Subcontractor Servitude | Hacker News Reader

Subcontractor Servitude

nytimes.com

46 pointsandrewl22 comments

Every day I am newly amazed by the apparently limitless extent of modern greed. People will do ANYTHING to make money, and it's truly incomprehensible to me how far some will go.

These "recruiters" go to a foreign country, promise people a better life and money for their families. They then put them in constructed slums, a service for which they charge exorbitant rent to the inhabitants. They then create random fees and regulations to reduce the worker's already tiny paycheck to nearly-nothing. On top of all of that, they constantly threaten the workers with legal action and deportation if they don't shut up and smile. All these people wanted to do was clean toilets for minimum wage!

So these "recruiters" will treat a group of strangers like animals (actually, worse than most American pets are treated) just to make some commission on the very small wages they falsely promised to these workers. Their desire to make a few dollars completely overrides any consideration of the people of whom they are taking advantage or the families suffering overseas waiting for a promised paycheck in the mail. In my mind this is morally worse than the wall street brand of greed, because at least those investment bankers don't go out of their way to treat individual people in a subhuman manner.

Excuse my language, but fuck all of that. Fuck those people and fuck whatever system made this a profitable enterprise. I really don't know who these people are or what to do about it, but I just wish I didn't have to live and work with people who are so insufferably greedy. This is real evil.

> Excuse my language, but fuck all of that. Fuck those people and fuck whatever system made this a profitable enterprise.

Sure. Who do you think made this system possible? Your answer lies in your own rant above… those same investment bankers you think are less evil than these subcontractors.

Think of it as tactical greed (i.e., on the ground, personally playing Mephistopheles' part) vs. strategic greed (i.e., altering the rules of the game such that conditions like this are profitable - in the meanwhile, gaining untold profits for themselves).

Definitely wasn't trying to stick up for greedy bankers here, just saying they're "dollars on paper" evil not "boots on the ground" evil.

"limitless extent of modern greed"

Why do you feel that greed is a modern phenomenon? You just know about it because of the fact that information can be shared more easily. People have always been greedy. If anything you would expect that with the ability to highlight abuses it would actually be decreasing.

Greed is not modern, but the opportunities for taking advantage of other people have grown immensely with new technology, globalization, and general economic expansion. It's easier than ever to be greedy.

This reminds us of our privileged position in software. At the moment, it would be difficult for an employer to do the same to a H1B software worker, since you can basically walk into a new job in days. But when you haven't got the protection of an incredibly strong job market, it appears you have no protection at all.

You may not see this in startup-ville but this is very much happening in IT at companies where software is not the "core competency"

I admit that this happens in some companies. However, it can only happen to developers who either are not good enough to find jobs elsewhere, or are not aware that they could find jobs elsewhere. As such, I feel those developers are not actually trapped, but rather unaware.

They aren't hired because they are good, they are hired because they are cheap, just like in the article.

if you transfer an H1-B, you are no longer cheap.

The only people who care about hiring the best and the "top 10%" is in the valley. The rest of America is fine with B through D... the reason being you selling to untechnical corporate project managers.

The costs to transfer a H1B are less than the costs to get it in the first place (the legal costs are the same, but it takes less work to get the materials together, and you don't need to pay the employee to move).

I believe it is the green card application that is the issue.

Huh? Aren't you basically tied to an employer with H1B? I know you can move to another company but my understanding was that the process is a bit involved. Plus isn't part of the attraction of the H1B program being able to get skill but pay them less than an American would try to negotiate?

It's better but overall it sounds like the same thing to me.

No, in fact there are supposed to be safeguards in place to prevent this. The ostensible idea behind H1Bs is that the employer literally cannot, for any price, find the talent they need locally. They MUST hire foreign workers to come in and do the job. And the law is written such that the foreign workers--the ones who are there to do a job that no local person can do--get paid what an american worker would be paid to do the same job.

That's to prevent the exact scenario you mentioned: a company hires cheap foreign labor under the H1B program, displacing qualified local labor.

Of course it's all toothless bullshit, so that's exactly how it works, in practice.

You aren't tied to an employer with a H1B. Your H1B is for one specific employer, but you can transfer the H1B to another employer fairly easily, given about 2 weeks notice.

I've negotiated fairly strongly for my past H1B jobs: again, the strong job market allows this. If the market was weak, then there would be a danger that an employer would have control over whether I could stay resident, and this would provide them with strong leverage. I would be surprised if this was an intended part of the H1B program though: I've certainly never seen anything indicate that it is.

The sort of thing happening to the workers in the article is a form of indentured servitude, which is widely regarded as slavery. I don't believe it is ethical to hold this sort of power over an individual, and IMO, those employers should face jail time. I find it hard to believe a this would be designed into the H2B program.

Aren't any applications for Green Card reset when you move on to a new employer?

It's not quite as simple as that, but there is a short window (~2 months I think) where you can't change jobs or move country without resetting your application. After that, you can move jobs but your new employer has to agree to transfer the green card process too.

Your bargaining position will get progressively weaker as the time remaining on your visa runs down.

Why would it do that? Once the visa runs out, you're out, and the employer can't really help with that.

If you're on a H1B visa, you really need to figure out a plan to a Green Card ASAP, unless you're not planning to stay long term.

The less time you have left, the less valuable you are to a new employer. Hiring someone who can work for 6 years makes sense. Hiring someone who must leave in 18 months is much more of a risk. Therefore you are at an increasing disadvantage in any negotiation where your best alternative to agreement is to seek alternative employment, e.g. Salary increases, change of project.

You're right about the green card, however even if you can get the employer support you need, it takes years and further restricts your employment options in the meantime.

Nice point, that does make a lot of sense.

the visas they have are for jobs u can't find americans for. i guess it would be tough to find an american willing to live in horrifying slum and clean toilets for $0/hr.....

It seems there was a "shortage" of American cleaners willing to work for what employers were willing to pay (nothing, if possible), so they had to be imported. Similarly, it seems there's a shortage of qualified programmers in Silicon Valley. Good thing FWD.us and the like are working on solving that problem!

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