IMO it's far too early for "AI" to have had a meaningful effect on Software company hiring. A more plausible explanation for me is that between roughly 2012 and 2022, there was a tremendous increase in the supply of SWE talent (via undergraduate CS programs massively increasing enrollment, boot camps, immigration, etc), fueled primarily by ZIRP. On the demand side, ZIRPy VC funding primarily went to bullshit Crypto and (to a lesser extent) bullshit Metaverse companies, most of which have not panned out, meaning there is a dearth of late stage and newly public companies to hire said talent.
disillusioned 1 hours ago [-]
I agree with all of this, coupled with a decent amount of layoffs from the Mag7s, though I'm not sure how distributed those were in California, necessarily.
daxfohl 44 minutes ago [-]
And old unicorns like airbnb and uber now having to compete with traditional hotels and taxis again.
I think Elon's takeover of twitter set something of a precedent too: if he could reduce headcount as much as he did and still have a functioning product, then why can't I?
BTW I also don't think it has much to do with that engineering tax deferral code change that people keep talking about. My cynical hunch is that that topic keeps getting seeded by the billionaires who have the most to gain by reversing it, and hey maybe they'll hire an extra engineer or two afterward just to be good sports, but it's not going to reverse any major employment trends.
rubidium 1 hours ago [-]
Biotech is facing a huge downturn right now too.
Fade_Dance 41 minutes ago [-]
That's a poster child of a casualty of ZIRP. Hard to imagine an industry any longer duration and hungry for cheap risk.
I'm not sure about the thesis that this is primarily fallout from free money and suppressed interest rates though. That was really a '22 story, and even with long and variable lags, that element has been in play for a while now.
Oversupply of talent definitely sounds like a good argument though. I'll posit there has been some disruption by recent developments in the industry. Also, while metaverse and crypto startups may be passe, the AI scene has disgusting amounts of hype and money, and crypto ain't dead either, which brings me back to the earlier point that I do think some disruption is there to fill the gap in the narrative.
mrtksn 6 hours ago [-]
What if this turns into rust belt but for software? Once high paying jobs gone with AI, politicians trying to please grumpy software developers promising them to open a software shop and create jobs. Mostly college drop-outs, voting for a certain party that promises to take on AI :)
Half kidding of course, but AFAIK many industries went through such a transformation and today most social and political issues stem from those areas that once were affluent lost their industries. Why not the software too?
b3ing 5 hours ago [-]
We are giving India the IT market, just like China got manufacturing.
mertleee 5 hours ago [-]
It's precisely this. Trump is allowing one of the last vestiges of the American middle class to be outsourced to India. Just like Clinton allowed the same to happen with factory jobs to China.
As a person of color this is even more detestable.
ipnon 58 minutes ago [-]
As a person of grayscale the contrast is undeniable.
platevoltage 5 hours ago [-]
At least we will be able to get jobs putting plastic forks in boxes now. Maybe we will be able to use those green GitHub tiles to negotiate better pay.
4 hours ago [-]
fuzzfactor 2 hours ago [-]
Actually it was Nixon who single-handedly pushed manufacturing to China, and Reagan who pushed harder.
Clinton just didn't do anything serious which could reverse this, and other Republican actions are what "allowed" further Chinese growth rates than that.
IOW almost anybody who had any influence was allowing prosperity to recede from our shores more so than Clinton.
not my downvote btw
rayiner 4 hours ago [-]
How is this Trump’s fault?
MangoCoffee 4 hours ago [-]
"No More Offshore. Startups Look to Spend and Hire in U.S. Due to Trump Tax Change."
I don't understand how Trump is allowing anything with headline like this.
yodon 3 hours ago [-]
The BBB fixed some previously dire flaws in how tax law treated spending on software salaries in the US.
tchock23 2 hours ago [-]
Create the problem. Fix the problem. Win!
ahmeneeroe-v2 5 hours ago [-]
Worse because we're giving it to India in the US.
aurareturn 3 hours ago [-]
I've been saying this on HN since 2022:
For all the pro-WFH/fully remote developers on HN who live in North America, you're going to be in for a surprise when your company decides to replace you with someone living in another country. Why hire you when the company can hire someone who costs 1/5 of you and is willing to work harder without complaining? Both of you are remote anyway. So what if the new hire works at night and sleeps during the day?
For all pro-WFH/fully remote developers living in North America, you should be cheering for return to office mandates. It'll probably save your career long-term.
jjmarr 1 hours ago [-]
I live in Canada and most skilled developers self-sort into the American market as it's a 2x salary differential.
Important roles at multinationals are therefore hired in the USA. Even though all countries are officially "equal" in the eyes of a multinational, with salary based on market conditions/cost of living, in practice developers at the same job level have very different impacts. This has been true for decades.
I don't think this dynamic will change even in a WFH/remote environment because it's a great excuse for companies to reward engineers differently based on impact while still preserving job title equality.
It's similar to manufacturing in Germany. Salaries are higher so it naturally attracts talent. You can get things cheaper abroad, and many do, but if you want it done right...
Rohansi 1 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's this simple. Maybe it would be for larger corporations that would rather hire more cheap staff than fewer quality staff. You shouldn't have this issue if the company values the experience the staff has instead of just looking at them as an expense.
I've been working fully remote for 10 years and the company hires people from almost anywhere in the world. They'd get to pick the best candidate regardless of their location. Pay is also not based on where you're living but on the role and your experience.
lazyasciiart 1 hours ago [-]
Why does Google hire anyone anywhere for half of their positions, when they could just literally not hire anyone and get the same amount of production code without wasting everyone’s time? It is absolutely not as simple as you seem to believe.
billy99k 2 hours ago [-]
Our company only uses teams in eastern europe. The cost is 1/3 the salary of someone in the US.
Remote work during covid improved remote management and communication, which is needed to fully outsource workers.
whatever1 2 hours ago [-]
If it can be done more cheaply then some competitor will do it and kill your business that doesn’t. Either find another competitive edge (be better or convince somehow the customers that you deserve the premium you ask for), or do what Trump does, introduce tarrifs for imports and cutoff the more more efficient companies from reaching the local market. And of course pay the price for it.
dmonitor 5 hours ago [-]
The rust belt can't really fall back on tourism like California can. Worst case scenario all software jobs evaporate and it becomes Florida with better weather
al_borland 1 hours ago [-]
I’m over in the rust belt and all I hear about California these days is it’s full of homeless people and crime that goes unchecked. It’s not looking as appealing as a vacation destination as it did 20 years ago. Maybe this perception doesn’t match the reality you see living there, but when it comes to attracting tourists, perception is everything.
platevoltage 45 minutes ago [-]
I'll take "lawless" California over seeing the same Rankin cop watching a stop sign at the entrance to Braddock in order to write "rolling stop" tickets every 15 minutes. I also like that I don't have to worry about a police chief holding me at gunpoint because the fire alarm happened to go off while I was alone in a warehouse space that I was renting.
I'm going to guess that the people who think the entire state looks like LA in 1992 probably weren't going to vacation here in the first place.
mertd 19 minutes ago [-]
It's really hard to reply without making a statement on politics but you really should diversify your news consumption.
justonceokay 1 hours ago [-]
Unlike Florida, a state known for its orderly and mannered citizens. I think CA will be fine
dangus 4 hours ago [-]
LA has a highly diverse economy, it’s really only the Bay Area that has diversification issues.
The rust belt actually does quite well with tourism, though my research for responding to your comment seems to indicate to me that tourism is important everywhere.
aworks 15 minutes ago [-]
Back in the 90s, it was the opposite as miliary/aerospace declined in SoCal.
I'm a native Michigander and long-time Californian (both subject to booms/busts) who recently took a road trip to the Midwest and back. If it weren't for family and friends, I probably wouldn't venture east of the 100th parallel. I was surprised by this.
heavyset_go 5 hours ago [-]
There are plenty of dying places in the desert and on the beach tourists can visit, it's just the "dying places" part that makes them aversive to tourism.
giantg2 5 hours ago [-]
Everywhere has a boom-bust cycle. The question is just on what timeline. It typically takes decades to happen. When is anyone's guess.
oceansky 4 hours ago [-]
Not always. Some industries just never come back. Where is the oil lamp or camera film industry now?
platevoltage 41 minutes ago [-]
The lamp industry didn't go anywhere. The Camera industry didn't go anywhere. Might as well be saying, where has the CRT monitor or Macromedia Flash industry now?
fiddlerwoaroof 1 hours ago [-]
I think defining industries this narrowly isn’t helpful
I've lost consulting work because I'm a lot more expensive than $20 a month. I've literally had clients say, "yeah, I would have called you, but I was able to figure out that bug with ChatGPT."
edoceo 2 hours ago [-]
Once the bugs stack up, they'll call you back and it will be lots of billable hours. At least, that was the case for me; only took a few weeks before the clients own inconsistent requirements bite them in the ass. Gotta have a business+tech expert to make many products. AI is neither; and many folks can't prompt for shit (and can't spec for shit; and can't test for shit).
platevoltage 34 minutes ago [-]
Not to discredit anyone else's experiences, but I have one client, who admittedly has gotten pretty good at "vibe coding", and he has been tasking me with all kinds of stuff that would have probably remained just as idea.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like AI. I don't like that I have to use it sometimes, and I think we were better off without it, but so far it hasn't hurt me. It's definitely made me way less employable in the traditional sense. I feel sorry for the new grads/self taught people trying to get jobs.
victorbjorklund 23 minutes ago [-]
Of course there will be. There will be instances where a company has 4 people working in a role but with AI 2 people can do the same job and they can therefore let 2 people go. (and then there will be other places where even more jobs are created because of AI).
“But Mollick said it’s too early to gauge how disruptive AI will be to the workforce. ”
I’d like a follow up article when I’m guessing a good chunk of these writers were hired back when their managers realized ChatGPT can’t help replace real creative writing output. It can only create more dead internet spaces that don’t make money long term.
There will always be bad managers making shitty decisions and journalists and CEO's eager to confirm a narrative, AI or no-AI
Source: Building an AI production studio myself and the first thing we had to do was hire writers to drive the creative effort.
fuzzfactor 2 hours ago [-]
When a manager prefers AI over a proven-performing employee, I would expect a lot if times it is becuse the AI is more intelligent than the manager, not the employee.
rapsey 2 hours ago [-]
Looking at things in the micro scale and expecting it to translate directly into a macro scale is stupidity.
lazyasciiart 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe you should say that directly to the grandparent comment who did that.
mrtksn 6 hours ago [-]
Sure, in total probably there will be even more and better jobs. Just like with the auto industry or the other industries that turned from producing stuff into designing stuff and telling to Chinese to produce it like this.
mat_b 5 hours ago [-]
That's not the whole picture. There are less positions available where you tell someone else what to do and more competition for those positions.
rayiner 4 hours ago [-]
Define “jobs.” A lot of the “jobs” created by offshoring production involved being service workers for the 25% of knowledge workers who benefit from offshoring.
nothercastle 5 hours ago [-]
Art jobs got destroyed everything else AI was just a excuse
platevoltage 5 hours ago [-]
The word “literally” is doing a LOT of work here.
speakfreely 6 hours ago [-]
"Jobs going away due to AI" really tracks two different outcomes:
- The type of job is eliminated due to AI
- The amount of people doing a type of job is substantially reduced because AI increases the productivity of people in that role and companies can do the same amount of that work with less people
I think the former is extremely limited so far, but the latter is pretty substantial. I didn't downvote you, but I imagine the people that did probably did so to reject the former argument.
nothercastle 5 hours ago [-]
The most common one is simply we wanted to cut heads and used ai as an excuse. Also AI spend is probably a huge drag on a lot of companies that are getting nothing off value but burning a lot
krapp 5 hours ago [-]
AI has already replaced thousands of jobs. Plenty of stories about that appear on HN. Plenty of anecdotes from people who have lost work or clients to AI. People here have stated their intention to fire their entire workforce and replace them with AI as soon as possible. AI companies have put up billboards saying "stop hiring humans." A single Google search would disabuse you of this notion.
