
The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage - awwstn
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-myth-of-americas-tech-talent-shortage/275319/
======
skwirl
As someone who has been working as a software developer for five years since
graduating, the claims made by this article are completely contrary to my
personal experience. Finding good developers is hard. We spend months trying
to hire for positions, sometimes interviewing dozens of people, before we find
someone. And we pay well, use modern technologies, have a great group of
existing developers, and don't expect anyone to work more than 40 hours a
week.

If you are a GOOD developer, the opportunities for you are endless. And the
bar for being a "good" developer is NOT very high relative to the range of
abilities found among all software developers. Even horribly incompetent
developers do not seem to have much trouble finding work (they do have trouble
finding work at this company... usually).

I think the reason why roughly one third of "computer and information science"
graduates aren't working in their field is because they themselves chose not
to work in this field. The work isn't for everyone. I know quite a few people
who majored in CS, were able to grind through it to get their degree, but
can't stand the thought of doing this for a career. Their motivations for
going into the field out of high school vary, and many are misguided, but how
can you really hold a 17 year old to making a 40 year life decision?

We need more good developers. If we were allowed to hire more international
developers, I can tell you we would not hire one crap developer "because they
are cheap." A crap developer does not just do less quality work than a good
developer, they do NEGATIVE work that costs the company more than the salary
difference between them and a good developer.

From a self concerned strategic standpoint, the U.S. should use the
opportunity of immigration reform to steal good developers from other
countries. We are a country of immigrants, and immigration will always be
important to us. Let's use it to capture the best and brightest from the rest
of the world. That is how we stay on top.

~~~
potatolicious
This article makes the fundamental mistake almost all other articles of its
topic do: it assumes that software development is a monolithic entity, when it
is instead a collection of extremely dissimilar camps.

Part of this is the fault of government - in almost all statistics the $200K
systems architect at Google is rolled into the same column as the $45K coder
pounding out VB6 apps for the company intranet.

This article is even _worse_ than most, since it lacks any real data on
_programmers_ , and instead uses data for _all_ STEM fields. This is a little
like measuring the average height of people in Texas using data from all over
the world. It's just lazy.

The more accurate title is: "top level developers in extreme shortage, mid
level developers less so, USA swimming with underemployed low level
developers"

And this reflects the reality on the ground. You have companies like Google,
Facebook, Microsoft, et al, who are desperately trying to bring in foreign
labor at the $150-200K levels (and beyond, I'm starting to see comp packages
towards $300K), showering them with lavish perks that the rest of the tech
industry hasn't even heard of, much less the rest of America.

Then you have the flip side, with companies like Infosys and WiPro bringing in
cheapo labor at $50K a pop and renting them out at exorbitant rates, using the
terms of the H-1B to hamper and exploit their employees knowing they have
little recourse. You also have domestic low-skill IT workers who, despite
exploding demand, have not seen their wages rise significantly.

Anyone who talks about tech immigration in the US who doesn't acknowledge
these two sides is either woefully uninformed or has a vested agenda. The
reality is that we need to expand immigration in the former category and hit
the brakes on the latter, but this also doesn't fit nicely into the
"immigration is purely a means for exploitation" narrative that some people
are trying to spin.

Schools are very good at producing crappy programmers, and not very good at
producing top-notch programmers. This is not a surprise, nor is it unique to
America. The "look at all of these unemployed STEM graduates" argument is
useless without also looking at whether or not said STEM graduates actually
_qualify_ for the jobs they seek. Simply shoving a shiny, rolled-up piece of
paper at someone doesn't automatically make them competent.

~~~
VLM
"The more accurate title is: "top level developers in extreme shortage,"

Vs the article

"134,780 H1-B visas that were approved in 2012."

