I'm from the UK and almost everyone I know is finding it hard to get work in tech right now. There's also a lot of strange stuff going on in hiring here (especi

I'm from the UK and almost everyone I know is finding it hard to get work in tech right now. There's also a lot of strange stuff going on in hiring here (especially for remote roles). There's a huge number of what appear to be fake applicants who when interviewed appear to be based on India for remote roles (bad internet connection, very poor English, unusual decoration for a British home or use of background, strange background noises). While these people can generally provide an ID of someone based in the UK and who has a legal right to work, my assumption is that they are not actually that individual. In non-remote hiring there's been an explosion in the numbers of boot-camp devs applying for positions which is making it difficult to find good developers between weeds of applicants. The average developer role might get 300+ applications when 5-10 years ago that might have been 10-20. I've also noticed a huge increase in companies filling underpaid positions by importing talent from abroad (generally from India). I used to work in the public sector and this seems to have been an increasingly common practice over the last few years. This may be because the public sector has found it hard to compete with private sector tech salaries and with the boom in migration in recent years they have started to turn to foreign talent as a way to fill roles where they're offering below-market-rate salaries (although I'm sure they'll claim there's a shortage of British people applying for these positions but we know that's salary related). I think all of this combined along with the tech slowdown and economic stagnation in the UK has basically created a toxic combination in which it's very hard for UK tech workers to find work. And because I know people will accuse me of xenophobia for what I'm saying here to be clear, I'm not suggesting any of this is bad or the fault of foreign workers. My family are working class and have had to compete with foreign labourers for many many years now. Many middle-class people like myself were quick to agree this was good for the economy and suggesting that it was simply that British workers were too lazy and didn't want to do jobs like clean toilets (well, except my mum I guess). So honestly if anything I think it's good that this trend is now hitting middle-class knowledge workers because perhaps now there will be a discussion about whether countries like the UK should be thought of primarily as economic zones in which its population are simply economic units which can be exchanged with economic units from other nations when it makes sense for businesses do so. Or whether alternatively the UK is nation which owes its best opportunities to its own citizens first, rather than offering them to a global labour pool (even if this is better for business and corporate profits).