It ain't the cause, but is definitely an enabler, because foreign talent on work visas effectively depends on their job much more so than their domestic counterparts and are thus very unlikely to push back against unreasonable demands or workload.

We may as well call them working hostages.

No but it demonstrates a disinterest in building software products and a bigger interest in playing business cost economics and securing their moat. Part of their strategy to force as much money into AI-hype as possible.

I have worked with some "american born engineers" that were some of the least competent people I've ever seen, while getting paid 2x or 3x of some "foreign contractors" on the same team

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Yeah, that was unnecessary. Incompetent are born and work everywhere. In this case, Microsoft's problem with GitHub is trying to shove the square peg that is GitHub in to the round hole that is Azure.