6 ms·

> If tech talent can’t come to the U.S., American companies will go where the talent is. LOL! They're going to send the jobs where the wages are cheaper, and t

• alephnerd 8mo ago
  I'm in the cybersecurity space and we largely shifted hiring and funding to Tel Aviv. Israeli [0] tech salaries are comparable to Atlanta [1] and Dallas [2], yet we get better talent across the board - less bootcamp grads and more people with a background in OS and algos. [0] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/israel https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/israel [1] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/atlanta-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/atlanta... [2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater-dallas-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...
  • dzonga 8mo ago
    yeah Israel tends to be strong in cyber security. However one thing as a founder, I have started to adopt the Israeli playbook - have dev team etc in Israel and sell in the US i.e green card startup you can live in a cheaper location, while benefiting from a larger market that might not be your home market
  • spwa4 8mo ago
    That's because Israel gets to import "a certain kind of people" from everywhere around the world who are trained. We all know why they leave the places they come from ... Sucks for people born in Israel btw.
  • butterbomb 8mo ago
    > less bootcamp grads and more people with a background in OS and algos. I’m going to wager at least one reason for this is Israel is big in industries that demand that sort of knowledge where in the US, most money was made by CRUD monkeys putting together high level line of business applications.
• rayiner 8mo ago
  The language people use is funny. When companies offshore skilled factory jobs to foreign countries, they call that "offshoring." But when it comes to programmers, they call it "going where the talent is." They act like programmers are in a different class than machinists.
  • surgical_fire 8mo ago
    In some ways they are. For a bit of time I worked offshore for a company in the US. That was pure cost cutting, I was making probably around 5x-10x less than someone with similar skills in the US. After a while I landed a job that required me to migrate to a different country. I actually make more here than the average salary for a local engineer. I don't know many machinists that are hired from halfway across the globe, relocation costs included, to make more than the average machinist in the destination country.
    • jacquesm 8mo ago
      I don't know about machinists but I do know about (and know one personally) welders with certain specialties that can basically name their price. Such as the ones that can fix gear in running steelplants where shutting the thing down would require a rebuild.
      • surgical_fire 8mo ago
        We are in agreement then. Specialized skill is valued in the correct context, when there is demand for it.
  • AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
    Homie you’ve been around here long enough to know that that is exactly the case Software developers view themselves as an entirely different class than skilled blue-collar laborers precisely because of their access to capital It is explicitly because a single engineer can go out and get money from a capitalist and a single machine shop operator cannot go out and get money from a capitalist that makes the distinction People wonder why software developers are anti-union it’s because they are fundamentally capitalist at heart
• lokar 8mo ago
  I worked at Google for years. We simply hired as many people as we could find who could get through the process. If they were outside the US we would try to get them here. If not, we would find a spot for them outside. We would never hire a less qualified person simply because they could work in the US. We were always behind, to the point that having open “headcount” in an org was worth little, what you needed was priority to get a new hire. At one point we were “parking” Australians in Dublin, having them work there for a year or two until they could get a visa for the US.
  • siliconc0w 8mo ago
    This was the old Google, new Google lays off teams and moves them to India. New grad hiring is all but paused, hiring just enough to Seniors to backfill attrition and trying to slot them in at n-1 or n-2 levels.
    • lokar 8mo ago
      Old Google was run by engineers. New Google is run by finance.
      • billev2k 8mo ago
        Like Boeing. And look how well that's worked out.
    • locusofself 8mo ago
      Sounds like Microsoft too.
    • giancarlostoro 8mo ago
      I've been told by completely different friends, at unrelated companies spanning countries and different US states that if I was only Indian they're sure HR would have called me back. I applied at each of these companies over the years. There's no shortage of talent in the US, there's an uptick in hiring discrimination.
• baron816 8mo ago
  Why are Americans entitled to those jobs? If there are people in other countries happily willing to accept 1/10 of the pay do to the same work, why is it morally wrong deny them those jobs?
  • co_king_5 8mo ago
    [dead]
  • some_random 8mo ago
    And why indeed do scabs not deserve a right to work as well?
  • bigthymer 8mo ago
    I think the logic goes something like...in a democracy, government policies should reflect the will of the people. The majority of the people are against exporting jobs overseas when the economy at home is not doing well, especially when the people that control the hiring are becoming obscenely wealthy at the cost of impoverishing the workers.
    • baron816 8mo ago
      So, America First then?
      • mikkupikku 8mo ago
        Who else first? Doesn't every democratic countries populace broadly attempt to vote in their own interests? Was there ever a pretext that they shouldn't?
