This is using statistics to tell a preconceived story. Underlying this a notion that foreign workers are simply “imported” like they are dug out of the ground or something. How do these STEM OPT people find jobs? Guess what. They interview like everyone else does.
1: Every big tech interview I have been in the visa status is not even a question in the interview process. There is just a simple gate that “can you legally work in the US”? The hiring committee is not even thinking about visa (that’s a HR problem)
2: Are there confounders in that foreign workers are less likely to negotiate? Absolutely.
3: are there confounders in that people who come to US for study are likely already a self selected bunch who are striving to succeed? What are the typical grade distributions between foreign STEM students and US STEM students? Is grade a confounding variable? What happens if we control for GPA?
And finally does H1B abuse happen? Absolutely.
There is a lot of nuance that are not captured by surface level statistics. But nuance does not make outrage.
Foreign workers are much more likely to agree to do illegal things, including kickback schemes. Unwind this shit and start over. Indian contracting companies big and small have fucked it all up.
I think that nuance is fairly unwarranted when you observe the American system through the lens the laws ask you to view it through.
The American H1B system isn't about importing foreign workers that do a good job, it's about importing foreign workers that do a job no American could do. The system demands you look for some American do do the job first, and only if you fail to find one can you import one from overseas.
In that view, all the talk about GPA fall flat, because it doesn't matter if the foreign worker is better than an American worker, you are supposed to pick the American worker anyway.
I’ve rarely seen them used for that purpose, but of course that’s my personal observation and I have no data about it. A lot of H1B folks I worked with were solid backend/mobile devs. I enjoyed working with most of them but it’d be a stretch to say they were uniquely qualified. I do notice they feel a lot of pressure to never push back on anything due to how they set up the H1B system. Not always the case but often. I always felt that they were being exploited in that way.
"We need to stop pretending that flooding the labor market with foreign workers is somehow beneficial to American students."
I do not think anyone is making that point. Clearly a gated and scarce employee pool is always in the advantage of the employee.
You can agree or not, but the point is expanded availability of highly skilled labor from CS Graduates benefits the US companies hiring them, not just by removing some scarcity in the supply, but also having an expanded talent pool increases quality available.
From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry, or have them starting and staffing competition in their home countries? "Brain drain" fueled by unlimited reserve currency dollars is very real.
Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US. Having worked with academics from around the globe, including US, I can state with some certainty the US degree courses are not qualitatively very different from what is available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost (US education costs are insane!). But they do carry the implicit promise of an easyer way to higher paying US jobs.
So all in all, everyone in the US benefits from the system, except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.
As a someone who came to the US as a foreign worker, I just want to make one correction. When you say:
> From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry, or have them starting and staffing competition in their home countries?
This doesn't happen nearly as often as you probably think. Starting a company in many countries (including my birth country in Latin America) is very difficult. Not only there is no financing, but the justice system is also slow to resolve inevitable contract disputes. Additionally, government regulations crush advanced businesses to the point where it's really difficult for companies to compete internationally. The US remains one of the best places to start a tech company.
Given this, many smart people in my home country decide to work for the government in highly-paid paper-pushing roles, throwing away years of study and computer expertise.
There are a whole lot of weasels who are adding a bunch of filler words and alternate phrasing to stuff that amounts to something akin to that point or some point built around that core.
>From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry,
If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?
>Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US.
First off, most H1B workers do not have american degrees so this blanket assertion is laughable on its face.
Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.
>except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.
Now reconcile this with the prevailing HN wisdom that the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe.
What makes one ok but not the other? This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.
This is exactly the opposite of reality. It's always been the economy. It's always been jobs. Everything else, no matter how important and worthy in other ways, is ultimately subservient in the long run, in the context of national mood/wellbeing/politics. Everything else can be traced to some degree back to jobs. Jobs are what primarily drives every single person's life experience and therefore, directly or indirectly, everything else.
> If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?
If it does what now? Fearmongering that intentionally whips up nativist xenophobia might do that. I'm not seeing how work visas in themselves would do it.
> Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.
I honestly don't know which institutions and people you're talking about. I can think of several fundamentally different candidates.
> This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.
You're being self-contradictory. Either you have principles to which you hold regardless of whether "this nation is in the shit", or your only "principle" is "do whatever works to keep you out of The Shit(TM)". Which isn't really a very inspiring principle. Anyway, as soon as you start doing things for instrumental reasons, you lose your deontologist card.
If your principle actually is "stay out of The Shit by any means necessary", then you have to prove that what you want to do actually works to keep you out of The Shit. Starting by defining what "The Shit" means to you. Maybe what works is building up industry.
What you've offered only works on exactly the same kind of "principles" as doing things "to build up US industry".
An actually principled approach to H1Bs might, for instance, be to convert them into permanent residencies or citizenships, because indentured servitude is ugly on principle. That'd also have the practical effect of making people less beholden to specific employers, thus reducing the negative effect on anybody they might be competing with, but that's not the principled part unless you can say what actual, specific principle it serves.
... and, by the way, for any actually reasonable definition, your nation (no longer mine) wasn't particularly "in the shit" until recently. Just normal fluctuations. It hasn't actually even really landed in "the shit" yet, although the people running Trump have succeeded in breaking its last hold on the the catwalk over the shit vat.
"the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe" uh, nope. That the billionaires should pay their share of taxes, and thy are definitely not "middle class" by any sane definition. And so is in Europe too. I'm sorry that I don't buy this fake antagonization, we all know the really wealthy pay next to zero taxes claiming all kinds of loopholes they created for themselves. Actually that would be a good measure to define middle class: those who _still_ pay taxes are middle class, and once you get the taxes decreasing it's a sign you moved into the riches land.
There’s a third option besides unlimited H1Bs, etc and completely restricted market — which is preferencing US natives.
And this problem isn’t reserved to CS grads — but represents 2/3rds of prospective middle class US citizens experiencing a worse outcome. Which contrary to your glib dismissal, is politically unstable.
I applaud the courage to call out this as a problem. With that said I believe that there is a lot more nuance on this issue than the article is willing to provide, or more importantly research needed to be done to be rigorous on this topic. There definitely is some truth here about the H1B1 program in the job market. There are some companies who are absolutely shameless abusers too. I think that all of us working in the industry know that a comp sci degree alone is not enough to provide the training for many of these roles.
As an aside, I think there's another equally important issue that should also be raised along with employment. A large number of our graduate+ degrees in STEM go to foreign nationals. The issue is not providing education to foreign nationals in and of itself, but that many of these degrees (public schools) are funded by tax payers, and we are depriving our country of an educated population while educating citizens in other countries who compete with our country globally. Private schools can and should do whatever is in their mission, but public schools should have some accountability to our citizens and tax payers. We all have a right to get value for the money that we put into things like our public university system, which is supposed to be training future leaders of our country.
