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H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

h1bexposed.tech

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Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#41

Post by phonon »

silisili wrote: post #13
Suppafly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No the solution is hiring American workers This, I don't understand how we have tons of un- and underemployed American workers and yet somehow businesses have convinced the government that they need to import workers.

The answer isn't one a lot of people are willing to talk about, but personally, I don't care. The problem isn't "businesses", it's other Indians. They take entire tech orgs over, then only hire each other. They make up bizarre reasons why US workers won't fit while spamming H1B applications. Before you grab your pitchforks, or try to dox me for racism one, please understand it's not all Indian people, obviously. Ther…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5fXrPMGM5E From a former senior employee at American Express.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#42

Post by [deleted] »

650 wrote: post #2

With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates comp…

[deleted]

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#43

Post by TitaRusell »

650 wrote: post #2

With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates comp…

Most people want to stay in their own country with their own culture and close to their friends and family.

In my own country we are actually seeing people GO BACK to Asia because places like Vietnam now have a viable middle class lifestyle.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#44

Post by gymbeaux »

This is a cool website and it highlights just how little data is out there regarding H-1B visas. There's some data on a government website but it's usually several years out of date if memory serves. It's basically impossible to prove that companies are abusing the H-1B program without hacking into their servers or someone whistleblowing.

Here are a couple of common misconceptions about H-1B visas:

- "H-1B workers must be paid the same as U.S. citizens" - The issue is companies can hire, say, staff engineers from India as SWE IIs or whatever. As we all know, tech hiring is a mess and it's trivial to place a candidate higher or lower than they really are.

- "Companies cannot hire from the H-1B program if there are U.S. citizens able to fill the role." - There are some asterisks to this statement. Companies can favor H-1B workers over U.S. workers so long as H-1B workers make up less than 15% of their total headcount. And again, it's trivial to build an interview pipeline that tends to filter out U.S. candidates. Heck, leetcode style interviewing has done a phenomenal job of keeping U.S. citizens out of FAANG. It's actually quite clever - design an interview process so difficult and irrelevant to the actual job requirements that most qualified individuals wouldn't bother applying. Anyone who's left probably has special circumstances motivating them to push through and grind leetcode for months, et al. (like not having to go back to their home country).

I think the spirit of the H-1B program is great. Makes total sense. But as is tradition, there are loopholes that allow abuse... and frankly, companies like Meta and Amex and JP Morgan have an obligation to minimize expenses and maximize profits. It's the same with the tax code - loopholes out the ass, but can we really blame companies for exploiting them? It's legal.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#45

Post by hallole »

stego-tech wrote: post #39
650 wrote: post #2

With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates comp…

I’ve been chewing on this for fifteen years, now. There is no pretty or simple or even palatable answer, just a bunch of proposals with tradeoffs. 1) Eliminate the H-1B visa entirely. If a company wants to hire an immigrant, they can just sponsor the Green Card up front, knowing the worker can fuck off once they have it. The net result would be decreased immigration and increased offshoring, which brings me to… 2) Da…

> Rural states and colonies become the new Indias and Philippines for outsourcing companies, depressing labor costs.

Depressing labor costs, but only to a point, no? They would be subject to American minimum wages; and, presumably, American labor, even at its cheapest, is more expensive than the offshore alternative.

And, assume there is no price differential... Would Americans not be better off if companies outsourced to other American (i.e., not foreign) companies? Thereby keeping currency within the U.S.? I've been hearing that remittances represent a substantial outward cash flow nationally.

I've never heard of such "Data Sovereignty Schemes," but they seem like far and away the best option. And thanks for writing this up, btw.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#46

Post by gymbeaux »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #17
silisili wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer isn't one a lot of people are willing to talk about, but personally, I don't care. The problem isn't "businesses", it's other Indians. They take entire tech orgs over, then only hire each other. They make up bizarre reasons why US workers won't fit while spamming H1B applications. Before you grab your pitchforks, or try to dox me for racism one, please understand it's not all Indian people, obviously. Ther…

The pattern I’ve seen emerge is that the only successful candidates just happen to be of the same ethnolinguistic background as the hiring manager. Merely being Indian is not enough.

I suspect this has happened to me at least once. I was a shoe-in, checked all of the boxes, recruiter was saying they really wanted me, and then for the final interview they brought in a mid level guy who asked me questions unrelated to the role (purely a Data Engineer role but he was asking me about the intricacies of ML models). All interviewers were Indian. I would wager they ended up hiring another Indian guy for the role. I would imagine this happens to people of color all the time so I don't "mind" in that sense. The bigger issue to me is U.S. citizens unemployed because roles are filled by H-1B people (which is difficult to prove, but the evidence seems to indicate).

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#47

Post by dzonga »

650 wrote: post #2

With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates comp…

it's an own goal end of day - led by myopic thinking about foreigners stealing the jobs

a foreigner worker pays taxes, rent & other bills thereby contributing and circulating money in the economy

now if that foreign worker stays in their home country - yes - they might get paid less - but who losses overall ? the country that would've imported labor or the worker ? - it's always the country - hence why brain drain is devastating.

remember the foreign worker only gets a better life - but losses social connections, culture etc

the countries & companies wouldn't be sponsoring these things if ultimately it didn't benefit them & them only

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#48

Post by gymbeaux »

drecked wrote: post #31
silisili wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer isn't one a lot of people are willing to talk about, but personally, I don't care. The problem isn't "businesses", it's other Indians. They take entire tech orgs over, then only hire each other. They make up bizarre reasons why US workers won't fit while spamming H1B applications. Before you grab your pitchforks, or try to dox me for racism one, please understand it's not all Indian people, obviously. Ther…

You’re right. The only reason you see Indians is because Indians knly hire Indians. It can’t be anything else. Completely unrelated, have you walked into a non nuclear/biomedical engineering engineering department in any IS college in the past 2 decades? I’m guessing those are also filled with Indians because their managers are insisting that only Indians can study engineering.

Actually it can and almost certainly is multiple things - not just that Indians prefer to work with other Indians (by the way this phenomenon isn't exclusive to Indians).

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#49

Post by gymbeaux »

throwaway2056 wrote: post #15
billsunshine wrote: post #4

No doubt h1b is abused. Corporations use it to structurally underpay tech labor. Shame to anyone defending this abuse as some sort of pro immigration policy - it hurts both domestic workers and underpays migrant labor. The question is - what % of this labor could be sourced domestically and what actually needs to be imported?

You should try to communicate to managers (that are US citizens or greencard holders) that decide on H1B/outsourcing.

As with many systemic issues in the U.S., it boils down to "publicly traded company must have highest profit possible so line on chart goes up". As much as I dislike FAANG companies in general for all their anti-worker efforts, I can't honestly blame them for making decisions that look good on the balance sheet. If I am a company, and I can choose to hire 10 U.S. engineers for $200k a pop, or 10 H-1B engineers for $100k a pop, I'm going to pick the H-1B engineers. Every H-1B or green card engineer I've worked with in-office has been extremely skilled, so I wouldn't even feel like I was "getting what I paid for" hiring them over U.S. citizens.

Re: H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

#50

Post by dr-detroit »

650 wrote: post #2

With all the discourse around H1Bs recently, I ask what the alternative is? Offshoring and workers paying taxes in their own countries? The common argument of X number of CS grads unemployed fails to hold as CS has been a monkey degree over the past few years due to the rush for money. Some investigation will show many graduates are not able to perform software engineering duties up to par, and sub par graduates comp…

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