
On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs - frostmatthew
http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/27/on-immigration-engineers-simply-dont-trust-vcs/
======
sosuke
Just on the subject of programmer salaries, I was talking with someone who had
much more experience in the computing industry than myself and he pointed out
something I'd never known. He said that programmer salaries from pre-bubble
days was six-figures, and that we're still in that range, and not higher is
proof that salaries have been kept low. Six-figures today is not what six-
figures was worth in 1998. Inflation alone from $100,000 1998 to 2014 is
$144,877.91 using
[http://www.usinflationcalculator.com](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com)

And yes, I don't trust anyone who cries foul about a shortage of workers and
then offers 40% under market wages, anecdote of course.

~~~
morgante
In principle, I agree with most commentators on HN that if there were actually
a shortage we'd expect to see salaries rising.

Yet, in practice, it does seem that there's simply an absolute shortage of
experienced developers. I've been hiring developers at my job for most of the
past year, yet we have _never_ had an offer turned down. Rather, we see only a
trickle of applicants, very few of whom are event remotely qualified. If we
actually saw a great developer, I'm sure we could put together a fantastic
compensation package (despite being an early-stage startup, we pay _above_
market for NYC). Yet all we see are mediocre developers, and few of those.
It's hard not to call this a labor shortage when my colleagues hiring for
other positions (marketing, writing, etc.) see 100x the number of applicants
with 1/10 as much outreach/advertising.

Given that it's impossible to produce more senior developers in a 1-2 year
timeframe, what alternatives do people suggest to immigration?

~~~
selmnoo
> Given that it's impossible to produce more senior developers in a 1-2 year
> timeframe, what alternatives do people suggest to immigration?

Why do we operate under the assumption that these companies are entitled to as
many unicorns as they want? Why shouldn't they just go out of business?

After the whole collusion ordeal when it became abundantly clear that on one
side there are VCs, founders, and C-levels who work to suppress our wages --
and on the other side, us, I actually want to see them lose and get hurt after
all the terrible things they did to us.

~~~
morgante
The world isn't nearly as binary as that.

I'm not a VC or founder. I'm a developer just like you, trying to deliver cool
products—but doing so requires more developers.

If my company was trying to suppress wages, or refused to pay above market,
then I'd agree with you that we have no right to ask for more talent. But
we're perfectly willing to pay for talent—we just can't find any.

I wouldn't be surprised if the number of senior developers on the market was
less than 10% of the number of open positions.

~~~
mkozlows
So the thing is, I share your general opinion -- there is a legit shortage of
talented developers, and it's hard to find them.

BUT: I guarantee you that there is in fact a wage and benefits package you can
offer that would get you more good applicants. Maybe it's more money (sure,
"above market" is nice, but I'm not going to leave a job for $5K more than my
"market" rate -- but for $50K more, well, let's talk). Maybe it's perks and
benefits (the Google package, for instance).

Whatever it is, there is absolutely money you can spend that would end up
getting you noticeably more applicants one way or the other. That the company
doesn't WANT to spend that money is exactly what bothers people.

And yes, yes, it's all well and good to say that developers are paid and
treated well -- they are -- but if their talent and skill is really that rare
and that in-demand, maybe they should be paid and treated even better.

~~~
morgante
Okay, let's assume we were willing to offer substantially higher salaries than
the market (though the practicalities of our funding certainly limits that to
some degree).

How would we communicate said information in a way that doesn't actively
distort the hiring process? When was the last time you saw a job ad with
salary listed?

