This is long overdue. The fact that a large tech company lays 10,000 people off and then immediately turns around and petitions for thousands of H-1B employees is criminal.
Hi, Im not an H1B but as someone who contracted for decades, it was pretty easy to get hired as a contractor after companies laid off. The entire reason I stayed a contractor was because after being an employee and living under constant threat of layoffs, I decided I couldn't live like that anymore. It was my way of taking control.
Contract labor is not booked as headcount so its not just the cost its also how its budgeted and looks to shareholders.
Obviously our industry hasnt cared a whit about what its employees think since at least 2005 when they thought they were going to send all of it elsewhere.
Indian outsourcing companies such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, etc., have a negative impact on contracting rates. These companies just underbid for the onsite contractor roles, so it is a race to bottom. Have you noticed all those emails from recruiters for $55 dollars on W2 in California for some contract role through TCS, Infosys, ..
> The fact that a large tech company lays 10,000 people off and then immediately turns around and petitions for thousands of H-1B employees is criminal.
the craziest thing is that this has to come from right-wight politicians. really gives you a sense of how much the left is f'd-up in 2026.
You didn’t have to say “in 2026.” You could have stopped typing at “f’d-up.” Never in the history of the world has a political group been so bent on working for foreigners and against its own citizens.
some theories say that when occupy wallstreet was happening something was needed to shift the attention off the class war.
some people call that a conspiracy theory, but looking back (how the attention to workers rights basically vanished and got replaced with other topics, and how the capitalist world got so much richer) it explains a lot of things very well.
> ...the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take into account in any labor condition application... whether the employer sponsor directly or indirectly engaged in layoffs within the previous year or plans future layoffs...
Unfortunately, as a 2nd order effect, I wonder if we'll see fewer layoffs and more outright firing to balance it out.
Sometimes i wonder if the actions of ICE, are a reaction to try and stop immigration because of climate change. Naturally the administration will never say this, but the American west in particular is suffering a water crisis today and recent times seem to indicate today is the new normal. I think its reasonable to guess that the land cant support more people.
No. The actions of ICE are a reaction to how much Trump and his base hate brown people. This administration doesn't even believe climate change is real, Trump infamously called it a "Chinese hoax."
The current administration doesn't believe in climate change / global warming, so no. It's just the typical "blame foreigners for your problems" thing that every authoritarian regime all over the world indulges in, and uses to justify nasty stuff. In the last 20 years, for example, it's also been how China justifies stealing stuff from other countries to further their local industries and technological growth (not that there aren't fantastic engineers and scientists in China already).
> The current administration doesn't believe in climate change / global warming
Sure they do. None of the Greenland stuff (or most of the Canada stuff) makes sense unless they believe in these things.
We assume that if they believed they would try to slow these things down, but they chose a different path, profiting off the accelerationism.
The claims of not believing are just fodder for the FOX News/OANN watchers and what they say publicly is not what they believe.
In much the same way that David Miscavige doesn't believe in Xenu, I'm pretty positive Donald Trump does believe in global warming, he just doesn't care... or rather only cares insomuch as it is a profit opportunity.
Greenland stuff doesn’t make sense even if they believe into the climate change. The US already has military bases there which are barely used. It’s just plain imperialism.
They know the truth, their public statements are an act. I think its pretty obvious that all public people say one thing and believe or do another in private.
I’ve been puzzled why climate change messaging seems to ignore the emissions of other large countries like China and India. If USA reduces emissions but others don’t, well we all share the same atmosphere so…
But similar to your angle, I’ve wondered if the climate change messaging is secretly targeted towards resource depletion. If USA switches off oil and oil runs out, who cares if others didn’t switch? But people have a hard time processing “going to run out in 50 years” as a crisis, so instead we get an apocalypse angle, I suppose because humans love the apocalypse (see: various religions).
The USA is far wealthier, uses more carbon per-person, and is responsible for more historical emissions than China or India. We have an obligation to reduce our gluttony before asking others to go without.
The USA is not wealthy, some people and corporations are wealthy, most people are not. BIG difference.
I like to think of holidays and work / life balance as a measure of wealth. Rich people can take time away from work because they can afford it. If you need to work lots of hours and barely can have a few days off then you arent wealthy.
Let me ask again, if you need to work 2 - 3 jobs are you wealthy ?
