Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens • Hacker News Board

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#271

Post by buckle8017 » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 12:58 AM UTC

exhilaration wrote: post #164

buckle8017 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing this article didn't mention and the author likely doesn't know is that there's a guide going around instructing people on how to apply for H1B jobs on forums like 4chan.

I've got out of work friends that would love to see this guide. Please share.

Unfortunately they will not hire Americans even if they're qualified because what they really want are slaves.

With H1B fired means deported.

The people following the guide are just making it impossible to review all of the applications.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#272

Post by alephnerd » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:02 AM UTC

tomhow wrote: post #254

alephnerd wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand, but why is similar moderation not extended when "H1Bs" come up on HN? To be brutally honesty, why is it acceptable to bash H1B abuse but not B1/2 or VWP abuse on HN. In both cases, it is employers mislabeling and potentially breaking immigration and labor laws, yet it is acceptable to talk derogatorily about those on H1Bs and not on other visas, even though rates of visa misuse are consistent across mos…

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I understand where you're coming from. Our role is not to moderate for or against any "side" in a debate. Our role is to uphold the guidelines, so that anyone with a reasonable position on any topic has fair opportunity to express it. My perception from moderating HN for years is that there is generally much more criticism toward companies (including/especially Silicon Valley compa…

Thanks for the kinds words and being open to listen to my feedback!

> Our role is not to moderate for or against any "side" in a debate. Our role is to uphold the guidelines, so that anyone with a reasonable position on any topic has fair opportunity to express it.

Absolutely and no argument there

> But if you see evidence that contradicts that (i.e., comments that are unkind towards visa-holders or that discuss them in any way that breaks the guidelines), you can certainly flag them and email us so we can take a look. We can only moderate what we see and there's a lot of stuff that we don't see.

I have done so on multiple occasions, but have seen a number of those comments remain up.

For example, this comment [0].

Additionally, in this very thread, we have an unsourced comment [1] parroting a common trope, which is legimately false in most cases (and as a member of the YC community, I'm sure you can get this validated), and with significant controversial discussion about this

I also see constant mentions of Infosys and TCS, but never mentions of massive European firms like EPAM which do similar shenanigans and advertise it to new hires across the CEE [2] or Globant and LATAM [3]. While the Indian firms are large, and it is acceptable to have not heard about Globant, EPAM is absolutely massive and every F100 uses them.

I can provide more robust data on the general trend, but it is something that would take some time, but I would really really appreciate if the YC employees affiliated with HN do a deep dive into this.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228366

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45224087

[2] - https://www.epam.com/careers/epam-without-borders/usa

[3] - https://stayrelevant.globant.com/en/culture/globant-experien...

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#273

Post by itake » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:02 AM UTC

Why is hiding the jobs necessary? I applied for one of these jobs years ago.

The recruiter told, "I have no idea how you applied for this job, but its not available for you. let me have you interview a different, but similar, role."

What was I supposed to do other than say, "ok! Send over the other job description."?

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#274

Post by DaSHacka » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:05 AM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #251

nyolfen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens different wages on that basis. larger pool means lower wages. this is so fundamental and obvious that it feels like i'm being gaslit when i see shit like this.

The US needs immigrants. We need the best and the brightest. Those are the folks starting the new job creating companies. That’s what keeps us so innovative. The H1B is a good gauntlet through which we can get those immigrants. Ended it is shortsighted.

> The US needs immigrants.

At the expense of the citizenry?

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#275

Post by lovich » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:05 AM UTC

pandaman wrote: post #244

yunyu wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prevents infosys/wipro slop from overwhelming the system, and filters down the incoming roles to only those that can't be filled by a US citizen (i.e. specialist technical jobs, top engineers commanding $500k/yr)

It's not just Infosys doing PERM fraud, around 2020 Meta had been barred from filing PERM due to overwhelming fraud. And are there really 85K unique and impossible to find in the US individuals every year? If these exist they will take a small fraction of H-1B allocation and the rest will go to the fresh grads, as it's now.

