I don’t know if it’s necessarily dependence or not. I think SV has trouble enticing US citizens from the rest of the country to move here because they won’t pa

I don’t know if it’s necessarily dependence or not. I think SV has trouble enticing US citizens from the rest of the country to move here because they won’t pay enough to provide a similar quality of life. In the 20years I’ve been here I’ve had to transfer tech from places like MD, NJ and Texas. In all cases we managed to retain very few of the engineers from those locations. If I had to guess we’d get 1 out of every 30 engineers to move to the valley. The primary reason we could convince so few was the high cost of housing. In those days the difference wasn’t anywhere near what it is now. recently at the big web monopoly I work at, we hired a director level from Colorado. After a year, he chose not to move due to high costs of housing despite >$300k salary and probably a very valuable RSU package. He left. I think wages in the Valley would be significantly higher if companies had to entice US citizens to move here. I think the wages would be higher because they’d have to provide quality of life/lifestyle at similar levels to elsewhere. The relief valve of foreign workers, the vast majority simply want a green card allows people to accept a lower standard of living relative to the rest of the US. That and the fact that once established foreign workers tend to hire same. Example: my Chinese colleagues only seem to be able to refer other a Chinese when we are hiring. Don’t mean to pick on them, other groups do it too. But also in 20 years I’ve never once seen a Chinese colleague refer a non-Chinese National (or even Chinese-American) for an open req.