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The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
101–110 of 126 posts
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reality is you couldn't hand over jobs to the most qualified person. In most cases the most qualified person already works for you (or is you!), and just needs an assistant who by definition is less qualified. Suppose you found someone at your competitor who is doing your exact same job (already unlikely - their have a different structure in some way that is important) who is better than you. Would they be willin…
Your hypothesis straight up assumes that a) Americans have the best possible education required for the work (we don't; functional illiteracy has never been higher in the last few decades). And b) Americans are the most fluent in English (again see a.). Even if the above assumptions are true the set of Americans who are qualified will be completely outnumbered by, say, even 2% of qualified people from a huge populati…
Your first assumption is completely and utterly wrong. I do not require anyone to have the best education. America does have a great education system. Do others do better? Well, that's very, very arguable, but let's accept it for discussion. The American education system is still very good. For most purposes, the American education system is more than good enough for the job at hand, and so it doesn't matter that an arbitrary education system is better since better doesn't matter once you've crossed the line of knowing the required material.
As for English, most Americans have English as a first language. Now there are certainly accent differences, but that actually plays in the favor of Americans when you're in the U.S. I can understand someone from Australia. However, they do speak a little different and I have to work a little bit at it. That makes them worse at any communication they would have to do with me. The majority of the world does not speak English as a first language. Some people are better than others, but the vast, vast majority of people I've heard who don't live in America have poor English skills. Sure, in countries like England or New Zealand, they will have great English skills as well, but when you get to Germany, some have great, some can just barely get by, and some, despite years of studying, can't actually speak it. Germans are one of the more likely people to have good English skills. If we were to go to China or India, English gets really really hard to understand. Their grammar is typically very very wrong.
Two billion people between India and China with rough numbers, two percent of that is about the population of the US. You're not looking at overwhelming the number of people in the US with only 2% of your population, at most half, and that is before we get into it, there are a lot of people in India and China who are older and not well educated. By contrast, your older people in the US are still likely to have had a fair amount of school and so be better.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support [...] Working in non-FAANG corporate America, these types of roles are the only thing thing I've ever seen H1B hires used for. They've run the gamut from incompetent to quite good, but none have ever been the "best and brightest". It saddens me that the left no longer seems to care about protecting American workers.
There are a lot of office / IT jobs that can be done by anyone with an education. Instead of a team of H1B from TCS doing BI dashboards, why not a bunch of local college kids? You dont even need a CS degree, any business degree student can do that with a couple days of training. Hell an associates degree should be more than enough. Companies used to hire local people, give aptitude tests and place people.
> why not a bunch of local college kids
Western college kids are not nearly as subservient and likely to keep their own interests in mind and not offer dog-loyalty to a company that will lay them off at the any sign of turmoil.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#104Conclusion: "There is plenty of international talent that can and should be leveraged in the appropriate places and the proper ways. There are many instances where you’re going to want to hire a leading expert in a technical field. But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..] We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believe…
> But most jobs, the qualifications are a core technical and subject competency combined with diligence and a willingness to learn. [..] > We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring. It's tough to square this noble thought with what's actually h…
> The culture of investing in training and mentoring to foster employee growth has been eroding for the past 40 years (if not more), to where it only seems to exist in limited capacity in legacy institutions and is completely absent in new (tech) firms. How does one convince business leaders to bring it back?
With engineers in the big tech companies mostly only staying for maybe 1-2 years I can understand employers not being very interested in training and mentoring to foster employee growth.
40 years ago engineers frequently stayed at companies like DEC, IBM, and HP for 10 to 20+ years.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#105Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#106False dichotomy. An H1B hire who has graduated from a US university and will receive a green card in a few years and become a US citizen after another 5 contributes to "the next generation of US talent" in the same way as John from Chicago.
You present the false dichotomy without qualifying 'the same way'. Is it in terms of collective taxes paid? Does that include or exclude family? Or is it in terms of money spent in the local economy? Or in terms of money sent abroad to other economies? Maybe it's in more direct terms of contributing to the next generation of talent, like volunteering, coaching, or hosting scholastic events for the community? Or maybe…
I meant in terms of contributions to the economy and talent pool, yes.
> don't socialize too much outside of their native language
If lack of socializing is an important factor, one should stop hiring introverts as well.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
this seems like common retort. hire h1b or else.... we open a role on linkedin for a data engineer for about 6 hrs and we got 500+ applicants and vast majority were indeed qualifed on paper. I am baffled by employers who cant seem to find anyone in the country that doesnt need work authorization. Love to hear what types of roles and where this is happening.
Its not that they can't find them. It's that if they can't exert the same control that they have over H1B visa holders, they would rather pay a lower salary (overseas). The US government could disincentivize companies from moving jobs over seas instead of hiring local, but the current administration seems more concerned with corporate profit and stock prices than anything else.
>if they can't exert the same control that they have over H1B visa holders, they would rather pay a lower salary (overseas)
Not that I am calling you a liar, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Though, any evidence would be great... so how do you know that?
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#108I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support, CRM managemetn, Marketing, Project Managers, and all sorts of basic office work. The idea its used for the best and brightest is absurd. When you also count the massive fraud in H1B, people looking for kickbacks, racial preferences, lying on resumes (I once interviewed an H1B with 4 pages on their resume, couldn't answer a single question from what I…
Not sure about you but I am fully supportive of the $100k H1B fee. In addition, I am considering voting Republican because of the disregard of qualified U.S. citizens. This is despite me not leaning towards that party in particular. The biggest problem I see is that companies just directly hire abroad now. All engineers at Amazon music have been fired and replaced with Indian workers abroad.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need to encourage a corporate mindset that believes in the importance of building up the American talent pool to tackle not only the challenge in front of them but the array of challenges that the future will bring." YC partner Ankit Gupta: hiring Americans first is DEI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49467325 - August 2026 (2 comments) H-1B Middlemen Bring Cheap Labor to Citi, Capital One - https://news.…
Your ability to consistently cite relevant sources/articles in your comments is impressive to me. It's a sign of a well informed person. Keep it up!
Thank you for the kind words. I remember everything I’ve ever read, it’s simply how fast I can aggregate links and threads based on keywords from HN search and my internal knowledge base/graph.
Objective data, evidence, and facts are important as a shared foundation to discuss upon.
Re: The American Worker vs. the Most Qualified
#110I have seen H1Bs used for basic Java development, Desktop Support, CRM managemetn, Marketing, Project Managers, and all sorts of basic office work. The idea its used for the best and brightest is absurd. When you also count the massive fraud in H1B, people looking for kickbacks, racial preferences, lying on resumes (I once interviewed an H1B with 4 pages on their resume, couldn't answer a single question from what I…
Not sure about you but I am fully supportive of the $100k H1B fee. In addition, I am considering voting Republican because of the disregard of qualified U.S. citizens. This is despite me not leaning towards that party in particular. The biggest problem I see is that companies just directly hire abroad now. All engineers at Amazon music have been fired and replaced with Indian workers abroad.
Dont be fooled. The Repugnant Party doesn't give a damn for the worker either. Its all just talk to get you to vote for them. The Dumbocrats try to sell their story by claiming they support DEI to sucker those who lean that way into voting for them. Both parties are for the corporate overlords 100%.