Of course with that longwinded answer I have to say... Tech is like the weather, just wait for a minute its all going to change anyway, so don't stress all of this.
Generally speaking, foreign students subsidize public universities by paying full sticker price for tuition, whereas US students are either in state (paying less) or often receive scholarships and support.
Foreign students are not stealing “slots” from Americans. If anything, their tuition dollars make more slots available.
Assuming funding correlates to more slots, which is not really true. The number of important professors to take mentorship from, the number of research lab slots are certainly lagging the increased funding, if increasing at all.
The money might be going into nicer buildings or administrative costs, but it's also a white elephant once the foreign funding dries up as the domestic situation improves for many internationals. After which then these universities find themselves in major trouble.
That's like trying to apply "the average american gets 20% of their fiber..." type nutrition information to a 500lb obese person.
It's probably true but not really meaningful in the broader context.
With the current easy money federally backed loans US university funding model the foreign students are just easy money on top of an already screaming money printer more than a noteworthy subsidy of their operations.
I won’t get into h1b which gets plenty of air time, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone wanting to eliminate OPT. This is beyond idiotic. Foreigners come and get educated in the US; if we didn’t have OPT they’d have to go back to their home country and contribute there. Instead with OPT we give them a chance to integrate into American companies, making the US more competitive as a whole. This is a massive strategic advantage. Places like MIT/CalTech/CMU are heavily made up of foreigners. We need the best and brightest minds from the world; only pulling from 350M vs 8B is a giant mistake.
One of the big advantages US has is that it's on the receiving end of brain drain. A lot of the best talent worldwide wants to go to US, learn in the US and work in the US.
The STEM OPT _extension_ is an additional year on top of the one year that all graduates get. I believe the article is arguing for getting rid of that extension, not all OPT.
More like they come to America because there aren't enough opportunities or good enough facilities back at home, get years of experience and knowledge, then go back home and start a billion dollar business that starts competing with said American companies they were just working for.
> Let that sink in: Half of our computer programming graduates are not in full-time jobs within six months of graduation. In the supposed golden age of technology, when every company claims to be desperately seeking tech talent, half of our trained programmers still need work.
Is this author suggesting that a CS degree is equivalent to programmer training?
Alarming statistics … many big companies also set up so-called engineering centers outside of the US and ship IT works there, often sidelining talent they already have in the US. Combining these practices, it would not be surprising the same happened to manufacturing will happen to many other professions.
I’ve been hearing about this for decades. It keeps happening because republicans need their cheap labor and democrats need foreign voters. The people in power have tremendous political incentives to keep the pipeline flowing.
Given that one must be a citizen to vote, this doesn’t appear to be the right angle through which to call out the Democratic Party. If you were to speak with Democratic Party leadership, I believe the emphasis would be on attractive talent from around the world to keep American businesses competitive. Certainly if there are problems with these visa programs, it’s worthwhile to bring them up to elected officials and push for changes.
H1Bs get citizenship, and they raise their children in their home cultures. My parents are citizens and have been voting for decades. But they still think and vote like Bangladeshis.
I’m not saying it’s some written-out plan. But look at how left wing Indians and Indian politicians in the U.S. are compared to say German Americans. (Socialism was a founding principle of the modern Indian state.) People in the party are acting according to their incentives.
In practice, H1B is a pipeline to citizenship, not just for the worker but their immediate family and extended family (due to family sponsorship). One H1 visa to my dad resulted in seven additional Bangladeshis in the U.S. And my dad did not sponsor a fraction of the family members he could have.
Moreover, foreign mindsets are durable over generations: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran... ("In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth.").
> "Moreover, foreign mindsets are durable over generation"
Right, and most countries are very conservative compared to the US, in particular many of the countries that the average H1B holder is from. India, for example. That means Republican voters. The entire premise is flawed fearmongering.
Is there any proof for this statement? Republicans want cheap labor, they'll tell you that themselves, but I don't believe the Democrats would ever say that they believe in labor immigration to "get more voters".
Have you forgotten the last 15 years of “demographics is destiny” and “coalition of the ascendant” rhetoric? The rising identity politics? All together with a strong shift in pro-immigration policy from the party since 2008? (In 2004, democrats and republicans had roughly similar views on immigration: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-became-st....)
I'm not American. This is the first time I'm hearing either "demographics is destiny" or "coalition of the ascendant".
"Demographics is destiny" seems to be a quote from a french philosopher from the 1800s, while "coalition of the ascendant" seems to be a description of the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term, an idea swiftly dismantled in 2016.
The articles I can find discussing these things don't contain any democrats scheming about using immigrants to overtake the republicans. The only people I find talking about how it will "estrange the republican party from these growing demographics" are republicans. I'm not going to claim that no democrat has ever considered that outcome, but I am going to propose that it seems more likely to me that if that were to happen it would be a result of politics they'd be in favor of anyway.
In general, it's pretty popular to help people. I don't think republicans would disagree that part of their coalition is built on higher income individuals, which they hope to grow by raising incomes. They're not doing that as a sort of underhanded tactic, they believe income is good. In the same way I think the Obama democrats do believe in helping immigrants, and obviously that makes them more popular amongst immigrants. That's not a scheme, that's just a policy.
I don't think this is nearly as clear cut as you believe it is.
> "Demographics is destiny" seems to be a quote from a french philosopher from the 1800s, while "coalition of the ascendant" seems to be a description of the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term, an idea swiftly dismantled in 2016.
But what was the nature of "the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term?" Normally, political coalitions are based on things like geography or economic classes. But Obama's coalition was based on ethnic groups. Specifically, it was based on winning supermajorities among demographic groups that were rapidly growing due to immigration. Indeed, the results of the 2016 election were portrayed in U.S. media as being the last gasp of the old America before it was washed away by demographic change.
Respectfully, maybe this would be clearer to you if you lived here, and spent the last 15 years reading countless headlines and articles about demographics, which were relatively rare before 2008. And those headlines and articles suddenly stopped last November, when Donald Trump won a narrow majority of naturalized citizens. None of that is a coincidence.
> The articles I can find discussing these things don't contain any democrats scheming about using immigrants to overtake the republicans... I don't think republicans would disagree that part of their coalition is built on higher income individuals, which they hope to grow by raising incomes.
That's a good comparison. But I think it's totally fair to say that Republicans have a policy of giving tax cuts to rich people because it inures to their political benefit. Republicans obviously never say that in those words, but Democrats certainly characterize Republicans that way. And I think it's a fair criticism.
