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I really want to believe this, but I'm not sure that I do. Of course the tech companies want to hire people from overseas; being able to hire someone from Indi

I really want to believe this, but I'm not sure that I do. Of course the tech companies want to hire people from overseas; being able to hire someone from India for half the cost but have them live in the US so there's some level of accountability/trust is a no-brainer. Huge new, cheap talent pool. But, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, coming over to compete for my job. On the surface it seems as simple as a conflict of interest between employees and the companies that employ them. Supply/demand. Dig a little deeper and the argument becomes that the top programmers we're bringing over are going to start great companies. That makes sense; part of the reason the United States is so powerful is selection bias: If we create an environment the hardest-working and smartest people in the world want to come to, the end result is a lot of great companies that create enough jobs for everyone. Elon Musk isn't starting Tesla or SpaceX in South Africa (where he's from). So we create an all-star selection of the human race in one country, make laws that are favorable to people coming/staying, and the economy explodes. What I'm not clear on is what the effect of opening the doors to programmers would be. Would truly great companies be started enough that the entire economy is shored up, or would it just dilute the talent pool to the extent that being a programmer isn't a "special" job you get paid $150,000/year for being decent at? The long-term, macro result of this would be interesting.

droopyEyelids 12y ago
To me the most interesting way of framing this is in terms of the changes that'll happen to the owners of businesses. The question of the talent of the new employees is secondary when you realize they will have to move countries in order to be tied to a specific job on penalty of getting their visa revoked. So suddenly, you create an unlimited class of employees with no bargaining power, and can play them against your native employees. This would be bad enough, but H1B visa holders usually make 20% less than their equivalent American coworkers.
- sampo 12y ago
  > tied to a specific job on penalty of getting their visa revoked. This is true if you hire from third world. I am from Northern Europe, and having a visa revoked and going back to my home country would not be a threat to me. I'd just happily move back home, and find a job there.
  - droopyEyelids 12y ago
    Most people consider a move to a new apartment in the same city inconvenient. There are very few people who wouldn't consider being forced to move across continents, while giving up their rights, a highly biasing factor in the pros/cons of any decision they made.
    - sfilipov 12y ago
      As a result, I can see programmers from Western and Northern Europe, who as of know may consider relocating to the US, change their mind and say "why bother". Any EU citizen will have easier time relocating to London/Berlin - two places in Europe where a lot of tech companies are located. PG's point is that a lot of people from outside the US (including from Europe) currently would prefer relocating to the US but they have difficulty getting a visa. Long term more and more people would prefer the second best choice that's available to them.
      - aceperry 12y ago
        "PG's point is that a lot of people from outside the US (including from Europe) currently would prefer relocating to the US but they have difficulty getting a visa" No, from my reading of pg's point: Most of the top programmers live outside of the US, so we should make it easier to get them by changing immigration policy.
    - sampo 12y ago
      > Most people consider a move to a new apartment in the same city inconvenient. This is a good point. But finding out that your employer is so nasty that they use your visa status as a bargaining chip, can be even more inconvenient.
grandalf 12y ago
What I'm not clear on is what the effect of opening the doors to programmers will be. There would be many effects which would interact with each other. But one thing that is sadly true right now is that for an engineering manager to increase his/her hiring budget there is unlikely to be a significant quality increase. Think about what this means. If there were more talent, then companies would be able to justify increasing budgets to build/grow a superior team. In this market if you double your budget you just get twice as many mediocre programmers or you end up getting into a bidding war for highly priced talent. Neither is good for the field as a whole.
jitl 12y ago
Did you read the essay? You seem to be totally ignoring the point that excellent programmers will be paid well because they are scarce compared to "decent" programmers. The goal is not to import cut-rate talent at cut-rate prices.
- slantedview 12y ago
  Actually, studies have shown that IS the goal. It might not be Paul's goal, personally, but generally speaking it is the goal of immigration policy for tech workers - to make labor cheap.
  - bigtunacan 12y ago
    Agreed, the goal is to drive down prices of IT salaries. I find it disingenuous of PG to indicate otherwise since he sits on the side of the table that directly benefits from a cheaper IT labor market. I have worked at numerous places where they have hired on H1Bs. One of those employers did so because they were looking for good talent no matter where they could find it and H1B holders were paid fairly. Every other employer was doing it because they could pay lower wages and force longer hours on H1B holders since they are in a sort of held-hostage situation. In one case developers were frequently working such long hours that they would just sleep at the office and only go home once or twice a week. This same place was paying their entry to mid developers in the 25K to 35K range and their most senior developers were making less than 50K.
    - kar2014 12y ago
