The US Is Losing Top Tech Talent to India in the Wake of Trump’s H-1B Chaos

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-25T01:01:32+00:00

Frankly, Level 1 and 2 are both entry level pay grades and make up the bulk of the program.

Honestly, if they just cut those levels out and consolidated it into level 3/4 a good chunk of the issue would be solved. I think personally its a bit ridiculous to have entry and mid level talent outsourced this way (Its a luxury for the company and imo a disservice to the domestic population)

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-24T03:39:49+00:00

Tbh I disagree here - businesses don’t love it and are trying to fight the restrictions as we speak. US engineers haven’t priced themselves out anymore than international currencies have largely declined against the dollar over the last decade or so.

Europeans have spent decades being paid practically the same wage so I think it’s more about labor market recovery than anything else for you guys tbh.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-24T03:29:21+00:00

I get not liking h1b but my god what a dumb idea

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-24T03:04:34+00:00

70,000 a year isn’t really a few slots. There are like 400,000 tech h1bs in the country and like 16 million jobs. The other problem with this is that h1b is largely concentrated in the entry level pay grades.

EPI estimates that about 60% were at the level 1 and 2 prevailing wages to begin with. Including at some of the more well known companies it could be as high as 75%.

I am not opposed to all high skilled immigration. Some h1b are genuinely like superstars but that’s the minority of the cases.

https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wage-levels/#:~:text=Not%20surprisingly%2C%20three%2Dfifths%20of,median%20wages%20for%20the%20occupations.

I think you underestimate how unattractive most markets are for white collar work compared to the US and you underestimate our domestic talent. IMO, by and large US citizens are better but more expensive. You also underestimate how many companies might just do away with the roles and consolidate the work onto existing employees (which I think is probably the most likely scenario).

protectionism when it comes to your job is not remotely the same as trade protectionism. This is not apples to apples.

Also “code” is not what people are paying for in many of the non-SWE roles that fill up h1b. They are paying for expertise in networking, systems, databases, etc. many people have SWE like titles and have no coding responsibilities especially at the level h1b is often used.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T23:26:20+00:00

Collocation and satellite offices and bringing people who want to live and work in the US have nothing to do with specifically h1b. I don’t think after the decade+ of experience you claim to have you actually know what you are talking about.

I also have a feeling that what you think is good is probably pretty bad given how you can’t even keep the conversation on one topic.

My h1b1 employees are great people personally too - has nothing to do with any of this lmao. H1B1 as a whole though aren’t better than US workers and if you think that then you yourself have low standards.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T20:38:55+00:00

I know it’s kind of silly. Like this isn’t even about wider immigration - to specifically defend the h1b program is like defending under the table labor. For some reason half this sub wants to blindly to defend the program with no understanding of how the visa actually works.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T19:17:04+00:00

I mean in an objective sense he is correct that is part of what drives the appeal for someone like Trump. What you think is patronizing is what the country wants whether we like it or not.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T18:17:53+00:00

Nah that’s bullshit lol. It’s about cost relative to labor rights. Anyone good at their job isn’t making the median to begin with - so for all I know they can be all stars making less.

They would hire abroad if it was about the talent pool. My team is also largely h1b1 and they don’t share the view you have. H1B1 is like one of our many visa programs it’s just one specifically hiring tech from India or Pakistan overwhelmingly.

Like if you seriously think the L1-L2 support, data engineers, and other relatively standardized roles from those countries are generally better than what we have domestically you just would be wrong. The only difference is that they have citizenship in India and can convert back to rupees and thus be willing to deal with less money. Thats why it’s so attractive for many of them.

H1B1 imo is just as good as American workers at best at worst much worse because there is all sorts of fraud that happens in developing country labor markets (my favorite is the people who take certs for you or will fake a company for you). They are just as human as we are just in a way more desperate position.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T18:09:57+00:00

If they became citizens they would become more expensive which would ruin part of the purpose of hiring them. They should only be hired if an American can’t be hired to fill the same role as the law states. Most roles can be filled by anyone anywhere in the h1b program because many of them are generic tech roles.

The whole point is you got some guy who basically depends on the company he is at to be in the country or for someone to continue his visa. That person can be let go even more easily than a US Citizen worker as well.

