8 ms·

Supply and Demand, Labor and Visas

108 points by mparramon 12y ago

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abat 12y ago
1) Some programmers really are worth orders of magnitude more than others. Really great programmers will help drive product decisions that can change direction of the company and the ultimate success/failure. The more responsibility a programmer has over product/quality/cost/delivery schedule, the more they can be worth a huge amount. 10X is probably a more common variance, but I'm sure there are single developers building the right thing that are worth more than 1,000 crap developers getting bogged down in product management BS. The thing is that communication/management gets harder the more people there are, so crap developers have very little value (and maybe even negative marginal value in certain cases). IE a developer that's 10X better than another developer can actually be worth 1000X because you can't just hire a 10 mediocre developers and have them be worth the same as a single great developer. 2) Really great developers are really paid a lot more than less good ones (but not their full value). Smart developers with no experience are paid more than what he suggests. A smart college grad can get paid 6 figures without any experience in the right job (not ~50K). People who prove their worth can ultimately get paid a lot more. However, they're pay will usually be increased above their peers outside of salary using RSUs/options that will be very valuable but vest over time. It is true that great developers often have to either co-found their own companies or take high level management roles to get 100X pay of an average developer. That said most companies don't pay programmers their true value, and it often takes a long time for a developer to fully demonstrate their value and develop a name for themselves. edit: TBC, I'm not arguing anything about immigration or the OP as a whole. I just take issue with the idea that there is little variance in value between programmers.
- skylan_q 12y ago
  1) This can't be discovered through an interview, nevermind an immigration process. It would just be increasing the entire pool of people who might qualify as "top talent" or "average" programmers. The author raised the point that 3rd world countries probably don't have as high a proportion in their general populace of skilled labour as the US.
  - oe 12y ago
    We are not talking about 3rd world countries though? Most of Europe has as skilled programmers as the US, of which some would like to move to the US.
hluska 12y ago
First, it is hard to take this article seriously when the author seems confused by what PG and Y Combinator actually do. For example, consider these sentences: One obvious difference between Paul is that he’s an employer and I’m an employee. We have too many people coming out of school who cannot find jobs, and not enough tech types for Y Combinator (or my various employers) to hire. What would happen if a few large companies (let’s start with Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe from the lawsuit; I’d add Y Combinator, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle), all announced they would raise salaries in all H-1B categories by 5%/year for 10 years, while the US reduced H-1B visas by 10% per year for 9 years, ending at 8,500 (10% of current volume)? In light of this severe misunderstanding, it is no wonder that this article makes so little sense. The author seems to make the point that H1-B visas tend to go to more average programmers. And, then argues that if companies want to attract more qualified people, they should start offering higher salaries/more options to top people. The problem is that they already do this and there is still a scarcity of truly amazing programmers. This isn't all that complex, or am I missing something?
- skylan_q 12y ago
  H-1B visa demand is not high because companies are striving for excellence. The visas are being used to preserve the existing labor market (salary levels) rather than paying higher salaries as dictated by supply and demand. Paul’s suggestion would help US companies find employees, but drain brainpower from the rest of the world, and leave the US workforce uncompetitive for US jobs. It is not a good answer. That's his main driving point. Employees are not all the same, and the immigrants aren't generally excellent programmers. Their purpose is to increase the labor pool size of the "average programmer" variety. This puts downward pressure on wages for average programmer types while also failing to bring in top-level talent.
  - hluska 12y ago
    PG said: The anti-immigration people have to invent some explanation to account for all the effort technology companies have expended trying to make immigration easier. So they claim it's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the US, where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American. Why would they go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same price? The only explanation is that they're telling the truth: there are just not enough great programmers to go around. There is nothing in this article to contradict what PG said - I'd love to see some well reasoned counter-arguments, but I don't see any in this article. In fact, I get the sense that the author has no idea what Y Combinator even does.
