Six months ago, I was asked my opinion of the Silicon Valley alignment with MAGA. I said at the time I thought it would last around 18 months and finally climax with a large fracture in the political movement around 2026. I had no idea at the time, the group of technocrats would begin publicly advocating for replacing American workers before Trump took office.
For the past several days I have watched Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sacks, Elon Musk and his big tech influencers debating with their followers about the importance for them to continue expanding H-1b visas for foreign tech workers. It is stunning to see this crew double, triple and quadruple down on advocacy, while defining American workers as inadequate for their Silicon Valley needs.
Alas, it is what it is. Within the argument Musk, Ramaswamy, Sacks and group have presented multiple justifications for their foreign worker assistance programs, while advocating for expanded immigration support therein.
Within the tone of their argument, they essentially say the American worker is (1) not intellectual enough; (2) doesn’t have the right work ethic; and the latest point of justification is that (3) American culture is to blame for their need to import foreign workers.
As Vivek Ramaswamy recently said, “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.” Thus, as the narrative is sold, American workers need to be replaced with more culturally appropriate Indian tech workers.
When the Indian-American starts saying Indian culture is more adequate at creating workers for the American tech industry, he loses me completely.
If the Indian culture is the holy grail breeding ground for software engineers, then why isn’t New Delhi replacing Silicon Valley?
Considering that factually the Indian culture is entirely based on a caste system, the argument is even more absurd.
What we need are training and recruitment centers for American students. However, the larger issue within the billionaire tech team advocacy is an issue of self-interest.
What we see in the justifications and arguments of the Ramaswamy, Musk and Sacks group is a very specific point of immigration policy for their subset within a singular sector of the American economy. Perhaps this would not be such a big issue, if these points of advocacy were coming from outside government interest groups. However, with this tech team going into the administration, the influence becomes something a little bigger.
The part the Tech Group do not understand is the core of the American DNA, “Liberty“…
It is only from the position of liberty, intellectualism actualized in freedom form, that the working culture of America, the ingenuity part, can be understood.
If you attempt to quantify Americanism with math and algorithms, the translated outcome always fails.
Dear Vivek Ramaswamy, my counter take…
Several years ago, Florida Power and Light won the prestigious international Edward Demming Award for excellence in multi-platform engineering, efficiency superiority and total quality in the process of energy management.
However, the scruffy rednecks did not blow every PhD intellectual out of the water with slide rules, CAD programs, articulated and quantified quality improvement processes and engineering acumen. They did it with hard hats and dirty fingernails.
Because they lost the award, the jaw-agape Japanese spent 6 months visiting and reviewing FPL and later published a 1,000-page study essentially saying FPL “wasn’t really good, they were just lucky.”
You see, the reviewers couldn’t actually quantify the reason why the Florida-based energy company was so successful. In response the FPL field leadership laughed, took out magic markers and wrote on the back of their hard hats: “WE’RE NOT GOOD, WE’RE RUCKY.”
A few years later, every single Kuwaiti oil field was blown up by Saddam Hussein. Global analysts and think-tanks proclaimed it would take 5 years to cap them all off and restart the Kuwait oil pumping industry. Well, the Kuwaiti’s and Saudi’s called Texans, who had them all capped and back in working order in 6 months.
We are a nation that knows how to get shit done.
A few more years pass, and the Northern Chile mine workers were trapped two miles underground. The eyes of the world began to tear as the word spread. Most began to whisper no one could save them. Who did they call for help? A bunch of hick miners from USA coal country who went down there, worked on the fly, engineered the rescue equipment on site, and saved every one of them.
Yup, that’s our America. Ingenuity born from freedom.
Across the pond a half-breed Islamic whack job, armed with an AK-47 and a goal to meet his virgins, began opening fire on a train in France. The scruffneck Americans on board didn’t run to the nearest safe room and hide themselves amid baguettes and brie. They said, “let’s go”, and beat the stuffing out of that little nut with a death wish.
Legion d’Honneur or not, that’s us. WE ARE AMERICANS! That’s just how we roll.
In fact, Lady Liberty can stroll along the Champs-Elysées with a swagger befitting Mae West because without her arrival, they’d be speaking German in the Louvre. Yet, for the better part of the past decade, a group of intellectual leftists have been teaching our children that it’s better to be sitting around a campfire eating sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other; because ‘save the planet’, or something similarly minded. It would appear, they hate the outcomes and inequities from freedom.
Warmest regards,
Americans First!
My BEST advice to @elonmusk @VivekGRamaswamy @DavidSacks and the Silicon Valley tech elites, is to keep talking. Just keep telling Americans how terrible they are and how they need to be replaced. Great Job.
Every time you guys open your typeset in public, @LauraLoomer grows a…
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) December 26, 2024


Doing the tech jobs Americans just won’t do; like illegally spying on citizens for the government and closing their bank accounts?
From Nicole Shanahan,
“Having lived in Silicon Valley for 20+ years and founded and sold an AI company, I’ve seen firsthand how we rely on H-1B to fill grueling, unglamorous coding jobs. These jobs are essential, and we need capable people doing them. But the system needs an overhaul. Here’s why:”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1872491541811671494.html
Anecdotes on DEI based discrimination in tech. Cued to the right part:
MAGA vs the Tech Bros (2:06:55)
Sargon of Akkad
25 Dec 2024
https://www.youtube.com/live/AnHGJWd64dE?feature=shared&t=1472
This is the best ever article on this topic!! Kudos to “Sundance” & the Conservative Treehouse!! Didn’t overlook any of the political fodder of those vile gloabalists- it’s all here. And I’ll be spreading it far and wide.
