My issue with reading (nonfiction) books these days is that they’re essentially extended opinion pieces. While I am open to learning a talking head’s perspective (not everyone who gets a book deal is necessarily an expert in their topic), my main gripe is that many writers don’t incorporate a multifaceted point of view on their subject. I don’t expect encyclopedic information, or comprehensive analysis, but I think including choice perspectives across the entire history of a given subject matter is important. Otherwise, I’ll just chat with a bot about the topic, and get text books or journal articles for deeper understanding. Book writers need to do a better job, maybe we need digital books that enable chatting with the author’s book/bot. Free idea for whoever has the bandwidth to do it.
The article says firms are spinning normal head count reductions, following a period of over-hiring, as efficiency thru AI adoption. This was obvious to everyone who wasn’t high on their own supply. Now the mistake is comparing AI adoption to the dotcom bubble, which is again an extreme take on reality. There’s still lot of promise to AI, and there are very real capabilities being enabled by existing technologies, so nothing is quite dotcom-like (except a few non-AI companies getting a push in profile by spinning themselves as AI), but jobs aren’t exactly being replaced by anything automated. If anything, AI flaws are creating more work, but hiring is stalled due to other reasons.
Investment monies have been tightened across the board, mainly due to high interest rates and the fact that investments in anything other than Tech/AI don’t match expectations of growth.
US companies have long been reliant on free flowing investment monies subsidized by the USG. Tightening those purse strings has reduced the level of jobs openings, including tightening of SBIRs and other non-research grant programs that small to medium sized companies use. Small business loans are also tight or non-existent. So, of course jobs will be limited.
The macro-level economic policies really only affect large corporations, unless a business is impacted by the tariffs. In general, hiring is fucked by immigration visas in large companies, which are still going strong and sneaking around the anti-immigration barriers. In some way, hiring non-U.S. workers for work funded by the USG is unacceptable, and economic theft.
If USG opens up funding more, then things will normalize, including for immigrant or non-U.S. contract workers in other places. As always, it’s the economy that’s the problem, but which part of it is always hard to pin down when other parts of it make up for it.
This is just Trump, not the USG as a whole. Congress approved a budget and Trump refuses to give the money out. People have to fight in court to get the money they're owed.
Data shows jobs have been in decline before Trump, likely related to reduced investments from high inflation and high interest rates. I guess I should add that part of opening up more funding includes managing other aspects so we don’t end up in the same economic environment post-2020.
Yeah, it should also be combined with the elimination of OPT, H4 EAD, and H1 visas that are harming the STEM industries in the same way to the tune of 6 million jobs. New grads can't compete with the tax benefits provided by hiring OPT workers.
Stupid me, I thought the US was about competition and boldness, a place where a man can work, be good at what he does and be appreciated for it. But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born.
The purpose of the United States government is to benefit the people already here. It is not reasonable to assume that Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet.
>But it turns out that for many of you it's about the place you happened to be born.
This meme needs to die. It was not some sort of accident that I was born in this country, it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions. I had a 0% probability of being born literally anywhere else. And as such, it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here.
> Americans should have to compete with the labor pool of the entire planet.
You almost always do, with houw our world is set up. No matter what you believe.
> it was the consequence of generations of conscious decisions and actions.
Oh, yeah, you are worthy, the others aren't. Got it.
> it is perfectly reasonable to want my government to prioritize the needs of me and my compatriots over those of others who are not from here.
They are not, in fact, prioritizing the needs of your compatriots. They would if they cared about making your country more competitive.
But in fact, they are hard at work to alienate your allies, erase your competitive advantages and turn you into a dictatorship.
Good luck, you're going to need it. Don't worry, I know us across the pond are fucked too, but at least we are not throwing away our status as a superpower for the dumbest of reasons.