If you can only take a weeks worth of holidays in a good year are you wealthy ?
> I’ve been puzzled why climate change messaging seems to ignore the emissions of other large countries like China and India.
It doesn't. The issue is likely more that you don't see or read widely enough.
Even here on HN you'll see mention of China and India's emissions and use of coal on a regular basis.
The US is a significant mention for two main reasons:-
* of all the human lofted additional CO2 of the past century plus (that sourced from formerly deep underground) the US is the single largest sole country contributor (although China is catching up (but may or may not equal the US)), ...
* the US is still a large per capita contributor today (ignoring tiny tiny outlier countries with small populations and near single export fossil fuel extraction countries) - it has an energy intensive economy.
My personal beef isn't so much with the US but specifically with US based fossil fuel and resource companies of the 1970s onwards (eg: Koch brothers) who were well aware of the problem with increasing the insulation factor of the atmosphere and doubled down anyway - spending large on "think tanks" to promote confusion via media, over sell the appeal of large cars, destroy any and all grass roots campaigns for public transport, etc. (CO2MaXXing ?).
The US has had influence across the planet post WWII, these campaigns just promoted a bad example for profit and deferred early and timely addressing of the issues.
In the 60s/70s they had the world is going into another ice age scare. Based on historical patterns we are in a cooling phase based on Milankovitch cycles. A long slow cooling phase going into another ice age. You can't blame the Koch brothers.
So the Koch brothers came up with the Milankovitch cycles. Even though it was proposed in 1842 by Joseph Adhémar then in 1860 James Croll added orbital theory in 1911 Milutin Milankovitch came up with the math.
The big event that caused it to come into pop culture in the 70s was a landmark paper by James Hays, John Imbrie and Nicholas Shackleton, published in Science in 1976.
But you think its the Koch brothers. And anyone who actual knows history is playing denialist bingo.
You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award for ignoring facts and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.
> So the Koch brothers came up with the Milankovitch cycles.
No.
> But you think its the Koch brothers
That's your strawman. What is known is the amount of effort put in by Koch and others to muddy the waters and belittle what became accepted internationally in the late 1960s.
> You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award
Is that someone I should know of?
> for ignoring facts
What facts have I ignored?
> and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory
What, that tobacco companies hired PR firms to make their poison look good, and fossil fuel companies hired more or less the exact same firms to upsell CO2 ?
That's on the record for anyone that cares to look.
> because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.
It's been the case for nigh on 50 years now - hardly a flash in pan here today gone tomorrow made up story.
Okay sure I should be more specific. In actions taken by governments, and in what I can only call “propaganda campaigns”, ie education targeted at young people on the topic. I’m not saying nobody is taking about this, but “mainstream sources” don’t talk about it.
Regarding USA contributing more in the past. Cleaner alternatives had not yet been invented at the time. We are supposed to make up for people of our country in the past, most of whom are not even distantly related to ourselves, using the only mass work saving technology that was available at the time? While people in other places use that same old technology today when they don’t have to? Haha yeah I’m not going to do that, and anyone who bites on that one should not be allowed anywhere near decision making at any level.
On per capita - atmosphere does not speak per capita. Atmosphere speaks in absolutes.
If this is the highest priority issue, which it must be for climate activists who buy the doom scenarios (I’m not saying they are wrong about that), climate activists should be urging we ban trade with nations who aren’t on such and such emissions reduction schedule, which is not to be exceeded by USA along strategically relevant dimensions (for example not to affect the economy negatively beyond how China et al are affected negatively), and to be verified by a UN inspection and analysis team à la nuclear weapons.
I have seen precisely zero climate activists advocate for this, and I’m sure you’re going to throw a laundry list of excuses at me (“well actually economic disentanglement is dangerous, we don’t want war, clearly you don’t understand this if you’re making this argument”, etc). The point isn’t to actually ban trade, the point is to apply sufficient pressure to the others to step down emissions while not harming any party relative to the others.
Messaging over here does not ignore that. A big chunk in Australia is about stopping exports of oil and coal, or at the very least taxing the exports more and making it more expensive. You might have to listen to people and organizations actually concerned though, rather than politicians intent on doing the bare minimum to capture the climate vote.
