Tech job relocation market is recovering. The competition is growing faster

https://relocateme.substack.com/p/the-tech-relocation-job-market-is

41 70 3 months ago

relocateme.substack.com

The more useful way to think about this is competition density rather than raw job count. A market with 10% more jobs but 2-5x times more candidates isn’t a better market, it’s a harder one wearing a better outfit.

We need to cancel the H-1B visa program. It is not helping Americans.

If more Americans knew how much money was being funneled to non-Americans they would be outraged.

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/stop-h1b-visa-holders

JumpCrisscross2• 3 months ago

If more Americans knew how much money was being funneled to non-Americans they would be outraged

The folks being hurt are, broadly, earning more than the average American. Generating outrage around H-1B, specifically, has always been difficult because it comes across as a champagne problem to the electorate. This is why broader anti-immigration messaging succeeds where targeted proposals have failed.

booleandilemma2• 3 months ago

I have worked in offices where half my coworkers were not American.

The average American doesn't get to peek inside these offices and so they don't realize how bad the problem is.

They see non-Americans working in taxi cabs, in landscaping, in food trucks, but they haven't seen how many white collar positions are being taken over by non-Americans. High salary positions. Management positions.

It's a disgrace we're letting this happen to our own country.

physicsguy• 3 months ago

Great way of moving the jobs to London!

supliminal3• 3 months ago

We are not allowed to discuss the underlying factors. So we won’t.

shimman3• 3 months ago

What are the underlying factors? That capital within the tech industry is horribly mismanaged and that maybe we should let the public decide how technology is shaped in this country rather than a small group of people that unironically believe in monarchies and hold deeply anti-democratic views?

milkshakes• 3 months ago

are you talking about the same public that voted in our current clowns? no thank you

ryandrake4• 3 months ago

This kind of vague innuendo, excused by a belief that you're under threat of censorship, adds zero value to the discussion.

Der_Einzige2• 3 months ago

Just look at /pol/ as an example of what happens when you censor too much and they go into their own dwelling. Most memes including trump/trump 2 started as a direct result of /pol/, the killing of Harambe, and gamergate. Zoey Quinn got trump elected twice. Let them say what they want to say here or they get meme magic which literally destroys human civilization over time.

supliminal3• 3 months ago

It is not a belief unfortunately. We’ve all been through it.

siliconc0w3• 3 months ago

There is an argument that the VC-class is actually not a very good way to direct socially productive capital deployment and it'd be better to tax the LPs and direct the research using a public (but meritocratic) process.

For example China (not without its flaws) largely skipped over the digital drug phase and went straight into funding socially beneficial things like energy and materials production, AI and robotic enabled manufacturing, and large scale infrastructure build out. So ten years later they have a lot of socially productive things and we have a lot of socially unproductive things.

supliminal3• 3 months ago

They didn’t skip over it. This was specifically chosen as a path by those in charge because they’re set on ruining our peaceful way of living for their personal gain.

xhkkffbf• 3 months ago

tech jobs that come with relocation support for foreign candidates.

So this is only measuring people who live outside the US and want to take jobs in the US?

cachius• 3 months ago

Relocation to where? The substack is called The Global Move, so possibly everywhere.

The linked report has data: https://relocateme.substack.com/i/186720111/where-the-jobs-a...

Germany leads by a wide margin with 1,218 jobs, roughly a quarter of all listings. In the July report, Germany had 564 jobs, so the country has more than doubled its share. Berlin alone accounts for 696 positions (up from just over 300 previously). This makes Berlin the single most active city for international tech hiring. Hamburg (195) and Munich (186) follow. This is somewhat unsurprising, since Berlin is often praised as one of the most expat-friendly and English-speaking cities in Germany and Europe.

The report is from February 2, so too early for the TDF searching LibreOffice devs to show up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47718764 Spain comes in second:

Spain holds second place with 657 jobs, up from 254 in my 2025 analysis. Barcelona (326), Madrid (97), and Málaga (92) are the main hubs. Spain’s 2023 Startup Law continues to bear fruit, and the cost of living remains lower than in Amsterdam, London, or Paris. With 8,580 active tech companies that generate €14.8 billion in annual economic impact and employ over 108,000 people, Spain has become a serious destination for tech workers who want a European lifestyle without Northern European prices.

sergiotapia• 3 months ago

I'm a single issue voter: who is protecting the american tech worker?

