Trump administration made waves on Friday with a major change to the H-1B visa program. Employers will now have to pay a one-time fee of $100,000 to hire an H-1B worker.
One of the main reasons for this change is that many American workers are losing their jobs to H-1B workers.
In light of these developments, a tech worker shared his frustrating experiences with job interviews on the social media platform TeamBlind, describing some of the challenges he faced.
What was his experience?
After months of preparing on coding platforms like Leetcode and practicing system design, the engineer was excited to land interviews with two of the world’s top tech companies.
However, his excitement quickly turned into uncertainty when he saw the names of his interviewers. At Meta, his panel had three Indian and two Chinese interviewers.
At Amazon, there were five Indian interviewers and one white interviewer, who was a “bar raiser” but not part of the technical evaluation. Despite doing well in his interviews, he was ultimately rejected.
This outcome left him wondering if the makeup of the interview panels played a role in his rejection.
He questioned whether being on a team of mostly Indian or Chinese interviewers might have led them to favour candidates who looked more like them, rather than focusing solely on his qualifications.
Though he understood that an Indian candidate might feel the same way in front of an all-white panel, the engineer’s frustration was also tied to tensions around the H-1B visa program, which allows foreign workers, especially from India, to fill tech jobs in the US.
The techie pointed out that many Americans are growing uneasy with the number of H-1B workers, seeing them as too entitled to work in the US.
Some believe that certain Indian workers, once established in the US, start favouring candidates from their own country during hiring decisions.
“The hiring process seems to be shifting, and Americans are tired of seeing the same faces making decisions,” he said, explaining that many people feel overlooked or even excluded from opportunities because of this trend. “The U.S. has been generous with the H1B program, but it’s hard not to notice how nationality is starting to influence hiring.”
At the same time, the engineer acknowledged that workers from India face their own challenges in the US, and he pointed out the complex nature of the H-1B program.
He even speculated that if the best jobs were in India, and millions of Americans flooded there to take those roles, India might react similarly, restricting foreign workers and favouring their own citizens.
‘The bias is in your head, not theirs’
Netizens poured their opinion on the post. A user noted, “The bias is in your head, not theirs. And that’s keeping you from succeeding.” Another added, “you have no idea the kind of hardships we have to go through in India. you have it way better than all of us.”
“I performed great on the interviews, but still got rejected.” <— Say most applicants who fail interviews,” wrote another. “I work at Amazon, it’s constant discrimination from Indians,” wrote a netizen.
“You just failed the interview buddy. Or someone performed better. Stop trying to look for a strawman,” noted a netizen.
A user explained, “An interview doesn’t guarantee a job, its easy to hide behind “hey I was discriminated” rather than introspecting and learning from a failed interview experience. You are going nowhere with this attitude. Unfortunately in your case it feels like you really have a skill issue and you are unable to cope with that fact that there could be people better than you.”
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