I have absolutely nothing against people here working on H-1B visas. I’ve known many great people over the years. How is it legal though for me and other citizens to lose our jobs in ET wave 2 when there are H-1B workers doing the exact same jobs (testing)? Isn’t part of the deal that they have to make a good faith effort to hire Americans before they can bring in foreign workers? How can they possibly make that claim when they are eliminating jobs? Maybe because SF isn’t directly sponsoring and goes through 3rd party firms they’re sheltered. Doesn’t seem right. I don’t mean to sound racist. Nothing against anybody individually. Just doesn’t seem like the company is following the spirit of the law.
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"I dont think there is anything illegal about this as unfair as it seems."
Weasel Washington inserted regulation that employer is not required to attest they can't find US worker if they're paying H1B at least $60K.
To ensure employer doesn't get entangled in a law suit, they
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hire "contractor" such that contracting agency is "employer", AND
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have employees "train" the H1B for 90 days, signing (purported) severance agreement that includes clauses such as gag order, no law suits, etc. BECAUSE hiring an H1B attestation states they won't be laying off a citizen within [no coincidence] 90 days of the H1B hire, completing 360 degrees of CYA.
Call Sara Blackwell.
If there are IT staff getting laid off please contact us ASAP? This could be big.
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Tech workers need to stand up and organize themselves before they get fired. But even the tech workers that have been fired need to get over their fears, lock arms and create a movement that will force politicians to end these predatory practices. If tech workers could work together and fight this, they would win. If not, enjoy your severance while you can, keep a roof over your heads while you can, feed and clothe your family while you can. . . Because your chances of getting back to where you were incomewise and benefitswise is ZERO!. Understand, no one is coming to rescue you. Knock off the snarky email campaigns, hanging out at message boards like this and gather in person and go and visit your elected representatives. You have a right to work in the country you were born in. But rights are things you are either prepared to defend or fight for.
Who are they and what jobs did they take from you?
They took our jobs!
"How many American COBOL/Java/pl1 implementers do you know? How many college kids have these skillls? How many are going to obtain these skills?"
I do ALL of the above - have taught at a major university. What we need is a national policy to re-train our citizens. Bringing in foreigners is not the answer and is a total hack. Will fight to stop that.
I'll take any American based development team and code circles around a team of H1B visa developers. Communication is the key and most H1B people I have met are nice people but have trouble in the communication area which makes them less efficient. A properly constructed team is like a close family. Heck my spouse can communicate with me with ever saying a word. Years ago State Farm had hundreds of these kinds of teams and put out some pretty darn good software that was cutting edge for its time. Much of that software is probably still paying the bills to this day.
These are people who can only count to ten on their digits :)
In order to sponsor H-1B Visa holders, the employer has to certify that there are no US citizens with similar skillsets. It seems to me that SF perjures itself every time it does so, based on the workforce cuts
1bdb yes, why not retrain people especially those you know are hard workers. There was purposely no offer to do that. This was to dump a bunch of older employees. Many could have learned it but they didnt outright qualify for developer positions...
You cannot just pick someone off the street, give them a red badge and say “You are a mainframe developer now”
People love to say it’s just coding. It’s really not. It’s the thought process and method of implementation via elimination.
Then why not train people to fill these jobs. It's not rocket science.... it's coding!!
Uh not everyone being axed is a developer. Business analysts, good ones, are worth a lot and they dont code. I think most would be willing to learn amd intelligent enough too but they have to have something to code and some direction or expectations set to learn. And lets not talk about how useless a BA is. Any good developer could tell you a good one is worth gold. Problem is ISD glutted the BA role with people with no training or understanding of what systems BA s do or did and they are a lot more techie than were yhe incoming ISD BAs.
The citizens being axed are the ones who cannot comprehend a JCL - and please understand that JCL is the uttermost lowest level.
I agree 100%. This is not right. No way should H1-B holders be spared a job while citizens are being axed.
It's not even cheap labor, they are on the same scale. Good luck finding American mainframe devs, they are retiring in droves.
OP is totally correct... individual h1b holders should be commended for their diligence( if they are qualified-some aren't) but sf is playing games by not sponsoring.
I dont think there is anything illegal about this as unfair as it seems.
Cheap labor with no string attached. Still s---s though even with State Farm getting a 3.6 billion tax cut from the government.
The salt is real
How many American COBOL/Java/pl1 implementers do you know? How many college kids have these skillls? How many are going to obtain these skills?
If a business requires skilled talent - it will hire talent with those skills.