Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907145

by larryfole • 10 years ago

136 156 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

dudul• 10 years ago

Probably won't be able to hire all those cheap H1Bs (and that's coming from a former H1B!)

mikeyouse2• 10 years ago

Trump loves cheap H1Bs.. Who do you think works on his resorts for minimum wage?

WildUtah• 10 years ago

Those are H-2Bs.

simple10• 10 years ago

That Peter Thiel is really good at picking winners and disruption.

robg• 10 years ago

And hopefully to the Supreme Court!

android5212• 10 years ago

let's hope that Peter Thiel can use his influence to do some good and not just for himself.

jedberg3• 10 years ago

Why would he? He's a hardcore Libertarian. His core philosophy is "do good for myself and the world will be better".

The only way he'll help anyone else is if their interests happened to be aligned with his.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the guy (barring recent endorsements) but you have to understand where his philosophical basis is.

stillworks• 10 years ago

That is very interesting.

There was a recent interview of Jeff Bezos where he was asked to comment about Peter Thiel. He said Peter Thiel is a Contrarian. He then said that Conventional Wisdom is generally right and Contrarians are generally wrong, but when Contrarians are right they are right in a massive massive way !

cneumuel• 10 years ago

This reminds me of Nassim Taleb's barbell risk management strategy: Avoid the middle in favor of the extremes. For investments, it means a combination of very conservative plus some high risk investments to win big. He applies it to many other areas, though, including health and politics.

internaut8• 10 years ago

Having watched and listened to Thiel for several years now, I came up with a pet hypothesis I call 'The Wolfian World' that I feel describes what's going on more accurately than the newspapers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413

chridal• 10 years ago

Your comment was a very interesting read. A shame that it didn't get any further discussion. I'll give The Book of the New Sun a go. Thanks for your insights.

lonewolf_ninja2• 10 years ago

Quite an interesting observation and detailed comment. Are the presentations/videos available on YouTube?

vectorpush• 10 years ago

I am an immense fan of BOTNS, it is perhaps the most cherished novel in my collection, several years after reading it I still haven't read another novel that has impacted me in a similar fashion (recommendations are welcome), however, while I don't object to your analysis of some of the book's themes, I think your connecting it to current political events is a pretty huge stretch and really only accurate in a somewhat superficial sense. Still, I can't say enough good things about that book so have an upvote.

puranjay2• 10 years ago

Dude, turn that comment into a blog post ASAP. It needs a place where it can "live" more permanently

mindcrime2• 10 years ago

Interesting. You sold me on picking up a copy of BOTNS just now. Looking forward to reading it. Sounds like a fascinating story, regardless of any connection to contemporary political events one way or the other.

sjm• 10 years ago

I'd guess it will be a harder sell to get software developers in Europe, Australia, NZ, etc. to move to the US.

Normal_gaussian3• 10 years ago

Or easier. Hillary is a face of western corruption to much of the world. So long as Trump delegates the tech stuff properly and doesn't do anything too unusual the moral choice of the US should be easier.

puranjay2• 10 years ago

From what I've read about the man, Trump doesn't seem to be a micro manager, especially with things he can't understand like tech.

Plus, it appears that Peter Thiel is going to be in some sort of advisory role. That's valuable insight

onion2k• 10 years ago

Hillary is a face of western corruption to much of the world.

That's not even slightly true here in the UK.

thowar2• 10 years ago

Not true here in Asia.

People love Obama and they see Hillary as an extension of his presidency.

People are afraid of Trump. He reminds them of the corrupt, self interested, dictator types, which are rampant in this region.

dguaraglia• 10 years ago

I don't know where you get your facts from, but the way the world sees the Clintons (whether corrupt or not) is as "expedient, better work with them, good things might come out of it." The way the world sees Trump is "what the fuck? This guy used to be a reality TV star in a program that didn't really make it outside of the US? What? He also says all this bizarre things?"

If you thought American image around the world was at its lowest it could reach during GWB's presidency, oh boy you are in for a surprise.

janoc8• 10 years ago

Not true here in France or most of Europe, for that matter.

The only people happy about Trump is ultra-right wing/neo nazi panopticon of odd figures - Wilders, Le Pen, Farage, Orban ... Really the "crème de la crème" of Europe. And, of course, Putin.

