9 ms·
There's a recession, and massive layoffs in tech... why are we bringing in more foreign workers when even US citizens are unable to find work?
by commandlinefan 3y ago
There's a recession, and massive layoffs in tech... why are we bringing in more foreign workers when even US citizens are unable to find work?
- ta988 3y agoSkills and willingness to work for shitty companies. And they don't leave after 6 months even under abuse.
- jimsimmons 3y ago[flagged]
- the-grump 3y agoBreaking news: HN is a forum, not a person.
- nbhusal 3y agoThat's disingenuous. You could still map the general opinion and value system of the forum majority and hold them to what they purport to care about. As someone who's just beginning to form their judgement of the forum populace, your tone immediately comes across as defensive and deflecting.
- the-grump 3y ago[flagged]
- princevegeta89 3y ago>>> willingness to work for shitty companies Don't agree with that part. When the market is tough, anyone is willing to work for shitty companies. You missed out the main point that people on h1b have hard time leaving companies generally because not everyone sponsors h1bs, and the general process around applying for PERM and GC forces candidates to stick around for >1 year at least.It is a resource-protection mechanism for employers. Adding to that the general incompetence by USCIS in handling h1b applications - where they take even 6 months to approve a h1b transfer.
- Simulacra 3y agoWhy do major companies layoff workers and replace them with foreign contract workers? It's cheaper.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 3y agoI remember times when shutting down a US-based factory and outsourcing the production to China looked like a damn smart move, because it's cheaper.
- ronnier 3y agoIs that true? I have pretty good insights from working with many of such people, close friends with many, and working at big tech companies. At big tech anyways, people on work visas are making a lot of money.
- kneebonian 3y agoThey might make a lot of money but they also are incredibly prone to being abused and gave to put up with whatever their boss tells them to do. It's a lot easier to force someone to work 65-80 hours for crunch time when they can't leave without being kicked out of the country.
- aroundtown 3y agoIt very much depends on the company and the bosses. I've seen visa status used to keep wages low and to lock people into shitty jobs and positions. These companies also use visa holders as a tool to keep citizen wages down. In both cases they will remind you of how easy it is to get someone else in who can do your job.
- gautamdivgi 3y agoWhen stock price triumphs everything else and management is stuffed with political hacks as opposed to value creators the only way is to keep cutting cost until the whole show runs into the ground. The focus is on the current set of people to make bank before the thing falls apart.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoFed wants to slow down inflation, that requires massive layoffs to rip off the bandaid.
- redeux 3y agoThat’s one school of thought, but it’s not the only. Raising taxes on corporations and high income earners (ie the people that actually have money) is certainly another solution, though obviously unpalatable to those current in charge of policy. It’s telling that the Fed frames layoffs of the people most impacted by high inflation, the lower and middle classes, as required.
- dragonwriter 3y agoTo be fair, the Fed has fairly blunt monetary policy tools; distributional impacts like that are the realm of Congress and fiscal policy. (Which fairly consistently drops the ball, but blaming the Fed for the inaction of the entity which both sets the Feds toolset and mission and then doesn’t deal with the problems inherent in the Fed executing that mission with the toolset it has is kind of badly missing the point.)
- jpgvm 3y agoAdditionally it's hard to blame the Fed for overreacting to the COVID crisis because they had to act quickly and previously they haven't been able to rely on sensible fiscal policy. Fed deployed the tools they had then and they are doing the same now, thankfully taming inflation is something they have more experience with vs pandemics.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoThe Fed can't raise taxes.
- redeux 3y agoNot directly, but they can influence other policy makers to do so.
- safog 3y agoAnd yet.. unemployment at 3.4%. Do you know any unemployed engineers?
- sempron64 3y agoI do! Do you know someone who's hiring?
- adrr 3y agoThere’s a post every 1st of the month on here with job openings. Better question are there jobs that pay fang salaries out there? That’s what’s getting affected.
- eulers_secret 3y agoRaising my hand! Here I am! I have a friend who’s an unemployed engineer as well.
- safog 3y agoI mean.. sure. There are still more job openings for SWEs than there are SWEs. The inflated comps from the last few years are an outlier, as long as you don't expect that you should find a job pretty quickly.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y agoMost of the recently laid off engineers that want jobs are finding them, just not necessarily at software companies, and not necessarily at the same ridiculously inflated salaries. The engineers that I know that were recently laid off and are unemployed have huge savings cushions and are being tremendously picky. It might not be sexy to take a job building software for an insurance company, and it might be quite painful to take a 30% pay cut, but jobs are there for those that want them. In an actual nation-wide recession, they are not.
- stcroixx 3y agoTo keep wages low for citizens.
- adrr 3y agoBecause there is still a shortage of engineers. And we still have the lowest unemployment in modern history.
- rangestransform 3y agonope there's just a shortage of pay from non-Silicon-Valley companies
- kube-system 3y agoSoftware engineers make well above median wages just about anywhere in the US working for just about any industry.
- epicureanideal 3y agoSo there’s a shortage until we are all making the same as a Starbucks barista, or whatever is the national median, despite long hours and investment in our education?
- adrr 3y agoWhat’s with the strawman arguments?
- kube-system 3y agoThe median software engineer in the US makes an 86th percentile wage.
- duped 3y agoThat sounds awfully entitled.
- shiftpgdn 3y agoYes the companies are the ones entitled. In a free market wages would rise for citizens, instead we have these huge body shops artificially running down wages for any company outside of the FAANG.
- darth_avocado 3y ago>There is a recession Outside of tech, nothing has really changed. Consumer spending is going up. > Massive layoffs in tech Business be booking everywhere else. Outside the giants who overhired and VC hyped overfunded startups, pretty much every other company has open positions and is hiring. The hiring bar is high, but they are hiring.
- gniv 3y agoOne of the main reasons for permissive immigration policies is economic growth. More people -> more consumption and possibly more production.
- thatfrenchguy 3y agoBelieve it or not, some companies are still hiring
- stale2002 3y agoThe reason is that of all the methods of immigration, getting high skilled tech workers is the method that makes the most amount of tax dollars for our country.
- randerson 3y agoTo grow companies and start new companies, which creates more jobs.
- UncleMeat 3y agoRecession? We've had positive real GDP growth for the past three quarters.