Your experience is not my experience. First, when a company lays off 20,000 people there is generally little regard for who the individuals are. You see this o

Your experience is not my experience. First, when a company lays off 20,000 people there is generally little regard for who the individuals are. You see this over and over again. Except for the very top performers who end up protected, these are usually projects / divisions / etc. getting killed en masse. Sometimes people have the opportunity to spend a few months interviewing to obtain another job in the same company, but not always. I've not been out of work for a moment of the 22 years since I left school, and have no problem with the Visa programs, etc. I personally believe we all benefit from opening up competition for positions. Having said that, what I've seen is that looking strictly at technical ability I would say that Visa employees have in general been no better and no worse than the average US employee, but when it comes to "soft skills" are typically much worse off (and not just communication because of language barriers, but in other areas as well). They've fared no better when it comes to upkeep of their skills. They've fared no better when it comes to "leveling off" and hitting a ceiling where they no longer advance in terms of salary, etc. Like the typical US worker, they get married, have kids, get a social life, and generally stop improving their skills. By that point most have green cards and/or citizenship. All of the companies I've worked for are large prestigious companies, some of which have set records for number of resumes received per month in the industry at different points in time, so again your experience might be different if you're talking about IT shops or start-ups.