These layoffs are happening because the entire tech industry is sinking all of its free cash into AI capex. H1B abuse and offshoring have both existed for decades, and neither are the proximate cause for these layoffs. If you’re blaming immigrants for this, you are either doing so in bad faith, or you are embarrassingly gullible.
Sure, but let’s not forget that ~90% of the Bay Area does not work in tech. They are all being left out of the AI boom, similar to how they were left out of every tech boom before it. Don’t see why we need to specifically weep for these ex-FAANG engineers because they couldn’t get into OpenAI or Anthropic.
A lot of it is local politics too. The Bay Area has chosen very hostile to economic growth policies especially around zoning/ affordable housing etc.
So it’s like if they keep voting for people who are anti growth it seems like the expected outcome to be left out. I.e. if new apartment buildings are largely banned, you don’t get the opportunity to open a coffee shop or work as a building manager.
This isn't exactly true because some others participate indirectly. The most obvious winners are the people who bought housing or other real estate. There are also non-programmers who invested, the most famous may be the Persian carpet dealers in Palo Alto who've been investing in startups on the side.
Yes, there are many who don't own their house, but some of those can also benefit. California has some of the most generous social benefits in the nation, all because they can tax the tech companies.
"A group of more than four dozen laid-off workers gathered at 11 a.m. on a Monday to hike Mount Tamalpais, a majestic peak overlooking the San Francisco Bay. They descended the mostly deserted trail in groups of about a dozen, led by Basem Istanbouli, a former Google employee sporting a bucket hat and a pair of toe shoes."
I'd rather hike than sling JavaScript for a bunch of finance goofs, but that's just me.
EDIT: Downvotes incoming so I am blocked out of responding to comments for 8h.
San Francisco is one of the most expensive places on earth. $180k/yr doesn't go very far in San Francisco specially if you want to have a family. Dual income becomes pretty much mandatory and if one of those incomes are lost, things start to get tough.
Pretty much anywhere else in the US (outside some parts of the East coast) and almost anywhere in the world, $180k/yr is an amazing salary.
Tech was already moving towards asynchronous working but AI just exponentially accelerated asynchronous work. Bulk of the software in 2026 has been written, reviewed and tested by AI (whether the HN crowd likes it or agrees with the practice, or not).
"AI" has, and will, suck out capital out of the market - this, coupled with non-zero interest rates is putting companies under pressure where cost savings is the top, if not one of the top priorities.
So these two conversations are happening in every board and executive room in San Francisco:
- SMB/startups: Can we go faster with less people if we load up on tokens? Yes.
- MNCs/Large Orgs: Are our engineers out of Austin or Asia equally productive with AI assistance? Yes.
So the decision is simple: San Francisco's expensive engineers and tech workers are useful in a rapidly contracting niche. They are still valuable for startups based out of SF (but the startups are just hiring less than they used to). They are still valuable for rapidly expanding companies based out of SF that are not yet having the cost discussion - Anthropic and OpenAI are certainly hiring.
But rest of the companies are just hiring equally talented workers out of Austin or Vietnam, for way cheaper.
The highly skilled will continue to get hired but the median worker out of San Francisco is being replaced.
That said, AI is making it increasingly easy to start your own business. I certainly have been encouraging people to find their own customers before their (ex)employer forces them to.
San Francisco is expensive because the competition for both technical talent and housing is fierce. The dynamics you’re describing existed from 2020-2022, and as a result it became cheaper to live here. Today, the rent is going up again, because companies are locating and hiring here again. San Francisco is not just magically an expensive place.
> San Francisco is not just magically an expensive place
but it is to people outside tech. I argue, pretty soon, San Francisco will become a magically expensive place for anyone outside AI
Now a shock to the HN audience: Around 90% of the Bay Area population does not work in tech!
> Today, the rent is going up again
AI is minting billionaires who can afford to purchase a lot of housing. San Francisco is supply constrained on housing.
Pricing of homes in San Francisco are going up because a lot less people are getting really rich and offering millions over asking price for the few homes that are up for sale.
An average person's income didn't go up in San Francisco. They suddenly don't have more money to pay in rent or a mortgage.
The life of an average person in San Francisco is not rosy nor indicative of this growth and that is the point I'm making and evidence that the article provides.
