About personal experience with “bodyshopi” or forewarned is forearmed

Deceived programmers write a complaint to Departament of Labor

Today I would like to share my experience and experience of acquaintances with such a thing as consulting company AKA "bodyshop". I think everyone who wants to go abroad to work will benefit from this experience.
TLDR : negative experience, I will not indicate the name of the company in order not to break the rules.

What is the bodyshop?

Bodishop is a company that takes on a H1B visa (a working visa to the states) and sells you to another company. “Who do I officially work for then?” - you ask and you will be right. In the US, there are 2 types of employment: under contract and FTE (FTE - full time employment). Regarding the bodyshop, you are FTE. That is, the bodyshop pays your salary, pays for honey. insurance, provides vacation, etc. Regarding the company to which you were sold - you are a contractor. That is, a contract has been concluded between the company and the bodyshop (usually for 3-6 months, and it is extended up to a year, more rarely more than a year), in which the company pays for 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 only give you half.

Why is that bad?

1. After you hit the US, you are fully owned by the bodyshop . 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 working status is canceled pretty quickly, and from Russia (Ukraine, Belarus) it’s quite difficult to download. Also, most bodyshops have a so-called On bench policy. This means that you are not paid a salary (or paid very little) until you find a project. Do I need to say here that it is, of course, illegal. But again, no one shakes the law.
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2. Ignorance of the laws of the country and state . You can tell a bunch of things that are not legally binding. You may be given for signing a bunch of documents with dubious points and you will not know which of them are legally binding and which are not. But if you have already arrived - it will be difficult to refuse to sign (see item 1). For example, you can be told that when you leave them, you will have to pay several thousand dollars in fines for alleged losses incurred by the company (I saw numbers from 15 to 35 one thousand dollars). The bodyshop I worked with besides this forces me to sign a contract in which there are wonderful points:

- “I refuse all rights granted to me by the state of Illinois”;
- "I can not go to other companies under the penalty of fines";
“If I suddenly want to sue the bodyshop, I will pay them any lawyer.”

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

3. Salary . As you remember, in relation to the company in which you work, you are a contractor. In the US, contractors receive one and a half / two more times than FTE in the same position. But the company does not provide them with insurance, benefits, etc. What is the amount and how much of it gets you know only the accountant. According to my estimates and estimates of other people, the bodyshop 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 the bodyshop is pretty good. For example, $ 60 thousand per year for a family of two people. For comparison, this is about $ 50- $ 60 per month for Peter. A little advice: if suddenly upon arrival you realized that this is not a big salary, inform your decision to leave. You can even raise it a little bit.

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

5. Career growth . As I have already mentioned, contractors are usually 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 move to full time, or simply do not renew the contract. So if you suddenly decide 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 transfer of a visa (about him a little later). Well, or do so to 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, paid much less than when you were “on the bench” or withheld a certain amount of dollars from the paychek as a “fine”. Immediately write to these guys that you will complain to Departament of Labor . This thing governs the relationship between the employee and the employer. When you go dol% state_name% unpaid wages, you will stumble upon a rather simple form, in which you are asked to indicate: who you are, what bodyshop, how much you did not pay, how much you illegally deducted. Fill out the form, you need to wait until the river swims the corpse of your enemy. The Departament of Labor will send a request to the bodyshop asking why it was not paid. And if you're lucky, they will appoint an audit of the company. If it came to court - decide for yourself what to do. You can consult with a lawyer. There is a good chance that not only salary, but also a fine to the treasury + expenses for a lawyer will be shaken off the bodyshop. I think it will be a plus if you find a few more guys whom the bodyshop has thrown and all together file a complaint. Well, in DOL itself you can go for a consultation.

How to find out if the bodyshop left a job or not?

Learning is usually quite simple. When you visit the company's website, you see all sorts of slogans, such as “the best solution to all problems”, “our goals are blah blah blah,” but you don’t see what product the company is developing. In the vacancy section, it is usually written “we are looking for java, C #, PHP, Perl, Python, C ++ developers”, etc. If you are not sure, write and ask if they offer a job at their place or will they contract you somewhere.

Are there any advantages?

Getting into the bodyshop is pretty easy. Usually at the 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 amiss. Now I need to say a few words about the visa: to go to the US to work, you need a visa. Most likely it will be H1B - a visa of a foreign specialist (about L1 later). To get this visa, a company that wants to hire you must submit a petition to USICS in early April. Next comes the lottery, and if you're lucky, you will receive a work visa. Now the chance to get it has fallen sharply: in 2015 it is 30%. After that there is a long process of sending and sending documents. You can enter the United States at the earliest in October. It is clear that not all firms that want to hire a developer are ready to wait half a year. Therefore, getting a work visa through the bodyshop is much easier.

What should I do? I have already agreed to bodyshop and prepare to fly to the USA

You can start submitting resumes to HR companies or companies directly. And to say that you need H1B transfer. Transfer is the change of your H1B visa holder. In this case, from a bodishop to some other company. Why go for it more willingly? Because a transfer is done 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 the arrival you can personally talk with the guys from the new company and resign from the bodyshop. Moreover, the transfer can be started immediately after you have confirmed your visa and before you arrive in the United States. Of course, bodyshopy know this alignment and try to hedge. For example, the bodyshop I worked with takes a security deposit worth 1000 dollars. In case you change your mind about flying for a year, or you will not be given a visa, or if you don’t win the lottery. Great thought, right?

What bodyshops are on the market?

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

Is Luxoft also a bodyshop?

Luxoft is rather a bodyshop and outsourcers. They also send people to the US, but they do it a little smarter. They apply for a L1 visa, for which you can not make a transfer and are required to work in the company that sponsored this visa. That is, if your employer decides to submit your documents to the green card after 1.5 years, you will not be able to influence the process in any way. It remains to wait for 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 will quit. Luxoft is not profitable, and they will delay this process as long as possible. The same story with a salary: you can’t especially swing the rights and insist on increasing the check. So be careful!

I would be glad if someone will share their experiences in the comments.