Software engineer describes his experience with H1B.

X/Twitter ^ | 12/30/2024 | John Konrad

[SeekAndFind]

My friend @JoshuaSteinman is dropping bombshells about H-1B visas, and I’ve got a story to add.

tl;dr – It’s a cultural problem.

I spent years in India, working directly for one of the country’s wealthiest individuals. He recruited me for my computer skills to lead some of the most ambitious, technically challenging projects ever attempted.

We broke world records and unlocked trillions in wealth. My boss? He now lives in a skyscraper in Mumbai.

Toward the end of the project, he told me his best engineers were leaving for Silicon Valley, lured by unbelievable salaries. So, on his recommendation, I packed up my family and moved to California.

Here’s where it gets weird: I was (at least for short periods of rime) chief of that massive project, with ultimate responsibility. But guys several rungs below me - men way less qualified for any job - were getting H-1B visas and landing incredible salaries in tech.

I got turned down for every tech job I applied for.

Looking back, here’s why:

1.I told the truth. The foreign visa applicants? Many claimed to work in different departments or roles to fit the narrative. I admitted I worked on oil & gas projects. That’s considered “dirty” and “irrelevant” in tech. http://2.My school wasn’t on “the list.” I graduated from @MaritimeCollege —what @stevenujifusa calls “the Harvard of Maritime.” Highest attrition rate in the country. 185 credits. Classes like spherical geometry. But it’s a state school in The Bronx.

Tech doesn’t care. They rely on lists of “approved” “Ivy Plus” schools, as @bhorowitz admits in The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

But there’s more to it. It’s a cultural problem.

American applicants are at a disadvantage because we’re too easy to vet.

•Work for an Indian oil company? Don’t mention it on your resume.

•Work for a Chinese communist spy agency? Just leave it out.

•Wrong degree? Ask the school to reword your transcript or reframe it as a minor.

As an American, it’s incredibly difficult to lie. HR WILL call my references and confirms every detail of my background.

But for foreign applicants? That’s a lot harder to verify, so they get a pass.

And beneath it all? “Tech culture.”

Read any book about the industry, and you’ll find a near-religious obsession with maintaining “culture.” It’s a startup mantra: hard work, positivity, willingness to take risks.

But the dirty secret? “Tech culture” also harbors disdain for: •“Dirty” industries like oil & gas. •Christian values or Republican politics. •Anything less than an Ivy League education.

This isn’t just about H-1Bs. It’s about arrogance baked into an industry that weeds out Americans for not fitting their mold.

I’m not surprised that zero of Josh’s friends from the Trump administration got hired in tech, even at the highest levels.

If you’re a foreign conservative? They’ll hire you because it doesn’t code against “tech culture.” (E.g. I have several ultra conservative very religious Hindu friends who don’t have this problem) But if you’re an American who doesn’t fit their narrative? They’ll weed you out.

It’s time to talk about the serious cultural problem in tech—and how it’s harming American workers.

Tech has serious biases. They either need to toss them out and hire the best candidates or figure out how to properly vet foreigners who don’t fit their BS culture.

P.S. I did find a way around this BS. Start a company yourself m. I did and raised over $6M for one company.

How did I do it? I dropped any mention of my religion, politics, oil drilling experience and state school education from my capital raising meetings. Worked like a charm.

As an American it’s literally easier to get million dollar checks than a middle level job at Facebook or Apple.

Watch this:

H-1B’s and political discrimination by Big Tech

[MayflowerMadam]

“...the Indians themselves.

“The most arrogant people on the planet.”

I agree based on my experiences. And why? The ones I’ve met are losers. They just haven’t figured out out yet.

[MayflowerMadam]

$95K in DC? That seems extremely low, unless it was a part-time job

[MayflowerMadam]

Someone needs to pose those questions to PDJT who, apparently, is on board with cheap labor by foreign workers. It’s antithetical to his bombastic “America First” platform.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Except that’s not what they are declaring.

Did you even read the prior post?

[ProgressingAmerica]

To be fair, to be clear,

Read post 77. https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4287265/posts?page=77#77

[Gaffer]

In my career as an engineering manager I must have at 4-5 Indians work for me who had already been through the H1-B process and got a green card or citizenship.

Hiring them was a mistake. Sure, credentials were there but the drive, ingenuity and innovation was just not there. Virtually all of the promised the world but delivered nothing.; They were only interested in seeing what other benefits they could get for themselves, IMO.

[Danie_2023]

“If it’s not economical to hire an H1-B, companies will only apply for H1-B for special cases involving a few stars in their field.”

Right. Make it unprofitable for companies to hire more than a select few H-1B visa applicants ... vs. the plethora they’re hiring now. Consider the penalty fee another version of a Trump tariff.

[Danie_2023]

“But for foreign applicants? That’s a lot harder to verify, so they get a pass.”

“But the dirty secret? “Tech culture” also harbors disdain for: •“Dirty” industries like oil & gas. •Christian values or Republican politics. •Anything less than an Ivy League education.”

Chalk it up to the same anti-America preferential treatment and discrimination due to political bias that we, non-leftist white Americans, have already been experiencing at the hands of our globalist “masters”.

If ‘they’ want to call this a culture problem, then let’s change the culture. ‘They’ lost the election, so we need to force them to start acting (or reacting) like they lost, instead of their usual doubling down on their leftist policies at our expense.