> the last gasp of the old America before it was washed away by demographic change.
I have heard commentators mention ideas along those lines (never the specific formulations you used as examples, but the general vibe) post 2016, and even a little before that. That is, to me, not the same as that being the policy. Post 2016 democrats needed a cope. They needed a hope to hold on to after they had lost, what to them seemed like a slam dunk. That's not a policy proposal, but rather a strategic observation. In general I think you're better served by listening to politicians when they are trying to build, than when they have failed in building.
I also think it's quite important to note that in that analysis, we presuppose that immigrants will like the democrats. That either requires that democrat policies are good for immigrants, and immigrants to recognize that, or a vast conspiracy to take America down. If demographic change would turn America into a third world country, as some commentators have argued, surely immigrants wouldn't be for that either.
> But I think it's totally fair to say that Republicans have a policy of giving tax cuts to rich people because it inures to their political benefit.
I surely don't hope it's that direct. I think it's fair to talk about the cause and effect, but it would be totally unfair to characterize it as naked corruption. I truly believe that the mainstream American republicans believe in tax cuts as a means to drive innovation. That they believe in slimming down the government from a place of ideology, and not simply a naked ploy to reduce the oversight of their sponsors' activities. That they believe their policies to increase the wealth of the regular American, which they then hope will make them vote Republican.
I worry that this is no longer true of the "far right"/"alt right"/"authoritarian right". That distinction, between doing something for a belief in a better world, and doing it purely for strategy to gain power, is where I place the line to "fascism". A definition I don't share with many scholars.
I doubt they would brazenly say that. That would be an open admission of ethnic conflict which would probably inevitably lead to violence. The word "need" in that quote is probably not literal, but Democrats do appear to desire demographic change. Here's some proof they want more of specific foreigners:
1) The biggest proof is under Biden's last term and at the end of Obama's last term, there were very large numbers of illegal border crossings. Especially under Biden where millions crossed. Let's conservatively say it was seven million people in four years. That doesn't happen by accident. Why do I say that? Under Trump's terms the border crossing numbers dramatically diminished. So it was just a question of enforcement which means the DHS, which happened to be run by the same guy Alejandro Mayorkas under both Biden and Obama, simply chose not to enforce the border and allow very large numbers of asylum claims (which I think are bogus and not our responsibility). That's a very nasty thing to do. Note that neither Biden nor Obama openly campaigned on letting millions of people in and it was a big concern of voters going into the 2024 elections.
3) Democrats have refused to comply with ICE. ICE is responsible for deportations. They have created sanctuary cities, counties, and states. What reason is there for this besides not wanting illegals to be removed? "Human rights" is just a way of saying "endless litigation to prevent deportations".
4) The census was changed under Biden to include illegals in the population count. This is used to apportion representatives. So that would give more representation in the House to Democrats since illegals tend to live in urban areas which are all represented by Democrats.
5) Democrats have repeatedly made claims about how diversity is our strength. If diversity is to be valued, they must favor more immigration. Diversity here seems to be a euphemism. No one calls for diversity in China or Saudi Arabia for example. Why not? I think we know. So immigration and diversity are seemingly euphemisms for something else. https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-joe-...
6) The 1965 Immigration Act signed and sponsored under Democrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac.... It called for less homogeneity of immigrants. It has caused demographic change. If we look at how ethnic groups vote, demographic change has primarily benefited Democrats.
I think it's just obvious also. Lots of political things are put in terms of euphemisms that use watered down language. But it's quite hard not to notice ethnic conflict and balkanization beginning in the US and even across Europe.
Just price the H1B properly. 300K/year per visa from the company to the government adjusted for inflation. This will make sure that only the cream of the crop will come.
Be careful what you wish for. H1B and other visas are fraught with kickback schemes. Upping the number might be just what's wanted by the current set of fraudsters.
"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream, has become less solid for recent graduates trying to find that first job."
As opposed to what? All the other recent graduates with non-engineering degrees who are drowning in job offers? It's tough out here for everyone. This kind of hyperbole doesn't help.
"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream"
It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it. People went after _software_ engineering degrees when they saw a bunch of 20 year olds in Mountain View with 6 figure incomes. The other branches of engineering have always been hit or miss.
And "American Dream" - really? Has anyone used that term unironically since The Great Gatsby came out?
> It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it.
You must be joking, although I can't interpret the second half of the sentence. University is absolutely sold as a product giving you a chance at employment in the US, even if the "education" is completely unrelated to the work.
There are a lot of errors in that article. Like line 1, the idea that foreign students get jobs before Americans do. Quite the opposite in real life. Go to any school, and see the employment rates in that school for US vs foreign students.
Also H1B pays FICA taxes, that exemption is only for OPT. The OPT exemption can be easily removed.
That first point is not comparing students, it is saying that the H1B visas issued that year all have jobs lined up (which is a requirement of the visa). Those jobs are what the new graduates would normally be competing for.
And you have to apply to get that job. And the vast majority of companies would prefer a US citizen or an LPR for that job, because there is no guarantee that you will get the visa approved.
Grad students (foreign and non-foreign) also don't pay FICA (or at least, they didn't when I was in grad school). Not that it matters much, grad student pay is nothing to dream about.
Soham got 5 jobs. More than 5 jobs... He kept them for a while too.
We didn't lie to comp sci grads, they have the skills to DO the job, but the interview is a whole other skill that they have to learn. There is a gauntlet to be run of goofy interview questions and qualifiers. I dont know any one in the last few years who hasn't gone back to leetcode and the like to brush up if they needed to look.
Staff doing nothing or not pulling their weight is far more common than people think. Managers are resistant to firing staff, not because of HR, or emotional reasons. Rather many of them don't want to deal with the judgement of their peers (why did you make the bad hire to start with), and the judgement of their team/group. Office politics at the director level and above in a large organization is BRUTAL.
>The percentage of computer science graduates ... For those who specialized in computer programming,
Isn't computer programing all of computer science. This seems like a weird distinction to make?
The job market just seems to suck, if it didnt i dont think things like this would come up. I dont think immigration is the reason for the job market sucking. theres no jobs to apply to, theres no jobs to take from americans in the first place
Immigration and guest worker programs aren't the only reason, but they're a big reason. It's been happening since the 90s, when the neo-conservative Bush Republicans and the Clinton "It's the economy, stupid" Democrats really agreed for the first time on making the economy the issue that overrode everything else. Unfortunately, by "the economy" they meant Wall Street and global corporations, not small businesses and workers. So they pushed for any trade deal or migration or in/outsourcing that meant more money for their corporate friends and more graft for themselves. Ross Perot was right, but he greatly underestimated what they would do.
