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Google, Meta, Amazon hiring low-paid H1B workers after US layoffs
- hankchinaski 3y agoHigh flying tech jobs bonanza is over. Check back in a couple of years
- malermeister 3y agoBest move right now is to go into freelance/consulting and wait for big tech to recover. Still plenty of money to be made that way.
- zffr 3y agoCan you make FAANG level money doing consulting?
- gabereiser 3y agoDouble, triple, even quadruple
- gloryjulio 3y agoAny guides on how to make multi millions per year as consultant?
- eddtests 3y agoThat's the realm of extreme skill, luck, and timing. There is no way there's a cookie-cutter solution to that and if people say there is I suggest they're no different to Tai Lopez etc... Two solutions I have seen (thanks to the news): 1. Be being a world-class academic on a hot ML topic consulting to a huge tech company at a strategic level 2. Be the prime minister of a G8 country and consult for global investment firms If you're a software engineer or even engineering leader at a startup/SME you're not going to find these contracts unless you're in the 0.001% of the market for a niche skill that's desperately in need.
- gabereiser 3y agoConsultants exist at every level. An individual will (should?) never make more than the client they serve. However, a team of consultants (like the ones who consult for global firms) can demand more than an individual can. Often times a lot more. They also take on indemnification and more risk. Last I checked, an engagement with Deloitte for anything costs $10M out the gate.
- eddtests 3y agoYes but the question was how does one consultant earn multiple millions of dollars. The average managing directors at Deloitte earn around $500k - I don't think there's any reasonable way to earn over double the average managing directors rate at a Big 4 without being a sole contractor directly contracting with a company
- gabereiser 3y agoContracting != consulting.
- eddtests 3y agoI don't really understand what you're on about anymore. Fwiw, I am a consultant and do know the field. Edit: Maybe you're unaware of the term https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/sole-contractor https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/sole-contractor, I was talking about a single person consulting, not a contract developer or whatever
- gabereiser 3y agoYou say you’re a consultant and yet link to a definition of a sole contractor. Again, I’m talking about consulting, not contracting. Those are different. If you don’t know the difference then here’s a definition of a consultant https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/consultant https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/consultant Now, to a layman, these may look identical. To a consultant, these are vastly different things. You are not paid on output, you are paid on outcome. Example: I can spend 10 days consulting a startup board on how to do something and make $50,000. I can spend 10 days coding for client X and make $5,000 tops as a contractor.
- gabereiser 3y agoStart a consultancy, start making money. There’s no hard guide. No playbook on how to succeed for you personally. It’s a business, just like any other. Treat it as a business. Not a job. Build it up. Network. Showcase. Charge slightly less than you would have. Hire more people to assist in the work. Compound your time. Compound your money.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gloryjulio 3y agoSounds like not much different from working on ur own startup. That would be very different from coasting as senior/staff in faang
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoAs general advice this is exagerated. You can match it yes, but quadrupling you need to be bringing something very special to the table. Unless you mean the arbitrage of doing this from different countries with more favourable tax/COL?
- gabereiser 3y agoOf course it is. Everyone’s mileage will vary. Not everyone is cut out to be CEO of a consulting firm. As a solo consultant, you’ll be hard pressed to charge more than they could get a FTE. As a firm, well, Deloitte, Cognizant, Pearsons, Booz Allen, all started as a consultancy or professional services spin off. If you’re wondering how to be a consultant, you won’t get FAANG money. If you know how to be a consultant, it’s a matter of finding the right clientele and/or hiring a sales rep for their clientele.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoAgain a massive no true Scotsman stretch. GP asked if we could make FAANG money as a contractor and you claim four fold... If you have the network, money and sub-hire a bunch of people. Ok sure but then it's not a like for like comparison. Most ppl in contracting are just interested in FTE work, with a better rate, tax framework, less office politics, etc. Very few want to go full Cognizant.
- gabereiser 3y agoHas asked how he could make FAANG money as a consultant, not a contractor. Those are different.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoI see perhaps somewhat lost in translation. In Europe a contractor is often referred to as an external consultant and _actual_ "Consultancy" are somewhat interchangeable terms but one is John's LLC and the other is BCG's pricetag consultants.
- malermeister 3y agoEasily, especially if you have a good resume.
- everdrive 3y agoYes, and what you'll find is that the output of your work product will become magically disconnected from your pay. Management will love your ideas because they came from a consultant. Ideas which come from within the business cannot be trusted, but consultants are expensive, and therefore they are both intelligent and also correct.
- iteria 3y agoAbsolutely. It's just about getting into a firm that isn't doing staff augmentation and is building out things for companies. While you will be paid well, it's worth noting that the code will be shit. Worse than code sometimes. That's why the company is outsourcing. I once spent six months just cataloging all the repositories and dependencies a company had. They needed to move to the cloud but they literally had no idea what code they had. Everything worked and so they just never touched it.
