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Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#41

Post by ohhmaagawd »

palakchokshi wrote: post #9
31reasons wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not zero-sum ? companies like Google, Facebook pick 1 out of 100 programmers, if there was 10 fold increase in programmers, they would start picking 1 out of 1000. Instead of complaining shortage of programmer it makes sense to build software development processes around "average" programmers rather than insisting on superstar programmers. How many other fields do that ? Have you read an ad about hiring only su…

Angie's List does explicitly that, showing you superstar plumbers, electricians, doctors, etc. If I am given the choice to hire a great plumber vs. an average plumber I would always hire a great plumber if I can afford him. Your argument that development processes should be built around average programmers is like saying open heart surgical procedures should be designed around average surgeons.

How do you think programmers get from average to great?

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#42

Post by humanrebar »

steven2012 wrote: post #24

What the blog post is saying is essentially saying is that pg is crying about a broken market, when in fact the market is working perfectly, ie. people who could be great programmers would rather go to other higher paying professions because programmers' salaries don't pay as well. The OP basically says the CEO of the startup could get 30 great programmers if he just raised his salaries and benefits higher, which is…

Agreed.

What's more is that deflating the cost of programmers makes it less sensible to make programming teams more efficient. If programmers were paid like doctors, you would start to see the tech equivalent of nurses, lab technicians, orderlies, and physicians' assistants.

In other words, if you were paying your best programmers $1M/yr, you would hire more personal assistants. And maybe there would be more demand for people who are (or can become) fluent in technology lingo, even if they can't write code themselves.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#43

Post by thejaredhooper »

sauravc wrote: post #34

"People are born with an innate calling to drug dealing," What the hell is this author talking about? While the he's a pretty accomplished individual, he lost me with his shitty analogies based on false premises.

That, and the included garbage at the bottom about child support, was pretty pathetic.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

humanrebar wrote: post #42
steven2012 wrote: post #24

What the blog post is saying is essentially saying is that pg is crying about a broken market, when in fact the market is working perfectly, ie. people who could be great programmers would rather go to other higher paying professions because programmers' salaries don't pay as well. The OP basically says the CEO of the startup could get 30 great programmers if he just raised his salaries and benefits higher, which is…

Agreed. What's more is that deflating the cost of programmers makes it less sensible to make programming teams more efficient. If programmers were paid like doctors, you would start to see the tech equivalent of nurses, lab technicians, orderlies, and physicians' assistants. In other words, if you were paying your best programmers $1M/yr, you would hire more personal assistants. And maybe there would be more demand f…

> If programmers were paid like doctors, you would start to see the tech equivalent of nurses, lab technicians, orderlies, and physicians' assistants.

What do you think business analysts, testers, non-developer IT specialists, etc., are?

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#45

Post by foobarqux »

pm90 wrote: post #22
jqm wrote: post #10

Maybe what we really need is an increase in VC's? Possibly grant resident status to anyone (with lot of money of course... after all, it's only the exceptional we are talking about here) who wants to fund and run a VC company? Because there are lots of great programmers who simply can't get funding. I wonder how PG would feel about that?

You can get a GC in the US if you can prove that you have $1 million invested in the US. Yes, its as simple as that. More rich people not moving is probably because if you're rich, you already have a good lifestyle.

I think it can be as low as $250k if invested in certain areas.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#46

Post by gaius »

hkarthik wrote: post #36

Hypothetically, let's say every YC startup was to double the starting salaries for programmers they hired. So if they are paying $120K-$150K/year, they start paying $240K-$300K/year. At that salary, programmers are getting paid on par with lawyers, doctors, and bankers. To pay this much, assume every startup needs to raise double or triple the amount of capital. The $1 million angel round becomes a $3 million VC roun…

I'm really sad that John Doerr won't make another billion dollars.

Oh wait, no I'm not. You see, it won't change a thing. In the current low-interest-rate environment there is nowhere else for the money to go. VCs and startups could pay engineers fairly (i.e. at the price at which the market clears) without breaking a sweat. They just don't, out of naked greed. Except now they're running out of people naive enough to exploit, hence wanting to bring in more people, people who are indentured by their visa status.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#47

Post by [deleted] »

hkarthik wrote: post #36

Hypothetically, let's say every YC startup was to double the starting salaries for programmers they hired. So if they are paying $120K-$150K/year, they start paying $240K-$300K/year. At that salary, programmers are getting paid on par with lawyers, doctors, and bankers. To pay this much, assume every startup needs to raise double or triple the amount of capital. The $1 million angel round becomes a $3 million VC roun…

[deleted]

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#48

Post by foobarqux »

[deleted] wrote: post #30
patio11 wrote: post #15

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…

[deleted]

$400k in RSUs over what time period and what vesting schedule?

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#49

Post by UK-AL »

steven2012 wrote: post #24

What the blog post is saying is essentially saying is that pg is crying about a broken market, when in fact the market is working perfectly, ie. people who could be great programmers would rather go to other higher paying professions because programmers' salaries don't pay as well. The OP basically says the CEO of the startup could get 30 great programmers if he just raised his salaries and benefits higher, which is…

This is me. I am considering switching from programming to other professions because I could reach higher pay a lot faster.

The plus side is that I get to do programming projects I find interesting(machine learning for me) in my spare time. While avoiding the tedious programming.

Best of both worlds.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#50

Post by davidw »

tokenadult wrote: post #38

Philip Greenspun is notorious for being intentionally provocative in his online essays, but here he makes a thoughtful contribution to the literature by picking apart one of the weakest points in Paul Graham's recent essay. The essay by pg appears to assume that programmers are born and not made and they are born in equal rates by population in all parts of the world. Greenspun correctly challenges that kind of naive…

> the United States already receives more net immigrants from all the rest of the world than any other country on earth

In terms of absolute numbers, yes. In terms of percentages, no:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migrat...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo...

> To make a strong policy case for immigration reform takes a more nuanced and tightly reasoned factual argument than Paul Graham made in his recent essay.

I agree with that. To that end, if you have any comments on my own article, please feel free to email them to me. All the muddle-headed thinking I read about immigration the last time around prompted me to write it as a place to collect my own arguments.

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