If you've been in the business long enough, you've seen it happening. I've heard managers talking about how they're sick of citizen employees with their unreasonable demands about health care and vacation time, and how those hard-working foreigners don't annoy them with such nonsense. I've seen the gleam in owners' eyes when they talk about how they can hire ten nameless cogs through some company that will bring them in for the same price as one native, and as long as they're at least 11% as productive as a native worker on average, hey, profit. And that's not just in software; that's in everything from construction to food processing to service work.
Several years ago, a client asked if I wanted to join his startup that was going to sell foreign tech services to US companies. I would have been the "face" who sold our services to US executives and collected the money, and then passed the work on to $1/day workers he'd found somewhere. Were they well-trained? Who knows; he didn't care and I wasn't supposed to either. I passed, but that offer was a microcosm of what's been happening to the US software industry for the past few decades, and the US job market in general.
> I dont think immigration is the reason for the job market sucking. theres no jobs to apply to, theres no jobs to take from americans in the first place
Are you sure about that?
Microsoft recently laid off 9,000 American workers while applying for 14,000 H1B visa workers [0]. They are transparently offshoring jobs from Americans to foreign workers.
Universities provide various specializations for the computer related programs: actual computer Science (math and algorithms with focus on research), computer networks and other IT infrastructure stuff, computer hardware, software engineering (the process of designing, architecting and managing the lifecycle of large scale software projects) for those that approach software like engineering project, and of course there is actual programming.
> That's equal to 82% of our graduating class who are guaranteed jobs even before any Americans walk across the stage for their diploma.
This is such a weird phrasing. These people are not "guaranteed" jobs. They get a job and then apply for a visa which is granted because they have offer letters. In fact the whole article reads like American government is somehow giving these people jobs rather than allowing them to work on jobs they have already gotten.
The most uncharitable reading of this is usual racist dog whistle.
> And Trump just approved another wave of Indians on H1B's for next year.
They would rather be poor and underdeveloped than have immigrants start more than half of billion dollar+ startups.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson
Billion dollar raises, not billion dollar profitable business. What exactly are these startups doing besides mega grifting and creating more useless layers of tech?
I don’t understand why we care if foreign born individuals are coding out software. We all use foreign written code daily.
Any student will look at the job prospects of their major before selecting it. We aren’t lying to them. I won’t feel bad for a student fresh out of college that “only” received a job offer for 95k, when that’s above the US median household income. I’m skeptical the lower job placement rate is due to H1B, and it might be more related to larger labor market trends.
Conclusion
The data points cited in the article are mostly accurate, based on available government reports (e.g., USCIS, ICE, NACE). However, the interpretations and causal claims are ideologically framed and often lack nuance:
Sound in identifying employment and wage challenges for new CS graduates.
Oversimplified in attributing these challenges mainly or solely to foreign workers.
Questionable in presenting policy recommendations as the only “truth-based” solution.
If you're looking for a deeper, balanced understanding, consider consulting:
National Science Board’s Science & Engineering Indicators
Brookings Institution or Cato Institute reports (for contrasting views)
NACE and NCES for graduate outcomes and education data
Just so others don’t have to do it. I did not think this post was hn worthy so wanted to save some time for others. Maybe hn needs to do it automatically
The key information is halfway down the page, in the figure that shows the number of new graduates and new temporary workers each year. The number of new temporary workers has been relatively stable, while the number of new graduates has been climbing steadily.
There was a shortage of software developers in the 2010s. The industry hired more people from abroad than there were graduates from CS programs. Still, CS graduates had better job prospects than their peers in other fields. The market responded to the shortage by increasing the supply of CS graduates, and that increase in domestic supply kept entry-level wages from rising faster than inflation.
The job market changed in the 2020s. A country with a more reactive immigration policy would have noticed the worsening job prospects of new graduates and routinely lowered the supply of new immigrant workers in that field. The US could not do that, as American legislators apparently don't believe in such central planning. The government can make employment-based immigration easier or harder overall, but it lacks convenient tools for targeted interventions in specific fields.
People who chose CS when the job market was hot are now graduating in record numbers. You could say in retrospect that the market overreacted and allocated too much resources to software. And it's quite likely that the market will now overreact in the other direction, as it did after the dot-com bust. Immigration policy can help smoothen these market overreactions, as you can get immigrant workers much faster than new graduates. But that requires dedicated effort from the government.
and that is their own "fault" for chasing money. The top graduates will still get good outcomes. It's the mediocre money chasers who would do poorly in a down market.
The exact same thing happened to the dotcom boom/bust. You'd think people would learn.
This is using statistics to tell a preconceived story. Underlying this a notion that foreign workers are simply “imported” like they are dug out of the ground or something. How do these STEM OPT people find jobs? Guess what. They interview like everyone else does.
1: Every big tech interview I have been in the visa status is not even a question in the interview process. There is just a simple gate that “can you legally work in the US”? The hiring committee is not even thinking about visa (that’s a HR problem)
2: Are there confounders in that foreign workers are less likely to negotiate? Absolutely.
3: are there confounders in that people who come to US for study are likely already a self selected bunch who are striving to succeed? What are the typical grade distributions between foreign STEM students and US STEM students? Is grade a confounding variable? What happens if we control for GPA?
And finally does H1B abuse happen? Absolutely.
There is a lot of nuance that are not captured by surface level statistics. But nuance does not make outrage.
Foreign workers are much more likely to agree to do illegal things, including kickback schemes. Unwind this shit and start over. Indian contracting companies big and small have fucked it all up.
I think that nuance is fairly unwarranted when you observe the American system through the lens the laws ask you to view it through.
The American H1B system isn't about importing foreign workers that do a good job, it's about importing foreign workers that do a job no American could do. The system demands you look for some American do do the job first, and only if you fail to find one can you import one from overseas.
In that view, all the talk about GPA fall flat, because it doesn't matter if the foreign worker is better than an American worker, you are supposed to pick the American worker anyway.
Bwaha. I have never met an H1B in tech that was doing a job that an American could not do.
The ‘mandatory interviews for Americans’ are just transparent scams.
I’ve rarely seen them used for that purpose, but of course that’s my personal observation and I have no data about it. A lot of H1B folks I worked with were solid backend/mobile devs. I enjoyed working with most of them but it’d be a stretch to say they were uniquely qualified. I do notice they feel a lot of pressure to never push back on anything due to how they set up the H1B system. Not always the case but often. I always felt that they were being exploited in that way.
That's because the system was sold with a lie or has otherwise been co-opted with revisions over the years.
It was supposed to be for hiring wernher von braun type world leading experts in their field.
It was never supposed to be for hiring a bunch of code plumbers, which is what 99.9% of this industry consists of.