~~~
mkozlows
Put it in the ad. It's not common, but it's not super-rare, either. And the
main reason you don't do it is that you don't want to eliminate your chance at
hiring someone at a below-market rate (or of alerting your below-market-rate
current employees that they're being screwed and should be getting big
raises). If you're committed to paying the rates you'd need to pay to get good
talent, then put that upfront.

~~~
morgante
See above:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8805687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8805687)

------
jacobolus
On one of the previous threads about this topic, someone suggested that
accepting H1-B applicants in order from higher to lower salaries instead of
based on a lottery would clear up a lot of the lottery spots that currently go
to the below-market-wage-indentured-servant type shops to be used for more
deserving companies and applicants.

Seems like a solid change to me, without an obvious downside. (But I am not an
expert and haven’t done any detailed analysis, so maybe this would have
negative consequences I’m not anticipating.)

Another change that might be a big improvement, it seems to me, is to let H1-B
visa holders more easily change jobs once they’re here, without so much risk
or paperwork hoops to jump through. If it were easier for H1-B workers to
switch jobs, then abusive employers would have less leverage to exploit them
(forced overtime, below-market wages, etc.).

~~~
bradleyjg
As much as it may sometimes seem like it is, the H1-B isn't a programming or
IT visa. It's applicable to a wide range of specialty occupations, across the
entire nation. The suggested change would block out virtually all applicants
from many other professions.

~~~
nitrogen
Regardless of the industry, if the H-1B is designed to allow employers to hire
specialists they can't find locally, then a salary-sorted approval process
should still be desirable.

Machine shops fighting over top-1% welders with deep materials science
knowledge should be no different to software shops fighting over top-1%
developers with deep computer science knowledge.

~~~
bradleyjg
That'd be fine if the applicant pool was first sorted by profession and
geography and like compared against like. But how do you decide the
distribution of visas across those sub-groups?

~~~
davidw
For that matter, who picks the number of "how many H1B visas should we have",
based on what criteria? Is there research backing up this number? Statistics?

I'd be much more willing to let people decide on their own:

[http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.it/2014/06/the-optimal-
number-...](http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.it/2014/06/the-optimal-number-of-
immigrants.html)

~~~
codeonfire
I'm fairly sure that is the US congress and their criteria is how many
minority votes they think they can get during an election year.

~~~
davidw
Because H1B's are about 'minorities'? Doesn't make much sense to me.

------
jacquesm
This whole immigration thing sounds like an excellent opportunity for someone
to put together a better way to work remotely. We're all supposed to be
internet savvy, why can't we come up with something better than skype and
github? Is something better even required? Why the emphasis on getting people
into the country? We're selling virtual presence solutions to industry and
telepresence to doctors and we're trying for surgeons. IT is the easiest job
to do from a remote location. I work with people every other day that I've
never even met in person and I have never visited the co-location of a large
chunk of the server hardware that I've worked with over the last couple of
years.

Why the accent on physical presence?

~~~
zaroth
Tele-presence has a long way to go, and the network infrastructure too, but it
will obviously, eventually, get to the point where it's indistinguishable from
being in the same room, minus the physical contact. But to your point, it's
not even a given that would help much.

Even with that, you still suffer mostly from time zones. You're just not going
to collaborate the same ways with someone on the other side of the planet.
That just means barriers to entry and more opportunity for those brave enough
to try and ultimately get a system that works for them.

I think there's a remote-work bias which isn't fully born out from the
evidence. It helps if you can somehow start with perfectly trustworthy peers,
because I think a large part of hiring local is keeping tabs and keeping
control. If you already know people who happen to be remote, versus trying to
hire someone you've never met before remotely, the former can work perfectly
fine, the later is [currently] nearly impossible.

There's probably legal and tax issues to deal with too, but I'm going to hand
wave assume they do not negate the potential benefits and could just as easily
work out in favor of the foreign independent contractor vs. local salaried
employee.

~~~
minthd
The time zone issue can be solved easily.find a south american country that is
immigration friendly and open an office their ,recruiting from all over the
world.

~~~
sanxiyn
Why not Canada?

~~~
raverbashing
A lot of companies do that already

However, it's not as simple as it seems, you think "let's send everybody to
Canada and then grow our offices there with all the foreigners we want" but
that doesn't happen and you wonder why.

Maybe they don't want to outgrow their main offices, or maybe it's got to do
with Canadian work culture

I've seen people being "parked" in Ireland before applying for their H1B

~~~
waterlesscloud
It seems to be quite common with movie visual effects companies. And the
Toronto or Vancouver offices are often bigger than the LA staffs.