I wonder how many legal avenues there still are if you are just a normal middle class person wanting to work a stint in the US for the experience. (Probably not a great idea right this minute, but normally, I mean).
My fault for being too broad. I'm in tech of course. The most typical thing you'd see me across borders for at the moment might be the installation of industrial equipment, which you'd expect to be ok under B1, or VWP if under 90 days.
Previously I'd been looking for options to just hang out in countries in the form of digital nomad/working holiday, which the USA also doesn't currently really cover too well. At any rate somehow each type has sharp edges to it which I happen to personally not fit into.
My more recent understanding in the main is that actually most square pegs don't fit into round holes anyway when it comes to international travel, and there's quite a bit of official discretion at every level for people who are trying to do the right thing.
In the USA atm, ICE is sometimes effectively ending up working-to-rule to fill their quota, so a lot of the discretion is negated. The most famous example is when ICE came in and rolled up a spin-up team (B1, VWP) who Hyundai and LG had brought in to stand up a multi-billion-dollar factory investment, for US workers to come work there.
You're illiterate. When some says 'did not do this' it is the same as 'I did not do this' and completely different from saying 'do not do this' to command someone else.
agree, Trump is largely a puppet and easily manipulated, though I'd put more weight on Heritage, Bannon, and Miller, placing Vance closer to the useful idiot group
This is long overdue. The fact that a large tech company lays 10,000 people off and then immediately turns around and petitions for thousands of H-1B employees is criminal.
Hi, Im not an H1B but as someone who contracted for decades, it was pretty easy to get hired as a contractor after companies laid off. The entire reason I stayed a contractor was because after being an employee and living under constant threat of layoffs, I decided I couldn't live like that anymore. It was my way of taking control.
Contract labor is not booked as headcount so its not just the cost its also how its budgeted and looks to shareholders.
Obviously our industry hasnt cared a whit about what its employees think since at least 2005 when they thought they were going to send all of it elsewhere.
Indian outsourcing companies such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, etc., have a negative impact on contracting rates. These companies just underbid for the onsite contractor roles, so it is a race to bottom. Have you noticed all those emails from recruiters for $55 dollars on W2 in California for some contract role through TCS, Infosys, ..
> The fact that a large tech company lays 10,000 people off and then immediately turns around and petitions for thousands of H-1B employees is criminal.
the craziest thing is that this has to come from right-wight politicians. really gives you a sense of how much the left is f'd-up in 2026.
You didn’t have to say “in 2026.” You could have stopped typing at “f’d-up.” Never in the history of the world has a political group been so bent on working for foreigners and against its own citizens.
I remember when the Democrats were for the working man and they had my vote. Now... they aren't and don't. How did this happen...?
some theories say that when occupy wallstreet was happening something was needed to shift the attention off the class war.
some people call that a conspiracy theory, but looking back (how the attention to workers rights basically vanished and got replaced with other topics, and how the capitalist world got so much richer) it explains a lot of things very well.
> ...the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take into account in any labor condition application... whether the employer sponsor directly or indirectly engaged in layoffs within the previous year or plans future layoffs...
Unfortunately, as a 2nd order effect, I wonder if we'll see fewer layoffs and more outright firing to balance it out.
The job of a government is to protect its citizens. There is nothing else more important.
Sometimes i wonder if the actions of ICE, are a reaction to try and stop immigration because of climate change. Naturally the administration will never say this, but the American west in particular is suffering a water crisis today and recent times seem to indicate today is the new normal. I think its reasonable to guess that the land cant support more people.
No. The actions of ICE are a reaction to how much Trump and his base hate brown people. This administration doesn't even believe climate change is real, Trump infamously called it a "Chinese hoax."
The current administration doesn't believe in climate change / global warming, so no. It's just the typical "blame foreigners for your problems" thing that every authoritarian regime all over the world indulges in, and uses to justify nasty stuff. In the last 20 years, for example, it's also been how China justifies stealing stuff from other countries to further their local industries and technological growth (not that there aren't fantastic engineers and scientists in China already).
> The current administration doesn't believe in climate change / global warming
Sure they do. None of the Greenland stuff (or most of the Canada stuff) makes sense unless they believe in these things.
We assume that if they believed they would try to slow these things down, but they chose a different path, profiting off the accelerationism.
The claims of not believing are just fodder for the FOX News/OANN watchers and what they say publicly is not what they believe.
