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Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

paulgraham.com

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Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#151

Post by hsitz »

wrs wrote: post #104
sz4kerto wrote: post #29

Hm, an article from pg I don't really agree with (even if I am benefiting from EU's open labor market). There are plenty of 'exceptional' programmers out there with not exceptional salaries. Anybody is free to hire one. There are a couple of problems though: - they're hard to identify - they might be exceptional in one situation and mediocre in another situation. The fact you are doing great at company X and task Y d…

Paying more will just shuffle around the exceptional programmers who are already in the US. But pg's point is that the US should be trying to attract more exceptional programmers. And the more the better, because they don't just add talent, they multiply it. (That's one thing that makes them "exceptional".) The secret sauce of Silicon Valley is not just the exceptional people, it's that they're all in the same place.

Parent poster has a point that the difficulty of actually identifying the exceptional programmers poses a major problem here. P.G. has actually written about this himself, arguing that great programmers are the only ones who can identify other great programmers, and that they can only do this if they have collaborated with them on actual work.

See the 'Recognition' section in "Great Hackers" essay, http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html: "So who are the great hackers? How do you know when you meet one? That turns out to be very hard. Even hackers can't tell."

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#152

Post by larrys »

bwaxxlo wrote: post #78
edw519 wrote: post #41

...and while you can train people to be competent, you can't train them to be exceptional. Why not? Every exceptional programmer I've ever met was unexceptional at one time. Something happened for them to become exceptional. I personally believe that while that "something" is most often "doing", "training" is often a big part of the equation. And that training is more often than not training their beliefs as much as…

You become exceptional by being curious and never satisfied. I don't think you can teach that. I mean, you can blurt it out to people all day but it takes intrinsic motivation to stay awake until 2am because you want to chase some random thing down the rabbit hole.

"motivation to stay awake until 2am because you want to chase some random thing down the rabbit hole."

Agree. Obsession and curiousity is important. To me you either have that or you don't have that. (Edit: Of course it depends on the subject for sure. You can be curious about one thing but "phone it in" about something else.)

I'm not a programmer but I can write some things that are helpful to me. The other day I made some tea and I then thought "hmm I will buy a timer on Amazon". Then I though "no let me write something that I can use from the shell to tell me when N time period is up and what it is up for". [1] I then probably spent the next hour or so writing this little routine when all I had done was getup to make tea. Because even though I am not a programmer I decided it was more interesting than what I was working on at the time (which is also pretty interesting).

Back to something that I do know about (negotiation and strategy) I go with your first sentence for sure.

[1] In other words instead of using the iphone timer or any number of other ways to do the same exact thing I just decided it was more fun to write something to do what I wanted. And it was fun. And when I showed it to my wife that evening (as an example of why I think our 10 year old should do programming) she couldn't understand why I thought what I did was fun to do.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#153

Post by cmdkeen »

wrs wrote: post #104
sz4kerto wrote: post #29

Hm, an article from pg I don't really agree with (even if I am benefiting from EU's open labor market). There are plenty of 'exceptional' programmers out there with not exceptional salaries. Anybody is free to hire one. There are a couple of problems though: - they're hard to identify - they might be exceptional in one situation and mediocre in another situation. The fact you are doing great at company X and task Y d…

Paying more will just shuffle around the exceptional programmers who are already in the US. But pg's point is that the US should be trying to attract more exceptional programmers. And the more the better, because they don't just add talent, they multiply it. (That's one thing that makes them "exceptional".) The secret sauce of Silicon Valley is not just the exceptional people, it's that they're all in the same place.

And that another country could attract those 95% and do great things with them. Several European countries are keen to do so, and with access to the EU's pool of citizens it would be a great place to try and a new tech hub from.

Sadly anti-immigration and/or anti-capitalism feelings are also strong in many EU countries which hampers this movement. I wish the UK could make more of our draw.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#154

Post by bigtunacan »

slantedview wrote: post #97
jitl wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the essay? You seem to be totally ignoring the point that excellent programmers will be paid well because they are scarce compared to "decent" programmers. The goal is not to import cut-rate talent at cut-rate prices.

Actually, studies have shown that IS the goal. It might not be Paul's goal, personally, but generally speaking it is the goal of immigration policy for tech workers - to make labor cheap.

