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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

#211

Post by michaelvkpdx »

Typical self-service from yet another rich VC.

Founders don't want to do anything to improve US society as a whole. Investment in education? Retraining workers whose skills have become dated? No- that's expensive and doesn't benefit the rich as much as another steady supply of below-market cost labor.

It's funny that so many of the VC's and Valley elite rail against the ills of the earth resource extraction companies (oil, coal, gas, etc...) yet see no harm in doing the same sort of scorched-earth work with human resources.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#212

Post by craigyk »

gnufied wrote: post #146
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 wonder where do you get your data for "hire someone from India for half the cost". Of all the facts thrown around - this is easily verifiable - http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php If you ignore those employed on hourly basis, a majority of people on H1B are paid quite well. Apart from salary and benefits - add Visa processing fees for their Kids and Spouse as well (which can easily amount to > 30k+) I think people und…

But why expand the H1B program vs. a more open immigration policy in general, or removing H1B lock-in restrictions?

So are you claiming that companies are paying an extra 30K for all their H1B employees on top of giving them a salary that exactly matches that of their non H1B peers?

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#213

Post by turar »

ryoshu wrote: post #71
xiaoma wrote: post #17

> So they claim it's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US, where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American. Why would they go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same price? The only explanation is that they're telling the truth: there ar…

The reason why tech companies will go through legal contortions is because they don't want to raise the salary floor. If a company can only find a great developer for $100k/yr in the US, but they can find a great developer for $50k/yr through H1B, it makes financial sense to lobby as long as the cost of lobbying is It's not about finding great developers. It's about finding great developers at a lower price.

What you described is illegal according to H-1B provisions.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#214

Post by johnohara »

The US has less than 5% of the world's population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US.

That is the question isn't it -- are those qualities "evenly distributed" around the world?

Africans make up a lot less than 5% of the great marathoners in the world. Does that mean the remaining 95% of great marathoners in the world live outside of Africa?

There are usually a whole host of other intangibles associated with exceptional performance, which are sometimes directly undermined by a change in physical location.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#215

Post by gaadd33 »

fsloth wrote: post #195
slantedview wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I concur. Basically the gradient in the price of labour between countries is driven up to a point by immigration policies. In the general sense increasing the pool of candidates will lower wages. I suppose what PG is after is creating a policy of allowing 'black swan standard' programmers of outstanding skill more in to the US using a different mechanism than the current H1B?

I'm pretty sure that already exists in the form of an O-1 visa. However I doubt the vast majority of programmers who get an H1B come close to meeting the standards for an O-1 visa.

So yeah, if you are a really great programmer and the rest of the world knows this, then any employer in the US can help you get an O-1 visa based off of that. If your programming prowess isn't well demonstrated, then yeah, you have to go through other channels.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#216

Post by frostmatthew »

rgbrgb wrote: post #189
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…

> something as inconsequential as a shopping website, or Yet Another Chat App Alright so first off, 150k will give you a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle in SF/SV (assuming you have no dependents, in which case it's just middle class). It's really not the astronomical salary that you seem to be imagining. Secondly, it is completely impractical to pay people based on the "difficulty" of their work. Difficulty,…

> Alright so first off, 150k will give you a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle in SF/SV...It's really not the astronomical salary that you seem to be imagining.

If we're going to say we shouldn't limit ourselves to 5% of workers then perhaps we shouldn't limit ourselves to 5% of the land. There's plenty of places in the country where 150k would be a very comfortable salary.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#217

Post by cottonseed »

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.

This. How is this not the top comment? The story that it is about talent and not about wages is terribly convenient for an industry that has shown it is willing to flagrantly violate the law to drive down engineer wages.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#218

Post by mrottenkolber »

arjie wrote: post #198
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…

Someone else can always offer 20% more than you if they use you to train. This may work on the small scale where you build lasting relationships, but on the scale of large companies? You'd rapidly gain a reputation of being a springboard, and not a place people join to do their best work.

20% more of what? How am I used to "train"?

I'd argue we'd gain a reputation of being really good, and that we improve together. That's not something you can buy. It might not be obvious, but while creating a great agency, this also implies creating a great workplace of my own. So if I feel like abandoning ship I know I have to change something.

Also, what's better than building lasting relationships? I'd stay "small scale" awesome anytime over being just another asset of a "large company".

I'd argue that we live in a time where you don't have to be "centralized large" anymore to achieve big things. Rather we should figure out how to do even better with loose organization paradigms.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#219

Post by fsloth »

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…

You are basically saying that programming is not engineering but a (highly technical) craft and the best way to foster talent in it is to utilize the age old master/apprentice relationship? If so I agree.

Universities do give the necessary theoretical muscles for a lots of things but they surely do not prepare for the craftmanship aspects (beyond informal cultural indoctrination, if any).

I wonder if there could be any feasible structured approach to merge the academic and ninja-craftmanship paths to learning :)

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#220

Post by curun1r »

gnufied wrote: post #146
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 wonder where do you get your data for "hire someone from India for half the cost". Of all the facts thrown around - this is easily verifiable - http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php If you ignore those employed on hourly basis, a majority of people on H1B are paid quite well. Apart from salary and benefits - add Visa processing fees for their Kids and Spouse as well (which can easily amount to > 30k+) I think people und…

I'm a dev manager at a prominent employer of software engineers and I did a search for my company at your link. I can't speak for other employers, but it appears that salaries for H1-Bs are ~25% lower than what I know Americans to be making at those same job titles. Half is almost certainly an exaggeration, but to deny that there's an H1-B discount is equally disingenuous.

On the topic of the essay, I worry that Paul is also being disingenuous. The US might only have 5% of the world's population, but we have a much larger percentage of the world's population where children have been exposed to computers from an early age. He's right that exceptional programmers can't really be trained, but that doesn't mean that they aren't made. They're made by being put in an environment where they can explore computing and let a natural creativity/curiosity that they have flourish. I've yet to meet an exceptional programmer that begrudgingly chose to write code for a living.

And that's my problem with the H1-B situation and why I think they've got an overall lower percentage of exceptional programmers. In the US, those who are driven by extrinsic motivators like money don't become programmers. They become salesmen, stockbrokers, lawyers or any of a host of other professions that sacrifice doing something interesting for high compensation. But most of those career paths aren't available to people in poorer countries whereas software engineering is. What I've seen among H1-Bs is a far higher percentage of people who basically hate their job, but do it because it allowed them to come to the US and afford a comfortable lifestyle for their families. I don't blame them for that, but I also don't think that it makes them particularly good developers. Don't get me wrong...I have met quite a few H1-Bs who were drawn to software development from an early age and love doing it in the way that usually results in being an nx developer (anywhere from 1x to 10x), but I just don't see them in the same proportions that I do among American developers.

If Paul can figure out a way to filter in the great developers while filtering out those that are only coming to make money, then I'd be completely behind his plan to let them all in. Somewhat ironically, his plan to let everyone in would somewhat accomplish that at the cost of decimating developer salaries (i.e. if the labor pool is increased and salaries dip accordingly, we'll find out pretty quickly who's only here for the money and which of us would be doing this no matter whether we were paid significantly less.)

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