domain:betonit.substack.com
hydroacetylene
18m ago
Gaza isn’t strictly monogamous, and isn’t subjected to the economic constraints that prevent normal industrial societies from marrying off increasingly marginal men.
TeknOShEeP
22m ago
Eh, again YMMV but speaking to my experience and that of my colleagues and family, I cannot point to an H-1B that I would say is good for the country. So yeah, I would say its universal abuse (this is not a universal judgement about the character of people receiving those visas, many are fine folks put in a sub-optimal situation).
100k absolutely does not wipe out Apple's backend developer. Thats between 25-33% of their salary, not including benefits. It makes them more expensive, so you have to be more careful, but this is big tech we are talking about, they have more money than God and are not afraid to sling it around.
Throwaway05
24m ago
I recall it being mostly non-American doctors - which means radically different professional standards (and standards of professionalism) as well as totally different life background. This may be my brain flattering my biases however.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
26m ago
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.
TeknOShEeP
27m ago
He also tried to get rid of the SALT tax exemption in his first term, which is probably the single most progressive piece of tax policy pushed in the past 70 years (and perhaps the only thing AOC agreed with him on).
Prediction: in 50 years historians will look on Trump like they are now looking on Nixon- unexpectedly the most progressive president of their cohort, and completely unrecognized for it in their time.
TeknOShEeP
33m ago
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.
rockbier1218
33m ago
True, but I think the tradeoff is worth it at this point. Notwithstanding the negative externalities on societal cohesion as a whole, the culture that sprung up around the Indian H1B scam factory is so fucking toxic for the tech industry. America is not only the innovation factory because we draw the best and the brightest, but because of the unique entrepreneurial culture that prizes outside the box thinking.
The Indians bring their rote memorization culture with them. Of course there are the entrepreneurs among them as well who come here and push that culture along, but let’s be honest 90+% are just people-pleasing corporate ass-coverers who also happen to have a millennia-long tradition of built-in discrimination deep in their bones. Enough already, the industry is hardly recognizable as American anymore.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
35m ago
I disagree. H-1B is not just "certainly abused", it's universally abused. I'm not saying that H-1Bs are all morons, but some are, and the not-morons are, while competetant, not above replacement level. America generates highly skilled in-demand workers from its domestic population in sufficient numbers to fill any role an H-1B would fill, its just that corporations jave not wanted to spend the time and money to develop the pipeline.
It is not "universally" abused, though the fact that it is used to bring in people who are the Indian equivalent of the bottom half of the class at Directional State is infuriating. 100K a year wipes out nearly all uses, including Apple's backend developer, including most of the non-absuive ones. Although I'm not sure where 100K a year comes from; the proclamation appears to make it 100K for the application and 100K per entry of the alien, which is cheaper but rather cruel to the alien.
crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
36m ago
I am a Canadian and I do not want more any Indians. India has plenty of Indians and, well, look at her. Any benefit they would bring is diminished by fraud, nepotism, and making my country more like their country.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
39m ago
And yet the media keeps reporting these stories as if there's every reason to believe them.
TeknOShEeP
44m ago
Yeah, I think one of the ones I called an EB-1A is actually an O-1 as he has family back in europe that he will return to. But same concept- the genius visa exists for 95+ percentile individuals, and frankly i dont think we should be recruiting below that at the expense of our domestic labor.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
44m ago
Alright, reminder set
TeknOShEeP
46m ago
I disagree. H-1B is not just "certainly abused", it's universally abused. I'm not saying that H-1Bs are all morons, but some are, and the not-morons are, while competetant, not above replacement level. America generates highly skilled in-demand workers from its domestic population in sufficient numbers to fill any role an H-1B would fill, its just that corporations jave not wanted to spend the time and money to develop the pipeline.
Also, 100k is almost the perfect amount of money to do what you say you want- if your talking about a highly skilled worker (lets be honest, a coder at FAANG or similar) than 100k per year is not actually that big of a deal compared to the rest of their compensation package. It will prevent companies like Cognizant from just chain migrating half of Bengaluru to provide substsndard IT services, and will also prevent scummy hospitals from hiring immigrants instead of domestic medical workers, but isn't stopping Apple from hiring some uber talented backend developer.