A good analogy to the debate is we're talking about a shortage of, and
reasonable desire to import any legendary epic level multi-platinum award
winning rock star, but in actual practice we're importing anyone who's ever
touched a guitar in order to keep domestic wages low by pushing unemployment
higher than it should be. They are two separate issues.

~~~
potatolicious
No, in actual practice we're doing both. Like I said before, anyone who
portrays the current H-1B issue as purely one-sided is either underinformed or
is pushing an agenda.

134,780 H-1B visas were approved in 2012, what is the distribution of
salaries? The fact that the US let 134,780 people into the country last year
says absolutely nothing about how many of these people are cheap, barely-
qualified foreign labor, and how many are the multi-platinum award winning
rock stars. It's quite obvious to even a lay observer that both categories of
hiring are occurring in large amounts in this pool, but almost no one is
willing to address the balance.

Painting the entire H-1B pool with a single brush is, to be blunt, extremely
ignorant of how it actually is in reality.

And seeing the state of the industry, a simple mean would be an inaccurate
picture also, given the extremely lopsided distribution (i.e., lots of people
making $200K, lots of people making $60K). What would be _far_ more useful is
an actual, comprehensive look at the _distribution_ of H-1B visas. The total
count is meaningless except in the populist "raaaah our jerbs!" way.

~~~
VLM
"almost no one is willing to address the balance."

Ah I think I see our minor disagreement. My belief is the vast majority of the
eighth of a million per year are NOT elite rock star caliber based on some
crude estimates about graduation rates and so forth. I don't believe we have
the educational capacity, world wide, to graduate 250 million computer science
grads every 20 years outside the USA such that the elite top 1% from each
graduating class year eventually H1Bs over into the USA. Even if we really did
have 250 million outside the USA CS grads every 20 years, why would a perfect
100% of the 1% come here?

The percentage of elite hires almost by definition must be so low in that
eighth of a million, so as to be a rounding error approx zero. That doesn't
mean Mr Anecdote doesn't exist or they're evil or imply any political
ridiculousness, it just means that elite level coders are such a tiny fraction
of the population that shoving them into the debate sideways is intentionally
derailing the real debate about the vast majority of people involved.

Beyond discussing the present and past, if we imploded the H1B system from an
eighth of a million to perhaps two thousand, almost certainly the two thousand
who actually survive the process would almost certainly be the elite 1%
supercoders, so even pretty far out "solutions" would have no effect on
supercoders, making it even less relevant to debate supercoders.

Another interesting way to put it, is most countries allow anyone in if they
post enough money. I don't know what the USA charges, but $1M would be more
than any other country I've ever heard of. So for a mere $2B, if H1B were
utterly eliminated, you could still let all the supercoders in under the
wealthy people rule at minimal cost. After all, if you're willing to pay
$350K/yr for a supercoder, posting $1M for a wealthy person immigration is
only about three years total cost.

Talking about the tiny population of supercoders is simply a distraction.

------
kyllo
This article makes a big mistake in conflating software development with STEM
in general. It shows a stock photo of a guy looking through a microsope (btw
why is he looking through the lens if the microscope is plugged into a
monitor? Seems redundant...), when the focus of the article is Microsoft,
Google, and Facebook wanting to raise the H1-B visa cap so they can bring in
more cheap coders from India.

Is there a shortage of STEM graduates in the U.S.? Absolutely not. We graduate
far more STEM students (especially in research-oriented sciences like biology,
chemistry, physics) than we have jobs for. These research jobs are mostly
funded by government grants, and the government is cutting back due to
unrelated political issues with the budget, of which the root cause is mostly
failures in the finance sector.

Is there a shortage of programmers in the U.S.? Perhaps. There is massive, and
growing, demand in all sectors for software developers, and our universities
aren't graduating them faster than demand growth, and as a result software dev
salaries are rising (or at least not falling).

But programming is _not_ STEM, and these jobs are not scientific research
jobs. They are mostly jobs building commercial software products or automating
business processes. These companies have figured out that they can squeeze a
little more profit out of their business model by bringing in Indians who will
write code for less money and can't job-hop because they're indentured by
their visa status. So when they whine about a "talent shortage," they really
just mean "American programmers are too expensive" because the relatively low
supply/demand ratio means they still have to actually pay them a livable FTE
salary and benefits--unlike most other job categories where they can and do
hire commodity temp labor. (There are several entire companies dedicated to
temp/contract staffing for administrative and QA positions at Microsoft.)

