Last Task After Layoff at Disney: Train Foreign Replacements
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
That's absolutely horrible. Not only is it a case of left hand not talking to right hand, it almost seems cruel to review someone in the position of being laid off so highly that it warrants a raise. Nobody stopped to consider "maybe we should keep this employee around?" It's disheartening.
As someone else commented, outsourcing is often the last-ditch effort by terrible IT managers, and that incident seems to confirm it.
They likely don't enough time left in their careers to be able to 'look back on it and laugh'.
This is why Labor Unions are good :) BUT most people these days look at them negatively sadly.
More commonly though, a director or vp will make the choices in bulk based on other factors like salary. Of course this means high performers, who were given raises commensurately, are first to go in that model.
Indeed, that sounds terrible. I haven't been in that (exceptionally difficult) situation, but I wonder why the laid off employees consented to this? I wouldn't be in any rush to help the company lay me off and transition to a cheaper replacement. Was their severance package dependent on this?
The one time something vaguely like this happened to me, granted my boss made it very personal although in truth he'd lost his ability to sell, I would have been much, much better off telling him to FO and leaving on the spot, instead it triggered anxiety that eventually disabled me, which I later learned I had a genetic predisposition towards.
Money isn't the end all and be all, after all.
"Please your honor, it's such an easy temptation to fall into, when the articles are so infrequently more useful than the comments section."
More likely, if they'd left immediately, many of them could have gotten the equivalent of 4 months wages at their new job, since hopping is often the best way to get a raise.
As long as you answer all of their questions you would certainly be meeting the good performance stipulation. There would be no way for them to know whether you are providing the whole story. Why offer up information that is not specifically requested? After all, the hardest part of engineering is knowing which questions to ask in the first place.
Although in this case i think most future employers would be understanding of the situation. But even so, during an interview you only have that much time to show a good image of yourself, there's not always time to explain everything and any minor hickup, suspicion or oddity could cost you the job, you don't want to leave the interviewer only remembering lots of "but" and "except that time".
And don't be an ass. Search, find, depart immediately and politely.
http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/06/01/us/visa-letter-alt...
Yes. Its financial extortion.
Obviously you shouldn't work for the Disneys of the world if you can work somewhere else. If you're really confident that you can find good work wherever and whenever you want it then you can afford to tell a bad employer like Disney to fuck off. For various reasons, a lot of people can't do that.
I guess I can see how threatening to not give them something is a threat, but if that is how expansive our definition is, how is regular employment not extortion?
If someone offered me $10K extra on top of my salary to take the trash out and clean the company kitchen for 2 weeks, I would gladly do it without blinking, even if it's a little humbling. I don't know about you. Calling it extortion is a bit much.
You mean 90 days, because that's the requirement in their agreement. And its not "taking out the trash", its directly training your lower-wage foreign replacement.
Anyway, it's a financial transaction for knowledge and labor like any other, if you think you're getting a raw deal, you should not accept the deal.
Not sure how it is financial extortion though.
Yes, that's covered in the article:
> To receive his severance bonus, he said, “I had to make sure they were doing my job correctly.”
It was a weird position to be for several reasons, but the weirdest part was getting to know lovely people who were excited about their new job in Costa Rica and feeling the perverse incentive to train them poorly so my job might last a couple more months. It's not something I ever hope to relive.
The H1B program disallows hiring foreign workers and paying them less than the equivalent rate for US workers. While there may be some debate about whether tech companies find ways to skirt the law, "we are laying off US workers to save money and replacing them with H1B workers" seems to flagrantly violate the law. No?
Basically, it's a loophole that should probably be closed.
Here's what I would support: if another country wants its citizens to be able to work in the US, they can offer to let Americans work there. Every American who goes to work there means one person from there can come work here, free and clear, but the numbers have to stay in lock-step, the net delta can't be greater than one for a given year.
Because unfair discrimination makes it worse for everyone involved: workers (cannot get jobs), employers (cannot hire qualified people), consumers (higher prices).
> That's the whole point of countries.
Of course not.
Countries have their own legal system which could be good (competition between various legal systems), but there is no good reason to discriminate on the government level against foreigners.
Even if other countries discriminate against Americans, the US would still benefit by NOT discriminating against citizens of these countries.
Some Americans would benefit. Others would suffer because competition would be tougher. And of course no one wants a social safety net because that would reward laziness or some other awful protestant work ethic bullshit.
If unlimited immigration came along with a robust social safety net (at least single-payer healthcare and a basic income guarantee) I would be right there with you.
The better thing to do is to lower barriers to immigration, both temporary and permanent, not play one labor pool against another to the benefit of capital.
As with all things, you get the talent you pay for.
Any engineer who accepts lower wages than their predecessor is either of lower talent and experience, or is by some situation forced to accept less. "Forced" being a key term.
Talent cannot be measured with the same formula used for guns and butter.
If someone comes to me to outsource me, I would totally help them do it because they will end up with exactly what they deserve. Outsourcing software engineering is the last refuge of incompetent management.