      If you are just worried about keeping your salary up, that will go down no matter what, as the talent pool all over the world increases and companies will offshore more work, that not only means less salary but fewer jobs. Most of those who argue against pg's argument here are concerned about lower salaries, no one is concerned about fewer jobs (because companies will move work offshore), less innovation (new product development moving away). Creating boundaries and not letting talent in, is just a big downward spiral and if it accelerates to a certain speed it will be too difficult to turn it around. May be not in short term but in couple to few decades.
edgyswingset 12y ago
What you touched at the end is part of a bigger problem, I think - people who write something as inconsequential as a shopping website, or Yet Another Chat App, are not worth $150,000/year. Maybe one out of one-hundred of those folks could use their talent on something that demands a wage like that outside of the absurdity that is the Bay Area. I don't feel the talent pool will be diluted so much as your run-of-the-mill developer won't be expecting a six-figure salary coming out of college anymore.
- pastProlog 12y ago
  Yes. Over 100,000 H1-B's are coming over every year. This keeps discussing exceptional programmers. You mean we need more than 100,000 exceptional programmers coming over every year? The reality is that the idea that even 10,000 of these people are exceptional programmers is a laugh. Every year 100,000 H1-Bs can come in. To believe this article, we'd have to pretend that we have a big wall up preventing these dozens or hundreds of exceptional programmers from immigrating to the US, and completely ignore the existence of the H1-B visa and the hundreds of thousands pouring in every year.
  - kaykay 12y ago
    Where did you get the > 100000 H1B's number?
    - pastProlog 12y ago
      The US State Department, this page has a graph of H1-B visa issuances and links to some of the reports - http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy/statistics/graphs.html http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy... The US Citizenship and Immigration Services web page has numbers as well.
    - Terr_ 12y ago
      Easy enough to find through the Wikipedia citations. 153,223 visas were issued in 2013, although some of that is to continue the presence of people who were already here in previous years... It's not all new arrivals.
oe 12y ago
In addition to the cheap & bad / talented founders pools there's also the pool of expensive and talented workers who just want to code. I mean, I wouldn't move to the US to work for half of what you make if I'm doing the same job, right?
gnufied 12y ago
I wonder where do you get your data for "hire someone from India for half the cost". Of all the facts thrown around - this is easily verifiable - http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php If you ignore those employed on hourly basis, a majority of people on H1B are paid quite well. Apart from salary and benefits - add Visa processing fees for their Kids and Spouse as well (which can easily amount to > 30k+) I think people underestimate how fortunate US is for being top destination of good programmers (and engg. in general). US has tons of companies founded by immigrants - Tesla, Bose, Sun Microsystems, Hotmail, Yahoo to just name a few. I agree that, something ought to be done so as Services companies (Infosys, Cognizant) have limited access to H1B visa pool and process is fairer to smaller companies.
- deleted 12y ago
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- craigyk 12y ago
  But why expand the H1B program vs. a more open immigration policy in general, or removing H1B lock-in restrictions? So are you claiming that companies are paying an extra 30K for all their H1B employees on top of giving them a salary that exactly matches that of their non H1B peers?
  - briandear 12y ago
    They don't pay that extra $30k per year. That's a relatively sunk cost. If you can pay a $30k premium up front, then pay that employee less over time than the US equivalent AND that employee is locked to that employer, then it's well worth that $30k upfront. Of course we are stipulating that it actually does cost $30k on average, which I haven't seen the data to support (or refute) that.
- curun1r 12y ago
  I'm a dev manager at a prominent employer of software engineers and I did a search for my company at your link. I can't speak for other employers, but it appears that salaries for H1-Bs are ~25% lower than what I know Americans to be making at those same job titles. Half is almost certainly an exaggeration, but to deny that there's an H1-B discount is equally disingenuous. On the topic of the essay, I worry that Paul is also being disingenuous. The US might only have 5% of the world's population, but we have a much larger percentage of the world's population where children have been exposed to computers from an early age. He's right that exceptional programmers can't really be trained, but that doesn't mean that they aren't made. They're made by being put in an environment where they can explore computing and let a natural creativity/curiosity that they have flourish. I've yet to meet an exceptional programmer that begrudgingly chose to write code for a living. And that's my problem with the H1-B situation and why I think they've got an overall lower percentage of exceptional programmers. In the US, those who are driven by extrinsic motivators like money don't become programmers. They become salesmen, stockbrokers, lawyers or any of a host of other professions that sacrifice doing something interesting for high compensation. But most of those career paths aren't available to people in poorer countries whereas software engineering is. What I've seen among H1-Bs is a far higher percentage of people who basically hate their job, but do it because it allowed them to come to the US and afford a comfortable lifestyle for their families. I don't blame them for that, but I also don't think that it makes them particularly good developers. Don't get me wrong...I have met quite a few H1-Bs who were drawn to software development from an early age and love doing it in the way that usually results in being an nx developer (anywhere from 1x to 10x), but I just don't see them in the same proportions that I do among American developers. If Paul can figure out a way to filter in the great developers while filtering out those that are only coming to make money, then I'd be completely behind his plan to let them all in. Somewhat ironically, his plan to let everyone in would somewhat accomplish that at the cost of decimating developer salaries (i.e. if the labor pool is increased and salaries dip accordingly, we'll find out pretty quickly who's only here for the money and which of us would be doing this no matter whether we were paid significantly less.)
