I know this is a much popular opinion now. But I can't help and ask this again:
If a company hires an engineer in India, instead of Seattle, how does America (and workers) benefit? Software doesn't require factories, or supply chains, its just a hiring decision.
The question is whether these restrictions increase American employment or just accelerate the exodus of jobs while making the US a less attractive place for talented people.
> For one, the engineer in India doesn't drive the demand for housing in Seattle thus keeping it more reasonably (less insanely) priced.
I urge you to understand that housing prices in Seattle are largely driven by supply inelasticity, more than anything.
If the premise was true, we'd have seen large drops in rent/home prices after mass layoffs (we didn't).
Also, it would be hard to explain the prices finally falling in Seattle for the last few months, which aligned perfectly with the largest supply since Feb 2014.
I think it’s pretty clear that Immigration has a direct strain on housing. It’s been a big problem in Canada too. Of course if you just keep building to increase the supply, that would be desirable.
>I urge you to understand that housing prices in Seattle are largely driven by supply inelasticity, more than anything.
Supply inelasticity comes from increased demand. Much of that demand in the past 20 years has come from the increase in Tech workers. A significant % of those tech workers are foreign workers. Places like Bellevue, Redmond, Bothell, etc. have dramatically changed in ethnic makeup.
It's driven by demand too. As soon as Canada restricted student visas, housing and rental prices (finally) started to drop. This wasn't because of supply.
Supply is rising from builders and also from lack of buying, iiuc the flattening and recent drops does line up with immigration and layoff changes, and its often quoted by the multiple local real estate agents weve talked to.
Obviously supply matters most but that doesnt mean demand isnt still a significant factor.
The engineer does marginally increase housing demand. They also increase local and federal tax revenue to support education, healthcare and other services. And the engineer will spend a large portion of their salary in the local economy, helping to support all the other business in Seattle. So there are also positive externalities.
What are some of the other "many negative externalities" you mention?
I feel like we could have the best of everything if you we just built more housing to keep up with demand.
It's just a never ending balance problem. Also the "just build more housing" is such a numbers only view. Anecdotally, everyone I've talked to hate budget cookie cutter apartment complexes; they're ugly, neighbor problems, noise, pets, etc. What people really mean is they want a single family house sitting on land, but you just can't have both.
I don't know what a "numbers only view" means. But I lived in Tokyo for a long time and I basically think it is an ideal city, and obviously there are lots of factors, but I think the single biggest factor is the abundance of housing. They have way more of it and it leads to so many wonderful things, like mass transit or an endless supply of little hole-in-the-wall restaurants, bars, and cafes in walking distance.
Look at how people vote with their wallets: there is an enormous demand for housing in places like Brooklyn. That doesn't mean we need to turn the whole nation into Brooklyn, but I think (given the massive demand) why shouldn't we have a few more places like Brooklyn, i.e. dense urban areas?
Most places in the US have a remarkably low population density; we can definitely greatly expand the housing supply with a little infill and still have lots of suburbs.
The engineer in India also doesn’t drive demand for managers and product teams and ops people and HR and payroll staff and canteen workers and office space construction and highways and education spending in the US. All that happens in Chennai instead.
people don't buy "housing." They buy views, they buy location, they buy neighborhood character. There are perfectly good houses in Nebraska---yet people aren't swarming to Nebraska. It's not because there's anything wrong with the housing.
This is the point the "just build more supply" folks never mention. Close to markets, water, aesthetically pleading single family houses on land. Like there's a reason housing crisis only happens in popular cities, because well, they're popular for a reason. Also people shit on zoning laws (yes they could be better), but I'm sure they dont want to live in hong kong style back to back concrete mega apartments with no parks
It's mostly due to absurdly difficult to get permits.
A benefactor decided to solve the housing crisis, created a development company. Gave up 2 years later. Stating the legal burden to get permits was the biggest financial obstacle. We are ready to build from the start, 2 years later we still couldn't build and spend most of our capital in lawyers in hope to get any approval.
But look at the other side. An engineer living in Seattle pays taxes and contributes to the economy. Seattle loses that benefits if that same job moves to India.
So, I am not sure if that housing argument alone makes that a better outcome for America (and workers).
Its Azure Hardware division that manages its first party silicon and its deployment has a huge hardware and electrical engineering presence. These fields don't have as many people in America in them, because Software has paid so much more for the last two decades, why would anyone go EE when they could go CS and make 2-3x more. In other countries, these degrees were paid similar so there is a larger pool to pull from then in America.
You can't train a software engineer overnight to be a silicon engineer
That's true. Problem is a lot of the time Middle America is comfortable and doesn't want to move out to the valley or Seattle.
Remote work makes that easier now, but with silicon / EE its not always the most optimal way to work.
Middle America EE is also not building data center class chips or infrastructure most of the time, would it be easier to get one of them up to speed, yes. But it's the equivalent of throwing a front-end engineer into C or embedded programming or vice versa.
At that salary, you're just proving the "why go EE when you can go CS and make 2X more" argument, at least if we're talking about a 20+ year senior dev/architect type.
I agree. Specialized engineering is very different from software, you can't easily replace that expertise.
My question is more on software roles, those CRUD or React component roles, where the work can be done remotely. Instead of Americans filling those positions, companies may/will simply hire those engineers abroad.
They may. I think the government should probably tax the diff in salary in those cases. The problem is, that is probably incredibly hard to define and pass as legislation or whatever has to be done.
H1B and offshore jobs can be beneficial to America though, and that was why the program started. Sufficient guardrails just never went up and now there is opportunity for some abuse. But that abuse isn't across the board, there is still beneficial H1B and offshoring going on mixed in with abuse.
"I think the government should probably tax the diff in salary in those cases"
How would that work if the remote people were employed by a different company that was given a contract by the home company to provide certain pieces of software or specific computing services?
Hey man I'm just a software engineer now, I can't speak on public policy.
My best effort, the contract is a red herring, we only care about the company that employs the abroad remote employees which is the contractual company in this case. If that contractual company is also abroad, we tax (tariff?) the contract.
What grounds would you have for putting a tariff a specific contract between two parties? Is it not the case that tariffs need to apply to categories of trade and to countries?
The laws are outdated, tariff laws were written when trade was physical goods. The US heavily trades in services present day. But I don't need grounds because the conversation has been about establishing said grounds.
If they're physically here on US soil on a visa, they're paying the same taxes as any other US citizen. Sales tax, property tax, Social Security, Medicaid, etc..
Well, you can only offshore jobs complex up to a certain degree, not frontier talent or higher management. The O1 visa will likely still be in effect for them; what's getting rejected are worker-level visas.
If a company hires an engineer in India, instead of Seattle, how does America (and workers) benefit? Software doesn't require factories, or supply chains, its just a hiring decision.
The question is whether these restrictions increase American employment or just accelerate the exodus of jobs while making the US a less attractive place for talented people.