"In late November, this former employee received his annual performance review, which he provided to The New York Times. His supervisor, who was not aware the man was scheduled for layoff, wrote that because of his superior skills and “outstanding” work, he had saved the company thousands of dollars. The supervisor added that he was looking forward to another highly productive year of having the employee on the team."
Seems like they should be looking to lay off some managers as well.
The American immigration system has a lot of issues with it but I think this could be a relatively easy fix. I've worked with a lot of H1-B employees and in general I think the United States is really lucky to have such talented people willing to relocate and live in the US.
Also, existence of an offer from a legitimate company determines candidate's eligibility. How would Department of Labor filter eligible candidates from the ones who've just padded their resumes?
My feeling is that the current system of tying applicants to positions is supposed to protect US workers but actually distorts the market and incentivizes companies hire H1-B visa holders as they can't leave easily but can still be fired anytime.
That's the way things work currently http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/h1-visa-transfer-faq.html
Legally one could start the interviewing process the day after they arrive in the US on H1. Contractually they might have signed agreements to compensate their employer for relocation and legal costs if they work for less than a year.
"Therefore, when people say 'H1 transfer', it is actually just a new H-1B petition, all over again, without the restriction of the H-1B cap" http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/h1-transfer.html
This is almost a perfect example of divide-and-conquer, where a united and powerful single actor (a corporation) picks off workers one by one.
I'm pretty sure, at this point, that IT workers will never unionize. I'd say that people who see the value in a union will probably just go into other fields (like nursing, where unions have actually successfully threatened strikes over exactly this issue).
The outsourcing company would then submit a new bid covering a broader range of IT systems.
I think that within about 15 minutes of a general IT strike, the electric fence would go out, the velociraptors would escape, and the jedi knights would start to wish those were real light sabers.
I got a good laugh at this, seeing it as a reference with the velociraptors but only realizing that all of those things are in their park as I finished the sentence.
1. The probability of 30+% of the IT staff suddenly not working the next day is considered vanishingly low, even in DR contexts where they routinely deal with low probability events.
2. Even if (1) was to come about, IT management pretty universally agrees with each other that IT staff are generally replaceable on short notice without irreversible consequences to the organization.
The case for organizational data disappearing and causing irreparable harm to the organization is pretty well established and accepted by IT management. It is not at all clear to me that even if an IT union entrenched itself in a major company, that a mass walkout would be taken that seriously, because I haven't yet seen the case made and accepted that IT organizational staff disappearing causes the same or greater harm.
The corollary implication is that IT organizations commit more process capital to retention of the bits sitting on spinning rust than to staff retention. Staffing spend remains an overwhelming percentage of the annual budget of most IT organizations, and if it isn't well-accepted that this staff disappearing all at once causes catastrophic damage, then I can't be surprised when there is so much assiduous effort at reducing that spend.
I don't agree with this mainstream IT management outlook on the matter, but most IT management is constrained to what they can demonstrate in financials and budget spreadsheets to senior management. Slowly degrading capabilities don't show up in those sheets until very late in the game.
Honestly, though, unions missed the mark in this case, they vastly overestimated how high the input would have to be to get to get a "true" from public boolean is_more_ethical_than_corporation(int union_ethics).
EDIT: hga - I can't reply, which is probably a good thing. I got a little overly sarcastic there. It doesn't help discussion, my apologies.
Oh, yeah, no long afterwords, this local murder of a John Galt (yep, for real) happened: http://ozarks-history.blogspot.com/2014/06/i-44-truck-explos...
Post-WWII is a strong period for unionized employees and companies, with much of the competition suppressed by war time damage, and the playing field less tilted toward unions by the Taft-Hartley Labor Act of 1947. Post-post is after that, when many if not most unionized US industries declined, e.g. steel and auto.
If you really cannot find someone domestically to fill a role, there's no reason you should be paying less for such rare skills.
Instead of trying to pin it to some standard of living metrics, I think its probably better to make it a multiple of the prevailing wage instead of the prevailing wage. If H1-B's are truly filling positions that companies cannot fill domestically then those workers should be worth far more than domestic counterparts. Companies should also be required to provide justification for rejection of each domestic worker that applied for the position.
These two things would probably fix the majority of the H1-B abuse, whether it results in more outsourcing is another question. But, large companies have data centers that need skilled labor to diagnose problems on site, be it SFP replacement or simply tracing cables. So i'm not sure how much of that kind of work can actually be outsourced.
For the most part, H1-Bs shouldn't be for positions under 100k/year although they consistently are, and that's a fixed number, I simply feel that n times minimum wage for a location would be a better starting point.
I understand the general claim/controversy is that American workers are laid-off and replaced with foreign workers who are paid less...lowering the wages for American workers across the board. But there does not seem to be evidence of that in this instance, just a "they took our jobs" attitude that the foreign worker. Obviously there is a separate issue, in that it appears the employer seems to have expressly stated that the worker's position was being eliminated, but does not appear to be accurate, I am just curious why focus on the foreign aspect.
