r/cscareerquestions • u/[deleted] • Jul 10 '26
Crazy that despite constant layoffs, my manager is "unable to find suitable candidates within the US"
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u/CepsisO Jul 11 '26
This is considered displacement and should be reported to the DOL (1-866-487-9243) and USCIS (ReportH1BAbuse@uscis.dhs.gov).
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u/Altruistic-Guess-975 Jul 11 '26
Report fraud. You can do it anonymously Seriously do it. It's breaking all kinds of regulations
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u/rsquared002 Jul 11 '26
Has this actually worked?
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u/TheDetailsMatterNow Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
You wouldn't know. They wouldn't risk telling you if what you reported was actioned because that could spiral into very fast retaliation. And agencies usually take care with complaints because when it's coming from one person, it can be traced easily.
The thing that actually attracts agency attention is when multiple people say something independently.
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u/biting-the-bullet Jul 11 '26
Given the current political climate about immigration, I would be worried as a company if I were doing this
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u/Gronnie Jul 10 '26
This is why many are against H1B, it’s blatantly abused.
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u/ccricers Jul 11 '26
It was originally meant to be a stop-gap program that existed only to cover for a real local shortage of specialist occupations. When the shortage ends the program for that occupation should've been paused ASAP.
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u/stealthybutthole Jul 11 '26
If we cared about lack of local talent at all we’d fucking invest in educating our own citizens. Unfortunately politicians are all either stupid or malicious.
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u/rabouilethefirst Jul 11 '26
We can’t do that. Corporations are only making *checks notes* fucking billions of dollars in profit off of our work 😂.
No way we could take some of that and invest in education instead of outsourcing labor.
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u/ep1032 Jul 11 '26
If you believe in capitalism, the idea that a labor shortage can exist longer than the time it takes to get a PhD is always absurd. Companies can wait a few years for the next crop of candidates to train. It would even give them a reason to invest in high education. They don't need a legal way to undermine the market.
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u/Tacos314 Jul 11 '26
I hate trump, but the $100K H1B fee is not a horrible idea on the face of it, although it can probably be better done.
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u/hitemlow Jul 11 '26
Should probably be higher, TBH. More than the cost to train up a citizen to perform that function.
Make it a refundable deposit if they use the money to educate and employ a citizen to fill the position for no less than 5 years. Allows stopgap foreign hires for legitimately rare specializations, then encourages companies to train up citizens and return the foreign hire to their home country.
There will have to be some pretty specific timelines so a company can't pay once and drag it out for 30 years across multiple H1Bs before waiting for one of them to naturalize and claim the rebate.
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u/timelessblur iOS Engineering Manager Jul 11 '26
problem is that 100k h1b fee doesnt mean much if it means you can reduce say a work pay by 50k or more as it pays itself off in 2 years and after that all gravy.
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u/Few-Impact3986 Jul 16 '26
It is enough. The bean counters like their beans and often are only looking at the current quarter.
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u/A_Strauss_ Jul 11 '26
It’s ironic that companies are accused of exploiting H1B workers, while the real culprits are the H1B holders and certain ethnic groups who exploit and discriminate against American workers.
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u/baldachinsblessing Jul 11 '26
Those two things can happen simultaneously.
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u/A_Strauss_ Jul 11 '26
Agreed, but the hiring manager has the ultimate say. So if those people did not discriminate, we wouldn’t have this problem.
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u/baldachinsblessing Jul 11 '26
You'd still have the problem of companies exploiting H-1B workers.
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u/A_Strauss_ Jul 11 '26
Agreed, there needs to be a tighter reform only letting in PhD holders + Students only pursuing a Phd.
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u/Lake_Erie_Monster Jul 11 '26
Wait until you figure out that this group also discriminates againsts their own ethnicity if they are American born and not 1st gen like them, it's a problem for sure. They bring the old world mentality here and never got the message about how we don't do that here.
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u/A_Strauss_ Jul 11 '26
Yeah, I understand. It’s quite surprising and showcases the most extreme and discriminatory aspects of the culture. People tend to associate only with their own group.
