48 ms·
Uber receives more foreign-worker visas as it lays off hundreds of employees
- dmode 7y agoDumbest headline ever. I sincerely wish people would stop voting this clickbait rag Mercury News in Hacker News. It says Uber received 299 approvals for the year. First, this is a miniscule number. Second, H1b approval is rolling. So I assume they would have gotten these approvals throughout the year. But the article, with its ignorance goes on to claim that it is unclear when they will start. That makes no sense. Finally, they don’t make any mention of comp.Pretty sure these are at least >$200k per position
- pandaman 7y agoI got you, friend. The salaries for those are public and readily available to you here: https://www.h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Uber+Technologies+Inc&job=&city=&year=2019 https://www.h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Uber+Technologies+Inc&... About a dozen are really >$200k.
- dmode 7y agoThese are base salaries. Now filter your list by software engineer and San Francisco. Median base salary is close $150k. Now add yearly bonus and Uber's RSUs and see how many have total comp >200k. Cheap labor narrative violated. Edit: I also filtered your list by "Senior Software Engineer" in SF and the results are mind blowing with cheap H1 pulling 150-200k base salaries. I will not be surprised if some of these are TC $400k, as FAANG typically pays as much in base salaries Sincerely hoping I was able to help you as a "friend" giving you better information
- pandaman 7y agoSo which letter in FAANG stands for Uber? From what I understand FAANG manages to give a lot of compensation through RSU because their stock is ridiculously expensive. Is the same true for Uber? Any links to support your point? Also, from what I understand, the ongoing layoffs are to cut costs, why would they offer additional compensation to the new hires? I am sure that if you filter for salaries >200K then, indeed, all the results will be >200K. However, they have positions like this one https://www.h1bdata.info/index.php?em=UBER+TECHNOLOGIES+INC&job=BACKEND+ENGINEER&city=&year=2019 https://www.h1bdata.info/index.php?em=UBER+TECHNOLOGIES+INC&... which does not look anywhere close to 200K and is an engineer in SF. Is not 125K what a fresh grad is getting there? Or a whole bunch of 109K SW engineers (https://www.h1bdata.info/index.php?em=UBER+TECHNOLOGIES+INC&job=SENIOR+SOFTWARE+ENGINEER&city=PALO+ALTO&year=2019 https://www.h1bdata.info/index.php?em=UBER+TECHNOLOGIES+INC&... ) in Palo Alto, is not it in the so-called Silicon Valley where it's below an entry-level SW engineer job salary? If they are looking for fresh grads then why do they need an H1B for that? Do look at the data, do not try to re-interpret it to match your imaginary reality.
- mritun 7y agoH1B data only lists base salary. Bonus, RSUs and other perquisites are never included unless part of base. You can safely multiply by 2 the salary number there and still you are not likely to exceed the post-tax salary listed in that database.
- pandaman 7y agoWhy by 2, why not by 10? What is the basis of your claim? You make an evidence-free claim against a solid number. Here is another, less solid number which does not look good for your claim's validity: glassdoor's average base salary for an Uber's software engineer in San Jose area is $148750 and average additional pay (bonuses, RSUs etc) is 12011. From the same data, the minimum base is 118K. Now, I don't think it's very reliable, but I would think it's extremely improbable that it both inflated the base salary and greatly underestimated additional pay (by the factor of 10 vs your claim). From this I can safely conclude that 109K Uber's H1Bs in Palo Alto make much less than the average there, even without knowing how much they get in additional pay (if anything at all).
- dmode 7y agoAre you suggesting a $125k base salary (which is most likely for a fresh grad), with addition of bonus, and equal RSUs, which is very likely a TC of $180k, cheap labor ?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- djsumdog 7y ago> Uber received 299 approvals for the year. First, this is a miniscule number. That is NOT a small number. They obviously won't be able to fill all of them, but 300 people is larger than the entire IT departments of some relatively large tech companies I've worked for. I realize Uber is global and there is a lot of infrastructure there, but I still don't see how this is a small number at all.
- belltaco 7y agoIt also counts extensions. Some of those could be someone who got their first visa in 2009 when Uber started and is still going through extensions because of the country based limits on green cards that disadvantage people born in large countries.
- dilyevsky 7y agohttps://lmgtfy.com/?q=uber+number+of+employees&s=g https://lmgtfy.com/?q=uber+number+of+employees&s=g
- masonic 7y agothis is a miniscule number You could argue that it's a smallish number for a growing company, but it's a ridiculously large number for a company that is shedding hundreds of employees in the same job category.
