Comment by declan_roberts

9 hours ago

This type of thing should come along with a reduction of allowed H-1bs.

Cisco especially is absolutely full of H1Bs.

As someone that has worked for them a decade ago, some of their division are >90% Indian. Those are all good engineers and not dunking on them at all but it should be unacceptable to bring over competing workers on a visa while also laying off so many people.

  • we were acquired and part of our org moved into cisco HQ.

    the entire floor were Indian other than our org, and over time our org was filled out with incoming transfers and new hires.

    i'll never forget some irony in that one of the engineering leaders brought us together for a mini townhall once and praised our "diversity" but by then the percentage of people in the room were basically the same as you described, including said leader. even our twice a week catered lunches were almost always indian.

    just an interesting experience being part of cisco for a couple of years.

    • Shocking. I had an interview for an Australian job with JP Morgan recently and even the interviewers were based in India. Super rude, could barely understand him due the strong accent, he couldn’t ask a single intelligent question and it was kinda clear that the org basically just hires other Indians. They always end up talking a lot while doing almost nothing and only hiring their friends and family while Chinese engineers just get stuff done. I’m sure there are exceptions but in my 15 years in tech I can count with two hands how many good Indian engineers I worked with.

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    • Diversity is the term to disguise cheaper labor. Call it women, ethnic minorities, trans, neuro divergent, on wheelchair, or those having criminal records.

      It's a brilliant slogan, not just because virtue signalling, but because it spawns cross cultural factions, all selfishly united to defend it. At no further brainwashing cost to you.

      You dare to attack it? You are out. Pack your stuff, and your shame.

      Consolation? It would at least provide opportunities to those who always suffered injustice. Yet many who claim their right to a seat don't bother with competence.

      It works, because the goal isn't more talents, we never lacked them: it's to pressure the overall labor cost.

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    • I was a contractor at Cisco as the only non-indian in my group. But, I think the entire floor (100+ people) was Indian except for me. I'd always heard of "toxic work environments" but was pretty dismissive, until working at Cisco. I never knew people could bring high school bullying, manipulation into a supposed professional workplace.

  • If a company is set on hiring foreign workers who will work for less than Americans and we don't let them bring them over here, won't they just offshore instead? I don't ask this to be contrarian but more to wonder how to combat it.

    • By penalizing offshoring. I don't say this as a particularly nationalistic person either. All companies in all countries should be heavily incentivized to hire local labor and sell to the local market. Globalization is extremely beneficial of course but the various side effects need to be managed.

    • An offshored worker is already much cheaper than an H1B worker, I would expect any easy substitutions along those lines to already be performed. Probably some effect on the margins, but I would doubt it outweighs the primary effect.

      (Of course, it would be a problem if you think H1Bs are for hiring people who cannot be found domestically, but it does not seem like many people think that these days.)

> This type of thing should come along with a reduction of allowed H-1bs.

H-1Bs also lose jobs in these layoffs, so there is an implicit reduction.

Unlikely to happen when H1B program benefit corporate and they run super PACs

Any policies to help the people are labeled as "socialist" nowadays

I think H1Bs are pretty much dead with the 100k fee.

  • As I understand it, the fee doesn't apply in many situations and is fairly easy to work around. Apparently it was neutered immediately after being announced.

This. Once Indians get in, they hire other Indians only. It is a disgrace. They are here in Sweden too studying for masters, terrible. They should be barred from EU honestly... sadly we just did a trade agreement...