I work for a US based company from the UK. I'd be quite reluctant mostly for the hassle factor - international travel is a pain, now I have a family I don't want anything other than a super easy trip when travelling for work, I don't usually have to travel, so if it's going to be a nightmare I'd rather not go. I've heard of colleagues having to take burner phones to China and stuff in the past and noped out of that, and it feels like it's not far off that for the US these days, so while I quite like the US in general it does put me off enormously.
On another note, we're having our next international team get together in Canada rather than SF. Make of that what you will.
The amount of unnecessary travel these large corporations do is insane. All of it subsidized by taxpayers as well just to pollute and destroy the environment for imaginary profits that inflate away within 5 years.
Well folks, there you have it, @onebigtime is the ultimate decider on what "unnecessary travel" is :).
On a serious note, being able to go face to face is sometimes a huge win, and can really help hammer through sticky problems, to the point where companies that are downright cheapskates on expenses still see enough value to justify paying for travel. I promise you, if it was really unnecessary, they wouldn't spend a dime they didn't need to.
It's more that half my team is 9 hour time difference from me. When we meet up we can get a lot of discussions done without anyone having to work insane hours.
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It’s an inevitable outcome of the hostile and unpredictable enforcement of rules that can change whenever trump has a bad day
The only constant is that things are always changing, and getting more hostile for foreigners. It's disingenuous to blame Trump when this is what U.S. voters chose.
> disingenuous to blame Trump when this is what U.S. voters chose
Trump legitimately campaigned on being cruel to illegal migrants and refugees. He also campaigned on reducing immigration in general. To that extent, you are correct inasmuch as Trump's H1-B policies were promised. (MAGA wasn't subtle [1].)
Where I think we can legitimately say this is MAGA versus Republicans is in the reverse brain drain. America in the 1950s was a destination for top minds. Ameirca in the 2020s is not. Part of that is due to remote work. Part due to us not being in the wake of a world war. But part was due to an explicit policy to attract the most ambitious to America, and then to encourage them to stay.
[1] https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/world-news/wo...
> Where I think we can legitimately say this is MAGA versus Republicans is in the reverse brain drain. America in the 1950s was a destination for top minds. Ameirca in the 2020s is not.
I do think it's counter-productive for America to make it harder for legal and talented immigrants, and we should fix that - but what's your evidence that America isn't still the world capital for the ambitious?
Statistically: The close competitors (e.g. Western Europe, Canada) are looking pretty dire economically compared to the US.
Anecdotally: I have friends from Estonia, Canada, the UK, and France that are all clamoring to be in America for the opportunity.
Historically: Post-WWII in the 1950s, 6.9% of the population was foreign-born. It's now 15.8%. So are we really more closed-off than we were then? Or is this just the response to the ever-increasing interest in immigrating because of the US being as compelling as it is?
> what's your evidence that America isn't still the world capital for the ambitious?
It's a loose hypothesis informed by e.g. this article.
I think America remains a net attractor. If you're smart and driven, you can become a multi-millionaire in America in a way that's harder almost anywhere else. But I'm saying harder. Decades prior, that was closer to impossible. Instead, we're now increasingly the economy where political connections dominate talent. (Again, we're still mostly not that. But we're shifting from the destination to one where talented people in India and China, for example, increasingly stay home.)
That's not true because no other country is even trying to take the lead, economically speaking. China is the only country that pursues innovation nearly as aggressively but they're not a desirable immigration destination. Canada and European countries are in the best position to step up, but they're not doing so other than being more welcoming than the US in accepting skilled immigrants. The economic incentives (capital markets, risk-taking, business-friendliness, talent density) haven't changed at all and if you're good at what you do, the US is still the best place in almost all cases. Enough that it's still often worth moving there despite how immigrant-hostile the country is.
> no other country is even trying to take the lead
Nobody else is brain draining, correct. But neither is America. That cedes a comparative advantage.
China’s entire battery and solar platform is built on tech invented in America. They’ve since taken the lead on truly remaking modern manufacturing. But in an alternate world, A123 stayed American.
