
Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In - gpoort
http://paulgraham.com/95.html
======
dang
All: much of this thread is of low quality, below the standard that Hacker
News discussion should adhere to, because it doesn't engage with what pg's
essay actually says. It merely uses it as a trigger point for passions about
other things, like H1Bs and Infosys. In other words it goes on a generic
tangent, and generic tangents are the vectors we most need to avoid if we want
discussions that are substantive instead of a handful of always-the-sames.

When I see cases like this, I've been asking: would the Principle of Charity
[1] have helped here? The answer is usually yes. In this case, the idea of pg
lobbying to flood the market with cheap programming labor is not only
demonstrably wrong from the article (which talks about a much smaller order of
magnitude and endorses _lowering_ H1B-style quotas), it fails a laugh test for
anyone familiar with his arguments in general.

The essay may be wrong, impractical, or impolitic; if you want to criticize
it, there are plenty of legit criticisms you could make, starting with: how
are we to objectively evaluate who the great programmers are, when it has
often been argued (including by a certain essayist) that this can't be
measured?

But if you're going to dispute an article—any article—on Hacker News, you have
a responsibility to engage with what it really says. The Principle of Charity
is the best way I know of to formalize this requirement, and unless someone
can make a case for any bad consequences of doing so, we're planning to add it
officially to the HN Guidelines in the new year.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)
and
[http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html](http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html)

~~~
nhjk
The article itself is of low quality. Entire sections are based on flimsy
assumptions or are just plain false. I'll list a few here:

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

A huge portion of the world can't even feed itself let alone educate itself to
the high standard of an "exceptional programmer" [1]. If we're in the business
of making flimsy assumptions then here's mine: I suspect that the US produces
the same amount of "exceptional programmers" as the rest of the world
combined.

"But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain
size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US,
where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American." and "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." And this is one of the hot startups that always win
recruiting battles. It's the same all over Silicon Valley. Startups are that
constrained for talent."

If you can't hire someone at your expected price then maybe you should raise
it. Maybe the market price has gone higher than what you perceive it to be.
That CEO could find his 30 "10x" engineers in a heartbeat if he offered
300-500k. Its not your god given right to be able to hire x number of
employees for the price you hired your previous employees at.

[1] [http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats](http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats)

In addition if you're going to claim an entire thread is of poor quality, back
it up. And while you're looking for examples of poor quality, be sure to use
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)

~~~
jonny_eh
> If you can't hire someone at your expected price then maybe you should raise
> it. Maybe the market price has gone higher than what you perceive it to be.
> That CEO could find his 30 "10x" engineers in a heartbeat if he offered
> 300-500k. Its not your god given right to be able to hire x number of
> employees for the price you hired your previous employees at.

It's a zero-sum game. If company X hires all 30 of the best engineers
currently looking for a job, company Y cannot. Company Y can offer more in an
attempt to lure them, but then Company X will be SOL.

We're talking about macro issues here. We want as many companies as possible
to succeed.

~~~
igonvalue
It's not a zero-sum game. Increased wages for engineers would encourage more
people to become engineers.

~~~
brianchu
In the long run. IIRC labor supply is a lagging indicator, so in the short run
(e.g. 1-2 years) it would be a bit closer to a zero-sum game.

~~~
jonny_eh
It feels like it's been zero-sum for a very long time.

------
sz4kerto
Hm, an article from pg I don't really agree with (even if I am benefiting from
EU's open labor market).

There are plenty of 'exceptional' programmers out there with not exceptional
salaries. Anybody is free to hire one. There are a couple of problems though:

\- they're hard to identify \- they might be exceptional in one situation and
mediocre in another situation. The fact you are doing great at company X and
task Y does not guarantee you'll be a rockstar at company W and task Z. \- you
don't want to pay for them. "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." Well, if they're really
exceptional and they worth 100x more than the others then pay them $5M/year
and they're going to come to you. I know this won't happen, and the reason for
that is exactly the fact that you have no clue how much they're going to worth
for you. You could even pay only $500k/y to these excellent guys but no
startup does that because they're not sure.

So please let's forget these stories about rockstar programmers and whatever.
It's simple: if US could tap the international talent pool without
restrictions then labor costs would go down by 50% OR it'd be easier to find
good ones quickly at the same price, therefore one of the biggest risk factor
in startups would be less of a problem. I completely support this argument, by
the way. Don't dilute this debate with 10x (1000x?) programmers and companies
who'd hire 30 people tomorrow morning at the market price (??) if they could
find them.

*Edit: I have zero problem with downvotes but I'm genuinely interested in counterarguments, so please explain where am I wrong. :)

~~~
wrs
Paying more will just shuffle around the exceptional programmers who are
already in the US. But pg's point is that the US should be trying to attract
_more_ exceptional programmers. And the more the better, because they don't
just add talent, they multiply it. (That's one thing that makes them
"exceptional".) The secret sauce of Silicon Valley is not just the exceptional
people, it's that they're all in the same place.

~~~
cmdkeen
And that another country could attract those 95% and do great things with
them. Several European countries are keen to do so, and with access to the
EU's pool of citizens it would be a great place to try and a new tech hub
from.

Sadly anti-immigration and/or anti-capitalism feelings are also strong in many
EU countries which hampers this movement. I wish the UK could make more of our
draw.

~~~
tomp
> Sadly anti-immigration and/or anti-capitalism feelings are also strong in
> many EU countries which hampers this movement. I wish the UK could make more
> of our draw.

AFAIK, there's no problem with freedom of movement for employees in the EU,
not even to/from the UK. The only issue is wages; London startups pay really
shitty salaries (£40-50K). Berlin's aren't much better (lower than London, but
in a much cheaper city). It's the exact same problem as in the US - the
salaries just aren't high enough to justify moving to and living in an
expensive city.

------
ta75757
Paul Graham is fighting for his side. I hope any developers here are smart
enough to fight for theirs.

He's arguing that the same companies who _colluded illegally to drive down the
wages_ of the "best" programmers, now have no interest in lowering their wages
when they're arguing for increased immigration. LOL.

~~~
killedbydeath
Is "your" side US-born developers? I was born outside and was able to
immigrate to the US on H1B. For the last few years it is very hard for my
friends to do the same. I wish they were given the opportunity. In no way they
are inferior to Americans. US became what it is because of openness to
immigration. But these days it's easier for engineers to immigrate to Europe
or Asia than the US. It may have long-term competitive consequences for the US
companies as there is definitely a lot of programming talent outside the US.
However if you view this as a zero-sum game with a "they came for our jobs"
xenophobic vision, you of course would not care about that.

~~~
zanny
Why didn't you and your friends found companies in your home country? You do
realize many h1b visa programmers, and the ones they want in the future, are
just being taken advantage of to drive wages down?

What is wrong with immigrating to Europe / Asia? As an American, if I had many
foreign associates that wanted to work for / with me, I would not hesitate to
relocate with them to some country that lets us, that would the be US's loss.

But to open the proverbial floodgates is to let entrenched interests win and
all the potential startups and growth elsewhere wither and die. It is not like
you are going to be founding the next big thing while bound to employment at
one of the big three to stay in the country.

~~~
yellow_and_gray
> What is wrong with immigrating to Europe / Asia?

You may be right here. I used to think it's better to immigrate to the US,
because that's where everyone was immigrating to. I thought I wouldn't find
good people elsewhere. But your comment just made me realize I'm not so sure.

> and all the potential startups and growth elsewhere wither and die

All of them, really? Every single one? There's no middle-ground?

> It is not like you are going to be founding the next big thing while bound
> to employment at one of the big three to stay in the country.

Why did you exclude that as a possibility?

------
austenallred
I really want to believe this, but I'm not sure that I do.

Of course the tech companies want to hire people from overseas; being able to
hire someone from India for half the cost but have them live in the US so
there's some level of accountability/trust is a no-brainer. Huge new, cheap
talent pool.

But, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of
cheap talent, some with questionable skills, coming over to compete for my
job.

On the surface it seems as simple as a conflict of interest between employees
and the companies that employ them. Supply/demand.

Dig a little deeper and the argument becomes that the top programmers we're
bringing over are going to start great companies. That makes sense; part of
the reason the United States is so powerful is selection bias: If we create an
environment the hardest-working and smartest people in the world want to come
to, the end result is a lot of great companies that create enough jobs for
everyone. Elon Musk isn't starting Tesla or SpaceX in South Africa (where he's
from). So we create an all-star selection of the human race in one country,
make laws that are favorable to people coming/staying, and the economy
explodes.

What I'm not clear on is what the effect of opening the doors to programmers
would be. Would truly great companies be started enough that the entire
economy is shored up, or would it just dilute the talent pool to the extent
that being a programmer isn't a "special" job you get paid $150,000/year for
being decent at? The long-term, macro result of this would be interesting.

~~~
gnufied
I wonder where do you get your data for "hire someone from India for half the
cost". Of all the facts thrown around - this is easily verifiable -
[http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php](http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php)

If you ignore those employed on hourly basis, a majority of people on H1B are
paid quite well. Apart from salary and benefits - add Visa processing fees for
their Kids and Spouse as well (which can easily amount to > 30k+)

I think people underestimate how fortunate US is for being top destination of
good programmers (and engg. in general). US has tons of companies founded by
immigrants - Tesla, Bose, Sun Microsystems, Hotmail, Yahoo to just name a few.

I agree that, something ought to be done so as Services companies (Infosys,
Cognizant) have limited access to H1B visa pool and process is fairer to
smaller companies.

~~~
curun1r
I'm a dev manager at a prominent employer of software engineers and I did a
search for my company at your link. I can't speak for other employers, but it
appears that salaries for H1-Bs are ~25% lower than what I know Americans to
be making at those same job titles. Half is almost certainly an exaggeration,
but to deny that there's an H1-B discount is equally disingenuous.

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

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

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

~~~
davidw
> If Paul can figure out a way to filter in the great developers while
> filtering out those that are only coming to make money

Perhaps the ones that just want to work hard and make other people money,
rather than aspire to money of their own could get a great big "I'M A SUCKER"
stamp on their foreheads?

Here's patio11 on salary negotiation:
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-
negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/) \-
should that desire to earn a bit more only apply to people who were born in
the right place?

~~~
justizin
I WILL SELL THE STAMP!

------
mrottenkolber
What I take away from the HN/Startup/Recruiting drama:

* Companies don't know how find good people (they think they know how to attract them, but honestly, how can they tell? They don't notice the ones they fail to attract, which I'd argue is most people)

* Companies are unable to produce (e.g. educate) good people

* They want to solve their failures by increasing the search space of people

I have no sympathy at all here. If you want good people you have to pick them
up early and educate them. A startup however wants great people _now_ , and
they are supposed to be a great match by pure chance. This is classic
irrational dream-thinking. You have to be pretty proud of yourself to expect
all the good things will come to you just like that.

I suggest an alternative (my) approach, I call it the "secret elite ninja
clan" approach:

1\. Find out what skills are required in your industry.

2\. Become a good at teaching these skills.

3\. Find a pupil (as motivated as possible, no skills required)

4\. Educate that pupil until a) they are as good as you are or better / b)
they loose interest and leave you

5\. Make money by utilizing the resulting skills. Also test your pupil's new
talents.

6\. Make pupil a partner if possible, return to step 1.

Also important: If you meet someone, figure out how that person can generate
value, don't get cornered by your expectations. Improvise, diversify.

I am currently with my third pupil (first two were not motivated enough) and
she seems to have it in her blood. I think if we keep up we can "grow" a
pretty good company of _really_ good people in a decade or so. Of course,
there won't be a CEO, or a product, just really good hourly rates.

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

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

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

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

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

------
danmaz74
It looks to me like the solution to the problem is simple. Just have a "high
tech visa" with no number limit, but one simple requirement: The company
requesting the job needs to be offering something like 150% (or 200% or
whatever makes sense) the average salary of the US workforce, or in their
state.

This will ensure that the visa will only be offered for skills that are
difficult to find in the USA (or the specific State). No problem of driving
salaries down.

~~~
thmcmahon
This is essentially how the 457 visa works in Australia. It's uncapped but you
have to pay a 'market salary rate', which is either the salary of an
equivalent worker in the firm, or of an equivalent worker In the industry.

~~~
read
The problem with what you mention about Australia is regression to the mean.
'Market salary rate' means average salary, which is not what a great
programmer is worth.

What danmaz74 suggested is better.

------
ulfw
Here are the H1B Top Ten visa sponsors: 1 Infosys 32,379 $76,494 2 Tata
Consultancy Services 8,785 $66,113 3 Wipro 6,733 $69,953 4 Deloitte Consulting
6,165 $98,980 5 Ibm 5,839 $87,789 6 Accenture 5,099 $70,878 7 Larsen & Toubro
Infotech 4,380 $59,933 8 Microsoft 3,911 $113,408 9 Hcl America 3,012 $81,376
10 Satyam Computer Services 2,249 $73,374

How many of those are America's top tech companies who are in dire need of
foreign engineers? The Top 3 by far are Indian outsourcing, sorry,
'consulting' companies.

[http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-
Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

~~~
petilon
By all means, write to your elected representatives to cut down on importation
of cut-rate programmers. But know that this doesn't disprove Paul Graham's
point. He is against the importation of cut-rate programmers too (see his
footnote [2]). He is only for the importation of top-notch programmers.

~~~
ulfw
And how do you identify a 'top-notch' programmer as a government organization
dealing with visas? Seriously. I'd argue 95% of hiring managers in SV can't
identify a top programmer.

The problem could be solved easily if H1-Bs could only be given to companies
registered and headquartered in the USA. That would get rid of the Wipros and
Infosyses etc.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
That would also get rid of most foreign countries from operating in the
states, since they couldn't get visas for management, trainers, or whatever.
Maybe you just meant Indian companies?

~~~
ulfw
Fair enough. What you could do is to split the 55,000 visas into 50,000 for US
entities hiring foreigners. Then you could have a separate 5000 H1-Bs for
foreign companies operating in the US. None of the latter would ACTUALLY be
able to hire a single person realistically, because Wipro/Infosys etc would
just grab those 5000 completely. But at least the other 50,000 would go
towards startups and the Googles/Facebooks/etc of the world hiring foreign
talents.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
The problem is, if we did that, the rest of the world would retaliate, and the
USA sells more abroad than at home (we are a net exporter of technology); we
still wind up screwing ourselves and losing jobs in the process.

------
mrrrgn
This concept of a "great programmer" is something I find very suspicious.

A competently trained engineer who works with distributed systems may
implement a trivial fix and save her company tens of thousands of dollars in
AWS bills.

Someone with a strong background in programming languages might implement a
PHP -> C++ cross-compiler and double the throughput of her company's web
servers.

The capability to recognize these improvements does not require some inborn
spark of genius. Rather, it requires the prerequisite experience in some
programming sub-field. Experience which can be learned.

