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Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

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Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#361
post #86

It's not just you. I have an Ivy league degree, worked in deep learning since alexnet at a leading startup in the space, was a CTO of a startup that got acquired and have referrals from very senior people at the top FANG companies and still struggled to get interviews. I also have research scientist friends with Neurips papers, ones that solved long standing open math problems and even they are struggling to get hire…

NYC is a much more attractive location than Warsaw, not just because of the salary, so I fully expect the open roles in NYC to be filled very quickly. I always wondered why American companies have offices in such unattractive locations. Last time I saw a company whose only European office was in Belgrade. Who are you going to convince to move to Belgrade to work for your company, lol? This is not like the US were all…

As polish immigrant who moved to NYC as a kid and grew up here there's no place I love more than NYC but you're wrong about Warsaw. I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe and the standard of living in Warsaw is better than 95% of them.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#362
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just not true. The H1B visa program didn't exist until the 1990s. In fact, until passage of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the US was under strict immigration restrictions established by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. During that time we assimilated the Ellis Islanders, beat the Great Depression, out-produced the Axis to win World War 2, split the atom, rebuilt Europe and Japan, electrified t…

>During that time we assimilated the Ellis Islanders, beat the Great Depression, out-produced the Axis to win World War 2, split the atom, rebuilt Europe and Japan, electrified the country, fed the world with our Green Revolution, invented the transistor, cured polio, invented the integrated circuit, and built the Empire State Building, Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam and interstate highway system. Cheap tech labor be…

>Green Revolution"... depended entirely on the cooperation of foreign governments

Habor-bosch fed the world, green rev was a gift of that refined process to a country that couldn't feed itself.

>And Americans may have invented the transistor, but the patents originated with Canadian, Austrian and German research

which of course would have been useless without boolean logic, invented by an american.

Most of your argument is a straw man against america the narrative. The US civil engineer corps developed the most useful part of our infrastructure - the hydroelectric dams. Historically, I don't think the designs of critical national infrastructure was outsourced to immigrants to save a few bucks because to do so would be shortsighted and irresponsible.

>you voted wrong

as if there was a real choice offered and people should be assumed to have voted wrong and held accountable.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#363

Yes, we reached peak tech employment. The market was flooded with job openings from a decade-plus of endlessly increasing VC funding. So a lot of not-technically-inclined people took bootcamps and entered the job market, and for a while there was enough jobs. But with VC funding slowly drying up, and a shaky economy, all those excess jobs are gone. But there's still a ton of people trying to get the jobs. I have two…

Well the CEOs are telling us there are more jobs than ever and they need the ability to hire more people from abroad to even have a chance at filling them. So are there jobs or not?

No, there are not that many jobs. There is a normal amount of jobs, and there are lot of unskilled workers trying to get those jobs. A large amount of the jobs are being listed for senior level skillset and experience, and there's just not that many of those candidates. It's even harder to find them when hiring managers are awash in unskilled candidates who look similar, with no discernible way to sort them out.

So the CEOs are claiming there aren't enough skilled workers, because it's technically true. The main problem is they've raised their standards [for the same wages], there was never that many experts just hanging around looking for jobs, and they shoot themselves in the foot.

They could fill positions pretty quickly. But our whole industry is a bad joke. "Highly Skilled" positions, where we don't have any quantifiable standards or qualifications, and we divine candidates from a stack of hundreds of applicants by software scanning pieces of paper for buzzwords. The final irony being these jobs can all be done remote, yet these CEOs claiming there's no candidates are requiring people live close to an office. If you've ever wanted proof that human beings are generally irrational and stupid, look no further.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#364
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is a much more attractive location than Warsaw, not just because of the salary, so I fully expect the open roles in NYC to be filled very quickly. I always wondered why American companies have offices in such unattractive locations. Last time I saw a company whose only European office was in Belgrade. Who are you going to convince to move to Belgrade to work for your company, lol? This is not like the US were all…

As polish immigrant who moved to NYC as a kid and grew up here there's no place I love more than NYC but you're wrong about Warsaw. I've been to most major cities in the US and Europe and the standard of living in Warsaw is better than 95% of them.