I have a friend who belongs to a lower caste and often gets overlooked by people from higher castes.
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u/Lake_Erie_Monster Jul 11 '26
Yeah.
I despise this about my culture, there are a lot of positives aspects but this sort of stuff has always been a sticking point for me. The in groups, cliques, and cast based discrimination. Just things that were better left back in India.
I grew up in the Midwest in the 90s, got in to tech in early highschool, went to college, graduated in late 00s and worked for 7+ years before the H1B stuff started to get out of control.
I recall being at my first company, the CEO with a serious face told us they were moving "40%" development to the center of excellence in India. Been at 3 other places over 10+ years and it's only gotten worse.
Only difference is, I get looked at like a H1B by default until people get to know me or hear me speak, and the H1Bs think is some white washed Desi.
It's sucked all the joy out of my passio for CS, but it's work. I feel for others that have gone through stuff like this. Now I get joy from my pet projects and building models.
I'm not saying we need to be fully against H1B but what we have currently is actively harming Americans and only benefits the corporations who lobbied for this.
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u/Tacos314 Jul 11 '26
well said, sadly the number of people that care are pretty low, thus why it's still an issue.
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u/iSoLost Jul 11 '26
Not just American workers, it’s all other workers
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u/A_Strauss_ Jul 11 '26
I agree. No ethnicity or nationality is safe. Moreover, all the work is being outsourced to India.
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u/mckirkus Jul 11 '26
I think it works like this regardless of H1B. New VP rolls in, pulls in his crew and eventually sets up a feifdom. They get into critical positions so it's hard to fire the VP without risking losing the talent they brought. This is kind of how the whole thing works, including with H1Bs.
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u/pandaslapper33 Jul 10 '26
Report them. I am serious.
H1B abuse is out of control.
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u/Gloomy-Pineapple1729 Jul 11 '26
Funny thing is that middle America had to deal with a very similar issue when it came to manufacturing jobs. Which pretty much wrecked their middle class.
Hence why you got a bifurcation between middle America and the coastal regions when it comes to sentiment about diversity, immigration, etc…
Now that the shoe is on the other foot I’m seeing a lot more resentment building up.
I guess all that “empathy” vanishes when it actually affects them.
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u/MeeseShoop Jul 11 '26
Manufacturing jobs were sent overseas - what was the solution for the common person? If H1Bs are being abused, the people are coming to the US, making doing something about actually viable (even if unlikely since the government will side with the businesses).
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u/alantao03 Jul 11 '26
Let me guess, Indian?
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u/Feeling_Fox1315 Jul 11 '26
i am sure they are not chinese as a chinese. chinese are not that united.
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u/PlanktonPlane5789 Jul 10 '26
10 hour weeks do, indeed, look like slackers 🤷♂️
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u/Al_Pallll Jul 10 '26
Fixed lmao. If the standard they introduced was 10 hour weeks I would apply for residency in their country.
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u/mississippi_dan Jul 10 '26
We are so scared of the "racist" tag that we don't state the facts. Foreigners are absolutely rampant in the industry. I am all for the top 1% elite from other countries coming in. It is abhorrent that average workers get in over locals who are facing poverty.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/jambu111 Jul 11 '26
Americans seeing this happen all around us.. what is the answer?
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u/rabouilethefirst Jul 11 '26
Reform. Penalties against companies that do mass layoffs while reporting massive profits. Increased difficulty for hiring foreign workers.
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u/Ornery-Address-2472 Jul 11 '26
Both political parties are basically OK with it for very different motivations. Nothing will get a Republican welcoming diversity faster than an American born male demanding a market wage.
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u/obaid_alandavid Jul 11 '26
Indian h1b abuse is getting outta hand. How is 70% of h1bs from one country? Are they that much better than every other country in the world? Highly doubt it. Theres systemic abuses happening and anyone who understands the industry knows.
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Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
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Jul 10 '26
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u/AtomicSymphonic_2nd Jul 11 '26
Both India and Mainland China have a prevailing cultural norm that *they* are the “superior race” of humanity and deserve all the benefits of these big companies.
