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This whole area of law is nonsense. Facebook software engineering doesn’t have “positions”. You don’t apply for some specific role. They are hiring thousands of
by lacker 6y ago
This whole area of law is nonsense. Facebook software engineering doesn’t have “positions”. You don’t apply for some specific role. They are hiring thousands of engineers every year, they hire for general software engineering skills, and you figure out what exactly you’re working on afterwards.
Meanwhile, US immigration law assumes that you are hiring one person at a time, and that each person is being hired for a separate “position”. You cannot say, we need 3000 people in this role this year, we have 1000, so we need 2000 more.
It ends up just being incoherent. You have to answer questions like “why are you unable to hire an American” and it’s like... well we are. We’re hiring many many Americans.
- programmerslave 6y agoThey really don’t hire that many Americans
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- PoignardAzur 6y agoYou should really elaborate when you make a claim like that.
- programmerslave 6y agoGo look on linked in. Of FB engineers, probably at least 40% are Chinese.
- PierceJoy 6y agoIs this a serious comment? First, skimming Linkedin is hardly an accurate way to see the racial makeup of a company. Second, Facebook has offices all over the world. Third, and most importantly, you know Chinese Americans exist, right?
- programmerslave 6y agoWhy can’t I reference a nationality without being called a racist? Who made you the thought police?
- PierceJoy 6y agoYou said anything about being racist? I'm implying your comment is ridiculous, because you've used being racially Chinese as a proxy for not being American, which is clearly not valid.
- jtsiskin 6y agoYeah, I want more details. It claims that Facebook specifically did not advertise some roles on its careers website, which led to these specific roles having ~0 US applications. Whereas most other roles have hundreds of US applications. What 'roles' were these? Is there some specific role they are not advertising? Edit: The original complaint https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1342786/download https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1342786/downl... You are exactly right; there are no 'roles' and it stems from the completely different type of hiring exactly as you describe. "Beginning no later than January 1, 2018, and continuing until at least September 18, 2019, Facebook’s standard operating procedure was to automatically initiate a PERM process when a temporary visa holder who was a Facebook employee in a “level 3” role1 or above asked Facebook for a permanent position, if the PERM process was needed to offer the PERM beneficiary such a position. 36. Facebook’s standard operating procedure was not to consider the temporary visa holder’s job performance or seniority or consult with the employee’s manager about the temporary visa holder’s job performance before initiating the PERM process on his or her behalf. 37. As noted above, to file a PERM application, Department of Labor rules first required Facebook to ensure that there were no minimally qualified and available U.S. workers for the position that Facebook wanted to offer to the PERM beneficiary. 38. From at least January 1, 2018 to at least September 18, 2019, when a Facebook employee who was a temporary visa holder expressed interest in receiving a permanent position through the PERM process, Facebook diverged from its normal recruiting protocols by not advertising the position on its external website, Facebook.com/careers, by not accepting online applications, and by requiring interested applicants to apply to the position by mail." Essentially, it seems like when a temporary visa holder working at Facebook wanted to have a permanent position, Facebook would create a 'dummy' role for them, then advertise it where people would not apply, so that they could then hire the employee permanently. But I wouldn't call this discrimination at all; I would call this Facebook hiring as many talented people as they can, as fast as they can. The same 'role' is still available and on the careers website.
- davidgay 6y agoIt's a reference to these "positions": 'However, the PERM process requires an employer to first demonstrate that there are no qualified and available U.S. workers for the position that the employer plans to offer to the temporary visa holder.' I.e., not really new positions, as the temporary visa holder is already in said position.
- ajsnigrutin 6y agoIs it so hard to get american workers? Don't they pay enough? Or why do they need foreigners?
- emteycz 6y agoYou want foreigners for diversity of workplace and ideas, for their different perspectives, for their direct exposure and intrinsic knowledge of their home countries, for the different expertise taught at their different schools...
- disposekinetics 6y agoTitle VII of the civil rights act makes it illegal to classify applicants on the basis of national origin. If you are taking that into consideration while hiring you are in violation of the civil rights act.