- rshnotsecure 7y agoI recently worked at a major retailer who has offices in the Bay Area. Part of the role involved migrating the ERP and ATS system, which had employees, salary, details etc. In the building I was in, which had incredible developers btw some of the best I’ve ever seen (and despite working on a legacy system!)...209 out of 209 were H1-B’s. Our consulting team at the time was about 20, and 19/20 of the team were H1-B’s. The really sad part about it was as we were leaving, they were establishing a training program for junior H1-B’s with liberal arts degrees to learn programming. I have no idea how they got the visa licenses for those folks. At the same time, they were the best people I ever worked with. But it’s not a sustainable way to run an economy.
- s_Hogg 7y agoI thought the H-1B was supposed to be a lottery, how is any company having this much "good fortune"?
- jumpinggenes 7y agoThey could be "older" H-1Bs , folks from India are waiting for a GreenCard since 2010, they can renew their H-1Bs in 3-year increments (perpetually) if they have a pending application for permanent residency.
- giovannibonetti 7y agoWell, the article mentions how many visas were approved, not how many were requested. Maybe there were many more that were requested, so that even with the lottery they got a huge number of accepted requests.
- semerda 7y agoRight, and here’s the dirty part of this process... some applications are under hiring agencies that later push those approved to the likes of Uber who might have maxed out their own allocations.
- 7y ago
- triceratops 7y agoThey offer one likely non-sinister explanation right in the article: “The software engineer market, it’s so saturated with H-1Bs that some of the people who are laid off are almost inevitably H-1Bs and some of the people that are being hired are inevitably H-1Bs,” Bier said. “I don’t read into it anything like this is obviously job displacement.”
- carapace 7y ago"What's the most important part of any message?" "The name of the messenger." The quote is from > Immigration policy analyst David Bier of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, [who] didn’t see evidence of H-1B abuse by Uber in its increased visa approvals and efforts to obtain more.
- wheelerwj 7y agoCato is far from a libertarian think tank, its a Republican think tank, originally it was the Charles Koch Foundation.
- carapace 7y agoI'm quoting TFA.
- monoideism 7y agoSorry, but Cato is definitely a libertarian leaning think tank (one of their few redeeming qualities, in my mind): - Penn and Teller, the original small l libertarians, are in the board at Cato. That pair wouldn't be caught dead associating with some neocon or populist outfit. - Cato created and maintain libertarianism.org - first sentence in Wikipedia's description of Cato: "The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C."
- gyc 7y agoWe can quibble about the exact political slant of Cato, but it definitely takes policy positions that are more libertarian than mainstream Republican positions. See, for example, the drug war.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- taurath 7y agoSomething that is bugging me about my company - we have a hard time hiring people, because we’re almost but not quite competitive on pay. And we see H1B notices go up in the boardroom. I can’t help but think if we were better competitive on pay we would not have a problem hiring - were not doing the most complicated thing in the world.
- novok 7y agoThere is another aspect in how interesting the thing you are doing is, or how much it will improve people's careers to work on the things your company is working on and so on.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoH1Bs have no (EDIT: limited) mobility. They are indentured servants to their sponsor. If you hired citizens, they’d bounce for better pay sooner rather than later. Your company possibly does this because the power imbalance is useful.
- dmode 7y agoThis is categorically incorrect and you should probably spend 5 mins researching before labeling others as indentured servants. H1B holders have 100% mobility, as it takes <15 days to transfer your visa via premium processing.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoOnly to someone else willing to sponsor them, and timelines can be tight. I might have over exaggerated with “no mobility” but it is frequently shown that their employment status is used to control.
- dmode 7y ago100% of SV companies sponsor H1 visas. And there are no tight timelines or anything. Sometimes you can run into an RFE that can delay your approval. But RFEs for software engineering are fairly rare
- democracy 7y agoOf course, it is money saving and also visa people are "yes men" which is good for a corporation. My generous Amazon offer had 1 day notification if they fire me, 10 days to leave the country and i will have to pay back all their expenses (rellocation etc).
- Havoc 7y agoAll this is just noise. Globalized world. You can throw some visa restrictions in the path of that tornado but it won't stop it. Profit seeking companies will always gravitate towards optimizing quality per unit of cost. The solution isn't more complex regulation...the solution is become more competitive globally. It's the only way to win - anything else...regulations, rules, red tape...people with incentive will find a way to circumvent.