23david 12y ago
I think it's important for all startup founders to realize that non-executive salaries in the U.S. tech industry have been incredibly distorted by the illegal wage fixing practiced over the last 10-15 years. The wage fixing set an artificial ceiling on programmer salaries. And if it's now stopped, we should expect a major correction over the next 5 years as market wages adjust. I'm hopeful that recent salary increases by large companies are evidence that things are moving in a good direction. But it will take time to rebuild trust between labor (programmers) and management in the tech industry. I don't think we're there yet, and in the meantime I am cynical about any effort to address hiring difficulties by increasing immigration.
- ColinCera 12y ago
  What "wage-fixing" are you talking about? Are you referring to the brief period in which a handful of tech companies colluded to tamp down salaries and cross-recruiting? Because that involved only a tiny percentage of the software developers in the US and had no significant impact on the national average salaries. Or has there been broader wage-fixing that you're aware of?
  - whiddershins 12y ago
    Correct me if i'm wrong, but didn't the wage fixing affect precisely the programmers to which the essay is referring? It may have been a tiny percentage of programmers, but it was the programmers occupying the best positions at the most desirable companies who were specifically targeted.
  - frostmatthew 12y ago
    > Are you referring to the brief period in which a handful of tech companies colluded to tamp down salaries and cross-recruiting? Ignoring for the moment I don't think four years is very "brief" or eight is only a "handful"[1] (and it may actually be even more[2]) It's a bit naive to think this "had no significant impact on the national average salaries" - some of these companies are/were among the largest and most desirable companies in tech, what they do is going to affect the entire industry. e.g. if you are a hiring manager at a company not involved and are trying to hire someone who is also considering an offer from an involved company the amount you need to offer to be more attractive is less. This brings down the average you pay, which brings down the average you offer. Likewise companies now competing for candidates also receiving offers from you now have an easier time sweetening their offers, and so forth and so on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... [2] http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-...
hacknat 12y ago
I agree with you. Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System, and it's pretty good at bringing the top talent to the U.S. already. Perfect? Of course not. Good enough? I think it is. Normally I don't hold someone's wealth against them, but on this issue it's hard for me not to be a little prejudicial.
- LetBinding 12y ago
  Except talented graduates of the American higher education systems have to leave the country if they don't get selected in the H-1B lottery. Last year, there were 45,000 applicants for the 20,000 advanced degree H-1B cap.
- Htsthbjig 12y ago
  "Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System" Because, you know, people educated outside the US, like Europe, South Africa or Japan, have not value whatsoever. It is American E.S who lags behind them. e.g Most educated Europeans need to speak at least 2 to 3 languages fluently. You also believe Chinese, African and South American will remain in the dark forever. I have an advice for you: travel the world.
  - hacknat 12y ago
    Whoa, whoa, calm down. I was talking about immigrants who come to do graduate work in the US.
  - zanny 12y ago
    Why would the number of languages you can speak indicate effectiveness of an educational system? Yes, I know the argument about cultural awareness. That won't make you better at building web servers. It might make you better at interacting with people of that culture. Fundamentally though multiple languages is incredibly wasteful. I'd never propose that English should be a global language - it is such a steaming pile of shit thinking it the best we have is insane - it just has network effects in its favor. Of course, building a language scientifically that uses all enunciable syllables and minimizes word size and maximizes understandability is a major project and getting people to speak it is impossible. And yes, the non-higher US educational system is colossal garbage, but we know that. We are talking about US higher education, where you pick your courses and rarely are students enrolling to learn two more languages for the fun of it. In that context, millions of students around the world strive to get into US schools, not because the teachers are any better - in my experience, one, individual students are different and learn better in different ways so one scale of "better" or "worse" education is insane, and two, there are diminishing returns on teaching skill such that the difference between the best public school teacher and the best teacher period is probably a fraction of a percent of student performance at worst. The US education system is good because of the business networks the prestigious schools get you into and how almost anyone will hire a US school grad.
tolmasky 12y ago
> ut, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, coming over to compete for my job. I don't understand this dichotomy. Why would companies here go out of their way to hire cheap labor of questionable skill outside the U.S.?? Bad cheap labor is easy to find. Call up a recruiter and say "I need 20 horrible programmers", they're not going to say "oh wow that's a tough one". Either you think: 1. Outside labor is good and thus I should be scared for my job, BUT those people legitimately deserve to be working here and are net positive for their employers, or 2. Outside workers aren't good and so what difference does it make if they compete with me here? I'm already competing with a saturated market of bad workers and if companies are stupid enough to hire them it'll work itself out -- they're not really competing with me.
