Net income per employee at MS is $440K so if H-1B are so important then they can afford it. I worked at MS on a visa and it definitely felt like I was a second class citizen that managers could freely abuse without recourse, it didn’t help that corporate politics had become tribal. So while having a visa was beneficial to me personally I felt it lead to the degradation of the employment market, now a market for lemons, and this hurt Americans. High prices are a signal and people make career choices based on prospective income, many of America's smartest got the memo that Software Engineering was going to be taken over by H-1B Indians and they should pick a different career like law, finance, or medicine. So the program created the problem it was purporting to solve, the fact that the problem exists even though we’ve had H1-Bs for decades. The irony is that without the H-1Bs the US market might be attractive enough for me to return, sadly I’d need the visa. I’m content knowing the market isn’t being destroyed for Americans even if it means I can’t partake in it.

That said I wonder if it’s more of a power grab with the discretion to grant exemptions being used to strong arm corporations to clamping down on criticism of Israel.

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baobabKoodaa 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 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.

	▲	cjbgkagh 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That they can afford it does not mean they should afford it, given the degradation of their flagship monopoly product I’m not sure if the H-1Bs are really helping all that much. My time there was absolutely dominated by bureaucracy, so much so that we spent 12 weeks planning a feature I knew I could do in 30 minutes, so I called a meeting and did it in front of them during the meeting, apparently that wasn’t respecting the process so I was punished for it.

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Ar-Curunir 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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cjbgkagh 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Point 1 H-1B is a horrible program that has to go, the manner in which this is done is unfortunate. Like many things it should have been done nicer and sooner but apparently that wasn’t an option.

Point 2 I’m certain exemptions will be granted that will mean in reality the H-1B gets to continue being a horrible problem for everyday Americans and the software industry in general. I don’t want to work in a lemon market and that’s what it has become. And I see this as more of an attack on free speech than an attack on H-1Bs but that shoe has yet to drop. In the meantime they need people to believe the threat is real so the companies will yield to power. The chaos is part of making it believable. If I was on a H-1B and I was too far away to make it in time I probably wouldn’t be too stressed about it but I’d understand why other people are.

	▲	cjbgkagh 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Seems like the first exemption was all current visa holders so all that panic was over nothing.