To start with, I post this as someone who has been in the software industry for ~17 years, between two of the major tech companies. I've seen big tech's hiring practices first hand. I talk to college kids on a yearly basis about what they can do to advance themselves and be ready for a career.

I've read Vivek's post and...I don't completely disagree with him. I agree that venerating the prom king/queen and calling the nerds in school Radioshack gets us nowhere. I think we DO need to find a way to make being smart cool - and that is a problem with our education system. Too many teachers in there really aren't very good when it comes to science and math - they teach from the book. Something that is more easily done with English or history, but much harder when you need to convey more than facts but an understanding and ability to solve problems.

And then certainly, you can point to universities that are hyper political and pushing nonsense. Though when talking with CS students, I don't see any evidence of this beyond the way some of them dress or hair colors and such.

All this said...I think the point that is being missed is that while our school system may be lacking, the software industry is A LOT of learning on the job. Yes, you need some foundational knowledge but you're going to learn a lot of tricks on the job. You'll be assigned a mentor - at least at the big companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc) that you can ask the basic questions, best practices, shortcuts and so forth. I learned more from my final internship than I did in any single year in college.

What Vivek and Musk however are making me think is that their issue isn't with education, as much as it is taking advantage of people. Look at Amazon, they're known for having a shit work life balance. A lot of people working 12 hour days and weekends. A lot of people doing "extra" work to avoid being put on a performance improvement plan (PIP). And the people on H1Bs do this because if they get fired, they have 60 days to find another job before they're forced to leave the US.

This doesn't even touch on the predatory contracting agencies that I have been told by former contractor H1Bs exploit workers like crazy. Late paychecks. Benefits are only what law requires. Being told to work extra hours and suck it up. You're on an H1B - you can't do anything about it, you're stuck.

All I can think is that this is what they want - more people who are here provisionally. That they can tell they need to work harder, faster, longer....or they're fired and have to leave the country. It turns out, if you threaten someone's livelihood they're highly motivated to be competitive.

Demanding more H1B1 visas means less American jobs for Americans. We don't want to support other countries. We want to have American jobs for Americans. Not foreigners who get exploited anyway.