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| ▲ | kburman 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I get the fear, but look at it from the investor's perspective. The US market is tapped out, Amazon is already everywhere it can be. Amazon isn't expanding in India out of love for the country or a desire to see it grow. They are doing it because Wall Street demands infinite growth every single year. Amazon India went from zero to a market leader in a decade not because of charity, but because that is where the new money is. To keep the valuation climbing (which sustains everyone's RSUs), they have to capture these emerging markets. If they don't, the stock stagnates, and the compensation model for US tech workers falls apart. | | |
| ▲ | pm90 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They can capture the market without moving the workforce there. Meta/Instagram/WA have dominated Indian market for a decade now. It seems like this is pure labor arbitrage. Growth is gone so the only way to increase profits is by cutting costs, with labor force being the top line item. | | |
| ▲ | danans 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > They can capture the market without moving the workforce there. Meta/Instagram/WA have dominated Indian market for a decade now. The former is a logistics company. They need an on-the-ground workforce in places they operate. The latter are social media products, no local workforce of significance needed. That said, we are in a world where Amazon is able to do labor arbitrage of software-adjacent jobs by moving them to India. That's been happening for more than 2 decades. Nothing short of new laws levying penalties, or a massive consumer boycott will stop that or slow it down. | |
| ▲ | kburman 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You are describing a colonial model, extract all the wealth while investing nothing in the local economy. That era is over. If anything, Meta is the anomaly, not the role model. They should be required to invest more given their dominance, rather than being praised for extracting maximum value with minimum local footprint. Regulators will likely close that gap eventually. | | |
| ▲ | jabedude 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Exchanging goods and services for money to a locale" is not a colonial model. I, a strawberry farmer in Florida, should have no obligation to create an office of locals in every geographic location I sell strawberries in. | | |
| ▲ | kburman 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If a foreign entity came into Florida and bought up 35% of the entire retail infrastructure, you bet the US government would regulate it and demand local value capture. Case in point - US actively forced TSMC and Samsung to build $65B+ of factories in Arizona and Texas to secure domestic interests. | |
| ▲ | dboreham 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No but you give up a large margin to shippers, importers, distributors and retailers in those geographic locations. | | |
| ▲ | jabedude 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which is an entirely different dynamic than what the person I responded to was calling for |
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| ▲ | a456463 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | and why do i care for the investor's perspective? they already made enough money to last them 100 lifetimes | |
| ▲ | int_19h 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm pretty sure that most American software engineers would take a stable job with a salary without RSUs over RSUs but you can get laid off tomorrow. | |
| ▲ | no_wizard 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >I get the fear, but look at it from the investor's perspective. The US market is tapped out, Amazon is already everywhere it can be. Heaven forbid we forget about the investors, and don't forget about the executive compensation! I mean, seriously, is there no such thing as balance? I'm not saying investors should be arbitrarily shorted, but on the same token it doesn't mean workers need to always take the brunt of the change, which is how it goes down 90% of the time. If layoffs were seen as executive leadership failures first and foremost it would be a small step toward the right direction of accountability. >To keep the valuation climbing (which sustains everyone's RSUs), they have to capture these emerging markets. Fallacy that the stock must continue to rise to the detriment of the workforce that supposedly would benefit. Never minding that RSUs shouldn't be seen as a primary form of compensation to begin with, there is a myriad of things companies can do to maintain the valuation of employee RSUs, like bigger grants. Secondly, you're assuming to capture these emerging markets, a layoff is a must. In reality, it likely is not. If you have a surplus of resources, deploying them effectively would be a net win, as you re-allocate these folks to higher priority projects and workstreams. The incentive structure that C-Suites have built up since the 1980s however don't align with that, because executive compensation is entirely based around juicing the numbers on a spreadsheet, as opposed to being rewarded for building sustainable businesses. >If they don't, the stock stagnates, and the compensation model for US tech workers falls apart. It doesn't, compensation is more broad than RSUs, and could be adjusted in kind. This is a solved problem. |
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| ▲ | geodel 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | True. This is Globalism at work. If these companies were not selling goods and services globally then they wouldn't have to deal with setting up offices, staff, pressure from local politicians to hire locals around the world. Companies hiring more in cheap labor countries is quite obvious for long time. In case of Amazon I feel most of the stuff that was cutting edge 2 decades back is now low value work where cost is the only edge. |
