Turns out announcing a $100k fee to distract from the Trump Gold Card announcement during the same press conference [3] leads to a reverse brain drain [0] and a $35B commitment to invest in India [1].
For example, much of AWS SageMaker's team is out of AWS India, and unofficially Amazonians on work visas are being offered transfers to India [2] while paying L6/7 [4] roughly the same as they would in Germany [5].
I warned people on HN for years to not be greedy with remote work (1-2 day hybrid is not the end of the world) and not be pissy to Americans of non-European heritage and derogatorily calling us H1Bs.
Either way those of us who know how to take advantage of brutal raw capitalism win - especially as this administration is helping further enhance this offshoring [6] with technology transfers [7].
This is real. I work at one of the big tech and have access to their internal head count breakdowns. The overall headcount is mostly stagnant but the US headcount is decreasing with a corresponding increase in Europe and mostly India based HC.
“ Turns out announcing a $100k fee to distract from the Gold Card leads to a reserve brain drain”
Seems a lot of the Trump policies go exactly the opposite of what was planned. The supply people at my company are telling me that there is a huge push to move manufacturing away from the US due to tariffs.
alephnerd|1 month ago
Turns out announcing a $100k fee to distract from the Trump Gold Card announcement during the same press conference [3] leads to a reverse brain drain [0] and a $35B commitment to invest in India [1].
For example, much of AWS SageMaker's team is out of AWS India, and unofficially Amazonians on work visas are being offered transfers to India [2] while paying L6/7 [4] roughly the same as they would in Germany [5].
I warned people on HN for years to not be greedy with remote work (1-2 day hybrid is not the end of the world) and not be pissy to Americans of non-European heritage and derogatorily calling us H1Bs.
Either way those of us who know how to take advantage of brutal raw capitalism win - especially as this administration is helping further enhance this offshoring [6] with technology transfers [7].
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-23/us-loses-...
[1] - https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-35-bill...
[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonemployees/comments/1qfesvs/6_...
[3] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati...
[4] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en...
[5] - https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-en...
[6] - https://youtube.com/watch?v=uDtm-k6JvI8
[7] - https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2025/04/the-india-us-tru...
einszwei|1 month ago
rvz|1 month ago
refulgentis|1 month ago
seattle_spring|1 month ago
It's not the end of the world, but it's also not really remote work if you have to live within commuting distance of an office.
vjvjvjvjghv|1 month ago
Seems a lot of the Trump policies go exactly the opposite of what was planned. The supply people at my company are telling me that there is a huge push to move manufacturing away from the US due to tariffs.