9 ms·

Expect further downward pressure on US tech salaries.

by lgleason 3y ago

_factor 3y ago
At the benefit of a stronger economy.
- mlindner 3y ago
  Completely agree. The pay is high because the demand is higher than the supply.
addicted 3y ago
Ah yes, the last 30 odd years of increasing immigration has exerted tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries. And countries in Europe that have not seen as much Tech immigration have seen huge boosts in Tech salaries. Comparable Europeans earn almost 1/3 - 1/2 what their American counterparts do today!
- dougmwne 3y ago
  But really, it’s much easier to enter the EU. You have dozens of countries with their own rules so there are many more options. Plus immigration rules tend to be much easier than the US with its famously strict legal immigration with low caps. Indeed, this balance between supply and demand is exactly what keeps US tech salaries high. Our dynamic economy creates a lot of tech roles while our restrictive immigration limits high skill immigrants from filling those roles, raising salaries. Tech companies have been lobbying unsuccessfully for years to raise or eliminate the h-1b cap, which would absolutely cut salaries. That’s why they are lobbying for it, to reduce their labor costs. Personally I think this is all going to be moot anyway. With software development becoming a mostly remote role after the pandemic, I’ve seen a lot less barrier over the past few years to hiring offshore teams. My own small division of 100 people has offshore teams in 3 countries.
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    And yet there is very little tech immigration into Europe, comparatively. Must be the low salaries.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      You can earn European level tech salaries in Bangalore and Beijing now. There isn't as much demand to move there and uproot your family just for $30-50k a year.
- bequanna 3y ago
  I’d be curious to hear opinions on why this large compensation discrepancy exists. AFAIK, my company has never considered outsourcing to remote Euro workers. Is there a perceived difference in engineer quality? Time difference?
  - jupp0r 3y ago
    Having worked in the EU and the US, here are some differences that I think are relevant for global employers: - The hiring pool is much smaller than in the US, one reason is probably demographics and lack of skilled immigration. This makes it less attractive to hire/grow there. - Labor regulation is much more strict. It's legally hard and expensive to lay off workers in Germany, for example. - Taxes are much higher than in the US, so even if employers spend a lot of money on payroll, much less of it will end up in employees checking accounts. - Demand is much lower. Tech industry in Europe is definitely there, but not booming to the same degree as in the US.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      >Labor regulation is much more strict. It's legally hard and expensive to lay off workers in Germany, for example. Is a few months notice [0] too much to ask? You can fire anyone you want, you're just going to wait a little bit or pay their remaining salary if you want them gone immediately. There is nothing legally hard about it. The hardest part is probably that you have to physically mail the layoff notice, but nothing prevents you from just directly giving it to them straight into their hands to be perfectly compliant with the law. Also, most of these laws only apply to companies with employee counts in the double digits. Not to small startups hiring their third employee. [0] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__622.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__622.html
      - jupp0r 3y ago
        There's much more to this than you cite. There's Betriebsrat and Sozialplan etc. I'm not at all saying any of this is bad, but it does play an important role when companies make decisions about where to put their engineering centers.
- logicalmonster 3y ago
  > Ah yes, the last 30 odd years of increasing immigration has exerted tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries. I'm not 100% sure, so I have to ask. Are you being sarcastic about immigration not exerting tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries?
dougmwne 3y ago
This affects very few immigrants of extraordinary ability. Such people are likely to be job creators with the companies and products they build. I agree that if we were to lift the cap on H-1b visas it could easily destroy tech salaries. Thankfully that’s not under consideration.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  Most H1-B visas don't go to engineering roles. Expanding those quotas wouldn't affect engineering salaries, but probably IT support roles, etc.
  - dougmwne 3y ago
    If you open the door wide enough, salaries will drop. It’s an economic reality. It may be a very good thing for the wider economy and stock market though. Right now critical roles that enable high productivity work are behind a tall wall of a multi-100k salary. It’s possible that we are letting a small number of engineers get early retirements in exchange for a drag on the whole economy.
thenaturalist 3y ago
The economy is not a zero sum game. The US created literally all relevant consumer technology in the last 30 or so years and demand for tech talent has exploded ever since. Having a competitve sector/ economy which regularly pushes the edge of innovation and hence expands demand (both on sell and supply side) is actually what keeps salaries up. This logic is as deeply flawed as often as it comes up.