H1B VISAS FIGHT…WHO’S REALLY BEHIND IT???
“A war against MAGA is underway, and it is disguised as a Civil War against DOGE. But who’s really behind it?”
…”Today we explore what the Washington Post is calling a MAGA civil war. It’s a much bigger story than it looks.”… See more:
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/doge-days-of-the-color-war-friday
*** *** ***
Barron Trump and friends seem to be bright enough Vivek?
When he gets his degree in engineering, I’ll accept that.
I’m sure he is probably capable.
It’s a matter of interest and motivation.
No, finance doesn’t count.
Ready, Set, Go.
I’m a retired software developer who worked with SAP, as a freelance independent. My income was cut in half due to the influx of H-1B visa holders late in the first decade of this century. They would work for cheap, they had to, or they’d get shipped back to their home country – but they still made much more than they could make there. Many of them do not understand American business culture and do not understand American English at the often high level needed for technical subjects intertwined with functional requirements. Many of them have no scruples against lying. Many of them were near-incompetent and spent all day on the phone asking colleagues what to do. I had too many projects where I had to fix what they had screwed up – you can read about the National Grid SAP fiasco that wasted millions of dollars.
There was never any shortage of American workers. It was all about the bottom line – they would work cheaply. But in the long run it often cost more to fix, than to do it right the first time with skilled Americans. It was a scam then and it’s probably still a scam now.
Oh my goodness. I worked for a state government that transferred from a extremely user friendly financial program to SAP. Talk about a total fiasco and failure. We couldn’t pay invoices or invoice others for services/contracts the entire first year.
SAP did not work for well over a year and we lost hundreds of discouraged staff to other departments and agencies. The staff that stayed looked like walking dead people; gray, drained and lifeless, but, they did get promoted.
I understand the program is good for overall control but as an end user it was horrible.
I work in a highly profitable company that has essentially printed money for over 50 years. Our President (along with other high quality associates) was forced out after the India-outsourced conversion of our Legacy Mainframe operating system to SAP took too long, cost too much, and significantly degraded customer trust. We’re still recovering, yet with less functionality that before.
SAP? We called that “Stop All Progress” when I worked in engineering.
I had same experience 20 years ago transferring to SAP. They had to bring a roomful of Indians in to get the system to even work and finish the project. They were also isolated. No one was allowed to talk with them, all communication was tightly funneled through official channels.
I have friends in the Software industry that have shared similar stories with me for many years. It’s the same for engineering projects “off-shored” to India. Lots of re-work, delayed schedules management headaches, and cost overruns.
It isn’t just software.
I have worked in (multiple) Japanese auto parts plants here in Ohio*.
Us dumb Americans were shipped machinery to install from Japan…. It wouldn’t work.
Turned out it didn’t work in Japan either. They shipped it to us to install and when it wouldn’t work here is was stoopid American problem.
Well we stoopid Americans reworked it and made it work – something Japanese couldn’t do LOL
A team of Japanese engineers were sent here to see what we did. Turns out one of our member’s spoke fluent Japanese and overheard their racists trashing of Americans and called them on it. It was GLORIOUS!
*Ohio sounds a lot like ‘good morning in Japanese and may be why we have their parts plants all over rural Ohio.
“Many of them were near-incompetent and spent all day on the phone asking colleagues what to do. “
So true! After getting sick of this, I used to just hang up and keep calling back until I got someone who sounded native. Was more time efficient than dealing with the incompetents.
Or they just google the topic to find the answer. After I noticed them doing that at the big German truck making company headquartered in Garbageville Oregon I would just do that myself to solve the SAP errors.
H1B VISAS FIGHT…WHO’S REALLY BEHIND IT???
“A war against MAGA is underway, and it is disguised as a Civil War against DOGE. But who’s really behind it?”
…”Today we explore what the Washington Post is calling a MAGA civil war. It’s a much bigger story than it looks.”… See more:
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/doge-days-of-the-color-war-friday
*** *** ***
Not Chicken Little – I was the exact same (direct SAP employee for ten years and independent for twelve) – SAP is all about business processes – assessing the business requirements and configuring accordingly, but the incoming Paki’s always found a way to CODE around a problem instead of CONFIGURE within the system. This was and is a massive problem but more because of a lack of business knowledge – you have to be able to MANAGE those foreign assets and know when to use them and when to use the (higher priced) local assets that know and understand the business processes.
To your point – they have a vast online network so they’d go back to their hotel at night and say, “…my client wants this… blah, blah, blah …how can I code this?” Again – by the time you pay a high billing rate to someone to properly manage these inferior (“lower cost”) consultants, the real savings is negligible and the end product is never as good as with knowledgeable, domestic consultants that know what they’re doing…
Most of us who are not in business or business finance don’t understand…I found this one article(?) for an idea of what it does:
https://sapinsider.org/topic/sap-finance/
“There was never a shortage of American workers. It was all about the bottom line”.
Excellen and very true Not Chicken Little!
We heard almost the exqact same thing ov forty years ago about the legal and illegal field workers from Mesxico.
It was “explained” to us dumb average citizens by the politicians that they could not close the border and stop the huge infux of illegals because these illegals were needed to do field work that American citizens just would not do.
It was all a huge lie and like you sayit was all about the bottom line.
The H1B workers are not ( not now anyway just wait and see) illegal but we are told America can not prosper without these people.
Another lie, we need to Make Americans Great Again.
I have also wondered why we are importing workers from a third world crap hole ike India.
Why does India not take advantatge of their smart, superior citizens and make their own country great.