"We need to stop pretending that flooding the labor market with foreign workers is somehow beneficial to American students."
I do not think anyone is making that point. Clearly a gated and scarce employee pool is always in the advantage of the employee.
You can agree or not, but the point is expanded availability of highly skilled labor from CS Graduates benefits the US companies hiring them, not just by removing some scarcity in the supply, but also having an expanded talent pool increases quality available.
From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry, or have them starting and staffing competition in their home countries? "Brain drain" fueled by unlimited reserve currency dollars is very real.
Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US. Having worked with academics from around the globe, including US, I can state with some certainty the US degree courses are not qualitatively very different from what is available elsewhere at a fraction of the cost (US education costs are insane!). But they do carry the implicit promise of an easyer way to higher paying US jobs.
So all in all, everyone in the US benefits from the system, except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.
As a someone who came to the US as a foreign worker, I just want to make one correction. When you say:
> From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry, or have them starting and staffing competition in their home countries?
This doesn't happen nearly as often as you probably think. Starting a company in many countries (including my birth country in Latin America) is very difficult. Not only there is no financing, but the justice system is also slow to resolve inevitable contract disputes. Additionally, government regulations crush advanced businesses to the point where it's really difficult for companies to compete internationally. The US remains one of the best places to start a tech company.
Given this, many smart people in my home country decide to work for the government in highly-paid paper-pushing roles, throwing away years of study and computer expertise.
> do not think anyone is making that point.
There are a whole lot of weasels who are adding a bunch of filler words and alternate phrasing to stuff that amounts to something akin to that point or some point built around that core.
>From a geo political perspective, would you rather have these people working to build up US industry,
If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?
>Lastly, those non-US graduates pay a very hefty sum for the 'privilege' of attending school in the US.
First off, most H1B workers do not have american degrees so this blanket assertion is laughable on its face.
Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.
>except the lower 66th percentile of native US CS graduates.
Now reconcile this with the prevailing HN wisdom that the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe.
What makes one ok but not the other? This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.
> If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?
At this point, software job opportunities are pretty low on the list of things tearing the nation apart.
This is exactly the opposite of reality. It's always been the economy. It's always been jobs. Everything else, no matter how important and worthy in other ways, is ultimately subservient in the long run, in the context of national mood/wellbeing/politics. Everything else can be traced to some degree back to jobs. Jobs are what primarily drives every single person's life experience and therefore, directly or indirectly, everything else.
> If it tears the nation apart what does it matter?
If it does what now? Fearmongering that intentionally whips up nativist xenophobia might do that. I'm not seeing how work visas in themselves would do it.
> Second, even when they do have US degrees enriches institutions and people that at best about half the country approves of and approximately nobody not getting paid by them approves of the economic model of.
I honestly don't know which institutions and people you're talking about. I can think of several fundamentally different candidates.
> This nation is in the shit is is because of you and people like you who adopt or condone policy positions based on something other than principals.
You're being self-contradictory. Either you have principles to which you hold regardless of whether "this nation is in the shit", or your only "principle" is "do whatever works to keep you out of The Shit(TM)". Which isn't really a very inspiring principle. Anyway, as soon as you start doing things for instrumental reasons, you lose your deontologist card.
If your principle actually is "stay out of The Shit by any means necessary", then you have to prove that what you want to do actually works to keep you out of The Shit. Starting by defining what "The Shit" means to you. Maybe what works is building up industry.
What you've offered only works on exactly the same kind of "principles" as doing things "to build up US industry".
An actually principled approach to H1Bs might, for instance, be to convert them into permanent residencies or citizenships, because indentured servitude is ugly on principle. That'd also have the practical effect of making people less beholden to specific employers, thus reducing the negative effect on anybody they might be competing with, but that's not the principled part unless you can say what actual, specific principle it serves.
... and, by the way, for any actually reasonable definition, your nation (no longer mine) wasn't particularly "in the shit" until recently. Just normal fluctuations. It hasn't actually even really landed in "the shit" yet, although the people running Trump have succeeded in breaking its last hold on the the catwalk over the shit vat.
"the american middle class ought to pay a lot of taxes to benefit the lower classes as is the case in europe" uh, nope. That the billionaires should pay their share of taxes, and thy are definitely not "middle class" by any sane definition. And so is in Europe too. I'm sorry that I don't buy this fake antagonization, we all know the really wealthy pay next to zero taxes claiming all kinds of loopholes they created for themselves. Actually that would be a good measure to define middle class: those who _still_ pay taxes are middle class, and once you get the taxes decreasing it's a sign you moved into the riches land.
This is a false dichotomy.
There’s a third option besides unlimited H1Bs, etc and completely restricted market — which is preferencing US natives.
And this problem isn’t reserved to CS grads — but represents 2/3rds of prospective middle class US citizens experiencing a worse outcome. Which contrary to your glib dismissal, is politically unstable.
I applaud the courage to call out this as a problem. With that said I believe that there is a lot more nuance on this issue than the article is willing to provide, or more importantly research needed to be done to be rigorous on this topic. There definitely is some truth here about the H1B1 program in the job market. There are some companies who are absolutely shameless abusers too. I think that all of us working in the industry know that a comp sci degree alone is not enough to provide the training for many of these roles.
As an aside, I think there's another equally important issue that should also be raised along with employment. A large number of our graduate+ degrees in STEM go to foreign nationals. The issue is not providing education to foreign nationals in and of itself, but that many of these degrees (public schools) are funded by tax payers, and we are depriving our country of an educated population while educating citizens in other countries who compete with our country globally. Private schools can and should do whatever is in their mission, but public schools should have some accountability to our citizens and tax payers. We all have a right to get value for the money that we put into things like our public university system, which is supposed to be training future leaders of our country.
Of course with that longwinded answer I have to say... Tech is like the weather, just wait for a minute its all going to change anyway, so don't stress all of this.
Generally speaking, foreign students subsidize public universities by paying full sticker price for tuition, whereas US students are either in state (paying less) or often receive scholarships and support.
Foreign students are not stealing “slots” from Americans. If anything, their tuition dollars make more slots available.
In some countries foreign students are charged a higher price for a course than domestic students.
That includes USA. Most programs charge foreign students more as they don't get any state subsidies.
Assuming funding correlates to more slots, which is not really true. The number of important professors to take mentorship from, the number of research lab slots are certainly lagging the increased funding, if increasing at all.
The money might be going into nicer buildings or administrative costs, but it's also a white elephant once the foreign funding dries up as the domestic situation improves for many internationals. After which then these universities find themselves in major trouble.
That's like trying to apply "the average american gets 20% of their fiber..." type nutrition information to a 500lb obese person.
