Hacker News Reader

Comment by sizzle | Hacker News Reader

Between Apple and Google investing heavily in facilities in India, I wonder if this is the writing on the wall that is the start of building up outsourced H1-b teams in economical state-of-the-art headquarters while they transition down their real estate footprint in the Bay Area in the wake of the 'new normal' way of remote working due to Covid-19.

Any predictions for the next 10 years if this will be a threat to on-shore devs considering the braindrain occurring at the direction of our president's myopic leadership and executive orders?

View on HN

I don't understand. If they decide to hire more in India they won't need H-1Bs any more.

Also, presidential cycles are short. A four-year presidency is simply not long enough to cause massive brain drain to be a threat for anything. But if the next administration continues to be myopic, I can see that trickle of brain drain turn into a torrent.

"I don't understand. If they decide to hire more in India they won't need H-1Bs any more."

That's exactly the point I was trying to make, that the former H-1B individuals will be hired to work at these new facilities in their homeland instead of bringing them to the bay area, as they no longer have physical working spaces here due to Covid-19 office closures and remote WFH for the foreseeable future.

Tech companies can then divest their expensive bay area real estate and shrink their HQ footprints to be a more global workforce and at the same time establish themselves in India and create custom hardware fabs away from Shenzhen and China, with lower cost savings of labor in India.

This will lower their H-1B hiring and talent acquisition costs drastically and the best and most talented H-1B's can instead work from the comfort of their home countries (e.g. India).

Thoughts?

But "this will increase salaries by reducing supply" is the common narrative on HN that one cannot fight.

Reasoning bottoms-up, you are right. This will reduce Bay Area footprint, and will allow good talent to join at lower costs. Couple this with top Indian talent in US not being treated fairly (most Indian immigrants have to wait 4-5 decades before being eligible for a green card even at Google / FB / etc..). The future for the Bay Area may not be as bright as the last 15 years. I certainly hope this isn't the case since I have a vested interest in the Bay Area but I do think longer term this is going to be the outcome though.. :(

Reasoning ground-up is not the faint of hear though. Most people want to extrapolate the world from the recent past based on their personal self-serving biases.

Thank, I'm also invested in this area. I am trying to arm myself with knowledge to possibly correct course and be as realistic as possible in the next 5 - 10+ years out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com