A former Walt Disney Parks and Resorts IT employee has spoken about a difficult experience during the company’s 2015 restructuring. Speaking to The Dallas Express in an interview, he said he was asked to train the worker who eventually replaced him through an outsourcing arrangement linked to the H-1B visa programme.
Leo Perrero said the incident changed his life and exposed what he now believes is a common practice in the tech industry.
‘Trained my replacement and then lost my job’
In an interview with The Dallas Express, Perrero recalled how the situation unfolded at work. “I hadn’t heard of it… until it caused me to lose my job. Well, train my replacement and then lose my job,” he said. Perrero said the experience came during a major restructuring at Disney in 2015, when many IT workers were laid off.
The H-1B visa allows US companies to temporarily hire foreign workers for specialised roles that usually require a degree, especially in tech and engineering fields.
According to Perrero, he was not even aware of the system until it directly affected him and his colleagues. He said there were early signs that changes were coming inside the company months before the layoffs.
At the time, he recalled, a senior executive had told employees about plans to bring in outside labour and run operations in a different structure. “The chief technology officer, during a big public hall meeting, sort of came right out and said it; probably a good six months before it happened. … He said ‘We’re going to bring in resources from outside and we’re going to operate. We’re going to have a doughnut of labour,’” he told The Dallas Express.
He also described other changes inside the company, including tighter control over unused vacation payouts, a shift in IT structure that made maintenance roles more vulnerable, and increasing pressure to document every detail of work processes.
‘They recorded my screen while I trained them’
Perrero said those documentation requirements later made it easier for outside workers to take over internal roles. “I had to train somebody sitting next to me… while they were recording [my] screen,” he said. He claimed this process continued until the transition was complete.
Perrero said affected employees were placed under a rehire restriction of one to two years, limiting their ability to return to other roles within the company or its partners.
Looking back, Perrero said he would have reacted very differently if he had understood what was happening earlier. “Had I known at the very beginning, I would have absolutely walked out day one and had nothing to do with it,” he said. He also advised workers in similar situations to push back rather than comply. “No compliance. No, no… You’re leading yourself down a path that’s going to result in you training your replacement,” he said.
He suggested that group action, such as a collective walkout, would be more effective, though he said he does not generally support unions. Perrero said outsourcing in tech has become a major concern. “It’s a cancer that just keeps growing. So the more Americans that go along with it, the worse it gets,” he said. Perrero said what happened to him is not rare.
“Considering the fact that I didn’t know what this was prior to it dramatically changing my life, I would want Americans to understand that this is a very common, extremely common business practice in the technology field,” he said.
H-1B reforms and limits
Talking about possible changes to the visa system, Perrero said higher wage rules or proposals like a $100,000 fee for certain H-1B hires could influence hiring decisions, but would not be permanent solutions. “It’s an executive order. It’s nothing permanent… As soon as the next person comes into office, they would have to renew it,” he said.
He added that he no longer closely follows policy debates around the programme, saying he has not seen lasting change over the years. Perrero also said he supports shutting down the H-1B programme entirely and instead using alternatives like the O-1 visa for highly skilled individuals.