Of course, that industry is being priced down to survival levels.

~~~
jacquesm
That's partly related to the non CGI parts of movies often being shot in
Canada because of cost advantages. In Toronto you couldn't walk two blocks
without tripping over a film crew.

------
joshAg
I think one way to fix the trust issue outlined here would be not tying the
H1B visa to a specific job, but instead giving it for a defined period of
time, eg 5 years, and not making it dependent on the employer.

I know at least a few people on H1B visas who celebrated getting a green card
with 2 weeks notice and a nice $20k/year raise to do the exact same job at a
competitor.

------
winter_blue
A fundamental question not being answered is: _Who gets to come to America_?

Right now, our system massively favors immediate relatives and refugees, and
only lets in a trickle of everyone else. If you are a person who wishes to
move to the US, don't have relatives here, and are not a refugee -- then good
luck, because you'll have a really hard time getting in.

Stories of people who literally sell everything to get a chance to live here,
like that of Claudia Mendoza, bring tears to ones' eyes:
[http://app.fwd.us/stories/429](http://app.fwd.us/stories/429) Now her husband
was probably not among the 1% in his field. But he was hard-working person,
valued by his colleagues, who added and contributed to our society. He and his
family were kicked out of the country, for not winning the H-1B lottery.

So to people who oppose skilled worker immigration, I have a question: Should
only refugees and people with family relations be admitted? Should everyone
else be completely blocked off? People who oppose skilled worker immigration
are essentially advocating this.

~~~
abecedarius
I favor much-more-open borders for people who want to immigrate and become
citizens. Any kind of guest-worker program, including the H1B system, I'm more
skeptical about. It's understandable for capital to work to carve out selected
holes in the fence to benefit themselves the most -- changing the laws isn't
easy or cheap -- but that's not the change I'm excited to get behind. (I don't
know what specific changes are being pushed right now, if any.)

~~~
SwellJoe
This is my position, as well. Worker visas are effectively a modern indentured
servitude. Foreign workers are much less likely to be a fluid commodity on the
job market as US citizens can be, because they have their visa to worry about.
I oppose borders, generally speaking, but I have a hard time swallowing the
massive corporate empowerment represented by the worker visa process
(bootstrapped startups also cannot effectively participate, either).

------
lotsofmangos
I was working a minimum wage factory job in an area where it is very easy to
get a job not that long ago, (it took 4 days from the phone call) and I asked
my line manager if they had problems hiring. 'Yes', I was told, hiring was a
major problem and keeping staff on was really difficult. I asked why they
though that was. Apparently they think it is because state benefits are too
high.

edit - I'm still working it, I am rubbish with cash.

They are not bad people, but they honestly cannot see that they may actually
save money by paying slightly more. I am planning to point this out in the
next week or two, but luckily I have nearly sorted my cash-flow issue, so I
can afford the license.

