
Supply and Demand, Labor and Visas - mparramon
https://medium.com/@reppep/paul-graham-appears-confused-about-supply-and-demand-labor-and-visas-and-great-programmers-d1d4854bc928?hn=1
======
schoen
I don't understand why the author of this piece describes granting new work
visas as offering employers an "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)".
I would view it as exactly the opposite -- I see _requiring visas_ for
employees in the first place as the "exemption from supply and demand (of
labor)".

I guess this is a pretty deep disconnect. Some people see the normal or basic
state of affairs as one in which _any employer can hire any employee in the
world_ , and then governments alter this background situation for political
and cultural reasons by choosing to prevent some migration and employment
offers (thereby artificially depressing the supply of labor in their territory
and the demand for labor in other territories). Other people see the normal or
basic state of affairs as one in which _people can only seek employment in
their own countries of origin_ ; then governments alter this background
situation for political and economic reasons by choosing to permit some
migration and employment offers (thereby artificially increasing the supply of
labor in their territory and the demand for labor in other territories).

On one view, granting work visas is undoing a very small part of a very large
prior government intervention in the economy; on the other view, it's creating
a new intervention where none existed before. On one view, the baseline is a
single world market for labor which then gets distorted by migration
restrictions; on the other, the baseline is hundreds of largely isolated
national markets for labor which then get distorted by importing foreigners.

~~~
dantheman
Until very recently, in human terms, the view of the "any employer can hire
any employee in the world" was the default and only view.

~~~
tptacek
Does the most effective argument against immigration controls require us to
relitigate the concept of nations?

------
tptacek
Graham didn't write that some programmers are merely worth 100x more than
other programmers. He wrote:

 _A great programmer will invent things an ordinary programmer would never
even think of. This doesn 't mean a great programmer is infinitely more
valuable, because any invention has a finite market value. But it's easy to
imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even
1000x an average programmer's salary._

The job of someone trying to rebut this statement is to foreclose on the idea
of imagining that a great programmer might invent something worth $10,000,000
(or that an "ordinary" programmer could do that while leaving their "ordinary"
status intact). Graham didn't say this happens every day; he said "it's easy
to imagine cases". And, obviously, it is.

Scale the hyperbolic 100x down to Fred Brooks' 10x. The rebuttal is still
wrong. It compares ordinary programmers to Zuckerberg and Andreesen, on the
premise that those are two programmers worth >100x. But nobody, including
Graham, has said those two are worth more as programmers.

The telling comparison is to John Carmack. "Nobody would ever hire John
Carmack instead of 100 programmers". OK. But they might hire Carmack instead
of 10 developers. That's because there probably is such a thing as a 10x
developer.

I do not like or for the most part agree with Paul Graham's immigration essay.
I think regional labor stickiness is a much more reasonable problem to solve
than immigration. Our industry should get better at sourcing talent from Tulsa
before lobbying to let more talent in from Krakow. Sadly, I haven't yet read a
lot of strong rebuttals to Graham.

~~~
davidw
IMO the biggest problem with PG's essay is that it was a bit too timid and too
focused on only "really good people":

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-
jobs...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/)

~~~
anindyabd
Great post. You summarily rebut every single argument against immigration made
regularly in Hacker News threads on immigration.

You cite a great article:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/06/i...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/06/immigration-
helps-american-workers-the-definitive-argument/)

From one of the research papers cited in the article [1]:

"We find that H-1B-driven increases in STEM workers in a city were associated
with significant increases in wages paid to both STEM and non-STEM college-
educated natives. Non-college educated show no significant wage or employment
effect."

[1]
[http://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/gperi/site/papers/peri_s...](http://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/gperi/site/papers/peri_shih_sparber_05_feb_2013_TEMPO.pdf)

------
hluska
First, it is hard to take this article seriously when the author seems
confused by what PG and Y Combinator actually do. For example, consider these
sentences:

 _One obvious difference between Paul is that he’s an employer and I’m an
employee._

 _We have too many people coming out of school who cannot find jobs, and not
enough tech types for Y Combinator (or my various employers) to hire._

 _What would happen if a few large companies (let’s start with Apple, Google,
Intel, and Adobe from the lawsuit; I’d add Y Combinator, Facebook, Twitter,
Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle), all announced they would raise salaries in all
H-1B categories by 5% /year for 10 years, while the US reduced H-1B visas by
10% per year for 9 years, ending at 8,500 (10% of current volume)?_

In light of this severe misunderstanding, it is no wonder that this article
makes so little sense. The author seems to make the point that H1-B visas tend
to go to more average programmers. And, then argues that if companies want to
attract more qualified people, they should start offering higher salaries/more
options to top people. The problem is that they already do this and there is
still a scarcity of truly amazing programmers.

