visa category applies to people who wish to perform services in a specialty occupation, services of exceptional merit and ability
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I've interned at Google and worked at Microsoft, and now I work for an investment bank in NYC. And I feel like there is a huge problem with H1B visa workers taking away jobs from actual Americans.
First of all, this isn't the fault of the H1B workers precisely. I would do anything to get a better life and job. This is directly the fault of companies and the useless congress we have that are turning a blind eye to the issue.
The companies know that they can get these workers as contractors, meaning that they won't have to deal with healthcare, HR complaints, and other entitlements. Furthermore, these workers are more so like indentured servants. They get less pay, and of course they have to do more since their contract can be easily terminated by the company.
The most frustrating part about it is that these companies post jobs out on indeed, LinkedIn, and etc., but they just hire from overseas usually. So the 1000+ applicants applying to some job are just wasting their time.
In my current company, I am literally the only American person in my team consisting of about 65 individuals including middle level management. 4 years ago, at least 33% of the team included other members that were American born. But now, the entire tech floor that has over 400+ people sitting including middle and upper middle management has about 85% Indians, 10% other ethnicities (mostly Chinese), and the rest are Americans. I'm not exaggerating about this.
The part that really gets to me is that these companies say that this is quote on quote "diversity" similar to how colleges also use this term. If you really value diversity which I myself do, you'd realize there is about 190 countries. When all of your so called diversity and inclusion comes from just India and China, that's not diversity that is just straight BS .
Furthermore, most of the Indian workers tend to hire only other Indians only. I was a recruiter for 1 year, and they did not even mention the American college graduates in the meeting even though they were clearly way better in solving problems, and if not, better at communicating were you can understand their thought process and intent.
Like most companies my current company has an onshore and offshore team. The idea is that there is 24hr support for the application. However, in these last 10 years, both onshore and offshore teams are just literally Indian people mixed in with few other ethnicities which doesn't even make sense.
Worst of all most of them always keep some small key knowledge to themselves so that it seems like that they are important. And they have tons of other little tricks which really bothers me. At some point once I stopped reaching out actively, my work got less and less. Meaning that they started giving me menial tasks in hopes that management will then let me go at the end of the year, or I quit myself. And at the end of the year review, they give everyone else 5 star reviews, but always have something to say about me. And of course, my boss who is Indian himself knows how the game is played, but in the end of the day you just smile and nod and pretend. The few contractors who were not Indian all complained to me about the same thing. But funny enough, they were slowly let go over the last 4 years towards the end of the year when teams shrink for budgeting reasons. And when they hire again, they will hire Indian of course.
Honestly, the only thing keeping me around is that I am a veteran and been with the company for 4 years and have some standing. But don't get me wrong there are some of my coworkers who are very good at their job and I love working with them,, but I will have to say that most (90%) are like this. They always ask me for help, and I set aside time to help them, but when I ask them for help it's just crickets. I really don't know why they are like this.
Overall, there are a lot of jobs in this sector, but no one ever really talks about this HUGE issue. This is one of the biggest issues to why a lot of new grads, or American workers can't get jobs in the software industry right now. And of course all the media that is controlled by just about 5 big parent companies all talk about amazing job growth and this and that, but don't look at the nuances to the numbers they are talking about.
If you work somewhere along software field, let me know what your experience is like.