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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

#271

Post by hacknat »

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 agree with you.

Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System, and it's pretty good at bringing the top talent to the U.S. already. Perfect? Of course not. Good enough? I think it is.

Normally I don't hold someone's wealth against them, but on this issue it's hard for me not to be a little prejudicial.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#272

Post by LetBinding »

gaadd33 wrote: post #229
petilon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read footnote [2] in Paul Graham's article. He is against the importation of low-cost programmers. He is only for the importation of exceptional programmers, regardless of where they were born.

Why don't exceptional programmers come in via the O-1 visa program? Obviously if they are exceptional it should be easy to meet the standards set by the government for the visa. There's no limit on the number of O-1 visa's that can be issued in a year so you don't have the lottery effect that the H1B has. The downside for the company that helps their employee get it is that the visa doesn't indenture the employee to…

O-1 is also tied to the sponsoring company.

The standards set by the government for the O-1 visa are more geared towards pure research scientist or professor kind of positions. A PhD is a minimum requirement along with publications in top international journals.

Most of the top engineers and developers don't have a PhD or scientific publications. O-1 is more appropriate for an university professor or NASA scientist position. Not for startup engineer.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#273

Post by NhanH »

It's kind of weird to see the same discussion being repeated over and over again, with people talking over each others with the same point, again over and over.

How about this instead, let's say I'm Patio11 and I want to go to the US, how do I do that? I personally consider Patrick to be the top 1% in what he is doing. And from what I've seen in on of HN's thread last week, a lot of people are aspiring to be the same.

Funny enough, after I typed the above paragraph, I just realized that I can't actually think of a good way to move to the US if I was Patrick. And I'd wager I know more about immigration (pertaining to tech works) than at least most people here, seeing that some of you quoting H1B as "over 100000 coming per years". H1B won't work, you can't have side project/ company on H1B while in the US. And I'm not particularly sure Kalzumeus Software will fit the profile for the investing/ job creators visa one. O visa is just iffy. (Special visas for country aside).

I'm not sure if I'm a great programmers or not. But I'm young enough to hope that I could one day be one. Please, actually proposing solutions on how great programmers could come to the US, with current immigration laws or any changes you think should be made. Keep bashing the H1B is not productive.

Or you can just come out and say "fuck you foreigners", in which case I will gladly reevaluate my plan.

(And then there is still a whole discussion with the OPT system, for some reasons, I have not seen anyone discussing about foreigners graduate from US university, and then have to leave because of the immigration system. There are a whole lot of us too!)

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#274

Post by mrrrgn »

wallflower wrote: post #236
mrrrgn wrote: post #135

This concept of a "great programmer" is something I find very suspicious. A competently trained engineer who works with distributed systems may implement a trivial fix and save her company tens of thousands of dollars in AWS bills. Someone with a strong background in programming languages might implement a PHP -> C++ cross-compiler and double the throughput of her company's web servers. The capability to recognize th…

> and eventually someone will have the idea. Having read the HipHop paper, I am pretty sure that most people would not have been able to contribute meaningfully to that type of revolutionary project. Execution is everything.

>I am pretty sure that most people would not have been able to contribute meaningfully to that type of revolutionary project.

I agree with you totally. Didn't a lifetime of learning lead to that achievement though? The concept of cross compilation between languages had been around for some time prior to HipHop.

They developed their knowledge and executed on it; but other people could, and would, have made the same connection under similar circumstances. They were experts with a specific set of skills. Not just born to be "great programmers."

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#275

Post by [deleted] »

frostmatthew wrote: post #216
rgbrgb wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#276

Post by andrewmutz »

I have a quick question for those arguing against PG's position:

Do you genuinely believe that increasing the number of talented software engineers emigrating to the United States is bad for the United States? Or bad for you?

In the same way that I would argue for public policy that benefits us all (not just me), I think we should have immigration policies that benefit everyone, not just Software Engineers.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#277

Post by rewqfdsa »

wallflower wrote: post #236
mrrrgn wrote: post #135

This concept of a "great programmer" is something I find very suspicious. A competently trained engineer who works with distributed systems may implement a trivial fix and save her company tens of thousands of dollars in AWS bills. Someone with a strong background in programming languages might implement a PHP -> C++ cross-compiler and double the throughput of her company's web servers. The capability to recognize th…

> and eventually someone will have the idea. Having read the HipHop paper, I am pretty sure that most people would not have been able to contribute meaningfully to that type of revolutionary project. Execution is everything.

What advances in computer science were necessary for HipHop? It's a bog-standard JIT system of the kind we'd been building for years. Sure, it's well-executed, but it's hardly a "revolutionary project" to those who weren't born yesterday.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#278

Post by LetBinding »

hacknat wrote: post #271
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 agree with you. Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System, and it's pretty good at bringing the top talent to the U.S. already. Perfect? Of course not. Good enough? I think it is. Normally I don't hold someone's wealth against them, but on this issue it's hard for me not to be a little prejudicial.

Except talented graduates of the American higher education systems have to leave the country if they don't get selected in the H-1B lottery. Last year, there were 45,000 applicants for the 20,000 advanced degree H-1B cap.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#279

Post by No1 »

petilon wrote: post #143
tsotha wrote: post #114

>The technology companies are right. What the anti-immigration people don't understand is that there is a huge variation in ability between competent programmers and exceptional ones, and while you can train people to be competent, you can't train them to be exceptional. What Paul Graham doesn't understand is hardly any of the H-1B people companies are importing are exceptional, and half of them aren't even competent…

Please read footnote [2] in Paul Graham's article. He is against the importation of low-cost programmers. He is only for the importation of exceptional programmers, regardless of where they were born.

The sentiment is nice, but the only selection mechanism presented is that "An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the last thing they'd want; it would destroy them." One only need look at the current H1B situation to see just how eager most tech companies are to add another mediocre programmer at 30% off market rates.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#280

Post by dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp »

danmaz74 wrote: post #108

It looks to me like the solution to the problem is simple. Just have a "high tech visa" with no number limit, but one simple requirement: The company requesting the job needs to be offering something like 150% (or 200% or whatever makes sense) the average salary of the US workforce, or in their state. This will ensure that the visa will only be offered for skills that are difficult to find in the USA (or the specific…

This is a great suggestion, especially if we accept the authors suggestion that hiring agents are only interested in exceptional foreign programmers, not the merely competent ones.

Also, what's a good ratio of exceptional programmers to competent programmers within an organization? Not all important code needs to be written by a clever architect.

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