This isn't all that complex, or am I missing something?

~~~
ojbyrne
One could make the argument (and it has been made by others) that company
founders are essentially glorified project managers, And VCs and especially
incubators are just a mechanism to reduce risk by treating them as independent
contractors and paying them well below the market rate, with e promise of some
a lottery-type payout if they work every waking hour and are really really
lucky.

~~~
hluska
That's one possibility.

Another possibility is that founding a company is a tactic on an entirely
different career path. Yes, you will likely fail and make below market money
in the process. But, after you fail, you'll arrive at your next job with
experience that people 20 years older than you could only dream of having.

This might just be a sign that I drank the Kool-Aid, but I think it's another
way of looking at your excellent point.

------
winter_blue
I began programming when I was 8, like a lot of people on HN and elsewhere.
Programming has always been my hobby, and I’ve enjoyed writing beautiful,
readable, maintainable, and (sometimes) efficient code. I was blessed enough
to have parents who were willing and could afford to send me over to the
United States for college. But I was far more lucky to have won the H1B
lottery that let me live here after college. Not everyone was as lucky. (See
[http://app.fwd.us/stories/429](http://app.fwd.us/stories/429)) Students
graduating with PhDs from Ivy League schools who wish to stay get kicked out
of the country every year because they didn’t win a lottery. The truth is it’s
incredibly hard to immigrate to the US legally.

For a lot of people, the H1B acts as a stepping stone to a green card (i.e.,
to an EB visa). These people aren’t really “guest workers” — a lot of them
will stay and become citizens. If you don’t have relatives here, are not a
refugee, and aren’t lucky enough to score a diversity visa,
skilled/employment-based immigration is the only route. And it’s incredibly
hard to come to this country under the skilled/employment-based immigration
route.

One of the fallacies that a lot of people who oppose skilled immigration
subscribe to is the “lump-of-labor theory”. It’s a hardened belief that jobs
are a zero-sum game — and from this arises the idea that every skilled
immigrant takes away a job from a U.S. worker. This isn’t true. More skilled,
educated workers will actually add to the economy — and grow the economy. Just
imagine: what if the U.S. had not let in the millions of immigrants it did
during the 1800s out of a fear that citizen workers would loose their jobs?
We’d have a much smaller population, and subsequently a lower total GDP. We
might be equally well-off on a per capita basis, but we wouldn’t be the
country we are today.

PG might have been wrong in that not every skilled immigrant is 100x more
skilled that his native counterpart. But I agree with him that letting more
skilled/educated people in, would be a good thing for this country overall.

~~~
ProAm
While what you say is true, many countries will not allow a company to hire a
foreigner if you can fill the same position with a citizen. From the
perspective of an American, it's often an uncomfortable fact that we pay taxes
to the government who willingly allows companies to outsource or externally
hire our jobs, The effect of this does cap/limit salaries for all involved.
That is one side of the coin. The other side which I fully agree with, that
more skilled and educated a population is the more enriched it can become,.
There are great benefits to have a large number of smart educated people
working together for the greater good.

~~~
anindyabd
>> it's often an uncomfortable fact that we pay taxes to the government who
willingly allows companies to outsource or externally hire our jobs

I think your argument is weakened by the fact that H1B holders pay the same
taxes as US citizens. It does stand when it comes to outsourcing, though.

>> The effect of this does cap/limit salaries for all involved

Do you have evidence for that claim? Research seems to point otherwise [1][2].

[1]
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/06/i...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/06/immigration-
helps-american-workers-the-definitive-argument/)

[2]
[http://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/gperi/site/papers/peri_s...](http://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/gperi/site/papers/peri_shih_sparber_05_feb_2013_TEMPO.pdf)

~~~
ProAm
>> I think your argument is weakened by the fact that H1B holders pay the same
taxes as US citizens. It does stand when it comes to outsourcing, though.

Except they are paying essentially to come here and work, where as citizen tax
payers should be paying to help enrich the place they live in and reap the
benefits of paying taxes. The fact that they both pay isn't the point, it's
what you are paying for.

>>Do you have evidence for that claim? Research seems to point otherwise

The only evidence I have is what the companies I have worked for pay people,
it's a very limited sample size but its from more than 1 company.

------
johansch
I'm sorry to re-use a reddit meme, but in this thread, as well as the previous
one: you can read about american developers arguing about why they should be
the only one to have access to the most lucrative market for developers
worldwide.

It is pretty clear to most intelligent observers that:

a) there is a low-end-market of mostly indian consulting companies abusing the
H1B program. It would be very easy to stop this. My suggestion: set a H1B
worker minimum salary of 120% of the average salary for existing native
workers.

b) The US, and the US companies wanting to employ the best software developers
would benefit by getting the whole world as recruiting ground.

c) Individual developers outside of the US wanting to work in silicon valley
would benefit

d) Not very good US developers in silicon valley, currently getting big
salaries could be at risk.

e) The rest of the world would not benefit by the brain drain this would
cause.