~~~
marincounty
I'm curious about the town you are talking about. I've seen the finances of
people who rely on state benefits, and in the Bay Area--unless you have a
bunch of kids(afdc) and were lucky enough to find section 8 housing; the state
benefits are not enough to keep a room--you can eat though. I know too many
homeless people who tried to get state benefits, and the help they recieved
was tiny, and had a time limit. My best friend who passed away was on SSDI. He
knew he was lucky he qualified for SSDI, but he was always broke. I saw his
checks and it was just enough to get through the month. People used to rib him
about buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks, at the expense of The Federal
Government, but they had no idea just how little money he was receiving.

~~~
lotsofmangos
Am in the south west of the UK. 2 to 3 days a week of crap work covers my rent
and most of my food and gives me loads of free time for pissing about on my
own stuff. I avoid benefits, not through any particular ideology but more
because I find them more trouble than they are worth. I sometimes earn decent
money, but I find I get stressed as hell in offices and I don't get motivated
enough by money to make up for it, so I am avoiding those kind of jobs for a
bit.

------
hyp0
Yes, if the best engineers really have x100 or x1000 productivity, why aren't
employers offering higher salaries?

There's been high-profile high-tech anti-poach collusion, and Ed Catmull
(pixar) even claimed it's for the best. But without that, there would be
implicit collusion anyway. It's obvious to employers that an arms-race to
attract talent is not going to benefit anyone (who is an employer).

But what would happen if wages did rise to their natural level? First, it
would attract people to the profession. Second, the most-profitable companies
would end up with the best engineers because only they could afford to outbid
everyone else (and resources end up in the hands of those most able to utilize
them).

Startups, being poor, will find it difficult to attract excellent salaried,
non-equity talent ("inequitable"?)

Thirdly and sadly, it would also mean less development work would occur
(because it costs so much, and employers have limited money). But I have a
feeling you'd end up with even more open source projects; and more people
working on startups (to fill the gaps).

------
PhoenixWright
Training is a big problem in tech. When I graduated college two years ago I
couldn't find an entry level job anywhere. Every company wanted at least 1
year of experience. I finally found a place that would give me a shot but also
massively underpaid me. Two years later and I am a dev lead on a major project
and they are begging me to stay (although they refuse to give me more money).
I'm actually getting calls from big valley companies that turned down my new
grad app like nothing.

Why don't tech companies (or any company really) invest in their workers and
help them attain new skills and career advancement?

~~~
pm24601
> Why don't tech companies (or any company really) invest in their workers and
> help them attain new skills and career advancement?

Because they don't actually want the "skill shortage" solved. There actually
is no skill shortage.

Companies create the "skill shortage" by making the job requirements so
impossible that no one applies:

"speaks Mandarin, programs in Java 7.1 and .Net 6.5, is able to travel 80% of
the time, is a Backbone.js guru...."

Just look at the laundry list of "must-haves" in a job posting now a days to
really get the true picture.

If companies really wanted to solve their "skill shortage" they would look for
talent that could be trained to the exact technology rather than demanding
that every possible candidate already know the tech stack.

------
Animats
There's a huge "purple squirrel" problem. Employers expect to be able to hire
someone who knows Drupal, PHP, and Ubuntu. They don't want to retrain someone
who knows Methode, Java, and Red Hat, even those do the same job.

Few employers have the capability to train any more. Whenever you encounter an
employer whining about this, ask them "How many people do you have in offsite
training right now?" If the answer is zero, tell them you've found their
problem.

~~~
morgante
I don't know how you can realistically expect startups to invest in employee
training.

~~~
beachstartup
we're a startup and we've sent multiple people to offsite training. in general
it only costs a couple thousand bucks per class per employee including room
and board.

~~~
morgante
Interesting. Were they otherwise experienced developers who you just needed to
train in your particular toolchain, or have you hired inexperienced developers
and trained them to be more experienced?

~~~
spc476
There's training expenses regardless of who you hire. There's training in the
work flow and the software stack you use (which you haven't mentioned at all
on any of the job posts you mentioned elsewhere). It's never "slot right in
and be 100% productive from minute one."

------
hw
Instead of a 'shortage of workers', the situation should be more adeptly
described as a 'shortage of skilled workers'. I do think there are tech
workers floating around, but the really good ones are hard to come by.
Extending immigration helps, but does not solve it, as only a bunch of the
pool are actually good talent.

Maybe immigration needs to be tweaked to help filter down the pool even more,
for example, raising the minimum H1B wage for its skill levels. A disparity in
the minimum wage only enables companies to bring in workers that are 'meh' and
only pay the minimum cause it's cheap labor, albeit not top talent.