When you bring foreign workers in, you have to train them, teach them skills, work culture, etc, that local workers already have.
I would assume this leads to a situation where the job market simply becomes more saturated. Even if H1B regulations require giving above the prevailing wage, over the long term, job market saturation will suppress wage growth through more contention for limited positions, and they may in fact be saving themselves money by paying the higher wages to essentially "Water down the soup"
Immigration controls worsen the bargaining positions of foreign workers relative to Americans; this is an opportunity for employers. Employers then exploit their advantage by preferring to hire foreigners; this extends the disadvantage of foreigners to Americans.
Foreigners on HB-1 will almost always make less. This is why companies do this. You won't find an American willing to earn less, because they know what they are worth and can demand it. If the foreign worker were to be paid the same as an American in the same position, the incentive to replace the worker vanishes completely.
So yes, we'd be happy with your conditions. Because either of those conditions being fulfilled would stop H1-B in its tracks, except for the extremely rare occurrence where a company finds value in importing a foreigner for their talent/skills/experience, as opposed to padding the bottom line.
What's sad about it though, is that, given the reputation of these out-sourcing companies such as Infosys, I am not too confident in the qualification of the tech people they imported. Worse, these companies are so good taking advantage of the loopholes in the H1B application process that they actually hurt the chance of people with really qualifications.
No, it puts the burden of proof on the employer. My employer had to submit about 600 pages of paperwork to show that yes, they did look around a lot before hiring me (including records of applications by candidates). I have no idea how the outsourcing firms get away with that.
They make job descriptions that only the immigrant worker could possibly fill, e.g. they demand that they have all the niche skills a candidate has that could possibly apply to the role, they demand that candidates are willing to work for the same pay in the same location and they do their best to advertise the position in places people won't look, like physical newspapers.
I also find that the prevailing wage information for software engineers is very low, at least when I've seen it on my own LCA forms it's been a lot lower than what I'm getting paid and I can easily see how other companies could abuse the process.
The burden is on the company. They must advertise the position externally and internally. Note that in this case it wouldn't be Disney advertising the position and filing the application - it would be the outsourcing company.
I get a ~90 day notice that my job is ending, during which time I continue to work the same hours and have time to apply to other positions inside and outside of Disney.
After that, if I don't have a job w/in Disney and separation occurs I get 10% of my annual salary. That's 5.2 weeks severance.
Am I missing something in the numbers?
There is certainly an emotional aspect to "training your replacements", but it does seem like Disney is trying to do right by employees and shareholders at the same time. Better balancing act than I've seen at most places.
Whether it's horrible or not, the point of the article is that Disney (via it's subcontractor) is violating the H1B program by using it to directly replace workers at a lower wage.
The formula does not incorporate experience, education or cost of living.
"But Disney directly employs fewer than 10 H-1B workers, executives said, and has not been prominent in visa lobbying."
"Many American companies use H-1B visas to bring in small numbers of foreigners for openings demanding specialized skills, according to official reports. But for years most top recipients of the visas have been outsourcing or consulting firms based in India, or their American subsidiaries, which import workers for large contracts to take over entire in-house technology units — and to cut costs. The immigrants are employees of the outsourcing companies."
They don't really say how many H1B workers are employed through Disney's contractors, but it's definitely implied
Lying to US govt about abusing H!B visa. And lying to news outlet. What do they think people are? Stupid?
So Disney instead hires a contractor service that employees H1-B people to replace the people being laid off at a lower rate.
That said, this seems a clear violation of the spirit of H1B, if not the letter of the law. We need better enforcement of this.
Ultimately, this leads back to the fact that the US has a large number of laws which are not enforced in reality. If these companies are breaking the law so badly (and they probably are, the top 7 or so companies using H1B are Infosys and other outsourcing firms) -- why don't employees go ahead and sue them? They are (presumably) incorporated in the US after all, it's not like they are untouchable.
This is also an excellent case for H1B reform. If a green card was a necessary condition of employing an H1B, these tech companies would have a much harder time retaining their lower paid employees, and the cost of "outsourcing in the US" as it were, would be prohibitive.
Lawsuits are extremely expensive and when you are butting heads with some of the largest corporations in the world, your odds of prevailing are pretty much nil. The only hope of overcoming those kinds of odds is for the government to get involved.
One side of it doesn't (deliberately) treat an H1B worker any differently than anyone else. In truth, even in top companies, the limited mobility of the worker may influence things in ways that aren't noticed - if it's harder to leave, it's harder to negotiate, even if you're a top dev at google. But ultimately, these companies more or less hire and treat H1B workers the same as their core workforce.
Then you have this completely alternate universe. A lot of people were pretty shocked (including people who strongly support skilled immigration) to discover that most of the largest users of this program are outsourcing companies. Part of the outrage even came from the pro H1B camp, since people who are offering very high salaries for top talent discover that visas are "all run out", because they have to apply for the same lottery as a company that is paying vastly less (and replacing a US citizen in the process).