~~~
walshemj
your right and can make the same argument in other professions eg the AMA, Bar
asociations and interestingly enough lawyers and accountants in India.

~~~
tptacek
An irony here is that the legal profession was recently ravaged by a
structural shift that eliminated lots of jobs, and it was caused in large part
by the tech industry.

~~~
kencausey
I missed this apparently. Can someone explain this change and the technology
which led to it?

~~~
petilon
Lots of jobs in the legal profession involves researching past court decisions
- going through mountains of documents. This can now be done in low-cost
countries such as India where there are tons of English speaking people. The
technology that led to it is the internet.

------
jlturner
I'd gladly hire 1 John Carmack over 100 average programmers. Is he really more
valuable than 100 programmers? If you factor the added cost of managing 100
engineers (and the intangible communication overhead cost of getting all those
engineers to agree and be on the same page), than yes it is far more valuable.

~~~
droopyEyelids
That is part of what makes this whole article so absurd to me. John Carmack or
whatever other 10x employee is never going to work to sell your ads, or share
your photos, or anything.

A 10x programmer is a genius who understands the business well enough to pull
ideas out of the air and has the chops to make them real. They're running
their own companies. And if they join companies, they join for ownership
stake.

------
fiatmoney
Hey, guess what.

There is a visa category for immigrants with "extraordinary talents". It is
the O-1 visa. Someone on the level of John Carmack or Jeff Dean, for instance,
would have no problem getting one of these.

[http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-
workers...](http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-
workers/o-1-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement/o-1-visa-
individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement)

H1B, by contrast, is primarily used for cheap bodies, at not-at-all high
salaries. This website makes it nicely available, but the raw data is
available from the Department of Labor.

[http://www.h1bwage.com/](http://www.h1bwage.com/)

[http://www.flcdatacenter.com/](http://www.flcdatacenter.com/)

------
abat
1) Some programmers really are worth orders of magnitude more than others.
Really great programmers will help drive product decisions that can change
direction of the company and the ultimate success/failure. The more
responsibility a programmer has over product/quality/cost/delivery schedule,
the more they can be worth a huge amount. 10X is probably a more common
variance, but I'm sure there are single developers building the right thing
that are worth more than 1,000 crap developers getting bogged down in product
management BS.

The thing is that communication/management gets harder the more people there
are, so crap developers have very little value (and maybe even negative
marginal value in certain cases). IE a developer that's 10X better than
another developer can actually be worth 1000X because you can't just hire a 10
mediocre developers and have them be worth the same as a single great
developer.

2) Really great developers are really paid a lot more than less good ones (but
not their full value). Smart developers with no experience are paid more than
what he suggests. A smart college grad can get paid 6 figures without any
experience in the right job (not ~50K). People who prove their worth can
ultimately get paid a lot more. However, they're pay will usually be increased
above their peers outside of salary using RSUs/options that will be very
valuable but vest over time. It is true that great developers often have to
either co-found their own companies or take high level management roles to get
100X pay of an average developer. That said most companies don't pay
programmers their true value, and it often takes a long time for a developer
to fully demonstrate their value and develop a name for themselves.

edit: TBC, I'm not arguing anything about immigration or the OP as a whole. I
just take issue with the idea that there is little variance in value between
programmers.

~~~
skylan_q
1) This can't be discovered through an interview, nevermind an immigration
process. It would just be increasing the entire pool of people who might
qualify as "top talent" or "average" programmers. The author raised the point
that 3rd world countries probably don't have as high a proportion in their
general populace of skilled labour as the US.

~~~
oe
We are not talking about 3rd world countries though? Most of Europe has as
skilled programmers as the US, of which some would like to move to the US.

------
chrisbennet
I say the following as a software developer so I'm one of the lucky ones in
this new world:

When someone from the silicon valley uses the argument that "We need to do X
to maintain our technological competitiveness." the "our" should be viewed as
referring to those that have the capital to benefit from this increased
"competitiveness". The Chinese are very competitive - because their labor is
relatively cheap. This is the axis of "competitiveness" capital is aiming for
with increasing H1B quotas, not "get smarter people". They could get all the
smart people they want but that would require them to share more of the
profits with those smart people - you know, the ones that actually create the
value in the first place.

All this "disruption" has benefited a very few disproportionately and the
"winners" would like the rest of the populace to give up a little more so they
can make even more money.

"Oh but Chris, these new companies create jobs so we should cut them a special
break - it helps us all in the end."

