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Immigration is about talent, not costs

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Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#591

Post by anjc »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #506
anjc wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But more to the point, it's short-sighted and selfish to judge policy decisions solely based on their effects on your salary. Especially since those of us in tech are, by and large, ridiculously well-compensated. Maybe it's selfish for you, but what about the ~50% of STEM grads who can't find a job in their industry? And wages are stagnant for STEM workers, and lowering for CS workers. Hundreds of thousands have be…

>Hundreds of thousands have been laid off in the last 5 years, particularly faced with globalisation and outsourcing. You could also make the argument that allowing women into the industry hurts the wages of male programmers.

Women have been allowed into the industry for a century+ :S If you mean attracting more women into the industry, supposedly the demand is so high that it wont affect any wages. Wages should continue to increase because of a lack of supply! Oh wait...stagnant for a decade...

http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages-mi...

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#592

Post by eitally »

bduerst wrote: post #510
LordHumungous wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government defined "prevailing wage" for a level 1 software developer in San Francisco is $74,000. Does that sound like a market rate to you? http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?area=41884... Edit: For a "web developer" the starting number is $52,000. In San Francisco. http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?area=41884...

Yes it does. Level 1 is mean salary for entry level, and it's for the peninsula, not just SFC.

Yep. The HN community is not at all representative of the market -- people here tend to be both more experienced and working in better positions than most -- and I can confirm that for non-tech companies the prevailing wage for entry level tech jobs (do-it-all programmer, web dev, etc) in the SJ/Milpitas/Fremont area is in the 70s, going up to ~100 after 10+ years experience.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#593

Post by geebee »

jahmaiosullivan wrote: post #514
anjc wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of evidence out there. Probably the most obvious signal for you should be that companies are complaining about a lack of workers, but wages are stagnant. Or another signal might be the fact that 50% of STEM grads have to work in unrelated industries because of an inability to find work in tech. If you want more proof of funniness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU Or if you want proof of major…

So interns are getting paid astronomical amounts but there are no shortage of workers? Something doesn't add up here.

Interns at elite major law firms earn the annual equivalent of up to $160,000 a year.

http://www.thelawstreetjournal.com/1l-2l/law-school-internsh...

MBA summer interns from elite schools can equal or exceed this as well.

We don't talk about a "shortage" of lawyers or MBAs, though because we know that this isn't typical. Also, for some reason, there seems to be a stronger cultural objection to engineers getting paid as well as lawyers, MBAs, or physicians. I think it's partly because when you say "lawyer" or "physician", people think of a serious, middle aged person with grey hair. When you say "programmer", people think of a young socially inept person. I don't agree with the stereotype at all, but I think it's part of why people would be so quick to conclude that an unobjectionable salary for a lawyer is "astronomical" for a developer.

I'd also say that comparing software development intern salaries at well paying companies probably represents developer pay in its best light. I'm not saying it's misleading or inaccurate - it's a perfectly valid snapshot. But software developers draw higher salaries out of the gate, but may fade in the stretch. Comparing what career developers earn at age 50 with their lawyer or doctor friends would probably give you a different picture that should also be considered. Ultimately, look at the general data - in San Francisco, the median salary for a software developer is just a little more than it is for a dental hygienist and a little lower than for a registered nurse. Yet many people feel that this indicates a severe shortage - I agree something doesn't add up here, but to me, the evidence suggests no particular shortage of developers.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#594

Post by Jacky800 »

ebbv wrote: post #240

That's great that AeroFS is hiring worldwide based solely on talent, but I can tell you from experience working at Ford, that is not the case among massive corporations. They are purely trying to exploit the wage differential between the US and India, Pakistan and others.