- andyzweb 12y ago
  >Why would companies here go out of their way to hire cheap labor of questionable skill outside the U.S.?? http://www.accenture.com/ http://www.accenture.com/
- anemitz 12y ago
  During my career I've witnessed a stark contrast between different visa holders: 1) Exceptional — the best and brightest from all walks of life. IIT Delhi to NUS Singapore. Hands down amazing folks who consistently outperformed their peers. 2) Cheap(er), mediocre — predominantly H1B holders from India and China. Varying degrees of output and communication skills. Mostly “slow tracked” for promotion and given the lowest salary in a given position’s range. My perception is that the startup community has generally ignored group #2’s existence. It’s not very surprising when you consider who the top 5 h1b sponsors last year: Infosys, Tata, Wipro, Deloitte, and Accenture[1]. Most startup folk would likely be surprised since we usually associate tech companies -> Google instead of Wipro. Logically your thinking is spot-on, but I'm not so sure the truth is so black and white. Consider the psychology of an h1b holder from India who has a 7 year wait to get a green card -- how is that person thinking about aggressive career moves? The answer is that they probably aren't. I bet if you looked at relative rates of employee churn you'd find visa holders stay with employers longer than their counterparts. They are probably also less likely to push for raises / promotions since their negotiating position is somewhat compromised by them needing another employer to transfer this visa to (possible, but very stressful). There is also likely a sense of indebtedness to a company when someone is first sponsored. This is probably the biggest difference when considering the cost of Group #2 vs similarly qualified domestic labor. Now consider those top 5 h1b sponsors again -- how does their workforce stack up? My intuition says they aren't the best and brightest from group #1 (don't know how to prove or disprove this just my qualitative observation). What seems to be happening is that we have huge consulting firms sponsoring labor from Group #2 -- and these companies are run by smart folks. They've developing a well-oiled machine for employing a more loyal workforce, at less cost -- and while the quality isn't as high as it could be, it's good enough to make their business model work. This is the exact opposite model of startups (and large, but highly innovative companies like Google) who want to only hire from Group #1. As a founder I've experienced the Group #1 labor shortage first-hand but I also worked with Group #2 in the industry and both experiences left me leaving a lot to be desired with our current immigration policy. I see both sides of this debate, but from my standpoint everyone is right. The disconnect seems to be that "anti-immigration" camp is fighting against expansion of Group #2 while startups and innovative companies like Google, et al. are fighting to increase visas for Group #1. What can we do to bridge that communication disconnect? [1] — http://h1b-visas.findthecompany.com http://h1b-visas.findthecompany.com
shanusmagnus 12y ago
Here's a related question that I never see addressed: how big of a programmer shortage do you think there would be if salaries were 50% higher? All the talk seems to assume that the makeup of industry is utterly inelastic. Fine, maybe your small company in Cleveland can't go out tomorrow and hire 10 A+ developers, but do people really not believe that if starting salary for an A+ developer was $150k, or whatever, that we might get more high-achievers choosing CSCI majors than pre-med or pre-law? Nobody could sanely argue that there isn't tons of talent outside the US; and maybe it would be good to bring some of it in. But I have yet to see the argument for why these companies with balance sheets that Switzerland would envy couldn't solve this problem by getting out the checkbook. Yeah, the problem wouldn't go away tomorrow, but I'm not sure that making it go away tomorrow should be the only acceptable solution. Guess what, guys: I can't hire people to come and drywall my office tomorrow at whatever price I feel like paying, either. Put another way, there's probably a reason we don't hear about the great doctor and lawyer shortage. Not apples to apples, obviously, but maybe it's oranges to grapefruits.
- chetanahuja 12y ago
  So basically you're proposing protectionist policies to limit supply and thus inflate the price of labor (that is, you). Would you also support similar arguments for say, oh I don't know, taxi or hotel prices in the area where you live so the existing pool of taxi drivers or hotel owners can protect the income they are making?
  - shanusmagnus 12y ago
    It may be useful for you to actually read TFA, which (spoiler alert) is not by me saying that we need to screw down the number of people we allow into the country, but is rather by another gentleman who has been stranded someplace unpleasant due to the ill winds of supply and demand, and wants to transform immigration policy until he washes up someplace more suited to his temperament.
  - chetanahuja 12y ago
    Downvotes don't faze me but I find it telling that I don't see an actual reply to my point regarding protectionist policies. If you find yourself instinctively downvoting my comment, please also take a minute to form a coherent reply to it and post it. Why is it ok for the (American) hacker news crowd to demand a legally mandated supply shortage to keep the prices of their labor inflated while it's not ok for (usually much poorer) taxi drivers to demand the same (campaigning against Uber and such)?
prostoalex 12y ago
> what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, coming over to compete for my job Let me be the devil's advocate and argue that even that is beneficial at the national policy level. The alternative to cheap imported labor for a small company would be to hire a local guy, but for any medium to large company the alternative would be to hire a foreign consulting shop, and there are tons of companies working in the niche. The "cheap" labor in programmer speak is usually around $50-70k salaries, adjusted for specific area, and I would rather have US capture the value of income taxes, sales taxes and other economic activity from that $50-70k than an outfit abroad.