I don't understand being this willfully naive, especially if you support AI, because using it to replace jobs is the entire selling point. No company wants AI for any other reason, and every company wants AI.
hazek112 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
platevoltage 5 hours ago [-]
What is wrong with this comment section.
cjohnson318 5 hours ago [-]
Racism? Lack of social awareness? Problems with impulse control? Trolling? Pick several.
IX-103 6 hours ago [-]
My anecdata - the large tech company I work for has practically stopped hiring. I went from conducting interviews practically every week in the first quarter to none at all on the post 3 months. Even during the layoffs on 2022 they were still hiring for some positions, so I conducted around 1-2 interviews a month.
wavemode 2 hours ago [-]
I'm literally one of the last software engineers my company (in the Bay area) ever hired. I've been here for 2 years and only 1 engineer joined since then, meanwhile dozens left.
softwaredoug 6 hours ago [-]
Are we sure its just tech? Isn't the entertainment industry going through a rough time right now as well?
JLO64 5 hours ago [-]
I have a Teamster friend here in LA, and according to him practically nothing is being filmed in this area. The major studios are opting to film either out of state (Georgia) or in Canada.
leeroihe 6 hours ago [-]
Over 50% of h1b visas issued in tech went to indian h1b's - no it's not an issue that's equivalent in the entertainment industry.
jmspring 5 hours ago [-]
Time to start holding businesses accountable for pushing the cheaper labor option. Many of those on visas are biased toward those from their own cultural heritage as well.
lokrian 5 hours ago [-]
Those businesses own all the social media, all the search engines, all the apps people discuss things on, and all the politicians.
rayiner 4 hours ago [-]
> Many of those on visas are biased toward those from their own cultural heritage as well.
It’s not even “bias.” It’s an odd form of white supremacy that views whites as above having material interests of their own. “It’s okay to be unfair to white people because they don’t need it like we do.”
I make the clarification because I’ve noticed it even among people who don’t have in-group bias. My mom quite dislikes other Bangladeshis, but only slowly realized over 30 years of living here that there are white-majority parts of the country with real economic challenges.
jmspring 3 hours ago [-]
I'm having a problem understanding are you saying it's white supremacy or parallel / similar too such?
If its the former, I am not sure what you are trying to convey.
For myself - seasoned engineer, european pursuasion, I want to work with people that are open and collaborative. I've worked with backgrounds like mine I would never work with again.
I do have an issue with employers find an excuse to bias towards the lower cost labor pool that is H1s. And when teams get saturated that way, it perpetuates the same.
These days, I have found large companies with a tech component and smaller companies within tech centers are more diverse/inclusive (as you will) than the FAANG type companies.
rayiner 3 hours ago [-]
> I'm having a problem understanding are you saying it's white supremacy or parallel / similar too such?
It’s hard to articulate because it’s more an absence of thought. Imagine robots run the world and tell humans what to do. You wouldn’t really think about the robots, and you wouldn’t think about their material interests. That’s kind of like how many desis view white people.
For example, consider the domination of the motel industry by Gujrati Patels: https://madrascourier.com/insight/how-gujarati-patels-took-o.... I suspect they don’t think of themselves as being “biased” by favoring other Gujratis. They don’t think about fairness to white people because why would you think about fairness towards your robot overlords?
jmspring 1 hours ago [-]
Ok, I think what you are meaning is a certain cultural sect / group / region dominating. White supremacists, for me is a different meaning because, history. So I think I understand the cultural comparison.
If I am understanding right, you are not wrong. A group gets a manager of a certain cultural background (visa or not), the team hiring practice trends that way. Companies do not question this...They should.
Diversity in age, culture, ethnic background and experience build a better team.
The unfortunate thing is there are a few cultures that benefit from H1 visas (most prevalent) and propagate their leanings over being open.
American companies should be doing more to hire non-H1s, there is not a talent shortage, but they would rather not pay that additional percentage.
nilespotter 1 hours ago [-]
> It’s an odd form of white supremacy that views whites as above having material interests of their own.
This is also an interesting way to explain the self-immolating Whites, which nowadays is most of us. Any sort of White group identity or collective interest is absolute heresy which must be opposed, while all things in the collective interest of non-Whites must be celebrated, encouraged, and helped along at our own expense. There's a certain paternalistic arrogance to it, an ethnocentric assumption that other races can't get on without us. And it's much more common and pervasive than the caricature of the like shaved head neo-Nazi we are all expected to imagine exists in large numbers, somewhere.
rayiner 1 hours ago [-]
Absolutely. One time, I was explaining to this lady about immigration: that, if the shoe were on the other foot, folks from Bangladesh would’ve shut down the border long ago. She hissed at me: “well, we’re not Bangladesh!” White Americans are supposed to be above having normal human attachments to soil, kin, and clan.
lisbbb 4 hours ago [-]
I just noticed tonight that the movie theaters in my city closed up July 27--there's already weeds growing up out front. This was a really depressing epiphany because the mall next door is basically dead, too. I feel like 2020 killed this place but it's been a delayed reaction, same as my tech career. All we have now here in the upper midwest are people wandering around wearing outfits more suited to the desert conditions of Africa and I guess they don't go to the movies, so...
Herring 7 hours ago [-]
What’s with the comments here? Forget the official reports, we should ask a couple randos on HN about their inboxes?
kristopolous 7 hours ago [-]
After reading the article it looks like the attribution is defensible:
"In contrast, professional and business services were down 7,100 jobs in July, the worst of any sector, and the tech-heavy information sector lost 1,000 jobs."
This could be many things. People could be leaving to do their own startups. The BLS counts that as a job loss thus high-velocity sectors can be reported as job loss.
Cyclone_ 6 hours ago [-]
People leaving to do their own startups would be a pretty small portion of the job market, even on the SF Bay area.
kristopolous 6 hours ago [-]
right, upon further research, there's no corresponding increase in LLC or EIN filings so the startup hypothesis is likely unsupported
seangrogg 6 hours ago [-]
In all fairness, plenty of people leaving the trappings of Big Tech are pretty capable of uprooting and doing business elsewhere; California offers relatively little other than what it has from existing inertia.
hshdhdhj4444 4 hours ago [-]
Agglomeration effects are real. Research has constantly shown that people working in high productivity area generate more wealth than the same people working outside high productivity areas.
The real problem, IMO, is that workers in the tech industry have voluntarily destroyed these agglomeration benefits by using the short period of power workers had during/after the pandemic to insist on work from home instead of better worker protections.
As a result, it’s very possible that high productivity areas in the U.S. are no longer that, and remote work has reduced all Americana’s productivity, making it impossible to justify the higher cost of living and salaries in big cities.
kristopolous 4 hours ago [-]
I dunno. I wish I could find places outside California like Iowa City or St Louis appealing, a simple million will get you a mansion with like fountains, a guest house, pool, tennis courts... In SF that's a two bedroom condo
aworks 5 minutes ago [-]
Except climate. I was on a road trip this summer and stayed in Iowa City while driving East and then St Louis driving West. Downtown Iowa City was appealing. I had a good hotel at a bargain price near the St Louis airport although the area was not the best.
But it was hot. My time back in coastal California has been mostly in the 70s. Camping in Marin County this week, the high was in the 60s. Refreshing after heat warnings in Nebraska, Illinois and Ontario.
tootie 6 hours ago [-]
BLS includes a household survey. It's not just based on payrolls. They aim to capture as much as possible about people with informal work or self-employment.
littlexsparkee 6 hours ago [-]
Provided folks give some context about their location, experience, search, etc the input can be helpful - averages are great but aren't super instructive about one's own odds.
Plus BLS household survey probably has some non-response bias from it re: high income, low time individuals, precisely the folks chiming in.
7 hours ago [-]
nadermx 6 hours ago [-]
We're littreally reading stories upvoted in importance by a bunch of randos. What else do you expect?
readthenotes1 5 hours ago [-]
Well, you survey 4400/13500000, the rando inbox is adding quite a bit to the sample size
w10-1 2 hours ago [-]
The topic deserves a lot better explanation.
It's not helpful to just talk about absolute numbers of jobs gained or lost in a sector without talking about percentages and historical variability.
It also appears the California number cited is based on a survey of ~4K people, some reporting they can't find work, while e.g., Federal unemployment is a function of people getting unemployment benefits. Do states do the same surveys with the same methodology, so the numbers are comparable? Likely not. So the term seems to be used in different senses, and "worst in the US" is unsupported.
Further, for tech in particular, it's not clear which jobs were converted to contracts, for AI services or outsourcing (in or out of US).
This kind of salad article is likely the future: enough for the general public worried about jobs, but not helpful to anyone who actually wants to understand and plan accordingly.
jmalicki 2 hours ago [-]
None of the above purported facts are true.
From the link: Employment and Unemployment in California (Based on a monthly federal survey of 4,400 California households which focuses on workers in the economy)
anecdata: after lay off 10 months ago, I suddenly got 3 offers in July and I am employed now.
I think it's the BBB that fixed the tax code issue - just a guess.
Terr_ 7 hours ago [-]
With respect to chronology and cause/effect, I'd point out that provision took effect in January 2022, so it's been of-concern for a while.
It was put into law in 2017 with the Republican TCJA, but section 174 was time-delayed, part of a general trick of having all of the tax-cuts and spending immediately, with any budget "balancing" items deferred as long as possible.
jvanderbot 6 hours ago [-]
I and a few thousand of my colleagues were laid off that day.
echelon 6 hours ago [-]
> With respect to chronology and cause/effect, I'd point out that provision took effect in January 2022,
That's when the layoff spree started!
ivewonyoung 7 hours ago [-]
Why didn't the Democrats who were in power repeal it by Jan 2022 by itself or as part of other large bills they passed?
Terr_ 6 hours ago [-]
Among other possible attempts(?) that touched on the issue, here's one in 2024 that Republicans blocked in the Senate, where they "filibustered" it by voting "nay" on cloture.
Alternate question: Why didn't the Republicans do something in the years before 2025 to fix the problem they created and which tech-company lobbyists absolutely told them about?
ripjaygn 5 hours ago [-]
That wasn't a clean bill, it had a bunch of other stuff in it, 86 pages long.
Democrats could've passed a bill that only included the repeal of the R&D changes, which they didn't coz they didn't want to.
Edit: rate limited coz of politically motivated downvotes, I am done here.
tomhow 49 minutes ago [-]
> Edit: rate limited coz of politically motivated downvotes, I am done here.
This feels like the "only Democrats have agency" story, where Republicans are somehow never to blame because they're just toddlers or forces of nature, while Democrats are always at fault because they didn't stop the Republicans from burning the house down or clean up all the poop from the carpets or whatever, in an endless and impossible race.
By your logic, Republicans didn't fix it because they didn't want to either! Why was that? Partisan vengeance against California?
> That wasn't a clean bill
Well, that one happens to be a bill from a Republican, I was just looking for ones that affected that tax-provision.
In any case, did you check out the table-of-contents, and not just the page-length? It may not be as minimal-as-possible, but it's all tax-related stuff.
ivewonyoung 4 hours ago [-]
> This feels like the "only Democrats have agency" story
Because only Democrats had agency when the law took effect? The president can veto any bill. Democrats passed two bills in 2021 and 2022 with zero Republican votes, zero, they could've easily included the repeal in those bills if they wanted to. They didn't coz they didn't want to, their stated policy is to raise taxes on corporations, how is this even debatable? Meanwhile the Republicans at that time had no agency. Once they got agency, they repealed it immediately, with zero Democrat votes.
