[declan_roberts]

I was contacted this week for a position that was openly 6 days a week. We need to end H1B in this country as soon as possible and keep the 996 schedule firmly out of the United States.

They call you lazy for not wanting to compete against the entire world in your own country.

[archagon]

Quite a leap to attribute corporate greed to H1B.

Think again: this is entirely homegrown.

[genxy]

You give away your bias when it is the other way around.

The H1B is a byproduct and a tool of corporate greed.

[ycombinator_acc]

Or it’s a way for the less fortunate (geographically) to seek a better future.

They more or less got rid of it last September, yet the job market has only worsened. Scapegoating minorities, whether it be trans people, brown people, Muslims or immigrants, doesn’t work. All it does is destroy lives.

> You give away your bias when it is the other way around.

How so?

[genxy]

American corporations could care less about giving anyone a better future.

archagon was attempting to paint declan_roberts comment as blaming H1B workers on working conditions, which they did not do. But H1Bs will be used to suppress wages by working more hours 996 under worse conditions (oncall, etc). This is low rhetoric. To call out how H1Bs are being used is not scapegoating nor is it racist. It makes zero difference where they come from. The cause is corporate greed, the effect is more H1Bs.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-h-1b-hiring-faces-1230...

https://americanbazaaronline.com/2026/05/20/amazons-33181-h-...

Amazon has cut, what 30k+ folks while increasing their H1B allocation.

[ycombinator_acc]

Now, with the $100K fee which has turned H-1B workers into indentured servants, they could and will be used for that, sure. But prior to the EO, they had the freedom to leave the country and reenter whenever they'd like to, so long as they were employed or had an offer on hand. Getting laid off wasn't the end of the world. Travelling wasn't a huge risk. Switching employers was relatively stress-free. While still not on par with that of citizens, the leverage and the bargaining power was there, preventing the longer workweeks under worse conditions issue you're referring to. The concern trolls claiming otherwise had no concrete evidence to show for their claims.

I never said it's racist, unsure where you got that from, but it absolutely is scapegoating, when the issue isn't immigrants, who are powerless and cannot fight back, but the admin that's vilifying them while being the actual villain.

[genxy]

The power dynamic is definitely worse now, but it has existed ever since I first touched corporate tech in the late 90s (microsoft).

The problem isn't with immigrants specifically, but how they are used by these corporations to suppress wages and reduce the agency of labor. I don't want to see anyone hurt. But the way the H1Bs are being used harms everyone.

[declan_roberts]

No country is ever going to be able to create a functional local software economy if every good engineer get sucked out of the country.

In many ways the current system is cruel to every international company which forces their local wages to compete with the United States.

[ycombinator_acc]

I don't care about "every international company" or any company. Kicking out immigrants is cruel to people.

[ycombinator_acc]

Also, why shouldn't those companies be forced to compete with US wages? Do only Americans get to have nice things and a strong purchasing power?

[raincom]

Why not both? It is a feedback loop. When the US allowed railroad/mine workers from China, it is true that Chinese labor wanted a better future and that capitalists want to use Chinese labor to suppress American wages. For instance, look at the animosity towards Chinese workers in Wyoming by European workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Springs_massacre

[ycombinator_acc]

Do you think the European workers were in the right? Is the solution to kick out (let alone slaughter) the Chinese, or is it to make them less exploitable by companies?

[raincom]

US workers are left with almost no systemic power to fight corporate exploitation, which creates a brutal race to the bottom. That's the structural context I was pointing out. But let’s be clear: turning that frustration into killing Chinese workers is never acceptable. The issue isn't the foreign workforce; it's a broken system that exploits everyone.

So, when foreigners want to come to the US to work, these foreigners find the working conditions (say, 996 of today) is better than working for the corporate and the government exploiters in their home countries.

[shermantanktop]

Is there not a connection between the two?

You'll have to spell out what you're suggesting here. "Think again" only works on LLMs, and then only sometimes.

