formerlurker's comments

You’re right. This article describes many lawsuits of how U.S. citizens would get replaced with Indians on H1B.

> Insiders Tell How IT Giant Favored Indian H-1B Workers Over US Employees

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-cognizant-h1b-visas-...

I do not understand why the H1B visas are skewed towards Indian men. It isn’t fair to Indian women nor people from other countries.

> The latest data showed around 72% of visas were issued to Indian nationals, followed by 12% to Chinese citizens. [2]

> About 70% of those who enter the US on H-1B visas are men, with the average age of those approved being around 33. [2]

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg87n2ml11o

I agree. H1Bs are akin to indentured servants who do not have the ability to vote. Meanwhile, employers make large payments to politicians to keep the status quo.

What I dislike most is the cheating from H1Bs though. My friend in an AZ university described how foreigners were known to cheat on their exams based the clique of the country they came from. Similarly, I met an H1Bs who sends his work to Indian cheaper workers even though it is supposed to be confidential. They also collude to get their family and friends into the U.S.

Bloomberg news covered it recently, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-cognizant-h1b-visas-...

The bad experience made me realize how easily the data I put out there can be used against me or nefariously. If you have daughters you may know about people making indecent photos or videos using their images. Someone in Eastern Europe actually made an AI app to undress people. What happens when if I share more personal details and the data is no longer considered mine?

Do I need to really elaborate on all the bad experiences people, women in particular, face? I thought these were well known by now.

Perplexity’s business model is still following the Google model of selling people to advertisers. The only LLM service with privacy protection I found so far is Claude. If I am paying for a subscription I would expect privacy to be included. How come people do not care?

I do not know about Perplexity because I avoid it. Instead, I prefer and pay for Claude over Perplexity because Claude offers actual privacy protections. All other services take in my data and use it to further train their models and that does not sit well with me because I had a stalker. It’s obvious that Perplexity is following the Google route of using people as products.

Someone who works at LinkedIn told me that Linkedin measures success by how many times a user opens the app. It would not surprise me if the numbers are exaggerated to make someone look good for a promotion. My take is that it must drive engagement somehow.

In a similar way, recruiters post ghost jobs to gather data and make companies look like they are growing.

I wonder what would happen if we purposely start polluting the training data? It may be too late for older technology but technology is always changing. If this is a way for me to protect my job and increase my value I actually consider doing this.

Merry Christmas to you too!

This is one of the most actionable and sound comments on this post. If interested, I always recommend the book “The Gulag Archpielago” because of all the repression examples and how to protect oneself. I wish you would speak with the other commenter who studied whistleblowers for 20 years.

I went to Japan recently and one of the most striking things to me was how easy it was to walk to places. Their infrastructure astounded me because it was set up with people in mind and not car companies.

The only thing we would agree on is that disconnecting self worth from a job is, in general, a good idea.

I have spoken with professionals in ballet and they actually feel mental strain from having to file for unemployment when off season. Even though it’s considered normal practice it doesn’t mean it’s right to treat people like that.

Dropbox gave a generous severance? Maybe, but is that is the case everywhere? I can tell you, the start up I worked for before, Aurora Innovation, only gave people one week for every year worked and they were doing silent layoffs in groups of five. One of those people was a young father on H1B who had been there less than a year.

Saying you should be in therapy long before it happens is rather callous. How was that father, or any of the other people, know they would need therapy beforehand for something they have no control over? It’s like saying you need therapy before an earthquake destroys your home.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin control over 51% of all votes at Google. Similarly, Zuckerberg controls over 60% of the votes at Facebook.

I took a look at https://www.opensecrets.org/ and surprise surprise, Google and Facebook were major election fund contributors to Silicon Valley representatives, like Ro Khanna. This tells me who really holds power.

So, reduce people to numbers and accept the suicides?

The awesome thing about not going to the office is that I no longer have to deal with repressed nerds and tech bros. I hate being asked out for coffee after I say no for the third time. I no longer have to deal with them looking at my body or making casual sexist jokes.

Could you please link the studies you mention? I only have anecdotes so I am curious to see studies about bullying and intimidation.

If you read TeamBlind you will see a large quantity of misogynistic thoughts from Indian men. They are so unashamed they do not even hide where they are from.

Apple did the same at an SPG (special projects group) and it too changed my view about corporations. People uprooted for those jobs only to have the rug pulled from under them.

Roblox exposes children to predators. I hope parents pay more attention and get their children out of Roblox because it doesn’t seem Roblox will do anything. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-roblox-pedophile-pro....

The timing coincides with layoffs at the company I work for, Aurora Innovation. I assume it’s done on purpose to be overshadowed by larger layoffs.

I agree. I also wonder if there will be other examples like this one that teach us something about ourselves as humans or maybe even something new. For example, I recall from the AlphaGo documentary the best go player from Korea described actually learning from AlphaGo’s unusual approach.