6 ms·

It is good thing overall. If a resource becomes more scarce (programmers in this case) companies learn to use it in more effective ways.

by chewz 7y ago

klipt 7y ago
Good for software engineers, bad for those hiring them. Just like a scarcity of doctors is good for doctors, but bad for patients. If the USA had only one doctor, we would't magically be able to treat everyone by using the one doctor "more efficiently", rather only the super rich would get treatment.
- belltaco 7y ago
  Doctors cannot be easily offshored to another office or given 100% remote work. Software can, and it's happening, article mentions it at the very end. If it happened to manufacturing and factories, it could even more easily happen to software.
  - chewz 7y ago
    Doctors (and also lawyers) are replaced by technology as we speak. Now it is time for programmers to follow and it would be easier as there is less regulation involved then in case of doctors. So not all bad.
    - anon1m0us 7y ago
      That's what I don't understand. A doctor earns an average salary of say, $300,000, while a programmer building software that automates the job of a doctor earns an average salary of $75-100,000. The value of the programmers is equal to all the people their programs replace, but yet, they are paid less than a single one of the individuals they replace. Our society doesn't properly value programmers. If it did, there wouldn't be an H1-B issue. There are more Americans who want to be doctors than America will legally allow to exist. There's no cap on how many programmers there can be, yet America throws its hands up in the air wondering why. The answer is obvious: America doesn't value programmers appropriately. You can't say, "We can't afford to pay what programmers are worth." How about pay sales people less. Why do sales people get 30% commissions? Why do CEO's get millions? The only real solution to the problem is to properly value the work and pay for it.
      - charezinski 7y ago
        If America doesn't who does?
  - shagie 7y ago
    Radiology is one of those "this can be outsourced" things - https://healthmanagement.org/c/imaging/issuearticle/outsourcing-and-radiology https://healthmanagement.org/c/imaging/issuearticle/outsourc... This is known as 'teleradiology' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleradiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleradiology )
belltaco 7y ago
Or they will just offshore to Canada or India. Look at the bottom of the article where it mentions Toronto.
- cy_hauser 7y ago
  That's not as bad as H1-B abuse and reflects a real possibility for any business. In other words, it's at least "fair." The H1-B abuse is based on corporate lies. It's hard to claim that you need H1-B workers when you're replacing existing workers and even having the fired workers train their replacements.
- Clubber 7y ago
  I don't understand why they don't onshore to say Missouri, or Alabama, or anywhere that isn't a big city.
  - belltaco 7y ago
    How many people want to move to AL or MO for jobs, compared to bigger cities? Your application pool would be considerably smaller. In many cases they move people who have lost their work visa extensions after working for 5 to 10 years, yet haven't received their greencards because of country quotas. Example: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/microsoft-might-be-forced-to-move-some-jobs-abroad-brad-smith-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/microsoft-might-be-forced-to...
    - Clubber 7y ago
      I was thinking more of the people who already live there and are computer savvy and have an internet connection can be utilized. FWIW, I'd love to get a decent sized property with internet, away from the city and traffic and pollution, and be able to work full time remotely.
closeparen 7y ago
In my experience, being on a team with shrinking headcount due to difficulty hiring is not fun: - Quality gets cut before features. - Engineers are yanked and shuffled from one urgent priority to another with no sense of ownership and no time for craftsmanship, leading to garbage codebases. - Mentorship and development fall by the wayside, making it even more important to get senior talent from outside, yet we still don't. - Management eventually spins up a team in a more favorable country, which leads to a lot of annoying off-hours videoconferencing at best, possibly even loss of status as the "center of gravity" for your area. - They company starts looking downmarket for labor, giving you less competent coworkers. - Higher pay is directly offset by higher likelihood of a layoff; you shuffle all the excess into your emergency fund just to maintain the same level of security.
kypro 7y ago
It also motivates them to invest in training and education to increase the supply of programmers.
- closeparen 7y ago
  Training and education are things you do with slack time, which only exists when you have more than enough staff to do the work. When teams are lean, no one can afford to teach.

