H1B at big tech is modern slavery. For every $400k SWE watching Netflix at Google there's an army of cheap, exploited foreigners carrying them behind the scenes.

Of course: don't be evil.

> H1B at big tech is modern slavery

that's putting it too far - they are free to leave or quit as they wish. Unlike the true modern slavery of which is migrant workers (like described here https://www.antislavery.org/world-cup-2022-the-reality-for-m...), where their passports are confiscated, etc.

H1B is exploiting the rules for cheap labour. It does benefit the H1B holder - since they would otherwise not have signed up. The losers in the situation are the local workers who expect to be paid higher, but is out-competed by these foreign workers.

“Modern slavery” is definitely an exaggeration but many are also not quite so free to quit.

The H1B is a “dual intent” visa, meaning you can apply for permanent residency while you have it. But you must maintain your H1B the entire time, which can be a decade or more for folks from places like India. You can transfer an H1B but it’s not easy and if you quit your job you must line another one up in 60 days or say goodbye to the life you’ve built yourself in the US. Some employers are happy to take advantage of this.

This is what creates more downward pressure on everyone's comp than just getting foreign workers. It artificially creates a group of workers for whom it's significantly harder and more risky to change jobs or simply quit when they are unsatisfied. I think everyone in tech would be better off if you wouldn't lose the H1B quickly if unemployed and if you wouldn't need to rely on an employer doing extra work to sponsor you. Make it two years instead of two months and make it so that the visa holder just can mail in proof of a paycheck. There is no real downside to this change for anybody in US society.

> There is no real downside to this change for anybody in US society.

Well, the downside is for the companies exploiting migrants and those are the ones donating money to the people who make decisions. Lobbying is legally bribing them and the effect is that the politicians don't represent the people who vote for them but the corporations.

And No, this is not a cynical take but a factual one.

I'm not sure about this. Maybe the companies would be better off with a system that makes it much easier to hire from wherever they want as well.

Or like... if the actual _company_ that claims it "needs that worker from outside the U.S. so so so much" actually took the risk on instead of foisting it on the poor employee (and by extension, the entire labor market). My 2-step process for fixing the H1-B system.

1. H1Bs are _auctioned_ instead of raffled. You really need that H1B? Prove it - pay for it. 2. Sponsoring companies are responsible for cost of living for that employee for the entire duration of their H1B. That obligation can be transferred to another company.

3. (Bonus) After reaching a certain threshold of "taxes paid to the U.S." (maybe 300k or something) H1B holders _automatically_ get their green cards. No questions asked. If you can take that much of their money, they can be citizens.

This is practical, but there is some inherently pay-to-play classist issues with handing out green cards to those with money.

There's already a category for that, the EB-5 investor visa.

If we understand the act of giving a green card to mean the US wants that person to join the society for the long term, is "taxes paid" really the best measure of desirability?

My issue with "H1B to the highest bidder" is that there's a lot of industries outside of tech that use H1Bs like healthcare, academia, skilled trades, or heck, even fashion models. I think something like that would have to be paired with quotas on the industry otherwise high tech salaries would blow away possibly-even-more-important healthcare and research spots.

As for #2, the main issue now is more of supply and demand. The US only gives out 140,000 employment based green cards a year (plus some from other unused categories), which also includes the worker's families. There are far more ways to get an employment based green card than through H1B. The problems we're hearing about are less to do with the process (which _is_ byzantine) and more to do with that there are not enough green cards to go around.

And just as an aside, there's no labor certification for an H1B, e.g. a company isn't saying they need that worker so so much. A company just wins the lottery and agrees to pay at least what the DoL says is the prevailing wage for the occupation. If they later want to get a green card for that employee, they have to redo the prevailing wage determination AND make an attempt to hire an citizen/GC before they can get the GC (or the employee has to prove they have exceptional skills that gains them international recognition, among other things which includes "being paid way more than your peers")

> Bonus) After reaching a certain threshold of "taxes paid to the U.S." (maybe 300k or something) H1B holders _automatically_ get their green cards.

I think this is a good idea in general. One of the main complained about immigration is some supposed cost to the barely-existing US welfare system. Having a minimum lifetime tax before getting access to that seems like a decent compromise to calm down the xenophobes

> which can be a decade or more for folks from places like India.

The current estimate for Indians is 140 years [0].

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/united-states-green-ca...

As long as they’re able to switch job and can leave the states (if they want to) I don’t think that the “slavery” word applies at all.

And I’m saying this because there are places like Dubai where you very often get your passport taken on arrival, can’t leave the state and can’t really go work somewhere else. There is a lot more to say, but that qualifies as “modern slavery”.

You're not really free to leave if you have to leave the country if you don't have a job lined up immediately.

If your passport is taken you are not free to leave. You physically cannot.

On an H1B you are free to leave whenever, and under certain circumstances forced to.

It’s a black and white difference. I don’t grasp why it’s hard to understand.

> if you have to leave the country

i mean, this is meant to be a jobs visa. The fact that if you quit said job, you no longer have a reason to be given to stay, seems pretty normal. You are free to leave, it doesn't mean leaving is consequence free.