ControlsFreak
47m ago
I'm sure it's quite field and role dependent, but mine is definitely a good one on that front. They're already pursuing "my project" as a large component of their role. So if I have the makings of a promising idea, it's not uncommon for them to spend hours trying to make the details work. I'm pretty impressed pretty often, but I also have managed to get myself a set of impressive collaborators.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
50m ago
What is the end goal here? Or any goal?
OK, you're slowing them down alright. They will not have as capable models, as quickly or cheaply, in the next 4-6 years. Then what? Is this just banking on an AGI superweapon to make economic dimension irrelevant, or on the windfall from economic growth this is supposed to beget? Huawei is superior in networking equipment, China has an overabundance of energy and skilled labor, if they scale up production of even past-generation compute chips (and mainly HBM), they will have a fully adequate and incompatible domestic ecosystem and Nvidia and others will never reenter their market, and American slice of it will be that much smaller.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
53m ago
Ok one more hot take: Brands in cycling barely matter, they really only do the frame (if they do!) and then assemble parts from suppliers. So pick PARTS not brand.
Yeah, what's annoying to me as an outsider is that I thought "Shimano" was a brand name like an Edelbrock engine, only to realize they make EVERYTHING, so they're not really any indicator of quality.
aqouta
58m ago
Yes, they continue to try and play catch up, what I'm definitely not seeing is the regret for making them do that rather than just giving them the more powerful chips. Lack of access to nvidia chips is demonstrably slowing down their AI progress.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1hr ago
Sure. I've worked with coworkers on a 24x7 rotation and there the time difference is a must for maintaining sanity. But when I'm working on a project (rather than keeping a system running) I find it way better to be nearby.
they work on it all through my night, and first thing in the morning, I have an email about their progress in taking my idea and running with it.
This works in the case that they have nothing going on, or are going to drop everything to pursue your project. More likely IME, they'll think about it for perhaps an hour and send you some feedback. That's the kind of thing that would have been way better as a meeting and that's most of my cross timezone experiences.
chooky
1hr ago
There is no question that The Daily Show took a political stance and generally thought that Dems were correct and Reps wrong, but did it take stances that Republicans would have found offensive? A TV personality rather than a radio personality, if you will. From what I have of Kirk, he was much more of radio personality, taking more provocative positions and being much more blunt.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1hr ago
That's your english convention. It obviously does not apply to German nouns, all of which by the immutable laws of the universe require capitalization without exception.
UwU
1hr ago
The policy is "directionally correct" but the effective date should be pushed back several months to lessen the immediate shock and the dollar amount has to be reduced to be more effective at encouraging good behavior while discouraging the bad ones.
Even FAANG can't afford 100k on top. The median total comp for an experienced engineer (IC4, IC5) is somewhere around 300k-400k and adding 100k on top of that means H-1B is effectively dead in the water. From personal experience working at big tech companies, it's not the H-1Bs that scare me, it's the off-shoring. Even at FAANG, I'm seeing entire teams getting moved to Brazil and Europe, and for head counts to only be assigned to non-US locations. Eliminating H-1Bs will only hasten this move.
Access to the us labor market should be expensive. There a lot of negative externalities associated with the kind of inequality the us has now and enacting policies which increase wages are one of the best ways to address this. As an aside if you want to understand how detrimental this program has been in terms of suppressing wages for technical professionals just go onto https://www.clearancejobs.com/ and look at how much more these roles pay compare to similar roles in other industries where hiring foreigners is mostly prohibited.
Can you quantify exactly how much the gap is? I looked around and it seems like for comparable roles at Boeing, the salary is in the ball park of median H-1B tech salary. If the difference is small, like 10-20k, then it's more appropriate to levy a smaller fee than 100k.
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
I've seen both sides, as I have some collaborators who go back and forth with enough significance that we keep up when they're abroad. There are nice things about being able to stroll down to their office. There are also nice things about, "Here's what I've been thinking about today; it's still kind of a hazy idea, but I think I'm on to something," and then I head home, go to bed, they work on it all through my night, and first thing in the morning, I have an email about their progress in taking my idea and running with it. Similarly for working a document toward a deadline. I can do what I can do, leave some notes, and magically, much progress has occurred while I was sleeping. It's a wonderful feeling when it happens.
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link