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The whole program was sold under false pretenses and has been abused hundreds of thousands of times by virtually every large company in the US. It was sold as a

The whole program was sold under false pretenses and has been abused hundreds of thousands of times by virtually every large company in the US. It was sold as a program to import foreign labor in specialized roles that couldn't be filled by US workers. In reality, it's a cost-cutting measure designed to suppress US wages in order to increase corporate profits. The program was bought and paid for by US corporations for their direct benefit. Why would Apple, with all their money, need to hire H-1B generalist Software Engineers and Project Managers when they can out-compete literally any other company on earth? https://h1bgrader.com/h1b-sponsors/apple-inc-6g06vq412q/lca/2022 https://h1bgrader.com/h1b-sponsors/apple-inc-6g06vq412q/lca/... The cover story these tech executives and investors use is that they like the H-1B out of a pure love for immigrants and the melting pot it creates. The reality is that they love the competitive advantage it gives them in hiring. They don't sincerely care if it's in America's best interest or in the interest of the countries being brain-drained. Some of them will admit this in private. (Disclaimer: I have nothing but respect, understanding, and zero judgement for employees working in the US on H-1B visas. I have a dozen good friends on H-1Bs. They're in no way to blame for these abuses. They're just doing what's in the best interest of themselves and their families.)

deleted 4y ago
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petilon 4y ago
> In reality, it's a cost-cutting measure designed to suppress US wages There may be some firms who are abusing the system. The example of Disney comes to mind... they hired H-1B workers, then laid off US citizen employees, then had the laid off employees train their cheaper replacements. But just because some people are abusing the system doesn't mean the system is inherently bad. The reason the US is a technology superpower is not merely because of the programmers who were born in the US, but also because of the programmers who immigrated to the US. Adjusted for inflation, wages for top talent has gone up about 20% in the last 30 years. In 1990, if you got a job in a top company such as Sun Microsystems you got paid about $45K (average then was $40K). If you adjust for inflation that would be around $98K. But today's fresh graduates make about $115 to $120K if you get into a company like Microsoft, and Microsoft isn't even one of the top employers in terms of pay. Facebook and Google pay much more.
- marcholagao 4y ago
  > just because some people are abusing the system doesn't mean the system is inherently bad How many American workers would have to be abused by this law before it becomes "inherently bad"? (as a number between 0 and 300 million) >The reason the US is a technology superpower is not merely because of the programmers who were born in the US, but also because of the programmers who immigrated to the US. The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here, so yes it literally because of our accomplishments that people strongly desire to immigrate here, and that doesn't diminish their contributions. >wages for top talent has gone up about 20% in the last 30 years Assuming that is true, we have been screwed out of a lot more than I realized. The United States has spent the past 30 years enjoying the greatest era of peace and prosperity the human race has ever seen and the most talented American engineers who made that possible only got a 20% raise in that time. That's shameful.
  - petilon 4y ago
    > The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here Not necessarily. The US is a gathering place for top talent, and that's not necessarily because of the talent that was born here. > American engineers who made that possible only got a 20% raise in that time No. The starting pay has gone up 20%, adjusted for inflation. That's not the same as raises over the lifetime of a single engineer.
    - supersync 4y ago
      The contribution of engineers to capital creation massively exceeds 20% over the past 30 years. Relative pay increase is such a scam. Having seen it up close, the even greater issue for society is this program & how it’s used has created an engineering culture of order takers. That’s the least valuable configuration of engineering teams.
  - jltsiren 4y ago
    > The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here, so yes it literally because of our accomplishments that people strongly desire to immigrate here, and that doesn't diminish their contributions. People moved to the US to work with the capitalists. There is plenty of talent around the world, while capital is far more scarce. The key US advantage is that it first won WW2 without suffering massive destruction, and then it used its economic advantage to win the Cold War. American share of private wealth has long been far more impressive than its share of technological talent.
908B64B197 4y ago
> Why would Apple, with all their money, need to hire H-1B generalist Software Engineers and Project Managers when they can out-compete literally any other company on earth? Honestly? Someone at a FAANG I won’t name explained it to me: They don’t check for employment eligibility/citizenship status before interviewing. If they like the person, legal is given the task of getting them a work visa. If they can’t, they’ll park the foreign worker at a satellite office until they can secure one. H1s and O1 are rather cheap in terms of legal fees. Especially when you operate at scale.
- staunch 4y ago
  That's how it works at most tech companies that run this scam, which is most tech companies. The point is that FAANG companies should have a tiny number of H-1Bs if they were following the law. Instead, they have the most H-1Bs. And instead of getting in legal trouble for fraud like this company, they're protected by their size, legal teams, lobbyists, and money. It's only H-1B fraud if you're doing it at a relatively small scale.
- triceratops 4y ago
  > They don’t check for employment eligibility/citizenship status before interviewing. Believe it or not, that's actually a good thing. It means they're looking only at skills and qualifications, not passports or "driving down wages with foreign labor", when making hiring decisions. Also it's not completely true. Recruiters will make a note of your employment eligibility for planning purposes (a new hire needing a visa transfer will take longer to start, the company has to allocate budget to legal etc). In large companies the people making the hiring decision most likely have no idea, and definitely do not care, about the candidate's work permit status. It's a thing for HR to take care of as a part of closing the deal.
- random42_ 4y ago
  > They don’t check for employment eligibility/citizenship status before interviewing As far as I remember, the vast majority, if not all, of recruiters I spoke with in the past few years asked me about my work eligibility in the US.
belltaco 4y ago
>Why would Apple, with all their money, need to hire H-1B generalist Software Engineers and Project Managers when they can out-compete literally any other company on earth Because they can't put the real job title on the application where that site got data from. It has to be within these generic ones by regulation: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm
- staunch 4y ago
  Sure the specific titles might be slightly unique to any given company. "Software Engineer for iCloud" or whatever. But these really are generalist software engineering roles. There are hundreds of thousands of US workers that can fill these generalist roles. It's not as if Apple is trying to hire US workers, failing, and then resorting to the H-1B program as they're supposed to. They use the H-1B to increase their labor pool and lower costs. That's the scam.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    > It's not as if Apple is trying to hire US workers, failing, and then resorting to the H-1B program as they're supposed to. They don't have to try and fail to hire US workers in order to use the H-1B program. That's for employment-based green cards. The H-1B only requires specialized skills - software engineering is a specialized skill. > They use the H-1B to increase their labor pool and lower costs Go check out levels.fyi to see what Apple pays "generalist software engineers". It's well-known that the younger generation of American workers is financially struggling. So it's not like they're turning down software roles at Apple because it's not enough money.
    - staunch 4y ago
      > They don't have to try and fail to hire US workers in order to use the H-1B program. The US Department of Labor disagrees with your assertion: "The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States." https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b There are requirements for companies to attempt to hire US workers first. None of them actually make a good faith effort to do this, they just pretend to. And that's why it's fraud.
Siira 4y ago
> in the interest of the countries being brain-drained Countries where the government is happier to see smart, educated people go to secure its own leechy position? Where there is little industry in the first place, what there is is owned by a few oligarchs, and mostly focused on “national security” projects like blocking Google Maps and cloning it. Competition is the only thing that can stop exploitation. These countries don’t lack for “brains,” they just have too many parasites.
pyuser583 4y ago
I, a US Citizen by birth - born and raised in the US, owe my career to the H1B visa program. I’m self taught and got my first “in” when a local employer wanted to hire lots of H1B visa folks. I was less qualified, but hired because they needed to prove they were willing to hire non-H1B visa folks in order to hire H1B visa folks. More broadly, I suspect the program I worked at wouldn’t exist without H1B labor. At least not in the US - they might have run it overseas. I’ve been offered insane sums of money at places that mostly hire H1B visa workers - far more than made sense. They wanted to hire me as evidence they were hiring people like me. And they paid me accordingly. The H1B people I worked with have became friends and mentors. OK, the ones who weren’t faking it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

