Google’s recent round of layoffs, including the sudden cut of over 1,000 employees last week, marks a continuing trend of unease and restructuring within the tech giant.
The Verge reports that Google has continued its trend of layoffs, which began a year ago with 12,000 employees being let go. This latest round has been described as “extremely impersonal” by a long-serving engineering director, reflecting a dramatic shift in Google’s culture.
Breitbart News reported on Google’s recent layoffs last week:
Google recently announced layoffs in some of its key divisions as part of its workforce strategy. The affected departments include the Voice Assistant unit; the hardware team responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit devices; and the augmented reality (AR) team. This move comes shortly after Google’s acquisition of Fitbit for $2.1 billion in 2021, which was a significant investment in the wearable technology sector. Despite this acquisition, Google has continued to develop and release new versions of its Pixel Watch, a product that directly competes with Fitbit’s offerings and the Apple Watch.
Google initiated several changes throughout the second half of 2023 to improve efficiency, streamline its operations, and realign resources. This restructuring involved eliminating roles across different teams globally. While the exact number of affected roles has not been announced, the impact is being felt amongst employees, as Alphabet has a reported global workforce of 182,381 as of September 2023.
The Alphabet Workers Union commented on the layoffs, calling them “needless” and promising to continue to fight the company “until our jobs are safe!”
The internal response to these layoffs from employees has been marked by a mix of resignation and cynicism, as evidenced by a popular post on Google’s internal meme board, Memegen, sarcastically thanking the “corporate overlords” for what seems like a new annual tradition.
This latest wave of layoffs has affected various teams, including the Maps/Geo, shopping ads, product, and trust and safety teams. Notably, Spyro Karetsos, Google’s chief compliance officer, has departed, with Danielle Romain taking over the role. Additionally, there have been strategic restructurings, such as the Devices and Services group adopting a functional organizational structure and the closure of the AR hardware team, indicating a shift in focus within the company.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has not yet addressed these layoffs internally, and information about employment status has been distributed on a team-by-team basis. The messaging around these layoffs emphasizes flattening the organization, speeding up decision-making, and increasing efficiency, however, a veteran manager commented: “Everyone at Google understands that these [cuts] are coming from the top. There’s no way this was the decision of a few disconnected orgs in isolation.”
Despite these cuts, significant numbers are still employed in areas like Google Cloud and the ad sales group, which are seen as potential targets for future layoffs. Additionally, there is speculation of a larger-than-normal wave of departures in the spring, linked to Google’s annual performance review cycle and changes in the HR department’s policies.
Read more at the Verge here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
Big Tech's Optional Practical Training Program Betrays Young and Old
By Joseph Maurer Washington Examiner, Excerpt: A program that undermines wages, steals from your grandparents, and actively dims the prospects of American college students- only an alliance of Silicon Valley excess and administrative insanity could come up with something so backwards.
Analysis conducted last year reveal that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers.
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania
By failures of border security, a lack of the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States and huge numbers of visas for high tech workers, the lives and livelihoods of Americans and their children, are being stolen by America’s corrupt political elite who are doing the bidding of those who provide them with huge “Campaign Contributions” (Orwellian euphemism for bribes) pursue legislation that is diametrically opposed to the best interests of America and Americans.
MICHAEL CUTLER
SILICON VALLEY IS NOW INDIA EAST!
IT'S NOT JUST HIGH TECH JOBS THEY GET. IT'S ALL BANKS, INCLUDING WELLS FAROG AND BANK OF AMERICAN, WHICH ONLY HIRES INDIANS.
And these Indians, the team that I work with, they cannot even speak a single sentence in English without making any mistakes.
“The B-1 visa is the main vehicle to cheat American [college graduates] out of jobs,” said Jay Palmer, an expert on forced labor and human trafficking, and a former advisor to President Donald Trump. He continued:
Lawsuit Exposes B-1 Visa Fraud in College-Grad Jobs 14 AP Photo/Butch Dill
NEIL MUNRO
14 Apr 2023 83
10:43
American professional Michael Harmon has just earned about $1 million by exposing visa fraud within an Indian company that does subcontract work for Fortune 500 companies.
The company defrauded the government by importing Indian college-graduate workers on B-1 visas that are only for non-working business visitors. Harmon exposed the visa fraud and earned a share of the $9.9 million federal fine with his Qui Tam lawsuit.