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| ▲ | darth_avocado 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Since the HN reaction to layoffs almost always is about blaming H1B, here’s a few more things the headline misses: 1. Cuts were global
2. Cuts in US also include H1B employees
3. 16000 roles are corporate roles, not just tech related, H1B program is not generally utilized for those roles
4. Expansion in India is not just tech. Amazon is a big retailer in India. Understandably if you’re seeing revenue growth in India, you will grow corporate presence in India. If Walmart becomes a massive retailer in EU, it will hire EU nationals in EU. That’s not shipping jobs to EU. | | |
| ▲ | FilosofumRex 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > 1. Cuts were global 2. Cuts in US also include H1B employees Hell no, Amazon has been a top 10 filer of H1-B LCAs for decades. The only H1-Bs being laid off, if any, are the older ones (over 39) to be replaced with cheaper models
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS8LNhxJq9Q | |
| ▲ | echelon 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Shouldn't we all want H1B rather than offshoring? That keeps the facilities here, the local employment options here, the growth here, the tax base here... We should want more smart people moving to this country. More business creation, more capital, more labor, more output. Immigration is total economic growth for America, non zero-sum. Offshoring is not only economic loss, but second order loss: we lose the capacity over an extended time frame. | | |
| ▲ | autokad 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I am not so sure on that. They raise inflation, home prices, etc. The locals see no real benefit except having to pay more for everything. While more taxes are collected, most of that goes to offsetting just some of the economic pain induced by the people living there. and it is in fact zero sum. every spot filled in university or company is a spot not taken by a local, as its obvious by the numbers, more local people are not getting admitted into CS programs nor are they being hired. its 100% zero sum when we are looking at these numbers and %s. | | |
| ▲ | echelon 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Companies want to cut costs. They will. If you don't bring more fungible labor into the US, the jobs will be offshored. Look at what just happened to film labor in 2022-2023. The industry was burgeoning off the heels of the streaming wars and ZIRP. Then the stikes happened. Amazon and Netflix took trained crews in the Eastern Europe bloc and leveraged tax deals and existing infra in Ireland and the UK. Film production in LA and Atlanta are now down over 75%. Even with insane local tax subsidies - unlimited subsidies in the case or Georgia. Software development will escape to other cheaper countries. They're talented and hard working. AI will accelerate this. Then what? America lost manufacturing. I think we've decided that was a very bad idea. We need to move the cheaper labor here. More workforce means more economic opportunities for startups and innovation. Labor will find a way as long as the infrastructure is here. De-growth is cost cutting and collapse. Immigration is rapid growth, diversification, innovation, and market dominance. All those people start buying from businesses here. They start paying taxes here. It supercharges the local economy. Your house might go up in price, but way more money is moving around - more jobs, more growth, second order effects. America doesn't have the land limits Canada has. And we can set tax policy and regulations to encourage building. I'd rather be in an America forecasted to hit 500 million citizens - birth or immigration. And I want to spend on their education. I want capital to fund their startup ideas. I want the FTC/DOJ to break up market monopolies to create opportunity for new risk takers and labor capital. That was the world the Boomers had. Exciting, full of opportunity. That was the world of a rapidly industrializing America. Right now, the world we have ahead looks bleak. People aren't having kids and we aren't bringing in immigrants. We'll have less consumerism, less labor, and everything will shrink and shrivel and be less than it was. | | |
| ▲ | coredog64 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > If you don't bring more fungible labor into the US, the jobs will be offshored. Offshoring is not always a substitute for an employee chained to the job by a visa. I'm sure you can get a million and one anecdotes here on HN about the perils of working across timezones, cultures, and legal systems. | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you really think that companies are moving out of country because "there's not enough talent", despite having some of the more relaxed tax codes and most talented universities here: well, sure. That would be hopeless. It also sounds like you're buying snake oil. They had decades to off shore, and they chose not to. I don't think Ai in the near term (<15 years) is going to change that dial much. If they do leave, there's plenty of talent to fill the void. | | |
| ▲ | aprilthird2021 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > If you really think that companies are moving out of country because "there's not enough talent", despite having some of the more relaxed tax codes and most talented universities here The US has a huge delta between its great universities and its mediocre ones. There are some smart and sharp kids everywhere in even the lowest ranked schools. But altogether the amount of people who can pass a code screen in the US is pretty low. If you ever interviewed people for a software position in a big tech firm, you'd realize this. | | |