Would you similarly blame the Democrats for all voting against the repeal as part of the BBB that just passed? You wouldn't and your reason would be "but the BBB contained a lot of other things apart from this repeal that the dems didn't like". Why won't you apply the same logic to the non-clean bill you brought up?
> By your logic, Republicans didn't fix it because they didn't want to either! Why was that? Partisan vengeance against California?
Huh, they fixed it immediately after coming to power. They couldn't fix it before the BBB because it needed to go in reconciliation because the dems don't suppor the repeal. They didn't fix it in 2019 because it wasn't even in effect yet and IIRC dems had the house. So how does the partisan vengeance allegation even make any sense?
blackguardx 4 hours ago [-]
86 pages is not long by today's standards. Also, when was the last "clean bill" passed?
devonbleak 6 hours ago [-]
It wouldn't have been budget-neutral without a bunch of tax increases along with it which they don't have the spine to implement.
ivewonyoung 6 hours ago [-]
It had Republican support so they could've easily gotten the 60 votes in the Senate, so it didn't need to be budget-neutral.
trenchpilgrim 6 hours ago [-]
Because it was intended to offset losses in tax revenue from the 2017 tax cuts, and trying to undo those tax cuts would have been political suicide.
gedy 6 hours ago [-]
Crimethink
MisterBiggs 7 hours ago [-]
I was laid off this year and also saw a massive uptick in offers in July. Based in Colorado, but was looking nation wide and I got more interest out of SF than the rest of the country combined.
petcat 7 hours ago [-]
Sounds like you're one of the lucky ones. In my experience, remote tech jobs have largely moved to India. It's like pulling teeth at my company to get them to offer a remote job in a NA timezone (US or Canada).
bitbasher 7 hours ago [-]
anecdata: I run a saas product and my primary customers are recruiters, after the BBB I have had more daily signups and new subscribers than previous months.
seangrogg 6 hours ago [-]
Partially! The text of the OBBBA actually made permanent the section of the tax code that treats software development as research and amortizes accordingly. However, because nothing can just be straightforward, it also allows domestic research expenses to be deducted immediately instead of amortized.
Definitely a much better tax situation but also not one we would've been in if not for the TCJA, and we still have an exposed oblique (the removal of the domestic research exclusion) that could put us back in the same spot unless the software development as research section is removed.
littlexsparkee 7 hours ago [-]
less recruiter activity than a few months ago, cleared one interview gauntlet just to have the role change due to a new lead hire, otherwise getting followups for screens but hit or miss on the tech assessments. might have to spend more time practicing. 10 yoe, SFBA.
throwmeaway222 7 hours ago [-]
sorry to hear that, keep it up, it was absolutely demoralizing for me during those 10 months I started to believe I was actually losing my mind after a literal 20 year history in startups/tech.
But my colleagues are all younger than me - they are hiring people out of college too, so you can make it just keep pushing
650REDHAIR 2 hours ago [-]
That’s quite the leap there.
But not a surprise based on your history here on HN.
silisili 7 hours ago [-]
I'm not looking for work, but have a LinkedIn that I honestly forgot about until the end of July. It'd been so long since I got even recruiterspam I forgot about it. And out of nowhere, 2 or 3 target recruiter messages.
Hopefully things are looking up for the market.
dyauspitr 7 hours ago [-]
This might be the only good thing in all of BBB
bravesoul2 7 hours ago [-]
Good... for tech workers, and tech companies.
sexeriy237 7 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, the BBB that fixed the rules that trump changed last time.
ivewonyoung 6 hours ago [-]
Why didn't the Biden admin "fix" the rule before it took effect in Jan 2022? They passed several bills, they could've have included the repeal. It took effect on the democrats watch, because of their inaction.
Edit: Republican Marco Rubio introduced a clean bill to repeal the changes in 2023.
The Democrat controlled Senate blocked it from coming to a vote.
Why does HN always blame only Republicans for this change?
qqqwerty 40 minutes ago [-]
Because how could the Democrats be certain that the Republicans wouldn't just use the same accounting trick again the next time that they wanted to pass tax cuts via reconciliation (which would effectively let them double count the "savings"). The Republicans have shown very little good faith in bipartisan efforts over the last decade and a half (as just one example, all the R's who voted against the IRA only to then campaign on the achievements of the bill later in the year).
So while it is great that the Republicans fixed this one thing (that they themselves broke), asking why the Democrats didn't fix it kinda feels like you have been living under a rock for these last few years. If they break something, and they regret breaking something, let them expend the political capital to get it fixed. There is no free lunch in politics. If you spend your time on something like this, it means some other priority is getting ignored. And doubly so if your counter party has been operating on such bad faith as of late.
AnimalMuppet 5 hours ago [-]
If you passed it in the first place, and counted on repealing it before it would have taken effect, and failed to do so, then I blame you for passing it in the first place.
ripjaygn 5 hours ago [-]
Why wouldn't you also blame the Democrats though?
They had the chance to repeal it before it would have taken effect.
Why do they get zero blame on here?
rezonant 5 hours ago [-]
I have no problem blaming them. The biggest problem with Democrats is that they cede all their power to Republicans, and don't seem to use the power they have when they have it. You can have the best policy positions ever but you still suck if you can't capitalize on wins.
But the Republicans made this change to start with. That's a lot of blame. And if they did it just to create a political firestorm against Democrats later (which is exactly what they did), do we (A) recognize that politicians shouldn't be using Americans as cannon fodder to damage their political enemies or (B) blame their political enemies?
hn_acc1 6 hours ago [-]
It's possible you need a supermajority or something to specifically "undo" laws passed by a previous session of congress - something Biden did not have.
throwaway173738 5 hours ago [-]
In the Senate specifically you need 60 votes to break a filibuster. Filibustering, if we Americans remember from Civics/US Govt class in high school, happens when a senator exercises their right to speak for as long as they wish. Or at least it used to. There was a rule change a few decades ago to allow something called a “pocket filibuster” where you don’t have to keep speaking but you can block further motions on the matter. This requires at least 60 votes to break, so it’s effectively impossible to do anything in the Senate without that many votes now.
There were some legendary filibusters back in the day. One famous example was when Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights act by speaking for 24 hours continuously. He was not able to block the bill by continuing to speak because there are limits to how long someone is able to stand and deliver, and originally if you stopped speaking you had to yield the floor and allow business to proceed.
ivewonyoung 3 hours ago [-]
Republicans supported the repeal, so 60 votes in the Senate were possible if the Dems wanted to repeal it. They didn't want to, coz they passed two reconciliation bills with zero republican votes and could've included the repeal in either one of them. Their policy is explicitly to tax corporations more. They didn't even let the clean repeal bills have a vote.
magicalist 2 hours ago [-]
> Republicans supported the repeal
of the statute they wrote, voted for, and signed into law. Important note.
ivewonyoung 6 hours ago [-]
Then how did Republicans repeal it just recently with zero Dem votes?
Repealing it had Republican support during the Biden term too, they even introduced a bill in2023 to repeal it which the Democrats killed.
Democrats really wanted the changes to take place since their platform is all about higher taxes on companies and high earners.
seangrogg 5 hours ago [-]
They actually did NOT repeal the portion relevant to software development being considered research - it was actually made permanent and is pretty trivial to find by searching for "software development" against the text of the bill. What did change was an additional section to how research is capitalized, with domestic research being able to deduct immediately while other (i.e. foreign) research is subject to the amortization rules.
rezonant 6 hours ago [-]
> which the Democrats killed
Do you have a source for this claim?
The congressional record says only that it died in the Finance Committee
ivewonyoung 6 hours ago [-]
Democrats controlled both the Finance Committee and the Senate. There was no way for Republicans to stop a bill from coming to vote. So it was necessarily stopped from moving ahead by Democrats despite Republican support. Another reason for the party in power blocking the vote would if the President opposed it, to prevent the scenario of Biden having to veto.
Edit: Blocked from being able to post new comments by HN because I am getting heavily downvoted for posting inconvenient facts and arguments. Stay classy, HN.
tomhow 52 minutes ago [-]
> Blocked from being able to post new comments by HN because I am getting heavily downvoted for posting inconvenient facts
This is not how HN works. Rate-limiting only happens when an account posts high volumes of comments that break the guidelines. It's nothing to do with downvotes or the political/idological flavor of what you post (we don't care and often don't know; all we care about is whether you're filling up threads with guideline-breaking comments, which is what ruins threads).
If you want rate-limiting turned off you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we can discuss it.
mikeyouse 5 hours ago [-]
Crapo, Republican Senator from Idaho killed the bill because he was pretending to care about deficits back then:
Needless to say, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the BBB’s ~$4 trillion debt increase.
rezonant 5 hours ago [-]
That is a different bill which also restored R&E.
While it is a different bill, the fact the Democrats were fine having it in the bill passed by the House in 2024 does cast doubt on this notion that they didn't try to resolve the issue.
rezonant 5 hours ago [-]
So that would be this Finance committee right?
> The Senate Finance Committee roster for the 118th Congress includes 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans, with three new GOP members recently appointed.
Hardly an unbeatable majority for Democrats on this committee. Especially since research and development is one of the main reasons taxation on higher income classes is effective: The idea is you'll be taxed if you want to take it as profit, but if you advance the state of the art, innovate, or create new technology then you can deduct that. The high tax rates of the US post WWII up to Reagan worked so well because of this combination: It was incentivized for businesses to reinvest their profits into R&D, since they'd hopefully be able to scale their profits if the R&D was successful.
I think it's not as clear cut as "the Democrats" or "the Republicans" here-- especially since there would probably be a requirement that the shortfall be made up in some other way in order to balance the effects on revenue.
ripjaygn 5 hours ago [-]
> I think it's not as clear cut as "the Democrats" or "the Republicans" here-- especially since there would probably be a requirement that the shortfall be made up in some other way in order to balance the effects on revenue
For the 10th time in this thread, the repealing bill DID NOT need to be revenue neutral since it had Republican support, all it needed was 60 votes in the Senate. Reconciliation only applies if a yearly budget bill can get at least 51 votes but not 60.
Sorry, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. I stated the same in another comment and was downvoted. I know HN is liberal biased but it's becoming unusable if you as much dare to criticize democrats.
rezonant 4 hours ago [-]
> it's becoming unusable if you as much dare to criticize democrats.
Is this situation right now really "unusable"? Aren't you overreacting just a tad? People might disagree with you, I'd hope you'd be able to have a conversation without getting upset.
ripjaygn 2 hours ago [-]
> Is this situation right now really "unusable"?
Quite literally unusable because I got blocked by HN from commenting for more than two hours coz of all the politically motivated downvotes. If you have the right politics, keep commenting!
> I'd hope you'd be able to have a conversation
See above, literally not able to have one because I dared to criticize Democrats for their actions and inactions that led to tech job losses for over two years.
> People might disagree with you
I'm open to arguments but looks like people disagree with the facts that I am bringing forward, so they're downvoting to suppress them to lower visibility and to discourage me from participating on here.
It's like on Reddit when you state a plain fact 'Musk founded SpaceX' in reply to a highly upvoted comment that said 'Musk bought all this companies' and get heavily downvoted and even permanently banned in large subs by highly biased moderators.
This place is turning into yet another BlueSky or Reddit where facts don't matter and only a one sided political narrative is pushed at all times. Don't think it's worth engaging. I don't want to be in a place where my comments are deemed so terrible that I get max downvoted and then unable to comment for several hours.