The Department of Justice said :
L&T Technology Services, LTD (“LTTS”), a company based in India, with U.S. offices in Edison New Jersey, has agreed to pay $9,928,000 to resolve allegations that between 2014 and 2019, LTTS underpaid visa fees owed to the United States by acquiring inexpensive B-1 visas, rather than more expensive H-1B visas, in alleged violation of the False Claims Act.
“The B-1 visa is the main vehicle to cheat American [college graduates] out of jobs,” said Jay Palmer, an expert on forced labor and human trafficking, and a former advisor to President Donald Trump. He continued:
Companies encourage [foreign] individuals to get a B-1 visa to come to the United States and work. They work these workers on 1099s [as contractors] with no benefits and they pay them through third-party consulting companies. Sometimes, the worker will be able to get an Individual Tax Identification Number and work undetectably for 10 years.
The fraud behind this visa is more rampant than any other visa we have in the United States.
Palmer applauded Harmon the whistleblower, saying, “Being a whistleblower is not an easy task — you have to have intestinal fortitude.”
Several other B-1 qui tam lawsuits are being litigated.
Palmer is familiar with the B-1 fraud because he works with many Indians who have overstayed their visas and are looking for ways to get legal status.
The B-1 fraud is easy to accomplish and rarely detected or penalized by federal agencies, Palmer said:
All you have to do is have an outbound and a return flight to the United States –that’s all. What they do is they get an outbound flight [to the United States]… and they cancel their return, get the money and go to work.
They’re coming over here legally but becoming illegal [by working]. When they’re over here, they’re getting driver’s licenses, some are even getting Social Security numbers … they’re not supposed to, but they’re still issued.
They come to the United States and they never leave. Most people working in a convenience store are over here on B-1 visas [often working for foreign managers with E-2 visas ]. Hundreds of thousands are working on white-collar jobs.
The fraud is difficult for ordinary Americans to detect — even when it is happening in the next cubicle.
The commonplace B-1 fraud is disguised amid the churning population of 1.5 million-plus foreign graduates who are working in the United States under a wide variety of legal visas.
Those temporary work visas include H-1Bs, TNs, L-1s, J-1s, and the “Optional Practical Training” work permit for foreign graduates of U.S. colleges. The legal visa workers often switch workplaces because they are employed by Indian-owned subcontractors, and often go home to avoid an obvious overstay of their temporary visas.
The B-1 fraud problem is further hidden by foreign graduates who overstay their visas to become illegal gig workers in the layers of subcontractors under Fortune 500 companies.
The huge flood of foreign college graduates is forcing down the workplace clout and the salaries of American professionals because the foreign workers will accept very low salaries to stay in the United States. In February, Bloomberg News reported :
In 2022, median annual pay was $52,000 for Americans with a bachelor’s degree, according to data released by the New York Federal Reserve Friday. That’s a 7.4% decline in inflation-adjusted terms — the steepest plunge since 2004, erasing nearly all of the pandemic-era gains. It was sharpest for those earning the most.
The government-delivered inflow of foreign workers is pushing many Americans out of white-collar technology jobs and into lower-wage, blue-collar jobs.
“I have seen the [hiring] system in the backend, and it is so appalling to see that there is so much [resume] forgery being done, there’s so much of corruption being done, that it is almost to the level back in India,” Aabha, an Indian contract worker in North Carolina, told Breitbart News. She continued:
I have met so many [American] people who are graduates and so much more knowledgeable than the Indians that I see in my regular day — and they are [saying] like “Okay, because we are not experienced, we are not getting [U.S. technology] jobs.” So they decide to do a blue collar job. They’re walking into Walmart, they’re walking into Best Buy.
And these Indians, the team that I work with, they cannot even speak a single sentence in English without making any mistakes.
Yet President Joe Biden’s officials are trying to import as many foreign workers as they can, even as Fortune 500 companies fire thousands of American professionals.
“The top 30 H-1B employers hired 34,000 new H-1B workers in 2022 and laid off at least 85,000 workers in 2022 and early 2023,” said an April 11 report by the left-wing Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Those layoffs include many visa workers, who are required by law to return home once their job disappears.
In response, Biden’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency is allowing the laid-off H-1B visa workers to get six-month B-1 visas so they have more time to win new jobs that are also being sought by U.S. graduates.
