Item — HN Reader

"And populist talk like this is often the first step towards that end."

As usual, it will backfire in the most predictable way: Microsoft will close offices in the US and invest in hiring skilled people for its foreign offices. And so will all major US corporations that feel the heat from this kind of misguided discourse.

It's that simple.

3 comments

If MS did not gain an advantage from using H1B's in the US it would not go though the trouble of getting H1B's. The level of corruption in India is a significant problem and MS would much rather do business in the US but they don't want to pay market rates for US workers. So they try and have their cake and eat it two by transporting workers to the US system.

I agree, bu there is a point beyond which it no longer makes sense to take the pain of getting an H1B compared to the pain to open up an office, say, in Singapore.

And even relocate some of your US workers over there.

That's fine by me. An American doesn't deserve a job more than anyone else.

Weak sauce.

Moving labor overseas has consequences. The labor pool here will begin ignoring Microsoft (more than we already now, but that's besides the point), since there aren't any US offices. This leads to the further development of competing infrastructure.

Next, you find Microsoft's products will take much longer to get certified for government use. Now that the core developers of the OS aren't U.S. workers, what's to say there aren't "backdoors" inserted by Chinese/Indian nationals? Oracle products sometimes lag for a year and a half because of its "development in every time zone model" when it comes to certifying it for our Defense Infrastructure.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is echo'd by "The market's are that simple". As HP's CEO said when "globalization" was a "new concept" it cannot be ignored if you want to remain competitive. But in actuality that means being competitive in job markets globally, and that can be done with H1-Bs.