I think the hyperbole in your comment is clouding your point, which appears to be that you are skeptical that immigration restrictionism is on balance good for the United States, to which I’d say that immigration restrictionism is actually the default setting and the current era of high immigration is unprecedented and new. This is the same pattern in Europe as well. The US achieved its super power status during one of the more restrictionist periods for immigration in its history, so I don’t follow how moderating immigration just a little bit equates to “throwing it away”.
>at least we are not throwing away our status as a superpower for the dumbest of reasons.
If you would choose to believe, all of this is a strategic play to get off the resource curse (aka the Dutch disease), with resources in question being trust and US dollar being the world currency.
Throwing that away may be a good thing for US long term.
Are they harming the STEM industry, or are they a key reason why these industries are successful? Maybe those workers are just better than you and deserving of those jobs? If you don’t want competition, what you’re asking for is a tariff basically. In other words, you are pro inflation and pro passing on YOUR costs to the rest of us. No thanks.
65% of H1B jobs are in one industry, “computer-related” jobs as of 2023.
There are over 700,000 H1Bs in the USA, so almost half a million tech industry specific H1B jobs. Considering there are roughly 6-10 million tech jobs in total in the USA, that's 5-9% of tech jobs.
As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
There is nothing you can post that will change this. The people openly abusing the intent of the program are growing too wealthy for them to even pretend to understand the negative effects. Don't expect them to accept there ever being any consequences for themselves for what they have done. Cutting them off cold turkey and enforcing the laws they've been breaking is the type of ice water shock they need to come back down to reality.
There is no rampant abuse or fraud or nepotistic hiring. These are just the latest talking points from supremacists on Twitter / X, that they repeat without any evidence, to rage bait the gullible. I’ve not seen nepotistic hiring from my immigrant coworkers, just merit based hiring. Do you really think all these well run and successful companies are leaning into allegedly low skill workers and nepotism because it is good for their business? No - they’re leaning into merit because that’s what is making them great.
If you disagree, share your evidence. Oh and also, high tech unemployment is not a reason to stop the H1B or other programs. If you’re unemployed in one industry, go find another one - don’t steal from me for your protectionism.
"Oh and also, high tech unemployment is not a reason to stop the H1B or other programs. If you’re unemployed in one industry, go find another one - don’t steal from me for your protectionism."
directly contradicts the written purpose of the H-1B program.
H-1B is explicitly conditioned on labor-market protection: prevailing wage requirements, attestations that U.S. workers are not being displaced, and the idea that the visa exists only when qualified domestic labor is unavailable. “If you’re unemployed, go find another industry” does not fit with H1B and shows you are OK with and personally normalize it's abuse.
The fact that you’re such a strong defender of H-1B while rejecting its core statutory premise shows you’re arguing for something other than H-1B as it exists in law. That mismatch is itself evidence that the concerns you dismiss aren’t coming from nowhere.
the US has very many visa programs, including half a dozen to a dozen work visa programs
this one particular visa program is politically radioactive, as if it is the only work visa program, and it doesn't accomplish its stated goals in hardly any way
until that can be settled I think and the program ironed out, it should be hampered to closed off, a moratorium
I would like to see the H1B program used to its original (and still codified) standards - highly in demand professionals that couldn't be sourced in the US so easily and are exceptional. The minimum wage for what such a professional would be paid was set in the 1980s, to $60,000 for someone with a master's degree, when it was exception. This minimum would be around $156,000/yr today. Okay, let's do that, that makes sense
if its politically radioactive to even just suggest that, all the more reason for a moratorium on that program, to me
For reference, I was an H-1B holder. My starting salary (straight out of college after finishing my master's) in one of the big tech companies was $95k base pay, this was 13 years ago. From my perspective, the visa program worked as intended.
13 years ago you should have been ineligible by both base salary and scarcity, until you were a senior architect in some specific niche and commanded a greater base salary
Or on a different work visa
Exhibit a b and c
I’m not saying you aren’t supposed to be here, I’m saying fix that program. The US shouldn’t be training talent and kicking them out. We should be training and keeping talent.
