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I'm surprised the article or the source for it didn't dive deeper into the impact the changes to H1B have had on the tech job numbers. Mind you I'm not trying t

by abuani 7mo ago

I'm surprised the article or the source for it didn't dive deeper into the impact the changes to H1B have had on the tech job numbers. Mind you I'm not trying to argue for or against them, but I find it hard to believe the changes aren't contributing at least a small amount to the drop. The other thing not mentioned is the impact on the end for ZIRP. Every tech company with a pulse over hired such a staggering amount during the pandemic. It's not surprising these companies are returning to reality and not hiring back to the same levels.

the_real_cher 7mo ago
Its impossible to ignore when a company laysoff thousands but then has thousands if verifiable H1Bs in the H1B logs. I agree with you. I'm not arguing for or against it. I do think leaving it out of the conversation is a willful choice and blaming job loss solely on AI is becoming propaganda at this point.
- alephnerd 7mo ago
  Employees on work visas are the first and easiest employees to lay off because we don't see our insurance premiums rise when laying them off (it's what most of us did early during COVID). And now with the $100K fees we have no incentive to hire most employees on a work visa anyhow. Hear that sound? It's the sound of GCCs opening in Poland, Romania, Israel, and India with those employees who were on work visas in the US now in charge. If you remain in a major tech hub like the Bay or NYC where you are close to early stage capital, you are secure as it gives you a density of established and early stage employers which makes job hunting easier. If you are in an inshoring hub like Atlanta, RTP, Denver, Minneapolis, or Pittsburg you're in big trouble. If you are remote first and lack a network of friends and colleagues in the Bay and NYC who can personally vouch and refer you for roles at their companies you're in big trouble. If you are a bootcamp grad, you are also in trouble so get the cheapest online degree you can that forces you to take a real algorithms and systems programming class. Edit: can't reply > The matter of fact nature of your reply sounds highly, personally anecdotal. Given the confluence of moving parts from AI and policy/politics alone, let alone potential regional instability and the effects on US financial markets, it’s really impossible to speak to the next quarter, let alone year/years. Not saying your prediction is not correct, but few are Well, duh. This is an anonymous forum, not a research paper. That said, I am speaking from my personal experience, and a couple of other decisionmakers on HN have also voiced similar sentiments on here. It's free advice - take or don't. It's not my problem. To quote Buck Strickland, "I ain't yo daddy".
  - gravisultra 7mo ago
    I don't know what a GCC is but I assure you that no one is opening offices in Israel.
    - alephnerd 7mo ago
      I can assure you otherwise - hell two of my Israeli/American startups are about to come out of stealth in the coming days as RSAC is approaching. Even with the current Iran War and the Gaza War, it's been business as usual. Edit: can't reply > You may be putting your money there, but consumers aren't having it Most companies aren't B2C or B2B2C. Enterprise and B2B is solely outcome driven.
      - gravisultra 7mo ago
        Look at the blowback on Vercel after the CEO went to Israel. You may be putting your money there, but consumers aren't having it.
    - disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
      Not right now, but there's a big tech scene in Tel Aviv and that won't go away for a while.
  - testbjjl 7mo ago
    The matter of fact nature of your reply sounds highly, personally anecdotal. Given the confluence of moving parts from AI and policy/politics alone, let alone potential regional instability and the effects on US financial markets, it’s really impossible to speak to the next quarter, let alone year/years. Not saying your prediction is not correct, but few are.
  - porridgeraisin 7mo ago
    Meta MLE hiring seems to still be going strong. They recently picked up a whole slew of people - all H1B - from one of the UCSD labs to work at HQ.
    - 7mo ago
bayarearefugee 7mo ago
> It's not surprising these companies are returning to reality and not hiring back to the same levels. The common claim from the "dont worry about AI stealing jobs" crowd is that there is nearly limitless demand for new software to be written. Even if over hiring is the reason for a lot of current job losses, the fact that over hiring is possible makes it obvious their Jevron's paradox claims are either lies or an attempt at self-soothing.
- el_benhameen 7mo ago
  The process of figuring out what to build has always been harder and more drawn out than the process of building it. I’m not arguing one way or the other for the Jevon’s paradox claims, but the steelman argument that you’ve missed is that job losses can happen very quickly (“last week’s version of Claude code is good enough that we can fire Joe and have Sarah do twice the work”), but the recovery can take a long time as the tech slowly diffuses throughout the economy and slowly spurs new ideas.
- lelandbatey 7mo ago
  I think the timelines are too short for trends to be completely apparent yet. You can typically hire people faster than you can scale your income sources, even in the face of tremendous demand. Right this moment there's factors pushing folks to fire, but I also do see some companies delivering more (not a lot, but noticably more) and seeing increasing sales as a result. Those are in conflict, and we'll see which way the trends push through time.
- visarga 7mo ago
  AI work creates surplus, we eat that away by specializing and becoming more dependent. Work doesn't stop, it becomes higher stakes, we depend on each other and AI now.
- dangus 7mo ago
  I think a more common claim is that the current downturn is way more obviously explained by Covid-era overhiring. Basically all the charts on that subject are incredibly eye-opening. To me it shows that the tech industry has actually been extremely resilient. Despite clearly going on an insane hiring spree that was not justifiable in the end, there hasn’t really been the kind of collapse we should expect. Tech companies have still maintained revenues and we haven’t seen any real sign of collapse. Companies that have gone trough major layoffs generally still have more employees than they did before 2020. What we are seeing are some tech employees who were used to nearly a decade of easy work act like spending 3-6 months looking for a job is industry apocalypse. I think you actually need to support the idea that there isn’t a nearly endless demand for software to be written. Software is just business logic. What businesses don’t involve software? What businesses are you seeing that are saying “our software is done, there are no more ways to optimize our business, and there’s no need to evolve business processes to compete, we don’t need to update it anymore!”? I can’t think of any business vertical that isn’t expecting constant improvement with their software.