Yeah, seems like if you're living in a boom area you would be there for as long as you personally are booming. I think big city areas in general are expensive to live in. There's a LOT of space in the world where decent savings in boom area would cover you for most or all of your life. And the more people who are in boom areas, the more expensive it is to live there. So of course it makes sense that the dude at the top of the article is "jobless" as if he is... ?
Unless you fit a certain very narrow demographic and career profile, SF is a shitty place to actually live. I understand that some people have an emotional or family attachment to it but honestly most of them would be way better off in the long run if they just moved. We can debate all sorts of hypothetical government policy changes that would make the city more livable and affordable, but come on, realistically most of those aren't ever going to happen. At some point you have to accept reality.
I would agree with you, until I asked someone who lived there how it is that people working normal jobs like Bartenders can afford to live anywhere in SF.
I was told that there are rent-subsidy programs that allow people making relatively low wages to pay e.g. $300-800/mo for a 1-bedroom apartment
My thought after hearing that is that, unless you're making north of $300-400k, it's probably better to make around $50-60k and collect subsidies + benefits. The middle income group gets shafted.
It used to not be like this. As a tech worker, i can say objectively that tech workers ruined SF. Rent was more expensive than South Bay but only by a couple of hundred dollars per month. In 2005 I paid $1700/month for a rent-controlled 700 sqft 1 bedroom in near Noe Valley. I later moved into another rent-controlled 500 sq ft studio on Twin Peaks with a view of the Bay for $1200/month in 2008.
I had friends who were artists and graphic designers that lived in a 2-floor 4 bedroom apartment in Noe Valley with incredible views of the Bay. They were paying $3200/month combined, so $800/month each.
That time was probably one of the best in my life. There was always something to do in SF, we would go out every weekend, go to bars, clubs. Golden Gate park for sports, free outdoor concerts like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, I saw Robin Williams perform comedy one year for free and most importantly it wasn't crowded. People didn't think that their social media life depended on them going to an event or a restaurant and posting about it.
It started getting worse because of the 7x7 list and lines grew longer because people wanted to follow that list like sheep. Then more and more tech workers drove up the prices until all my friends that I used to hang out with moved out of SF to other parts of the country. DC, LA, Denver. All their apartments got replaced by tech workers. SF is now a mono-culture and pretty destroyed if you ask me. Everything is overcrowded, unaffordable and overhyped. It's a real disappointment to see one of the most beautiful cities in the world rot from the inside.
Where’s those other highly walkable cities (by American standards) with great running weather, plentiful amazing views, and diverse restaurants and activities?
In terms of effective income, there are loads of places. Like, yes, I took a paycut moving from SF to the Seattle Metro, but I was able to buy the kind of house I'd need to live in Tracy to afford, within the same (time) commute that I had from Oakland to the South City. I have a peculiar affinity for Seattle that I don't have for, say, Portland, so it was an easy choice. I actually really appreciated SF as a city, but I also moved there just before the COVID lockdowns hit, and the Bay Area is a profoundly unpleasant place when lockdowns force it into endless-suburbia mode.
Denver is very much the same as Seattle (although I'd argue its got less going on culturally than Seattle).
There are a number of cities where yes, you'll make less objectively, but the cost of living is low enough that that's a wash. You'll have less prestige and maybe work on less important projects. But if that's important to you, why are you pinning your cards to someone else's mast instead of striking out on your own?
A you looking for a list or something? It's a big country. There are a zillion places to live that are better than SF in most ways, depending on your priorities.
Whenever someone suggests a specific alternative city here we always get a lot of lame complaints that the proposed alternative is unacceptable due to weather / jobs / transportation / politics / food / family ties / blah blah blah. I think a lot of people just prefer to complain instead of taking action to improve their situation.
But anyway if you want a specific location then try Cleveland. It's a nice place to live.
The way you said “face reality” implies a lot of delusion.
There’s a lot of nostalgia. Both for what the city used to be and what I potentially can (but most likely won’t) become. The delusion is so rampant that it’s really what causes people to vote you (and me) down. Like objectively speaking sf is a terrible city and many people agree. At best you can like the city but you cannot ignore the fact that there are some pretty horrible downsides for living here and that many many people hate the city.
I will say if you work in tech or are a liberal extremist or you’re gay then it may be worth it to live here but I wouldn’t call it wonderful. You can’t make the city better if you don’t admit the faults.
