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Comment by kadabra9 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, we know.

I wish guys like you could just be honest and admit its really just about trying to save on labor costs rather than trying to frame this issue like there's some massive lack of skilled domestic engineering talent here.

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It is talent though.

You can't write a performant Linux runtime agent such as what Wiz did without knowing eBPF, which requires also understanding Linux internals, which requires an OS background.

Why should I spend $150k training someone who has no experience from scratch for 1 year? A lot of table stakes curricula has been made optional.

There are plenty of non-juniors who meet all of your expectations, you just want to pay them less than market rate for their expertise.

Market rate is a function of supply and demand. Unless the market is regulated.

Right. Demand is fairly rigid from companies who need the labor. But they, as for-profit entities, want to maximize shareholder value, so instead of paying market rate for labor when the market rate is high, companies attempt to decrease the market rate by increasing labor supply through a variety of means - lobbying for modern indentured servitude (H1b's), shipping jobs overseas, etc.

This stands in direct contrast to the stated arguments they use to justify such moves, like "there isn't sufficient talent inside the US". There is sufficient talent inside the US, it just comes with a price tag they don't like.

> modern indentured servitude

Can confirm those targeted by H1B visas, etc don't think like that at all. I was in the US for a while on a F1 visa, which allowed me to work for a couple years, and I was super grateful for the opportunity. Had a couple positions with wages I heard some ranting was "too low", while I found it very livable and was even able to save a significant amount. I can imagine it being very similar for others who've come from places where earnings really are a pittance for many.

That description is more about the power dynamics at play. H1b workers are often expected to work longer hours, and to do so with lower pay than American citizens, and not even think of complaining about it. In the US visa system, if an H1b worker loses their job, they have 90 days to get a new job (next to impossible when visa sponsorship is required) or else they lose legal residency rights and must either self-deport or be in violation of immigration law (which is a great way to screw yourself over on future opportunities). The resulting dynamic is one where both the h1b employer and the h1b employee know that the employer can basically ruin the employee's life whenever they want, for any cause (including no cause), at the drop of a hat. This shapes the working relationship in negative, coercive ways. That coercive aspect is the basis for describing it as "modern indentured servitude".

I have a master's degree and make more than that but still can't write a performant Linux runtime agent, will you pay and train me?

There are plenty of domestic candidates that have those skills and backgrounds.

You would just rather find offshore candidates and pay them less, rather than paying domestic salaries.

Which, ok, fair enough, but at least own it instead of fabricating some "pipeline shortage" to justify trying to save a buck on labor costs.

I think a better question is why is a person like you in a position to be paying anyone anything close to $150k?

Every time I read stuff like this on HN I think to myself "Man the downfall of SV can't come soon enough."

Yes, why would you. As in, the question doesn’t make sense. A new grad will command a much lower salary than 150k today. Bet many would take 50k for a chance to train in this market.

It's not talent though, why are we acting like it takes critical knowledge to write java spring endpoints or react components? Very few dev jobs require critical knowledge, even then that can mostly be learned on the job.

So yeah it seems like these companies that rely on massive corporate welfare + the backing of the US government don't want to pony up and pay their fair share.

Why should the government provide utilities to you or public education or firefighters or a legal system for you? What are you doing to make your end of the societal bargain copasetic?

You come across as greedy, people know you're insanely greedy. Why do you continue to be greedy and not help the community? The community is literally on the cusp of inflicting a massive amount of damage and let's not act like this administration won't start going after H1B workers once it becomes marketed as taking well paying jobs away from Americans who are struggling to pay their bills. You can even play it to garner more Congressional support by telling big tech to start relocating jobs into red/competitive districts or they will start taking revoking their H1B workers visas.

It's a powder keg situation and you want to shovel more gun powder around the keg rather than deescalate.

> It's not talent though, why are we acting like it takes critical knowledge to write java spring endpoints or react components?

Because typically that's not what you are hiring, even if effectively that's what you will have the engineer doing often.

I was hired for my problem solving skills. For being able to design an application end-to-end. For being able to extend a messy existing system in ways that are sensible. For being able to analyze issues and come up with ways to address them. For coming up with answers for legacy issues. Those among many other things.

Anyone out of a boot camp can write a Java endpoint using Spring. If you think that's what the company is hiring, you are sorely mistaken.

I say this as someone that was an interviewer in past jobs, including FAANG.

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