“[We are] aware, of course, of the many recent layoffs in the technology sector, [so] we published options and useful information for [foreign] employees across the country facing termination and those in this vulnerable situation,” said USCIS director Ur Jaddou said April 11.
“Searching for employment in the United States does not fall under the meaning of a legitimate business activity for the purpose of B-1 visa eligibility,” responded Elizabeth Jacobs , a lawyer with the Center for Immigration Studies.
Very few of the illegally-working B-1 graduates are deported, mostly because of Silicon Valley’s huge influence in the White House and in both parties. This week, for example, Indian media outlets reported that four House members from California are pressuring USCIS to ensure that laid-off Indian workers are not sent home. The legislators are Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Ro Khanna, Jimmy Panetta, and Kevin Mullin.
The Democrats’ support for foreign workers over their own swing-voting, college-educated voters could be an opportunity for GOP strategists. But GOP leaders show no willingness to reject the cheap-labor demands of their own business donors.
Biden’s federal agencies also make the white-collar fraud easier by bundling B-2 tourist visas with the B-1 visitor visas, Palmer said. “They should separate these and charge more for them,” he said.
“The United States issued over 16 million of these [B-1/B-2 visas] a year and they’re nontraceable, basically — this is the same visa that some of the 9/11 terrorists came in on,” Palmer added. Breitbart has covered some of the many cases of B-1 fraud within the Fortune 500’s pyramids of Indian-managed subcontracting companies and gig workers.
In 2013, another Indian firm paid a fine of $33 million for cheating the government as it allegedly replaced American hires with smuggled Indian college graduates . But most of the B-1 fraud is tolerated by agencies , prosecutors, and politicians. In 2019, Breitbart News reported ;
Infosys, one of the biggest Indian outsourcing companies, allegedly cheated 500 American graduates out of jobs over 11 years from 2006 to 2017 — and will only have to pay $800,000, without admitting guilt, in a settlement with California’s attorney general.
The attorney general, Xavier Becerra, now runs the Department of Health and Human Services for President Joe Biden.
However, under President Donald Trump, the reform-minded officials in the agencies began to crack down on the B-1 fraud. “They tried but it didn’t work,” Palmer said.
Extraction Migration
The federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration . This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries, reduces beneficial trade , and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.
The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices . The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.
The lethal policy also sucks jobs and wealth from heartland states by subsidizing coastal investors with a flood of low-wage workers, high-occupancy renters, and government-aided consumers.
The population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because it allows elites to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.
In many speeches, immigration chief Alejandro Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elite opinion about “ the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Migration — and especially, labor migration — is unpopular among swing voters . A 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent “Invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats
Analysis conducted last year reveal that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers.
Report: Facebook to Cut Thousands of Jobs in Latest Corporate Downsizing
Reuters
February 22, 2023
(Reuters)—Facebook-parent Meta Platforms Inc is planning a fresh round of job cuts in a reorganization and downsizing effort that could affect thousands of workers, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Last year, the social media giant said it will let go of 13% of its workforce, or more than 11,000 employees, as it grappled with soaring costs and a weak advertising market.
Meta plans to push some leaders into lower-level roles without direct reports, flattening the layers of management between top boss Mark Zuckerberg and the company's interns, the Washington Post reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
Analysis conducted last year reveal that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers.
Despite his Wall Street, big business, Big Tech, and billionaire donations, Biden has attempted to portray himself as a small-town fighter from Scranton, Pennsylvania
By failures of border security, a lack of the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States and huge numbers of visas for high tech workers, the lives and livelihoods of Americans and their children, are being stolen by America’s corrupt political elite who are doing the bidding of those who provide them with huge “Campaign Contributions” (Orwellian euphemism for bribes) pursue legislation that is diametrically opposed to the best interests of America and Americans.
MICHAEL CUTLER
Zuckerberg’s FWD.us Claims No Amnesty Ensures Midterm Defeat for Democrats NEIL MUNRO
The Facebook-funded FWD.us investor advocacy group is touting the claim that Democrat turnout will drop in 2022 if the party cannot pass an amnesty through Congress.
But that claim is toothless, in large part because recent polls show that many Americans of Latino ancestry are increasingly voting for the GOP, precisely because GOP leaders oppose the amnesty-amplified wave of cheap labor into their communities.