It is good thing overall. If a resource becomes more scarce (programmers in this case) companies learn to use it in more effective ways.

by chewz 7y ago

It is good thing overall. If a resource becomes more scarce (programmers in this case) companies learn to use it in more effective ways.

klipt 7y ago

Good for software engineers, bad for those hiring them. Just like a scarcity of doctors is good for doctors, but bad for patients. If the USA had only one doctor, we would't magically be able to treat everyone by using the one doctor "more efficiently", rather only the super rich would get treatment.

belltaco 7y ago
Doctors cannot be easily offshored to another office or given 100% remote work. Software can, and it's happening, article mentions it at the very end. If it happened to manufacturing and factories, it could even more easily happen to software.
- chewz 7y ago
  Doctors (and also lawyers) are replaced by technology as we speak. Now it is time for programmers to follow and it would be easier as there is less regulation involved then in case of doctors. So not all bad.
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    That's what I don't understand. A doctor earns an average salary of say, $300,000, while a programmer building software that automates the job of a doctor earns an average salary of $75-100,000. The value of the programmers is equal to all the people their programs replace, but yet, they are paid less than a single one of the individuals they replace. Our society doesn't properly value programmers. If it did, there wouldn't be an H1-B issue. There are more Americans who want to be doctors than America will legally allow to exist. There's no cap on how many programmers there can be, yet America throws its hands up in the air wondering why. The answer is obvious: America doesn't value programmers appropriately. You can't say, "We can't afford to pay what programmers are worth." How about pay sales people less. Why do sales people get 30% commissions? Why do CEO's get millions? The only real solution to the problem is to properly value the work and pay for it.
    - charezinski 7y ago
      If America doesn't who does?
- shagie 7y ago
  Radiology is one of those "this can be outsourced" things - https://healthmanagement.org/c/imaging/issuearticle/outsourcing-and-radiology https://healthmanagement.org/c/imaging/issuearticle/outsourc... This is known as 'teleradiology' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleradiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleradiology )

belltaco 7y ago

Or they will just offshore to Canada or India. Look at the bottom of the article where it mentions Toronto.

cy_hauser 7y ago
That's not as bad as H1-B abuse and reflects a real possibility for any business. In other words, it's at least "fair." The H1-B abuse is based on corporate lies. It's hard to claim that you need H1-B workers when you're replacing existing workers and even having the fired workers train their replacements.
Clubber 7y ago
I don't understand why they don't onshore to say Missouri, or Alabama, or anywhere that isn't a big city.
- belltaco 7y ago
  How many people want to move to AL or MO for jobs, compared to bigger cities? Your application pool would be considerably smaller. In many cases they move people who have lost their work visa extensions after working for 5 to 10 years, yet haven't received their greencards because of country quotas. Example: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/microsoft-might-be-forced-to-move-some-jobs-abroad-brad-smith-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/microsoft-might-be-forced-to...
  - Clubber 7y ago
    I was thinking more of the people who already live there and are computer savvy and have an internet connection can be utilized. FWIW, I'd love to get a decent sized property with internet, away from the city and traffic and pollution, and be able to work full time remotely.

closeparen 7y ago

In my experience, being on a team with shrinking headcount due to difficulty hiring is not fun: - Quality gets cut before features. - Engineers are yanked and shuffled from one urgent priority to another with no sense of ownership and no time for craftsmanship, leading to garbage codebases. - Mentorship and development fall by the wayside, making it even more important to get senior talent from outside, yet we still don't. - Management eventually spins up a team in a more favorable country, which leads to a lot of annoying off-hours videoconferencing at best, possibly even loss of status as the "center of gravity" for your area. - They company starts looking downmarket for labor, giving you less competent coworkers. - Higher pay is directly offset by higher likelihood of a layoff; you shuffle all the excess into your emergency fund just to maintain the same level of security.

kypro 7y ago

It also motivates them to invest in training and education to increase the supply of programmers.

closeparen 7y ago
Training and education are things you do with slack time, which only exists when you have more than enough staff to do the work. When teams are lean, no one can afford to teach.