I've been out of a job for most of the past year. While sending Merry Christmas texts to my friends, I had a conversation with one (another programmer, different technologies and industry) where he revealed he was laid off last month.
I keep applying for jobs, and recently accepted the possibility to relocate for an on site position (because staying where I am and hoping to get a remote position hasn't worked out). I just had a promising lead in Texas 'move forward with another candidate'... argh!
Companies aren't willing to train people, not even their current employees. They want their candidates to come prepackaged with at least X years experience in Y technologies for several technologies. Their unwillingness to budge created the H1B catastrophe we see now. I'm more than willing to replatform my skillset (B2C Commerce Cloud to Shopify, or Java to .NET, for example), but no one's offering.
Looking around at the big picture, it seems that most money is leaving tech to chase higher returns elsewhere. If you aren't doing AI or crypto, it feels that you're fighting over bones. The scraps were gone a long time ago.
And we see PG talking up H1B on twitter. I'd like to think that if he still read HN he might not do that.
Really companies should be banned from importing more people[1] if they laid off a certain number in the last year. That way the job market would be more likely to self correct.
[1] I think they should still be allowed to hire people who are already in the country on a visa, as it's unfair to make their risk of being kicked out of the country worse. And they should be allowed to renew existing visa workers
IMO the main issue with H1B is that it makes it harder for them to move. This reduces their ability to negotiate salaries which ultimately drives the equilibrium price for everyone down.
This is why unions in Europe often end up in two seemingly contradicting (but not really) positions regarding labour immigration. One is to try to limit it, and the other is to ensure that the immigrants gets as strong rights as possible if they are allowed in.
An argument against not being allowed to import more people after layoffs (and it’s the one people like PG and Musk are making) is that the people who were laid off simply don’t have the skills required to allow companies to succeed.
They need to import labor because the domestic labor pool isn’t good enough. A quieter part is that people immigrating also expect less for their outputs.
Are you and Elon saying that India’s education system and universities are just plain better than MIT, Stanford, etc? If so - why are so many studying abroad in places like Canada and Australia?
If not, then are Indians just genetically smarter than Americans, so that their pool is better?
It just seems like immigrants are willing to work more for less, so that in the future when they’re citizens, they can work less for more.
Sorry, I wasn’t making a case for that argument. I’m only pointing out that it exists, it’s a prominent way of thinking, and it’s worth considering.
I don’t personally subscribe to that belief.
My position is more so that wealthy, powerful people stand to gain a lot by disempowering their workforce, and they’re working hard to do just that. People like Elon would love to see cheap labour and AI beset the workforce such that it had no leverage and lower wages. He has said about as much in various ways already.
I’m a little disappointed that my comment wasn’t voted down more, because I really did phrase it as my own opinion.
Yes, it’s a major component at least. I’ve wondered if there should be protections against this to maintain some baseline of safety for people’s workloads, but that would never fly in North America as far as I can tell. And it could actually harm some people who legitimately need to work overtime to take care of their families.
Mass layoffs are generally not that discriminating. Because they don't want the news to leak in advance, it's usually a circle of the top brass and the HR department that decides who goes. And with mass layoffs, it's usually entire teams not just people who were on performance plans. Hence, I don't think their argument is good. I have little against importing talent when there is a shortage[1], but mass layoffs are good evidence that there is not.
[1] Well, except when the country fails to invest enough in education and training. It's wrong for the UK, for example, to consistently not fund enough medical students, and make up for it by importing staff educated by third world countries.
Small tangent but I’ve seen a sharp increase in typos in the front page comments throughout December. Very surprising to me (I’ve been here since 2016.)
If you aren't doing AI or crypto, it feels that you're fighting over bones.
Getting jobs in AI has also been hard for a lot of people as well. Many of my former colleagues who worked for a very visible company in the ML/NLP space have had issues finding good positions.
I think these are businesses development directions everyone talks about but are almost guaranteed to be a flop for any company that isn't already known in them. A few years ago everyone talked about big data hires even if they had about a GB of relevant data.
I wonder how much of this is due to the end of semiconductor scaling. At some point, if hardware performance-per-cost doesn't increase, things will stabilize and new applications will dry up. The computer industry could become like, say, the machine tool industry. Important, but not a source of runaway profits.
