Elon Musk followers turn on him after he backs importing 'super talented engineers'
Elon Musk followers turn on him after he backs importing 'super talented engineers'
Some of his own followers expressed displeasure at X owner Elon Musk on Christmas after he signaled support for importing more "super talented engineers" from overseas.On Wednesday afternoon, Musk responded to a post on X about a purported dearth of American-born engineering talent in Silicon Valley...
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 doesn't want a championship sports team, he wants a cheap, desperate, obedient source of labour.
Yeah, he just wants more pliant and subservient H1B visa holders that he can pay less than he'd have to offer to an American, who will be deported after 2 months if they don't work hard enough to satisfy him.
Oh. Right.
By 'deported', I guess we're now talking about 'rounded up into mass concentration camps.'
I had a friend back a few years ago who was an H1B and it's fucking exploitive. They made him work off his visa. And since his visa is tied to his job he couldn't leave it. The place was toxic af.
The company was very much abusing H1B visas but unless someone at the company spoke up, it's just business.
By 'deported', I guess we're now talking about '
rounded up into mass concentration campsbeing administratively relocated to alternative living accommodations.https://insideevs.com/news/718815/production-teams-will-be-overburdened-tesla-employee/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/politics/twitter-layoffs-visas-h1b/index.html
We've seen Musk use this before, after all.
shortage of engineers? are you kidding me?
I know of two first degree of separation SWEs who can't land jobs. One worked at microsoft for like a decade.
FTFA:
Other followers accused Musk of simply not wanting to pay top talent what it's worth.
Bingo, got it in one. They don't want to pay american talent american wages, they want to pay all talent 3rd world country wages while they themselves pocket a 50 billion dollar contract.
He's running out of inexperienced engineers to burn through. He statedv early on that he wanted to create a surplus of engineers to drive down the cost.
That cost being, paying the engineers' salaries.
I work pretty closely with a lot of young engineers. My work brings them in as interns, hires them, but doesn't pay them very well and after 2 years we have new engineers because they've all found better jobs. Saturating the market with talent really hasn't worked out the way he wanted it to, because as it turns out that's nothing new.
So now he's gotta find a new way to pay engineers less.
So now he's gotta find a new way to pay engineers less.
I imagine it would be something like this:
Position: Senior ML Software Developer
Join the XTesla420X family of goal-oriented, success-driven, rockstar AI/Machine Learning engineers who aren't afraid to move fast and break things in the name of automation and mankind's future.With no middle management, you get to be your own boss* and set your own working hours**. The only thing holding to hold you back from greatness is your own potential, and we're ready to help you thrive in a fast-paced environment where the sky the limit and your own mortality is nothing but a temporary setback.
Requirements:
- 10 years industry experience
- No kids
- A 210% work ethic
- Intimacy with a Python
Compensation & Benefits:
- Exposure in lieu of salary
- Office vending machine
- Office cocaine (unavailable for remote workers)
- Optional unpaid vacation days on statuatory holidays
* reporting directly to Elon Mouske
** minimum 80 per weekSo now he’s gotta find a new way to pay engineers less.
Well, except scams like the H1B is a pretty old way of setting that up...
It's a common trick used in American Hiring Practices, knowingly set an impossible standard for hiring. Turn around and say "We can't fill this position with candidates in the US, here's the list of people we rejected. Can we get approved for hiring visas?"
And The Government falls for that bullshit guaranteed... after some donations to the Super PAC of course.
There are obviously easily exploited loopholes to enable H1B visas especially for a couple of businesses that hire the most H1Bs.
As long as most countries in this world have median wages well below 33% of the US there will be rampant outsourcing / under the table labor / vastly lower comp H1B roles.
If you truly try to minimize your cost of living the cost to live in the US is surprisingly cheap. Most shit we buy is optional. Rice and beans are cheap, you can find people giving away clothes, transportation can be very cheap and a simple pay as you go phone can be very cheap and be your access to the internet and is fully functional. You can make enough with a job that just pays minimum wage to send enough money home and feed an entire family without yourself worrying about being homeless or going without food.
Immigrants tend to try harder and put up with more bullshit than natives because things are that much better here than back home. Hell, we have food pantries! That's basically unheard of in most of the world. Billions still struggle to put food on the table outside of the US and western europe. I relied on food pantries as a kid to survive in poverty. My wife is from a third world country and couldn't believe people would just give food to those in need freely.
I'm not here to bash on immigrants, i'm just pointing out that even the poor in the US generally have more privilege than they could possibly realize. The vast excess of the top 10% in the US is crazy, and the .1% here are so egregiously overcompensated it should probably be criminal.
