As someone who used to work as a software engineer at a Silicon Valley company you’ve probably heard of, let me just say Elon is full of shit. If you didn’t know, H1B visas are not distributed based on merit - it’s a random lottery that anyone in say India who graduated college with a CS degree can enter, so you might get a star or a C student. About 50% of our engineering team was on H1B visas, and they were paid about half of what Americans got. And of course if they complain or whatever they can be fired without cause and have just 2 weeks to find another job or else leave the country. Some of them were very smart; some were mediocre and some were terrible. On the whole, I’d say they were less talented than the Americans. Everyone put in long hours. So this is just about saving money and having greater leverage over your employees.
As someone who used to work in IT, but not Silicon Valley, I agree. While I don't recall any of the H1B visa workers I've dealt with as being dumb, I do recall that they varied in intelligence and competence.
1- You can already pay people less by employing them in India instead of bringing them here. There is no reason a cheap software engineer has to be in USA.
2- Plus the software engineering field has never been where Long hours mean better software. Skills is a major factor here.
It’s ridiculous to think companies are keeping bad engineers on payroll and paying extra for the lawyers and sponsoring immigration. It’s a headache to employee people on visa which is why not all companies offer work sponsorships like H1bs.
I know how much it costs to deal with compliance and I assure you, companies still make a killing on H1. I’m in the tech industry AND have family members who sponsor H1 visas.
I know people who provide developers to companies at the rate of $145/hr and pays the developer $45/hr. That’s a profit of around $200K. I assure you compliance does NOT cost $200K/year.
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u/bmeisler 1d ago
As someone who used to work as a software engineer at a Silicon Valley company you’ve probably heard of, let me just say Elon is full of shit. If you didn’t know, H1B visas are not distributed based on merit - it’s a random lottery that anyone in say India who graduated college with a CS degree can enter, so you might get a star or a C student. About 50% of our engineering team was on H1B visas, and they were paid about half of what Americans got. And of course if they complain or whatever they can be fired without cause and have just 2 weeks to find another job or else leave the country. Some of them were very smart; some were mediocre and some were terrible. On the whole, I’d say they were less talented than the Americans. Everyone put in long hours. So this is just about saving money and having greater leverage over your employees.
tl;dr Elon is full of shit