Summary
Elon Musk faced backlash from his followers on X after advocating for importing “super talented engineers” to address a shortage in the U.S. tech industry.
Musk likened hiring top foreign talent to building a championship sports team and argues that there is a shortage of talented and motivated American engineers.
Critics argued there’s sufficient U.S. talent being overlooked or underpaid, with some pointing to widespread tech layoffs.
Musk dismissed claims of low wages or training gaps, maintaining a need for exceptional engineering talent to advance innovation.
Musk doesn’t want a championship sports team, he wants a cheap, desperate, obedient source of labour.
Ah yes, the American dream.
The American Dream has long since been corrupted by the wealthy into a pipe dream for the masses that funnels more money to the rich.
“That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it! -George Carlin
Yeah, he just wants more pliant and subservient H1B visa holders that he can pay less than he’d have to offer to an American, who will be deported after 2 months if they don’t work hard enough to satisfy him.
Oh. Right.
By ‘deported’, I guess we’re now talking about ‘rounded up into mass concentration camps.’
I had a friend back a few years ago who was an H1B and it’s fucking exploitive. They made him work off his visa. And since his visa is tied to his job he couldn’t leave it. The place was toxic af.
The company was very much abusing H1B visas but unless someone at the company spoke up, it’s just business.
The place was toxic af.
What I’ve seen at such places is that they will often put some Indian into a management position and they will squeeze blood from a stone like you wouldn’t believe, flogging H1Bs (all Indian in many cases), and hiring no citizens if they can help it, other than just a token or two.
But the tokens will quickly learn their job is under constant threat if they get any notions of being uppity - the Indian H1Bs being there as a lesson that doesn’t have to really be explained…
And yeah, it’s toxic as anything.
Even worse when the company exploits the caste system. Since most Indian migrants still believe in that shit.
I used to contract at MSFT back during the 360 3RR era, me and my boss were reworking the support phone tree process flow, because it was wholly inadequate and had many infinite loops that a caller and support agent would end up in…
But yeah, during that, I routinely saw Indian H1B contractors being viciously abused by their higher ups in the caste system who were full time employees.
I tried to call out some of this, and HR’s line was literally that it was not politically correct of me to criticize this, because well thats just normal in their culture.
Its fucking disgusting.
MSFT has an entire company culture of its own caste system of various kind of contractors who are basically all lied to by recruiters telling them if they work really hard they’ll become full time employees with much better pay and benefits… in reality, that almost never happens, because project managers are all full time, and will routinely sabotage their own projects if the alternative is to actually keep a team on long enough that they’d become full time.
As a recent example of what I mean by this:
Halo Infinite.
MSFT hired a whole team of temp contractors to overhaul the engine that Halo ran on, to massively upgrade it.
By the time significant Halo Infinite production began, basically all of these people who rewrote the engine now were on to some new contract, some other company.
So… nobody in the actual main game dev team can figure out how the overhauled engine (now called SlipSpace) works, they can’t ask any of its actual devs for help, they spend a few years trying to develop the game on it, game is buggy as fuck and difficult to work on… and eventually give up and start redoing everything on UE5.
This all happened because MSFT higher ups wanted to penny pinch the development of the foundation of their biggest IPs next game, by using contractors instead of higher paid FTs, and in the end, it cost them enormous amounts of time an money on something they ended up abandoning anyway.
(I mean, there’s much more to the story of why Halo Infinite’s development was fucked, such as totally rewriting the story of the game midway through development, but the dumpster fire with the engine development is almost entirely due to MSFTs temp vs FT caste system and short term cost avoidant, thus long term cost maximizing management culture.)
Surely it’s that the ones in the minority believing that promote each other and make everyone else’s life hell.
By ‘deported’, I guess we’re now talking about '
rounded up into mass concentration campsbeing administratively relocated to alternative living accommodations.https://insideevs.com/news/718815/production-teams-will-be-overburdened-tesla-employee/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/politics/twitter-layoffs-visas-h1b/index.html
We’ve seen Musk use this before, after all.
shortage of engineers? are you kidding me?