Ironically, such controlling behavior and shutting down of facts, criticism of one side and conversation is leading more and more people to vote for the other side. I am now ashamed of being a lifelong liberal and won't vote democrat till people change this obnoxious partisan behavior on platforms like this one.
rezonant 1 hours ago [-]
So your opinions are unpopular and people are tired of responding to the same points over and over again?
Hacker News is far from a bastion of left wingers, many people have complained about liberal and progressive ideas being downvoted as well. Above all, this platform isn't made for political debate, and it is not encouraged. If it makes you feel better, not a single one of my posts in all this has much or any upvotes. If you are looking for political validation, this ain't the place for it.
2 hours ago [-]
rezonant 5 hours ago [-]
No need to repeat yourself. Why are you getting so worked up? I think we'd all like to understand what the hold up was on these bills, but let's base that in supported facts, not partisanship.
As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference.
ripjaygn 5 hours ago [-]
Two bills were passed with zero Republican votes in 2021 and 2022 by Democrats, the repeal could've been included in either if democrats wanted.
> As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference
There were only 27 members in the committee. So all the Democrats on the committee voted against the repeal and all the republicans voted for the repeal.
How is that a negligible difference? That's a massive maximum difference between the parties, in fact it was impossible to have a higher difference.
rezonant 5 hours ago [-]
Do you have the voting records of this bill in committee? Of course there were 27 members, that's the sum of the Democrats and Republicans. That does not mean that they voted on party lines in committee.
apical_dendrite 6 hours ago [-]
There are special rules called reconciliation that allow one party to pass a bill with just a majority. It can be used only once a year (hence why everything was packed into the big beautiful bill) and there are very complex and technical rules around what it can be used for.
So to answer your question, Republicans repealed it with zero Democratic votes because they included it in the once-a-year reconciliation bill. The bill that you are linking to would not have met this criteria.
ripjaygn 6 hours ago [-]
It had Republican support so it would've gotten the 60 votes in Senate without needing to get reconciliation. It didn't even get a vote because the Democrats stopped it from proceeding with their control of the Senate. Their policy is all about higher taxes on corporation and high income individuals so it tracks.
bushbaba 4 hours ago [-]
Unemployment in California was higher back in 2015. Feels like this is layoff related
ipnon 55 minutes ago [-]
It's more concentrated in the middle class now. There are this year lots of underemployment opportunities for the lower class, and with MediCal and other welfare you can make ends meet. I have worked in both economies.
declan_roberts 6 hours ago [-]
This is the time to cut back on h1b permits.
wnc3141 4 hours ago [-]
I suspect this will become a key issue in Newsom's brand of center-left Democratic politics. It greatly affects both urban and college educated workforces - i.e the Democratic base. Canada took the lead here a few years ago under Trudeau's administration.
bsder 6 hours ago [-]
Or, better yet, simply prevent any company who laid people off from being able to access any more H1-Bs for some number of years.
You can keep your current H1-Bs, but no more for you for 5 years if you do a layoff.
hshdhdhj4444 4 hours ago [-]
There are already limitations on hiring H1Bs after layoffs.
ahmeneeroe-v2 6 hours ago [-]
Not sure how that is better. Remove current H1Bs prior to any layoffs of US nationals.
Jcampuzano2 5 hours ago [-]
Both should be implemented.
If you are laying workers off you clearly don't need additional H1B workers. You should be barred for at least a year if not more from putting in any applications for H1B after any major layoff.
It should also be scrutinized if you preferably fire local workers over your H1B workers. Anybody caught doing so should be barred from H1B for a decade.
I like my H1B coworkers, but things have gone too far. You can't do layoffs and simultaneously put in applications for thousands of H1B workers. It makes no logical sense and should be illegal. The system is completely broken right now.
Not to mention most of this H1B work is not actually due to lack of local talent. Building a web or mobile app is not rocket science and there are plenty of people capable of doing so. Any company putting in H1B for anything but research positions or positions requiring exceptional expertise is probably abusing the system.
ahmeneeroe-v2 5 hours ago [-]
>Both should be implemented.
Love your thinking here. Total agreement.
And yeah I have had great experiences with my H1B coworkers, but they are doing jobs that US professionals could easily do. At this point H1Bs are just (possibly unwitting?) scab labor.
Good on the rust belt states for being able to get their unemployment down under 5.5%.
heavyset_go 5 hours ago [-]
Might be a case of those who are permanently out of the workforce because they couldn't find work are not counted in unemployment statistics, along with flight and deaths of despair.
hshdhdhj4444 4 hours ago [-]
It’s helpful when the government is subsidizing your entire economy.
Farming, healthcare, autos, etc are almost completely subsidized by the government.
stockresearcher 4 hours ago [-]
Careful. Coronado, Miramar, Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms, Edwards, Mcclellan, Vandenburg, Travis, etc. How many bases do you think there are in Iowa?
giantg2 5 hours ago [-]
I wonder if the participation rate is lower or people moved away.
jfengel 5 hours ago [-]
Or maybe new jobs opened up.
giantg2 5 hours ago [-]
Possible, but that's not really what my friends in those areas are seeing. The only real industry there is medical - taking care of all the old folks.
mertleee 6 hours ago [-]
There's a reason most people you run into SF are either here on O1 or h1b visas these days...
Time to cull the waterloo crowd and maybe think twice about cheap outsourcing to latam and india.
akavi 5 hours ago [-]
As an American citizen, born and bred, I would literally, physically fight you on behalf of keeping Waterloo grads in America.
Many of the best coworkers I've had the pleasure of working with, not to mention the founders of the company I spent over a quarter of my career at (Pagerduty).
nickm12 1 hours ago [-]
hear hear! I've worked with exceptional people from all sorts of backgrounds, but pound for pound, Waterloo CS grads are significantly better on average than grads from any other CS program. They start off way ahead, but also maintain that edge throughout their careers.
Disclosure: I'm a US citizen with multiple CS degree from MIT and my son is studying CS at Waterloo now.
jdefr89 47 minutes ago [-]
Nice. I an researcher at MIT LL. In order to work at the lab you need to be a US citizen since a lot of it is federally funded. I tried to get my buddy, a Waterloo grad currently at Google, an interview but he is Canadian...
Husieandr 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
philosophty 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
akavi 5 hours ago [-]
A zero-sum mindset on a website dedicated to programming of all places? Where we literally create wealth out of nothing but coffee and the strength of our minds?
My love for my country means I want it to be the greatest in the world. Waterloo grads make America better. Period.
philosophty 5 hours ago [-]
Some games (founding companies) are non-zero sum. Some (like employing Americans vs non-Americans) are zero sum.
You're just hand-waiving away reality, which is a very non-programmer thing to do.
NikolaNovak 5 hours ago [-]
A wonderful Book on immigration, math, history, facts, and zero sum
From an American author
(Illustrated, to reach those who talk about "stealing American jobs from Americans!!!" a lot).
From Amazon Canada, because I like fun too :-)
"Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration"
I've never met anyone that argued for open borders that wasn't capable of isolating themselves from the negative effects. Like say, a tenured professor like Bryan Caplan.
Open borders might be net-positive but would very predictably devastate the lives of poor people in America. Not that most people who advocate it know anything about being poor.
NikolaNovak 4 hours ago [-]
Hang on, are we upset that immigrants are taking the jobs of poor people in America?
I thought based on original post we were upset immigrants are taking high paying specialist jobs from the rich techies in San Francisco?
Or are they just just taking all the jobs while miraculously not spending any money and not creating any demand and not participating in economy at all?
I just want to understand this evil scourge appropriately.
P.s. (And oh, boy, will I compete in the "knowing about being poor" with anybody on HN :)
philosophty 3 hours ago [-]
Poor Americans are the most in need of the opportunity tech jobs provide. That's how they can become non-poor Americans.
Poor Americans are also the most vulnerable to unskilled immigration making them even poorer than they already are.
It's not that complicated.
prewett 2 hours ago [-]
If they are vulnerable to unskilled immigration, that would imply that they are unskilled themselves. I don't see how they will be able to take advantage "opportunity tech jobs provide"--a highly skilled set of jobs.
I agree that poor Americans are vulnerable to unskilled immigration, but suggesting that highly skilled tech jobs are a solution is just not realistic.
jufter 1 hours ago [-]
> but suggesting that highly skilled tech jobs are a solution is just not realistic.
I went from homeless to six figures thanks to tech.
I think you are missing that tech is one of the few well paying industries that doesn't have socioeconomic gatekeeping with degrees.
philosophty 2 hours ago [-]
Many poor people could make it into the middle class by learning to do skilled jobs if given the opportunity.
The number of opportunities is significantly reduced when companies have the easier and cheaper alternative of hiring non-Americans.
And those poor people that don't have the capability to become skilled workers can at least not be kicked while they're down.
jdminhbg 2 hours ago [-]
> Some games (founding companies) are non-zero sum. Some (like employing Americans vs non-Americans) are zero sum.
Not even wrong
pj_mukh 5 hours ago [-]
Seeing this pablum on Hackernews is quite startling. It seems like its going to remain the "global warming is fake" of the economics world.
"Oh but I know of this study that.."...I know..I know.
philosophty 5 hours ago [-]
Your argument is that all games are non-zero sum and supply and demand don't apply for some magical reason?
Seems like I'm making the sound economic argument and you're just casting aspersions.
NikolaNovak 4 hours ago [-]
I think the general overall notion is:
1. If, say, an immigrant earns 70k, they will also spend 70k. It's an equilibrium - they "create" as much jobness as they "take".
2. The easiest intuitive explanation I have is - imagine a million immigrants move in. They're basically a self sufficient city - with police and doctors and teachers and mechanics and salespeople and whatever. Doesn't bother me.
In fact, America is by definition (unless one is native American) the land of immigrants. It is clearly factually historically obvious that immigration was not zero sum and it continually expanded overall prosperity and might of the American empire. It's only when we zoom into the very here and now that some people, for some reason, freak out and feel "omg immigrants!!".
philosophty 4 hours ago [-]
1. Immigrants send to their home countries very significant amounts of their income, so it's always going to be net-negative in that sense.
2. Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?
Of course America is a land of immigrants. And of course immigration can be positive-sum.
That doesn't prove that it's always positive-sum.
It's easy to see many situations that are not positive sum. Huge amounts of unskilled immigration is, at least in the short-term, going to be extremely zero-sum because they will consume far more public resources than they pay for, depriving the existing users. This has played out many times.
In other words:
Too much skilled immigration takes good middle class jobs away from citizens that need them.
Too much unskilled immigration takes public resources and jobs away from citizens that need them.
Given those facts, the argument should be about how much is too much of any particular kind of immigration for any particular time and place.
pj_mukh 3 hours ago [-]
Lol. Called it. Always with the moving goal posts.
Oh but remittances are high! Think of the short term effects.
I will mention my Indian coworkers parents use the remittances to buy Netflix subscriptions, Coca-Cola and American Corn but it won’t be enough. It’ll never be enough.
Constant-pie thinking is an all consuming identity not a rational viewpoint that can be reasoned with.
philosophty 3 hours ago [-]
Funny how you applaud yourself for being correct but make no actual arguments.
What are you claiming? That immigrants do not actually remit significant percentage of their income? That all or most remitted money comes back to America? That short-term effects do not matter even if they're highly destructive?
You're claiming that I believe in a fixed pie which could not possibly be further from the truth. But I do believe that some pies are fixed, some of the time, in some places. Are you claiming the opposite? That pies are never fixed?
You're the one who isn't arguing in a rational way.
pj_mukh 5 hours ago [-]
“Demand is fixed, they're coming or your jobs” is your “Temperatures always rise and fall, there is no global warming”.