- ThomPete 7y agoBlue collar workers cant be more competitive than the cost of living supports.
- tyingq 7y agoSpecialization is crazy rampant these days. I can't, for example, afford most of our "cloud architect" or "security architect" candidates. Most of them are asking for bigger numbers than I make, two levels above. Maybe time to ask for a raise? :)
- bsder 7y ago> I can't, for example, afford most of our "cloud architect" or "security architect" candidates. First, you can generally read "architect" as "waste of oxygen" on most software resumes. I have known 4 people who were actually good "architects", and none of them put it on their resume. Second, perhaps you should grow those people in house, hmmmm? Third, be prepared for those people to leave when they get better than the "architects" you are seeing. > Maybe time to ask for a raise? Probably. But if you're one of the principals in a startup, you understand silly things like "cashflow" and "bankruptcy".
- tyingq 7y agoI totally get your view, but stand by my team. "Architect" deserves the skeptisicm, but if you're doing the right thing, it does add a ton of value. I concede that there are "architecture orgs" that drain more value than they add. Basically, we are "city planners", which is needed, and useful if done the right way.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoCan’t speak for cloud architect roles, but the roles I’ve been offered for security architect are $150k-$220k/year base comp with various levels of bonus and RSUs. That’s the market reality. In the current labor market, you should be asking for a raise regardless.
- ilaksh 7y agoIt seems like the issue is that this is just a systemic abuse, so it's easy to say "everyone else is doing it". I have a feeling the reason it is tolerated is because some people are genuinely uncertain about what the right thing to do is. In other words, there are business people in government who are saying to themselves, "well, if foreign workers are willing to do the same jobs for less money in exchange for being able to move to a wealthy country, who are we to stop them?" So I think that side of it needs to be out in the open because I have a feeling a lot of people feel very strongly the other way. And just leaving it as a sort of lax policy without discussion is probably not going to be ideal for anyone.
- semerda 7y agoClever & greedy strategy. H1Bs are often paid a lower salary with 0 stock options. H1Bs are brainwashed into thinking this is their breakout. Grass is greener nonsense. Locked in by H1B from jumping ship. Even if a company agrees to a Green Card they often tie the employee for few more years through payback of fees should they exit early. At will employment can’t exempt one from this. It’s a dirty process and most stay quiet in fear of having their visa terminated.
- baby 7y ago0 stocks? Source?
- rockinghigh 7y agoThey made it up. I got stock options and RSUs at multiple companies while on H1B. It may happen but it’s not the norm.
- Swizec 7y ago> Even if a company agrees to a Green Card they often tie the employee for few more years through payback of fees should they exit early. To be fair, if you're a software engineer the fees, while high, are pretty doable. Especially with a few years of savings under your belt. source: just signed some papers to start and pay for a green card process.
- rockinghigh 7y agoUber’s stock compensation is with RSUs, not options. H1Bs receive RSUs just like other employees. There is no discrimination based on visa status at these companies. You can also transfer companies while on H1Bs and also transfer some of the green card process.
- jypepin 7y agoI can say that, at least at Uber, this is not true. Salaries, stock options and everything else is the same, no matter if you have a work visa or not.
- bsder 7y agoReally, we need a general rule of "Lay people off and your access to H1-B's is blocked for 5 years." You get to keep the H1-B's you have, but no more.
- vinay427 7y agoGood luck retraining people from some arbitrary department to fill the role of a PhD researcher, for example, on very short notice. Workers have specific qualifications so they are not freely transferrable.
- bsder 7y agoTough. If you really need an H1-B, then apparently you had best not lay off those people, hmmmm? The calculation is up to the people in charge. Suspending H1-Bs simply tips the cost benefit ratio.
- dmode 7y agoSo are you saying that you cannot lay off sales people if they have data scientists on H1 ? Got it
- bsder 7y agoAyup. You get to keep what you got, but no more. If your H1-B's are that valuable, then maybe you can find something else for those salespeople to do, eh?
- vinay427 7y agoI was under the impression that your idea would more naturally fix the problem of some H1B holders being underpaid and preferred over citizens/PRs. It seems like you actually meant it to be punitive targeting any company that uses H1Bs.