Kicked off a major firestorm here, which ultimately lead the government to change the way the foreign worker program functions.
(Flip side is that they can be used to ease the pain of strikes called for e.g. internal political struggle reasons, like a not too long ago UPS strike, and they can be raided like any other union piggy bank.)
And stop talking about H1B holders as "immigrants". They are not. H1B is a non-immigrant visa.
I've had this happen to me a handful of times in my career, and the H1B program was genuinely helpful there. Unfortunately, it is more often used to save money in situations like this article, making the program less useful for more legitimate situations.
This is somewhat misleading -- H1B is a non-immigrant visa with dual intent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_intent), which includes the immigrant intent.
And a lot of them do, so your point about them "not being immigrants" is largely moot.
Yes, there are some people who come here with no desire to stay, but they have been in the minority since around 1492.
"Yes, there are some people who come here with no desire to stay, but they have been in the minority since around 1492."
Good old fashion American exceptionalism. Who wouldn't want to stay in the good Ol' US of A?! 'Murica Fuck Yeah right?
Disney's legal department would probably prevent anyone from revealing names based on the information presented, to prevent expensive lawsuits (which, if they were to occur, might wipe out any savings they're realizing from their unethical behavior).
Stay classy Disney.
I also saw the latter with some of my domestic colleagues. For a while, I would step into the gap and ensure that things were corrected.
With the benefit of experience and hindsight, I would do things differently. Learn to pro-actively walk away from such circunstances, as soon as you can. The longer you stay, the more you contribute to the success of those making such policy and the more you risk trapping yourself in the results.
US citizens and permanent residents can change jobs freely, drop out of the work force, go back to school, transition to a new career, and so forth, all without jeopardizing their right to live and work in the US. While H1B workers do have some rights to change jobs, their mobility is considerably more limited.
You don't have to be especially cynical to believe that the very one-sided nature of the "at-will" relationship here, along with the high stakes for the employee (if you can't get a new job with a new sponsor, you will have to leave the country), is huge part of the appeal of these visas.
So, was it legal for Disney to fire them? Probably. Was it legal for Disney (or rather, its contractor) to replace them with H1Bs? Probably not.
It is incredibly shitty and absolutely against the spirit of the visas, but it's not against the letter of the law.
It might be because I have a low tolerance for clickbait headlines and articles.
Otherwise, hiring an H1B to replace an employee is illegal, but this is sort of a loophole.
If you actually take the maxim of fairness and equality seriously, skilled foreign workers are by far the most unfairly discriminated group of people. Much more than blacks and women who are supposedly discriminated against in tech. Unlike women and blacks, skilled foreign workers actually have the government with arbitrary set of standards to determine who can work and who can't.
Another part of the immigration story that's fascinating is illegal immigrant stories are almost always come with some sob story to make readers feel empathic towards them. Such stories are almost never told with skilled immigrants.
On the other hand, it does seem like there should be a regulatory body taking action on this sort of abuse, and I'm curious if anyone knows more about that.
I'm sorry, but I have to call bullshit on this. The State has an economic interest in maintaining high(er) levels of employment among citizens, because employed citizens stimulate the economy, while providing financing for public programs, and while not claiming benefits like unemployment. There's a net economic benefit (not to mention a foundational argument for the role of government) in protecting the employment of a country's own citizenry, so it's not like this is done capriciously.
(Also, fun time to point out: Many other countries have the same exact qualifications that protect jobs from citizens being outsourced to other countries. Including India, fittingly.)
Now, contrast that with the idea that a certain segment of the population is systemically disadvantaged based on race, income bracket, or gender. And for the minority of those disadvantaged who actually achieve qualifications that make them a great fit for a job, they still face discrimination in the form of hiring discrimination and wage discrimination. This is all done not based on merit, or as a matter of economic policy by a government, but rather: whether someone happened to be born a certain color or sex.
Really? There's really even a second of argument to be made about which of these scenarios is more insidious and unfair?
EDIT: Also, SERIOUS dog-whistle warning on use of the word "supposedly" to refer to discrimination against women and other minorities.
No you cannot
> black people don't deserve the rights of citizens
You are not recasting argument. You just add racism on top of it, then claim original argument to be racist
>women should stay home
And how does that follow from protecting citizenry employment?
As far as comparing it to replacing people with women or other ethnic minorities; people did complain loudly about Mexicans "taking our jobs" but that has died down in recent years because people have realized how stupid it is to blame the workers.
Let's not muddy the issue with unwarranted claims of bigotry. The problem in this story is the management at Disney mistreating their existing (now former) employees.
This isn't just classic bigotry recast. The maxim of fairness doesn't extend across political boundaries where cheap foreign labor can siphon money across different economic spheres leaving domestic workers wanting for a job. Actually the whole reason why people object is that isn't fair to have to compete against someone in Bangalore. Displaced workers can't just choose to move to a cheaper country for work.