        • baron816 8mo ago
          There’s a lot you can do to directly help other countries that indirectly helps your own country. Creating a rules based system (vs a “might makes right” system) means the powerful don’t just get to take everyone shit, but it does mean everyone gets an opportunity to prosper. Allowing US companies to find talent abroad means those companies can deliver better products and makes competition more viable (ie lowers prices for consumers). If we only care about “jobs” and the size of paychecks, then protectionism is the way to go. But if we actually want to provide broad based prosperity (especially for our own citizenry), then you should not protect a small subset of high paid workers.
• simianwords 8mo ago
  I think this is normal? You want free market to work only till it justifies the 200k salaries but not when it leads to similar increase elsewhere.
• yodsanklai 8mo ago
  At a given level of skills, the company will favor the cheapest employees. At a given level of salary (e.g. US market), the company will find the best possible candidates (most of them are foreigners, for simple statistical reasons). Maybe there's a confusion that an "US" company should somehow be loyal to the US. This isn't the case, big publicly traded corporations work for the shareholders. They don't own anything to the US graduate who's looking for a job. If they have less flexibility to hire in the US, they will hire elsewhere if they can. They still have an incentive to hire in the US as it's easier to collaborate when everybody is close by, but apparently it's not enough to favor (less skilled and/or more expensive) US citizens. What is ironic is that this model has been forced to the world by the US, and nobody cared when it affected the manual workers. Now that it affects the educated elite, it's suddenly unacceptable.
  • spwa4 8mo ago
    At this point it no longer matters. Thanks to Trump, they have no choice. We can discuss nefarious motives all we want, and they may even exist, but they don't really factor in at this point.
  • palmotea 8mo ago
    > Maybe there's a confusion that an "US" company should somehow be loyal to the US. This isn't the case, big publicly traded corporations work for the shareholders. They don't [owe] anything to the US graduate who's looking for a job. That's not true. A US company should be loyal to the US: the fact that they are not is political dysfunction. China, for all its faults, gets that, and it makes sure its companies are loyal to China. They're also in the process of burying the US economically and technologically. The US is falling behind in industry after industry, and its not creating new, sustainable technological edges at a sufficient rate. That's partially because the shareholder-mercenary American companies repeatedly make deals with the much more strategic China, that weaken themselves and America in the medium to long term. > What is ironic is that this model has been forced to the world by the US, and nobody cared when it affected the manual workers. Now that it affects the educated elite, it's suddenly unacceptable. It was always unacceptable. It's just that too-many idiot software engineers confused themselves for capitalist barons, because they had a 401k and a higher-than-average salary.
• _alaya 8mo ago
  > They're going to send the jobs where the wages are cheaper, and that's exactly what they're doing. I read these sentiments, and I honestly don’t understand the tone. This kind of behavior is exactly what you’d expect after taking just a few introductory undergraduate economics courses. Free markets are predicated on the free movement of capital and labor, and American companies being able to go overseas for cheaper labor is exactly what they're going to do unless there are laws preventing that. When we have laws keeping jobs in one place they get called "regulation." Generally speaking, I’m really shocked at how uneducated people are — programmers in particular — about how the labor market works, how the economy works, or how anything in the real world works, really. There's a reason studying humanities is valuable - history, philosophy, economics, etc. It clues you in that when someone wants to exploit you, it's usually based on well-established precedent.
  • palmotea 8mo ago
    >> They're going to send the jobs where the wages are cheaper, and that's exactly what they're doing. > I read these sentiments, and I honestly don’t understand the tone. This kind of behavior is exactly what you’d expect after taking just a few introductory undergraduate economics courses. You'll notice I was responding to something I quoted. They claim they're taking action X because of Y, when they're actually taking action X because of Z. Changing Y will do nothing about X. Hence the tone. Also, the eight most terrifying words in the English language "I just took few introductory undergraduate economics courses..."
    • _alaya 8mo ago
      Gotcha, looks like I misread what you were saying. > Also, the eight most terrifying words in the English language "I just took few introductory undergraduate economics courses..." Fair enough, but I at least have a whole degree in it. :)
  • bigbadfeline 8mo ago
    I'm not the person you replied to but I don't see how your comment relates to his, I mean, did you reply to the wrong comment? Do you understand the difference between "talent" and "cheap labor"? > Generally speaking, I’m really shocked at how uneducated people are — programmers in particular — about how the labor market works, how the economy works, or how anything in the real world works, really. You provided zero evidence for any of these sins in the comment you replied to. I'm kind of shocked how economists get shocked out of thin air, it seems they make everything out of thin but highly compressed air. > There's a reason studying humanities is valuable - history, philosophy, economics, etc. There's a reason why people avoid these - in their present form, they provide zero practical value and even worse, teaching them amounts mainly to shamanistic incantations designed to confuse and hide the truth -e.g. BS about "talent" when the issue is "cheap labor".