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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

#481

Post by prostoalex »

Amadou wrote: post #449
prostoalex wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The largest users of h1b visas are firms that bring people to the US for a period of time to get trained, then have them return to their country of origin, offshoring the work Minor detail, but if it's the same employer in both countries, they don't need to apply for H1, L1 would do the trick. It's also not subject to a cap and is much cheaper administratively. So if companies are using H1 program for foreign emplo…

The L1 visa program forbids placing the employee at a third party site as part of a labor arrangement. Thus the L1 visa is not applicable to this sort of "training." I'm sure plenty of L1 employers play fast and loose with that rule because there is essentially no formal enforcement mechanism. Nevertheless, H1B is the official visa for that sort of work. http://www.technologyexecutivesclub.com/Articles/outsourcing...

Correct, when a third-party is involved, it's no longer the same employer in both countries.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#482

Post by igonvalue »

jonny_eh wrote: post #465
nhjk wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article itself is of low quality. Entire sections are based on flimsy assumptions or are just plain false. I'll list a few here: "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." A huge portion of the world can't even feed itself let alone educate itself to the high standa…

> If you can't hire someone at your expected price then maybe you should raise it. Maybe the market price has gone higher than what you perceive it to be. That CEO could find his 30 "10x" engineers in a heartbeat if he offered 300-500k. Its not your god given right to be able to hire x number of employees for the price you hired your previous employees at. It's a zero-sum game. If company X hires all 30 of the best e…

It's not a zero-sum game. Increased wages for engineers would encourage more people to become engineers.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#483

Post by jacalata »

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.

c) I am skeptical that pg's proposal would substantially increase the number of truly great programmers who could come to the US, and I believe it would actually just increase the pool of decent programmers which is already large enough to meet demand: so the net effect would be the same companies and software being created, but less money being paid in salaries and therefore spent on consumption, which is worse both for this pool of decent engineers and for the governments which lose out on the taxes they could have gained from the distribution of money from pg and other rich investors to the employee engineers.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#484

Post by seanmcdirmid »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #473
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

It is actually quite economical to make software in the states, one of the reasons being our relatively sane immigration policy. But it wouldn't take much xenophobia to make china look good. America also can't sit on its hands and remain competitive; its a constant battle and we have to continuously adapt and tweek our policies to remain #1.

Disclosure: I'm an American who has worked for Microsoft in Beijing for 7+ years.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#485

Post by logfromblammo »

jonny_eh wrote: post #465
nhjk wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article itself is of low quality. Entire sections are based on flimsy assumptions or are just plain false. I'll list a few here: "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." A huge portion of the world can't even feed itself let alone educate itself to the high standa…

> If you can't hire someone at your expected price then maybe you should raise it. Maybe the market price has gone higher than what you perceive it to be. That CEO could find his 30 "10x" engineers in a heartbeat if he offered 300-500k. Its not your god given right to be able to hire x number of employees for the price you hired your previous employees at. It's a zero-sum game. If company X hires all 30 of the best e…

I'd like to offer a minor correction. We want as many companies that provide positive value to the economy to succeed.

There is a positive (but not r=1) correlation to providing value to the economy and offering higher pay to employees. We (that is to say, software pros) don't want all companies to get as many software workers as they might want, because they wouldn't pay any one of us a decent middle-class wage.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#486

Post by simonebrunozzi »

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…

Why is it called the Principle of charity? From what I read, it means assuming the best possible interpretation of the argument. But is that "charity"? I would have called it something different.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#487

Post by jeremyjh »

igonvalue wrote: post #482
jonny_eh wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't hire someone at your expected price then maybe you should raise it. Maybe the market price has gone higher than what you perceive it to be. That CEO could find his 30 "10x" engineers in a heartbeat if he offered 300-500k. Its not your god given right to be able to hire x number of employees for the price you hired your previous employees at. It's a zero-sum game. If company X hires all 30 of the best e…

It's not a zero-sum game. Increased wages for engineers would encourage more people to become engineers.

Or to remain engineers, or to get BACK into engineering without taking a pay-cut. It would increase the supply of good engineers immediately. But I don't disagree with pg; I think we should hire all the greatest engineers in the world, except for the fact that we cannot identify them.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#488

Post by ghiculescu »

dang wrote: post #448
nhjk wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article itself is of low quality. Entire sections are based on flimsy assumptions or are just plain false. I'll list a few here: "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." A huge portion of the world can't even feed itself let alone educate itself to the high standa…

There are many opportunities to apply the Principle of Charity here. For example, that statement about populations can easily be interpreted to mean simply that great programmers can be born anywhere. That's pretty unobjectionable. (Imagine the kerfuffle if he had claimed anything but that.) And does the literal number "95%" substantively change the argument that there are many great programmers outside the U.S. and…

> And does the literal number "95%" substantively change the argument...

Given PG used that number in the article's title, and even in its URL, it does seem like it's worth debating. If the number was actually 50% as the parent suggests, then suddenly you have a very different argument.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#489

Post by amerliore »

bmdavi3 wrote: post #107

In high school, part of the reason I chose computer programming as my future career is because I like it, and part of the reason is that I knew not a lot of other people did, or could do it well. I didn't know what the world would be like in 20 years, but I figured that was a good way of giving myself a chance at having a good job down the road. Computer science courses in college were much tougher than in most other…

Why are Computer Scientists forced to play by different rules than every other decent job?

American electricians don't have to compete with Chinese electricians.

Can you imagine American doctor/lawyer/engineer associations allowing their bosses to lobby to let cheap and desperate foreigners flood into their country and undercut all their jobs, drive down wages, reduce the value of their educations?

It's ridiculous that computer scientists are being asked to work against their own financial best interest, while VCs are explicitly in the game of maximizing their own profit at all costs (including the willingness to sacrifice all decency and compassion, put entire industries into homelessness and poverty, destroy the social safety net, turn the middle class into indentured servants...)

If this isn't class warfare, what is? You have a near-billionaire VC writing essays to convince the lower classes to work directly against their own financial best interest in favor of his own financial best interest.

No competent businessman would allow a cheap competitor to flood into his market and ruin his business. Why do VCs expect computer scientists to allow their labor market to be destroyed?

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#490

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #478
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," "tra…

so far out of line with the empirical data we have regarding this issue

What is that empirical data? I'm curious, not being snide.

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