This might not be popular here, but in my opinion, the H-1B visa program has been a disaster for tech companies. It oversaturates the tech labor market with career-seeking individuals, drowning out the hackers who immerse themselves in technology (and may be on paper "less qualified"), and recruiting/HR teams have virtually no idea how distinguish between these types of candidates.
This is a very touchy topic because it's very hard to talk about honestly without accusations of race / xenophobia / prejudice / envy / whatever. I'll say: I've worked with tons of H-1Bs who were "immersed" in tech. I've worked with tons that weren't. Individuals are individuals.
The problem is that collections of people behave wildly different from individuals. The culture of an org that's mostly H-1Bs is wildly and starkly different than ones with different ratios. This problem, at least when I initially joined Amazon many, many years ago, was actively warned against. The onboarding had a little speech about cultural differences and how it's OK to push back here. We aren't here to be task takers.
Fast forward to today and the culture is wildly different. Many of the practices of offshore teams have leaked into local ones, because the same culture that bred them over there are now in leadership positions here. There's no shortage of teams operating like unquestioning ticket jockeys these days. Your job isn't to produce value, it's to close tickets as fast as possible. Do what management says. Don't ask questions.
This comment is not reflective of ground reality. Most of current workers (90% easily) at big tech, both US Citizens and Visa holders are far too removed from the hacker ethic and can't do more than using the company RPC framework to write boilerplate stuff. People act shocked when told about basic insights of computer science. Mind you I am talking about both low and high level engineers and management.
Lol is this the "best of the best" that FAANG supposedly hires? Here on the east coast, everyone is expected to have a sound CS foundation or equivalent skills and experience, our second tier state college has a fantastic CS degree, and the half of my team that is in India has no problems with everyday usage of CS concepts and the worst I can say about them is a lack of initiative or creativity but like, same.
Is FAANG just sniffing it's own farts about their "ability"?
When you are hiring at those high rates quality goes out of the window. The companies were so big and growing fast that all external leaders would hire their loyalists. The hiring quality was dropping steadily and then dropped sharply. There were some well intentioned special hiring initiatives which were in theory supposed to preserve the same quality of hires, but in private the HR leaders responsible for the initiative would send everyone a private message saying "Wink wink, this hiring is for special initiative, please please keep that in mind". The thing is if you don't have immediate customer feedback and the company is not in survival mode, empire building just takes over. I have worked at multiple of big tech comapnies and all just daily remind of "Yes Minister"
drowning out the hackers who immerse themselves in technology (and may be on paper "less qualified"), and recruiting/HR teams have virtually no idea how distinguish between these types of candidates
Interesting thought ... could be a kernel of truth there.
I believe this is true. But FAANGs are really software factories, not places for innovation. The product requirements rain down from high up above, and they expect a shoddy implementation as fast as possible. The model largely works
Immigrants are now responsible for the lost hacker spirit? Seriously?
I think you might be confusing correlation with causation. Software engineering becoming a well paid job for the masses is the reason for both decline of exclusive hacker culture and amount of career-seekers (both domestic and international) willing to join the industry.
Comments
This might not be popular here, but in my opinion, the H-1B visa program has been a disaster for tech companies. It oversaturates the tech labor market with career-seeking individuals, drowning out the hackers who immerse themselves in technology (and may be on paper "less qualified"), and recruiting/HR teams have virtually no idea how distinguish between these types of candidates.
This is a very touchy topic because it's very hard to talk about honestly without accusations of race / xenophobia / prejudice / envy / whatever. I'll say: I've worked with tons of H-1Bs who were "immersed" in tech. I've worked with tons that weren't. Individuals are individuals.
The problem is that collections of people behave wildly different from individuals. The culture of an org that's mostly H-1Bs is wildly and starkly different than ones with different ratios. This problem, at least when I initially joined Amazon many, many years ago, was actively warned against. The onboarding had a little speech about cultural differences and how it's OK to push back here. We aren't here to be task takers.
Fast forward to today and the culture is wildly different. Many of the practices of offshore teams have leaked into local ones, because the same culture that bred them over there are now in leadership positions here. There's no shortage of teams operating like unquestioning ticket jockeys these days. Your job isn't to produce value, it's to close tickets as fast as possible. Do what management says. Don't ask questions.
This comment is not reflective of ground reality. Most of current workers (90% easily) at big tech, both US Citizens and Visa holders are far too removed from the hacker ethic and can't do more than using the company RPC framework to write boilerplate stuff. People act shocked when told about basic insights of computer science. Mind you I am talking about both low and high level engineers and management.
Lol is this the "best of the best" that FAANG supposedly hires? Here on the east coast, everyone is expected to have a sound CS foundation or equivalent skills and experience, our second tier state college has a fantastic CS degree, and the half of my team that is in India has no problems with everyday usage of CS concepts and the worst I can say about them is a lack of initiative or creativity but like, same.
Is FAANG just sniffing it's own farts about their "ability"?
When you are hiring at those high rates quality goes out of the window. The companies were so big and growing fast that all external leaders would hire their loyalists. The hiring quality was dropping steadily and then dropped sharply. There were some well intentioned special hiring initiatives which were in theory supposed to preserve the same quality of hires, but in private the HR leaders responsible for the initiative would send everyone a private message saying "Wink wink, this hiring is for special initiative, please please keep that in mind". The thing is if you don't have immediate customer feedback and the company is not in survival mode, empire building just takes over. I have worked at multiple of big tech comapnies and all just daily remind of "Yes Minister"
Interesting thought ... could be a kernel of truth there.
I believe this is true. But FAANGs are really software factories, not places for innovation. The product requirements rain down from high up above, and they expect a shoddy implementation as fast as possible. The model largely works
Why do you think people from other countries aren't "hackers"?
The people from other countries who are genuine hackers aren't qualified enough to get approved for H-1B visas.
Immigrants are now responsible for the lost hacker spirit? Seriously?
I think you might be confusing correlation with causation. Software engineering becoming a well paid job for the masses is the reason for both decline of exclusive hacker culture and amount of career-seekers (both domestic and international) willing to join the industry.