Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

What if the qualities that make a drug dealer are economic, but the qualities that make a GREAT drug dealer may be a mix of environment and genes?

If you want the most amazing, ruthless, and efficient black market for drugs, you must have the largest possible number of drug dealers participating in the system, so the most talented and motivated drug dealers have the opportunity to be the best they can be.

The author of this post is missing some of Graham's core arguments, and it makes me want to go back and reread the original essay. Perhaps it is PG's fault for conflating concepts, as people seem to be raising valid points (startups should be able to hire great programmers if they would just pay more) while missing that the core thesis is undeniable: if there are more programmers participating, more greatness will emerge.

It is probably not even linear. If you track the history of martial arts proficiency, the ones that are in fashion seem to produce a higher overall average of ability, with the "greats" in that martial art always arising when many many people are participating in that art, and there is a rich ecosystem that supports learning and competition. i.e. Judo in the 1970s, or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the early 2000s.

I see this anecdotally and in published research, where pockets of artists, writers, and musicians have created a wildly disproportionate amount of forward looking work when there are many of them in the same area creating all at once.

Even if startups paid more, it would not significantly increase the total number of great programmers. Google, Apple, and Facebook already DO pay "more" and I think these companies are in exactly the same boat as the startup in the essay - they would happily keep hiring as many great programmers as they can find.

If that is true, the number of jobs available to great programmers is not proved to be finite.

Top notch programmers come from curiosity, building a fair few complicated projects and a little bitter experience so you know how to avoid problems and be realistic

I think the subtext of "I would hire thirty great programmers tomorrow!" is "I would hire thirty great programmers tomorrow! They just need to think 55 hours a week is a nice relaxing pace, have impeccable pedigrees, and be capable of spinning up within single-digit weeks. Also, we're looking for top-of-the-skill-curve at a combination of five technologies, two of which are fairly niche. For a variety of reasons we'd strongly prefer if they were located in one particular geographic area where we happen to be in vicious, frothy competition with a hundred firms trying to hire exactly this profile of people."

This happens to be very similar to the rough description that Wall Street is looking for in certain niches of programmers. I have not heard Wall Street loudly complaining about the impossibility of finding Haskell programmers who can code against FIX and also have PhDs in physics.

I rather strongly believe this is because Wall Street institutionally believes in market prices and, unlike Silicon Valley, is willing to tolerate the market telling them that the market clearing price for hiring this type of programmer times thirty is $200k base plus a $600k bonus as opposed to $120k base plus an equity grant with expected value in the $X0k range.

What makes a great programmer? And what does this great programmers do? We have had and still have a vast number of great programmers in US and churning our more and more, but what do they do? is it greatness that they seek? if so, why are more programmers involved in scientific research? I really want to agree with your views, but for now it seems that immigration is an issue for one market sector, and last time I looked, that market sector isn't out to change the world.

We humans are greedy species. If given opportunity we would always hire superstar (even janitors or hamburger flippers) especially if they don't cost any extra. If you can find superstar, great! but stop crying "shortage" if you are not in the business of open heart surgery.

EDIT: And yes every average heart surgeon is capable of doing heart surgery otherwise they would not get a degree in the first place. There is no such thing as 10x heart surgeon.