Comment by keeda
4 hours ago
Many comments here claiming immigrant tech workers undercut native workers, yet somehow in the software industry, where H1B has been the most widely used, unemployment rate has historically consistently been much lower than the overall unemployment rate, and the wages have been higher (and growing faster) than average wages.
Like 25% - 40% lower unemployment and 60% - 100% higher wages. Even during the dot-com bust software was much better off! It's right there in the BLS data (though a bit hairy to slice and dice due to how they categorize jobs.)
The "immigrants displace native worker" narrative is too simplistic. Consider maybe that without those workers the work simply does not get done.
I mean, we've all lived through this. How many people here, for most of their careers, did NOT have mountains of backlog they would like to clear out if only they had more headcount? How many have NOT spent days on quarterly planning because of the need to be extremely judicious about what you put on your roadmap? And how many have not bemoaned, oftern right here on HN, how hard it is to find people who can actually code?
It's not just you, this dynamic plays out all over the place, and puts real constraints on the expansion potential of companies, which reduces future hiring all around. There are studies on this. Yes, there is naturally some downward wage pressure on local employees due to a larger pool, but on the whole the expansion and faster growth of companies, and hence the overall economy, more than compensates for this.
Feel free to ask your favorite AI for more... You know, the thing actually taking our jerbs! ;-)
Even before this current AI wave and awful economy/hiring environment, corporations have been turning their noses up at workers. When there were "jobs a plenty", you only need to speak to anyone in the industry to see how much talent is overlooked because they can. Corporations and the economy at large should work for the people, we should not be burning down the lives of citizens to grow the economy at all costs.
Here is the evidence that even 10 years ago there was way more talent ready-to-go and easily cultivated talent that could be honed with a few weeks or months of training: ATS keyword gaming (make sure you have the right SQL/Java version mentioned), need to lie about your exact stack to get an interview, hiring gauntlets where it's "a numbers game" and you go around and around till you get just the right leet-code questions that you happened to already know, age-ism where anyone over the age of 40 is worried about a lay-off and never getting back into the industry because corps/hiring managers only want younger for technical work. All of those anecdotes, which anyone whose been in this industry is deeply familiar with, points to an absolute glut of talent even in employee-friendly times.
I'm all for H1B's and bringing in foreign talent, I'm also all for holding corporations accountable and ensuring they don't get a pass to treat humans and labor as disposable. If a large corporation can bin resumes because they don't match a plethora of exact keywords and if they don't want to train for even a few weeks and need someone to "hit the ground running", they are drowning in too much talent.
I'd prefer to discuss data over anecdotes, but oh well... I can bring anecdotes of my own! Which have the benefit of actually aligning with the data!
Specifically, a decade+ of industry experience interviewing countless candidates (hundreds, personally) for FAANG-level salaries, regardless of visa status or any other criteria, and still struggling to hire talent, which put major crimps on our roadmaps. And hearing the same from peers and leaders in the industry, in private and in public as well as right here on HN!
We were not overlooking talent "because we can", we literally could not execute on a significant portion of our roadmaps due to lack of talent despite offering FAANG salaries.
I'm also all for holding corporations accountable, and if you see my past comments, I've been calling out all the anti-worker shenanigans that started since Elon fired 80% of Twitter (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47175871)
But 1) as the data suggests, H1B displacing native jobs is not really a problem, and 2) as other comments here indicate, it's not Microsoft that needs to be held accountable because, at just below FAANG-level salaries, it is one of the highest paying companies in the industry.