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abofh 12y ago
I do hope this isn't just ghosted since it's been up for an hour with no discussion, but.. Right on. You really want a 10x'er, you'll discover that they're usually happy where they are, which is part of why they bloomed into one. If you want to make them move, you need to offer them something above contentment and personal satisfaction -- at that point, if you can't offer me contentment and happiness -- money is really your best proxy, and you should fight with it. If they're really a 10xer though, expect the other side to fight back. Now, if you want to /make/ more 10x'ers, bringing in immigrants is probably a good way to ensure you're being selective (top 5% of people in schools around the world, as long as they're comparable to some selected baseline) -- but that's to /make/ the 10x'er, not to hire them, and the H1-B is to hire talent that cant be /found/ domestically, not talent that can't be nurtured domestically.
- ta0348553 12y ago
  I generally agree. But I am not sure that bringing in immigrants is a good way to make more 10x'ers, if you actually want to grow the domestic talent pool as opposed to just finding undervalued talent. People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the field are less likely to, since they have options. I would love to see a credible study on this, but intuitively I think it's likely that this effect could cancel out much of the net growth in the domestic talent pool that would otherwise have come from immigration. Before anyone argues that this is morally wrong, remember, we're not worried about what SHOULD be true, just about how to increase participation of talent in the field, empirically.
  - anindyabd 12y ago
    >> People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the field are less likely to, since they have options. First of all, as someone born in what you term a "third world" country, I do find your argument morally outrageous, but apparently I'm not allowed to argue morality. But let's see: "Foreign-born entrepreneurs helped start one-fourth of all new U.S. engineering and technology business established between 1995 and 2005, including Google and eBay. In high-tech Silicon Valley, California, more than one-half of business start-ups over that period involved a foreign-born scientist or engineer; one-fourth included an Indian or Chinese immigrant" [1]. Is being a founder of a multi-billion or multi-million dollar company no longer considered prestigious? What is prestigious? Being a doctor? "Of the roughly 853,000 health care professionals employed as physicians and surgeons in 2010, more than one-quarter (27 percent) were foreign born. ... Persons born in India, the Philippines, and China accounted for 34 percent of employed foreign-born physicians and surgeons." [2] [1] http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/usforeignbornstem.aspx http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/usforeignborns... [2] http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-health-care-workers-united-states#4 http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-health-c...
schoen 12y ago
I don't understand why the author of this piece describes granting new work visas as offering employers an "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)". I would view it as exactly the opposite -- I see requiring visas for employees in the first place as the "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)". I guess this is a pretty deep disconnect. Some people see the normal or basic state of affairs as one in which any employer can hire any employee in the world, and then governments alter this background situation for political and cultural reasons by choosing to prevent some migration and employment offers (thereby artificially depressing the supply of labor in their territory and the demand for labor in other territories). Other people see the normal or basic state of affairs as one in which people can only seek employment in their own countries of origin; then governments alter this background situation for political and economic reasons by choosing to permit some migration and employment offers (thereby artificially increasing the supply of labor in their territory and the demand for labor in other territories). On one view, granting work visas is undoing a very small part of a very large prior government intervention in the economy; on the other view, it's creating a new intervention where none existed before. On one view, the baseline is a single world market for labor which then gets distorted by migration restrictions; on the other, the baseline is hundreds of largely isolated national markets for labor which then get distorted by importing foreigners.
- skylan_q 12y ago
  I see requiring visas for employees in the first place as the "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)". National boundaries, timezones, cultures, local governance issues, political issues, etc... still exist. The globalist view is ignores this and assumes that visas are an artificial barrier to entry. If the argument is to promote US interests, (as his is, and PG's possibly is) one can't view it through globalist glasses but nationalist glasses. Large corporations seek to increase their ability to get labor in whichever country their operations reside. This increases the supply of labor in that country, which drives downward pressure on wages.
  - foobarqux 12y ago
    Promoting US interests rarely means promoting interests of the US middle class.
