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Trump's Next Immigration Move To Affect H-1B Visas; Require Tech Companies To Try To Hire Americans First: Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
AdamnSelene writes: A report in Bloomberg describes a draft executive order that will hit the tech industry hard and potentially change the way those companies recruit workers from abroad. The H-1B, L-1, E-2, and B1 work visa programs would be targeted by requiring companies to prioritize higher-paid immigrant workers over lower-paid workers. In addition, the order will impose statistical reporting requirements on tech companies who sponsor workers under these programs. The order is expected to impact STEM workers from India the most.
Penguinisto adds: If (perhaps when) the president follows through, his next move could limit or at least seriously alter the way H-1B visas are distributed, putting U.S. citizens at a higher priority, and possibly restricting H1-B visas tighter. From the article: "If implemented, the reforms could shift the way American companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple recruit talent and force wholesale changes at Indian companies such as Infosys and Wipro. Businesses would have to try to hire Americans first and if they recruit foreign workers, priority would be given to the most highly paid. "Our country's immigration policies should be designed and implemented to serve, first and foremost, the U.S. national interest," the draft proposal reads, according to a copy reviewed by Bloomberg. "Visa programs for foreign workers should be administered in a manner that protects the civil rights of American workers and current lawful residents, and that prioritizes the protection of American workers -- our forgotten working people -- and the jobs they hold."
Some 10 years ago I worked for a large company with offices all over the world. I had to work with the hardware group, who wrote tests but had no clue about software. Not only did they not use any kind of version control, their common software (libraries and utilities) were on a mapped drive, usually s:. There was no documentation on what was mapped to s:. There was no write control on their software. They all worked on the same code, at the same time. A couple times a week I'd get group-wide mail along the lines of "whoever broke the build with foo.c, please fix ASAP". It doesn't help that more than once I was the one who broke the build but never admitted to it. Yep, I would have their file and my file open side by side (I had to copy their hardware register settings), would change the wrong file (why could I open their files r/w? Cuz they were dumasses). I begged their manager for over a year to use some kind of VCS, only to get a blank look.
I should mention, 2/3 of this team was in India, rest of the team including management was across the street.
So, new chip. Big announcement, they were going to use VCS this time. Happy me. Till I started to notice the files tended to stay new. Got concerned when changes went away. Came back. Went away again. After about a month I dug into it. I'll give you a paragraph break to think of WTF was happening.
Turned out, they still had the same shared directories everywhere. At the end of every day in India they would delete the entire repository from VCS. Then they would add every file in their common directories as new files. First thing in the morning somebody resync'd to the common directories. I kid you not. I walked across the street, asked the manager "um, whiskey tango foxtrot?". His answer? "It matches our workflow, it's working, go away".
sigh