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Comment by C-x_C-f | Hacker News Reader

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The comparison as stated straightforwardly shows that the percentage of workers who are foreign born has grown. Your comparison is the odd one. Yes, the increase in jobs is higher for American citizens, in absolute numbers, than for foreign workers. Of course. These are jobs in America, after all. The baseline growth in foreign workers I’d expect would be zero.

If overall jobs in a sector had increased, why would you expect the growth of foreign workers to be 0?

If I'm concerned with the overall citizen population's job prospects, the relative size of the increases matters more to me than the absolute change.

If I created 1 nepotistic software job for my kid and 3 jobs for software professionals not related to me, I think very few people would look at that and say "Oh, well three times as many non-nepotistic jobs were created, so we can ignore the one..."

How are H-1Bs comparable to nepotism?

Don't focus on the nepotism aspect specifically, but rather that job group in one distinct, identifiable population (my kid or H1Bs) grew at a far higher rate than for the general (not my kids or not H1Bs) employment market, despite the latter experiencing more absolute growth.

I still don't see what the issue is.

Consider two scenarios:

1. H-1Bs get massively reduced over the next five years. Tech sector crisis ensues due to market shocks. Foreign workers decrease. American workers go up by 25% (~2.5M).

2. H-1B numbers stay as is. Tech sector relatively unperturbed. Foreign workers increase by 50% (~1.3M). American workers increase by 30% (~3M).

Wouldn't you argue that 2 is preferable to 1?

(I'm not saying that a crisis will happen if H-1Bs end, I'm just presenting two scenarios with different relative increases that I believe prove my point)

Are you asking if I would prefer a tech market that didn't experience a crisis over one that did and from my answer of "of course I do", believe that proves some unrelated point?

The relevant variable here is the increase in jobs. The crisis in my example is just some exogenous variable. I'm genuinely trying to understand your point. In my view, if one cared more about difference in relative increases inter-group rather than absolute differences intra-group, then scenario 1 would be preferable.

I too am capable of semi random number generation

Maybe because nepotism leads to untalented people getting jobs?

I think the $100K fee is a good idea. If these H-1Bs are exceptional talent, paying $100k to employ one is truly a bargain.

What if China only charges $1k or even free for the same people? I mean, they are doing lots of AI work now also, and you can already see a few foreign programmers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. What is stopping Apple, Microsoft, Meta, or Amazon from doing even more work in India or other countries because they can't get the people they need in the US, or its just cheaper to setup more research jobs in Stockholm or London than it is in Seattle or San Jose?

Its not like it isn't already a work market for talent. $100k is a significant amount of friction to overcome.

I think you meant "world market".

Companies are going to be offshoring as much as they can anyway. Bits fly across borders untaxed.

If there is some foreign talent that, for example, Meta thinks will benefit their bottom line by $1M/year, an extra $100K on top of a $250K benefits package is small change!

It's a human-tariff, but it is paid by wealthy corporations.

Yes, world market, darn phone. They have more incentive to offshore now, $100k is some overhead but so is setting up an office overseas (~$100k/engineer).

Set a floor that is regionally adjusted such that the foreign ops/noncitizen cost is consistently higher no matter where. And that it also accounts for and penalizes malicious compliance/intent.

Regarding the overall problem: For the jobs that people care about keeping away from the alphabet soup provisions, the only problem is finding pliant and desperate people that take any port in a storm - not competence.

On business resistance: As for firms like Alphabet/Microsoft/Meta, they are not immune to noneconomic forces that might favor US presence and penalize non US expansion, broadly construed.

Do you think that the employee pool overall would be more or less talented without the H-1B program? What about the tails of the distributions?

They all know that. These are politicians. They know they’re misrepresenting the data. They don’t care, they consider it to be part of the job, and they’re not wrong. That’s it.

How are they “misrepresenting” the data? The comparison as stated shows that the foreign born share of the workforce is growing faster than the field as a whole. The point is that foreign workers are becoming a larger share of the workforce.

They didn’t say that foreign workers got more of the jobs in absolute terms than native workers. That would be truly disastrous.

I did considered that but then went with Hanlon's razor [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

I don't think it's malice though, that's not what I said.

You seem good at using the tools of data. Stick to that. We need more people like you. Don’t let clever phrasing dim your shine.

Hanlon’s razor is in that group of things the expert class is supposed to say so the expert class doesn’t use the tools of data on their masters and attempt to convict them. Along with Occam’s razor, correlation does not imply causation, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, data is not the plural of anecdote, let’s agree to disagree, no one can beat the market, and so on.

These all throw out the baby (Iran-Contra, etc) with the bath water (flat earth, etc), tend toward curbing scrutiny, and let someone off the hook. All of these sayings are worth considering, and red flags, at the same time.

Please take the AI slop elsewhere

Yes, that’s another good one. I’ve added “AI slop” to the list of low effort red flag phrases people say when they turn their brain off and delegate their thinking to a meme complex.

These were from a note on my phone. Originally I heard the idea from Eric Weinstein on some podcast, maybe Chris Williamson’s. Eric only mentioned a few examples, and the rest I added over time as I heard them. The meme complex idea I heard from Daniel Schmachtenberger, also some podcast.

Another variation would be when you can take someone’s response and apply it broadly to anything. Like when low effort “debunkers” like Michael Shermer reply with “well humans are notoriously bad at eye witness testimony, and let me explain confirmation bias, and a dozen other cognitive biases”, which of course doesn’t address (or even mention) the UFO or whatever topic they’re discussing. It’s a neat trick where you can just dismiss anything without ever mentioning the thing being dismissed.

America got to the moon without H1-Bs. America doesn't need H1-Bs. America just needs a little wake up call, which the H1-Bs did. Now watch things unfold as an informed person.

> America got to the moon without H1-Bs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

From the linked article:

> The operation played a crucial role in the establishment of NASA and the success of the Apollo missions to the Moon.

Those are not H1-Bs.

tell me you've never opened a history book...

You mean the part where former HP exec Carly Fiorina said “Forget the engineers”?

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