The rest is worried now - people are seriously questioning what happens, for example with NATO, after Trump's remarks on not unconditionally supporting the allies. Is Trump going to divide Europe between himself and Putin, e.g. in exchange for Syria? Is Putin going to have a free hand to invade Baltics now? What about Ukraine, Moldavia? Are we going to go back to the Iron Curtain era where Soviet "borders" were the ones with West Germany? These are serious issues which you don't feel on the other side of the Atlantic, but for us living there it is a big deal.

What about business? Trump made some remarks about erecting trade barriers to protect American markets. So, of course, this concerns us too.

On the other hand, the misogynist, racist, xenophobic BS he was producing during the last few months is mostly seen as disgusting, but finally mostly your internal problem. I am sure someone like Merkel is not going to be personally happy to have to sit next to him at some official function, but people do respect the result of the election and are professionals. GWB was not seen as the sharpest tool in the shed in Europe neither but everyone survived it.

Clinton was seen as a continuation of the US policies, so naturally people would have preferred her - nobody likes to rock the boat too much when it comes to foreign policy or business. Trump is seen as unpredictable, unreadable and incompetent in this regard, unfortunately.

pavlov• 10 years ago

Hillary is a face of western corruption to much of the world.

No, to 99% of the rest of the world she's just a former Secretary of State and the wife of a former president whose era is often viewed through a nostalgic lens compared to current turmoil.

Fox News doesn't broadcast outside USA, you know.

threatofrain2• 10 years ago

No ruler manages bureaucracy alone. Trump will have to bring in classical Washington. We'd like to think that Trump will perform a full-on house cleaning, sourcing principally from his business connections, but the reality is that everyone needs classical Washington because each person you bring on is a king of his little fiefdom in the NSA, CIA, FBI, armed forces, etc.

xupybd2• 10 years ago

NZ dev here. Trump getting in doesn't worry me I'd love to work in the US. I think it's all been overblown.

nathan_f773• 10 years ago

I'm also a dev from NZ, and I worked in the US a few years ago. Honestly it's not all it's cracked up to be, and I wouldn't choose to go back there. Trump didn't factor into that decision, but now it's even less enticing.

hueving2• 10 years ago

Well you wouldn't want a developer that made snap judgments based on presidential elects anyway.

Remember that the number of people that have voted for Trump only represent about 1/5th of the population.

android5212• 10 years ago

That's a lot...

ClassyJacket• 10 years ago

Eh... The Prime Minister of Australia is actively working against the technology industry here, and he actually states that preventing Australians from having better internet access is his biggest accomplishment.

majewsky3• 10 years ago

Is there any (hopefully hilarious) argument behind this statement?

robBlair5234• 10 years ago

ClassyJacket - you are a drongo.

So is Turnbull, but it doesn't excuse you.

zo1• 10 years ago

I'm actually more inclined to move to the US now that Trump has won the presidency. It works both ways, you know.

ne0n• 10 years ago

Shouldn't we be talking about this shit before the election? It's not like California had anything to do with Trump, but still.

hal9000xp2• 10 years ago

I actually think there is a possibility that it could be easier to get into US as highly skilled migrant under Trump presidency because of his anti-immigrant polities.

If he raises a minimum income bar for H1B to 150K and keep the same cap, then it would be much less qualified applicants for H1B visas and therefore there would not be cap overflow with annoying lottery process.

Of course, I can't predict what Trump is going to do. He can also reduce cap significantly (which would be very stupid move).

Let's admit current H1B requirements are stupid. For example, requirement to have bachelor degree instead of high salary. There are lots and lots very mediocre developers and almost all of them have degree. On the other hand, there are pretty strong developers who do not have degree (i.e. smart drop-outs).

P.S. I like this article: http://paulgraham.com/95.html

tomp• 10 years ago

which would be very stupid move

Why? Because the salaries of US-based programmers would rise? Because companies would be more motivated to train locals instead of importing foreigners?

rubber_duck3• 10 years ago

Because the salaries of US-based programmers would rise? Because companies would be more motivated to train locals instead of importing foreigners?