> It's disingenuous to blame Trump when this is what U.S. voters chose.
It’s really not. Exit polls show a tiny fraction of voters picked Trump for anything other than his empty promises of “instantly fixing the economy”.
That’s ignoring all the people who didn’t vote at all. Saying not voting is the same as voting for the bad thing is an empty accusation that lacks critical thinking.
Not voting is probably worse. Candidates won't exist that reflect your preferences if you don't actually demonstrate them.
I do wish we'd have a bunch of electoral reforms but those candidates don't do well during primaries.
I'm convinced it's the primary that is breaking the elections here. You have to pander to the kind of people that vote in primaries - more extreme or more available being the key demographics there. So either people with political beliefs way off the party average, or old people.
Until/unless we institute ranked choice voting, the vast majority of people will NEVER have a candidate that reflects their preferences in any meaningful way.
> It’s really not. Exit polls show a tiny fraction of voters picked Trump for anything other than his empty promises of “instantly fixing the economy”.
Pew Research disagrees. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/13/what-trum...
Economy ranked #1 - 93% said it was very important (side note: something Democrats somehow missed).
Second was immigration - 82% said it was very important (another thing Democrats missed).
Less important to Trump voters: climate change (11% said it was very important), racial and ethnic equality (18% said it was very important), and abortion (35%).
Interesting poll.
> > The one topic that lagged a bit was health care: 58% said they knew what he would do if he won the race.
I would love to see a deep dive on the 58%'s answer since Trump has had a healthcare plan since 2015 that we have yet to see.
> Saying not voting is the same as voting for the bad thing is an empty accusation that lacks critical thinking
It's game theory. Gaining a vote is as valuable as convincing someone who would have voted against you to not turn out.
Caveat: if you aren't in a swing state, and we're constraining ourselves to the Presidency, you're right. (Though not voting on anything on the ballot is just stupidity or laziness. Pretty much every jurisdiction has meangingful issues being decided by plebiscite every few years.)
If you're in a swing state, however, not voting endorses the status quo. It may not be what was intended by the voter. But drunk drivers are dangerous irrespective of intent.
In practice, the issues people tend to bring up for conscientously not voting tend to be comically undone by the winner of the election. And if you tallied up everyone who didn't vote (let's take them at their word that it's conscientiousness), you'd swing almost every election. So yeah, a non-voter and a MAGA voter are electorally identical, ceteris paribus.
If 100 million people vote for someone who promises an instant fix to anything, then they deserve what they get.
...and the price of eggs. Don't forget that.
Browsing r/illinois and r/EyesOnIce for a few minutes will cure anyone from ever wanting to step foot in the US.
I'm really interested to see what happens during the world cup. Won't be surprised if somehow it may end up even bigger of a scandal than Qatar'22. Even if we set immigration and politics aside, heat it going to be an even bigger issue than everyone is anticipating.
Those also provide a nice and easy intelligence collection resource for those refining enforcement and identifying potential obstacles.
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Are you lost? A bot? This kind of hate doesn’t belong on hn
of course, truth to you is "hate"
Yes missions accomplished, indeed. I am sure there are some good promotions being had by the Chinese and Russian intelligence operatives who successfully convinced enough of the US population to give up on everything that made our country a world leader and choose self-destruction instead. Leftist degrowthers have nothing on reactionary destructionists.
I would rather quit a job than risk life for a trip to the USA. I have simply put it on the list of unwise places to travel, places like Iran or North Korea. I have no idea when this might change but countries taken over by high amounts of authoritarianism usually emerge from it fairly randomly and usually not at all.
I've travelled to the US (Boston, and later drove to Washington) in September. Even me being Russian, why would I worry? I have a visa (which I've waited for more than a year), I visit colleagues in the company and have a place to stay. What's going to happen to me? The worst that can happen is some talk at the border, but there wasn't any.