There was a live space late last night that he came onto since accounts were restricted and blue checks removed after this incident. His position is people are being racist to an Indian. Other side was the person publicly advocates and supports non Trump policies and is in a Trump admin position. Also debate about investing in America vs outsourcing cheap labor. Convo did not go well.
The general consensus was that he paid for and bought Trump specifically to increase legal immigration and Trump will keep his promise to the tech oligarchs. Also that Trump is 80 and these guys are much younger and now that they r in they will run circles around him and push their agenda.
I’ve never heard him speak like last night. The whole convo was a S show.
That is the one bright light – we now know out of their own mouths what they really think and really intend to do.
Who knew an instigator like Laura Loomer could cause all this havoc and revelation with one, simple tweet? Neither Musk, Ramaswamy, nor Sachs had to engage in that instigation, but apparently their egos got the best of them and now the world sees them for who they are.
No more pretending, get comfortable seeing what the light is showing and we can now be aware, going forward, that those that continue to pretend to not know things have a different game they are playing, one that obviously doesn’t like sunlight, so we should more easily step aside and avoid whatever trap the pretenders think they can still set.
I recall, way back when, when the “Indians” took over IT. As a woman working in IT, I also experienced their nasty attitudes towards women. And as their “boss” at one time, total disrespect. Not everyone had that experience, but I was forever turned off. I was told by another manager, “go easy on them, don’t take it personal, they just got off the boat”. Seriously? I watched colleagues laid off in droves and I decided to go into consulting where I could use my skills and choose my clientele and stay far away from the rude immigrants.
So, NO. Americans are intelligent and capable, but the imports were dirt cheap. That’s the only reason for importing them. Since then, most if not all IT was exported to other countries with cheap labor, and many other industries followed. NO. Americans are amazing. Corporate greed is also amazing…
I want American jobs for Americans, not imported masses who have no desire to culturally immigrate. The big whigs can put their extra billions into the training and protection of Americans. I am not “prejudiced”, I am pissed that all our jobs were outsourced, our universities ruined by the woke Left, etc., and that somehow America should become a welfare country for the residents (universal basic income, according to Musk), while the rich get richer.
And if Elon is still stuck on living on Mars, he can go there with all his imported “talent”, and they can all sit around and CODE together.
100% Born Free! I’d give you more thumbs up if possible!
Question for your expertise.
What is the future of IT with the emergence of AI? Won’t AI generate all the grueling entry-level coding in the near future if not already?
Well said…!
Musk and Ramaswampy can prove their value to this country by helping fix our broken fed gov spending system, and helping to deport millions of illegal aliens. Failing that, I expect Trump to shed them both. The shedding should occur within 6 months.
Vivek, in a day, likely convinced millions of people to not just deport “illegals” but to repatriate Indians back to their home country and end the H1B visa program.
Have those two driven outside their lane of travel?
Would those two get off the government teet and out of the trough?
Asking for an American friend…
The response on this has been universal and correct. Woot! I’m looking at the timing.
A parade of Big Tech guys do meetings at Mar-a-Lago.
*Before* Trump takes office Musk/Vivek make their statements
The ‘net explodes with rightful demands to respect American knowledge workers just like blue collar workers
Consider the timing of weasels like Bush (‘no new taxes’), Clinton, Obama. First they get power and then they do things that ruin us. Never do they get the public pulse first.
BTW I’ll reiterate: tariffs must exist on foreign knowledge labor billed direct to US. Sending H1Bs home is not enough.
Everyone talks about illegal immigration but legal immigration is already out of control as our government works against the American people.
In Seattle people from China are flooding the housing market paying cash for houses pricing Americans out of the market. Two houses next to me were recently bought by people from China and now they are renting them to young Americans.
And the only people from China with that kind of money are higher ups in the godless Communist party.
The only people allowed to leave China are CCP loyalists. Heck the only people allowed to leave their village in China are CCP loyalists.
In the early 90s, I worked for a small Petro-Chemical Engineering firm that invited 5 Chinese engineers o come to the US to work on a project. Not too long after they arrived, I figured 2 were workers in their twenties and the other 3 older ones were watching to make sure the other two didn’t defect.
After about 1 year, one of the two received a letter from back home informing him that he was to come back soon as they had found him his wife (hard copy picture was included) who also was an engineer . They would live in a small apartment in a tiny manufacturing town for the rest of their life & not be allowed to travel out of their area.
Really eye-opening for me as a new engineering graduate.
Asia offshoring their stolen gains into America in anticipation of their own house burning down. They have no faith in their own nation and systems. They want to move the grift to a new town.
Oligarchs like Elon and Vivek have revealed their true desire is to make themselves even greater by under paying workers brought in on H-1B, not about making America great.
This is reminiscent of the company scrip. The wealthy mine owner or lumber company owner would issue their own payments to workers that could be redeemed at the store for food and supplies owned by the company and the rent paid to company owned houses.
Elon and Vivek attempt to justify their practice of wanting ever more Indians by disparaging Americans.
Pardon me but your racist against Americans slip is showing.
Also there was talk about investing in America and Americans (education, training, jobs, etc) vs outsourcing cheap foreign labor as well as incentivizing companies to hire local vs foreign. Topic of American heritage and culture came up as well. It didn’t go over well at all. This was specifically for tech industry.
Also brought up that tech was never Trumper until recently and how convenient that was right after surviving attempted assassination. Response was people change their minds.
H-1B was brought up and he doubled down on foreigners are better and basically that’s the way it’s going to be for him.