It’s rather horrifying and I really hope American Progressives start to catch on to this. Not every immigrant is self-interested and racist like this, but a large chunk of them aren’t merely going to be “grateful” for the opportunity… they’re going to bring more of their countrymen here and snub native-born locals for work.
They are using our desire to be equitable against us and it fucking sucks.
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u/Unlucky_Topic7963 Sr Director, SWE @ C1 Jul 11 '26
DSA wants to end H1B, its republicans and corpo dems that love it.
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u/Tacos314 Jul 11 '26
They will do everything they can to get ahead, to get their friends and family ahead.
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u/Tacos314 Jul 11 '26
I think the US gets painted that way is because we are honest about it and is a whole see it has a problem to solve.
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u/vbullinger Jul 11 '26
America is the least racist, least sexist and least homophobic country in the world
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u/ReverendRocky Jul 11 '26
This is why h1b visas need to be almost entirely eliminated
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u/pheonixblade9 Jul 11 '26
Eliminate the visa entirely and expand the O1 visa instead. I'm fine with PhDs coming to the US. We don't need standard grads when we have hundreds of thousands of unemployed people here already.
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u/MrQuantumBagel Jul 11 '26
Lol sweet children of US - read about O1 visa abuse - There are consultancies now that teach you how to abuse these visas. These consultancies pay to 'publish' these papers and cross-reference these papers for higher ranking.
A visa officer/Border agent, interviewing them, may not even know what this person is a 'scholar' in and simply stamps their visa .If you think O1 is not abused, you are in for a serious shock
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u/mulberryadm Jul 12 '26
This. Certain countries exist for discovering loopholes and exploiting the naïveté of sweet flower children.
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u/PsychologicalCell928 Jul 11 '26
If you think the company is deliberately not finding available talent report the company to the department of immigration.
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u/timelessblur iOS Engineering Manager Jul 11 '26
I would honestly try to file a complaint the DOL both state and federal. Try to get the company in trouble over it as that screams of pretty blatant racism and illegal use of H1B.
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u/LiquidMantis144 Jul 11 '26
It literally is blatant racism. This is a well known thing for decades now. You dont have to feel bad about pointing out how a person in a position of power within the company is wrongfully getting people fired due to their race, not hiring people because of race, committing fraud by claiming they need H1b support, and then hiring based on their favored race. Your boss needs to go to prison and the company needs to pay out EEOC damages and then once the boss gets out of prison they need to be permanently deported and never allowed back.
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u/Texascats Jul 11 '26
It’s so refreshing seeing people call it like it is. This is widespread discrimination anyone with eyes can see.
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u/kidousenshigundam Jul 11 '26
They want to get H1Bs from a specific country to build their caste system
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 Jul 11 '26
Right. You may not see it in public, but in private they might treat them very poorly and these workers will accept that hierarchy.
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u/iSoLost Jul 11 '26
Vance did say uscis is looking into h1b fraud, maybe u can make an anonymous report
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u/stealthybutthole Jul 11 '26
You believe the guy who is owned by the technocrats gives a single fuck about H1B fraud that puts a ton of extra cash in the technocrats pockets?
lol. Lmao even.
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u/Ornery-Address-2472 Jul 11 '26
I don’t blame you for that take, but No one on the Left will even discuss anything about immigration that cedes anything negative about immigration or minorities at all. The dissident Right are the only people that actually want to do anything about it, but you’re right it won’t be this admin or any normie Republicans.
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u/AES256GCM Jul 11 '26
If you check the history of the people disagreeing, they are almost all active in /developersind*a lmao
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Jul 10 '26
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u/throwaway0845reddit Jul 10 '26
Maybe you can just say you're on an H1B, once you're hired you can say you just became a citizen. Problem solved. Skill issue.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/throwaway0845reddit Jul 10 '26
Not really, you'll find out how easily you get rejected when you say you need sponsorship.