- eddtests 3y agoDepends on the ‘consulting’ - are you giving strategic advice to the CTO’s office at a multinational? You could be making millions! Are you augmenting an SME’s team as an IC? You can make a little more than an employee after accounting for all the things you have to pay for that tend to be included as an employee. You tend to need some really awesome work experience to get the former while the latter is fairly easy to walk into.
- hankchinaski 3y agoBeen doing this for the past 6-7 years. Hands down better than riding the big tech hype train.
- tester756 3y agoWhat is software "consulting"? You mean being contractor?
- sjducb 3y agoRight now the consulting market is at zero. 18 months ago i was talking to 4 recruiters in parallel, turning down jobs and making companies outbid each other. Today the only recruiters who will return my calls are the ones who have gotten me jobs in the past and they all said they don’t have anything. One of them talked about an opportunity that might exist in 3 weeks time that he’ll put me in for if it gets the go ahead.
- notsurenymore 3y agoWeird, that vast majority of jobs I see posted now (in my area of experience) are either from grifty third party recruiters or small random consulting firms. I see very few first part job postings by companies.
- bluedino 3y agoAll the recruiters that were reaching out with 120-130k offers are now down to 80k. People will likely stay where they are at those rates
- donnie12345 3y agoWhat does this mean ? :(
- ftyers 3y agoFor H1B don't they have to show that they are paying at least market rate? And isn't it a factor in awarding the visa?
- gabereiser 3y agoMarket rate is +/- 50%.
- prng2021 3y agoI've personally noticed that H1B tech workers get paid significantly lower than others. It's a shameful business practice and obviously also really hurts the competitiveness of non-visa workers. My guess is that there's no clear market rate for any position. Companies can always say there's a wide range between lowest and highest paid for any given role.
- rrryougi 3y agoA PERM (permanent labor certificate) actually requires prevailing wage for a specific job position at a specific area. Just go check this website: https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages
- iteria 3y agoMarket rate is based on the national median. So yeah... they do get paid more than the median, but far less than a developer where they work. It's why H1 workers tend to get hired in high paying areas. That's when it's worth it. If they can swing remote, it might be worth it. I've had a California company "lowball" me and I cackled at my amazing raise internally.
- rrryougi 3y agoThat is not true. Prevailing wage also depends on the where you work. https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages https://flag.dol.gov/programs/prevailingwages
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- InvaderFizz 3y agoThis is the only part of the article that matters, and even it is a stretch: > Just a month after Sundar Pichai announced Google’s plan to cut 12,000 jobs around the world in January, the company filed applications for H1B visas to hire software engineers, analytical consultants, user experience researchers and other roles from outside the United States, with several requests aimed for new Google employees to join in August, the report states. Google parent Alphabet owned Waymo too has reportedly filed similar H1B applications to hire engineers. The article fails to mention and actual H1B requests by the others, just lumps them in with the layoffs.
- boringg 3y agoProcess had probably already set sail before the layoffs.
- ghodith 3y agoYeah, only a month after? That process had likely been approved many months before that even and was only then taking effect.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoThis article, and the one it is based on, is just rage bait. Sadly, this topic specifically works really well in HN.
- smoldesu 3y agoOP's submission history is just page-after-page of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=donnie12345 https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=donnie12345 It's not really being submitted in good-faith. My advice is to flag submissions with edited titles, and ignore the obvious outrage porn. It seems to work, more often than not.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoOh wow, you weren’t kidding. On top of that, OP has submitted this link multiple times in the past few hours.
- jncfhnb 3y agoMost of these cuts haven’t targeted tech talent, so this isn’t really contradictory in any way.
- Palmik 3y agoSignificant amount of tech workers were affected, at least at Google.
- mdorazio 3y agoWhat headlines have you been reading that make you think the many thousands of workers cut were all not tech talent?
- iepathos 3y agoThere are stats you can find if you look for it. Something like 5-10% was made up of actual engineers. Large majority was sales, marketing, HR, product and design, recruiting, and finance. I've only seen stats for Google but assume it was similar at most other companies with the exception of Twitter.
- mdorazio 3y agoAgain, what stats? Because that doesn't appear to be the case at all according to [1]. But let's take your word for it since you didn't provide a source. Here's an actual hard number: 170,000 tech workers cut this year alone (plus more last year) [2]. Let's use your 5% lower bound. That's 9,000 engineers. I hope you'll agree that's a lot. [1] https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-workers-software-engineers-layoffs-meta-coding https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-worke... [2] https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs/ https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs/
- jncfhnb 3y ago9000 is not a lot, and your own first link states tech roles have net increased, not decreased.