It's probably true but not really meaningful in the broader context.
With the current easy money federally backed loans US university funding model the foreign students are just easy money on top of an already screaming money printer more than a noteworthy subsidy of their operations.
> That's equal to 82% of our graduating class who are guaranteed jobs ...
Guaranteed jobs? Sir, this is not France ;)
“eliminate the STEM OPT extension”
I won’t get into h1b which gets plenty of air time, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone wanting to eliminate OPT. This is beyond idiotic. Foreigners come and get educated in the US; if we didn’t have OPT they’d have to go back to their home country and contribute there. Instead with OPT we give them a chance to integrate into American companies, making the US more competitive as a whole. This is a massive strategic advantage. Places like MIT/CalTech/CMU are heavily made up of foreigners. We need the best and brightest minds from the world; only pulling from 350M vs 8B is a giant mistake.
One of the big advantages US has is that it's on the receiving end of brain drain. A lot of the best talent worldwide wants to go to US, learn in the US and work in the US.
The STEM OPT _extension_ is an additional year on top of the one year that all graduates get. I believe the article is arguing for getting rid of that extension, not all OPT.
Good point, but does 2 vs 3 years really make a difference in the context of the larger argument?
More like they come to America because there aren't enough opportunities or good enough facilities back at home, get years of experience and knowledge, then go back home and start a billion dollar business that starts competing with said American companies they were just working for.
I’d love to see the data on this. There aren’t that many billion dollar businesses, period, especially compare to the number of people on OPT.
If the US is a great place with more opportunity, then the pressure is to stay versus go back. When the US becomes anti-foreigner, then we all lose.
> Let that sink in: Half of our computer programming graduates are not in full-time jobs within six months of graduation. In the supposed golden age of technology, when every company claims to be desperately seeking tech talent, half of our trained programmers still need work.
Is this author suggesting that a CS degree is equivalent to programmer training?
Alarming statistics … many big companies also set up so-called engineering centers outside of the US and ship IT works there, often sidelining talent they already have in the US. Combining these practices, it would not be surprising the same happened to manufacturing will happen to many other professions.
I’ve been hearing about this for decades. It keeps happening because republicans need their cheap labor and democrats need foreign voters. The people in power have tremendous political incentives to keep the pipeline flowing.
Given that one must be a citizen to vote, this doesn’t appear to be the right angle through which to call out the Democratic Party. If you were to speak with Democratic Party leadership, I believe the emphasis would be on attractive talent from around the world to keep American businesses competitive. Certainly if there are problems with these visa programs, it’s worthwhile to bring them up to elected officials and push for changes.
H1Bs get citizenship, and they raise their children in their home cultures. My parents are citizens and have been voting for decades. But they still think and vote like Bangladeshis.
I’m not saying it’s some written-out plan. But look at how left wing Indians and Indian politicians in the U.S. are compared to say German Americans. (Socialism was a founding principle of the modern Indian state.) People in the party are acting according to their incentives.
They can't vote in Federal elections if they're not citizens.
In practice, H1B is a pipeline to citizenship, not just for the worker but their immediate family and extended family (due to family sponsorship). One H1 visa to my dad resulted in seven additional Bangladeshis in the U.S. And my dad did not sponsor a fraction of the family members he could have.
Moreover, foreign mindsets are durable over generations: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran... ("In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth.").
> "Moreover, foreign mindsets are durable over generation"
Right, and most countries are very conservative compared to the US, in particular many of the countries that the average H1B holder is from. India, for example. That means Republican voters. The entire premise is flawed fearmongering.
Does this mean only foreigners aren't brainwashed enough to mostly vote Republican ?
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> democrats need foreign voters
Is there any proof for this statement? Republicans want cheap labor, they'll tell you that themselves, but I don't believe the Democrats would ever say that they believe in labor immigration to "get more voters".
That just sounds like a ludicrous conspiracy.
Have you forgotten the last 15 years of “demographics is destiny” and “coalition of the ascendant” rhetoric? The rising identity politics? All together with a strong shift in pro-immigration policy from the party since 2008? (In 2004, democrats and republicans had roughly similar views on immigration: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-democrats-became-st....)
I'm not American. This is the first time I'm hearing either "demographics is destiny" or "coalition of the ascendant".
"Demographics is destiny" seems to be a quote from a french philosopher from the 1800s, while "coalition of the ascendant" seems to be a description of the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term, an idea swiftly dismantled in 2016.
The articles I can find discussing these things don't contain any democrats scheming about using immigrants to overtake the republicans. The only people I find talking about how it will "estrange the republican party from these growing demographics" are republicans. I'm not going to claim that no democrat has ever considered that outcome, but I am going to propose that it seems more likely to me that if that were to happen it would be a result of politics they'd be in favor of anyway.
In general, it's pretty popular to help people. I don't think republicans would disagree that part of their coalition is built on higher income individuals, which they hope to grow by raising incomes. They're not doing that as a sort of underhanded tactic, they believe income is good. In the same way I think the Obama democrats do believe in helping immigrants, and obviously that makes them more popular amongst immigrants. That's not a scheme, that's just a policy.
I don't think this is nearly as clear cut as you believe it is.
> "Demographics is destiny" seems to be a quote from a french philosopher from the 1800s, while "coalition of the ascendant" seems to be a description of the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term, an idea swiftly dismantled in 2016.
But what was the nature of "the coalition Obama sought to build in his second term?" Normally, political coalitions are based on things like geography or economic classes. But Obama's coalition was based on ethnic groups. Specifically, it was based on winning supermajorities among demographic groups that were rapidly growing due to immigration. Indeed, the results of the 2016 election were portrayed in U.S. media as being the last gasp of the old America before it was washed away by demographic change.
Respectfully, maybe this would be clearer to you if you lived here, and spent the last 15 years reading countless headlines and articles about demographics, which were relatively rare before 2008. And those headlines and articles suddenly stopped last November, when Donald Trump won a narrow majority of naturalized citizens. None of that is a coincidence.
> The articles I can find discussing these things don't contain any democrats scheming about using immigrants to overtake the republicans... I don't think republicans would disagree that part of their coalition is built on higher income individuals, which they hope to grow by raising incomes.
That's a good comparison. But I think it's totally fair to say that Republicans have a policy of giving tax cuts to rich people because it inures to their political benefit. Republicans obviously never say that in those words, but Democrats certainly characterize Republicans that way. And I think it's a fair criticism.
> the last gasp of the old America before it was washed away by demographic change.
