The abuse of work visas by Facebook causes depression and labor abuse

A former employee of Google and Facebook recounts the dire working conditions suffered by many employees. The visa requirement makes it possible to abuse hours and wages and thereby cause depression.

A few days ago an employee committed suicide in the Facebook offices. The case was closed as a suicide case, but little by little conversations about said person's past have emerged. According to some messages in some forums, said employee was in a delicate situation, since he was in the United States with a work visa, in addition to suffering workplace harassment from his superiors.

Said employee had been reporting below expected targets and was on the verge of having his contract renewed to move to another department. However, there was a problem that endangered his work and he feared that the work visa would not be renewed. It is the H1B, which allows hiring people from other countries as a process of entry to the country and with this pretext, according to the youtuber TechLead.

From their experiences on Google and Facebook, managers know perfectly well that they are constantly waiting to renew the contract and the visa. Many have already been in the country for years and depend on renewing the contract so as not to be deported to their country of origin, which in many cases no longer have family support there.

The great social network that ends the mental health of workers

With this, there are not a few who ask for illegal working conditions and who do not report. 12-hour shifts are not uncommon and being paid less than their peers is a condition that many must accept. For this, he comments that since 2011 the requests of the H1B have skyrocketed, with almost 3.000 employees only on Facebook with that visa.

To this is added a valuation system in which all the employees of a project compete with each other. One strategy used to force work on weekends was not to publish demands for new implementations until Friday. That forced many to work Saturdays and Sundays since it was the only way to give contributions. And it is that if someone did not work on the weekend, it was to be expected that another person would take them all and leave in a worse place those who decide to have a life outside of work.

This combines serious labor exploitation and people who depend on keeping a job at all costs. He assures that it is technically slavery and if someone does not accept job cuts he is fired to quickly hire another person with an H1B. A process that is repeated until exhaustion.

He says that in his time at Groupon he says that almost all were immigrants from China and India who work in conditions almost as bad as those in their country. From his point of view, what has revolutionized technology is what he calls modern slavery. According to him, at least Google seriously supports you to improve while having a job at Facebook forced you to weave networks of alliances so that everyone has an impact. A work system that the mental health of many people ends so badly to the point of having to take their own life.