These companies will pay lip service to the concept of improving the US
education system to crank out more highly-skilled STEM graduates, make our
country more competitive, etc. But really, it's just whining about
microeconomic factors that hinder their constant efforts to trim their HR
budgets. They just want cheaper coders, period.

~~~
freyr
> There is massive, and growing, demand in all sectors for software
> developers, and our universities aren't graduating them faster than demand
> growth, and as a result software dev salaries are rising (or at least not
> falling).

This is a direct contradiction to what's claimed in the article, namely that
dev salaries are _not_ rising to the extent that would be expected if there
were a true shortage.

~~~
yajoe
To throw some numbers at this question about salaries. Here is the Standard
Offer for a college hire Level 59 Microsoft SDE (Developer) to Seattle over
the years as I've observed them.

    
    
      2005-2006: 70k
      2007-2008: 80k
      2009-2010: 85/90k (there was a macro recession here)
      2011-2012: 100k/105k
      2013: 105k--110k (tbd)
    

In 6 years that's a 50% increase. What other industry has as much salary
growth for front-line or entry-level people? I believe in a shortage. The most
likely cause is this VC-infused hiring bubble going on that may burst and put
a lot of people back on the market.

What's tragic is that Microsoft people who started in 2006 and had 70% careers
are often making similar money as the entry-level folks. Combine that with a
toxic environment and stagnant products, and it's pretty easy to understand
why great people leave the company. It's also pretty easy to understand why
Microsoft wants to import H1Bs that often are terrified of getting deported
back and will do anything to keep their jobs.

~~~
larsberg
Two things that make me suspect this information is anecdotal rather than from
a hiring manager (though I could be wrong):

1) I left MSFT around 2006, but the offers I made to (admittedly, mostly blue
chip) candidates in 2002-2004 were closer to 80k and not even at the top end
of the L59 level band. I'm not sure those early year numbers are quite spot
on.

2) The initial offers are set for the middle of the L59 compensation
range/band. As those bands went up, so did all of the others - I guarantee the
L59 band is not above the L60 band. If you got hired in 2006, you're at least
L62 by six years later (or you would have been managed out, in any non-
disfunctional org). Even if you'd been camping and never made L63 (which is a
big bump), you would get raises as the midpoint for the band moved over the
years. Otherwise, it raises very serious issues with your group's HR
generalist about why you have a L62 who's being paid outside (below or above)
the acceptable range around the salary band and the manager would have been
encouraged to either motivate or manage out the employee, if they really
didn't deserve raises to take them back into the correct compensation range.

Microsoft is disfunctional about many things, but the HR generalists were
pretty good at tracking and running numbers and asking very hard questions
about people who were over/under-compensated or stagnating at a low level
(sub-L63).

~~~
yajoe
> I left MSFT around 2006

The company changed significantly since then. Bill left. There was a layoff
(well, a couple, but the first was a black swan nonetheless). There is a new
review system and new rules about comp.

It's not the same place you remember. I really liked the MSFT around 2006, too
:)

------
willholloway
As a working coder whose interests are not served by increasing US supply of
coders through immigration I have a financial motivation in this meme
spreading. I oppose increasing immigration because coding is one of the few
remaining pathways to a solid middle class life in the US, and I don't want
that to change.

That said, quality hackers can feel very secure in 2013 and for the
foreseeable future.

The point the article makes about the ample number of programmers graduating
US universities is belied by the essential truth of FizzBuzz.

It is not graduates that are in short supply, it is high IQ individuals that
can solve problems with computers. That is not going to change.

As a consulting coder I find the demand for custom apps to be incredible.
Almost everyone who asks me what I do for a living follows up by saying they
want something built.

Most are filtered out because they don't have the budget, but the demand
(willing and able) is incredible.

There are just not that many people with the tenacity and analytical thinking
to deal with the realities of building the kind of software the world needs.