- reacharavindh 3y agoIf only there were labor protection laws that prevent companies from firing and hiring at the same time(for same/similar roles) in the US. This is madness.
- pokstad 3y agoThen how would a company replace low performers?
- reacharavindh 3y agoI don’t think the companies in question let people go based on performance or any other logical criteria. They saw an opportunity to unload and they did. I can speak based on Netherlands where I work now. If an employee is performing below expectations, then a conversation needs to be had(documented), given a chance to improve or change course. If after an extended period of attempt, the decision to let that employee go still holds, then they may. However, the above reasoning cannot be made for several employees at once (like the layoffs that occurred). To do an American style layoff, the government will insist on the company to document the reasons why, and in most cases, take away the choice for the company to choose which employee they can let go. Which makes it very unattractive. So, if a company wants to let go of several people at once, they typically offer good severance packages and request the employees to quit.
- clnq 3y agoWe have labour protections in the UK and this isn't a big problem. We can't fire people on manager whims and tantrums, and there is more accountability in the process, but not a problem or an obstacle to firing people who are not capable or performing. First, there is the initial probation period. 80% of the people who won't perform, won't perform in the initial months. You just need a veto system or objective managers and it's easy to let slackers go. A lot of managers are soft on their employees and let them pass probation even if their performance is somewhat poor and, frankly, sometimes it's obvious it will continue to be poor. This is a mistake. So long as the company doesn't make these mistakes, this solves 80% of the matter. Secondly, employees can be put on probation again, or on personal improvement plans. Yes, it can be done for actual performance reasons, not only Google-style. They can then fail these periods if their performance doesn't improve. But once again, this needs to be done with a clear head and accountability. This solves another 10% of the matter. Thirdly, you can demote employees so that their pay matches their effort. This probably needs some foresight as demotion requires consent from the employee, if I recall. But if that consent is given as part of the employment contract, it's another way to make things just. You pay someone who underperforms less, you use that cash to hire people who perform. This option mitigates the perceived problem in firing under-performers even more. In short, so long as there is good evidence that the employee was underperforming, it's not a problem. There are small peculiarities around dealing with this and not exposing the company legally beyond reason. But that's true for everything. Just don't be a clueless asshole about firing employees, do it when there really is a good reason, and it will all be fine. There are, of course, employees who are vindictive or abuse these laws. But then again, a vindictive employee or one willing to abuse the company into keeping them around is a global problem. Some small % of people will just do these things everywhere - labour protections or not.
- greatpostman 3y agoGenerally not supposed to say this out loud, but being the only American on an all H1B team at these companies can be absolutely brutal. Very alienating, always missing out on back channel communications, no sympathy for missteps
- api 3y agoThey also can’t easily quit since if you lose sponsorship you may have to return to your country of origin. It’s not “confiscating passports” level but it’s definitely exploitative.
- firtoz 3y agoIt happens in the UK too. For example a friend of mine was taken advantage of by the boss who was not hesitant at all to remind her that her existence in the country depended on his approval; so she had to do long hours with unreasonable tasks for little pay.
- fiforpg 3y agoWhy "not supposed" to say out loud? Sounds simply as a problem of the only X on a team of Ys. Cultural (and other) differences can be hard, it is just a fact of life. Think of it as being in the shoes of a lonely non-American in the country of Americans, if that is any consolation.
- booleandilemma 3y agoI mean, no kidding. Half the people I work with are H-1B. The program takes jobs away from Americans and should be illegal. I want to work with people from my town, not people from halfway across the world.
- seaman1921 3y agoif you want to pick who you want to work with, maybe start your own company and then you will probably figure out yourself that you need the H-1Bs
- 2devnull 3y agoBecause you compete with other businesses. If labor regulations allow companies to do X, and one or more companies actually do X, then others have to follow suite and do X or be undercut. It’s simply the prisoner’s dilemma but the prisoners are companies and exploiting labor is defecting.
- hejalajsbsb 3y agoAre you asserting that there is enough American talent to satisfy the job market and that they are being unjustly suppressed? It’s an interesting idea. Do you have any reading relevant to the topic that supports this assertion?
- booleandilemma 3y agoAbsolutely. And I would go even further and say that many of the people we hire from overseas aren't even that good. They're just cheap labor and that's what makes them attractive.
- dudul 3y agoMaybe the article that created this thread?
- mattrighetti 3y ago> I want to work with people from my town Nobody forces you to work with people from across the world, quit your job and find one that only hires people from your town
- artyom 3y agoNot surprising at all. They want to go back to the pre-crypto craze era and they all have a common plan for it. Yeah it's cartelization and it's illegal but we all know they do it.