Strap in next 4 yrs going to be a bumpy ride. They r hell bent in importing cheap labor and supposedly r selling it to DJT be able to compete against China
I’ve been a computer programmer since taking classes in high school since 1976. What I’ve learned is the best software developers simply have a talent for it. The people who desire the position, and work really hard at it can succeed, but they just won’t be as good as people who have a natural talent for it. If you have a desire to hire US citizens, and a way to find that talent, I’m pretty sure that would work. I’ve also seen many cases where someone had a different degree from college, and somehow was introduced to software development, and they were just really good at it. These people can even be self-taught via web based tutorials. I haven’t personally seen a non college educated person do this, but it seems possible to me. Has all this talent within the US been tapped out? I would have to see proof. It all gets muddied by executives who decide to cut costs regardless of talent.
Perhaps without knowing, but maybe not, by publicly and transparently starting this conversation, maybe the country will be able to sort this all out, and not just once again sweep it under the rug.
I was a programmer in the late 60’s – early 70’s. Probably the heyday of business software development. None of us had college degrees. We cranked out good code that worked. I believe some of that core code is still running. Then companies decided that programmers had to have a degree, didn’t matter in what. And then we were stuck with a bunch of people who couldn’t code their way out of a wet paper bag. You can see the results of that “junk code” every day. And yeah, a lot of us good programmers were replaced by foreigners, particularly around the non-existent Y2K crisis.
Fair point:
My aunt is well-traveled. She’s been on nearly every continent and visited nearly every culture on the planet. The only country on her no-fly list? India. She detested the place. Dirty, polluted, chaotic, corrupt, dangerous.
My Indian students would fly back to India every summer with their parents. When they returned I would ask them about their trip. Unless their family was from a wealthy caste, like the Patels – kids from that caste were often pampered for a month – the overwhelming feedback is how much it sucks there.
Sometimes the parents would catch themselves speaking to me like a servant. Often, all I had to do was raise an eyebrow at some subtle dig or put-down and they would remember they were not living in India anymore and back off.
Africa is the way it is because it is full of Africans. India is the way it is because it is full of Indians. Haiti? Somalia? Yep and yep.
It is true. The caste system has likely stifled this society for thousands of years by limiting mobility for all but those in the top castes. Though the system is outlawed, it is still practiced and spoken about openly. My ex husband was from there. I spent time there.
One of the most shocking memories of traveling with my ex inlaws was on a road trip from Bombay to Gujarat. Upon leaving we loaded the car and I quickly noticed we had about six bottles of water for a day of traveling with 5 people. I mentioned to them I did not think it was enough we have five people. Immediately they said oh that water is not for them, meaning the two drivers. So we proceeded through the day, arriving at our destination the people hosting us immediately gave us some water and I immediately noticed that the hosts nor my inlaws had offered water to these two men so I asked if I could get some water for those men as they had been traveling all day without any water at all. Oh yes of course they retorted! I think the hosts and inlaws were indeed embarrassed, as they should have been. As for the two men they thanked me immediately as they had heard the conversation. One of them also made a comment that really stuck with me all these years. He said to me I really like you Americans because you really have a value for all work. Meaning we appreciate all the “little” people in Indian society that are completely invisible and are not even worthy of planning for a couple of bottles of water to be given. (Meanwhile I was told it was unsafe to drive yourself in India and you must have a driver. But of course it was ok for said drivers to be thirsty for 8 hours long while taking your life in their hands.) I assured him that indeed we do, or at least that is the way I was raised.
Surely as a manager or boss, you will not be thinking seriously about the contributions of such low people regardless of how good and valuable they may be if you are biased to begin with to discount them entirely. Adding to that my ex even said to me that people in India are racist. They value lighter skin even within their own culture. So a person there of low caste and darker skin would have extra hurdles to overcome for sure. I am certainly not surprised at all the negative comments about the workers. I also witnessed much lower standards for many things there. It is hard to aspire to greatness when everyone around you is mediocre at best.
Regarding the H1B visa issue. It’s very clear to me one of the problems is these folks presence and permission to be here is tied to the company sponsoring them. This is a big part of the problem. They are forced to take lower wages thereby lowering wages for everyone. Add in the illegal collusion among big corporations on the wages they pay to Americans as well, the result is wages are very artificially low. It was very quiet but there was a suit about this I read about and I have anecdotal evidence of a family member who every time they tried to move companies to get a bump in salary the new company offered them literally to the actual penny what they were currently making. As in down to the actual cents they were currently making. This happened several times over a decades long career. Fixing wages across an industry is an anti-trust violation I believe.
I think we are in a conundrum here in the states, we do in many respects need more workers but our lax enforcement of illegals and H1B systems combined have lead to a vast underclass of exploited people. People that compete with Americans directly with artificially low wages. This is by design not on accident as I think Sundance is alluding to. Perhaps this conversation is a prelude to a new system where each person asking to immigrate is vetted. This is what Canada does. Each person is evaluated on their own merits on what they can bring to the table so to speak. They give points for certain things. For example you get more points if you can speak both English and French. So a person speaking no English or French would have a much higher bar to gain entry. I just spoke to my ENT Dr. yesterday and he gave me an earful about the shortage of ENT Dr.s across the country. It is anecdotal but when we identify areas of need, we could prioritize the people with the specific skills we need and instead of limiting them to working with one company only, we could just let them in and let them play the market like everyone else here. By not forcing them to take artificially low wages it should not affect the overall market for that skill as much as it does now with the extremely artificial controls on who the immigrants can work for on H1B. Maybe loose H1B moniker and call it something else entirely. As I am aging and looking forward to a future where there are very few doctors at all and close to zero in private practices I can only imagine what wait times are going be in 10 or 15 years. I just hope the MAHA group can do something to make people healthier very quickly so we don’t need the Drs at all.