Agreed, the goal is to drive down prices of IT salaries. I find it disingenuous of PG to indicate otherwise since he sits on the side of the table that directly benefits from a cheaper IT labor market.

I have worked at numerous places where they have hired on H1Bs. One of those employers did so because they were looking for good talent no matter where they could find it and H1B holders were paid fairly. Every other employer was doing it because they could pay lower wages and force longer hours on H1B holders since they are in a sort of held-hostage situation. In one case developers were frequently working such long hours that they would just sleep at the office and only go home once or twice a week. This same place was paying their entry to mid developers in the 25K to 35K range and their most senior developers were making less than 50K.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#155

Post by jacquesm »

Why limit this to programmers? It's not as if we're some kind of privileged and special sub-species of humanity. People should be allowed to move around the globe at will without those pesky borders. That would be one way to get us out of the hole we're in. Drawing arbitrary lines for certain professions and not for others only further deepens the gap.

Companies have long ago figured out ways to go trans-national, simply by opening up offices in low wage countries.

Another, easy solution if you want more talent is to pay more.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#156

Post by chrisseaton »

gaius wrote: post #35
tartle wrote: post #28

"I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he'd hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said "We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning." Evidence-based policy proposal at its finest :)

... And he could, if he simply out-bid his competitors.

I'm not sure this is really the case. I know many programmers who say they won't work for finance no matter how much the pay is. And in some cases the pay on offer is literally 6x, and isn't far off a rhetorical 'million dollars'.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#157

Post by khyryk »

oe wrote: post #125
khyryk wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reasonable way to let more "great programmers" in is to let more of all kinds of programmers in.

Or maybe interview them before hiring? :)

Well, will great programmers line up at the "great programmers" H1B line? Probably not. Will the government screen applicants in order to increase the concentration of "great programmers"? Hah. There are no means available to us to increase the concentration of great programmers in a pool of programmers without great cost, and this inevitably means that in order to get more great programmers, one has to go through more programmers.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#158

Post by gaius »

smtddr wrote: post #94
michaelvkpdx wrote: post #75

Part of the reality of founding a company in the United States, and taking advantage of the freedoms and protections being in the USA offers, is that you have to work with the USA labor force. If you don't like it- well, go international. Fast food restaurants don't get to import the best burger-slingers from Germany. Software companies have to live in the same space. And it's complete and utter BS to suggest that th…

>>Fast food restaurants don't get to import the best burger-slingers from Germany. Software companies have to live in the same space. I don't agree with this. The tech industry is beautiful & far-reaching in large part because it doesn't have the restrictions of proximity to the degree of many other industries. I would hate to see artificial limits placed on it to force the same conditions as traditional Brick and mo…

You mean like, say, clothing or electronics manufacture, in which conditions for workers are a global race to the bottom?

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#159

Post by slantedview »

Re this footnote: "An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the last thing they [Google and Facebook]'d want; it would destroy them"

If this is the case, why aren't Google and Facebook coming out strongly against our current H1B mechanism which is demonstrably little more than a tool for importing cheap labor?

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#160

Post by wallflower »

CaptG wrote: post #89

I'm new to HN, and would consider my self a competent developer. How does a competent developer become an exceptional one?

Why do you want to become an exceptional one?

I'm going to give you an alternative answer. There is a hard limit on our personal abilities. There comes a point where a lead developer matures by bringing on people onto their team who are better at X.

I really like this comment from an AskHN from jlcfly several weeks ago. I hope most of us embrace this philosophy as the reality is programming as an art is much more important than programming as a rote skill.

"Teach them to be better than you. That may seem counterproductive. I have a type A personality, and I have decent coding skills. I've been in your situation a number of times. I also know there's these mythical expert developers out there that I can't seem to find (or afford). So, what to do? A few years ago I realized that if I continue down this path, I'll end up with some serious health issues due to the stresses that come along with having a reputation for being a really good developer.

So, I decided that instead of searching for developers better than me, I would teach developers I work with how to BE better. It's taken a lot of patience. And it's taken me quite a bit to LET GO of my way of doing things. I had to take my ego out of the picture. (VERY hard to do.)

Nowadays, I realize that developers don't have to BE better than me. I simply have to ALLOW them to do what they do without being so obsessive about it. Turns out, even junior developers really CAN do good work. They just need a little guidance that only comes with experience, and then they need me to get out of their way."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649415

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