This issue is a great example of a real-world “leaky abstraction”: we use this mental model of a market’s function, where prices are set by the interaction of s

This issue is a great example of a real-world “leaky abstraction”: we use this mental model of a market’s function, where prices are set by the interaction of supply and demand. And it’s a great model! It’s almost indispensable if you’re selling apples or buying a home. But the IT job market, specifically in Silicon Valley, is an almost pathological failure case. There have been hundreds of attempts to replicate the unique success of Silicon Valley across the world. Even within the US, where the regulatory environment, market size, and other confounding factors can be ruled out, they have all failed to varying degrees. The not-so-secret secret to SV’s success is now pretty well established to be very similar to an airport’s “meeting point”: It doesn’t actually matter that much where it is, as long as there are enough signs leading you there. And there needs to be just one meeting point, or the concept falls apart pretty quickly. SV is the meeting point of tech. Throw the best people, some good universities, a lot of capital, and maybe a decade of experiments with LSD in one pot, stirr, wait, and watch it bloom. Tech immigrants in the Valley are competing for jobs on the micro level. But zoom out just slightly, and they are a necessary ingredient of building the world’s most competitive innovation pressure-cooker. It may be useful to make the analogy with capital: just like people are competing for jobs, VC firms are competing for deals. Yet you never see attempts by that industry to restrict foreign capital to flow into the Valley, even though they would have all the resources to make their case to legislators. On a moral level, there is something not quite right about professionals with $60,000+ starting salaries to be antagonistic towards those using education and dedication to seek a better future among them. But even if you reject what some will surely call “SJW virtue signaling”, you should pragmatically choose to advocate for policies that help both you and your presumptive competitors: advocating for some of the practices that are close to indentured servitude will do just that. But that’s difficult to do, in practice: are you actually advocating for their benefit? Or are you trying to drape so many gold chains around their neck that they’ll sink, I. e. pricing them out of the market? If you are in SV, you have all the possibilities to discuss these questions with those affected by them. Make sure you do: that ability is but one of the perks of living in the world’s best place to find smart people of any background.