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On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

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Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#111

Post by fw109 »

santacluster wrote: post #106
fw109 wrote: post #95

This is my perspective as a much-maligned foreign worker. I lost the lottery of birth, and was born to lower middle class parents in a third world country. But I worked hard in school, and got a scholarship at a respected private university in the US. I worked hard in college, and got a decent offer from a big tech company. When I start next year right after graduating, I will earn more in one year than my father ear…

Although I am the son of an immigrant, am married to an immigrant and am a hiring manager who regularly hires migrant workers, I have no problem understanding anti-immigration sentiments when it comes to people with your attitude.

I don't understand. Am I supposed to accept the arguments I keep hearing for why I shouldn't be here? I'm just defending my right to be here, using the same self-serving attitude espoused in the rest of the comments I found here. What should I say: I am going to contribute to the American economy by paying taxes and being a good citizen, I am going to create value for my company, etc.? Well yes, I do think these things, but all the commenters here do not care, they just think I'm stealing their jobs.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#112

Post by amerliore »

fw109 wrote: post #95

This is my perspective as a much-maligned foreign worker. I lost the lottery of birth, and was born to lower middle class parents in a third world country. But I worked hard in school, and got a scholarship at a respected private university in the US. I worked hard in college, and got a decent offer from a big tech company. When I start next year right after graduating, I will earn more in one year than my father ear…

You won the birth lottery by having the IQ to do this kind of work.

Software professionals would not be against immigration if VCs and their portfolio companies were not illegally suppressing wages using anti-competitive tactics.

Employers are suppressing wages using both hard and soft collusion. If they stopped doing that no one would have an issue with letting more workers in.

Still--the argument applies--why not just create software companies in your place of origin?

How are you giving back to your country of origin by participating in a brain drain, where all the talents of your high IQ are awarded to the imperialists that keep your home country in a state of economic subordination in the first place?

There is a very strong argument to be made that the best way to help "3rd world countries" is to refrain from draining their best and brightest brains. Paul Graham is arguing that America should fuck the rest of the world by stealing their best people, leaving the dregs to wallow in a ghetto of human misery.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#113

Post by IndianAstronaut »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

This whole immigration thing sounds like an excellent opportunity for someone to put together a better way to work remotely. We're all supposed to be internet savvy, why can't we come up with something better than skype and github? Is something better even required? Why the emphasis on getting people into the country? We're selling virtual presence solutions to industry and telepresence to doctors and we're trying fo…

Physical presence means the host nation also collects the tax revenue. It also means that those workers consume products in that nation. An immigrant will go to movies, buy food, go shopping, and pay taxes in the nation he immigrated to instead of the one he came from.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#114

Post by mkozlows »

morgante wrote: post #109
mkozlows wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the thing is, I share your general opinion -- there is a legit shortage of talented developers, and it's hard to find them. BUT: I guarantee you that there is in fact a wage and benefits package you can offer that would get you more good applicants. Maybe it's more money (sure, "above market" is nice, but I'm not going to leave a job for $5K more than my "market" rate -- but for $50K more, well, let's talk). Maybe…

Okay, let's assume we were willing to offer substantially higher salaries than the market (though the practicalities of our funding certainly limits that to some degree). How would we communicate said information in a way that doesn't actively distort the hiring process? When was the last time you saw a job ad with salary listed?

Put it in the ad. It's not common, but it's not super-rare, either. And the main reason you don't do it is that you don't want to eliminate your chance at hiring someone at a below-market rate (or of alerting your below-market-rate current employees that they're being screwed and should be getting big raises). If you're committed to paying the rates you'd need to pay to get good talent, then put that upfront.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#115

Post by SwellJoe »

abecedarius wrote: post #49
winter_blue wrote: post #4

A fundamental question not being answered is: Who gets to come to America ? Right now, our system massively favors immediate relatives and refugees, and only lets in a trickle of everyone else. If you are a person who wishes to move to the US, don't have relatives here, and are not a refugee -- then good luck, because you'll have a really hard time getting in. Stories of people who literally sell everything to get a…

I favor much-more-open borders for people who want to immigrate and become citizens. Any kind of guest-worker program, including the H1B system, I'm more skeptical about. It's understandable for capital to work to carve out selected holes in the fence to benefit themselves the most -- changing the laws isn't easy or cheap -- but that's not the change I'm excited to get behind. (I don't know what specific changes are…

This is my position, as well. Worker visas are effectively a modern indentured servitude. Foreign workers are much less likely to be a fluid commodity on the job market as US citizens can be, because they have their visa to worry about. I oppose borders, generally speaking, but I have a hard time swallowing the massive corporate empowerment represented by the worker visa process (bootstrapped startups also cannot effectively participate, either).

