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What do you mean by "high" wages? Would you post your region, along with the BLS salary for a software developer, a physician, lawyer, nurse practitioner, and

by geebee 10y ago

What do you mean by "high" wages? Would you post your region, along with the BLS salary for a software developer, a physician, lawyer, nurse practitioner, and dentist? For dallas, here are the numbers: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000 Nurse Practitioner: $101,260 Software Developer: $97,930 Dentist: $177,130 Lawyer: $132,380 Physicians and Surgeons: $202,450 I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example). But this does show you the kind of options available in the US to those motivated, confident, educated people with initiative you described in an earlier post. Personally, I think that if employers are having trouble getting people with choice to work as software developers, that's the market's answer. There are a lot of different perspectives on this - I personally don't have a problem with immigration, but I have a huge problem with coercing immigrants to work as software developers as a condition of living in the US. That's the real appeal of these corporate controlled immigration programs - create a pool of engineers who aren't allowed to go into higher paying fields. Free people are allowed to go to law school, open a sandwich shop, sell real estate, whatever they like. In response to market signals. You know free markets, freedom, personal choice. Corporations hate that stuff. So they've invented this fake story of a "shortage", as if this shortage isn't a rational response among free people to the pay and working conditions that are below what they can earn in other fields. And their solution is to use a coercive visa program to create a pool of workers who don't have this freedom.

austincheney 10y ago
> I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example). In my opinion this is the root of the problem. Schools are not preparing students with many of the practical skills of software development. These students enter the market with skills businesses claim to want, but often don't match with the reality of the position, platform, or technology. Businesses could solve this problem themselves by training their work force, but they don't. Instead it is entirely on the employee to get the skills (on their own time) the current employer demands. As a result many developers burn out and those who achieve this mastery of learning on their own time leave to get higher paying jobs elsewhere. Why wouldn't they since they have invested in themselves more so than the employer has, and such there is no loyalty earned. The end result is a talent gap. A large pool of barely qualified people that have trouble moving between employers and on the other side a couple of talented folks who can do whatever they want.

by geebee 10y ago

austincheney 10y ago

> I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example). In my opinion this is the root of the problem. Schools are not preparing students with many of the practical skills of software development. These students enter the market with skills businesses claim to want, but often don't match with the reality of the position, platform, or technology. Businesses could solve this problem themselves by training their work force, but they don't. Instead it is entirely on the employee to get the skills (on their own time) the current employer demands. As a result many developers burn out and those who achieve this mastery of learning on their own time leave to get higher paying jobs elsewhere. Why wouldn't they since they have invested in themselves more so than the employer has, and such there is no loyalty earned. The end result is a talent gap. A large pool of barely qualified people that have trouble moving between employers and on the other side a couple of talented folks who can do whatever they want.