Moments of rare insight do happen - "hey what if we cross-compile all this
crappy PHP to C++?" \- but these are a matter of random chance: get enough
folks with programming language expertise working on a strictly PHP codebase
and eventually someone will have the idea.

The "born programmer" is a myth. A great programmer is often a person with a
high level of training in some particular sub-fields, and/or, a person who is
very savvy regarding the craft of building software (i.e. "The Pragmatic
Programmer").

~~~
wallflower
> and eventually someone will have the idea.

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

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

~~~
wallflower
Ok, fair enough. HipHop was not the first JIT. I'd like to hear your opinion
on MapReduce.

~~~
rewqfdsa
More interesting is fundamental database progress like the work Google's done
on F1. Now _that_'s an advancement in the state of the art.

------
volkadav
We already have visas specifically targeted at letting in exceptional talent:
the O (temporary) and E (permanent) series. Of course, the tech industry
lobbying is not generally speaking around those visas, but rather H1-B. So I
don't think it is entirely correct to assert that industry wants more "genius
visa" types, they want more journeymen (gender-neutral; the kind of staff that
are competent but not exceptional, or else they would be here on an E-series).
Why ever would they spend lobbying dollars unless there was an expectation
that spending $X on Congress today will save them $Y (Y > X) in wages in the
future?

Don't get me wrong, I've greatly valued the talented non-US folks I've had on
my teams over the years. But I'd rather we gave them an easy path to
citizenship if they want to be here rather than giving more of them the
opportunity to be borderline indentured servants. Then they could fully enjoy
the benefits of the society they're contributing to, including labor
flexibility and the ability to bargain for a fair market wage. I'm sure the
free-market enthusiasts running large tech companies or venture capital firms
love that idea.

~~~
winter_blue
The O visa for all practical purposes is impossible to get. It can take years
to get an EB visa. Most talented/skilled workers come here on an H1 or L1, and
eventually get permanent residency via the EB visa.

For a company that's hiring and unable to find good programmers, the H1 is
really the only visa available to them.

~~~
hacknat
No they're not. You have to higher a lawyer and spend some money, but my dad
got one coming from Canada and he was a middle manager at best (at the time).

~~~
acgourley
It's become more difficult.

------
kohanz
There exists no practical, reliable method to identify the "great" programmers
from the rest (other than by employing them or working with them over a
significant amount of time). Many of them interview poorly. If you could
actually identify these people, you'd have a billion dollar idea.

So that implies that in order to grant entry to the "great" programmers, the
door needs to be wide open to everyone. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but
it doesn't appear to be addressed by PG.

~~~
jleyank
FWIW, truly exceptional programmers can always be hired under things like the
O-1 visa (unless tech isn't included in "sciences" or "business"). I assume
that they mean people like Linus or Bill Joy when they mean "great
programmers", not somebody who can sling Javascript 20 hours a day...

Or, are all the companies looking for these rockstars looking to help them
immigrate to the US, rather than spend a few years solving problems? Cuz I
think they're not...

------
wallflower
If you put all the engineers at Facebook, Apple, Google into a typically-sized
college football stadium, they would barely fill it. The new digital economy
is not inclusive for everyone, most everyone who does not produce technology
is a spectator (e.g. walking down the street swiping their phone, sitting in a
bar swiping their phone v. writing apps or infrastructure software).

The reality is that the Apple/Google/Facebook level (and aspiring) companies
want the H1B limit raised so that they can attract the best in the world.
However, there are companies with profit-based motives. Infosys, Wipro et al.
extensively abuse the H1B system and create a system of indentured servitude
for, mostly, the non-Apples of the world. The companies that aren't shining
stars - but like most other companies need software maintained and built to
sustain their business.

Not every talented non-US Facebook employee wants to live in their home
country. In some cases, the home country has rampant
inflation/unemployment/bad schools/crime. America is still very much the land
of opportunity, despite its flaws.

Consulting agencies almost always reach a point where they can't maintain
quality and simultaneously pursue greater revenues (because they can't hire
enough good people). What usually happens, sadly, is that the revenues take
precedence and they start diluting the overall work quality.

You still can't beat the power of face to face human interaction unless you
build something like The Matrix - where every one inside it is a hologram.

------
voidlogic
IMHO the real issue isn't that they many companies can't find great
programmers, its that they only want great programmers who live in their
locality.

For many (most?) startups in the valley, if you aren't living in the greater
SFO area, or willing to relocate there, they are not interested.

They are dinosaurs living in the past, fighting distributed collaboration.
(Which is ironic as they are technology companies). Importing people from
overseas to the bay area is actually the hard way of solving the problem.

From first hand XP, I can tell you going distributed has made hiring top notch
talent 10x easier. And if I hire someone overseas, they don't _have to_
move...

Again, IMHO all the excuses like "culture" are bullshit, if your culture
depends on holding hands as a group every day, your company culture is already
fatally weak.

~~~
tolmasky
Warning, anecdotal data ahead: I would not want to work under remote
conditions again. In my career I have worked mainly under "startup
conditions". At Apple on iPhone, everyone lived in the same place and worked
non stop on the product, same as when I left to start a company. On my second
company, I had many remote workers. The reality I experienced is that there
was at least a 2-3x slowdown. When people are on different time zones, what
used to take 5 minutes can become a 1 day turnaround through email and waiting
for the other person to be up. Perhaps it works under certain scales, but when
you're trying to be nimble it's just one more needlessly complex factor. What
ended up happening is everyone got on a in between sleep schedule which was
pretty bad for everyone's outside of work life.

~~~
ryanSrich
I'm not sure when you worked remotely but I can tell you remote work in 2014
is much much different. First off, using email internally for communication
makes no sense. If you're a truly distributed team[1] you use teamspeak, or
hangouts, or slack, or IRC, or anything other than email.

Second there are no radically different timezones within the US. If you're on
the east coast you work most days from 10 - 6, if you're on the west coast you
work most days from 7 - 3.

Third if you're working on something pressing with your distributed team you
schedule some time together to work later. If you're on the east coast you may
have some nights during a sprint where you're wrapping up at 9pm or 10pm.

Fourth no matter where your team is located if you have members in different
US (or even international) timezones you want at least 4 hours during the day
spent together (employees are really only performing at the top of their game
for a fraction of the day anyway [2]).

[1] A truly distributed team is one that supports remote workers via
communication and culture as much as they do their local employees.

[2]
[http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/crunch...](http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/crunchmode/econ-
hours-productivity.html)

~~~
ryanSrich
Continue to downvote me but please at least reply with a comment as to why you
disagree.

------
moocow01
How about Silicon Valley first working on actually optimizing the use of the
current labor pool by letting in the REAL other 95% of programmers meaning ...

\- Anyone over 40

\- Anyone who doesn't fit the profile of a 25 year old white male

Until this happens in any real manner, these sort of pleas are just politics
as usual for economic gain.

~~~
kenjackson
This is very true. Our industry has cultural issues that need to be fixed to
unlock the potential out of those people who are already in this country.

PG may have a valid point down the line, but it is really not near the top of
the pressing causes of labor shortage of the exceptional.

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

This assumption is repeated throughout the essay, but I'm not particularly
convinced it's true. Why would the qualities be evenly distributed between
first world countries such as the US where programming is respected and well
paid vs failed states like Nigeria or the war-torn Congo?

~~~
zerr
Do you honestly believe USA is a first world country in terms of
availability/affordability of high quality welfare, healthcare and education
systems?

~~~
bigtunacan
I do not believe the USA is "best in class" as far as first world countries
go, but having traveled abroad to 3rd world countries things could certainly
be a lot worse here.

To give an example while in Belize I was told by one of the natives that in
the event of a serious emergency one would probably die because just getting
to the nearest hospital would take 4 hours best case scenario, but likely
longer.

------
DenisM
I thought a lot about it, and I think I found a simple solution:

Keep the current h1b caps, and then auction off each visa to the highest
bidder. The auction proceeds must go to the employee in question, with jail
term for anyone trying to claw it back.

What this will do is drive the wages for the immigrant engineers ever higher,
by extension raising the wages of Americans as well. It will also make sure
only the best ones can be brought in, stopping the "cheap import" problem, and
the higher wage will give the best incentive to come. Resultingly, foreign
companies will be drained of talent, and American companies will become even
stronger against weaker adversaries, and employing much of the best talent in
the world.

~~~
LetBinding
Except this will only help large employers like Google and completely screw
startups. How do you compute wages when it is paid in terms of equity?

1% of Google was worth nothing in 1995. It's worth a lot today. How do you
identify if a startup is the next Google when calculating wages for your
auction?

The only winners of your auction will be mega corps who will pay a huge salary
upfront with no equity.

~~~
DenisM
It's not a net loss for startups - the ones past series B can easily price
their options. The earlier stage ones will be cut out, that's true. To be
honest, any effort to raise wages will cause that effect, and it's no reason
to oppose better pay for engineers.

On the other hand, an immigrant, once settled, will accumulate wealth and
eventually become a startup founder herself, without as much need for
investment. That would be a boon for the earliest stage part of the ecosystem.

------
buro9
There is more than immigration in the way of non-US programmers moving to the
US:

1) Immigration

1) Health care

3) Living standards (some part cost of rent, some part accessible lifestyle,
some part relationships and future plans, etc)

I'm a London programmer and yes immigration is an issue, but health care (for
themselves and their partner) is joint #1 on that front. It's hard not to look
on US healthcare as being the worst possible product of US politics and that
starts to impact the standard of living thing.

Most non-US programmers I know come from societies where we're happy to pay
more in tax to have a more civilised society and life. You may fix
immigration, but to make the US an attractive place to want to relocate to far
more needs to be fixed.

~~~
OmarIsmail
Any reputable tech company (or startup) will provide health insurance and or
sufficient wage so that you and your partner will be able to afford more than
adequate insurance.

It's not the upper-middle class programmers that get screwed by the US'
ridiculously evil and horrible health care system. It's the 99% that make less
than 100K/year.

~~~
pgeorgi
> Any reputable tech company (or startup) will provide health insurance

... which generates another dependency on the employer (beyond the work visa
thing).

I know the history of the employer-pays-for-health-care model in the US, but
really: it's broken, fix it.

~~~
mahyarm
You already have that dependency in terms of your visa. If you don't work for
your employer anymore, you don't have a visa any more, and you need to leave
the country fairly quickly or get a new visa elsewhere. In the light of that
the healthcare part doesn't matter as much.

~~~
pgeorgi
You're right, the healthcare issue bites citizens much more than work visa
holders (who are already screwed).

It's still broken (like so many other things in the US) and therefore one more
deterrent to even considering going the work visa -> green card -> citizenship
route.

------
jacquesm
Why limit this to programmers? It's not as if we're some kind of privileged
and special sub-species of humanity. People should be allowed to move around
the globe at will without those pesky borders. That would be one way to get us
out of the hole we're in. Drawing arbitrary lines for certain professions and
not for others only further deepens the gap.

Companies have long ago figured out ways to go trans-national, simply by
opening up offices in low wage countries.

Another, easy solution if you want more talent is to pay more.

~~~
melindajb
This is so true. salaries could drop fast if people could work from anywhere.
Lots of people would take a pay cut to live in a less expensive part of the
country near family with better schools and quality of life.

------
j_baker
I have a ton of issues with this post.

For starters, the idea that some people are just inherently exceptional
programmers and others can only be competent is elitist. Is it any wonder that
every programmer in Silicon Valley thinks they're God's gift to the
programming world? We've been taught that to be hirable we have to be "10x"
engineers who spend all of our free time hacking.

But ok, maybe you don't agree with me on this point. You feel as though there
truly is some kind of "master race" of programmers who are inherently gifted
in ways that nobody else can learn to be gifted. That still doesn't mean that
you should agree with PG.

Why do we need to import all of these engineers into Silicon Valley? One of
the great benefits of Software Engineering is that it can be done from
anywhere in the world. Why can't people choose to stay where they live? My
suspicion is that it has more to do with entrepreneurial arrogance than
anything else. Company executives simply want to build big empires with lots
of programmers all under their thumb under one roof.

So what happens? If you want to be an engineer, you have to come to Silicon
Valley and displace someone who already lives in the Bay Area. It's
displacement that breeds displacement.

Ok, maybe you still don't believe me. You think that we need exceptional
engineers and they _have_ to be in the Bay Area. The immigration policies that
tech companies are pushing for aren't based on merit. The STEM visas only
apply to people who are schooled in the US. In other words, the people who
will be coming to the US on these new visas aren't coming here because they
are one of the exceptional engineers tech companies fawn after. They're here
because they have parents who can afford to send them of to the US to fancy
schools. We're not getting the "poor and huddled masses" that made this nation
great anymore.

Is it any wonder people in the Bay Area hate us? We're elitist, we displace
people, and we're importing people from affluent backgrounds.

~~~
douche
>For starters, the idea that some people are just inherently exceptional
programmers and others can only be competent is elitist.

It may be elitist, but that doesn't make it incorrect. There is a floor level
of intellect and memory that is required to program effectively, and those
that are born with more of those gifts have more potential to be a good
programmer. It still requires work to hone those skills, but that work is more
effective if you're starting from a higher floor.

I could practice playing basketball as many hours as Lebron James or Kevin
Durant, but they are always going to have inherent advantages over me.

~~~
j_baker
I disagree. Research has shown that becoming good at something is more about
practice than anything else.

------
grandalf
If someone is smart and wants to work in the US there should be no barriers to
doing so. I don't deserve any job or salary if someone else can do it better
or cheaper. We are all human beings in the sense of our right to fair work and
wage.

Who wants to wake up in the morning and think "thank goodness some lawmaker is
forcing someone smarter/better than me to live in poverty so I can have this
cushy job"?

PG is right that most programmers are not all that bright. This limits the
state of the art in our industry far more than most people realize.

[edit]: I can't believe this thread is getting hijacked by people who oppose
PG's view on this and are downvoting comments in support of it!

~~~
bradleyjg
It is amazing to me how the same group of people can rail against rent seekers
in a thread about uber or airbandb and then turn around in a thread on
immigration and act like their own rent seeking is pure and good and right. I
guess it is all a matter of whose ox is being gored.

~~~
grandalf
Exactly. What those people don't understand is how much this hampers the kind
of ambition and projects that can get built.

