Ex-Meta employee says 88% of his team were on H1B: 'If you’re an American, now is your time'

Former Meta data engineer Zach Wilson's comments drew sharp responses from Indian tech professionals and global observers. (File photo)

A former Meta employee has sparked a heated debate online after revealing that 15 out of 17 members on his data engineering team in 2017 were on H-1B visas. Zach Wilson, now the founder of a data analytics company in San Francisco, shared the post on X amid growing anxiety over President Donald Trump’s $100,000 visa fee order.

“When I worked at Meta in 2017, I was on a team of 17 people. 15 of the 17 were on H1B visas. I was one of two Americans on the team,” Wilson wrote. “Just for core growth data engineering, that’s $1.5m in visa fees under the new rules.”

Wilson added: “If you’re an American looking to land a big tech role, now is your time because more than 80 percent of your competition literally just vanished overnight. Good luck!”

The founder worked as a data engineer for the tech giant for close to two years.

‘Meta wasn’t built on passports, it was built on talent’

Wilson's X post drew sharp responses from Indian tech professionals and global observers. A few X users also corrected Wilson and pointed out that the new fees don’t apply to existing H1B visas. "So any effect it will have will be slowing the pipeline of new H1Bs over time," commented Vanyali
(@VanyaWright).

Nitin Ahirwal, an Indian engineer, commented: “Meta’s core growth data engineering wasn’t built on passports, it was built on talent. If 15/17 engineers were on H-1Bs, that tells you something: US schools are producing users of tech, not builders.”

Ahirwal argued that the $1.5 million in visa fees was negligible compared to the $120 billion in value H-1B talent had created for FAANG companies. “Your ‘competition’ didn’t vanish. It just shifted. Those engineers will now be building the next Meta, Google, or Nvidia — in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Toronto, or Singapore.”

Wilson responded: “I went to a tier three school in US and still got in. If Meta gave me a chance, I’m sure they would give more MIT and Stanford grads a chance too if there wasn’t any other option.”

‘Removing visas doesn’t replace the gap, it exposes it’

Other users weighed in on the broader implications of Trump’s order. X user Monica Jasuja (@jasuja) wrote: “This is a double-edged moment. Sure, American grads may see more open doors in the short term. But forcing out 80 percent of the talent pipeline doesn’t just shrink competition, it reshapes where global tech gets built.”

Rushikesh Patil (@Rushi374) added: “If 15 out of 17 engineers at Meta were on H1Bs it tells you the reality. The talent pipeline wasn’t coming from US schools then and it isn’t ready now. Removing visas doesn’t replace the gap, it just exposes it.”

Another X user Tom Anderson (@TomAnderson_79) shared his own experience: “I was on the Windows team (8) doing DevOps with Sanchez. We were the only two Americans on that team and everyone else, including the manager, were from India — not to mention the 3 directors above the manager.”

White House clarifies: ‘not an annual fee’

Amid mounting confusion, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt issued a clarification on X: “This is not an annual fee. It’s a one-time fee that applies only to the petition.” But it did little to calm nerves, as many visa holders remained unsure whether their pending applications or travel plans would be affected.

Currently, the cost of filing an H-1B petition ranges between $2,000 (about Rs 17.5 lakh) and $5,000 (about Rs 44 lakh). Trump’s order raises it to a staggering $100,000 (about Rs 88 lakh) for new petitions, a move experts say could devastate Indian professionals and companies that rely heavily on the visa programme. Indians account for more than 70 per cent of H-1B visa holders in the US.

Read more: H-1B visa fee hike: Tech giants Microsoft, Meta, Amazon urge employees to be back in US before Sep 21 deadline