First, H1B workers have been getting abused for over a decade. Every email I get from job shops is from someone with an Indian name and when I talk to them, it’s really hard to understand them for their thick accents. The Indian companies have pretty much taken over job placement in America, in large part because from what I’ve heard, people pool their money to send someone over here to set up a business. All it takes (!) is $250k deposited into an on-shore American bank, a type of visa issued to people who say they’re here to start a new business with said funds and who promise to hire at least 5 (or so?) employees. The thing is, there are no restrictions on who they hire! So what they do is use this as a way to funnel people from their little group back home over to America. They set them up with H1B visas, bring them over here, and work as a job shop to get them into places at whatever rates they can get.
When I talk to these guys, their first question is always, “What’s your rate and availability, Mr. David? No matter what rate I say, they almost always come back and say, “Oh, my, the client is only able to pay $22 or maybe $23 per hour.” This is for a job req looking for for a “Senior Developer” with 10+ years of experience! See, the only thing the Dept of Labor requires them to show is that they were unable to hire any Americans for the position in order to justify hiring a foreigner. DOL never asks WHY. So I think you know you’re working with one of these cheap family-owned groups when they keep low-balling the rate because they need to justify hiring their family members. But the other side is AI. I think every job that relies predominantly on what I’d call “analytical” skills will be mostly replaced by AI. Jobs that involve some amount of physical labor, regardless of how much analytical skills are needed, will take many years to be replaced. Note that 100% of programming is analytical in nature, so this thing we call “programming” is going to disappear pretty quickly. The only reason we do it is because “coding” is an intermediate language we use to get stuff out of our heads and into a form that can be studied and communicated to other humans. Machines can’t make sense of it, so it’s a formal language that can be reduced to binary files that execute tasks represented as lists of CPU instructions. I’ll say it again: programming languages exist for the convenience of HUMAN PROGRAMMERS. Without us in the loop, the “code” is extraneous. AI will go from a high-level description and some interview questions directly to running code that can be tweaked by the person creating the app. Yes, this will eliminate a couple of million jobs by 2030. But it’s going to create HUGE opportunities for a new kind of “creator” class of workers. Frankly, I’m glad I’m retired and don’t have to rely on my programming skills any more. But I’m eager to see what lies ahead. -David Schwartz > On Jul 3, 2025, at 1:13 PM, George Toft via PLUG-discuss > <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote: > > I would like to add... > > 1. From a paper posted at work as required by the Department of Labor. Tata > Consultancy is providing H1B Visa workers to be Database Administrators for > $66K/year. Tata is well known to take 1/3 off the top, so that means H1B > worker gets $44K/year. That's $22/hr. In Phoenix. That is what we - as IT > workers - are competing with. My children with no college education make more > than that. > > 2. Oh, it gets better with AI. I went to an all-day AI conference (it was > actually three days, but it made me physically ill, or maybe it was something > I ate). The presenters demonstrated how Generative AI can be used in social > media posts and on Instagram. The presenter admitted he hadn't made a post in > six months - he had AI generate a video of him talking, lip-synched to his > AI-generated voice, making hand gestures. He also demonstrated live how to > get ChatGPT to make LinkedIn posts that sound like him. And then, he told us > how he was able to avoid hiring an executive assistant by collaborating with > three AI Generalists for two days. So eight labor-days of AI Engineer salary > was expended to avoid the recurring annual cost of a person's job. > > 3. Microsoft laid off 6000 last quarter and announced 3000 more, with AI > stepping into many of the roles. > https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxl0w1w394o > > 4. Even in my own web-hosting, the host switched their live chat to a > chatbot. I had to migrate one of my sites from one type of account to another > about two months ago, and again on another site last week, and needed > guidance both times. In the first migration, a human on the chat helped me. > On the second, it was some Agentic AI. The chatbot was faster than the human > and gave me perfect answers, going so far as to weave in parts of my question > in its answer. It felt like it was straight out of ChatGPT. And that's a > problem - the AI gave me better customer service than the human. > > Regards, > > George Toft > > On 7/2/2025 12:28 AM, David Schwartz via PLUG-discuss wrote: >> I think H1B visas for programmers and engineers should be FROZEN for 5 years. >> >> AI is going to be transforming both the programming world and many >> engineering roles. As a result, I believe there are going to be more >> software people dumped on the market over the next 5 years than we had after >> Y2k. >> >> Unfortunately, most of these folks are going to be US Citizens rather than >> H1B visa holders, for reasons I alluded to earlier. >> >> Congress should block all further H1B hires and demand companies spend that >> money on retraining their existing US workers rather than dump them into a >> rapidly shrinking job market and replacing them with foreigners. >> >> Unfortunately, most of the 25 wealthiest billionaires in America also happen >> to run companies that have huge staffs of software and hardware engineers. >> So given the current political climate, what’s the likelihood that there >> will be any significant change in current policies? >> >> -David Schwartz >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list: PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