I'm sorry to be this dismissive, but I've had this conversation too many times and you will simply see what you want to see. There is no convincing coal workers of global warming.
philosophty 4 hours ago [-]
Your arguments are so convincing you don't even need to make them and there's no chance you're the one that's refusing to acknowledge reality. Okay...
nothercastle 5 hours ago [-]
It’s probably negative sum because you end up hiring more offshore workers but still end up spending less
mertleee 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
CapricornNoble 5 hours ago [-]
> Americans make america great. We got the moon without indians.
Yeah but we got to the moon with imported Nazi German rocket scientists. Still "immigrants" of a sort.
dvrj101 2 hours ago [-]
yup,Operation Paperclip. This program brought over 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, many of whom were former members of the Nazi Party and some with SS affiliations, to the U.S. for government employment between 1945 and 1959.
didibus 5 hours ago [-]
The flip side should also be said, Canada and many other countries have talent drained by the US since they can't compete on pay.
It's hard to say, but who knows what could have been if the top Canadians had have to start or join Canadian companies and didn't have the option to take a higher pay in the US.
okdood64 5 hours ago [-]
> Canada and many other countries have talent drained by the US since they can't compete on pay.
What's the relevance here of this? Canada should make better opportunities for their citizens.
RHSeeger 5 hours ago [-]
And the reverse of that is that folks in the US should agree to work for less; so that they get the jobs. Neither one is as easy as it sounds.
ahmeneeroe-v2 5 hours ago [-]
That is not the reverse. Canada should make better opportunities for it's citizens and so should the US.
anal_reactor 5 hours ago [-]
That's "homeless people should just buy homes" level of thinking.
faluzure 5 hours ago [-]
I like the way you think. As a Canadian, I’m disgusted that we educate our youth and then send them to the US to take jobs from Americans and pay taxes to the Americans. We should be putting them to work in Canada instead so we can build companies and industries in Canada instead of America.
/s, but not really.
kjellsbells 4 hours ago [-]
> We should be putting them to work in Canada instead so we can build companies and industries in Canada instead of America
OK...I'll bite. Every Canadian government, of either party, has agreed with you for the last sixty years. Your country has excellent universities, the infrastructure is decent, the politics are non-violent...and yet people bail. I could say the same about the UK as well, but it's harder for their brains to drain to the US.
So: why is Canada failing to hold on to their homegrown talent? Is it a "push out" of Canada (driving talent away) or a "pull in" to the US (America having something irresistible)?
5 hours ago [-]
estearum 5 hours ago [-]
The sudden explosion in zero-sum thinking in the right wing will be studied for generations
heavyset_go 5 hours ago [-]
It's a defining characteristic of reactionary thought and it's already studied.
hshdhdhj4444 5 hours ago [-]
Funny how H1Bs are responsible for the destruction of the American labor force but also happen to be represented most in the jobs whose salary and size have grown the most in the U.S. over the past 2+ decades.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that H1Bs are most represented in the industry that has generated nearly all the growth that has been generated in America over the past 2-3 decades.
philosophty 3 hours ago [-]
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that slave labor is most represented in the industry that generated nearly all of America’s economic growth during the 18th and 19th century.
Is the argument you're making, which is ridiculous.
The success of an industry says nothing about how exploitative or unethical its practices are.
greesil 5 hours ago [-]
Not sudden.
philosophty 5 hours ago [-]
The way many people like yourself seem to have been completely fooled by major corporations wanting cheaper labor to exploit (through both legal, semi-legal, and illegal immigration) will be studied for generations.
Their favorite trick (which you've adopted here) is to accuse people of being "racist" and "right wing" for objecting.
For the record, you would have to search long and hard to find someone more opposed to Trump and his minions than myself. Bernie Sanders has the same basic viewpoint I've expressed.
I have absolutely no hatred for anyone based on their origin or race.
I am completely in favor of allowing as many people into this country as we can sustainably absorb, and even a little more. At the same time, I strongly object to prioritizing the desire of major corporations to exploit cheaper labor at the expense of American citizens.
estearum 4 hours ago [-]
I don’t really know what you’re responding to
philosophty 3 hours ago [-]
Your suggestion that these are "right wing" ideas when Bernie Sanders says the same thing and for the same reasons. You might accuse him of being "zero sum" but you can't accuse him of being right wing.
greesil 5 hours ago [-]
The American dream in silicon valley was built in part by these folks. They stay here and become Americans both culturally and legally and it's fantastic. Some of them even become Republicans.
As others have pointed out it's not a zero sum game since human capital begets growth.
vachina 5 hours ago [-]
“Canadians”, touché.
HDThoreaun 5 hours ago [-]
Not only is this mindset disgusting, it is completely wrong. Labor is not zero sum, jobs create more jobs. Immigrants are what has made this country great, allowing immigration was critical to the US becoming the industrial/financial/tech capital of the world. Shutting down immigration will weaken our economy, it will cost americans jobs.
kanbara 5 hours ago [-]
there is no more american dream, and anyone who “creates” jobs in this economy and era of rampant hypercapitalism isn’t really enabling or transferring wealth.
if there were ample americans to do these jobs, they should be able to get them.
nationalism is a silly idea, anyway. and we should have free trade and movement with our biggest two allies. american exceptionalism is a joke
philosophty 5 hours ago [-]
You're arguing that Americans have no more right to success in America than non-Americans. I don't think many Americans will agree with you.
And neither will most people from any other country agree about their own country's success.
dvrj101 2 hours ago [-]
> Americans have no more right to success in America than non-Americans.
Americans literally voted to defund the education system, voted for administration(s) that will amplify spending money to hire foreigners to keep America center of top talent/skill across domains and most importantly voted for extreme capitalism.
Major corporations are hiring them because they're cheaper not because there aren't well educated Americans available.
There are more than 60 million college educated Americans. That's 50% more than the entire population of Canada.
It's a very big and well educated country, bud.
mertleee 5 hours ago [-]
There have never been more unemployed new college grads studying computer science and computer engineering. There are ample americans ready to take these jobs.
Boomers promulgated lies about "shortages" for years to lobby for relaxed visa schemes. Ironic you mention nationalism being silly, since Indians are some of the most openly caustic nationalists I encounter on a daily basis.
jmspring 5 hours ago [-]
What about the "masters" diploma mills?
joshdavham 5 hours ago [-]
> Time to cull the waterloo crowd
Are implying that reducing the number of graduates from a single program (CS) at one specific university (Waterloo) from a country 10x smaller from the US (Canada) will help lower tech employment in California?
tstrimple 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ahmeneeroe-v2 5 hours ago [-]
Why should US graduates compete with non-US workers in the US? Call me scared or incompetent or uncompetitive but I just don't want to compete in that way. All those people can stay in their countries and out-compete US grads there.
hshdhdhj4444 5 hours ago [-]
Because technology is a global industry and if you can’t compete with these workers you surely won’t be able to compete with these workers when the company that was willing to pay them $150k to work in San Francisco can pay them $50k to work out of Romania.
Instead of that individual now paying 80-90% of their income to US taxes and US businesses and saving the rest in U.S. banks providing even cheaper capital for US businesses, they will be doing the same in Romania.
And worse, if that person does create a new startup, the majority of employees hired will be in Romania, and only a tiny fraction would be Americans who moved there to work for that company, and would be competing with American companies with a much lower cost basis.
But hey, Romania will be pleased for sure.
ahmeneeroe-v2 4 hours ago [-]
I'll take the other side of this bet.
greesil 5 hours ago [-]
I'm sure there are other smart USians but shit there's a fuckload more globally and I get to work with them and it's great. And then if they stay long enough they become citizens.
My rule of thumb is if I'm the smartest person in the room then we've got serious problems.
hazek112 4 hours ago [-]
If they're so smart maybe they should help their own country build companies...
greesil 3 hours ago [-]
Well that's how you get competent foreign competitors, congratulations.
justinhj 6 hours ago [-]
if it means I can hire Waterloo graduates again here in Canada that sounds fantastic
mertleee 6 hours ago [-]
I couldn't agree more! Canada has massive potential, albeit also large issues with their immigration system being gamed.
In my opinion, outsourcing is a larger evil. The money used to pay the salaries of outsourced engineers should be taxed at-least at 20% (along with remittances to India) akin to what we currently penalize foreign countries for maliciously suppressing the cost of physical goods. This is called Countervailing Duty or Anti Dumping Duty penalties.
I've reached my limit with the entitlement of these people in the united states. Especially systematically excluding americans or non-indians once they reach a hiring level / role.
trade2play 45 minutes ago [-]
Indian software wages are about 1/3 US. The U.S. would need to tax them much more to dissuade outsourcing.
s5300 5 hours ago [-]
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pj_mukh 5 hours ago [-]
It's not most people you meet, its most people you remember you meet.
Arguably, the purpose of a company is to generate profit. If US companies need skilled workers that they can't find locally, they will open or expand their international offices. At least the O1/H1B visa holders pay taxes in the US and contribute to the local economy.
hazek112 4 hours ago [-]
The United States is not an economic zone.
Non-resident visa holders are not citizens and act accordingly against the interests of citizens and their families.
ahmeneeroe-v2 4 hours ago [-]
Arguably the purpose of a country is the furtherance of its citizenry. The US system should be set up to disincentivize US companies from bringing scab labor into the US.
In practical terms this would look like eliminating H1B/O1 programs.
hshdhdhj4444 5 hours ago [-]
Corporations are just absolutely devastated at the fact that they cannot hire an H1B in California for $150k but will now have to hire the exact same person in India for $60k in one of the most remote friendly industries in the world.
ahmeneeroe-v2 4 hours ago [-]
If your sarcastic comment were true they'd be offshoring wholesale even with the existence of the H1B program.
dilyevsky 1 hours ago [-]
Take a guess where majority of google cloud hiring is these days
vondur 5 hours ago [-]
California’s economy feels like it’s running on tech companies at this point. Any downturn in their hiring has really big effects on the California state budget.
heavyset_go 5 hours ago [-]
That's the downside of depending on regressive income taxes instead of taxing assets, capital gains, dividends, etc sufficiently.
wskinner 4 hours ago [-]
California has the most progressive taxation scheme of any state. Dividends and capital gains are taxed as income. I’m curious what you would consider “sufficient” taxation - the top marginal combined rate for a Californian is over 50%.
Ericson2314 1 hours ago [-]
What it needs is more property tax aga, or better yet, land value tax.
vondur 5 hours ago [-]
I think California had the highest capital gains tax in the US.
TowerTall 4 hours ago [-]
It is only two weeks ago the commissioner of labor statistics got fired and going forward one needs to be very sceptical about the integrity of numbers or statistics coming from the official US government resources. How can anyone at this point trust any US statistics?
After a long drought I've seen more recruiter emails recently but I do think the days of 500k-1M TC are dwindling. Big Tech seems to be moving a lot of positions to LCOL areas and I don't see that abating.
adw 6 hours ago [-]
This very very very much depends what you do. ML critical-path roles are doing much better than everything else as far as I can tell.
mdaniel 4 hours ago [-]
In the midst of a gold rush, sell shovels and maps
In the less glib way, I'll draw attention to the fact that machine learning roles are only one moving part of the machinery required to manage, operate, train, evaluate, demo, and integrate AI adjacent opportunities. That's to say one need not be a pytorch or differential equation ninja to contribute meaningful to riding the hype train
selfhosttoday 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure if this is entirely related, but during COVID (in SF) I was always surprised to see my colleagues so adamant against RTO once the vaccine was widely disseminated. I always felt that if jobs were remote there would be no need to hire us specifically - they'd hire in the cheaper parts of the country remotely or worse yet, other countries. The usual retort was that folks in North Carolina, Canada, Eastern Europe, Bangalore or whatever weren't as good - but I always thought such rebuttals were arrogant at worst, and ignorant at best.