I know of two first degree of separation SWEs who can’t land jobs. One worked at microsoft for like a decade.
FTFA:
Other followers accused Musk of simply not wanting to pay top talent what it’s worth.
Bingo, got it in one. They don’t want to pay american talent american wages, they want to pay all talent 3rd world country wages while they themselves pocket a 50 billion dollar contract.
He’s running out of inexperienced engineers to burn through. He statedv early on that he wanted to create a surplus of engineers to drive down the cost.
That cost being, paying the engineers’ salaries.
I work pretty closely with a lot of young engineers. My work brings them in as interns, hires them, but doesn’t pay them very well and after 2 years we have new engineers because they’ve all found better jobs. Saturating the market with talent really hasn’t worked out the way he wanted it to, because as it turns out that’s nothing new.
So now he’s gotta find a new way to pay engineers less.
So now he’s gotta find a new way to pay engineers less.
I imagine it would be something like this:
Position: Senior ML Software Developer
Join the XTesla420X family of goal-oriented, success-driven, rockstar AI/Machine Learning engineers who aren’t afraid to move fast and break things in the name of automation and mankind’s future.With no middle management, you get to be your own boss* and set your own working hours**. The only thing holding to hold you back from greatness is your own potential, and we’re ready to help you thrive in a fast-paced environment where the sky the limit and your own mortality is nothing but a temporary setback.
Requirements:
- 10 years industry experience
- No kids
- A 210% work ethic
- Intimacy with a Python
Compensation & Benefits:
- Exposure in lieu of salary
- Office vending machine
- Office cocaine (unavailable for remote workers)
- Optional unpaid vacation days on statuatory holidays
* reporting directly to Elon Mouske
** minimum 80 per week*must relocate to shithole work site with self funded relocation where labor rights have been repealed and report to duty 6 days a week for minimum 14 hour shifts. 20 for crunch time. We make 996 look like child’s play!
So real it hurts reading it.
Does it have to be a python? Does a colubrid count?
And how about healthcare? Or will accepting the offer enroll me in clinical trials to have my brain implanted into a robot? Robots don’t need healthcare, pay, sleep, time off, or any of the other things fleshies need to live. Of course, the organic components, such as the brain and possibly spinal cord will require occasional maintenance, but the upkeep cost for those is minimal
POV Me after having my brain put in an Optimus robot: [Says “Kill Me” repeatedly]
No middle managers is pretty attractive ngl
If the CEO is Musk, I’d take as many managers between him and me as I can.
Intimacy with a Python
I mean, it helps either way you read it
So now he’s gotta find a new way to pay engineers less.
Well, except scams like the H1B is a pretty old way of setting that up…
It’s a common trick used in American Hiring Practices, knowingly set an impossible standard for hiring. Turn around and say “We can’t fill this position with candidates in the US, here’s the list of people we rejected. Can we get approved for hiring visas?”
And The Government falls for that bullshit guaranteed… after some donations to the Super PAC of course.
There are obviously easily exploited loopholes to enable H1B visas especially for a couple of businesses that hire the most H1Bs.
As long as most countries in this world have median wages well below 33% of the US there will be rampant outsourcing / under the table labor / vastly lower comp H1B roles.
If you truly try to minimize your cost of living the cost to live in the US is surprisingly cheap. Most shit we buy is optional. Rice and beans are cheap, you can find people giving away clothes, transportation can be very cheap and a simple pay as you go phone can be very cheap and be your access to the internet and is fully functional. You can make enough with a job that just pays minimum wage to send enough money home and feed an entire family without yourself worrying about being homeless or going without food.
Immigrants tend to try harder and put up with more bullshit than natives because things are that much better here than back home. Hell, we have food pantries! That’s basically unheard of in most of the world. Billions still struggle to put food on the table outside of the US and western europe. I relied on food pantries as a kid to survive in poverty. My wife is from a third world country and couldn’t believe people would just give food to those in need freely.
