By Any Means Necessary

By day 2 of my time as a Director of Engineering at American Express in Phoenix, I knew the place was an H-1B fraud operation and I had to leave. I kept my position for exactly 366 days so I could retain my signing bonus, then I got out.

The level of incompetence was unlike anything you can comprehend until you work somewhere like that. They made me do silent layoffs and hire in India to replace the people we cut. The CIO came in and purged the ranks from the top down with Indian nationals. My entire management chain up to him was Indian.

The office at 18850 N. 56th Street had more than 1,000 H-1B filings tied to that location across hundreds of legal employers. A campus of shell employers, staffing companies, contractors, and client arrangements, all pointing at the same physical floor. I made the video when I first left because people needed to see what the arrangement looked like from inside it.

I reported what I saw to Harmeet Dhillon and the Department of Labor. I gave them proof that I RISKED MY LIVELIHOOD TO OBTAIN. Harmeet's fixer, Varda Hussain, sent me form letters.

That is the game. They staff the floor by any means necessary, then hide behind a vendor, a federal form, or a silent layoff. I am pro-American. American jobs should go to qualified American citizens first. If we lack qualified Americans, train them.

USCIS approved 406,348 H-1B petitions in FY2025. Of those, 252,088, or 62 percent, were in computer-related occupations. Systems analysis and programming alone accounted for 204,971 approvals. Among the computer-related approvals, 21 percent were for initial employment and 79 percent were for continuing employment. The shortage story has a retention machine bolted to it.

The credential is a costume. USCIS reported that 57.5 percent of approved beneficiaries held a master's degree, while 123,824 listed a bachelor's as the highest degree. Doctorate holders had median compensation of $105,000. Bachelor's degree holders had a median of $132,000. The extra letters did not raise the bid.

The intake valve is everywhere a form can be printed. A separate USCIS report counted 45,796 FY2025 petitions from employers with no more than 25 full-time equivalent employees. DOL also certified 1,446 applications from Grandison Management listing 57,840 requested positions. Those are positions on applications, not visas or unique people, but the number should make your eyebrow move.

The form invents the occupation after the seat is filled. The registrar is the recruiter. The shortage is a lottery with a federal login.

A Y Combinator partner called hiring Americans "DEI," then sneered at Ohio as flyover country. He locked his account after Palmer Luckey and the FTC chair spent the next 48 hours on him. Garry Tan defended him.

The a16z new media team reached out to me last week. I proposed REAL INTERVIEWS about what the 99 percent of Americans outside San Francisco want to know. The woman on the call looked like I had thrown cold water on her. She said they "weren't interested in dumbing down their content."

That sentence tells you everything. They think you are stupid if you do not live in San Francisco and work in tech. They need you cast as low-class trailer trash so they never have to answer you.

I am from the Rust Belt. I grew up in the wreckage, I will always keep the spirit of Detroit in my heart, and I believe in the American soul of this great country. There are more important things than money and status. Young people need to understand that before they accept comfort money in exchange for never trying to boil the fucking ocean.

I lived that other life. I started from a similar place, except I was living out of my car. I worked my way into prestigious tech companies, and succeeding in the rank and file came easily because I had a stronger work ethic than most of my coast-born counterparts.

Then you find the ceiling: Stanford pedigree, family connections, the club you cannot join this late in the game. You can make half a million dollars in total compensation and outsource your entire life so you can grind harder. Maid, meal prep, Equinox membership, nice watch. Everything looks good while you work harder to pay for the machinery that lets you keep working harder. Ouroboros.

Eventually you wonder what the fuck the point is. Then a window opens. You meet a nice girl and see a wife, children, and a church without a rock band or projector setup. You realize the illusion was mostly propagated by bitter childless people, or people with "show children" who outsource the interaction and raising to somebody they pay.

I cannot tell you what to do, but I slipped out through the window. Things are not always idyllic. I never question the point of my life anymore, and that is one of the most precious things a person can have.

That changed what work was for. A job should support a life, and leadership means carrying the pressure so your people can do theirs.

The clearest lesson I learned about leadership came on a high-stakes engineering floor. I was managing a team through a major demo. They had worked their asses off and built software worth being proud of, so the day before the performance I wanted the room set and two full rehearsals completed.

I run demos the way I ran classical music ensembles when I was a composer. The performance should be the most boring repetition the performers have ever done. Everything should be locked deeply enough that muscle memory can take over.

Then I looked around and realized how tired everybody was. Stoked, but tired. At that moment, my entire job was morale management. I took food and drink orders, rotated people out for breaks, and cut everybody loose to rest as soon as I could.

The job was to be the guy who gets shit done, regardless of what the work looked like. Sometimes that meant writing a mountain of code. Sometimes it meant cracking a joke because the room was too tense. Technical talent pointed at the wrong problem is useless. Be the guy who gets things done. Keep it simple.

If you watch one thing after this, make it the American Express floor. That is where this story started.

Be well. Never let them change you.

- Dr. J

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