My feelings here are best articulated by David Mamet through the character
Levene in the play Glengarry Glen Ross:

"You can't learn that in an office. Eh? He's right. You have to learn it on
the streets. You can't buy that. You have to live it."

~~~
danso
I know that in every profession, each passionate practitioner thinks that no
cheap hire can possibly replace them. And yet I think this case is especially
true for the developer of custom solutions. If you believe that the majority
of time spent on software is in its post-release maintenance and iteration
phase, then hiring mediocre developers to build the product will only result
in massively increased product lifetime costs. And throwing more mediocre
developers at it won't fix the underlying issues.

It's hard to think of other building-type professions where one person can
have so much sway over a company's initial success. And no, this is not
because programmers are inherently more vital than civil engineers or
doctors...it's because programmers have so few limits and regulations to deal
with...as has been said on HN many times, just about anyone can spin up a
Heroku dyno, load up incredibly powerful FOSS, and _attempt_ a worthwhile
product with little cost beside time and effort. Whereas a doctor, it doesn't
matter how brilliant you are, you're going to have to jump through a lot of
hoops and pay a lot of dues before you can fully develop your revolutionary
treatment.

------
chrisbennet
"Now, let's review some microeconomics. In a free market, it is almost
axiomatic that the market always clears. That's a technical term that means
that when somebody tries to sell something, if they are willing to accept the
market price, they will be able to sell it, and when somebody wants to buy
something, if they are willing to pay the market price, they will be able to
buy it. It's just a matter of both sides accepting the market price." - Joel
Spolsky " Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers?"

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html>

Sure, if you can't find developers to work for you _at any price_ than there
probably is a shortage of developers in your area. If you _could_ find
developers if you paid twice as much as you are offering, then that is a clue
that the market price is just higher than you can or are willing to pay.

~~~
jellicle
And if you can double the number of developers by importing them from abroad
while keeping the number of jobs constant, the clearing price will inevitably
fall to reflect increased supply with constant demand.

There, was that so hard? Yet some people seem to have trouble believing it.
It's almost as if people are regurgitating their political beliefs instead of
looking at the situation honestly.

------
VLM
A quote from the article also applies to the recent fad of promoting STEM
education in K-12 etc.

"Roughly twice as many American undergraduates earn degrees in science,
technology, engineering, and math disciplines than go on to work in those
fields."

Maybe if my kids grade school gets their way, we can boost that to four times,
or even more. Those numbers are almost as bad as recent law school grad stats.

Needless to say as a life long STEM guy I'm strongly encouraging my kids to
avoid the STEM field at all costs. I'm not annoyed at my kids school for
focusing on STEM; its a very good educational technique and not any worse than
other educational fads. As a vocation choice STEM is as likely to be as
unrewarding as trying to become a rock star, a pro NBA player, or a fine arts
painter, but those classes are great in K-12 schools. Those examples, and
STEM, make truly excellent hobbies, but awful jobs, at least for most of the
participants. I may not know the right answer, but I know STEM is the wrong
answer. I'll still love my kids anyway, no matter if they become unemployed
programmers or unemployed musicians, but I hope they can do better financially
with their lives both for themselves and the grandkids, by being quided out of
"hobby" jobs like STEM and music and art and into something with a profitable
future.

~~~
gnoway
kneejerk reaction: like what? I haven't thought a lot about this, but I tend
to equate STEM with 'profitable future'. What other industries/disciplines are
you thinking of?

~~~
VLM
"I tend to equate STEM with 'profitable future'."

There's a large number of extremely wealthy and extremely powerful people
working publicly as hard as they can against that belief, and the government
has been purchased to be on their side. Very few things unite everyone in
power both in .biz and .gov quite as well as the destruction of STEM as a
middle class or better lifestyle. My advice is be very careful when going up
against a united powerful opposition like that.

Like I wrote, I may not know the right answer, but its not very hard to figure
out STEM is, or is soon going to be, the wrong answer.

~~~
angersock
That's quite a claim there--would you mind elaborating on your reasoning?

Perhaps it's just due to my current existence in a very productive city, but
STEM (and vocational training) seem to be both very much in demand and
rewarded.

~~~
VLM
Alright enough enough I apologize for the somewhat curt answer above stop
downvoting me. I'll be more verbose and more polite.