I saw a map once of each state, and the 2nd highest group of immigrants in the entire SE of the US were Indians. also look at when Trump 45 met Prim Minister Modi at the Houston stadium. It was filled with Indians. I was amazed at one how many Indians traveled to see Modi, and that they were conservative (at least to Modi standards), but somewhat to Trump too. All Indians I have met have been pretty liberal.
Great reply SD..👏👏.. I only wish more voices from “our” side would speak up ..👍.. especially in the classroom where some are downplaying American Exceptionalism…
🇺🇸💪😀👍
I will be watching what President Trump does about H-1B visas like a hawk.
Talk is cheap but people are policy and now I am looking at all the people surrounding the President with a critical eye.
Will he end all the H-1Bs and the illegals?
Sure the criminals are on the 1st flight out of here but these guys are on the next flight so companies in America hire Americans. It’s pretty simple.
Sadly, Trump is unlikely to do anything about H1B visas and he speaks glowingly about “legal” immigration. We don’t need more immigration and I think most people have now caught on to the Gloabalist’s lie about it. What we need is to close down the borders, send a crapload of people home, and then get back to being a self-sufficient country again.
The best replacement we could make? Give dads a $100K annual bonus if they have 3 or more kids and stay married so their wife doesn’t have to work. Raise the kids to adulthood successfully (i.e. not wards of the state) and you never have to pay income taxes again.
Immigration is a weapon meant to attack and destroy us, and Vivek damn well knows it.
We have gone from Vivek and Elon being the saviors of government waste, to this now…
Email the POTUS elect…let him know your thoughts.
Not a tech savvy person but I wonder…who is whispering in The Donald’s ear about the need for tech workers and AI?
Vivek exposed that he is India First. The massive pushback on him is glorious to watch. Elon is being called out too but Vivek really stepped in it attacking American culture, jocks, prom queens, sleepovers, etc. I’ve never trusted him and I was right. Stephen Miller already posted PDJT’s speech at Mt. Rushmore.
He gave eye-rolling speeches during the primaries last year trying to sound like a Madisonian heritage American and he just isn’t. He’s right about a lot of things when it comes to MAGA and I’m happy to have him champion those, but then he decloaks and we all get to see that those were just speeches.
As further proof of your assertion, Sd, I’d like to suggest two David McCollough books:
1) “The Pioneers”
2) “1776”
Here’s an interesting, reasoned take on the subject:
https://jordansather.substack.com/p/the-legal-immigration-debate-over
Thnx for the link.
This “debate” inevitably dovetails into “who enjoys the spoils of the system”.
For me personally, all I know is that I will coordinate with others to boycott any overly expensive crap product regardless of nationality or racial makeup of the labor force.
1.”What we need are training and recruitment centers for American students.” 2.”However, the larger issue within the billionaire tech team advocacy is an issue of self-interest.”
Both if these statements are true.
And their criticism of the US work force is also valid. Or else why is X (formerly Twitter) doing so well after 80+% of its workforce has been dismissed? As the question was stated: “What exactly do you do around here?”
As a licensed engineer I am aware of the conversations at the board level on the competency and training of the latest crop of graduate engineers.
The “teams” or committee based approach that has been the basis of their education leaves them unable to work on their own and start from basic principles. I am aware of older engineers who have been hired to train engineers – some in their 40’s or mid career – in these principles. They, when given a task, are unable to calculate an answer from the 1st and 2nd laws of physics, which is how we old timers were trained. They attempt to “look up” an answer on the internet. And now with AI- the equivalent of “hamburger helper” without hamburger – they reach their erroneous conclusions at the speed of light.
The boards of registration are concerned about giving these engineers a license that puts them in “Responsible Charge” of engineering work. This is the question that was supposed to have been answered after the Kansas City Tea Dance Disaster (LOOK IT UP) but here we are again.
It will take a generation to re-align the engineer graduates of today. Many will never make it. Musk, et al are being asked to produce NOW, in real time and cannot wait for the workers here to catch up. The examples SD cites are all valid and his conclusions are valid but they worker that accomplished those feats are like me -70+ y and fading fast. His examples are all from my generation – the guys that went to the moon BEFORE there were any computers using our Slide Rules and our un-helped hamburger.
If you want results, they are the game.
Start catching up now.
Ready, Set, Go.
Hate to say it, but it’s your take that comes closest to my opinion on this matter. NOT at ALL a fan of Vivek, and only mildly pleased by SOME of Mr. Musk’s efforts and comments. Yet at all times, I am a fan of truth and a relentless seeker of it. And the truth is, Americans are FAR from being able to fulfill today’s technological requirements in the workforce. As you say, we are at least a generation away from such capabilities.
Also a Trump Truth: PDJT IS a full-blown patriot who loves this country and everything it has been, plus everything it could be. For me, this fact has always been his greatest attraction. But it is also his biggest weakness when it comes to any who have the power, resources and will to manipulate. Buckle-up peeps. It’s gonna get grizzly.
Well, as far as Elon goes, he has an aerospace team that does stuff….H1B?
The problem that trying to band-aid the education problem in the short term is going to lead to large-scale long-term consequences. Do you suppose all these H1-B visa hires will simply leave in 10 years? What incentive does a high schooler have to push themselves through hard engineering classes if there is no obvious path to employment? Indians will almost invariably only hire other Indians. Letting more of them in is only going to lock the next generation completely out of these jobs.
