- "Well, Uncle Sam, we looked so hard in US and nobody answered our job posts, we have to go to ... $othercountry to hire, there is no other way"
Contrary to popular opinion, IT workers aren't interchangeable and there exist a large swath of jobs that very few people qualify for (HN should know this) because of the specialization required.
America is at near full employment [2]. Replacing American workers with lower paid foreign workers is already illegal and frequently enforced[3].
This is such a deep distraction but a virulent virus of a narrative, surgically designed to needle our reptilian minds.
[1]: https://www.goodreturns.in/news/tech-layoffs-2025-oracle-cut...
[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the...
[3]: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20180501-2, https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20180501-2
Pretty sure that is the U3 rate which only counts people as unemployed if they are actively looking for a job. The U6 is better and rarely falls below 5%:
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/nx-s1-5660752/why-americans-d...
And if they don't want to work, why would that impinge upon full employment, because what is the plan? Force people to work who are retired, or don't want to? Work or go to jail? "Full employment" is always presumed to be "people wanting to work can find it".
Corporations are trying to hide job openings from US citizens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45223719 - September 2025 (526 comments)
Job Listing Site Highlighting H-1B Positions So Americans Can Apply - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44892321 - August 2025 (108 comments)
H-1B Middlemen Bring Cheap Labor to Citi, Capital One - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44398978 - June 2025 (4 comments)
Jury finds Cognizant discriminated against US workers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42385000 - December 2024 (65 comments)
How middlemen are gaming the H-1B program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123945 - July 2024 (57 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42454509 (additional citations)
> Federal data shows Oracle filed for 2,690 H-1B visas in fiscal year 2025 and 436 so far in fiscal year 2026, totaling over 3,100 visa requests.
There is no proof that these people were also not part of the layoffs. Typically in layoffs, until the day off the announcement, it’s just business as usual. Which means people keep getting hired and H1B petitions being filed. The article doesn’t say they filed these petitions AFTER the layoffs.
The number from 2025 is not really relevant when the layoffs were in March 2026. The article author clearly has a narrative they want to push.
And of the 436 petitions in 2026, only 235 are new hires (remaining are continuing approvals). Hardly a scandal there. Especially if they're likely hiring AI engineers and laying off call center employees - its not like their laying off an american citizen to hire a cheap H1B employee as this article is angling to have the reader believe.
"In 2025, it was estimated that over 163 million Americans were in some form of employment, while 4.16 percent of the total workforce was unemployed. This was the lowest unemployment rate since the 1950s, although these figures are expected to rise in 2023 and beyond."
Here is U6 which is a better reflection imo:
This is only true if you define “unemployment” narrowly to exclude people who are in school. In 1950, you could get a job out of high school. Today, you need to spend four years in college, sometimes more.
Counting people who are in school as “not unemployed” ignores the opportunity cost of school. You’re spending 4 years in the prime of your life. And during that time you’re not earning any income, but instead paying money. So even if eventually your job prospects are as good as they were in 1950, clearly the economy isn’t as good as it was when you could hit that same rate without people making that up front investment.
That can’t be further from the truth
Actually H-1Bs are more expensive than Americans due to visa costs and attorney costs, so Oracle can SAVE money by hiring Americans, yet they still decide to continue hiring H1Bs along with Americans.
HN does know. Some of us question whether brave and courageous leadership knows.
What America is full of is fake employment statistics that are artificially inflated by young people hiding out in school to avoid the bad job market.
20-24 age employment has been about the same for last 16 years:
Then why does it take months and months for even experienced devs to land a job?
Software is undergoing a secular downsizing. It increasingly looks like we have too many SWEs, and that we need to support them retraining. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a labor shortage in other industries.
> IT workers aren't interchangeable and there exist a large swath of jobs that very few people qualify for (HN should know this) because of the specialization required.
You are stating what IT people understand and are blatantly ignoring the realities of many companies. I've been at more than one shop that decided to do layoffs in a 'corporate' way and the people who knew the system were let go, the people who didn't know a class from a function were kept around, and the smart people from other teams have to jump in and pick up the slack.
And that's not event getting into outsourcing/etc, that's just basic corporate stupidity.
> America is at near full employment [2].
Doesn't tell the full story, i.e. under-employment where someone's working at a Walmart with a CS degree; They're still 'employed' but it's not in their field.
> Replacing American workers with lower paid foreign workers is already illegal and frequently enforced[3].
A Single link to a single enforcement action only resulting in < 180K USD for damages is not a great example of enforcement.
Outsourcing companies prey on gaps in US tax code and the like to make it 'look' cheaper to outsource, except for the huge maintenance cost for the trash that comes out.