> this is meant to be a jobs visa

It isn’t, it’s a dual intent visa. Job and path to permanent residency.

> dual intent visa.

the gov't doesn't intent this visa to be dual purpose. It is a job visa first and foremost, and the path to PR is at best a secondary concern for the gov't.

If the government doesn’t intend for it to be a dual intent visa why did they make it a dual intent visa? This is all very much under their control!

It's made a dual intent because it's impossible to prove the lack of immigration intent for any long-term visa. It's not the only dual intent visa, almost every long-term non-immigrant visa is dual-intent for this reason. Even the TN, which is not proclaimed a dual intent is such de facto since the TN visitors don't have to prove the lack of immigrant intent either. The reason TN is such an exception is that it's not issued by the DoS and the concept of "dual intent" exists only as a legal fiction around the DoS procedures.

You're free to try and leave Dubai without a passport, but it's not consequence free.

I love when authortiarians use degrees of coercion to say "well technically YOU ARE free. But not free from consequences".

It's such a disingenuous line of argumentation.

that's a false equivalency.

When your passport is confiscated, you get arrested at the airport.

When you are tired of your H1B job, you can just leave. The fact that you lose your position in the queue for a potential PR is irrelevant.

You can secure another job before leaving the old one.

That's like saying that I have a visa because I can just make sure my next job has a visa.

Past: a man can own a slave.

Now: the system can own a slave.

Yeah I agree “slavery” doesn’t apply here, I’m just disputing how free to leave H1B workers are.

> you can apply for permanent residency while you have it.

Just to further complicate it, for many people _your employer_ has to apply for permanent residency on your behalf which is another 2 year ordeal and fair bit of money (that's just to get the green card priority date, not to mention waiting for the green card itself which varies by country). And that further indentures you since if you leave during that period you effectively abandon that application.

Indentured servitude version 2.0

very few privileged people can really just quit

H1B is a lemon market for those signing up just the same as those surrendering their passports and ending up a working prisoner. Each might luck out, but they're more likely to get exploited and regret their decision. And it gets worse every year.

H1B might not meet the legal definition of modern slavery even though many are trapped just as effectively by the system but everyone in evolved with employing them is morally compromised just the same.

If the H1B program is really this bad, and if everyone involved is truly morally compromised, would it be better for the US to shut the H1B program down completely?

Surely you can think of something more nuanced than that extreme option? You can fix the visa program such that you can attract the most talented immigrants and treat them with respect for the contributions they make to your society?

Most H1b visa workers are low skilled and are treated as commodity. Its their own fault because there will always be a market for low skilled professionals.

I’m proposing an extreme option in response to the extreme criticism. If the US in enslaving people, we should stop that immediately.

It’s definitely not modern slavery in the literal sense, because indeed it’s fully legal for them to leave or quit as they wish, but neither is it fully true to say that they are free to do so.

If an H-1B worker does quit their job, or even if they get fired, they have a very tight deadline under the immigration laws to depart the country. This applies regardless of what financial obligations they may have as a renter or homeowner and regardless of the situation of the rest of their family.

And if after their job ends they rush out of the country to meet the immigration deadline, any lingering ties to the US will make it harder for them to convince CBP to let them re-enter on visitor status, so the departure may in some circumstances be either temporarily or permanently one-way as well as rushed.

The severity of this disruption forces many H-1B workers to meekly put up with a lot more abuse and mistreatment at work than do US citizens, LPRs, and those lucky few categories of nonimmigrants whose work authorizations are not tied to their employment. Agreed, it’s not slavery, but it’s not full freedom either.

A more humane approach would be what Canada does: holders of Canadian employer-specific work permits who quit or lose their job are nevertheless legally allowed to remain in Canada until their current work permit expires, although not to work for a different Canadian employer without first receiving a new permit. They can rely on this predictability of legal status in the country when signing leases, planning their children’s education, and other matters. And it often gives them far more time than the tight US deadline to find a new employer to sponsor a subsequent work permit.

They are not really free when renting contracts would leave them bankrupt and they'd have nowhere to go.

It's a very exploitative situation with extra steps where there's little they can do to protect themselves once in the country.

They can just endure until they're out of it.

> H1B is exploiting the rules for cheap labour. It does benefit the H1B holder - since they would otherwise not have signed up.

H1B, L1 etc visa schemes make you indentured to the system. The longer you stay and invest in your home and social life (which as a human you have to, otherwise you become a mindless drone), the more you are indentured to the system. Indenture is built into the visa contract – you cannot quit your current employer and stay unemployed even for a short period of time – even though you did contribute social security every single month, even though you paid all taxes every single month – you get no benefits.

So, you are in constant fear of losing your job and having to throw away your entire investment here. This means you will be pliable in many ways you would otherwise not be. You can be denied promotions, you can be given shitty/grunt work, you can be given borderline unethical work, you can be asked to fire other people in unsympathetic ways, you can be asked to work weekends and nights without any overtime pay, you can be asked to travel very long distances for work in economy class and so on and you shall not complain.

You can only suffer silently until you get another job. Btw, you cannot get any random job you like. You have to get a job where the employer is willing to go through the rigmarole of visa process - which narrows the field significantly.

