r/technology • u/nosotros_road_sodium • 12h ago

Business Instacart to Pay $5 Million Over Alleged Hiring Discrimination Against US-Born Employees

https://www.kqed.org/news/12105323/instacart-to-pay-5-million-over-alleged-hiring-discrimination-against-us-born-employees
126 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

55

u/RevolutionaryFig9437 12h ago

Earlier this summer, OpenAI settled a case for a little over $3 million for requiring workers to file applications by mail. Apple settled a similar case in 2023, and Facebook settled one in 2021.

Almost all the tech bros.

32

u/SirkutBored 11h ago

These fines are too damn small. $5 mil is less than 100 employees for a year. Shits a joke. 

11

u/FreshEclairs 10h ago

For OpenAI tech employees? More like 10.

-5

u/Ok_Union2122 7h ago

The government accepted such a small settlement because they know that the law was not broken and they had no case.

4

u/SirkutBored 7h ago

Knowing that H1B has been being abused for years now, yes, laws were broken. H1B is meant as a stop gap, not an alternative. 

-1

u/Ok_Union2122 6h ago

You don't know how hiring works in these companies. I was there for 15 years and doing interviews and hiring decisions.

They put H1-B applicants in the same hiring pool as Americans, and they hire plenty of both. Everyone who is good enough to be hired, gets hired. Americans who got rejected simply couldn't qualify.

It only looks bad because they have no "open position" but the law requires one. That's why they make these weird jobs with strange application process. Because it satisfies the law without adding a bunch of headaches.

2

u/SirkutBored 6h ago

So you're already talking about how the system is being gamed.

Like how a company puts out a job description requiring 5 years of one thing, 5 years of a different thing not remotely related to the first and so on until they are requesting 20-25 years of experience and wonder why no one can qualify. Like how companies right now are expecting 5-7 years in AI when the real ramp up was only 3-4 years ago. Like how companies will overlook someone who meets most of the qualifications and can be trained on the rest. There are tens upon tens of thousands of unemployed tech employees right now and right now companies are still applying for H1Bs. With ATS I bet many qualified candidates aren't even making it past an automated screener because they don't know they have to tweak their resume for everything from ATS readability to highlighting the skills asked for specifically in each application which a human screener would recognize because Remedy isn't ServiceNow, because bash isn't ksh or any other comparable similars.

7

u/dirty_cuban 11h ago

Foreign workers take the highest paying tech jobs which should be going to Americans but of course the Trump administration focuses on deporting Mexicans doing the back breaking jobs no one else wants like farm work, landscaping, construction, etc. Everything is a scam

3

u/MyNameIsNightPain 9h ago

Should legit ban outsourcing as well

2

u/innocentsalad 5h ago

Raise taxes depending on what percentage of your American company's employees and contractors aren't American.

25

u/OuterSpaceBootyHole 12h ago

Hilarious. Accuses the feds of using outdated methods in PERM regulations but then requires US candidates to use snail mail. No wonder they got whacked.

6

u/nosotros_road_sodium 9h ago

"We posted the jobs in classified sections and no Americans applied!" said the companies in a world where prospective job applicants don't know what a newspaper is.

-2

u/Ok_Union2122 6h ago

US candidates don't have to use snail mail. They go to the same hiring pool as everyone else.

The problem is the wording in the law requires an "open position" but that concept is very outdated in tech. They don't have "open positions" - they hire on a constant basis, and they hire every candidate who passes the application process. If the H1-B guy and the American are both good - they both get hired!

3

u/OuterSpaceBootyHole 6h ago

...no it literally says in the article that's why they got fined.

1

u/Ok_Union2122 1h ago

They put up those postings for “snail mail” applications but you don’t have to do that to apply. You can apply same as anybody else by submitting your resume online from their careers website.

Trust me. I did it. I worked there. I was in the hiring committees. I don’t care what some article says written by people who don’t know.

The posted jobs with “snail mail” applications only exist to satisfy the specific wording in the laws. Because the laws don’t match their actual hiring practices. That’s not the normal way to apply for a job, and anybody who wants to apply can do it without going through those postings.

12

u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw 11h ago

So instead of spending a fortune on ICE to stop foreign born workers from taking jobs from US citizens we could have just told Instacart to use lawful hiring practices. Got it. 

11

u/gizamo 10h ago

All the major tech companies do this, and the fines are a joke. They need to 10X the fine for the first offense, and the second should be 20X.

Better yet, make it based on revenue, e.g. 10% of annual revenue for the first offense, and 20% for the second.

If penalties mean nothing, the crimes mean nothing.

5

u/nosotros_road_sodium 9h ago

Yep, at the rate they're at, the fines are just a cost of doing business.

3

u/Ok_Union2122 7h ago

This is overblown.

What actually happens is they want to hire a specific person. But the law says they have to offer the "open position" to an American first. The problem is, "open positions" don't really exist. They are constantly interviewing people, and they make hiring decisions based on talent. None of it has anything to do with "open positions".

Problem is, the law refers to "open positions" and so you can't hire H1-b without having an open position. So they do this weird "job posting" thing in order to comply with the law at the minimal cost.