

The talented Mr Green: How FWD.us lost the tech moral high ground - georgeflanit
http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/29/the-talented-mr-green-how-fwd-us-lost-new-york-elon-musk-and-the-tech-moral-high-ground/

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wavefunction
FWD.us is about depressing wages and playing domestic labor against foreign
sources, while treating H1-B employees like indentured servants. I'd rather
compete on actual merits than the artificial ecology created by the H1-B
system.

We already have O and L1 visas, but apparently those limited requirements are
too much. I used to wonder about getting contacted by a recruiter wanting to
know if I was interested in a 2 month contract on the other side of the
country for peanuts when I obviously have a history and apparent preference
for FTE. Then I wised up.

~~~
jacoblyles
It's clear that a limiting factor on the growth of Silicon Valley is the
availability of high-skill laborers. The labor shortage out here is insane.
There are no unemployed competent computer programmers, and few unemployed
_incompetent_ programmers. Those that have jobs receive new job offers
_daily_. On the flip side, founders find it very hard to stand out amidst the
deluge of job offers to attract workers to their companies.

More high-skill immigrants would probably lead to more available jobs for
natives, as more companies could find the labor they need to grow.

A low-skill immigration increase isn't necessary, and may hurt the Americans
without a college degree who are already suffering in this economy from high
levels of unemployment. But it is likely the only way to get Democrats on
board for high-skill immigration reform.

~~~
jiggy2011
Skilled programmers being in demand and having options for employment for them
sounds like a feature not a bug to me.

What is wrong with the guy who has spent years of his life honing is craft
demanding a fat salary?

Programming seems to be one of the few professions where a junior employee is
expected to turn up and be productive from day 1.

If the programmers available don't have the skills you need, invest in
training them or mentoring them. Offer attractive wages and get applications
from all over the country. Talk to the colleges about your requirements and
see if they can work that into the curricular.

That eats into profits? Good, give the money to people with a higher
propensity to consume and spread that love around.

~~~
jacoblyles
It is to the point that companies with fat piles of money can't grow, because
they can't find competent people to give the money to. Yes, they do send out
linkedin emails and take recruiting trips all over the country.

~~~
georgemcbay
Sure they could, they just need to give out more money than they are willing
to.

There are some exceptions to this like a few people Google has famously
granted money hats to (but even they were more on the management side than
pure engineers), but start busting through the glass ceiling that sits at
around $160k or so for experienced engineers and see if you can't hire some.

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natrius
If I were Elon Musk, I'd abandon FWD.us too. Lots of people buy Tesla vehicles
for environmental reasons, so funding ads touting policies that are perceived
to be harmful to the environment would be a bad idea.

That doesn't mean the strategy is a bad one for FWD.us. Mark Begich will never
oppose ANWR drilling. Lindsay Graham will never oppose the Keystone pipeline.
The ads only serve as good PR for them to counter the bad PR they'll likely
get for immigration reform.

The article cites Josh Miller's editorial that criticizes FWD.us. Here's
another quote:

 _"...given that Mark Zuckerberg and the other technology pioneers who are
behind FWD.us have risen to prominence by spearheading disruptive innovations,
reverting to such traditional lobbying tactics seems like a missed opportunity
for meaningful change. Technology companies live and die by how innovative
their products are, our organizing and lobbying tactics should be no
different."_

How is that not textbook naivete? It's not a logically sound argument at all.

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jongraehl
I'm pretty sure that _skilled_ immigration is a net positive for the economy
(even below-median coder H1B, as opposed to the many awesome H1B working at
top companies).

But it seems a tautology that increasing skilled immigration quotas will
depress my salary. If quotas are decreased, then the spots will be filled with
only the best immigrants.

That said, most of my favorite technical peers are foreigners. So my ideal,
selfish scenario would be for my company to have the ability to easily bring
in H1B or similar, while our competitors can't :)

Minimum wage immigrant labor, on the other hand, absolutely must not lead to
full welfare-state benefits (if I've not been mislead about the lifetime cost
of Medicare), or the U.S. will be impoverished in the long haul.

It's unfortunate that the lobby for increasing H1B spots (which is probably a
net positive for the whole U.S., in spite of my selfish doubts listed above)
is politically allied with increasing unskilled immigration.

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guelo
You are wrong. Data shows that hard working unskilled immigrants are net
payers into the social system. And they are a big positive to the economy
overall. America became the world's superpower on the back of unskilled
immigrants.

~~~
jacoblyles
It's not necessarily pubic programs that are the problem. Unemployment among
low-skill workers is still high[1]. I don't see how increasing competition for
unskilled jobs is good for those already struggling workers suffering from a
low-skill labor glut. And intuitively I'd expect high-skilled workers to
generate more complementary jobs than low-skilled ones.

Today's economy and the economy in 1920 or even 1960 don't much resemble each
other. For starters, the costs of labor regulation and employer mandates sets
a pretty high price floor on labor. That creates a much more difficult market
for workers with relatively low marginal productivity to find work.

Also, the population has a far more top-heavy age distribution than it used to
have. This country is going to need a _very_ productive labor force to
maintain the welfare state at anything close to the current tax levels.

[1] <http://c4.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/YL%20chart.jpg>

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josh2600
Slightly tangential, but, holy shit, that's not a blog post, that's gold.

I have to wonder though about the ROI. That's a hell of an article and could
easily be in the New Yorker or Rolling Stone. Even if it gets 1M hits, it's
unlikely that the ad revenue will be anything like what Rolling Stone gets,
right?

If you had content that was this good, what would be your monetization
strategy?

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tosseraccount
Salon's take on billionaire lobbying :
<http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/billionaires_partner/>

"In April, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg unveiled FWD.us, a quasi-dark-
money outfit created to give Silicon Valley a greater political presence in
Washington. It has already raised $25 million."

Sailor's take : [http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/mark-zuckerbergs-save-
bil...](http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/mark-zuckerbergs-save-billionaires-
fund.html)

"I mean, if America's tech billionaires and mere centimillionaires
(hectomillionaires?) can't lower programmers' salaries immediately, what
possible economic incentive will they have to continue to be rich? It's Econ
101, people!"

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hkmurakami
The article title's reference to _The Talented Mr. Ripley_ is strangely apt,
having read the plot summary.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talented_Mr._Ripley>

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jacoblyles
Most of the bad press seems to be FUD against Keystone XL which works because
of the rich California liberals who don't care much about energy prices. Is
the lesson that no Silicon Valley PAC can ever come close to a conservative
cause?

~~~
chalst
I think the lesson is that, while you can have a bipartisan lobbying outfit, a
bipartisan lobbying outfit that sweetens some of its membership with partisan
campaigning against the views other members is going to land itself in
trouble.