- bsder 7y agoIt's a bit of both--frontend and backend. Part of it is do you REALLY need that H1-B in preference to a domestic worker since any layoff you incur will block your access to that pipeline for the next (n) years. That is a calculation at hiring--aka frontend. Then, once you have employed an H1-B, you're going to have some reticence to pull the layoff lever as that will now block your H1-B pipeline. That is a calculation at layoff--aka backend. If your H1-B's are actually, genuinely valuable, the calculations are a business decision. If, however, you are using H1-B's to displace workers and then lay them off, that's going to grind to a halt really quickly.
- tempsy 7y agoH1Bs are basically modern day wage slaves. Anyone who thinks the technical interview process is based on merit/technical proficiency alone needs a very big wake up call.
- tziki 7y agoH1B salaries must be at least as high as the average salary for that profession in the area. How is above average salary 'wage slavery'?
- tempsy 7y agoNo...usually they fall in the bottom quartile as far as total compensation goes. That is exactly why companies like hiring them. The "slave" part of it is that they are totally dependent on the company in the sense that they will be kicked out of the country if they don't follow orders, which usually means being overworked and underpaid.
- tziki 7y ago>No...usually they fall in the bottom quartile as far as total compensation goes. That's simply not true. I suggest you familiarize yourself with H1B more.
- tempsy 7y agoReally? It is well-known that H1Bs earn less because they have zero leverage when it comes to negotiating. Why else would Uber, and other tech firms, like hiring them?
- tziki 7y agoI don't think you're listening. It's the law that companies hiring H1B workers must pay at least the average wage of the profession in the area. What are the sources on your claim that the companies are breaking that law?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vzaliva 7y agoThe assumption that they are hiring H1B employees to save money does not hold the water. It is a condition of H1B visa approval for the company to offer a competitive wage. The company must advertise a similar position and offer an H1B employee a salary in the market range. As someone who was on H1B once myself, I find articles like this as a disturbing example of anti-immigration hysteria which is quite common in current political climate in the US. "Indians/Mexicans are coming for your jobs!" For people who really think this is the case, I suggest comparing size of the US job market and H1B visa cap. The amount of H1B holder is relatively small. As someone who lives in the Bay Area, I know the demand for qualified engineers and I am pretty sure all the good engineers of 300 people they laid of will be snatched by other companies immediately.
- dgzl 7y agoFrom my experience, people are upset about "Mexicans are coming for your jobs!" because of employers hiring illegal immigrants to do labor work at a discount.
- rosybox 7y agoYes, companies applying for H1B visas are not doing so in an attempt to save money, they are paying a premium to acquire desirable talent. However regarding your comment about "anti-immigration hysteria" US tech companies use foreign contractors to save on headcount costs. These are not H1B visas, these are contractors that are paid a very small fraction of the salaries of software engineers. These contractors are working along side US engineers and doing the same job for much lower pay. That is a concern to me as I cannot compete with the salary of someone living in Eastern Europe, Macedonia, India or Argentina. If you want to label my concern hysteria, you may do so, but it's still something I'm concerned about.
- belltaco 7y agoThe ironic thing is that extra restrictions on H1Bs and the insane green card wait times will lead to accelerating offshoring and use of foreign contractors. In fact, it's already happening. Not only does it badly hurt the US economy and tax collection, when whole new teams are hired offshore, and the company is used to working with offshore teams, they will tend to hire new people in those places. E.g Canada is reaping rewards https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/09/16/canada-wins-big-from-america-first-trade-and-immigration-policies/#f0e92a06af8b https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2019/09/16/canad...
- aSplash0fDerp 7y agoWith the number of CS degrees produced from China and India alone each year, the evolution of slave labor is going to make the H-1B horror stories from the 90's to the present sound like fairy tales.
- aksx 7y ago> the evolution of slave labor is going to make the H-1B horror stories from the 90's to the present sound like fairy tales. Sorry, english is not my first language. can you please elaborate on what you mean?
- aSplash0fDerp 7y agoAt what point does it make better economical sense to send a well paid project manager to oversee dozens or hundreds of engineers being paid artificially deflated local rates? Looking at the STEM numbers, there will definitely be a glut of engineers. At least with an H-1B visa, they got a ticket to Disneyland. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-countries-with-the-most-stem-graduates-infographic/#626c443268ae https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/02/02/the-co...
- bruceb 7y agoQuantity doesn't equal quality.
- aSplash0fDerp 7y agoAgreed
- Bubbadoo 7y agoBoth, the Indian and Chinese universities emphasize rote learning over problem solving. Essentially, the memorize the subject matter.