- batch12 3y agoI believe for H1B they have to post the jobs and demonstrate no qualified American could be found. I've seen companies do this quickly and quietly to satisfy the requirement. I wonder if there a way to identify these opportunities and take advantage of the low applicant pool.
- maccard 3y agoIf you send me your resume, I can write a job description that only matches you in 15 minutes.
- mrits 3y ago14 minute coffee break with 1 minute ChatGPT?
- wildrhythms 3y agoThese companies have already found their H1B hire before they even craft the job description. The description will be carefully written to match exactly that candidate's specific expertise and experience, so they can easily decline all other candidates. Also look up a "bench and switch"[1] scheme where foreign hires are lined up in positions that don't even exist to form a defacto H1B staffing agency. https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/executives-staffing-companies-charged-visa-fraud https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/executives-staffing-compa...
- mavelikara 3y agoThe process you are describing is for applying for an employment-based Green Card.
- hankchinaski 3y agoI’m not familiar with the US visa rules, but aren’t companies supposed to demonstrate that they can’t source talent domestically before bringing people in on visas? This seems odd and damaging to the US economy. And I say this as a non-US person
- dudul 3y agoYeah but it's excessively easy. Rules most likely have changed since I was myself on an h1b 10+ years ago, but iirc all you had to do was show a job posting up for a certain amount of time without being able to hire.
- mdorazio 3y agoSee my reply to ftyers. It's very easy to get around the rules.
- xen0 3y agoI believe that, in many places, tech jobs are exempt from such restrictions.
- jtonl 3y agoThey can always reason that they can't hire market rate.
- postalrat 3y agoMaybe they can't find people who want to work in the office.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> I’m not familiar with the US visa rules No worries. If this thread has proven anything, that would be that not even Americans know, but they sure love a good flame bait. Jokes aside, what you just said is absolutely correct and it is indeed how it works in the US. I'm an immigrant myself, and that was part of the process. Most people complaining about how this "hurts" Americans, are, unknowingly I hope, echoing the same xenophobic slogans we have been hearing for a couple decades now.
- bell-cot 3y agoDaydream: American companies are allowed to replace well-paid American workers with ill-treated, ill-paid H1B workers all they want...with the small caveat that the highest replacement rates and worst ill-treat/-pay rates must occur the C suite.
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago> with the small caveat that the [...] worst [...] pay rates must occur the C suite. It is not uncommon that C suites don't get paid that much money: the big money that they make rather comes from bonuses.
- bell-cot 3y agoThat's fine - so long as the bottom-end H1B's are getting proportional bonuses, stock options, expense accounts, etc., etc.
- aleph_minus_one 3y agoIntroducing this nearly alwats means that if the company has a bad year, the company only pays out a small fraction of the money to the employees that it would in a good year. The problem is that many employees want the best of the two worlds: a huge bonus in good years and a rather high guaranteed salary.
- DebtDeflation 3y agoSo basically FAANG has finally discovered what the entire rest of the IT industry discovered 20 years ago.
- lp4vn 3y agoMe and many other people commented here when the whole thing started that layoffs in a time of record profits and cashflows were basically a strategy to keep salaries low. At this point I honestly don't know how innocent one has to be to think that everything is an organic coincidence and not an orchestrated move. Companies colluding to make the life of workers worse and boost their profits, that has never happened before in the history of humanity.
- nostrebored 3y agoKeep salaries low? This is one of the boomiest industries, with truly insane salaries, with years of employee-favorable conditions. Beyond that, we’re in for years of macroeconomic reckoning for unresolved asset bubbles in the 2000s and horrendously bad COVID policy. Laying off makes sense. Sometimes you hire to backfill roles or for strategic teams. Sometimes an H1b is the correct hire.
- lp4vn 3y ago>This is one of the boomiest industries, with truly insane salaries How many software developers can, in a reasonable timeframe, buy a house in the place they live and support alone a family of four people? Then the truly insane salaries you are talking about are not really that insane. >Laying off makes sense. Sometimes you hire to backfill roles or for strategic teams. Sometimes an H1b is the correct hire. Developers are seen by companies as over expensive peons and they have been maneuvering to turn the whole field in an low cost industry. I hope you are younger than 30 to still hold such a naïf worldview.
- bradleyjg 3y agoHow many software developers can, in a reasonable timeframe, buy a house in the place they live and support alone a family of four people? Then the truly insane salaries you are talking about are not really that insane. House prices have gone absolutely nuts in the last forty years. We are witnessing the largest generational transfer of wealth in the history of the world. Healthcare and education have also experienced broken cost growth. But those are problems for everyone that’s not on the winning side of these giant money sucks. It doesn’t change the fact that ratio of programmer salary to median salary has been moving way up. It’s both true that we are doing relatively much better and we are getting screwed by costs just like everyone else.