This is possible only if the H1b worker is unskilled or I would say he is a commodity.

What you have said in the comment is not applicable for competent professionals.

Unfortunately that's not true. It is not easy even for strong programmers to polish up on Leetcode, find a new job, get a written job offer, have the new employer to file for an H1B transfer, and get an acknowledgement from USCIS all within the 60 day window. The 2021-2022 job market was an aberration where anyone with a pulse could find a programming job within a few weeks.

Even in the best case, as the 60 day deadline gets closer you also have to plan for the contingency and start planning how to uproot your life. Pack your belongings, sell your car, plan to take the kids out of school for at least the current school year. Even if you get the H1B approval a few days after you return to your home country, visa stamping can take months so you have to plan for an extended absence and the good possibility that you won't be able to return.

Sure we can say that this is exactly what H1B workers signed up for when they came to the US and it is true that no one goes into this blind. However it is not a pleasant situation to be in, and the fear of facing this, especially in the kind of job market we saw in 2023, takes its toll on families.

Suppressing wages is one thing but imagine the pressures to behave unethically where bidded.

This is the major problem in my view. Until your permanent residency slots, and before you actually start integrating with the culture, it is the case that many H1B's are ethically in tune moreso with their mother country than the United States.

The occasional civics lessons done over lunch in my career have been eye opening in more than one way. Interestingly, many H1B's are allergic to unionizing as well. Probably another facet of the demand for more of them.

This feels a little hyperbolic. I’m a world where Forever 21 was importing actual slaves chained to sewing machines I think the people accepting voluntary contracts that undercut the price of local labor are at most modern indentured servants.

It's only exploitation if those workers have to live in the US. Something like 50kUSD/y is laughable to an american but is actually a ridiculous amount of money for a lot of people due to exchange rates. More than worth it so long as they can work remotely without paying US cost of living.

>Something like 50kUSD/y is laughable to an american

What's laughable is how out of touch you are. US median personal income among workers who work full-time year round is about $56k.

Wow. I guess I am out of touch.

I know plenty of US families who gross less than 50k. They live comfortably, but not extravagantly, and not in California.

I also know a handful of people who make less than $25k/yr. They struggle more, but they still get by.

$50k/yr, $25/hr may be chump change to a big tech company engineer with a degree from a prestigious university, but it's a very normal hourly (non-overtime) wage (maybe even on the high side) for a lot of regular people.

Addition: For example, journeyman electricians average $24/hr in my state.

$25k is close to what international students in the US get paid on average. Postdoctoral fellows get $50k on average. All of them get by, many with families.

I think I'm out of touch then. I thought US had high cost of living everywhere and that people would struggle financially unless they made about $100k per year. At least that's the impression I got while reading salary discussions here.

Is this only true in big cities? Is this true at all?

I live in Florida. Miami, Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville are our largest cities, with Jacksonville being the most populous (though it's only #20 nationally.)

Median household income in Florida is $62k/yr. This includes the 13% of our population of 22 million who are in poverty and the about 7% on government food assistance (SNAP). I have personally lived on less than $20k/year as a younger, single man with low cost housing.

Florida is in the bottom third of states by median household income. DC, Maryland, and some of the northeastern states have median household income in the high-80s to just over $90k, but no state in the US is at $100k median. California is at $85k/yr.

To answer your question, HN has a higher than average population of young, childless, city-dwelling people with good education, well-paying careers, and relatively expensive tastes ($8+ cups of coffee, etc.) If they suddenly made the median salary for their state, they would likely struggle financially for a bit.

I don’t live in an expensive area but the general move towards $15/hr minimum has either caused or been a really strong indicative symptom of something like a collapse in the value of wages. A lot of people doubled their wages nearly overnight here, while myself making $25 did not see a raise at all.

I was an account manager at a MSP making $25 and I remember seeing a sign for a rural bar “line cook wanted $25/hour”. Tried to use that as a bargaining chip to show him how bad it was and he told me to go work at the bar if I wanted the same money for less work. No, I’d like to be gain experience and be treated like a professional, please.

Point being, $50K ain’t shit. Even in rural areas.

> Tried to use that as a bargaining chip to show him how bad it was and he told me to go work at the bar if I wanted the same money for less work. No, I’d like to be gain experience and be treated like a professional, please.

That should’ve been your hint to start looking for a new role asap. If negotiation fails, bounce as fast as you can.

H-1B is an immigration visa, if they worked remotely outside of the US they wouldn't have it.

> Something like 50kUSD/y is laughable to an american but is actually a ridiculous amount of money for a lot of people due to exchange rates.

For anyone on the globe able to go through a Google job interview that's also not going to be really that much.

There was a shift in salaries during the pandemic when more companies opened to hiring remote workers.

To hold this position is to assert that modern employment is wage slavery. That extends beyond H1B. It also undermines the suffering of the actually enslaved but I do not think that was your intention.

This comment might be interpreted as offensive on so many levels. :) One of them being the implication that, on average, nationals are bigger slackers than foreigners.

