Outsourcing happens when the economy forces companies to cut costs. When innovations return substantial growth, most companies don't think much about the costs. We have a rough economy, bad tariff policy, a weakening dollar, and immigration policy that's reducing the overall US population (and with it, spend in the economy). All those factors push companies to need to cut costs
> If you really think that companies are moving out of country because "there's not enough talent", despite having some of the more relaxed tax codes and most talented universities here
The US has a huge delta between its great universities and its mediocre ones. There are some smart and sharp kids everywhere in even the lowest ranked schools. But altogether the amount of people who can pass a code screen in the US is pretty low. If you ever interviewed people for a software position in a big tech firm, you'd realize this.
>The US has a huge delta between its great universities and its mediocre ones. There are some smart and sharp kids everywhere in even the lowest ranked schools. But altogether the amount of people who can pass a code screen in the US is pretty low. If you ever interviewed people for a software position in a big tech firm, you'd realize this.
I'm convinced that the code screen functions as a somewhat arbitrary filter/badge of honor.
FAANG and equivalents get tens of thousands of applicants and they cannot hire them all
If too many pass the code screen, they will just make it harder, even though the job hasn't gotten any more difficult.
Or they get failed at system design. Which is BS in many cases.
It's a necessary filter. Again, you need to interview candidates for these jobs to understand. Our industry doesn't have any qualifications, any exam to pass to certify, so there are just a ton of people who can't do the basic job but think they are qualified because we don't have a good way to screen people for this work.
>The US has a huge delta between its great universities and its mediocre ones.
Like any other country, yes.
>But altogether the amount of people who can pass a code screen in the US is pretty low. If you ever interviewed people for a software position in a big tech firm, you'd realize this.
Compared to India? Or is it fine to lower standards of quality when you are paying an 8th of the cost and it turns out most people don't need to be from MIT to contribute?
That's perfectly fine and dandy. But that's not what H1Bs are for.
H1Bs aren't paid 1/8 their counterparts in the same company.
And no, the same applies to India and to China but because the number is small here we pick the small numbers from the rest of the world as well. We don't only hire people from India and China in tech they are just more populous countries so their best workers are far more numerous.
Go to any FAANG in the US and you will see people on H1B from all over Europe, Africa, South America, etc. but Indians and Chinese are the largest group because they are the largest population countries with established pipelines from schools there to schools here to jobs here.
>We don't only hire people from India and China in tech they are just more populous countries so their best workers are far more numerous.
So we are talking H1Bs. Does that mean this small pool of "best foreign talent" also all happen to speak English and are able to communicate their ideas on a team?
>the same applies to India and to China but because the number is small here we pick the small numbers from the rest of the world as well.
Well you're already shifting your point:
> But altogether the amount of people who can pass a code screen in the US is pretty low.
You're criticizing America as an excuse to find people overseas and bring them in. Thanks for proving the fact that H1B is being abused.
So you're telling me your fine taking the time to find the finest H1B workers but not Americans?
If we have say 1M job openings in a field, and only 250k American citizens can pass a screen for that job, then we need to find other people for it, no? Those people will be likely to most common from the most populous countries in the world...
Several of the links of yours are about PERM applications, not H1B.
I agree abusers (employers) should be put on he H1B visa blacklist which already exists.
H1B already mandates that employees be paid within the wage window of their peers. And anecdotally I know several who make more than their citizen peers in the same company same level
Based on the "Worst Case Housing Needs: 2025 Report to Congress" released in late 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that foreign-born population growth accounted for approximately two-thirds of the increase in nationwide rental demand between 2021 and 2024.
Of course. In any growing services-based economy you will have foreign born population growth. If you eliminate that population growth, economic growth will decline with it.
If we were a growing manufacturing-based economy that wouldn't be the case as much.
No, Ralph is famously dumb and needs lots of hand-holding and explanations of things most people think are very simple and can hold very little in his head at once.
But that's often enough to loop over and over again and eventually finish a task
Also what's the delta b/w Claude Code doing it and you doing it?
I would have to look up farm services. Look up farmhand hiring services. Write a couple emails. Make a few payments. Collect my corn after the growing season. That's not an insurmountable amount of effort. And if we don't care about optimizing cost, it's very easy.
Also, how will Claude monitor the corn growing, I'm curious. It can't receive and respond to the emails autonomously so you still have to be in the loop
> as anything digital can be brushed off as “that’s not evidence, it could be AI generated”.
This won't change anything about Western style courts which have always required an unbroken chain of custody of evidence for evidence to be admissable in court
Most 18-22 year olds are living alone for the first time and have just set up their first bank account and are spending all their time focused on studies and trying to get an internship, so they aren't focused on the difference between credit card and debit card, plus they don't spend a lot out anyways
> The problem with a lot of these UN bodies such as the WHO, UNESCO etc is that they do not have proper external scrutiny, and instead have become overarching institutions which pass down diktats from on high.
Any example of a diktat from on high which you think was highly negative? Afaik, these bodies typically just promote whatever is scientifically / economically / etc. the prevailing worldview
Am I wrong or Trump was the one who initiated the first shutdowns. Trump was the one who said we'll have a vaccine quickly, etc.
What should he have done that he didn't do, in your opinion? Fwiw, it was the economic shock from COVID that caused this situation where he's come back to ruin our lives again. Any further disruption to the economy during COVID would have exacerbated that
> One month after [March 16, 2020, when the administration first recommended social distancing], epidemiologists Britta Jewell and Nicholas Jewell estimated that, had social distancing policies been implemented just two weeks earlier, U.S. deaths due to COVID-19 might have been reduced by 90%.
So there’s a concrete thing he could have done differently.
> Any further disruption to the economy during COVID would have exacerbated that
More stringent restrictions done earlier may have shortened the duration of the economic impact, who knows, we can’t exactly observe those alternate timelines directly.
The administration had zero discipline on messaging and so nothing was done with any consistency. As you say, he was initially positive that a vaccine would arrive quickly; when it was available, he flipped and endorsed alternative treatments of all kinds, many of them harmful. Formerly a champion of Dr. Fauci, then later his worst detractor and chief prosecutor in the court of public opinion.
It's less what should he have done, than what shouldn't he have done. Specifically, he pushed conspiracy theories, demonized his health experts, and touted ineffective cures, and ultimately cast doubt on the safety of the vaccines. All to pander to his base. He had a remarkable chance to build trust in government via a truly extraordinary vaccine rollout, to a crowd which is historically distrustful. Instead he squandered that goodwill on petty fights and self aggrandizement.
And it was the scientists and doctors of the WHO, who denied the existence of Covid until after every country in the world had shut down. I thought covid denial was a bad thing, but you're still getting downvoted... In response to your last question i've got no idea. I don't have any confidence the vaunted scientists got it right back then either. Just look at the disasters inflicted on countries and states that imposed heavy handed and IMO largely unnecessary covid measures.
It's easy to say COVID measures were unnecessary when you live in a timeline where you were spared from the worst case scenario of an immediate global pandemic. The economic harm was huge, but we don't know what it would have been if we had not taken any protective measures and we didn't know back then either how dangerous the disease could be