Ford is not a 100% knowledge based industry.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#595

Post by degradas »

npsimons wrote: post #292
sliverstorm wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your remarks about "divisive ethic-neuveau-ghettos" with "communities insulating themselves rather than assimilating" just makes it worst. Part of the "social contract" when you immigrate to the US is to at least make an effort to join your new country. We aren't the Borg, but we would like to see you learn at least a little English, accept your new country, and generally participate. You are already most of the way…

Exactly. We've already seen Islamists try to enforce sharia in England; if we had wanted a theocracy, we would have let the Christofascists take over long ago. And before anyone goes claiming oppression of differing cultures, the secular culture that is America is precisely the root cause of why many people want to to move there. Others in this thread have already mentioned things like misogyny, homophobia, etc, that…

From where I sit (Europe) America does not look like having a secular culture at all. Sure, you have the separation of church and state enshrined in your constitution, but in practice the country seems way too religious.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#596

Post by AngrySkillzz »

tmarthal wrote: post #433
starfishjenga wrote: post #14

If this guy is starved for talent couldn't he just increase what he's willing to pay and steal people from other tech companies? (There are a number of people who would be willing to jump ship for the right #s I'm sure.) This seems to be where BusinessWeek is correct. At the end of the day engineers should be getting paid more.

There are only a handful of Yann LeCuns in the world. You can't just duplicate certain technical expertise. This isn't about developer X using framework Y; this is about research level PhDs (and equivalent) that cannot continue work for a US-based company because of visa issues.

Look at the numbers; the vast majority of H1B are not research level PhDs working on unsolved problems.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#597

Post by LLWM »

falcolas wrote: post #170
illumen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't provide any evidence, you're making it up.

Or, he fears blacklisting in what is a closed market. The number of employees who have identical work histories is pretty slim; naming 2-3 of them would be very identifying. I've seen this (job openings explicitly tailored for new or exisiting H1B employees) quite a bit myself, and I too am unwilling to "name names" for the same reason.

Then there's no reason for anyone to take your concerns seriously.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#598

Post by hnnewguy »

unprepare wrote: post #234
hnnewguy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't mention anything about not paying the market price. That's the flaw in that definition. Price is the most important factor. Edit: If price isn't accounted for then what isn't in a shortage at prices just greater than free?

A shortage is a lack of supply, a company unwilling to pay above $X is not a shortage of supply, it is a shortage of demand. If we have a shortage of carrots, we dont have enough carrots at ANY price. If people are unwilling to pay 5$/LB for carrots but thats what they cost in the store, that is not a shortage. What this discussion is about is substitute goods[1] replacing standard goods. In this case US workers are…

>A shortage is a lack of supply

No, a shortage is the discrepancy between the quantity supplied and quantity demanded at a given price.

When wages offered are too low, there is a shortage of labour supply. Increase those wages and that shortage disappears.

>If we have a shortage of carrots, we dont have enough carrots at ANY price.

This is simply not true.

>If people are unwilling to pay 5$/LB for carrots but thats what they cost in the store, that is not a shortage.

The shortage of carrot occurs at every price below $5/lb. You cannot talk about shortages in the economic sense without prices. Period.

I'm not sure why people are insistent on arguing the semantics of the word "shortage", rather than the far more interesting supply/demand dynamics underpinning the markets being discussed.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#599

Post by LLWM »

cousin_it wrote: post #191
tmorton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone.

> Pricing a scarce resource doesn't "screw over" anyone. Citation needed! For reference, here's a toy model where pricing a scarce resource screws someone over: - There are two people in the model, Alice and Bob. - Alice is very rich, Bob is very poor. - Each of them needs a loaf of bread per day to survive (100 utility), and would also enjoy eating a second loaf (1 utility). - Initially, each of them gets a loaf fro…

Pricing didn't screw Bob, being poor did.

Re: Immigration is about talent, not costs

#600

Post by LLWM »

jnbiche wrote: post #500
carsongross wrote: post #70

The Silicon Valley privilege bubble is on farcical display here. The immigration that bothers the vast majority of Americans (and, indeed, the native populations in all countries) is low-skilled immigration that swamps lower-income communities and drives down wages for the middle and lower classes. At this point I cannot help but think that the conflation of these two different types of immigration is intentional.

Yeah, try being a hard-working, competent, solidly middle class 45-year old software developer who has been laid off from his job at BigCorp in SmallCity, Midwest, probably because BigCorp is bringing in a wave of L1 employees who "understand the technology" better. SmallCity sees an average of 1-2 software jobs posted on Monster a month , some of which aren't even real jobs. His only options are to uproot his family…

Or to work remotely. Or to start his own business. Or find work in another industry. Or do one of a million other things.
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