Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 655 posts

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#61

Post by cpwright »

The big issue I have with this essay is that, while I believe it is true that letting in exceptional foreign programmers would benefit the economy and that probably does not overly hurt many exceptional American programmers; I don't see how just opening up the H1B program would achieve that.

Instead, I believe you might get some fraction of those exceptional programmers to come to America; but you would probably get many more less-than-exceptional programmers (which pg called competent) competing with less-than-exceptional, but competent Americans (or those who could be trained to be competent).

On balance, I'm unconvinced this would help.

Potentially, instead of having a lottery, the government should just run a dutch auction for the same sized quota. If someone is truly exceptional, it would be worth paying for them. You'd also end up naturally giving American programmers a bit of a home-field advantage; because their cost would not be burdened with the additional cost of winning an auction.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#62

Post by ta75757 »

Paul Graham is fighting for his side. I hope any developers here are smart enough to fight for theirs.

He's arguing that the same companies who colluded illegally to drive down the wages of the "best" programmers, now have no interest in lowering their wages when they're arguing for increased immigration. LOL.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#63

Post by davidw »

grandalf wrote: post #27

If someone is smart and wants to work in the US there should be no barriers to doing so. I don't deserve any job or salary if someone else can do it better or cheaper. We are all human beings in the sense of our right to fair work and wage. 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…

Also: the economy is not a zero-sum game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

I guess it's just the fact that I've lived abroad for a while, but I see people as, well, people, and don't care too much about where they happen to have been born. I think it's unconscionable to subject law-abiding people to a life of poverty if they're willing to work.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#65

Post by thesz »

1) By training you will uncover latent great programmers.

2) By training you will raise overall education level, making life easier and more pleasant for everyone in country (any country, not only US).

Either I getting old or PG getting sloppy. His latest essays do not stand a bit of critique.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#66

Post by grandalf »

windlep wrote: post #50

Two immediately obvious problems in this set of arguments: 1) There'd be more great programmers if they wouldn't all divide themselves amongst so many startups, the vast majority of which will fail. Some other VC's have pointed out this problem as well. Less start-ups overall would increase the amount of great programmers available, and maybe more of them would succeed. 2) PG himself has said that great programmers g…

There'd be more great programmers if they wouldn't all divide themselves amongst so many startups

This is a silly argument that suggests that some wise arbiter ought to choose which startups get to exist. In reality, startup engineering skills are unique and involve a sense of architecture, efficiency, and often making due with insufficient time/resources. Everyone working in a startup is getting some of this experience.

great programmers grew up coding

It's 2014, many people in other nations did grow up coding. One doesn't have to ahve had a TI-994A in the house to be considered "advantaged" in this respect anymore. For the past 10 years, any browser with a js console qualifies.

The point of PG's essay is that there shouldn't be barriers. Let the startups at least have the option of hiring various engineers and let them learn from that how to best hire, rather than having to scrape the bottom of the barrel in the US.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#67

Post by aristus »

Or, perhaps, companies should become smarter about recruiting and hiring the large-but-unknown "false negatives" that are generated by their current process. Easier to implement, a competitive advantage, and you don't have to run a lobbying campaign. All you have to do is prick a few egos. Oh, wait... that's why.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#68

Post by bradleyjg »

volkadav wrote: post #26

We already have visas specifically targeted at letting in exceptional talent: the O (temporary) and E (permanent) series. Of course, the tech industry lobbying is not generally speaking around those visas, but rather H1-B. So I don't think it is entirely correct to assert that industry wants more "genius visa" types, they want more journeymen (gender-neutral; the kind of staff that are competent but not exceptional,…

The problem with employment based 2nd and 3rd priority are the per country quotas, especially for people that count against the Indian quote. The EB2 quota is currently in 2005 for Indians.

As for EB1 (alien of extraordinary ability), it isn't a terrible good fit for programmers. The rules require an alien to meet 3 of 10 categories, but many of them are either wholly inapplicable to the industry, or only cover a narrow subset of it.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#69

Post by [deleted] »

zerr wrote: post #60
xiaoma wrote: post #10

> 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…

Do you honestly believe USA is a first world country in terms of availability/affordability of high quality welfare, healthcare and education systems?

[deleted]

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#70

Post by mightybyte »

FlipFlopsb wrote: post #39

"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" That is some very flawed thinking right there. If this statement about how all the great workers are not US was true then they could outsource all programming outside the US easily just like call centers. This article is just mo…

Not true. The legal landscape in some (many?) other countries gives companies much less recourse against IP violations. When you hire programmers, you typically have to give them access to a substantial portion of your code base if you want them to be productive. For overseas programmers, their country needs to have IP laws with enough teeth so you can be reasonably confident that your programmers aren't going to take your code and run. This is not an issue with call center workers.
Post reply on HN