This is a real eye-opener. Do you know how to fix how stupid I am? Tell me what's wrong with my analysis.
Here's a report: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-lawmakers-scruti.... Is it factually wrong that "In the first half of 2025, Amazon and its cloud-computing unit, AWS, received approval for more than 12,000 H-1B visas, while Microsoft and Meta had more than 5,000 H-1B visa approvals each" and that they did layoffs?
It's hard to see how H-1B hiring could move meaningfully either up or down, given that the number of H-1Bs is capped at 65,000 [1] (+ 20,000 for advanced degrees), no company is going to pay for the process of getting an H-1B visa and not actually hire into it, and if a person on an H-1B loses their job they lose their visa in 60 days. You know exactly how many H-1Bs there are in the country: it's mandated by Congress.
What has changed is that they are or will soon be allocated by pay level instead of randomly. That's going to bias hiring toward Big Tech firms like Microsoft and Meta and away from body-shops like Infosys and Wipro.
These are the companies that receive the most H1B approvals because they have large numbers of high skill employees, so it isn’t surprising that they have thousands of visas approved. But the total number of visas across the country is capped annually per the law (by Congress). All H1B workers combined are still only a fraction of a percent of the total jobs in America.
Another thing to keep in mind that these are also the largest and most innovative companies, and that’s in part due to having access to the best available talent. Those H1B workers cost the companies MORE than American workers. These companies have standardized compensation by job and level and it isn’t different for immigrants. But immigrants come with the additional costs of the immigration process, on top of having the same salary. This isn’t a cost saving measure, it’s a path to continuing to stay innovative and relevant.
As for layoffs - these are mega corps so one part of the company may be doing layoffs in their business while another business within the same company is hiring. And you’re seeing the total effects (layoffs and hiring), and it seems contradictory, but it’s actually just a bunch of little decisions that aren’t tied to each other.
The thing about all of these responses, factual as they may be, is that they don't address the issue we're discussing. Regardless of whether the number is fixed or how much the employees are paid, thousand of people lost their jobs. I'm sure a few are active on the board here. It looks bad when you request visas and do mass firings.
The list of mind-boggling design decisions MS has made at this point is so long at this point that I don't blame people any more for saying 'MS bad'. Just pointing at the start menu search and Everything tells you everything you need to know, and more or less sets the tone you can expect from MS decision making.
HN seems to think PMs have a lot more power at Microsoft or large corps than they actually do. I assure you, a bunch of this stuff just comes top down because some VP's million dollar bonus rides on it.
The mandate to implement these kind of pop-ups doesn't come from above.
The mandate to identify ways to increase profit comes from above, and it is the PMs (through marketing/research/developers) that come up with ways to satisfy these requirements.
And failure to meet these requirements means a bad review and a chance of being laid off.
Related but tangential: is there a way to grab video frames from a meeting? Audio transcript is great. Looking at a use case to grab participant video.
> Back in W20, our first product was an API that lets you send a bot participant into a meeting. This gives developers access to audio/video streams and other data in the meeting. Today, this API powers most of the meeting recording products on the market.
There’s a simpler non malicious explanation for this. Asians know other Asians in tech and hire based on who they are familiar with rather than their ethnicity. It’s also why women managers tend to have more women in their teams.
It’s not malicious. Just a side effect of people’s network. Should that change? Yes. You want a heterogenous team. And this is exactly why DEI is important hahaha
This isn't just a meta phenomenon, it happens at all the big tech companies and it's always asians and indians that form insular groups (indians slightly less so). It is common and not an accident.
Are you sure? there are particular combinations of ethnicity and gender for which people seem to be quite convinced it's "malicious" when hirers stick to their own
CR poll asks about any problems faced. Phone didn’t connect to the multimedia unit? That’s a problem.
Not saying MB quality hasn’t changed but given the large feature set the problem surface area is also very large. More opportunities for owners to find issues.
By comparison, Lexus uses tried and tested old technology to the point it’s boring to own. But it’s super reliable.
2nd thing not captured here: not all car models are equal. The lower end Mercs and other premium manufacturers models aren’t built to the same standards by my experience. There’s a difference in quality of a German car made in Germany and a German car made in Mexico. The higher end models used to be made in Germany (not sure if that’s still the case).
All of this affects this rating. You might be fine buying an E class but the experience of owning a CLA might be shit.
This makes sense. There are 3 “ways” a battery charges.
1. OS’s battery driver does the charging. This is possible when the computer is on and the driver has control.
2. Firmware driven charging. Typically used in sleep mode
3. Analog Trickle charge - no intelligence, no code is executing. Charge slowly from a dead battery so as to not damage any components.
#1 is the only case where an app. Can control any aspect of charging.