> Such stories are almost never told with skilled immigrants.
Because the H1B gravy train means they don't have to sneak into the country.
And as I understand it, more IIT graduates go into programming from degrees in e.g. mechanical and civil? engineering than those who get CS degrees, because that's where the money is.
If they had green cards, than they would be free to find better paying jobs or switch jobs. Instead, the H1-B is essentially shackles that ensures an H1-B stays put while they apply for a Green Card. Otherwise they go back to India, that is a BIG disincentive to leave the employer voluntarily ESPECIALLY since they are here by exploiting a loophole as it is.
It's not just that, if the same practices were used in other industries that are traditionally protected (doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, accountants, etc) or unionized, all hell would break loose. But nobody seems too bothered that this happens to tech workers.
Discrimination against skilled foreign workers is not illegal- in fact laws like H1-B require a certain amount of discrimination.
To compare the situation of H1-Bs to women or blacks or even illegal immigration is at best being willfully ignorant of US history and custom. Get back to me when H1-Bs are forced to pick cotton for a couple generations.
On the other hand, skilled immigrants often seem completely oblivious to the fact that they are completely being discriminated against. Just like blacks who thinks they are being mistreated simply because of their skin color at birth, and women to their gender at birth, skilled immigrants can perfectly adopt their narrative of mistreatment due to birth location. And yet, they don't. They simply take the world for what it is, and try to win it based on merits. Maybe it's because skilled workers go beyond race and gender, they themselves have a hard time identifying themselves with each others.
The irony of what you're saying should also not be lost on you. You're claiming that you're discriminated against due to your status as a skilled-immigrant worker, but that nobody in your situation would claim this.
Also it seems like you think that women and African-Americans don't face discrimination in tech? I really have a hard time imagining people making this claim, especially with statistics like: Men are employed in STEM occupations at about twice the rate of women with the same qualifications. [1] The number of women graduating with computer science degrees has halved in the last 30 years. [2] Women are treated as if they don't belong in the field, through sexism or dismissal. [3] How many women do you see stuck in UI Dev? Have you talked to them? Guess what -- a lot of them hate UI but get stuck in the 'girly' part of CS, especially at the entry level. My fiancee, who graduated with me from a top 10 university with an emphasis in Algorithms and Modeling is now doing web UI... Well payed web UI, but still, definitely not the right fit for her skill set.
My African American friends in tech faced the same sort of discrimination -- the cultural barrier to entry we have in the tech field is pretty bonkers.
1. https://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/acs-24.pdf 2. http://readwrite.com/2014/09/02/women-in-computer-science-wh... 3. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/women-and-information-technol...
Not sure I would characterize mine, and millions of others' stories as "sob stories". Economical and safety reasons for moving away from place of origin are realities, not short stories for your soul.
Employees get fired all the time for being too senior, too wise to their rights and too expensive (even if that is not the stated reason), and in large companies entire divisions are often laid off and replaced by managed service providers and consultants that'll do the job for less.
This is just the horrible reality of employment in the US - the H-1B system has many faults, but that's not the cause here, the cause is the company itself.
You can see this in every field - employer loyalty is at a low, full time workers get hired on a part time basis, workers get rotated regularly, people get fired so they don't qualify for seniority, hours get shifted to comply with the bare minimum of labor law, etc.
Disclaimer: I'm on an H-1B.
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edit: Clarification: My first sentence should have been "if the replacements were American". Prevailing opinion seems to be that Americans losing jobs to foreigners is unfair, but no one bats an eyelid at Americans losing jobs to Americans - it's just capitalism.
I wasn't really going for the blatant racism angle, even though there is quite a bit of that too at the lower levels of the discourse pile.
For instance, Netflix fires people all the time. They also hire H1B workers, at (you can see the data) a very high rate. Now, there are still arguments to be made about worker freedom and mobility, suppressing salaries at the high end, an excessive tolerance of false negatives in hiring… but ultimately, using H1B workers for $250K+ jobs isn't going to get your average American riled up.
Using these visas to specifically fire and replace US Citizens, and withholding a small severance unless the US citizens train their replacements, goes deeply against the way this visa was sold, which is a way to bring in more high level talent that is essentially unavailable in the US (ie., purely additive with synergies with existing workforce, not at all a replacement).
You hit the nail on the head. Would there be these many complaints if the replacements were Canadians? Nope. Would there be many complaints if the replacements were English? Nope. Would there be many complaints if the replacements were Aussies. Nope.
Would there be many complaints if the replacements were Mexicans? Yes.
What's common between Mexico and India? What ever could it be?
To save you the trouble of clicking on the link:
US: $3,263
Canada: $2,724
Australian: $2,610
UK: $3,065
Mexico: $609
India: $295Your second parts about the reality of employment in the US is dead on. There are some companies (or at least some organizations) that benefit from grooming employees and keeping them engaged, but most pretenses of commitment are embarrassing lies. Reid Hoffman's spiel about "tours of duty" strikes me as the most suitable framework for the current corporate job market.
