporations making people hate each other, it's the American way. Those H1B replacements should be keeping those American flags - what other country would allow this kind of nonsense to happen.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
Yeah, I'm not sure how the folks in charge expect those being fired to do anything but the absolute bare minimum required by their contract.
IndianAstronaut 11y ago
>what other country would allow this kind of nonsense to happen. Trade is a 2 way street. If the west wants Indian and Chinese markets open to their goods (western brands are ubiquitous in those places), they will want concessions on services and immigration quotas. Recent pushes by the US to open India's retail sector would have wiped out millions of jobs, much more than the few thousand complained about here.
analyst74 11y ago
Or you can negotiate a nice bonus/severance and good references for the favor of training your replacement, provided that you are willing to quit on the spot.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  Good luck with that. If you're being laid off and your replacement is already lined up for you to train, you're not really in a very good negotiating position. Plus, a company that would put you in that situation probably doesn't understand or care about the value of your knowledge before they've already felt the pain of losing you.
theklub 11y ago
Maybe you'd leave out some important information when training your replacement.

supergeek133 11y ago

You know I think this has been a debate for longer than just H-1B. Take consulting companies and the recent huge expansion of companies like TATA/TCS. I've worked for two companies now that completely replaced their operations teams with TCS, and it's been a disaster each time, but it's cheaper and the tradeoff in ops quality doesn't matter when you have millions in labor off the bottom line instantly. It's much easier to see that than any negative perception or lost sales.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

anon987 11y ago

How does someone sniff out companies like this during an interview or pre-screen?

seivan 11y ago
Look into their employee turnover. Five people quit in a single quarter in a company of 30~ people. That doesn't require sniffing. It would choke you.
hwstar 11y ago
It's really hard to tell without working there as employee. What most people do not realize, is that you need to be in a position to quit a job if you find it doesn't work for you. Too many people live paycheck to paycheck and are not in a position to do this.

Zikes 11y ago

Is the US Government not also to blame for this? I had thought that one of the major rules about immigrant worker visas was that they can only be granted for workers whom are doing a job for which no available citizen worker can be found.

mingfli 11y ago
No, that only applies to green card applications through work. General work visas don't usually have this restriction.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  H-1B explicitly does.
  - mingfli 11y ago
    Umm, no it doesn't. http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupation/understanding-h-1b-requirements http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupatio...
  - ConfuciusSay 11y ago
    It doesn't, it's a misconception. You see often enough companies hiring H1-B's, have their American equivalents train them, and then fire the American workers.
titomc 11y ago
" no available citizen worker can be found. " H1B stipulates this. Here is how the companies work around this. The ADs that they put for this position should have the salary too. The salary will be the bare minimum specified by the Department of Labor for that work location. eg: Arizona I think its not more than 62K per year. There will not be any American worker who will be willing to work for that. So the AD will yield zero American applicants for that position and thus they hire an H1B worker. If your company has H1B workers, go to to your company's public notice boards usually in the break rooms. You can find notices like "Labor condition application for a foreign worker". Take a look at the second page or the third one and see the salary for that position. Usually it will be a bare minimum or minimum + ~10K.

mring33621 11y ago

Not sure how a simple statement of, "I was a full-time employee of company XYZ until I was laid off, with severance, after training my H1B contractor replacement," is at all disparaging. It is simply a statement of fact.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
I assume you're talking about these paragraphs: > Leo Perrero, an IT worker at Disney who was laid off after training his foreign replacement, says non-disparagement agreements hinder the debate over the H-1B visa. Without such agreements, "you would have a lot more people speaking out - real human beings with real stories, not just anonymous persons speaking out," said Perrero. > "Their freedom of speech is being taken away from them with the non-disparagement agreements," he said. Stating a fact is probably not disparaging. (Not a lawyer; I dunno.) But that's not a debate, either. If you want to debate about it, you basically have to say that this act hurt you, which may count as disparaging or discrediting your former employer.
floppydisk 11y ago
The problem is, if the statement is word in a very open ended manner and the firing company perceives the comments as disparaging in any way, they come after you. The company could argue revealing they're completely replacing departments with outsourced staffing as detrimental to the company's reputation due to the stigma associated with outsourcing. They go to court and whip out multiple blog posts/forum comments/editorials to prove their point. Now you're stuck. You're helping perpetuate a damaging stigma against your former employer that negatively impacts their business reputation. Doesn't matter if it's "fact" or not. Is the fact disparaging? They might also get you on NDA violations if your NDA includes not revealing corporate staffing strategies. IAMNAL but I've been around enough to know it's possible to spin anything with an open-ended clause.