Unlike Musk's HyperLoop, the barrier for software is not materials and
resources, it's simply minds. If you're working on a crappy, bloated codebase
it's because some business person likely accurately assumes that a rewrite
would be risky and slow (b/c of the supply and quality of labor).

~~~
Iftheshoefits
> Unlike Musk's HyperLoop, the barrier for software is not materials and
> resources, it's simply minds. If you're working on a crappy, bloated
> codebase it's because some business person likely accurately assumes that a
> rewrite would be risky and slow (b/c of the supply and quality of labor). <

No, the business person knows it will cost money to rewrite and simply doesn't
want to commit the resources. It almost certainly has nothing to do with the
supply and quality of labor.

------
xiaoma
> _So they claim it 's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you
> talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has
> gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US, where
> they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American. Why would they
> go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same price? The only
> explanation is that they're telling the truth: there are just not enough
> great programmers to go around._

And yet most start-ups pay programmers far less than they pay their lawyers.

~~~
ryoshu
The reason why tech companies will go through legal contortions is because
they don't want to raise the salary floor. If a company can only find a great
developer for $100k/yr in the US, but they can find a great developer for
$50k/yr through H1B, it makes financial sense to lobby as long as the cost of
lobbying is < $50k/yr. If the company is pg's example: ($100k - $50k) * 30
workers each year? Hell yeah I'm going to lobby for more foreign workers.

It's not about finding great developers. It's about finding great developers
at a lower price.

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

------
jacalata
When I talk to startup founders, I find ones that offer me a 20% pay cut from
my current job, a load of bullshit about how exciting their options are as the
156th employee, and a refusal to negotiate on salary, followed by seeing them
in the paper complaining that there are no engineers in Seattle the week after
I refuse their offer and tell them that it is too low.

------
23david
As PG states:

    
    
      it's easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things 
      worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary.
    

If this is true, _rational_ companies should be willing to pay salaries
between 100-1000x of _average_ for great programmers.

All hail the $100M/yr rockstar programmer.

I can't wait to see the cool things that will come out of a greater
distribution of wealth to hackers, geeks and programmers. Think of all the
neat kickstarter campaigns that will get funded... and all of the startup
ideas that can find angel funding. And all the open-source and Makerspaces and
rockets etc, etc.

~~~
throwawaymsft
Exactly. Wall St. is where you can get paid proportional to performance -- and
that's where you see people earning $100M/yr. With software, employers are
happy to capture the value of the 1000x programmer and pay them marginally
more than the 1x one.

------
edw519
_...and while you can train people to be competent, you can 't train them to
be exceptional._

Why not?

Every exceptional programmer I've ever met was unexceptional at one time.
Something happened for them to become exceptional. I personally believe that
while that "something" is most often "doing", "training" is often a big part
of the equation. And that training is more often than not training their
beliefs as much as training their skills.

Many of the best programmers I've even known never imagined themselves being
able to do what eventually became their norm. For a lot of them, all it took
was the guidance of a caring mentor or trainer to see the possibilities.

Regardless of _where_ programmers come from, I take it as a serious
responsibility to help them become what they can be. Not saying "can't" is the
first step.

~~~
bwaxxlo
You become exceptional by being curious and never satisfied. I don't think you
can teach that. I mean, you can blurt it out to people all day but it takes
intrinsic motivation to stay awake until 2am because you want to chase some
random thing down the rabbit hole.

~~~
larrys
"motivation to stay awake until 2am because you want to chase some random
thing down the rabbit hole."

Agree. Obsession and curiousity is important. To me you either have that or
you don't have that. (Edit: Of course it depends on the subject for sure. You
can be curious about one thing but "phone it in" about something else.)

I'm not a programmer but I can write some things that are helpful to me. The
other day I made some tea and I then thought "hmm I will buy a timer on
Amazon". Then I though "no let me write something that I can use from the
shell to tell me when N time period is up and what it is up for". [1] I then
probably spent the next hour or so writing this little routine when all I had
done was getup to make tea. Because even though I am not a programmer I
decided it was more interesting than what I was working on at the time (which
is also pretty interesting).

Back to something that I do know about (negotiation and strategy) I go with
your first sentence for sure.

[1] In other words instead of using the iphone timer or any number of other
ways to do the same exact thing I just decided it was more fun to write
something to do what I wanted. And it was fun. And when I showed it to my wife
that evening (as an example of why I think our 10 year old should do
programming) she couldn't understand why I thought what I did was fun to do.

------
cletus
This is nothing new. The problems with work visas in the US are:

1\. Cheap bodyshops consuming much of the quota; and

2\. Immigration being tied to an employer.

(2) is a direct cause of (1).

For those that don't know, sponsorship for a green card basically involves two
stages.

Labor Certification ("LC") is the first and most time-consuming stage. It
involves "proving" you can't find a US citizen to fill the job. There is then
a queue with a quota system based on country of _birth_ (not citizenship). For
countries with a high number of immigrants (eg Mexico, Phillipines, India,
China), the queue can be _years_ long. During that time the employee is
essentially an indentured servant. Employers can and do exploit this
situation.

The Department of Labor can add to this by randomly auditing a particular
application, which will add a minimum of 1-2 years to the process. Sometimes
this is for cause but the DoL's stated policy is to prevent petitioners from
"gaming" the system so they disguise their auditing criteria by randomly
selecting applications to audit.

The second stage is basically a formality: filing for adjustment of status.

So for a period of 10 years _or more_ the employee may be in no position to
leave, no position to negotiate and will quite possibly have to work under
abominable conditions for substandard wages.

The LC process ostensibly has a prevailing wage determination step to ensure
the employee isn't being victimized. Trust me, it's a joke.

Startups here, as a general rule, aren't the problem. These nameless bodyshops
paying $50,000/year or less for a warm body to contract out to a Fortune 500
company for $500/hour are.

If you kept the current green card quotas and simply made H1B visas portable
and immigration essentially automatic when your number (in the queue) is up
then you'd end a lot of these problems.

~~~
winter_blue
H1B workers _can_ switch jobs -- your point (2) is not true.

During the first 6 years or until the LC is filed, H1 workers can work for any
employer in their field of study. After the LC has been filed, they can switch
jobs as long as the job title/requirements are substantially similar (thanks
to the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act). And the
recent executive action by Obama will make it even easier for post-LC workers
to change jobs.

I have yet to meet someone on an H1 who felt tethered down to their employers.
Almost every H1 worker I know has switched jobs at some point. This whole idea
of the "indentured H1 worker" is complete lie, and anyone making it is being
dishonest. It's just a cover-up for their hatred for immigrants -- a lie
fabricated to cloak their hatred as concern.

~~~
cletus
You are (mostly) incorrect.

AC21 portability (as it's called) allows for an employee to maintain their
pending immigration status if they have filed an I-485 and it has been pending
for at least 180 days.

Thing is, the I-485 is the last 10% of the process. The biggest hurdle is
getting the Labor Certification, which is the part that can (and does) take
years.

So an employee technically has H1B portability under the AC21 provisions but
they must start all over again if they aren't in the last 5-10% of the
immigration process.

------
itg
Read: We don't want to train workers or pay them a good salary. We expect them
to know everything beforehand and be content with crappy wages, then wonder
why the brightest kids are going into fields like medicine and high finance.

~~~
khyryk
And even then, most of those who are in fact "great programmers" would
probably not get offers.

------
tw04
The anti-immigration people aren't trying to keep the elite programmers out.
The technology companies aren't trying to get the elite programmers in. The
technology companies are trying to pay slave wages to mediocre programmers
rather than pay competitive wages to Americans.

I've watched it first hand from the sidelines. I'm not a programmer but I work
directly with them on a daily basis. VERY, VERY few of the immigrants I've
seen coming in are what I would consider remotely in the realm of elite.

Elite programers can find a job in any country, and they can make a ton of
money in any country. That's the beauty of the internet, there's absolutely no
reason they need to come to the US to flourish. The people trying to come here
aren't the elites.

------
rayiner
I think very few people don't want the U.S. to let in exceptional programmers.
But the fact is that "1%" programmers are 1% of the population. Tech companies
have tremendous trouble identifying those 1% from the other 99%. The
government is almost certainly going to do a worse job at that. And if the
government delegates screening to the private sector, then the system is
tremendously gameable. So the issue isn't whether we should let in those 1%
programmers. It's wether it's worth it to let in 99 mediocre programmers for
every exceptional one, or to create a system with tremendous incentives to
import those 99 mediocre programmers in an effort to drive down wages, hoping
we'll get some exceptional ones in the process.

~~~
dllthomas
It seems like the government could substantially delegate this by simply
putting a high floor on salary permissible for incoming workers.

------
bmdavi3
In high school, part of the reason I chose computer programming as my future
career is because I like it, and part of the reason is that I knew not a lot
of other people did, or could do it well. I didn't know what the world would
be like in 20 years, but I figured that was a good way of giving myself a
chance at having a good job down the road.

Computer science courses in college were much tougher than in most other
majors, and there were many, many nights I'd be coding away to finish a
project while my friends were out partying, playing video games, etc. I like
art, history, and music too, but I figured it was worth it, just a few more
years and it would pay off.

Now, just as it is starting to pay off, people are trying to change the rules.
I've been trying to get my 10 year old nephew interested in science and math,
encouraging him, so he can make the same choices down the road if he wants to.
But if the plan is to swoop in at the last minute and remove the rewards for
delayed gratification, maybe I should tell him to have a blast and do
whatever.

Either allow full immigration for people in any career (best option), or have
the same stifling limits for all careers (distant second). Don't cherry pick
who's going to have their careers dis-proportionally affected.

~~~
amerliore
Why are Computer Scientists forced to play by different rules than every other
decent job?

American electricians don't have to compete with Chinese electricians.

Can you imagine American doctor/lawyer/engineer associations allowing their
bosses to lobby to let cheap and desperate foreigners flood into their country
and undercut all their jobs, drive down wages, reduce the value of their
educations?

It's ridiculous that computer scientists are being asked to work against their
own financial best interest, while VCs are explicitly in the game of
maximizing their own profit at all costs (including the willingness to
sacrifice all decency and compassion, put entire industries into homelessness
and poverty, destroy the social safety net, turn the middle class into
indentured servants...)

If this isn't class warfare, what is? You have a near-billionaire VC writing
essays to convince the lower classes to work directly against their own
financial best interest in favor of his own financial best interest.

No competent businessman would allow a cheap competitor to flood into his
market and ruin his business. Why do VCs expect computer scientists to allow
their labor market to be destroyed?

------
btilly
A big problem with the current H1B system is that companies like Infosys are
supposed to pay what they claim is market rate, but have every incentive to
lie about the true market rate. The problem that Paul would like fixed is that
there are a lot of really good programmers who startups would rightly like to
hire but can't.

Paul would like to eliminate the cap. But this makes the first problem worse.
If you solve the first, then removing the cap makes perfect sense.

So how do we solve the first? My proposal is that any company wanting import
an employee can, but has to post a significant bond for the cost of deporting
the employee if there are problems. That immigrant is free to transfer
employment. At the end of a year, if that immigrant left to go to another
company, the original employer loses the bond __and __owes the difference
between the immigrant 's current income and the original one.

Under this proposal there is a disincentive to bring in an immigrant unless
said immigrant really is paid above market rate for their skills. Locals may
not like the competition, but people will be hiring immigrants because they
think they are better, and not because they are cheaper than the market.

------
cma
> And since good people like good colleagues, that means the best programmers
> could collect in just a few hubs. Maybe mostly in one hub.

Owner of prestige hub wants it to be more prestigous, and wants your policy
support to make it happen. No where is this spelled out as a conflict of
interest.

Ycombinator seems similar in many ways to the Law Firm partner/prestige
system, or the university prestige system, or the scientific publisher
prestige system.

~~~
gaius
Ask any VC, would you be willing to make a deal that grows the wider economy,
but has a 99% chance of impoverishing you personally? Then ask why that is the
deal he offers everyone else, and tries to get written into law...

------
droopyEyelids
> American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier
> because they say they can't find enough programmers in the US. Anti-
> immigration people say that instead of letting foreigners take these jobs,
> we should train more Americans to be programmers. Who's right?

What a biased 'framing' pile of bullshit.

Let as many programmers in as you want. Just give them the right to quit their
job without deportation, and ensure they're paid the exact same wages as an
American.

Thats the only honest solution to this problem. It'd make everyone happy
except for the very people pushing to open immigration.

~~~
winter_blue
The H1B visa already guarantees:

1\. You can take up any job related to your major (in college).

2\. You are required by law to be paid the same or higher wages as Americans,
for your job position/title.

Almost every H1 worker I know has switched jobs at some point. The whole idea
of the "indentured H1 worker" is completely fabricated. My suspicion is that
it's a cover-up that allows anti-immigration people cloak their hatred for
immigrants as concern.

Basically, during the first 6 years (or until a greencard application is
filed), H1 workers can work for any employer in their field of study. After
the greencard application, they're job choices are slightly narrowed down to
jobs that are substantially similar to their previous one. However, recent
executive action by Obama will make it easier for workers with pending
greencard applications to change jobs.

------
cpwright
The big issue I have with this essay is that, while I believe it is true that
letting in exceptional foreign programmers would benefit the economy and that
probably does not overly hurt many exceptional American programmers; I don't
see how just opening up the H1B program would achieve that.

Instead, I believe you might get some fraction of those exceptional
programmers to come to America; but you would probably get many more less-
than-exceptional programmers (which pg called competent) competing with less-
than-exceptional, but competent Americans (or those who could be trained to be
competent).

On balance, I'm unconvinced this would help.

Potentially, instead of having a lottery, the government should just run a
dutch auction for the same sized quota. If someone is truly exceptional, it
would be worth paying for them. You'd also end up naturally giving American
programmers a bit of a home-field advantage; because their cost would not be
burdened with the additional cost of winning an auction.

~~~
yxhuvud
Or maybe they should do away with the quotas. Why must immigration be limited
at all?

------
dasil003
I think it's a bit disingenuous to not even mention cost in this article.
Clearly a lot of companies are using H1-Bs to save money more than to find
great programmers. Even ones that genuinely _want_ exceptional programmers may
not even have the capability to _identify_ great programmers.

------
zerr
Meanwhile, why don't get better at management to allow remote work? ...

~~~
xasos
It's been tried in the past, but it hasn't been that successful. Technology
has come a long way in decreasing communication boundaries, but it won't
replace (at least for the next 5-10 years) the latent need to have employees
in office. It's not only about the work produced, but also the interactions
between the team. Both Yahoo[1] and Reddit[2] have banned remote working.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-told-
remote...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-told-remote-
employees-to-work-in-an-office--or-quit-2013-2)

[2] [http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/04/why-reddits-new-no-
remote-...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/04/why-reddits-new-no-remote-
worker-policy-is-upsetting)

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

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

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

~~~
waterlesscloud
Drive down the wages of your most talented citizens and yes, you hurt the
entire country.

~~~
andrewmutz
So just to be clear, if we have more Doctors & Lawyers, so their wages
decrease, and the cost of receiving medical care or getting legal help goes
down, this would be bad for everyone?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Yes. Then your most talented citizens will go into other work and the quality
provided will go down.