I'm probably going to be unpopular, but as a non-American, I actually find that hiring non-American is a good trend, especially if you want to sell all around the world. I don't have an opinion on H1-B specifically.
Companies selling physical goods lead to a decent amount of jobs in every country they operate in by definition. Not so for software.
It is US big tech who has for a decade or 2 reaped enormous benefits from extracting large sums of money from non-US economies while contributing near-zero back to those economies (often not just near-zero but straight up deeply negative amounts due to externalities).
What do you mean? Only way I can think of is social media advertising revenue going to big tech instead of local media. But a net negative effect on non-US economies seems hard to believe.
Every euro/yen/.. spent by German/Japanese/.. residents on US tech is one that goes to big tech. Every minute spent consuming US tech (Meta et al) is one spent not consuming something that benefits local society.
Enormous net negative, and I'm lucky enough to be part of the poster child society that shows just how much better the alternative is: South Korea. And even here people still use lots of US tech (Instagram is huge), just much less of it, in every case at massive net benefit to Korean society as a whole.
I am not aware of the South Korean software ecosystem, can you share a bit more info or point us to some? It sounds cool, I’m very interested in localized economies and software.
Korea is one of the 4 countries that I know of where a non-Google firm holds significant market share in search. One of only 2 democracies, the other being Japan. And Japan is ambiguous as their local player (Yahoo Japan) has been using Google for indexing for years (but is now switching).
Instant messaging, online payments, online shopping, second hand market place, domestic hotel bookings, email are all local tech companies. Food delivery was local for very long, now technically acquired by foreign company but run independently as local tech. Taxi apps have been local for very long, though Uber's presence is growing - but even there they got into the market by acquiring a local player and running them relatively independently afaik (less sure about this one). Even then, majority of market share is still non-Uber locals. Anything finance-related is local. Maps are local. Gaming streams was Twitch+Local but is now local only.
Despite Android enjoying >90% market share for 10+ years (now rapidly losing to iOS, I'd say among age 20-30 iOS is >40%), the only Google products that have been popular were Youtube and Chrome. Gmail somewhat.
Even the dating app market here is dominated by local players. This is the only case I can think of where the result is actually worse than if it wasn't, which is quite a feat considering just how awful Tinder and friends are.
The only US apps that dominates its field here is Instagram. Chrome and Youtube do as well but gained that purely through default and PC usage. Netflix and Disney+ are popular by virtue of original content, but sports are local players. Spotify to an extent, but again, nowhere near 90% market share like US or Europe.
For obvious reasons, most tourists and short-term foreigners here hate all of this. But frankly their opinions should be ignored. Despite being a foreigner as well it's clear as day that it's much better for everyone else.
The local replacement of Google maps is the easiest example, I've written a little about it here [1].
China is another country that has developed its own local apps, mainly because many global ones are banned there. Even if Google, Uber, and others had free rein, I don’t think they could compete with the existing options. The local apps are so tuned to Chinese culture, an American app just wouldn't be intuitive to them.
Do you think the local apps, aside from dating, are better than their U.S. counterparts, or is it mainly due to their strong local momentum? Could the Western apps compete in that market? It sounds like Uber is making some inroads.
Yes, China is the poster child and even more extreme of a case, but less good of an example for how things could be in a Western country. An EU country today can't become like China, but they can become like Korea, or at least something much closer.
> Do you think the local apps, aside from dating, are better than their U.S. counterparts, or is it mainly due to their strong local momentum? Could the Western apps compete in that market? It sounds like Uber is making some inroads.
Yes, they're better.
The first reason being what you touched upon with China. To give an example; Meta will almost never consider developing some specific feature or local integration purely for Italy, despite almost everyone in Italy using it. This is an awful situation, really, but it's just because from Meta's perspective it doesn't push the needle [1]. What if instead of Whatsapp all of Italy used ItaliApp? They'd be busy fulltime doing local integrations, things that make sense for Italians. There's nothing else for them to do. They would probably have tried at some point to go abroad, utterly failed, and from then on just focused on the local market. How do you improve revenue from a market, offering a free app like instant messaging, when you already have 99% penetration? Make people use it more. How? Useful features.