- emteycz 6y agoNational origin is not the only way to measure diversity. Anyways, thankfully neither me nor my company is in the USA. If this is the reason why one can't build a diverse workplace, you built a very sad country.
- umanwizard 6y agoThat has nothing to do with why Facebook wants to hire foreigners. Facebook wants to hire foreigners because they want to hire essentially everyone who passes their interviews, and only some subset of those are American.
- jedberg 6y agoOnly 4.25% of the world's population lives in the US. It's mathematically impossible for all the best people to already live here.
- shiftpgdn 6y agoWhat % of that is developers? What is the global demand for software developers?
- dekhn 6y agoFacebook SWE does have positions. There is a generic SWE role they hire a lot of recent grads into, but there are many bespoke positions. In my case, I was hired at Google onto a specific team via a bespoke role ("Test Engineer, Site Reliability Engineering") that was distinct from the general Test Engineer role. I interviewed with the team that I would be working on.
- conjecTech 6y agoI think you just made the Justice Department's case for them. An H-1B is intended for individuals with specialized skillsets. The fact that Facebook engages in this form of mass, generic recruiting underscores the fact that they are not seeking out rare skillsets and don't really need to utilize this program to find people matching the required criteria.
- rayiner 6y agoBingo. My dad came over here in an H1-B because his company needed a public health expert with experience in Bangladesh. There were probably a handful of people in the world with that background. The company wasn’t going to find an American with those skills. I’m sympathetic to the idea that we should have a generic immigration mechanism for skilled workers. But we don’t have that. Congress hasn’t created one because the American people won’t support one. (Or at least, the parties that want such a thing aren’t willing to spend political capital on it so long as they can kick the can down the road by abusing the current system).
- triceratops 6y agoIt sounds like your dad should've come in on the O-1.
- freeone3000 6y agoIt's not mutually exclusive. If a company has H-1B quota that is unused, it may be beneficial for the company to sponsor under the H-1B directive rather than start a new process for an O-1. O-1s are also significantly difficult to qualify for; it is unclear whether an "average" public health expert would qualify.
- rayiner 6y agoO-1 didn’t exit back then.
- triceratops 6y ago
- CPLX 6y agoI mean that's sort of the point. The program is supposed to be for specialized positions that you just can't get an American worker to fill. If you've just hired 1,000 Americans into an identical position you've demonstrated that you're misusing the intent of the program.
- safog 6y agoNot really, they wanted 3000 positions, they only found 2000 qualified Americans, so they hired the additional 1000 on a H1b.
- rodonn 6y agoSuppose you have a company and you need 3 people who can do X. You interview as many Americans as you can, and find 1 who can do the job. You fill 1 position with that American, and now start interviewing non-Americans and find 2 who you hire for the other two positions. This seems entirely within the intention of the H1B program. Now suppose instead of 3 employees, you need 3000. You find 1000 Americans able to do the role, and hire 2000 non-Americans for the remaining roles. This still seems consistent with the intention.
- aeturnum 6y agoI don't understand why hiring 3000 engineers for a generic "engineering" can be reduced to "Facebook doesn't have positions." Facebook is looking to hire a human to fill a spot in the org chart. The fact that they are hiring other people for other spots in the org chart (and they might be able to swap people) does not change that they are positions. >You have to answer questions like “why are you unable to hire an American” and it’s like... well we are. We’re hiring many many Americans. Saying no to this question means you are not hiring a US resident for this position. You're hiring many US residents for other positions. That seems...accurate? Are you thinking that, if a company hires X number of US residents, that should entitle them to hire Y non-US residents? I'm not trying to be obtuse - I want to understand what a non "incoherent" policy would look like for you.
- bxji 6y agoCorrect me if I’m wrong, but Facebook hires people under a generic role (Software Engineer) and then has them choose the team they will join after a “bootcamp” session. So they are not preallocated to a team to fulfill a specific need, and it’s not a direct 1 requisition to 1 person type system. I believe that’s what the above poster was referring to when they mentioned Facebook hiring to be general.
- Closi 6y agoThe purpose of the program seems to be to bring in workers where there is a specific need, so if it’s a generic role then that’s not helpful to their cause.
- tozeur 6y agoAre you a lawyer?