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#116

Post by IndianAstronaut »

curiousDog wrote: post #32
gsibble wrote: post #16

This whole set of lies really makes me angry. Ever notice how it's only the most powerful of powerful who complain about "talent shortage"? Those who have the most to gain from reducing technology salaries? Sure, you might hear about it being a competitive market with high salaries and all, but that's what it's supposed to be! Engineering talent is in high demand and salaries are supposed to go up! If anything, they…

Would be nice if someone extrapolated how the wages would look like today if the H1-B program wasn't put into place. Would programmers be making WallStreet salaries? How would that have impacted the start-up ecosystem? Also, numerous H1-Bs are the core of companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc. How would things have looked without any of them?

>lso, numerous H1-Bs are the core of companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc. How would things have looked without any of them?

Google would not exist if the US immigration policies were always strict. Sergey Brin is an immigrant. Neither would lots of companies.

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21576101-start-ups-fo...

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#117

Post by no_wave »

morgante wrote: post #84
sosuke wrote: post #2

Just on the subject of programmer salaries, I was talking with someone who had much more experience in the computing industry than myself and he pointed out something I'd never known. He said that programmer salaries from pre-bubble days was six-figures, and that we're still in that range, and not higher is proof that salaries have been kept low. Six-figures today is not what six-figures was worth in 1998. Inflation…

In principle, I agree with most commentators on HN that if there were actually a shortage we'd expect to see salaries rising. Yet, in practice, it does seem that there's simply an absolute shortage of experienced developers. I've been hiring developers at my job for most of the past year, yet we have never had an offer turned down. Rather, we see only a trickle of applicants, very few of whom are event remotely quali…

Advertise the salary you're offering. If your positions look like 90k positions but you're offering 150k, how will an applicant know?

EDIT: I noticed that you wrote in a nested comment that publicly listing salaries is a non-starter. I'm not sure why - at the very least you could list the smallest number you'd imagine offering a qualified applicant.

Note that it's pretty strange to claim that you can't attract enough skilled engineers even at higher salaries when you're keeping the fact that you pay higher salaries a secret. How do you expect this mechanism to work?

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#118

Post by IndianAstronaut »

sosuke wrote: post #2

Just on the subject of programmer salaries, I was talking with someone who had much more experience in the computing industry than myself and he pointed out something I'd never known. He said that programmer salaries from pre-bubble days was six-figures, and that we're still in that range, and not higher is proof that salaries have been kept low. Six-figures today is not what six-figures was worth in 1998. Inflation…

>He said that programmer salaries from pre-bubble days was six-figures, and that we're still in that range, and not higher is proof that salaries have been kept low.

The pre bubble days had plenty of immigration, not to mention NAFTA was in full swing as well. The job and salary situation seems to be poorly correlated with salaries and job availability.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#119

Post by fw109 »

zo1 wrote: post #101
fw109 wrote: post #95

This is my perspective as a much-maligned foreign worker. I lost the lottery of birth, and was born to lower middle class parents in a third world country. But I worked hard in school, and got a scholarship at a respected private university in the US. I worked hard in college, and got a decent offer from a big tech company. When I start next year right after graduating, I will earn more in one year than my father ear…

>" So for those of you with inflated senses of self-worth complaining about people like me, why don't you go cry to your mommy about how you should have taken a Wall Street job instead, so that you could have earned a lot more money while fucking over the world economy. Because fuck the rest of the world, right? " You're more than welcome to cut your upcoming now-1st-world salary that you boast about and give most of…

You're right, I'm luckier than several billions of people in the world. But my point is simply this: the fact that I wasn't born in the US was not in my control. If I want to move here, some people want me here, and it is in my control to do so, I just feel that I have the right to do so.

As far as the last few lines in my comment go: I was expressing bitterness at the fact that we foreign workers are being dismissed as worthless talent-less job-stealers. In my comment I wanted to be dismissive of those who are dismissive of me. I am not really so in real life, as I know that the ones being so vile here are not like that in person, because everyone is more complicated than that.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#120

Post by waterlesscloud »

morgante wrote: post #110
waterlesscloud wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've never been unable to make a compelling offer to a candidate you've attracted to apply in the first place. What about those you haven't?

You're right that our biggest challenge is in getting people to apply in the first place. What do you think is the highest value of deploying monetary and other resources to make that happen, given that publicly listing salaries is a non-starter?

If you want the benefit of offering significantly above market salaries, at some point you've got to let it be known that you're doing that. Secretly paying people a lot of money won't attract new talent.
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