> Federal data shows the tech giant filed for over 3,000 foreign worker visas as it cuts thousands of American jobs.
Just trying to understand what context you feel is relevant here...
Even if Oracle is also firing people in India the idea that no American can do these jobs in the US should be challenged.
Let's assume they do need extremely specialised skills for these roles and are struggling to find those skills in a highly educated country like the US so need to look for employees in countries like India, the question you should then be asking is, well, if they couldn't hire from abroad what would they do instead?
Perhaps they would need to give someone who recently graduated a chance? Perhaps they would try to train people working in adjacent fields at Oracle? Maybe they would increase the salary so American's with these skills employed elsewhere would switch jobs?
So can you steal-man why I should be in favour of companies hiring abroad given there are clearly smart and educated people in the US who are looking for work or might be tempted to work for Oracle if they offered better salaries or training?
Can you explain the advantage to the US workers in allowing this?
As someone who largely worked at startups and smaller companies before joining the NHS it genuinely confused me how no one would ever say no to anything when I first started working there.
The projects I worked on were genuinely absurd... My team alone spent millions on things that literally wouldn't have made any difference to the quality of healthcare in the UK.
Apparently we were given a budget and we had to find a way to spend it otherwise it would be cut. At any normal company we should have all immediately have been made redundant.
It's refreshing to to see something intentionally uncurated.
I think "low quality" content has it's place. A lot of my favourite blogs back in the day could be considered "low quality", but for whatever reason I liked them and read their stuff... Same was true of my own blog. It wasn't particularly high quality but back then even a lowish quality blog would still occasionally be surfaced on Google if the right key words were searched for.
I miss this about modern YouTube too... I used to love watching content from small creators even if their content was "lower quality", but it's so hard to discover that type of content today.
Everywhere you go there is an algorithm pushing you towards larger and more professional creators. And that can be fine, but it's nice to have some balance.
"quality" is something you care about if you want to virtue signal your professional or intellectual capability, usually as part of a monetization scheme. Hacker News cares so much about quality because this forum is attached to a billion dollar startup incubator, and for many people here their persona is business. Posting on substack is business for most people. Posting on medium is business for most people. "Quality" is just another kind of influencer culture.
Writing blogs shouldn't be about marketing and reading blogs shouldn't be about maximizing information density. The vast vast majority of blogs on the old web that everyone yearns to return to weren't "high quality." You were just writing about whatever, likely in a style that would get you downvoted on HN for being insufficiently substantive, and if you were lucky someone else might read it.
I wouldn't even call it "low quality" so much as "non-commercial."
Not really. Lots of companies are cutting traditional SWE roles though...
I think there are roles available for other types of skill-sets, For example, "Product Engineer" seems to be the new full-stack. Now anyone with some technical background can vibe code anything in a few hours companies are starting to merge product and engineering into one, cutting those who can't or are unwilling to do both.
There's also some demand for skilled AI Engineers.
Anyone whose just a frontend or backend guy is going likely going to really struggle to find anything in this new world. I'd consider trying to rebrand your skills a little and seeing if you have any luck.
I've been saying this since late 2022 at this point, but people need to assume this is their last SWE job. You might still be able to find work in tech, but you'll struggle to find traditional SWE jobs going forward.
Also, being unemployed for 6+ months is stupid unless you genuinely don't need the money. You're better off just taking a job for 50-60% of your previous salary if you're going to be out of work for the majority of the year.
Some people have the right message but the wrong timing (i.e. too early). And for some people this could already be true.
I'm already assuming I have maybe one more job change in me as a software engineer and then it might be extremely difficult to find any future jobs in the field.
Especially considering I'm old enough that at least some companies were likely going to be discriminating against me because of my age.
Doubly so now that they probably assume I'm too old or set in my ways to handle the shift to coding with A.I. agents, which isn't the case.
Well, notions of speed are a little tricky for spaceships, but yeah, Artemis's top speed is going to be right when it starts reentry: about 25,000 MPH.
Hasn't Germany and the UK been investing in renewables for years now? They must be feeling pretty happy about that decision right now unlike oil obsessed countries like the US.
A quarter of a century ago, the first quarter of 2001, Britain used 39 TWh of coal electrical generation, 36 TWh of gas and 21 TWh of nuclear.
Today we're lot more energy efficient†, and the renewables made more than 25 TWh, but nuclear is now less than 10 TWh, we of course no longer burn coal, which leaves 30 TWh of gas still and we have a lot more imports (because we have a lot more interconnect, which is also a form of energy security)
† For example back then we mostly used incandescent light bulbs! And a lot of people still used CRT televisions back then!
For electricity generation, the UK is currently generating 50% via renewables. It goes up and down each day of course, storage is not a solved problem yet.
Yes, but it is not enough. It helps a lot when sunny, and weekend mid-day gross market prices for electricity hover just above zero, but there's not enough batteries, flexibility, and other renewables to avoid price spikes in the morning and evening peak, when hydro and gas plants are still covering a lot.
That’s because the price is set by the highest marginal producer
Most of the UKs recent renewables are on a fixed price supply basis and when the market prices goes over this the excess is eventually fed back into reducing consumer bills
Ah yes the standard "<excuse>...just be patient, any day now it'll get cheaper" response we've been hearing for years
I'm NOT against renewables. I'm NOT pro fossil fuels. I'm against the dishonesty in the discussion. Stop claiming direct reduction in bills if that's not going to happen [0]
The first step is to understand the UK is more or less a 3rd world country by US standards these days and if you want to find a job you'll need to accept a salary that's likely far below your expectations, and a lifestyle that far, far below your expectations as someone living in the US.
- Cut your salary expectations by half or more.
- Cut your take home pay expectations by 60-70% as the government will take a huge chunk of your income.
- Assume you will struggle to pay rent since 50%+ of your post-tax income will go to rent.
- Assume you'll struggle to heat your home because the UK has the highest energy costs in the world.
- Assume you won't be have access to healthcare unless on your deathbed and you won't be able to afford private because the above.
If you're happy with this lifestyle then you might be able to find a QA engineer job in the UK for £30,000. The job market here is horrendous though. A lot of people I know are looking for other ways to make a living or supplement their income such as by claiming they're disabled.
Sounds like you took programming to learn programming while the others took it for a certificate.
I had similar issues for different reasons at university. Some of the subjects I learnt were extremely boring to me and I just didn't focus on them, while others I obsessed about. I learnt the things I wanted to learn, but didn't get the grade I probably could have if that was what I was optimising for.
Just trying to understand what context you feel is relevant here...
Even if Oracle is also firing people in India the idea that no American can do these jobs in the US should be challenged.
Let's assume they do need extremely specialised skills for these roles and are struggling to find those skills in a highly educated country like the US so need to look for employees in countries like India, the question you should then be asking is, well, if they couldn't hire from abroad what would they do instead?
Perhaps they would need to give someone who recently graduated a chance? Perhaps they would try to train people working in adjacent fields at Oracle? Maybe they would increase the salary so American's with these skills employed elsewhere would switch jobs?
So can you steal-man why I should be in favour of companies hiring abroad given there are clearly smart and educated people in the US who are looking for work or might be tempted to work for Oracle if they offered better salaries or training?
Can you explain the advantage to the US workers in allowing this?
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