droopyEyelids 12y ago

To me the most interesting way of framing this is in terms of the changes that'll happen to the owners of businesses. The question of the talent of the new employees is secondary when you realize they will have to move countries in order to be tied to a specific job on penalty of getting their visa revoked. So suddenly, you create an unlimited class of employees with no bargaining power, and can play them against your native employees. This would be bad enough, but H1B visa holders usually make 20% less than their equivalent American coworkers.

sampo 12y ago
> tied to a specific job on penalty of getting their visa revoked. This is true if you hire from third world. I am from Northern Europe, and having a visa revoked and going back to my home country would not be a threat to me. I'd just happily move back home, and find a job there.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  Most people consider a move to a new apartment in the same city inconvenient. There are very few people who wouldn't consider being forced to move across continents, while giving up their rights, a highly biasing factor in the pros/cons of any decision they made.
  - sfilipov 12y ago
    As a result, I can see programmers from Western and Northern Europe, who as of know may consider relocating to the US, change their mind and say "why bother". Any EU citizen will have easier time relocating to London/Berlin - two places in Europe where a lot of tech companies are located. PG's point is that a lot of people from outside the US (including from Europe) currently would prefer relocating to the US but they have difficulty getting a visa. Long term more and more people would prefer the second best choice that's available to them.
    - aceperry 12y ago
      "PG's point is that a lot of people from outside the US (including from Europe) currently would prefer relocating to the US but they have difficulty getting a visa" No, from my reading of pg's point: Most of the top programmers live outside of the US, so we should make it easier to get them by changing immigration policy.
  - sampo 12y ago
    > Most people consider a move to a new apartment in the same city inconvenient. This is a good point. But finding out that your employer is so nasty that they use your visa status as a bargaining chip, can be even more inconvenient.

grandalf 12y ago

What I'm not clear on is what the effect of opening the doors to programmers will be. There would be many effects which would interact with each other. But one thing that is sadly true right now is that for an engineering manager to increase his/her hiring budget there is unlikely to be a significant quality increase. Think about what this means. If there were more talent, then companies would be able to justify increasing budgets to build/grow a superior team. In this market if you double your budget you just get twice as many mediocre programmers or you end up getting into a bidding war for highly priced talent. Neither is good for the field as a whole.

jitl 12y ago

Did you read the essay? You seem to be totally ignoring the point that excellent programmers will be paid well because they are scarce compared to "decent" programmers. The goal is not to import cut-rate talent at cut-rate prices.

slantedview 12y ago
Actually, studies have shown that IS the goal. It might not be Paul's goal, personally, but generally speaking it is the goal of immigration policy for tech workers - to make labor cheap.
- bigtunacan 12y ago
  Agreed, the goal is to drive down prices of IT salaries. I find it disingenuous of PG to indicate otherwise since he sits on the side of the table that directly benefits from a cheaper IT labor market. I have worked at numerous places where they have hired on H1Bs. One of those employers did so because they were looking for good talent no matter where they could find it and H1B holders were paid fairly. Every other employer was doing it because they could pay lower wages and force longer hours on H1B holders since they are in a sort of held-hostage situation. In one case developers were frequently working such long hours that they would just sleep at the office and only go home once or twice a week. This same place was paying their entry to mid developers in the 25K to 35K range and their most senior developers were making less than 50K.
  - kar2014 12y ago
    If you are just worried about keeping your salary up, that will go down no matter what, as the talent pool all over the world increases and companies will offshore more work, that not only means less salary but fewer jobs. Most of those who argue against pg's argument here are concerned about lower salaries, no one is concerned about fewer jobs (because companies will move work offshore), less innovation (new product development moving away). Creating boundaries and not letting talent in, is just a big downward spiral and if it accelerates to a certain speed it will be too difficult to turn it around. May be not in short term but in couple to few decades.

edgyswingset 12y ago

What you touched at the end is part of a bigger problem, I think - people who write something as inconsequential as a shopping website, or Yet Another Chat App, are not worth $150,000/year. Maybe one out of one-hundred of those folks could use their talent on something that demands a wage like that outside of the absurdity that is the Bay Area. I don't feel the talent pool will be diluted so much as your run-of-the-mill developer won't be expecting a six-figure salary coming out of college anymore.