- kgbcia 3y agoSounds like a great business plan. Join the layoff news cycle to avoid criticism and get rid of old or innificient employees. Maybe that's why zuck and Sundar are at the top.
- barneygale 3y agoGood riddance - it is unethical to work for these companies unless you attempt to sabotage their operations from the inside.
- 0xDEF 3y ago>low-paid The minimum annual salary for an H1B worker is $60,000. That is higher than what tech workers get paid in most of Europe.
- bluedino 3y agoIt's bare minimum of a tech salary in the USA, even helpdesk makes that now
- mattrighetti 3y agoComparing salaries for tech workers in the EU vs H1B in the US does not make a lot of sense. Cost of living, taxation, rents, electricity/gas bills and welfare are completely different.
- 0xDEF 3y agoFresh of the boat immigrants are not entitled to welfare in Europe. Taxation and electricity/gas bills tend to lower in the US. Rent in Silicon Valley and NYC are definitely a lot higher than anywhere in Europe but those are not the only places with tech jobs.
- dboreham 3y agoDispute that taxes in US are lower. Sales tax is lower than VAT. That's true. But income tax is about the same or higher in the US, in my experience.
- arlort 3y ago> Fresh of the boat immigrants are not entitled to welfare in Europe If you mean healthcare then employed residents (what H1B is) are
- mattrighetti 3y ago> Rent in Silicon Valley and NYC are definitely a lot higher than anywhere in Europe Salaries in SF and NYC for tech workers are way higher in those areas indeed. I would argue that that is probably the main reason why rents are so high, there's plenty of tech workers with stellar salaries willing to pay for a house.
- ckemere 3y agoI’m curious about the role of fresh out of college hires in this issue. Hired on an OPT for two years and then converting to H1b. Any inside info on the fraction of applications in this scenario?
- notpachet 3y agoMeta-question, but what in the world is going on with that website URL? It has another URL for the same domain specified as a query parameter? I feel my sanity slipping...
- testplzignore 3y agoIt's got "europe" in the URL which makes me think it's related to GDPR compliance somehow, especially given the lack of ads on the page.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoBig N companies are all evil
- jaimex2 3y agoNon-American here. Do H1B workers need to live in the US to work, or they can work remotely from their country?
- renewiltord 3y agoThey won't file an H-1B for people working from outside the country. It's much faster to just employ you in one of the other places they have a presence. And if they need you to visit, there's an L-1 and related class.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoYou must live in the US to work there. There are worse stuff than H1B, eg L1B. H1B has the req that you must find another sponsor within 60 days of leaving a company, but you can quit just fine otherwise. L1B means you can only work for the sponsor company and nobody else and as soon as you get fired you are gone.
- nojvek 3y agoHave to be on the US for the visa to be valid. They can go for holidays for a short period.
- bluedino 3y agoYou don't need a Visa if you don't live in the US
- dboreham 3y agoYou have this backwards: the visa is required only to live in the US for the purposes of working. If you aren't living in the US, you can work as much as you like for a US company, provided they and you comply with laws in your country. Typically this requires them to set up a subsidiary in your country, or contract with a local company that you become an employee of.
- arlort 3y agoWhich is why this thread seems surreal, if it were about cost cutting they wouldn't bring people to the US in the first place
- spandextwins 3y agoThe trends I’ve seen in the industry are to hire lots of H1b’s who just churn out questionable code, then hire sharp people to fix that code. Rinse and repeat. Soon the H1b’s will be replaced by AI, this might be the last batch, probably using them to fine tune the AI. Unfortunate.
- mistrial9 3y agothere are many kinds of code, with many kinds of lifecycles.. this comment is too vague to be useful
- mavelikara 3y agoMany of the AIs themselves are build by people on H-1B! You can easily verify that Open AI, for example, have made tens of H-1B applications. Also, please go check the names of authors of influential papers - many of them are from countries who don’t share a land border with the US, but work here. Yes, there are plenty of engineers who churn out questionable code. But those are not all folks on H-1B, or are H-1B exclusively on those roles.
- mikewarot 3y agoI abhor any system that results in second hand citizens, such as the H1B program. It suppresses the general welfare, in service of capital. If I were able to, I'd give everyone in the program an immediate option for citizenship, and then cancel it. We clearly need to reform our immigration system.
- Zetice 3y agoH1Bs aren’t second hand citizens, and canceling the H1B program would trigger an immediate humanitarian crisis, not to mention completely shut off America’s main advantage in innovation; the idea that we don’t care where you’re from if you’re great at what you do.
