About personal experience working with "body shops" or warned - means armed

Deceived programmers write a complaint to Departament of Labor

Today I would like to share my experience and the experience of acquaintances with such a thing as the consulting company AKA “bodishop”. I think that this experience will be useful to everyone who wants to go abroad to work.
TLDR : the experience is negative, I will not indicate the name of the company, so as not to violate the rules.

What is bodyshop?

Bodishop is a company that takes over H1B visa (state work visa) and sells you to another company. “For whom am I officially working then?” You ask and you will be right. In the United States, there are 2 types of employment: by contract and FTE (FTE - full time employment). Regarding body shop, you are FTE. That is, the body shop pays you a salary, pays honey. insurance, vacation, etc. Regarding the company you were sold to - you are a contractor. That is, a contract has been concluded between the company and the bodyshop (usually for 3-6 months, and it will be extended to a year, less often more than a year), according to which the company pays your work (hourly pay) to the bodyshop. The bodyshop profit is clear where - they take the difference between how much the company pays for you and how much they pay you. Sometimes this difference is very large. They can give you only half.

Why is that bad?

1. After you have arrived in the USA, you are wholly owned by the bodishop . They can direct you to any project they find. The problem is that contractors are usually given the most boring projects. You can, of course, start downloading rights, but here you need to remember that your work status is canceled quite quickly, and from Russia (Ukraine, Belarus) it’s quite difficult to download them. Also, most body shops have the so-called On bench policy. This means that you are not paid a salary (or paid very small) until you find a project. Need I say here that this, of course, is illegal. But then again, nobody shakes the law.

2. Ignorance of the laws of the country and state. You can say a bunch of things that do not have legal force. You can be given a bunch of documents with dubious points for signature and you won’t know which of them have legal force and which do not. But if you have already arrived, it will be difficult to refuse to sign (see point 1). For example, you may be told that when leaving them you will have to pay several thousand dollars in a fine, allegedly for losses incurred by the company (I saw numbers from 15 to 35 one thousand dollars). The bodyshop I worked with also makes me sign a contract that has some wonderful points:

“I give up all the rights that Illinois gives me”;
- “I can’t transfer to other companies under penalty of fines”;
““ If I suddenly want to sue the bodyshop, I’ll pay them any lawyer. ”

Moreover, knowing that it is illegal, the “body shop” tries to fulfill its threats by keeping the last paycheck, or part of it, off people. I personally know the person with whom they demanded $ 15,000 for breaking the contract. Of course, he refused, and they kept his salary for the last month (~ $ 5000).

3. Salary. As you remember, regarding the company in which you work, you are a contractor. In the USA, contractors receive one and a half \ two times more than FTE in the same position. But the company does not provide them with insurance, benefits, etc. What is this amount and how much of it goes to you only an accountant knows. According to my estimates and those of other people, a bodyhop takes about 50% -70%. With all this, you are still forced to cover part of the insurance. Oddly enough, many people before arrival think that the salary offered by a bodishop is pretty good. For example, $ 60 thousand per year for a family of two. For comparison, this is approximately $ 50- $ 60 per month for Peter. A little advice: if suddenly upon arrival you realize that this is not a big salary, let us know about your decision to leave. You can even raise it a little.

4.Green card . It would seem that this is bad? Green card is pretty good! Yes, but you are ready to start doing it only after one \ two years. That is, from the moment you arrive in the USA and before you have it and you can calmly change your employer, it will take about 4 years. For comparison: usually software companies begin this process six months after the device, and some even immediately after the device.

5. Career growth. As I already mentioned, usually contractors are sent to the most uninteresting parts of projects. They are hired to do some piece of work. You can cover the code with unit tests for half a year. Or write bash scripts, although you are a backend developer. After that, you are either offered to switch to full time, or simply do not renew the contract. So if you suddenly decided to stay with a bodyshop - welcome to hell from a series of interviews.