tptacek 12y ago
Graham didn't write that some programmers are merely worth 100x more than other programmers. He wrote: A great programmer will invent things an ordinary programmer would never even think of. This doesn't mean a great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because any invention has a finite market value. But it's easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. The job of someone trying to rebut this statement is to foreclose on the idea of imagining that a great programmer might invent something worth $10,000,000 (or that an "ordinary" programmer could do that while leaving their "ordinary" status intact). Graham didn't say this happens every day; he said "it's easy to imagine cases". And, obviously, it is. Scale the hyperbolic 100x down to Fred Brooks' 10x. The rebuttal is still wrong. It compares ordinary programmers to Zuckerberg and Andreesen, on the premise that those are two programmers worth >100x. But nobody, including Graham, has said those two are worth more as programmers. The telling comparison is to John Carmack. "Nobody would ever hire John Carmack instead of 100 programmers". OK. But they might hire Carmack instead of 10 developers. That's because there probably is such a thing as a 10x developer. I do not like or for the most part agree with Paul Graham's immigration essay. I think regional labor stickiness is a much more reasonable problem to solve than immigration. Our industry should get better at sourcing talent from Tulsa before lobbying to let more talent in from Krakow. Sadly, I haven't yet read a lot of strong rebuttals to Graham.
- dvanduzer 12y ago
  Let's just allow that Graham is only saying that inventive people tend to cluster in one economic zone. It's an easy conclusion to anyone interested in the continued economic success of the United States that we should get as many of those people into the country as possible. Now if what we really want is to maximize inventiveness as a species / civilization... We probably don't want a monoculture of thought. We want inventive people in a diverse number of environments, all getting slightly different experiences and fresh angles on local and global problems. We could take a further leap and argue that we need to import diversity to solve the monoculture problem in the United States. But that's not what Graham's arguing.
- davidw 12y ago
  IMO the biggest problem with PG's essay is that it was a bit too timid and too focused on only "really good people": http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/ http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs...
mcfunley 12y ago
PG's time would be better spent arguing for top marginal tax rate increases. Or something else that's testimony against self-interest. I think it's not at all surprising that the overall reaction to his transparently talking his book is blind rage. (This isn't a particularly great response, but it's in line with every other one I've read.)
jlturner 12y ago
I'd gladly hire 1 John Carmack over 100 average programmers. Is he really more valuable than 100 programmers? If you factor the added cost of managing 100 engineers (and the intangible communication overhead cost of getting all those engineers to agree and be on the same page), than yes it is far more valuable.
- abat 12y ago
  Agreed. I also wouldn't be surprised if he got paid >100X the average programmer with Oculus in the end as well.
- oe 12y ago
  Yeah, that example sounded wrong. I'd say Oculus Rift is better off with Carmack than 100 average programmers doing the same stuff.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  That is part of what makes this whole article so absurd to me. John Carmack or whatever other 10x employee is never going to work to sell your ads, or share your photos, or anything. A 10x programmer is a genius who understands the business well enough to pull ideas out of the air and has the chops to make them real. They're running their own companies. And if they join companies, they join for ownership stake.
- petilon 12y ago
  It depends on the program you are trying to develop. If you are trying to develop a typical business application 10 good developers could probably accomplish as much or more than John Carmack. But if you are trying to develop a game, even 1000 good programmers could not together accomplish what John Carmack could accomplish single handedly.
datashovel 12y ago
There is alot more to it I think than meets the eye. I've seen a wide spectrum of talents. I've seen some with the capacity to be 10x who have no motivation, and some with almost no chance of reaching 10x status with all the motivation in the world. I think one of the differentiators, in what makes a 10x programmer significantly more valuable is alot of things people are trying today have never been done before. So to have the insight that a 10x programmer can bring to the table is priceless. I think it's entirely wrong to believe, in these cases, that you can achieve the same result with average developers. On the other hand, if you're doing things that have been done a million times before, there's likely to be a few tried and true templates people can follow to get a functioning system up and running.
- datashovel 12y ago
  I do agree with the article regarding not enough competition between tech companies. Due to the enormous value a 10x programmer can bring to a company, there should be at least a few [pick your favorite job board] postings for $1 million / yr salary. Right now the state of hiring in Silicon Valley (being an outsider) seems to be a high level of collusion or some "unspoken promise" between employers in the area that they should not "rock the boat".