The claim is being made by pro-migration groups, including the leaders of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) which denounced the Senate’s parliamentarian’s decision to exclude the parole amnesty for 6.5 million illegals from the draft Build Back Better spending plan.
NDLON declared Thursday night:
Democrats’ excuses for their failure, for their incompetence, and for their insincerity will be the ammunition used by xenophobes in the Republican Party to retake control of the federal government in upcoming elections. Inaction on immigration legalization risks further propelling Trumpism in every possible way … No more excuses. Where there is a will, there is a way.
The NDLON group represents illegal migrants, most of whom work for very low wages, and none of whom can vote in U.S. elections.
Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) is making the same claim, according to Bloomberg, which reported that he “warned that Democrats would face wrath from voters in the 2022 elections if they don’t secure a citizenship path”
But the NDLON claim is being echoed by the politically powerful investor class, who use imported workers, consumers, and renters to spike the value of their Wall Street investments.
Todd Schulte is the president of the FWD.us advocacy group for investors, which gets about $30 million a year from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to push for more migration. On Thursday night, he tweeted:
Schulte’s deputy also pushed a hard line:
Unsurprisingly, FWD.us has a hidden agenda in the amnesty debate.
The establishment media extensively cover the proposed parole amnesty for 6.5 million illegal migrants. But the media largely ignores two other proposed changes to immigration laws that would deliver huge benefits to West Coast investors who created the FWD.us advocacy group in 2013.
For example, the BBB legislation would allow the White House to provide green cards to millions of favored migrants, including perhaps three million “chain migrants” selected by recent immigrants. This open-doors policy would provide investors with millions of new profit-generating consumers, renters, and workers.
The BBB legislation would also allow President Joe Biden’s pro-migration deputies to sell green cards to at least one million migrants who have taken many of the Fortune 500 jobs sought by skilled U.S. college graduates. This change would allow Fortune 500 companies to hire many more foreign graduates with dangled offers of fast-track green cards. These workers are usually imported via the visa worker programs, such as the H-1B and Optional Practical Training program.
But those two benefits for the Fortune 500 investors may be dropped if the Democrat senators cannot also get their amnesty for illegal migrants.
On Friday, an advocacy group for corporate-funded immigration lawyers urged Congress to keep pushing the green card giveaway, even after the amnesty was nixed:
“The corporate guys are riding on perceived sympathy for the illegal alien population in order to get their immigration giveaways,” said Robert Law, the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. He continued:
The Hispanic population knows immigration is a pocketbook issue for them as well, and mass illegal immigration — plus legal immigration — hurts the economic opportunities of Hispanic Americans or the black community, or any people who typically are competing at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
The Senate’s debate referee has not issued any judgments on the two green card proposals.
Zuckerberg’s FWD.us network of coastal investors stands to gain from more cheap labor , government-aided consumers , and urban renters . The network has funded many astroturf campaigns , urged Democrats to not talk about the economic impact of migration, and manipulated coverage by the TV networks and the print media .
FWD.us’also spotlights many family dramas amid the inflow of border migrants. This focus helps keep reporters from recognizing the huge pocketbook impact of the establishment’s economic policy of mass migration. The resulting family-drama coverage also keeps many young progressives from noticing that the extraction migration policy drives up their rents and cuts their salaries.
The breadth of investors who founded and funded FWD.us was hidden from casual visitors to the group’s website sometime in the last few months. But copies exist at other sites .
Biden ’ s Chief of Staff Worked on Behalf of Big Tech for Endless H-1B Visas JOHN BINDER
Democrat Joe Biden has chosen Ronald Klain to be his chief of staff should he enter the White House in January. Klain worked on behalf of Silicon Valley executives and their interests, which include providing tech corporations with an endless supply of H-1B foreign visa workers and more free trade.
Klain, who was made Biden’s incoming chief of staff this week , served on the executive council of TechNet — a firm that promotes the interests of Silicon Valley’s tech corporations in Washington, D.C. Klain served on the council alongside executives from the Oracle Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Google, Visa, Apple, and Microsoft.
TechNet, most recently, joined a lawsuit against President Trump’s reforms to the H-1B visa program that sought to prioritize unemployed Americans for jobs rather than allowing businesses to continue importing foreign workers.