This is really quite simple. If there's ways for the most talented to make
more money, that's where they're going. The most talented aren't locked into
any particular career.

Sure, there will be exceptions, but the overall trend will be undeniable.

~~~
andrewmutz
As long as Hospitals and Law firms continue to hire competent Doctors and
Lawyers, this would be a win for society. More people getting health care or
access to the legal system, at lower prices, would be a good thing for
society.

And I don't see any reason why an increase in the number of Doctors or Lawyers
would cause Hospitals or Law firms to hire incompetent employees.

~~~
waterlesscloud
We actually have a surplus of lawyers right now, at this very moment. Large
numbers of people with law degrees are unable to find work in the field.

So fewer people are going to law school. And this is true even at the top end.
The most talented people are going into law in lesser numbers.

It's not a theory, it's actual fact.

~~~
cheez
That's pretty much how free markets operate. There is nothing wrong with it.
The idea that X profession deserves the smartest kid in the room is nonsense
if the profession has found out how to get along without that kid.

------
thesz
1) by educating you will uncover latent exceptional programmers and

2) by educating you will raise educational level and make life better for
everyone in country (any country).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_correlations_of_cri...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_correlations_of_criminal_behaviour#Socioeconomic_factors)

[http://www.commissiononhealth.org/PDF/c270deb3-ba42-4fbd-
bae...](http://www.commissiononhealth.org/PDF/c270deb3-ba42-4fbd-
baeb-2cd65956f00e/Issue%20Brief%206%20Sept%2009%20-%20Education%20and%20Health.pdf)

Those two arguments are omitted from essay. I think it is a sign of sloppiness
on PG's part.

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

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

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

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

------
davismwfl
To me the main failure and what negates the argument to me is that 95/5%
population. Yes, I agree that the US makes up a small percentage of the global
population and to think we have the best, smartest or only of anything is
stupidly arrogant and extremely short sighted.

However, to assume that of the 7 billion people on the planet and the 6.7
billion that are not in the US are comparable in education, opportunity,
training and ability is just not realistic either. While I agree too that
greatness can't be taught necessarily, it also can't exist without education,
drive and opportunity.

The problem is when you use misleading statistics to make your argument it
causes intelligent people many times to negate the validity of the entire
argument. While I don't have a problem with h1b's overall, I do have an issue
when startup's and other companies argue they can't find anyone in the US.

Having managed a large development team at one time and having used large
numbers of H1B's, what I learned was that H1B's are far less job mobile and
far more tied to the organization sponsoring their entry. Which is of course
one of the core reasons companies like them. It makes competing for the same
resources far cheaper and keeps wages lower overall. In most situations when
demand increases and supply decreases, cost goes up across the board (e.g.
salaries). In tech, the salaries don't increase as much as the cost to the
lawyers to get more H1B's to help keep the pay lower.

------
1971genocide
A lot of people in this thread seem to be really short sighted. Yes every tech
worker's salary will drop significantly if the United States allowed more open
immigration laws. But think about this - what would have happened if elon
musk, vinod khosla,Sundar Pichai though the united state was not worth the
trouble ? Silicon Valley would prolly exist but wouldn't have the monopoly on
software that it has.

I am not an american but I am really happy that the united states government
has strong anti-immigration laws. This might not be an popular opinion but the
United States has mooched off talent from the rest of the world without paying
for it. It has actually allowed rapid development of the start-up scene in my
country who are in direct competition with the bay area. The best part is
unlike the bay area most of the tech workers are able to save a majority of
their money as the living cost is dirt cheap compared to the disgusting wealth
extraction from the young and talented that happens in the bay area.

Now just for a second imagine if these tech hubs grow and take a large market
share from the likes of google and facebook ?

As a student of Computer science who doesn't happen to be the the united
states all this is really good news and I wish the govt doesn't listen to PG
as it results in the 95% to decentralize the wealth generated from technology
from the hands of PG and silicon valley. ( And I am of the believe that power
is always best kept in the hands of the many compared to the hands of the few
)

~~~
gaius
_every tech worker 's salary will drop significantly if the United States
allowed more open immigration laws. But think about this - what would have
happened if elon musk, vinod khosla,Sundar Pichai_

See, this is just crazy. Why would you or I or anyone want to make ourselves
materially worse off, so some guys we've never met, and who couldn't care less
about us, can become richer than the dreams of avarice? Politicians say,
what's good for the economy is good for everyone, but it just isn't true.

~~~
1971genocide
The thing you are suggesting leads to a frighting conclusion. Are you saying
that you are against people like elon musk from doing what he does ? He wasn't
born into wealth and was middle class just like you and me but was just too
damn smart. The free market rewarded him for his smartness and we are all
better off because of it.

Yes he became really rich but the net sum of wealth he provided in return has
made everyone else much richer than him.

You are making the wrong conclusion that you are worse off "materially" if
such smart individuals didn't innovate. In fact you and everyone else in
america would be slightly poorer.

Most countries do not even have a "good economy" that they can brag about. The
fact that you want a larger portion of the massive wealth these people have
brought to america is an really entitled opinion to have.

America is an an midst of an economic boom which is almost a miracle obama has
pulled ( compared to its EU/Asian/SouthAmerican Counterparts ) . If you are
unhappy that america is also home to some of the richest and smartest
individuals on the planet and you are trying to compare yourself to their
standard and saying "Uhh, I want some of that" then its a problem of mentality
and not about wealth/immigration/politics/etc.

~~~
UK-AL
Elon musks are the exception. Look at the average rich person.

They have often used protectionism(doctors), manipulation(sales) and other
methods to get rich. Lots of people get rich in finance by finding ways to
transfer risk onto other people. Is that productive overall?

Not every rich person is someone who adds unbelievable value.

------
chmartin
"it's easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things worth
100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary" ... yet they get paid maybe
1.5x

~~~
SwellJoe
Unless they start a startup. But, H1B doesn't make it easy for a startup
founder to come to the US, since it requires the startup to already exist and
be funded in order to go through the H1B process. So, it's a chicken and egg
problem.

My co-founder is in the US on a visa that was sponsored by Google (and he
still works for Google). Had that not been the case, he might still be in
Australia (we probably could have made it happen had we needed to...but, he
might not have had the motivation to come here without the Google job).

What I'm trying to say is that H1B _does_ tend to lend itself to indentured
servitude. Foreign workers here on a visa are less likely to seek other
employers, because they have a visa to keep renewed, or they have to seek
citizenship (which is a whole other pile of problems). That probably does
depress the industry baseline salary.

But, my desired solution is not to reduce the number of indentured servants,
but to kill the limits on their freedom to work that makes them indentured
servants.

------
beejiu
Anybody who travels 4,000 miles to a new country to work in, and to live with
people they have never met, have proven themselves to be the sort of motivated
person you want to hire.

~~~
sumedh
That is actually a good point.

------
Tarrosion
I generally find PG very convincing, but not here. Opening up immigration
_would_ have major side effects, though probably it would help companies hire
top programmers. But rather than bear that cost, would we as a society be
better off if we tried to educate children better, get more kids hooked on
being makers, whatever it is you believe is important?

Fundamentally, making the 95-to-5 population comparison only makes sense if
the 5% is at or near maximum utilization. And it's not at all obvious that
American potential talent is that heavily utilized.

As an aside, it's also not at all obvious to me that we can't teach
exceptional programming, at least for some people. In fact, the idea that top
programmers are vastly better than merely good programmers is also not obvious
to me. Think about lifting things: Perhaps I can lift 50kg and some one else
52kg. If the task is to lift a 51kg object, the other person is infinitely
better than me. But if the task is just to lift moderate weight objects, we
are indistinguishable. Similarly it seems plausible that for most tasks "very
good" programmers are indistinguishable from"great" ones.

~~~
OmarIsmail
Do you think YC startups are lying when they say they're struggling to hire?
It is obviously in our best interests to hire every great programmer we come
across - no matter what. If you really think that there are some great
developers out there who are struggling to find a job in the US please send
them my way or send them to ANY of the YC startups and they'll be hired within
2 weeks.

How long do you think it takes to teach someone to be an exceptional
programmer? 5 years? 10 years?

How long has Facebook been around? How long have most small tech companies
been around?

Yes, in 10-20 years after all the parents today are telling their children to
get into software we'll have a glut of developers. But right now, there's
obviously not enough. And the quickest way out is to relax the limits on
immigration.

If the US doesn't do it, then it's a great opportunity for another attractive
first-world country to take the lead. Maybe Canada will.

~~~
Roboprog
Stop trying to shove more people into the SF bay area peninsula?

A 100K/yr salary won't buy, or even rent, much of a place for a family to live
in near Palo Alto or San Francisco. But it sure will in Sacramento.

... or Fresno, or Portland, or Seattle, or Denver, or Phoenix, or Boise, or
Minneapolis, ...

The tech industry needs to think outside the Silicon Valley box, and consider
that while people should be grouped together for networking and other
multiplier effects, it might be time to have more than one town in which to do
business - a location that is not so closed in with outrageous real estate
costs.

I almost took a job in Mtn View a few years ago, but wanted a 50% salary
increase (vs Sacramento) to compensate for housing. So, it didn't happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
davidw
patio11 is very much American, and could easily move to the US if he wanted
to.

Actually, now he can't because he's married to a foreign citizen, and the
United States puts those people through all kinds of hassle and lengthly waits
even if they are _married_ to someone from the US.

~~~
NhanH
I know patio11 is American, that wasn't the point.

~~~
davidw
Fair enough - but it's distracting; you could write "someone like patio11".
Your point is correct: you can't just up and move to the US easily even if
you're good what you do, and you're a net positive for the economy.

------
WalterBright
The fascinating thing about the modern internet is it has made the development
of the D programming language possible. The core development team consists of
people from all over the world. They are highly competent, and few companies
could afford to hire any of them, let alone convince them to relocate across
the world.

I just think it's awesome.

------
sgnelson
My question is why should we only apply this to programmers? What about
Mechanical engineers? What about Machinists (there is quite the demand and a
very low supply of them if you talk to many manufacturers), what about
Doctors, Nurses? Farmers? (there's not much demand that I've heard about the
need for farmers, but I think they're important, so I'd like to bring them in
to the Country.)

Do we only let people in because of the skills they have? What about the next
set of skills that will become more important in the future? What specific set
of skills do we let in, which ones do we keep out? What about people who have
the potential, but currently lack the skills? How do we find those people?

I don't believe in exceptional programmers, I believe in exceptional thinkers.
Programming is a skill, just like any other skill. Some people will be better
at it than others. But it's a skill that can be taught. People who are more
capable of being the "great thinkers," are more likely to be a better
programmer than not, not because of the programming language they know, but
because they're able to solve problems. If I ran a company, these are the
people I want.

But then we come full circle, who are these people, and do I only let them in
because they're "special?"

I also think that way too much attention is paid to what Paul Graham says.
Yes, he was successful with certain things, but that doesn't mean he's all
knowing and all wise.

As to my biases, I'm all for immigration, but not so much for the H1B program
(for ethical reasons, I'm not a big fan of the whole "he has skills that no
one else has, so he gets the golden ticket to the chocolate factory. To me,
that just means that he/she had a more privileged upbringing than 60-80% of
the world. ie, access to clean water, food, education, electricity,
computers.)

~~~
LetBinding
Uh.. H-1B visas are used to for mechanical engineers, nurses, doctors, and MBA
grads all the time. The reason you don't know them is because this is a tech-
focussed forum and the absolute number of these visas going to the other
professions is fewer.

But graduates of top civil engineering, nursing, biology, medical,
neuroscience, physics, etc programs in the country primarily use the H-1B visa
for post study employment.

------
cottonseed
Even the "need" for exceptional programmers is really about companies getting
a good deal on labor:

> it's easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things
> worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary.

Wouldn't it be nice to hire people that are 100-1000x more productive while
only paying them marginally more?

------
tomohawk
There are a lot of things that should probably be fixed in the immigration
system/laws, but starting out by labeling one side "anti-immigration" is
probably not the best place to start.

If you have something to say that is worthwhile, there is no need to apply
labels to people who may think differently.

------
wheels
I agree with the basic thrust of the argument, but there are a couple of
sticking points:

The first thing that caught me reading through the comments section here is
that a lot of folks complain about immigrants pushing down wages. While there
are certainly places that happens, I don't think that's what Paul's talking
about here. However, there is another form of that which does happen --
immigrants _do_ stabilize wages, even at startups, and wage fluctuation
dictates some of which businesses are tenable and which aren't (and where
they're tenable and where they aren't -- some businesses that would make sense
in Dehli wouldn't make sense in San Francisco).

For the CEO mentioned, as salary goes to infinity, so to does his ability to
hire as many great developers as he would like. To hire 30 developers the next
day, there exists a salary which would make that possible. It's just that his
business would probably not be tenable paying that much.

So, I think there's a component missing to the essay: how much wage
stabilization is desirable via immigration? There's already a salary gap
between working as a developer in the Bay Area vs. working almost anywhere
else. How large should the ratio be allowed to grow? How much of being the hub
is defined by having wages that are a small multiplier of wages elsewhere in
the world for the same positions?

Second, the title seems a bit unfortunate. There's obviously not a uniform
distribution of great programmers around the world. There's probably a pretty
strong correlation between the distribution of home computers a decade ago and
the home countries of great developers. The distribution not being uniform
isn't really important to the point being made (it's fair to assume that most
great programmers weren't born inside the US), but since it's implied so
prominently in the title, it's harder to give it a pass.

------
gstar
I wonder if it's as simple as population ratios for programming talent.

Kenyan (distance) and Jamaican (sprinters) runners offer a counterpoint here,
the world's best are all from tiny regions, in fact, some are from the same
family, and most all train together.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/how-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/how-
one-kenyan-tribe-produces-the-worlds-best-runners)

[http://elitetrack.com/blogs-details-4075/](http://elitetrack.com/blogs-
details-4075/)

------
WalterBright
The irony of this is that the old USSR would not allow their highly educated
people to leave, fearing brain drain. Then the US does not allow highly
educated people in. And of course there was the post-WW2 gold rush to grab as
many german scientists and engineers as possible, and I don't think the
results of that for the US and the USSR are in dispute.

It's like the other irony that we use tariffs to 'protect' domestic industry
and embargoes to 'punish' foreign industry, yet they are merely different
words for the same thing.

~~~
logicchains
>It's like the other irony that we use tariffs to 'protect' domestic industry
and embargoes to 'punish' foreign industry, yet they are merely different
words for the same thing.

And the tragedy is that the majority of voters don't understand this, when it
would only take a few hours of econ 101 to teach.

