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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

#91

Post by kasey_junk »

encoderer wrote: post #85
kasey_junk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed for this. The New York metro area has more than 2x the population of the Bay Area and an extremely diverse economic base. That makes claims about availability of choice being limited in NYC in comparison to SF pretty hard to believe.

The population of the metro area has nothing to do with it, it's about concentration of the industry. Acting is similar. There are more acting jobs in Hollywood than NYC. I've seen many studies of tech hiring/jobs across the country. I'm sure you can find any research you're looking for.

The OES does not agree (neither does dice.com's numbers fwiw):

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_35620.htm#15-0000

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#92

Post by mechanical_fish »

davidw wrote: post #73
patio11 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Out of curiosity, what are programmer salaries like in Japan, and how is immigration there?

Read and discover:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/

(I could pull an answer to your question out of this -- hint, search the page for a dollar sign -- but if you're reading "out of curiosity" you should just get some coffee or something and read the whole glorious thing, because the number is useless without the context, and the context is very different from the USA.)

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#93

Post by vasilipupkin »

encoderer wrote: post #88
vasilipupkin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is high frequency trading jobs in California pay more than startup jobs in California also if engineers had fewer choices, wages would be lower, wouldn't they ?

Of course, pay isn't the only motivation behind a career choice. Many engineers take jobs in less lucrative verticals like game development because the work interests them. That said, if you're an experienced engineer and you told me you wanted to make $200k next year, if you're in NYC I would say "go into finance" which is far more limited than the advice I would give in SFBA which is "go work for just about any pub…

Less variety should put downward pressure on wages, all things being equal, not upward pressure

All I am saying is, software development wages are too low, especially relative to the demands of the job - that's why there is a perceived shortage. Raise the wages and smart people from other fields will teach themselves to code and join the fray

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#94

Post by encoderer »

kasey_junk wrote: post #91
encoderer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population of the metro area has nothing to do with it, it's about concentration of the industry. Acting is similar. There are more acting jobs in Hollywood than NYC. I've seen many studies of tech hiring/jobs across the country. I'm sure you can find any research you're looking for.

The OES does not agree (neither does dice.com's numbers fwiw): http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_35620.htm#15-0000

You're missing 1/2. You have to also add San Jose-Sunnyvale-Cupertino, etc.

Edit: Also, counting the total headcount of ppl writing code in the area is not a measure of how many choices you have in the job market.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#95

Post by kasey_junk »

encoderer wrote: post #94
kasey_junk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OES does not agree (neither does dice.com's numbers fwiw): http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_35620.htm#15-0000

You're missing 1/2. You have to also add San Jose-Sunnyvale-Cupertino, etc. Edit: Also, counting the total headcount of ppl writing code in the area is not a measure of how many choices you have in the job market.

For completeness: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000

Still doesn't get you into more choice than NYC.

If you don't want to use head count (and I agree there is nuance), what do you want to use? Thus my citation needed request.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#96

Post by dang »

HN has recently had multiple extensive threads about PG's immigration essay and the questions raised by it. In such cases, we demote follow-up posts as duplicates unless they contain significant new information.

Please note that this criterion depends neither on what the particular topic is, nor the opinions people express, nor who they agree or disagree with. It has to do with avoiding repetition.

The reason for this practice is that without it, the same vociferous discussions would recur on the front page every day, and that would fail to gratify intellectual curiosity.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#97

Post by palakchokshi »

31reasons wrote: post #90
palakchokshi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a difference between a specialist and a 10X person. Specialization indicates a detailed knowledge of specialized subject. It has nothing to do with how creative, intelligent and talented you are in solving problems of your domain. I could be specialized into writing device drivers for Real-time linux systems and yet be average programmer. Specialization has to do with knowledge, 10x indicates fluid intellige…

Then I guess we differed on what 10x meant.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#98

Post by gaius »

gaius wrote: post #27
ovi256 wrote: post #21

Off topic, but the second comment from Jason is pure gold. He's calling Philip Greenspun (of Greenspun's tenth law fame), a "Harvard Lawyer of unknown programming provenance". I can see how blog hostnames can confuse people, but maybe google the author for context ? Besides, he's fighting the strawman of training, where Greenspun talked about economic incentives.

I posted a comment to that effect a few minutes ago :-)

Hmm, which is now been deleted.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#99

Post by davidw »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #92
davidw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what are programmer salaries like in Japan, and how is immigration there?

Read and discover: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/ (I could pull an answer to your question out of this -- hint, search the page for a dollar sign -- but if you're reading "out of curiosity" you should just get some coffee or something and read the whole glorious thing, because the number is useless without the context, and the context is very different from the USA.)

I'd forgotten about that. On the whole, it looks like, despite lower levels of immigration, Japanese engineers do not earn more than their US counterparts, which makes sense: the economy is complex, with a lot of different things factoring into how much people make.

Re: Immigration to increase the supply of programmers

#100

Post by 31reasons »

palakchokshi wrote: post #97
31reasons wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between a specialist and a 10X person. Specialization indicates a detailed knowledge of specialized subject. It has nothing to do with how creative, intelligent and talented you are in solving problems of your domain. I could be specialized into writing device drivers for Real-time linux systems and yet be average programmer. Specialization has to do with knowledge, 10x indicates fluid intellige…

Then I guess we differed on what 10x meant.

This what generally people think of 10x. The imaginative 10x heart surgeon would do following:(any or all of it)

1. Take 10 times less time performing heart surgery.

2. Could perform successful surgery at 10 times less cost.

3. Invent new ways of doing work of 10 heart surgeons.

4. Survival rate of his/her patients would be 10 times that of other heart surgeons.

5. Could perform heart surgery so complicated that it would generally require 10 heart surgeons during the surgery.

Are you going to find such a heart surgeon ? If so, how many? would entire healthcare system be functional if all hospitals are adamant on just hiring 10x surgeon and at the same time advocating bringing more 1x heart surgeons into the market.

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