3 ms·

> why aren't they simply offering large enough compensation packages to attract the existing pool? Well, they are. Compensation packages at the big tech compan

• learc83 10y ago
  >Well, they are. Clearly they aren't. Say an engineer can make a company $1 million per year. They are only willing to pay $200k per year in total compensation, but they complain that they can't hire enough engineers. Obviously they aren't paying enough per engineer. >At a certain point, don't you think it's better to share some of that opportunity with smart foreigners? How many Teslas does an American twenty-something need? So it's not the multi-billion dollar companies that are being greedy, but the engineers making $150k a year? Companies want to import foreign workers to depress wages so that they can save money, and your instinct is to blame the workers who don't want lower wages?
  • aianus 10y ago
    > They are only willing to pay $200k per year in total compensation, but they complain that they can't hire enough engineers. Obviously they aren't paying enough per engineer. Engineers are not created from money. You might be able to fill your positions by paying more, but not all of the positions in the entire country. Not without immigration or higher graduation rates. > Companies want to import foreign workers to depress wages so that they can save money, and your instinct is to blame the workers who don't want lower wages? How do you justify that the location of birth should be the main determinant in whether an engineer earns $150k a year or $30k a year? That line of reasoning is a lot more disgusting to me than corporate profit-maximizing.
    • ThePawnBreak 10y ago
      > You might be able to fill your positions by paying more, but not all of the positions in the entire country. Not without immigration or higher graduation rates. There is not set number of "positions", the number depends on the number of developer willing to work for the wage offered. If you would consider an employer who is willing to pay $50 per month for a developer to have an open "position", then the number of positions would be an order of magnitude higher.
    • learc83 10y ago
      If there was really a shortage of engineers, then engineer salary would be very close to the value the engineer adds to the company, because the competition to hire would drive the price as high as it could possibly go. Salary is nowhere near close to the value an engineer adds to the company, so most likely there is no shortage. The shortage is a manufactured problem to justify an attempt to depress wages. >How do you justify that the location of birth should be the main determinant in whether an engineer earns $150k a year or $30k a year? If we take that to it's logical extreme. No one makes $150k a year. We allow an unlimited number of software engineers in until the average salary drops down to a level where it's not worth it to immigrate here. Maybe that's worth it to you, but if global income equality and globally open borders are your goal, argue for that. Stop with this false argument about an engineering shortage that doesn't exist.
      • aianus 10y ago
        > Salary is nowhere near close to the value an engineer adds to the company, so most likely there is no shortage. I think it is more likely that the marginal value added by an engineer to a company is much less than you think it is. If Google currently earns an average of ~$2m per engineer that does not imply that they will earn an additional $2m upon hiring another engineer. In fact I'm confident they could fire at least 500 engineers tomorrow without negatively impacting their profit at all.
        • eon1 10y ago
          ..because the engineers have created things that the company can continue to profit off. They're not factory workers, they don't need to be there on the day-to-day to add that value, so it's a little disingenuous to suggest the impact would be seen "tomorrow". Still not having those engineers 6, 12, 24 months down the line might not look so happy, though.