Question for the anti-immigration folks is, if immigration was reduced or
stopped entirely, would that necessarily result in higher wages for everyone
else? Are talented engineers really not being able to find a job that wants to
pay what they want? Are the decent, run-of-the-mill engineers not able to find
a job that pays market or slightly below market? Would companies then
outsource even more anyway?

~~~
cellis

      >> would that necessarily result in higher wages for everyone else?
    

Unless companies like Google relocate ( to where? ) then yes, wages would
absolutely rise, because _they don 't allow WFH_ [1], ergo _the only engineers
available_ would be those in the Bay Area, NYC, etc. No, they wouldn't
outsource critical infrastructure to places like India or China, who hacked
them. I also don't see them picking up and leaving and going to e.g.
Vancouver.

I think the only way to address this "great engineer" thing without American
engineers crying foul is to _gasp_ introduce standardized testing that all the
American tech companies -- who can't get the amazing talent -- agree upon and
then select the 99th percentile of the candidates that pass it and pay them in
the 99th percentile of wages for the bay area. This would be an objective
measure and Americans wouldn't be suspicious of whatever criteria VCs/founders
use to measure "great programming ability". Make the interviews and the
criteria public, bring it to the light, then people would be more inclined to
believe them. Right now I simply hear a bunch of hand-wavey math and see a
bunch of rich people whining about how they don't have engineers to build
_their things_. Yes, I know there are flaws with standardized tests, but it's
the best of bad things.

[1] Most companies. Yahoo notoriously, but most companies aren't in favor of
allowing WFH.

~~~
fredophile
A lot of west coast companies are in Vancouver. It's not their headquarters
but having a Vancouver office gives them access to large pools of foreign
talent that they can't easily bring into the US. It's also conveniently
located in the same time zone as California and Washington which reduces the
difficulties of having remote workers.

Any standardized test will be gamed. Just look at all of the books and other
resources you can find for how to solve the types of problems that get asked
in coding interviews.

------
JabavuAdams
There's something interesting missing from this discussion -- do the most-
skilled international developers _want_ to move to the US? The US's reputation
is at a low ebb.

I mean, I like visiting, and I would love to work on some of the projects that
are only available in the US, but the idea of actually living there? That's a
really tough sell.

~~~
joshAg
Enough do. For example, the line for people from India with a master's degree
(separate lines for bachelors or phd) to get a green card is more than 11
years long. That's the time from when they qualify to get a greencard to when
they actually receive it and not counting the years it takes to qualify for a
greencard. During that time they have to stay on h1b visas, which can
apparently be renewed indefinitely if the holdup is the backlog in the line
for greencards.

------
Spooky23
The whole premise of this "crisis" is that folks want to have their cake and
eat it too.

Feels to me like this is more about convenience for financiers. It's easier to
do due diligence when everything you do goes through the same funnel a few
minutes away from your office. Much easier than flying to Denver, New York or
Chicago.

Instead of importing more workers into the overcrowded and expensive valley,
maybe export the jobs to one of the other cities in the US with skilled
workers. At this point, New York City is practically a cheap market.

------
fhadley
I don't read a lot of techcrunch to be honest, so maybe this is their standard
fare and isn't worth the time I'll take to write this. On the other hand, I
dislike that this man just painted my entire industry as xenophobes, without
so much as a quote from the party in question. Is this acceptable now? I
certainly reject the idea of a world in which psuedo-journalistic conjecture
is taken at face value, without so much as an anonymous source.

~~~
mrottenkolber
It's usually better to not go TC et al. I just wanted to see how to write an
article from an HN threads a few hours earlier.

------
latcampbell
"We don't have exceptional programmers and hence we may be fucked" sounds like
an excuse to me. A successful manager or leader is supposed to make an average
team do great things. If a manager starts moaning for lack of great talent, I
would suspect he is looking for excuses. Perhaps some introspection is needed.

------
twelvechairs
What the article neglects to mention is that if the US doesn't capture workers
(and SF doesn't work to lower living costs) its inertia for the tech industry
(which admittedly currently seems unstoppable) will wane and other countries
will pick up the slack.

