Summary
Elon Musk faced backlash from his followers on X after advocating for importing “super talented engineers” to address a shortage in the U.S. tech industry.
Musk likened hiring top foreign talent to building a championship sports team and argues that there is a shortage of talented and motivated American engineers.
Critics argued there’s sufficient U.S. talent being overlooked or underpaid, with some pointing to widespread tech layoffs.
Musk dismissed claims of low wages or training gaps, maintaining a need for exceptional engineering talent to advance innovation.
I’ll break the flow of shitting on Elon (a hobby of mine, but it gets old) and say yes, we have a large number of engineers. Yes, a lot of them suck real hard. Good ones are often promoted to the level of their incompetence, others are just well-polished incompetents who know how to talk the talk. So…yes, there is a shortage. However adding more to the pool won’t fix the bad hiring and promotion practices in the industry.
Also, doesn’t really matter if there’s a bunch in the Midwest if you can’t convince any of your existing staff to uproot to some racist pro-trump place with extreme temperatures (assuming you want some level of in person interaction). Texas is only palatable because the place they’re moving is Austin which is…not quite as racist. And tech bros have never had a reputation for being pro women which of course Texas is not.