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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

#51

Post by asocial »

gaius wrote: post #25
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…

We don't require surgeons or airline pilots or bridge-designing civil engineers to be rock stars. Exactly why do people think you need a rock star programmer to build, I dunno, eBay for cats or whatever is the latest stupid VC fashion?

Even if you only run eBay for cats, you probably secretly believe you can become the equivalent of Facebook in your particular space, and feel that what you need is a room full of the eBay for cats version of Mark Zuckerberg, making the billion dollar magic happen on the cheap.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#52

Post by abalone »

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…

It seems highly improbable that cash-based Wall Street compensation packages could be offered by Silicon Valley startups. Maybe established companies could, but it would massively increase the fundraising requirements for early stage companies, with probably bad effects on the SV ecosystem.

Perhaps you can argue that startup equity grants should be higher. Would hiring issues be resolved if the average equity grant tripled? Would more talented people in the U.S. pursue Silicon Valley careers if they got 3% instead of 1% to be an early employee?

I can't prove it, but I'd conjecture it would only have a modest effect. The notion of "expected value" of equity is problematic. It's not like it's simply a 3X stronger offer. The bigger issue is whether the company will be worth anything at all.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#54

Post by palakchokshi »

the_real_bto wrote: post #23
palakchokshi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know how to read your comment. I, for one, do believe that surgical procedures should be designed for the average surgeon. You want the procedures to be built around superstars? If I were building a software company that I wanted to survive and thrive long term, I would definitely try to cater to BOTH the superstar and more average programmers. Both have their place.

I think I might have to specify what I mean by average. I read average as competent. Sure there are software processes that a competent programmer can work with but to say all processes should be designed for just competent programmers,as the commentator suggested, is unreasonable in my opinion. I do see your point though about designing processes around just superstars. That's not viable either.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#55

Post by tokenadult »

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…

It's a pity your thoughtful comment is losing visibility as the submitted story has been flagged off the front page.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#56

Post by palakchokshi »

ohhmaagawd wrote: post #41
palakchokshi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Some of it is aptitude, some of it is learning the right things from experience and some of it is attitude.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#57

Post by patio11 »

abalone wrote: post #52
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…

It seems highly improbable that cash-based Wall Street compensation packages could be offered by Silicon Valley startups. Maybe established companies could, but it would massively increase the fundraising requirements for early stage companies, with probably bad effects on the SV ecosystem. Perhaps you can argue that startup equity grants should be higher. Would hiring issues be resolved if the average equity grant t…

"That totally blows out my business model!" may be true [+], but is not an objection which should escape the lips of someone who has the word "capitalist" literally in their job title.

[+] I'm agnostic on this. Pinterest just raised, what, $450 million dollars? That's presumably not intended to buy the world's biggest vat of chocolate pudding.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#58

Post by davidw »

abalone wrote: post #52
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…

It seems highly improbable that cash-based Wall Street compensation packages could be offered by Silicon Valley startups. Maybe established companies could, but it would massively increase the fundraising requirements for early stage companies, with probably bad effects on the SV ecosystem. Perhaps you can argue that startup equity grants should be higher. Would hiring issues be resolved if the average equity grant t…

While I'm willing to be convinced that things like HFT have some value to society ( https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology.html ) and while there are certainly some lame things that come out of Silicon Valley, on the average, I think I'd rather see more resources flow to the latter than the former.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#59

Post by tokenadult »

davidw wrote: post #50
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 argu…

The other countries with higher intake (as a percentage of national population) of migrants or of foreign-born persons, as you can see from the Wikipedia links you have kindly shared, are mostly special cases of countries with a very high percentage of refugees or guest workers. For countries accepting permanent residents with a path to citizenship, the United States still ranks plenty high on a percentage basis, and the absolute numbers are much of what generates population growth in the United States these days. I'll have to take a look at your article and ponder it awhile. We need perspective like yours (American living abroad) a lot more on Hacker News. Thanks for your reply.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#60

Post by palakchokshi »

31reasons wrote: post #19
palakchokshi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 n…

heart surgery is very complex and success depends on a lot of things. How a human body will react to a highly invasive procedure is unknown hence if it reacts in a way that your average surgeon has no idea on how to deal with the patient would die. Have you heard of specialists? Do you know why people go to specialists? Why is there a need of specialists if every average heart surgeon can do heart surgery?

So you see there is something like a 10X heart surgeon, he/she is called a specialist.

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