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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

#471

Post by anemitz »

tolmasky wrote: post #412
anemitz wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my career I've witnessed a stark contrast between different visa holders: 1) Exceptional — the best and brightest from all walks of life. IIT Delhi to NUS Singapore. Hands down amazing folks who consistently outperformed their peers. 2) Cheap(er), mediocre — predominantly H1B holders from India and China. Varying degrees of output and communication skills. Mostly “slow tracked” for promotion and given the lowe…

> since their negotiating position is somewhat compromised by them needing another employer to transfer this visa to (possible, but very stressful). There is also likely a sense of indebtedness to a company when someone is first sponsored. This is part of the point: this aspect of immigration labor would ironically disappear if it was easier to get into this country. The fact that its hard to get in and get a job is…

So how do we implement this as policy? What we can't do is just say anyone can immigrate. We need to find ways to make it easy for exceptional people to live and work here but make it difficult (sliding scale to impossible) for everyone else.

One random idea I was thinking about was regional, industry specific visa committees that would review each application to ensure that we are able to more accurately identify exceptional individuals and filter out the mediocre / low-quality talent.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#472

Post by swatow »

dang wrote: post #327

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…

Increasing the availability of any kind of labor (whether ordinary programmers, or "great" programmers) always lowers the price, and if it didn't lower the price, there would be no effect. The startups looking for great programmers could find them if they stole them from Google or Facebook for huge salaries.

The problem with this debate is neither side has the intellectual courage to state their side properly.

The protectionists latch on to the "indentured servitude" issue even though employers would want H-1Bs whether or not they could hold being fired and having to return home over the employees head (and I personally have never seen this happen, I assume it only occurs with the lower tier workers hired by contracting companies, if at all). Protectionists pretend that this is the mechanism through which H-1B's lower wages, even though the real effect is via increasing the supply.

Similarly people like pg say that the issue isn't wages, even though, as I mentioned, the issue can always be expressed in the supply curve of labor, and equilibrium wages.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#473

Post by shanusmagnus »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #463
shanusmagnus wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was less that we bring in the big guns by poaching them from these other fields, then that we address the issue the way it's traditionally been addressed, which is to let the market take care of it. If these development jobs are really magnificent engines of wealth creation, then pay more to hire for the positions and more qualified people will appear. If, as you point out, there's now a lawyer glut, and now…

And all those services you keep comparing against, you know, can't be moved outside the USA (I'm not going to china to get a back rub or my transmission rebuilt). And of course, software doesn't work like that at all (I can open a software development office in China with the money I make there; as a bonus, I avoid repatriating the money back into the states for extra taxes).

That's a fair point, but it remains to be seen what the frictions are. I doubt that the domestic software industry has had my welfare particularly in mind all these years up till now, and yet they're all still here, paying what everyone wants us to think is our exorbitant American salaries.

What is the point at which these giants collectively tell us to fuck ourselves and run off to the Chinese nirvana you describe? Is it just north of where we are already, so if we don't get some immigration relief immediately we're all doomed?

Maybe. Or maybe the whole process isn't as clean as you're implying that it is. I do know that for as long as I've been paying attention a standard Republican refrain has been that if we don't lower our taxes to zero then all industries, in their game-theoretic wisdom, will evaporate from our lands. And yet businesses keep failing to migrate en masse to whichever Dakota has no taxes, and Minnesotan industry draws another day's breath.

To reiterate, I'm not saying you're wrong; but the causal chain is considerably more entropic than you or pg are letting on.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#474

Post by Philadelphia »

larrys wrote: post #123
edw519 wrote: post #41

...and while you can train people to be competent, you can't train them to be exceptional. Why not? Every exceptional programmer I've ever met was unexceptional at one time. Something happened for them to become exceptional. I personally believe that while that "something" is most often "doing", "training" is often a big part of the equation. And that training is more often than not training their beliefs as much as…

""training" is often a big part of the equation." I think the assumption is that at the speed these companies are operating having to wait for a "trained" (assuming it's true) batch is simply to long. By that point they may be out of business.

The logical takeaway from that is that they don't have a viable busisness model, not that society should change in order to make their poor business model work.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#475

Post by Xatter »

Maybe we should look at what the data have to say and then formulate our opinions from evidence?

http://www.epi.org/press/epi-analysis-finds-shortage-stem-wo...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...

If you're going to dispute these findings I look forward to reading your peer reviewed published papers.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#476

Post by jacalata »

kar2014 wrote: post #406
shanusmagnus wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a related question that I never see addressed: how big of a programmer shortage do you think there would be if salaries were 50% higher? All the talk seems to assume that the makeup of industry is utterly inelastic. Fine, maybe your small company in Cleveland can't go out tomorrow and hire 10 A+ developers, but do people really not believe that if starting salary for an A+ developer was $150k, or whatever, tha…

> but do people really not believe that if starting salary for an A+ developer was $150k, or whatever, that we might get more high-achievers First, US is already the third country in list for highest paid programmers, there is not much room to grow. Second, Companies are in business, not for charity. Companies are there for profit so if they could hire a beginner programmer for 50k, they should, otherwise they would…

The US is third? Well jeez, you'd think that a country arguing that they need to attract all the top programmers in the world would at least try and pay the highest in the world to start with.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#477

Post by ahomescu1 »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #332

Let's put an exemple of what PG is saying: Ellon Musk Ellon Musk is from South Africa, he was not born in America. He has created an enormous amount of wealth in the US. It is as simple as the US won't have self landing space rockets today without this man. Tesla would be bankrupt today, like Fisker. It seems clear to me after reading comments here that Americans feel entitled to the position of world rulers they enj…

Minor nitpick: his name is spelled "Elon".

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#478

Post by Iftheshoefits »

dang wrote: post #327

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…

The best, strongest interpretation of PG's essay merits far less charity than even exists in this thread. There is barely anything of substance in the whole piece, and the parts that are substantive are just so far out of line with the empirical data we have regarding this issue as to be baffling coming from somebody with the cache of PG. If I were not being "charitable" I'd use words like "peurile," "ignorant," "transparent demagoguery," and "thoroughly irrational." In the interest of being charitable, I'd simply describe the essay as being merely a master work on how to write a series of unsubstantiated assertions interleaved with assertions that have already been thoroughly debunked.

This doesn't even touch on the incredibly un-"charitable" opening to PG's essay, on which he explicitly casts opponents or those who might disagree with him as being anti-immigrant. There is no way to "charitably" interpret that sentiment in a positive way. It is purely negative and entirely unworthy of a person claiming to be interested in honest intellectual discussion.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#479

Post by winestock »

gaius wrote: post #356
wallflower wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be shocked at the 9-to-5 programmers. Those who code during the day and go home and (egads!) do not code on side projects. The day of the company Halloween party was always the most jarring. All these 9-to-5 programmers would bring in their kids for the parade. For one afternoon, young, naive me saw that the true meaning of life is your impact on the world. These kids were the world for their parents. Comin…

Someone whose motivation is looking after their family will do anything to do so. Even JavaScript.

I will quote you on this. I don't care if you mind; it's just so good.
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