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It's similar to how China dominated manufacturing in prior decades. They have massive amounts of low cost labor and, unfortunately, the US has pretty large wal
by adam_arthur 2y ago
It's similar to how China dominated manufacturing in prior decades.
They have massive amounts of low cost labor and, unfortunately, the US has pretty large walls up preventing mass in-migration of white collar workers.
H1B is capped and also more of a lottery than a points based system.
If the US allowed mass white collar immigration, wages would decline materially which would make our industries more competitive for the next generation of software.
Right now the system is geared around protectionism (intended or not) and wage inflation for US local workers.
The current market wages in software are far far above what a global equilibrium would be. Though myself and I'm sure most others here have benefited from it in the short term.
To be clear, established companies with an existing market are fine for now and can do well with high wages.
But the next generation of companies that are chasing smaller markets and margins, ones that require more elbow grease to out-compete are underserved.
e.g. the entire DeepSeek team was paid less than a few Meta engineers (with 7 figure comp each)
"The firm offers 14-month pay for various positions and the highest offer is for deep learning researchers for artificial general intelligence (AGI), with a monthly salary between 80,000 yuan ($10,983) and 110,000 yuan, which could mean an annual income of up to 1.54 million yuan, the report said."