------
unimportant
A call for immigration reform is almost always an attempt to reduce wages and
to avoid having to train people, instead of a real shortage.

The likely result of open borders would be something like London startup
salaries, which are extremely low (measured by what the amount of money buys
you in London) for people that aren't on the upper end of the skill range with
years of experience.

Entry level salaries will barely get you by and you'll have to live in a
shared apartment for 5 years or so until you can afford to rent a place on
your own (if you're smart enough to up your skill-set in that time).

This is due to a small startup ecosystem and the ability for most Europeans to
access the UK's job market.

------
maerF0x0
One part of the immigration problem that is keeping wages is high is the fact
that spouses/dependents cannot work. Want to bring in an ace programmer?
You'll have to pay double (or just "more") because her husband cannot work in
the "land of the free" ... If they're from a country with free healthcare,
education or any other benefit, you'll have to pay for that because it was
part of their "compensation" before .

I've posted before about the cost of coming to the bay area:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8533781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8533781)

------
melindajb
The fact is that investors want a free market for labor, but will not accept a
free market for capital.

Otherwise anyone could invest in any company without silly "accredited
investor" rules, which serve only to keep the cost of capital high enough to
generate desired returns from the money changers.

------
ninavizz
No, no, no, no, no, no, no to more immigration as a solution to a perceived
lack of workers.

[https://t.co/pCv7JgF7mF](https://t.co/pCv7JgF7mF)

------
gsibble
This whole set of lies really makes me angry. Ever notice how it's only the
most powerful of powerful who complain about "talent shortage"? Those who have
the most to gain from reducing technology salaries? Sure, you might hear about
it being a competitive market with high salaries and all, but that's what it's
supposed to be! Engineering talent is in high demand and salaries are supposed
to go up!

If anything, they aren't going up enough. Programer's salaries as a whole have
stayed nearly even since 1992 [1]. Furthermore, profit margins in the
technology sector are remarkably high with very little spent on HR compared to
another highly profitable sector: banking. Highly skilled STEM graduates
frequently choose to go into finance because they can make more over a longer
career without a cap on their income. The ratio of revenue to HR costs at tech
companies and finance companies is way out of whack.

If tech wants the best workers, there are plenty of willing and capable
Americans ready to pick up the work. Just fucking pay for it. Stop lying
through your teeth that this is about talent. It isn't. It's about your
stockholders. That's why you only hear the most powerful bitching about it
since they are the only ones who would benefit.

[1] [http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-
media/newshour/photos/2013/07/18/...](http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-
media/newshour/photos/2013/07/18/IT_average_salaries-
unemployment_chart_business_desk.jpg)

~~~
curiousDog
Would be nice if someone extrapolated how the wages would look like today if
the H1-B program wasn't put into place. Would programmers be making WallStreet
salaries? How would that have impacted the start-up ecosystem? Also, numerous
H1-Bs are the core of companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc. How
would things have looked without any of them?

~~~
amerliore
And where would wages be if the biggest tech employers had not been blatantly
colluding to depress wages, using illegal anti-competitive tactics?

Paul Graham advocates for free trade when it will increase the value of his
portfolio and the wealth of his friends. He doesn't say a word about how free
trade has been undermined by the illegal collusion of Facebook, Google, and
Apple.

~~~
FranzVonSuppe
I would just like to point out Facebook was not among the companies indicted
for collusion.

Think what you will about Facebook, but it is on the high horse in this
occasion.

~~~
amerliore
You're right. I would edit it but the comment is now too old to edit. My
sincere apologies to Facebook.