petilon 4y ago

> In reality, it's a cost-cutting measure designed to suppress US wages There may be some firms who are abusing the system. The example of Disney comes to mind... they hired H-1B workers, then laid off US citizen employees, then had the laid off employees train their cheaper replacements. But just because some people are abusing the system doesn't mean the system is inherently bad. The reason the US is a technology superpower is not merely because of the programmers who were born in the US, but also because of the programmers who immigrated to the US. Adjusted for inflation, wages for top talent has gone up about 20% in the last 30 years. In 1990, if you got a job in a top company such as Sun Microsystems you got paid about $45K (average then was $40K). If you adjust for inflation that would be around $98K. But today's fresh graduates make about $115 to $120K if you get into a company like Microsoft, and Microsoft isn't even one of the top employers in terms of pay. Facebook and Google pay much more.

marcholagao 4y ago
> just because some people are abusing the system doesn't mean the system is inherently bad How many American workers would have to be abused by this law before it becomes "inherently bad"? (as a number between 0 and 300 million) >The reason the US is a technology superpower is not merely because of the programmers who were born in the US, but also because of the programmers who immigrated to the US. The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here, so yes it literally because of our accomplishments that people strongly desire to immigrate here, and that doesn't diminish their contributions. >wages for top talent has gone up about 20% in the last 30 years Assuming that is true, we have been screwed out of a lot more than I realized. The United States has spent the past 30 years enjoying the greatest era of peace and prosperity the human race has ever seen and the most talented American engineers who made that possible only got a 20% raise in that time. That's shameful.
- petilon 4y ago
  > The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here Not necessarily. The US is a gathering place for top talent, and that's not necessarily because of the talent that was born here. > American engineers who made that possible only got a 20% raise in that time No. The starting pay has gone up 20%, adjusted for inflation. That's not the same as raises over the lifetime of a single engineer.
  - supersync 4y ago
    The contribution of engineers to capital creation massively exceeds 20% over the past 30 years. Relative pay increase is such a scam. Having seen it up close, the even greater issue for society is this program & how it’s used has created an engineering culture of order takers. That’s the least valuable configuration of engineering teams.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  > The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here, so yes it literally because of our accomplishments that people strongly desire to immigrate here, and that doesn't diminish their contributions. People moved to the US to work with the capitalists. There is plenty of talent around the world, while capital is far more scarce. The key US advantage is that it first won WW2 without suffering massive destruction, and then it used its economic advantage to win the Cold War. American share of private wealth has long been far more impressive than its share of technological talent.