250 Disney employees were told [...] that they would be laid off.
Is it really big news that 250 were laid off?
Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
What does it mean to train your replacement for a software engineer? Did they teach them how to write code? 3 Month is not enough time for that. Did they explain how their existing code works? That would be quite a normal thing, but 3 month is really long for that.
"because of his superior skills and “outstanding” work, he had saved the company thousands of dollars"
The average software engineer should be able to save a company hundreds of thousands of dollars, not thousands, provided they are given the right resources. If he only saved the company thousands of dollars and did not generate new revenue, that explains why he was laid off.
His résumé lists a top-level skill certification and command of seven operating systems, 15 program languages [...] “I was forced into early retirement,”
If he was really so skilled, why did he not find another position at Disney or elsewhere?
Agism is a real thing. Maybe he couldn't.
Lesson for all you younger professionals: Save and become financially independent. You will never know exactly when they come for you during a round of layoffs. If you are older than 40, watch out. You are likely on their list.
It is big to the 250 people being laid off.
> If he only saved the company thousands of dollars and did not generate new revenue, that explains why he was laid off.
It is not the job of the software engineer to generate revenue. A software engineer is a part of the process it's not his sole responsibility to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars. The point is to not get bogged down by the semantics of the performance review, the employee being laid off performed exceptionally well according to his supervisor despite which he is being laid off which the supervisor is not aware of.
> If he was really so skilled, why did he not find another position at Disney or elsewhere?
One reason could be the age old old-age problem in the tech industry. The article mentions he is 57 years old(which should be irrelevant when hiring).
This article says nothing of the underlying restructuring that occurred where the focus of the department was shifted from sustainment to development.
It mentions nothing of the laid off employees out of that 90 that found jobs with the consulting companies that would be handling the sustainment work and ultimately sitting at same desk, doing the same work, for more money.
Also, the 40 that retired weren't simply offered 3 months salary and let go. They had the choice to look for other work within the company, look for other work elsewhere, or use the many years of experience they had vested with the company and take a retirement package.
There are also those that lost their jobs as part of that "90" (not 250) on January 30, that were able to rehired at the company in subsequent months in other roles.
Source: I actually work for Disney, in IT, in the building pictured in the article.
Because they replaced their internal workforce with H1-Bs.
If your company is sticking it to you, sticking it back to them is a perfectly valid choice (although not one I'd take, I'm more the ride off into the sunset type).
A better system would allocate H1Bs to the most talented foreign workers and let them choose their own employer here in the US, negotiating a market rate salary if they so choose.
"Pay the nonimmigrant workers at least the local prevailing wage or the employer's actual wage, whichever is higher; pay for non-productive time in certain circumstances; and offer benefits on the same basis as for U.S. workers;"[1]
Full disclosure: I'm on a H1-B and paid way more than the local prevailing wage for my position.
You can claim people are a level 1 computer programmer, and the prevailing wage is 65k: http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?area=41884...
I've been through the visa process a few times at different companies, and it's pretty clear that even employers who are not "taking jobs away from US workers" are sticking to the letter of the law and not the spirit, since the goal is to get that candidate a visa. Microsoft would tell all of the green card applicants not to worry about PERM certification since MS needed so many people that if they found an equally qualified candidate, they would hire that candidate too, but when you see how things get crafted it's clear that company lawyers will do all they can to reduce the likelihood of there being any qualified applicants.
It is, at the end of the day, paper with words on it.
The idea that this could affect future prospects is true, but only in a sort of vague way that doesn't really matter.
Imagine that a company works you to death and eventually you just can't turn up any more. Does it make sense to worry about references then? Do you ever want to work for such a company again, or even for someone who respects them? I wouldn't.
Actually, no. The fundamental requirement of the H1B program is that workers be paid the prevailing wage. The only way that's possible is for replacement workers to be paid the same as those they replaced, which isn't what happens.
If Microsoft, Facebook, and Google are speaking the truth then wouldn't they be keen to pick up the talent being dismissed by Disney and Edison? Understand that someone monitoring ticketing tech at Disney World is different from a mobile software engineer but there must be some overlap.
Besides, it's not like US has monopoly on office space for tech companies. Microsoft, Facebook or Google would apply for a visa, but then just hire the candidate for their UK/Ireland/Canada office if they don't get it approved.
*Edit - According to the UK Government, the statutory redundancy (severance) pay in the UK for a worker of 10 years would be 15 weeks pay at a maximum of £464 which equates to about £7k $10k. Obviously this is only the statutory level.
And do all those positions collectively get paid more than what they used to? To a certain extent, I imagine you can hire a greater number of cheap workers who collectively can muddle through the job, but still cost less.
There's something disturbing about the "job creation!" moral trump card, when the same act is destroying or at least hurting other lives and careers.
