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If you're an h1b worker you literally don't have a choice. You obey or get yourself and your family kicked out of the country.
by aaomidi 5y ago
If you're an h1b worker you literally don't have a choice.
You obey or get yourself and your family kicked out of the country.
- enriquto 5y agoLand of the free, they say!
- Veen 5y agoSo you literally do have a choice. There’s just a consequence (There are worse things than not living in America, hard as that might be for you to imagine.)
- aaomidi 5y agoYou're going to say no to writing a timeout code and risk your entire family going back to your country? What if you have kids who were born here? You're now going to take them back to a place they don't know? Or are you going to let them go to foster care here? How about if you've bought a house here? You're going to have just a few months to settle everything before you can go.
- Veen 5y agoWhy would anyone contemplate leaving their children behind in foster care? That seems an absurdly hyperbolic suggestion. People move countries for work and take their children with them all the time. I mean, if the country was Syria and you literally risk death, then I could understand, but people in that situation are refugees, not on work visas. Perhaps I’m finding this hard to understand since I have no desire to live in the US whatsoever and have turned down several offers from companies that wanted me to move there. Nice place to visit, but I can think of dozens of places I would rather live.
- otterley 5y agoWhat country are you based in? Have you ever lived in a country with extreme poverty or an oppressive government?
- aaomidi 5y agoThe kid is a US citizen and doesn't know any language other than English. Depending on the home country that might be a huge huge obstacle for the kid. I was once that kid who had to go back to Iran without knowing Persian. It was fucking terrible.
- Veen 5y agoYes, moving to a country is hard when you don’t speak the language. Can I ask, why did your Iranian parents not ensure you learned Persian if moving back was a possibility?
- aaomidi 5y agoBecause it was something I resisted and made me miserable trying to learn in another country. They did the right thing because I was able to still have a childhood that wasn't bogged down with learning Persian.
- Aeolun 5y agoWhy would you risk all of those things on the whim of an employer. I swear the US must be the worst possible country in the world to emigrate to.
- siculars 5y ago(Right, like returning to a country you were trying to escape.)
- josephcsible 5y agoIf you're here from a country that you had to escape, then you're a refugee, and unlike H-1B immigrants, refugees don't have to leave just because they lost their job.
- iaml 5y agoThere's a ton of people who had to (or really wanted to, makes no difference in this case) escape a country that did it using their skills as a programmer.
- Veen 5y agoBut the vast majority moved because they could make more money in the US. They behave unethically because they don’t want to give up that income. It’s a purely mercenary calculation. And it does make a difference whether it’s a want rather than a need. I want lots of things, but if I behave in a shitty way to get them I should be condemned. I’m sure there are some people in the unfortunate position you describe, and in their case it’s understandable. But it’s not the general case.
- iaml 5y agoPeople who moved for the money likely went to FAANG instead. Actually, I got interested in this and checked trustarc's careers page and it seems most technical positions are in Philippines/Canada with a mention of "global team" so I'm convinced now all this thread is arguing about strawmen and in reality the product is being written by some remote contractors from third world country who will be easily replaced by a million others if they refuse.
- redler 5y agoThe corporate leaders that make the decisions are the ones that should resign on principle. Not the theoretical H1B employee who would uproot their family, derail their career, distress-sell their house, leave the country, etc., over the setTimeout line.
- antattack 5y agoOr if your employer is paying for your family's healthcare, or your school tuition.
- josephcsible 5y ago> if your employer is paying for your family's healthcare Isn't this true of every full-time job? But people quit and get new full-time jobs all the time.
- erdo 5y agoMaybe in the US, but not in Europe. Health care and the education of your children is largely not dependent on your job. Shades of grey of course, I don't think university education is free in the UK anymore (it was when I was at university) and private health care does exist
- antifa 5y agoMedical Feudalism is just how things work in the United States.
- peterkelly 5y agoYou absolutely do have a choice. You just have to decide where your line is. If you are asked to commit a crime by your employer, do you go ahead and do it for the sake of keeping your job? What about something legal yet highly questionable on moral grounds? Going ahead with an annoying UI feature you don't agree with is probably justified if the alternative is getting deported, but there's a threshold somewhere and it's different for everyone.
- aaomidi 5y agoI've already explained this in the thread. Not going to argue about how each person defines literally.
- fibers 5y agoYes because America, not China has exacerbated the conditions in India to make it so you have no choice to come to America. There won't be a timeline where the US relaxes their immigration laws to make something like this possible.