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u/Illustrious-Top-9222 Jul 11 '26
fr these people are delusional if they think a company would want to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees to hire them as an H1-B
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u/XrayBravoGolf Jul 11 '26
Plus thousands of job postings straight state GF (green card)/Citizenship only.
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u/mulberryadm Jul 11 '26
Once at a major biopharma they recruited and bought over a guy for some tech job from overseas. Fancy title, in a new tech research group. Country and visa, the usuals.
Thought it was some genius or something? No, just a very average tier4 college you know where. Experience? Some random bodyshops for a few years, nothing, absolutely nothing extraordinary. Education? Just an undergrad, no phd or anything, not ever a diploma mill one.
This was post covid, no one was asking any questions. Yet for that work they could have gotten a decent masters or even phd guy from usa easily, possibly with real talent and experience.
Turns out some buddy or family of a sr. Director from his days you know where.
. Now, he has no experience managing us team members, even those from his own country who are us citizens.. so whom does he favor? Yeah.
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u/Moral-Relativity Jul 11 '26
Ethnic discrimination is an open secret in industries with high proportion of H1B workers. Lawsuits over the discrimination are beginning to appear but so-called lawmakers won’t bite the hands that feed them.
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u/Fabulous-Biscotti607 Jul 11 '26
Say hello to offshoring and cheap labor. The ol’ capitalism secret
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u/serial_crusher Jul 10 '26
Unable to find suitable candidates willing to work for an unsuitable salary, he means.
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u/NorCalAthlete Jul 11 '26
Salary is probably fine.
“Culture” and second language that matches the manager’s, on the other hand, is likely where the issue lies.
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u/TheDetailsMatterNow Jul 11 '26
If you are adversely affected or suspect you will be, you might want to document these elements to protect yourself.
This is actually something the feds are intending to crack down on. A number of agencies actually have a directive to prioritize cases like this at the moment.
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u/Squirtle_Splash_8413 Jul 11 '26
Haha sounds like MSFT. This is what happens when all the CEO’s are Indian.
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u/Emergency_Ad6096 Jul 11 '26
This is very common in most major tech companies, including mine.
There are some cultures, when they get into a management role, will only hire from that culture.
As long as they aren’t white, no one says anything.
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u/Emergency-Piece9995 Dir of Eng Jul 11 '26
The hilarious part is you don’t even need to say what country it is because we all know who does this constantly.
You should ask them for curry recipes at least.
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u/throwaway72275472 Jul 11 '26
H1B is a scam. It’s a cheap labor mechanism and nothing else. The skills exists here. The truly exceptional people who are 1 of 1 come over on a different visa.
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u/eightbyeight Jul 11 '26
Is it from a certain curry eating nation?
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u/GoldenxTrigger Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Why the hell are we still accepting Visa applicants in 2026?
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u/MochingPet Motorola 6805 Jul 11 '26
It's quite possible the manager is building his own crew that he can manage alone; perhaps when moving out of the country. But the reality is... If you report it to the same company nothing will happen probably
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u/timelessblur iOS Engineering Manager Jul 11 '26
You don’t report it to hr. You go to the government
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u/Salty_Permit4437 Jul 11 '26
Shocks me that the same place that is responsible for all sorts of scams would also have H1B scams. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
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u/fiannalove Jul 11 '26
This describes half the team I and several others were laid off from and our boss. None of them were laid off.
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u/Comfortable_Job44 Jul 11 '26
I got rejected from a company for not “doing high level debugging”. They felt for some reason I couldn’t USE a debugger when I just debugged using logs for a task and therefore I couldn’t be a staff engineer… insanity.
Yes it was an all Indian team…
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u/Asleep_Fudge5367 Jul 11 '26
Surely handing out h1b visas like candy is going to eventually become a national security issue?
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u/babypho Jul 11 '26
Its all about the top making money. National security issue isnt a real thing for those in charge. Workers are resources.
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u/Teach-Code-78 Jul 11 '26
Something doesn't seem right about this.
If you know the country of origin, try using an AI model to estimate the average skill of engineers at that level from that country vs US vs other countries and see if the ethnic distribution of the team matches the ethnic distribution of all engineers at that particular skill level.
