Maybe Satya can call Donald Trump? I am sure he has his phone number. They can sort it

> Net income per employee at MS is $440K

MS with N fewer workers is not going to bring in N*$440K less net income. The incremental income added by an average employee is much less than $440K.

I’m sorry, but what? What part of your statement is relevant to the rapid and cruel enactment of the policy? Leaving aside whether or not it is unreasonable, the immediate applicability, over a weekend, of this policy, is that this thread is discussing. Not your smug satisfaction at the validity of the policy.

Why can't they set a salary cutoff for visas at something like 1.5x of median salary in the same industry? That's what EU does. No lottery, no degree requirement even -- if the company wants you to pay above the market, they can, otherwise, nah.

This of course creates another problem -- highly paid foreigners price locals out of the housing market, but hej, we can always blame that on refugees, right.

Ssh. Have to keep up the globalist fiction here.

10 YoE means nothing. Let's not pretend there isn't a massive skill gap in software engineering. I've interviewed and worked with 10+ YoE people in my company that I wouldn't trust with junior work on my team.

People keep saying this but all my peers in tech companies on h1b were paid the same as me.

I also know people with 10 yoe. But when I dig into it almost always those people have a massive list of requirements for the job they want (remote/short commute/no overtime ever/etcetc)

Though it is reasonable to ask whatever you want you must understand there are always someone more desperate (and often with higher skills) that will take that job.

So the fact that 10yoe can’t find a job doesn’t mean anything. Usually this is either too many demands from seeker or skill issue.

Or they don’t eant to take lower salary.

If a company was willing to pay 70k for a developer you must be delusional to think they will suddenly decide to pay 100k+ for local talent.

They will just get a remote contractor

[dead]

I agree with you with respect to timing, but I don't think it's too much of one thing or another, and just chalk it up to typical Trump Administration "move fast and make things dumb" approach to various policies. I guess it's possible they chose this weekend to enact the highest shakedown possible on H1B visa holders outside the United States, but I'm reluctant to give them that much credit. I think they just said here is the policy, go now and the inconveniences be damned.

Employers have said these workers are critical and they can’t find any workers already in America to do these roles.

FAANG are by far the largest users of H1-B. They also have billions of dollars and access to excellent lawyers. They can pay up for this; an excellent employee is certainly worth more than $100k per year to them. Think of this more as a tax levied on some of America’s wealthiest businesses.

> Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.

I’m actually curious, have you worked at a large corporation before?

It would be atypical for the scenario you are describing to occur given that there has been a US government policy change that’s of no fault of the employee who is still eligible to work in the United States.

Folks aren’t going to be sitting around on Monday morning saying jeez Billy on the H1B visa didn’t show up to work today and we have no clue why, guess he is fired!

Within business units at this scale there are small, dedicated teams that manage contractors, vendor contracts and licenses, keep track of employees on visas, report that information for compliance purposes, etc, and they are almost certainly communicating with their employees who are currently out of the country to provide arrangements and additional details as things progress.

> Meanwhile, if you didn’t return by Sunday, you’re locked out of the country and unable to show up for work which will result in your termination fairly soon.

Remember too that this coincides with an RTO order for Puget Sound that kicks in roughly the same time.

only a very small percentage i think, for example only 4.2% work anywhere in the medical field [1]

[1]https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...

This doesn’t appear to apply to people on cap-exempt H1-Bs.

i have never heard of this and nothing i've read has indicated this; it's always been tech companies large fortune 500's. I did some googling and am not finding anything to support this claim, either. If you've got sources i'd love to see them.