Computerworld columnist Steven Vaughan-Nichols is warning that foreign tech workers are avoiding attending US events and are not interested in jobs in the Land of the Fee.
Vaughan-Nichols said that after President Donald Trump returned to office in January, European conference attendees told him they would not take jobs or attend conferences in the United States.
The mood is not exactly mysterious when the US feels like it has “Keep Out!” and “No Trespassing!” signs nailed to the arrivals hall with bizarre rules about handing over all your data to check you have not made a social media post taking the Michael out of Trump.
He said that even top tech people who flew in with proper visas and paperwork were getting turned away at the border.
Trade show organisers are seeing the same pattern, and they are not pretending it is a blip. Getting speakers and attendees from outside the States to commit to US events is getting harder, and plenty refuse to try.
Quelle surprise.
At this point, there are a good percentage of citizens that would leave if they could! This is no shock.
Europe experienced a “brain drain” for quite a few years to the US. I suspect that a lot of talented US citizens will be looking at the rest of the world to set up home, careers and families.
There was a time when tech talent would uproot their lives for the US because it offered collaboration, publishing, company-building and a big conference circuit. Now they run a gauntlet at the border, where even a green card or citizenship does not guarantee they will not be hassled.
Thus it can be seen how when industries aren’t mitigated in their self defeating behavior by unions, the associated job market and domestic industry can be driven to collapse and there will be zero ability to slow the process down once it begins spiralling.
Unions, even if you are a super smart techbro who understands EVERYTHING about the world better than other people because you understand computers… you still need Unions or else the company you are working for will inveitably blow itself up and leave nothing but a crater behind.
I wish union work was more common place. It seems where I live unions are mostly for blue collar work and less common than I would hope to see.
Conversely, the company I’m working for has been around for 45 years, isn’t unionized, promotes from inside, and provides reasonable wages and great benefits.
They know that if they mess that up, we’ll all leave and go work somewhere else.
Of course, the company isn’t American, which likely makes a difference.
Oh believe me I have also seen precarious tall stacks of rocks that manage to stay standing for much longer than you would expect. Usually it is because they are surrounded by a forest of other much more solid formations of rocks or the ground is solid and well suited to support a base stone.
Sometimes though I see someone waving to me smugly from atop a precarious stack of rocks amidst a sea of other precarious stacks of rocks and I chuckle to myself and wave back condescendingly… and then feel guilty about the ugliness of pre-emptive disaster tourism.
