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Comment by mr_cyborg | Hacker News Reader

One of the things that always surprised me at a previous company was seeing the H1B hiring notices posted for easily-trainable positions.

I have nothing against people coming to work in the United States, but I thought those visas were specifically for roles where the skills weren’t available.

In this case, by making the skills super specific, like that Home Depot sales portal in this article, they made them rare.

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That's the whole point of the nit-picky requirements: they often don't want to fill the positions with locals. They really want a more malleable, and often cheaper, workforce using H-1B's etc. but can't go that route until they can document that there is no locally available talent.

The other possibility is that they are going to hire internally, but for some legal reasons they have to make a public job post. Requiring some super specific thing like "Home Depot sales portal" sounds like a tipoff that this is going to be an internal hire. The place I currently work is like that. The decision makers already know who they want to give the job to before it's even posted, but they still make three other poor bastards come in and go through the interview process even though they have no chance. The interviewees will no doubt end up second guessing every answer, handshake, etc. when really it was just never going to happen. To be extra obnoxious the job listing is left up for months after it's filled.

I've been that person so I can attest.

The "opening" was essentially a copy of my resume. The more specific requirements (details from my resume) the better.

Either way, if listings are that specific, I ignore them for both reasons.

Yep, I’ve certainly seen the same for big companies, but some of them are kind enough to list a requirement that is a dead giveaway, like:

“Candidates for Solutions Architect 4 at X Corp preferably have three or more years of experience as a Corp X Solutions Architect 3”

I knew someone who used to work for a company where they had a policy to only hire developers on work visas. The management treated them as indentured servants rather than employees, using the threat of losing their visas and making them pay ‘legal fees’ as tools for coercion.

The guy I knew only got out because my then employer promised to endorse his visa and deal with any legal stuff.

The super specific skill requirements is usually a sign its being posted either for Green Card application or H1B. Both require "recruiting attempts".

H1B doesn't require any recruitment nor does it require any specific skill. So the OP has no idea what he is talking about. H1 only requires bachelor degree and a job in the same field. The PERM process in green card requires the recruitment process, but that has been around since forever and it is for someone internal whose greencard is being filed

When filing an H-1B, the employer only has to promise that the hiring won't have an adverse effect on employees already employed at the firm, NOT that they made a good faith effort to hire anyone locally, much less train someone into it.

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