- bsdpufferfish 3y ago
  The myth is that these measures must be taken because of "shortages of workers" when there are plenty of US citizens in STEM who are underemployed. This narrative is purely a lobbying effort.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > ... when there are plenty of US citizens in STEM who are underemployed. Where, exactly? Unemployment rate among STEM graduates is half of that of the general population [0]. Salaries are also substantially higher [1], and keep getting higher [2]. [0] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-unemployment#:~:text=Overall%2C%20among%20all%20STEM%20workers,4.9%25 https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-unemployment...). [1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-median-wage-and-salary-earnings#:~:text=STEM%20workers%20earn%20more%20than,(figure%204%2D1) https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-median-wage-.... [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433814-000-most-stem-salaries-are-on-the-rise-but-inequalities-are-worsening/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433814-000-most-ste...
    - bsdpufferfish 3y ago
      Unemployment != underemployment. So the unemployment rate in your first article is not relevant, missing labor participation rates etc. The second article is about median wages of people who are already in jobs categorized as stem. Same with the third, which is also only about the derivative. > Where, exactly? The most prominent segment can be found by dropping the engineering and tech. Biology, math, physics, chemistry, etc. However even in engineering we find that the top grads move into software or finance.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
linuxftw 3y ago
People in tech have blinders are. We're already in tech, so we don't see the repercussions. Entry level jobs are almost non-existent, they're all going overseas and to indentured servants.
- Clubber 3y ago
  This is just a repeat of what started in the 90s (probably earlier). It's really a scheme for companies to get access to more talent to drive wages down.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    News flash. The demand has started to slow down. 20 years ago, the Chinese backlog used to be in the decades range. Now it's 2 years. The Indian backlog used to be multi-decade too, but is now 11. Already, we've had engineers at portfolio companies decide to return to India to either earn a dollar salary or start their own startup. At this point, we've decided to straight up outsource jobs to India, Israel, and Eastern Europe. The talent base we need doesn't exist in the US. These guys could have become taxing paying members of American society. Now they'll make contributions to India, Eastern Europe, and Israel instead
    - coredog64 3y ago
      > Now they'll make contributions to India, Eastern Europe Good! There’s a billion people in India and plenty of opportunities for growth. The net benefit for all of humanity is larger if they stay there. Put another way, is it really all that great that the US drains the top talent out of India and Eastern Europe?
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        It does when those people who leave have a chip on their shoulder due to bad experiences with the US. For example, the founder of Zoho (Sridhar Vembu - I actually lived in the same apartment complex in the Bay Area that he started Zoho at) has become a NatSec cabinet advisor to Narendra Modi's administration, and has a chip on his shoulder about his experience dealing with US immigration. It was a big reason he returned to India. Wang Huning, the Chairman of the Chinese Politburo and Xi Jinping's right hand man - soured on the US after his experience dealing with the US as a student. A good friend of mine from college in the ML space who's parents are pretty high up in the ruling party of a major SEA state has been constantly complaining to me and them about how they lost 2 chances at the F1 to H1B conversion, and every single time became more and more ambivalent about the US. They can end up returning to SEA and make a large company, but they will also have a chip on their shoulder about the US. Another good friend of mine was an Indian national who specialized in EE and Condensed Matter Physics (semiconductors type work) - even did grad school in it at a Stanford type program. He left the US to work for a major Chinese company in SEA because immigration in the US was horrid. Plenty of Israelis feel the same way now about the US due to similar experiences. The US Immigration system exudes a sense of American exceptionalism because voters say "Love it or leave it". But the people who leave end up becoming successful, but still angry at how much effort and stress was expended for naught. China is now a near peer in 2023. There's no reason to fuel anti-Americanism in India, SEA, LatAm, etc and push them to the other side.
ketzo 3y ago