- _dujt 3y ago> we don’t care where you’re from if you’re great at what you do. Yes, that’s true but isn’t what is happening here. They’re not bringing in H1Bs for their talent, they’re firing US workers so they bring in H1Bs to do the same job, but cheaper. Break up ALL big tech.
- Zetice 3y agoIf they’re not better, the company will get worse, and be overtaken eventually. In my experience, they’re plenty good enough, often overqualified.
- ecf 3y agoAll well and good but I never mentioned performance. Of course they’re able to do the job, no doubts there. But the bottom line is US companies are firing US workers not because they need to, but because they want an excuse to hire cheaper workers through an immigration program.
- Zetice 3y agoThere is nothing at all special about a US worker. Welcome to the world, where people who aren’t from or in the US also need to feed their families, and have just as much a right to do so as Americans do.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago“Low paid”? I’m an immigrant myself and know how the visa application process works. There are a few mechanisms in place to prevent H-1B holders to receive lower wages than their colleagues, first and foremost the PERM, which guarantees similar wages in the same occupation and area of employment. If Google or anyone else are hiring H-1B visa holders directly, they have to pay them accordingly to their own standards. Also, visa salaries have to be publicly available. It’s not like they could lie about it. When people speak of visa holders as “cheap” labour, they probably think of IT consultants hired by Indian companies, which regularly are the worst offenders.
- mrits 3y agoH-1B have no leverage and can get in emergency hire situations. This encourages exploitation. Like a slave they might be lucky and have a good master.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoWhile I agree that getting fired as a H-1B could end up terribly, I have yet to encounter a single visa holder that's grossly underpaid or mistreated. > Like a slave they might be lucky and have a good master. Can't take this kind of hyperbole seriously.
- mrits 3y agoYou aren't supposed to take hyperbole literally. I didn't hire H1B workers because I couldn't find Java programmers in the US...
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> You aren't supposed to take hyperbole literally. I didn't say "literally", but "seriously". > I didn't hire H1B workers because I couldn't find Java programmers in the US... You are misdirecting your anger at the program, instead of the abusers, which are never FAANG companies but large IT consultancy corporations like Tata. If your company is hiring H-1B visa holders at a rate way below market, they are committing fraud. Again, not an issue with the visa holders themselves, but your company HR personnel being absolute crooks.
- gniv 3y agoThere's nothing really new in this article. These companies hire H1B's all the time. There is no evidence that they are low paid. I was an H1B at [FAANG] and I had a bigger salary and more stock options than most of my teammates (not sure why, but I think I was more aggressive in asking for raises). I also received help to get my green card quickly.
- fareesh 3y agoAre there any political candidates on the Presidential ballot for 2024 who might be willing to hold corporations accountable for these types of practices with stricter enforcement or perhaps changing immigration policy?
- mistrial9 3y agomost executives need to a) look good while talking to the mass, but in fact b) steer by the wants and needs of other executives IMHO
- renewiltord 3y agoI get it. High income antiwork congregates on blind and low income antiwork congregates on HN. H-1B hiring has dates that matter that you're lined up to do. Go read "Important Dates" here https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-electronic-registration-process https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary... Ultimately, the Silicon Valley job market is bimodal. If you don't make $500k+ here, it's not because a H-1B worker is taking your job. It's because you're not good enough at interviewing. Because people are hiring even now.
- horns4lyfe 3y agoYou clearly don’t get it, you just made an unrelated argument. And ya, obviously if you don’t make a half million dollars you don’t have a good enough resume and don’t interview well enough to make that much. That’s tiny portion of jobs and not what anyone here is talking about. Truly a pointless, navel-gazing comment.
- renewiltord 3y agoThe "low paid H-1Bs" making 2x more than people complaining those guys are in slavery has to be somewhat funny at least. You've got to be better off than the person described as being enslaved.
- raverbashing 3y agoNot surprising attitude from these companies, at this point H1B are more "warm bodies" hired for low wages than hiring for talent (with all respect to the recipients of those visas) But why does this site looks like an intranet site "best viewed with IE6"?
- Mizoguchi 3y agoAs a once H1B holder I can confirm this is actually a common practice not only a FAANGs but pretty much any large and medium size tech corporation in America. The visa is not the actual problem but the green card promise and process. It took me 6 years to be "free" and that's considered pretty fast compared to my Indian colleagues many who are still waiting more than a decade later. One of the teams I work with today is about 90% Indian, most from great schools like CMU, many overqualified for the job they do, all trapped in the green card promise making 1/3 of what they could be making somewhere else.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> ... all trapped in the green card promise making 1/3 of what they could be making somewhere else. Your colleagues need to find a lawyer, then. Visa holders don't need to stay employed in the same company to obtain a green card. And if they really are underpaid compared to other coworkers, that's a clear case of visa fraud against the employer.
