I'm surprised the article or the source for it didn't dive deeper into the impact the changes to H1B have had on the tech job numbers. Mind you I'm not trying to argue for or against them, but I find it hard to believe the changes aren't contributing at least a small amount to the drop.
The other thing not mentioned is the impact on the end for ZIRP. Every tech company with a pulse over hired such a staggering amount during the pandemic. It's not surprising these companies are returning to reality and not hiring back to the same levels.
> It's not surprising these companies are returning to reality and not hiring back to the same levels.
The common claim from the "dont worry about AI stealing jobs" crowd is that there is nearly limitless demand for new software to be written.
Even if over hiring is the reason for a lot of current job losses, the fact that over hiring is possible makes it obvious their Jevron's paradox claims are either lies or an attempt at self-soothing.
The process of figuring out what to build has always been harder and more drawn out than the process of building it. I’m not arguing one way or the other for the Jevon’s paradox claims, but the steelman argument that you’ve missed is that job losses can happen very quickly (“last week’s version of Claude code is good enough that we can fire Joe and have Sarah do twice the work”), but the recovery can take a long time as the tech slowly diffuses throughout the economy and slowly spurs new ideas.
AI work creates surplus, we eat that away by specializing and becoming more dependent. Work doesn't stop, it becomes higher stakes, we depend on each other and AI now.
I think a more common claim is that the current downturn is way more obviously explained by Covid-era overhiring.
Basically all the charts on that subject are incredibly eye-opening.
To me it shows that the tech industry has actually been extremely resilient. Despite clearly going on an insane hiring spree that was not justifiable in the end, there hasn’t really been the kind of collapse we should expect. Tech companies have still maintained revenues and we haven’t seen any real sign of collapse. Companies that have gone trough major layoffs generally still have more employees than they did before 2020.
What we are seeing are some tech employees who were used to nearly a decade of easy work act like spending 3-6 months looking for a job is industry apocalypse.
I think you actually need to support the idea that there isn’t a nearly endless demand for software to be written.
Software is just business logic.
What businesses don’t involve software?
What businesses are you seeing that are saying “our software is done, there are no more ways to optimize our business, and there’s no need to evolve business processes to compete, we don’t need to update it anymore!”?
I can’t think of any business vertical that isn’t expecting constant improvement with their software.
I think the timelines are too short for trends to be completely apparent yet. You can typically hire people faster than you can scale your income sources, even in the face of tremendous demand. Right this moment there's factors pushing folks to fire, but I also do see some companies delivering more (not a lot, but noticably more) and seeing increasing sales as a result. Those are in conflict, and we'll see which way the trends push through time.
Employees on work visas are the first and easiest employees to lay off because we don't see our insurance premiums rise when laying them off (it's what most of us did early during COVID). And now with the $100K fees we have no incentive to hire most employees on a work visa anyhow.
Hear that sound? It's the sound of GCCs opening in Poland, Romania, Israel, and India with those employees who were on work visas in the US now in charge.
If you remain in a major tech hub like the Bay or NYC where you are close to early stage capital, you are secure as it gives you a density of established and early stage employers which makes job hunting easier.
If you are in an inshoring hub like Atlanta, RTP, Denver, Minneapolis, or Pittsburg you're in big trouble.
If you are remote first and lack a network of friends and colleagues in the Bay and NYC who can personally vouch and refer you for roles at their companies you're in big trouble.
If you are a bootcamp grad, you are also in trouble so get the cheapest online degree you can that forces you to take a real algorithms and systems programming class.
Edit: can't reply
> The matter of fact nature of your reply sounds highly, personally anecdotal. Given the confluence of moving parts from AI and policy/politics alone, let alone potential regional instability and the effects on US financial markets, it’s really impossible to speak to the next quarter, let alone year/years. Not saying your prediction is not correct, but few are
Well, duh. This is an anonymous forum, not a research paper. That said, I am speaking from my personal experience, and a couple of other decisionmakers on HN have also voiced similar sentiments on here.
It's free advice - take or don't. It's not my problem. To quote Buck Strickland, "I ain't yo daddy".
The matter of fact nature of your reply sounds highly, personally anecdotal. Given the confluence of moving parts from AI and policy/politics alone, let alone potential regional instability and the effects on US financial markets, it’s really impossible to speak to the next quarter, let alone year/years. Not saying your prediction is not correct, but few are.
For bleeding edge R&D, we still hire domestically because the capacity, network, and capital remains in the US, but these roles will overwhelmingly be in the Bay or NYC as I mentioned above, and will overwhelmingly recruit from a handful of top programs with an established track record.
Most HNers are median or below median (that's how medians work because life is a Gaussian distribution) so a large portion will be negatively impacted.
