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Comment by harichinnan | Hacker News Reader

Keeping up with the mood of the country (US) I want to call these comments out as racist propaganda. The casual reference to H1B workers(90% Indians) as root cause of problems in American tech companies is getting old.

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As someone who used to hold an H-1B visa I can confirm that they are one of the dominant factors that brought Silicon Valley to where it is today. Workers on H-1B visas are fearful and obedient. Despotic managers who love to cut corners without being held to account thrive on such a workforce.

It might be your personal anecdote. I know many H1B employees who are well paid and not fearful or obedient.

Different cultures have different ways of being courteous and showing respect to others(elderly). You must've had some misunderstandings based on your own. Silicon Valley has been a dominant force. Many H1B employees contributed to the valley's success.

It’s not about race—it’s about a shitty corporate culture. Within Intel there are full-time employees (blue badges) and contractors (green badges). Intel has shifted towards hiring more green badges while paying them less, offering them fewer benefits, and in general treating them worse in comparison to the full-time blue badges. And yes, many green badges are working for Intel under H1B visas. Because of the poor working conditions, there isn’t a great incentive for green badges to be doing their best work. Meanwhile, blue badges become proportionally fewer in number within the company.

I agree it's shitty culture to color code employee badges and subject a set of people to humiliation. I've worked as an employee and a contractor. We all will at some point in our career. You can't judge someone's integrity to work or competence by the color of the badge they are wearing. H1B employees do compete for IT jobs and win them over Americans. But that's because of interview performance and skills. There's enough data for anyone who wants to find out on how H1B employees are paid.

Often the problem isn’t nation of origin, it’s the nature of the training given from one generation to the next and knowledge transfer.

My father used to work in Hughes in some areas that required American citizens by US law; he regularly told stories of someone in a department retiring before replacements had been hired for knowledge transfer, causing lost time and knowledge.

The mood of the country is racist propaganda

I mean a lot of things are obvious, why pretend they are not

Police killing black men is no longer racist propaganda. It's a reality of life for black people.

25+ years ago in Redmond, most of the H1B were Europeans.

The criticisms haven't changed. Just the available sources of cheapest labor.

If you worked in Microsoft, you would know the H1B employees never came cheap. If you were dreaming of reaching Wall Street salaries in Redmond, then that's a mismatch in expectations. Microsoft was always making software for around the world. If American didn't have H1B program, they would've simply expanded the dev centers in Asia and Europe rather than pay Wall Street salaries in Redmond.

How does this relate to your statement that criticism of H1B is racist propaganda?

If this statement didn't have racist intent, how would you know?

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