Intuitively, yes; factually (looking at the last 30 years of tech), categorically false. Tech begets tech, tech jobs beget tech jobs. Personally, I think we are not remotely close to “peak software” in particular.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  The reality of Canadian tech salaries would disagree with you. Our immigration system targets skilled workers from abroad, and brings in a lot of them. It's a far more "rational" and less confusing system than the US, but also explicitly geared around bringing in skilled workers as permanent residents and it brings in a lot of them. The downward pressure on compensation rates is real. Apart from exceptions in FAANG type companies, salaries here are often 1/2 of the rates of US employers, and it isn't because we're a lower quality product. As a result a large % of us just move south to the US on a TN visa, or take remote jobs from US employers. Because the disparity in compensation is very high. And it's in large part because the market here is flooded with talent from abroad.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    The Canadian tech market is particularly small by most standards. Tech salaries there are lower than what a skilled employee can get in Israel, China, or India.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  But the increase in tech jobs doesn't benefit existing workers. Compare https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-tech-workers/ https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing... : > According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74% of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born abroad. In 2000, only 29% were. > Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000 jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we created 100,000 engineering positions in the last decade, we’ve also displaced 88,000 domestic engineers.[1] > American tech workers are getting pushed out, and they aren’t coming back If the downward pressure on salary in American software jobs is so extreme that salaries frequently go all the way to zero, while there is a countervailing upward pressure on salary among Indian no-job-yets, why do we say it's "categorically false" that there is a downward pressure on American software salaries? [1] Note that this is what you expect from a pricing shift, not an increase in the value created by the work. The quantity of software labor purchased has gone up and sellers are being forced out. If the driver of increased quantity-of-jobs were increased value created, you would see sellers entering the market, not leaving.
danking00 3y ago
People who gain citizenship are no longer in a precarious visa situation nor tied to their current employer. Moving people off visas and into PR/citizenship would seem to me to remove downward pressure on salaries. Heck, workers with PR/citizenship are probably more likely to unionize for higher wages because they feel safer.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  But this admits that the more generous and open policy might also be more practical. Can’t have that, it is too good.
- lgleason 3y ago
  You are forgetting the law of supply and demand. More supply and the same demand leads to lower prices.
pvg 3y ago
From a few people already working in the US for years getting green cards?
snakeyjake 3y ago
My employer cannot hire H1Bs. They are prohibited by law. All employees must be US citizens. They pay extremely competitive rates. They are the reason for and a source of complaints regarding gentrification in my area. edit: as an example the starting rate for high school work-study and college interns is the hourly equivalent of $78k/yr plus the same benefits as full-time employees from the second they show up. The work environment is spectacular. There is no work from home because that is a practical impossibility so the work-life balance is carefully considered and benefits are outstanding. There are no after-hours tasks (there can't be, really). You show up, work 9-5 in a relaxed environment, go home, cash your fat check, and enjoy travel and hobbies. From IPC soldering-certified technicians to senior RF scientists and everything in between we cannot find enough workers for the amount of work we have. For sexy startups trying to use sexy AI to steal user data in order to serve them sexy ads yes, maybe the market is saturated. For hard-STEM fields my experience has been that there are too few people who take their linear algebra classes seriously.
- pc86 3y ago
  I worked for a sexy startup (non AI and didn't steal user data, but did have ads) that got bought by one of these big hard-STEM companies. The scientists there who had 15 YOE and a PhD made less than programmers on our side with no college degree and 2-3 years of experience programming. Hard-STEM seems to have lots of jobs where you can grind your ass off for the better part of a decade or two and hope to make $100-120k/yr by then if you're lucky. At least on the coding side you'll get to that level within a handful of years if you're willing to job switch often and optimize for that salary. Glad to hear there's at least one hard-STEM place where the grind isn't as bad.
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    True The "hard-stem" places rely on a bit of gaslighting and the "holier than thou" self-image of the "hard-stem" people to pay them less and to overwork them As much as the IT world has issues, it is night and day compared to the hard-stem world where a lot of times they won't even look at you if you don't have a MSc or PhD. Learn on the job, what is that?
jupp0r 3y ago
Only if you believe you live in a zero sum world, which every serious study will show you don't.
- bluecheese452 3y ago
  Haven’t seen a single replicable study showing this.
probablynish 3y ago
The article says that most of these approvals are going to tech entrepreneurs / startup founders. The effect of this seems to be to create new companies that otherwise wouldn't have existed, spurring demand for tech workers. The net effect of this is upwards pressure on wages if anything. More generally, if another country became the global nexus for top tech talent, capital would eventually follow there, and the long term effect on US tech salaries would be negative.