by abuani 7mo ago

the_real_cher 7mo ago

Its impossible to ignore when a company laysoff thousands but then has thousands if verifiable H1Bs in the H1B logs. I agree with you. I'm not arguing for or against it. I do think leaving it out of the conversation is a willful choice and blaming job loss solely on AI is becoming propaganda at this point.

alephnerd 7mo ago
Employees on work visas are the first and easiest employees to lay off because we don't see our insurance premiums rise when laying them off (it's what most of us did early during COVID). And now with the $100K fees we have no incentive to hire most employees on a work visa anyhow. Hear that sound? It's the sound of GCCs opening in Poland, Romania, Israel, and India with those employees who were on work visas in the US now in charge. If you remain in a major tech hub like the Bay or NYC where you are close to early stage capital, you are secure as it gives you a density of established and early stage employers which makes job hunting easier. If you are in an inshoring hub like Atlanta, RTP, Denver, Minneapolis, or Pittsburg you're in big trouble. If you are remote first and lack a network of friends and colleagues in the Bay and NYC who can personally vouch and refer you for roles at their companies you're in big trouble. If you are a bootcamp grad, you are also in trouble so get the cheapest online degree you can that forces you to take a real algorithms and systems programming class. Edit: can't reply > The matter of fact nature of your reply sounds highly, personally anecdotal. Given the confluence of moving parts from AI and policy/politics alone, let alone potential regional instability and the effects on US financial markets, it’s really impossible to speak to the next quarter, let alone year/years. Not saying your prediction is not correct, but few are Well, duh. This is an anonymous forum, not a research paper. That said, I am speaking from my personal experience, and a couple of other decisionmakers on HN have also voiced similar sentiments on here. It's free advice - take or don't. It's not my problem. To quote Buck Strickland, "I ain't yo daddy".
- gravisultra 7mo ago
  I don't know what a GCC is but I assure you that no one is opening offices in Israel.
  - alephnerd 7mo ago
    I can assure you otherwise - hell two of my Israeli/American startups are about to come out of stealth in the coming days as RSAC is approaching. Even with the current Iran War and the Gaza War, it's been business as usual. Edit: can't reply > You may be putting your money there, but consumers aren't having it Most companies aren't B2C or B2B2C. Enterprise and B2B is solely outcome driven.
    - gravisultra 7mo ago
      Look at the blowback on Vercel after the CEO went to Israel. You may be putting your money there, but consumers aren't having it.
  - disgruntledphd2 7mo ago
    Not right now, but there's a big tech scene in Tel Aviv and that won't go away for a while.
- testbjjl 7mo ago
  The matter of fact nature of your reply sounds highly, personally anecdotal. Given the confluence of moving parts from AI and policy/politics alone, let alone potential regional instability and the effects on US financial markets, it’s really impossible to speak to the next quarter, let alone year/years. Not saying your prediction is not correct, but few are.
- porridgeraisin 7mo ago
  Meta MLE hiring seems to still be going strong. They recently picked up a whole slew of people - all H1B - from one of the UCSD labs to work at HQ.
  - 7mo ago

bayarearefugee 7mo ago

> It's not surprising these companies are returning to reality and not hiring back to the same levels. The common claim from the "dont worry about AI stealing jobs" crowd is that there is nearly limitless demand for new software to be written. Even if over hiring is the reason for a lot of current job losses, the fact that over hiring is possible makes it obvious their Jevron's paradox claims are either lies or an attempt at self-soothing.

el_benhameen 7mo ago
The process of figuring out what to build has always been harder and more drawn out than the process of building it. I’m not arguing one way or the other for the Jevon’s paradox claims, but the steelman argument that you’ve missed is that job losses can happen very quickly (“last week’s version of Claude code is good enough that we can fire Joe and have Sarah do twice the work”), but the recovery can take a long time as the tech slowly diffuses throughout the economy and slowly spurs new ideas.
lelandbatey 7mo ago
I think the timelines are too short for trends to be completely apparent yet. You can typically hire people faster than you can scale your income sources, even in the face of tremendous demand. Right this moment there's factors pushing folks to fire, but I also do see some companies delivering more (not a lot, but noticably more) and seeing increasing sales as a result. Those are in conflict, and we'll see which way the trends push through time.
visarga 7mo ago
AI work creates surplus, we eat that away by specializing and becoming more dependent. Work doesn't stop, it becomes higher stakes, we depend on each other and AI now.
dangus 7mo ago
I think a more common claim is that the current downturn is way more obviously explained by Covid-era overhiring. Basically all the charts on that subject are incredibly eye-opening. To me it shows that the tech industry has actually been extremely resilient. Despite clearly going on an insane hiring spree that was not justifiable in the end, there hasn’t really been the kind of collapse we should expect. Tech companies have still maintained revenues and we haven’t seen any real sign of collapse. Companies that have gone trough major layoffs generally still have more employees than they did before 2020. What we are seeing are some tech employees who were used to nearly a decade of easy work act like spending 3-6 months looking for a job is industry apocalypse. I think you actually need to support the idea that there isn’t a nearly endless demand for software to be written. Software is just business logic. What businesses don’t involve software? What businesses are you seeing that are saying “our software is done, there are no more ways to optimize our business, and there’s no need to evolve business processes to compete, we don’t need to update it anymore!”? I can’t think of any business vertical that isn’t expecting constant improvement with their software.