And, some of that is the fault of the company procuring those services too. They don't give good enough requirements, they take too long to figure stuff out...
And yet I've found a niche specifically around spending half of my day reviewing pull requests from offshore houses where, requirements be damned, it's obvious the contractor is either overworking employees, letting incompetent employees in, or the employees think they can cheat and put code that 'just happens to work under testing' but inevitably will break under any stress.
But at the end of the day you can still do it. WITCH consultancies have seeped into a number of our industries and all the average consumer can do is bitch about how every software product or interaction UX from the providing companies has gotten so much worse.
Hope you're not saying this at social gatherings.
What the newspapers(economists | politicians) say, is not reality for most people.
Real wages are 15% higher than they were in 1979 [1].
With the gig economy as long as you can make 50$ a day via Uber Eats , you might be considered “employed”.
For the days I need to be in the office, my commute is well over 2 hours each way. Pay cuts, horrible commutes.
(Im in the same boat, but much longer than 6 months)
https://x.com/chrisbrunet/status/2037376353461567734
Apparently, no citizen wants to do this job? Why do we allow things like this?
So maybe the actual question is what kind of a Stanford undergraduate would choose a university IT position in ~2021 instead of aiming for more lucrative tech roles. Perhaps the kind that wants to maximize their chances of getting H-1B.
Stanford wouldn't blatantly violate laws like this.
I agree with you. The category list in H1B needs to be trimmed. So that companies have less wiggle room for things like this.
The layoffs were also worldwide. Not sure what the impact to US workers was. India was hit hard.
Honestly, I'd preferably make it so that stock movement is frozen for a time except for laid off employees
The EU is actually clamping down on it because of populist/far right parties. I know someone who runs a Thai restaurant and he cannot fly in a cook from Asia. He has to find someone from Europe.
Think of someone from a place that isn't nice enough, but well above the threshold of absolute shitshow with genocidal aftertaste that allows protection. Such people, by virtue of claiming to require asylum get temporary protection and right to residence and then clog the system by appealing everything ten times with the obviously foreseeable result of not being granted anything. The current idea that is supposed to solve everything is hosting the immigration ghettos offshore (surprise surprise) to not upset the local population until the positive decision is made.
Right populists are mostly riding the racist feeling and the idea that the actual legitimate asylum seekers are undesirable, because they are Muslim, because immigrants leech on the system and all that, plus the actually observable existence of ethnic (organized) crime.
All at the same time, the tech immigration is very easy as long as you get an offer. No quotas, no 100k shakedown, not even a degree requirement or a language test, just someone willing to fill the form and pay like 500 bucks in processing fees and pay you the above media salary. Family immigration isn't restricted either and partners of citizens and immigrants get right to work (because what else they would do here, lol).
But the actual non-fancy low-skilled low-paid immigrants are either EU citizens from less affluent side of the continent or the (former) asylum status holders (which is straight path to citizenship most of the time). Packages have to sorted, garbage trucks have to be driven and cheaply. But sure, anti-immigration attitudes we have.
So yeah, the only sure way to fly in a Thai cook is to marry her or give her husband a tech job.
Out of curiosity, isn't that the same case as what happened with the Biden immigration surges, at least Venezuela? And now the current administration is taking action?
With green cards, the government is concerned about permanent residents being dependent on the state if a company ceases to exist or fails to pay salaries or lays people off.
This worry is largely not present for limited term work visas.
This is why I’m wondering: did the EO get blocked, paused for judicial review or something? Is it even in effect?
No intention to make this political, I’m legitimately curious about the status of the law and its actual applicability here. Supposed to be such a steep fine they literally couldn’t afford to do this - not with them already going cash flow negative to build out AI datacenters. So either it’s not applying (why?) or somehow they’re justifying one HUGE fee and somebody is floating them one astronomical loan - which again, why? Where’s the profit in taking that big a risk? Seems absolutely unhinged!
We’re missing something here. Or, at least, I am.
There are a bunch of people in the country as students in US universities with an F visa. If they get a job, the employer can apply for an h1b, and the fee doesn't apply to them because they aren't getting a visa, they are changing status (might sound like potato/potata, but the difference exists and applies).
That’s like saying “Oracle hires tens of thousands and mass layoffs” (* hired during the pandemic)
These kinds of layoffs don't just happen on a whim, certainly aren't supposed to. Oracle's business conditions really didn't change that much over the past year.
It's perfectly reasonable to retroactively question a company's choice to hire immigrant workers relatively shortly before layoffs.