TechNet is one of the groups that has filed an amicus brief to oppose the new regulations on H-1B visas. https://t.co/ofY4GJ2sVR
— U.S. Tech Workers (@USTechWorkers) November 12, 2020
Trump’s seeking to force businesses to hire Americans over importing foreign visa workers is an affront to Silicon Valley’s tech corporations, those represented by TechNet, who advocate for an endless flow of H-1B foreign visa workers.
There are about 650,000 H-1B visa workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News. More than 85,000 Americans annually potentially lose their jobs to foreign labor through the H-1B visa program.
Analysis conducted in 2018 discovered that 71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley, California, are foreign-born, while the tech industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50 percent foreign-born tech workers. Up to 99 percent of H-1B visa workers imported by the top eight outsourcing firms are from India.
TechNet’s listed immigration goals include allowing corporations to dictate the annual level of legal immigration to the United States and the elimination of per-country caps that would effectively let India and China monopolize the U.S. green card system.
The group’s goals on trade are in direct opposition to President Trump’s economic nationalist agenda that has imposed tariffs on foreign imports from China, Canada, Europe, and other parts of the globe.
TechNet’s trade goals include reducing “tariff and non-tariff barriers to information, communications, and advanced energy technology products, services, and investments” as well as “protections for the free flow of data across borders…”
While Biden has vowed to flood the U.S. labor market with more foreign workers to compete against Americans for jobs, he has shied away from questions on whether he will eliminate tariffs on foreign imports that were imposed by Trump. Such elimination of tariffs would be a boon to multinational corporations that offshore their production and jobs overseas only to import their products back into the U.S. market, often with no penalties for doing so.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
IMF Chief: AI Will Impact 60% of Jobs in Advanced Economies Like United States Andrew Bret Wallis/Getty 3:35
AI is set to significantly transform the job landscape in advanced economies like the United States, affecting an estimated 60 percent of jobs, according to Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
France 24 reports that Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), recently predicted that Artificial Intelligence will significantly impact the job market in advanced economies. The IMF report suggests that approximately 60 percent of jobs in these economies are likely to be influenced by AI technologies. However, AI’s influence is not limited to advanced economies only; according to the IMF, AI will have a global impact, with varying degrees of influence across different economic areas.
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 04: IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaks during a joint press conference with World Bank Group President David Malpass on the recent developments of the coronavirus, COVID-19, and the organizations’ responses on March 4, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
“Advanced economies, some emerging markets, are going to see 60 percent of their jobs impacted, and then it goes down to 40 percent for emerging markets, 26 percent for low-income countries,” Georgieva detailed, highlighting how nearly 40 percent of jobs worldwide are at risk due to automation and AI integration.
Georgieva further explained that even jobs that are safe from being replaced by AI may face a major shift in how they’re performed: “Your job may disappear altogether — not good — or artificial intelligence may enhance your job so you actually will be more productive and your income level may go up.”
The IMF report also highlights specific challenges that emerging markets and developing economies face — while these regions are less affected initially by AI but also risk missing out on the potential benefits, potentially widening the existing digital and economic divides. This poses a significant concern for older workers who are more likely to be negatively affected by these technological shifts.
Georgieva emphasized the importance of policy intervention in response to the AI revolution, stating: “We must focus on helping low-income countries in particular to move faster to be able to catch the opportunities that artificial intelligence will present,.” Georgieva noted that many should get used to the possibility of AI influence, stating: “In other words, embrace it, it is coming. So artificial intelligence, yes, is a little scary. But it is also a tremendous opportunity for everyone.”
Dirty Jobs star Mike Rowe commented last year that AI is most likely to impact white collar workers. As Breitbart News previously reported , Rowe said “I’ve been hearing for years that robots are going to wreck blue-collar work. Turns out AI is coming for your white-collar job.”
Rowe added:
Rowe recently expressed his opinion during an interview on The Big Money Show that the growth of AI in the workplace will not jeopardize blue-collar jobs. He argued that these roles require particular skill sets that are difficult to replicate digitally. “People used to say that the robots are going to destroy skilled labor. Well, not really,” Rowe said. “I haven’t seen any plumbing robots. I haven’t seen any electrician robots. And I don’t think we’re going to see any artificial intelligence in the skilled trades to that degree.”
Read more at France 24 here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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