Earlier quoted context omitted.
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If it was manufactured, where is my sister-in-law’s fit and healthy dad? Oh yeah he’s dead from Covid.
Perhaps the US shouldn’t be funding gain of function research in other countries.
Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
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Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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If it was manufactured, where is my sister-in-law’s fit and healthy dad? Oh yeah he’s dead from Covid.
Tbh that’s a pretty lame appeal to emotion argument. An event can be “manufactured” while also having real negative externalities.
I’m not making any statement on the veracity of the claim that the pandemic was manufactured, just pointing out a flaw in the logic here.
Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#53Once you switch to full remote, why not hire from Central and South America at maybe 1/4 the price of a Californian.
It would be great if the cost of living in the US was 1/4 what it is, just like another country. Best gig for a US programmer is remote work from Bali or another beautiful place with reasonable prices.
That being said, these companies don't really provide much as far as stable US jobs go so it would be better to encourage entrepreneurial activity for US programmers.
Another word of advice for programmers. Do what you can to own the IP of your work. Whether it's open source or your own proprietary IP. Work for hire where the company owns the IP if your work is a dead end job.
Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#54Once you switch to full remote, why not hire from Central and South America at maybe 1/4 the price of a Californian.
Americans like to think they have a monopoly on skilled programmers. But the reality is that most countries have them and they will do the same work for a fraction of the price. Everything is done over the internet these days so it doesn't matter that much where you are located.
We still have a monopoly on good language practices for American english and/or AFAIK how to actually build something that solves business needs rather than requirements.
We saw similar between 2005ish-2015ish. Lots of offshoring where you could get whatever you 'wanted' built, but it was exactly what you 'wanted' and not what actually made sense.
By this I am referring to contract houses that weren't quite 'code genies' but still would deliver products that were barely workable upon delivery. More than one shop I worked at over the last decade actually -suffered- from this.
Magically, most orgs who could figure out how to deliver even semi passable/realistic functional requirements could get the same done in house for a LOT less money.
Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#55Whoever wrote this doesn't understand how the H-1B system works. Most of these applications are for existing employees of the company who are on some other kind of work authorization (like EAD or OPT). Because of the lottery they have to reapply every year for 3-4 years until their authorization expires. The layoffs have nothing to do with anything.
>The layoffs have nothing to do with anything.
They probably should though, at least I think so.
With mass layoffs of this scale, it seems like H1B roles should be the on the top of chopping block if we're keeping in the spirit of the actual purpose of the program. That means those H1B roles should have been so unique and world class talented that they were considered irreplaceable by the other thousands laid off. It seems they should be required to show justification this holds. It seems this should be pretty easy to provide evidence for if your holders are say Google Fellows (picking Google as an example) or the Peter Norvigs of the world.
I have nothing against H1B holders, I do however have a lot against businesses who often abuse these programs to suppress labor costs and dangle green cards as a piece of leverage. To be fair, big tech companies tend to be better about this and pay competitively for these roles though not always.
Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#56The only way this could be a problem is if you assume employees are fungible. But they aren't. You may have too many of one type of worker, and not enough of another, so it would make perfect sense to lay off the first ones, and hire foreign workers for the second one.
>The only way this could be a problem is if you assume employees are fungible.
Which Google does by pushing every hire through the same hiring funnel.
Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#57Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#58Whoever wrote this doesn't understand how the H-1B system works. Most of these applications are for existing employees of the company who are on some other kind of work authorization (like EAD or OPT). Because of the lottery they have to reapply every year for 3-4 years until their authorization expires. The layoffs have nothing to do with anything.
That doesn't make a difference to the H-1B requirements. No other domestic worker could do the same job? It's a scam.
No other domestic worker could do that job for the same price. You see, we just went through layoffs for cost saving purposes, and have nearly no money in the bank (just $100B), so we can only hire these H-1B visa holders or our business will go under.
Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#59I don't see why that is inconsistent. Companies doing layoffs keep hiring people, what are the news?
Well, consider a different scenario.
I was on a two-person team that was, due to recent client poaching, pretty severely overstaffed. Our manager had just been promoted and we got a new one hired in.
He viewed our lack of work to do as temporary and started recruiting. He eventually hired a third member and we started training her. After the first day of training, I was fired with no notice and no severance. The manager remarked, in the surprise exit interview, that he had taken a look at staffing recently and we had too much.
There are a couple interesting things to consider here:
1. We had been severely overstaffed (as advertised!) for several months before he even started hiring. He was well aware of it.
2. My team's original manager had offered to me that I was free to live anywhere in the world, as long as it had an internet connection. He left the team so soon after I joined that this didn't happen. But the new manager gave many indications of being acutely uncomfortable with the idea that I had made a request that he wasn't willing to grant immediately.
My question to you is, was I fired because we were overstaffed, or was that mentioned in the exit interview for no particular reason?
And my followup question is, did the companies discussed here do layoffs because they were overstaffed, or because they felt they had the right amount of staff, but they wanted to pay them less?
Re: Big Tech Resumed Hiring Foreign Workers Just Weeks After Layoffs
#60There are multiple missing things for this: 1. Layoffs happened regardless of visa status, so visa workers were part of the layoffs. 2. The visa applications for H1B could be for workers already working in the company under a different visa like TN or F1 3. The positions affected by layoffs and positions filing for H1B could be different. For example, a front end position may be affected by layoffs, but the visa appl…
>Many of the Google visas are for new employees, with some starting as soon as August 17th. Refutes at least two points you made if not three..
The application process takes in general no less than a year.