The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage • Hacker News Board

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#101

Post by prostoalex » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 5:24 AM UTC

don_draper wrote: post #71

pg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The finance companies competing for programmers are also American. So even assuming that SV companies could draw star programmers away from Goldman Sachs by paying them more, there would still be exactly the same net shortage of them in the US.

The finance companies pay considerably more than Silicon Valley companies thus don't have the same problem with filling positions as SV does. Do you disagree with that? Search 'finance companies lobby h1b visa'. Nothing Then search 'bay area companies lobby h1b visa'. Tons of results.

Finance shops typically contract through an outsourcing agency. Wipro, Tata and InfoSys are typically among the most prolific filers for H-1B, and those filings fell significantly in 2009 post financial crisis.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#102

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 5:27 AM UTC

muzz wrote: post #84

blhack wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the starting salary for the types of people PG is describing here is "whatever I want".

He refers to "open positions for programmers at high tech companies", so I would have to disagree

Agreed; I like where I work, but it would be hard for me to turn down 2x what I'm currently making at just about any company. I suspect that is true for most people.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#103

Post by danmaz74 » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 6:49 AM UTC

muzz wrote: post #88

pg wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know whether finance companies pay or whether they have less problem hiring people. But what difference would it make it that were the case? We're talking about the same pool of people. The specific companies where the shortfall appears doesn't make any difference to the argument for immigration.

If price is allowed to rise, demand drops.

Price is already allowed to rise. Any company can offer a higher salary to its engineering candidates.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#104

Post by jaggederest » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 9:48 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #8

jaggederest wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, nobody in the US is even attempting to train effective programmers, let alone 'star' ones. There's a lot of room on all sides to improve the quality and availability of good technical workers. And, in the US at least, the financial industry siphons off a lot of otherwise excellent talent that could be going towards more productive ends than shaving milliseconds off automated trading.

http://hackerschool.com

280 students a year? Not really a large scale effort. And it appears that you must already be a programmer to attend.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#105

Post by muzz » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 3:03 PM UTC

wunna wrote: post #92

muzz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people exist. If you pay enough for them, you can hire them.

define "enough". Easy enough for you to pontificate, if you know better, start your own company and pay everyone million $ salaries. What are you waiting for? p.s. I am an entrepreneur and have had significant hiring challenges for my company. So not spewing out stock lines from Lou Dobbs and his ilk.

Enough for them to come to work for you.

I really don't understand why this is a difficult concept to grasp.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#106

Post by muzz » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 3:19 PM UTC

WildUtah wrote: post #86

pg wrote: post #2

It's not bogus. Many if not most of the big high tech companies have open positions they can't find people for. If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech…

Big high tech companies with open positions for stars would benefit most from a bidding system for a fixed number of visas. That way, the companies that really need top people could just pay enough cash to get a visa and be assured of having one available. The whole system could operate much faster, too. But what's being proposed is a vast expansion in the number if visas available. Most of the new ones will go to th…

It would be interesting if the amounts of the winning bids were made public.

It could raise a non-trivial amount of money. If there are only 65,000 H1B visas (there is talk about doubling it, and with exemptions the actual number is almost double currently)and the average winning bid is $20,000, that would be $1.3 Billion total!

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#107

Post by muzz » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 3:20 PM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #103

muzz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If price is allowed to rise, demand drops.

Price is already allowed to rise. Any company can offer a higher salary to its engineering candidates.

Great, so the market-clearing level should be reached and there is neither shortage nor surplus.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#108

Post by muzz » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 3:35 PM UTC

jcnnghm wrote: post #66

pg wrote: post #2

It's not bogus. Many if not most of the big high tech companies have open positions they can't find people for. If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech…

Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech companies is that these companies want star programmers Maybe they should try paying like stars. What percentage of engineers that aren't founders or within the first five employees make over $300,000 a year? The money is in Silicon Valley, Google's 2011 net income was $299,874/employee [1], but the vast majority of engineers aren't going to be…

> In the interim, it seems like the best way to capture value is to build companies to flip in talent acquisitions

Interesting point, and really indicates that companies are not willing to pay enough for talent when hiring them individually. Even a startup that is nothing more than a bundle of talented individuals has enormous leverage just because of that bundling.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#109

Post by nazgulnarsil » Thu, Jul 25, 2013, 11:58 PM UTC

magicarp wrote: post #23

dvt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia has (literally) nothing to do with real-life software engineering. I hope I'm not bursting your bubble, but if you think otherwise you're severely mistaken.

FizzBuzz isn't software engineering, it's CS101.

Yes, it would be like not being shocked that an econ student couldn't adequately explain supply and demand.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#110

Post by wunna » Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 12:58 AM UTC

muzz wrote: post #105

wunna wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

define "enough". Easy enough for you to pontificate, if you know better, start your own company and pay everyone million $ salaries. What are you waiting for? p.s. I am an entrepreneur and have had significant hiring challenges for my company. So not spewing out stock lines from Lou Dobbs and his ilk.

Enough for them to come to work for you. I really don't understand why this is a difficult concept to grasp.

If you were an entrepreneur you would understand....