They don't want to pay american talent american wages, they want to pay all talent 3rd world country wages while they themselves pocket a 50 billion dollar contract.
This is usually what tech bro ‘innovation’ boils down to.
I know a guy who's basically the Goku of computer networking. Listing his accomplishments would doxx him. It took him months to find an escape route out from where he was at.
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.
Why work for a man who expects his workers to work "hardcore" for 80 hours a week without any overtime pay?
Sounds like exploitation to me.
They like the taste of boot, that's why they're Muskrats.
Well to answer @Gork@lemm.ee’s hypothetical - someone who hates Elon might run a simple cost benefit and still decide two brutal years of making no money is worth having a big T(esla)/SpaceX on their résumé.
Which is unfortunate because it would be good to see a revolt that led to a kinder leader of those companies.
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.
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 broligarchs have always loved the H-1B fraud.
The future of the US
Why don't you make the education system here in the US better first.
LOL who the fuck am I kidding.
FTFA:
Another Musk follower said that he should "open a school" to better train Americans, and then added, "We have brains."
"If you need a school, you’ve lost already," Musk replied.
You need a school? Get back to work peasant.
"Oh God! They're voting in their own interests!!! Burn it down!"
"import" like it's livestock. Strategically avoiding the word "migration", too.
Deport the foreigners taking our jobs except for the ones who directly benefit me.
What. A. Shitstain.
They don't have to lie any more. They only need 4 years.
But I thought we wanted to deport people, not import them.
Please reference this simple chart:
Let's see where the imports are from. I have a feeling those who would accept bottom-tier wages will be the preferred import. I'm not blaming the workers, either. They will be sadly surprised by COL.
Right-Wing bootlickers continue to learn they aren't in the in-crowd they desperately seek to join.
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!
Yeah, rule of law applies to everyone, regardless of what those mouthpieces on the Supreme Court might claim.
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
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.
I just want him to be a little bit stupider. A little bit more to cross over the "mix household chemicals and fucking die" line.
So you want TWO Trumps?!
Well, not in this case. In this case, Musk is absolutely right. Probably what he would actually be if he hadn't gone full to the weird dark side.
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!
H1B Visa for me, none for thee
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.
The way to attract talented American engineers is to pay them more, not replace them with ringers. Fucking twat.
There is a material value in never having to wonder if I'm going to be ordered to print out my most salient code contributions to justify my role to the CEO.
When you're THAT BAD people literally will accept being paid less... The gotcha is that they'll accept it in exchange for never having to deal with your idiotic bullshit again by leaving.
The fuck you talking about?! If we do that then profits are less. Jesus Christ, do you even business?!
/s because it’s probably needed
It's because they don't intend to do anything to improve the education around here. That would swing voters away from them.
The education available in the United States is excellent. Just not for everyone. Just like healthcare in the United States. The best healthcare in the world is available here, just not to everyone. Because of money. For those with access to it, the amount they pay for it translates into higher wage requirements.
Due to socialized education in other countries (and more robust and generally available high-quality public education), particularly in developing democracies, the average starting wage for similar talent is much lower abroad.
Musk would never consider an employee who didn’t go to Stanford or Harvard or MIT or a similarly well accredited engineering school. He also wouldn’t consider those candidates because they would have much higher wage requirements which he conflicts with “laziness“. If the richest man on earth ever were actually willing to pay a living wage to Americans, he would still have the top talent he could get elsewhere. But, as a Self interested business person, he only cares about what’s cheaper. Therefore, he integrates anything that isn’t his primary choice in order to make his immoral business decisions appear more ethical. Or at least reasonable.
When it really translates to his: “I would hire American talent, but they feel they deserve to be paid better than what I’m willing to pay anyone other than myself.”
The education available in the US is also at its most expensive for overseas students, who are desperately courted by universities for a massive cash influx (source: am post-academic who witnessed this untold times). Wealthy families send their kids over at ungodly tuition rates, the students go back home and have the prestige of a US degree, which matches them up with high-paying jobs and ensures that the family’s wealth cycle continues.
A snag: the universities make so much money off these students, that if the student is struggling or not meeting a requirement somewhere, they’ll get waved through regardless with obviously bad results. The money is the point. I suspect if Elon did start importing people for lower costs, he’d get a lot of these students: they’re not hacking it back home but have a US degree from solid R1/R2s, come with a nice letter from their parents’ company, and are willing to be low-paid yes-people in order to cover their asses. Gambit? Masterful. Dick? Fully in car door. Car door? Expertly slammed.
Do I really need to login just to view a comment?
why, would you rather have a less shitty internet?