Sam who did his BSCS at Michigan State and Sandeep who did his MSCS without a thesis at SUNY New Platz will be negatively impacted, but Sarah who did her BSCS at UT Austin or Sarita who did her MSCS with thesis at UIUC will be hired.
Similarly for L1/2, it ain't happening unless you have a proven track record at a US comparable office like MSRL Bangalore, but that candidate would have ended up at a top CS program doing an MS/PhD anyhow and have a relatively easy path to immigrate to the US.
Basically, the same funda that exists in India about university tiers for hiring has returned to the US, but a lot of HNers aren't ready for this level of competition.
The difference between Kamal who is slogging at a mid-level SWE at Infosys in Indore and Karl who's working as a SWE at Cisco's NC office is marginal - both are going to be made structurally unemployed, with Kamal's work going to be automated with a CodeGen LLM in the hands of a junior SWE, and Karl's job being moved to a Cisco GCC in India, Eastern Europe, or LatAm.
The only way either can protect themselves is to find a way to end up at a top employer in a major hub.
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> What do you mean
Basically, it's best for all of us (be us SWEs, PMs, VCs, or SEs) to assume that we are average or below average, as that allows us to think strategically and defensively, thus allowing us to reduce our risk and take any advantage that we can.
That requires a level of competitiveness and strategic thinking that some may find distasteful, but it's the only way you can survive in the industry long term.
It doesn't mean hurt or negatively impact anyone always, but it requires one to be realistic and recognize that we are not in a stag-hunt but a Hobbesian trap.
It depends on the tier of H1B hiring. I think you study/studied at an INI so your peer group has more in common with Sarah and Sarita instead of Sam, Sandeep, Karl, or Kamal.
In a lot of cases, Sandeep used to be Kamal, and these are the Desis on H1Bs or L1s who are getting laid off or forced to consider moving back to India, the UK, the EU, Australia, etc.
Tracks, I guess. MSDS@UCSD, MSA@GT, MSCS@CMU all got jobs at meta, IBM, amazon. First two in the bay, third one as well I think. MSCS@NCSU got an internship at amazon but did not get full time yet. MSCS@NEU also did not get anything yet. CS@Columbia did not get anything, but EE@Columbia (semicon stuff) got one in bell labs NJ.
Although naturalization is pretty difficult, I guess it's still a good deal to return at 30 with 4cr starting wealth.
> Although naturalization is pretty difficult, I guess it's still a good deal to return at 30 with 4cr starting wealth.
Yep. That's what Chinese nationals in the US began doing in the early 2010s when China was developmentally similar to India today - the cost/reward ratio diminished due to the GC backlog.
Others would say this is exactly what they voted for. Unfortunately it's all about perspective, and after a decade of passively consuming hn, it's obvious where the sites interest lies in terms of moderating content.
It's the first editor since probably sublime text that I've genuinely enjoyed. Useful without any configuration, and very easy to get a productive environment.
There's a few rough edges that I'm trying to work through. I've been able to solve my "open in X" like key bindings. But I have yet to get things like "run test for current method". That's probably the biggest pain point I've had so far
Just to reiterate the point the person above you made, but in far simpler terms: independence can be far greater return on your personal well-being then maximizing gains. I'm willing to "lose" out on $50-$100k over the lifetime of my mortgage in exchange for never needing to make a payment on the house again
But the AI vote will be used as a fig leaf so they don't even have to pretend to mete out justice. "AI said it, it must be true" will soon become a mantra (even though most people here know how wrong it can be and how often it actually is).
I hear that lazy LEOs now use AI to write police reports. Noice. And the AI can trivially show up for hearings.
In the world we could assess this completely and with perfect accuracy, you're spot on that that'd be all that we need!
In the current world, though, due process exists because there are sometimes messy and fuzzy details that need evaluation. For instance, the date of an immigration court hearing might be delayed, or an applicant may be granted an extension. An immigrant may have received incorrect information and missed the proper steps through no fault of their own. If immigration enforcement skips due process but is working on even slightly outdated information, we're trashing the rights of people who may be following the process properly.
In the cases where an immigrant is clearly here illegally and there are no extenuating circumstances, deportation is already the thing that the current due-process does.
> Why would someone who has not committed a crime and is not accused of a crime need a court case?
Criminal court is only one type of use-case for the legal system, there are loads of other ones. The phrase "Civil court" refers to scenarios where no one has committed a crime and no one is accused of a crime, and these represent the majority of court cases.
When someone is allegedly an il_legal_ immigrant, they are present but allegedly violating immigration _laws_.
That is to say, such a person has been accused of a crime.