If I recall correctly, just my base was 20-30% higher than the prevailing wage that the government publishes (big tech bubble people forget how wages look like outside of big tech). In exchange, my employer hired someone with a graduate degree that knew C/C++ well enough to contribute immediately (I also did an internship with them a year prior).
> 13 years ago you should have been ineligible by both base salary and scarcity
I disagree. I don't believe my wage was lower than what a US candidate would get (from what I've seen at big tech, HR dictates wage brackets so same position translates to roughly same wage) and it is more expensive for a company to hire internationally. To me this means that they were unable to fill the position domestically. Later in my career I was involved in interviewing and the candidates were barely able to code (small sample size though) so either I was unlucky (after all, a lot of people apply even when they maybe shouldn't; some may have had a bad day), or the talent pool is indeed pretty small. I guess systems programming is a specific enough niche?
> I’m not saying you aren’t supposed to be here, I’m saying fix that program. The US shouldn’t be training talent and kicking them out. We should be training and keeping talent.
H1B was the only option available to me that allowed me to kick off the naturalization process so no issues there for me as well.
None of the things you perceived are what I think the H1B should be for though
so I can see how we're talking past each other
in neither my model or the current model, a salary percentage over what the government publishes has nothing to do anything. that's not a factor.
your wage being lower than what a US candidate would be paid for that role is not a factor either.
regarding the talent pool, I think you have it backwards to rationalize how it benefited you, companies are often looking for candidates in many places and then retroactively decide whether to accomodate special circumstances such as visa sponsorship
I'm glad you felt valued, empowered, had a nice compensation package, and a naturalization path you were looking for
now to my model:
in 2013 the minimum salary for the H1B with a master's degree should have been ~$113,000. Solely based on the 1989 $60,000 number adjusted for inflation. if the company wouldn't have justified that for their inability to fill the position domestically then it still shouldn't have occurred. or systems programming was that valuable and would have pushed up salaries faster because of the actual shortage.
Because the excesses are well documented and the proponents of it are constantly disingenuous about the issues that make it widely hated everywhere except in SV and in C-suites. It's at risk of being eliminated completely because those who abuse the system are spoiled brats that melt down over any hint of reform. When reform isn't possible, elimination becomes the only choice to make the excesses stop. Pretending not to understand this only makes it that much more likely that it will be eliminated entirely. The time for getting away with playing dumb is long gone. All it accomplishes is making the program even more hated.
The temporary program from three decades ago to bring in some extra help until the industry could ramp up training programs to develop domestic talent isn't temporary after three decades and the industry has made clear as long as it exists, there will be no honest attempts at developing talent instead of going for the lowest cost global source. All of the above will of course fall on deaf ears, with all the usual intellectually dishonest deflections and outright lies being brandied about. This once again guarantees that reform will be impossible and elimination the only solution.
I am looking at the problem from a population and industry level, and so my apologies if I am not looking at it from the individual’s perspective.
The first issue which stands out to me is that the world at-large doesn’t create enough jobs in industries where highly-skilled Western educated workers can work. In fact, low-skilled Western educated workers don’t have many prospects at a global stage either. So Western-educated workers (either immigrants or citizens) are stuck in Western nations due to several factors, including pay ranges, work conditions, and quality of life reasons, like access to a clean and safe environment, or a working justice system.
The quality of life reasons and pay ranges are the main attractors for immigrants as well, which is why some nation-state economies have remittances as a key component of their GDP. On top of that, some nations have sacrificed building an education and employment infrastructure in favor of building what are essentially factories for producing workers for Western nations. This also has the side effect of keeping the quality of life of these countries suppressed because people who would voice the most discontent simply leave. So, I’d say the second reason immigration visas need a more nuanced approach is because they hurt the development of other countries, unless those countries set up remittances or job contract pipelines. But even so, there’s no guarantee that the baseline quality of life will improve even as GDP sky rockets.