Sad to see that to some extent that's exactly what happened. My current tech take is that developers shouldn't allow AI and/or agents to do the entirety of their job, rather allow them to do more, and it should be framed as such specifically. e.g. don't use AI to write the entire feature, use it to make the feature better and drive more revenue, or more correct and result in less bugs, thus less wasted effort on ops/etc.
It's amusing to see some people excited for AI to do the entirety of the implementation and planning, as if there would be no impact on us. If AI is that good, you just need TPMs (to the extent it's even possible, anyway).
It's no surprise to see that jobs that cannot be done remotely are making a comeback.
dasil003 6 hours ago [-]
Having seen what happens when TPMs run things and otherwise smart engineers just do what they’re told, I can assure you this will not lead to good outcomes no matter how good AI gets.
selfhosttoday 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, but at least this way you don't need to pair SWEs.
deadbabe 7 hours ago [-]
I’ve started seeing emails from recruiters coming in again after a long drought. These unemployment figures will probably be lagging indicators.
6 hours ago [-]
nextworddev 7 hours ago [-]
Hmm anecdotally I’m seeing a lot of hiring in all places ranging from faang to startups. So tech hiring is not evenly distributed.
Esophagus4 7 hours ago [-]
There is definitely hiring going on, but having seen this now from the hiring manager side, companies are flooded with candidates because of all the tech layoffs.
So yes, companies are hiring, but it’s hard to get hired right now because of the volume of candidates.
Not impossible, but definitely harder.
darth_avocado 7 hours ago [-]
In my anecdotal experience hiring has been picking up but it seems that everyone expects the 2021 ZIRP economy where new grads were getting $200-300k offers with easy interviews. The experienced hire market is now back to where we were in 2015-2016 and new hire market slightly lagging behind. Unfortunately a lot of people will have to be comfortable working for non tech companies in tech roles like 10 years ago. It sucks because the living standards are more expensive than 10 years ago.
giantg2 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not seeing many jobs in my area for non-tech companies. The non-tech company is working for is outsourcing to India. I might be getting terminated soon and expect I will end up working retail. Nobody wants early career generalists.
mertleee 5 hours ago [-]
It's starting to hit product management and sales roles.
999900000999 6 hours ago [-]
I just had to accept a keep the lights on offer. Still a software role, but I'm making what I was in 2018 without adjusting for inflation.
2020 I was making about 80k more, even though I got that job through a combination of networking and luck.
My budget is less ball out and more it's nice I covered my rent
nextworddev 7 hours ago [-]
This is the right take, plus the glut of applicants.
scarface_74 6 hours ago [-]
Most developers have always worked for non tech companies…
darth_avocado 5 hours ago [-]
I agree but that’s not the expectation a lot of people I meet have, especially new grads
seanmcdirmid 7 hours ago [-]
It could be FAANG retreating from HCOLs to LCOLs with the hope that they can make up the expertise gap with AI.
nextworddev 7 hours ago [-]
This is a big part. Lots of rotating L6 and L7 with L4 and 5
rafram 7 hours ago [-]
Unless you can provide some evidence for that, it seems like pretty plain BS. The issues with outsourcing/offshoring were never the kind that can be solved with AI.
vitaflo 6 hours ago [-]
It’s pretty obvious the future is low wage devs using AI. It’s only a matter of time before US devs are squeezed out of the market.
AstroBen 6 hours ago [-]
AI is good at low wage junior work, not senior work. It's the other way around
__turbobrew__ 3 hours ago [-]
I believe you have it backwards, the future is having high wage devs use AI. Imagine a world where a single high wage devs with lots of experience can oversee say 10 AI agents. The boilerplate and grunt work can be taken care of by the agents and the human can refine the results as they know better than the AI and where the AI went wrong.
If you stick a low experience human in front of an AI the human does not know if the AI is spewing nonsense and therefore sometimes you will get nonsense from the process.
0cf8612b2e1e 7 hours ago [-]
Are those job posts or actual hires?
FollowingTheDao 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, I was going to ask the same question. Article on the topic:
Is it possible that the companies with cash to burn are trying to take advantage of the situation and swoop up talent on the cheap?
scythe 7 hours ago [-]
I got my first (and only; I changed careers) tech job in 2014. I only learned years later that 2014 was considered a "down" year for the industry. The "job market" exists at the margins. If you're good, you get hired.
2 hours ago [-]
AstroBen 6 hours ago [-]
I got my start around then as a junior working fully remote with 6 months experience.. something everyone assures me is impossible
Perseverance is the most important thing I think
rufus_foreman 6 hours ago [-]
>> If you're good, you get hired
In the long term. But in the long term we're all dead.
I only have one social media account, LinkedIn, and I have that account because I wanted to help people that got laid off from the company I worked for who were good, but were definitely not getting hired in 2008. There were developers who were top notch, but they weren't getting hired, they were sitting there not working getting poorer, frustrated and divorced.
I'm on my last job so I have no idea what the job market is like now, don't know don't care, but no. There are times when even the best developers can't even get a phone interview.
AstroBen 6 hours ago [-]
This is why you should live below your means and save money when times are good. It's very possible, especially in the tech industry to get to a position where you can comfortably ride out a few years of a crappy job market
littlexsparkee 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah that was my M.O., had to step down a few months ago to take care of a mobility issue and I'm glad I planned for it.
Der_Einzige 7 hours ago [-]
That's hiring for people with AI skills. If you're not in AI, you're fked right now.
littlexsparkee 7 hours ago [-]
Or peripheral to it, e.g. data engineering for pre-training data or a joint DE/ML role, etc. Sometimes the scale (petabyte) or specific stack experience is a barrier.
esseph 7 hours ago [-]
Not every business is in tech.
Every business uses tech.
R&D tax credit problem fixed, now development starts to get back on track at a lot of companies.
__loam 7 hours ago [-]
Not true. The people who are screwed right now are juniors. There's still a lot of hiring happening for traditional development.
xyst 1 hours ago [-]
Got to love our kakistocracy.
jeffbee 7 hours ago [-]
So the clickbait headline is "as tech falters" but tech actually had the least losses of any sector, except government. More correct in all possible ways would have been "as construction falters", "as manufacturing falters", or "as banking falters".
littlexsparkee 7 hours ago [-]
it's a little tricky with the labels, they did mention that professional and business did the worst of all sectors and while information sector lost jobs as well, that sounds like the closest match for tech so I have reservations about the claim as well
jeffbee 7 hours ago [-]
Generally the BLS categories are hard to parse. Some major companies are software categories, others are information. But in general the "information" sector is pretty heavy on newspapers, books, and film as well. And search engines etc have their own categories.
Would you be able to guess without looking what top-level category contains Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, or Google?
dyauspitr 7 hours ago [-]
These might be the only reliable numbers in the country…
aaroninsf 7 hours ago [-]
Worst reported.
Serious question: who is producing reliable numbers now? The Trump administration is actively suppressing federal reporting and openly threatening to cease collecting and reporting data,
and this is absolutely signaling to sycophants and supporters that they should falsify or withhold unflattering data.
This is a truly terrible timeline.
Waterluvian 6 hours ago [-]
The USSR went this route and it worked out great. It’ll be interesting to watch the U.S. do the same.
lisbbb 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tomhow 44 minutes ago [-]
> WHICH IS A HUGE REASON WHY TRUMP IS ASKING FOR RATES TO COME DOWN!!!!! The guy freaking knows business, whether your little minds can accept it or not, the people in charge right now actually are trying to fix this crap.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks* around it and it will get italicized.*
Same newspaper last week: tech guys so over-abundant they are paying $2000 each to sleep in bunk beds in Mission flophouses.
littlexsparkee 6 hours ago [-]
you can still have a local AI boom in SF (which has a housing shortage) while tech employment falls state-wide
zombiwoof 7 hours ago [-]
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exabrial 6 hours ago [-]
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hn_throwaway_99 6 hours ago [-]
Anyone talking about CA saying "oh, how can they be redistricting" should STFU and direct their ire at Texas and Trump. They started this, demanding this completely irregular mid-decade redistricting, so I for one am thrilled the Dems are finally growing a pair and fighting back.
Rendered at 06:29:48 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I think Elon's takeover of twitter set something of a precedent too: if he could reduce headcount as much as he did and still have a functioning product, then why can't I?
BTW I also don't think it has much to do with that engineering tax deferral code change that people keep talking about. My cynical hunch is that that topic keeps getting seeded by the billionaires who have the most to gain by reversing it, and hey maybe they'll hire an extra engineer or two afterward just to be good sports, but it's not going to reverse any major employment trends.
I'm not sure about the thesis that this is primarily fallout from free money and suppressed interest rates though. That was really a '22 story, and even with long and variable lags, that element has been in play for a while now.
Oversupply of talent definitely sounds like a good argument though. I'll posit there has been some disruption by recent developments in the industry. Also, while metaverse and crypto startups may be passe, the AI scene has disgusting amounts of hype and money, and crypto ain't dead either, which brings me back to the earlier point that I do think some disruption is there to fill the gap in the narrative.
Half kidding of course, but AFAIK many industries went through such a transformation and today most social and political issues stem from those areas that once were affluent lost their industries. Why not the software too?
As a person of color this is even more detestable.
Clinton just didn't do anything serious which could reverse this, and other Republican actions are what "allowed" further Chinese growth rates than that.
IOW almost anybody who had any influence was allowing prosperity to recede from our shores more so than Clinton.
not my downvote btw
https://www.wsj.com/tech/tech-startups-hiring-us-workers-30f...
I don't understand how Trump is allowing anything with headline like this.
For all the pro-WFH/fully remote developers on HN who live in North America, you're going to be in for a surprise when your company decides to replace you with someone living in another country. Why hire you when the company can hire someone who costs 1/5 of you and is willing to work harder without complaining? Both of you are remote anyway. So what if the new hire works at night and sleeps during the day?
For all pro-WFH/fully remote developers living in North America, you should be cheering for return to office mandates. It'll probably save your career long-term.
Important roles at multinationals are therefore hired in the USA. Even though all countries are officially "equal" in the eyes of a multinational, with salary based on market conditions/cost of living, in practice developers at the same job level have very different impacts. This has been true for decades.
I don't think this dynamic will change even in a WFH/remote environment because it's a great excuse for companies to reward engineers differently based on impact while still preserving job title equality.
It's similar to manufacturing in Germany. Salaries are higher so it naturally attracts talent. You can get things cheaper abroad, and many do, but if you want it done right...
I've been working fully remote for 10 years and the company hires people from almost anywhere in the world. They'd get to pick the best candidate regardless of their location. Pay is also not based on where you're living but on the role and your experience.
Remote work during covid improved remote management and communication, which is needed to fully outsource workers.
I'm going to guess that the people who think the entire state looks like LA in 1992 probably weren't going to vacation here in the first place.
The rust belt actually does quite well with tourism, though my research for responding to your comment seems to indicate to me that tourism is important everywhere.
I'm a native Michigander and long-time Californian (both subject to booms/busts) who recently took a road trip to the Midwest and back. If it weren't for family and friends, I probably wouldn't venture east of the 100th parallel. I was surprised by this.
Would it be any worse than the Dot-com bust?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
We're rewriting the belt.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like AI. I don't like that I have to use it sometimes, and I think we were better off without it, but so far it hasn't hurt me. It's definitely made me way less employable in the traditional sense. I feel sorry for the new grads/self taught people trying to get jobs.
