5 ms·

Maybe they realized that 71% of Silicon Valley being foreign-born H1b visa holders isn’t really the best image for ‘diversity’? https://slate.com/technology/20

Maybe they realized that 71% of Silicon Valley being foreign-born H1b visa holders isn’t really the best image for ‘diversity’? https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/meta-facebook-layoffs-h1b-visas-immigration.html https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/meta-facebook-layoffs-h... Bonus: almost half of Meta employees are from Asia. Reminds me of a screenshot of WPengines ‘diversity’ pledge on their website that proceeded to state nearly 80% of their staff were female. They changed it not long after.

dudul 4y ago
This last paragraph reminds me of a all hands monthly meeting a while ago during which the DE&I lady reported that we did great with diversity during the past month by hiring ~80% women.
- thesid 4y ago
  LOL this happened with us too. We were 2 indians and 2 white guys from norway in the team. We needed to add more jr devs to our team to carry out some of the tasks. They only ever sent us resumes for women and when we finally hired 2 women they thanked us for being a open and accepting team. We had to weed out 18 candidates before we settled on the only good ones. so it was almost 2/20 hit rate
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
> Bonus: almost half of Meta employees are from Asia. That seems low for a global company as around 60% of the global population is in Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_continents_and_continental_subregions_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_continents_and_contine...
- negamax 4y ago
  Access to education and infrastructure could be the reason for disparity. But real challenge to solve is to have 60% of giant corps coming from Asia, run with proper corporate controls.
- halpmeh 4y ago
  But Meta’s employees aren’t uniformly distributed across the Earth so comparisons to the global population are irrelevant.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    But Meta is free to hire the best no matter where they live.
    - hobbitstan 4y ago
      ‘The best’
      - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
        Wow, what a comment. Totally packed with insight and truth.
        jjj123 4y ago
        Is it not useful to highlight that we have no idea how to measure “the best,” so defending hiring practices because they’re filtering for “the best” is silly? Edited for clarity
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The idea is moreso that Meta abuses the visa system to hire SWEs on the cheap. Because America has a moderately[0]-restrictive immigration system, people who come here on a visa are committed workers. If you decide you don't want to work for one company after moving here, your options are to leave the country in 30 days or find another firm knowledgeable enough about the immigration system to adopt your existing visa application. The reason why this happens is because the system is designed to be deliberately difficult to use. The idea being that if it's hard to hire an H1B visa worker, you'll hire an American instead. But because this works as intended, companies that know how to work the system get access to hordes of cheap, pliant labor. So instead of protecting American workers, we protect well-connected businesses that can screw over American workers. [0] Compared to EU nations, at least
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    So your suggestion is make immigration easier or tougher?
  - drbeast 4y ago
    Stop fetishizing Europe, the situation is the same there in regards to the visa process(moneyed companies looking for cheap labor). Sincerely, someone who dealt with the nonsense of multiple European visas.
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      I meant to say that Europe is harder to get into than the US. Their visa processes are probably more exploitative than US H1B, but I know less about it so I left it in a footnote.
johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
It's interesting that they had to hire from abroad. Meanwhile Latine people are the least represented demographic. It's not just Trump and racism at the border. Racism against Latine is everywhere. And worse is how accepted it is.

dudul 4y ago

This last paragraph reminds me of a all hands monthly meeting a while ago during which the DE&I lady reported that we did great with diversity during the past month by hiring ~80% women.

thesid 4y ago
LOL this happened with us too. We were 2 indians and 2 white guys from norway in the team. We needed to add more jr devs to our team to carry out some of the tasks. They only ever sent us resumes for women and when we finally hired 2 women they thanked us for being a open and accepting team. We had to weed out 18 candidates before we settled on the only good ones. so it was almost 2/20 hit rate

cscurmudgeon 4y ago

> Bonus: almost half of Meta employees are from Asia. That seems low for a global company as around 60% of the global population is in Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_continents_and_continental_subregions_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_continents_and_contine...

negamax 4y ago
Access to education and infrastructure could be the reason for disparity. But real challenge to solve is to have 60% of giant corps coming from Asia, run with proper corporate controls.
halpmeh 4y ago
But Meta’s employees aren’t uniformly distributed across the Earth so comparisons to the global population are irrelevant.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  But Meta is free to hire the best no matter where they live.
  - hobbitstan 4y ago
    ‘The best’
    - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
      Wow, what a comment. Totally packed with insight and truth.
      - jjj123 4y ago
        Is it not useful to highlight that we have no idea how to measure “the best,” so defending hiring practices because they’re filtering for “the best” is silly? Edited for clarity
kmeisthax 4y ago
The idea is moreso that Meta abuses the visa system to hire SWEs on the cheap. Because America has a moderately[0]-restrictive immigration system, people who come here on a visa are committed workers. If you decide you don't want to work for one company after moving here, your options are to leave the country in 30 days or find another firm knowledgeable enough about the immigration system to adopt your existing visa application. The reason why this happens is because the system is designed to be deliberately difficult to use. The idea being that if it's hard to hire an H1B visa worker, you'll hire an American instead. But because this works as intended, companies that know how to work the system get access to hordes of cheap, pliant labor. So instead of protecting American workers, we protect well-connected businesses that can screw over American workers. [0] Compared to EU nations, at least
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  So your suggestion is make immigration easier or tougher?
- drbeast 4y ago
  Stop fetishizing Europe, the situation is the same there in regards to the visa process(moneyed companies looking for cheap labor). Sincerely, someone who dealt with the nonsense of multiple European visas.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    I meant to say that Europe is harder to get into than the US. Their visa processes are probably more exploitative than US H1B, but I know less about it so I left it in a footnote.

johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago

It's interesting that they had to hire from abroad. Meanwhile Latine people are the least represented demographic. It's not just Trump and racism at the border. Racism against Latine is everywhere. And worse is how accepted it is.