------
silverlake
There are a number of problems with this argument. (1) Great programmers are
not evenly distributed around the world because most places lack good
educational systems. It makes sense that most are in 1st world countries. (2)
Big companies have offices in India, China and elsewhere. Immigration policy
does not prevent Google from hiring every great programmer on the planet.
What's their complaint? (3) Do many companies need great programmers? Sorry,
but your web/mobile app isn't rocket surgery. (4) For every single product on
the planet the market finds a price to match supply & demand. Why are tech
jobs different? $200k in SF is worse than $100K in Dallas. Increase salaries;
problem solved. (5) PG says startups are DESPERATE! Yet they won't consider
remote employees, so I guess they aren't that desperate. (6) No one can spot a
"great" programmer in a pile of resumes. Maybe your interviews and hiring
committees suck?

The least controversial policy is 1st world countries give their foreign STEM
grads Green Cards (or equivalent). The 2nd easy solution is to pay top
programmers lots more money. If they are indeed worth "100X or even 1000X"
more than the average, it makes economic sense to pay at least 5X more. Only
hedge funds seem to understand this. Finally, any company with 200+ employees
can put an office in India/China and hire everyone they want. You can either
wait for politicians to change immigration laws, or make remote offices work.
Which is more likely?

~~~
jqm
"Desperate" but won't hire anyone over 35 or who doesn't look like they "fit
in", regardless of ability....

------
inflagranti
I know I'll go of a on a tangent here, too, and won't directly address the PG
posting, but it really saddens me that every time there is discussion about
immigration on HN, it always degenerates into an us vs them argumentation
between employer and employee and how each side can maximise their profit.
Rarely anyone seems to care about the social or humanitarian angle of it, not
to mention the historical significance to the US as a country. Is it really
that controversial to allow other people that didn't win the birth-lottery a
chance to work here if they proven themselves to be qualified enough? Isn't
that what the US was founded on and what at least the H1B was exactly meant
for? And can anyone really honestly argue that the 65k H1Bs that are awarded
each year could put considerable pressure on the average wage in a country of
300M (especially considering the strict wage requirements which people seem to
happily ignore in most arguments here). Why are people so upset about a few
immigrants - fearing for their wages - when clearly the wage-fixing amongst
Google, Apple & Co. had a much more severe influence? Isn't this obviously the
typical spiel of blaming and fearing the immigrants for situations much better
explained by internal actors that should be feared (and possibly punished)?

------
igonvalue
It seems plausible that there is a dearth of exceptional programmers, and that
it would be difficult to rectify this by training more. But scarcity is a fact
of life in any market; is there anything special about the labor market for
high-end programmers? If the CEO that pg mentions really wanted 30 programmers
tomorrow, why doesn't he attract them from other companies by offering them
higher wages? Before you dismiss this as naive or impractical, let me point
out that this approach has been empirically validated: Facebook was able to
massively scale its developer workforce by poaching employees from Google.[0]
I'm not even arguing for or against more immigration; it just seems strange to
me that this essay is ignoring the elephant in the room, particularly when
there's been a well-documented conspiracy among the biggest companies in the
valley to suppress developer wages.[1]

[0] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff-
enginee...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff-
engineer-3-5-million-to-turn-down-facebook-offer/)

[1] [http://pando.com/tag/techtopus/](http://pando.com/tag/techtopus/)

------
swatow
I think it's useful to rephrase the emotive, and unclear language used in this
debate (like "driving down prices") into the language of economics.

Let's assume there are two types of programmers, normal and great.

Now in a competitive market (which the labor market basically is, especially
since the collusion issue has been dealt with), wages and employment levels
are determined by supply and demand for each type of programmer.

The current H-1B system allows in both kinds of programmers, increasing the
supply of both kinds, and thereby lowering wages. It's important to note that
pg makes a mistake when he conflates lowering wages, with H-1B employees
earning less than Americans. In fact, if wages stayed the same then the H-1B
program would have no effect. When startups complain they cant find the right
people, what they mean is they can't afford the effective wage needed to steal
people from Google or Facebook (there is always a number that would make them
switch).

Now in this framework, pg's proposal can be rephrased as "use H-1Bs to
increase the supply of great programmers, instead of ordinary programmers". I
agree this is a good proposal, because this gives the best tradeoff in terms
of cost (i.e. whatever it is that makes the US limit immigration in the first
place) vs benefit (reduced costs for employers).

When analyzing this situation, it's very important to note that high wages are
a bad thing in themselves. Just like high prices for milk are good for milk
produces and bad for milk consumers, but given the option to create cheap milk
(e.g. artificially) society should always take it.

Some people like to compare programmers' situation to, for example, doctors.
But to the extent that the AMA artificially limits supply, this is a bad thing
for society. Trade unions or professional organizations that use political
lobbying (or violence) to artificially limit supply, are harming society for
their own benefit. People sometimes claim that tech is full of clueless nerds.
I would argue that the "nerdiness" of tech workers also correlates with a
decreased capacity for the self-deception needed to support AMA style
unionization, and that this is a good thing. It might result in lower wages,
all things being equal, but it also results in a better industry overall, and
higher growth that itself creates higher wages.

~~~
karmajunkie
High wages are only a bad thing from the perspective of capital. From the
perspective of the middle class, they distribute capital (and reward effort)
more equitably.

~~~
swatow
So the theory (see "general equilibrium theory" of "welfare theorems of
economics") is that increasing the supply of labor (or any other input for
that matter) results in greater total output. And since the more expensive
labor is the the labor of "great" programmers, increasing the supply of great
programmers results in a greater increase in total output.

In general, economists (including myself) assume that increases in total
output are always worth it, because the taxation system can account for the
redistribution effects. This isn't guaranteed, since redistribution isn't free
(some estimate that $1 of tax revenue costs $1.30 to the economy), but I think
it's a very good rule of thumb.

So if you want to help the middle class you should support a more progressive
taxation system, not higher wages [1].

[1] and by higher wages I mean higher wages for their own sake. Making workers
more productive, which might raise wages, is also a good way to do this.

------
SCHiM
While I do agree in the general sense with what is being said, I very much
dislike it when numbers are abused to strengthen a subjective argument. It
feels like you're abusing facts and lying.

>"Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly
distributed"

This is a pretty big assumption, there are huge cultural differences between,
for example, India and the US. Who says that these differences could not
enormously sway the distribution of great talent?

The next argument made is that since the US only has about 5% of the worlds
population it also follows that only 5% of the worlds great programmers are
naturally available there. However, apart from the question of potential,
there's also the question of opportunity. I'd wager that the standard of
living in the US is substantially higher than in most other parts of the
world. Which leads me to suspect, but not to prove, that that 5% of 'all great
programmers available' is actually quite a bit higher.

It's obvious that no matter how good you _could_ be with a computer, you won't
be able to sharpen your skills if you don't have the means and those means are
more readily available in the US than in China.

------
loteck
This may be the least inspiring, least visionary solutions for one of the tech
industry's challenges I've ever read from PG. That's unfortunate.

The tech industry's hostility to the basic concepts of training and employee
development, which have long since been implemented in every other long-
lasting trade and industry, need to change. That change needs to start with
the industry's most prominent leaders and foremost thinkers.

~~~
keenerd
On the plus side, it is nice to see that HN is not a rah-rah PG echo chamber.

------
thomasfoster96
It's a bit disappointing that immigration descends to bring a shouting match
over who's more patriotic far too often.

Paul Graham's essay is actually pretty good - it tells gets that we're ending
up in a world where the skilled workforce is not heavily biased towards
stable, highly developed countries. Rather, countries like India, China, etc
now have a skilled work force probably out numbering the long-time developed
countries.

------
fsloth
For an arguments sake: Perhaps what could be changed here is the scale of time
from months to years and a shift in the chosen solution space from harvesting
to nurturing?

PG requests more star quality programmers _right now_. Perhaps a more
fruitfull approach would be to figure out what makes great programmers great
and figure out how to teach people to be more like them. I.e. hunter gathering
for roots versus figuring out how to plant a vegetable garden. What is so
great about good programmers? Love of quality, learning by doing - beyond a
certain ability of concentration and verbal acuteness I'm fairly confident
these could be taught to people in structured form far better than how the
current institutions manage. Universities were created first and foremost to
train people in complex but established and repetitive procedures - not to be
crafting shops even though the latter would benefit learning the art of
programming far better. Why not pour the funds required for lobbing into
attempts at improving programmer education, I'm sure the ROI in the latter
would far outpace the former in the long run.

------
cplease
I'm not sure what PG thinks is so holy about the software industry if his
whole argument boils down to the fact that the USA has 5% of the world's
population.

By the same logic, 95% of the great plumbers, carpenters, electricians,
accountants, lawyers, janitors etc. are abroad as well, let them in too as
long as companies here want to hire them, until the USA has > 50% of the world
population?

------
qwerta
I am from EU and moving to US would not bring me much improvements. Especially
with a family it is very expensive there.

Perhaps US could first tap resources within its borders. There are 50 million
people in 'fly-over' states which are sort of ignored.

And 1% of all men are in prison, perhaps allow them to learn (and graduate)
while in prison. Right now they are not even allowed tv, not mentioning
internet.

------
epicureanideal
I think the best way to address everyone's concerns is to do a trustworthy
study (trusted by both management and engineers) on the effects of opening the
doors under different scenarios.

How does the situation play out from everyone's perspective? If we open the
doors too fast, do we get a huge drop in wages, everyone loses their houses,
and students flee from tech education? Is there a rebound after N years?

If we open the doors slower, are we able to maintain wages at their current
level? After how many years have we fully absorbed the talent and / or the
effects of importing more talent start to ADD to the compensation of current
workers, based on the improved tech ecosystem?

So, who can provide a model of what would happen at 3 month to 1 year
intervals (I'd prefer shorter) in terms of salaries and rent, going out lets
say 10-20 years?

Also, maintaining wages at their current level may not be a good thing. It
seems that they've been suppressed lately and so we'd be maintaining them at a
suppressed level, but this is just to start the discussion.

------
windlep
Two immediately obvious problems in this set of arguments:

1) There'd be more great programmers if they wouldn't all divide themselves
amongst so many startups, the vast majority of which will fail. Some other
VC's have pointed out this problem as well. Less start-ups overall would
increase the amount of great programmers available, and maybe more of them
would succeed.

2) PG himself has said that great programmers grew up coding. PG's own
population argument misses this as the greatest populations (India / China) do
not have the wealth for kids to grow up coding. As people trying to increase
the diversity of programmers have pointed out, getting this type of upbringing
is hard even in America if you're not a well-off (generally white) male.

There's plenty of talent here in America, but let's be honest, its _harder_ to
utilize. It's much much easier to just import talent from countries that have
education systems and cultures that do better at creating programmer talent
than to fix America's deficiencies.

~~~
pcurve
There are many problems with PG's arguments.

1\. It's painfully obvious that he doesn't talk anybody in the trench.

2\. If H1B Visas used the way it was intended, there would be no issue with
finding those great talents. Instead, H1B Visas are used my large
consultancies and corporations for tapping cheap labors.

3\. There are strong programming talents in Western and Eastern Europe, but
they are not knocking down embassies to come to the U.S. despite much better
job prospects and higher pay. Because quality of life is inferior.

4\. You don't need a company full of 'great programmers'.

------
larrys
"American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier
because they say they can't find enough programmers in the US. "

I think the question is who are the technology companies that want the
government to make it easier. Is it "traditional established" companies that
can't get quality programmers because anyone good is off trying to hit the
lottery at a startup? Or is it the startups (trying to hit the lottery) who
can't recruit?

Either way the question is if the chance of a startup working is considered
mid to low (failure rate) then what happens to all of this exceptional labor
down the road? The assumption that the current demand (startups) will last for
a long time isn't necessarily correct.

Being in business many years (longer than PG iim and it should matter
actually) I've seen plenty of cases where people make a demand assumption that
later turns out to be the reason they go out of business (buy a new warehouse,
expand the restaurant and so on).

~~~
OmarIsmail
That exceptional labor either moves to other businesses locally (good for the
local economy) or it goes back home and you're back to where you were. Not
sure what the downside is here?

Educated, hardworking people are always a fantastic asset to any country.
They're not the ones you need to be worried about no matter what the economic
condition. This isn't about bringing in a lot of migrant farmers for permanent
citizenship.

My suggestion: New VISA. Similar requirements and restrictions as an H1-B
(educated, employment based, dual intent so can be switched to a green card
with enough time). Only companies (no subsidiaries) with more than 3 employees
or 500K in the bank and less than 500 employees can apply. Don't have the same
timing as an H1-B, make it like the O1 where visas can be processed and
granted year round.

------
ChrisAntaki
> A great programmer doesn't merely do the same work faster. A great
> programmer will invent things an ordinary programmer would never even think
> of. > ... a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an
> average programmer's salary.

I like how Paul slips in some encouragement for engineers wanting to start
their own businesses.

~~~
zanny
I also highly doubt MS / Amazon / etc who want unlimited H1Bs would be paying
these great programmers 100x or 1000x times their average programmers.
Especially since they are not doing that right now.

That implies either "average" programmers are being overpaid by a lot, or that
great programmers are being taken advantage of. I highly doubt its the former,
so hurrah for industry.

------
CaptG
I'm new to HN, and would consider my self a competent developer. How does a
competent developer become an exceptional one?

~~~
wallflower
Why do you want to become an exceptional one?

I'm going to give you an alternative answer. There is a hard limit on our
personal abilities. There comes a point where a lead developer matures by
bringing on people onto their team who are better at X.

I really like this comment from an AskHN from jlcfly several weeks ago. I hope
most of us embrace this philosophy as the reality is programming as an art is
much more important than programming as a rote skill.

"Teach them to be better than you. That may seem counterproductive. I have a
type A personality, and I have decent coding skills. I've been in your
situation a number of times. I also know there's these mythical expert
developers out there that I can't seem to find (or afford). So, what to do? A
few years ago I realized that if I continue down this path, I'll end up with
some serious health issues due to the stresses that come along with having a
reputation for being a really good developer.

So, I decided that instead of searching for developers better than me, I would
teach developers I work with how to BE better. It's taken a lot of patience.
And it's taken me quite a bit to LET GO of my way of doing things. I had to
take my ego out of the picture. (VERY hard to do.)

Nowadays, I realize that developers don't have to BE better than me. I simply
have to ALLOW them to do what they do without being so obsessive about it.
Turns out, even junior developers really CAN do good work. They just need a
little guidance that only comes with experience, and then they need me to get
out of their way."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8649415)

~~~
superalanliu
"There is a hard limit on our personal abilities."

Reading this makes me think of fixed vs growth mindset. Also, I feel that the
'hard limit' is way beyond the 'exceptional' line. So anyone can work and
become exceptional. I feel like the 'hard limit' applies if you want to be #1
or something not the .01%.

~~~
wallflower
You are correct.

