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Comment by DebtDeflation | Hacker News Reader

What you describe is certainly possible, but it's not what's happening. You can go on Blind, Fishbowl, any work related subreddit, etc. and hear the same story over and over and over - "My company replaced half my department with H1Bs or simply moved it to an offshore center in India, and then on the next earnings call announced that they had replaced all those jobs with AI". There's a reason why "AI = Actually Indians" is a meme everywhere on the internet, and it isn't racism, it's just people observing the reality around them.

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I’m not describing what’s happening right now — I’m saying the data shown in the article is insufficient to ground what it claims. The testimony you mention better supports the argument, but also is insufficient to show that this shift to H1-B is not in addition to a reduction of overall projected headcount due to AI.

Multiple things can be true at once. Some jobs have been eliminated by AI. The H1B system is being abused by employers. Offshoring has replaced more American jobs than H1Bs. Corporations are lying to investors about the impact of AI on their headcount. All of the above are true.

Again, however, the data in the article does not show that. The article is attempting to argue this point with facts (hard data), while not presenting said hard data. It's especially egregious because of the naming of specific companies.

Why is it especially egregious to name companies?

It's a false accusation. The numbers have no meaning. Is that not obviously the point of contention?

It's one thing to say, this is aggregate in the industry (and still be misleading), or say group by MAG7, or AI companies, or some sector. It's another to name Amazon as the ringleader when the data don't show that.

> There's a reason why "AI = Actually Indians" is a meme everywhere on the internet

As a good reminder of the weird information bubbles the modern Internet has become, this is literally the first time I have ever seen this.

It might seem like it's "everywhere on the Internet" but it's really just what your Twitter/discord/subreddit/TikTok cohort are talking about.

And keep in mind, I'm a fellow HN user and likely overlap with you far more than even the average Internet user.

The US is getting outcompeted by India, basically.

On short term price.

>The US is getting outcompeted by India, basically.

And it almost completely comes down to housing costs. If half of your $150k salary wasn't going directly into a landlord's pocket in the US, we would easily be able to compete.

There's also the small matter of healthcare and education costs.

If that explains most/all of it, why don't we see more tech companies moving into areas of the US with low housing prices?

I guess some of it is the "captive" effect for an individual - if you leave the expensive property market for somewhere cheaper with a lower salary, it becomes very hard to move back to the expensive place. But is that a strong enough effect?

Surely an efficient free market should theoretically make tech companies much more geographically distributed?

Many expanded to Texas, for example. Also Hollywood left LA. There aren’t any/many desirable locations left in the US that have low housing costs.

People perhaps don't like the word desirable here. What I meant is not just pretty streets, but many other factors, such as nearby industry, infrastructure, educated workforce (in the thing you need), reasonable weather/sunshine, etc.

Yeah, you can find something cheap, but often it is cheap for a reason. Especially when the whole country has a housing shortage. I'm sure Alaska is beautiful, for example.

Alaska is beautiful, but the polar opposite (no pun intended) of where someone should be looking for LCOL. Alaska is outrageously expensive for myriad reasons, and it is also not exempt from the nationwide housing crisis / greed crisis.

There are also cultural differences in these low cost USA areas that will make it hard to find educated techies there and/or get them to move there. Like it or not, the socially-liberal urban-California culture has become a sort of "Defacto Standard Culture" for tech, and a company is not going to be able to simply move all these people to rural Alabama because the cost of housing and living is cheaper there.

When work-from-home became more widespread, my spouse and I did the whole "Oooh, where could we live to maximize our income/expense ratio!" Zillow fantasy-exploration, and we concluded that even though many places in the country are significantly cheaper than where we are, we would be miserable in these places.

Reminds me of that story that made the rounds on HN a few years ago about that techie who moved to Bumblefuck Arkansas and bought an insanely cheap office for his tech enterprise, and regretted it for years due to the place otherwise being a total shithole.

What could we do to produce educated techies in these low cost areas?

It seems like a USA specific problem because from my understanding low cost areas in much poorer countries produce many highly skilled educated techies. What are they doing differently from the US?

Here's an idea, better education?

Replace the Bible with a science textbook.

There's plenty of science textbooks in our public schooling from what I've seen.

Not enough apparently, else you wouldn't see Texan schools debate about creationism vs evolution.

Those areas are producing educated techies. Those record them move to better areas.

Because low housing price areas are low priced for a reason.

US housing is pretty much mega fucked. The price is close to the maximum people are willing to pay. In many areas, it's well over that maximum.

Or you could say the ruling class is generously donating their software industry to India, much like they generously donated their manufacturing industry to China.

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