“But Mollick said it’s too early to gauge how disruptive AI will be to the workforce. ”
I’d like a follow up article when I’m guessing a good chunk of these writers were hired back when their managers realized ChatGPT can’t help replace real creative writing output. It can only create more dead internet spaces that don’t make money long term.
There will always be bad managers making shitty decisions and journalists and CEO's eager to confirm a narrative, AI or no-AI
Source: Building an AI production studio myself and the first thing we had to do was hire writers to drive the creative effort.
- The type of job is eliminated due to AI
- The amount of people doing a type of job is substantially reduced because AI increases the productivity of people in that role and companies can do the same amount of that work with less people
I think the former is extremely limited so far, but the latter is pretty substantial. I didn't downvote you, but I imagine the people that did probably did so to reject the former argument.
I don't understand being this willfully naive, especially if you support AI, because using it to replace jobs is the entire selling point. No company wants AI for any other reason, and every company wants AI.
It’s not even “bias.” It’s an odd form of white supremacy that views whites as above having material interests of their own. “It’s okay to be unfair to white people because they don’t need it like we do.”
I make the clarification because I’ve noticed it even among people who don’t have in-group bias. My mom quite dislikes other Bangladeshis, but only slowly realized over 30 years of living here that there are white-majority parts of the country with real economic challenges.
If its the former, I am not sure what you are trying to convey.
For myself - seasoned engineer, european pursuasion, I want to work with people that are open and collaborative. I've worked with backgrounds like mine I would never work with again.
I do have an issue with employers find an excuse to bias towards the lower cost labor pool that is H1s. And when teams get saturated that way, it perpetuates the same.
These days, I have found large companies with a tech component and smaller companies within tech centers are more diverse/inclusive (as you will) than the FAANG type companies.
It’s hard to articulate because it’s more an absence of thought. Imagine robots run the world and tell humans what to do. You wouldn’t really think about the robots, and you wouldn’t think about their material interests. That’s kind of like how many desis view white people.
For example, consider the domination of the motel industry by Gujrati Patels: https://madrascourier.com/insight/how-gujarati-patels-took-o.... I suspect they don’t think of themselves as being “biased” by favoring other Gujratis. They don’t think about fairness to white people because why would you think about fairness towards your robot overlords?
If I am understanding right, you are not wrong. A group gets a manager of a certain cultural background (visa or not), the team hiring practice trends that way. Companies do not question this...They should.
Diversity in age, culture, ethnic background and experience build a better team.
The unfortunate thing is there are a few cultures that benefit from H1 visas (most prevalent) and propagate their leanings over being open.
American companies should be doing more to hire non-H1s, there is not a talent shortage, but they would rather not pay that additional percentage.
This is also an interesting way to explain the self-immolating Whites, which nowadays is most of us. Any sort of White group identity or collective interest is absolute heresy which must be opposed, while all things in the collective interest of non-Whites must be celebrated, encouraged, and helped along at our own expense. There's a certain paternalistic arrogance to it, an ethnocentric assumption that other races can't get on without us. And it's much more common and pervasive than the caricature of the like shaved head neo-Nazi we are all expected to imagine exists in large numbers, somewhere.
"In contrast, professional and business services were down 7,100 jobs in July, the worst of any sector, and the tech-heavy information sector lost 1,000 jobs."
This could be many things. People could be leaving to do their own startups. The BLS counts that as a job loss thus high-velocity sectors can be reported as job loss.
The real problem, IMO, is that workers in the tech industry have voluntarily destroyed these agglomeration benefits by using the short period of power workers had during/after the pandemic to insist on work from home instead of better worker protections.
As a result, it’s very possible that high productivity areas in the U.S. are no longer that, and remote work has reduced all Americana’s productivity, making it impossible to justify the higher cost of living and salaries in big cities.
But it was hot. My time back in coastal California has been mostly in the 70s. Camping in Marin County this week, the high was in the 60s. Refreshing after heat warnings in Nebraska, Illinois and Ontario.
Plus BLS household survey probably has some non-response bias from it re: high income, low time individuals, precisely the folks chiming in.
It's not helpful to just talk about absolute numbers of jobs gained or lost in a sector without talking about percentages and historical variability.
It also appears the California number cited is based on a survey of ~4K people, some reporting they can't find work, while e.g., Federal unemployment is a function of people getting unemployment benefits. Do states do the same surveys with the same methodology, so the numbers are comparable? Likely not. So the term seems to be used in different senses, and "worst in the US" is unsupported.
Further, for tech in particular, it's not clear which jobs were converted to contracts, for AI services or outsourcing (in or out of US).
This kind of salad article is likely the future: enough for the general public worried about jobs, but not helpful to anyone who actually wants to understand and plan accordingly.
From the link: Employment and Unemployment in California (Based on a monthly federal survey of 4,400 California households which focuses on workers in the economy)
This is federal not state data.
Federal unemployment data is based on this said survey. This link explicitly debunks that myth: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
I think it's the BBB that fixed the tax code issue - just a guess.
It was put into law in 2017 with the Republican TCJA, but section 174 was time-delayed, part of a general trick of having all of the tax-cuts and spending immediately, with any budget "balancing" items deferred as long as possible.
That's when the layoff spree started!
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/118-2024/s230
> Why didn't the Democrats
Alternate question: Why didn't the Republicans do something in the years before 2025 to fix the problem they created and which tech-company lobbyists absolutely told them about?
Democrats could've passed a bill that only included the repeal of the R&D changes, which they didn't coz they didn't want to.
Edit: rate limited coz of politically motivated downvotes, I am done here.
This is not how HN works. I posted an explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44920494.
This feels like the "only Democrats have agency" story, where Republicans are somehow never to blame because they're just toddlers or forces of nature, while Democrats are always at fault because they didn't stop the Republicans from burning the house down or clean up all the poop from the carpets or whatever, in an endless and impossible race.
By your logic, Republicans didn't fix it because they didn't want to either! Why was that? Partisan vengeance against California?
> That wasn't a clean bill
Well, that one happens to be a bill from a Republican, I was just looking for ones that affected that tax-provision.
In any case, did you check out the table-of-contents, and not just the page-length? It may not be as minimal-as-possible, but it's all tax-related stuff.
Because only Democrats had agency when the law took effect? The president can veto any bill. Democrats passed two bills in 2021 and 2022 with zero Republican votes, zero, they could've easily included the repeal in those bills if they wanted to. They didn't coz they didn't want to, their stated policy is to raise taxes on corporations, how is this even debatable? Meanwhile the Republicans at that time had no agency. Once they got agency, they repealed it immediately, with zero Democrat votes.
Would you similarly blame the Democrats for all voting against the repeal as part of the BBB that just passed? You wouldn't and your reason would be "but the BBB contained a lot of other things apart from this repeal that the dems didn't like". Why won't you apply the same logic to the non-clean bill you brought up?
> By your logic, Republicans didn't fix it because they didn't want to either! Why was that? Partisan vengeance against California?
Huh, they fixed it immediately after coming to power. They couldn't fix it before the BBB because it needed to go in reconciliation because the dems don't suppor the repeal. They didn't fix it in 2019 because it wasn't even in effect yet and IIRC dems had the house. So how does the partisan vengeance allegation even make any sense?
Definitely a much better tax situation but also not one we would've been in if not for the TCJA, and we still have an exposed oblique (the removal of the domestic research exclusion) that could put us back in the same spot unless the software development as research section is removed.
But my colleagues are all younger than me - they are hiring people out of college too, so you can make it just keep pushing
But not a surprise based on your history here on HN.
Hopefully things are looking up for the market.
Edit: Republican Marco Rubio introduced a clean bill to repeal the changes in 2023.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/282...
The Democrat controlled Senate blocked it from coming to a vote.
Why does HN always blame only Republicans for this change?
So while it is great that the Republicans fixed this one thing (that they themselves broke), asking why the Democrats didn't fix it kinda feels like you have been living under a rock for these last few years. If they break something, and they regret breaking something, let them expend the political capital to get it fixed. There is no free lunch in politics. If you spend your time on something like this, it means some other priority is getting ignored. And doubly so if your counter party has been operating on such bad faith as of late.
They had the chance to repeal it before it would have taken effect.
Why do they get zero blame on here?
But the Republicans made this change to start with. That's a lot of blame. And if they did it just to create a political firestorm against Democrats later (which is exactly what they did), do we (A) recognize that politicians shouldn't be using Americans as cannon fodder to damage their political enemies or (B) blame their political enemies?
There were some legendary filibusters back in the day. One famous example was when Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights act by speaking for 24 hours continuously. He was not able to block the bill by continuing to speak because there are limits to how long someone is able to stand and deliver, and originally if you stopped speaking you had to yield the floor and allow business to proceed.
of the statute they wrote, voted for, and signed into law. Important note.
Repealing it had Republican support during the Biden term too, they even introduced a bill in2023 to repeal it which the Democrats killed.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/282...
Democrats really wanted the changes to take place since their platform is all about higher taxes on companies and high earners.
Do you have a source for this claim?
The congressional record says only that it died in the Finance Committee
Edit: Blocked from being able to post new comments by HN because I am getting heavily downvoted for posting inconvenient facts and arguments. Stay classy, HN.
This is not how HN works. Rate-limiting only happens when an account posts high volumes of comments that break the guidelines. It's nothing to do with downvotes or the political/idological flavor of what you post (we don't care and often don't know; all we care about is whether you're filling up threads with guideline-breaking comments, which is what ruins threads).
If you want rate-limiting turned off you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we can discuss it.
https://www.taxnotes.com/featured-news/crapo-criticizes-atte...
Needless to say, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the BBB’s ~$4 trillion debt increase.
While it is a different bill, the fact the Democrats were fine having it in the bill passed by the House in 2024 does cast doubt on this notion that they didn't try to resolve the issue.
> The Senate Finance Committee roster for the 118th Congress includes 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans, with three new GOP members recently appointed.
> https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/senate-finance-finalizes...
Hardly an unbeatable majority for Democrats on this committee. Especially since research and development is one of the main reasons taxation on higher income classes is effective: The idea is you'll be taxed if you want to take it as profit, but if you advance the state of the art, innovate, or create new technology then you can deduct that. The high tax rates of the US post WWII up to Reagan worked so well because of this combination: It was incentivized for businesses to reinvest their profits into R&D, since they'd hopefully be able to scale their profits if the R&D was successful.
I think it's not as clear cut as "the Democrats" or "the Republicans" here-- especially since there would probably be a requirement that the shortfall be made up in some other way in order to balance the effects on revenue.
For the 10th time in this thread, the repealing bill DID NOT need to be revenue neutral since it had Republican support, all it needed was 60 votes in the Senate. Reconciliation only applies if a yearly budget bill can get at least 51 votes but not 60.
Sorry, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. I stated the same in another comment and was downvoted. I know HN is liberal biased but it's becoming unusable if you as much dare to criticize democrats.
Is this situation right now really "unusable"? Aren't you overreacting just a tad? People might disagree with you, I'd hope you'd be able to have a conversation without getting upset.
Quite literally unusable because I got blocked by HN from commenting for more than two hours coz of all the politically motivated downvotes. If you have the right politics, keep commenting!
> I'd hope you'd be able to have a conversation
See above, literally not able to have one because I dared to criticize Democrats for their actions and inactions that led to tech job losses for over two years.
> People might disagree with you
I'm open to arguments but looks like people disagree with the facts that I am bringing forward, so they're downvoting to suppress them to lower visibility and to discourage me from participating on here.
It's like on Reddit when you state a plain fact 'Musk founded SpaceX' in reply to a highly upvoted comment that said 'Musk bought all this companies' and get heavily downvoted and even permanently banned in large subs by highly biased moderators.