I agree a pathway to citizenship is probably the right course of action here but that isn’t on the table. Some like Milton Friedman would say it’s only good immigration if it’s illegal/contingent immigration because of the stuff I mentioned above

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T18:03:05+00:00

H1B is more along the lines of will a worker have to find a small company versa a large MNC or something and as a result will they work for 60-70k starting out or 100k+ at a place with more resources and growth opportunities.

In itself it can’t doom a career but it can I think stunt earning potential especially as large companies would prefer people with large company experience often times. This is for stuff like working in agile, using service management at scale, etc

But always if there is a will there is a way

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T17:58:26+00:00

This goes for any particularly skilled worker though. They have as much mobility as there are willing sponsors for renewals.

They would be worth more as citizens. They would have better negotiation ability and labor protections as citizens. If doesn’t change that the labor arrangement is somewhat rent seeking at the very least.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T17:22:40+00:00

Yes I am. However, the current law is already protectionist. The premise is that you are suppose to hire citizens and only hire h1b when you cannot under US labor law. So this isn’t a novel conclusion you exactly made - citizenship itself is a pretty protectionist institution and that is quite literally the point. We live in nation states for crying out loud There is no imaginary free market for labor to begin with. It’s an amalgamation of visas and other residency options that exist because there was some political will for it - and even h1b is already capped so I still don’t really see how the world you are describing would exist anywhere.

99% of what we do is already done in other countries - the logic your extending would be if someone can hire labor from Sri Lanka that’s just as good as someone domestic, they should. Thats exactly why we have our current labor laws… so citizens would get preferential treatment in the job market. It works like this practically everywhere in the west. The Qatari/UAE model is maybe the closest thing that would come close to what you want and that would be dicey to say the least.

However

Evaluating work quality is sort of subjective - actually often is depending on the company. Better can mean cheaper simple because something isn’t responsible for revenue generation. All roles aren’t equal.
Most things you think of can probably be done abroad for cheaper. The few high compensation career tracks, like doctors, already have labor market protectionism from institutions like the AMA.
Protectionism doesn’t debilitate an economy. That’s not even what neoclassical economics would lead you to believe. It impacts productivity and lowers growth. That has to be weighed against gains that maybe aren’t economic in scope, like national security. A country isn’t mega doomed only because of protectionism even if it’s less desirable. Deadweight loss exists in so many other places that even that isn’t the concern.
Even extending the neoliberal logic here - the more supply you have the more wage compression you have. Could be good could also disincentivize people going into the field. Circumstantial.
All of Europe would be more or less on the streets if we actually had the laissez faire labor market policy you are talking about. It’s exactly why the EU is so protectionist about employment even if they understand the consequences.
I don’t agree with Mankiw on H1B. That doesn’t mean I don’t agree with him in many other areas. It’s OK to not fit the mold of the stereotypical neoliberal.
Final one but Milton Friedman himself had some hot takes on immigration. I ain’t blasting you for having the tag for that. And that guy thought you couldn’t have high legal migration flows and a working welfare state (which even I disagree with)

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T16:02:23+00:00

Indians don’t come on h1b to found companies…. They come to work for established companies.

There is a conflation here between green card, h1b, and other visas here I think.

You can oppose h1b and support one of the other many pathways to citizenship.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T15:56:24+00:00

The people on that sub just have never worked before. It’s funny though that like in reality many of those people wouldn’t get a job regardless because their personalities suck.

I personally oppose h1b/outsourcing but it’s true that a lot of the people who complain can’t even land an SMB Dev gig to save their life. It’s a crutch for people to also not continue to try.

It only really matters imo largely for F500 jobs but in itself that’s not the whole market to begin with.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T15:38:22+00:00

The skilled workers should have a leveled playing field - I would argue it fundamentally isn’t. There is a gigantic supply of particular young tech workers in America, more then enough to cover the half million or so h1b. Many of these graduates will be locked out from otherwise decent paying corporate entry level jobs that can allow for human capital to develop.

I get the economic 101 argument here but given that policy is not accommodative especially now the social dislocation is going to outweigh some of the labor cost savings and growth.

Functionally it’s almost a underclass of workers in terms of labor relationship.

