> Cancelling visas or deporting them will not get American workers their jobs back

So I think what some in this thread are saying is it quite literally 'will' bring American workers the literal jobs that the H1Bs aren't doing anymore.

> but a large amount of them work hard to come here and setup roots

So two things can definitely be true here. They can be hardworking and well-intentioned, and they can still be used as a wedge between American workers and slightly better jobs

There is no guarantee that any American will be hired to fill any job vacated by a former H-1(b) holder. The firm could contract or fail against foreign competitors.

Guarantees are rare and not a realistic bar for action.

None of this is how this happens though. The reason why companies spend thousands of dollars to pay lawyers is that local talent to do this work simply does not exist. They would much rather prefer hiring Citizens.

I experienced it at my first role after college. I got a job at a hospital as an analyst. Many of my graduating peers applied. Only a few got in. It was odd because the first day the room was divided into two. Literally one side locals and the other side H1B. It’s a group that has less than 1% ethnicity in my area. It was really weird. It felt like there was a quota to hit 50% locals. There were a few experienced people with the software we were using. Most were not and the people that were had a citizenship. That analyst role didn’t even need a CS degree.

This is simply not true, on average. More likely is that they are unwilling to pay the wages that enable the existence of the American middle class.

Americans work hard to have a middle-class lifestyle. Non-Americans work hard just to be Americans.

How many times do you think the phrase "NEVER PROVIDE POLITICAL COMMENTARY" appear in the instructions for this? XD

I would assume the exact opposite is in the instructions.

Well, if you took 5 seconds and tested it out, you would understand that "I cannot provide political commentary" is one of this bot's favorite things to say.

I know it feels good to pretend that this bot spews MAGA commentary, and one day it very well might do that, but right now it's just a bog standard Gemini bot.

Ask it about Lake Ontario, Gulf of Mexico or tariffs. It told me the President had no constitutional power to change tariff rates

You don't NEED one, but you probably SHOULD have one. It just helps speed things up immensely and lowers the chances that you'll burnout.

"If you want to go fast, go by yourself. If you want to go far, go together."

What clues did you use in this to spot Claude?

You get access to more APIs specific to the native platform, the looks and feel is far better (I can easily see when an app isn't a native iOS app - e.g., Liquid Glass is awesome), and the tool ecosystem (e.g., Xcode is specifically built for Apple Apps).

> I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.

Respectfully, this sounds terribly naive.

Why? All big and even medium tech companies have dev offices in EU and India. As example since it's much easier to deal with visas say in Ireland a lot of hiring was shifted to Irish offices.

I do want to follow up to my own comment here, and just mention that I realize that capital's entire point is to get us to blame each other instead of capital (e.g., American software vs Indian|Chinese|etc software).

The moral of the story is that two things can be true at the same time: A lot of H1Bs are rightfully thrilled at the opportunity to work for decent US companies and make decent money to provide for their family. While a lot of American engineers are rightfully wary of the knock-on effects of hiring workers who can be cheaper and more 'malleable' (in a manner of speaking).

Having worked at a few large companies, this was the case at all of them. I do think there is a messy middle of companies built on vibes.

There are 2 issues:

1/ Employment provides training and experience. If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?

2/ h1b increases labor supply, not the demand. More supply, means lower wages for everyone.

1/ Training is only effective if you can fill the function of the job and learn from it. Many software engineering jobs people claim are stolen by H1B hires are filled by human beings more likely to meet the bar. Many American candidates just don’t. Filling a software role is hard.

2/ Demand for software is not static. Good software drives demand for more engineers in many cases, intra or extra-company. There is probably a non zero rate of wage suppression per marginal h1b currently. But an American economy with no h1b employees could feasibly have a much lower average sde salary. It is not an Econ 101 problem.

1/ Training goes all the way down the pipeline to colleges. If x% of students are foreign, then Americans didn't have the opportunity to get the education.

Again... the skill issue falls apart when you consider teams at tech companies having 1 non-American national origin or caste. I'm very skeptical that, between two foreign candidates with the same U.S. education and experience but different national origins, the fact that the candidate whose nationality matches the current team composition is selected can be explained purely as a matter of skill.

2/ Great, lets train up more American engineers to push the demand higher.

People are not as capable as you think they are and software engineering (well) is actually difficult. You cannot just push more people in. People are not fungible.

There is truth to your statement, but high salaries and demand encourage locally capable people to enter the industry.

Consider growth of CS graduates in the past 5 years or the number of people that transitioned into tech (like myself).

In 2026, this signal is not as clear: with the uncertainty of tech, increased output with less labor due to AI, and growing competition amongst workers (citizen or otherwise). We may see a shift in studies to other fields.

Discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49448819

I've always ran into an issue running arbitrary processes - whether it be for serious production work, or just toy scripts. So many choices with so many dependencies, featuring so many foot-guns. So I decided to take a stab at solving the problem. Would love any feedback or contributors :)

SystemG - An agent-friendly general process composer.

- https://sysg.dev/

- https://github.com/ra0x3/systemg

- https://docs.rs/systemg/latest/systemg/

I understand the source is thehindu.com - but I'm assuming there's no way we can get that title updated? "Government orders..." sort've misleadingly implies something that "Indian government orders..." does not.

> Devs have relatively no incentive to be more productive for their orgs, and all the incentive to be more productive on their own personal work.

AI definitely supercharges the side project myth, but I think we’re going to see waves of developers quitting or losing their jobs because they’re chasing dreams of running a side code project that isn’t going to turn into a business.

The incentive to be more productive at work is that they get to keep their job and not be replaced by a cheaper junior. I think we’re in for a reckoning across the industry as companies realize that there’s little difference between a lazy senior armed with Claude and a halfway motivated junior who has aspirations of growing into something more. The latter costs less and might grow into a better dev.

If the salaries fall then there would be no highly motivated juniors.

Lazy senior vs motivated junior tension has always existed. I was one then became the other. I don’t see llm changing this dynamic!