[jeffersondem]

“. . . howl from your roof-tops that the Declaration and Constitution granted slavers the unlimited “right” to declare whatever the h*ll they wanted to declare, for whatever reasons, or no-reasons, they wanted and everyone else must, must obey — be they slaves, freedmen, women, Southern Unionists, Northerners or anyone else, they all must obey whatever the 1860 slavers declared.”

Women? Where did that come from?

Is it now being claimed the South went to war to prevent women suffrage and the Union was fighting for women suffrage and Title IX?

[riri]

But for foreign applicants? That’s a lot harder to verify, so they get a pas

And a lot of cultures really are comfortable with lying. So, great combination.

[riri]

But With high speed internet, the cloud and networks, people can do the job remotely from ANYWHERE.

An even bigger problem and it is affecting all levels of jobs. Call centers, customer service, engineering, accounting, etc.

My entire team at work, once all American, is now half Filipino. In my immdeiate group, I am the only American left.

The Filipinos can't (won't, pretend they can't) do the more difficult tasks (after 3 years) but they get a pass because they are so cheap. The skeleton crew of Americans have to do the more challenging work.

It's kinda BS

[riri]

At least it has a yard. More than new construction has for less than 1M.

[jeffersondem]

“The truth is, our Founders never claimed an unconditional “right” of independence at pleasure, meaning: for any reason or for no reason.”

There he goes again; writing about what the Founders didn’t write and ignoring what they did write when it does not line up with his mother church’s doctrines.

The Founders representing the 13 slave states did indeed say governments should not be changed for light and transient causes. The foundation of a new government must be organized - they said - in such a form “as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The Confederates met the “as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness” Declaration of Independence test.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"I don’t want to spend another year going over and over and over this...."

LOL

The same ten people here on FR who have already spent a decade going over this again and again are well prepared to put another decade into it.

This is exactly what makes the Civil War so blindingly annoying and boring. The only frustrating part to me is that it turns conservatives into supporters of the concept of the living and breathing constitution - which they do not deny, BTW.

Long live the trustworthy progressives! If a progressive says it, it MUST be true.

[jeffersondem]

“The same ten people here on FR who have already spent a decade going over this again and again are well prepared to put another decade into it.”

We have just begun to fight!

[jeffersondem]

“Immaculate Conception in our Enlightenment Era Founders’ philosophical devotion to natural law, as expressed in their Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...””

Brother Joe I am not convinced you are correct when you argue the phrase “merciless Indian Savages” in the Declaration of Independence was an invitation by the Founders for native Americans to become physicians, university presidents, jurors, and electors.

And I don’t think the reference was intended to place native Americans on an equal footing with the Founders in the same way that the Founders viewed themselves being on an equal footing with King George.

I rejoice that you think that is the way it should have been; but it wasn’t.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "The Founders representing the 13 slave states did indeed say governments should not be changed for light and transient causes.
The foundation of a new government must be organized - they said - in such a form “as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The Confederates met the “as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness” Declaration of Independence test."

Confederates failed the "light and transient causes" test, as well as several others.

[BroJoeK]

ProgressingAmerica: "The only frustrating part to me is that it turns conservatives into supporters of the concept of the living and breathing constitution - which they do not deny, BTW."

You didn't read my post #80, did you?

So which part of the words, "it isn't" do you not understand?

[BroJoeK]

ProgressingAmerica: "Except that’s not what they are declaring.
Did you even read the prior post?"

To be fair, I should have referenced my post #79 in response to DiogenesLamp's post #65.

In his post #65 DiogenesLamp makes the Lost Cause claim he's posted here many times before, namely that the Declaration of Independence grants anyone and everyone an unlimited "Right of Secession" and "Right of Rebellion" at any time and for any reason, or for no reason -- in other words, "at pleasure".

And DiogenesLamp well knows it's a Big Lie, but he keeps posting it, I think, because he well understands that without that lie, nothing else the Confederates claimed is true.

Of course, I understand that you wish to divert the argument into something about a "living and breathing constitution", which nobody on Free Republic has ever supported, your claims notwithstanding.

Yes, debates of exactly what their new Constitution said and meant go back to the 1787 Convention itself, but no conservative then, or since, has ever argued in favor of a "living and breathing constitution".

The idea of a "living constitution" begins with Progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson, circa 1912:

"Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.
Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop."

Of course, conservatives have always said: the way to adapt our constitution is through constitutional methods, such as amendments, conventions of states and lawful acts of Congress, not through imaginative reinterpretations, executive fiats or SCOTUS legislation.

So, if, as a debating tactic, you wish to claim that somehow Free Republic conservatives have suddenly become Wilson Progressive Democrats, then you must first demonstrate where & how that happened.

And that will bring us back to DiogenesLamp's Big Lie about a supposedly unlimited "Right of Secession", and all the rest.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "Women? Where did that come from?
Is it now being claimed the South went to war to prevent women suffrage and the Union was fighting for women suffrage and Title IX?"

Naw....

I'm simply making the point that DiogenesLamp and his 1860 slavocrats who claimed and unlimited "Right of Secession" for themselves at the same time granted no such "Right" to others of their fellow countrymen & women, did they?