6 ms·

Any guess on how much will salaries for developers will rise after this move?

by LAMike 10y ago

barrkel 10y ago
Or how much developer employment will fall? (Two sides of the same coin.)
- UK-AL 10y ago
  Surely you only get more unemployment when its artificially increased by law. There would be nothing stopping a individual developer accepting a lower salary. But probably won't because companies are desperate for them.
  - barrkel 10y ago
    To be clear, we are explicitly talking about reducing employment; reducing the number of developers eligible to work directly reduces employment, because there are fewer left to be employed. Then consider the second-order effects. When wages rise, some development tasks are no longer worth performing, because they cost more than the value they create. In theory whole industries could become unsustainable if developers are very scarce, with knock-on effects on other professions.
  - VLM 10y ago
    "But probably won't because companies are desperate for them." Only in SV, maybe a couple other bubble towns. The most likely outcome is decentralization of SV and expansion of remote offices and remote working. Its easy for a world-wide company colocated with dozens of other world-wide companies in just one city to exhaust the supply of even the devs who fail fizzbuzz. If you expand that labor pool to the rest of the country given the extreme level of over-education and un- and underemployment in general, its not going to be a problem to find new devs of a higher quality than the drained pool in SV.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  How would that happen? do you mean world-wide?
onion2k 10y ago
If a company can't recruit an immigrant worker on a visa they'll try recruit one of the currently unemployed local developers on the exact same package the immigrant would have been on. That has no impact on wages. If the job required a unique talent that would only have been possible to fill with an exceptionally talented immigrant worker then the job won't be filled, and the company will be consequently less competitive. That will likely drive the wages of their workers down if a different company (in India perhaps) is able to utilize that worker's skills. For example, imagine the next Jony Ive can't get a visa so he stays in the UK and works for a British company instead.. How would that impact American wages?
- anjc 10y ago
  Why would it drive wages down?! It'd be the exact opposite, and is the reason that wages have been stagnant in STEM, and is the reason for the wage collusion scandal. Companies would have to increase their offers to attract talent from other companies. Or they would have to - as used to be the case everywhere - accept that talent is nurtured from within.
  - hocuspocus 10y ago
    IT services aren't STEM. The wage collusion scandal happened at a time where yearly H-1B quotas were typically not met! (Edit: I'm wrong, they were met, but much more slowly than they are today, no lottery needed back then). Today there's roughly 4 times more applications than visas delivered through the lottery, and the wages in tech have never been so high. If you get screwed by your employer within the framework of labor laws, don't blame it on immigration.
    - anjc 10y ago
      Would that not demonstrate the point then? You're saying wages aren't stagnant anymore, occurring at a time when the demand for workers has finally outstripped supply because not enough visas are issued. So don't blame it on immigration now, fine. But if issuances of visas increase then you're back in the <2012 situation of stagnant or decreasing wages due to the availability of cheaper workers. So can you then blame stagnant industry wages on immigration? Displacement of indigenous workers is also a major issue. By the way, I wasn't trying to "blame it on immigration", my ire is solely directed at corporate lobbying for public policy, given that their sole motivation is an increase of private profits regardless of the socioeconomic side-effects. It should not be allowed.
hocuspocus 10y ago
I don't think companies that outsource their IT to Infosys, Tata and the like, will suddenly be willing to pay more.
- angry_octet 10y ago
  The clients all bargain for the best deal in the market. If costs go up across the board they will have no option, if they want to stick with outsourcing. Outsourcing has its own peculiar costs, the market may evolve.
- flukus 10y ago
  You could remove 75%+ of the developers there with no loss to productivity anyway.
cronjobber 10y ago
Sure, glad you asked. Salaries will rise by exactly 13.6% within the first year.

Any guess on how much will salaries for developers will rise after this move?

by LAMike 10y ago

Any guess on how much will salaries for developers will rise after this move?

barrkel 10y ago

Or how much developer employment will fall? (Two sides of the same coin.)

UK-AL 10y ago
Surely you only get more unemployment when its artificially increased by law. There would be nothing stopping a individual developer accepting a lower salary. But probably won't because companies are desperate for them.
- barrkel 10y ago
  To be clear, we are explicitly talking about reducing employment; reducing the number of developers eligible to work directly reduces employment, because there are fewer left to be employed. Then consider the second-order effects. When wages rise, some development tasks are no longer worth performing, because they cost more than the value they create. In theory whole industries could become unsustainable if developers are very scarce, with knock-on effects on other professions.
- VLM 10y ago
  "But probably won't because companies are desperate for them." Only in SV, maybe a couple other bubble towns. The most likely outcome is decentralization of SV and expansion of remote offices and remote working. Its easy for a world-wide company colocated with dozens of other world-wide companies in just one city to exhaust the supply of even the devs who fail fizzbuzz. If you expand that labor pool to the rest of the country given the extreme level of over-education and un- and underemployment in general, its not going to be a problem to find new devs of a higher quality than the drained pool in SV.
Chris2048 10y ago
How would that happen? do you mean world-wide?

onion2k 10y ago

If a company can't recruit an immigrant worker on a visa they'll try recruit one of the currently unemployed local developers on the exact same package the immigrant would have been on. That has no impact on wages. If the job required a unique talent that would only have been possible to fill with an exceptionally talented immigrant worker then the job won't be filled, and the company will be consequently less competitive. That will likely drive the wages of their workers down if a different company (in India perhaps) is able to utilize that worker's skills. For example, imagine the next Jony Ive can't get a visa so he stays in the UK and works for a British company instead.. How would that impact American wages?

anjc 10y ago
Why would it drive wages down?! It'd be the exact opposite, and is the reason that wages have been stagnant in STEM, and is the reason for the wage collusion scandal. Companies would have to increase their offers to attract talent from other companies. Or they would have to - as used to be the case everywhere - accept that talent is nurtured from within.
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  IT services aren't STEM. The wage collusion scandal happened at a time where yearly H-1B quotas were typically not met! (Edit: I'm wrong, they were met, but much more slowly than they are today, no lottery needed back then). Today there's roughly 4 times more applications than visas delivered through the lottery, and the wages in tech have never been so high. If you get screwed by your employer within the framework of labor laws, don't blame it on immigration.
  - anjc 10y ago
    Would that not demonstrate the point then? You're saying wages aren't stagnant anymore, occurring at a time when the demand for workers has finally outstripped supply because not enough visas are issued. So don't blame it on immigration now, fine. But if issuances of visas increase then you're back in the <2012 situation of stagnant or decreasing wages due to the availability of cheaper workers. So can you then blame stagnant industry wages on immigration? Displacement of indigenous workers is also a major issue. By the way, I wasn't trying to "blame it on immigration", my ire is solely directed at corporate lobbying for public policy, given that their sole motivation is an increase of private profits regardless of the socioeconomic side-effects. It should not be allowed.

hocuspocus 10y ago

I don't think companies that outsource their IT to Infosys, Tata and the like, will suddenly be willing to pay more.

angry_octet 10y ago
The clients all bargain for the best deal in the market. If costs go up across the board they will have no option, if they want to stick with outsourcing. Outsourcing has its own peculiar costs, the market may evolve.
flukus 10y ago
You could remove 75%+ of the developers there with no loss to productivity anyway.

cronjobber 10y ago

Sure, glad you asked. Salaries will rise by exactly 13.6% within the first year.