For that comment, yes. It appears that the author has limited it to signed-in users only. This is one way to ensure that the Bluesky moderation tools are applied to everyone who might view / screenshot / interact with the post in question.
So a bullshit excuse
Is there a Nitter for Bluesky yet? [googles]
Not sure which comment you wanted...
Globalism for me but not for thee
How are you going to get super talented engineers when you’re gutting everything good in America.
The goal is to lower US labor costs to below European ones and more akin to the typical 50k/year indentured servitude india H1B worker salary.
Average European labour costs tend to match the average US costs because of taxes and government services paid for from taxes being different.
On the one hand, I barely get six figures in EUR as a mid-senior engineer. On the other, my rent is capped at below 20% of my take home for a large penthouse, my insurance is 140 EUR and valid everywhere across Europe, no extra costs, dental included. If I get fired, I get years of unemployment. Years.
You look outside of the US and import them
I thought AI meant we didn't need all these tech workers? /s
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.
christ it should be a rule to never post links to sites that require accounts or logins when sharing information about a discussion without also providing screenshots or a non-account mirror.
Not sure if there is something better....
"Immigrants for me, and go... fuck... yourself."
- Elon basically
Huh no way, the oligarch is going to make things worse for people in the country where he's an oligarch?
Shooketh
I'll believe any negative Elon news when it starts to actually hurt his pocketbook or well-being or life.
Until then I am apt to just consider it clickbait.
I dream of the day he's held accountable for something in a major way, but like my desire for that for Trump, I just have my doubts.
I figured it was more a ploy to knock him down a rung or two after his successful election by his assistant president.
Yeah, when you import your slaves you can pay them less and they're more subservient because they don't want to be deported. It also drives down the wages for US citizens that perform the same jobs. News flash, there are plenty of good software engineers in America. They just aren't going to work 60 hours a week for 60k a year while the company they work for posts billions in profit each year.
If you need my skill and time to make a million dollars, I better be getting at least 15-20% of that profit. Employers can obviously afford to pay it if they can give a CEO that barely does shit 250 mil plus stock options
Software engineers can devise lots of interesting ways to depose. He’s gonna radicalize the smart people.
LOL - surely the billionaire is going to be concerned about the plight of the American worker!?
The same guy that bought, then gutted, Xitter? Demanded people send him CODE for him to REVIEW?
I have some bad news for self-styled "Libertarians" that are also engineers...
What is so incredible is that the education system in the US is so fucked that so so so so SO many high skill, high education jobs need to be brought in from overseas. Meanwhile Elon just wants to fuck over the education system in the US even more.
The reason why he wants to bring in foreign labor is, in all likelihood, to make his employees more easily controlled. Expats are less likely to raise a fuss about their living conditions and may not have much of a connection to the political movements around them to take part in protests. Also if those employees have their visa's dependent entirely on the whims of their employer, if they DO get uppity in any way, they can face almost immediate deportation upon being fired.
In short, he does not give a fuck about Americans. It is 100% about control and exploitation.
And what happens to us who were born here? Where are we supposed to go when all the jobs that we could fill are being taken by H1Bs and Optimus robots?
We are all meant to go fuck ourselves.
And what happens to us who were born here? Where are we supposed to go when all the jobs that we could fill are being taken by H1Bs and Optimus robots?
these immigrants are not taking the jobs that most Americans work. high-skilled Indians and Chinese are filling shortages in engineering, doctors, etc. vast majority of Americans are not competing with these groups
Immigrants. Expats is a classist term.
It's the immigrants taking your jerbs.....no wait not those.
That sweet, sweet H1B visa slavery
My job tried to strong arm a bunch of Indian engineers into going home with massive paycuts. They all found jobs in India paying more than what work was offering but let work pay their moving expenses back home before quitting. I'm super proud of those guys.
Glad to hear it. I've seen so many H1Bs yanked around by corps over the years, and for the most part, they get rolled.
Awesome, workers outside the U.S. should get fair wages
Is there a shortage?
Or are you only looking at Bay Area hires because I see a great number of good and bad engineers in Midwest and eastern parts of the USA.
Yes there is a shortage, a shortage of workers who are unable to say no without being threatened with deportation and compensated with far lower non-competitive wages.
The industry is flooded with American workers though
There is becoming more and more of a shortage of good engineers who want to work for companies associated with him I am sure. All they have to do is read about his business practices.
He believes in overworking, underpaying, and is anti-unions because he knows they would fight against the wages, policies, and work practices he wants to force against people.
Elon Musk is anti-workers. And thus, since workers are the fabric of this nation.... Elon Musk is anti-america.