pastProlog 12y ago
Yes. Over 100,000 H1-B's are coming over every year. This keeps discussing exceptional programmers. You mean we need more than 100,000 exceptional programmers coming over every year? The reality is that the idea that even 10,000 of these people are exceptional programmers is a laugh. Every year 100,000 H1-Bs can come in. To believe this article, we'd have to pretend that we have a big wall up preventing these dozens or hundreds of exceptional programmers from immigrating to the US, and completely ignore the existence of the H1-B visa and the hundreds of thousands pouring in every year.
- kaykay 12y ago
  Where did you get the > 100000 H1B's number?
  - pastProlog 12y ago
    The US State Department, this page has a graph of H1-B visa issuances and links to some of the reports - http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy/statistics/graphs.html http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy... The US Citizenship and Immigration Services web page has numbers as well.
  - Terr_ 12y ago
    Easy enough to find through the Wikipedia citations. 153,223 visas were issued in 2013, although some of that is to continue the presence of people who were already here in previous years... It's not all new arrivals.

oe 12y ago

In addition to the cheap & bad / talented founders pools there's also the pool of expensive and talented workers who just want to code. I mean, I wouldn't move to the US to work for half of what you make if I'm doing the same job, right?

gnufied 12y ago

I wonder where do you get your data for "hire someone from India for half the cost". Of all the facts thrown around - this is easily verifiable - http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php If you ignore those employed on hourly basis, a majority of people on H1B are paid quite well. Apart from salary and benefits - add Visa processing fees for their Kids and Spouse as well (which can easily amount to > 30k+) I think people underestimate how fortunate US is for being top destination of good programmers (and engg. in general). US has tons of companies founded by immigrants - Tesla, Bose, Sun Microsystems, Hotmail, Yahoo to just name a few. I agree that, something ought to be done so as Services companies (Infosys, Cognizant) have limited access to H1B visa pool and process is fairer to smaller companies.

deleted 12y ago
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craigyk 12y ago
But why expand the H1B program vs. a more open immigration policy in general, or removing H1B lock-in restrictions? So are you claiming that companies are paying an extra 30K for all their H1B employees on top of giving them a salary that exactly matches that of their non H1B peers?
- briandear 12y ago
  They don't pay that extra $30k per year. That's a relatively sunk cost. If you can pay a $30k premium up front, then pay that employee less over time than the US equivalent AND that employee is locked to that employer, then it's well worth that $30k upfront. Of course we are stipulating that it actually does cost $30k on average, which I haven't seen the data to support (or refute) that.
curun1r 12y ago
I'm a dev manager at a prominent employer of software engineers and I did a search for my company at your link. I can't speak for other employers, but it appears that salaries for H1-Bs are ~25% lower than what I know Americans to be making at those same job titles. Half is almost certainly an exaggeration, but to deny that there's an H1-B discount is equally disingenuous. On the topic of the essay, I worry that Paul is also being disingenuous. The US might only have 5% of the world's population, but we have a much larger percentage of the world's population where children have been exposed to computers from an early age. He's right that exceptional programmers can't really be trained, but that doesn't mean that they aren't made. They're made by being put in an environment where they can explore computing and let a natural creativity/curiosity that they have flourish. I've yet to meet an exceptional programmer that begrudgingly chose to write code for a living. And that's my problem with the H1-B situation and why I think they've got an overall lower percentage of exceptional programmers. In the US, those who are driven by extrinsic motivators like money don't become programmers. They become salesmen, stockbrokers, lawyers or any of a host of other professions that sacrifice doing something interesting for high compensation. But most of those career paths aren't available to people in poorer countries whereas software engineering is. What I've seen among H1-Bs is a far higher percentage of people who basically hate their job, but do it because it allowed them to come to the US and afford a comfortable lifestyle for their families. I don't blame them for that, but I also don't think that it makes them particularly good developers. Don't get me wrong...I have met quite a few H1-Bs who were drawn to software development from an early age and love doing it in the way that usually results in being an nx developer (anywhere from 1x to 10x), but I just don't see them in the same proportions that I do among American developers. If Paul can figure out a way to filter in the great developers while filtering out those that are only coming to make money, then I'd be completely behind his plan to let them all in. Somewhat ironically, his plan to let everyone in would somewhat accomplish that at the cost of decimating developer salaries (i.e. if the labor pool is increased and salaries dip accordingly, we'll find out pretty quickly who's only here for the money and which of us would be doing this no matter whether we were paid significantly less.)

