Summary
Elon Musk faced backlash from his followers on X after advocating for importing “super talented engineers” to address a shortage in the U.S. tech industry.
Musk likened hiring top foreign talent to building a championship sports team and argues that there is a shortage of talented and motivated American engineers.
Critics argued there’s sufficient U.S. talent being overlooked or underpaid, with some pointing to widespread tech layoffs.
Musk dismissed claims of low wages or training gaps, maintaining a need for exceptional engineering talent to advance innovation.
Musk likened hiring top foreign talent to building a championship sports team and argues that there is a shortage of talented and motivated American engineers.
There’s not, it’s just they want good wages and working conditions
As an employer the way to get cheaper workers that accept worse conditions is flood the labor pool. With the cost of an American education, H1B’s will always take less. Not just from foreign countries, but also from “better” countries with free education.
This isn’t just bad for the tech sector, it’s bad for everything that requires an advanced degree.
Yeah the more I’ve learned about H1 visas the more they stink. You set up your entire life and your employer can destroy it all at any time by firing you. So they take pay cuts, extra hours, extra duties, demands to sleep in the office, just horrible shit that American employees won’t stand for.
All we need to do is extend it to a 2 year rolling period for the individual. If you lose your job you have 2 years to get the next one. And employers have to wait 5 years before they can bring in another H1b employee if they fire one. After 5 years give them a green card.
Even simpler fix, actually. If they genuinely can’t find anyone else, set the wages of the people they hire to a mandatory 5x industry median or 500k, whichever is larger
If they genuinely can’t find anyone else, set the wages of the people they hire to a mandatory 5x industry median or 500k, whichever is larger
Trump tried something very similar to what you propose: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/08/19/trump-h-1b-visa-wage-rule-gives-clue-to-second-term-immigration-policy/
But I thought we wanted to deport people, not import them.
Honestly, this chart wouldn’t be acceptable for the most part.
Get the brown skinned engineers over here, but then threaten to deport them once they’re here. Easier to control and pay less. As is the way with every asshole regime.
It’s because they don’t intend to do anything to improve the education around here. That would swing voters away from them.
The education available in the United States is excellent. Just not for everyone. Just like healthcare in the United States. The best healthcare in the world is available here, just not to everyone. Because of money. For those with access to it, the amount they pay for it translates into higher wage requirements.
Due to socialized education in other countries (and more robust and generally available high-quality public education), particularly in developing democracies, the average starting wage for similar talent is much lower abroad.
Musk would never consider an employee who didn’t go to Stanford or Harvard or MIT or a similarly well accredited engineering school. He also wouldn’t consider those candidates because they would have much higher wage requirements which he conflicts with “laziness“. If the richest man on earth ever were actually willing to pay a living wage to Americans, he would still have the top talent he could get elsewhere. But, as a Self interested business person, he only cares about what’s cheaper. Therefore, he integrates anything that isn’t his primary choice in order to make his immoral business decisions appear more ethical. Or at least reasonable.
When it really translates to his: “I would hire American talent, but they feel they deserve to be paid better than what I’m willing to pay anyone other than myself.”
The education available in the US is also at its most expensive for overseas students, who are desperately courted by universities for a massive cash influx (source: am post-academic who witnessed this untold times). Wealthy families send their kids over at ungodly tuition rates, the students go back home and have the prestige of a US degree, which matches them up with high-paying jobs and ensures that the family’s wealth cycle continues.
A snag: the universities make so much money off these students, that if the student is struggling or not meeting a requirement somewhere, they’ll get waved through regardless with obviously bad results. The money is the point. I suspect if Elon did start importing people for lower costs, he’d get a lot of these students: they’re not hacking it back home but have a US degree from solid R1/R2s, come with a nice letter from their parents’ company, and are willing to be low-paid yes-people in order to cover their asses. Gambit? Masterful. Dick? Fully in car door. Car door? Expertly slammed.
I literally just said all of that, but I already said all of that. Just with more context and explanation.
Well, I’m glad you get what I’m saying, repeating it isn’t helping anyone.
Nothing is worse, however, then you excusing the shitty actions I’ve described. That just makes you complicit.
This tracks with my experiences.
Dumbest person I met in grad school was upper Indian caste. I wrote a paper he slapped his name on and rehashed several times to get his PhD in mechanical engineering. He didn’t understand basic concepts we learn before entering the engineering program, still has a PhD because money.
Foreign teams that have US degrees within my company also match your description. We give them a task expecting a full days work in their opposite time zone. Instead they work for 15 minutes, get confused, send a single question to us, and stop working for the rest of the day. They are less than worthless, always costing more time to clean up after than they save.
Musk doesn’t want a championship sports team, he wants a cheap, desperate, obedient source of labour.
The American Dream has long since been corrupted by the wealthy into a pipe dream for the masses that funnels more money to the rich.
Yeah, he just wants more pliant and subservient H1B visa holders that he can pay less than he’d have to offer to an American, who will be deported after 2 months if they don’t work hard enough to satisfy him.
Oh. Right.
By ‘deported’, I guess we’re now talking about ‘rounded up into mass concentration camps.’
I had a friend back a few years ago who was an H1B and it’s fucking exploitive. They made him work off his visa. And since his visa is tied to his job he couldn’t leave it. The place was toxic af.
The company was very much abusing H1B visas but unless someone at the company spoke up, it’s just business.
The place was toxic af.
What I’ve seen at such places is that they will often put some Indian into a management position and they will squeeze blood from a stone like you wouldn’t believe, flogging H1Bs (all Indian in many cases), and hiring no citizens if they can help it, other than just a token or two.
But the tokens will quickly learn their job is under constant threat if they get any notions of being uppity - the Indian H1Bs being there as a lesson that doesn’t have to really be explained…
And yeah, it’s toxic as anything.
https://insideevs.com/news/718815/production-teams-will-be-overburdened-tesla-employee/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/politics/twitter-layoffs-visas-h1b/index.html
We’ve seen Musk use this before, after all.
This is what’s causing backlash? Not any of the Nazi shit?
Hindu nationalists are about to be very, very surprised at what the Nazis actually think about their actual “Aryan” heritage.
