My Position On The Disney Layoffs • Hacker News Board

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#131

Post by dailo10 » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 7:19 PM UTC

shas3 wrote: post #9

justizin wrote: post #4

"I'm sharing news about it because this experience has taught me the H-1B Visa program needs to change to protect others in the future." Anyone who still supports FWD.us and believes that the US doesn't produce enough professionals to satisfy the needs of our businesses is straight up, while they are reading this, actually holding a crack pipe to their mouth.

Protectionism doesn't work. There is wide consensus among economists on comparative advantage [1]. Healthy, non-protectionist immigration policies have been proposed to have similar effects as free trade [2,3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage [2] http://www.economics.uci.edu/files/docs/micro/s07/Peri.pdf [3] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100008723963904434771045775512...

Actually, the dirty secret amongs development economists is that protectionism works when you're trying to establish yourself in an industry. If you look at a number of successful developing countries, they first created protectionist policies to nurture homegrown companies. Once those companies matured and acquired skills/knowledge, they slowly remove those policies to compete on a global level.

Of course, it's different for a developed country like the U.S. But I object to those who blithely proclaim that free trade is the best solution. Even when you look at the U.S., freer trade has led to clear winners and losers -- the winners being bigger profits for corporations, and the losers being those who have lost their jobs.

I'm not sure what a better solution looks like, but increasing globalization forces us to grapple with some very real issues and growing inequality.

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#132

Post by dj_doh » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 7:32 PM UTC

There are so many variables at play. Author is looking at it from a narrow window. I'd not blame him as this affects him personally. That said, what are some other variables?

(1) Polyfill Disney is a global company and their management have to balance hundred different priorities that includes reducing HR cost. Don't be shocked if all of these H1B/L1 replacements are replaced by some highly automated systems in the next 5-10years.

(2) Economics Ask yourself why are you using Uber over local taxi, Airbnb over Hilton, Target over Wholefoods? Be it corporation or individual, in all these cases, you are getting pretty much the same service at a reduced price. It's not a deal breaker when you are looking at replaceable cogs.

(3) Enforcement There are some gray areas. H1Bs should be used where local resources are difficult to find or not at par with job requirements. Companies based in Bay Area, NYC, Boston, Austin, Houston and Denver face this problem day in and day out. I don't know how this spans out across the geography.

(4) Skills If you are really good and someone who has been diligent about keeping his skills and knowledge up to date. You should have no problem finding your next gig. If you have a tendency to take the union mentality. That's probably not going to work.

(5) Attitude I tried and failed to get a friend's resume across our recruiter. He is a former federal software engineer whose best skills read ~ COBOL and SQL. He is living in Bay Area, but refuses to try shops like Hack Reactor. Never stops blaming foreign workers. Somehow under the illusion that he has a birthright to that job. Taking your environment for granted is not wise.

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#133

Post by Sammi » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #81

coldcode wrote: post #5

"... and they routinely sacrificed personal time and freedoms to help make your experience in the parks what it was". Never do this unless its a startup you own. You get paid for X to do Y hours and nothing more. Anything more is volunteer work for a for-profit employer.

> You get paid for X to do Y hours and nothing more. Some of the incentives I can think of: * possibility of a promotion, raise, bonus * profit-sharing plan * employee stock ownership plan

In reality people achieve higher pay and position much quicker by changing jobs. Staying at one company is screwing yourself over in comparison.

I know bonuses are used in sales quite a lot. Not so much in engineering. Profit-sharing and stock are straight up pipe dreams in most instances.

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#134

Post by exelius » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 8:23 PM UTC

boca wrote: post #102

exelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the author is simply mistaken that H1-Bs are the problem. H1-Bs are limited enough that they can't be responsible for the volume of outsourcing. They also carry salary parity requirements, and while H1-B holders rarely actually make market salary, the savings still aren't enough to prompt a wave of outsourcing. There was a problem at one time with H1-Bs, but the H1-B lottery has become so competitive that i…

Just want to share my perspective as an Indian who was in US for 6 years until I came back to India a couple of months back. I am not sure why you think companies can bring folks from other countries (India in your example) at a meagre salary of $25K per year and that too in a managerial capacity. You are directly questioning the work that folks at USCIS do. I was in US on L1B initially, which is different from L1A t…

It absolutely does happen at the scale I'm describing because part of my job is trying to place guys from India on L-1 visas :) I try to be ethical about it (i.e. only bringing the actual team leaders who are acting at least somewhat in a management capacity) but I see some of my less-ethical competitors abusing the L-1 process to an astonishing degree for grunt-level QA and development resources. Also, you only need to prove the "managerial capacity" thing when the visa is initially issued; they're usually good for a few years and they don't check up on what you're doing after the first time.