If you look at where people work, and how they’re the happiest working, it’s when they can find something modest which affords them a reasonable quality of life in their local environment. Great examples of this include many East Asian and Northern European countries. The key difference here is that these countries prioritize building benefits for their populations via education and workforce training and development. Unlucky people in any country will hope to immigrate to change that aspect of their life, which is a failure on the part of their home nation, not the individual.
Some nations have prioritized infiltration of large cap Western companies primarily for strategic geopolitical reasons, and that’s the third reason why I think immigration visas need a more nuanced approach.
Lastly (because I am secretly an idealist), I’d like large cap companies to be responsible with the great power they wield. Large cap companies have a global reach, and so can upset the local economies of any country by interfering with the work of small to medium sized businesses. Imagine if Google decides that it will set up shop in South Africa because the U.S. curtails all H1B hiring. Some people in South Africa will benefit, but the overall effect will be that the majority of the population will desire to shift its behavior so the individual can work at the best possible economic opportunity. While that sounds like an ideal scenario to a Western-educated liberal, consider that many businesses in local communities will lose out on potential high-skilled workers. The ecosystem of workforce development and employment needs to balanced against community development. Large cap companies subvert the function of local communities by shifting the calculus to economic optimization, whereas healthy and thriving communities have other goals as well.
Populations as a whole have lost sense of purpose because the main reason most people work is so that they can stop working. But globalization perverted that mindset by prioritizing the needs of large corporations over the needs of local communities. People still want to stop working, but they don’t know how to reach that goal. This problem exists because more than half the countries in the world have sacrificed their own development in favor of developing workers for large cap companies in Western countries.
Bit of a hastily typed ramble, but I hope the gist of it is clear enough.
I just worry about people abusing the term moral injury in the same way that they abuse other terms related to mental health issues, like trauma or PTSD.
Maybe I am wrong in how I think about this, but if giving the same prompt to a model produces similar outcomes (i.e., not exactly the same), then the final result is within a set of expected outcomes via the use of constituent words or phrases which retain the same meaning across different variations of possible constructions.
You can define a function to determine whether a number is prime using any number of ways. If your prompt produces an outcome with that intent, and that intent alone, then your prompt, and by extension the model, have some tendency towards producing outcomes for a specific intent in that case, which seems like a deterministic process to me for retaining the “gist” of the result.
The same applies to natural language outcomes. If I ask about a medicine and how it works, the model can construct the response in any number of ways, but the feature space of that response constrains the outcome to retain the same “gist” of the response across all variations of it.
It’s the same as asking the same question to ten different people. They’ll each have their own way of answering you, but the gist of the answer will remain consistent across respondents.
The problem here is that a GenAI model isn’t exactly governed by randomness as there is distinct information you can pull out in a knowledge graph (not saying there’s a literal knowledge graph here, just referring to what’s encoded in the weights) by composing the appropriate set of prompts, and as such some information will always be more closely linked versus other unrelated or dissimilar sources. So, this operation is unlike the operation of a slot machine, where you pull a lever and you are bound to find some answer within a set of permutations.
I think GenAI models do have some deterministic properties depending on their training data, but it depends on the model settings, prompts, and how you yourself impose your editorial decisions on the outcomes. In that sense, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the writing and code produced with help from GenAI models aren’t the property of the composer because the writing and code wouldn’t exist in the form that they do if they weren’t prompted and processed by the composer (provided that this material isn’t plagiarized).
The instruction-driven process of producing acts from a GenAI model make it more involved than what this writer is describing as the model itself has no thought, purpose, or intention. So it’s not a service, necessarily, where I’d expect a service to take more off my plate, but in the case of GenAI the composition, editorial, and review process take a lot of time and effort. As such, I feel comfortable referring to GenAI as a tool because there is both a deterministic quality to its output, and the tool wielder exercises considerable control over the output.
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