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Comment by CursedSilicon | Hacker News Reader

I can definitely attest to this statistic. Got thrown overboard at my last job for not wanting to sign my name to things we weren't doing (no I'm not telling the IRS we encrypt our data at rest when we don't!)

Finally got brought on a week ago at a PC repair shop of all things. It's not glamorous but it's the only "IT related" thing I could find. In Seattle of all places!

The FAANG's doing their massive layoffs caused an absolute knock-on effect downstream across the entire corporate world ("well if Amazon thinks they should, we should too!") and everything I apply for now LinkedIn gleefully tells me there were "over 500 applicants" already

Even the public sector seems to be impossible to get into. Despite the requirement of US citizenship and the incoming administration (along with Elon's threats) even getting an interview in that sector is a challenge now

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I think we (tech workers) have seen this for a while. The tech bubble was real - surely we all noticed this at the time - and it stands to reason that a correction is well past due.

But now, there are anecdotes of other sectors being hit as well.

Note that all of this is "working as intended." The way the fed manages inflation generates unemployment to knock out high salary workers and keep wages down. The target unemployment rate is not zero.

How can what you're saying be true if Elon Musk says we need more H1Bs because there is a labor shortage?

There's a lack of dirt cheap highly educated labor.

It dovetails nicely into their desire to slash education for Americans

Once we deport all the "illegal" immigrants, the MAGA folk can pick fruit in Florida while the H1B's work at Amazon for pennies on the dollar I suppose

Lower turnover too with H1Bs

The same labour shortage was all over the news in Germany. Meanwhile people were mocking the salaries and conditions offered by those industries. Immigration is only means to acquire labour at below market rate.

Well there two reasons here in the Netherlands.

Some jobs are unworthy for Dutch people. Your Dutch nationality protects you from slavery. For this there are immigrants.

The second reason is that we have a lot of people doing bullshit jobs in climate controlled offices but nobody wants to do physical labour.

Maybe they should list typical daily active calorie expenditure for job positions ? We need an uber for mixing sedentary and physical jobs.

Tesla laid off 14,500 folks in April 2024 and then they received 2,405 H1Bs in 2024.

"Tesla workers said that many employees let go were more senior engineers with higher compensation and they have been replaced with junior engineers from foreign countries at a lower pay."

https://electrek.co/2024/12/30/tesla-replaced-laid-off-us-wo...

One of the biggest issues with H1Bs is the fact that it reduces the employee's ability to change jobs and thus reduces their bargaining power for wages and thus depresses the wages across the board over time. That seems to be the main driving force for Musk behind the bluster around labor shortages.

I've worked with a few folks on H1Bs and they've all been paid significantly less than I have in the exact same role. Less base and less RSUs.

did you forget to put a /s at the end of that?

Maybe because Musk mixes a lot of BS into his sayings?

wasn't this implied by him already? (/s)

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