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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   34264 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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This may be "directionally correct" but it's too much and too sudden. This is currently positioned as a direct fuck-you to H-1B holders and the companies who hire them, with policy goals secondary. If they want to fix the abuse problem long term of companies underpaying H-1B, they can put a sliding salary tax for companies hiring under the median H-1B wage, up to a cap on the median wage. E.g. if you pay your tech guy 100k and median is 130k, then pay an addition 15k to the government.

Currently there are two problems:

  1. America has only 4% of the world's population but 25% of the GDP. We need to brain drain other countries to ensure economic dominance in the long term.

H-1B allows us to do it by attracting the best and brightest from other countries. ~100-200k H-1B holders in the country is only 0.1% of the 160M workforce, which is evidence that it is used to attract exceptional talent, for the most part. Top companies like FAANG plays by the book here, they do not generally pay H-1Bs less than local talent, they just want the best people.

  1. There's H-1B abuse in lower tier consulting companies, where they use H-1B as a source of cheaper labor.

This is the problem the administration should fix by adding taxes and fees.

The difficulty is to solve both problems at once. I don't think the program is perfect, but effectively killing it will be detrimental to the US in the long term. Yes, instituting a 100k/year fee on top for every H-1B employee will effectively kill this program.

H-1B allows us to do it by attracting the best and brightest from other countries.

Thats not what H1-Bs are for though. The EB-1A is the "genius visa", and it does not appear to have the $100,000 fee.

H1-Bs are for filling "specialist" roles that "cannot be filled by Americans", and are universally acknowledged to be heavily abused. While I have only run into a few H1-Bs in my industry, none of them impressed me with their acumen or work ethic, and frankly i would have let them go if I had control over it. The EB-1As Ive worked with though have all been frigging rock stars.

I posit there's two different worlds in H-1B, one rife with abuse and the other working-as-intended. All the H-1B workers I've met at FAANG were great workers, no different from native born Americans, and they were not paid less. We should solve the abuse problem but not eliminate the program entirely.

Thats not what H1-Bs are for though. The EB-1A is the "genius visa", and it does not appear to have the $100,000 fee.

I don't only mean rockstars or literal geniuses. It's still very worth it to brain drain the top few percentiles of labor from other countries, even if they are not geniuses. Considering we only import tens of thousands per year and there's over a billion people in the work forces of China and India, it's not a stretch to think that we are getting their cream of the crop. And to the extent that we are not, due to cheating and abuse, then that's something we should fix.

All the H-1B workers I've met at FAANG were great workers, no different from native born Americans, and they were not paid less.

Then respectfully, their jobs should be going to American workers. There is no role in any FAANG company (unless you mean NVIDIA instead of Netflix) where there are no qualified Americans. As an industry "tech" does not have any super secret squirrel sauce that you can't find employees for in most first world countries, its just about how many you can find and what you pay them (chipmaking is a different ball game of course). American universities are graduating hundreds of thousands of them every year. But its easier for a company to import H-1Bs (and even pay them the same!) who's loyalty you own and who on paper have the skills you need than hire domestic talent that might on paper need training and experience.

But a country should have labor policies that benefit its citizens, maybe even at the expense of other countries citizens, thats one of the points of being a country in the first place.

There is no role in any FAANG company (unless you mean NVIDIA instead of Netflix) where there are no qualified Americans.

There are plenty of roles where demand exceeds supply, however -- essentially all the qualified Americans are already employed or don't care to be.

American universities are graduating hundreds of thousands of them every year.

About a single hundred thousand, not all of those American.

There are plenty of roles where demand exceeds supply, however

Then by the iron laws of economics, the price must increase. In this case you can make a very simple argument that H-1Bs are depressing American wages.

About a single hundred thousand, not all of those American

If you limit your pool to CS graduates, yes. But I humbly submit that essentially any engineering or math graduate can be trained fairly easily to do junior programmer job at a FAANG, and i personally know many who have taken that route. That at least triples your available talent pool.

Then by the iron laws of economics, the price must increase.

Yes. At some point, however, the price will exceed the value of the work, and the work just won't get done. You see this with minimum wage employees getting replaced by kiosks as the minimum wage goes up; at the top, I expect you'll simply see progress crawl to a halt (and no, that's not a good thing).

If you limit your pool to CS graduates, yes. But I humbly submit that essentially any engineering or math graduate can be trained fairly easily to do junior programmer job at a FAANG, and i personally know many who have taken that route.

Mathematics is about 25,000. Engineering is 145,000. But most of these people either already have jobs or are headed for postgraduate degrees also.

(and most of them couldn't cut it in a job that actually required software skill... but then, neither could most CS graduates)

At some point, however, the price will exceed the value of the work, and the work just won't get done.

Which is a perfectly acceptable business tradeoff.

You see this with minimum wage employees getting replaced by kiosks as the minimum wage goes up

Yes, and I have happily stopped any transactions I would ever have with these sorts of places. I'll still patronize my more local chains (in the vein of In 'n out but better), or even national ones (like Chick-fil-A) that don't treat their employees like cogs. Same with grocery stores. If a business can't cope with rising costs of labor than it deserves to go under.

at the top, I expect you'll simply see progress crawl to a halt (and no, that's not a good thing).

Gonna start an engineering smug war here, but as I see it "tech" progress has already meaningfully ground to a halt outside of LLM babble, and even that is debatable. Ever better targeted ads do not leave the world better off. Recruitment pitch to all of you young programmers stuck in FAANG limbo- go look outside to those clunky old manufacturing, transportation, energy, and industrial companies. They are desperate for good embedded systems engineers, and you can do some fantastically cool shit that will actually make measurable differences in the average person's life.

Recruitment pitch to all of you young programmers stuck in FAANG limbo- go look outside to those clunky old manufacturing, transportation, energy, and industrial companies. They are desperate for good embedded systems engineers, and you can do some fantastically cool shit that will actually make measurable differences in the average person's life.

It's also possible to work in embedded at a contractor where nothing you do will have any impact on anyone outside the company and their direct customers :)

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