- vsskanth 7y agoThese H1Bs might be for renewal of 3 yr extensions, transfer from another employer or a first time H1B selected through lottery. The article doesn't mention the spread. Usually you have to dig deeper into USCIS data to differentiate. Since Indians have to be on H1B forever, it will look like a company is filing more H1Bs every year while in reality they are just maintaining visa status for their existing employees. There are staffing and consulting service companies out there that exploit H1Bs for profit but I don't believe uber is one of them or the type that uses H1 to save money.
- dmode 7y agoYou are 100% accurate. This publication has no idea how visas work but constantly publishes click bait article to trigger the outrage machine
- vsskanth 7y agoThis is an unfortunate reality of journalism today. I've even seen bigger news outlets operate in a similar manner. They just look for data that fits a narrative without bothering to actually dig deeper and find out why. This case is especially egregious since the data is available from USCIS in a CSV file and they still didn't bother.
- gundmc 7y agoCan you share some of your examples of Mercury News "publishing click bait articles to trigger the outrage machine"? I've found them to be pretty even-kiltered overall, but am always happy to reevaluate my impression.
- akhosravian 7y agoUber snatches up more foreign-worker visas as it lays off hundreds of employees
- emufeshie 7y agoThere are two different things at play here. Uber firing people and Uber hiring people on H1b. Both are extremely common practices in all big companies. Unless Uber fired local employees and hired H1bs to replace them for lower pay, I don't see an issue here.
- thallavajhula 7y agoThis is a spammy website. Why is this on the front page of HN?!
- arugulum 7y agoReposting my quick immigration quiz: 1. An international student graduates at the top of their class in Stanford in CS, and goes to work for a tech company. What visa do they use? The correct answer is F1 (OPT) for one year, with OPT STEM extension for 2 extra years, while they apply for H-1B. If they weren't a STEM major, regardless of their actual role, they have a single year to apply for H-1B, with a ~30% chance of success, before being asked to leave the country. Regardless of their qualifications. 2. Instead of going to a tech company, they work for a year in a tech firm, then go to MIT for CS grad school. They perform excellently, having many publications under their name, doing several industry internships at Microsoft/Google labs. They then get accepted to a tenure track Assistant Professor position at Columbia. What visa do they apply for? Still H-1B. I say this because I think most Americans don't have a good idea of how widely H-1B applies. To repeat the caricature of "H-1Bs" being majority underpaid indentured slaves whose employers manipulate salary paperwork while hanging the threat of revoking their visa sponsorship every other week is laughable, if not downright insulting.
- vsskanth 7y agoThe reality is both highly skilled professionals and the run-of-the-mill IT contractor jobs end up in the same H1B bucket. This leads to skewed perceptions since the latter seems to be massively exploited by certain companies.
- arugulum 7y agoExactly. I have no doubt that H-1B has been and continues to be abuse. But it's also literally the only viable work visa in the majority of cases, so painting with a broad paintbrush about the exploitation of H-1Bs is a bad idea.
- jmpman 7y agoThat’s why H1Bs need to be bid on, and the generated revenue should go to fund STEM scholarships for US citizens.
- vsskanth 7y ago
- throwaway-asdhj 7y agoLooking at the numbers they give, they're probably talking about base pay without RSUs. Uber, like most tech companies, pays senior engineers proportionally higher quantities of stock than junior engineers, so they can fire low performers before their vesting cliff without losing as much money. The total pay for L5s on visas and for L5s in general is 50/50 cash and RSUs, while L3s are more like 30/70. It's surprising that Ron Hira is questioning why the pay packages are close together. If he's studying the use of tech H1Bs he should know that their actual income will be much higher than the number written on the LCA.
- confidantlake 7y agoThere are so many people graduating college in cs that are spending more than year without being able to job in the best economy in living memory. The idea that we need h1bs is ludicrous. They are brought in to suppress wages and for companies to able to get away with poor working conditions.
- valley-green 7y agoAh so this is why I can’t find work as a SWE
- miramardesign 7y agoUntil India starts hiring Americans, we should cut the h1b, . Until we get reciprocity ...
- throwaway_45 7y agoJust tax the employer 1x on H1b workers salary. If employee gets 100k then government gets a 100k. That will probably solve the h1b problem quickly. If employer truly believes this person is that valuable they will have no problem paying the tax.
- dmode 7y agoYeah, that would nicely solve the problem by moving even more jobs to another country.