According to Chris Benner, a regional economist at the University of
California, Davis, there has been no net increase in jobs in Silicon Valley
since 1998; digital technologies inevitably mean you can generate billions of
dollars from a low employment base.[1]

[1]
[http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technol...](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technology-
and-inequality/)

------
DavidWanjiru
There are so many complexities to this debate. For example, if you oppose
foreigners coming to America, do you also oppose America exporting stuff to
these foreigners wherever they currently are? Presumably no. If not, how are
they able to afford your exports, which in turn keep you, an American, in your
job? Their ability to create value, and trade this value for somebody else's
value. What if, then, their ability to produce this value is magnified by
their coming to America? You know, like that example given by a commentor, of
a fashion designer from Oklahoma moving to Paris or Milan? Or my friend from
Thika, Kenya? He has done design work for Daimler Trucks, but was denied a
visa by the American embassy in Nairobi, having been seconded to the American
branch of Daimler's trucks business by their German business. The embassy
simply didn't see how this Kenyan kid landed this gig, despite all the
supporting documentation and opportunity to verify, so they alluded his
paperwork was fake and denied him the visa. Would he have made more money over
there? You bet. At any rate I bet. Would he be able to buy more American
stuff, keep more Americans in their jobs? Yes. But now he can't, coz your govt
won't let him come over. Who is the loser here? Remember, the reason he caught
Daimler's attention in the first place, despite his lack of formal design
training, was his work. In fact, they wanted him to come to America to
formally study design at Daimler's cost, since that formal education was part
of Daimler's hiring policy. So it wasn't merely that he'd have taken an
American job, or that Daimler can train plenty of the available Americans. He
was a "great programmer", and I'd say America is worse off for not hiring him.

------
mabbo
The arguments keep going back and forth: just pay developers more if they're
worth more (supply and demand, pay more for what's better, etc) vs work visa
requirements are protectionist and we should get rid of them.

What people seem to forget is that there is a lovely experiment going on that
can (partially, with some caveats) answer some of these questions as to what
would happen: NAFTA.

If you have a technical degree, getting a work visa for the USA as a Mexican
or Canadian is fairly simple. There aren't (afaik) any limit to how many there
are. I've had a few (internships, full time job in Seattle).

So what is the average experience for a Canadian or Mexican on TN visas to the
US? I've been one, and I've known quite a few. Purely anecdotal, but as far as
I can tell, we're just an increase in the usual supply of developers, which
eventually just lowers the average wage of all developers. I'm sure we're
pretty smart folks, but we're not worth 10x as much as anyone else- we
certainly weren't being paid any more than the others.

I think immigration limits for people with jobs lined up in the country they
wish to enter are silly, and the whole world ought to have the same access
NAFTA residents do. But I also think Paul Graham should admit that simply
offering people more money would solve his problem. He's chosen the price he
wants to pay, the market says you can't get very many great people at this
price, so he's demanding the market change rather than his chosen price.

------
guiambros
My problem with PG's original post is that there's no easy way to identify the
so-called exceptional programmers, and he seems to disregard that. We can't
magically find the "other" 95%", and give visas only to them. And, in most
cases, you won't know for sure till many years later.

Also, I dislike the ideological debate of H1B's, which seems to be OP's main
point. H1B's _are_ used to increase supply, which has the collateral effect of
lowering wages (or keeping them at reasonable levels).

Per PG's post: " _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_". What, exactly, is holding this CEO from
hiring 30 great developers, today? They simply can't _afford_ them.
Particularly being a small-ish startup, that can't compete head-to-head in
terms of wages/benefits with Google, Facebbok, Apple. Of course a massive
influx of talented immigrants (100x or not) would be a blessing.

This is not a bad thing. It's possible that this startup would create even
more value, more jobs, and pay more taxes, if they had the 30 additional
programmers. H1B's or not. But let's not pretend the reason why this CEO is
not filling the open positions is because they're not available in the US, and
immigrants would be the only solution.

Above all, I think the US needs a better immigration policy for the talents
that will supply demand in the next 5, 10 years. It's insane that our taxpayer
dollars go to fund education to bright foreign student, and we (forcibly) send
them home after graduation. This is the dumbest use of taxpayer dollars, ever.

------
flipped_bit
I think both authors miss the point that historically (esp. post WW2 which
corrected the abberation during WW2) that capital flow was increasingly
borderless.

It has been labor that is held back in some anachonistic time warp with visa
restrictions and so on. In prior times, European colonialism in Asia precisely
solved the labor issues by directly annexing, then enhanching, controlling,
and regulating the historical Asian labor productivity flows.

After decolonization, with diversions to socialist/communist and autarkic
models in Asia, most of these countries are now back in the game largely in
control of developed (and mostly Western) nations.

You have to see the regulation of labor in these slightly larger timelines to
appreciate what is happening even in SV, and in other parts of the world.

Majority of labor needs were of blue-collar variety, but thanks to technology,
even white-collar labor is not immune to this economic rationale of matching
capital to labor.

Borders will dissolve (they are mostly unnatural and artificial barriers), and
before people bring up all the cultural and historical rights, even these
items are ultimately driven by economics. High-tech jobs are no different in
this equation and are driven by the same forces.