So the NYT is opposing a practice which makes very poor people much better off, and makes much wealthier people a little worse off - unlike their Indian counterparts, they do not need to jump through hoops to get a visa and work at some other job - all on the basis of where those people were born. Classy.
In short it makes sense to play the start up game in India, only if its your own start up.
To use an extreme example, the workers at Foxconn who work 12 hour shifts, share a bed, and have terrible health problems due to chemicals for making ipads more shiny are quite likely making a decision that's better than their nearest alternative. That doesn't make how Foxconn treats workers ok.
The H1-B program is flawed in that it not only hurts these wealthier americans (those who are being laid off), it hurts Indians too by hanging the threat of deportation over their head if they ever want to change jobs. As usual the wealthiest of americans are able to use the law to make themselves even wealthier.
Wages are tied loosely to value generated. If you're very skilled at making widgets, you can make the company a lot of money. If widgets go out of style, your value to the company decreases. YOU as a person aren't worth any less, but you aren't worth as much to your current employer.
In the tech industry, you need to be responsible for increasing your ability to generate value and negotiating for to capture your share of the value you create.
I cant really speak to the visa status of the contracted employees (I know that seems to be a lot of the focus of the comments in this thread). I do know that many of the people that were impacted by this restructuring found roles in other parts of the organization (which was mentioned in the article), many doing active development work on other projects. These employees included a wide range of ages and experience levels, so I really don't buy that agism was part of this decision. I do not know what those employees ended up making in the new roles, but I do have years of experience with the HR policies of this company and would be very surprised if those employees weren't making at or near their previous levels. With that said I really don't feel there were significant financial gains to be had by shifting those 250 roles around. I recently saw some internal figures showing that the number of non-contractor Disney IT employees has actually gone up slightly in the past year. This could be creative accounting statistics or it could be that there truly is not some scheme to replace knowledgeable local employees with less knowledgeable out-sourced employees as the article suggests. My experience and gut says the latter is more likely than the former, but that is my own opinion. I wont speculate on the disposition of the employees that are truly displaced and out of a job as a result of this restructuring, but I do feel for them, and hope for the best for them.
I've been in my IT role with Disney for only a few years (I have many more years in non-IT roles), but for me, I like the emphasis on actual development, and less on ongoing sustainment. I personally don't feel like my role or those around me are at risk of being replaced by an out-sourced team. I also work closely with some of the "managed services" folks, and appreciate that they will be handling the monitoring and calls in the wee hours while I get to create cool stuff during the day.
Disclaimer: I by no means speak for Disney or it's IT department. This is all my personal observation and opinions.
Neither did they. Good luck.
I really don't understand the tone in comments from this whole thread in general. Many companies, large and small, make decisions that result in a change of direction or focus. The results of those changes may mean that some of roles are no longer needed. Is it inherently negative for an IT group to say they want to focus on new development and not sustainment? Is it because out-sourcing is "bad"? Is it because Disney is a large corporation and "enterprise" has such a negative connotation?
I honestly want to understand this better, because I don't get why there is _so_ much negativity around this.
Even on simple things like open floor plans, common working hours, scrum/agile methodologies, when an H1B employee is asked for feedback they will offer no real opinion. It has a large impact on the work culture.
Some of my co-workers are great friends. I would love for them to be citizens here, but I cannot help but resent the H1B program to the point where I will now scan companies for how many H1Bs are working there. I want to be a part of a work culture that does not treat its employees like hourly wage slaves. I would prefer they are granted full citizenship so that their lower bargaining rights do not affect mine. Not only do I have H1B friends who feel their d
Someone earlier mentioned that Indians get a bad wrap in Silicon Valley. I'll just throw in that even amongst my Indian friends it is a well-accepted fact that there is a pattern of strong in-group preferences among Indians in hiring practices, office politics, and inter-worker relations. Racial/cultural/religious groups that have strong in-group preferences in diverse settings such as large corporations will tend to get a bad rap.
Amongst Stanford, IVY, etc friends the common comeback to this conversation is that I should start my own company to avoid being an employee. All agree being an employee is a precarious position in America unless you are at one of the top 3 tech companies, but even for those companies, they only need to retain and keep happy their best workers during the high growth phases. The divide is that amongst my friends who have raised $10-30mm seed rounds, they all came from very wealthy backgrounds to begin with. Middle and lower class Americans friends are pursuing my path as well, building up savings and a personal safety net for first 5-10 years out of college because we see how greatly in debt our parents are. The wealthy love the H1B program because it is completely beneficial for them that America has a wage slave system, and they'll never have to be on the other end of the stick.
Outside of engineering, the other roles in companies like eBay that I see where cheap foreign replacement is less of a risk and native Americans are valued are product managers. An MBA is an unspoken prerequisite for that role, and again, I only know of wealthy friends obtaining MBAs. Even a friend who has Harvard MBA stated, "an MBA is worthless, it's basically an extended networking party for rich kids."
On the flip side, my current work tried to convert me to a H1-B since they thought it would be easier to get me a green card from there, and that has been a complete clusterfuck with the lottery where we waited months and my petition wasn't even selected.