What’s needed is a complete removal of government incentives to use these programs, along with on the job training and vocational programs designed to get people up to speed now.
As a matter of fact I went into engineering after graduating from high school in 1972- immediately after the close of the space race – and being told by my HS guidance counselor that there was only a limited future for engineers.
After all look at the unemployment numbers for engineers in the 1970’s! And then the Tea Dance Disaster (again, LOOK IT UP) where my Mom’s after class coffee buddy while getting their masters degrees ended up on the second level walkway.
What I determined was that there will always be a shortage of people that will step up and put their name on their work and stand behind it.
And there are less today.
And the boards are not confident in the capabilities of those who are seeking the privilege (that’s what a license is – a privilege) to be in that position.
And so I – at 70 – am still at it.
Start catching up now.
Ready, set, go.
Nice post.
When Elon took over Twitter, he let go most of that workforce. I would be interested to know the nationalities of those he canned and those few he kept.
Summing it up:
Exactly. I always wondered what Musk was after with his sudden support. It was obvious from the get go that Vivek did not identify as America first but India first despite being born here. Which is a good illustration of why we should limit legal immigration.
If the children of immigrants, have no loyalty to America and contempt for Americans, why do we keep bringing them in by the millions?
“A war against MAGA is underway, and it is disguised as a Civil War against DOGE. But who’s really behind it?”
…”Today we explore what the Washington Post is calling a MAGA civil war. It’s a much bigger story than it looks.”… See more:
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/doge-days-of-the-color-war-friday
*** *** ***
The article seems to require the reader to believe that Vivek didn’t say what he said which (the article agrees) is what set off the storm.
Not sure what’s going on here. There is a huge problem with American culture. Laziness, entitlement, trash celebrity worship, rap music, terrible public education, progressive activist universities, materialism, victim olympics. I could go on and on and on. And most here would have agreed until…..yesterday? Really? The issue here is not so simple as us v. them on a large scale. It’s a smaller and much more nuanced issue of american v. foreign tech bros in the H1-b context. Two totally different things, requiring very different analysis — at least in my opinion.
Don’t lump all Americans in with your interpretation of our culture. That is what the media sold and continues to sell. Once you leave that perspective – you see a whole new America, that can tackle our problems and face the tyrants who don’t know how to serve – but just want to be served. And those who trade Truth for “misguided” compassion.
But Truth is a person and He has a vision bigger than the Horizon. Lets see what happens.
I’m American. And I’m not “lumping in.” I’m making a valid generalization based on broad exposure to popular American culture over decades. Just sayin’ 🙂
It’s so nice to see you again in the Treehouse kathyca! Hope you are enjoying the holidays… 😀
thank you, Ad rem. I am enjoying the holidays and hope all of you are doing the same. Love the CTH <3
finally after he left the group discussed the website in general and thoughts were around how it is probably not a safe space for people to utilize. things like him/the website now engaging in mass censorship (multiple people lost blue check mark which grants privileges on website), how he could be snooping on everyone including DM and potentially using it as a honeypot to gather info. some talk about his potential Israeli ties and possibly IDF agents working at the website along with greater israel project in general possibly going on right now and could be suppressing info via algorithms and moderation. similar stuff other popular social media websites are accused of doing. on 1 side the website collecting info and the other side projecting/manipulating/influencing people through curating data presented to them. almost similar to censorship industrial complex that he bought Twitter with and exposed just now working for him instead of DHS.
the other side of the issue is there’s no good alternative for conservative influencers right now to actively engage, reach audience, and make a living in the space as many of them rely on conservative influencing for work. and so while he is actively engaging with people despite being such as public figure (i was thoroughly shocked he showed up and interacted with everyone at 1am+ for quite some time) the reality is and he agreed something to the effect of if you don’t like the website and how it is run go somewhere else you are not needed here and are causing issues. and so conservative voices especially on the call were left in despair of where to gather, discuss, promote, and make a living/difference digitally at this point.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/12/ingrassia-what-elon-vivek-get-wrong-about-h/
Shortsighted tech bros seek to leave American STEM talent even further behind
https://www.dossier.today/p/shortsighted-tech-bros-seek-to-leave
Very lucid article-thank you!
I agree with many of the points above, but look at who those hard hats are/were – NOT the 2000’s kids – they are/were those of us that are aging our way out of the economy. Our replacements are generally very much as described. Here is a slightly different take on the topic: https://mailchi.mp/tomwoods/controv?e=7954708c71. Tom Woods is a widely-read Libertarian and I think his analysis here is worth your time to review.
As Tom points out – take the immigration component out of it, and just listen to what Vivek is saying about “…A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers…“. How can you possibly argue that point?
I’m thinking that THEY are just advocating for America being better and pointing out the emphasis in other cultures on EDUCATION (STEM) over FLUFF in order to do that?? I know that’s what I want – the American culture is whacked and I don’t think we should get butt-hurt for hearing that.
And drawing the immigration component back into the discussion, I think we ALL agree that illegal immigration is job #1 to STOP, but we should also all be in favor of improving America and welcoming qualified, monitored, restricted, assimilating, contributing, LEGAL immigration as a (small/limited) component of that.
Totally agree that people are not considering the ~30 year gap between when American culture started going to hell and when those people have started to be in charge of everything and will be for decades. The last 5 years in my profession has been very telling, and Covid/WFH only made it soooo much worse.
Baby boomers are at the end of their cycle years…remember when Baby boomers were going to bankrupt Medicare and it did not happen?