The only thing that can upset globalization trends is war which is precisely
what happened with WW1 and WW2 in the 20th century (which also arrested the
globalization trends which started to peak just prior to WW1). You want to
stop labor migration flows? Start preparing for war.

The other possibility is for the labor vs capital imbalances to level out -
for e.g. China and India become sufficiently advanced and developed to a point
where there is no need for them to export their surplus populations, exactly
how the British did in 18th and 19th century as they colonized North America
(USA and Canada), Australia, and South Africa.

------
DavidWanjiru
Paul Graham's entire argument rests, as far as I can tell, on the assumption
that the distribution of great programmers maps to the population
distribution. Can this be empirically established or refuted? Because doing so
would bring this matter to a close pretty quickly, I think. After all, is
anybody arguing about whether America needs to import middle eastern oil? Of
course not, because the global distribution of oil has been empirically
established, and the need to meet local deficits with imports meets little, if
any, resistance. I feel that the intractability of this immigration debate,
such as it is, is due primarily to the fact that the global distribution of
top quality "digital talent", as Graham calls it, hasn't been established.
Some people say most of the best is out there, others say the best is just a
matter of training.

------
datashovel
There is alot more to it I think than meets the eye. I've seen a wide spectrum
of talents. I've seen some with the capacity to be 10x who have no motivation,
and some with almost no chance of reaching 10x status with all the motivation
in the world.

I think one of the differentiators, in what makes a 10x programmer
significantly more valuable is alot of things people are trying today have
never been done before. So to have the insight that a 10x programmer can bring
to the table is priceless.

I think it's entirely wrong to believe, in these cases, that you can achieve
the same result with average developers.

