Does your company not already grow skills over time? One should already be training (or coaching) individuals regardless of their present skill levels.

We grow skills. That's one reason they are so valuable. And we cross train. Everyone is able to take over for another employee at any time. But now is not the time. I just can't stomach losing our H1B members or any dev right now.

We are in the health IT sector and you may not know this (because it surprises most everyone) but there is an absolute revolution happening in healthcare. We're approaching version 5 of FHIR. And I'd guess 99% of the devs on HN are like "what the heck is FHIR". It's a core standard for exchanging healthcare data. And it's literally the tip of an iceberg. And that's my personal dilemma as a lead developer.

Speaking of skill growth, devs attended FHIR Dev Days last week, CCDA Implementation-athon a few weeks before that, and the FHIR Connectathon a week before that.

None of us are in the office and since we have formed personal relationships over the last few years we know how to "get stuff done". AFAIK we treat every employee well enough they have few reasons to leave. Now is not the time for us to lose a dev. Any dev.

I just ask the government to stop being jerks and let us ride out this covid year without too much more upset...

That's a very uncharitable reading of what they said. They presumably spent time training these people. They can't afford to train up a bunch of new people because someone decided that they need to be kicked out of the country for no good reason.

I am saying that they should already have a "training time allocation" built into their role and that they could choose to use it for remedial skills. That is, individually having time for training should be a moot point.

Now, if the business can survive in the meantime is a different matter. But the business has no choice in the matter. And the business is not alone in the matter. Which probably makes that a moot point too.

I don't claim that it will be easy. "I can't train people" doesn't compel me as a broadly satisfactory counterargument for the above reasons. That sentiment itself is not charitable making it hard for me to read it charitably.

You can always do what companies like yours have already done to residents: Have the H1B visa holders train the residents, and leave the H1B visa holders out of a job. Does that sound unpleasant to you? Trust me, anyone on the shorter end of any stick isn't going to like it. My question is, why preference H1B holders over residents?

I'm not sure you're making an argument in good faith here.

Still feel free to see my response just below. That said I'm not management but our devs are smart and knowledgeable and I'm sure are getting offers from other companies. And I like to think they are treated well and I hope I get to work with them for a long time to come.