Estimate a ratio of "we need more STEM" vs "we need less STEM" in .biz, .gov,
mainstream media, etc. Does anyone other than internal "tech" sites ever
discuss how the pool is too big and getting too large and maybe we need
licensing and unionization and apprenticeships or some way to shrink it? Lets
say maybe 100 to 1 ratio? Are there any paid PR groups or lobbying groups at
all on the side of the STEM worker? Any? Not even one? How bout on the other
side? Oh, dozens you say working to increase the supply and drop the cost (aka
our salary).

A continuous stream of one unified voice from .gov, .biz, and .edu that we
need more STEM grads, more STEM immigrants, more STEM is what "we" need or
else. Yet... talk to people who aren't paid PR shills and its all poor working
conditions, more grads than jobs, ageism, underemployment/overeducation. Sure
you'll get a few quisling types who think that supporting those trying to
destroy them will somehow personally save them, although historically that
never seems to work out. And there's maybe 3 or 4 cities with a high cost of
living and a shortage of techies... at least right now... at least supposedly.
A tiny subfield with real demand as opposed to PR demand like petroleum
engineering has explosive salary growth rates... supposedly we're told the
demand is even higher for code slingers, well, OK, show me the increasing
salaries and the unemployment rate approaching zero. Oh that's not happening
nationwide without lies, damned lies, and statistics?

Well someones lying then, or at least not telling the whole truth. Do you
think the guy who stands to make a higher profit could be lying to you? Nah,
Management and PR are transparent and clean as glass... How about the .gov guy
purchased by the .biz guy, has a politician ever lied to you? Hmm. How bout
that .edu guy who's salary more or less depends on convincing kids to enter
his field, does he have any conflict of interest, or at best well intentioned
delusion? Yet a VERY few lone voices in the wilderness, with no economic
interest (or not much anyway) suggest maybe the emperor really does have no
clothes, but they must be making it up because their reward for it is ...
nothing at all? A better life for their kids? +5 of HN karma? Seems a pretty
small reward at best for a lot of work.

So that's my interpretation of the players on the field. There's the
completely unorganized STEM workers, and absolutely everyone else united
against them with a common cause, identical PR campaign, for fairly rational
similar economic reasons. I wonder which side will win?

Now compare our response to other fields involving labor forces and
import/export and immigration and .gov policies. We seem to be failing
ourselves in the PR war compared to ... well compared to pretty much every
other field of human endeavor other than maybe the pot growers, congressmen,
and sex workers. And there's a substantial overlap there at that. Actually
they probably do a better job of self promotion than we do.

~~~
whiddershins
I am torn between

-the desire to agree with your point in principle: yes, there is probably a conspiracy of some sort to push these wages down and ignore the reality that these careers can have a huge downside, your wages will at best stagnate, and the number of college grads increase each year

-the desire to respond to your point in practice: it seems generally hard to hire computer programmers, they seem to make quite a bit, even if they aren't super-exceptional, and the wages and unemployment statistics for these sorts of jobs seems better than most other career paths

------
zenbowman
The article makes the mistake of assuming that everyone who graduates with a
computer science degree can actually work as a professional programmer.

Cheating and copying were extremely widespread when I did my undergraduate and
even graduate level computer science work at a top-20 engineering school.
Maybe 10% of students were actually people I could consider hiring.

This goes for both American and foreign students, I don't make the false claim
that Americans are not as smart as foreigners or don't work as hard.
Dishonesty and dishonor was the norm, and in my experience, most of the people
who actually did their own work and had a knack for engineering went on to do
very well.

------
ww520
America does have a tech talent shortage. It's the shortage of rockstar
developers willing to work for low wage.

------
pauljonas
The important takeaway that is lost/neglected both in the article and the
comments is that the bulk of H1-B visa is allotted to cheap body shop entry
level developers. A lot of fussing over high end Google / Microsoft positions
obscures this truth that is evident from perusing the actual H1-B statistics.
I've posted here before, but within a short commute from my home in Arizona, I
can tally thousands of jobs displaced by the combination of H1-B / offshore
(and this is not an either/or but a both/and strategy). Does anyone contest
that this is countervailing effect on new vocational entries?

And the truth that median/average salaries have not raised significantly
exposes that indeed, to call it a _shortage_ is myth. I suppose it depends
upon the local market but here I see developer positions (PHP web development)
being filled at $7.50 - $15 per hour, hourly rates bested by those not even
possessing a college degree. Now, before somebody spouts off some PHP bashing
and that those job slots merit only that pay level, consider that those old
school / mainframe programming jobs that were supplanted by NIV / offshore
coders paid 2-3X this mark for a less comprehensive skill set.

------
migrantgeek
I don't doubt that companies are trying to get a piece of legislation passed
that allows them to pay employees less. Increasing margins, that's what
companies do.

I do take issue with the idea that the talent shortage is a myth.

I work for a company willing to pay a six figure starting salary plus good
benefits in what's supposed to be a recession and we cannot fill our
headcount.

My team has been looking to fill 2 headcount positions for months and it's dry
as hell. Our search includes the entire US since working remote is acceptable.
Candidates often look good on paper but they can't whiteboard even simple
problems.

It seems every company with decent staff has made them happy and no one decent
is jumping ship right now especially when trying to recruit from the larger
companies.

I'm getting sick of all the hyperbole on this site. I think I'll be
uncommenting my hosts file entry to block it for a while.

