Comment by petilon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by petilon | Hacker News Reader

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> In reality, it's a cost-cutting measure designed to suppress US wages

There may be some firms who are abusing the system. The example of Disney comes to mind... they hired H-1B workers, then laid off US citizen employees, then had the laid off employees train their cheaper replacements.

But just because some people are abusing the system doesn't mean the system is inherently bad. The reason the US is a technology superpower is not merely because of the programmers who were born in the US, but also because of the programmers who immigrated to the US.

Adjusted for inflation, wages for top talent has gone up about 20% in the last 30 years. In 1990, if you got a job in a top company such as Sun Microsystems you got paid about $45K (average then was $40K). If you adjust for inflation that would be around $98K. But today's fresh graduates make about $115 to $120K if you get into a company like Microsoft, and Microsoft isn't even one of the top employers in terms of pay. Facebook and Google pay much more.

> just because some people are abusing the system doesn't mean the system is inherently bad

How many American workers would have to be abused by this law before it becomes "inherently bad"? (as a number between 0 and 300 million)

>The reason the US is a technology superpower is not merely because of the programmers who were born in the US, but also because of the programmers who immigrated to the US.

The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here, so yes it literally because of our accomplishments that people strongly desire to immigrate here, and that doesn't diminish their contributions.

>wages for top talent has gone up about 20% in the last 30 years

Assuming that is true, we have been screwed out of a lot more than I realized. The United States has spent the past 30 years enjoying the greatest era of peace and prosperity the human race has ever seen and the most talented American engineers who made that possible only got a 20% raise in that time. That's shameful.

> The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here

Not necessarily. The US is a gathering place for top talent, and that's not necessarily because of the talent that was born here.

> American engineers who made that possible only got a 20% raise in that time

No. The starting pay has gone up 20%, adjusted for inflation. That's not the same as raises over the lifetime of a single engineer.

The contribution of engineers to capital creation massively exceeds 20% over the past 30 years. Relative pay increase is such a scam.

Having seen it up close, the even greater issue for society is this program & how it’s used has created an engineering culture of order takers.

That’s the least valuable configuration of engineering teams.

> The reason they moved to the US was to work with the programmers who were born here, so yes it literally because of our accomplishments that people strongly desire to immigrate here, and that doesn't diminish their contributions.

People moved to the US to work with the capitalists. There is plenty of talent around the world, while capital is far more scarce. The key US advantage is that it first won WW2 without suffering massive destruction, and then it used its economic advantage to win the Cold War. American share of private wealth has long been far more impressive than its share of technological talent.

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