908B64B197 4y ago

> Why would Apple, with all their money, need to hire H-1B generalist Software Engineers and Project Managers when they can out-compete literally any other company on earth? Honestly? Someone at a FAANG I won’t name explained it to me: They don’t check for employment eligibility/citizenship status before interviewing. If they like the person, legal is given the task of getting them a work visa. If they can’t, they’ll park the foreign worker at a satellite office until they can secure one. H1s and O1 are rather cheap in terms of legal fees. Especially when you operate at scale.

staunch 4y ago
That's how it works at most tech companies that run this scam, which is most tech companies. The point is that FAANG companies should have a tiny number of H-1Bs if they were following the law. Instead, they have the most H-1Bs. And instead of getting in legal trouble for fraud like this company, they're protected by their size, legal teams, lobbyists, and money. It's only H-1B fraud if you're doing it at a relatively small scale.
triceratops 4y ago
> They don’t check for employment eligibility/citizenship status before interviewing. Believe it or not, that's actually a good thing. It means they're looking only at skills and qualifications, not passports or "driving down wages with foreign labor", when making hiring decisions. Also it's not completely true. Recruiters will make a note of your employment eligibility for planning purposes (a new hire needing a visa transfer will take longer to start, the company has to allocate budget to legal etc). In large companies the people making the hiring decision most likely have no idea, and definitely do not care, about the candidate's work permit status. It's a thing for HR to take care of as a part of closing the deal.
random42_ 4y ago
> They don’t check for employment eligibility/citizenship status before interviewing As far as I remember, the vast majority, if not all, of recruiters I spoke with in the past few years asked me about my work eligibility in the US.

belltaco 4y ago

>Why would Apple, with all their money, need to hire H-1B generalist Software Engineers and Project Managers when they can out-compete literally any other company on earth Because they can't put the real job title on the application where that site got data from. It has to be within these generic ones by regulation: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm

staunch 4y ago
Sure the specific titles might be slightly unique to any given company. "Software Engineer for iCloud" or whatever. But these really are generalist software engineering roles. There are hundreds of thousands of US workers that can fill these generalist roles. It's not as if Apple is trying to hire US workers, failing, and then resorting to the H-1B program as they're supposed to. They use the H-1B to increase their labor pool and lower costs. That's the scam.
- triceratops 4y ago
  > It's not as if Apple is trying to hire US workers, failing, and then resorting to the H-1B program as they're supposed to. They don't have to try and fail to hire US workers in order to use the H-1B program. That's for employment-based green cards. The H-1B only requires specialized skills - software engineering is a specialized skill. > They use the H-1B to increase their labor pool and lower costs Go check out levels.fyi to see what Apple pays "generalist software engineers". It's well-known that the younger generation of American workers is financially struggling. So it's not like they're turning down software roles at Apple because it's not enough money.
  - staunch 4y ago
    > They don't have to try and fail to hire US workers in order to use the H-1B program. The US Department of Labor disagrees with your assertion: "The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States." https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b There are requirements for companies to attempt to hire US workers first. None of them actually make a good faith effort to do this, they just pretend to. And that's why it's fraud.

Siira 4y ago

> in the interest of the countries being brain-drained Countries where the government is happier to see smart, educated people go to secure its own leechy position? Where there is little industry in the first place, what there is is owned by a few oligarchs, and mostly focused on “national security” projects like blocking Google Maps and cloning it. Competition is the only thing that can stop exploitation. These countries don’t lack for “brains,” they just have too many parasites.

pyuser583 4y ago

I, a US Citizen by birth - born and raised in the US, owe my career to the H1B visa program. I’m self taught and got my first “in” when a local employer wanted to hire lots of H1B visa folks. I was less qualified, but hired because they needed to prove they were willing to hire non-H1B visa folks in order to hire H1B visa folks. More broadly, I suspect the program I worked at wouldn’t exist without H1B labor. At least not in the US - they might have run it overseas. I’ve been offered insane sums of money at places that mostly hire H1B visa workers - far more than made sense. They wanted to hire me as evidence they were hiring people like me. And they paid me accordingly. The H1B people I worked with have became friends and mentors. OK, the ones who weren’t faking it.