Expect further downward pressure on US tech salaries.

_factor 3y ago

At the benefit of a stronger economy.

mlindner 3y ago
Completely agree. The pay is high because the demand is higher than the supply.

addicted 3y ago

Ah yes, the last 30 odd years of increasing immigration has exerted tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries. And countries in Europe that have not seen as much Tech immigration have seen huge boosts in Tech salaries. Comparable Europeans earn almost 1/3 - 1/2 what their American counterparts do today!

dougmwne 3y ago
But really, it’s much easier to enter the EU. You have dozens of countries with their own rules so there are many more options. Plus immigration rules tend to be much easier than the US with its famously strict legal immigration with low caps. Indeed, this balance between supply and demand is exactly what keeps US tech salaries high. Our dynamic economy creates a lot of tech roles while our restrictive immigration limits high skill immigrants from filling those roles, raising salaries. Tech companies have been lobbying unsuccessfully for years to raise or eliminate the h-1b cap, which would absolutely cut salaries. That’s why they are lobbying for it, to reduce their labor costs. Personally I think this is all going to be moot anyway. With software development becoming a mostly remote role after the pandemic, I’ve seen a lot less barrier over the past few years to hiring offshore teams. My own small division of 100 people has offshore teams in 3 countries.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  And yet there is very little tech immigration into Europe, comparatively. Must be the low salaries.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    You can earn European level tech salaries in Bangalore and Beijing now. There isn't as much demand to move there and uproot your family just for $30-50k a year.
bequanna 3y ago
I’d be curious to hear opinions on why this large compensation discrepancy exists. AFAIK, my company has never considered outsourcing to remote Euro workers. Is there a perceived difference in engineer quality? Time difference?
- jupp0r 3y ago
  Having worked in the EU and the US, here are some differences that I think are relevant for global employers: - The hiring pool is much smaller than in the US, one reason is probably demographics and lack of skilled immigration. This makes it less attractive to hire/grow there. - Labor regulation is much more strict. It's legally hard and expensive to lay off workers in Germany, for example. - Taxes are much higher than in the US, so even if employers spend a lot of money on payroll, much less of it will end up in employees checking accounts. - Demand is much lower. Tech industry in Europe is definitely there, but not booming to the same degree as in the US.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    >Labor regulation is much more strict. It's legally hard and expensive to lay off workers in Germany, for example. Is a few months notice [0] too much to ask? You can fire anyone you want, you're just going to wait a little bit or pay their remaining salary if you want them gone immediately. There is nothing legally hard about it. The hardest part is probably that you have to physically mail the layoff notice, but nothing prevents you from just directly giving it to them straight into their hands to be perfectly compliant with the law. Also, most of these laws only apply to companies with employee counts in the double digits. Not to small startups hiring their third employee. [0] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__622.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__622.html
    - jupp0r 3y ago
      There's much more to this than you cite. There's Betriebsrat and Sozialplan etc. I'm not at all saying any of this is bad, but it does play an important role when companies make decisions about where to put their engineering centers.
logicalmonster 3y ago
> Ah yes, the last 30 odd years of increasing immigration has exerted tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries. I'm not 100% sure, so I have to ask. Are you being sarcastic about immigration not exerting tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries?

dougmwne 3y ago

This affects very few immigrants of extraordinary ability. Such people are likely to be job creators with the companies and products they build. I agree that if we were to lift the cap on H-1b visas it could easily destroy tech salaries. Thankfully that’s not under consideration.

jupp0r 3y ago
Most H1-B visas don't go to engineering roles. Expanding those quotas wouldn't affect engineering salaries, but probably IT support roles, etc.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  If you open the door wide enough, salaries will drop. It’s an economic reality. It may be a very good thing for the wider economy and stock market though. Right now critical roles that enable high productivity work are behind a tall wall of a multi-100k salary. It’s possible that we are letting a small number of engineers get early retirements in exchange for a drag on the whole economy.

thenaturalist 3y ago

The economy is not a zero sum game. The US created literally all relevant consumer technology in the last 30 or so years and demand for tech talent has exploded ever since. Having a competitve sector/ economy which regularly pushes the edge of innovation and hence expands demand (both on sell and supply side) is actually what keeps salaries up. This logic is as deeply flawed as often as it comes up.

