Comment by breadwinner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by breadwinner | Hacker News Reader

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H-1B workers at companies such as Google, Meta or Microsoft are not treated any different, they are not taking abuse or being exploited. There may be smaller companies where this is happening though.

One of the issues is conflation of IT jobs and High Tech jobs. Those making laws don't understand the difference -- they are all "computer jobs" to them. IT does not require immigrant labor. Companies such as Infosys and Tata don't need to be operating in the US. There are plenty of US workers available to do the job.

But High Tech is different. High Tech needs the best in the world, not the best in the US. The US leads the world in tech not because the best ideas were all American but because the best people in the world immigrated to the US. Stopping this will be ruinous to American prosperity.

The seminal research paper that kicked off the AI revolution (titled "Attention is all you need") was written by 2 Indians, 1 German, 1 British Canadian, 1 Pole, 1 Ukrainian, and 2 US born people. These people came to America, worked together and changed the world as we know it. Why would we want to stop it? Has this immigration undercut Americans? Far from it. These immigrants are the lifeblood of the tech industry, and their innovations create jobs.

H-1B's are absolutely exploited. I'd personally testify to the abuses at financial companies. Hearing threats of "If you don't complete this by tomorrow, you can expect to be back in India by next week" From one Indian to another too...

It's awful to witness it. Please don't spread misinformation that "They are not taking abuse or being exploited" That is extremely disingenuous.

It sounds like you object to the exploitation rather than to the H1-B.

don't be asinine. h1-b is what enables this exploitation

Sorry that's untrue. Top companies such as Google, Meta or Microsoft absolutely do not abuse H-1B workers or treat them any different. As I said there may be smaller outfits, or IT shops where this is happening.

You have to look harder. It's not always explicit as OP says with threats of deportation. Rather there's a huge power imbalance.

Who can we ask to stay late? Who "doesn't mind" 12 hour days? Who "doesn't mind' being on call. Who won't mind if they get a smaller bonus or raise? How about Sandeep who is afraid to say no because if he says no too many times and loses his job him and his entire family have to move back overseas with minimal notice?

That's how real exploitation happens these days. And sometimes even good managers don't realize they're doing it, because, after all, poor Sandeep even said he didn't mind! He's just a really hard worker!

Yup. Even if they are treated equally, and everybody has the same chance of being laid off, they have more to lose than permanent residents.

I've never worked at those companies. But to say that it _never_ happens there is a bit of an absurd thing to say.

You are right, unless you have been present at every manager-employee interaction you can't say it has "never" happened. But to claim that this is happening requires more than just one or two instances, right?

I used to think the same thing until I was brought in on an important legacy project that put me tangential to the "inner circle" and heard a lot of this kind of thing along with other shady practices like authoring the RFP for the government to publish so that the requirements favored the company.

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