Technical ability is somewhere in the continuum between fixed and growth. When
I look at natural artists draw portraits, I realize that it will take me years
and days of continual practice to get to their point (even if I ever do). The
true measure of a good portrait artist is how few lines they take to capture
the essence of an individual.

As someone once explained to me, it is hard to be the global maximum (e.g. the
most attractive person in the world or the best coder in the world). It is
much more achievable to be the local maximum (e.g. the best listener/most
interesting person at the party, the one who regularly gives interesting
technical talks at the local niche meet up). And really - therein buried is my
point - if you truly want to be an exceptional programmer, I believe you must
help others become better. Otherwise, what are you contributing? Your high
income paycheck to buy stuff? True happiness comes from belonging (strongly)
to a community.

The way I look at fixed vs growth is in terms of diversification. Yes, if I
invest 1000 hours in beginning to go through TAOCP - I might become a better
algorithmic thinker. However, what would becoming a better algorithmic thinker
do to my medium and long-term goals? I personally and strongly believe that
the more we invest in areas that we have interest in and may fear a bit (fear
is a very good indicator of what you need to work on) and yet may be
relatively weak in e.g. learning how to sell, connect to people - the more
diversified your life, relationships, acquaintances, and skills will become.

------
bahmutov
You want great programmers? Exceptional? Why would any exceptional programmer
go to US on H1B visa? It is such a short leash - no way anyone truly great
would trade Europe or Asia for a chance to be a slave in a cubicle, ready to
be fired at moment's notice.

You want exceptional programmers, Paul? I will tell you a way to find the
truly great ones, and promise that other developers will NOT be against it.
Any developer can come here, provided that the hiring company:

1\. Pays him / her $1,000,000 (1 million US dollars) per year, tied to
inflation. I don't care how you search or decide, but that is the best
indicator of a truly exceptional programmer - paying him / her a LOT. 2\. If
the contract is broken for any reason, the exceptional developer gets the
severance package, for example a 6 months salary.

Hmm, I do not see you or anyone else advocating for _exceptional_ salaries to
pay for an exceptional programming talent. Case closed.

------
jleyank
Assuming linearity, there's 1/10 of the number of exceptional programmers in
Canada vs the US (based on population). The educational system's are
comparable, as are the social environments. Canadians can get TN visa to work
in the US with a job offer and a CV at the port of entry, so there's no
"paperwork problem". Although it's probably a bit more difficult than coming
north as it's trivial coming north...

So, if it's important to hoover up the rockstars from Canada, there's nothing
stopping companies - they already have the weather advantage, and relo costs
are pretty low for most singletons. The only negative is that the TN visa
can't lead to a green card. But I doubt most startups are thinking "six years,
get green cards for the staff".

------
tdicola
Why can't this argument be flipped on its side, if 95% of the best programmers
are outside the US then why aren't the venture capitalists investing in and
building companies outside the US? Surely we should see 95% of their portfolio
companies are outside the US too...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
95% of the VCs are in ONE TOWN. Its not a USA vs the world problem. Its just a
concentration of wealth problem.

And hey, its not like the best programmers are sheep being herded into the US.
They have to apply. Don't they get a say? In a one-world view it doesn't
matter where they work.

------
rfrey
There's a number of comments here disputing the "even distribution" assumption
pg makes. The disagreements are wrong because pg did not say that great
programmers were evenly distributed, just that the qualities that make great
programmers are.

Some of those qualities are, IMO, curiosity; a mathematical inclination;
attention to detail; an ability to quickly move between levels of abstraction;
and so on.

I have no trouble believing those qualities might be evenly distributed among
all humans. Of course, in many places people with those qualities might not
choose to study programming, because the local culture and economics do not
reward that path. An established and reliable migration path to a place where
it is valued might change those choices though.

------
vproman
If depressing compensation isn't a goal of tech companies, than why the
collusion between many of the large tech companies via their anti-poaching
agreements? Compensate them with the benefits, environment and challenges that
will keep them, instead of colluding to prevent their mobility through a free
market.

Also, if "natural born, exceptional" programmers are so rare, would you not
have to invite 999 "competent" programmers, of which we supposedly need no
more of, in order to get that 1 "exceptional" programmer which Graham claims
we desperately need? So to get thousands of exceptional programmers, how many
competent programmers would have to be invited into the workforce as well?

------
thesz
1) By training you will uncover latent great programmers.

2) By training you will raise overall education level, making life easier and
more pleasant for everyone in country (any country, not only US).

Either I getting old or PG getting sloppy. His latest essays do not stand a
bit of critique.

------
angry_octet
At the core of PG's post are two related errors (1) that US companies, without
immigration barriers, would _choose_ to recruit these top 5% programmers, and
(2) that these 5% would _want_ to move to the US.

Whether companies even can select out this 1-in-20 person is implausible,
especially from overseas. The top 25% maybe. I can only ascribe (1) to an
unreasoning faith in American capitalism and (2) to a lack of travel and
living overseas.

In my experience the 5% programmers are already taken. America does need to
reduce the immigration admin burden to encourage innovation, but its only a
part of the problem. And maybe American companies should try harder to
innovate in other countries.

------
lukasm
Surprisingly, the solution is the free market. Make a pool of 5k visas with
almost no requirements. Companies will bid on it. Add 50 visas for startup
founders. Run this experiment for al least 6 years and measure the outcome.

On the other hand, that maybe a good thing. If we have more "Silicon Valleys"
there will be more innovations, more competition. We don't need one superpower
a.k.a monopoly that comes with other risks like NSA.

Price of starting a company is going down, markets are becoming more liquid
therefore you don't need SV crazy money to get you going. What is more, you
can reach ramen profitability faster outside SF, get more talent.

~~~
mohanmcgeek
6 years is a huge time scale. For reference: 10 years ago, China had trade
deficits. The companies have a problem now, and it needs to be fixed now.

------
Terr_
> The only explanation is that they're telling the truth: there are just not
> enough great programmers to go around.

Hardly the only explanation.

First, the "career fakers" are unlikely to be seeking international
relocation, which means that imperfect interviewing/hiring systems don't
exhibit their latent flaws as much.

Second, "post-purchase rationalization" becomes a factor: "I went through this
effort in the past, it must have been worth bit."

Third, how much more time is spent vetting a single international hire, versus
the same attention to a local candidate? If the outcome is better, how much of
that is due to a deeper engagement by the company?

------
chetanahuja
Everybody seems to be discussing the pros and cons of H1-B and it's various
misuses etc. It's very clear to anybody who's gone through the process (as I
have, both as an employee and as an employer) that this is an extremely flawed
process based on a mid-20th century model of industrial work in huge
factories.

But PG's essays is not about necessarily maintaining or expanding the existing
flawed process itself. It's about the end goal of having a rational legal
process to keep the tech ecosystem healthy. Some of the concrete ways I can
think of that makes the situation better:

1) Right away, grant all tech degree holders from say, the worlds' top 200
universities immediate medium term visas equivalent to current OPT (Optional
Practical Training periods which are short term). The current version of OPT
allows about 18 months of work permit for jobs somewhat related to their
degrees. An alternate, more politically palatable version of this might only
include US universities and/or only post-graduate degrees. A very basic
version of this idea can simply extend the term of the current OPT to say, 5
years.

2) Dissociate the granting of green cards to skilled employees from a
particular employer. This is a major reason H1-B visa holders feel trapped
with one employer (otherwise the mobility between jobs is pretty easy for H1-B
holders). Let the skilled immigrant directly apply for permanent residency
based on employable skills supported by, say, education, employment,
compensation history so far in their careers. Make sure equity compensation is
given weight here (to treat the startup ecosystem fairly).

3) Remove the per-country quotas on green cards. India and China having the
same quota as say, to pick a random small country - Latvia, is ridiculous and
quite possibly mirrors the old style racist immigration policies from the
previous centuries.

(1) and (2) will pretty much mitigate most of the issues foreign engineers
face when participating the startup ecosystem. All three changes together will
take away any motivation/power employers have over skilled employees in
today's H1-B -> green card pathway based system. This should also assuage any
valid wage suppression issues raised by some people on this forum.

------
dangoldin
Using the same argument we should be investing more in the groups that
traditionally haven't been into programming - women and minority groups. They
are already US citizens without needing a visa sponsorship.

------
jeffdavis
"has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US, where
they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American. Why would they
go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same price?"

I agree with the essay in general, but this seems like a fairly dumb question.
Supply and demand says that a greater supply will tend to drive prices down.
That may not really apply in this case, because a greater supply might result
in a greater demand (for various plausible reasons); but the question just
seems like a poorly-argued part of the essay.

------
YuriNiyazov
I am surprised by this. It would be so much more efficient to concentrate on
building technology that makes working with people around the world as
seamless as working with them in the same office.

~~~
nostrademons
It would, if it would work. 90% of the technology is already there, in the
form of email, videoconferencing, shared docs, DVCS, etc. The problem is that
the remaining 10% will probably mean the difference between the success or
failure of your organization, and so until somebody can make brilliant chance
creative ideas happen between people on different continents as easily as they
happen over dinner, people will still have to colocate.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
Yea, I've worked at plenty of SV startups. I hear a lot about this "chance
brilliance" phenomenon as the reason for stuffing people into the same open
space. Usually it just means lots of noise and interruptions where you can't
concentrate on anything you are doing.

I can see this argument work when the team is like 4-5 people, but the moment
you are at 15 and above, it all breaks.

------
Xatter
Maybe we should look at what the data have to say and then formulate our
opinions from evidence?

[http://www.epi.org/press/epi-analysis-finds-shortage-stem-
wo...](http://www.epi.org/press/epi-analysis-finds-shortage-stem-workers/)

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-
crisis-i...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-is-a-
myth)

If you're going to dispute these findings I look forward to reading your peer
reviewed published papers.

------
FlipFlopsb
"The US has less than 5% of the world's population. Which means if the
qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of
great programmers are born outside the US" That is some very flawed thinking
right there.

If this statement about how all the great workers are not US was true then
they could outsource all programming outside the US easily just like call
centers. This article is just more propaganda to pay programmers the same wage
as minimum wage.

~~~
mightybyte
Not true. The legal landscape in some (many?) other countries gives companies
much less recourse against IP violations. When you hire programmers, you
typically have to give them access to a substantial portion of your code base
if you want them to be productive. For overseas programmers, their country
needs to have IP laws with enough teeth so you can be reasonably confident
that your programmers aren't going to take your code and run. This is not an
issue with call center workers.

------
tezza
What PG is stating is broadly true.

It may be possible to eke out a few more % of programmers by teaching
computing more widely.

At the moment the bunch of programmers is fairly self-selecting, and there may
be many more people who may be great programmers if exposed to the
possibilities.

For instance, some people who would normally become metal workers, stone
masons, fine artists or mechanical engineers could make excellent programmers.

------
spinlock
I seriously doubt the wisdom of a CEO who is willing to go from 70 to 100
programmers in one morning. What's he going to do after lunch?

------
strommen
Sure, sounds great.

But out of all the people that would love to immigrate to the USA, how can we
possibly distinguish the "great" programmers from the merely competent (or
less)?

Hiring is already an extremely difficult problem for the most sophisticated
technology companies in the country. We can't possibly expect a government
agency to do it well at all.

------
jerdavis
I see PG's resume, but I seriously wonder how many programmers he's
interviewed, hired, managed, and fired in the last 5 years. How often has he
thought about what to pay his engineers in relation to their output and others
in the group. How much experience does he personally have with offshoring? I
bet not that much actually.

------
23david
Skilled programmers are able to generate incredible economic value, and
companies having difficulty hiring should consider whether they are
undervaluing programmers when they set salary ranges.

It's possible to quickly test this by simply adjusting the salary ranges
upwards until good candidates start accepting job offers. Believe me... it
works.

------
aristus
Or, perhaps, companies should become smarter about recruiting and hiring the
large-but-unknown "false negatives" that are generated by their current
process. Easier to implement, a competitive advantage, and you don't have to
run a lobbying campaign. All you have to do is prick a few egos. Oh, wait...
that's why.

------
protomyth
First, characterizing anyone against the current H1B program as anti-
immigration is a nice political tact but has nothing to do with the truth. It
is a great way of framing the other side, but it is not a nice way to debate,
but it is so common.

The current H1B lowers prices of IT by mostly supplying body shop consultants
to American corporations. Go look at the stats of who is getting the most H1Bs
and the dirty tricks they are using to assure no citizen can apply for those
positions. Now that the big players have been caught illegally colluding on
depressing wages this is the next step to cheapen the wage pool.

Second, the silicon valley folks could start recruiting a lot better. Since we
talk about ageism[1] and sexism so much, perhaps some effort into recruiting
could be spared. While we're at it, perhaps recruiting from other colleges
that have programs[2].

Third, I'm all for legal immigration after all part of my family came that
way, but I want the H1B program (and its hidden friends) removed. I want all
the folks who came here and got degrees given first chance with NO indentured
servitude to a single company. The American taxpayer had a hand in educating
these students and it is high time we got value from it.

Yes, we should speed up the path for STEM folks we need, but it should not be
at a single company's whim.

1) It seems like hollywood actresses have about the same career length as
programmers (30 is too old, 40 and 50 are un-hireable).

2) Microsoft in the 90's made it very clear they only wanted people from the
school I attended for support since we had a nice midwestern accent.

------
cykho
I wonder what the all up cost of getting someone an H1B visa is currently? Is
this an annoying bureaucratic hurtle or a real barrier to talent entering the
US?

My perception is that the cost is around $20k (lawyers/filing fees) + some
uncertainty due to the lottery. Is that a barrier to a person that's worth
paying $100k+?

~~~
OmarIsmail
The problem isn't the cost. Most tech companies (in SF/the Valley) at least
will gladly pay the 10K in legal costs (amortized over 2-4 years, that's a
small percentage of fully loaded cost). The problem is the cap. If you try to
bring in a talented person then you're rolling the dice. 50% chance they get
H1-B - oh and you can't apply until April 1st, and you don't find out for 2
weeks (if you expedite) or 3 months (if you don't). And if you DO get the visa
then they're not allowed to start working until October 1st.

So you have to take them through the entire process before April 1st - so
realistically Jan/Feb/March, and then you won't actually be able to have them
in house until October. Large companies can weather that kind of delay just
fine, but a 5 person startup?

------
davidw
I decided to write about this myself, as a place to collect a lot of my
thoughts on the errant economic and moral reasoning I see on these threads:

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

------
technoir
Some seem to believe that software developers are so focused on programming
that they were never exposed to basic macroeconomics.

If supply goes up, price goes down.

It may be better for employers, and the economy as a whole depending on how
you measure, but it is not in the best economic interest of those already
selling their development labor.

------
DontBeADick
> But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain
> size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US,
> where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American.

The whole argument hinges on this unverified anecdote.