bsdpufferfish 3y ago
The myth is that these measures must be taken because of "shortages of workers" when there are plenty of US citizens in STEM who are underemployed. This narrative is purely a lobbying effort.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > ... when there are plenty of US citizens in STEM who are underemployed. Where, exactly? Unemployment rate among STEM graduates is half of that of the general population [0]. Salaries are also substantially higher [1], and keep getting higher [2]. [0] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-unemployment#:~:text=Overall%2C%20among%20all%20STEM%20workers,4.9%25 https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-unemployment...). [1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-median-wage-and-salary-earnings#:~:text=STEM%20workers%20earn%20more%20than,(figure%204%2D1) https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-median-wage-.... [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433814-000-most-stem-salaries-are-on-the-rise-but-inequalities-are-worsening/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433814-000-most-ste...
  - bsdpufferfish 3y ago
    Unemployment != underemployment. So the unemployment rate in your first article is not relevant, missing labor participation rates etc. The second article is about median wages of people who are already in jobs categorized as stem. Same with the third, which is also only about the derivative. > Where, exactly? The most prominent segment can be found by dropping the engineering and tech. Biology, math, physics, chemistry, etc. However even in engineering we find that the top grads move into software or finance.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

linuxftw 3y ago

People in tech have blinders are. We're already in tech, so we don't see the repercussions. Entry level jobs are almost non-existent, they're all going overseas and to indentured servants.

Clubber 3y ago
This is just a repeat of what started in the 90s (probably earlier). It's really a scheme for companies to get access to more talent to drive wages down.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  News flash. The demand has started to slow down. 20 years ago, the Chinese backlog used to be in the decades range. Now it's 2 years. The Indian backlog used to be multi-decade too, but is now 11. Already, we've had engineers at portfolio companies decide to return to India to either earn a dollar salary or start their own startup. At this point, we've decided to straight up outsource jobs to India, Israel, and Eastern Europe. The talent base we need doesn't exist in the US. These guys could have become taxing paying members of American society. Now they'll make contributions to India, Eastern Europe, and Israel instead
  - coredog64 3y ago
    > Now they'll make contributions to India, Eastern Europe Good! There’s a billion people in India and plenty of opportunities for growth. The net benefit for all of humanity is larger if they stay there. Put another way, is it really all that great that the US drains the top talent out of India and Eastern Europe?
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      It does when those people who leave have a chip on their shoulder due to bad experiences with the US. For example, the founder of Zoho (Sridhar Vembu - I actually lived in the same apartment complex in the Bay Area that he started Zoho at) has become a NatSec cabinet advisor to Narendra Modi's administration, and has a chip on his shoulder about his experience dealing with US immigration. It was a big reason he returned to India. Wang Huning, the Chairman of the Chinese Politburo and Xi Jinping's right hand man - soured on the US after his experience dealing with the US as a student. A good friend of mine from college in the ML space who's parents are pretty high up in the ruling party of a major SEA state has been constantly complaining to me and them about how they lost 2 chances at the F1 to H1B conversion, and every single time became more and more ambivalent about the US. They can end up returning to SEA and make a large company, but they will also have a chip on their shoulder about the US. Another good friend of mine was an Indian national who specialized in EE and Condensed Matter Physics (semiconductors type work) - even did grad school in it at a Stanford type program. He left the US to work for a major Chinese company in SEA because immigration in the US was horrid. Plenty of Israelis feel the same way now about the US due to similar experiences. The US Immigration system exudes a sense of American exceptionalism because voters say "Love it or leave it". But the people who leave end up becoming successful, but still angry at how much effort and stress was expended for naught. China is now a near peer in 2023. There's no reason to fuel anti-Americanism in India, SEA, LatAm, etc and push them to the other side.