Welcome to the US. Please hand over your phone and social media logins so we can screen you for wrongthink. If you break an obscure law ICE may or may not disappear you to a black site. Enjoy your stay.
For some reason I am picturing Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall, awakening to this unintentionally-funny dystopia as he tries to traverse port security.
That level of scrutiny was fine for COVID regulation enforcement. What makes immigration different?
It doesn't matter to conservatives. Look at the US South. They have been poor for generations because they dislike diversity more than they want a strong economy and common prosperity.
As far as I can tell the best fix is higher education (exposure to diverse viewpoints & critical thinking predicts partisan shifting). But I'm sure there are other options.
The South is a bit of a lost cause. I was born and raised in Alabama. I spent many years out of the country and also living elsewhere in the US. But I've been back in Alabama since October 2010.
These people here love to shoot themselves in the foot.
I always say that Sherman should have never stopped. He should have burnt everything to the ground.
> They have been poor for generations
that will be news to a lot of people in the south.
One of the implications of having the worst education in the nation is that a lot of facts would surprise them.
Stats > anecdotes
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Which countries would that be specifically?
Many many Americans find it impossible to support companies led by a Nazi. Personal safety > American nationalism
Huh? The US South is wealthier than any country on earth that is not a tax haven excepting only the US as a whole and perhaps Norway with its oil wealth. (The US South was considerably poorer than the rest of the US, but the advent of air conditioning about 75 years ago eventually ended that.)
I'm going to guess that it also has more college graduates per capita than any country except the US as a whole.
Also, US states and US regions have almost no control over how diverse they are: the Federal government decides who to let into the country, then those people are free to chose which state to live in regardless of how much the residents of a state dislike immigrants.
You don’t compare a US region to sovereign countries that don’t share federal transfers, monetary policy, or capital markets. The correct comparison might be the South vs other US regions. In that comparison the South has persistently lower incomes, higher poverty, worse health outcomes, and weaker mobility. And while immigration is federal, states clearly influence who stays through jobs, education, civil rights enforcement, and political climate.
The Federal government has famously been involved in how well states enforce civil rights starting in the 1950s.
Also, the Southern US can't be doing that badly at guarding civil rights if a non-white immigrant can write,
>As a brown guy I'd prefer my odds in the reddest county in Mississippi than anywhere in Asia (other than my own ethnostate).
> US states and US regions have almost no control over how diverse they are
I have an expanding blacklist of states I won't live in because of their broken policies. If you don't support freedom and liberty, you're not a welcome place for civic-minded Americans who can think past their nose. The states very much can control their appeal to outsiders but the demagogues that get elected don't care. There is a collective mind disease that has infected governance since the Gingrich era.
This leads to a self-sorting effect where people who have the means to leave go elsewhere. I grew up in Arkansas and not speaking as an ignorant outsider. I have no interest in living there because of the broad cultural problems and lack of work opportunity.
OK, but the relevance of your comment to the comment I was replying to is unclear to me unless you are an immigrant into the US.
A continual point of debate is whether the front-page economic indicators tell the whole story about the welfare of the population. The US lags behind many countries in areas such as life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, health care, suicide, motor vehicle deaths, violent crime, and so forth. We have lots of money, but our money doesn't seem to buy us as much quality of life. I say these things, though I'm doing OK money wise and have an otherwise decent lifestyle.
The disparity between the big indicators and the lives of the people is in fact a source of political contention. In 2024, people were angry in a "growing" economy that seemed to have gotten inflation and unemployment under control.
I think your entire analysis is based more on a hunch than on data. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
US is 9th, so the south alone would rank even lower.
Is that before or after accounting for all the federal money it receives? The red states are the welfare queens of the union, with nearly all of them taking in more federal money than they return in tax revenue.
Compared to New York City, an extremely diverse place?
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None of the above is in https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTE...
Typo in headline. I think the word you’re looking for is “everyone”.
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I stopped at the ad hominem and didn't read the rest of your comment.
What's wrong with having a hyphen in your name?
