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Tim Cook Told Trump Tech Employees Are 'Nervous' About Immigration (cnbc.com)
Behind the scenes at the White House tech CEO meeting, Apple CEO Tim Cook told President Donald Trump that technology employees are "nervous" about the administration's approach to immigration, CNBC reports, citing a source familiar with the exchange. From the report: The source said the president told the CEOs on Monday that the Senate's health-care bill needs "more heart." That would be a second known instance of the president criticizing the GOP plan in private meetings. To that, the source said, Cook replied that the immigration approach by the administration also "needs more heart." Cook cited the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is under review by the Trump administration. He also said people in tech and their co-workers were nervous about their status, and added that it "would be great" if the president could "send them a signal." Here's what executives of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft said.
Yeah I'm nervous. I'm nervous about foreigners taking good tech jobs. Hopefully Trump can put an end to it.
...upper management is nervous about the administration's approach to immigration, maybe. Those of us on the ground are nervous about immigration in a different way, like some H1B replacement trainings.
Fuck you, Tim Cook. Eat the rich.
Trump hasn't done anything of substance to even mildly inconvenience the wealthy, and the H1-B program (which, let's face it, is what Timmy's talking about) is no different. He made a few pointless proclamations to great fan fare but he didn't even bother rescinding Obama's executive order letting their spouses work.
Trump's entire cabinet is comprised of billionaires and Goldman Sachs people. The swamp is not getting drained. Face it, we got Hilary's economics with the right wing's Health Care and social issues slants.
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Are "Tech Employees" nervous or are just "H-1B Tech Employees" nervous while most of the rest are thinking they might be staring at an opportunity?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
If you're a legal U.S. citizen OR you have a legal work visa, I don't think you have anything to be "nervous" about?
Yeah, the mainstream media likes to work people up into a frenzy over "what COULD happen" based on the conjecture of reporters with no first-hand knowledge of anything. But just listening to Trump's own speeches (which are so poorly spoken, it's obvious they come from him and aren't the result of careful editing and vetting like most presidential speeches) -- he keeps clarifying that all of his immigration issues are about stopping the "undocumented" people.
Last I checked, Apple wasn't employing a bunch of illegal immigrants who have no green cards?
And quite frankly, I've been a bit disappointed that "Mr. Build-a-Wall" has said so little about cracking down on the number of H1B visas we keep granting people to come over here and do our tech jobs. That's one area where it's FAR from provable that we just don't have anyone in America capable of doing the work....
Nervous about enforcing laws?
Nervous about actually vetting immigrants?
Nervous about letting immigrants from other countries have a fair chance at entry, instead of being at an inherent disadvantage because they do not have the privilege of physical proximity that illegal Mexican immigrants have?
To me it seem utterly crazy to be "nervous" about treating immigration as seriously as any other country on Earth does... you try just wandering into Canada and looking for work and see how well that works for you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When there's a policy that will favor citizens instead of guest workers, nerves should be a bit frazzled.
That's how we know Trump has chosen the right policy. Besides, it's time that globalists like Cook show a little heart for citizens - by respecting the law and enforcing it consistently.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
When a university replaces their tech workers with H1B workers, it has gotten out of hand. These positions were not empty, they had competent people already that were being pushed out.
Here, it's not illegal immigration, but rather, H1B employees that are the topic here.
From a political POV, the argument has been that H1B workers are used to simply undercut American workers - both citizens & permanent residents. Note that in the Labor Certification process, which a company has to go through while applying for these visas, they have to demonstrate that there are no American citizens or permanent residents available to take that job. That argument is badly undercut when you have outgoing American employees being required to train their replacements. Obviously illustrating a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the law.
From the corporate standpoint, there have been two arguments. One is that it's impossible to find American workers who are interested in doing those jobs. One may add the caveat about the salaries required to do those. If those jobs can be offshored, it's a win-win: the US doesn't have to issue all those H1B visas, and the companies can pay Indian salaries to Indians sitting in Bangalore or Pune. If they cannot be, that's where the companies should be made to cough up the cash.
The other argument is that it's impossible to find Americans who are qualified to do those, which was the original purpose of the H1B visas. This is where the EB1/2/3 category comes into question. In which case, again, see if they can be done offshore, and if they can't, then issue those visas, but for a big price.
The best suggestion I've heard about H1B's is to put a floor of $150k on the salary. That would cut out the sub-par coders here that people complain about.
When I started out in IT (back sometime after the last Ice Age,) it was very possible to start out as a help desk person, and work your way up learning as you went. I know, because I started out with a non-CS degree and made the hops from help desk to desktop support to (essentially) a data center operator, then several levels of sysadmin and finally where I am now as a senior engineer/architect. The thing I'm worried about is that current generations will see no future in an IT career and choose not to pursue it. One of the contributing factors is the limited prospects for low-end IT jobs needed to get the skills you have to possess at the higher levels. If help desk work is offshored or a minimum wage job, fewer people will go into the field and gain the kind of OJT you only get in the trenches.
I absolutely don't hold myself out to be some super-genius, but I have noticed that there are a lot more "senior architect" level jobs being filled by people with a much lower skill and experience level than you would expect. This makes sense if there's a whole bunch of missing rungs in the career ladder -- a CS grad will BS his way into a higher level position than they normally would have because of this. This is where you get the architect-level people who just buy whatever's in the Gartner Magic Quadrant because they can't objectively evaluate vendor claims. I've had to work very hard to stay hands on in the company I work for, because the assumption is that once you reach my level all you do is hand-wave a few diagrams and buy million-dollar software tools to badly automate Function X. My boss knows this, but it's hard convincing those above our level that it's worth investing in the talent pool.
I'm one of those crazy people who really likes my job and loves learning and teaching newbies what I know. I also think companies would be fighting fewer fires if the labor market wasn't so distorted at the low end by the body shops and outsourcing companies.
That Trump will prevent them from outsourcing all work to India, and bringing in Indians for 1/2 the salary of home grown talent.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
There are some many 'anonymous sources' in the news today you don't know what to believe. When I see those words I automatically think 'fake news'. If it true just come and say it.
BTW: An anonymous source says that /. is about to make me their CEO.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
They're spouses of workers here are what are ostensibly temporary visas which were themselves issued for temporary labor shortages. Those 'temporary' shortages have been going on for at least 15 years. That's 3 full college classes start to finish.
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Low wages are always what they should be, but high prices are just the market self regulating. And God forbid you talk about poverty or (gasp) wealth inequality. Fetch me my fainting goats, I do believe I have a case of the vapours...
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There's a reason for this: both parties are in on it. Democrats see them or their offspring more likely to vote Democrat; and businesses see them as cheap labor, and therefore (legally) bribe Republicans to look the other way. Thus, Republican representatives pretend to be appalled for their voting base, but have kept making excuses not to sign anything when the opportunity has arisen.
Trump is doing it wrong. Directly booting people out and breaking up families is both mean and bad politics. A law needs to go after businesses with some legal teeth against owners and hiring managers, along with an army of inspectors. Much fewer illegals would come if they couldn't get jobs. It would take longer to see results than direct boot-outs, but eventually has the same effect.
But, business will never go for that: they'll lobby and bribe to stop it, and they have deep pockets. Trump seems too pro-business to fight that fight, and so does the street-hunter thing instead. Bigly sad.
And Congress needs get off their butt and fund the hiring of more border guards. That's more effective than a wall. Tunnels and ladders will pop up. Again, both parties have made silly excuses not to fund guards in the past.
There are multiple entrenched special interests that collectively put up barriers (no pun int.) to real solutions.
Table-ized A.I.