San Francisco is one of three cities in America where you can walk to things. A lot of people don’t value that, and that’s fine, those people should all leave
There’s a lot to unpack about this, from this is being result of capitalism (or hyper capitalism in US) and not AI, all the way to this would not have had happened if software or tech people were “street smarts” rather than just logical smart, they basically shot themselves in the foot, they went crazy on automating their own work to the point when the boss saw the work is too automated to need them, they got fired, meanwhile if you look at other sectors (healthcare, education, legal, etc.) they immediately lobbied to prevent such case, they allowed the use of AI but they are still the gate keeper of it: “oh you need to use AI in a healthcare matter?! Nope, can’t do that without a licensed practitioner!!” It’s simply to make sure they are not going to be jobless within 5y.
Solutions? Well, it varies from how invested you are to solve it, are you open to tame capitalism and dismantling the concept of infinite growth and minimizing expenses while maximizing profits? Or are you open to regulate the tech market just like other sectors, and mandating a human gatekeepers regardless of how smart the AI is? There are many solutions but I highly doubt any will be done in the current political atmosphere.
> Or are you open to regulate the tech market just like other sectors, and mandating a human gatekeepers regardless of how smart the AI is?
The doctors and nurses might feel smug and cozy having pulled off a hiest and putting regulation in their favor for now but you know who are even better at pulling off hiests and putting regulation in their favor? MBAs and corporate attorneys.
The fat salaries of doctors and nurses are going to be squeezed out into the hospital's bottomline and the doctors and nurses won't be able to do anything about it because the very drama they pulled off to get to where they are will be used against them. It's already happenning - wages for doctors and nurses aren't growing and they are being eaten away by inflation. It's very likely they will make the same amount of dollars in 2036 that they make today.
The tech industry has chosen not to play dirty and we don't have to.
AI is making it increasingly easy to start your own business. I certainly have been encouraging people to find their own customers before their (ex)employer forces them to.
Starting your own business isn't for everyone and it's scary but it's no more difficult or scary than 12 rounds of tech interviews.
There are H1B armies of regular people, doing regular jobs, that require no critical skills, making decent wages, at the cost of the American worker/Graduate. Thank your Gov for allowing corporations to fill their ranks with slave labor. It all starts with a particular kind of CEO, CIO/CTO and it guts the technology department of American employees.
I don't think that's what's happening here. It's pretty clear importing thousands (10s of thousands?) people into an area has an effect on the local residents that's not good.
There is nothing "weak" about standing up for your own economic interests. The H1B program has largely been based on a fiction--using a handful of superstars as marketing cover for tens of thousands of mid-skill developers. But with AI now coming for everyone's job the pretext of a "skills shortage" is unsustainable.
Mid-skill developers? It's now become common to just contract out dev work to folks in Eastern Europe, for example. There are exceptional people there. And it's now really hard to get them to the U.S. so instead of having them pay taxes in the U.S. and spend their wages in the U.S. and maybe found their own startups and thereby grow the U.S. economy, they just do all that in their home country.
All that immigrant hate is so short sighted, it's hard to believe that you think that's actually in your own interest. Both common sense and history disagree with you.
(Though I admit that xenophobia has evolved in ancient human societies for good reasons. No reason to not realize it's bad though, not just morally but economically too. Very suitable for populism though, clearly.)
Immigration implicates economic and cultural issues, trying to reframe them as being about "hate" or "fear" is just a form of misdirection. Similarly, dismissing the concerns as "short sighted" is just ignorant of history. Plato was thinking about the challenges of reconciling immigration with democracy 2,000 years ago. Alexander Hamilton presaged the destabilizing effects of immigration on democracy at the inception of the U.S. https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2016/12/21/hamiltons-actual-vie...
I think that's their point - the subjects of the article should be working instead of hiking. But someone with an H1B visa, yet lacking any special skills, has a job instead of them.
I don't agree with their premise, just restating it.
Wages aren't the primary determination of slave labor, it's control. I suppose "indentured servant" would be even better, but there are an enormous number of restrictions on H1B holders in how they move (both between employers and countries).
(I don't love this analogy and consider it extreme and not overly accurate)
Then let them. If they want to offshore, let them have the associated pros and cons, and free up real estate that American workers can use to start competitors.
They just have to go to any large corporate campus and take a good look. I know of a particular one in TX where 90% of the IT employees are of one particular nationality and at least 90 % of that group do not have any kind of permanent status in the USA. I am not talking about 100-200 employees, I'm talking about 1000 plus.