I’m not here to bash on immigrants, i’m just pointing out that even the poor in the US generally have more privilege than they could possibly realize. The vast excess of the top 10% in the US is crazy, and the .1% here are so egregiously overcompensated it should probably be criminal.
You can make enough with a job that just pays minimum wage to send enough money home and feed an entire family without yourself worrying about being homeless or going without food.
presses X to doubt
In my wife’s home country a salary of $11k/year is considered typical. Some make a lot less, some make a lot more. So a lot of people get by on about 6k/year.
In my state minimum wage is 16/hr or $33,280. Almost all jobs pay substantially more than this, but if all your costs are day to day are food, transport and renting a room with family/cousins/etc you can afford to send $6000 aka $500/mo. It’s way less than rent anyway. $500/mo can trivially feed a family in most of latin america for a month with some leftover. If you have that much a month you can absolutely survive, but don’t expect any luxuries. AC is unheard of. You probably have a tiny portable washing machine for clothes, the kind kids get for their dorms in the US. You hang your clothes out on a clothesline. Electricity isn’t 100% stable, brownouts are common and so is service interruption. Generators are a luxury. You can’t drink the water without boiling it, so everyone drinks bottled.
My wife was more likely to only send $100-200, because even that little makes a major impact and in the US where we are, it doesn’t do very much. $1 goes a lot further in places like, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador and many, many more countries in the Americas than it goes in the US.
When my wife went clothes shopping in the US for the first time she thought Primark was incredibly expensive. They’re known for being very cheap low quality clothes in the US. Still way more expensive than clothes in her home country (aside from the typical imported luxury brands that few can afford.)
At the start of the pandemic my wife’s mom sold their condo in a wealthy portion of their capitol for about $ 40k US. I just bought a condo that is slightly bigger for about 600k.
So yeah, you can X to doubt all you want but I promise you really don’t know what it’s like in the overwhelming majority of countries in the world. It’s impossible to understand if you haven’t even been to a place that doesn’t speak English.
No I get that. I actually had some guy who did comissions for me and I found him insanely cheap. I didn’t understand how he could charge so low for what I was asking, until the bill came and I saw he was in a South American country where the exchange rate basically meant that when all was said and done; 20 bucks from a North American client was like a couple hundred down there.
What I doubt is being able to find any building on American Soil that you can afford the rent on while working minimum wage. Especially since most entry level jobs will actively prevent you from qualifying for full time benefits no matter how much you work.
What I doubt is being able to find any building on American Soil that you can afford the rent on while working minimum wage.
Minimum wage in massachusetts is $16/hr or 33,280.
Here’s a furnished room for rent, 995/mo aka 12k/year - well within minimum wage budget above, just a hair over 33% of gross. https://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/apa/d/roslindale-995-furnished-room/7813596105.html
here’s another, 1100/mo https://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/apa/d/somerville-roommate-situation-br-avail/7813966888.html
689/mo room for rent (lowell but still possible to find minimum wage jobs near lowell.) https://boston.craigslist.org/nwb/apa/d/lowell-brazilzian-room-mates-furnished/7807989802.html
975/mo https://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/apa/d/everett-private-bedroom-975-month/7811735244.html
There’s no shortage of rooms for rent that are affordable for a single minimum wage income. You’re just not living on your own. Isn’t the trope that 4-6+ immigrants all live together in one house? because that’s what they do to minimize housing expenses. You don’t need a great home to survive or thrive or to even raise kids… because the listings above that we consider actually end up being less finding a random stranger on the internet and more extended family focused where you find family or friends of family who have immigrated to the US and already live in an area. Here in MA that is a mixture of different cities depending on what cultural group you’re from.
Now let’s take a look at a poorer state like Georgia. 7.25/hr minimum wage, or 15k/year. This one will be harder but I suspect people will largely make way more than that since walmart pays closer to 10.