I know that Warsaw is a great city, but I don't want to be a foreigner in Poland. I think there's a host of aspects that would impact the standard of living, when one is a foreigner in another country, that you aren't fully considering. NYC is great because it's a city of foreigners. Warsaw isn't.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is a much more attractive location than Warsaw, not just because of the salary, so I fully expect the open roles in NYC to be filled very quickly. I always wondered why American companies have offices in such unattractive locations. Last time I saw a company whose only European office was in Belgrade. Who are you going to convince to move to Belgrade to work for your company, lol? This is not like the US were all…

On a below-average US salary living in Belgrade your quality of life would be equal to a 7-digit salary living in the US. Not to mention that you would be in one of the safest cities in the World for women and children and generally would live better than Seinfeld on Park Ave :) and of course everyone speaks english…

As I said in the other comment, I just don't think it would be a good experience when one is a foreigner. Maybe if you consider it as just an adventure. I personally think I would get bored and lonely very fast.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An argument against not being allowed to import more people after layoffs (and it’s the one people like PG and Musk are making) is that the people who were laid off simply don’t have the skills required to allow companies to succeed. They need to import labor because the domestic labor pool isn’t good enough. A quieter part is that people immigrating also expect less for their outputs.

And once they are hear the H1B somewhat locks then into an employer gutter damping salaries

It’s spelt here. To hear means to use your ears.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#367
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is palpable. For many years, FAANGs and the likes have made billions across the world without hiring any significant amount of people in nearly all of those economies. Zero profit for the non-US countries. Take a random one, Denmark. Google and Apple sure have been making great money off of the Danes. What has Denmark gotten in return for it? Nothing. It's all gone towards (generally US) investor returns, a…

This is a bad example. Google hired some VM specialists who worked out of their Aarhus office. I think they used their research for Android. I don't know if Google still does this, but we have (or had) a large number of people working on CS problems which they could use working at our universities they could attract.

It's negligible. Pick a random different country if you're co nvinced Denmark is an outlier. Compare vs. their jobs in the US. Now compare that to per-country revenue. Quite simply, the % profit margin per country, looking at their expenditures made in each country (incl. salaries paid in that country) vs their revenues there.

And then compare it to "what if Google wouldn't operate at all in Denmark", how much jobs that would create.

The great news is this isn't a hypothetical that can be waved away with "we don't know", because we have a golden example in South Korea, where the 10+ year delay that Google had in gaining market share has resulted in tens of thousands of local jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist.

Could every country have its own Google a la South Korea? Maybe not. But plenty could.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#368
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simpler to just say wages are x% of gdp.

Not sure that would make sense. And it probably would appear like communism to the US, because one company or industry increasing the GDP would then translate into benefitting the workers of all other companies/industries. Also, if GDP decreases, salary would have to decrease as well.

I don't think you understand what I said. Instead of nominally inflation which is gamed, use total wages as a percentage of GDP.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#369
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If no one hires 0-2 how many 2-4 will there be?

That’s definitely a problem right now, but it’s still not worth hiring people just to train them and have them leave. I think this one of the reasons for the popularity of H1B, as this new normal isn’t worldwide yet.

That's why I said they tried nothing and are out of ideas.

Re: Ask HN: Are you unable to find employment?

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a below-average US salary living in Belgrade your quality of life would be equal to a 7-digit salary living in the US. Not to mention that you would be in one of the safest cities in the World for women and children and generally would live better than Seinfeld on Park Ave :) and of course everyone speaks english…

As I said in the other comment, I just don't think it would be a good experience when one is a foreigner. Maybe if you consider it as just an adventure. I personally think I would get bored and lonely very fast.

oh man, honestly this can’t be further from the truth, regardless of your age, marital status… belgrade in particular and europe in general would be anything but boring for US folk!
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