If nothing else…immigration of all types needs to be paused until it is sorted out with Americans in mind and legal immigraiton, restarted, slowly.
Those forgotten men and women.
Thank you! It’s good to look at the whole picture.
American culture has always celebrated the prom queens and jocks over math champs and valedictorians. But still produced the best engineers. H1B isn’t aimed at bringing in the best and brightest. It is to bring in entry and mid level workers at lower wages than companies would otherwise pay. The program is harmful to our country in the long term. The only benefit is to the profit margins of some oligarch.
Evidently gab is lit now with Andrew Torba saying thanks to Elon.
https://gab.com/AustinKid/posts/113724608958498055/media/1
More than a few are taking exception to folks with HYPHENS putting down Americans.
https://gab.com/Matt_Bracken/posts/113724461841086232
If for no better reason, hiring Americans insures, when technology breaks, you can understand your tech person and they can understand you.
“Considering that factually the Indian culture is entirely based on a caste system, the argument is even more absurd.”
Sundance, you are painting India with an extremely broad brush… Our culture is greatly influenced by caste but we are not a monolithic group.. no more than America is.. this would be akin to saying that American culture is based entirely upon race
I have been on a H1-B visa myself and have had a chance to look at how the system works from the inside.
A few viewpoints
1. The H1-Bs offer your businesses to indulge in labour arbitrage.. it is very tempting for many of your employers. If you can offer someone 10,000 to 20,000 $ lesser than the prevailing wage , you are bound/tempted to go for the lower wage and see if it works out for you..
2. Many H1-Bs started working beyond 8 hours a day to “prove themselves” without asking or expecting overtime pay… Obviously, American workers would not go along with that.. and your businesses didn’t care if they got free labour. This has however now created a new dynamic which was beneficial to your employers
3.H1-Bs were used to fill a number of contract positions which American workers avoided inorder to look for long term career prospects . These temporary contracts turned into permanent job offers over a period of time especially for those workers who proved to be good employees
4. IT spending in many US companies is purely discretionary.. Many of your managers came to the right conclusion that their leadership wanted the cheapest possible cost of operation..H1-Bs provide an option to do just that
I hope my comments don’t gobbled up … There is no silver bullet here. Personally, I would like for India to grow and keep her talent.. we are still a long way from achieving that.
No surprises that Musk and Ramaswamy are supporting H1-Bs… There are obvious limits to Trump/MAGAs relationship with Silicon Valley
Nobody on the planet, whether it’s a natural disaster or some sort of conflict, says to themselves, “I sure hope the Indians are coming!” They pray to their personal God that the AMERICANS are coming.
We don’t need to be saved by a bunch of South Asian computer programmers whose only purpose is to depress the wages of middle-class workers and displace American tech workers. We all know the stories at places like Disney.
America First means the American PEOPLE first, Vivek.
Vivek is not just making the case for less immigration, he’s making a case for the repatriation of Indians back to their homeland. Nobody would miss them. And I say that as a former teacher who had absolutely delightful Indian kids in his classroom. Like the Haitians in Ohio, the Somalis in Minnesota, and the Indians in tech, it’s like having an alien culture transplanted where it is not going to grow naturally.
Zman has a similar post about it today: The Indian Question | The Z Blog
I agree with this completely – these people never have the chance to understand, let alone embrace American culture, and many don’t want to.
My daughter told me last night that the managers at the Hotel she works at are leaving to go back to their native India for a month. “Who will be in charge?” she asked. “You will have to figure it out” she was told. I understand these “Indians” own most of the Hotels in our city. The wages are low, no benefits are offered and there is no overtime pay or paid Holidays. On the plus side, my daughter is in college and her schedule allows her to work when she is not in class. But, when you have unsatisfied customers at a major Hotel chain, and they are screaming in your face, it is going to be a very special Truth filled young American logical, hard working girl, who will figure out what to do, because that is just who she is. They were begging her to be in charge but she said no – her schooling comes first – now I know why they recruited her so hard.
oh and if anyone thinks no matter what happens Elon donates $250+ million and his friends more on top of that to Trump that there is any chance of them getting removed no matter what they do or say imo you are not living in reality at all. Trump owes them Bigly. If there was some discussion to be had it should’ve been before DJT took the money. now…good luck.
“Pinch hitting for Joe Smith, Rajesh Patel!”
I wonder when those on the right and left calling for nationalism and angered by the tech bro push for global talent will realize that nationalist workers was what Hitler was all about? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
As the great failed Cubs manager was fond of saying, “It is what it is, so enjoy the sushi, samosas and nachos.”
Your post reminds me of an article I read long ago, applauding the MLB for their long-standing program to train and import Cuban baseball players. They were self-righteously doing a good thing for those poor downtrodden Cuban boys.
Even when I read it I thought, well, why not American boys.
Remember when… 🤨
Another ironic thing about Vivek driving himself over a cliff on Christmas Day? This is the guy who, along with Elon, wants to shutter the Department of Education. Instead of saying we should just replace Americans with Indians, he would have been wiser to point out that the H1B visa PROBLEM – and it is an anti-American PROBLEM – flows from the four-decades long failure of the Department of Education.
That entire rotten department needs to be destroyed and eliminated. All the money should be sent to Parents directly via grants that are not means-tested. Not to the states, not to the schools. When the Parents select the school – and they should be protected legislatively to allow them to pick ANY school, public, private, charter, or parochial – the money follows the child.
Schools should publish their prices and academic results in order to compete for students. If the parents have some grant money left over, they can put it towards other educational opportunities. This could be things like math tutoring (which Vivek talks about) and trades like electricians and welders.