And I'm not questioning the work that CIS does; I'm just saying that it's very, very difficult to say someone is not working in a managerial capacity based on false documentation. There's no way they can tell false documentation from real documentation. But for L-1 visas there is no salary parity requirement, only a requirement that the company cover all expenses for the employee while they are in the US. So the IT body shops take advantage of this, and it leads to entire divisions of large companies being laid off and replaced by cheap labor.

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#135

Post by exelius » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 8:31 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #103

exelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the author is simply mistaken that H1-Bs are the problem. H1-Bs are limited enough that they can't be responsible for the volume of outsourcing. They also carry salary parity requirements, and while H1-B holders rarely actually make market salary, the savings still aren't enough to prompt a wave of outsourcing. There was a problem at one time with H1-Bs, but the H1-B lottery has become so competitive that i…

>They also carry salary parity requirements This is easily gamed by creating "new" positions with trivially different responsibilities than the old positions you want to get rid of. Now you don't have an established salary history to work with. That's on top of having H1B's by the shorthairs because its so difficult for them to switch jobs, thus the 60+ workweek the domestic workers rightfully balked at is achievable…

> Its likely an H1B has an undergrad degree for a foreign university that's little more than a diploma mill anyway.

Yeah, this is unfortunately the case. There are only a few internationally reputable universities in India, so if they were unable to get into one of the top schools in the country, they usually have to follow up with a masters from a reputable US university if they ever want to work outside India. I just view someone with an undergrad degree from India and a masters in some technical discipline from a US school as being about the same as someone with an undergrad degree from a US school.

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#136

Post by prostoalex » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

Sammi wrote: post #133

prostoalex wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get paid for X to do Y hours and nothing more. Some of the incentives I can think of: * possibility of a promotion, raise, bonus * profit-sharing plan * employee stock ownership plan

In reality people achieve higher pay and position much quicker by changing jobs. Staying at one company is screwing yourself over in comparison. I know bonuses are used in sales quite a lot. Not so much in engineering. Profit-sharing and stock are straight up pipe dreams in most instances.

True, I was just pointing out that large companies are typically aware of 8-to-5 attitude, and at least try to mitigate that, so an employee that's kicking in extra hours might not be foolish after all.

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#137

Post by bharath28 » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 9:57 PM UTC

ta2938489 wrote: post #116

bharath28 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Community" is loose term - choosing to limit the boundaries to "your country" is arbitrary. There is an argument to be made that having the people best suited for a job work on it will improve long term economic viability of the product itself and in turn availability of the product to the "community". There is also the risk of losing the best talent to an entity outside this arbitrary definition of community and th…

Borders are another way of saying "local control". If, all things being equal, you would rather that political decisions happen closer to you than further away, then you are in favor of (arbitrary) borders. I think it's an error to view concepts such as "community" and "your country" as quaint abstractions while putting full faith in "the product" and "economic viability". Economic arguments are important, but not co…

Economic optimality, in this case, is merely one of any number of quantifiable measures you can use to define what is decent vs terrible. How does the place of birth of people working jobs (that they are good at) change what you call decent or terrible - what is your measure?

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#138

Post by jgoewert » Wed, Jun 17, 2015, 10:10 PM UTC

student123 wrote: post #65

Yet another xenophobic article. What if disney hired an American contractor that replaced their old infrastructure with new age docker/cloud/YC-funded stack and were able to save costs by cutting 250 positions replacing them with 50 pure blooded americans (oh wait and another 10 pround "undocumented" immigrants). The reality is that this person is on the wrong side of efficiency argument. And he is just blaming his i…

So, "xenophobic" is the new word for being upset for when a business figures out a way to skirt laws to destroy people's lives and careers that they spent years working towards.

Thanks for the dictionary update.

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#139

Post by harimau » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 12:37 AM UTC

jobu wrote: post #62

This is a great line: "If you view your staff as a liability, it's more likely a leadership problem." If a company's employees are not an asset, then leadership hasn't done it's job of either weeding out the bad people or spending enough money to attract and grow good people.

The leadership was able to increase their compensation 42% over the course of a year last year so, if that's what their focus is for this year, then maybe they are by cutting these folks, reducing costs, etc for whatever metrics get them more cash.

Re: My Position On The Disney Layoffs

#140

Post by shas3 » Thu, Jun 18, 2015, 1:53 AM UTC

makeitsuckless wrote: post #127

shas3 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any immigration policy short of opening the borders completely is "protectionist". How so? The idea of comparative advantage is that one country has a market, another, the means to provide for that market and you facilitate this 'trade'. India, China, pretty much most countries have plenty of top notch talent that cannot be satiated by opportunities within their own countries. These are not necessarily geniuses, bu…

Non-protectionist would be free traffic across borders like within the EU. Any immigration policy is a form of protectionism. BTW, I find your naive notion of the US as the promised land rather unsettling. Personally, I don't know anybody who would want to immigrate to the US, and especially not for the archaic, exploitative work culture. Yes, this is matter of perspective. But you seem to be lacking any other perspe…

Wow! Gratuitous negativity?