- andrewnicolalde 5y agoWhat in your opinion has America done to India?
- not1ofU 5y agoBecause US employment laws are terrible. For everyone, not just h1b workers.
- nikkinana 5y agoYeah the best shit code in the industry is written by h1b's
- OJFord 5y agoHow many companies seriously start revoking visa sponsorship the moment an employee pushes back on a Jira ticket? Really the issue is being fired over it isn't it? The visa just makes being fired worse for employees requiring one. I would hate to work at a company where a bit of debate on 'is this really a good idea' were a firable offence; sounds like the 'believe it or not - jail' scene from Parks & Recreation! That's satirising a visiting delegation from a developing country under military rule.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y ago>I would hate to work at a company where a bit of debate on 'is this really a good idea' were a firable offence Right, and you don't have to because your continued existence in a country isn't dependent on it. Companies with attitudes like that don't reveal it until it's too late.
- OJFord 5y agoI just think the existence/prevalence of such places is being wildly overstated... Especially without any sort of 'hey, stop pushing back on every issue, shut up and do your job or you won't have one' type warning. But then I've never lived or worked in the land of the free, so what do I know.
- MisterSandman 5y agoAs someone on a Visa - even a 0.0001% chance of being fired for saying something like this would shut me up.
- Aeolun 5y agoSo you walk on your toes all the time? That seems like a really unhappy way to live.
- emptyparadise 5y agoWhat's the alternative?
- yunohn 5y agoWhy do you assume it’s an H1B worker? I don’t see where you get this baseless accusation from.
- flixic 5y agoWhat if 3 US citizens said "fuck no", and it was someone on much shakier ground who felt the pressure to say yes? Not a given at all, just makes it more likely.
- yunohn 5y agoIt really seems horribly racist to just assume that it must be the “lesser moral” H1B employee who made this dark pattern happen. You have zero evidence, no indication that’s the case, and are speculating wildly.
- tortasaur 5y agoIt isn't even slightly racist. It isn't a comparison of morals between the H1B worker and U.S. citizen; the employer simply has more leverage over the H1B worker.
- yunohn 5y agoBut where is this assumption of a H1B worker causing this coming from? Literally zero indication of this, just a racist strawman. What a depressing thread this has been.
- octokatt 5y agoI hear you. Same for if you’re disabled, your partner has a medical condition… moving between jobs can be cost less for some, but changing jobs is not cost less universally. Which means in a given developer pool, there’s usually at least one person who “won’t put up a fuss about implementing industry standard code”.
- magnetowasright 5y agoEven if you’re not a H1B, here in Australia in my experience, there’s still a lot of racism and sexism in the industry. I’ve been shocked at the virulently racist and/or sexist things people are comfortable saying at work, especially in company wide meetings. It’s not just behind closed doors, not that that’s any better. I’ve also worked in several places where dream candidates with 10+ years relevant experience were hired (and paid) as juniors despite demonstrably being the most skilled and experienced in the company. There was no technical reason for it. It might have had something to do with the fact that they were not white and/or were women. It probably doesn’t help that a lot of the dev work in Australia seems to be in the financial services industry which is still an Old Boys Club in my experience. The dumb, anti-human shit I was asked to implement (and did push back on and refuse to implement) when I worked in the industry was mind boggling. It doesn’t really matter if you push back or refuse, someone somewhere made a decision and paid a lot of money for some shitty Market Research that says that users want ridiculous feature X and it must work on Internet Explorer Mobile, and the decision is made. Someone will be desperate enough to do it. Shit workplace! Also morally reprehensible which is one reason I left, but yeah, there’s no shortage of people desperate for work imo. Even now that we’ve all been WFH on the east half of the country for a year and a half, companies still don’t want to hire people to WFH once we’re allowed to go into the office, also despite their inability to fill these roles because seemingly few people want to agree to commute when it’s safe to do so. Makes it even harder if you don’t want to live in Sydney or Melbourne. Mobility and security aren’t a given just because you’re a dev, even a very skilled and experienced one. The job market doesn’t necessarily yield to the demands, either. It’s easy to say “just don’t do it” when you don’t feel as many pressures of being working class as others or when your ability to find work is not a concern to you. That being said, I do fantasise about the ability and desire for all devs to refuse to implement these anti-human things. The world would be a better place. I don’t use the internet or tech in general as much as I used to because of what it’s all become. These are just my experiences. I’d be keen to hear from other Australians their experiences of the industry here.