I was deceived. What should I do?

Well, firstly, try to make a visa transfer (about him a little later). Well, or make it so that you can legally remain in the United States and not be dependent on the bodyshop. Most likely, you were not paid a salary for the last month of work, you were paid much less than a salary when you were on the bench or withheld a certain amount of dollars in the form of a “fine” from the paycheck. Write to these guys right away that you will complain about the Departament of Labor. This thing governs the relationship between employee and employer. Googling dol% state_name% unpaid wages you will come across a fairly simple form in which you are asked to indicate who you are, from which body shop, how much you did not pay, how much illegally deducted. After filling out the form, you need to wait until the corpse of your enemy floats along the river. Departament of Labor will send a request to the bodyshop asking why they didn’t pay. And if you're lucky, he will appoint an audit of the company. If it comes to court, decide for yourself what to do. You can also consult with a lawyer. There is a good chance that not only the salary will be shaken from the body shop, but also a fine to the treasury + expenses for a lawyer. I think that it will be a plus if you find a few more guys whom the bodyshop threw, and all together file a complaint. Well, in DOL itself you can go for a consultation.

How to find out if the body shop has left a vacancy or not?

Finding out is usually pretty simple. Having visited the company’s website, you see various kinds of slogans, such as “the best solution to all problems”, “our goals are blah blah blah”, but you don’t see which product the company is developing. The vacancy section usually says “we are looking for developers of java, C #, PHP, Perl, Python, C ++”, etc. If you are not sure, write and ask if they offer a job at home or will contract you somewhere.

Are there any pluses?

Getting into a bodyshop is pretty easy. Typically, in an interview with them, basic knowledge is checked. It is important for them to drag you. The project most likely you will find. You will be interviewed not in the top companies, but in everything. Somewhere yes fit. Now I need to say a few words about the visa: to go to the USA to work, you need a visa. Most likely it will be H1B - a visa of a foreign specialist (about L1 a bit later). To obtain this visa, the company that wants to hire you must file a petition with USICS in early April. Then a lottery takes place, and if you are lucky, you will get a working visa. Now the chance to get it has fallen sharply: for 2015 it is 30%. After that, there is a long process of downloading and sending documents. You can enter the United States at the earliest in October. It is clear that not all companies that want to hire a developer are ready to wait six months.

What should I do? I have already agreed to bodishop and am getting ready to fly to the USA

You can start applying for a resume at an HR company or at a company directly. And say that you need an H1B shuttle. Transfer is a change of ownership of your H1B visa. In this case, from bodishop to some other company. Why would they be more willing to do this? Because the transfer a) takes 4-6 weeks, and after this period you can start working; b) if you have a visa, you do not need to play the lottery. So immediately after arrival, you can personally talk with the guys from the new company and quit the bodyshop. Moreover, the transfer can begin to be done immediately after you have been confirmed with a visa and before arriving in the United States. Of course, body shops know this alignment and try to make sure. For example, the body shop I worked with takes a security diposit of $ 1,000. In case during the year you change your mind to fly to them, or you will not be given a visa, or if you do not win the lottery. Great invented, right?

What body shops are there on the market?

EPAM, Luxoft. In general, as experience suggests, there are a lot of them. You can add your options in the comments.

Is Luxoft a Body Shop too?

Luxoft is rather bodyshop and outsourcers. They also send people to the United States, but they do it a little trickier. They issue an L1 visa, according to which you cannot make a transfer, and are obliged to work for the company that sponsored this visa. That is, if your employer decides to submit your documents to the green card in 1.5 years, you will not be able to influence the process. It remains to wait 1.5 years, plus another two years on the very design of the green card. It is clear that as soon as you have it - you quit. Luxoft is not profitable, and they will drag out this process as long as possible. The same story with the salary: you can’t really rock the law and insist on increasing the check. So be careful!

I would be glad if someone shares their experience in the comments.