Summary
Tesla replaced many laid-off U.S. workers with foreign H-1B visa holders after a 2024 wave of layoffs affecting 15,000 employees.
These visas, tied to employer sponsorship, often lower compensation and give employers significant leverage over workers.
Critics argue this displaces U.S. employees, as senior engineers were replaced by lower-paid junior engineers.
CEO Elon Musk, while advocating for expanding H-1B visa caps, faces backlash, especially from conservatives, for “job-stealing” concerns.
Musk contends there’s a U.S. skill shortage, but critics highlight potential exploitation tied to Tesla’s demanding work culture and visa dependence.
Billionaire twat contends that he doesn’t want to pay for competent employees and prefers slave labor.
Fixed that for him.
No such thing as a skill shortage. Pay, and they will come or the ones you have here will learn.
Not the case for highly skilled roles that are likely the ones affected here.
Each H1B application must include a DOL certification stating that the foreign worker will be paid a DOL specified minimum salary for the role, often exceeding 100k.
In fact since no such certification is necessary for domestic workers, in theory, they could have been paid less than foreign workers.
This has more to do with laying off experienced employees in senior roles and higher salary brackets and replacing them with “junior” roles at lower salaries, with the same work expectation.
Layoffs are also a way to take back unvested stock from senior long-serving employees and granting new employees a fraction of that released stock. Just making it a requirement to automatically vest all stocks during layoffs will massively reduce the layoffs.
If it’s software engineers and such (where usually a bunch of H1B visas come into play), the domestic workers absolutely want way more than 100k.
It’s not about the 100k number. That’s just to say that we are not talking about minimum wage level salaries here. H1B requirements are very strict about equivalent pay for domestic and foreign workers. In my career, I have never been in a situation where at the same title, role responsibilities, and company tenure, there were significant differences in salary levels.
This is 100% about employers laying off workers
It affects both US and domestic workers equally.
However it is the case that H1B workers have no other choice but to find themselves in these exploitative situations since they were also included in earlier layoffs and now have a clock ticking for them to leave the country in 60 days or find a new job. While domestic workers can spend more time exploring options or even starting their own businesses, which is an option not available to H1B workers.
Ultimately, it’s misguided to make this a domestic vs foreign worker issue when it’s the employers who are being exploitative and taking advantage of the situation because they can.
You can easily make H1B work 80 hours a week, as they know the moment they are fired they’ll have to return to their home country.
Also while other professions might indeed have higher salaries under H1B, Software Engineering salary is way under the average.
At my first job it if college, we had one QA guy at a small company. He did everything. He worked 12+ hours a day and weekends to support a team of ~8 devs iirc.
He was an H-1B. He didn’t have a choice but to work his butt off and do anything they asked.
At one point while I was there, they honored him at some company party, thanking him for his hard work over the last 2 years. The gift was a $100 restaurant gift card.
And management had the nerve to be “shocked” when he quit immediately after getting his green card.
Double the hours, half the price.
So… Tiktok trend? Light a tesla on fire? Make owning his crap such a liability no one ever buys any of it.