$175/mo https://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/roo/d/atlanta-atl-marta-furn-mid-age-man-free/7810363955.html
$400/mo for a trailer (eww, but doable… 4800 a year) https://atlanta.craigslist.org/sat/apa/d/thomaston-mobile-home-for-rent-in/7810137528.html
495/mo atlanta highway loop https://atlanta.craigslist.org/sat/roo/d/red-oak-great-room-available-in-college/7813455844.html
That being said, there are some cheaper places out there. $250/mo (incl utilities) in the heart of the city for a room but women only https://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/roo/d/atlanta-seeking-cool-roommate-for-old/7813271349.html
Some (likely) gay dude wants a gay dude to move in $350/mo https://atlanta.craigslist.org/eat/roo/d/decatur-sharing-accommodation-with-gay/7814264684.html
If there are situations where you can split a rental even there for that cheap… how can anyone even argue that it isn’t at all possible to survive on minimum wage?
I get that most people do not want to live with strangers or anybody at all if they can help it but it’s a much better option than being homeless or living in a country where you will be paid a couple hundred bucks a month.
I meant at 7.25, but hey a state where the wage is more than double would work, and kinda dodges the point. I mean 16 an hour is more than I make in my state and I do not make minimum here.
They don’t want to pay american talent american wages, they want to pay all talent 3rd world country wages while they themselves pocket a 50 billion dollar contract.
This is usually what tech bro ‘innovation’ boils down to.
I know a guy who’s basically the Goku of computer networking. Listing his accomplishments would doxx him. It took him months to find an escape route out from where he was at.
Musk likened hiring top foreign talent to building a championship sports team and argues that there is a shortage of talented and motivated American engineers.
There’s not, it’s just they want good wages and working conditions
As an employer the way to get cheaper workers that accept worse conditions is flood the labor pool. With the cost of an American education, H1B’s will always take less. Not just from foreign countries, but also from “better” countries with free education.
This isn’t just bad for the tech sector, it’s bad for everything that requires an advanced degree.
Yeah the more I’ve learned about H1 visas the more they stink. You set up your entire life and your employer can destroy it all at any time by firing you. So they take pay cuts, extra hours, extra duties, demands to sleep in the office, just horrible shit that American employees won’t stand for.
All we need to do is extend it to a 2 year rolling period for the individual. If you lose your job you have 2 years to get the next one. And employers have to wait 5 years before they can bring in another H1b employee if they fire one. After 5 years give them a green card.
Even simpler fix, actually. If they genuinely can’t find anyone else, set the wages of the people they hire to a mandatory 5x industry median or 500k, whichever is larger
If they genuinely can’t find anyone else, set the wages of the people they hire to a mandatory 5x industry median or 500k, whichever is larger
Trump tried something very similar to what you propose: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/08/19/trump-h-1b-visa-wage-rule-gives-clue-to-second-term-immigration-policy/
Why work for a man who expects his workers to work “hardcore” for 80 hours a week without any overtime pay?
Sounds like exploitation to me.
They like the taste of boot, that’s why they’re Muskrats.
Well to answer @Gork@lemm.ee’s hypothetical - someone who hates Elon might run a simple cost benefit and still decide two brutal years of making no money is worth having a big T(esla)/SpaceX on their résumé.
Which is unfortunate because it would be good to see a revolt that led to a kinder leader of those companies.
Ya’ll are not reading between the lines here.
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,”
The “AND super-motivated [sic]” is key here. By “super-motivated” he means working 80-100 hours for shit pay.
Yeah, both American citizens and H1Bs area getting tired of this shit.
On another vein, his government “positions” listing
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.” for “zero pay”.
Is code for, “I want corporate lackies for this job.” Corporations will pay it’s reps to “work” in these government positions and basically lobby. No one else will bother because normal people got mouths to feed.
It’s not really “between the lines” when he’s been straight up shouting exactly that for years. He’s been very vocal about it at least since he bought Twitter, “keeping only the most talented ones who really want to work” and it turned out that only the immigrants who can’t AFFORD to leave stayed for shit pay.
Another fun thing about H1B holders is that, in their home countries, there are often kickbacks and indenture schemes that mean that they’re spending the first year of their working life in the US paying back someone for “arranging” the work. So if they quit, they’re in debt to the mob, and if they don’t return, their families are at risk.