The old myth of "immigrants are taking our jobs". The American economy (and all western countries) would be substantially weaker without all those immigrants, highly skilled or not. Without them, the agricultural sector would collapse, the health care system would barely hang by a thread, and next time you go use a toilet at your companies office or a random shopping mall, try to find out who cleans it regularly (hint: that person is most certainly not born in your country nor highly educated).
Immigrants grow the economy, if anything. They make your life better.
That I even have to read this nonsense in a place with so smart and highly educated people as HN makes me pretty sad.
Thats not what the issue is, it's that they aren't free to job-hop in the way that other people are. H1B keeps their wages artificially depressed and they have a sword of damocles over their heads threatening deportation.
Random refugees coming into the country "takin my jerb" isn't happening. Large companies importing skilled labor for specific positions to either drive down sector wages or acquire workers who are more willing to put up with bad working conditions (this is nursing right now) is a different beast.
https://archive.ph/hTPql
These layoffs are happening because the entire tech industry is sinking all of its free cash into AI capex. H1B abuse and offshoring have both existed for decades, and neither are the proximate cause for these layoffs. If you’re blaming immigrants for this, you are either doing so in bad faith, or you are embarrassingly gullible.
Give them some credit, they can be both
Sure, but let’s not forget that ~90% of the Bay Area does not work in tech. They are all being left out of the AI boom, similar to how they were left out of every tech boom before it. Don’t see why we need to specifically weep for these ex-FAANG engineers because they couldn’t get into OpenAI or Anthropic.
A lot of it is local politics too. The Bay Area has chosen very hostile to economic growth policies especially around zoning/ affordable housing etc.
So it’s like if they keep voting for people who are anti growth it seems like the expected outcome to be left out. I.e. if new apartment buildings are largely banned, you don’t get the opportunity to open a coffee shop or work as a building manager.
This isn't exactly true because some others participate indirectly. The most obvious winners are the people who bought housing or other real estate. There are also non-programmers who invested, the most famous may be the Persian carpet dealers in Palo Alto who've been investing in startups on the side.
Yes, there are many who don't own their house, but some of those can also benefit. California has some of the most generous social benefits in the nation, all because they can tax the tech companies.
"A group of more than four dozen laid-off workers gathered at 11 a.m. on a Monday to hike Mount Tamalpais, a majestic peak overlooking the San Francisco Bay. They descended the mostly deserted trail in groups of about a dozen, led by Basem Istanbouli, a former Google employee sporting a bucket hat and a pair of toe shoes."
I'd rather hike than sling JavaScript for a bunch of finance goofs, but that's just me.
Hiking doesn’t buy much food and shelter
if they brought tents they might be scouting their new neighborhood
My point still stands.
If the pay is the same I fully agree. But it is not.
Imagine not thinking about "pay" all the time. Try it.
I did try it. Then the mortgage late notices started to pile up. Then the IRS started calling. I don't recommend it.
Imagine not thinking about “food” and “shelter” all the time. Try it.
Syndicated at https://www.fa-mag.com/news/jobless-tech-workers-are-being-l...
EDIT: Downvotes incoming so I am blocked out of responding to comments for 8h.
San Francisco is one of the most expensive places on earth. $180k/yr doesn't go very far in San Francisco specially if you want to have a family. Dual income becomes pretty much mandatory and if one of those incomes are lost, things start to get tough.
Pretty much anywhere else in the US (outside some parts of the East coast) and almost anywhere in the world, $180k/yr is an amazing salary.
Tech was already moving towards asynchronous working but AI just exponentially accelerated asynchronous work. Bulk of the software in 2026 has been written, reviewed and tested by AI (whether the HN crowd likes it or agrees with the practice, or not).
"AI" has, and will, suck out capital out of the market - this, coupled with non-zero interest rates is putting companies under pressure where cost savings is the top, if not one of the top priorities.
So these two conversations are happening in every board and executive room in San Francisco:
- SMB/startups: Can we go faster with less people if we load up on tokens? Yes.
- MNCs/Large Orgs: Are our engineers out of Austin or Asia equally productive with AI assistance? Yes.
So the decision is simple: San Francisco's expensive engineers and tech workers are useful in a rapidly contracting niche. They are still valuable for startups based out of SF (but the startups are just hiring less than they used to). They are still valuable for rapidly expanding companies based out of SF that are not yet having the cost discussion - Anthropic and OpenAI are certainly hiring.
