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Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

paulgraham.com

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Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#321

Post by andrewmutz »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #309
andrewmutz wrote: post #276

I have a quick question for those arguing against PG's position: Do you genuinely believe that increasing the number of talented software engineers emigrating to the United States is bad for the United States? Or bad for you ? In the same way that I would argue for public policy that benefits us all (not just me), I think we should have immigration policies that benefit everyone, not just Software Engineers.

Drive down the wages of your most talented citizens and yes, you hurt the entire country.

So just to be clear, if we have more Doctors & Lawyers, so their wages decrease, and the cost of receiving medical care or getting legal help goes down, this would be bad for everyone?

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#322

Post by throwaway90446 »

mrottenkolber wrote: post #167

What I take away from the HN/Startup/Recruiting drama: * Companies don't know how find good people (they think they know how to attract them, but honestly, how can they tell? They don't notice the ones they fail to attract, which I'd argue is most people) * Companies are unable to produce (e.g. educate) good people * They want to solve their failures by increasing the search space of people I have no sympathy at all…

Addendum to #3: Motivation is necessary but not sufficient in software development; it is one of the professions that really does have minimum cognitive capability and working memory requirements, which current research shows to be highly nonplastic via education or training. Genes matter.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#323

Post by 23david »

pastProlog wrote: post #238
wrs wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying more will just shuffle around the exceptional programmers who are already in the US. But pg's point is that the US should be trying to attract more exceptional programmers. And the more the better, because they don't just add talent, they multiply it. (That's one thing that makes them "exceptional".) The secret sauce of Silicon Valley is not just the exceptional people, it's that they're all in the same place.

There already is a program to bring in exceptional programmers - the H1-B visa program. The 100,000 people it is bringing in a year is not enough? There are more exceptional programmers out there?

Fixing the H1-B program so that it's harder to game would probably be a great help. H1-B workers also should be given a way to voice complaints or report abuse without fear of repercussions from their host companies.

But not sure that reforming H1-B will be an easy battle to fight. Many of the companies that have large H1-B workforces are also very politically connected and stand to lose a lot of money.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#324

Post by zanny »

oceanstone wrote: post #304

> A great programmer doesn't merely do the same work faster. A great programmer will invent things an ordinary programmer would never even think of. > ... a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. I like how Paul slips in some encouragement for engineers wanting to start their own businesses.

I also highly doubt MS / Amazon / etc who want unlimited H1Bs would be paying these great programmers 100x or 1000x times their average programmers. Especially since they are not doing that right now.

That implies either "average" programmers are being overpaid by a lot, or that great programmers are being taken advantage of. I highly doubt its the former, so hurrah for industry.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#325

Post by sampo »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #137
sampo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Most people consider a move to a new apartment in the same city inconvenient.

This is a good point. But finding out that your employer is so nasty that they use your visa status as a bargaining chip, can be even more inconvenient.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#326

Post by throwaway90446 »

jitl wrote: post #84
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…

Did you read the essay? You seem to be totally ignoring the point that excellent programmers will be paid well because they are scarce compared to "decent" programmers. The goal is not to import cut-rate talent at cut-rate prices.

Excellent programmers are only paid well if they have a good internal idea of their value and are able to negotiate.

I've known countless great developers with terrible self-esteem and/or total inability to effectively negotiate. Far more, in fact, than the reverse.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#327

Post by dang »

All: much of this thread is of low quality, below the standard that Hacker News discussion should adhere to, because it doesn't engage with what pg's essay actually says. It merely uses it as a trigger point for passions about other things, like H1Bs and Infosys. In other words it goes on a generic tangent, and generic tangents are the vectors we most need to avoid if we want discussions that are substantive instead of a handful of always-the-sames.

When I see cases like this, I've been asking: would the Principle of Charity [1] have helped here? The answer is usually yes. In this case, the idea of pg lobbying to flood the market with cheap programming labor is not only demonstrably wrong from the article (which talks about a much smaller order of magnitude and endorses lowering H1B-style quotas), it fails a laugh test for anyone familiar with his arguments in general.

The essay may be wrong, impractical, or impolitic; if you want to criticize it, there are plenty of legit criticisms you could make, starting with: how are we to objectively evaluate who the great programmers are, when it has often been argued (including by a certain essayist) that this can't be measured?

But if you're going to dispute an article—any article—on Hacker News, you have a responsibility to engage with what it really says. The Principle of Charity is the best way I know of to formalize this requirement, and unless someone can make a case for any bad consequences of doing so, we're planning to add it officially to the HN Guidelines in the new year.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity and http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#328

Post by zanny »

killedbydeath wrote: post #302
ta75757 wrote: post #62

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.

Is "your" side US-born developers? I was born outside and was able to immigrate to the US on H1B. For the last few years it is very hard for my friends to do the same. I wish they were given the opportunity. In no way they are inferior to Americans. US became what it is because of openness to immigration. But these days it's easier for engineers to immigrate to Europe or Asia than the US. It may have long-term compet…

Why didn't you and your friends found companies in your home country? You do realize many h1b visa programmers, and the ones they want in the future, are just being taken advantage of to drive wages down?

What is wrong with immigrating to Europe / Asia? As an American, if I had many foreign associates that wanted to work for / with me, I would not hesitate to relocate with them to some country that lets us, that would the be US's loss.

But to open the proverbial floodgates is to let entrenched interests win and all the potential startups and growth elsewhere wither and die. It is not like you are going to be founding the next big thing while bound to employment at one of the big three to stay in the country.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#329

Post by cottonseed »

throwaway90446 wrote: post #322
mrottenkolber wrote: post #167

What I take away from the HN/Startup/Recruiting drama: * Companies don't know how find good people (they think they know how to attract them, but honestly, how can they tell? They don't notice the ones they fail to attract, which I'd argue is most people) * Companies are unable to produce (e.g. educate) good people * They want to solve their failures by increasing the search space of people I have no sympathy at all…

Addendum to #3: Motivation is necessary but not sufficient in software development; it is one of the professions that really does have minimum cognitive capability and working memory requirements, which current research shows to be highly nonplastic via education or training. Genes matter.

> current research shows to be highly nonplastic via education or training

I'd be very interested to see what you're referring to. Citation needed.

edit: The only thing I can thing I can think of that you might be referring to is the recent meta-study of the impact of practice on performance:

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/06/30/095679761453...

I don't have access to the full article so I don't know if they looked at programmers specifically. (Anyone?) They found that, depending on the activity, practice accounted for about 0-25% of the performance. (Depending on where programmers fall in that range, if excellent programmers are 1000x more productive, I'd take deliberate practice for 250x, Alex.)

However, the assumption that, if practice as measured in these studies isn't the answer, then talent is, is obviously false. Quoting this response piece by Alfie Kohn:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/07/...

"That’s not necessarily true, however. The question posed by Macnamara and her colleagues was appropriately open-ended: “We have empirical evidence that deliberate practice, while important, …does not largely account for individual differences in performance. The question now is what else matters.” And there are many possible answers. One is how early in life you were introduced to the activity — which, as the researchers explain, appears to have effects that go beyond how many years of practice you booked. Others include how open you are to collaborating and learning from others, and how much you enjoy the activity."

I recommend the entire article.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#330

Post by andyzweb »

tolmasky wrote: post #320
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…

>Why would companies here go out of their way to hire cheap labor of questionable skill outside the U.S.??

http://www.accenture.com/

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