Second reason is much less enshittification. Now I think this effect would be less severe for ItaliApp, as part of this is cultural in Korea, but it'd still be there. Given ItaliApp will not turn into a trillion dollar behemoth, if it enshittifies too much, there's more chance of competition popping up. Either local, or the neighboring EspañaApp sensing an opportunity. The Google maps comparison I linked to at the bottom is the best example. US apps can be great - many years ago, Google maps used to be. They just no longer are.
Uber is gaining ground mostly through tourists and short-term expats. The biggest local taxi app took far too long to add foreign credit card support. But like I said, Uber here is still a JV, did not start out as Uber, and I'm fairly sure they still run their ops here much more locally than they do in e.g. European countries. It remains to be seen whether they'll keep on growing, but for now among locals I still put their market share at <20%. I do actually use them for a different reason; unlike the main local app, Uber shows the drivers' rating after they take your call. I haven't met anyone else who cares about this though.
[1] I actually think they're leaving a lot on the table here, but I could be wrong.
How much money does country X spend paying Windows or MS Office or Photoshop, simply as the cost of doing business? And it's not that any other country couldn't – technologically – come up with a competitor to Windows, MS Office or Photoshop, it's that it is basically impossible for a non-US product to gain any traction in the tech world, for reasons that are both economical and legal. In fact, in many tech domains, the best that a non-US company can hope for if they want their product to be successful is to be bought by a US company.
Seen from the rest of the world, the has spent the last few decades killing the software and hardware industry of everybody else through practices that feel very much like a combination of a tax on tech and an abuse of monopoly.
If you wonder, the rest of the world doesn't quite see any difference between the "unfair" practices of which US Conservatives accuse China and the practices that the US has adopted for the last 40+ years in a number of domains when it comes to becoming/remaining the dominant player in a number of fields.
I'm afraid I don't understand what rubric you're talking of. Are you asking me whether employers across the world should read HN? Or is that an autocorrect typo for "rule"?
If the latter, yes, certainly. My last two employers had to hire US and Canadian developers anyway just to be able to sell to the US/Canada, so I guess it's already the case.
Consider purchasing a better English dictionary. I worked in the ESL/EFL industry for years and never encountered the word rubric as a synonym for category/chapter. It is commonly used to refer to a guideline or rule.
I guess everyone has a different idea of what's good. I find most people consider something good if it works out for them, and no more thought is given to the issue.
As for Americans, I think they have to question what their taxes are doing for them? They grow up receiving a sub-standard public education, they take on an enormous amount of debt to get higher education, and when they reach adulthood, the job market unceremoniously has nothing to offer them because its all being given away to non-americans.
What's the point of a nation anyway? What's a government's job? Maybe nationhood is an outdated idea and we should all bow to corporate overlords instead.
I think at this point Americans need to be questioning the partnership between the major capital interests and the major political parties. We all know we’re getting screwed, but the parties are adept at keeping us blaming each other and playing tug of war while they get away with whatever their sponsors want, more or less. It’s not a problem that’s going to get solved by a Democrat or Republican supermajority in Congress, control over the Supreme Court, or control of all branches of government.
The way I see it, American tech companies are siphoning considerable amounts of money from other countries thanks to a tech monopoly. For instance, I see my taxes being used to pay MS Office licenses/subscriptions, and I strongly suspect that if anybody ever manages to displace MS as king of the word processing hill, it will be a US company, or a non-US company bought by a US company.
So, yeah, my non-US taxes being used to pay for US jobs? I can live with that. But I can also live with them being used to pay for jobs in my country.
I keep applying for jobs, and recently accepted the possibility to relocate for an on site position (because staying where I am and hoping to get a remote position hasn't worked out). I just had a promising lead in Texas 'move forward with another candidate'... argh!
Companies aren't willing to train people, not even their current employees. They want their candidates to come prepackaged with at least X years experience in Y technologies for several technologies. Their unwillingness to budge created the H1B catastrophe we see now. I'm more than willing to replatform my skillset (B2C Commerce Cloud to Shopify, or Java to .NET, for example), but no one's offering.
Looking around at the big picture, it seems that most money is leaving tech to chase higher returns elsewhere. If you aren't doing AI or crypto, it feels that you're fighting over bones. The scraps were gone a long time ago.