But rest of the companies are just hiring equally talented workers out of Austin or Vietnam, for way cheaper.
The highly skilled will continue to get hired but the median worker out of San Francisco is being replaced.
That said, AI is making it increasingly easy to start your own business. I certainly have been encouraging people to find their own customers before their (ex)employer forces them to.
San Francisco is expensive because the competition for both technical talent and housing is fierce. The dynamics you’re describing existed from 2020-2022, and as a result it became cheaper to live here. Today, the rent is going up again, because companies are locating and hiring here again. San Francisco is not just magically an expensive place.
> San Francisco is not just magically an expensive place
but it is to people outside tech. I argue, pretty soon, San Francisco will become a magically expensive place for anyone outside AI
Now a shock to the HN audience: Around 90% of the Bay Area population does not work in tech!
> Today, the rent is going up again
AI is minting billionaires who can afford to purchase a lot of housing. San Francisco is supply constrained on housing.
Pricing of homes in San Francisco are going up because a lot less people are getting really rich and offering millions over asking price for the few homes that are up for sale.
An average person's income didn't go up in San Francisco. They suddenly don't have more money to pay in rent or a mortgage.
The life of an average person in San Francisco is not rosy nor indicative of this growth and that is the point I'm making and evidence that the article provides.
Yeah, seems like if you're living in a boom area you would be there for as long as you personally are booming. I think big city areas in general are expensive to live in. There's a LOT of space in the world where decent savings in boom area would cover you for most or all of your life. And the more people who are in boom areas, the more expensive it is to live there. So of course it makes sense that the dude at the top of the article is "jobless" as if he is... ?
Sounds like they just enjoy the early retirement.
Unless you fit a certain very narrow demographic and career profile, SF is a shitty place to actually live. I understand that some people have an emotional or family attachment to it but honestly most of them would be way better off in the long run if they just moved. We can debate all sorts of hypothetical government policy changes that would make the city more livable and affordable, but come on, realistically most of those aren't ever going to happen. At some point you have to accept reality.
I would agree with you, until I asked someone who lived there how it is that people working normal jobs like Bartenders can afford to live anywhere in SF.
I was told that there are rent-subsidy programs that allow people making relatively low wages to pay e.g. $300-800/mo for a 1-bedroom apartment
My thought after hearing that is that, unless you're making north of $300-400k, it's probably better to make around $50-60k and collect subsidies + benefits. The middle income group gets shafted.
It used to not be like this. As a tech worker, i can say objectively that tech workers ruined SF. Rent was more expensive than South Bay but only by a couple of hundred dollars per month. In 2005 I paid $1700/month for a rent-controlled 700 sqft 1 bedroom in near Noe Valley. I later moved into another rent-controlled 500 sq ft studio on Twin Peaks with a view of the Bay for $1200/month in 2008.
I had friends who were artists and graphic designers that lived in a 2-floor 4 bedroom apartment in Noe Valley with incredible views of the Bay. They were paying $3200/month combined, so $800/month each.
That time was probably one of the best in my life. There was always something to do in SF, we would go out every weekend, go to bars, clubs. Golden Gate park for sports, free outdoor concerts like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, I saw Robin Williams perform comedy one year for free and most importantly it wasn't crowded. People didn't think that their social media life depended on them going to an event or a restaurant and posting about it.
It started getting worse because of the 7x7 list and lines grew longer because people wanted to follow that list like sheep. Then more and more tech workers drove up the prices until all my friends that I used to hang out with moved out of SF to other parts of the country. DC, LA, Denver. All their apartments got replaced by tech workers. SF is now a mono-culture and pretty destroyed if you ask me. Everything is overcrowded, unaffordable and overhyped. It's a real disappointment to see one of the most beautiful cities in the world rot from the inside.
Where’s those other highly walkable cities (by American standards) with great running weather, plentiful amazing views, and diverse restaurants and activities?
I’ve apparently been overlooking all of them!
In the real world you'll have to compromise on some of your priorities.
Do you mind being slightly drizzled on?
If not, Seattle/Bellevue are a great option. Or Portland even.
Seattle as in Amazonville? Explored there a bit last summer, pass. All cited items are worse.
Portland I’ll admit haven’t explored well, so not going to give a judgement.
Where though?