Sorry, but your personal experience isn't universal.

------
polskibus
Why don't SV companies hire programmers abroad by opening tech centers abroad?
That's what other tech companies do, either directly or via outsourcing
companies like SII or EPAM. Quality control is mostly a matter of pay - if it
is good enough, you will get the same quality of work as in US.

------
stinos
But, is it really necessary that all, or most, those exceptional programmers
are concentrated in one country? Becasue in the end that's what is being
advocated here: keep the US a technological 'super'power. Why is that needed
(honest question)? How about diversity?

------
jarsin
Please tell me how the startup you mention identifies great programmers.

I would not be suprised at all that they are yet another company that thinks
solving trick programming questions under pressure is what makes someone great
vs not great.

sorry but i call bs on your startup that cant find great programmers.

------
rglullis
One thing that I don't get about the critics (especially the liberal-inclined)
from H1B programs is: even if opening the gates ends up resulting in cheaper
labor, what is _wrong_ about that?

If the gates were open, the ones coming here to work for cheap won't be taking
your jobs at the next startup fad. They will be working doing the things that
Americans don't want to do: improving network infrastructure, doing boring TPS
reports in biotech firms, basic IT, local (better) tech support, maybe
modernizing your craptastical banking systems. None of the Americans that
complain about H1B ever seem to realize that.

You guys seemed perfectly fine to have the Chinese building your railroads and
to have the hispanics taking care of your children or to work in the kitchen
of your favorite restaurant. So much so that you seem to be okay with giving
amnesty every 10-20 years to undocumented immigrants. No need to worry, the
status quo will not be challenged.

~~~
droopyEyelids
What is wrong is that cheapness is enforced by making those laborers a second
class citizen- they need to stay with the company that sponsors their visa or
they get kicked out of the country.

Thats also the only reason why they're cheaper. Because, by law, their
employers have stripped them of the only negotiating right an employee usually
has- the ability to switch jobs.

This would be unethical enough if it existed in a vacuum, but instead it
exists in context of citizens trying to get jobs, lowering their value while
pitting them agains the workers without rights.

~~~
davidw
So we should let people come _and_ give them more rights to switch jobs.
Simply keeping people out is not the answer.

~~~
droopyEyelids
Yes that is the point I'm making. That is not the point Paul Graham,
Zuckerberg, or FWD.US are making. And if they aren't making that point, it's
not going to be in the bill that gets passed through congress.

------
raintrees
Recognizing other countries' education/qualification/certifications would
assist, as well (once they are here). I have spoken with a few people directly
that had to start over once living in the US, their previous efforts were
discounted.

------
andyidsinga
>> [2] .. An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the last thing
they'd want; it would destroy them

i wonder if the great amout of inexpensive mediocre programmers everywhere
else will wtill have a similar a similar effect over the next 50 years.

------
tartle
"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."

Evidence-based policy proposal at its finest :)

~~~
gaius
... And he could, if he simply out-bid his competitors.

~~~
OmarIsmail
Businesses die when they run out of money.

Paying your programmers 3-500K/year is a sure fire way to run out of money
really quickly.

And while a great programmer is obviously worth it, most companies (at the
early stage) have so many external factors that even a great programmer isn't
enough, they need the time to iterate and find product market fit. You know
the whole lean startup thing. So how do you circle that square?

~~~
gaius
This is true of any commodity - salaries for your talent, square feet of
office space, kilowatts for your technology, you name it. It's called
business. And it's not at all clear why you, I or anyone else should
subordinate our own best interests, to make this guy richer.

~~~
OmarIsmail
But you understand the world isn't that simple right?

Imagine you lived on a land with 100 square feet. You wanted to open a store,
but the big supermarket (because they started early) already has 60 square
feet and the price of the other 40 square feet is astronomical. So you can
only rent out 5 square feet. Well, you can't do much with 5 square feet, and
that big market is making lots of money with theirs. So they keep buying more
square footage and driving up the prices until there's literally no way any
other business can continue to exist.

See, by artificially limiting things you can create a situation where only
people that are already in an advantageous position will strengthen that
position. Now, if you want only big tech companies to exist and not see the
innovation brought forth by small companies then sure continue supporting and
advocating for restrictive policies. If you actually care about the long term
future of what the human race is capable of then you'd want to remove all
artificial restrictions and let the more natural "survival of the fittest" of
the market iterate towards new innovations and technology.

~~~
gaius
Do _you_ understand that the world is not that simple? The only artificial
shortage in play, is created by those self same companies - or unemployment in
the US particularly among 40+ programmers would be 0%.

If _you_ care about the long term future of the human race you would be
fighting both ageism and indentured servitude.

~~~
OmarIsmail
If you know of any great 40+ programmers please send them my way.

I think you are ascribing a conspiracy with something that can be much more
easily explained. 40+ y/o programmers first started learning programming 20+
years ago when programming was more low level in general. Furthermore their
skills were honed on broken processes and outdated technology. And, if a
programmer has been in the industry for 20+ years and they are good, they've
most likely made enough money to retire, or are in a management position (and
expecting a management position). Lastly, there were a lot less programmers
entering the field 20+ years ago than there are today (I'm guessing on this
one admittedly).

When you take all of these factors together, how many job-seeking unemployed
40+ programmers are really out there? My guess is that if they are job-seeking
and unemployed, they should be looking inwards for why. It's probably a
problem that they can solve themselves. And of course it doesn't have to be
skill based issues - most people don't live in SF which is where a lot of
programmer hiring is happening now. By 40+ you have a family with roots that
people don't want to uproot.

If you know of any good programmers that are willing to work as an engineer
(not manager) in SF then please please PLEASE send them my way.

~~~
gaius
_40+ y /o programmers first started learning programming 20+ years ago when
programming was more low level in general. Furthermore their skills were honed
on broken processes and outdated technology_

When you have been around technology for a little while you will see that the
changes over time are superficial. There's actually not much you can do with a
fancy Angular app now, that you couldn't do with an IBM 3270 terminal 40 years
ago. You have a form to enter records into a database, or a report to extract
that data in a nicely formatted way. Or Facebook, or Amazon, or whatever, to
an experienced programmer these are just forms and reports. They differ from
earlier apps only in the most trivial ways, the engineering under them hasn't
changed. These old guys built things like banking systems, airline booking
systems, that have been running for decades, and will be running for decades
more. They know 100x more than any "scrum master" or whatever is in fashion
now.

Sadly attitudes like you demonstrate, are common. Hence, rampant ageism and
the drive to hire cheap 20-somethings.

~~~
OmarIsmail
Fundamentally programming is all the same: it's pushing around some 1s and 0s.
But you'd have to be crazy to think the people in this industry haven't been
standing on each other's shoulders and constantly refining existing ideas and
developing new ones.

If anything, the pace of innovation has been accelerating.

This kind of "I've been coding banking systems that have been around for 20
years what do you know you little snot" faux-elitism is the exact attitude
that makes certain kinds of developers absolutely horrible to work with. I
hope you recognize that.

~~~
gaius
Not really, it's the voice of experience. For example, I did Versant in the
90s, and the reasons we ripped it out and went back to Oracle, still apply
when someone says "let's use MongoDB!". But too many people in the industry
lose out if we stop reinventing the wheel and start REAL innovation.

------
fdesmet
pg may be right in some respects, but that doesn't mean his opposition is
wrong.

pg's argument cannot explain the reality that we've all seen: companies hire
droves of H1B folks who are anything but exceptional.

Only a fool fails to understand why.

------
Khelavaster
I hope the qualities that make someone a great programmer aren't evenly
distributed. I hope that the American education system effectively develops
those qualities on average better than any other country in the world.

------
Torgo
Fix the obvious, rampant fraud first, otherwise you're dumping water into a
bucket with a giant hole in the bottom. If you can't stop fraud then you can't
stop more fraud when the numbers are increased.

------
oskarth
YC has a big advantage over US: they are not geographically bound to one
place.

Say nothing changes in a decade. There's nothing that's fundamentally stopping
YC from starting branches in SE Asia, Europe or Canada.

------
Htsthbjig
Let's put an exemple of what PG is saying: Ellon Musk

Ellon Musk is from South Africa, he was not born in America. He has created an
enormous amount of wealth in the US.

It is as simple as the US won't have self landing space rockets today without
this man. Tesla would be bankrupt today, like Fisker.

It seems clear to me after reading comments here that Americans feel entitled
to the position of world rulers they enjoy today. As if the wealth they enjoy
as hegemonic power was generated in America and not all around the world.

Do you believe your salary is American generated? It is not. You print dollars
that the world needs to use because it they don't sanctions are raised to
them, or the US just invades them.

But as PG is saying, the world using the dollar as world reserve could change
overnight.

You take your privileges for granted.

~~~
1971genocide
I get the same feeling reading the comments in this thread. I can see why your
comment would get down-voted. Most ppl in this thread do not want to hear the
real fact that they are no different than the rest of the labour force. But
because they grew up with an entitled expectation they cannot even imagine
that someone out there can even be marginally talented as them.

~~~
amerliore
How does your logic apply to the superrich ownership class?

Are they actually any more talented than the people they rule over?

Why is questioning their wealth taboo, but undermining __my __modest career
prospects virtuous?

------
JoeAltmaier
Enlightened self-interest. Great people increase opportunity. To the degree
that happens, this is a good idea. In the short term there will be
supply/demand issues and some folks will get hurt.

------
bsbechtel
Wasn't it Ben Franklin that made a very similar appeal, regarding all
occupations? The US should want the very best talent the world can produce, in
every field, not just technology.

------
alecco
Why not both ways? We should seek to make countries open their immigration
(not just USA) and we should create a worldwide union of IT workers to protect
abuse like they do now with H1B.

------
aheppenstall
I think a lot of those talking about cheap labour really don't understand how
the current US immigration system works. Maybe large companies have other
options but as a startup founder I've been through the H1-B process and it is
anything but cheap and easy. Legal costs are in excess of $5k and the you must
pay the employee a prevailing wage. For my cofounder this was in excess of
$180k and thus as a series seed startup we simply can't afford to exercise the
visa.

I absolutely understand the need to protect US jobs but the situation isn't
very good when two cofounders can't stay in the country after raising almost
$1m in seed capital and employing US citizens.

------
xacaxulu
It's incredible what shortages exist when you don't provide meaningful work,
competitive wages or room for advancement. Time to import less demanding
people.

------
iamwil
Why would the distribution of great programmers around the world assumed to be
even?

Is it because of widely accessible programming resources for cheap through the
internet?

------
neaanopri
We shouldn't restrict expansions to digital talent.

------
trothamel
Isn't this what E-1 and E-2 visas are for?

------
xigency
There are plenty of exceptional people who are not given any sort of
meaningful opportunities.

------
rwallace
As an anti-immigration person, my position is not the one suggested by Paul
Graham. I make no claims either way regarding the ease of training people to
be programmers. My position is that we should put an end to this ridiculous
19th-century idea that you can only be a productive programmer if you are
physically located in the US.

------
pskittle
late to the party but hoping someone can answer a quick question. I'm one of
those people trying to learn how to code. How i do I know i'm on track to
being better than a competent programmer?

------
duaneb
Yeah, let's prioritize blind progress over employing local citizens.

------
tsotha
>The technology companies are right. What the anti-immigration people don't
understand is that there is a huge variation in ability between competent
programmers and exceptional ones, and while you can train people to be
competent, you can't train them to be exceptional.

What Paul Graham doesn't understand is hardly any of the H-1B people companies
are importing are exceptional, and half of them aren't even competent. It's
not even about getting enough labor to fill open positions. It's about
flooding the market with low cost labor so US technical people lose market
pricing power.

These companies don't even _know_ if there's a US citizen who's qualified for
the job. I mean, this kind of stuff goes on all the time:

>The contention of the DoJ in this indictment appears to be that Mr.
Cvjeticanin was defrauding companies seeking to hire IT personnel, yet for all
those hundreds of ads — ads that for the most part never ran and therefore
could never yield job applications — nobody complained!

[http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/18/so-thats-how-h-1b-visa-
fr...](http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/18/so-thats-how-h-1b-visa-fraud-is-
done/)

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

~~~
gaadd33
Why don't exceptional programmers come in via the O-1 visa program? Obviously
if they are exceptional it should be easy to meet the standards set by the
government for the visa.

There's no limit on the number of O-1 visa's that can be issued in a year so
you don't have the lottery effect that the H1B has. The downside for the
company that helps their employee get it is that the visa doesn't indenture
the employee to the company, so they are free to quit and find a new job at
their own pace.

~~~
LetBinding
O-1 is also tied to the sponsoring company.

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

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

~~~
gaadd33
From reading this: [http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/o-1a-extraordinary-
abili...](http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/o-1a-extraordinary-ability-and-
achievement/understanding-o-1a-requirements)

It seems like you need 3 of the 8:

1,2, and 3 seem hard to do

4 might not be too hard

5 requires a letter from the company ceo/evidence that you are actually doing
something exceptional/useful

6 would be hard

7 is a letter requirement saying that your position is critical, I assume if
you are an exceptional programmer it should be easy to get that from your
sponsoring company.

8 says you get paid a lot, shouldn't be a problem for any software engineer

So out of the list, 2 of them seem trivial and then you just need to check the
box for one other, which if you are in the top programmers, shouldn't be too
hard.

~~~
LetBinding
7 is not satisfied by a letter from any company CEO. The person writing the
letter has to be a distinguished individual in their own capacity. A startup
CEO, irrespective of potential, is a nobody. Tim Cook writing the letter means
something. Also 1 letter doesn't suffice. O-1 applications typically require
7-8 such letters from distinguished individuals ~not directly related to your
field~. At a minimum 3 or 4 are needed.

Remember, US immigration is not an objective process, i.e., you satisfy 3 of 8
points, you are in. It is a subjective process. The sponsoring company hires a
lawyer to petition USCIS making a case for the visa. The subjective
interpretation of the petition is completely at the discretion of the specific
case officer. The recent multi-year trend of evaluating O-1 visa petitions
seems to be completely dependent on number of publications in journals, impact
factor of those journals, number of citations in google scholar, your work
being published in major news media, and several letters of support from
distinguished individuals from ~outside~ your primary area of expertise (your
contributions are considered valuable if people not in your immediate field
have a high opinion of you).

The law offices of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP, the immigration
attorneys that 95% of Bay Area companies retain for filing immigration visas,
will not even accept your case if the candidate doesn't have a Ph.D. with
several years of high impact publications.

As you can see, this visa is geared towards positions as university faculty,
major national lab scientists, or industry research labs of big firms. This
visa doesn't help startups. I know of only one startup that successfully got
the O-1 visa for a Chinese data scientist. But that person was part of the
CERN team that won the Nobel prize.