~~~
mixmastamyk
> but they can't whiteboard even simple problems.

Not sure how accurate that statement is, but as quality software is not
written on whiteboards under pressure you may be looking at the wrong things.

There's a guy here that frequently brings up the work-sample test, and some
data exists confirming it to be a indicator.

~~~
AznHisoka
Do you mean to suggest work-sample tests are superior to whiteboards?

~~~
mixmastamyk
In an coding interview situation, yes. Whiteboards can still be useful, as
always it depends.

I suppose the point is that not everyone responds well to the pressure and on-
the-spot character of coding on a whiteboard. As real-world coding is never
expected immediately in front of a powerful person, you can be selecting for
less relevant qualities.

------
analyst74
I think countries that want more immigrants could learn something from Canada.

In one of the recent reforms, it started to favor those who can fit into the
country better -- those who have spent several years studying or working here
can get immigration visa much easier and faster, without needing any sponsors.

This ensures a few things:

1, it reduces the chance of some highly educated immigrants failed to adapt to
local job market and ended up doing manual labors, or consuming social
assistance.

2, it gives the market more power to influence who should get in the country.

3, companies cannot hold foreign workers hostage, because after a couple
years, the workers can fast-track through immigration visa without them.

~~~
vowelless
They also have(had?) this interesting track-to-residency by piggy-backing on
the American H1-B visa [1]. This gives them a great filter for skilled
laborers.

[1] [http://www.albertacanada.com/immigration/immigrating/ainp-
sr...](http://www.albertacanada.com/immigration/immigrating/ainp-srs-US-visa-
holder-criteria.aspx)

------
jtbigwoo
When someone says "I can't find enough qualified people for X", the reader
should always append "for what I am willing to pay."

Miraculously, there never seems to be a shortage of qualified Wall Street
traders, university administrators, or any number of other highly paid
professions.

------
dspeyer
> Could it be that schools aren't teaching their students the right stuff,
> that despite their fancy credentials, today's grads lack the programming
> chops or logical prowess needed to succeed at a Google or Microsoft? Not so
> much.

Having done interviews at Google, and given a lot of very low scores to people
with impressive degrees, I'm inclined to say yes. The author thinks that this
would cause wages to rise, but the argument there looks pretty sketchy.

~~~
dpritchett
Given that there's not an actual college major titled "Google SWE II", I'm not
sure what sort of standards you're expecting out of people.

