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.

  • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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    13 hours ago

    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!

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      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.

    • atempuser23@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      He’s not stupid. He’s abusive. He knows what he’s doing and why. He will save millions and keep the wages of his pool of talent depressed.

      • Fades@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        Bit of both, Mysk didn’t even complete his college degree. Being born into money does not, by default, correlate to intelligence

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      9 hours ago

      Well he saw that the only people willing to work at Twitter were extremely desperate to stay in the country

    • threesaken@lemmy.ca
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      17 hours ago

      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.

      • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        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.

        What mod tools? Shouldn’t need a login to view or screenshot. Interaction should require an account but I see no reason for the others.

        • underwire212@lemm.ee
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          5 hours ago

          Completely agree. This a grab for leads by Bluesky. Not exactly something I like to see in social media platform outreach tactics…

  • Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Super talented = extremely desperate foreigners who’ll work 90hr weeks for very low pay.

    Just in case anyone needed a translation.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      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…

  • bitwolf@sh.itjust.works
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    15 hours ago

    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.

    • way_of_UwU@programming.dev
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      14 hours ago

      A shortage of engineers willing to work for Musk-led companies, maybe. Tesla is well-known in tech circles to have awful work culture. You can only survive with high turnover like that for so long before most American engineers know that there are much greener pastures.

      • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        9 hours ago

        A shortage of engineers willing to work for Musk-led companies, maybe.

        Not maybe at all. Every tech group I’m in would rather work fast food than do a 90 hour week under Musk.

        I used to be in a group during the 2022-2023 era where we shared memes of recruiters who were trying to convince engineers to go to Twitter. The meme well dried up when all the recruiters were fired.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      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

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        14 hours ago

        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.

  • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    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?!

    • Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee
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      16 hours ago

      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.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    He didn’t explain to them that holders of H1B visas have to stay with the corporation that hires them or else they get deported. It’s semi-slavery. Conservatives would love it.

    • futatorius@lemm.ee
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      24 hours ago

      That’s the only way to keep salaries depressed, which is why they’re brought in. If they could switch jobs, there’d be competition among potential employers and the salaries would increase. The whole H1B scheme is a filthy racket. It depresses the wages of non-H1B workers, it exploits those on an H1B visa, and there’s a whole cottage industry of faking recruitment campaigns before showing that a company was “forced” to fill a critical skills shortage with an H1B holder. For example, the qualifications can be written so that only people on certain Indian of Chinese computer-science courses can have the required coursework. Not that the applicant necessarily took the course, though: there’s another cottage industry in India and in China of people doing exams on someone else’s behalf.

      And then there’s industrial espionage…

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Yep. What I don’t get is when people that are supposedly “nationalist” aren’t even patriotic enough to just open up immigration so that the talent pool stays HERE. It’s all about just short-term profits for private tyrannies and everyone else can apparently go fuck themselves, citizens included.