There is a huge gap between the targeted beneficiaries of the O-1 and H-1B
visa. One is geared towards Nobel prize caliber scientists, the other towards
run of the mill developers working in body shops and overseas consulting
firms.

The prototypical 10X developers that most startups seek do not usually meet
the criteria for the O-1, and is at a disadvantage in the H-1B lottery. A
lottery treats every application equally. It makes no distinction between an
extremely competent individual and an extremely incompetent one. This favors
body shoppers and outsourcers since they can mass-file visa petitions for
every warm body on their payroll overseas hoping some of them make the
lottery. A startup filing one or two visa petitions for a very specific
individual is at a severe disadvantage.

~~~
gaadd33
It's interesting that the bar is so high for engineers yet seemingly much
lower for musicians, models and businesspeople. Perhaps the solution is to
equalize that discrepancy. Or perhaps the bar is much lower in the NYC area
for those 3 fields and it isn't evenly applied everywhere.

~~~
LetBinding
It is simply because the contribution of a musician, a model, and an athlete
is more easily understood by peers in other fields. The value of a 10X
engineer is not that well understood by "outsiders" and in many instances by
"insiders" either.

Most folks think developers are interchangeable cogs in a machine. They don't
think the same of musicians or models or athletes. This is exacerbated by the
body shoppers and overseas outsources who indeed consider their developers as
mere warm bodies or "resources", and who indeed abuse the H-1B visas. Startups
are the losers.

The O-1 visa was introduced before the era of startups and wasn't really
geared towards the use case of a startup, i.e., a good developer slogging away
in a basement to make the next Google.

------
rweichler
What about the 95% of great companies overseas?

------
lukastsai
a mobile readable version:

[https://getscroll.com/r/6mzz6](https://getscroll.com/r/6mzz6)

------
slantedview
Paul's entire argument is a strawman.

H1B isn't about hiring "great programmers". It IS about importing cheap labor.
This fact has been proven many times, with actual data rather than rhetoric,
yet we still find ourselves having this same argument over and over. Here's a
nearly 10 year old study that lays it out:

[http://www.cis.org/PayScale-H1BWages](http://www.cis.org/PayScale-H1BWages)

~~~
dang
> Paul's entire argument is a strawman. H1B isn't about hiring "great
> programmers"

You use the word "strawman" and without skipping a beat replace his argument
with one (about H1Bs) that he obviously isn't making.

------
xacaxulu
Read, drive salaries into the dirt.

------
zerooneinfinity
That or they can pay foreign programmers a lot less and drive the average rate
down for everyone.

~~~
andrewliebchen
Or pay them the same as American workers and allow that money have an amazing
effect on the world.

Or we can continue only hiring Americans. Those $100 hoodies aren't going to
buy themselves.

~~~
amerliore
So the laws of supply and demand don't apply to labor markets?

Increasing the supply lowers the price. Are you disputing this?

------
shamney
what about the countries that are then deprived of this talent?

~~~
sumedh
Its called Brain Drain and its a real issue.

------
andyl
"American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier
because they say they can't find enough programmers in the US."

Clarification: can't find enough American programmers willing to work for low
foreign wages.

~~~
gaius
And, ageism.

~~~
michaelvkpdx
This is so screamingly correct. Let's go see the startups hire some old COBOL
(or now, VB) programmers and train them on the new stacks, before we listen to
anymore of this "there's not enough programmers in the USA" garbage.

~~~
wallflower
I used to be shocked at the 9-to-5 programmers. Those who code during the day
and go home and (egads!) do not code on side projects. The day of the company
Halloween party was always the most jarring. All these 9-to-5 programmers
would bring in their kids for the parade. For one afternoon, young, naive me
saw that the true meaning of life is your impact on the world. These kids were
the world for their parents.

Coming back to retraining, I think some of us in the bubble lose fact of how
much dedication is involved to successfully learn something new and become
productive. Retraining is hard and, more importantly, not everyone wants to
willingly do it.

~~~
gaius
Someone whose motivation is looking after their family will do _anything_ to
do so. Even JavaScript.

~~~
winestock
I will quote you on this. I don't care if you mind; it's just so good.

------
michaelvkpdx
Part of the reality of founding a company in the United States, and taking
advantage of the freedoms and protections being in the USA offers, is that you
have to work with the USA labor force.

If you don't like it- well, go international. Fast food restaurants don't get
to import the best burger-slingers from Germany. Software companies have to
live in the same space.

And it's complete and utter BS to suggest that there's no way we can make up
for the gap in our education system. You have to invest in the society, and it
takes time to train people. Railroads in the 1890's didn't suddenly wake up
with a million trained workers at their disposal, and they didn't have the
option of importing trained workers from the UK where railroads were booming.
Part of the limits of their expansion was the need for training- and when they
didn't train, they ended up with dead workers (25,000 out of a force of 1
million killed on the job in 1900 alone).

If someone wants to come to the USA on their own volition, and take their oath
of citizenship- fantastic! We should all welcome them. But it is not up to
corporations to dictate terms of citizenship at their convenience.

~~~
adambratt
Uh....most railroad workers were immigrants.

I get your point but that probably wasn't the best example.

~~~
michaelvkpdx
No- you're thinking of the railroad builders (1860's-1870's). By 1900, when
the railroads were into their big boom, most of the imported construction
workers had either become citizens or given birth to the next generation, who
were citizens.

I guess should have clarified that I meant the engineers, brakemen, locomotive
builders, and mechanics, and not the well-known Chinese and Irish immigrants
who made up the workforce building west.

------
mnglkhn2
The value proposition needs to be right.

So far, tech companies only propose to let people come and work, for 3 to 6
years. There is no guarantee made to the exceptional programmer that the
company will apply his/her green card, and hence facilitate the actual act of
immigration. Until The company applies and the application is approved, we are
talking just about work visas and not about immigration.

The only reasonable way to immigrate at this moment is through family, which
means come and get married to a citizen.

If you don't do that, then you are totally dependent at the whim of the
sponsoring company, which might decide at some point during those 6 years that
you are not exceptional anymore and hence you should pack and close down all
your stuff (apartment, bank accounts, etc) within 30 days (at some point not
even these 30 days were not guaranteed).

If we discuss about having talent coming in, then the discussion has to
clarify what the value on the table is.

~~~
sumedh
> we are talking just about work visas and not about immigration.

Moving to a different country under work visa is also immigration.

~~~
EduardoBautista
No, immigration implies you are going to stay there. Being on a work visa you
will always have the uncertainty that you will have to leave the country.

~~~
sumedh
Did some google search and yes you are right. I just assumed that moving on a
work visa also falls under immigration.

------
michaelvkpdx
Typical self-service from yet another rich VC.

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

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

------
vegabook
Basically this proposition makes complete sense if you're an employer, and
complete nonsense if you're not.

Of course the seductive argument of the bosses is that economic growth will
benefit, but the post-crisis economy is proving to concentrate all returns to
capital, and none to labour.

It's no wonder that those who champion it the most have nothing to worry about
to feed and house their families for the rest of their lives.

------
patronagezero
Surrender your welfare programs (social security, public schools, the postal
office, health insurance, the war machine, NASA, etc) and I'll be on board
with completely open immigration. Barring that, you're just another corporate
shill looking to profit from the ignorance of the masses.

------
byEngineer
Well, they are so constrained of talent but then they treat you like shit.
What gives?

------
michaelochurch
I don't buy the overall argument here.

 _Anti-immigration people say that instead of letting foreigners take these
jobs, we should train more Americans to be programmers._

I don't think most people who oppose the disingenuous invocation of "talent
shortage" (while discriminating against women, minorities, and programmers
over 40) by tech executives are "anti-immigration people". Immigration, at a
reasonable rate, is a good thing.

 _What the anti-immigration people don 't understand is that there is a huge
variation in ability between competent programmers and exceptional ones_

I hate being That Guy, but... [citation needed]. I don't exactly know who
these anti-immigration people are, though.

 _So they claim it 's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you
talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone
through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US, where they then
paid them the same as they'd have paid an American._

I don't think that it's just about driving down salaries. I think it's also
about age discrimination (enabled by the ready availability of young
programmers) and implicit expectations of obedience. In the US, you get talent
or obedience but rarely both. Overseas, you have at least a chance of getting
both (but if you're hiring on the cheap, the hit rate for talent is pretty
low).

 _He said "We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning." And this is one of the hot startups
that always win recruiting battles. It's the same all over Silicon Valley.
Startups are that constrained for talent._

And yet they only want to hire pedigreed men under 40 who live in
California... Somehow, I don't buy it. If you want more talent, raise wages.
That's how economics works.

 _Exceptional performance implies immigration. A country with only a few
percent of the world 's population will be exceptional in some field only if
there are a lot of immigrants working in it._

We're still the 3rd-largest country by population, and have some of the best
land, and speak the dominant language...

Still, I take no issue with what the H1-B program is _supposed_ to be: high-
talent immigration. I'm for that. But a true high-talent immigration would
have, by definition, to be employer-independent, meaning that once you're in,
you're in and can move about the economy just as easily as anyone else.

One of the problems with the H1-B program is that it makes it hard for visa-
holders to change jobs, and leaves them beholden to their employers because
they can be _deported_ if they're fired. If we're going to have a high-talent
immigration program, we should have one... but that requires an unconditional
"once you're in, you're in" policy, not some subordinate/contingent status.

 _Technology gives the best programmers huge leverage_

I still haven't seen it. Upper-middle income is a nice improvement, but none
of the people buying houses in Palo Alto or Mountain View are programmers.
They're all VCs and product executives working 11-to-3 while the engineers do
all the heavy lifting.

 _We have the potential to ensure that the US remains a technology superpower
just by letting in a few thousand great programmers a year._

Why not just kill off the bro culture and the age discrimination? If we only
need a few thousand more great programmers, then just making the industry more
hospitable to women should do the job, right? If that's all we need, there's
no reason we need our tech CEOs to lie to politicians about a "talent
shortage" in order to get immigration policies changed.

Again, I have no problem with high-talent immigration. I think that we
absolutely should allow more upper-tier technical people (if at a level where
they'll create more jobs than they take, and top programmers are at that
level) into the country. But I don't think that the H1-B program, as it is
structured, does the right thing. Once someone has it, it should be employer-
independent.

------
pastProlog
> Anti-immigration people

Like the author? He wants a tranche of immigration slots to open and for that
tranche, indirectly if not directly, to block immigrants from Mexico,
Honduras, Nigeria, and so forth. These slots are effectively only open to
Indians, Chinese, and a trickle from other countries.

So this H1-B proposal is anti-immigrant. It means immigration only from mostly
two countries. Of a certain class of person. In order to cut the wages of US
programmers and force them to work more non-FLSA hours.

> Exceptional programmers

This is risible. I worked with a Chinese H1-B hire who told me he had never
touched a computer until he got to the US. While that may have been anomalous,
research on the H1-B immigration program (
[http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b.html](http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b.html)
) shows that it is not the best and brightest immigrating. The millionaire and
billionaire angels and VC's want to flood the US with indentured servants
chained to their H1-B visa. Look at the top H1-B sponsors - they are for
Tata's indentured servants, not for people doing bleeding edge
compiler/AI/whatever work.

> you can train people to be competent, you can't train them to be exceptional

Perhaps not, but I've met plenty of people with the capability to be
exceptional programmers, but during non-flush times companies want programmers
to have a BSCS, and with public colleges become more selective and raising
their rates, they never get a chance to do so. The millionaires and
billionaires get tax cuts on their capital gains, so the training they require
for this work becomes more costly to the worker, and in fact more workers
can't afford it, so a shortage develops. So then the parasite millionaires
want to suck off of India's free IIT program instead of restoring US education
to the level it used to be.

> how many more he'd hire

Yes, times are flush now. How many was he hiring in 2008-2009? How many in
2001-2002? When the economy goes into the toilet again, there will be millions
of indentured servants still here on H1-B visas. How many 40 or 50 year old
programmers is he willing to hire? Or are we supposed to pay and take out big
loans for our college, work 60 hour weeks in our 20s and 30s with the carrot
of options while paying San Francisco rents, suffering through the post-dotcom
and bank failure recessions, only to be cast aside at 40?

We hear about supply and demand from the oracles of economics all the time,
but somehow this NEVER applies to salaries going up. I mean I am open to
hiring programmers right now as well - seriously. You'll be paid minimum wage
and the output will have to be spectacular. As soon as the economy dips you'll
be gone.

We the programmers work. We are the creators of wealth. I have been studying
biology recently, including species which have become parasites. As one
species becomes more parasitic on another, it changes form completely. It
usually gains hooks and suckers to latch on to the working species it is a
parasite off of, and the parasite devotes its body to eating and sexual
reproduction. In our modern times, the angels, the accelerators, the VC's are
the parasites. These "job creators" expropriate the surplus labor time of we
the programmers, the network/system/database admins etc. who do all the work
and create all the wealth. The LP's of the big VC firms are the type of polo-
playing Phillips Andover heirs you can see in the documentary "Born Rich".
Something I know the 20-something unkempt dorks who go to Python conferences
know nothing about, although they are the ones ultimately being given their
marching orders and who are getting profits sucked off their labor. These
heirs have set up additional financial hurdles to getting a BSCS at a public
college over the years, and the parasites now want to parasitically suck of of
India's free IIT universities and turn their graduates into H1-B coolies over
here.

> we should train

When the hell was the last time a tech company really trained its employees?
Aside from the odd week-long class here or there? What a farce. Companies
haven't trained for decades, and the parasites who use companies to
parasitically suck off the labor of those of us who actually work have
reworked public US colleges to be more financially impossible to get through
than they used to - then they whine they can't find more "exceptional" US
programmers. What a farce.

------
slantedview
Re this footnote: "An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the
last thing they [Google and Facebook]'d want; it would destroy them"

If this is the case, why aren't Google and Facebook coming out strongly
against our current H1B mechanism which is demonstrably little more than a
tool for importing cheap labor?

------
wittgenstein
Another great essay by Paul Graham that spells out the idiotic state of the
current US immigration system in a clear manner. It is fucking unbelievable
that even in the comments here there are still people complaining about
foreign programmers driving salaries down or taking jobs from US citizens.
Paul Graham is right and any intelligent person can see this.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
People can disagree with PG (and you) and also be intelligent.

For example, me. PG is partially wrong, objectively. About the only thing his
essay has correct is that there exists intelligent, very good programmers
outside the US.

The collusion suit that big tech companies recently settled, the wage
stagnation even in our industry, and a wide variety of other facts suggest
that keeping wages low is in fact a very important goal to technology
companies, and that they will do anything--including illegal collusion--to
keep them low.

If anything the notion that there just aren't enough qualified (well-
qualified) workers in the US to fill tech positions is at best an
extraordinary claim that PG's essay fails by a wide margin to substantiate.

