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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

#201

Post by gaius »

mrottenkolber wrote: post #167

What I take away from the HN/Startup/Recruiting drama: * Companies don't know how find good people (they think they know how to attract them, but honestly, how can they tell? They don't notice the ones they fail to attract, which I'd argue is most people) * Companies are unable to produce (e.g. educate) good people * They want to solve their failures by increasing the search space of people I have no sympathy at all…

There already is a name for it - the Cravath System, it's the approach taken by the best law firms.

http://www.cravath.com/cravathsystem/

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#202

Post by sfilipov »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #137
sampo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tied to a specific job on penalty of getting their visa revoked. This is true if you hire from third world. I am from Northern Europe, and having a visa revoked and going back to my home country would not be a threat to me. I'd just happily move back home, and find a job there.

Most people consider a move to a new apartment in the same city inconvenient. There are very few people who wouldn't consider being forced to move across continents, while giving up their rights, a highly biasing factor in the pros/cons of any decision they made.

As a result, I can see programmers from Western and Northern Europe, who as of know may consider relocating to the US, change their mind and say "why bother". Any EU citizen will have easier time relocating to London/Berlin - two places in Europe where a lot of tech companies are located.

PG's point is that a lot of people from outside the US (including from Europe) currently would prefer relocating to the US but they have difficulty getting a visa. Long term more and more people would prefer the second best choice that's available to them.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#203

Post by mrottenkolber »

gaius wrote: post #201
mrottenkolber wrote: post #167

What I take away from the HN/Startup/Recruiting drama: * Companies don't know how find good people (they think they know how to attract them, but honestly, how can they tell? They don't notice the ones they fail to attract, which I'd argue is most people) * Companies are unable to produce (e.g. educate) good people * They want to solve their failures by increasing the search space of people I have no sympathy at all…

There already is a name for it - the Cravath System, it's the approach taken by the best law firms. http://www.cravath.com/cravathsystem/

Nice to be validated by a third party. :)

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#204

Post by 23david »

austenallred wrote: post #12

I really want to believe this, but I'm not sure that I do. Of course the tech companies want to hire people from overseas; being able to hire someone from India for half the cost but have them live in the US so there's some level of accountability/trust is a no-brainer. Huge new, cheap talent pool. But, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, c…

I think it's important for all startup founders to realize that non-executive salaries in the U.S. tech industry have been incredibly distorted by the illegal wage fixing practiced over the last 10-15 years.

The wage fixing set an artificial ceiling on programmer salaries. And if it's now stopped, we should expect a major correction over the next 5 years as market wages adjust. I'm hopeful that recent salary increases by large companies are evidence that things are moving in a good direction.

But it will take time to rebuild trust between labor (programmers) and management in the tech industry. I don't think we're there yet, and in the meantime I am cynical about any effort to address hiring difficulties by increasing immigration.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#205

Post by govindkabra31 »

volkadav wrote: post #26

We already have visas specifically targeted at letting in exceptional talent: the O (temporary) and E (permanent) series. Of course, the tech industry lobbying is not generally speaking around those visas, but rather H1-B. So I don't think it is entirely correct to assert that industry wants more "genius visa" types, they want more journeymen (gender-neutral; the kind of staff that are competent but not exceptional,…

The allocation of visas for exceptional talent is surprisingly skewed. Only about 6% of 1 Million green cards issued each year are issued to people who are here for their skills. Rest goes to family based immigration.

This specially hurts engineers on H1B from India and China the most, because of per country limits, they have to wait for close to a decade. e.g., someone from India, who qualifies for the definition of "Exceptional" for EB2 bucket, should have applied in 2005 to get visa this month.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#206

Post by EduardoBautista »

sumedh wrote: post #171
mnglkhn2 wrote: post #53

The value proposition needs to be right. So far, tech companies only propose to let people come and work, for 3 to 6 years. There is no guarantee made to the exceptional programmer that the company will apply his/her green card, and hence facilitate the actual act of immigration. Until The company applies and the application is approved, we are talking just about work visas and not about immigration. The only reasona…

> we are talking just about work visas and not about immigration. Moving to a different country under work visa is also immigration.

No, immigration implies you are going to stay there. Being on a work visa you will always have the uncertainty that you will have to leave the country.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#207

Post by rfrey »

There's a number of comments here disputing the "even distribution" assumption pg makes. The disagreements are wrong because pg did not say that great programmers were evenly distributed, just that the qualities that make great programmers are.

Some of those qualities are, IMO, curiosity; a mathematical inclination; attention to detail; an ability to quickly move between levels of abstraction; and so on.

I have no trouble believing those qualities might be evenly distributed among all humans. Of course, in many places people with those qualities might not choose to study programming, because the local culture and economics do not reward that path. An established and reliable migration path to a place where it is valued might change those choices though.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#208

Post by mbesto »

kohanz wrote: post #5

There exists no practical, reliable method to identify the "great" programmers from the rest (other than by employing them or working with them over a significant amount of time). Many of them interview poorly. If you could actually identify these people, you'd have a billion dollar idea. So that implies that in order to grant entry to the "great" programmers, the door needs to be wide open to everyone. I'm not sayin…

I bring up this point everytime the debate comes up. The talent war is real. The immigration problem is real. But I have yet to see anyone (myself included) present a valid solution.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#209

Post by kaykay »

pastProlog wrote: post #174
edgyswingset wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you touched at the end is part of a bigger problem, I think - people who write something as inconsequential as a shopping website, or Yet Another Chat App, are not worth $150,000/year. Maybe one out of one-hundred of those folks could use their talent on something that demands a wage like that outside of the absurdity that is the Bay Area. I don't feel the talent pool will be diluted so much as your run-of-the-m…

Yes. Over 100,000 H1-B's are coming over every year. This keeps discussing exceptional programmers. You mean we need more than 100,000 exceptional programmers coming over every year? The reality is that the idea that even 10,000 of these people are exceptional programmers is a laugh. Every year 100,000 H1-Bs can come in. To believe this article, we'd have to pretend that we have a big wall up preventing these dozens…

Where did you get the > 100000 H1B's number?

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#210

Post by pastProlog »

OmarIsmail wrote: post #93
ta75757 wrote: post #62

Paul Graham is fighting for his side. I hope any developers here are smart enough to fight for theirs. He's arguing that the same companies who colluded illegally to drive down the wages of the "best" programmers, now have no interest in lowering their wages when they're arguing for increased immigration. LOL.

Paul Graham is representing the startups that he's invested in - not Apple, Google and FB. The BigCos are already big enough to have international offices to mitigate these immigration issues. A 20 person startup doesn't.

> From the essay: But it is dishonest of the anti-immigration people to claim that companies like Google and Facebook are driven by the same motives. An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the last thing they'd want; it would destroy them.

Eric Schmidt not only illegally colluded in a conspiracy to drive down programmer salaries, his e-mails say things like "this may be illegal so delete this e-mail".

I guess I'm one of those "dishonest" wealth-creating worker bees who read these subpoenaed e-mails where I spin the "dishonest" narrative that I actually believe what Eric Schmidt said about his attempts to secretly and illegally drive down his programmer's salaries.

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