Less expensive as well as more likely to put up with bad treatment because their visa is at risk if they get laid off (tied to a specific company and limited time to find a new employer to sponsor if you lose your job). (That’s aside from other problems with the H1B program as currently implemented. I am all for skilled immigrant visas but this one has been quite badly abused and continues to be so despite some attempts to fix the issues )
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Thank you
Some of those are the “rehiring” of too many of the blindly axed (or chainsawed) DOGE cuts!
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This is what my son is worried about. He graduates next spring, with double majors in Mechanical and Civil engineering. He really wanted to go into renewable energy, preferably wind. But that isn’t looking great, both in terms of climate/energy science support and, now, in terms of energy credits in the Big Beautiful Bill. He’s going to try to pivot to some other area of renewable energy, but unfortunately his research and internship on turbine optimization likely won’t be as useful now. We are looking to figure out if we have any hooks to get him EU citizenship (we were part way there with Italy until they changed the law this spring, unfortunately I think the rest of our heritage is too distant) since so much more interesting renewable energy engineering is going on in Europe. Since that now seems more unlikely, he’s looking at US companies that have a strong presence in the EU, hoping if he bides his time here, he can eventually get a work visa to work there. (He is, of course, looking at a wide variety of traditional US jobs as well, he just wants to cast a broad net in hopes that there is a path to getting to his preferred job type.)
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My son works in a different field, but he always wanted to use his skills for the greater good by working with NOAA rather than in private industry for profit. Unfortunately, he was forced—quite literally—to change direction because of DOGE. The silver lining is that he now earns a higher salary. It wasn’t what he originally hoped for, but he found challenging work that makes him happy.
There are private sector companies doing important research and development in wind power. Hopefully, your son will find a position where he can apply his skills, have security, and find fulfillment.
The private sector will take over a lot of government work, but sadly our collective loss is in the areas of essential research that don’t have immediate profit potential. That was the benefit of our scientific agencies. The focus was on scientific advancement, not profit.
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Intel used to be (and maybe still is) a hirer from many colleges - but lost their way a long time ago (whereas AMD and Nvidia picked up).
TSMC in Arizona is hiring though. Coworker’s son just graduated from ASU with a MS in mechanical engineering and started there a couple of weeks after graduation.
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Posting this here as well for soon to be grads…
I am also now seeing a trend where employers are reacting to employees discovered to have posted inappropriately or frequently during work hours.
Worth reminding your kids to be careful. Their electronic history isn’t private and has serious potential consequences.
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And using your company’s computer and network to post misogynistic screeds or to rant about whichever ethnic group is ruining our country violates several corporate policies simultaneously…which you agreed to on your first day. Don’t claim First Amendment (you need to read said amendment to realize you have no recourse). It’s a one way trip to termination. And good luck finding a lawyer who will touch the case.
Their computer, their rules.
While you’re at it, remind your kid that running their side gig while at work is another no-no. I ran into this recently…you can’t film your Poshmark unboxing videos during a boring staff meeting by putting yourself on mute and taking yourself off camera. One of your colleagues will inadvertently out you and the jig is up.
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From an actual employee handbook…
- Employee Use of Social Media:
- XXXXXXXX-XXXX has policies in place to guide employees on the appropriate use of social media.
- These guidelines emphasize a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination, abuse, bullying or excessive use.
This is a large European multi national company but most companies have similar guidelines. Be careful what you say and how frequently you say it.
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And for some companies it’s even more stringent. For example, I work for an investment management firm. We are limited as to what we can post/repost on LinkedIn in terms of anything that may be considered to come close to financial advice or a view on the markets or similar - even with respect to reposting our own company’s research - unless we are designated within the firm as being allowed to post that.
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My graduate got a job!
It’s not exactly in their field, more like field adjacent, and there are no benefits, but it pays quite well (much better than I was anticipating), and it’s a good stepping stone especially given that DS21 has no prior work experience.
He had applied to this company for a open role they had posted but while he wasn’t qualified for that, he had some specific technical skills that were a match for a side venture the company runs. They reached out to him on Tuesday to see if he would be interested in this other role. Wednesday he had the interview and today they offered him the job. He’ll start on Monday.
I’m not sure about whether there’s any chance for career progression, and this is unlikely to be a long-term role, but this will allow him to build some work experience for his resume as well as gain some additional technical certification. It will also provide him with an opportunity to further strengthen his “soft skills”. The company is located within easy commuting distance from home and the role is hybrid, so he’ll continue living here for now allowing him to be able to save a significant percentage of his income (not that he’s much of a spender to begin with).
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Thank you for posting. I’m sure you have had to explain to your young team members what “zero tolerance” means …this is a generation raised on do-overs, whoopsies and extra credit…
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Not only just junior staff.
I am aware of a seasoned professional who was recently separated for cause having recklessly disregarded their companies social media policies by indulging in political discussions and excessive use of social media during what were supposed to be work hours.
Some companies take this understandably very seriously. For instance a company that would adversely be impacted by tariffs wouldn’t take kindly to an employee (or candidate) publicly criticizing the Trump administration’s policies.
We are all entitled to first amendment speech but it becomes more complicated once employers are involved. Just not worth getting yourself on HRs radar screen.
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Regarding social media activities during the work day, last year a young colleague emailed me about a work matter from an odd email address with her first name but a made up last name. Later I googled this to find that she was a content creator with 5 Youtube channels and over 800 videos of 45 minutes to an hour in length. She had a mostly work from home job and was surprisingly less productive with her time than we had anticipated. It wasn’t entirely clear that she was working on this during her work day. But after she was let go for not being highly productive (I was not involved in her annual assessment nor did I tell her superiors of her 5 Youtube channels), in the subsequent videos she complained that she had a new job that was “more demanding” and “less flexible” so she wouldn’t be posting as much new content.
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This is hilarious. “My job actually requires me to work a full day”.
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I suspect this is partly an issue with youngsters whose first job is work from home. Those of us who’ve been around a while generally understand that a work day is a work day… there are exceptions, but those usually managed to slack off even in an office.
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Unfortunately this is happening to a lot of youngsters!
I was talking to a friend the other day who just started a new job. He said, “The job is great, but it’s also frustrating for me, because I haven’t actually met a single one of my co workers yet. Even though I only work from home a couple of days a week, my co workers don’t want to come in if it’s just for a meeting, so I only see them on video. Many of them have never worked a job where they had to come in to the office, and these co workers don’t seem to want to get to know me at all… I feel like meeting with them is just wham bam thank you ma’am, then they get back to whatever they were doing.”
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I also have something to add to the main theme. After a year of god knows how many applications (somewhere well over a hundred) and a handful of interviews, D19 finally got a “real” job. Guess what, she was put forward to HR there by someone she knew. The job wasn’t advertised externally. It kind of kills me that so much of this is who you know.
(She had done a great internship but unfortunately at a non-profit that only had a handful of permanent employees and interns/volunteers who do a lot of the other work. They loved her and would gladly have had her back, but she needs to actually earn an income!)
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I don’t think it’s just youngsters. There’s a reason companies are going back in.
It’s not all people and I read the stories on here of how much more productive people are with less a commute - but if you look at the overall, people of all ages seem to be less productive from home that used to be office based. I hear that from people at so many companies.
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