Maybe ... but this is almost word for word what my college counselor told me in 2001 when encouraging me not to study computer science, and I've heard some variant of it again and again ever since. What I think is that supply and demand will continue to ebb and flow, as will compensation, but that the ability to create software is a useful skill that will continue to be compensated pretty well for the foreseeable future.

It will need to be tied in with a real abet engineering discipline the future , at least domestically.

This is more or less why I said the useful skill is the ability to "create software", not to "write code".

One end game may well be that a lot of people who are today "product managers" will use increasingly capable AI assistants to "create software" without writing much, if any, code. But in that world, I think a lot of people who are today "programmers" will also be very well suited to creating software in that way, and will have no trouble transitioning into those roles if that's where the opportunities are.

Saying that kids shouldn’t need to study computer science is like saying kids shouldn’t need to read and write because the market for literate people is saturated. Code is the toolset for the modern economy.

So, this is an easier case to make today (though to be honest I remain pretty skeptical of this), but in 2001 this was very far from being clear cut. The dot-com bubble had just burst and software looked like it might be a small niche or even just a fad in permanent decline.

This is why you encourage immigration.

If you prevent talent from coming to the US, companies will follow the talent.

This is why American cybersecurity and networking has almost entirely been outsourced to Israel and India and chip manufacturing to Taiwan and South Korea.

I do not understand how we got to this point. India is not in the U.S. sphere of influence and has not even voted to condemn Russia.

It’s really a sign of how weak the U.S. government has become, which is heartbreaking. US has found it too expensive to invest in its own citizens. It’s almost a ticking time bomb.

> India is not in the U.S. sphere of influence

Financing the Abraham Accords [0], using American engines in tanks [1], American fighter jet engines in Indian fighter jets [2], and being a part of 2 bilateral treaty organizations [3][4] absolutely puts India in the US Sphere of Influence.

> has not even voted to condemn Russia

India will never piss off Russia, because India doesn't want Russia to join the Chinese camp [5]. By keeping trade and defense ties with Russia, India minimizes the chances of Russia becoming pro-China instead of neutral during an India-China war (which almost happened in 2020) [6].

Mistreatment of Indian students in Ukraine during the war made a vote in favor of Ukraine politically untenable during election season [7]

[0] - https://www.axios.com/2023/09/07/saudi-india-uae-us-railway-...

[1] - https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/logistics/ameri...

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/why-ge-pl...

[3] - https://www.state.gov/i2u2/

[4] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

[5] - https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/11/06/india-in-emerging-w...

[6] - https://theprint.in/defence/nearing-breaking-point-gen-narav...

[7] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/ukraine-crisis-stra...

In some ways it is a U.S. ally. But don’t tell me you are going to buy Russian oil and not side with the us in Ukraine and tell me you are under our influence.

Any development in a country that has not washed its hands of Russia should be illegal for selling in the us.

In addition, the recent argument with Canada over the killing over a citizen on Canadian soil comes into play here. That is not what s country under western influence does.

Russia has supported India in multiple occasions when US was against Indian interests. The neutrality policy of India has supported it better than taking sides and it'll continue for the foreseeable future.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1751o2e/comment/k4dr... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/xssv8o/c...

> you

I'm American.

> are going to buy Russian oil and not side with the us (sic) in Ukraine

Well,

1. That oil goes to the EU. If there's a buyer, there's going to be a seller [0]

2. It's at margins barely above the cost to extract, which is as big a financial hit you make make [1]

3. As pointed above, China is the bigger bad to India instead of Russia. It's better to keep countries neutral in a future India-China war

> Any development in a country that has not washed its hands of Russia should be illegal for selling in the us.

Thank god you don't work at the State Department. That's how you alienate every country that isn't in North America and Europe.

China would have the pick of the litter.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-27/europe-is...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/revenues-russias...

I understand the need for the us to sacrifice somewhat in order to tame the bigger bad.

However, the us is operating from weakness here which is not okay and the situation should have never been allowed to develop to this point. Ironically it may be outsourcing and offshoring in the first place that led us here.

US critical infrastructure development should not be outsourced to countries who have any contact with countries that are we are in a proxy war with.

No international relations expert, afaik, would say India is in the US sphere of influence; the US specifically says India is not (in what I've seen). India is an independent power that is growing its relationship with the US. It also has relationships with Russia and with others. China happens to be an adversary, which strengthens the US relationship for now.