H1bs can be transferred easily between companies. Once you have your i-140 approved you can transfer that easily to the new company. You also retain your priority date. In simple terms, you don't lose your place in the GC queue. It takes around 9 - 15 months for your labor and i-140 to be approved.
"Moving to a new company within 5 years starts the whole citizenship cycle over again too, so they are a less mobile workforce"
Nah these programs are never ever abused in any way shape or form by company management.
No H1Bs needed.
This ought to be illegal, no?
It's absolutely not the same as outsourcing - if Disney could have outsourced the jobs, it would have by now. But these positions likely require physical proximity to the Disney theme park.
This is the ugly side of H1Bs - while Facebook, Google, et al. are using them in a way that (plausibly) doesn't hurt American employment, and are legitimately in need of more slots, that's not the case for the main H1B players (Infosys, HCL, etc), who are just gaming the system to maximize revenues.
Just a few of the realities that you will face if and when you do so:
1) A 12+ hour time difference. I recall nightly conference calls that started at 10pm. If you are somebody who values your time, you will find this untenable. Just use Slack or Basecamp to touch base? See #2:
2) Complete inconsistency in skill and communication ability. It was almost the norm to wake up in the morning and check for the changes we expected to be in place while the outsourced team worked overnight only to be shocked at the lack of progress. One question about a particular detail of the assigned task would bring the work to a screeching halt and we wouldn't find out about it until the next day. We would answer the question (usually inconsequential) and the progress would resume (far behind schedule). In many other cases, work was just done incorrectly and we had to spend the day course-correcting.
3) Lack of talent. After all, the workers who qualify for H1-B's are a self-selecting group who are, by definition, identified as the most talented employees. There is no guarantee that their counterparts who stayed home are able to do the job properly. In my experience most employees were sub-par, as one would expect when they are willing to work for pennies on the dollar compared to a U.S. citizen or somebody on an H1-B.
This is false. Many (at least 50% of H1B Indian workers) do not fall under this category.
To give you an example (in software): a company like Infosys would send you average or below average consultants who are good at communicating in English. And then Infosys would charge you higher than the premium developers located in the US, while paying the worker just about average (or even minimum pay by market standards). Over a longer period of time, there are quality issues, reworks, extensions and dependability created. Now, even if a client decided to leave Infosys and hire a premium developer - it is hard and costly. Who wants to take responsibility of a bad quality thing without being given time to improve quality.
The rest of the 50% who are talented, they get paid well, they contribute positively to the US economy and indirectly hurt the Indian economy.
I think many of your points could be summarized as "we hired a bunch of idiots and they couldn't do their job very well". Timezones made some difference in that you weren't able to closely supervise them, but the fundamental problem was that your management shouldn't have outsourced the work to people not capable of doing the job.
First, there may be benefits to locating your workforce in the US. They may be closer to the location of core business activities, and the employer may enjoy some benefits of the US legal system and infrastructure. Opinions on this may differ, some people think location is unimportant, others think it is highly important. I'm just suggesting that it certainly may be a factor.
Second, a path to US citizenship or a green card remains very valuable. If an employer can sponsor a visa and green card application, they may get a higher caliber of applicant than they would overseas. There is also a lower possibility of turnover. While it is certainly possible to leave a job as an H1B holder for another, mobility does remain considerably more limited than it would be for a citizen who can freely participate in the labor market (including leaving the field entirely for better opportunities).
I don't really see this as a scare story, because it's pretty indisputable that these visas are sometimes abused. That doesn't mean they always are. How often and how much is another subject of considerable disagreement.
Overall, I will say one thing, they system is horrendously broken when a company that pays over 200k for H1B applicants is in the same lottery as outsourcing companies where people are training their replacements.
Disclaimer: I am an immigrant in the US on a L visa.
If the goal of the H1B visa program was 'import enough migrants to bring down the standard US salary' it probably wouldn't be legal because no politician would get behind it publicly.
So this is really about calling a spade a spade...
One thing I've never seen work, however, is differing time zones working well together. There's always some kind of schedule conflict that could be resolved if everyone was taking lunch at the same time or getting off work at the same time.
Everything, actually.
“The program has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans...”
"Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced."
If such a loophole exists it puts American tech workers in a vulnerable position.
I would be willing to bet if they gave these workers Green Cards instead of H1-B's, this practice wouldn't be as popular because the worker would be able to compete freely in the market.
Doesn't sound like remote work to me.
Same situation in Canada, except we call them "temporary foreign workers."
These programs are supposed to fill a shortage, but in practice they just provide cheaper labour.
Also, just a general off-topic thought. The article talks about how H1-B's tend to have lower salaries than U.S. tech workers. I'm under the impression that many of these H1-B candidates are individuals just finishing a degree and will later in their career move on to obtaining a green card after a few years. If this is the case, then of course their salaries are lower; they're earlier in their career. I'd love to see some data exploring this more.