The most baffling thing is that even now the H1Bs, etc. are still pouring in. How can you say there is a shortage of IT talent and you need to import them where most grads can't find any work?
This wasn't even a secret; in our stand ups our immediate manager said that they were blocked from hiring onshore and only had offshore quota available if they wanted any more team members.
C-suite seem to think they can lie straight to our faces and know they'll get away it.
Hate to say that they're probably right? At least for the moment, tech workers have almost none of the organization or radicalization that would be required to push back against this.
By the way, it's very similar here in Australia. I don't think there's anything an individual can do in this case. This needs regulation. Even with better workplace protections, the forums are full of people describing what you described and worse.
Everyone thinks socialism or communism is going to fix things, but those were already tried and failed with horrifying consequences. I think maybe instead what we need to do is sort out the management and who is in it.
> Things are no different at companies where the founders are engineers.
Look at companies where engineer CEOs are replaced by MBA CEOs vs companies where the oppposite happens.
Pretty sure that when saying founders you're selecting for unicorn founders as well, sample bias going through the roof. Huge majority of engineer founders never seriously aims to reach that level, they end up with a small or medium-sized, product-driven company.
Another baseless assumption.
> they end up with a small or medium-sized, product-driven company.
Which are no more intelligent or ethics driven than large corps.
Another baseless assumption.
As a general rule Eng/technical field have to be more transparent, because of the inherent nature of the field. It's another question if they are 'ethical', but I'd say on an average more transparent=more ethical. Exceptions will exist of course.
It's no guarantee, I've had a few terrible managers that I assumed were non-technical but was shocked to learn they actually had IT degrees from decades ago.
They just checked out for some reason and would jump from meetings the minute they got even vaguely technical.
"I'll leave that to the engineers as we're self organising, I've got to head off" which left us to run by consensus which slowed everything down.
We've also had people poached by other companies.
I would say what's going on is similar to what I've seen in the dot com era. We used to joke during the boom that anyone with a pulse who can type can get a job. Then the economy tanked and it was tough. Throughout this people with reputation and industry connections could always find a job.
Now we're in a period of over-supply of new grads. Companies that over hired for years are making adjustments.
Big companies are generally hiring but try to do so in lower cost geographies where they can. There are still a lot of well funded companies in the US that are hiring locally (mostly around AI). There are still jobs posted here on HN every month. Just possibly less. I haven't been tracking the stats...
Just because the stock market is up doesn't mean there is demand for software developers. I predict demand will come up but these cycles take time to play out. During the dot com bust many ended up leaving the industry because they could not find work.
Someone who's families very presence in this country depends on their employer will rarely find a reason to complain about being overworked to the bone or told to do questionable things.
H1B and other programs have a noble purpose that is often (but not always) abused to create loyal servants.
So the questions is why the government is not turning off the outside supply when there is an internal oversupply.
'Annual reports of immigration statistics for FY1995 through FY2003 published by the former INS and then DHS contained “Parolee” sections with data on parole grants.88 DHS’s 2003 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, the last to include such data, contained annual data for FY1998 through FY2003 on several categories of parolees.89 During this six-year period, the annual total number of persons paroled into the United States ranged from about 235,000 to about 300,000, with port-of-entry parolees accounting for more than half of each annual total.90 Only limited data on DHS’s use of parole since then are publicly available. Among the available data are statistics covering FY2022 and FY2023 that were published by DHS in response to congressional mandates.91 The DHS reports for FY202292 and FY202393 included quarterly data on parole grants by CBP, the DHS component responsible for determining whether or not to grant parole in the majority of cases. The FY2023 reports also included parole grant data for ICE and USCIS as well as data on parole requests received and approved by ICE and USCIS. As DHS explained in its FY2023 report for the fourth quarter with respect to ICE and USCIS parole data, requests, approvals, and grants each represent a “stage in the parole process,” with requests being “the number of applications and petitions for parole submitted,” approvals being “the number of parole requests authorized,” and grants being “the number of paroles given.”94 The parole grant data in the FY2022 and FY2023 DHS reports reflect numbers of grants, not unique individuals. For FY2022, DHS reported 795,561 parole grants by CBP (417,326 by OFO and 378,235 by USBP).95 For FY2023, DHS reported 1,244,348 parole grants by CBP (940,348 by OFO and 304,000 by USBP) as well as 85,608 parole grants by ICE and 10,046 parole grants by USCIS. 96 For both years, the quarterly OFO data were reported by what DHS termed “parole classes of admission.” 97 In addition, from October 2022 to November 2024, DHS’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) published monthly tables on CHNV parole. It reported a total of 532,110 parole grants during the October 2022-November 2024 period.98'
I feel like 20 years ago the cultural gap between an American an an Indian was too great for offshoring to be successful. Now, what's really different between myself and my counterpart in Mumbai? Many managers here are Indian anyway, lessening the culture gap still.
Web developers, data analysts, project managers, sales analysts, support engineers - these are not highly-skilled roles that just can't be satisfied by the US market.
SNAP should be audited and there needs to be a way to limit the number of recipients because there's no way 42M Americans need it that bad. If they all do, then we're pretty far gone as a country.
As far as the $2k checks go, I have no idea. Sigh... Dumb dumb dumb! I just want the national debt paid down and the US Govt. to have a budget and live within its means without deficits. Is that so hard?
I do think Trump sends up trial balloons that exist solely to distract the media.
I might have some bad news for you. Come let me drive you around Louisiana.
The SNAP contingency funds probably are earmarked for SNAP. Whether they can properly be spent on benefits if there isn't a budget appears to be a harder question to answer. I see arguments being made in both directions.
Once the offshore team is large enough, companies stop hiring in the USA.
Also, how would it differentiate between outsourcing and SAAS?
A _better_ solution would be to remove the H1-B cap and continue to skim the best graduates worldwide. Same with removing the green card quotas. Make sure if someone gets an H1-B, they can transition to a green card and then to citizenship.
That's always been the US's super power.
Keep the density of innovation in the USA by inviting people in.
Source? Trump's 100k fee only started in September, and I can't find any official statistics since then.