In terms of effective income, there are loads of places. Like, yes, I took a paycut moving from SF to the Seattle Metro, but I was able to buy the kind of house I'd need to live in Tracy to afford, within the same (time) commute that I had from Oakland to the South City. I have a peculiar affinity for Seattle that I don't have for, say, Portland, so it was an easy choice. I actually really appreciated SF as a city, but I also moved there just before the COVID lockdowns hit, and the Bay Area is a profoundly unpleasant place when lockdowns force it into endless-suburbia mode.
Denver is very much the same as Seattle (although I'd argue its got less going on culturally than Seattle).
There are a number of cities where yes, you'll make less objectively, but the cost of living is low enough that that's a wash. You'll have less prestige and maybe work on less important projects. But if that's important to you, why are you pinning your cards to someone else's mast instead of striking out on your own?
A you looking for a list or something? It's a big country. There are a zillion places to live that are better than SF in most ways, depending on your priorities.
Whenever someone suggests a specific alternative city here we always get a lot of lame complaints that the proposed alternative is unacceptable due to weather / jobs / transportation / politics / food / family ties / blah blah blah. I think a lot of people just prefer to complain instead of taking action to improve their situation.
But anyway if you want a specific location then try Cleveland. It's a nice place to live.
The way you said “face reality” implies a lot of delusion.
There’s a lot of nostalgia. Both for what the city used to be and what I potentially can (but most likely won’t) become. The delusion is so rampant that it’s really what causes people to vote you (and me) down. Like objectively speaking sf is a terrible city and many people agree. At best you can like the city but you cannot ignore the fact that there are some pretty horrible downsides for living here and that many many people hate the city.
I will say if you work in tech or are a liberal extremist or you’re gay then it may be worth it to live here but I wouldn’t call it wonderful. You can’t make the city better if you don’t admit the faults.
TIL I’m a “liberal extremist” for liking the weather, the walkability, views, and plentiful activities that comes with so many people in a small area.
San Francisco is one of three cities in America where you can walk to things. A lot of people don’t value that, and that’s fine, those people should all leave
There’s a lot to unpack about this, from this is being result of capitalism (or hyper capitalism in US) and not AI, all the way to this would not have had happened if software or tech people were “street smarts” rather than just logical smart, they basically shot themselves in the foot, they went crazy on automating their own work to the point when the boss saw the work is too automated to need them, they got fired, meanwhile if you look at other sectors (healthcare, education, legal, etc.) they immediately lobbied to prevent such case, they allowed the use of AI but they are still the gate keeper of it: “oh you need to use AI in a healthcare matter?! Nope, can’t do that without a licensed practitioner!!” It’s simply to make sure they are not going to be jobless within 5y.
Solutions? Well, it varies from how invested you are to solve it, are you open to tame capitalism and dismantling the concept of infinite growth and minimizing expenses while maximizing profits? Or are you open to regulate the tech market just like other sectors, and mandating a human gatekeepers regardless of how smart the AI is? There are many solutions but I highly doubt any will be done in the current political atmosphere.
> Or are you open to regulate the tech market just like other sectors, and mandating a human gatekeepers regardless of how smart the AI is?
The doctors and nurses might feel smug and cozy having pulled off a hiest and putting regulation in their favor for now but you know who are even better at pulling off hiests and putting regulation in their favor? MBAs and corporate attorneys.
The fat salaries of doctors and nurses are going to be squeezed out into the hospital's bottomline and the doctors and nurses won't be able to do anything about it because the very drama they pulled off to get to where they are will be used against them. It's already happenning - wages for doctors and nurses aren't growing and they are being eaten away by inflation. It's very likely they will make the same amount of dollars in 2036 that they make today.
The tech industry has chosen not to play dirty and we don't have to.
AI is making it increasingly easy to start your own business. I certainly have been encouraging people to find their own customers before their (ex)employer forces them to.
Starting your own business isn't for everyone and it's scary but it's no more difficult or scary than 12 rounds of tech interviews.
There are H1B armies of regular people, doing regular jobs, that require no critical skills, making decent wages, at the cost of the American worker/Graduate. Thank your Gov for allowing corporations to fill their ranks with slave labor. It all starts with a particular kind of CEO, CIO/CTO and it guts the technology department of American employees.
Always the weak blame the immigrants and then vote for the robber barons against their own interests.
I don't think that's what's happening here. It's pretty clear importing thousands (10s of thousands?) people into an area has an effect on the local residents that's not good.