I have heard commentators mention ideas along those lines (never the specific formulations you used as examples, but the general vibe) post 2016, and even a little before that. That is, to me, not the same as that being the policy. Post 2016 democrats needed a cope. They needed a hope to hold on to after they had lost, what to them seemed like a slam dunk. That's not a policy proposal, but rather a strategic observation. In general I think you're better served by listening to politicians when they are trying to build, than when they have failed in building.
I also think it's quite important to note that in that analysis, we presuppose that immigrants will like the democrats. That either requires that democrat policies are good for immigrants, and immigrants to recognize that, or a vast conspiracy to take America down. If demographic change would turn America into a third world country, as some commentators have argued, surely immigrants wouldn't be for that either.
> But I think it's totally fair to say that Republicans have a policy of giving tax cuts to rich people because it inures to their political benefit.
I surely don't hope it's that direct. I think it's fair to talk about the cause and effect, but it would be totally unfair to characterize it as naked corruption. I truly believe that the mainstream American republicans believe in tax cuts as a means to drive innovation. That they believe in slimming down the government from a place of ideology, and not simply a naked ploy to reduce the oversight of their sponsors' activities. That they believe their policies to increase the wealth of the regular American, which they then hope will make them vote Republican.
I worry that this is no longer true of the "far right"/"alt right"/"authoritarian right". That distinction, between doing something for a belief in a better world, and doing it purely for strategy to gain power, is where I place the line to "fascism". A definition I don't share with many scholars.
I doubt they would brazenly say that. That would be an open admission of ethnic conflict which would probably inevitably lead to violence. The word "need" in that quote is probably not literal, but Democrats do appear to desire demographic change. Here's some proof they want more of specific foreigners:
1) The biggest proof is under Biden's last term and at the end of Obama's last term, there were very large numbers of illegal border crossings. Especially under Biden where millions crossed. Let's conservatively say it was seven million people in four years. That doesn't happen by accident. Why do I say that? Under Trump's terms the border crossing numbers dramatically diminished. So it was just a question of enforcement which means the DHS, which happened to be run by the same guy Alejandro Mayorkas under both Biden and Obama, simply chose not to enforce the border and allow very large numbers of asylum claims (which I think are bogus and not our responsibility). That's a very nasty thing to do. Note that neither Biden nor Obama openly campaigned on letting millions of people in and it was a big concern of voters going into the 2024 elections.
2) Democrats have run on a racial platform and it has been very successful. See: https://keywiki.org/Race_Will_Win_the_Race. For example, California used to be a GOP state. Ronald Reagan was the governor of California. The demographics of California have changed dramatically in just a few decades as has the politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California#202...
3) Democrats have refused to comply with ICE. ICE is responsible for deportations. They have created sanctuary cities, counties, and states. What reason is there for this besides not wanting illegals to be removed? "Human rights" is just a way of saying "endless litigation to prevent deportations".
4) The census was changed under Biden to include illegals in the population count. This is used to apportion representatives. So that would give more representation in the House to Democrats since illegals tend to live in urban areas which are all represented by Democrats.
5) Democrats have repeatedly made claims about how diversity is our strength. If diversity is to be valued, they must favor more immigration. Diversity here seems to be a euphemism. No one calls for diversity in China or Saudi Arabia for example. Why not? I think we know. So immigration and diversity are seemingly euphemisms for something else. https://www.c-span.org/clip/white-house-event/user-clip-joe-...
6) The 1965 Immigration Act signed and sponsored under Democrats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac.... It called for less homogeneity of immigrants. It has caused demographic change. If we look at how ethnic groups vote, demographic change has primarily benefited Democrats.
I think it's just obvious also. Lots of political things are put in terms of euphemisms that use watered down language. But it's quite hard not to notice ethnic conflict and balkanization beginning in the US and even across Europe.
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I haven't seen any criticism of deportations from Democrats because "who's gonna mow my lawn". I'm sure it happens, but I haven't seen it.
I've seen an endless feed of Democrats and people further left concerned about the human rights abuses happening right now with ICE and deportations
Bold of you to assume any of these people have a lawn to mow.
> Where did you see that? On the news, I only see democrats crying "who's gonna mow my lawn" whenever Donald is deporting illegals, neve republicans.
This is a brain rotten to the core on right wing propaganda.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/donald-trump-stephen-mill...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-u-turn-deporting-farm-21542...
https://archive.ph/1Q4p9
Look closer, or choose different friends.
This is an extremely reductionist view of what's going on right now.
If you don't see people in both parties working hard to try to shelter, protect and defend these people, you aren't looking hard enough.
Just price the H1B properly. 300K/year per visa from the company to the government adjusted for inflation. This will make sure that only the cream of the crop will come.
Be careful what you wish for. H1B and other visas are fraught with kickback schemes. Upping the number might be just what's wanted by the current set of fraudsters.
"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream, has become less solid for recent graduates trying to find that first job."
As opposed to what? All the other recent graduates with non-engineering degrees who are drowning in job offers? It's tough out here for everyone. This kind of hyperbole doesn't help.
"How the American engineering degree, sold as a solid ticket to the American dream"
It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it. People went after _software_ engineering degrees when they saw a bunch of 20 year olds in Mountain View with 6 figure incomes. The other branches of engineering have always been hit or miss.
And "American Dream" - really? Has anyone used that term unironically since The Great Gatsby came out?
> It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it.
There was a whole “Learn to Code” pitch from politicians saying that literally anyone could have a good job if only they learned to code.
> It wasn't "sold" as though there were some cigarette smoking ad men behind it.
You must be joking, although I can't interpret the second half of the sentence. University is absolutely sold as a product giving you a chance at employment in the US, even if the "education" is completely unrelated to the work.
There are a lot of errors in that article. Like line 1, the idea that foreign students get jobs before Americans do. Quite the opposite in real life. Go to any school, and see the employment rates in that school for US vs foreign students.
Also H1B pays FICA taxes, that exemption is only for OPT. The OPT exemption can be easily removed.
That first point is not comparing students, it is saying that the H1B visas issued that year all have jobs lined up (which is a requirement of the visa). Those jobs are what the new graduates would normally be competing for.
And you have to apply to get that job. And the vast majority of companies would prefer a US citizen or an LPR for that job, because there is no guarantee that you will get the visa approved.
Grad students (foreign and non-foreign) also don't pay FICA (or at least, they didn't when I was in grad school). Not that it matters much, grad student pay is nothing to dream about.
Soham got 5 jobs. More than 5 jobs... He kept them for a while too.
We didn't lie to comp sci grads, they have the skills to DO the job, but the interview is a whole other skill that they have to learn. There is a gauntlet to be run of goofy interview questions and qualifiers. I dont know any one in the last few years who hasn't gone back to leetcode and the like to brush up if they needed to look.