st3v3r 11y ago

It should be absolutely illegal to place any kind of condition on severance pay.

wang_li 11y ago
Then they'd just lower the amount offered.
hwstar 11y ago
The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying the company in a bad light. If anti-disparagement clauses were made illegal, fewer companies would offer severance.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  > The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying the company in a bad light. If anti-disparagement clauses were made illegal, fewer companies would offer severance. Then let's make anti-disparagement clauses illegal and severance packages mandatory. Companies afraid of bad press may then be motivated to be even more generous than they would have otherwise. Not only would they have to pay you enough to sign, they'd have to pay you enough to make you happy enough that you don't speak against them. They'd only have a carrot but no stick. Frankly, if a company doesn't want to be portrayed in a bad light, it should endeavor to avoid doing things worthy of disparagement.
  - hwstar 11y ago
    I agree 100% on your last sentence. As for making severance statutory in the US; that will be a uphill battle.
- greenyoda 11y ago
  "The main reason why severance is offered is to keep people from portraying the company in a bad light." Probably a more important reason for offering severance is to insure against former employees suing the company (for wrongful dismissal, discrimination, sexual harassment, etc.). Most severance agreements demand a "general release of liability" in return for the severance payment. (Of course, that doesn't shield the company from criminal liability if anything they did was actually illegal, e.g., wage theft.)

qihqi 11y ago

H1-B and Outsourcing to offshore are two completely different things. As outsourcing means hand part of a job to contactor firm which could either be local or foreign. Foreign contracting firm don't need visas, and local contracting firm can either hire Americans or sponsor visas. The real problem is that a foreign worker should not get paid less doing the same job American do. That will kill the incentive and it's also very inhumane and racist to pay less for the same work based just on citizenship.

jobu 11y ago
It's never made sense that H1B Visas are awarded by lottery instead of salary. In a lottery system a company can game the system by applying for thousands of visas. If they were to do it based on highest salary it would offer U.S. workers more pay protection, and it would still allow companies to bring over the high-quality talent they need.
- hwstar 11y ago
  The entities in power want a cheap obedient labour force. They don't want expensive stellar performers as much as they want low salary employees with a sword of Damocles hanging over their head. H-1B coupled with employment at-will is a powerful combination to keep the H-1B employee in control.
- untog 11y ago
  The problem with that is that it would immediately prioritise areas with a high cost of living - San Francisco, New York, etc.
  - Eridrus 11y ago
    Yes, if companies in lower cost of living areas want more people, they will have to increase how much they pay; if they can't match "market" H1B rates they could increase their pay until they can recruit people from other areas of the US. I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

titomc 11y ago

H1B worker here. I understand the sentiments of being replaced by an H1B worker. I just want to emphasize that the worker is not be blamed for this. The fault is with the H1B system & the consultancies which exploit the H1B system. 1. The H1B visa is supposed to be a "skilled visa". But currently this visa is purely based on luck and not on skills & that's how many bad apples game the system. The DOL approves LCA based on minimum wages. The consultancies just pay the minimum wages and bring in the H1B employee. This minimum wage should be increased to match the salary of a skilled American worker. So that this exploitation will stop. eg: (the salaries are approximate) In Arizona , the minimum annual salary for LCA is 62K, the average salary paid to an American worker is 115K. Consultancy firms like TCS,Infosys and many other local "one room" consultancies pays 62K and bring in H1B employees because 62K is the minimum stipulated by Department of Labor. Increasing this minimum 62K to a realistic salary like 115K will stop this abuse. 2. There is no easy job portability for H1B workers. Switching jobs on H1B is a precarious act and if something goes wrong, you will have to be out of the country immediately, no grace period. So to be on the safer side, many H1B employees stay silent and accept lowball offers. They also have kids who are going to school and a spouse who cannot work because they are on H4. So H1B workers job portability is not really easy. Make H1B jobs portable without any strings attached. So that if an H1B employee is paid less and abused by the employer. He/She can switch jobs easily. So this will prevent H1B abuse by the employers and they will think twice before low balling an H1B worker. 3. H1B is a dual intent visa. Once the employer starts GreenCard process for the worker. The H1B worker is literally on shackles. The rules are so strict that the worker cannot change jobs easily. Cannot accept promotions or title change for years. The worker silently accepts this because he/she has a family & kids to support just like any other American worker. All I want to convey is: The H1B employee is not be blamed for this. The very rules of the H1B system are being gamed by the consultancy companies from India. Stopping H1B system is not the solution because all the large companies in US has huge dependency on H1B employees. So to stop this abuse, 1. Increase the minimum wages to a more realistic one. 2. Stop lottery system and grant visas based on top salary. 3. Make the H1B job easily portable.

