Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In • Hacker News Board

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#311

Post by tolmasky » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:42 PM UTC

voidlogic wrote: post #297

IMHO the real issue isn't that they many companies can't find great programmers, its that they only want great programmers who live in their locality. For many (most?) startups in the valley, if you aren't living in the greater SFO area, or willing to relocate there, they are not interested. They are dinosaurs living in the past, fighting distributed collaboration. (Which is ironic as they are technology companies).…

Warning, anecdotal data ahead: I would not want to work under remote conditions again. In my career I have worked mainly under "startup conditions". At Apple on iPhone, everyone lived in the same place and worked non stop on the product, same as when I left to start a company. On my second company, I had many remote workers. The reality I experienced is that there was at least a 2-3x slowdown. When people are on different time zones, what used to take 5 minutes can become a 1 day turnaround through email and waiting for the other person to be up. Perhaps it works under certain scales, but when you're trying to be nimble it's just one more needlessly complex factor. What ended up happening is everyone got on a in between sleep schedule which was pretty bad for everyone's outside of work life.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#312

Post by hacknat » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:42 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #286

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 O visa for all practical purposes is impossible to get. It can take years to get an EB visa. Most talented/skilled workers come here on an H1 or L1, and eventually get permanent residency via the EB visa. For a company that's hiring and unable to find good programmers, the H1 is really the only visa available to them.

No they're not. You have to higher a lawyer and spend some money, but my dad got one coming from Canada and he was a middle manager at best (at the time).

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#313

Post by davidw » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:42 PM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #273

It's kind of weird to see the same discussion being repeated over and over again, with people talking over each others with the same point, again over and over. How about this instead, let's say I'm Patio11 and I want to go to the US, how do I do that? I personally consider Patrick to be the top 1% in what he is doing. And from what I've seen in on of HN's thread last week, a lot of people are aspiring to be the same…

patio11 is very much American, and could easily move to the US if he wanted to.

Actually, now he can't because he's married to a foreign citizen, and the United States puts those people through all kinds of hassle and lengthly waits even if they are married to someone from the US.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#314

Post by davidw » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:44 PM UTC

voidlogic wrote: post #297

IMHO the real issue isn't that they many companies can't find great programmers, its that they only want great programmers who live in their locality. For many (most?) startups in the valley, if you aren't living in the greater SFO area, or willing to relocate there, they are not interested. They are dinosaurs living in the past, fighting distributed collaboration. (Which is ironic as they are technology companies).…

I'm currently working at a place that produces 30,000 euro machines. It's pretty handy to be in the same place as the other developers, so they don't have to ship everyone their own 30,000 euro machine to work with. And that's just the developers; if there's a problem with the motors or other bits and pieces, that's another department that needs to be called in to have a look. Not very convenient if everyone lives in different places.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#315

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:44 PM UTC

edgyswingset wrote: post #101

austenallred wrote: post #12

I really want to believe this, but I'm not sure that I do. Of course the tech companies want to hire people from overseas; being able to hire someone from India for half the cost but have them live in the US so there's some level of accountability/trust is a no-brainer. Huge new, cheap talent pool. But, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, c…

What you touched at the end is part of a bigger problem, I think - people who write something as inconsequential as a shopping website, or Yet Another Chat App, are not worth $150,000/year. Maybe one out of one-hundred of those folks could use their talent on something that demands a wage like that outside of the absurdity that is the Bay Area. I don't feel the talent pool will be diluted so much as your run-of-the-m…

[deleted]

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#316

Post by hacknat » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:44 PM UTC

Htsthbjig wrote: post #301

hacknat wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System, and it's pretty good at bringing the top talent to the U.S. already. Perfect? Of course not. Good enough? I think it is. Normally I don't hold someone's wealth against them, but on this issue it's hard for me not to be a little prejudicial.

"Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System" Because, you know, people educated outside the US, like Europe, South Africa or Japan, have not value whatsoever. It is American E.S who lags behind them. e.g Most educated Europeans need to speak at least 2 to 3 languages fluently. You also believe Chinese, African and South American wi…

Whoa, whoa, calm down. I was talking about immigrants who come to do graduate work in the US.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#317

Post by zanny » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:45 PM UTC

Htsthbjig wrote: post #301

hacknat wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System, and it's pretty good at bringing the top talent to the U.S. already. Perfect? Of course not. Good enough? I think it is. Normally I don't hold someone's wealth against them, but on this issue it's hard for me not to be a little prejudicial.

"Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System" Because, you know, people educated outside the US, like Europe, South Africa or Japan, have not value whatsoever. It is American E.S who lags behind them. e.g Most educated Europeans need to speak at least 2 to 3 languages fluently. You also believe Chinese, African and South American wi…

Why would the number of languages you can speak indicate effectiveness of an educational system? Yes, I know the argument about cultural awareness. That won't make you better at building web servers. It might make you better at interacting with people of that culture.

Fundamentally though multiple languages is incredibly wasteful. I'd never propose that English should be a global language - it is such a steaming pile of shit thinking it the best we have is insane - it just has network effects in its favor. Of course, building a language scientifically that uses all enunciable syllables and minimizes word size and maximizes understandability is a major project and getting people to speak it is impossible.

And yes, the non-higher US educational system is colossal garbage, but we know that. We are talking about US higher education, where you pick your courses and rarely are students enrolling to learn two more languages for the fun of it. In that context, millions of students around the world strive to get into US schools, not because the teachers are any better - in my experience, one, individual students are different and learn better in different ways so one scale of "better" or "worse" education is insane, and two, there are diminishing returns on teaching skill such that the difference between the best public school teacher and the best teacher period is probably a fraction of a percent of student performance at worst. The US education system is good because of the business networks the prestigious schools get you into and how almost anyone will hire a US school grad.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#318

Post by lukasm » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:47 PM UTC

Surprisingly, the solution is the free market. Make a pool of 5k visas with almost no requirements. Companies will bid on it. Add 50 visas for startup founders. Run this experiment for al least 6 years and measure the outcome.

On the other hand, that maybe a good thing. If we have more "Silicon Valleys" there will be more innovations, more competition. We don't need one superpower a.k.a monopoly that comes with other risks like NSA.

Price of starting a company is going down, markets are becoming more liquid therefore you don't need SV crazy money to get you going. What is more, you can reach ramen profitability faster outside SF, get more talent.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#319

Post by davidw » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:47 PM UTC

aortega wrote: post #310

davidw wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope any developers here are smart enough to fight for theirs. I'm confused. I'm a developer, originally from the US, who lives in Europe. Is an Indian guy who works as a developer on my side? How about a German woman? Is a guy in Alabama willing to work for cheap on my side? Is someone like PG, whose actions have created a shitload (that's the metric shitload, not the American version) of companies completely on…

Labor can be seen as a scarce resource. If a US developer want to maximize profit he needs to be as scarce as possible. PG and startup employers are in the reverse situation: they need to commoditize labor as much as possible to maximize their profit (labor can be 80% of the fixed expenses in a IT business). A developer residing outside US needs to support PG at first so he has access to bigger profit, but once he's…

> Labor can be seen as a scarce resource.

You could, but that's a really limited version of economics that misses the fact that it's not a zero-sum game.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#320

Post by tolmasky » Fri, Dec 26, 2014, 8:47 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #12

I really want to believe this, but I'm not sure that I do. Of course the tech companies want to hire people from overseas; being able to hire someone from India for half the cost but have them live in the US so there's some level of accountability/trust is a no-brainer. Huge new, cheap talent pool. But, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, c…

> ut, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, coming over to compete for my job.

I don't understand this dichotomy. Why would companies here go out of their way to hire cheap labor of questionable skill outside the U.S.?? Bad cheap labor is easy to find. Call up a recruiter and say "I need 20 horrible programmers", they're not going to say "oh wow that's a tough one".

Either you think: 1. Outside labor is good and thus I should be scared for my job, BUT those people legitimately deserve to be working here and are net positive for their employers, or 2. Outside workers aren't good and so what difference does it make if they compete with me here? I'm already competing with a saturated market of bad workers and if companies are stupid enough to hire them it'll work itself out -- they're not really competing with me.