Or it just speeds up outsourcing.

hal9000xp2• 10 years ago

There are two cases why companies would hire foreigners:

1. Hiring foreign workforce despite big supply of local workforce at certain skill level. It should be mediocre skill level with mediocre salaries because otherwise there would not be big supply of local workforce. The only reason why employer would do this is to reduce expenses for paying salaries. Wages for local workforce will decrease as a result of increased overall supply of workforce (locals + foreigners).

2. Hiring foreign workforce because of very small supply of local workforce at certain skill level. It should be pretty high skill level because demand exceeds supply and employers are willing to go through complicated visa process. Often such companies (like Google) are very hungry for talent and constantly hiring. It means that they would hire both, local and foreigners, anyone who is capable to pass their challenging job interview. Those companies are happy to pay decent salary for those rare talents.

So this is background. Now, I will answer to your questions:

If you cut the cap on highly skilled migrants, then temporarily salaries for highly skilled locals would spike, but in the long term such companies could not grow. As a result of this, some companies would go bankrupt (high tech is risky business, if you can't grow, often it means you will be dead) and some companies would go overseas. So in this case, either locals have less job opportunities in their homeland or they fly abroad to countries who are realized that high quality human capital is everything in global economy of 21th century.

TAForObvReasons• 10 years ago

H1B allows for work experience to substitute for formal college degrees. It's easier to demonstrate competency with the degree but it is not compulsory:

The nature of the specific duties is so specialized and complex that the knowledge required to perform the duties is usually associated with the attainment of a bachelor's or higher degree.
education, specialized training, and/or progressively responsible experience that is equivalent to the completion of a U.S. bachelor’s or higher degree in the specialty occupation, and having recognition of expertise in the specialty.

https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupati...

Const-me• 10 years ago

In practice, American companies who hire foreigners on H1B don’t bother.

I’m guessing, evaluating a university diploma is a well-known routine. Proofing that work experience counts as equivalent is less common, and hence unknown to the lawyers/accountants who do that paperwork.

If you don’t have an education but are exceptionally talented, O-1 “Extraordinary Ability” might be easier than H1B.

rurban• 10 years ago

150K is a bit unrealistic. The US is not only Silicon Valley. But 100K is realistic, and I would certainly appreciate that.

Regarding the quota of 65.000-110.000/year: With a 100K salary cap the numbers could stay the same. What's clear is that the H1-B visa departments are not able to process even 50.000 per season. The ones who take the risk or can afford it not to travel are staying and waiting for the processing after the first 3 years. The others, esp. the ones who need to do business traveling and their visa was not processed (even with Priority) have to leave the country and the program, like me.

Streamline the process, get more personal or raise the cap.

wkoszek• 10 years ago

You confuse skill with high salary. If you're a part of HN community and work for a startup with some seed funding, good luck with (a) finding people (b) paying them $150k.

Not sure how you the want government to evaluate chemical, mechanical, aerospace etc. engineers. Right now it's formal education, since I think it's hard to do it objectively otherwise. For software engineers you expected USCIS will look at our ... GitHub accounts to evaluate it?

H1B as it is OK. Unfortunately big firms figured you can DDoS the application system and flood it with applications, get some people, underpay them and use them to replace more expensive and more qualified US people. This is a problem and it needs to be solved.

Read this article as an example: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof-that-h-1b...

olalonde• 10 years ago

You confuse skill with high salary.

Skill is too difficult to define objectively and it's probably not what you should be discriminating on anyways (in a purely economic sense).

What you need to go for is "valuable" (scarce and in demand) engineers and salary is a decent proxy for that (more so than formal education). You also don't want the government to "evaluate" engineers because doing a good job at that would mean, pretty much by definition, selecting the very same engineers companies elect to hire.

alexmlamb2• 10 years ago

I would advocate for using standardized test scores. If you're a smart dropout, even high school dropout, you could take the tests within just a few weeks.

Perhaps there does need to be some kind of flexibility for people who are not native English speakers. For example, a very high math score should be able to compensate for low verbal scores.

Using degrees seems like the worst possible option, since the standards are so low these days, and the trend is for the standards to go even lower.

lonewolf_ninja2• 10 years ago

I agree with most of your points. If the current application system is modified to prevent the 'DDoS' by the big firms, it would solve most of the H1B issues and automatically fix a lot of things.