India is nearly unassailable. Nobody can really conquer a country of 1 billion people anyway, economically they have the size (and therefore power) to be independent-minded, and geographically there is no neighbor that is now a serious threat: China can bicker and skirmish but would have to cross the Himalayas to fight a war, which is impossible. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, but those are useless other than to deter an existential attack by India - using them would be suicide. Bangladesh lacks economic, political, and military power. Others are too small.

India doesn't need to be in the US 'sphere' and serve US interests.

I think they are still mad about Ukraine supporting Pak on Kashmir in UN and selling them bunch of tanks 20+ years ago. What I don't get is why Pak FO didn't remind IK of that when he visited Russia. Maybe they were that hard up for oil.

India is assassinating people on US and Canadian soil. And more importantly, the US and Canadian governments are being very officially-public about it.

Let that sink in.

I'd be shocked if China isn't assassinating people too. They definitely have established "police stations" here and are conducting operations against dissidents and their families, but maybe it hasn't crossed into actual murder. If it has, the US and Canada aren't talking about it; they're barely talking about, or doing anything about, the secret police stations.

> India is assassinating people on US and Canadian soil.

I've clearly missed something here. Where can I learn more about what you're referencing here, or what Google search would point me in the right direction?

Basically India made plans to assassinate someone on US soil, got found out and then carried it out on Canadian soil.

Here’s the first hit for “India assassinate Canada” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/canada/india-assass...

The Washington Post has written about this a fair bit, including an article from the editorial board. "washington post indian assassination" should give you some reading.

Maybe Modi took a hint when Trump practically laughed off the Khashoggi assassination.

Is the issue not enough talent in the US, or not enough talent at a desired salary range? One of the guys here is talking about people making 30k USD. My guess is there is not much American talent at that pay range, even if there's plenty of talent available here generally.

Old story retold. The Claudian Roman government doubled down on the distinction between barbarian and Roman civilian and used shitty rhetorical tools to denigrate the barbarians. This all despite the fact that most Romans farms and undesirable jobs were still being done by "barbarians." It's almost like looking into a mirror of history. The end for Rome was not far beyond Claudius.

I would feel better if some of positions being outsourced required some sort of clearance . I really feel like certain development , like banking products / power grid / cyber security products for instance, should require a clearance to work on.

Which Claudius?

I never read Roman history beyond 6th and 7th grade history and AoE 1's campaigns, but I think Roman analogies would make it easier to drive my point to a couple people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius_Gothicus who's reign was pretty late in the Empire phase, though good news for the U.S. it took another 150 years once they started crowning barbarians emperors before it all went to shit. Ironically, it was the emperors from barbarian territory who led the effort to keep second class and first class from mixing; which also rings a little true in our current U.S. political climate.

I thought it was Gothicus!

I feel like the correct compromise for our conversation would be requiring strict clearance control for products in certain sectors.

The reality is that if you work on a banking product for instance you might find an exploit you can use and keep secret and use to your countries benefit. That’s why these positions need clearance controls.

Even a benign program like a text editor could have a back door installed to spy on the us.

I am curious to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

There is no solution. US, Israeli, and Indian cyber-infrastructure is completely intertwined.

There's no possible way to decouple without reversing 30 years of development.

The only solution is to justify to Israel and India why they should continue to align to the US, instead of hacking it on their own.

This justification comes from the carrot (FDI, IP Transfers) and the stick (bad press, cultivating alternative allies, tarriffs)

The era of Hyperpower is over. Regional Powers have returned.

The US Policy world has recognized this for a decade and is operating under those assumptions. The issue is the type of person who gets their news from CNN, Fox, Reddit, Zeihan, Telegram, etc isn't exactly the kind to read policy papers or watch C-SPAN

> Even a benign program like a text editor could have a back door installed to spy on the us.

It goes both ways. Meta is an American company with development done in the US. Everyone uses WhatsApp at the senior levels outside of North America. Everyone other than China uses Google as their primary search engine. Everyone uses MS or Apple as their primary OS

I don’t agree with the premise that it is impossible to reverse . Frankly , security concerns should be treated as a priority one and heaven and earth should be moved to rectify the situation. It’s definitely not impossible just difficult. Frankly, we should be focused on solving hard problems that have high impact like this.

I also think that in sourcing is an investment in the us citizen, something that all companies operating in the us should be obliged to do.

> This is why you encourage immigration.

Our problem doesn't really seem like a lack of encouragement for immigration. We have plenty of people trying to come here, we either don't want the people attempting to come or don't want immigration at scale at all.

