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Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

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Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#41

Post by some_random »

lokar wrote: post #28
palmotea wrote: post #13

> If tech talent can’t come to the U.S., American companies will go where the talent is. LOL! They're going to send the jobs where the wages are cheaper, and that's exactly what they're doing. IIRC, my employer stopped offering new H1-B sponsorships in most cases, after they opened an office in India (10+ years ago). They didn't open the office because they had a hard time hiring in the US. They opened it because the…

I worked at Google for years. We simply hired as many people as we could find who could get through the process. If they were outside the US we would try to get them here. If not, we would find a spot for them outside. We would never hire a less qualified person simply because they could work in the US. We were always behind, to the point that having open “headcount” in an org was worth little, what you needed was pr…

That may have been how Google did it back in the day, but in the modern McKinsey approved enterprise noticing that you can pay someone in the UK, or Croatia, or India a fraction of what you have to pay an American is impossible to miss.

Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#42

Post by lokar »

siliconc0w wrote: post #32
lokar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google for years. We simply hired as many people as we could find who could get through the process. If they were outside the US we would try to get them here. If not, we would find a spot for them outside. We would never hire a less qualified person simply because they could work in the US. We were always behind, to the point that having open “headcount” in an org was worth little, what you needed was pr…

This was the old Google, new Google lays off teams and moves them to India. New grad hiring is all but paused, hiring just enough to Seniors to backfill attrition and trying to slot them in at n-1 or n-2 levels.

Old Google was run by engineers. New Google is run by finance.

Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#43

Post by some_random »

baron816 wrote: post #34
palmotea wrote: post #13

> If tech talent can’t come to the U.S., American companies will go where the talent is. LOL! They're going to send the jobs where the wages are cheaper, and that's exactly what they're doing. IIRC, my employer stopped offering new H1-B sponsorships in most cases, after they opened an office in India (10+ years ago). They didn't open the office because they had a hard time hiring in the US. They opened it because the…

Why are Americans entitled to those jobs? If there are people in other countries happily willing to accept 1/10 of the pay do to the same work, why is it morally wrong deny them those jobs?

And why indeed do scabs not deserve a right to work as well?

Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#44

Post by shimman »

alephnerd wrote: post #16
kadabra9 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we know. I wish guys like you could just be honest and admit its really just about trying to save on labor costs rather than trying to frame this issue like there's some massive lack of skilled domestic engineering talent here.

It is talent though. You can't write a performant Linux runtime agent such as what Wiz did without knowing eBPF, which requires also understanding Linux internals, which requires an OS background. Why should I spend $150k training someone who has no experience from scratch for 1 year? A lot of table stakes curricula has been made optional.

It's not talent though, why are we acting like it takes critical knowledge to write java spring endpoints or react components? Very few dev jobs require critical knowledge, even then that can mostly be learned on the job.

So yeah it seems like these companies that rely on massive corporate welfare + the backing of the US government don't want to pony up and pay their fair share.

Why should the government provide utilities to you or public education or firefighters or a legal system for you? What are you doing to make your end of the societal bargain copasetic?

You come across as greedy, people know you're insanely greedy. Why do you continue to be greedy and not help the community? The community is literally on the cusp of inflicting a massive amount of damage and let's not act like this administration won't start going after H1B workers once it becomes marketed as taking well paying jobs away from Americans who are struggling to pay their bills. You can even play it to garner more Congressional support by telling big tech to start relocating jobs into red/competitive districts or they will start taking revoking their H1B workers visas.

It's a powder keg situation and you want to shovel more gun powder around the keg rather than deescalate.

Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#45

Post by AndrewKemendo »

rayiner wrote: post #23
palmotea wrote: post #13

> If tech talent can’t come to the U.S., American companies will go where the talent is. LOL! They're going to send the jobs where the wages are cheaper, and that's exactly what they're doing. IIRC, my employer stopped offering new H1-B sponsorships in most cases, after they opened an office in India (10+ years ago). They didn't open the office because they had a hard time hiring in the US. They opened it because the…

The language people use is funny. When companies offshore skilled factory jobs to foreign countries, they call that "offshoring." But when it comes to programmers, they call it "going where the talent is." They act like programmers are in a different class than machinists.

Homie you’ve been around here long enough to know that that is exactly the case

Software developers view themselves as an entirely different class than skilled blue-collar laborers precisely because of their access to capital

It is explicitly because a single engineer can go out and get money from a capitalist and a single machine shop operator cannot go out and get money from a capitalist that makes the distinction

People wonder why software developers are anti-union it’s because they are fundamentally capitalist at heart

Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#46

Post by bigthymer »

baron816 wrote: post #34
palmotea wrote: post #13

> If tech talent can’t come to the U.S., American companies will go where the talent is. LOL! They're going to send the jobs where the wages are cheaper, and that's exactly what they're doing. IIRC, my employer stopped offering new H1-B sponsorships in most cases, after they opened an office in India (10+ years ago). They didn't open the office because they had a hard time hiring in the US. They opened it because the…

Why are Americans entitled to those jobs? If there are people in other countries happily willing to accept 1/10 of the pay do to the same work, why is it morally wrong deny them those jobs?

I think the logic goes something like...in a democracy, government policies should reflect the will of the people. The majority of the people are against exporting jobs overseas when the economy at home is not doing well, especially when the people that control the hiring are becoming obscenely wealthy at the cost of impoverishing the workers.

Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#47

Post by locusofself »

siliconc0w wrote: post #32
lokar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google for years. We simply hired as many people as we could find who could get through the process. If they were outside the US we would try to get them here. If not, we would find a spot for them outside. We would never hire a less qualified person simply because they could work in the US. We were always behind, to the point that having open “headcount” in an org was worth little, what you needed was pr…

This was the old Google, new Google lays off teams and moves them to India. New grad hiring is all but paused, hiring just enough to Seniors to backfill attrition and trying to slot them in at n-1 or n-2 levels.

Sounds like Microsoft too.

Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#49

Post by light_hue_1 »

Yup. All the H1B haters are going to get what they want: silicon valley will lose its engine and the next major tech companies will be overseas.

I see it personally. People who are awesome. Their FAANG desperately wants to get them to come to the US. They can't for years. Then they give up and open an office in India or Eastern Europe and the US loses hundreds of jobs and great talent.

This teaches such companies to go overseas. And once they have taken on the burden of doing so expanding is much easier there than here.

It's amazing to see a country that has everything and every advantage throw it all away. But I guess Europe did the same thing a century ago.

Re: Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs

#50

Post by lokar »

some_random wrote: post #41
lokar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google for years. We simply hired as many people as we could find who could get through the process. If they were outside the US we would try to get them here. If not, we would find a spot for them outside. We would never hire a less qualified person simply because they could work in the US. We were always behind, to the point that having open “headcount” in an org was worth little, what you needed was pr…

That may have been how Google did it back in the day, but in the modern McKinsey approved enterprise noticing that you can pay someone in the UK, or Croatia, or India a fraction of what you have to pay an American is impossible to miss.

Yeah, that’s part of why I left.

In the old days that approach would have obviously worked poorly (it was tried, and it went poorly).

IMO, as the company grew various issues inevitably reduced Eng effectiveness to the point where now outsourcing is no worse.

Now even if you could hire the best from around the world and get them all to MTV, it would not really matter.

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