Here is a partial list of guilty companies:

Apple

Google

Microsoft

IBM

Adobe

Oracle

Sun

Intel

Earthlink

Virgin

Genentech

eBay / Paypal

Pixar

Intuit

Lucasfilm

Dreamworks

Dell

Comcast

Clear Channel

WPP

AOL

AskJeeves

Lycos

Oglivy

Illumita

DoubleClick

------
fw109
This is my perspective as a much-maligned foreign worker. I lost the lottery
of birth, and was born to lower middle class parents in a third world country.
But I worked hard in school, and got a scholarship at a respected private
university in the US. I worked hard in college, and got a decent offer from a
big tech company. When I start next year right after graduating, I will earn
more in one year than my father earns in five. Even with cost of living
differences, I calculated that I will have a far better standard of living
than I was used to.

Perhaps my university gave me the scholarship to boost its diversity figures.
Perhaps my company is paying less than it would have to in some imaginary
world in which foreign workers with H1Bs were not allowed -- then again, if
that were the case, I would never get that job (I'm smart, but not
"extraordinary" enough to get an O-1 visa). But it doesn't matter. Whatever
the reasons, I stand to win, living a much better life than back home. So for
those of you with inflated senses of self-worth complaining about people like
me, why don't you go cry to your mommy about how you should have taken a Wall
Street job instead, so that you could have earned a lot more money while
fucking over the world economy. Because fuck the rest of the world, right?

~~~
zo1
>" _So for those of you with inflated senses of self-worth complaining about
people like me, why don 't you go cry to your mommy about how you should have
taken a Wall Street job instead, so that you could have earned a lot more
money while fucking over the world economy. Because fuck the rest of the
world, right?_"

You're more than welcome to cut your upcoming now-1st-world salary that you
boast about and give most of it to a third-world charity or something. Because
otherwise, you're also saying "fuck the rest of the world". When you
understand why you won't do that, then you'll understand why others won't as
well. No, seriously, you can't just ask _others_ to do good, you have to do
good yourself as well. Until then, all you're saying is that you expect
_others_ to take a hit in their advantage so that _your_ opinions on what
matters are satisfied. Without even considering that maybe they're doing what
they think matters already, and all you're really complaining about is that
it's not the same as yours.

Edit. I'd like to add something about your "birth-lottery" comment.

>" _I lost the lottery of birth, and was born to lower middle class parents in
a third world country._ "

I don't agree at all. If anything, you _WON_ the "lottery" over probably
billions of other people, ones that are born into families that do not support
their offspring as much as it sounds like yours did to you. You may not be
lucky enough to be born in a fancy 1st world country, but that's just entirely
besides the point because you're succeeding, despite your claim that you lost
some imaginary lottery.

~~~
fw109
You're right, I'm luckier than several billions of people in the world. But my
point is simply this: the fact that I wasn't born in the US was not in my
control. If I want to move here, some people want me here, and it is in my
control to do so, I just feel that I have the right to do so.

As far as the last few lines in my comment go: I was expressing bitterness at
the fact that we foreign workers are being dismissed as worthless talent-less
job-stealers. In my comment I wanted to be dismissive of those who are
dismissive of me. I am not really so in real life, as I know that the ones
being so vile here are not like that in person, because everyone is more
complicated than that.

~~~
pm24601
We are not expressing bitterness at foreign workers - we are expressing the
reality of 30+ years of US jobs being exported. Good paying manufacturing jobs
in the Midwest. Many, many towns are now empty poor shells inhabited by once
middle class families who are now poor because their jobs were exported to
foreign countries.

And now Americans are supposed to be willing to give up their jobs even within
the U.S.?

Maybe if the 1%ers hadn't been so busy destroying the American middle class,
you would be welcomed more generously.

------
chvid
I wonder how long time this will live on the frontpage of HN before it gets
"censored" to back as the discussion of PG's piece did?

With the all internet's "direct communication" and "netizens democracy" it is
funny how we cannot have a non-bullshit discussion about a subject like this.

~~~
dang
There are 339 points and 636 (!) comments on that story. How anyone can call
that "censored" is beyond me.

No moderator touched that post at all.