ThrustVectoring 11y ago
Replacing the lottery with a salary-based assignment seems like just common sense to me. Why should we allow over someone the employer says is worth $62k, when we could allow over someone the employer says is worth $110k? As a bonus, it means that the minimum wages aren't relevant, since supply and demand of skilled international workers will set the lowest wage that gets admitted to the US. This rule would unfortunately favor employers in high cost-of-living areas over low COL ones. Employees are approximately ambivalent between taking home $5k/mo and paying $2k/mo in rent, and taking home $4k/mo and paying $1k/mo in rent. But, the higher rent + higher pay scenario will get admitted well before the lower rent + lower pay. It also incentivizes putting as much of the compensation in salary as possible, and as little as possible in other benefits.

davidw 11y ago

This video came out yesterday, about immigration. I think it's worth a watch, and the economics behind it are good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHCT2bUjwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHCT2bUjwg My views: http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/ http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs...

ones_and_zeros 11y ago
He lost me with his first false equivalency. To keep with his basketball analogy, imagine a basketball league with a separate farm system. There is an unspoken agreement that the farm system will train basketball players and when the major league needs them the farm system will get a percentage of the players salary. Now the major league teams are using players that didn't go through the farm system, and are only playing garbage time (80% of H-1Bs are paid on the lower 2 tiers of the DOL pay scale). So young people and families see that the farm system isn't really all that viable and so they either don't participate or chose a different sport all together. Ultimately the farm system dries up... I also skimmed your views, and I'd like to address the straw man in your moral section. People that are against H-1B aren't trying to keep out other people. I'd prefer that if we do indeed have a shortage which requires special immigration visas that we have actual hard evidence of the shortage first and if the data shows it then to focus on encouraging employers and education institutions to train citizens first. If that can't be done, I'd rather we automatically give citizenship to those that we deem are vital to our economy instead of keeping them in immigration limbo that is the H-1B system.
- davidw 11y ago
  > People that are against H-1B aren't trying to keep out other people. You wouldn't know that from reading comments in places like HN. Your point about citizenship (it could be a green card or a different visa, too) is a good one: by giving people with a work visa the freedom to move around, they're no longer beholden to one employer, and their wages will rise to the market rate.
- NhanH 11y ago
  > I also skimmed your views, and I'd like to address the straw man in your moral section. People that are against H-1B aren't trying to keep out other people. I'd prefer that if we do indeed have a shortage which requires special immigration visas that we have actual hard evidence of the shortage first and if the data shows it then to focus on encouraging employers and education institutions to train citizens first. If that can't be done, I'd rather we automatically give citizenship to those that we deem are vital to our economy instead of keeping them in immigration limbo that is the H-1B system. Yes, but the majority of people against H-1B are not proposing or pushing a feasible alternative. Let me just state a short argument here: currently ,there is no simple way for a programmer being offered a $300k salary to immigrate to the US within a reasonable timeframe (let's say <6 months). EB-x will take years depending on your country of origin (and still takes 1-2years even without waiting, just for the processing time alone). Said programmer will not qualify for O-1 (O-1 requires specific types of achievement/ popularity). L-1 requires you to stay with the company abroad for at least a year.