What would probably work is - increasing the visa application fees quite significantly if a company is applying for more than X applications a year.

wallace_f• 10 years ago

On the other hand, there are pretty strong developers who do not have degree (i.e. smart drop-outs).

I think you might know better than I, but I don't think you have to drop out to be a great developer. Let's be honest, a degree by itself is almost meaningless outside the hard sciences, engineering, and perhaps whatever you would call the 'job-training' degrees (accounting, nursing, pharmacy, etc). There's degrees where you have to figure out how to get things done on your own, and there's degrees that are mostly about learning how to say what's politically correct.

edblarney3• 10 years ago

I predict that not that much will change WRT valley issues.

His bombastic statements were populist, I don't see anything on the policy agenda that seems it will hit the Valley in any meaningful way.

Even if there are some trade-barbs with China ... the Valley doesn't export much there ...

aaronblohowiak• 10 years ago

we import quite a bit from China, so tariffs would be painful.

edblarney3• 10 years ago

+ We are outsourced there but we are the customers in that equation. The Chinese will not make things more difficult for American buyers - they are in a very pernicious situation as it is.

+ As for tariffs: the thing is - we are already in a trade war. China can sell in the US at will. China blocks tons of American companies from selling to China.

American exports to China are almost nothing.

The Chinese are already 'attacking' and have little to retaliate with.

Also - manufacturers are already moving many things out of China etc. and the gov knows it.

Tariffs may pinch a little bit, but if they do - they would be offset by a commensurate uptick in American manufacturing.

The only thing the Chinese could do would be to block 'Pizza Hut' and possibly Apple, which would suck.

Because of the trade imbalance, the Americans can do far, far more damage than the other way around.

China does hold massive US reserves, and could play some tricks, but it's not going to get to that, moreover, the Fed is ready to mop up any liquidity if the Chinese step out of bounds.

China has been playing a great hand of poker against the West - dividing and conquering - US and EU leaders all kow towing to China, and if they speak up getting slapped down for 'fear of losing access' to China. But we don't have access ... and we're never going to get it. Why would they give us access?

It will take some leadership to re-establish proper trade relations, and even though I don't like Trump at all - if he gets more aggressive with China it would be almost surely a 'good thing'.

The area I would worry about is military i.e. South China sea etc..

I see a lot of Obamacare being repealed, a tougher stance on illegal immigration coming for sure. I don't think that will hit the Valley very hard.

willvarfar• 10 years ago

American tech manufacturing is outsourced to Asia, right? Will a trade war with China, for example, impact gadget production and raise costs and lower demand for the gadgets that the valley produces and profits from? If there are trade-barbs with China then I would expect that to hit the valley hard.

tajen• 10 years ago

Low factory jobs may come back to US, hopefull with better pay than in China and selling gadgets at a higher price point, while China starts focussing on producing for their own population. I look at this quite optimistically, as it makes end-user price closer to the real cost of production, and it makes production local which brings the concerns for extremely-poor workers closer to the consumer.

In other words, no-one cared for Chinese slaving away, but reimporting those jobs and having Americans factory workers in the same indecent position may trigger more empathy, or at least more health/education budget is available to cater for them. Maybe we'll even charge 10x for IoT gadgets (or kid games, or Ikea lamps), so that workers get a decent situation. It will hit the Valley hard, but only startups who distribute moderately useful gadgets that rely on the poverty of the Chinese workforce.

Maybe it will go as far as paying the Macbook price for a PC, but that's ok if workers get proper working conditions.

Abdur91• 10 years ago

yeah,true

anc84• 10 years ago

No one can reliably predict what it means.

idlewords• 10 years ago

Oh my god, a sane comment in this thread. God bless you.

kraftman• 10 years ago

Really? I think it's fairly obvious that no one knows what it means, and that OP is asking for peoples opinions.

manav• 10 years ago

I think he will be fine for the H1B and and other skilled immigrant programs.

Lower corporate taxes would be good, but I don't think it will be realistic. However, some kind of deal for tax repatriation for large multinationals might be possible. This could bring a lot of money back into the country by the likes of Apple and others.

Tariffs might have some impact as well depending on the type of company/labor and source countries affected (China/Mexico).

tomdell• 10 years ago

Data requests of Silicon Valley companies by the government may increase.