We should dismantle the H1B program if we are struggling to find roles for American youth.

bitcurious• 3 months ago

Dismantling H1B (imo) will lead to a more globally distributed tech market and that would harm American workers an order of magnitude more than the competition from H1Bs. You want to keep jobs in EST..PST, you want IRL collaboration to matter, you want concentration of jobs in tight geographies like SF.

henry20234• 3 months ago

Work is not charity, each H1B that comes to the US will bring twice or triple its income as US GDP.

It’s a net positive for America.

Rumudiez• 3 months ago

even when they make 6 figures, live in a tiny apartment with no furniture, and send back their whole paycheck in remittances each month?

or do you mean the old motel in the scenic locale you used to go as a kid, that has since been bought up by immigrants, has AI art peeling off the walls now and has gone without basic maintenance for 30 years?

zthrowaway2• 3 months ago

There’s no solid evidence of that. In some aspects they can be a net positive sure but it’s modest.

nothinkjustai2• 3 months ago

Net positive for the rich elites and a net negative for the working class. And considering the crap conditions H1Bs are often forced to work in under the threat of deportation, not really a benefit for them either.

georgeburdell• 3 months ago

Given the civil unrest during the Covid lockdowns, I’d say robust domestic employment is good policy

GolfPopper2• 3 months ago

"America" doesn't pay bills, buy houses, raise kids, form communities. People do.

I am far beyond sick and tired of the pretense that higher national metrics somehow magically mean better quality of life for the citizenry.

If "America" doesn't deliver for its citizens, it will come to an ignominious end sooner than might be expected.

cucumber3732842• 3 months ago

US will bring twice or triple its income as US GDP.

That is predicated on the assumption that "hurr GDP go up!" is good for America which is questionable at best and I take issue with far more than any specific point of immigration policy.

bdangubic• 3 months ago

That will do absolutely nothing at all - like nothing. If you want to be a single-issue voter you need to find candidates that will outlaw outsourcing (or make it financially prohibitive). problem is of course, you won't be able to find any.

Democrats slogan for upcoming elections should be "Americans First" with outsourcing being a key part of the platform - "while our opponents are pitching 'America First' that has miserably failed for Americans, we will change that." (they won't but good pitch :-) )

zacharyz• 3 months ago

I don't disagree. My observation of at least one major large company is that rather than rely on h1bs they are instead building out offices in other countries and dramatically increasing hiring there. I doubt they are the only company doing that, but I don't see anyone talking about it.

mixmastamyk6• 3 months ago

Why only the youth? After the economy recovers we have ageism to look forward to.

noident• 3 months ago

Probably 90% of my coworkers in a US tech company are on a work visa. Now that there is pressure on the H1B program, my company is investing in a permanent engineering team in India. Whether this will pay off for them in the long term is a matter of debate, but it seems like the near-term future of the US engineering team is in serious doubt.

You can't just "dismantle H1B" and expect it not to backfire.

nyantaro1• 3 months ago

Absolutely. Nearshoring alone could skyrocket

lubujackson• 3 months ago

It is very, very divided tech market right now. As a full stack eng with lots of startup product experience and an AI product under my belt, I had no trouble landing interviews and getting a new role. 2 years ago, it took me ~300 applications for a handful of viable interviews, as the meta was FAANG or "big data experience". 2 years later, everything is different.

Most telling: I mistakenly filtered against all jobs in SF on LinkedIn and I was a few pages in before I noticed. There were just a few lawyer jobs in the mix but literally every other job was AI/backend/product engineering roles. Meanwhile, I know an experienced EM from enterprise SaaS who has all but stopped looking for work.

stego-tech2• 3 months ago

This remains quite the nasty storm of a job market.

* A non-zero amount of employers simply aren't opening jobs because they're all-in on AI replacing workers within the next 6 to 18 months, and have been all-in on that gambit for the past two to three years.

* Tariffs are choking out domestic tech workers in non-tech companies, as those companies try to save money by farming out to MSPs and contractors instead of retaining in-house talent.

