Certainly $100k+ is enough to interest some citizens. But there's always the marginal citizen who would be swayed for more money. Anecdotally, I had lots of cl

Certainly $100k+ is enough to interest some citizens. But there's always the marginal citizen who would be swayed for more money. Anecdotally, I had lots of classmates who aggressively pursued careers in finance not because they had any intrinsic interest in the field but because they heard it can pay exceptionally well. If technology had the same reputation (it's beginning to acquire it, but is somewhat behind), more of them would have pursued it instead. Note: I'm not saying this should necessarily be the goal. Personally, I think it's fine if we import additional tech labor from around the world, and even prefer that to using wages as a carrot for more citizens. > By they way, the next step after not being able to hire a 60k H1B worker is usually to hire a 60k outsourced remote worker, not to hire a 150k "citizen". This article is not about H1Bs. Many of the foreign-born tech employees are permanent residents who compete directly in the same market as American-born employees. Hiring in tech is something of a bifurcated market and there is H1B hiring both in the abusive lower-wage sector and higher-pay direct employment sector.