There is nothing "weak" about standing up for your own economic interests. The H1B program has largely been based on a fiction--using a handful of superstars as marketing cover for tens of thousands of mid-skill developers. But with AI now coming for everyone's job the pretext of a "skills shortage" is unsustainable.
Mid-skill developers? It's now become common to just contract out dev work to folks in Eastern Europe, for example. There are exceptional people there. And it's now really hard to get them to the U.S. so instead of having them pay taxes in the U.S. and spend their wages in the U.S. and maybe found their own startups and thereby grow the U.S. economy, they just do all that in their home country.
All that immigrant hate is so short sighted, it's hard to believe that you think that's actually in your own interest. Both common sense and history disagree with you.
(Though I admit that xenophobia has evolved in ancient human societies for good reasons. No reason to not realize it's bad though, not just morally but economically too. Very suitable for populism though, clearly.)
Immigration implicates economic and cultural issues, trying to reframe them as being about "hate" or "fear" is just a form of misdirection. Similarly, dismissing the concerns as "short sighted" is just ignorant of history. Plato was thinking about the challenges of reconciling immigration with democracy 2,000 years ago. Alexander Hamilton presaged the destabilizing effects of immigration on democracy at the inception of the U.S. https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2016/12/21/hamiltons-actual-vie...
These aren't immigrants.
I think that's their point - the subjects of the article should be working instead of hiking. But someone with an H1B visa, yet lacking any special skills, has a job instead of them.
I don't agree with their premise, just restating it.
Is the pie so fixed?
How many "regular" positions would be lost in a counterfactual world with less domestic demand?
> making decent wages ... slave labor
Wages aren't the primary determination of slave labor, it's control. I suppose "indentured servant" would be even better, but there are an enormous number of restrictions on H1B holders in how they move (both between employers and countries).
(I don't love this analogy and consider it extreme and not overly accurate)
Why do we need an abysmal analogy when "H1B holder" describes it well enough?
Do you not understand that analogies are used for people who don't understand what H1B holders are, or what the user of the analogy thinks of them?
If they can't do that then they just offshore it. The big tech firms are increasing their presence and offices in other countries for cheaper labor.
Then let them. If they want to offshore, let them have the associated pros and cons, and free up real estate that American workers can use to start competitors.
Offshored workers don't compete with me for food, housing, education, etc.
You're competing with 2 billion Asians. We're never going back to the 1950s no matter now much people cry about it.
What kind of CEO, CIO/CTO?
The kind that has a strong in-group bias and likes to hire from his own ethnicity, gradually taking over departments.
americans are not supposed to work, they are supposed to join the military and free up space
It’s so weird how this is getting downvoted. It’s obviously true for anyone with two eyes
They just have to go to any large corporate campus and take a good look. I know of a particular one in TX where 90% of the IT employees are of one particular nationality and at least 90 % of that group do not have any kind of permanent status in the USA. I am not talking about 100-200 employees, I'm talking about 1000 plus.
If you want to come here and be racist, stop being a coward and say it with your whole chest instead of hiding behind “one particular nationality”
Clearly a lot of people benefit from this situation, which is why you can’t speak about it publicly
That's a wild claim. 1000 non-status immigrant IT employees at one Texas company? Name it, it'll be global headlines if true.
> at the cost of the American worker/Graduate
The old myth of "immigrants are taking our jobs". The American economy (and all western countries) would be substantially weaker without all those immigrants, highly skilled or not. Without them, the agricultural sector would collapse, the health care system would barely hang by a thread, and next time you go use a toilet at your companies office or a random shopping mall, try to find out who cleans it regularly (hint: that person is most certainly not born in your country nor highly educated).
Immigrants grow the economy, if anything. They make your life better.
That I even have to read this nonsense in a place with so smart and highly educated people as HN makes me pretty sad.
"Immigants! I knew it was them! Even when it was the bears, I knew it was them!"
Thats not what the issue is, it's that they aren't free to job-hop in the way that other people are. H1B keeps their wages artificially depressed and they have a sword of damocles over their heads threatening deportation.
Random refugees coming into the country "takin my jerb" isn't happening. Large companies importing skilled labor for specific positions to either drive down sector wages or acquire workers who are more willing to put up with bad working conditions (this is nursing right now) is a different beast.
Trump already charges $100K in taxes for each. Is this not enough?
That ended up not happening.
I liked the idea (even as a former h1b holder) but it seems tied up in court and nobody is paying it yet
Clearly not