Trump emboldened a lot of racists. You don't need to make any logical sense, just show off your true racist inner self to the world. I guess having a hyphen in your name is woke now.
You seem to overly generalize. Nothing I said was racist. But you sir need your eyes checked. And uncivil attitude.
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Go ahead and explain why. There are some incredibly intelligent people in other countries.
They can work remotely.
This is a very incorrect statement. 40% of all current US unicorns have an Indian immigrant founder. They might be the greatest job creators in the economy. Giving them up will be the end of the US.
1% of the population starting 40% of our billion dollar companies.
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/foreign-born-entrepreneu...
> 40% of all current US unicorns
This should be easy to cite. Thanks in advance.
It appears that close to 20% of all unicorns were founded by Indian entrepreneurs, which is still remarkably eye-opening.
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This reads like some bizarro IT version of Schrödinger's Immigrant: Both stealing our jobs AND taking our welfare checks at the same time!
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If someone who doesn't even have your language as their first language can just come and steal your job, maybe that's a little bit your fault too.
Yes it is. That is why we are fixing the problem with Trump.
That doesn't fix the underlying problem which is you being not very competent.
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If you someone born in a village with a fake diploma and no skills other than prompting an LLM can steal your job, you're just not very good.
Flipside: I'm not worried that a person like that would ever steal my job.
You see what I'm saying, or still nah?
the unicorn: SaaS AI agent wrapper top human capital sirs
Shhhh ... when your competition is kicking themselves upside their own ass ... keep quiet and carry on.
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I'm curious about how the culture is changing over there.
Your comment, from the apparent heart and home of free competition and capitalist zeal, crying about competition?
Are you really American? Not being bad here - genuine question.
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I'm not a fan of the way AI is developing, especially the threat it poses to jobs, but it has a way of finding, otherwise hard to locate, facts on the NET:
US manufacturing employment peaked in June 1979 at ~19.6 million jobs. It never "stopped" — output has grown — but jobs declined steadily afterward.
Main causes of job losses (especially sharp drop 2000–2010):
* Globalization and offshoring by US multinationals (key driver) * China's WTO entry (2001) + PNTR (2000), accelerating imports * Automation/productivity gains Trade deficits and competition from low-cost countries (Asia, Mexico)
Who contributed:
* US corporations/multinationals seeking lower costs * US government policies (trade agreements, PNTR with China) * Economic forces (globalization, container shipping, currency issues)
It seems to me that big money, greed, and self-intrest, are ultimately to blame for any lack of employment in the US, for natives and foreign workers. Blaming the one politician that is trying to restore this country's economic power and ability to support its citizens is short-sighted, childish and really messed up because for the longest times, foreign tech workers have been the preferred go to employee for most of not all of the company's responsible for this mess.
A politician that says he wants to restore the country's economic power but has only harmed it further with his actions is worse than one who isn't even pretending to be on the side of the non-rich. President Trump is the product of the greed, big money, and self interest that enabled all of these policy and wealth shifts. This seems to be obvious to everyone except right-leaning people in the US.
Interesting that you blame Trump for this especially since facts speak for themselves.
US manufacturing employment peaked in June 1979 under "President Jimmy Carter (D)."
Key World leaders during major events:
1979 peak → *US: Jimmy Carter. *China: Deng Xiaoping (paramount leader).
China's WTO entry (2001) + PNTR (2000) → *US: Bill Clinton (D) signed PNTR into law (October 2000). *China: Jiang Zemin (CCP General Secretary).
Decline accelerated post-2000 due to globalization, offshoring by US corporations, and policies under multiple administrations (Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr.).
Job losses stem from corporate cost-cutting and systemic economic forces, not one politician. If you're going to blame a politician, then at least list the ones that contributed to the chaos not the ones you don't like because it's affecting you personally.
On a side note, I am one of those natives that has not been able to find a stable job, for the past 30+ years until Trump came in, but then lost it after Job Biden arrived. This is how life has been here in the US, at least for me, after graduating high school. I for one, I'm glad someone is doing something about this mess :)