* Interest rates choke out job growth across the economy as a whole, but the Fed can't really lower them since inflation continues skyrocketing due to tariffs and geopolitical destabilization

* The government axed 10% of the entire bodycount from the 2008 Collapse, in the span of a year, and from within its own ranks, thus increasing competition further

* The remaining folks who want to put butts in seats are being tied by their leadership into offering lower salaries for higher skills/experience, and the hiring managers still want to find a candidate that's willing to take shit pay but also not leave the second things improve

* Continued datacenter buildouts and the Nth-order effects on supply chains continue to support the narrative that AI will just replace all work(ers) anyway, so there's no point trying to deal with this crisis, but aren't displacing enough jobs to spur policymakers into actually fixing the problem through increasing taxes or passing more regulations.

* Ongoing deportations are hampering complimentary jobs for citizens. Research from the Obama era deportations show that for every 100 migrants deported, 12 citizens lose their jobs - meaning under the current regime alone, as many as 72,000 fewer jobs exist solely from deportation efforts since the start of their term.

This is bad, ya'll. There's no "easy" way out of this either, no silver bullet to make everything all better and get folks back into job roles again. If the regime capitulates on tariffs or geopolitics (which they won't), they look weak and incompetent (which they are). If the Fed lowers rates to boost job growth, inflation will take off like a rocket because that's what Capital has been trying to engineer since 2024; if the Fed raises interest rates to keep inflation in check, the job market will crater and the datacenter boom will go bust as safer investments produce good returns again. If employers keep wages low, workers will fuck off to greener pastures the literal second they find something; if they raise wages to match cost of living and promote familial growth, they'll have to hire fewer workers and thus increase competition. Hell, by some estimates it's easier to get into Harvard than land a job right now!

Shit's fucked, and until someone forces accountability and takes the L (namely the regime who started this shitshow in the first place), nothing is going to really improve.

harimau777• 3 months ago

IMHO, the easy answer is wealth taxes and massively increased social safety net in order to bring America in line with developed countries.

saltyoldman2• 3 months ago

I don't think the rich should be taxed a dime more until they route out the Fraud. What's the point of having all the rich people suddenly pay out $40 Billion next week, if that money disappears in California Homeless and Hospice crap. I don't disagree with increased safety nets but it needs to be done without people writing 50k Medicare billing lines per day.

Supposedly CA spent 800k on EACH HOMELESS PERSON over the last 5 years. They could have all gotten a free home in a suburb and developer salary for 2 years instead of fraud capture.

stego-tech2• 3 months ago

I mean, yeah, I'm in full agreement with you. Think Tanks, Economists, Researchers, Politicians, Philosophers, Social Workers, everyone who looks at this stuff professionally is in general agreement that our method of shoe-horning middlemen into every single transaction, forced privatization of government services, permissive attitudes towards corporate consolidation/antitrust laws, and lack of substantial taxation is what's ultimately harming our long-term growth prospects.

Try telling that to the people who have benefited from said conditions for decades and are enjoying the fruits of their harmful labors. They're the ones running all three branches of government from local to federal level and everywhere in between, and they have no intention of changing anything or sacrificing their own gains until they're dead in the ground.

jandrewrogers• 3 months ago

The economies you want to copy are even more stagnant than the US economy. It isn't obvious why this would be a long-term improvement.

ryandrake4• 3 months ago

We need to Make Billionaires Millionaires Again.

akramachamarei• 3 months ago

In line with developed countries except, for example, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden, each of whom previously levied wealth taxes on individuals, but apparently didn't like the taste, and have since repealed.

siliconc0w3• 3 months ago

Don't forget skyrocketing employer health care costs due to Government-endorsed monopoly and fraud that is the US Healthcare system. Robots don't need healthcare.

iririririr• 3 months ago

this article said nothing at all besides the blatantly obvious.

it's the usual elastic job market. yesterday BE was down because clueless employers thought saas and cloud would be good enough. it wasn't

today FE is down because employers think slop react is good enough. it clearly isn't.

and cycles goes on.

Tech job relocation market is recovering. The competition is growing faster

Related Stories