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Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

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Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#91

Post by RachelF »

jmwilson wrote: post #20

An earlier article has a bit more description of the complaint: https://archive.md/67DiB For those curious about how this works, the company has to show it tried and couldn't hire a US resident, but they don't have to try very hard... so the company posts a brief job opening in a local newspaper. When nobody responds, because it's the newspaper, tada! Proof there was no American-based talent capable of filling the jo…

Another trick is to post the job on Linkedin - for one minute.

I've seen a few job ads that are active from 11:59-12:00

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#92

Post by JPKab »

a-and wrote: post #49

In this thread there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding regarding both the Permanent/Temporary visa distinction, as well as what Facebook did. The lawsuit refers to the Permanent Labor Certification process - the process of certifying that a position cannot be filled by a US citizen. This is one of the first early steps of an employer sponsoring an employee for a Green Card (so called immigrant visas, not H1-B). I…

I'm not disagreeing with you on your comment at all, but the "much demonized H1 process" was legitimately abused by a lot of bad actors who violated the spirit of the visa (talent you can't find in US) in pursuit of simply using it to hire at a lower rate a captive employee who you can freely exploit.

I was at a company that abused it, and we were hiring DBAs whose entire job was to administer MS SQL server. There were plenty of people locally who could do this, but none who were willing to work 70 hours a week for the very average salary.

The US government wasn't even sharing any data on the visas publicly until the Trump administration forced them. Once the data was public, it was blatantly obvious as to why they hadn't shared the data before. Wipro, Cognizant, etc were hogging the H1Bs for labor arbitrage purposes, making it hard for people looking for actual rare talent to get anyone in country. I had a friend from Pune who was stuck waiting in India for 2 years (an amazingly talented ML engineer) due to us not being able to get him a visa while Wipro was stealing them all in the same region for their labor arbitrage business.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#93

Post by darth_avocado »

kfprt wrote: post #88
sushid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These roles are varied and not traditionally new grad roles. The qualification requirement is also not just a degree. It can be something like 3+ experience with some infra tooling. Lastly, I think we'd all agree that a graduate with the same degree can have varied performance and there's no guarantee that some sponsored person will come back with the degree and the skills they clearly need ASAP.

They claim they are in desperate need and that's why they have to hire foreigners. Surely 6 years is enough time for them to rectify the situation if it were as desperate as they claim. If they can't find a solution in 6 years then they are either unmotivated or unwilling. This is their problem, not ours. If your business was to collapse in 6 years why would you not spend that time finding a solution.

Because you’re assuming a static system. If everything stopped moving, you need x people, x us citizens that you could train, you had 6 years where the people stay with you, and you have a guarantee that after you put 6 years the people will stay with you till you get back what you invested in these people, then yes that is a viable situation.

However, things move and move fast. And it’s not like companies don’t try to find solutions, they do, but they balance them with their need to stay competitive in the market. That is why you see initiatives all around.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#94

Post by Kim_Bruning »

newfriend wrote: post #85
davidw wrote: post #22

The elephant in the room: make it too hard to employ talented foreigners, and sooner or later companies will just open up offices there, rather than here. Remote work has only made this easier. I want smart, hard working, talented people coming to the US, myself.

I want MY government to prioritize its citizens, i.e. ME.

Ok, I'll bite.

How about we propose the following deal: I'll let your company do business in my country unfettered by extra rules and tariffs, if you let my company do business in yours on the same terms.

Now you're doing business in two whole countries instead of one. Is that a better or a worse deal than the one you were proposing before?

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#95

Post by dang_p3n1s »

kfprt wrote: post #87
closeparen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think success at this kind of work has more to do with traits than with education or experience per se. Probably there are some Americans with the traits who are undereducated for preventable reasons.

Traits? What traits? Is the implication here that Americans aren't hard workers? That's the only interpretation that parses.

americans aren’t particularly hard workers…

Does that “parse”…?

