Tech Looks To Obama To Save Them From 'Just Sort of OK' US Workers

theodp writes Following up on news that the White House met with big biz on immigration earlier this month, Bloomberg sat down with Joe Green, the head of Mark Zuckerberg's Fwd.US PAC, to discuss possible executive actions President Obama might take on high tech immigration (video) in September. "Hey, Joe," asked interviewer Alix Steel. "All we keep hearing about this earnings season though from big tech is how they're actually cutting jobs. If you look at Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, why do the tech companies then need more tech visas?" Green explained why tech may not want to settle for laid-off U.S. talent when the world is its oyster. "The difference between someone who's truly great and just sort of okay is really huge," Green said. "Culture in tech is a very meritocratic culture," he added. "The vast, vast majority of tech engineers that I talked to who are from the United States are very supportive of bringing in people from other countries because they want to work with the very best."

Comments

Re:Read that statement as follows:

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as an H1B worker at one of the major tech companies, I can tell you right now that I'm anything but indentured. If you have {Apple | Facebook | Google | Microsoft} software engineer on your CV, you are not going to have trouble finding a job, willing to offer you another H1B, at the drop of a hat (in fact, you tend to receive dozens of emails from recruiters every single day). There's no issue at all with feeling like you're locked into one company, other than the normal golden handcuffs that large tech companies give you ofc.

Re:That's why slashdot is against tech immigration

[anagama]

Here's an example of how one company apparently applies that "no American available" policy:

Now I am working in an American multinational here in the United States, and I find that every last person working for me is an H1B temp work visa holder. There are zero Americans on my staff. In addition to that, we recently had to fill 3 more headcount in my group. My boss instructed me that due to 'budget' that we were to go to our India sourcing department and they would arrange for contractors to be sent in from offshore (India). It would take about 1 month for their visas to be arranged and for them to be on site (in Raleigh North Carolina). Though our Applicant tracking system is overflowing with applications by Americans (including probably some of my own old ones), we didn't even look at those before bringing in the H1Bs. The corporate law firm arranges this, gives the 'no Americans can be found' stamp of approval and the temps are flown in with expedited Visas (H1B or other temp type visas that they use until the H1B is approved). I mentioned this to a couple of my coworkers, and I was discretely told to be quiet about it if I knew what was good for me and didn't want to 'expire' myself.

What to Do When My US Company Won't Hire Americans?