📉💻💼 #Triangulation

Back in 1995, a level-one tech support job could earn you $25 an hour. That wasn’t some fluke; it was the going rate for skilled, entry-level tech work during the dawn of the internet boom. You didn’t need a PhD—just solid troubleshooting skills and a phone headset. Then came the flood.

By 2011, that same job—if it still existed—paid $14 an hour. In 2017, GoDaddy rebranded the position entirely. They called it “customer service” and paid $17 an hour. A rebrand and a pay cut—how American.

And through it all, nobody said a word about how companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Elon Musk’s empire were abusing the H-1B visa system to undercut American wages, inflate profits, and build a mythology of “talent shortages” that simply wasn’t true.

What H-1B Was Supposed to Do

The H-1B visa program was designed to help U.S. companies fill jobs when they couldn’t find qualified American workers. That was the pitch. But the reality was always murkier.

Rather than use the program to fill gaps, many tech firms used it to replace existing U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor. Some even forced American employees to train their replacements before laying them off—like at Disney in 2015 (Preston, 2015). This wasn’t about innovation. It was about exploitation.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft: Repeat Offenders

Google consistently ranks among the top 10 users of H-1B visas. In 2022 alone, they filed for over 6,500 H-1B applications (USCIS, 2023). These weren’t just for high-level engineers or AI specialists. Many were for roles in QA testing, software support, or even basic IT.

Amazon follows the same pattern, submitting thousands of H-1B applications every year across its sprawling empire of cloud computing, logistics software, and customer platforms (USCIS, 2023). Meanwhile, Microsoft built part of its workforce model around outsourcing and importing labor—going back to the 2000s when Bill Gates personally lobbied Congress to expand the cap on H-1Bs (Andrews, 2007).

Elon Musk? His companies don’t just rely on H-1Bs—they also benefit from them indirectly through third-party IT services and contractor networks tied into Tesla and SpaceX’s infrastructure. The companies may sell innovation, but they build it on the backs of underpaid labor.

And no one said boo.

GoDaddy and the Pay-Cut Playbook

In 2017, GoDaddy proudly advertised its $17/hour “customer service” jobs. These were, in essence, entry-level tech support positions—only with a new title, reduced autonomy, and stripped-down benefits. The goal was to pay less and expect more. Rename the role, lower expectations, and pretend it’s progress.

That’s how the H-1B system helped turn a solid $25/hour career path into a glorified call center gig with tech vocabulary.

Thanks, Bill. Who wants what for free?

The Role of the IBEW—and the Silence of Labor

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) once had the chance to step up and organize tech workers. They had the infrastructure, the reach, and the legacy. But when the digital revolution arrived, they looked the other way. Maybe they didn’t understand the industry. Maybe they didn’t want to bother. Maybe—like much of organized labor in the Clinton era—they got too comfortable with the status quo.

Whatever the reason, they didn’t act. Instead of helping tech workers organize, they watched from the sidelines as companies rewrote job descriptions and gutted pay scales.

When the bottom dropped out, the blame fell on the workers themselves. They were called lazy, entitled, or worse—ungrateful for the very jobs that no longer paid enough to cover rent. No one talked to the workers. No one asked them what had changed.

A Lost Opportunity—and a Manufactured Crisis

The narrative was simple: “We can’t find American workers with the right skills.” That’s what Big Tech said. But it was a lie.

The truth? American workers existed. They were experienced, trained, and ready to work. But they also expected a living wage. And that, apparently, was unacceptable to companies who could get away with paying someone half as much on a visa that tied them to the job under threat of deportation.

The H-1B system became not a safety net—but a tool of wage suppression. And no one—not the Clinton administration, not the labor unions, not the media—said a damn thing.

The Workers Were Always There

The tragedy here isn’t just the loss of jobs. It’s the erasure of a workforce. Technical workers were never lazy, and they were never the problem. The problem was a system rigged against them—a system propped up by silence and powered by profit.

If the IBEW had acted early, maybe the outcome would have been different. But instead of organizing new fields, they blamed the very people they were supposed to represent. We may never know how—or if—they got paid off. But we do know who got left behind.

And in the end, it wasn’t the engineers at Google or the cloud architects at Amazon who got blamed. It was the everyday tech worker—the one answering phones, solving login issues, and getting paid less every year.

Nobody said boo.

References

Andrews, E. L. (2007, March 8). Bill Gates asks Congress to let more skilled foreign workers into U.S. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/business/worldbusiness/08iht-gates.4886851.html

Preston, J. (2015, June 3). Pink slips at Disney. But first, training foreign replacements. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (2023). H-1B Employer Data Hub. https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/h-1b-employer-data-hub