Tech companies tend to hire a lot of foreign workers. A lot of those foreign workers are suddenly being screwed, and the ability for American companies to hire such people has just taken a big hit. It's quite relevant here.
For the record, the demonstrated effect of US tech workers visa caps is less jobs for US-born workers too (as the economy is artificially slowed down as a whole).
Another way to look at it: if restrictions on high skill tech immigration tighten, then tech companies that would have been founded in America will instead be founded elsewhere.
This is more true of software than of any other industry, because software is built mostly with human capital which can cross borders fairly easily.
I’ve definitely wondered how easier immigration would affect my salary. I could see a lot of talented devs quitting their jobs to start companies that would hopefully recruit me with better benefits than I currently have.
Not to mention that technology has always been a bigger displacer of jobs than immigration. H1B allows 65K immigrants per year. Much more than that is displaced by self-driving cars, warehouse automation, etc.
I know a handful of talented developers stuck at a large company because of visa issues. They are too afraid to look for a better job because of immigration.
But really, it’s much easier to enter the EU. You have dozens of countries with their own rules so there are many more options. Plus immigration rules tend to be much easier than the US with its famously strict legal immigration with low caps.
Indeed, this balance between supply and demand is exactly what keeps US tech salaries high. Our dynamic economy creates a lot of tech roles while our restrictive immigration limits high skill immigrants from filling those roles, raising salaries.
Tech companies have been lobbying unsuccessfully for years to raise or eliminate the h-1b cap, which would absolutely cut salaries. That’s why they are lobbying for it, to reduce their labor costs.
Personally I think this is all going to be moot anyway. With software development becoming a mostly remote role after the pandemic, I’ve seen a lot less barrier over the past few years to hiring offshore teams. My own small division of 100 people has offshore teams in 3 countries.
This seems kind of backwards to be honest. The crackdown on H1-Bs will definitely have long term negative consequences on US tech economy, not positive consequences. A lot of major progress in tech was possible specifically because it was very easy to get h1-b visas especially for immigrants who came to study in US colleges.
Imo the issue with European immigration system is that it isn't welcoming for permanent immigration. So high skilled people go to Europe, earn some money and then go back home because they are never accepted as equal citizens in most wester European countries (both by law, but even more importantly, by culture).
In US on the other hand, immigrants can settle in much more easily and call it their new home, and become full fledged part of the society both by law and culturally. Especially in areas like SV and New York.
When you look at leadership (i.e. C-titles, VPs, Founders) of a lot of tech companies in SV and New York, first and second generation immigrants are vastly over-represented.
EDIT: also guess what is going to happen if immigration becomes harder? the outsourcing companies will get better and do the job cheaper remotely from India, so even more of the tech work will just get outsourced, meaning there will be even less tech jobs in Europe. You really can't stop the inevitable consequences of the global free market, unless you want to go full protectionist. So acquiring and KEEPING skilled labor through immigration is probably a much smarter long term choice compared to protectionist immigration strategies.
Has anyone tried to determine if the prevalence of H1B visas results in a downward pressure on salaries in the tech sector? In theory, it shouldn't because H1B visas are supposed to be filled when you can't find a citizen or a resident, but I wonder.
There has been a story equivalent to that on the front page every few weeks for the last five years that I've been reading HN.
I attribute it to some kind of watch-goliath-fall fantasy. That has been amplified dramatically since Trump got elected. Since then, a couple dozen countries are now supposedly candidates to swipe a lot of tech talent away from the US. Nothing will come of it; even more high-skilled talent will actually make it to the US thanks to reforming the H-1B back to what it was supposed to be. Inbound, substantial corporate tax cuts will increase the power of the magnet luring start-ups to US shores.
pretty much this. its why there was a lot of h1b visa abuse. top 0.01% doesnt want to pay a lot for tech workers but the demand is high, so increase the supply of tech workers.
Hi Peter. Thanks for your AMAs, always a source of great value.
A couple of questions from me:
1. Which would you say are the top spececializations within tech that employers are most willing to sponsor visas for nowadays?
2. Would you say the willingness to sponsor tech professionals has lessened somewhat as of late? Given the economic climate, opportunities to hire remote globally, etc.
3. Are there any impactful immigration reforms we should keep a watchful eye for, vis a vis the 2024 US presidential election?
I don’t know if my experience in the mid-2000s is unique. A company I worked for laid off thousands of American workers and replaced them with H-1B and off-shore labor.
Many (most?) of the H-1B workers were utterly unqualified. Right out of school, inexperienced, and some just hopeless. The impact beyond the obvious was anyone pursuing a tech career at that company found alternate work.
The lesson was not lost. They learned that they could be replaced at any time by much cheaper global labor.
So I wonder if some of the scarcity in the tech labor market isn’t due to this perception.
>“A deficit of domestic tech workers to fill available American tech jobs is worsened by the lack of access to foreign talent,” said Peter Leroe-Muñoz, general counsel and senior vice president of tech policy for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, an industry lobbying group. He said about 59% of the area’s workforce is foreign-born, including those holding H1B visas.
>Many jobs in such fields as information technology would have been filled by foreign workers holding H1B visas in the past year, Mr. Nowrasteh said, but instead they remained open or were moved overseas.
Interesting to think about how the US is somehow unable to home-grow talent in important fields like this... these tend to be well paying jobs but Americans, for some reason, can't fill them.
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