Microsoft Says H-1B Workers Among Those Losing Jobs

CWmike notes that after a US Senator urged Microsoft to lay off H-1B workers first, Microsoft says it is cutting a 'significant number' of foreign workers as part of the layoff it announced last week. But experts say there is nothing in the law requiring a company to cut the jobs of H-1B workers before US workers. David Kussin, an immigration attorney, said, 'In fact, the law is very well designed to say that you have to treat H-1Bs the same as US citizens in all regards.' Another H-1B critic, UC Davis professor Norman Matloff, said the Senator's letter would help their fight. 'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first — and they won't state this — then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"

Comments

Require pay and benefits parity

[Reality Master 201]

It's an easy thing to fix - require that H1B visa holders receive the same pay and benefits for their work as the rest of the workforce. If companies really have problems finding citizens to fill jobs, and aren't just trolling for lower paid wage slaves, then it ought not to be a problem, right?

Man, I'd love to see the tech industry try to talk its way out of that.

Re:Require pay and benefits parity

[Shakrai]

I really don't understand why a company should "hire locally" first when its not in its best interest to do so.

I didn't used to see why either but somebody who is wiser than I am put it this way: Michael Dell is too cheap to pay for the country that created him

In other words, the United States (for all it's pluses and minuses) got Microsoft/Dell/etc going, why aren't they giving back to the United States? I'm not some hippie liberal douche but I tend to believe that there are more important things than the bottom line. We owe it to future generations not to undercut our own population in the perpetual search for lower wages.

I would also say that this applies to consumers as well as to CEOs. If you aren't willing to buy anything more expensive than the cheap plastic shit sold at Wal-Mart then you are part of the problem.

(And before I get modded troll the 'hippie liberal douche' remark is a South Park reference)

Re:Require pay and benefits parity

[hey!]

Yes. And let them stay as long as they want, rather than kicking them out to bring new H1Bs in to replace them. That's pretty much a formula for accelerating the movement of tech jobs overseas, taking inexperienced engineers, showing them the ropes, and sending them back to offshoring outfits in places with low wages.

I don't want to frame this as a kind of nationalistic struggle, but India and China don't need a US funded technology and tech jobs transfer program, which is what H1B really is. They are quite capable of developing their own, robust indigenous industries.

If a talented and educated person wants to move here for a while, and can support himself, I don't think it hurts us very much if at all. If after a few years he decides he'd like to stay here, that's good. Productive people create wealth, and wealth creates jobs. The very best create companies, even industries.

What's really bad for the country, not just American engineers looking for a job, is a revolving door program which drains the country of experience gained by work being done here. The knowledge gained by work is a capital resource, and kicking H1Bs out who want to stay here is like sending boxes of cash out of the country.

Re:Require pay and benefits parity

[tele_player]

Why should it be different for a country? If they can't compete by providing the skilled labour necessary why should a company be forced into 'purchasing' the less skilled labor?

Because it's not fair when companies can shop all around the world for the cheapest prices on necessities (e.g. labor), while the common US citizen cannot shop all around the world for the cheapest prices on necessities, such as food, housing, education and health care. In other words, the competition is between US employers and US labor, and the employers have an unfair advantage.

Re:Require pay and benefits parity

[saider]

There should not be workers here on visas. Especially for high-tech jobs.

Give them full legal residency and give them the option to stay instead of sending them home after 6 years and perpetuating the "shortage".

Re:Require pay and benefits parity

[Firehed]

The people laid off should be the ones with the lowest skill-set, regardless of their location. Or does equality only apply domestically?

If companies lay off their best employees (foreign or domestic) because they're the most expensive to keep on board, those companies will suffer in the long-term, which is good for exactly zero people. I'd argue that companies have been forced to do this in order to help the short-term bottom line for idiotic shareholders who refuse to see R&D as a good thing because it doesn't bring in revenue next week, but it's that kind of stupidity that brought us this situation in the first place.

I'd like to think that most companies aren't so short-sighted to think that getting rid of their highest-paid employees is a good idea in the long term, but they've been forced into a position where they have to do so because it makes the shareholders happy. It's the asshole day-traders trying to ride the stock market to immediate infinite riches that are killing your precious American jobs.