(What I understand to be) Google's favorite tools - C++, Java, algo/data
structure theory - don't exactly describe a holistic CS/SE/MIS curriculum. I'm
sure a specifically designed trade school curriculum could train intelligent
people up to ace valley hiring tests in two years or less.

~~~
nickbarnwell
Anyone who's gone through a holistic CS curriculum should be able to fairly
easily pass the Google/Facebook/MS/Palantir-esque interview process (for new
grad positions) with flying colours. The typical algorithmic questions they
give are things likely seen verbatim in second year maths and algorithm/data-
structure courses, while the system design stuff is fairly pedestrian.
Specific knowledge of any language was unnecessary, and they really honed in
on CS fundamentals.

I do think they probably miss out on some smart people who scraped by in
classes to pursue personal interests and could easily learn the material, but
given the state of most new graduates it's probably a fair trade-off.

(Disclaimer: I interned at Google after my Freshman year. I'm an English Lit.
major and completely self-taught; I did not think the interviews were
particularly difficult)

~~~
dpritchett
I think we agree with each other.

I did a master's in CS from a school not known for CS and I'm pretty sure I'd
fail Google's interviews unless I could put in a few weeks of focused
preparation. Meanwhile I'm happily employed in Memphis and Google seems to
have a recruiting pipeline in place that works for them.

------
enoch_r
> As shown in the EPI graph below, in 2009 less than two thirds of employed
> computer science grads were working in the IT sector a year after
> graduation.

How horrifying!

Now present the relevant statistics for history majors, economics majors, or
English majors.

~~~
jfb
Well, English/history/&c. majors are _usually_ not presented as vocational
training, as it seems that CS is these days, so it's not entirely a useful
comparison.

------
digz
This study was done by a 'non-partisan' group that's heavily backed by unions.
Doesn't seem too non-partisan to me when you consider how significantly anti-
immigration unions have been over the last century.

The data may be valid, but the interpretation is always the most important...
and a union-backed group masquerading as a non-partisan think tank hardly
seems unbiased.

~~~
mjmahone17
It's kind of funny that unions are anti-immigrant: I think this (along with
their past tendencies to be anti-black, etc) have hamstrung a lot of them.
Immigrant laborers and American-born laborers have a lot more in common than
not: they should both be pushing for higher-wages, more job availability, and
better working conditions. As such, the unions should be embracing, rather
than rejecting, new immigrants, and making sure that laws are passed to
protect the immigrants' interests (such as eliminating the H1-B in favor of
more green cards, say), because they are essentially the same interests.

~~~
digz
Unions are not terribly interested in overall productivity/output. Their goal
is to maximize the value to their constituents (either through wages or
working conditions). By decreasing/holding stagnant the supply of labor
available, they are able to force wages to be higher than they _should_ be. Of
course, as economists understand, this causes all sorts of problems.

Unions really aren't that different from corporate lobbyists...

What's more impressive I think is how vehemently anti-immigration (and to your
point, anti-black at various times) the Democratic party has historically been
(mostly driven by union influence) and how quickly that seems to have been
forgotten by most.

------
whiddershins
Every time I try to hire someone to do any tech work for me, I am convinced
there is a shortage of tech talent. It is cray hard to hire people, leaving
aside price. It is hard to even get people to discuss working for me, before
compensation is even discussed.

And I live in NYC, not under a rock. And I'm friendly.

Sure seems like a tech shortage to me.

~~~
Spooky23
My cousin is a contractor. He says the same thing about drywall guys. My boss
when I was stock clerk in high school said the same thing about cashiers.

Hiring people is hard. Most good people already have jobs, so you need to find
folks transitioning or starting out. There's a risk either way. The more
specialized the skill, the harder it is.

------
ef4
I can summarize the problem with the data in one sentence: a degree in
computer science has almost no correlation with your usefulness as a
programmer. So a glut of people with degrees does not imply that there is no
skill shortage.

Really good programmers, like musicians, almost invariably start practicing as
children. By high school, they know enough to be dangerous. By college,
they're operating on a qualitatively different level than their peers who are
trying programming for the first time. (Hence the widely-reported bimodal
distribution of student performance in introductory college CS classes.)

Can someone starting at age 18 still become a great programmer? Almost
certainly. But they need to put in the vast amount of times and intense effort
that it takes, and that gets harder to accomodate the older you get.