23david 12y ago

I think it's important for all startup founders to realize that non-executive salaries in the U.S. tech industry have been incredibly distorted by the illegal wage fixing practiced over the last 10-15 years. The wage fixing set an artificial ceiling on programmer salaries. And if it's now stopped, we should expect a major correction over the next 5 years as market wages adjust. I'm hopeful that recent salary increases by large companies are evidence that things are moving in a good direction. But it will take time to rebuild trust between labor (programmers) and management in the tech industry. I don't think we're there yet, and in the meantime I am cynical about any effort to address hiring difficulties by increasing immigration.

ColinCera 12y ago
What "wage-fixing" are you talking about? Are you referring to the brief period in which a handful of tech companies colluded to tamp down salaries and cross-recruiting? Because that involved only a tiny percentage of the software developers in the US and had no significant impact on the national average salaries. Or has there been broader wage-fixing that you're aware of?
- whiddershins 12y ago
  Correct me if i'm wrong, but didn't the wage fixing affect precisely the programmers to which the essay is referring? It may have been a tiny percentage of programmers, but it was the programmers occupying the best positions at the most desirable companies who were specifically targeted.
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  > Are you referring to the brief period in which a handful of tech companies colluded to tamp down salaries and cross-recruiting? Ignoring for the moment I don't think four years is very "brief" or eight is only a "handful"[1] (and it may actually be even more[2]) It's a bit naive to think this "had no significant impact on the national average salaries" - some of these companies are/were among the largest and most desirable companies in tech, what they do is going to affect the entire industry. e.g. if you are a hiring manager at a company not involved and are trying to hire someone who is also considering an offer from an involved company the amount you need to offer to be more attractive is less. This brings down the average you pay, which brings down the average you offer. Likewise companies now competing for candidates also receiving offers from you now have an easier time sweetening their offers, and so forth and so on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... [2] http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees/ http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-...

hacknat 12y ago

I agree with you. Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System, and it's pretty good at bringing the top talent to the U.S. already. Perfect? Of course not. Good enough? I think it is. Normally I don't hold someone's wealth against them, but on this issue it's hard for me not to be a little prejudicial.

LetBinding 12y ago
Except talented graduates of the American higher education systems have to leave the country if they don't get selected in the H-1B lottery. Last year, there were 45,000 applicants for the 20,000 advanced degree H-1B cap.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
"Fortunately we already have a system that lets only the exceptional talent in. It's called the "American" Higher Education System" Because, you know, people educated outside the US, like Europe, South Africa or Japan, have not value whatsoever. It is American E.S who lags behind them. e.g Most educated Europeans need to speak at least 2 to 3 languages fluently. You also believe Chinese, African and South American will remain in the dark forever. I have an advice for you: travel the world.
- hacknat 12y ago
  Whoa, whoa, calm down. I was talking about immigrants who come to do graduate work in the US.
- zanny 12y ago
  Why would the number of languages you can speak indicate effectiveness of an educational system? Yes, I know the argument about cultural awareness. That won't make you better at building web servers. It might make you better at interacting with people of that culture. Fundamentally though multiple languages is incredibly wasteful. I'd never propose that English should be a global language - it is such a steaming pile of shit thinking it the best we have is insane - it just has network effects in its favor. Of course, building a language scientifically that uses all enunciable syllables and minimizes word size and maximizes understandability is a major project and getting people to speak it is impossible. And yes, the non-higher US educational system is colossal garbage, but we know that. We are talking about US higher education, where you pick your courses and rarely are students enrolling to learn two more languages for the fun of it. In that context, millions of students around the world strive to get into US schools, not because the teachers are any better - in my experience, one, individual students are different and learn better in different ways so one scale of "better" or "worse" education is insane, and two, there are diminishing returns on teaching skill such that the difference between the best public school teacher and the best teacher period is probably a fraction of a percent of student performance at worst. The US education system is good because of the business networks the prestigious schools get you into and how almost anyone will hire a US school grad.

tolmasky 12y ago

> ut, if I'm an entry-level, US-based programmer, what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, coming over to compete for my job. I don't understand this dichotomy. Why would companies here go out of their way to hire cheap labor of questionable skill outside the U.S.?? Bad cheap labor is easy to find. Call up a recruiter and say "I need 20 horrible programmers", they're not going to say "oh wow that's a tough one". Either you think: 1. Outside labor is good and thus I should be scared for my job, BUT those people legitimately deserve to be working here and are net positive for their employers, or 2. Outside workers aren't good and so what difference does it make if they compete with me here? I'm already competing with a saturated market of bad workers and if companies are stupid enough to hire them it'll work itself out -- they're not really competing with me.