I seriously doubt there is a shortage anywhere in the U.S.
I'll break the flow of shitting on Elon (a hobby of mine, but it gets old) and say yes, we have a large number of engineers. Yes, a lot of them suck real hard. Good ones are often promoted to the level of their incompetence, others are just well-polished incompetents who know how to talk the talk. So...yes, there is a shortage. However adding more to the pool won't fix the bad hiring and promotion practices in the industry.
Also, doesn't really matter if there's a bunch in the Midwest if you can't convince any of your existing staff to uproot to some racist pro-trump place with extreme temperatures (assuming you want some level of in person interaction). Texas is only palatable because the place they're moving is Austin which is....not quite as racist. And tech bros have never had a reputation for being pro women which of course Texas is not.
CEOs man...
Rules for me not for thee does not work this way buddy.
Can we ask Musk to volunteer to become the world's first recorded instance of a Mellified Man? Then science can determine if it's truly a medical marvel or not. He'll be the only one to have done it! I think his ego might go for that.
Plus it'll be sweeter when we eat him. Candied CEO sounds kinda good.
Finally, you could sincerely call him a sweet man
I know most people will write this off as him being an idiot, but I believe he's doing this to distract from his involvement with the government. It's all theater to distract us from what he and the politicians he's heavily involved with are actually doing. Add in his involvement in the tech trade, and it's actually really disturbing what he may be doing.
When I voted for the leopards ate my face party I didn't think that the leopards would eat their own faces ;)
Elon wamts to destroy education in the US so this is to compensate for that move.
It's crazy that these politicians can just make wild claims without providing a shred of evidence. The just get to "dismiss."
Stop that, please.
Musk is not a politician.
Do not normalize this by even referring to him as such. He has never held elected office.
He's an oligarch interfering in politics. That makes him a politician, as well as an asshole.
The guy is absolutely an unelected politician. He's Trump's puppeteer and will be using his money to get what he wants.
He's more than qualified. All you need to be a politician in America is capital. The actual law is typically sidestepped in favor of monetary gain. How is this any different than our usual goings-on? This is the most American thing that's happened in years.
You're still pretending the law and constitution mean a damn thing in practice. They're gonna roll it up and smoke it next year.
Musk is not a politician.
So, why is he the one giving orders to Veep Donold?
In yet another chapter of the the bourgeoisie propping up fascists, thinking they can control them, only to lose the control immediately...
He's right though. One of the reasons the US is so technologically dominant is because of the brain drain. Of course there are also employers and employees who abuse and try to game the VISA system. That is also true.
I feel like people are talking over each other. The top 0.1% of talent goes to the US because the US has better growth opportunities and better prospects than any other place on earth. It's not just about sourcing talent. It's also about denying competitors that same talent.
Too late now. Going to be stuck with him for a long time.
Yeah he proved that he basically bank rolls many GOP members and without being elected anywhere he was able to pull the shut down stunt. He is ingrained into this campaign no matter what.
I don't know. I think the way he's alienating people, sooner or later he's going to annoy the wrong person and end up finding himself falling out a window.
Just a thought. An observation, not a prediction or a threat.
I was browsing reddit and the liberal side of it from politics to bpt and cscareers and I love how they're getting redpilled on Indians and immigration. It seems they finally care when the jobs are personally affecting them. Liberals in their ivory tower are finally getting to smell what they sowed.
The left's been saying we should prosecute the employers exploiting immigrants rather than the immigrants themselves for... well, ever.
Lol, lmao even. "Immigration" in the US is systemic exploitation. It wouldn't drag down folks' wages if it wasn't set up with the express purpose of creating an underclass of labor. We would all be much better off under an official open border policy.
You hate immigrants because you're a racist
They hate H1B immigration because it allows people like Elon to freely set up sweatshops of smart immigrants who have built a home in this country and now have their chance to keep living in that home tied to the random whims of a billionaire.
Not the same.
The H1B system in concept is great but it's ripe for abuse by men like Elon. One I'm aware of is that paperwork is way behind on the gov side and it's kind of a lottery (will our coworker be here in the fall? Let's spin the wheel!). Another is that larger companies can from what I understand put in a request for many more spots than they need and since it's a lottery be fairly confident they'll get the spots they really wanted, while small companies have to suffer at the whims of chance. And I'm no expert on this but I'd say another key area that sucks is its just a bizarre design by committee system. As Americans we want to steal other countries best and brightest and H1B is like a DMV version of that goal.
This is one of the news sites that supplies echo chamber content. Like with the 2024 election.
Cry harder
I better statement would be Eye roll harder.