On the other hand, if you're doing things that have been done a million times
before, there's likely to be a few tried and true templates people can follow
to get a functioning system up and running.

~~~
datashovel
I do agree with the article regarding not enough competition between tech
companies. Due to the enormous value a 10x programmer can bring to a company,
there should be at least a few [pick your favorite job board] postings for $1
million / yr salary.

Right now the state of hiring in Silicon Valley (being an outsider) seems to
be a high level of collusion or some "unspoken promise" between employers in
the area that they should not "rock the boat".

------
Zigurd
That, like other articles say that the real answer is "bid higher." Is that
correct? There is one way to find out: Would employers pay significantly more
for an H1-B employee than any other. Auction the visas, with a high minimum
bid.

If you need that PhD with a stellar track record from outside the US you will
willingly pay $50-100k. If your goal is to supress wage growth in an industry
with very high productivity, GTFO.

------
mcfunley
PG's time would be better spent arguing for top marginal tax rate increases.
Or something else that's testimony against self-interest. I think it's not at
all surprising that the overall reaction to his transparently talking his book
is blind rage. (This isn't a particularly great response, but it's in line
with every other one I've read.)

------
tarikjn
To those making the argument that if companies can't find talent they are not
paying enough (which I don't disagree with), I can't help but wonder isn't
there a price point past which it's more cost effective and sensible for
companies to open an office in a country which allows to hire from a pool of
7B people vs 300M?

------
vinceguidry
> John Carmack is an obvious genius who keeps pushing the edge — but nobody
> ever hired him instead of 100 programmers.

If I had the choice of working with 100 programmers or working with John
Carmack, I'd go with Carmack Every. Single. Time. Wouldn't even hesitate.

------
pmelendez
One thing that bothers me about the "immigration takes jobs from locals"
argument is that it would imply a reduction on job positions which I haven't
seen in the technology industry.

------
njloof
I'll note that when poaching between companies reached a critical mass, major
companies like Google and Apple colluded to keep salaries down (see Techtopus
for details).

------
SwellJoe
Some things this article doesn't address (though I think many of the things it
does address are useful additions to the conversation, as was the previous
discussion here at HN, which helped me grasp a lot of the nuances of the
question):

Ageism, sexism, and white/Asian supremacy, in the tech jobs market. Every time
I read about the disastrous shortage of tech workers in the US, I have to fill
in the fact that it's actually probably saying, "There is a shortage of young,
male, white or Asian tech workers". Companies, in the general case, aren't
hiring developers over 40, developers who are women, and developers who are
black or brown. The best companies probably tap into one or two of these
options, but very few tap into all of them.

Even Google and Facebook, widely regarded as amazing employers with good
diversity programs tend to draw primarily from the recently graduated, and
even pre-graduated, including paid internship-to-employee programs that
channel the best students into Google jobs beginning a couple years into a
student's education at "good" universities. In the youth-focused culture of
Silicon Valley, it would seem absurd to suggest the same resources be expended
to re-train existing programmers (despite pretty good data indicating that
experience is one of the bigger leading indicators of programmer efficiency).

So, I understand why so many are reacting negatively to pg's essay. I know
enough women, minorities, and older folks, who have left tech because the
industry was simply not friendly to them--it paid them too little, it worked
them too long and too hard, it treated them as outsiders--to make me
suspicious of the motivations behind the pro-H1B camp.

I am for open borders, which would imply companies being able to hire from
anywhere (but also employees being able to work and live anywhere), but the
H1B process leads to a sort of indentured servitude that provides employers
with an effectively captive pool of talent. If there were anywhere near full
employment in the tech industry, and if there were a convincing case to be
made that employers genuinely were hiring across a broad spectrum of people to
fill tech roles, and were paying tech workers what they're worth, I'd be more
inclined to get on board with this particular push.

This one is hard for me to figure out, because I genuinely do want more
freedom for _everyone_ to be able to move about freely and work anywhere they
choose, and H1B is currently the only way a lot of my friends have been able
to come to the US...so I support it, and even support expansion of the
program. But, I don't like that it so clearly serves large corporations at the
expense of workers. It makes immigration to the US _much_ easier but only for
those people willing to kowtow to their US employer.

------
bazookajoes
In my opinion PG does his article a disservice by not being more specific
about the great programmers should be let into the US.

For example he could touched on the O-1 visa for "Aliens of extraordinary
ability".

Instead the conversation has devolved into the costs and benefits of H-1B
visa.

PGs goal is to bring more great programmers to the US, however the H-1B visa
is specifically targeted to good programmers, not great programmers.

From wikipedia: > The law requires H-1B workers to be paid the higher of the
prevailing wage for the same occupation and geographic location, or the same
as the employer pays to similarly situated employees. Other factors, such as
age and skill were not permitted to be taken into account for the prevailing
wage.

Here are some other points of confusion:

1) Some people are hung on the term "programmer", I think what is meant by
this term is someone who is A) deeply technical, B) codes, C) contributes to
product fit, and D) contributes project planning.

2) Some people are hung up on the term "great" programmer". Good programmers
get their work done on time and with high quality. Great programmers
contribute key insights that transform the product or team in ways that that
directly lead to accomplishing the team's goals. Personally I've found that it
is often possible to distinguish between good and bad programmers. It has been
much harder to distinguish between good and great programmers.

3) Some people are hung up on the fact that great programmers are frequently
not paid 10 or 100 or 1000 times what good programmers are paid. There are
three very good reasons for this. A) A great programmer has to be in the right
position to be commensurately rewarded. (The world's greatest fly fisherman
will receive a normal wage on a commercial fishing boat.) B) A great
programmer is making decisions and taking actions that will result in raised
profits. They don't get paid up front because the money isn't there yet. C)
Many people have never worked with a great programmer. The programmers that
they think are great are only 1.5X or 2X or 3X. That isn't.

4) Some people are hung up on the fact that PG seems to make either A) the