| ▲ | SJC_Hacker 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >The US has a huge delta between its great universities and its mediocre ones. There are some smart and sharp kids everywhere in even the lowest ranked schools. But altogether the amount of people who can pass a code screen in the US is pretty low. If you ever interviewed people for a software position in a big tech firm, you'd realize this. I'm convinced that the code screen functions as a somewhat arbitrary filter/badge of honor. FAANG and equivalents get tens of thousands of applicants and they cannot hire them all If too many pass the code screen, they will just make it harder, even though the job hasn't gotten any more difficult. Or they get failed at system design. Which is BS in many cases. | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >The US has a huge delta between its great universities and its mediocre ones. Like any other country, yes. >But altogether the amount of people who can pass a code screen in the US is pretty low. If you ever interviewed people for a software position in a big tech firm, you'd realize this. Compared to India? Or is it fine to lower standards of quality when you are paying an 8th of the cost and it turns out most people don't need to be from MIT to contribute? That's perfectly fine and dandy. But that's not what H1Bs are for. |
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| ▲ | dzonga 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > We need to move the cheaper labor here Very smart & pragmatic. however political sentiment is going the other way - which is an own goal |
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| ▲ | Analemma_ 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You could use this exact argument to say nobody should ever have children-- children also raise inflation, home prices, etc. And the majority of your property taxes go specifically towards programs which would be unneeded if nobody had any children. The fact that naive anti-immigration arguments can be copy-pasted unchanged into arguments against having children is a sign that maybe those arguments are stupid. To understand why, you might start with the fact that immigrants also purchase goods and services, and hence pay the salaries of the ~70% of people in this country employed in some way or another by consumer spending. | | |
| ▲ | mc32 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Children are future taxpayers the majority with parents who were not a tax burden --net positive tax contribution. People without Children benefit from the taxes paid by the children of people who rear children -i.e. people without children aren't "cashing out" their tax contributed retirement --that contribution went to other retirees. | | |
| ▲ | 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | repstosb 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And citizens benefit from the taxes paid by non-citizen immigrants, whether documented or undocumented. Not just income and payroll taxes that might be dodged by under-the-table arrangements, but sales taxes, property taxes (perhaps paid indirectly via rent to a taxpaying landlord), the consumer share (nearly 100%) of tariffs, etc. And much of that tax base is spent on benefits and services that are not accessible to taxpaying non-citizens. So from that standpoint, immigrants are a /better/ economic deal for the public than children are. At the end of the day, though, it shouldn't matter where people were born if they're contributing to society, and the grandparent post is 100% correct that the whole debate is stupid. | | |
| ▲ | irishcoffee 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sales tax is actually paid by the vendor, they just pass the cost along. The landlord pays the property tax, they just pass the cost along. It is absolutely impossible for an undocumented alien to meaningfully contribute towards their tax burden in any meaningful way. | | |
| ▲ | int_19h 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Sales tax is actually paid by the vendor, they just pass the cost along. The landlord pays the property tax, they just pass the cost along. This is sophistry. Ultimately the tax is paid by the person that brings their money to the table. | |
| ▲ | lovich 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Oh, in that case no w-2 employee pays income taxes, their employer does. I guess we’re all just mooches on society and only the company owners do anything. | |
| ▲ | betty_staples 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | 15155 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The vast majority of adults and their children will never pay their tax burden proportionately. | | |
| ▲ | irishcoffee 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | How do you figure that? | | |
| ▲ | 15155 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Grade school math. Look at income tax receipts: the top 5% pay >61% of all income taxes. You can try and split hairs with "sales taxes" and "payroll taxes" and try to shimmy things into some anti-capitalist stance ("but the companies benefit from their labor!!!," "renters pay property taxes indirectly!"), but the overwhelming majority of all tax payments come from a small percentage of individuals. |
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| ▲ | milch 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Immigrants pay social security taxes, unemployment taxes, ... that they also will never be able to benefit from. Those are purely for the benefit of US citizens | | |
| ▲ | Saline9515 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It depends if the immigrant is hired because the native worker is deemed too expensive. In this case, it contributes to reducing contributions through wage suppression. | | |
| ▲ | milch 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you have access to data that shows big tech is preferentially hiring visa holders over US citizens you should get on that class action lawsuit right away. That's probably hundreds of thousands or even millions per person in lost wages, and even after lawyers take their 30% cut, that's still a sizable chunk. |
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| ▲ | mc32 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There is a good case for vetted legal immigration (there is need and they fill that unmet need), no question; however, that should not be at the expense of the local population, regardless of country. In other words, the locals should not suffer a depressed job market because of immigration. The whole reason for a state to exist is to first and foremost look after the wellbeing of its citizens that elect the bodies of government. | | |
