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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

#581

Post by Amezarak »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #550
Amezarak wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not, I did not check Chinese salaries, but you can hire good programmers from other countries for less than that.

Ultimately it's a world market for labor at the top end. Barring artificial distortions (immigration/emigration restrictions), people will move to where they can get the best deal; since good Chinese programmers can immigrate to the states, it puts a floor on Chinese salaries, the same is true in India actually. It is a whole different game for soso programmers. If you want a soso programmer in China, they will be mu…

> Barring artificial distortions (immigration/emigration restrictions), people will move to where they can get the best deal;

No, they won't. Many people value staying near home more than they value additional salary. That's especially true for people who'd have to move house thousands of miles into a new culture, but it's true even of people within the US.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#582

Post by mgkimsal »

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 a zero-sum game. If company X hires all 30 of the best engineers currently looking for a job, company Y cannot. Company Y can offer more in an attempt to lure them, but then Company X will be SOL."

So what? Why is that a problem that needs to be solved?

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#583

Post by mgkimsal »

aceperry wrote: post #517
LetBinding wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only for fungible types of workers. Programmers, software engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, etc aren't like farm or construction laborers. These skills aren't commodities.

That's not how management sees talent like programmers and engineers. Management sees them like another commodity labor resource.

Specifically, they all fall under "Human Resources". While I suspect some issues even for CEOs might fall under HR, I also suspect that large company CEOs may also have unique employment contracts not available to the myriad software engineers at the same company.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#584

Post by schlumpf »

swatow wrote: post #472
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 pr…

The "issue" in question is the marginal productivity of imported ICT labor. Your generalization about nominal wage effects holds only where an economy faces constant (or diminishing) returns to scale from immigration [1]. This essay argues exactly the opposite, that US government policy should compete to attract people who will increase economic returns to scale.

> ...it's easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary.

Moreover, there is evidence that even IT workers in identical, commoditized roles are sufficiently more productive in the US than than in India so as to justify an extra $75k per capita in client billings for they US-based workers [2]. PG's essay is not sufficiently described by a rudimentary labor supply curve as you claim.

[1] http://www2.hawaii.edu/~noy/362texts/immigration.pdf p.156, particularly footnote 8

[2] https://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2013conference/program/retrieve.p...

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#585

Post by canes123456 »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #553
canes123456 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an above average, but not great, USA born programmer, I say bring as many programmers as possible to the USA. Great one create can help create the new Google, Uber, etc which than create more jobs. More above average makes software companies more effective over all. There are a ton of horrible "programmers" that are net negatives that bring down the average for a whole IT department.

I don't know if you're making a tongue in cheek argument or not, but currently an enormous portion of the tech immigrants come to America to work as cogs in consulting companies or MegaCorporations. And there isn't any precise way to pick the people who are going to start the next Google- except for the people who already run successful businesses and therefore have the money and influence to emigrate if they wanted…

I am saying to let everyone in from the best to mediocre.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#586

Post by davidw »

UK-AL wrote: post #494
davidw wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really see that as a risk? If it happens, do you think it's realistic that it would happen in some countries but not others?

Its already happened in my country. Web developers are hired on minimum wage.

I know a bunch of people in the UK doing web stuff, and none of them are making minimum wage. Far from it.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#587

Post by j_baker »

douche wrote: post #576
j_baker wrote: post #165

I have a ton of issues with this post. For starters, the idea that some people are just inherently exceptional programmers and others can only be competent is elitist. Is it any wonder that every programmer in Silicon Valley thinks they're God's gift to the programming world? We've been taught that to be hirable we have to be "10x" engineers who spend all of our free time hacking. But ok, maybe you don't agree with m…

>For starters, the idea that some people are just inherently exceptional programmers and others can only be competent is elitist. It may be elitist, but that doesn't make it incorrect. There is a floor level of intellect and memory that is required to program effectively, and those that are born with more of those gifts have more potential to be a good programmer. It still requires work to hone those skills, but that…

I disagree. Research has shown that becoming good at something is more about practice than anything else.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#588

Post by UK-AL »

davidw wrote: post #586
UK-AL wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its already happened in my country. Web developers are hired on minimum wage.

I know a bunch of people in the UK doing web stuff, and none of them are making minimum wage. Far from it.

Depends on location, and seniority.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#589

Post by fsloth »

aswanson wrote: post #390
mrottenkolber wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never really did academia so I wouldn't know. To be honest, I think the age of academia is over. I have more against these institutions than I see value in them. I say get rid of them, we can do better. Why can't we teach "theoretical muscle" outside of universities? Wait, was the purpose of universities to maintain the state's control of education? Have they been putting thoughts in chains? Kept science away from…

Academia moves too slow in adapting to innovation, at least in terms of practice oriented fields like engineering. It's well suited to teach and progress theory but horrible in terms of preparing practitioners.

Good point. I think the slowness of the system is one of its inherent values and not flaws just as long as the slowness does not turn into stagnation.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#590

Post by fsloth »

For an arguments sake: Perhaps what could be changed here is the scale of time from months to years and a shift in the chosen solution space from harvesting to nurturing?

PG requests more star quality programmers right now. Perhaps a more fruitfull approach would be to figure out what makes great programmers great and figure out how to teach people to be more like them. I.e. hunter gathering for roots versus figuring out how to plant a vegetable garden. What is so great about good programmers? Love of quality, learning by doing - beyond a certain ability of concentration and verbal acuteness I'm fairly confident these could be taught to people in structured form far better than how the current institutions manage. Universities were created first and foremost to train people in complex but established and repetitive procedures - not to be crafting shops even though the latter would benefit learning the art of programming far better. Why not pour the funds required for lobbing into attempts at improving programmer education, I'm sure the ROI in the latter would far outpace the former in the long run.

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