- hokepokedoke 3y agoThis topic is a lightning rod and it seems we're conflating a bunch of things. All these things can be separately true. 1) H1B's are abused 2) Immigrants, like any other people, can form cliques at work 3) Companies do layoffs while simultaneously hiring 4) H1B semi-indenture the hired immigrant First off the bat, this is a clickbaity article. The literal implication is FANG laid off and FANG also hired H1Bs therefore FANG laid off Americans to employ lowly-skilled H1Bs. This is pure sleight of hand. Facebook's had ~20k layoffs and ~3k H1B hires. It'd be easy to claim a wholesale clean out/swap out if Facebook successfully hired ~10000 to 20k H1Bs. Secondly, H1B hires usually include a mix of net new hires (say a college grad joining facebook) and existing employee (I work at facebook and want to switch to an H1B visa). Thirdly, H1Bs are usually lodged independently of layoffs or better put, H1Bs are lodged several months in advance. A decent chunk of those H1B hires started their application process 16-18 months ago. You cannot just fire someone and immediately pick an H1B. The H1B process is independent and nondeterministic (or random because it takes several months to process an application & it all depends on the lottery). It's pretty blatant the article doesn't even mention the number of visas awarded. It also doesn't even bother backing up the 'low-salaried' claim (fun fact, all H1B salary info is public so you can actually do the math yourself and see if say Amazon's H1B salaries are 'low'/'deflated'. Spoiler, no such thing) (I'll also add, the energy required to perform a conspiracy of multiple managers coordinating to mass replace american workers at FANG could boil the sun. I think labor collusion happens i.e. a do-not-poach from X company, but H1B would be practically infeasible at distributed semiautonomous Google/Facebook hiring teams. But hey, I guess it's doable but not worth the RoI) Secondly, H1B abuse definitely happens and we literally know who the obvious culprits are. These are the standard offshoring culprits. I'm not going to mention them by name here but they are responsible for most of the horror stories you hear i.e. having an american train their literal replacement Thirdly, I totally get it. Tech is a tough-to-hire industry and hiring is a zero sum game (if i were an economist, i'd argue the productivity gains from a diverse skilled workforce actually makes the pie bigger but that's for another day). If I were American I would be pissed off at the idea of a bunch of foreigners coming in and taking my jobs. But that's not what's happening in this article. The last thing is the almost xenophobia which I don't think should be relevant to H1B hiring, but idk folks. If a PhD team is full of a bunch of folks from Bleurgh, of course the Bleurghians will clique up. It's naturally human tendency especially if you're a foreigner. I literally see Americans do this wherever they go :). But sometimes some people do experience stone-wall cliques where the Bleurghians refuse to even attempt to assimilate. That's a complicated issue, but I can see why it'd be frustrating. I once took a graduate CS class that was mostly full of Bloopians and I found it amusing when the instructor would sometimes conduct office hours in Bloopian Honestly the best way to fix immigration is to be mad at your government and compel them to make common sense regulations. We literally know who perpetuates H1B abuse but the USCIS doesn't have the means to fully stamp it out. USCIS is woefully understaffed and inundated and like any government bureau, pretty slow. The government, because of partisanship, has been pretty much roadblocked on common-sense immigration for decades.
- donnie12345 3y ago:(
- rhaway84773 3y agoThis article is a nothingburger. These companies laid off a bunch of people. Some of whom were H1Bs. And they’re hiring a bunch of people. Some of whom are H1Bs. That’s simply a commentary on large companies hiring even after doing layoffs which is pretty standard.
- horns4lyfe 3y agoH1B is meant to help companies when they can’t find Americans to hire. They just fired a bunch of Americans, and now they can’t find them?
- manuelabeledo 3y agoThey fired visa holders too [0] The article makes it sound like they are replacing Americans with low paid workers, which is absolutely false. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-layoffs-hit-h1b-visa-workers-hard-ca03c2cd https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-layoffs-hit-h1b-visa-worke...
- flappyeagle 3y agoMaybe the people they fired were bad?
- viknesh 3y agoWhere in the article does it justify "low paid"?? Given that H1B salaries and job titles are public, and so is levels.fyi, its trivially easy for the authors to be able to fact check this. Unless it's just a scare piece designed to feed into a narrative. And then they managed to put the two indian FAANG CEOs in the picture, without even mentioning one of their companies? This is really junk journalism...
- lapcat 3y agoThis is a direct link to the article: https://www.leefang.com/p/big-tech-resumed-hiring-foreign-workers https://www.leefang.com/p/big-tech-resumed-hiring-foreign-wo... The moneycontrol.com link is merely a summary of that.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoThe original article is even more misleading. I would expect that it was written by someone with zero knowledge of US immigration policies.