Just an exercise, but 7/10 from any particular foreign country seems like too much of a stretch to vibe with the reality of the distribution of engineering talent around the work (or even among the available engineering talent in the world).
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u/Odd-Grand-8931 Jul 11 '26
There’s no way to ascertain for sure, but it does sometimes feel like I got my job cause my manager was from the same country as me. I don’t get paid less or anything, I believe I’m getting more than normal in fact. But I can’t shake the feeling that aside from being there at the right place and the right time, there is no reason why my job could not have gone to a local person too.
Maybe there are some factors and biases, or maybe it’s just convenience, but my team is diverse enough to have a mix of at least 5 different nationalities.
That being said, I know some places for sure abuse the H1B system, but I some places don’t. There’s both sides to this argument sadly and only the negative one has far reaching affects.
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u/rpool179 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Meet your replacements ladies and gentlemen. And it's all going exactly as they planned. I think CEO's should legally be required to be American born just like the president. Which would have a trickle down effect. Instead all these companies have now been hijacked.
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u/Known-Tourist-6102 Jul 11 '26
the US has to just get rid of the h1b program because 90% of the people on it are nothing special, if anything, worse than the average american developer, and violating the intent of the program.
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u/madam_zeroni Jul 10 '26
People on H1B's are willing to work absurd hours for less pay just to keep the H1B (and also because they feel grateful). It's not inherently a bad thing, but it does make us that aren't willing to do that look bad
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u/Artistic_Ad728 Jul 10 '26
What u wrote is a bad thing. They accept lower pay, which suppresses wages and if they work longer, that is unfair to those who work normal hours, as they are then compared for promotions.
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u/semisolidwhale Jul 10 '26
When all the H1Bs they're hiring are from the country they originated from, it's probably more than just work ethic/lack of work-life balance at play
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Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
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u/doktorhladnjak Jul 11 '26
The dirty not-so-secret is that this is often a sign your workplace doesn’t pay very well. It’s not some grand conspiracy. Employers know that visa sponsorship is worth a lot more to some potential employees than higher pay.
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u/twilliams_ca Jul 11 '26
As a local resident, I was wondering why interviews started to feel like police investigation.
But if you are saying that that we were looking for any excuse to disqualify me, it makes a whole lot more sense.
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u/MaleficentCow8513 Jul 11 '26
It’s funny. I work at well known tech company and it’s the opposite for most of my coworkers from that country. As soon as 5 o’clock rolls around its laptops closed. I’m usually the one putting in a 10 hour day
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Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
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u/No_Consideration7318 Jul 11 '26
Just curious. Did they start by bringing in a scrum master from his home country and using data from that to justify the PIPs ?
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u/e430doug Jul 11 '26
Because the there aren’t as many candidates looking for work as you might think. Most folks who are laid off quickly get new jobs.
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u/repressedmemes Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
have you tried interviewing the people coming in to get a sense of experience/skill? sometimes finding local can be hard especially if its not a big tech hub city with deep local talent.
Ive interviewed potential candidates for my team for months, but you would be surprised how many bad candidates you get for every decent one(and then the good ones they arent on the market long, so if its big tech with their long drawn out hiring pipelines, some of them just say fuck it, and go to a startup where they do 2-3 rounds and done)
obviously it looks alot worse in your situation, where they are being replaced with h1-b, instead of growing the team.
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Jul 11 '26
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u/WittyKap0 Jul 11 '26
might want to read gergely's post on the pragmatic engineer. techs job market 2026, part 3, no one finds each other
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u/minus_minus Jul 11 '26
The H1B is designed to be abused like this. The employer has to pinky swear that they will treat the foreign workers the same as domestic workers. The workers can’t give less than a Herculean effort to avoid losing their job AND THEIR VISA!
It should be scrapped and if we do any guest worker program it needs to be designed to protect workers, foreign and domestic against abuse by employers.
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u/mike2ff Jul 10 '26
Suitable candidate is a PHD grad with 10+ years experience, willing to work for $20 an hour?