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Comment by derektank | Hacker News Reader

Why, exactly? These companies have foreign customers, it seems reasonable to expect that they would also want to have foreign employees that can speak the language, work in the same time zone, etc. And the demand for those employees is unlikely to be perfectly commensurate with demand for US based employees at all times. Seems like a ban would be pretty destructive, even if some of this hiring is an attempt at offshoring work US based employees would be doing.

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If this is the case, why do I get someone in India when I call US based companies for support (during their midnight)?

Should US employees do support for Indian companies during our midnight too? I'm being honest, I can probably work for a few pennies since I was laid off months ago. Anything will help keep me going at this point.

I've witnessed the answer personally. Indian immigrants working physically in US call centers.

If a company is operating in a foreign nation sure. If a company is operating in America on American soil and refusing to hire Americans because they want to save a buck, they should face penalties. I do not see hiring foreigners as being pro-American.

Then make this choice when you own a company. What % of your paycheck are you willing to donate to being pro America?

> Then make this choice when you own a company

Absolutely I would.

> What % of your paycheck are you willing to donate to being pro America?

This is a tu quoque logical fallacy. I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it, but I can tell you that I'd rather take a pay cut than hire a foreigner.

Great! Then I encourage you to do so. And then after you do, we can come back and you can tell us how company X should do Y. Otherwise you are just sitting there complaining when you would likely do the same thing given the same choices.

Sure fund me and let's see what happens.

your heart is obviously in the right place but you could not be competitive. this is like I got a team of ballers and everyone is on steroids (which are legal). you have a high moral ground and care for your ballers and would never let them dope. your chances playing against my team are not going to be that great…

Logically you should pay taxes on the money earned from American customers at American rates to the American government.

More software companies are operating internationally nowadays than aren’t, I would assume. And publicly-traded companies are generally owned internationally to some degree. It’s rarely in the interest of a company to restrict themselves to a single country.

Furthermore, most of the hardware that you use directly or indirectly, wasn’t manufactured in the US. The globalization trend of companies, job markets, consumers, and supply chains being spread around the world will likely only grow. Most things are internationally interdependent nowadays, there’s no good reason for why the job market should be any different.

The comment is mostly talking about Silicon Valley big tech, of which exactly 100% operates in many countries.

Having worked for a startup and lost my job to remote workers in a foreign country because they were cheaper and being told "we can hire 3 or 4 of them for the price of you" has left a bitter taste in my mouth.

I can tell you that US tech companies making enormous amounts of money from your country's populace while contributing back near-zero jobs in return is just as bitter.

This line of reasoning is deeply flawed. If US tech companies are “making enormous amounts of money from your country’s populace”, then your country is getting something in return, e.g. access to Apples hardware products, amazons cloud, or googles search engine.

Why should it matter if they also open an office in your country?

It isn't at all, and having lived in countries on both sides of the coin, I can tell you that people are getting a worse product in return, without the local job creation. I've written more about it here [1]. A trivial example is Google Maps. I've gone a bit more in-depth on that example here [2]. In a nutshell, you get much less enshittification, far better customer support (humans instead of ML models), and all the other things that used to be completely normal but were slowly boiled away while getting people used to it in the name of shareholder returns.

For clarity, I took the discussion as being about software, as physical goods (including hardware) are an entirely different beast which my points don't necessarily apply to.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42538601

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42286046

Getting the most product for the least amount of money is Capitalism 101. Companies don’t owe you anything past that and you should follow the same principle.

Do the least amount of work that’ll get you as much money as possible and always look for a better offer.

I'd prefer to take a pay cut and continue working - that's survival 101, which as a human is my primary concern.

Under capitalism, a private company has duties to shareholders first. If you want companies has duties to their host country first, there are other social systems for that. Perhaps fascism.

> Under capitalism....are other social systems for that. Perhaps fascism.

That is, obviously, a false dichotomy

When US sells stuff, it's all pro free-market. When US competes, there are tiktok potential bans and whining about workers from other countries. You can only pick one to be fair. You either don't sell your products to the outside world (and kill the economy) or provide equal opportunities for nations you earn money from.

If such a ban is in power, many companies will either close or move abroad. It's as simple as that. I agree, it will be totally destructive.

So be it.

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