In fairness, the worst case implication is that nationals with a cushy salary are less motivated than poorly paid foreigners who need to maintain their job to maintain their visa and position in the immigration process. That doesn’t seem particularly offensive to me, a decently paid national.

In general, I think it's best to avoid stereotypes like this, unless they aren't just stereotypes but a statistic. And even then, interpreting a statistic can often be tricky.

There wasn’t a stereotype; we were discussing different incentive structures (national vs foreigner was not a salient part of the discussion). No one is hinting toward nationals being innately lazy or foreigners being innately hard working

>In fairness, the worst case implication is that nationals with a cushy salary are less motivated than poorly paid foreigners who need to maintain their job to maintain their visa and position in the immigration process.

"Motivated" can be one of those euphemistically loaded words. Am I "insufficiently motivated" when I refuse to cross an ethical/legal/moral line? Is an H1B who has their residency on the line "more motivated" when they're totally okay with crossing that line?

Also, here's another little thing you don't get told about H1B and everyone just assumes you you know: any H1B you manage is only supposed to be able to work in their state of residence, and you, the employer are supposed to enforce that.

Think about that from a native's point of view. You:re drawing a box around this person and basically saying "you must stay here and work". Whereas I just move around and do what needs being done wherever it's conducive to being done from.

Sure, call me privileged, but it's awful bloody draconian when the System demands you implement a surveillance mechanism on their behalf over your workers.

Maybe I'm just a bad employer. These things just really leave a bad taste in my mouth. Point being always track all the outputs. Often the desired ones are the ones no one wishes to direct your attention to.

This is such a tone deaf rosy eyed out of touch with reality comment.

Modern slavery exists. See things like Uyghur camps, people sold to work until death on Thai boats or exit visas in Saudi Arabia.

Having a choice to work for money or (gasp) return home is not even remotely the same? To put them under the same label is to discount the actually bad stuff.

"Return home" is awfully convenient phrasing to gloss over the fact that to many of the people caught in this system, the US IS their home in practical terms and "returning home" to their country of origin is more like uprooting your entire life within a few weeks and restarting it in a foreign land.

Especially with Chinese and Indian H1Bs, the wait for permanent residency can be so long that they may have spent over a decade in the US with no meaningful connection to their country of origin, with all their friends and immediate family here.

Correct. Now you can maybe read up on those things I mentioned and understand why you are still failing to make H1B even remotely look like actual modern slavery. (Spoiler alert: it might have something to do with pitting "uprooting life" & "no friends" against "no option to leave", "life in confinement" and "work till death")

Calling it slavery isn't to say that the situation is on par with Uyghur camps or Indian laborers in the middle east etc. Just like "I'm dying from this heat" doesn't actually say that the heat is so severe as to kill you the way it can in some parts of the world.

The point is that the system creates a similar sense of entrapment as slavery. The fact that it isn't literal slavery doesn't make it not an exploitative practice worth fixing.

"I'm dying from this heat" is okay because dying is something we all do.

That phrase would stop being okay if death was something that happens not to you but to poorer people in other countries. See the difference?

Comparing your privileged life with really bad events that happen to others makes light of them. There's a reason things like "omg it's like a gas chamber here amirite?" are often frowned upon and Auschwitz is stuff of the past but slavery happens today.

Also, sorry but the last part about "similar sense of entrapment", it's not entrapment when the worst that can happen is you go home. I myself am on a working visa, yes if I get fired I go home where I'd rather not be, but I'd never have the gall to compare it to literal slavery as long as it's happening...

Easy to say that when you don't have a family member who is suicidally depressed because they spent 20 years working hard to get through the process, had their green card application process messed up by their employer, have barely lived in their country of origin and have no career prospects there because what they are educated in is not valued there.

I have extended family members who lived in war zone in the past couple of years. Somebody just started bombing their city. They had to move.

So yeah sorry to hear but it's one of those many sucky situations in life. The lack of options is illusory. Mental issues are mental issues, slavery is slavery, misfortune as a free person is misfortune as a free person.

Sounds like grounds to sue for the "messed up" process? If not I assume if whoever it is worked 20 years in the US they have experience that can be valued in many countries. I'd recommended checking around the more reasonable ones like Canada or Australia. As free person can.

I wonder how Singapore never gets into this list with their maids and helpers and builders living in dormitories.

There are no exit visas for foreign workers, right? Just like with SV, you have an option to come work for money or leave home anytime. Yeah condition may suck but it's a fundamentally different situation.

You don't understand what slavery is. Slaves don't get paid and it isn't voluntary. H1B are paid and is entirely voluntary. The reason foreigners accept and compete for the positions is because the pay is better than the positions they can get locally. Calling that slavery is ignorant and an insult to anyone alive or historically who has suffered actual slave labor.

People who go to Dubai and end up in what people call slavery also "sign contracts" and go there "voluntarily".

They're exploited nonetheless.

Your entire comment defending exploitation is and insult to anyone alive.

Disgusting semantics game to defend what the US and other countries do with migrants. You're trying to shame people when you're the one who should feel ashamed.