andyzweb 12y ago
>Why would companies here go out of their way to hire cheap labor of questionable skill outside the U.S.?? http://www.accenture.com/ http://www.accenture.com/
anemitz 12y ago
During my career I've witnessed a stark contrast between different visa holders: 1) Exceptional — the best and brightest from all walks of life. IIT Delhi to NUS Singapore. Hands down amazing folks who consistently outperformed their peers. 2) Cheap(er), mediocre — predominantly H1B holders from India and China. Varying degrees of output and communication skills. Mostly “slow tracked” for promotion and given the lowest salary in a given position’s range. My perception is that the startup community has generally ignored group #2’s existence. It’s not very surprising when you consider who the top 5 h1b sponsors last year: Infosys, Tata, Wipro, Deloitte, and Accenture[1]. Most startup folk would likely be surprised since we usually associate tech companies -> Google instead of Wipro. Logically your thinking is spot-on, but I'm not so sure the truth is so black and white. Consider the psychology of an h1b holder from India who has a 7 year wait to get a green card -- how is that person thinking about aggressive career moves? The answer is that they probably aren't. I bet if you looked at relative rates of employee churn you'd find visa holders stay with employers longer than their counterparts. They are probably also less likely to push for raises / promotions since their negotiating position is somewhat compromised by them needing another employer to transfer this visa to (possible, but very stressful). There is also likely a sense of indebtedness to a company when someone is first sponsored. This is probably the biggest difference when considering the cost of Group #2 vs similarly qualified domestic labor. Now consider those top 5 h1b sponsors again -- how does their workforce stack up? My intuition says they aren't the best and brightest from group #1 (don't know how to prove or disprove this just my qualitative observation). What seems to be happening is that we have huge consulting firms sponsoring labor from Group #2 -- and these companies are run by smart folks. They've developing a well-oiled machine for employing a more loyal workforce, at less cost -- and while the quality isn't as high as it could be, it's good enough to make their business model work. This is the exact opposite model of startups (and large, but highly innovative companies like Google) who want to only hire from Group #1. As a founder I've experienced the Group #1 labor shortage first-hand but I also worked with Group #2 in the industry and both experiences left me leaving a lot to be desired with our current immigration policy. I see both sides of this debate, but from my standpoint everyone is right. The disconnect seems to be that "anti-immigration" camp is fighting against expansion of Group #2 while startups and innovative companies like Google, et al. are fighting to increase visas for Group #1. What can we do to bridge that communication disconnect? [1] — http://h1b-visas.findthecompany.com http://h1b-visas.findthecompany.com

shanusmagnus 12y ago

Here's a related question that I never see addressed: how big of a programmer shortage do you think there would be if salaries were 50% higher? All the talk seems to assume that the makeup of industry is utterly inelastic. Fine, maybe your small company in Cleveland can't go out tomorrow and hire 10 A+ developers, but do people really not believe that if starting salary for an A+ developer was $150k, or whatever, that we might get more high-achievers choosing CSCI majors than pre-med or pre-law? Nobody could sanely argue that there isn't tons of talent outside the US; and maybe it would be good to bring some of it in. But I have yet to see the argument for why these companies with balance sheets that Switzerland would envy couldn't solve this problem by getting out the checkbook. Yeah, the problem wouldn't go away tomorrow, but I'm not sure that making it go away tomorrow should be the only acceptable solution. Guess what, guys: I can't hire people to come and drywall my office tomorrow at whatever price I feel like paying, either. Put another way, there's probably a reason we don't hear about the great doctor and lawyer shortage. Not apples to apples, obviously, but maybe it's oranges to grapefruits.

chetanahuja 12y ago
So basically you're proposing protectionist policies to limit supply and thus inflate the price of labor (that is, you). Would you also support similar arguments for say, oh I don't know, taxi or hotel prices in the area where you live so the existing pool of taxi drivers or hotel owners can protect the income they are making?
- shanusmagnus 12y ago
  It may be useful for you to actually read TFA, which (spoiler alert) is not by me saying that we need to screw down the number of people we allow into the country, but is rather by another gentleman who has been stranded someplace unpleasant due to the ill winds of supply and demand, and wants to transform immigration policy until he washes up someplace more suited to his temperament.
- chetanahuja 12y ago
  Downvotes don't faze me but I find it telling that I don't see an actual reply to my point regarding protectionist policies. If you find yourself instinctively downvoting my comment, please also take a minute to form a coherent reply to it and post it. Why is it ok for the (American) hacker news crowd to demand a legally mandated supply shortage to keep the prices of their labor inflated while it's not ok for (usually much poorer) taxi drivers to demand the same (campaigning against Uber and such)?

prostoalex 12y ago

> what I see are floods of cheap talent, some with questionable skills, coming over to compete for my job Let me be the devil's advocate and argue that even that is beneficial at the national policy level. The alternative to cheap imported labor for a small company would be to hire a local guy, but for any medium to large company the alternative would be to hire a foreign consulting shop, and there are tons of companies working in the niche. The "cheap" labor in programmer speak is usually around $50-70k salaries, adjusted for specific area, and I would rather have US capture the value of income taxes, sales taxes and other economic activity from that $50-70k than an outfit abroad.