assumption that H-1B recipients are great programmers, or B) the assumption
that if the US grants more H-1Bs annually that there all the additional
recipients will be great programmers. I don't think he's making either of
those assumptions. There is a curve of capability and potential for H-1B
recipients just like every other population. PG is saying that any increase in
the number of great programmers in the US is good for the US.

5) The final question is what does it mean for something to be good for the
US? A) If an H-1B recipient starts the next facebook is it good for the US? It
will be great for angels, VCs and institutional investors. It will be good for
the US because the US will tax everyone's personal compensation (although any
eventually corporate profits will likely be tax sheltered). It will be good
for the US because jobs will be created (although there might be fewer jobs at
the companies being disrupted. B) If the H-1B recipient only winds up doing
good job at a corporation then the corporation did not need offer a more
attractive salary to a US citizen or train a US citizen to do the job. This is
good for the corporation because their costs are lower (assuming the cost of
the H-1B application process is lower than the cost of offering a more
attractive salary or training an individual with potential). This is bad for
the individual who might otherwise have been trained or received increased
compensation. However if the role is truly a role that would not otherwise
have been filled then there is no individual who is negatively impacted by
hiring an H-1B applicant.

Here is something to think about: 1) The company is willing to compensate a
programmer $COST for a role. 2) The company expects an increase in revenue of
$REVENUE as result of the additional headcount. 3) The company has a return on
investment goal of ROI for the year. It might be an internal figure or
something promised to its investors. 4) The company can only hire a candidate
if (REVENUE-COST)/COST > ROI 5) There are two reasons for hiring H-1Bs A)
because the company can not find anyone else who will accept a compensation
that makes the equation work or B) because the company can not hire anyone for
the role (perhaps they or their industry has a negative reputation or no
reputation).

There are certainly things that complicate this equations: 1) Perhaps the
company is forward looking enough to hire in advance of expected attrition. 2)
Perhaps the individual is in a role that supports revenue creation by another
individual. 3) Perhaps the company has an "up or out" approach and they are
hungry to find stars. 4) Perhaps the revenue that the new hire would bring in
is very hard to predict. In this case the up front compensation would be
reduced to account for the risk. Typically the role would come with the
potential for increase compensation in the form of a bonus, stock options or
commission.

------
caryfitz
It really seems like both sides of the issue are arguing here. PG wants to
argue for finding more of the diamonds in the rough, instead of spending
triple the $$ to pry them away from a competitor. "There isn't enough to go
around" he cries - well, if you pay more, of course you'll "get your guy".
There isn't enough gold to go around either, that's why it is expensive. If
programmer salaries doubled (say) - the programmers make the widgets so you
have to hire them, and the customers probably won't pay more, so you have less
$$ for the VCs. So they, would naturally, like to increase supply. This
doesn't seem too controversial.

On the other end, you have an engineer who is (I would guess?) competent and
feels underpaid. That is what we all feel like, isn't it? And he'd prefer to
make more $$ for his job. And he looks around and sees (or thinks he does)
that the guys with the $$ don't want to pay him more - instead they go find
other people to fill his role. "Don't want what I'm paying? Sorry! I'll find
someone else". He would like to be paid more for his services, instead of the
job getting given to someone else.

I think it must be made clear that the people PG is talking about (rockstars
hired by a startup) - and the people that are normally associated with H1Bs
(junior level talent) - are NOT the same groups of people.

With 65000 visas available - I would suspect what is really happening is this.
Since there is no way for a government agency to determine if an engineer is
good / bad / excellent / sucky. They have to pretty much "trust" the company
to only submit the visa application in good faith. However, if you are a
business manager with less than stellar scruples, you need to fill 50 seats
and you can find them all with H1B visas for a "competitive" salary! (remember
that is the gov'ts competitive salary, which probably lumps all engineers from
the help desk to the architects into the same bucket...). Slam dunk! I just
saved my company thousands! And those engineers I do hire _can 't leave for a
few years_! Double score! There is _no_ risk for a company to try to bring in
any and all H1B workers. And there is great upside.

So - PG may be correct that there are hundreds / thousands of top top top
engineers trying to get in on an H1B to a startup or google. There are also
most likely tens / hundreds of thousands of middling engineers brought in to
fill slots. We should not try to compare a "free market" like buying something
off ebay, with employees and labor. Employees and labor have many many more
real-life implications - and a wise handling of the issue should see that.
_real_ people have families, homes, mortgages, relationships, cultures,
history, commuting times, taxes, immigration... There is a cost to switching
things up in real life. On ebay, you just click a different link to select a
better priced product. There is very little (no?) cost to switching things in
a virtual "free" market. It can't be a "free market" when switching producers
costs a large percentage of the products' cost. Think if a trade on the NYSE
cost $10,000 a trade - instead of $15.

I tend to view it as a class-based argument. And when someone tries to make it
a "logical argument" it seems a bit farcical. There is too much self-serving
going on. Facebook/PG/VCs arguing for more labor and less pay? And individuals
arguing for less labor and more pay? I mean - that's pretty straight-forward.
Both have a valid argument - both have selfish motivations.

And given those two, I'd lean towards making a stronger middle class.

------
abofh
I do hope this isn't just ghosted since it's been up for an hour with no
discussion, but.. Right on.

You really want a 10x'er, you'll discover that they're usually happy where
they are, which is part of why they bloomed into one. If you want to make them
move, you need to offer them something above contentment and personal
satisfaction -- at that point, if you can't offer me contentment and happiness
-- money is really your best proxy, and you should fight with it. If they're
really a 10xer though, expect the other side to fight back.

Now, if you want to /make/ more 10x'ers, bringing in immigrants is probably a
good way to ensure you're being selective (top 5% of people in schools around
the world, as long as they're comparable to some selected baseline) -- but
that's to /make/ the 10x'er, not to hire them, and the H1-B is to hire talent
that cant be /found/ domestically, not talent that can't be nurtured
domestically.

