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 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
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.
The ones that know about it already love it very much.
Super talented = extremely desperate foreigners who’ll work 90hr weeks for very low pay.
Just in case anyone needed a translation.
And who are really indentured servitude type slaves
I was “lucky” enough to be around during the dot-com meltdown and seeing H-1Bs still being used/abused, even as so many citizens were being cast away. This scam has been around for quite some time. The cap was 115K in 99 and 2000.
Perversely, when the bubble really started taking its toll, the cap was 195K from 2001-2003.
During much of this time period, you’d look around and see 200 people applying for one cruddy junior/intermediate type of software engineer position. Why the cap was not zeroed out in emergency legislation tells you all you need to know about anyone looking out for Americans who work for a living.
Companies claiming things are so dire that they just cannot find the local talent are so very full of it. If they were the least bit genuine, they’d be paying HIGHER wages to the people they do bring in on a visa and they’d be lobbying for permanent status, not this six year max thing.
Now if Elmo was talking about basically being a worldwide talent scout to bring people here with full citizenship status AND being paid top dollar, we’d be talking something different, but if he’s talking about more H-1Bs, it’s the same old shit as it ever was…
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.
Thank you
Almost all of the HB-1 sponsors in my workplace are making 100k+. That may be lower than the average pay for that position in some cases, but it’s definitely not starving anyone.
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?!
The future of the US
The broligarchs have always loved the H-1B fraud.
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!
He didn’t “overstay” his visa. The minute he set foot on US soil, he dropped out of the college he enrolled in and leveraged his father’s connections to land that startup job. When your family owns an emerald mine, they might not be US citizens, but they’re definitely going to make friends with US citizens, and those are the people you schmooze.
When you enter the US under student visa (F1) and you drop out of college, your status become invalid and you have to leave the country in 30 days even if the visa sticker on the passport says “valid until next year”
With all the resources their family had, there were more “legal” ways to buy access to the country, like creating a fake company with fake employees
Right-Wing bootlickers continue to learn they aren’t in the in-crowd they desperately seek to join.
He’s so fucking stupid. It’s exhausting.
Well, I’m not sure I’d call it stupid, exactly. He wants indentured servants, cheap. It’s about accruing more power and wealth to himself.
Now, our government should be set up to STOP unregulated capitalism like this, but at this point, it’s been captured by the capitalists, and they are basically there to give a huge assist to capitalists instead.
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Bit of both, Mysk didn’t even complete his college degree. Being born into money does not, by default, correlate to intelligence
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.
H1B Visa for me, none for thee
Musk replied. “OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process. HOWEVER, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
I’Ve BuRnEd OuT aLl ThE WiLlInG nErDs hErE aNd I nEeD tO bUy SoMe FrOm OvEr ThErE1!1!
Globalism for me but not for thee
Musk is currently fighting with Laura Loomer over this and even pretended to be someone else in order to argue with her over Twitter Spaces and it is very, very funny to watch.
The Muskrat wants cheap engineers that will work like China’s 9-9-6.
I thought AI meant we didn’t need all these tech workers? /s