I’d be fine, as a citizen competing against migrants for jobs, if h1bs were structured so that they

A: were the top end pay, so they pushed the pay scale up

B: were uncoupled from employment. A company could pay the cost to let someone enter, but that person should be able to jump jobs day 0.

I’m not suggesting the specific implementation but I feel like if those two guiding directives were kept, both society and the individual workers would benefit from brain draining the rest of the planet while simultaneously pushing worker comp higher.

Has anyone suggested a significant change to the h1b system like this beyond just a close it all/open it all binary?

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#276

Post by truffet » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:07 AM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #248

nyolfen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens different wages on that basis. larger pool means lower wages. this is so fundamental and obvious that it feels like i'm being gaslit when i see shit like this.

Well it's because by this logic we should just stop Americans from studying for computing jobs as well, that way those who remain will have higher wages. Just as the Luddites tried to stop the rise of industrialization that threatened to bring the skills they used to employ to the wider public at lower costs. The real answer is that immigrants create enough economic demand to be net positive even for Americans, for m…

[dead]

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#277

Post by truffet » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:08 AM UTC

dyauspitr wrote: post #251

nyolfen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No Silicon Valley company that I know of pays H-1B and citizens different wages on that basis. larger pool means lower wages. this is so fundamental and obvious that it feels like i'm being gaslit when i see shit like this.

The US needs immigrants. We need the best and the brightest. Those are the folks starting the new job creating companies. That’s what keeps us so innovative. The H1B is a good gauntlet through which we can get those immigrants. Ended it is shortsighted.

[dead]

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#278

Post by tmule » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:08 AM UTC

srameshc wrote: post #46

teachrdan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do they favor hiring Indians in general, or Hindu Indians in particular. (To the exclusion of Muslim Indians)

I don't think so. I feel Indian managers have a tendency to hire anyone else but Indians. If they have to favor Hindu, Brahmin, Muslim is very subjective, depending on that person's background, but I would say very rare. If they really have a prefrence, it will be "the connect", like if they both can connect based on region (ex: Delhi or that region) but very few Indians of current generation would care about caste o…

This is a remarkable claim. Not a single Indian in tech that I know in my personal or professional life - numbering over a hundred - has ever disputed that Indians have strong (sub)ethnic affinities that color their views hiring. In addition, nepotism is a real thing in Indian culture. I’d be laughed out of a room with aforesaid folks if I claimed “Indian managers have a tendency to hire anyone else but Indians”. This is either deliberately misleading to “save face” on behalf of the community (another cultural trait), or you’re utterly oblivious in an outlying way to how things work.

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#279

Post by AuthError » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:09 AM UTC

handoflixue wrote: post #266

tziki wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Top 1% of artists earn about as much as the average software engineer. Ranking people purely based on salary is turning h1b into a visa for people in specific professions.

Genuinely curious: why do we need H1B visas for artists? My understanding is that H1B visas are meant to cover highly-skilled work that can't be done by locals, and "art" doesn't seem like a field with a shortage of local candidates?

this also holds true for chemical, biomedical researchers, mechanical engineers working in deep tech, software engineering is such an anomaly that it's hard to do income based lottery without overindexing on swe market

Re: Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens

#280

Post by cryo28 » Sat, Sep 13, 2025, 1:10 AM UTC

woah wrote: post #13

I'm certainly not an expert in immigration law but this whole system seems pretty stupid. On one hand, H1B holders can be paid below market rates because it is very hard for them to switch jobs. For this reason, they create resentment from American citizens. On the other hand, it would be extremely detrimental to the US to kill the golden goose of our tech industry by turning it into some kind of forced welfare for c…

This is the bigest misconception that H-1B is meant to hire the best. It is NOT. Foreign H-1Bs are typically rank-and-file employees to take mid-level jobs en masses. The best and brightest cannot go through H-1B due to oversubscription and resulting lottery. Thus the best and brightest are using different visa types like O-1 and self-apply for green cards using EB1/EB2 National Interest Waivers.