- lapcat 3y agoI'm just going by the HN guidelines: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- donnie12345 3y agoSo US corporations need H1b because they can't find enough workers that don't accept poor working condition s.
- donnie12345 3y agoDon't hesitate. Let's have lively debate over this issue.
- pharmakom 3y agoHas Google given up on hiring the best engineers? I remember a time when the interview process was very tough (and erred on the side of caution) but they paid top money / benefits.
- Crontab 3y agoI don't mind H1B visas but I do worry about the amount of power it gives the employer over the workers who are under it. It just seems ripe for abuse.
- Argonaut998 3y agoWhy is this allowed? This is blatant corruption. Firstly the H1B was never intended to be used to hire cheap labour en-masse from abroad, in fact quite the opposite. Why is no politician cracking down on it? It’s madness and does not help the US or its citizens in any way, shape or form.
- mr_tristan 3y agoI don’t suspect this is as nefarious as just stupid bureaucracy. My company has kept hiring interns immediately after laying off 10% of their staff, “to keep the funnel open”. H1Bs seem to be organized similarly; it’s a different “system” to companies and tends to be not that aligned with general hiring. Of course, at my job I’m now surrounded by junior engineers on a very old legacy product. These juniors are very much not equipped, and struggle. I mention this will take months of training and mentoring, challenging the teams ability to execute on product in any case. It appears protecting a head count matters more than real results. It’s saddening to watch these silly management trends take over in the industry, but, it just looks like the big companies are due for being challenged.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- afinlayson 3y agoUnless something has changed. My h1b salary has always been close to if not more than my peers.. not saying it doesn’t happen, just never did for me.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoSame here.
- bigfryo 3y agoNow that I am retired and living on a fixed income. I like immigrant labor because it's cheap.
- bigfryo 3y agoNow that I am retired and living on a fixed income I like cheap immigrant labor.. But when I was still working, I disliked it. Funny how that works.
- cannabis_sam 3y agoNon-unionized tech workers finally facing the music… The smart ones know what to do, hopefully they will be a majority against the ones indoctrinated into right wing market fundamentalism. In any case, the unionization issue will sort itself out eventually, when the spoiled assholes are no longer in the industry, but damn it’s probably gonna be painful for a while.
- david38 3y agoThis is almost laughable. A massive chunk of big tech exists to put others out of business, and by extension, out of jobs. Simplest case: how many companies used to employ a team to administer their MS email solution? Outlook was once very dominant. I know my university did. Then places started jumping to Gmail because it saved money and was more reliable. You didn’t have to just trust your small onsite team. Those jobs were cut. Yes, they found other employment usually, but that’s because of the relentless growth of tech. A strong union would have done what? Prevented the switch to gmail?
- cannabis_sam 3y agoYes, tech eliminates other jobs, and like what the OG luddites had a problem with, the issue is not the technology or even the eliminated jobs, it’s the effect on the labor population. In the situation we are actually discussing in this thread, normal employees where terminated, and then replaced by employees on H1B visas, people in a vastly more precarious position, allowing the companies far more control over its employees. If you’re an employee, I’m curious how you feel this is valuable to you? Especially in the longer run. Are you claiming people are not employed to maintain MS Exchange? That’s just a fairly simple issue of ignorance; get out of the SV tech bubble. Those jobs are not gone, albeit somewhat reduced in numbers by competitors providing better service like you say. Unfortunately this also brings along the concept of outsourcing these jobs to countries with lower salaries because these “feelings-based” overpaid CEOs lack any other substantial ideas for reducing costs. A union that opposed this kind of globalization arbitrage, would have forced these overpaid CEOs to provide policies that actually increased profits, instead of simply exploit desperate employees in other countries. Ergo, weak unionization creates inefficiencies, who would have thought?? See also amazon drivers unionization efforts. A union would have very simply blocked the idea that drivers should be obliged to piss in bottles and shit in bags while on delivery. I think we can safely conclude that most people enjoy deliveries NOT contaminated by feces, YMMV. I mean, unless you are the rare tech employee who enjoys doing your toilet needs in a garbage can in the middle of your hot desked, open office. I’ll leave it as an open exercise for others to determine what’s more laughable.
- cvccvroomvroom 3y agoOf course. Money Hoovering megacorps gonna megacorp. I had an H-1B boss at Meta before layoffs. They didn't lay off the non-engineer workers who sat around the office and socialized all day... hot seat rto bullshit. The main way out is worker-owned co-ops.
- jscipione 3y agoThis is The Great Replacement, the systematic extermination of the white race by mass importing non-whites.
- bettyfrank470 3y ago[dead]