------
michaelochurch
"VCs" aren't responsible at all, as far as I can tell, for the
Google/Apple/et-al wage-fixing that cost the trust of engineers. That
shouldn't be pinned on them, and it certainly shouldn't be pinned on Paul
Graham.

What VCs do that is wrong is that they've created a culture of co-funding and
collusion-- a feudal reputation economy-- which thwarts independence in
decision making and generates a small set of big winners before startups can
start hiring and get to the market. Comparing notes on who they like and who
they don't is sleazy and creates an in-crowd that is mostly incompetent, but
it's not illegal, and it's a subtle-enough offense that average engineers (who
probably have little interest in being founders, anyway) dislike them.

As for why they do this, it comes from the fact that building a good
portfolio, though technically their job, is a game at which feedback cycles
are slow. You might have a strategy that is going to make 40% annual returns
(on average) each year, but if macroeconomic events take you down over 3
years, you don't get to prove yourself. So, the VCs have (justifiably) learned
that their career benefit is maximized not by building the best portfolio, but
by having association (even if the percentage they end up with is tiny) with
the very-rare "home runs" that happen every 5 years or so. That requires them
to spread information around and create the culture of co-funding, much like
an academic department where 20 names get on a paper when 2 researchers did
most of the work.

It's not that we "don't trust" the technology elite. We know what their
economic interests are and we trust them to pursue them. And that's fine, if
this pursuit involves openly advocating what is best for them and what they
believe is best for us and for the country. What's _not_ morally OK is lying
to the government about a "talent shortage". If they want to come out and say,
"our economic interests favor <X>, and here's why we think our interests are
aligned with yours", I'd be fine with that. Just don't fucking lie.
Immigration is a complex topic and there's no simple answer. "Talent shortage"
is a lie, and the ethical status of claiming one exists actually is black-and-
white: it's fucking wrong. There's no talent shortage when it's this hard for
women, or minorities, or people over 40, or people who spent their careers
outside of California, to get themselves taken seriously in tech.

The problem with FWD.us is that they're using their wealth to get access to
government officials, and then lying to them, with the intention of bringing
economic changes that may or may not harm us, but we've been left out of the
discussion.

~~~
S4M
You really shouldn't use any opportunity to bring on your usual thesis - VCs
collude to fund only startups created by "connected" founders - when it is so
out of topic.

------
waterlesscloud
It would be helpful to have some concrete examples of companies who are
hurting from this shortage.

What projects, specifically, are they not getting done?

What specific requirements are they not able to find in potential employees?

Why, specifically, is training not an option?

How, specifically, is inability to get this project going hurting them?

What specific compensation are they offering?

If you want some trust, you're going to need to be forthcoming with specifics,
not vague talk about top 5% coders and "We need 30 more great programmers".

~~~
amerliore
Training is seen as competitive suicide, because while you bear the costs of
training, your competitors can then poach your trained employees by offering a
salary that is less than your total cost for that employee but more than the
salary you pay that employee.

X = cost to train employee

Y = salary of employee

Competitor pays Z such that Y < Z < Y+X and puts you out of business.

The second factor is that if you raise wages for one person, then the rest of
your workforce expects those wages. So a 10% salary increase for one person
quickly becomes an across the board 10% bump on your personnel costs.

Bribing, lobbying, paying PR firms, pulling the wool over people's eyes is all
judged to be a smaller expense and a worthwhile cost-saving measure.

The economically viable solution is to have schools do the training, but
universities are likely not the best model for getting good tech workers.

~~~
selmnoo
> because while you bear the costs of training, your competitors can then
> poach your trained employees by offering a salary that is less than your
> total cost for that employee but more than the salary you pay that employee

I tell everyone that in this day and age, the company is not loyal to you --
they will get rid of you very easily if they need to, and so you should not be
loyal to them. However, if the company starts investing in you, training you,
then you should be loyal to that company. I would't go to a competitor that
pays higher in this case (if they pay higher than 2(X + Y), consider it :)).