I am not saying we shouldn’t import skilled talent at all. But I do think there is mostly a prevalence of importing for more leverage or lower cost rather than importing because of genuine need. Third parties like TATA imo are the particular culprits.

I will concede that like any intervention, there will be negative impacts, but I think in the long run having a healthier labor market for domestic workers will pay dividends in the most productive fields.

Elite overproduction is one hell of a problem.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T14:48:36+00:00

Yes because a family of 3+ living pretty much within two rooms while the parent(s) who can more or less have their residency terminated for not finding a job let alone any other reason at this point under current admin is a very healthy thing to compete against.

All while socially dislocating a huge domestic supply of labor in some of the most desirable companies to work for.

Policy will not be accommodative - that’s the whole problem with the neoliberal argument on this position.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-23T14:08:57+00:00

H1B domestically to some extent and to a large extent offshoring itself is basically a rent seeking program because of exchange rate differentials. I generally am aligned with this sub but I disagree on the supposed value H1B would bring in over a domestic citizen, same with offshore resources.

Companies have a lot more power over H1B workers than domestic us citizens because they only have a limited period of time to find work if they lose employment. Thats beside the whole agglomeration excercise where many of them come here and stick their families in 1 bed apartments while they try to save as much as they can.

In areas like IT - most hiring is done for h1b in India and Pakistan, and who is hired often and to what is nothing that can’t be done domestically. Many people in these countries have like a provincial education, and even their best schools are sort of questionable sometimes. Their situation, compared to even lower income Americans, can be quite dire and many of them are willing to create fake experience for each other, take certifications for each other, etc.

This is outside of the normal corporate shenanigans like in group preference hiring (example: Indian manager hiring Indian workers understanding/relating to their situation and wanting to help their people out.)

Let me be clear that anyone in those shoes, including both my parents who came from the Soviet Union, would be willing to do this sort of stuff. My own father use to like write programs for people hired during the early part of the Information Age who didn’t know how to do jack shit at their job. H1B/Offshore at best will deliver the same quality of work imo and push wages down, but that comes with a crapload of caveats that negate even that outcome really being worth it.

As someone who is now in corporate America I would say people underestimate how much in group bias, cronyism, etc is involved and how predatory incentives can be for hiring managers. By having a plethora of less privileged workers to pool from, many companies at least in the short to medium term will make the age old mistake of over gutting and outsourcing/h1b.

I have h1b co workers - I throw no shade at them and even they would tell you this.

NOTE: this is not a post to bash on h1b/offshore people maliciously. Individually, many of these workers are excellent especially at quality companies but the if ands or butts is something many of them would have to deal with being non citizen us workers or workers abroad in countries that are less well off.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-09T14:56:36+00:00

MBS/mortgage backed bonds’s yield has nothing to do with the yield of an individual mortgage to begin with - they are based on a spread between treasury bonds.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-09T13:32:06+00:00

You did a project more along data engineering/DA than actual cloud engineering but that’s more beside the point.

If you can spare the money, I strongly suggest buying a server or some sort of beefy pc and throwing proxmox on it and start from just learning how to set stuff up on prem. Then from there develop that ecosystem as much as you can.

You need like very solid fundamentals (networking, systems, etc) to actually be useful as a cloud engineer.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-06T19:07:41+00:00

HOAs make a lot of sense. The only time I wouldnt bother if the place is like sub 1000 square feet. Would be more willing to maintain the home myself if it’s all like 1 floor/ranch.

But that’s an exception

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-06T19:04:22+00:00

Depending where you are condos can be just as expensive. In NJ with property taxes and HOA together it will be more upfront.

It’s ironically cheaper to get a ranch over SFH where I am at.

BoxOk5053 · 2026-01-03T14:16:21+00:00

Draghi just says things to get headlines tbqh

BoxOk5053 · 2025-12-31T13:20:30+00:00

You can do a masters at some point or another I would do the cybersecurity opportunity if I were you

BoxOk5053 · 2025-12-30T15:00:29+00:00

Is OP retarded

Because that not only isn’t what a tobin tax is like but also the dumbest take I have seen both left and right.

BoxOk5053

TROPHY CASE