What idiot wrecks his DOGE message – of which the Dept. of Education is a meatball target – by taking his eye off the ball to demand more Indians displace American workers?
Agree about the DOE. But disagree about Vivek driving himself off a cliff entirely on his own. I think he failed to anticipate the knee jerk reaction to broad criticism of American culture, and then the left/media amplified the schism to epic proportions on social media. Almost exactly the same way they tried to goad Trump about Elon being in charge, but this time the left’s efforts resonated with patriotic conservatives. At the end of the day, no one thinks Kamala (or any dem for that matter) would be BETTER on H1-b visas, so why undermine our own success getting Trump back in office? I say, keep a close eye on Elon, Vivek, et al. and the visa situation, and enjoy the next four years.
🤣
BANNON: “We are not turning the United States of America over to the geeks who are mad they got stuffed in the locker”
I have a BSEE and have worked 30 years in the industry. I am not rich, but my profession provides a decent living. My two children are both in college pursuing degrees in computer science. During my career, I have not seen much evidence of a drastic shortage of talent. Recall the stories during covid of tech companies hiring folks who had nothing to do. I would not want to see the tech work environment distorted by an overload of immigrants from India. Companies and universities need to drop the DEI nonsense and start going after people based on merit. As a white male, I see DEI as a cancer that needs to be eradicated.
I hear Boeing had foreign engineers design the MCAS (Maneuvering Compensation Augmentation System) on the 737 Max, the system which, due to the laws of unintended consequences, caused two crashes, killing about 350 people. The MCAS was meant to make a more unstable plane (because of the bigger engines being further forward, when you would add thrust, after attempting to recover from a turning stall (stall=air not flowing smoothly over the top of the wing), the added thrust would try to pitch the plane back into the stall. The MCAS was supposed to help with that, but it relied on only one AOA probe (Angle of Attack). These “engineers” supposedly thought a “one in a million” failure rate was “acceptable”, but apparently didn’t do the math on how many millions of flights the planes need to successfully fly. Not sure if the foreign/contracted out , engineers rumor is true, but it’s not like how Boeing used to do things.😔
One of my 1970’s high school classmate worked the probability of an average automobile, starting…given the statistical number of parts and capabilities….either it was a negative or zero…but it wasn’t supposed to start….
Fantastic Sundance.
We’re not only Americans we’re “Amer I Can”!
Stop paying Americans to stay home and do nothing, and they will learn things real quick!
You know who the smartest Americans are? The ones incarcerated…when I worked for IDOC, as a nurse, there were always inmates getting in trouble for contraband…they would find junk and garbage…and turn it into things like telephones, clocks, radios, pagers etc….
I try not to call any call centers anymore. Most of the time, I can’t understand them, and give up. Maybe that’s the plan?
This whole H-1B vs American workers is just more gaslighting.
It is like the push to not have kids because of overpopulation while they say we must have immigrants due to population decline for the jobs Americans won’t do.
All boils down to a flood of third world immigrant invasion for the profits to corporations in America.
Let me throw my opinion in here. I am a part-time commercial driver for Autozone. I am 75 years old and I have severe osteoarthritis in both knees. I keep getting called to go to work because our “red-blooded American young workers” keep calling out because they apparently don’t “feel” like going to work today. I am heading out right now because of it.
OUR CULTURE HAS BEEN CORRUPTED AND IT HAS TO CHANGE.
I am an 11th generation American. My ancestor arrived in the American colonies in the 1600’s.
You cannot Make America Great Again if you are too damn lazy to go to work.
In my young years, you got fired for continual, last-minute absenteeism.
There is an epidemic of absenteeism of our young people.
I am sympathetic to Vivek’s narrative of the culture. But his argument highlights the need for demolishing the department of educations and creating school voucher system more than importing workers. Elon and the tech billionaires need to create their own STEM schools for profit and feed their own companies to compensate for the shortfall of talented engineers.
The country needs a complete reset on assimilation from immigration. Decades of more illegal and legal immigration without assimilation must be reversed if we are to regain a traditional American culture based on traditional values. This task MAGA correctly identifies as the much bigger threat and larger problem to be solved than lack of workers for current corporations.
thats how I see it.
therefore I hope MAGA grass roots will block Elon and Vivek’s effort to increase any legal immigration for short term benefit of corporations by voicing their opposition. Grass roots needs to get out in front of this and voice opposition to their representatives and trump organization. Stating plainly we are against anything that increases legal immigration and at the same time demanding full deportation of all illegal immigration. Including a crackdown on businesses breaking the law by employing illegal immigration.
I can concur with my experience in engineering, dealing with most other cultures are subservient and do as they are told. From Mexico, to Taiwan, to Ireland and others, they can execute, but they are not innovators or free thinkers. They can refine but not create. Its frustrating to know I rarely will get a fresh perspective to solve a problem if left to their own accord.
Yup, that’s our America. Ingenuity born from freedom.
It is entirely possible that these foreign born brainiacs only perform at the top when they are implanted in American culture. Their home countries simply don’t have the societies that bring out the excellence.
Now I’m all for some competition between American and foreign workers but there is a limit. Having worked 20 years in engineering I am aware of the attitude difference among workers and it’s really no different than the attitude of northern workers versus southern, in our own country. Everyone should be aware that southern companies struggle with local worker attitudes so look to northerners for a better balance.
If we’re going to have immigration, I’ll take the H1-b over a fence climber any day.
Am preferring both off of the menu.
How about a newly graduated white male?
Sure if all you want is some math. Engineering is about seat of the pants experience and newby engineers can’t compete with an experienced designer.