I just cannot imagine executives at tech companies/body shops having any positive ethical motivations. More like "they'll do what we say without complaining or they'll go home". There's no way it's not just a hugely abusive to both pools of workers. The whole thing really feels like another example of the imbalance between labor and capital in the US.
Who originally wanted H-1B/etc? Rich people with money and power? Of course!
The end game for corporatism is shown in Europe where you can see a clear gap between countries that are built on non-zero sum systems which are thriving, everything just works...and then other countries which have been heavily corporatist for multiple decades, everything is collapsing, government function is both non-existent in many areas and reaching new highs of intervention into markets. Unfortunately, the Chinese were right.
About what? Are you familiar with how the life of a Chinese salaryman is going about for the last one year while us in the West are trembling in our shoes about how open weight Chinese models are threatening SOTA frontiers?
> Large companies dictating economic companies is anti-innovation
Yes but what's the solution? To pass even more regulation against the large companies and make them behave?
> in Europe where you can see a clear gap between countries that are built on non-zero sum systems which are thriving, everything just works
Some concrete examples?
Every serious attempt to answer that ends up admitting something uncomfortable, that democracy only functions as intended if voters are consistently rational and informed. But that assumption doesn’t hold. It never has. Even the Athenians put Socrates, father of Western civilization, to death.
If society were at all rational, we'd see a lot more people swing from lampposts.
This is something I'd encourage everyone with strong opinions about work visas to try and accomplish.
You don't change a system by crying about it on anonymous internet forums, you do it by competing against it and making it redundant.
Good luck though.
Ultimately, companies who use H1B visas will outcompete companies who don't because the H1B system gives them cheaper labor costs. The solution has to come at the regulatory level.
150 years ago, if you told someone "oh if you want safer factories just build one yourself," that business would never survive because they'd get outcompeted by the less scrupulous factory owners who were happy to mangle their employees and just replace them with more desperate workers.
It's significantly easier to outsource white collar work.
And you can keep playing the regulation game until there are no companies left.
But people who oppose H1B don’t seem opposed to that.
I have utmost respect of your work, a customer of your fantastic product and have been meaning to reach out to you for a while (infact I learned about Cory from your blog in 2021) but I had to push back hard on this.
TinyPilot didn't happen in India nor China. I can argue it would have been cheaper to build it at any one of those countries but you know much better about it than I.
Labor costs only matter when you're selling an absolute commodity that has no edge than price.
Of all the people I would have expected to say that the solution has to come at the regulatory level given the experience, success you've had, with your transparency in how your company was doing, I am utterly surprised it was you.
I am more than happy to continue, reached out - I just wish our initial email would have been way more pleasant!
The H-1B visa program is simply another element of the system that capital uses to abuse labor in the United States. It's not enough that healthcare (if you are even lucky enough to get any) is tied to employment. The low bar for bringing in foreign workers is used as a negotiating tactic by employers. There is no equivalent leverage for workers, absent economic ruin. This problem affects tens of millions of Americans and that's not normal and it's not okay. Maybe the law should allow H-1B visa, but also charge an absolutely huge premium (> $250k) that the company commits to worker healthcare or something. If the positions are so essential then $250k is still an incredibly good deal.
America has to start addressing the imbalance of power between capital and labor. It's gotten bad enough that one could easily argue that it's becoming a potent anti-democratic force in the US. And, I'm sorry, but Americans should not have to cede their desire for equal economic footing because people like you want intimate that it's about "not hiring immigrants".
Unfortunately, the current status quo and economic footing everyone enjoys in the US is built on this and similar exploitative behaviors explicitly enabled by the US government for its entire history.
How willing are you to sacrifice your standard of living for the purpose of labor gaining some foothold against capital? The GDP per capita of the poorest US states are more than virtually all socialist countries.
Schools are the main beneficiary of the program: there are 1M foreign students in the country, each paying full tuition and living expenses. Without H1B the number would have been orders of magnitude lower. For example, in China, where education is literally 10x cheaper, there are just 0.25M foreign students, because there is no immigration pathway for those. So any politician trying to clamp down on this program would have to explain to his or her alma mater why does he or she hate it so much.
And yes, the next round will be "worse than Trump". The reality is Trump ran on certain principles that his voters adhered to, and he didn't deliver. The next logical step will be to support somebody even more "extreme".
Honestly tell me: Would you ever apply to Oracle for a job?
Why can Oracle continue to hire good talent despite offering poor working conditions? H1-B.
Is it circular? Absolutely.
There really should be a strict maximum percentage of visa hires for any particular job type at a company. Say, 2x the overall average for that job category, and never to exceed 30%.
