Translation -- US software engineer salaries are still too high for his liking, so he wants to dilute the market with more to lower the overall cost.
The flip side is that the US has traditionally attracted the best talent in the world. This class has gone on to win the most Nobel prizes and create the most valuable companies in the world. Focusing on a real negative externality (labor arbitrage) fails to recognize the immense benefits skilled immigrants bring to this country.
I’m a son if one of them. My dad came this country in the 60s to get his masters in math at BYU. Probably the only South Asian in the entire class. He overcame extreme poverty,(half of his siblings died in childhood), disabilities to go on and achieve so much. I benefit from his achievements and being a US citizen.
That being said, we’re losing our preeminence due to growing xenophobia and a strident “might is right” worldview. But it doesn’t have to be this way - we can embrace our shared humanity while still competing on the global stage for talent.
Something interesting happened in the early '70s and it deserves a much better explanation https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Quibbling over the definition of “innovation” aside, this country was built by immigrants because America itself is a country of composed predominantly of immigrants.
As for 1971, my explanation is that this was the point of no return for the various great society programs that we benefit from today (Medicare medicaid and social security). It was a point at which keeping a full-time w-2 employee on payroll leaped involuntarily. It made American labor safer and also more expensive, and encouraged capitalists to seek out cheaper labor in the “developing world”. It also created a lot of bureaucracy around managing the new tax dollars.
I don’t think it has anything significant to do with immigration. Although the “problem” presented by those charts is so vague that people can see in them whatever they like, I suppose.
Google under Eric Schmidt literally colluded with other large SV companies to depress wages. There was a court case, it was a big deal, ~$400M was paid out over it.
""I believe we have a policy of no recruiting from Apple and this is a direct inbound request. Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening? I will need to send a response back to Apple quickly so please let me know as soon as you can. Thanks Eric". Schmidt's email led to a recruiter for Google being "terminated within the hour" for not having adhered to the illegal scheme."
It's not cynical, it's true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Role_in_illegal_n...
It really annoys me when they bitch about not being able to bring in skilled workers from overseas because they can't find skilled people here... Hey, maybe they should fucking train someone!
Usually when a tech boss is complaining about not having skilled staff locally it's code for "... I want to find someone cheaper overseas". It's like seeing a job ad that wants a wizard at everything but has terrible pay, they just want to import a cheaper worker.
The millenials and later go straight for politics and dethroning anyone who was there longer than 5 years.
It shows in the Rube Goldberg BS they are producing.
Training of a highly educated person takes at least 15 years starting with elementary school. Looks like the US school system is in bad shape, but it a bit strange to demand from Eric Schmidt to fix it. Immigration is a way to get skilled workers which doesn't require waiting many years for the results, but it doesn't preclude fixing education meanwhile.
Is he willing to pay taxes instead of laundering the money through Dutch and Irish subsidiaries?
Google is over 15 years old now, they could have started this deep training already. Maybe Erich Schidmt's vision stops on the next quarter.
I do not mind a little competition if we bring people who might improve our technological edge. China is going to surpass the US eventually and oh lord, we are in denial!.
This is my opinion, I am not claiming to know the absolute truth or facts.
A lot of things would need to change for that to happen. Switzerland naturalizes more people every year than the PRC has ever naturalized and the Swiss are not known for making joining their nation easy. Shanghai, the richest city in China, has a GDP per capita on par with Poland last I checked and the country as a whole is ranked 96th, a bit above Thailand. The EU isn’t that attractive either. Germany is poorer than all US states but Mississippi. Money isn’t the only thing when it comes to brain drain but it’s a big, big thing.
A European long-term resident of China.
If that's true, then his point stands, I guess?