Due process in the constitution guarantees that individuals (including non-citizens facing deportation) have the opportunity to defend themselves in court against such accusations.
>When someone is allegedly an il_legal_ immigrant, t
When someone is allegedly a murderer, or a thief, or a vandal, or whatever... a trial is needed to determine guilt or innocence.
But when they arrest someone for those things, the preliminary process allows police to determine someone's identity. Their address, things of that nature. Their basic information. Basic information is all that is needed to determine whether or not someone is a citizen. There is no trial needed to determine citizenship.
>Due process in the constitution guarantees that individuals (including non-citizens facing deportation) have the opportunity to defend themselves in court
No, you attended public school and someone had you memorize "due process" in 3rd grade and you never were taught what it meant. It does not guarantee "a defense in court", because in this case there is no crime to defend against. No one's wanting to send them to prison. In the simplest terms, due process is the idea that the government must have a process for a particular legal proceeding, and that if someone must undergo that proceeding they get the same process everyone else does. If rich people were getting to skip out of the proceeding, or get a shortened one, but you had to go through the entire thing... it'd be a due process violation. Or alternatively if you wanted that proceeding and they were getting to skip it (say you had a full 30 day period to file, but they canceled your filing that same day) you'd have a due process violation.
>It seems like at your school they didn't mention habeas corpus
Habeas doesn't apply... no one's trying to prosecute them for a crime. The juvenile confusion you're experiencing, where you believe deportation to be some sort of punishment for a crime, rather than merely the immediate remedy for someone who doesn't belong where they are, well it's bizarre.
If someone breaks into your home tonight, do you think the police can't remove them from the house until after the trial?
The writ of habeas corpus applies to detention, not prosecution. In fact this is why it exists. If it only applied after a crime was alleged, the government could hold people in extrajudicial detention forever so long as it never leveled criminal charges. The Bush administration did exactly that in Guantanamo and was slapped down by the Supreme Court.
>The writ of habeas corpus applies to detention, not prosecution.
It doesn't. If a cop stops you on the sidewalk for 10 minutes, that's being "detained", but they don't need to meet the burden of first going to a judge and presenting the evidence required in habeas. Which is all of the detention that occurs in these cases, after that it becomes deportation.
But, should habeas be required of deportation, then only proof required for that is "here is the documentation showing lack of citizenship".
While the importance of due process cannot be overstated, immigration violations are not generally crimes outside of a few specific areas. Removal proceedings are frequently not tied to any particularly crime, but merely unlawful presence, which is not a crime in its own right.
>When someone is allegedly an il_legal_ immigrant, they are present but allegedly violating immigration _laws_.
That's ok. They can be pardoned for that crime, I do not with to see them prosecuted or incarcerated. Sending them home is enough.
>That is to say, such a person has been accused of a crime.
Nope. Just accused of being a non-citizen, which if it turns out to be true, is de facto proof that they do not have the right to reside within the United States. Citizenship = right to live here. Not all rights are fundamental, voting and residence belong only to citizens.
> Why would someone who has not committed a crime and is not accused of a crime need a court case?
So if the executive decides they suspect you are an illegal alien, detains you, claims to have checked you are an illegal alien, and then expels you to some foreign country you have no right to challenge this at any point in the process?
Because if that’s what you think “due process” means, than the government never has any need for criminal process at all, it just needs to decide it suspects people of being illegal aliens instead of criminals, then it can imprison them indefinitely while it “checks” and expel them whenever it decides it tires or imprisoning them (perhaps to someplace it knows they will be killed or deprived of then nevessities of life), all without ever defending any of those acts as justified in court.
While you are correct in stating that an article III court generally is not required, the due process for immigrants, even those not present legally, is more complicated than just "check paperwork for legal status, act immediately". While in some cases expedited removal bypass the normal process, if a deportation is contested, due process still generally entails access to a hearing before an immigration judge (article II judge).
What do you think the process to check whether someone is an illegal immigrant is? It needs to leave a paper trail, and provide someone the opportunity to prove that they're a citizen or here legally.
>It needs to leave a paper trail, and provide someone the opportunity to prove that they're a citizen or here legally.
If you would read the articles where people are griping about this case or that case, none of these immigrants have contested it with a "but I'm a citizen". I suspect this is because they know that won't fly. For the amazingly few cases where a citizen is temporarily detained, many of those cases are leftists trying to jam ICE up by not making the claim and hoping they overstep.
None of those that have made the news are cases where it goes to court because the detainee claims citizenship and ICE denies it.
That doesn't work in all cases. ESTA visa for example you give up the rights to due process if you overstay on that visa as part of the agreement to the visa.
Doesn't justify anything that ICE are currently doing though.