The list of people deemed "suspect" and spied on by the government using private data may grow and the people spied on may become, on average, browner and more Muslim.

partycoder• 10 years ago

I think for the most part, Pence would be the most experienced in the Trump/Pence duo. I would look into Pence's government style.

weihaw• 10 years ago

Pence is the VP which constitutionally has next to no power (Lookup VP John Nance) President-elect Trump will be running the executive via his cabinet appointments. It'll be Governor Christie, who's running the transition and finding those cabinet appointments, that you should be pinning your hopes on.

kibibu• 10 years ago

Yeee-es, but then would you say Cheney had no power?

DasIch• 10 years ago

The only difference between Trump and Pence is that Pence is more qualified to execute the horrible promises they've made.

imh• 10 years ago

Complete uninformed speculation: The stock market doesn't seem to like him. If that continues, the big markets may be less appealing as investments, interest rates may stay low, and so VC may be a (relatively) more appealing place to throw money. That would fuel money towards more startups, but it's a wildly uneducated guess.

phmagic2• 10 years ago

I think the market will self correct shortly.

SkyMarshal2• 10 years ago

With the GOP controlling both Congress and the Presidency, and a luddite POTUS, encryption, digital privacy, and net neutrality are all in danger.

spiderfarmer2• 10 years ago

The US will be moving backwards in a lot of areas.

phmagic2• 10 years ago

Many would rejoice in the fact that is actually moving. Backwards and forwards to many in this election is a matter of opinion.

dreta• 10 years ago

How are these things in danger NOW? Did you sleep through the whole Snowden incident, and everything Assange published in the past decade? Trump can’t take away what you don’t already have.

SkyMarshal2• 10 years ago

We've certainly lost some of these things, but we're about to lose all the rest.

id122015• 10 years ago

Why would I move to US/Silicon Valley ? Is it because Donald Trump won ? But what will change about taxes and freedom ?

memossy• 10 years ago

I don't think there will be significant negative drag to Silicon Valley as anti-immigrant policies won't apply to skilled migrants.

Ultimately Trump is a chauvinist and economic with the truth sure, but that just makes him a New York businessman. He is no ideologue and as long as he doesn't kick off a trade war things should level out quite quickly as I note here:

https://governmentsandmarkets.com/trump-the-morning-after-th...

We can also actually expect more support for startups as these are acknowledged job creators. Where the danger comes is in enforcement of anti-monopoly statutes for larger companies, although healthcare monopolies are likely first on the plate.

grandalf• 10 years ago

It probably means very little. A president does not really have the power to make significant change. It happens with collusion from congress and apathy from the public.

The Silicon Valley outcry about Trump was mostly a social signal intended to make people seem enlightened -- how enlightened does one really have to be to be disappointed a presidential candidate makes rude/racist remarks?

andygates• 10 years ago

With the same party wearing all three hats, the chance of change is increased.

humanrebar2• 10 years ago

I seriously doubt the republicans and Trump will be on the same page much. Plus the democrats are slightly stronger in the senate, so the filibuster should slow many changes down a bit.

threatofrain2• 10 years ago

I'd be surprised if strategic redistricting doesn't happen within 4 years.

jedberg3• 10 years ago

The only policy position he really made clear that would affect SV was that he said he would find a way to severely punish Apple for making their devices in China.

Whether he follows through and has congressional support is to be seen.

rimantas• 10 years ago

No other US company makes anything in China?

Anderkent• 10 years ago

Trump is not known for his consistency.

ubertaco• 10 years ago

For instance, various Trump brands manufacture heavily in China.

panic• 10 years ago

If Obamacare is repealed, I'll have to stop working independently and go back to a "real" job to be able to afford health insurance.

Jach• 10 years ago

Peter Thiel has his ear, predict based on what you would think Thiel would suggest. My guesses, not that I have a great model of Thiel's mind, are less regulation but more data collection, probably not much change w.r.t H1B.

yurikokoko• 10 years ago

Srsly, if you want a highly skilled worker who is paid >$100k in the States, you got to have them start working here early when they are not that sophisticated and maybe is paid $70k or so. if I start my career in my home country I wouldn't give sh*t about working in the States after a few years when I'm already successful.

Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

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