Anybody who travels 4,000 miles to a new country to work in, and to live with people they have never met, have proven themselves to be the sort of motivated person you want to hire.
Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
131–140 of 655 posts
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#132what about the countries that are then deprived of this talent?
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#133"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." Evidence-based policy proposal at its finest :)
exactly. And he would have those 30 tomorrow morning if he increased his offer. He is struggling to fill those 30 because he managed to fill the first 70s at a price that he liked, but he is unable to do so now due to change in market condition. But he can't just increase the offer now because then he would have to increase the wage of the first 70.
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is wrong is that cheapness is enforced by making those laborers a second class citizen- they need to stay with the company that sponsors their visa or they get kicked out of the country. Thats also the only reason why they're cheaper. Because, by law, their employers have stripped them of the only negotiating right an employee usually has- the ability to switch jobs. This would be unethical enough if it existed…
So we should let people come and give them more rights to switch jobs. Simply keeping people out is not the answer.
Yes that is the point I'm making. That is not the point Paul Graham, Zuckerberg, or FWD.US are making. And if they aren't making that point, it's not going to be in the bill that gets passed through congress.
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#135This concept of a "great programmer" is something I find very suspicious.
A competently trained engineer who works with distributed systems may implement a trivial fix and save her company tens of thousands of dollars in AWS bills.
Someone with a strong background in programming languages might implement a PHP -> C++ cross-compiler and double the throughput of her company's web servers.
The capability to recognize these improvements does not require some inborn spark of genius. Rather, it requires the prerequisite experience in some programming sub-field. Experience which can be learned.
Moments of rare insight do happen - "hey what if we cross-compile all this crappy PHP to C++?" - but these are a matter of random chance: get enough folks with programming language expertise working on a strictly PHP codebase and eventually someone will have the idea.
The "born programmer" is a myth. A great programmer is often a person with a high level of training in some particular sub-fields, and/or, a person who is very savvy regarding the craft of building software (i.e. "The Pragmatic Programmer").
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#136I generally find PG very convincing, but not here. Opening up immigration would have major side effects, though probably it would help companies hire top programmers. But rather than bear that cost, would we as a society be better off if we tried to educate children better, get more kids hooked on being makers, whatever it is you believe is important? Fundamentally, making the 95-to-5 population comparison only makes…
Do you think YC startups are lying when they say they're struggling to hire? It is obviously in our best interests to hire every great programmer we come across - no matter what. If you really think that there are some great developers out there who are struggling to find a job in the US please send them my way or send them to ANY of the YC startups and they'll be hired within 2 weeks.
How long do you think it takes to teach someone to be an exceptional programmer? 5 years? 10 years?
How long has Facebook been around? How long have most small tech companies been around?
Yes, in 10-20 years after all the parents today are telling their children to get into software we'll have a glut of developers. But right now, there's obviously not enough. And the quickest way out is to relax the limits on immigration.
If the US doesn't do it, then it's a great opportunity for another attractive first-world country to take the lead. Maybe Canada will.
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me the most interesting way of framing this is in terms of the changes that'll happen to the owners of businesses. The question of the talent of the new employees is secondary when you realize they will have to move countries in order to be tied to a specific job on penalty of getting their visa revoked . So suddenly, you create an unlimited class of employees with no bargaining power, and can play them against yo…
> tied to a specific job on penalty of getting their visa revoked. This is true if you hire from third world. I am from Northern Europe, and having a visa revoked and going back to my home country would not be a threat to me. I'd just happily move back home, and find a job there.
Most people consider a move to a new apartment in the same city inconvenient.
There are very few people who wouldn't consider being forced to move across continents, while giving up their rights, a highly biasing factor in the pros/cons of any decision they made.
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#138"American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier because they say they can't find enough programmers in the US." Clarification: can't find enough American programmers willing to work for low foreign wages.
And, ageism.
This is so screamingly correct. Let's go see the startups hire some old COBOL (or now, VB) programmers and train them on the new stacks, before we listen to anymore of this "there's not enough programmers in the USA" garbage.
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#139There exists no practical, reliable method to identify the "great" programmers from the rest (other than by employing them or working with them over a significant amount of time). Many of them interview poorly. If you could actually identify these people, you'd have a billion dollar idea. So that implies that in order to grant entry to the "great" programmers, the door needs to be wide open to everyone. I'm not sayin…
FWIW, truly exceptional programmers can always be hired under things like the O-1 visa (unless tech isn't included in "sciences" or "business"). I assume that they mean people like Linus or Bill Joy when they mean "great programmers", not somebody who can sling Javascript 20 hours a day...
Or, are all the companies looking for these rockstars looking to help them immigrate to the US, rather than spend a few years solving problems? Cuz I think they're not...
Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
... And he could, if he simply out-bid his competitors.
Businesses die when they run out of money. Paying your programmers 3-500K/year is a sure fire way to run out of money really quickly. And while a great programmer is obviously worth it, most companies (at the early stage) have so many external factors that even a great programmer isn't enough, they need the time to iterate and find product market fit. You know the whole lean startup thing. So how do you circle that s…
This is true of any commodity - salaries for your talent, square feet of office space, kilowatts for your technology, you name it. It's called business. And it's not at all clear why you, I or anyone else should subordinate our own best interests, to make this guy richer.