And what if someone claims you overstayed the visa, but you didn't? You still need a legal process to defend yourself from arbitrary accusations. Not having a process is not just morally wrong, it is also simply non-functional.
This is risible. "Sending them home" requires arrest and detention. Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the US Constitution grants people the right to contest their detention in court. So far, the administration hasn't formally suspended habeas corpus, despite what Stephen Miller may assert on TV.
They'd quickly cancel the contract with any supplier that doesn't give them the carte blanche and obfuscation of responsibility they want.
Just like other ML and big data LEO projects in the past, assume the use of AI is to greenlight what they already want to do and would like a fig leaf of justification for from a computer.
I had a recruiter reach out for a company doing Agentic SRE's due to my years of experience as an SRE. Second sentence was describing their mission as making the SRE role no longer necessary for companies. I know if you read between the lines that's the goal of many AI companies, but I was surprised how upfront they were.
There's no reason to hide it anymore. A CEO can go on CNBC and openly admit "Yes, we are excited about AI because if it works we won't have to pay so many middle class white collar workers anymore" and there are many average people who will ideologically defend it, as if they'll somehow be immune.
Any time you dare to mention AI is going to replace software devs here, loads of people come out of the woodwork saying there’s zero evidence and it’s all just the end of ZIRP or whatever.
Well I know for a fact that my company’s art spending is way down, and while we haven’t fired any software engineer we also haven’t added any. I’m very conservative about the AI hype but I can’t deny a 20%-30% boost at the moment so I’m not gonna hire a junior to do the boring 25% for me, who incidentally would be more annoying to steer the way I want. And it wouldn’t surprise me if a slightly more capable model actually makes us slash headcount or at least never need a junior again, same way artists are going. It’s also likely that solopreneurs won’t need to hire in the first place, or will be able to run very lean teams a lot more easily. Many of us will be replaced sooner or later, no idea when, but burying head in the sand doesn’t help much.
Software development jobs will be some of the first to go.
If you think about what we do, it's very manual. We're the assembly line workers of the office. We manualy, painstakingly, put the product together out of primitive pieces.
... That makes no sense. The value of an instrument isn't what makes a successful musician successful. The best musicians can make the cheapest sounding instrument sound amazing. What cheaper instruments offers is the opportunity for someone to even have a chance.
that is the point. It is easy to buy another 'toy'. It is tedious to practice using what you have. Thus many buy instrunents persuing sucess.
you need something to work with and despite great musicians sounding good on junk quality does sometimes sound better in ways you cannot compensate for. Also even if you can make cheap sound good it may be ergonomically harmful, or otherwise be a struggle. Thus it is sometimes justified to spend money on better.
Those synths are famous and expensive because they're an important part of musical culture. E.g. if you want to make dance music it's likely you want 808- or 909-style drums. You could use samples or software simulations, but I think the hardware UI makes a difference. It's easier to follow the idioms of a genre when you're working in a similar way to the originators of the genre.
> It's easier to follow the idioms of a genre when you're working in a similar way to the originators of the genre.
This is essentially what I was after. Behringer (and others) are selling you the dream of reaching the echelons of those genre-defining originators.
But you won't. Having a Jupiter-8 clone or even an original will not make you another Giorgio Moroder or Nick Rhodes and having a Linn clone won't make you another Prince. Those synths and drum machines became famous because they existed at the right time in the right place (and under the fingers of the right people).
Behringer is selling nostalgia. Sure, you don't have to shell out the equivalent of a small car, but looking at what people are producing with these devices, for 99% of the customers, it will not bring them any nearer to their dreams.
> Those synths are famous and expensive because they're an important part of musical culture
Not only that, many synths are expensive at launch because of R&D and production costs (considering the small amount they produce), and impossible they're already part of "musical culture" as they just launched. TE and Elektron stuff is expensive at launch as just one counter-example.
But Teenage Engineering or Elektron are putting out original creative stuff. Even if it is built around vintage components like the SidStation (which is still one of the devices I really regret having sold)
There are still a select few subreddits where this is true as well. I genuinely miss 10 years ago getting into random shit like double edge razors, home brewing and woodworking and how supportive those communities were to get into. Some communities _do_ exist, but once they get past a certain size it becomes worthless
Oh man this brings back memories! I can’t remember the name either but they would say stuff like “whey-men” after these “prayers”. I think at some point it kind of devolved into the same jokes over and over as those subs tend to do so I drifted away, but it was fun for a while.
The other thing not mentioned is the impact on the end for ZIRP. Every tech company with a pulse over hired such a staggering amount during the pandemic. It's not surprising these companies are returning to reality and not hiring back to the same levels.
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