If you need to work to survive, you are a wage slave

I'd love to hear your take on exercise

All your hunter gatherer and farmer ancestors were wage slaves apparently

> You don't understand what slavery is. Slaves don't get paid and it isn't voluntary

Technically, that varies. Slavery is as old as humanity itself and it exists in different forms. It's not even unheard of for a slave to be wealthier than his master, although, of course, this is more of an exception. What I'm trying to say is if someone isn't picking up cotton in the american south, it doesn't mean they cannot be enslaved and don't need help

Back in the days of slaves, someone would have argued how slavery isn't that bad because there were more worse things in their past and how slavery was an improvement in the lives of those slaves compared to what they would have had in their home country. Your argument reeks of the same moral flaw.

> Back in the days of slaves, someone would have argued how slavery isn't that bad because there were more worse things in their past and how slavery was an improvement in the lives of those slaves compared to what they would have had in their home country.

Its not that uncommon an argument to encounter today on the Right.

> Slaves don't get paid and it isn't voluntary.

That is a very ignorant and US centric view of something that has been practiced for millennia all over the world.

Yeah there’s also non-H1B people getting severely underpaid too, and those comps are used to justify it.

I believe companies should be forced to pay H1B visa employees the top rate that they have for that job position (actual top rate paid to citizens and green card holders). If the theory is that they're desperate for these skills because people here don't have them, then companies should be more than willing to pay a premium to get those people they so desperately need.

It's still cruel and dehumanising.

Are H1Bs hired at big tech paid that low anywhere? From what I saw, they may be given the bottom of the job level band, but it's still usually quite high.

At the same time, it was obvious that having h1b engineers gave the managers a lot more power to overwork them and prevented them from speaking out.

Right, visas that are tied to jobs give the employers too much power over the employees.

But do you know what other American thing that's also tied to jobs? Health insurance. American health insurance is also modern slavery.

Seems quite clear that H1B should be reformed to allow for easier moves to another employer. It should just be a work permit for any job for a period of time.

Probably happens the other way too.

Yes, the grandparent comment also describes the common immigrant experience on a team where the others are native speakers of the work language. It’s not intentional prejudice, but just the wrong kind of accent can leave you excluded because the others start to feel that verbal communication is “harder” with you around.

Why "not supposed" to say out loud? Sounds simply as a problem of the only X on a team of Ys. Cultural (and other) differences can be hard, it is just a fact of life.

Think of it as being in the shoes of a lonely non-American in the country of Americans, if that is any consolation.

Therefore you are saying that having diversity leads to bullying and that you’re ok with that.

It’s always the goal, after all.

That’s actually the opposite of what they’re saying. Lack of diversity leads to bullying.

In corporate and academic America diversity unofficially means not majority white. Further, you're not supposed to acknowledge any sort of ingroup bias of any nonwhite racial group

It isn’t the “opposite” because this isn’t a binary situation. There is a spectrum. If the group members were all from the same place it wouldn’t be an issue either. If everyone is from different places it isn’t an issue. If many are from one place and some aren’t, then it is an issue.

The difference is, he presumably is in America.

Is that really related to h1b or other (cultural?) differences?

It’s not as if it’s directly attributable to an H1B but if a group has eight Indian people on it chances are they’ll converse in their native language from time to time and it’s quite possible they’ll have a group chat and a close relationship (given their shared similar circumstances). Not difficult to see how an outsider might feel excluded.

That said, that same group often faces exclusion in the wider company (and coming together is often in reaction to that), so it’s kind of miserable for everyone.

To be honest, I'm actually in favor of them not needlessly struggling to communicate with each other in broken English. I was once in an Econ class with a Chinese professor that spoke mandarin natively. As did a slim majority of the class. I recall him trying to explain something to the other mandarin-speakers and struggling before squeezing in like a 4 second mandarin quip and the response was a wave of "eureka!" across the other ones. Like he just somehow squeezed the past 40 minutes into 4 seconds and they all finally understood it completely. Astonishingly, really.

"chances are they’ll converse in their native language from time to time"

This needs to be a big No No. Everyone should speak the language everyone else can understand in the workplace at all times. I natively speak German, but I never speak German at work even when I temporarily was only working with someone visiting from Germany. It would have been rude to everyone around us. But then I'm also weird in that I dislike speaking my native language...

Agreed, I'm Indian and thus often it is the case that other Indians try to speak with me in Hindi, but I end up having to insist on English in certain contexts.

It's unnecessarily rude and exclusionary towards others. But on the other hand, I previously encountered the opinion that people who insist on speaking in English (especially without the "quirks" and accent of Indian English) despite being able to do Hindi are just trying to be pretentious.

That's caused by a lack of diversity. If they were from different countries, they would behave differently.

They also can’t easily quit since if you lose sponsorship you may have to return to your country of origin.

It’s not “confiscating passports” level but it’s definitely exploitative.

It happens in the UK too. For example a friend of mine was taken advantage of by the boss who was not hesitant at all to remind her that her existence in the country depended on his approval; so she had to do long hours with unreasonable tasks for little pay.

Oh man, but you're not missing out, you're alienating, you're not excluded from back channels ... you're being targeted for being expensive.