If they still need more labor, then they need to attract and train local talent rather than relying solely on overseas talent.
Eventually yeah.
By your logic, if you were the only person in the country, you'd live like a king.
In the real world, the evidence is obvious: average productivity/wages drop, incentive to invest in labour-saving technology disappears, and you get multiple decades of stagnation. Every country which had unlimited, unfree labour has had decades of slow growth as a result.
Income growth in the working age population in the US since 1990 has been about the same as Japan, a country which is widely regarded as on the verge of economic collapse. US per capita income is probably 20-30% lower than it would be with first-order effects from immigration, likely much more with second order effects. Under any other circumstances with economic policy elsewhere, the US economy would be growing 7%/year now (and ofc, the answer for Japan's ills is apparently, you guessed, lots of immigration).
China is seeing secular reductions in production costs because of capital investment, not low wages. The peculiarly statist notion of American capitalists that the route to economic supremacy was large numbers of illiterate Guatemalans should go down as not only an economic failure but a moral one (equally of H1B).
People who are wondering about $100k fee- it only applies if you are bringing people from overseas for this job; meaning if an immigrant is already in the country (eg: on a student visa), they don't have to pay $100k. It's just a visa change for them. There have also been murmurs about pay-to-play system, not sure how it works though.
People who got pissed reading the title- majority of the visas sponsored were last year and not last week's layoffs.
Or you can buy your way out of that restriction by paying each laid off worker 3 years of wages.
Pick one.
For an I-140 PERM (employment based green card) however the requirement is that there was an effort made to hire locally first.
Most people on HN are uninformed about this, well actually uninformed in general.
Despite the rhetoric the administration is very friendly to big business and will absolutely help them hire cheaply. Larry Ellison especially.
But no, they did virtually nothing. I would even be surprised if more than 100 companies paid the one time $100k fee at this point with all the loopholes that were included.
All the new regulations (carefully presented as crackdown) make it easier for large companies to hire immigrants in a more reliable way. All carefully choreographed by big tech.
The chances of a specific company being able to sponsor a specific employee through this year's lottery went by significantly (3-4x) compared to the last several years.
The 100k fee basically does nothing to curb H1B cheap labor. It's a one-time fee, and when you realize that H1B's can't easily leave their job, it's a fee that easily pays for itself. H1B's are paid less for the same job (just google "are H1B's paid less"), and since they can't easily leave, the reduced turnover saves them money as well. If you think that an employee is likely to stay for 4 years, that's only 25k per year and the fact that they are paid about 15%-20% less than an American, the equation still easily comes out in favor of importing the cheap labor.
It was a move crafted to look like it was cracking down on abuse, but not actually cause any real pain to the companies abusing the system. Hence why all these mega corps are still filing for H1B's even while laying off their American citizen workers.
You have 2 countries, C1 and C2.
Scenario 1: C1 has enough demand for 100 tech jobs. C1 only has 50 qualified natives for 100 tech jobs.
The wages of C1 go up because there is more demand than supply.
Scenario 2: C1 has enough demand for 100 tech jobs. C1 only has 50 qualified natives for 100 tech jobs.
Now you put in a H1-B visa program that will pay the same as the prevalent wage as a local native. C2 has enough candidates to fill the other 50 positions.
The wages of C1 will NOT go up because now supply matches demand.
Is Scenario 2 fair? Who gets to decide what fair is? Given the above system, I think I would argue that H1-B visa programs cause wage deflation in C1, even if it is filling jobs that would not be filled and even if the jobs paid the exact same as someone working in the native country.
I am not dogmatic about that though. Willing to hear a counterpoint to scenario 2.
Country 1 is now a better place to start a new company or expand your existing company because all the best workers in the field work in country 1. Starting the same business in country 2 will almost certainly fail.
This is literally why the Bay Area became the world’s most important tech hub and isolationism will allow (and is allowing) Chinese tech to jump ahead of the US. The government doesn’t care about losing a literal arms race, largely to reduce the political power of California. By no longer educating and welcoming the world’s brightest engineers the USA is going to be reduced to support and manufacturing roles where its large workforce will have to compete with everyone else and salaries will tumble.
1. Companies can hire overseas. There's some cost to it in terms of added friction, but if wages rise enough in C1, then it's worth the friction to hire in C2 instead.
2. Workers also consume and invest, raising demand for other jobs. Employment is not a zero sum game, especially at the macro scale.
Also, why they need to do H1B instead of just outsourcing abroad?
Also, h1-b is limited to 6 years (one renewal) unless I-140 (green card) has been filed for the employee. In which case, renewals become unlimited until green card is granted.