| ▲ | milch 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure where you're getting that from in my comment. I never said US citizens should want H1Bs for everyone with zero vetting, only that they are a net tax positive. It's not a dichotomy of maintaining the status quo or getting rid of H1b completely. At least in big tech companies, they do follow labor market tests and prevailing wage tests and so on that are designed to vet that there is an unmet need and that visa holders aren't underpaid. I won't deny there are visa mills and consultancies that game the system and pretty much explicitly just hire cheap foreign labor, but this is a thread about H1B in the context of Amazon layoffs, not InfoSys layoffs. |
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| ▲ | learingsci 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | GDP matters very little when I’m homeless. | | |
| ▲ | aprilthird2021 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you're homeless due to losing your job, then you'll be homeless whether your job goes overseas or to someone else in the US. At least in the latter scenario the job is still here for you to get back one day |
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| ▲ | johnnyanmac 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I want the loopholes on H1Bs to be closed. H1B is a great concept to get foreign talent that found domestically. But these days is a shell game that's turned into a way to put shackles on employees who can't job hop. It hurts both groups in the long run. | | |
| ▲ | FilosofumRex 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > want the loopholes on H1Bs to be closed. H1B is a great concept... There are no loopholes on H1B, it's working exactly as it was intended - replace, not just supplement - American workers with cheaper, more obedient tech slave workers dependent of their master-employer for their survival. The talent visa is called O-1 not H1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=envbbUc4LhU | |
| ▲ | dlahoda 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | would job hop allowance help? | | |
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| ▲ | incr_me 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Wait why doesn't India get to have these things, too? | | |
| ▲ | int_19h 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | There's no reason why it shouldn't, but why should American corporations subsidize it? | | |
| ▲ | IncreasePosts 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Because they can hire 5 programmers in India for the cost of 1 in America, and American programmers aren't 5x better than Indian ones ? Amazon is an online shop, not a jobs program. I'm sure they would rather eliminate a position altogether even more than sending it to India. | |
| ▲ | incr_me 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Seems just to me, honestly. |
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| ▲ | Gibbon1 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Shouldn't we all want H1B rather than offshoring? That's my opinion. However there are issues with who's sucking the tit. If you bring in a bunch of people from outside instead of hiring locals that's not a win for the locals. On the other hand whats the difference for someone in San Francisco if Apple hires a guy from India vs New Jersey? Not much. And H1B visa's can be low grade indentured servitude. | | | |
| ▲ | jimbob45 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yep. The negativity around H-1Bs is centered around using them for low/mid-level roles in the pursuit of wage suppression, racial/caste discrimination with hiring managers abusing the system to get their friends in, and the tech industry unnecessarily hogging them when we really need them in niche industries (e.g. nuclear engineering). Trump made the cost change some months ago to address those concerns but I haven’t seen any studies showing whether or not those changes had a positive effect or not. | |
| ▲ | KerrAvon 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We should want open borders. Immigration is a significant net positive. But we can settle for controlled immigration with liberal limits. H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test. | | |
| ▲ | jandrese 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > H1-B is stupid on its face. You're seriously telling me that this software engineering job absolutely cannot be filled by an American? That doesn't pass the laugh test. The job description is a senior full stack product developer fluent in all programming languages and frameworks. Salary is $70,000/year. Somehow they can never find Americans to fill those jobs. They'll go on Linkedin complaining that Americans are too lazy and don't have the right hustle culture and talk about made up concepts like work life balance when the bosses demand 100 hour work weeks without overtime pay. | | |
| ▲ | draygonia 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That seems low. Is it a corporate strategy to set a low salary and when nobody local fills it (because it's below the competitive rate) they get to hire H1-B? | | |
| ▲ | milch 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No, because H1B has pay requirements. As someone who went through the process with Amazon I can confirm that they definitely do offer you a salary that is in line with the local market. There might be lower incentive for raises down the line, but that's a conspiracy theory at best | |
| ▲ | breakpointalpha 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes. | |
| ▲ | esseph 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's the commonly used method for more than a decade, yes. |
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| ▲ | pc86 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Link the job description because I don't believe this is real. | |
| ▲ | cyberax 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Salary is $70,000/year The lowest allowed limit for such a job is around $140k in areas like Seattle. | | |