Being the odd one out also makes you a target for things like PIP quotas. It's very disturbing to watch, especially as managers try to justify it with phony evidence to save their own.

Happens all the time

Yeah it's absolutely demoralizing and made me leave some teams. Have very little faith in performance reviews and role guidelines

I am in the situation myself currently

I'm a manager of a team that's mostly H1Bs at Google. It's mostly fine but a few of them just refuse improve their English, and it's frustrating spending hours every day just being an English teacher to an engineer who writes at a 5th grade level. The problem with hiring too many H1Bs is they speak to each other in Chinese and thus take forever to become proficient at communicating with the rest of the company.

Also, I'd call into question the credibility of this article. Google pays H1Bs the same as Americans as far as I know. What Google is doing is hiring a large number of engineers in India. These people I assume are paid much less than American engineers.

As someone with some exposure to Chinese characters as a Japanese speaker, I’ve had the please to casually glance a WeChat group and realize some of the back channel Chinese from my teammates was joking about trying to get me fired.

I have a completely different experience. My (Indian) manager told me I couldn't be let go because it would make the team entirely Indian :) Apart from that, I found it much easier to work with H1B colleagues than with entitled and full of ego "native" Americans.

Yeah, the ego and entitlement of people living in their native country who can’t be sent back at a moment’s notice.

I don't think the risk of being sent back (or lack thereof) is important for how to treat other people. To put it crudely, assholes will be assholes no matter where they come from.

more like "everyone gets a prize" mentality.

I can't speak for other countries, but I'm not too surprised that you can run into certain cultures of Americans who seemingly have zero regards for the sentiment of others. Maybe it is ego and entitlement, but it's not because they can't be deported.

It's called acreaging. https://www.quora.com/How-do-Americans-live-in-the-worlds-la....

I’m not American and don’t live in America (I presume by “America” you mean the United States?), but shouldn’t it be “… refuse to improve their English”?

It should be “refuse to…” yea. I’m going to hazard a guess that the author you’re responding to missed the to there in their comment. It’s a common thing. Sometimes for example when I’m replying on mobile I might miss a word or autocorrect from my web browser may do something strange and I don’t catch it.

> I presume by “America” you mean the United States?

Yea that’s almost for sure what they mean. Typically people from the United States of America are called Americans and people across the world refer to those people as “Americans” and they/we also refer to ourselves and our country as “America” as a shortened form. I’m a little surprised you weren’t aware of this given your clearly written English but yep that’s what that means!

Presumably the parent comment meant that their English was poor to the point where they couldn’t communicate effectively with the worker, not that the worker was getting their point across but lacking pristine grammar.

As an anecdote I’ve found that non-Americans from well off families tend to speak near grammatically perfect English because that’s how foreign languages are taught.

As an anecdote, an eternal rule for venting about insufficient language skills of damned foreigners on the Internet seems to be that it must be articulated by at least one demonstration of one's own inability to possess the very competence demanded (e.g., through absolutely careless spelling, grammatical error, etc.), which my contribution above was simply commenting on ironically— with a tangential spoof of U.S. exceptionalism of course.

Here's something I don't understand. If google pays the same regardless, why bother to hire H1B at all?

If there are n tech jobs to be done, y people in group A who can do them, and z people in group B who can do them, opening hiring to all (y + z) people makes hiring easier than confining yourself to only y.

Easier could mean easier to hire, cheaper to hire (even if you pay them all the same as each other, the clearing wage is likely lower due to increased supply), easier to retain, etc.

Because they can serve them shit-sandwiches in other metrics and the H1B has no recourse.

"Work over the weekend or your employment will be terminated and you will have to be deported."

probably because of non-pay related practices? things like differences in healthcare laws, unionization, legal rights as a citizen (of a particular country) vs being a visitor who can be evicted/deported at will.

Because when a minimum wage is fixed, the market naturally simply adjusts the other parts accordingly.

Sure you pay both $x, but the skill diff can be 10x. USD16$250k can get you a bootcamp coder w zero exp (but w profile/status of citizen cardholder) [1] or someone way beyond 10x that skill but who simply can't afford to negotiate.

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/haseeb-qureshi-how-to-negoit...

Things have changed in India. In these top companies, engineers get as much as 1/3rd of the pay here. That’s relatively much better given the cost of living in India.

Well market dictates that if I am providing similar output, I should expect to get paid same or equalize the two levels at some intermediate stage.

refuse improve their English

I had to read that a few times and chuckled at the irony

My old boss in academia went through a “hire tons of Chinese chemists” phase and it got so bad he just had to eventually ban Chinese from being spoken in the lab. That seemed to work well and their English improved greatly and understanding in the lab went up. When they went back to China, hopefully they got more out of their experience here also. They learned new techniques instead of just doing things the same way they had always done them.

Interesting, isn't it considered impolite to speak in a language that someone in the group doesn't understand?

When I was in Germany, Germans even texted their SO in English in case I glance over their phones. Maybe the group I was in was exceptionally welcoming but everywhere in Europe where I lived(EU, non-EU, UK etc.) it was always considered rude to speak a language that others don't understand and everyone always tried their best to speak in English as a lingua franca.