For Indians the GC queue is nearly infinite, hence too many renewals.
The H1B worker is meant to temporarily fill a gap. If there is available US talent, the H1B worker should leave and be replaced by a citizen/permanent resident.
The H1B i140 petition thing requires you to advertise the job before submitting the petition. How does this work if the employee is not fungible?
The employer can legally say they advertized the job and had no applicants and need an H1B employee.
You're confusing things. I-140 is a green card application, not H1B.
H1B petition requires the I-129 form and an LCA from the DoL. No advertisement is required, except posting the LCAs in a conspicuous place in the company office.
It is very easy to fulfill the "muh we tried to hire! Nobody wants to work!" fake criteria to be able to apply for an H1B.
if you are already in the US it currently does not apply to you, or if you are transferring jobs with an existing h1b, or renewing your h1b.
source: former h1b
side note: as of february it’s estimated only 85 h1b petitions paid the 100k fee. the rest did not fall under the qualification.
https://www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/1000...
I haven't seen Google or FB or Amazon or other top tech companies pay H1B any less. They get paid pretty well.
But firing people (some might be on H1B too) and hiring H1B at the same time is meaningless.
Btw, if you want to stop people from getting fired, J Powell needs to be fired. He is keeping interest rates high for any sort of hiring. These same companies hired like crazy during 0% interest rate environment.
Juiced economy and free cash is what led to massive inflation. Powell is trying to save hay until winter - when we get a recession the interest rates cuts are the only knob he has to turn to soften the blow.
Anyway, I feel that you need read this guy comment
Those are the voters that matter (unionized, geographically spread out, didn't price everyone else out via remote work) - not SWEs.
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/82c1795b-704a-4da3-82ec-2f9cd52de...
These are union jobs where hours worked don't extend beyond 50 hours including overtime and with significantly lower barrier to entry compared to software.
Why should American SWEs earn more than Accountants (around $80k), Teachers (around $70k), or Mechanical Engineers (around $80k)?
It's this kind of attitude that makes non-techies feel schadenfreude.
Techies moan and moan, yet in reality we became the capital elite - a median TC of $190K [0] does make you the capital elite in a country where the median household income is $80k [1]. Even investment bankers have a similar TC to SWEs [2] - especially if you don't work for a Bulge Bracket or Elite Boutique.
[0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/united-...
[1] - https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28...
[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/investment-banker?countryId=254&cou...
Union jobs with set hours and lower barriers to entry than software while offering middle class salaries? It's so horrible /s.
It's this attitude that makes people who don't have stakes in the software industry feel schadenfreude.
Oracle didn’t file “thousands of H1Bs”. Oracle filed 2690 applications in FY2025 (Oct-Sep), and so far filed 436 in FY2026, according to the article.
If anything, this would indicate that Oracle slowed down on hiring foreign workforce. Oct-Mar is half of Oracle’s fiscal year, but they only filed 16% of the H1B applications as in 2025? That seems in line with a hiring freeze and subsequent layoff.
This is just ragebait.
Since the ai data center cash suck the jobs have dried up… ai productivity gains maybe too, although we’re waiting to see meaningful results there.
From a recruitment perspective it’s still difficult to find experienced candidates with specific skill sets because any job openings get flooded with 10,000 ai generated slop applications that have to be screened by ai and the 10 excellent candidates get lost.
> Oracle [...] has filed thousands of petitions for H-1B visas in the past two fiscal years, even as it lays off thousands of American workers
Oracle is laying off workers of _all_ nationalities, not just Americans. I know people at Oracle with H1B visas that were laid off. Trying to paint it as if they're replacing Americans with foreigners is just unnecessary fear mongering.
However, we are not in the same economy we were 5 years ago. The job market is very tough and the H1B program makes less sense every day.
Why would Americans have to compete with the rest of the world exactly? The purpose of a country is to serve and protect its citizens first, not become a giant open bar for the entirety of humanity.
There is no evidence that the alternative party would have done anything about this issue.
It is obvious that both parties are completely detached from the interests of their constituents.
Remember that the Hyundai workers in Georgia were deported at the best of the local union. Right now, foreigners are a large portion of this field's workforce. If you are to join with a union, you will rapidly find that it absorbs the remainder of the workforce through being "a union shop". You will rapidly find that such a union will expand to include all these people. And then they will ask for you to be deported. It wouldn't be the first time. The reason Chinese and Indians couldn't be citizens for a long time is because the predecessor to today's AFL-CIO lobbied to block that.
Choose wisely. The danger is looking you right in the face and saying "I am the danger".
I’m a globalist and fully understand modern disliking of unions.