| ▲ | ThePowerOfFuet 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Allowed by whom? | | |
| ▲ | cyberax 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | By law. H1b requires the wages to be greater than the prevailing wage for similar positions in the region. They are published by DoL: https://flag.dol.gov/wage-data/wage-search For this kind of experience, you'd be looking for level 2 _minimum_ and likely level 3. For King County in WA it's right now $149240 and $180710 respectively. Level 4 wage is $212202, btw. |
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| ▲ | echelon 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Our competitors in another country will have no problem building those products. Then they'll be sold in America to American consumers. Then our industry deflates, because we can't compete on cost or labor scale / innovation. If we put up tariffs, we get a short respite. But now our goods don't sell as well overseas in the face of competition. Our industries still shrink. Eventually they become domestically uncompetitive. So then what? You preserved some wages for 20 years at the cost of killing the future. I think all of these conversations are especially pertinent because AI will provide activation energy to accelerate this migration. Now is not the time to encourage offshoring. | | |
| ▲ | bluecheese452 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If my job is shipped to India today why would I care that twenty years later the boss is Indian instead of American? | | |
| ▲ | echelon 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > If my job is shipped to India today Immigration isn't "shipping the job to India". It's bringing the labor here and contributing to our economy. This might have a suppressive force on wages, but it lifts the overall economy and creates more opportunity and demand. Offshoring is permanent loss. It causes whatever jobs and industry are still here to atrophy and die. The overall economy weakens. Your outlook in retirement will be bleaker. If you have to pick between the two, it's obvious which one to pick. | | |
| ▲ | thewebguyd 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > This might have a suppressive force on wages And that's the general problem. People don't care about the overall economy when wages are going down and cost of living is going up. Even myself, I couldn't care less about the overall health of the economy. I care about being able to subsist mine and my family's life style, put food on the table, someday own a home, not live paycheck to paycheck because all the jobs are paying below a living wage, etc. I'm extremely fortunate to make the salary that I do, but I know plenty of others not so fortunate, in other fields that don't pay nearly as well as tech does, and probably never will. The answer can't be "go into tech" nor should it be "let's suppress wages so labor isn't so expensive for our domestic companies." And obviously offshoring isn't great either. We can still import talent without suppressing wages, by not abusing the program and actually only importing for roles that truly, beyond all reasonable doubt, could not be filled by a domestic worker. | |
| ▲ | Saline9515 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Usually the next step of this failed discourse is to explain that locals are so entitled that they don't want to do hard jobs for the minimum wage, due to decades of wage suppression done thanks to immigration. In France, being a cook used to pay very well, now that most cooks in Paris are from India or Sri Lanka, often without a proper visa or at the minimum wage, no local wants to do this anymore (working conditions are awful). The industry then whines loudly about "the lack of qualified (cheap) workers" |
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| ▲ | jandrese 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Turns out this is a difficult problem with no one good solution. Subjecting labor to a race to the bottom is probably the most efficient individual system from a capitalist standpoint, but it destroys itself just as much as your customers can no longer afford to buy most of the products made. The selfish strategy ruins the entire system if everybody does it. Capitalism and Communism have opposite problems. Communism attempts to manage the markets from a top down approach, making it relatively easy to handle systemic problems but almost impossible to optimize for efficiency because there is far too much information that doesn't make it to the top. Capitalism by contrast pushes the decisions down to where the information is, allowing for excellent efficiency but leaving it blind to systemic problems. So the best solution is some kind of meet in the middle approach that is complex and ugly and fosters continual arguments over where lines should be drawn. | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Innovation is why american salaries in tech are so high. They funded trillion dollar companies. If that becomes so much of a commodity that some other countries can do it for pennies on the dime, then yes. Salaries will deflate. But we sure aren't offshoring (nor using most H1bs) to see more innovation. Quite the opposite. Tech isn't manufacturing where the biggest supply line wins by default. That's why I'm not holding my breath that the US isn't going to be outcompeted on talent anytime soon. Of anything, its own greed will consume it. |
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| ▲ | pc86 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You say "we should want open borders" then argue for something that is objectively not open borders. "Open borders" and "controlled immigration" are diametrically opposed things, regardless of whatever liberal limits you're imagining. Almost nobody is arguing for zero immigration. |
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| ▲ | belter 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Many Software Engineers gone. At L6 and L7 level. Details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/ |
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