If I happen to be in a working group that speaks multiple languages, I would definitely raise the question of speaking a common language in a work environment because you can't all be on the same page when your communications are patchy.

I don't know where in germany you worked at but most offices here are not nearly as english friendly, in my experience it's quite rare and more than half the IT jobs still expect you to know some German otherwise it's a non starter.

>I don't know where in germany

Frankfurt, non-IT job. I guess the mileage varies.

hope you enjoyed your stay, I've been meaning to visit that part of the country for a while, never got the chance to see Saalburg north of Frankfurt.

Frankfurt is the finance capital, so IME it'll tend more English-speaking than the average.

Yes, but many Chinese engineers have such a low level of proficiency that they genuinely struggle to communicate in spoken English. Pronunciation/accent can also be a major barrier to comprehension.

how can they write code ? real question

Do you seriously believe nobody in the non English speaking world can write code?

My guess is that he's talking about commenting code, not actually writing it.

I've had multiple coworkers remove comments or reject CRs because there were too many comments. If you foster a culture where comments are discouraged then it's less of an impediment

I mean you still have to comment on issues, and even within the code itself you need to name things in ways that make sense to others.

It's not that English specifically is required to do this, but if the organization is American it does seem like English would be the default and proficiency would be pretty important.

Is that a culture you want to foster, though?

I can say that I didn't agree with it. But that's what lead devs were pushing. The common mentality among devs is that releasing is more important than building something sustainable.

> there were too many comments

I didn't even knew this was a thing. I write tons of comments thinking they could be appreciated in case somebody has to glance at the code.

for example, if they need to create a class or a function, how do they name it ? I live in the non English speaking world, I had to learn a minimum of English to be able understand, reason about and write code.

Tell them to use chatgpt to translate their broken English

Yes, many German and French multi-national companies have English as the official language.

If there is at least one non-local participant in a meeting, or on an email list, then the discourse has to be popped up to English.

This often happens when none of them are native English speakers, e.g. German & Spanish.

There are specific English proficiency tests bound to levels of management - bad English, no promotion.

I’m European, Dutchman specifically, and I find it mentally difficult, almost impossible sometimes, to not converse in English with a person I know does speak English. I used to work at a Dutch company with ~35 nationalities and me and my Dutch colleagues where often reminded by our non Dutch coworkers that they prefer us to continue water cooler conversation in Dutch and not switched to English when they joined in. For them this was a great way to learn more Dutch. Right now there is also a parent at my kids school who is Welsh, and even though he understands Dutch very well and prefers to speak it, everytime I approach him for a conversation the first sentence in my head is formed in English. I have to consciously switch to Dutch before starting the conversation. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s some genetic heritage from when our country was a big international trading nation?

I don't know about google but at my fortune 500 company they are technically paid the same but clearly paid less in reality. A bunch of them are at lower levels then they should be based on experience and skills.

I find it interesting that H1B implies Indian or Chinese workers. As a South African I don't know why you don't hire more English speakers that would be H1Bs. I myself have tried to get an H1B and so far the door has been closed.

It's been easier for me to move to a European country where I had to learn another language.

I agree with this but I’ve found that the people making the decisions of who to hire usually have some incentive to hire from a certain country.

Those reasons could be kickbacks, family stake in the company, etc.

Edit: This is completely anecdotal. Grain of salt and all that.

It's not common. I was on a call with a group of Indian contractors and one of them announced they were relocating to the USA. The cheers on the call were insane.

From an employer's point of view it's easier to stick to X countries as the source of H1Bs as the process overall can differ between countries.

It's because statistically they are just almost entirely from India. There are a few Chinese ones but it's no where near the amount of Indian hires. Chinese H1b candidates are post graduates from PhD programs and are less common but make up the 2nd largest but still extremely small group.

For quite a while, H1B had been almost exclusively for foreign graduates from American schools so the distribution of H1B workers is as same as the distribution of foreign students.

In tech or IT, the ones who hires are mostly indians so mostly prefer to hire from there, I think even in Canada international students acceptance process, there were some complains that the majority of these students are from India.

> I'm a manager of a team that's mostly H1Bs at Google. It's mostly fine but a few of them just refuse improve their English

I am wondering how did they manage to pass the Google's hiring committee?

You can’t hire a bunch of people without lowering the bar. This is a big part of the reason why big tech doesn’t appeal to me. “We’ve got tens of thousands of the best of the best” sounds like weird delusional fetishism and I’d like to think that we are mostly past that now thank God. I see communication skills as a core competency, end of story. When you hire like crazy, standards slip, or you might forego one standard in favour of “engineering” capability, or whatever.

Hiring committee never meets the candidate.

It's on the interviewer to mark communication difficulties. And I assume bad interviewers don't see English proficiency as important.

Finally! These H1Bs in India are living the 100% remote future that 99% of HN wants!

If only we could have predicted that: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/26/remote-wo...

I guess that the question here is, are they hired workers or outsourced?

The only scenario where this makes sense is if the "all H1B team" is all from the same country / speaks the same language. The issue is not "all H1B", it's the lack of diversity in the team.

