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H-1B Exposed: Banking sector visa sponsorship investigation

178 points by joshcsimmons

by billsunshine

4 subcomments

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?

by 650

9 subcomments

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 compared to pre 2015. Of course its nuanced between training that companies used to offer etc.

by citrin_ru

0 subcomment

This site explain that H-1B is abused, which is rarely disputed and there are ways to make it less prone to abuse. It doesn't tell that there is no shortage of skilled workers.

by jetskii

1 subcomments

$196k average at Capital One? Even with HCOL, that's a very good salary. I feel like they could certainly find competent citizens willing to work for that wage...

by CaliforniaKarl

0 subcomment

See also "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers [video]", posted twice:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47028155
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038665

by iberator

0 subcomment

Migration for good technical jobs should be banned forever. Immigration = lower wages, and visa slavery. Impossible to compete.
(I'm not from USA)

by alexb_

0 subcomment

The H-1B system is obviously flawed. For some reason, we've decided to tie the ability to live where you want and take advantage of your pursuit of happiness to having an employer. This creates massive power imbalances that are avoided by not engaging in national segregation policies. We don't demand that anyone born on this side of the border do anything like what people born somewhere else have to - how can a law applied differently based on how you were born be just?

by gymbeaux

0 subcomment

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.

by Madmallard

0 subcomment

greed blast
should be pretty obvious
our corporations have been systematically ruining things for the average American for quite a while now

by mekekdkxkxkx

0 subcomment

[flagged]

by whatever1

0 subcomment

[flagged]

by srameshc

1 subcomments

Exposed what ? It has brought some great talent to the country and helped with talent immigration for sure, everyone knows it. There is a phase when there is a sacrifice for the candidate but then people change jobs even when green card processing is throught the stages.

by jpgvm

6 subcomments

No. The talent shortage is not a myth. The unemployed/underemployed American programmer that can actually keep up is a myth. Everyone good (without additional baggage) is either a) employed or b) could be employed whenever they feel like it.
If you aren't good enough then don't be surprised the companies prefer an immigrant. You don't get an automatic American free pass for having less skills, experience, interviewing poorly, etc.
i.e skill issue.
Ending immigration for tech would simply mean far more global workers/offshoring in order to access the top tier talent via different means as that is the real reason all along.
Wage suppression was the old (and now largely incorrect) story. The visa is still exploitive, it should be amended to be a 10 year visa that is independent of employment so immigrants aren't screwed by layoffs.