In much the same way that David Miscavige doesn't believe in Xenu, I'm pretty positive Donald Trump does believe in global warming, he just doesn't care... or rather only cares insomuch as it is a profit opportunity.
Greenland stuff doesn’t make sense even if they believe into the climate change. The US already has military bases there which are barely used. It’s just plain imperialism.
They know the truth, their public statements are an act. I think its pretty obvious that all public people say one thing and believe or do another in private.
Lol, the Golf courses, Almond plantages and Datacenters would beg to differ. It can't support more peasants maybe
I’ve been puzzled why climate change messaging seems to ignore the emissions of other large countries like China and India. If USA reduces emissions but others don’t, well we all share the same atmosphere so…
But similar to your angle, I’ve wondered if the climate change messaging is secretly targeted towards resource depletion. If USA switches off oil and oil runs out, who cares if others didn’t switch? But people have a hard time processing “going to run out in 50 years” as a crisis, so instead we get an apocalypse angle, I suppose because humans love the apocalypse (see: various religions).
The USA is far wealthier, uses more carbon per-person, and is responsible for more historical emissions than China or India. We have an obligation to reduce our gluttony before asking others to go without.
What have you done to reduce your gluttony?
The USA is not wealthy, some people and corporations are wealthy, most people are not. BIG difference.
I like to think of holidays and work / life balance as a measure of wealth. Rich people can take time away from work because they can afford it. If you need to work lots of hours and barely can have a few days off then you arent wealthy.
Let me ask again, if you need to work 2 - 3 jobs are you wealthy ?
If you can only take a weeks worth of holidays in a good year are you wealthy ?
China and India have very, very low per capita emissions. They are also the countries working the hardest and fastest at installing renewable energy.
> I’ve been puzzled why climate change messaging seems to ignore the emissions of other large countries like China and India.
It doesn't. The issue is likely more that you don't see or read widely enough.
Even here on HN you'll see mention of China and India's emissions and use of coal on a regular basis.
The US is a significant mention for two main reasons:-
* of all the human lofted additional CO2 of the past century plus (that sourced from formerly deep underground) the US is the single largest sole country contributor (although China is catching up (but may or may not equal the US)), ...
* the US is still a large per capita contributor today (ignoring tiny tiny outlier countries with small populations and near single export fossil fuel extraction countries) - it has an energy intensive economy.
My personal beef isn't so much with the US but specifically with US based fossil fuel and resource companies of the 1970s onwards (eg: Koch brothers) who were well aware of the problem with increasing the insulation factor of the atmosphere and doubled down anyway - spending large on "think tanks" to promote confusion via media, over sell the appeal of large cars, destroy any and all grass roots campaigns for public transport, etc. (CO2MaXXing ?).
The US has had influence across the planet post WWII, these campaigns just promoted a bad example for profit and deferred early and timely addressing of the issues.
In the 60s/70s they had the world is going into another ice age scare. Based on historical patterns we are in a cooling phase based on Milankovitch cycles. A long slow cooling phase going into another ice age. You can't blame the Koch brothers.
> they had the world is going into another ice age scare.
They did, didn't they! Not in the bulk of scientific discussion though, just in media outlets, broadsheets, opinion columns, etc.
It does rather sound like somebody bought into the Koch / Heartland propaganda stream whole heartedly.
Hopefully commenters can bring up "the little ice age" et al. so we can all play denialist talking point bingo.
So the Koch brothers came up with the Milankovitch cycles. Even though it was proposed in 1842 by Joseph Adhémar then in 1860 James Croll added orbital theory in 1911 Milutin Milankovitch came up with the math.
The big event that caused it to come into pop culture in the 70s was a landmark paper by James Hays, John Imbrie and Nicholas Shackleton, published in Science in 1976.
But you think its the Koch brothers. And anyone who actual knows history is playing denialist bingo.
You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award for ignoring facts and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.
> So the Koch brothers came up with the Milankovitch cycles.
No.
> But you think its the Koch brothers
That's your strawman. What is known is the amount of effort put in by Koch and others to muddy the waters and belittle what became accepted internationally in the late 1960s.
> You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award
Is that someone I should know of?
> for ignoring facts
What facts have I ignored?