In this new age, diversity just means no wyt people.

That's how a company without white people in Vermont can claim it's diverse.

Same with women only companies.

I guess it’s not a good time to be a white male. I’m not one but it’s hard to ignore when in plain slight.

The important thing to realize is that “white” doesn’t mean everyone with “white” skin. Middle class kids from Ohio are “white,” and these race conscious programs and elimination of meritocracy hurts them. But the second or third generation Harvard folks aren’t functionally “white,” regardless of their skin color. Those folks will learn, through private schools and social capital, how to end up in top positions in this new economic structure, while they are joining in complaining about “white” people.

> But the second or third generation Harvard folks aren’t functionally “white,” regardless of their skin color.

Genuine question, does this applies even when they are “white” (Caucasian white)? Why is that or is there a subtext I am missing?

[delayed]

No. This is 100% just informed by your ideology. Enough said. Don’t peddle that here.

When people actually discuss the advantages of diversity in the workplace, the advantages exist due to actual diversity, not just “a non-white-male voice”.

You’ll no doubt cite some extreme view or vocal minority to justify making this assumption, but it is not what most people mean most of the time. You’re painting a false reality which I’ve got no doubt creates a feedback loop leaving you seething.

> No. This is 100% just informed by your ideology. Enough said. Don’t peddle that here.

My friend was filling a technical role and he had to turn down fitting white male candidates and hire technically inferior one just to satisfy diversification. It's not about ideology, it's about pathology that diversification creates in some cases.

Look, I'm very sure there's women only companies and minority only companies that claim they are diverse. It's not hard to find. (I'm black and I have eyes). Some of them covered in articles stating that thier composition is growing diversity. Or talking about how their diversity helps. People forget about diversity in experience & experiences. You can't all be devs after all.

I remember a body shop in Austin that recently made it into the news for allegedly putting up an ad for a white people only job linked to Berkshire.

Everyone there looked from the Indian subcontinent. The board had Middle eastern and black people.

No visibly Hispanic or White people or Black people among the rank and file in an Austin company.

Stop the pretence please.

Yes.

I’ve been the only US citizen on a team and now I am on a team with exclusively white, remote employees. I’ve watched my current team build the worst systems I’ve ever seen while constantly congregating themselves.

"while constantly congregating themselves" you meant a different word here but I can't for the life of me figure out which one

perhaps "congratulating" ?

The person you’re replying to didn’t mention performance at all, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply.

He's trying to defend immigrants without understanding that that BS political correctness means immigrants get exploited to hell and back while pretending "to care for immigration".

Companies largely don't care about the environment or immigration. They care about the right branding while maximizing profits and they have no qualms exploiting people. Or laying then off if they don't toe the line (RTO being a grand example)

Social posturing in certain cultures is very different from Euro rooted cultures in a way that you don’t notice until you are immersed in it for awhile. I personally found this aspect extremely hard to work with, and it seems to guide communication to a surprising degree.

Say what you want—what do you think these H1B teams are saying about the Americans?

I'm sure that's how they feel too.

My ex gf is here on H1B and so is all her friend group. I feel bad for her situation, it adds a layer of stress but the way they treat the visa is disrespectful to Americans I think. For example, they are generally of the mindset that Americans are stupider and lazier than them which is why they are here. So they will vent their frustrations on Americans by calling us stupid and lazy and entitled because we have citizenship but they do all the work. It's not a healthy way to view this country or their coworkers. They take the "nation of immigrants" line too far and act as if their American coworkers are basically their inferiors but who were lucky enough to happen to have citizenship. I always tried to provide a different perspective to no avail.

Lol really?

This a big news to me.

Her ethnicity ? If you don't mind

She's Indian.

If ask a group of Americans they will tell you a similar story one which Americans are superior and H1b workers are inferior.

These are called dialects. They want a divided workforce so that no one questions them about poor labour laws. E.g Amazon and Tesla

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and for using multiple accounts to post abusively.

Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is she wrong?

It is possible to be impolite, ungrateful, obnoxious and correct.

N=1 anecdote hopefully not generalizable across the population

To avail, use maths. [for engineering groups]

Ie, cardholding need be completely blind to recruiters. Ie, instead of `Do you have work authorization?` as the first question asked [no less], it need be enforceably ILLEGAL to try fish information about it.

In practice that can't be fully done without also blinding a lot of other related things. But having Single-Market enforced by law will certainly reduce the pay gap found today in lvl-to-lvl comparisons (top ppl of country A vs the same of country B; bottom ppl of country A vs the same of country B).

re "vent" "disrespectful"; I believe their comparison is meant to be neutral and nonhurtful, albeit not of PC enculture.

My last couple of jobs(non tech) almost everyone I talked to on a daily basis was ESL. It was great as an introvert because they could talk around me and about me while I kept to myself. Now Im in tech with all English speakers there's no escape from the slights. Id love to be only a team of ESL people, because now it's like highshcool. The only time they talk to me now is for baiting too cute by half questions and comments.

Try being a highly skilled tech worker who happens to be female and getting a tech job when the screeners are all H1B guys.