Social programs and entitlements are really all the encouragement needed for immigration, as long as you're legally allowed to immigrate and get a job at all. Is the question really how do we encourage the "right" kind of immigrants for the skills or roles we want to expand?

> how do we encourage the "right" kind of immigrants for the skills or roles we want to expand

Remove a decade long backlog for Indian nationals coming to work in Skilled fields (STEM, Accounting, Healthcare, Finance, Law) by speeding up processing times by hiring more bodies at USCIS Processing Centers.

And also maybe not forcing every Chinese national who studied STEM in China to go through enhanced background checks [0].

And also hiring more immigration judges (I knew a former Immigration Judge with the DHS - they de facto had a hiring freeze since the 2010s, leading to case backlogs).

Tl;dr - stop defunding the DHS and USCIS

[0] - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/06/04/2020-12...

Maybe we're thinking of different things, but isn't the backlog for Indian citizens caused by a fixed number of visas per year and per country caps? If you track the visa bulletin [0] they call out when a green card number is ready for your category, and India has its own set of dates because their country is so oversubscribed.

0 - https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

Agreed all of those can and should be done. IMO none of those are related to encouraging immigration though, only removing legal blockers.

The incentives exist, we just need to get out of peoples' way and let people immigrate here.

Alternatively, we could alter the statue of liberty and remove the poem if we collectively don't want to welcome immigrants of all skills and situations.

> encouraging immigration though

Skilled Immigration is already encouraged by the salary bump.

The issue is skilled immigration has been backlogged, as the existing system hasn't been reformed since the 2000s.

It's the backlog that pushed Chinese, South Korean, Taiwanese, and now Indian immigrants to consider staying put instead of spending 5-10 years living under the fact that you might be asked to leave in 60 days.

Sure, but that was my point. We need to remove barriers, we don't need to further encourage immigration.

There are plenty of federal agencies that are underfunded or being tacitly defunded, DHS is absolutely not one of them.

USCIS:

https://immigrationimpact.com/2023/01/17/uscis-funding-crisi...

I wouldn't underestimate the tolerance our system has for paying people to do otherwise unnecessary jobs simply to keep employment high and people distracted.

Our system would indeed implode if many went unemployed. Companies would go down with it though, they need people employed so they can spend money and keep the gears of capitalism turning.

I know I sound very cynical here but I don't even mean it as a bad thing. Its just the way this works, for anyone looking to down vote a cynical sounding take I'd be really interested to hear what I might be misrepresenting.

This is nonsense. There is no "system". Individual companies don't hesitate to lay off employees if that improves profits. While a few worthless employees can slip through the cracks at large companies, there is zero chance that employers continue paying large numbers of employees to do unnecessary jobs. Boards have no loyalty to abstract concepts like capitalism.

More jobs can always be invented/created in the name of safety. More regulators, more regulations, more psychological councilors, more child protection specialists, more DEI councilors, more lawyers for more lawsuits, more military divisions (to keep the country safe)... etc. Mainly supported with public funding.

Not saying those aren't real jobs (many certainly are), but I think the scope & number of those jobs can be expanded to fill the void left by more "productive" / "survival" jobs.

Now you're just making things up. Safety professionals make up a minimal fraction of the workforce which has barely increased in recent years. If anything, we should be spending more on workplace safety. Those are hardly useless jobs.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-m...

Companies have been quick to cut DEI jobs as soon as the outside political pressure died down.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/28/tech/google-meta-other-tech-gi...

The military has been cutting personnel. The number of divisions has gone down. Higher military spending has been going towards procurement programs, not towards more uniformed jobs (although some defense contractors have expanded a bit).

With so many companies having layoffs in the last 12 months, were those all unnecessary jobs? If not, were revenue targets or company valuations lowered to match the loss of productivity with fewer necessary positions in the company?

Companies will absolutely continue paying large numbers of employees to do unnecessary jobs, they're incentivized to do so. A growing company is often seen as a good sign by shareholders and no one can really tell whether the new roles are any more or less productive. Existing employees and managers have the benefit of growing teams and getting promoted before anyone sees if the teams over-hired. Holding expendable positions also has the benefit of making for an easy layoff when investors get spooked.

Meaning the company and employees have good reason to hire and keep unnecessary jobs, don't have many short-term downsides as long as it doesn't directly cause a drop in key metrics, and have a built-in backup plan when things turn south and they can show good leadership by trimming the fat.