> and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory
What, that tobacco companies hired PR firms to make their poison look good, and fossil fuel companies hired more or less the exact same firms to upsell CO2 ?
That's on the record for anyone that cares to look.
> because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.
It's been the case for nigh on 50 years now - hardly a flash in pan here today gone tomorrow made up story.
That's not what the poster above said. Go posture somewhere else.
Okay sure I should be more specific. In actions taken by governments, and in what I can only call “propaganda campaigns”, ie education targeted at young people on the topic. I’m not saying nobody is taking about this, but “mainstream sources” don’t talk about it.
Regarding USA contributing more in the past. Cleaner alternatives had not yet been invented at the time. We are supposed to make up for people of our country in the past, most of whom are not even distantly related to ourselves, using the only mass work saving technology that was available at the time? While people in other places use that same old technology today when they don’t have to? Haha yeah I’m not going to do that, and anyone who bites on that one should not be allowed anywhere near decision making at any level.
On per capita - atmosphere does not speak per capita. Atmosphere speaks in absolutes.
If this is the highest priority issue, which it must be for climate activists who buy the doom scenarios (I’m not saying they are wrong about that), climate activists should be urging we ban trade with nations who aren’t on such and such emissions reduction schedule, which is not to be exceeded by USA along strategically relevant dimensions (for example not to affect the economy negatively beyond how China et al are affected negatively), and to be verified by a UN inspection and analysis team à la nuclear weapons.
I have seen precisely zero climate activists advocate for this, and I’m sure you’re going to throw a laundry list of excuses at me (“well actually economic disentanglement is dangerous, we don’t want war, clearly you don’t understand this if you’re making this argument”, etc). The point isn’t to actually ban trade, the point is to apply sufficient pressure to the others to step down emissions while not harming any party relative to the others.
Messaging over here does not ignore that. A big chunk in Australia is about stopping exports of oil and coal, or at the very least taxing the exports more and making it more expensive. You might have to listen to people and organizations actually concerned though, rather than politicians intent on doing the bare minimum to capture the climate vote.
I wonder how many legal avenues there still are if you are just a normal middle class person wanting to work a stint in the US for the experience. (Probably not a great idea right this minute, but normally, I mean).
There are tons of temporary agricultural and hospitality work available.
I'm not sure there's a legal visa for that though. It'd be interesting if there was.
There is! H2A and H2B
My fault for being too broad. I'm in tech of course. The most typical thing you'd see me across borders for at the moment might be the installation of industrial equipment, which you'd expect to be ok under B1, or VWP if under 90 days.
Previously I'd been looking for options to just hang out in countries in the form of digital nomad/working holiday, which the USA also doesn't currently really cover too well. At any rate somehow each type has sharp edges to it which I happen to personally not fit into.
My more recent understanding in the main is that actually most square pegs don't fit into round holes anyway when it comes to international travel, and there's quite a bit of official discretion at every level for people who are trying to do the right thing.
In the USA atm, ICE is sometimes effectively ending up working-to-rule to fill their quota, so a lot of the discretion is negated. The most famous example is when ICE came in and rolled up a spin-up team (B1, VWP) who Hyundai and LG had brought in to stand up a multi-billion-dollar factory investment, for US workers to come work there.
Oh, your intuition failed badly on this one, as those were the pioneering come-here-to-work-legally visa programs.
There's the L1 and O1 visas
It's amazing how much of a hypocrite he can be
https://thehill.com/business/5603478-trump-organization-fore...
(Trump org requests record level foreign worker permits, 2025)
Americans had more than 10 years of exposure and still finds him "amazing".
1. did not call him "amazing"
2. we are "amazed" on a nearly daily basis, better not to desensitize, that's what he wants, overton window and such
> 1. did not call him "amazing"
you don't get to police how people talk or feel about other people, duh
unless you are him?
You're illiterate. When some says 'did not do this' it is the same as 'I did not do this' and completely different from saying 'do not do this' to command someone else.
This is not necessarily a personal thing with Trump. If anything I think this might likely be more of a JD Vance thing.
agree, Trump is largely a puppet and easily manipulated, though I'd put more weight on Heritage, Bannon, and Miller, placing Vance closer to the useful idiot group
I wonder how the Big Tech co's who kissed the ring are feeling about this.
Must apply to existing H1-B holders who got it in the last 5 years or so.