Then you get posts like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079183
https://emaggiori.com/employed-in-tech-for-years-but-almost-...
Staff doing nothing or not pulling their weight is far more common than people think. Managers are resistant to firing staff, not because of HR, or emotional reasons. Rather many of them don't want to deal with the judgement of their peers (why did you make the bad hire to start with), and the judgement of their team/group. Office politics at the director level and above in a large organization is BRUTAL.
Not a great comparison, but agree that it just takes passing some goofy interviews. That guy lied his way through all of his interviews.
>The percentage of computer science graduates ... For those who specialized in computer programming,
Isn't computer programing all of computer science. This seems like a weird distinction to make?
The job market just seems to suck, if it didnt i dont think things like this would come up. I dont think immigration is the reason for the job market sucking. theres no jobs to apply to, theres no jobs to take from americans in the first place
Immigration and guest worker programs aren't the only reason, but they're a big reason. It's been happening since the 90s, when the neo-conservative Bush Republicans and the Clinton "It's the economy, stupid" Democrats really agreed for the first time on making the economy the issue that overrode everything else. Unfortunately, by "the economy" they meant Wall Street and global corporations, not small businesses and workers. So they pushed for any trade deal or migration or in/outsourcing that meant more money for their corporate friends and more graft for themselves. Ross Perot was right, but he greatly underestimated what they would do.
If you've been in the business long enough, you've seen it happening. I've heard managers talking about how they're sick of citizen employees with their unreasonable demands about health care and vacation time, and how those hard-working foreigners don't annoy them with such nonsense. I've seen the gleam in owners' eyes when they talk about how they can hire ten nameless cogs through some company that will bring them in for the same price as one native, and as long as they're at least 11% as productive as a native worker on average, hey, profit. And that's not just in software; that's in everything from construction to food processing to service work.
Several years ago, a client asked if I wanted to join his startup that was going to sell foreign tech services to US companies. I would have been the "face" who sold our services to US executives and collected the money, and then passed the work on to $1/day workers he'd found somewhere. Were they well-trained? Who knows; he didn't care and I wasn't supposed to either. I passed, but that offer was a microcosm of what's been happening to the US software industry for the past few decades, and the US job market in general.
> I dont think immigration is the reason for the job market sucking. theres no jobs to apply to, theres no jobs to take from americans in the first place
Are you sure about that?
Microsoft recently laid off 9,000 American workers while applying for 14,000 H1B visa workers [0]. They are transparently offshoring jobs from Americans to foreign workers.
[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/microsoft-applied-to...
That article says that isn't rellly accurate for Microsoft.
But where are the job listings that h1b applicants are using. It seems like job availability is just down overall
Universities provide various specializations for the computer related programs: actual computer Science (math and algorithms with focus on research), computer networks and other IT infrastructure stuff, computer hardware, software engineering (the process of designing, architecting and managing the lifecycle of large scale software projects) for those that approach software like engineering project, and of course there is actual programming.
> Isn't computer programing all of computer science.
In the same way accountancy is all of math.
It seems to miss foreign students?
yup, trying to unionize with H1B workers nearly impossible as well as a majority of them feel this will threaten their sponsorship/visa.
The wage suppression is real.
> That's equal to 82% of our graduating class who are guaranteed jobs even before any Americans walk across the stage for their diploma.
This is such a weird phrasing. These people are not "guaranteed" jobs. They get a job and then apply for a visa which is granted because they have offer letters. In fact the whole article reads like American government is somehow giving these people jobs rather than allowing them to work on jobs they have already gotten.
The most uncharitable reading of this is usual racist dog whistle.
Top comment on that article
> This is just so completely outrageous.
> And Trump just approved another wave of Indians on H1B's for next year.
They would rather be poor and underdeveloped than have immigrants start more than half of billion dollar+ startups.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson
> half of billion dollar+ startups.
Billion dollar raises, not billion dollar profitable business. What exactly are these startups doing besides mega grifting and creating more useless layers of tech?
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I don’t understand why we care if foreign born individuals are coding out software. We all use foreign written code daily.
Any student will look at the job prospects of their major before selecting it. We aren’t lying to them. I won’t feel bad for a student fresh out of college that “only” received a job offer for 95k, when that’s above the US median household income. I’m skeptical the lower job placement rate is due to H1B, and it might be more related to larger labor market trends.
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Please don’t do this on HN. Even before LLMs were commonplace we eschewed summaries or TL;DRs.
Sure, but llm may be more unbiased and give high quality summary. But I won’t do it again, I am sure you have thought about it much more than I have.
Conclusion The data points cited in the article are mostly accurate, based on available government reports (e.g., USCIS, ICE, NACE). However, the interpretations and causal claims are ideologically framed and often lack nuance:
Sound in identifying employment and wage challenges for new CS graduates.
Oversimplified in attributing these challenges mainly or solely to foreign workers.
Questionable in presenting policy recommendations as the only “truth-based” solution.
If you're looking for a deeper, balanced understanding, consider consulting:
National Science Board’s Science & Engineering Indicators
Brookings Institution or Cato Institute reports (for contrasting views)
NACE and NCES for graduate outcomes and education data
And? You want an applause or what?
Just so others don’t have to do it. I did not think this post was hn worthy so wanted to save some time for others. Maybe hn needs to do it automatically
A slightly different take:
The key information is halfway down the page, in the figure that shows the number of new graduates and new temporary workers each year. The number of new temporary workers has been relatively stable, while the number of new graduates has been climbing steadily.
There was a shortage of software developers in the 2010s. The industry hired more people from abroad than there were graduates from CS programs. Still, CS graduates had better job prospects than their peers in other fields. The market responded to the shortage by increasing the supply of CS graduates, and that increase in domestic supply kept entry-level wages from rising faster than inflation.
The job market changed in the 2020s. A country with a more reactive immigration policy would have noticed the worsening job prospects of new graduates and routinely lowered the supply of new immigrant workers in that field. The US could not do that, as American legislators apparently don't believe in such central planning. The government can make employment-based immigration easier or harder overall, but it lacks convenient tools for targeted interventions in specific fields.
People who chose CS when the job market was hot are now graduating in record numbers. You could say in retrospect that the market overreacted and allocated too much resources to software. And it's quite likely that the market will now overreact in the other direction, as it did after the dot-com bust. Immigration policy can help smoothen these market overreactions, as you can get immigrant workers much faster than new graduates. But that requires dedicated effort from the government.
> People who chose CS when the job market was hot
and that is their own "fault" for chasing money. The top graduates will still get good outcomes. It's the mediocre money chasers who would do poorly in a down market.
The exact same thing happened to the dotcom boom/bust. You'd think people would learn.