ones_and_zeros 11y ago

The major issue with the H-1B isn't the Indian consultancies, who contribute to some of the more egregious abuses, but the regular tech companies: The Intels, Microsofts, IBMs, EMCs, Googles, Facebooks, Amazons, etc. It's not that they are replacing employees that are citizens it's that they are preferring the H-1B and OPT for open positions. Modern tech corporations have been automated to the point that the biggest cost is labor, so they are now spending a lot of effort to address this cost. The claim that there is a STEM shortage is a myth invented by these corporations in order to lobby and expand these programs. They operate within the letter of the law but not in the spirit, with misleading job advertisements and preferential hiring practices. This becomes a self fullfilling prophecy in that the smart people who are paying attention are driven away from technology.

curiousDog 11y ago
Umm, no. If you've worked at Facebook/Amazon/Google, you'd know that is not true. They do not prefer H1-Bs over citizens. They simply hire people who pass interviews. Also, what makes you think the industry's smartest people aren't working at these companies? I'd say on the contrary, they have the smartest folk in the CS industry at these companies.
mrsharpoblunto 11y ago
Not true, the numbers clearly show that its consultancy companies that take up the vast majority of the H1B quota. http://foreign-employment.findthedata.com/ http://foreign-employment.findthedata.com/ Microsoft is the first big 'tech' company on the list at no. 11 with 3600 applications. Compare that to Infosys which had over 23,000 applications, or Tata with 14,000. Its also conspicuous that the consultancy companies pay much less and seem to apply for drastically less green card labour certs as a percentage of H1B's than the tech companies.

gorbachev 11y ago

These companies are doing something blatantly illegal. The H1-B program was designed to prevent abuses like these. It looks like enforcement is sorely lacking.

theklub 11y ago

I love that a power company is outsourcing its IT. Isn't that a security concern?

jcslzr 11y ago
Not really, foreigners governments are minions of the US Military, it just for war reasons they are painted as real enemies. In reality any country fighting the US in any way would be like being a skinny kid who fights Mike Tyson in his prime and Mike Tyson has a bat and a gun and the referee is Tyson Mother.
- crpatino 11y ago
  The problem with that approach is that while Mike Tyson keeps flexing his muscles and banging heads around the neighbourhood, some scrawny nerdy type is quietly toying in his basement with ultralight drones and shrapnel grenades. I think if most people around here agrees that Big Old Industries can be "disrupted", there is no reason to think that the same cannot happen to Big Old Geopolitics. Not to say that Tyson's mom does not have her own nerds working in her own garage, but the scenario is probably more complex that what you made it out to be.
  - aws_ls 11y ago
    Time-frames. You imply major changes in geopolitics which typically need multiples of 100s of years. No body can plan for that long a period - they can sure pretend to. Such changes, often come undetected until we are well into or past them, so useful for anthropoligists and historians. Another example of a still larger time-frame are geographical and ecological changes (multiples of 10,000 years) IMHO, the GP's argument is relevant to time-frame of politics/policies in a few years/decades. Post 2nd world war and more so end of cold war era. Its US which rules the world, and so GP is quite right (found the Tyson example, hilarious).
AndyNemmity 11y ago
That's a funny statement given how many "homeland security" style companies are entirely outsourced on premise.

johngalt 11y ago

I'm completely in favor of H-1B. I've been trying to hire an American CEO for years, but there is a critical shortage of CEOs (willing to work for a reasonable salary). I'm certain there are plenty of MBAs we could import to fix this shortage.

st3v3r 11y ago
I know it's a joke, but the absolute last thing this world needs is more MBAs.
uglysexy 11y ago
willing to work for a reasonable salary Reasonable salary to you is different from reasonable salary to a highly qualified CEO. Also, you should revisit your idea of qualifications. There are many VP/SVP level folks who are fully qualified to be CEO given the chance. CEOs weren't born CEOs. There were promoted to that position.

archlight 11y ago

In singapore, work permit class are all based on salary you earn and associated rights. EP1 above 8k you can apply long term visa for your parents. EP2 above 6k you can think about applying permanent residency. SP you cannot bring your own spouse. WP you cannot marry to local. It is a bit brutal. but effective. IT outsourcing is like training you while you on pay. once entry level engineers get experienced and they will ask to migrate to US. eventually a local hire become out of job. Things I don't understand is why all these IT jobs require degree. why cannot we train school dropout to do the works? don't listen to outsource company when they say we have 80% graduate/16% masters/4% PHD etc. see what skills you really want.