~~~
ta0348553
I generally agree. But I am not sure that bringing in immigrants is a good way
to make more 10x'ers, if you actually want to grow the domestic talent pool as
opposed to just finding undervalued talent.

People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a
significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that
career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the
field are less likely to, since they have options.

I would love to see a credible study on this, but intuitively I think it's
likely that this effect could cancel out much of the net growth in the
domestic talent pool that would otherwise have come from immigration.

Before anyone argues that this is morally wrong, remember, we're not worried
about what SHOULD be true, just about how to increase participation of talent
in the field, empirically.

~~~
anindyabd
>> People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a
significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that
career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the
field are less likely to, since they have options.

First of all, as someone born in what you term a "third world" country, I do
find your argument morally outrageous, but apparently I'm not allowed to argue
morality.

But let's see: "Foreign-born entrepreneurs helped start one-fourth of all new
U.S. engineering and technology business established between 1995 and 2005,
including Google and eBay. In high-tech Silicon Valley, California, more than
one-half of business start-ups over that period involved a foreign-born
scientist or engineer; one-fourth included an Indian or Chinese immigrant"
[1]. Is being a founder of a multi-billion or multi-million dollar company no
longer considered prestigious?

What is prestigious? Being a doctor? "Of the roughly 853,000 health care
professionals employed as physicians and surgeons in 2010, more than one-
quarter (27 percent) were foreign born. ... Persons born in India, the
Philippines, and China accounted for 34 percent of employed foreign-born
physicians and surgeons." [2]

[1]
[http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/usforeignborns...](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/usforeignbornstem.aspx)

[2] [http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-
health-c...](http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-health-care-
workers-united-states#4)

~~~
ta0348553
Unless I misunderstand the underlying argument, more skilled immigration is
argued to be good because it is good for business. That's an economic
argument, and I was making an economic argument in turn, that more skilled
immigration may not straightforwardly result in a bigger talent pool in the
US.

On the moral side, I do wonder if the West will be criticized in 50 years for
its intellectual draining of the third world, not unlike the West's draining
of colonies' natural resources 50 or 100 or more years ago. But this is a
favorite thought experiment of mine, the question of "What currently
fashionable thing will our grandchildren denounce us for doing?"

Anyway, you're disputing my assertion that "People choose careers for social
reasons as well as for money. Adding a significant fraction of third world
immigrants to a career lowers that career's prestige, meaning that talented
natives who might have joined the field are less likely to, since they have
options." First of all, I wish I had written that better in that I don't mean
"a career", but rather "our career", ie, technology / programming. My mistake.

Still, doctors are a poor example since their supply is constrained by an
outside force (medical education and licensing), and so their salaries are
higher than they'd otherwise be, and their power is based on our awe for
people who can save human life. In other words, they are nothing like
programmers.

Also, I have heard that many governments like importing foreign doctors since
in some cases this offloads parts of their education to their native land, and
training doctors is expensive. Probably not the point you're looking for.

As for founders, I am not certain individual founders matter much in the
cultural image of tech as a career. Most non-Californians can't name many
founders, and certainly not many foreign born founders. I suspect that the
only founders who get many people to consider tech to be a possible career are
Jobs and Zuckerberg.

But as for programmers, people have various ideas floating around in their
heads. They remember outsourcing, where American programmers ended up with no
power and no money. This didn't do much for the prestige of the career. They
think of nerds, obviously, who aren't too great on social norms. Does it seem
reasonable that adding people to that labor market who are accustomed to lower
living standards (wages), locked in by restrictive visas (power), and
unfamiliar with American social norms (nerds) is actually going to make the
field more attractive to natives?

~~~
anindyabd
> I do wonder if the West will be criticized in 50 years for its intellectual
> draining of the third world, not unlike the West's draining of colonies'
> natural resources 50 or 100 or more years ago

I do not think these are equivalent at all. When the Westerners drained the
colonies of natural resources, the ones who were colonized got no benefit from
that whatsoever. That was pure exploitation. (It will be very interesting
indeed if you argue otherwise.) However, when educated immigrants from under-
developed nations are hired in a developed country, the immigrants can 1) have
a much better quality of life; 2) send money back home to their families; 3)
can use what they learn to go back to their home countries and start
businesses there (if they so choose). Thus, the immigrants, and their
countries of origin, are being helped. _Most_ people from the third world will
tell you the same. But (hopefully) no one is going to say that the Scramble
for Africa was a good thing. And I doubt that the Africans thought it was good
thing when it was going on.

But going back to the argument you're making -- "people have various ideas
floating around in their heads. They remember outsourcing, where American
programmers ended up with no power and no money. This didn't do much for the
prestige of the career. They think of nerds, obviously, who aren't too great
on social norms." Hmm, maybe. But this [1] article argues, with some
interesting charts, that interest in CS education is increasing. The Chair in
Computer Science & Engineering at the UW argues that "Kids are waking up.
Every field is becoming an information field, and if you can program at a
level beyond an intro course, it’s a huge value to you." The CS department
chair at Harvey Mudd College says "Students feel that computing is socially
relevant and even hip."

[1] [http://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-
sci...](http://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-science-
education-explosion/)

------
auggierose
Come on, PG just wrote this piece as an homage to this movie:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/)

------
brianbreslin
Here's an idea, what if the funds that go towards H1-B visas were parceled out
towards training domestic workforces of the future.

There is a systemic flaw in this analysis (both the author's and PG's) in that
we're comparing short vs long term solutions and problems and blending them
together as if they were one.

~~~
winter_blue
It's funny that you mention that because it's being done already. With every
work visa application, a company with more than 50 employees has to pay $1500
towards the training of US workers, and companies with less than 50 employees
have to pay $750.

It's called the ACWIA fee. It was introduced by the American Competitiveness
and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 (ACWIA). Source:
[http://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-
form-i-129-pe...](http://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-
form-i-129-petition-nonimmigrant-worker)

~~~
brianbreslin
Ah I had no idea. Thanks!