------
graycat
The article just assumes as clear and given that the immigrants have better
skills, but there is no explanation for just how that could be. The technical
education system in Taiwan and India is much better than in the US? Tough to
believe.

~~~
ardit33
Not necessary, but the top 10% of any of those countries (even third world
countries), will be better than the average US dev. (not necessary better than
the top 10% of engineers coming out of US).

That means that bringing the top 10% of the rest of the world here, will bring
the average up, which means harder technical stuff gets done, which by itself
opens up more jobs for the economy.

Any good immigration policy should make sure to filter, and bring in only the
best, and making sure that they are not underpaid. One way to do that is not
to tie the visa to an employer, and making sure a engineer with lets say 5
years of experience coming here has a job that pays more than the average of a
engineer with 5 years of experience makes, and remove loopholes on this

This will reduce H-1B missuse from the indian/chinese consulting companies,
and allow the H-1B holder to switch jobs as they choose and not to be tied
down to one employer.

After 3 years of working under this visa, an H-1B holder should be able to get
the green card, and have ultimate freedom on their lives.

Making these changes will just both allow best engineers in, and reduce the
abuse that may happen due to the current rules on tying an employee to a
employer (intenured servitude in the 21st century).

~~~
mjmahone17
Why should immigration policy filter out immigrants? One of the pushes behind
Arizona's economic boom in the 90s and 00s was the influx of immigrant labor
(who then bought houses that needed to be built/bought services that needed to
be provided, and paid taxes for the government to hire more people to build/do
more things).

Immigration policy shouldn't support non-free labor, but it's unclear why we
should only be focusing on the "best" immigrants, rather than trying to let in
as many people as possible who will help build their communities.

------
dusklight
Speaking as someone who has interviewed quite a lot of people, I would say we
have an ample supply of kids who started programming in college and
successfully graduated with a 4-year degree, or even a masters. But we have a
huge shortage on people who can actually write code and be hireable.

~~~
nthj
Which totally makes sense, and I'm unsure why students don't think this one
through. It's like saying, "I want to be a career musician", spending 4 years
learning music theory, and then expecting a job playing the piano with an
orchestra.

If you want to make great music, you've gotta spend a lot of time playing the
piano.

~~~
gamechangr
"I'm unsure why students don't think this one through".

MONEY. Financial aid is available for classes, but not for self learning.
Classes take a large percentage of your (would be) self learning time.

------
criley
How many times is this going to be reposted to HackerNews? How many times are
we going to bring up the same issues with this interpretation?

Like, for example: the assumption that every STEM graduate wants to work in
STEM fields, and that the failure of a STEM grad to find work in a STEM field
is a failure of the STEM field instead of a personal decision of the STEM grad
to pursue whatever career they want.

~~~
ebbv
So every issue only gets one post at HN and then it's done forever?

Since this is an issue which is actively being reformed right now, it seems to
me that posting current (same day), informational posts about it is totally
valid.

~~~
criley
There are no new developments, just more news outlets using (subjectively) bad
interpretations of existing ideas/data.

Look at a site like <http://www.memeorandum.com> \-- for any one news story, a
dozen news outlets report on it (discussion section of links).

That's what's going on here: a new outlet decides to report on the same
information that someone already scooped and we already discussed, and then we
start the dog and pony show up here again and repeat all of our discussions
with the same information we had 3 days ago, and 5 days ago, etc, when the
other articles came out.

We had some brilliant people make some brilliant comments last time around,
will we achieve that quality on the repeat post? Is it worthwhile to redo the
effort?

~~~
roc
> _" Is it worthwhile to redo the effort?"_

Last time around certainly wasn't the _first_ time around for this issue. So
if HN was in the habit of retiring subjects, there wouldn't have _been_ any of
those brilliant comments you referred to.

And yet you're going to use those comments to argue for the retirement of the
subject?

------
ttrreeww
So... after I got my green card (was on H-1B), my base salary skyrocketed from
around 110k-ish to 150k

~~~
ardit33
I have an H-1B and already make more than you, so that doesn't mean that H-1B
will prevent you from demanding a high salary. I have had to switch jobs
though and reset the Green Card process though, which is a bit nervewreking.

~~~
angersock
Out of curiosity, having brought up the subject:

What the hell do you do that justifies that >150K USD, especially if you
aren't a founder? Are you a founder? What's going on?

I'm genuinely curious.