This place is turning into yet another BlueSky or Reddit where facts don't matter and only a one sided political narrative is pushed at all times. Don't think it's worth engaging. I don't want to be in a place where my comments are deemed so terrible that I get max downvoted and then unable to comment for several hours.
Ironically, such controlling behavior and shutting down of facts, criticism of one side and conversation is leading more and more people to vote for the other side. I am now ashamed of being a lifelong liberal and won't vote democrat till people change this obnoxious partisan behavior on platforms like this one.
Hacker News is far from a bastion of left wingers, many people have complained about liberal and progressive ideas being downvoted as well. Above all, this platform isn't made for political debate, and it is not encouraged. If it makes you feel better, not a single one of my posts in all this has much or any upvotes. If you are looking for political validation, this ain't the place for it.
As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference.
> As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference
There were only 27 members in the committee. So all the Democrats on the committee voted against the repeal and all the republicans voted for the repeal.
How is that a negligible difference? That's a massive maximum difference between the parties, in fact it was impossible to have a higher difference.
So to answer your question, Republicans repealed it with zero Democratic votes because they included it in the once-a-year reconciliation bill. The bill that you are linking to would not have met this criteria.
You can keep your current H1-Bs, but no more for you for 5 years if you do a layoff.
If you are laying workers off you clearly don't need additional H1B workers. You should be barred for at least a year if not more from putting in any applications for H1B after any major layoff.
It should also be scrutinized if you preferably fire local workers over your H1B workers. Anybody caught doing so should be barred from H1B for a decade.
I like my H1B coworkers, but things have gone too far. You can't do layoffs and simultaneously put in applications for thousands of H1B workers. It makes no logical sense and should be illegal. The system is completely broken right now.
Not to mention most of this H1B work is not actually due to lack of local talent. Building a web or mobile app is not rocket science and there are plenty of people capable of doing so. Any company putting in H1B for anything but research positions or positions requiring exceptional expertise is probably abusing the system.
Love your thinking here. Total agreement.
And yeah I have had great experiences with my H1B coworkers, but they are doing jobs that US professionals could easily do. At this point H1Bs are just (possibly unwitting?) scab labor.
Farming, healthcare, autos, etc are almost completely subsidized by the government.
Time to cull the waterloo crowd and maybe think twice about cheap outsourcing to latam and india.
Many of the best coworkers I've had the pleasure of working with, not to mention the founders of the company I spent over a quarter of my career at (Pagerduty).
Disclosure: I'm a US citizen with multiple CS degree from MIT and my son is studying CS at Waterloo now.
My love for my country means I want it to be the greatest in the world. Waterloo grads make America better. Period.
You're just hand-waiving away reality, which is a very non-programmer thing to do.
From an American author
(Illustrated, to reach those who talk about "stealing American jobs from Americans!!!" a lot).
From Amazon Canada, because I like fun too :-)
"Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration"
https://a.co/d/7GrrzzE
Open borders might be net-positive but would very predictably devastate the lives of poor people in America. Not that most people who advocate it know anything about being poor.
I thought based on original post we were upset immigrants are taking high paying specialist jobs from the rich techies in San Francisco?
Or are they just just taking all the jobs while miraculously not spending any money and not creating any demand and not participating in economy at all?
I just want to understand this evil scourge appropriately.
P.s. (And oh, boy, will I compete in the "knowing about being poor" with anybody on HN :)
Poor Americans are also the most vulnerable to unskilled immigration making them even poorer than they already are.
It's not that complicated.
I agree that poor Americans are vulnerable to unskilled immigration, but suggesting that highly skilled tech jobs are a solution is just not realistic.
I went from homeless to six figures thanks to tech.
I think you are missing that tech is one of the few well paying industries that doesn't have socioeconomic gatekeeping with degrees.
The number of opportunities is significantly reduced when companies have the easier and cheaper alternative of hiring non-Americans.
And those poor people that don't have the capability to become skilled workers can at least not be kicked while they're down.
Not even wrong
"Oh but I know of this study that.."...I know..I know.
Seems like I'm making the sound economic argument and you're just casting aspersions.
1. If, say, an immigrant earns 70k, they will also spend 70k. It's an equilibrium - they "create" as much jobness as they "take".
2. The easiest intuitive explanation I have is - imagine a million immigrants move in. They're basically a self sufficient city - with police and doctors and teachers and mechanics and salespeople and whatever. Doesn't bother me.
In fact, America is by definition (unless one is native American) the land of immigrants. It is clearly factually historically obvious that immigration was not zero sum and it continually expanded overall prosperity and might of the American empire. It's only when we zoom into the very here and now that some people, for some reason, freak out and feel "omg immigrants!!".
2. Those companies that hired 1 million skilled workers could have hired 1 million Americans, giving them much better jobs than they otherwise would get. What's the good argument for giving them to non-Americans instead?
Of course America is a land of immigrants. And of course immigration can be positive-sum.
That doesn't prove that it's always positive-sum.
It's easy to see many situations that are not positive sum. Huge amounts of unskilled immigration is, at least in the short-term, going to be extremely zero-sum because they will consume far more public resources than they pay for, depriving the existing users. This has played out many times.
In other words:
Too much skilled immigration takes good middle class jobs away from citizens that need them.
Too much unskilled immigration takes public resources and jobs away from citizens that need them.
Given those facts, the argument should be about how much is too much of any particular kind of immigration for any particular time and place.
Oh but remittances are high! Think of the short term effects.
I will mention my Indian coworkers parents use the remittances to buy Netflix subscriptions, Coca-Cola and American Corn but it won’t be enough. It’ll never be enough.
Constant-pie thinking is an all consuming identity not a rational viewpoint that can be reasoned with.
What are you claiming? That immigrants do not actually remit significant percentage of their income? That all or most remitted money comes back to America? That short-term effects do not matter even if they're highly destructive?
You're claiming that I believe in a fixed pie which could not possibly be further from the truth. But I do believe that some pies are fixed, some of the time, in some places. Are you claiming the opposite? That pies are never fixed?
You're the one who isn't arguing in a rational way.
I'm sorry to be this dismissive, but I've had this conversation too many times and you will simply see what you want to see. There is no convincing coal workers of global warming.
Yeah but we got to the moon with imported Nazi German rocket scientists. Still "immigrants" of a sort.
It's hard to say, but who knows what could have been if the top Canadians had have to start or join Canadian companies and didn't have the option to take a higher pay in the US.
What's the relevance here of this? Canada should make better opportunities for their citizens.
/s, but not really.
OK...I'll bite. Every Canadian government, of either party, has agreed with you for the last sixty years. Your country has excellent universities, the infrastructure is decent, the politics are non-violent...and yet people bail. I could say the same about the UK as well, but it's harder for their brains to drain to the US.
So: why is Canada failing to hold on to their homegrown talent? Is it a "push out" of Canada (driving talent away) or a "pull in" to the US (America having something irresistible)?
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that H1Bs are most represented in the industry that has generated nearly all the growth that has been generated in America over the past 2-3 decades.
Is the argument you're making, which is ridiculous.
The success of an industry says nothing about how exploitative or unethical its practices are.
Their favorite trick (which you've adopted here) is to accuse people of being "racist" and "right wing" for objecting.
For the record, you would have to search long and hard to find someone more opposed to Trump and his minions than myself. Bernie Sanders has the same basic viewpoint I've expressed.
I have absolutely no hatred for anyone based on their origin or race.
I am completely in favor of allowing as many people into this country as we can sustainably absorb, and even a little more. At the same time, I strongly object to prioritizing the desire of major corporations to exploit cheaper labor at the expense of American citizens.
As others have pointed out it's not a zero sum game since human capital begets growth.
if there were ample americans to do these jobs, they should be able to get them.
nationalism is a silly idea, anyway. and we should have free trade and movement with our biggest two allies. american exceptionalism is a joke
And neither will most people from any other country agree about their own country's success.
Indians or Canadians are not forcing US to hire them bud, https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statisti...
There are more than 60 million college educated Americans. That's 50% more than the entire population of Canada.
It's a very big and well educated country, bud.
Boomers promulgated lies about "shortages" for years to lobby for relaxed visa schemes. Ironic you mention nationalism being silly, since Indians are some of the most openly caustic nationalists I encounter on a daily basis.
Are implying that reducing the number of graduates from a single program (CS) at one specific university (Waterloo) from a country 10x smaller from the US (Canada) will help lower tech employment in California?
Instead of that individual now paying 80-90% of their income to US taxes and US businesses and saving the rest in U.S. banks providing even cheaper capital for US businesses, they will be doing the same in Romania.
And worse, if that person does create a new startup, the majority of employees hired will be in Romania, and only a tiny fraction would be Americans who moved there to work for that company, and would be competing with American companies with a much lower cost basis.
But hey, Romania will be pleased for sure.
My rule of thumb is if I'm the smartest person in the room then we've got serious problems.
In my opinion, outsourcing is a larger evil. The money used to pay the salaries of outsourced engineers should be taxed at-least at 20% (along with remittances to India) akin to what we currently penalize foreign countries for maliciously suppressing the cost of physical goods. This is called Countervailing Duty or Anti Dumping Duty penalties.
I've reached my limit with the entitlement of these people in the united states. Especially systematically excluding americans or non-indians once they reach a hiring level / role.
https://dictionary.apa.org/distinctiveness-effect
Non-resident visa holders are not citizens and act accordingly against the interests of citizens and their families.
In practical terms this would look like eliminating H1B/O1 programs.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fires-commissioner-of-lab...
In the less glib way, I'll draw attention to the fact that machine learning roles are only one moving part of the machinery required to manage, operate, train, evaluate, demo, and integrate AI adjacent opportunities. That's to say one need not be a pytorch or differential equation ninja to contribute meaningful to riding the hype train
Sad to see that to some extent that's exactly what happened. My current tech take is that developers shouldn't allow AI and/or agents to do the entirety of their job, rather allow them to do more, and it should be framed as such specifically. e.g. don't use AI to write the entire feature, use it to make the feature better and drive more revenue, or more correct and result in less bugs, thus less wasted effort on ops/etc.
It's amusing to see some people excited for AI to do the entirety of the implementation and planning, as if there would be no impact on us. If AI is that good, you just need TPMs (to the extent it's even possible, anyway).
It's no surprise to see that jobs that cannot be done remotely are making a comeback.
So yes, companies are hiring, but it’s hard to get hired right now because of the volume of candidates.
Not impossible, but definitely harder.
2020 I was making about 80k more, even though I got that job through a combination of networking and luck.
My budget is less ball out and more it's nice I covered my rent
If you stick a low experience human in front of an AI the human does not know if the AI is spewing nonsense and therefore sometimes you will get nonsense from the process.
https://www.apollotechnical.com/ghost-jobs-in-tech-why-compa...
Perseverance is the most important thing I think
In the long term. But in the long term we're all dead.
I only have one social media account, LinkedIn, and I have that account because I wanted to help people that got laid off from the company I worked for who were good, but were definitely not getting hired in 2008. There were developers who were top notch, but they weren't getting hired, they were sitting there not working getting poorer, frustrated and divorced.
I'm on my last job so I have no idea what the job market is like now, don't know don't care, but no. There are times when even the best developers can't even get a phone interview.
Every business uses tech.
R&D tax credit problem fixed, now development starts to get back on track at a lot of companies.
Would you be able to guess without looking what top-level category contains Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, or Google?
Serious question: who is producing reliable numbers now? The Trump administration is actively suppressing federal reporting and openly threatening to cease collecting and reporting data,
and this is absolutely signaling to sycophants and supporters that they should falsify or withhold unflattering data.
This is a truly terrible timeline.
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