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by _Rabs_ 268 days ago
H-1B's are absolutely exploited. I'd personally testify to the abuses at financial companies. Hearing threats of "If you don't complete this by tomorrow, you can expect to be back in India by next week" From one Indian to another too...

It's awful to witness it. Please don't spread misinformation that "They are not taking abuse or being exploited" That is extremely disingenuous.

2 comments

It sounds like you object to the exploitation rather than to the H1-B.
don't be asinine. h1-b is what enables this exploitation
Sorry that's untrue. Top companies such as Google, Meta or Microsoft absolutely do not abuse H-1B workers or treat them any different. As I said there may be smaller outfits, or IT shops where this is happening.
You have to look harder. It's not always explicit as OP says with threats of deportation. Rather there's a huge power imbalance.

Who can we ask to stay late? Who "doesn't mind" 12 hour days? Who "doesn't mind' being on call. Who won't mind if they get a smaller bonus or raise? How about Sandeep who is afraid to say no because if he says no too many times and loses his job him and his entire family have to move back overseas with minimal notice?

That's how real exploitation happens these days. And sometimes even good managers don't realize they're doing it, because, after all, poor Sandeep even said he didn't mind! He's just a really hard worker!

Yup. Even if they are treated equally, and everybody has the same chance of being laid off, they have more to lose than permanent residents.
I've never worked at those companies. But to say that it _never_ happens there is a bit of an absurd thing to say.
You are right, unless you have been present at every manager-employee interaction you can't say it has "never" happened. But to claim that this is happening requires more than just one or two instances, right?
I used to think the same thing until I was brought in on an important legacy project that put me tangential to the "inner circle" and heard a lot of this kind of thing along with other shady practices like authoring the RFP for the government to publish so that the requirements favored the company.