If you ignore data regarding H1B, OPT and O1 your analysis is meaningless. I support immigrants coming to this country to work, my girlfriend is one of them! But what has happened to tech in terms of Americans being displaced is candidly astounding.
As a black man, I honestly think more of the apparent "discrimination" against American minorities is a direct result of offshoring and h1b.
> But what has happened to tech in terms of Americans being displaced is candidly astounding.
My tenure at a BigCo came to an end recently-ish and in the 2 years before I left I saw:
- multiples of new openings in LatAm/India vs Domestic
- increasing use off offshore staffing firms even on big name stuff
- presumed increase in offshore teams based on my random heuristic of clicking usernames making recent posts in various Slack channels "team: $FOO, Location: Bangalore" and etc. The volume here was much higher than last year, and far higher than it was in the years prior.
- lots of open internal talk about "leveraging partners"
Majority of the work I did was working with private sector F500s and the extent to which those companies outsourced IT/Software was staggering. I encountered several major companies that had basically no "actual" IT/Software in the States: outside of a handful of meeting-takers the actual implementation work was almost 100% outsourced/staff-aug via H1B shops.
The talk about "AI" taking jobs is a total distraction from the actual source of the jobs disappearing.
It's hard to explain how diametrically different the playing field is now. In most cases it's not "AI" it's just systemic replacement of Americans because they're "too expensive". Which basically just means more yacht money for executives at the altar of infinite GDP growth.
Both sides are complicit as well. It's not just the left but in current times even more so the right. The right won't shut up about deporting "illegals" but has created even more opportunities for H1B's to flood in and no disincentive for corporates to outsource. Canada already has laws that act as "tariffs" for offshoring labor - we desperately need awareness first and unified action.
What is happening now to knowledge work in the U.S. is what happened to factory jobs in the 90s.
> "The right won't shut up about deporting "illegals" but has created even more opportunities for H1B's to flood in and no disincentive for corporates to outsource. Canada already has laws that act as "tariffs" for offshoring labor - we desperately need awareness first and unified action.
What is happening now to knowledge work in the U.S. is what happened to factory jobs in the 90s"
100%--this admin is a fraudulent disaster on so many levels.
As a black man, I honestly think more of the apparent "discrimination" against American minorities is a direct result of offshoring and h1b.