Thank you
Why don’t you make the education system here in the US better first.
LOL who the fuck am I kidding.
FTFA:
Another Musk follower said that he should “open a school” to better train Americans, and then added, “We have brains.”
“If you need a school, you’ve lost already,” Musk replied.
You need a school? Get back to work peasant.
“If you need a school, you’ve lost already,” Musk replied.
My god, what a smug asshole.
I’d love to see this smarty pants trying to get by as an actual engineer, instead of a billionaire LARPing as one.
Would be fired day one on lack of interpersonal skills. And other skills for that matter.
“Oh God! They’re voting in their own interests!!! Burn it down!”
Deport the foreigners taking our jobs except for the ones who directly benefit me.
What. A. Shitstain.
They don’t have to lie any more. They only need 4 years.
This is what’s causing backlash? Not any of the Nazi shit?
Because this goes against the Nazi shit.
Hindu nationalists are about to be very, very surprised at what the Nazis actually think about their actual “Aryan” heritage.
Wait are there Indians that voted for Trump to get rid of immigrants?
There’s always going to be ladder pullers but yeah
Most Indian Americans know what’s going on but there’s always that weird subset that wants to bring caste shit with them and such.
People can be mad about two things. Don’t let a baity headline inform your views.
Well, in this case it’s among the people who really like him. So while people can be mad about two things, in this case I don’t think the people being discussed are.
But I thought we wanted to deport people, not import them.
Please reference this simple chart:
Let’s see where the imports are from. I have a feeling those who would accept bottom-tier wages will be the preferred import. I’m not blaming the workers, either. They will be sadly surprised by COL.
Honestly, this chart wouldn’t be acceptable for the most part.
Get the brown skinned engineers over here, but then threaten to deport them once they’re here. Easier to control and pay less. As is the way with every asshole regime.
Better yet, arrest them when their visa is mysteriously revoked for illegal immigration, then you don’t have to pay them at all!
He didn’t explain to them that holders of H1B visas have to stay with the corporation that hires them or else they get deported. It’s semi-slavery. Conservatives would love it.
That’s the only way to keep salaries depressed, which is why they’re brought in. If they could switch jobs, there’d be competition among potential employers and the salaries would increase. The whole H1B scheme is a filthy racket. It depresses the wages of non-H1B workers, it exploits those on an H1B visa, and there’s a whole cottage industry of faking recruitment campaigns before showing that a company was “forced” to fill a critical skills shortage with an H1B holder. For example, the qualifications can be written so that only people on certain Indian of Chinese computer-science courses can have the required coursework. Not that the applicant necessarily took the course, though: there’s another cottage industry in India and in China of people doing exams on someone else’s behalf.
And then there’s industrial espionage…
“import” like it’s livestock. Strategically avoiding the word “migration”, too.
Human Commodities
Don’t forget that (using his words) he himself was an illegal alien that overstayed his student visa and started to work in his first startup with invalid status. Kick him out and ban him from re entry, no exceptions!
Yeah, rule of law applies to everyone, regardless of what those mouthpieces on the Supreme Court might claim.
H1B Visa for me, none for thee
What I’m reading is that he wants Chinese or Indian engineers because they are as qualified as the next guy, they’re already used to insane hours and no holidays AND he can just pay them their original wage, which is peanuts compared to what US engineers make. Also once he’s done with them he can just deport them. What’s not to like?!
It’s never too late to develop class consciousness, clueless tech bros.
Edit to add: Dollars to donuts, the people still putting up with Musk’s shit at 𝕏itter are the H-1B workers just trying to survive without getting deported. Two years ago: Why foreign workers in the US are especially vulnerable to the Twitter turmoil
Earlier this week, Elon Musk gave remaining staff an ultimatum to commit to working “hardcore” or to leave. But some staff who would like to leave the company feel like they can’t because doing so, may leave them no choice but to depart the US, multiple former Twitter employees told CNN.
