Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas • Hacker News Board

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#51

Post by sanswork » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 4:43 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #50

sanswork wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm guessing you have found your attempts to hire senior devs in Australia to be easy?

I'm not a hirer but a lowly employee. See my recent edit. I keep an eye on the market and I haven't seen any crazy wage increases. I'm not against being convinced of the point but atm I'm just not convinced that there's no senior devs to find, at the right price. Also, how long have these visas been going on for? It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem I guess. Because of the band-aid fix of the visas, the wages never…

I've explained elsewhere why raising wages doesn't solve the problem.

You are convinced there is no problem when you admittedly have no experience with the issue. You're also expecting to see changes that wouldn't fix the problem because of your lack of experience with The problem.

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#52

Post by sanswork » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:00 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #50

sanswork wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm guessing you have found your attempts to hire senior devs in Australia to be easy?

I'm not a hirer but a lowly employee. See my recent edit. I keep an eye on the market and I haven't seen any crazy wage increases. I'm not against being convinced of the point but atm I'm just not convinced that there's no senior devs to find, at the right price. Also, how long have these visas been going on for? It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem I guess. Because of the band-aid fix of the visas, the wages never…

So you are claiming that the only thing holding you back from progressing your career is that you don't want to do more work for what you see as not enough money? If that is true you suffer from some serious short sightedness in regards to your career. AND you don't have any experience in the topic.

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#53

Post by NTDF9 » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:50 AM UTC

hive_mind wrote: post #22

On the bright side, India could benefit immensely from less brain drain.

They already are. Amazon, Linkedin, Microsoft, Uber etc have offices there, paying top talent to the tune of $60-$80/year.

For comparison, this is more than median tech salaries in London and cost of living in India is peanuts.

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#54

Post by hiram112 » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:57 AM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #51

brokenmachine wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a hirer but a lowly employee. See my recent edit. I keep an eye on the market and I haven't seen any crazy wage increases. I'm not against being convinced of the point but atm I'm just not convinced that there's no senior devs to find, at the right price. Also, how long have these visas been going on for? It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem I guess. Because of the band-aid fix of the visas, the wages never…

I've explained elsewhere why raising wages doesn't solve the problem. You are convinced there is no problem when you admittedly have no experience with the issue. You're also expecting to see changes that wouldn't fix the problem because of your lack of experience with The problem.

What you don't seem to understand is that the visa system destroys the whole concept of supply and demand.

If your business can't hire workers, you will have to raise salaries. If you can't afford the higher salaries, you don't have a viable business (at least, without the use of wage arbitrage and indentured servants).

The extra supply of labor will come into the market as soon as they're receiving signals that wages are rising, working conditions good, etc. Until then, it seems like a waste of time: why study really difficult software when you will be competing with folks willing to work much more cheaply.

You might have to wait a bit for this pipeline to fix itself since you purposefully broke it this past decade by using visas to game the system.

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#55

Post by hiram112 » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 6:04 AM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #29

empressplay wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now it becomes the responsibility of the industry to encourage students to study computer science in uni...

And those students might be helpful for these roles in a decade. So do you expect these companies to survive just cooling their heels until then?

Too bad for these companies. They gamed with basic supply and demand. Lot of industries which don't abuse foreign labor as much have a steady pipeline of candidates because these grads saw your company - shitty wages, awful working conditions, no future - and bailed the fuck out and into a other career path. Now these companies, dependent on cheap visa labor, may have to pay back some of the fat cash they've gained by screwing their own nations' workforce for the last two decades.

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#56

Post by hiram112 » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 6:07 AM UTC

catmanjan wrote: post #15

xiphias wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain?

As sanswork said, easy to get new devs, but as soon as they've put in a few years it's very easy to go out on your own or go overseas.

So what? You'll have to compete?

You've gotten so used to your cheap labor, indentured workforce,that you can't even contemplate employees participating in a free market?

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#57

Post by hiram112 » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 6:15 AM UTC

ZvG_Bonjwa wrote: post #48

empressplay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently had a pretty good look at the Melbourne software dev market and there are seemingly plenty of senior devs looking for work, companies here appear to have the "pick of the litter" when hiring. Maybe you're just in the wrong part of Australia?