Yes, I'm saying that Americans are causing their own replacement by H-1B foreign workers. Blame Wall St., blame the guys with the annoying accents doing your tech support, blame whoever the hell you want. I'm blaming all of the people happy to get rich at anyone else's expense, probably including whoever manages your 401k.

Re:Require pay and benefits parity

[htnmmo]

One place I worked at, it was no secret why were hiring H1-B workers. It was much cheaper.

Whenever we hired Americans my boss would interview them, I'd interview them, another peer would interview them. Indian workers just kinda showed up.

One guy was fresh out of training and needed a lot of hand holding to do basic things. Any random CS grad would have been the same.

The best people we had were American. That sounds ethnocentric but the people I'm talking about included Russian-American, Indian American, etc. either first generation or immigrants.

I remember another time when someone contacted me about developing a small site for them. They explained how they hired an indian firm for $2,500 and after months of not getting the project done hired another for $3,500 and the didn't complete it either. He decided to share this information with me after I quoted him $10k for his project. He ultimately decided to try and find another outsourcing firm. Months later I checked and he didn't have the site done. He wound up spending almost the same in and got nothing in return.

Re:Require pay and benefits parity

[dwpro]

I blame the inequality of the current system. Give H1B's more rights and this becomes a level playing field. As it is, companies have h1b's by the balls.

Let Microsoft import as many people as they like

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States wants to be the leader in technology, but it won't encourage kids to go into science and engineering, and won't let many talented and better educated foreigners come and work at their companies.

And then they bitch and complain when companies like Microsoft move jobs to other countries that either do have the people they want, or will let those people come and work there.

Then let it be fair...

[bogaboga]

I mean if you do not see why a company should pay more for my services when someone is willing to do it for less, then I would like to see the following:

Microsoft should outsource management or hire H-1B visa personnel for management positions as well. It will be cheaper for the company too. How about that?

Know what disgusts me ?

[Arthur B.]

Heh, H-1B workers don't vote. Now of course, if the senator had asked them to fire gay people first...

The gut reaction of many slashdotters to migrant workers is simply disgusting. It combines basic misguided tribalism ("Yeah we're in the same group of 300M people") with a rent seeking behavior ("I want a higher wage at the expense of the consumers")

I won't even get started on the total immorality of the concept that the govt grants you or not a "right" to work for a willing employer, grants you or not a "right" to rent a house from a willing landlord, etc.

Re:Know what disgusts me ?

[mrops]

What disgusts me is the double standards. America was and is the land of the immigrants and dreams. The country was born out of immigration. America is proud of the American Dream, IMHO H1-B visa holders carry the torch of that dream more than born citizen. They come to this country in that hope. Unfortunately the dream is being hijacked by a few rick business men on the top for cheap labor that is willing to throw in 120 hr weeks.

If you really want to fix this, then transform the H1-B program and give the H1-B visa holders right equivivalent to that of greencard holders. The problem will mitigate itself. All of a sudden the employers will realize that immigrants are not slaves and if u lower wages and expect 120 hr weeks, they will find a better opportunity. Also remove the concept of "sponsor" for H1-B. Sure a employer can sponsor, however an immigrant steps into US, he is free to work anywhere.

This will level the playing field for Americans, as employer will really find a local before he attempts H1-B.

Re:WHO IS JOHN GALT?

[cc_pirate]

On the other hand, if one espouses and believes a philosophy that says that "Whatever I can do to make myself more money at the expense of the group is both moral and reasonable", well, you wind up with the current GOP ideology of selfishness and greed and you can see where that has gotten us.

Re:WHO IS JOHN GALT?

[DeepZenPill]

You miss the whole point of those tax breaks. The states didn't sacrifice anything to attract his business there. If they hadn't offered tax breaks, they wouldn't receive ANY tax revenue from Dell because the company wouldn't have set up shop there. It was a calculated decision by the state that resulted in a large net gain in tax revenue, and a net gain in employment, regardless of the makeup of that employment, and it was an agreement entered into willingly by both parties. Dell has no obligation to the state beyond that.