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#96

Post by kfprt »

darth_avocado wrote: post #90
kfprt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't companies also use the 6 years that they employ a foreigner to train an American worker to fill the position? A bachelors program is only 4 years and the company could sponsor it if they were in such desperate need.

Unfortunately a lot of these jobs aren’t exactly jobs that you can train someone from 0. These are jobs that require advanced education and the ability to be able to grasp certain concepts. They can’t just train anyone, but they can train university students in certain majors, which tbh they already do. All of these companies hire a TON of fresh grads, which is exactly what you’re saying, training someone to do the j…

I've yet to see an argument as to what the problem is that they can't fix in 6 years and an amount of money equal to a tech salary. It seems more likely the problem is that they want to underpay.

If H1B was restricted to advanced degrees such as PhD's I doubt many people would complain. It would certainly be more in line with the intent of the program. Why more Americans don't pursue STEM PhD's is an excellent question. Do you have any insight on that?

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#97

Post by random314 »

kfprt wrote: post #88
sushid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These roles are varied and not traditionally new grad roles. The qualification requirement is also not just a degree. It can be something like 3+ experience with some infra tooling. Lastly, I think we'd all agree that a graduate with the same degree can have varied performance and there's no guarantee that some sponsored person will come back with the degree and the skills they clearly need ASAP.

They claim they are in desperate need and that's why they have to hire foreigners. Surely 6 years is enough time for them to rectify the situation if it were as desperate as they claim. If they can't find a solution in 6 years then they are either unmotivated or unwilling. This is their problem, not ours. If your business was to collapse in 6 years why would you not spend that time finding a solution.

Checkout levels.fyi to see the salaries offered by Facebook. Facebook is not a university offering training. The job is not similar to plumbing where after a couple of months of "training" one person becomes fungible with another one.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#98

Post by davidw »

azinman2 wrote: post #28
davidw wrote: post #22

The elephant in the room: make it too hard to employ talented foreigners, and sooner or later companies will just open up offices there, rather than here. Remote work has only made this easier. I want smart, hard working, talented people coming to the US, myself.

There needs to be a balance as there’s an existing country that enabled these companies to exist and grow as large as they have on the backs of its treasure and blood. Personally I think we should be trying to get most of the worlds brightest to want to become citizens here. The issue is when companies have low skilled jobs that they want H1Bs using because they can pay them less and know they’ll stay around as they…

> low skilled jobs

Hard work is a skill in and of itself, that many of our ancestors who migrated here possessed - and not much else.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#99

Post by closeparen »

kfprt wrote: post #87
closeparen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think success at this kind of work has more to do with traits than with education or experience per se. Probably there are some Americans with the traits who are undereducated for preventable reasons.

Traits? What traits? Is the implication here that Americans aren't hard workers? That's the only interpretation that parses.

The intelligence and conscientiousness required to do high-end software engineering work may well be uniformly distributed. But I think we're probably at a point where there's more capital looking to hire people like this, than there are Americans like this.

Re: Facebook Settles with U.S. Gov over Improperly Reserving Jobs for Immigrants

#100

Post by kfprt »

darth_avocado wrote: post #93
kfprt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claim they are in desperate need and that's why they have to hire foreigners. Surely 6 years is enough time for them to rectify the situation if it were as desperate as they claim. If they can't find a solution in 6 years then they are either unmotivated or unwilling. This is their problem, not ours. If your business was to collapse in 6 years why would you not spend that time finding a solution.

Because you’re assuming a static system. If everything stopped moving, you need x people, x us citizens that you could train, you had 6 years where the people stay with you, and you have a guarantee that after you put 6 years the people will stay with you till you get back what you invested in these people, then yes that is a viable situation. However, things move and move fast. And it’s not like companies don’t try…

If you have both money and time and can't/won't find a solution then your business deserves to fail. That's capitalism. If everyone plays by the same rules then there is no competitive disadvantage. I am an optimist and believe that American corporations will rise to the challenge of reduced H1B abuse.
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