Item — HN Reader

Large FAANG tech companies are largely unaffected, cool.

Yet, I see some startups whining and about this on X and other places.

If you really want to say that you're "hiring the best" or you want to "hire the world class best talent" then you would hire the best american engineers or pay the fee for overseas talent.

No excuses.

I can't for the life of me understand why some startups say "we need skills" and "we only hire the best" then choose a way cheaper talent via H1B overseas rather than train or hire a an Ivy / Stanford recent CS grad.

3 comments

The Stanford PhDs also need H1B. So now the startups cannot hire them anymore.

> So now the startups cannot hire them anymore

Too bad.

Exactly, now they will take the latest and greatest of US research and go contribute to India, China and Europe.

Is a great win for everyone except the US.

If they are PhDs in Computer Science, I believe they would qualify for EB-1.

Nope. Surprisingly eb1 have been awarded to a lot of models actors etc. A phD have to have certain qualifications before even attempting for eb1

Eb1 is a green card not a visa. Only people who have decided that they will live forever in the US, regardless of the occupation, apply for it.

What - you expect them to admit they hire the mediocre? Anyway, the labor market is a market like any other - the consumer, in this case the employer, wants to get the best product (labor) at the cheapest price (salary). This isn't complicated.

Looking at this a little more deeply, the biggest issue is American labor is getting underpriced. What's causing that? Well, for starters there's the cost of an American education. The employee is looking at that as an investment and they expect a good ROI.

The second is inflated lifestyle expectations. That's been a big problem in America since the 90s. People aren't just living beyond their means, they're living well beyond their means - and just like the billionaires, they want more.

The result is we have recent college graduates expecting nice six-figure salaries. It's easy to offshore that. The growing trend now is to offshore to South America so you don't have to deal with the time zone shifts. You always have to remember there's someone a wee bit hungrier than you who is willing to work a wee bit more for a bit less. That's the person your employer wants.

This is what happens when you treat people like commodities, and you worship the market and money as your lord and savior.

All good.

Just don't say that you're hiring the best or the top 0.01% then, we all know where these ones are, they are either at FAANG or at a wholly $10B+ well funded AI lab.

> "What - you expect them to admit they hire the mediocre?"

They don't have to, we know they are.

But now they might as well admit it since the ones that can't afford the fee are the ones crying about the H1B situation.

'We need the smartest people' - we can afford. That last bit is the unspoken part. They want to maximize their headcount for a given budget. They're just responding to market dynamics.

Also, FAANG do not hire the smartest people. They have the budget to hoover up as many potentials as possible in order to keep them away from their competitors. The smart ones quickly realize this and leave.

They are not saying the h1-bs they hire are better than the domestic workers that are hired , they are just marginally better than the domestic subsection of the population that is not qualified anyway.It is not magic , it is a numbers game.

H1B is a better economic leash than college debt.

Thats all.

Cool.

Then there should be no complaints from startups and founders about paying the $100K H1B fee for overseas talent.