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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

People keep parroting this urban myth, but I just don't see it. The best engineers I've worked with (by far) have been US-educated. Yes, mostly from the upper strata of academia (Stanford/Berkeley/UCLA/MIT/Caltech/etc.) but I'd say that the "average" US developer is significantly more capable than the average off-shore developer.

I mean, the great majority of the main technological advances of the past 20 years have generated by American companies (and more often than not by US-educated entrepreneurs).

Anti-intellectualism might indeed be a problem (maybe?) but to say that tech has been adversely affected is, imo, untrue.

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A lot of outsiders can agree that American tech has been vibrant, but what about America outside of tech? Do the other parts of American society smell intellectually vibrant? Other jobs outside of tech appear extremely de-skilled, so I wonder what motivation a person has for furthering their mind -- to impress their peers?

Modern thinking on financial optimization has destroyed the spirit of work.

Yes, it's interesting to me (but not surprising) that the comments are focusing on just the tech industry. This is more widespread IMO.

> there's such a shortage of top talent domestically in the USA

>> The best engineers I've worked with (by far) have been US-educated

GP's statement does not preclude your experience. For example, all US engineers could have great expertise but there could be only a few of them.

I'm confident that's the case -- the model of US higher education is widely known to disproportionately prioritize the top tier of schools. We focus on the best in the world, but not the highest median quality in the world.

Also, top schools emphasize athletics and other aspects beyond intellectualism. Not saying that's a bad thing, but the emphasis on extracurricular activities seems greater than other parts of the world -- something also observed by Hofstadter.

57% of silicon valley tech workers and 43% of New York tech workers are immigrants, so advances made by American companies are not necessarily made by domestic American workers.

I'd argue that USA has lots of high quality tech workers mostly thanks to brain drain and its size.

https://www.newsweek.com/h-1b-visa-row-foreign-workers-make-...

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