I sincerely hope that people with such attitudes never buy imported products. It's always easy to criticize others' decisions to use their own resources in the most efficient manner, but when the tables are turned they claw for rationalizations to make themselves exceptions to their rule.

I was an H-1B worker at Microsoft

[thirty-seven]

I worked at Microsoft in Redmond with H1B work status for four years. In 2007, I left MS because I found a job opportunity that was better for my family. (This new job happened to be back in my country.)

I can't comment about the overall H1B program in the US, or the overall US labour market, or even on any new changes at MS over the past year, but I do definitely know about the experiences of H1B employees in the developer and testing roles at MS.

I (and all other non-US-citizen employees) were treated exactly the same as every other employee. We had the same job descriptions and responsibilities as other employees and the same opportunities for promotion. We were integrated in teams that included US citizens, other H1B-status workers, and people with other immigration statuses. We were certainly paid the same as any other employee with a similar job and similar experience.

I also know that Microsoft has very high hiring standards for developer and tester roles. I was not in a management/lead position, but I occasionally reviewed resumes and took part in interviewing applicants. Interviews were tough all-day affairs, including questions that required the use of logic, math, programming, and testing methodologies. The point wasn't to see if the applicant could regurgitate the knowledge, but to view his or her thinking process, creativity, and problem solving abilities as they tried to come up with a solution, and handle complications or restrictions that the interviewer throws at the candidate after they come up with an initial solution.

During the time I was there, my group and most others were always trying to hire more people. The major bottleneck was waiting to get any resumes for candidates that seemed worth interviewing. Most interviews ended with frustration that the candidate wasn't up to standards. Just because you applied to MS and didn't get a job or even an interview is not proof that Microsoft didn't need to look outside the US to find candidates up to their standards.

So, you might have valid criticisms about the quality of Microsoft software, but MS really does have very high standards for their employees, and employees with H1B status are treated the same as any other full-time employee there.

Re:WHO IS JOHN GALT?

[jollyreaper]

On the other hand, if one espouses and believes a philosophy that says that "Whatever I can do to make myself more money at the expense of the group is both moral and reasonable", well, you wind up with the current GOP ideology of selfishness and greed and you can see where that has gotten us.

Thank you, you hit it right on the head. The part of Ayn's ideas that makes sense at first blush is "Hey, don't take from me what I created, let me choose to do what I want with it." That goes right back to the American Revolution with "Taxation without representation is tyranny." Yes, taxes are the price we pay for a civil society but a civil society would also let us say what should be done with it.

The part that Ayn completely misses is capturing the true costs and debts represented by a society. Her heroes are idealized men who never quite existed in the real world, only in the adventure pulps. Her heroes are like Doc Sampson, Johnny Quest's dad, Rusty Venture's dad, etc. You could sit them down on a desert island with nothing but coconuts and surly natives and five years later he'd have a modern society and space travel. This just doesn't happen in the real world.

In the real world, the Edison's and Gates' and other robber-barons are building their empires upon the groundwork laid by society. Public money paid for the national defense so they aren't growing up as slave labor for a foreign power. Public education provided for them, likely not for their own schooling but the schooling of their employees. Imagine if they were to set up shop in Haiti and had to start educating their workforce in the ABC's before they could ever get to producing things of value!

A healthy economy is like an ecosystem. The plants grow, get eaten by something that gets eaten by something eventually eaten by the apex predator. The apex predator dies, decays, and the biomass enters the ecology once more.

The problem with the Randites is they simply don't want to play fair. They'll gussy up their arguments with all sorts of sophistry but the fact of the matter is they're greedy and don't want to pay their fair share.

Re:WHO IS JOHN GALT?

[jollyreaper]

Republicans, and even libertarians believe that nobody should be able to make money by fraud.

Look at the legacy of the Bush administration. The reality does not reflect your arguments. Roll back regulation, roll back enforcement, protect the guilty, victory at any cost. If the president does it, it is legal. To the victor goes the spoils. Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing. Who is John Galt? I am, motherfucker.