ketzo 3y ago

Intuitively, yes; factually (looking at the last 30 years of tech), categorically false. Tech begets tech, tech jobs beget tech jobs. Personally, I think we are not remotely close to “peak software” in particular.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
The reality of Canadian tech salaries would disagree with you. Our immigration system targets skilled workers from abroad, and brings in a lot of them. It's a far more "rational" and less confusing system than the US, but also explicitly geared around bringing in skilled workers as permanent residents and it brings in a lot of them. The downward pressure on compensation rates is real. Apart from exceptions in FAANG type companies, salaries here are often 1/2 of the rates of US employers, and it isn't because we're a lower quality product. As a result a large % of us just move south to the US on a TN visa, or take remote jobs from US employers. Because the disparity in compensation is very high. And it's in large part because the market here is flooded with talent from abroad.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  The Canadian tech market is particularly small by most standards. Tech salaries there are lower than what a skilled employee can get in Israel, China, or India.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
But the increase in tech jobs doesn't benefit existing workers. Compare https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-tech-workers/ https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing... : > According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74% of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born abroad. In 2000, only 29% were. > Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000 jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we created 100,000 engineering positions in the last decade, we’ve also displaced 88,000 domestic engineers.[1] > American tech workers are getting pushed out, and they aren’t coming back If the downward pressure on salary in American software jobs is so extreme that salaries frequently go all the way to zero, while there is a countervailing upward pressure on salary among Indian no-job-yets, why do we say it's "categorically false" that there is a downward pressure on American software salaries? [1] Note that this is what you expect from a pricing shift, not an increase in the value created by the work. The quantity of software labor purchased has gone up and sellers are being forced out. If the driver of increased quantity-of-jobs were increased value created, you would see sellers entering the market, not leaving.

danking00 3y ago

People who gain citizenship are no longer in a precarious visa situation nor tied to their current employer. Moving people off visas and into PR/citizenship would seem to me to remove downward pressure on salaries. Heck, workers with PR/citizenship are probably more likely to unionize for higher wages because they feel safer.

bee_rider 3y ago
But this admits that the more generous and open policy might also be more practical. Can’t have that, it is too good.
lgleason 3y ago
You are forgetting the law of supply and demand. More supply and the same demand leads to lower prices.

pvg 3y ago

From a few people already working in the US for years getting green cards?

snakeyjake 3y ago

My employer cannot hire H1Bs. They are prohibited by law. All employees must be US citizens. They pay extremely competitive rates. They are the reason for and a source of complaints regarding gentrification in my area. edit: as an example the starting rate for high school work-study and college interns is the hourly equivalent of $78k/yr plus the same benefits as full-time employees from the second they show up. The work environment is spectacular. There is no work from home because that is a practical impossibility so the work-life balance is carefully considered and benefits are outstanding. There are no after-hours tasks (there can't be, really). You show up, work 9-5 in a relaxed environment, go home, cash your fat check, and enjoy travel and hobbies. From IPC soldering-certified technicians to senior RF scientists and everything in between we cannot find enough workers for the amount of work we have. For sexy startups trying to use sexy AI to steal user data in order to serve them sexy ads yes, maybe the market is saturated. For hard-STEM fields my experience has been that there are too few people who take their linear algebra classes seriously.

pc86 3y ago
I worked for a sexy startup (non AI and didn't steal user data, but did have ads) that got bought by one of these big hard-STEM companies. The scientists there who had 15 YOE and a PhD made less than programmers on our side with no college degree and 2-3 years of experience programming. Hard-STEM seems to have lots of jobs where you can grind your ass off for the better part of a decade or two and hope to make $100-120k/yr by then if you're lucky. At least on the coding side you'll get to that level within a handful of years if you're willing to job switch often and optimize for that salary. Glad to hear there's at least one hard-STEM place where the grind isn't as bad.
- raverbashing 3y ago
  True The "hard-stem" places rely on a bit of gaslighting and the "holier than thou" self-image of the "hard-stem" people to pay them less and to overwork them As much as the IT world has issues, it is night and day compared to the hard-stem world where a lot of times they won't even look at you if you don't have a MSc or PhD. Learn on the job, what is that?

jupp0r 3y ago

Only if you believe you live in a zero sum world, which every serious study will show you don't.

bluecheese452 3y ago
Haven’t seen a single replicable study showing this.

probablynish 3y ago

The article says that most of these approvals are going to tech entrepreneurs / startup founders. The effect of this seems to be to create new companies that otherwise wouldn't have existed, spurring demand for tech workers. The net effect of this is upwards pressure on wages if anything. More generally, if another country became the global nexus for top tech talent, capital would eventually follow there, and the long term effect on US tech salaries would be negative.