Probably won't be able to hire all those cheap H1Bs (and that's coming from a former H1B!)
Trump loves cheap H1Bs.. Who do you think works on his resorts for minimum wage?
Those are H-2Bs.
Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
131–140 of 169 posts
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having watched and listened to Thiel for several years now, I came up with a pet hypothesis I call 'The Wolfian World' that I feel describes what's going on more accurately than the newspapers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413
I am an immense fan of BOTNS, it is perhaps the most cherished novel in my collection, several years after reading it I still haven't read another novel that has impacted me in a similar fashion (recommendations are welcome), however, while I don't object to your analysis of some of the book's themes, I think your connecting it to current political events is a pretty huge stretch and really only accurate in a somewha…
My email is in my profile if you or anybody else wanted to talk about BOTNS and why there's a deep connection between Peter Thiel's ideas and those of Gene Wolfe.
I don't think it is a coincidence that Wolfe was an engineer during the same period that Thiel has been scrutinizing. There are many intriguing connections. The energy crisis in oil, the rejection of nuclear energy (the New Sun). I fancy I see allegory. Maybe I'm mad but I am fascinated by both sets of ideas and cannot help seeing a wonderful marriage. ;-)
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh... The Prime Minister of Australia is actively working against the technology industry here, and he actually states that preventing Australians from having better internet access is his biggest accomplishment.
ClassyJacket - you are a drongo. So is Turnbull, but it doesn't excuse you.
What is a drongo?
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not true here in France or most of Europe, for that matter. The only people happy about Trump is ultra-right wing/neo nazi panopticon of odd figures - Wilders, Le Pen, Farage, Orban ... Really the "crème de la crème" of Europe. And, of course, Putin. The rest is worried now - people are seriously questioning what happens, for example with NATO, after Trump's remarks on not unconditionally supporting the allies. Is Tr…
Tread carefully; while I suspect most of Europe doesn't care too much about Trump, the media and rest of the left wing in the UK labelled anyone pro-Brexit as ultra-right wing / neo Nazi types - they're still being called uneducated and racist by presenters on TV as I'm typing this. Then the vote for Brexit won a majority. They're not all scum at the extreme end of a political spectrum. If France goes down the same n…
Read carefully what I wrote. I didn't write that supporters were "scum" or "nazis". However, do check who was the first to congratulate and cheer Trump's victory:
Nigel Farage - former head of UKIP in UK, a party with extreme right wing history and some of the most vile and xenophobic rhetorics during the recent Brexit campaign.
Marine Le Pen - head of the French Front National, another extreme right party, with documented history of antisemitism, racism, xenophobia and outright neo-nazi tendencies. Their former leader (Le Pen the elder) famously said that holocaust was only "a detail of history", even going as far as joking about not enough Jews going up in smoke ...
Geert Wilders - the Dutch extreme right politician, well known for his anti-Europe and anti foreigner views
Victor Orban - the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary, known for his xenophobic policies, coalition government with the neo-nazi Jobbik party and negative views on liberal democracy - which he is successfully dismantling in Hungary.
With Le Pen I am afraid you could be right - here in France she has consistently around 30-40% of support already and a lot of people see her as a saviour against the "Arabs" (mostly people of North African descent - Moroccans and Algerians, both legaly and illegaly here and, by extension, all muslims), which are despised by many. The recent terrorist attacks and incompetent governments didn't help neither, but the animosity goes deeper and longer back than that.
However, the French system of presidential elections works differently than in the US, with two rounds where the 2 strongest candidates qualifying into the second round. She will likely lose there, because the racist, antisemitic past of her party is unpalatable to many. On the other hand, if the major parties don't put forward a sensible and popular candidate, anything could happen ...
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
The media are not the left. While individual publications might be exceptions to the rule generally the media are to the right of centre in Europe.
I don't where you get that from, but in France, most of the media are left-center left, with a few to the right.
That's what you get when you generalize over all media and, especially, not knowing any of them.
European media are on both sides of the aisle, you will find both left and right leaning ones, including crazy tabloids.
However, what you likely won't find is something like Fox News, with conspiracy theory pushing nutcases being regulars there.
BTW, this theory about a "media conspiracy" is not new, nor something that Trump or Putin invented. Lügenpresse ("lying press") is a term widely popularized by (not invented) and mostly associated with National Socialists in Germany - in Hitler's Mein Kampf, for example.
Most people parroting this unfortunately don't care - anyone having a different view has to be a part of some complot or aiding the "enemy" (whoever that happens to be).
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Salaries in western Europe are about half of US salaries, if you go to the East, while still within EU, a programmer could be paid as little as $15-20k/year. If you go even more to the East - Ukraine, Russia, China, India, etc. you can get very highly qualified people for even less, happy to work on a project for you. Software is one of the easiest things to outsource/offshore, unlike manufacturing or servic…
Software is NOT easy to outsource. I have been part of many outsourcing projects over the last 15 years, and I can count on one hand the number of those that have been acceptable. Outsourcing requires a completely different style of management than of a local team of developers. I have had better luck outsourcing art and animation tasks. But even there cultural barriers pop up all the time.
I am not saying it is easy, only that it is the easiest when compared to e.g. manufacturing or services. You can't exactly outsource a dentist or barber to India and outsourcing manufacturing is a hugely expensive and complicated task, with a ton of logistics involved.
Compared to that moving software development to another country is much simpler. It is difficult to get it right, but it is simpler to move things like specifications and code than containers of raw materials and goods.
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Salaries in western Europe are about half of US salaries, if you go to the East, while still within EU, a programmer could be paid as little as $15-20k/year. If you go even more to the East - Ukraine, Russia, China, India, etc. you can get very highly qualified people for even less, happy to work on a project for you. Software is one of the easiest things to outsource/offshore, unlike manufacturing or servic…
Reality check: decent developer in Russia earns $30k/year net, which means ~$40k gross. Really good ones are $50-60k/year net.
That's actually more than here in France :(
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reality check: decent developer in Russia earns $30k/year net, which means ~$40k gross. Really good ones are $50-60k/year net.
That's actually more than here in France :(
I think this is because of France's progressive income tax rates. In Russia we still have flat scale.
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#139I'd guess it will be a harder sell to get software developers in Europe, Australia, NZ, etc. to move to the US.
Or easier. Hillary is a face of western corruption to much of the world. So long as Trump delegates the tech stuff properly and doesn't do anything too unusual the moral choice of the US should be easier.
No ruler manages bureaucracy alone. Trump will have to bring in classical Washington. We'd like to think that Trump will perform a full-on house cleaning, sourcing principally from his business connections, but the reality is that everyone needs classical Washington because each person you bring on is a king of his little fiefdom in the NSA, CIA, FBI, armed forces, etc.
Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley
#140I actually think there is a possibility that it could be easier to get into US as highly skilled migrant under Trump presidency because of his anti-immigrant polities. If he raises a minimum income bar for H1B to 150K and keep the same cap, then it would be much less qualified applicants for H1B visas and therefore there would not be cap overflow with annoying lottery process. Of course, I can't predict what Trump is…
You confuse skill with high salary. If you're a part of HN community and work for a startup with some seed funding, good luck with (a) finding people (b) paying them $150k. Not sure how you the want government to evaluate chemical, mechanical, aerospace etc. engineers. Right now it's formal education, since I think it's hard to do it objectively otherwise. For software engineers you expected USCIS will look at our ..…
I agree with most of your points. If the current application system is modified to prevent the 'DDoS' by the big firms, it would solve most of the H1B issues and automatically fix a lot of things.
What would probably work is - increasing the visa application fees quite significantly if a company is applying for more than X applications a year.