21–30 of 655 posts
But out of all the people that would love to immigrate to the USA, how can we possibly distinguish the "great" programmers from the merely competent (or less)?
Hiring is already an extremely difficult problem for the most sophisticated technology companies in the country. We can't possibly expect a government agency to do it well at all.
Is it because of widely accessible programming resources for cheap through the internet?
> So they claim it's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US, where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American. Why would they go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same price? The only explanation is that they're telling the truth: there ar…
> The US has less than 5% of the world's population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US. This assumption is repeated throughout the essay, but I'm not particularly convinced it's true. Why would the qualities be evenly distributed between first world countries such as the US where programming is respected and well…
My perception is that the cost is around $20k (lawyers/filing fees) + some uncertainty due to the lottery. Is that a barrier to a person that's worth paying $100k+?
Don't get me wrong, I've greatly valued the talented non-US folks I've had on my teams over the years. But I'd rather we gave them an easy path to citizenship if they want to be here rather than giving more of them the opportunity to be borderline indentured servants. Then they could fully enjoy the benefits of the society they're contributing to, including labor flexibility and the ability to bargain for a fair market wage. I'm sure the free-market enthusiasts running large tech companies or venture capital firms love that idea.
Who wants to wake up in the morning and think "thank goodness some lawmaker is forcing someone smarter/better than me to live in poverty so I can have this cushy job"?
PG is right that most programmers are not all that bright. This limits the state of the art in our industry far more than most people realize.
[edit]: I can't believe this thread is getting hijacked by people who oppose PG's view on this and are downvoting comments in support of it!
Evidence-based policy proposal at its finest :)
There are plenty of 'exceptional' programmers out there with not exceptional salaries. Anybody is free to hire one. There are a couple of problems though:
- they're hard to identify - they might be exceptional in one situation and mediocre in another situation. The fact you are doing great at company X and task Y does not guarantee you'll be a rockstar at company W and task Z. - you don't want to pay for them. "I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he'd hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said "We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning." Well, if they're really exceptional and they worth 100x more than the others then pay them $5M/year and they're going to come to you. I know this won't happen, and the reason for that is exactly the fact that you have no clue how much they're going to worth for you. You could even pay only $500k/y to these excellent guys but no startup does that because they're not sure.
So please let's forget these stories about rockstar programmers and whatever. It's simple: if US could tap the international talent pool without restrictions then labor costs would go down by 50% OR it'd be easier to find good ones quickly at the same price, therefore one of the biggest risk factor in startups would be less of a problem. I completely support this argument, by the way. Don't dilute this debate with 10x (1000x?) programmers and companies who'd hire 30 people tomorrow morning at the market price (??) if they could find them.
*Edit: I have zero problem with downvotes but I'm genuinely interested in counterarguments, so please explain where am I wrong. :)
> The US has less than 5% of the world's population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US. This assumption is repeated throughout the essay, but I'm not particularly convinced it's true. Why would the qualities be evenly distributed between first world countries such as the US where programming is respected and well…