How do you reconcile your experience with the common narrative that there is a huge shortage of tech workers in the US and, hence, the H1B/H4 programs?
One of the "problems" companies have is that it's hard to find skilled workers in the US with good experience who are not demanding SF wages. And recent graduates aren't that useful so while they might technically be "tech workers" in the sense they would like to fill open roles, companies don't really want them.
So for most companies if you want to hire the most experienced and qualified for the role, and do that at a reasonable cost, you'll need to consider the H1B route.
I mean, if you are senior, you probably have a family and possibly kids. Even with a part-time RTO position that means more than a three-roommate setup, you need a house or 2b/3b in SF/SEA/NY. That works for industries where you dont need to be in the most expensive cities, but how does it work for tech workers with families?
What's "reasonable" depends on perspective. Truth is it makes relatively little sense hiring tech workers in the US today. I'm not saying I'm happy about that, but unlike a few decades ago, the majority of tech talent in the world today is overseas, and increasingly in low-labour cost countries like India which previously didn't have the internet access or education to compete.
Given this today a reasonable cost to a business for software development is lower in the same way a reasonable cost for manufacturing is lower because of low-cost manufacturing in places like China.
I'm just pointing out what's happening. For a while now people with an education thought the reason they could find good work and were doing okay relative to uneducated people was because of effort. And while this was somewhat true, it's probably better explained by much lower levels of international labour competition from low-wage countries. It takes skill to be good at manufacturing too, but that skill doesn't protect you from extremely low cost labour which doesn't quite have comparable skills, but can do the job almost just as well.
People should be thinking about this. Economists will argue (perhaps correctly) that allowing the free market to do its think will result in higher GDP growth. But if people are unemployed and struggling to find good work, what's the benefit of that GDP growth? There should be some effort to balance what's reasonable from an employers perspective with what's reasonable for employees.
Then companies should set up training pipelines outside the San Francisco Bay Area. Simple as.