Melbourne is a positive outlier and not at all representative of the rest of Australia. Finding senior devs in Brisbane is an insanely arduous process and its not uncommon to see positions take 6+ months to fill (at least at the places I've worked at). Even when companies start throwing money around like crazy, the talent just isn't there. I've heard that Sydney isn't so great either. Once devs hit seniority they run…

So what's the salary you're offering for this unfillable position, and what's the average price of a home there?

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#58

Post by brokenmachine » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 6:17 AM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #52

brokenmachine wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a hirer but a lowly employee. See my recent edit. I keep an eye on the market and I haven't seen any crazy wage increases. I'm not against being convinced of the point but atm I'm just not convinced that there's no senior devs to find, at the right price. Also, how long have these visas been going on for? It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem I guess. Because of the band-aid fix of the visas, the wages never…

So you are claiming that the only thing holding you back from progressing your career is that you don't want to do more work for what you see as not enough money? If that is true you suffer from some serious short sightedness in regards to your career. AND you don't have any experience in the topic.

Well, we're only talking about me now, but I have pretty much decided that I do not want to progress any further in my current direction. I'm on a pretty good pay now and the work situation is acceptable.

I am investigating ways to invest the money I have made/am still making in the best ways for the best possible return, and also looking to downshift by pursuing projects/businesses in my free time that I am simply interested in - that have no guarantee of financial success, while also looking into the possibility of moving to a less expensive part of the country.

I am not looking for a promotion which includes taking on more stress and less free time in exchange for an insufficient pay increase. It would need to be significant for me to take the chance, and from what I have seen out there, I haven't found anything that would satisfy me, although if I was actually out of work now perhaps I would accept less.

If that makes me unqualified in your opinion to comment about whether pays are sufficient for exactly the type of job that I'd be applying for, I don't care. I also don't care if you think I'm ambitious enough. I'm very sure I wouldn't want to work for you anyway.

There was even an out-of-work dev commenting that he was looking for work in this very thread. I don't know what more I can say.

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#59

Post by vacri » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 6:27 AM UTC

> I am sad when I look into the eyes of my staff on 457 or working holiday visas .... How do I ask them to help us do our small but proud part in sustaining Australia’s economic growth and providing more jobs for Australians and other immigrants?

I know that this part is entirely rhetorical, but the thought of a boss in tech coming over and trying to inspire me to do my work 'for the good of the country' is just too amusing. :)

Re: Software company's response to Australian government abolishing migrant visas

#60

Post by yakult » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 6:31 AM UTC

catmanjan wrote: post #43

yakult wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously think those problems can't be fixed with money? Increasing housing supply costs money. Upgrading the education system costs money. UBI and other social services for people replaced by automation costs money. Investment in innovation and basic scientific research costs money. In the same way, preventing monoculture is a simple case of directly subsidizing people's visas/PR/citizenship on various groun…

Yes I do. Increasing the supply should fix the problem but there are so many other factors at play in the Australian housing market. Tax concessions, foreign investment, wage stagnation, youth unemployment make it a very hostile market for many people. It's all too big to fail and prices need to go up to keep everyone's super from devaluing. Investment in the education system won't lead to big change without deregula…

Let's look at this from another perspective: do you see an improvement to any of these large complex problems if we remove money from it? Do you see ways to marginally improve things with marginally more money? Just so you know, my answers are no and yes.

>If we still can't even select uni entrants based on those holistic measures what chance do we have of selecting migrants?

And yet migrants still get selected on a yearly basis. Sucks, I know.

There are no magic solutions that let you pick with 100% accuracy, but I sure can come up with things that still have problems but better than what happens currently. The current system is arbitrary, slow, and with large cross subsidies being flung around with no oversight.

Simply putting a dollar value on each document would give the policy makers plenty more incentive to make sure the subsidies at least go to the right place.

edit: I suspect your argument boils down to "we shouldn't do this thing that gives us huge amounts of money, because we don't need money."

Am I being uncharitable?