This is why over the long-term, restrictive immigration laws will cause tech jobs to move abroad. There is no fundamental reason why the global tech industry has to be so concentrated in Silicon Valley. The workforce - which is heavily international - is there at the moment, but if American immigration policies restrict the workforce, the companies will eventually move operations to wherever their workers are.
Bingo. And once talent does move offshore, it’s going to be really really hard to get it back. Because let’s face it: SV is a horrible place to live in. Housing is too expensive, poor public transportation, endemic homelessness and the chance that an earthquake will wipe out the whole region.
If another city say Bangalore or Vancouver does get the critical talent required to kickstart the Tech boom and be a viable competitor, tech companies will migrate wholesale and never look back.
(1) While we are at it, let’s stop externalizing costs to some other territories. And to really make things equal, we are going to price all other things equally at a global level with certain cost adjustments to account for shipping and geography and similar factors. Oh let’s not forget that all labor needs to be allowed multinational freedom of movement and migration to anywhere, similar to how much freedom multinational corporations enjoy. And probably going to need to unify all 195 nations into 1 global state too.
Then this little immigration and globalization issue will finally disappear, which would be fantastic for everyone.
(2) Or we can continue opening up the globalization box piece by piece because each change is really great for some groups and really bad for other groups, which only serves to heighten social conflict and wars like the trade war that has been happening. There will never be enough assistance provided for groups that are negatively impacted by globalization; governments are much too slow acting reactively and proactively.
You realize that most of the changes that you and others want to make are just as unrealistic solutions as the above, and only one is a permanent solution? Right? And as a result of the fragmentation of the world we find ourselves in, incremental changes will not solve anything really. You can move the tech hub or dominant economy somewhere else and it will end up getting restricted again because there will never be enough relief from crowding unless the tech hub becomes more decentralized like most other industries. Further, even being decentralized there will be incumbents created in Canada that will eventually find the changes to be undesirable just like the USA.
Canadians will eventually say China is ok but Indians are externalizing too many degree education costs. And there might be another trade war, and someone thinks they have the answer by moving the dominant economy somewhere else and the same issues will surface again.. and round and round we go in circles until people have finally had enough of kicking the can down the road, throwing the garbage over the wall, and the globalization wars and option 1 happens.
If human civilization survives long enough, option 1 (one world government) will definitely happen, because it makes a lot of sense in a highly interconnected world. But it's very hard to say how far off it is.
The problem with flyover countries and other places inside the US is the same fickle immigration rules apply. And how many people around the US want to migrate to Alabama or Mississippi?
>At the same time, if the companies export their labor to exploitative countries, their goods and services can be tariffed.
This isn't manufacturing. I really doubt local techies in Canada or India are being exploited.
> The problem with flyover countries and other places inside the US is the same fickle immigration rules apply. And how many people around the US want to migrate to Alabama or Mississippi?
There are many universities in Alabama and Mississippi that produce ample high-quality graduates. I can tell you that, comparing with the courses published on OCW, my curriculum and its rigor did not differ much from that of MIT.
This is where the tech companies located throughout the region get most of their employees. There are, right now, tech jobs in places like New Orleans, Mobile, Huntsville, Birmingham, Hattiesburg, Jackson, and at least a half-dozen other cities in those two states - and not just one or two employers in each, but enough to jump around a little during your career.
So, a company opening there could expect to draw from the same pool of talent everyone else is, and successfully attract a lot of candidates for salaries great for the area and substantially less offered by FAANG. Not a lot do it (just one guy in my class, for example), but as the number of jobs and their pay increased, less people would leave to work in CA. Eventually, yes, you'd drawn in people who want to move here from other places. About a quarter of my current workplace (~150 employees) relocated from elsewhere in the country.
If you get to the point where you can't find anyone else for any sane amount of money, then...open up another office somewhere else in the country. Why is your first jump that fickle immigration rules are going to be the problem rather than hiring the people already here?
For many companies, cost is not as much a factor as being able to attract top talent, and not fragmenting their offices too much by spreading teams across them.
Many people in smaller metro areas that you mentioned are able to relocate to the West Coast, and many people actually do. The are no visa or immigration issues for them.
If the choice for a new location is between Vancouver and Mississippi, literally anyone in the world can work in Vancouver easily, expanding their potential hiring talent pool. Whereas a Mississippi office only attracts people that are unwilling to relocate to the bigger metro areas within the US. Any new location in the US has to deal with these new immigration issues if they don't find an exact match or if they have to hire a foreign born grad from one of the schools you mentioned. Vancouver does not have these issues.