[Tadpole9181]

The top comment seems to insinuate the 996 (or any overwork scheme) is being brought over because of H1B visa workers.

The responder is saying that domestic American capitalists do not need foreign influence to abuse or exploit labor. The H1B visa program has absolutely nothing to do, for example, with Walmart telling their full time employees how to apply for government assistance programs because they refuse to pay a livable wage.

[declan_roberts]

Software talent doesn't compete against Walmart greeters. That's the connection you're missing for h1b.

[Tadpole9181]

I don't see how that's relevant to the discussion. The parent's point is that companies in America do not need to import cruelty or an acceptance thereof, they are more than capable and more than willing to do it themselves.

I brought up Walmart as an example, it was never intended to be a 1:1 analog with H1Bs.

[randycupertino]

My company currently has roles open for "5-6 days per week in the office" - we used to be 100% remote! It's awful.

[szatkus]

And at the same time the very same people are 10x more productive because of AI, right?

[akomtu]

6 am, 6 pm, 6 days a week. Why is it called 996?

[stubish]

The term '666 schedule' got nixed by marketing.

[nouveaux]

9a-9p 6 days a week

[rcxdude]

9AM to 9PM

[rented_mule]

Chinese tech companies' 996 policies, and large Chinese tech companies in general, are newer than that ethic in the US. What I hear about 995.5 (every other Saturday off) from my friend at Xiaohongshu in Beijing sounds remarkably consistent with what I heard from my Google friends 20-25 years ago, from working hours to on-site amenities that kept you at work. You're spotting a correlation, but I think causality probably goes in the US -> China direction on this.

In the early to mid 90s, I worked at a Silicon Valley based software startup. We had something called "The Century Club". You made the club if you'd done 3 consecutive months in the last year without working less than 100 hours in any week of those months (averaging 100 hours was not good enough). More engineers were in the club than not. We were told that making the club was not mandatory, but nobody in the club was ever fired and most not in the club were eventually fired.

The next startup I was at had a similar culture without the cute name. I remember my most exhausting stretch there was coming in on a Saturday morning, for a database migration that had to happen outside business hours, and working straight through without sleep (other than nodding off at the keyboard) until Monday afternoon. Our CEO was kind enough to bring us food. Even in regular times there, I would go exercise from 10-11 PM, and more often than not I'd go back to the office after.

A decade later I was at Amazon. Our entire group of ~100 engineers was required by our VP to work weekends, in the office, for months at a time when approaching ship dates. The VP would send an email every Friday during this period to remind us to be there. Of course he wasn't there.

Those were all pretty counterproductive, but didn't seem that unusual. The difference in the US back then was that even asking about such things during an interview would often result in no offer because the candidate didn't have a "good" work ethic. Things have gotten a lot better in the US in the last 10-15 years, but a lot of that came from competition for talent. The more that competition eases, the more likely it is that we'll go backwards on this.

Relating back to the article... For the last 3 years of my career (I retired a few years ago), I worked 4-day weeks, and it was all remote. This is just as anecdotal as the article, but I felt I got far more done, with higher quality, than at any point in my career. It was such a revelation.

[skybrian]

I guess you had bad luck working for teams that worked long hours. But as another datapoint, I worked at Google for more than a decade around that time period, for several different teams. Google did have a lot of amenities and people would say that it was to keep you at work, but I didn't see much evidence of that. It didn't keep anyone I knew from going home when they wanted. Being single, I'd stay for dinner or even come in on a weekend to do my laundry. But some weekdays I'd either work from home or get in around 11. Or maybe go for a bike ride at lunch. Nobody kept track. I have little idea how many hours I worked, but there was plenty of time while waiting on compiles to check Memegen and Hacker News. It wasn't a high-stress job.

It's a big company, though, so other teams might be different.

[insane_dreamer]

also companies were eager to portray themselves as "family", framing giving your all for the company as a moral choice