winter_blue 12y ago
I began programming when I was 8, like a lot of people on HN and elsewhere. Programming has always been my hobby, and I’ve enjoyed writing beautiful, readable, maintainable, and (sometimes) efficient code. I was blessed enough to have parents who were willing and could afford to send me over to the United States for college. But I was far more lucky to have won the H1B lottery that let me live here after college. Not everyone was as lucky. (See http://app.fwd.us/stories/429 http://app.fwd.us/stories/429) Students graduating with PhDs from Ivy League schools who wish to stay get kicked out of the country every year because they didn’t win a lottery. The truth is it’s incredibly hard to immigrate to the US legally. For a lot of people, the H1B acts as a stepping stone to a green card (i.e., to an EB visa). These people aren’t really “guest workers” — a lot of them will stay and become citizens. If you don’t have relatives here, are not a refugee, and aren’t lucky enough to score a diversity visa, skilled/employment-based immigration is the only route. And it’s incredibly hard to come to this country under the skilled/employment-based immigration route. One of the fallacies that a lot of people who oppose skilled immigration subscribe to is the “lump-of-labor theory”. It’s a hardened belief that jobs are a zero-sum game — and from this arises the idea that every skilled immigrant takes away a job from a U.S. worker. This isn’t true. More skilled, educated workers will actually add to the economy — and grow the economy. Just imagine: what if the U.S. had not let in the millions of immigrants it did during the 1800s out of a fear that citizen workers would loose their jobs? We’d have a much smaller population, and subsequently a lower total GDP. We might be equally well-off on a per capita basis, but we wouldn’t be the country we are today. PG might have been wrong in that not every skilled immigrant is 100x more skilled that his native counterpart. But I agree with him that letting more skilled/educated people in, would be a good thing for this country overall.
- anindyabd 12y ago
  America is a country of immigrants, that, throughout its history, has hated new immigrants [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_%28politics%29#Nativism_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_%28politics%29#Nativis...
  - twic 12y ago
johansch 12y ago
I'm sorry to re-use a reddit meme, but in this thread, as well as the previous one: you can read about american developers arguing about why they should be the only one to have access to the most lucrative market for developers worldwide. It is pretty clear to most intelligent observers that: a) there is a low-end-market of mostly indian consulting companies abusing the H1B program. It would be very easy to stop this. My suggestion: set a H1B worker minimum salary of 120% of the average salary for existing native workers. b) The US, and the US companies wanting to employ the best software developers would benefit by getting the whole world as recruiting ground. c) Individual developers outside of the US wanting to work in silicon valley would benefit d) Not very good US developers in silicon valley, currently getting big salaries could be at risk. e) The rest of the world would not benefit by the brain drain this would cause.
- walshemj 12y ago
  your right and can make the same argument in other professions eg the AMA, Bar asociations and interestingly enough lawyers and accountants in India.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    An irony here is that the legal profession was recently ravaged by a structural shift that eliminated lots of jobs, and it was caused in large part by the tech industry.
    - kencausey 12y ago
      I missed this apparently. Can someone explain this change and the technology which led to it?
      - petilon 12y ago
        Lots of jobs in the legal profession involves researching past court decisions - going through mountains of documents. This can now be done in low-cost countries such as India where there are tons of English speaking people. The technology that led to it is the internet.
brianbreslin 12y ago
Here's an idea, what if the funds that go towards H1-B visas were parceled out towards training domestic workforces of the future. There is a systemic flaw in this analysis (both the author's and PG's) in that we're comparing short vs long term solutions and problems and blending them together as if they were one.
- winter_blue 12y ago
  It's funny that you mention that because it's being done already. With every work visa application, a company with more than 50 employees has to pay $1500 towards the training of US workers, and companies with less than 50 employees have to pay $750. It's called the ACWIA fee. It was introduced by the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 (ACWIA). Source: http://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-form-i-129-petition-nonimmigrant-worker http://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-form-i-129-pe...
  - brianbreslin 12y ago
    Ah I had no idea. Thanks!
- zodiac 12y ago
  If by "funds towards H1B visas" you include salary paid to the H1B employees, most employers would refuse to do this.
  - brianbreslin 12y ago
    no i mean the fees paid to the government for the visas. employee salaries shouldn't go towards training of other future employees.
njloof 12y ago
I'll note that when poaching between companies reached a critical mass, major companies like Google and Apple colluded to keep salaries down (see Techtopus for details).
guiambros 12y ago
My problem with PG's original post is that there's no easy way to identify the so-called exceptional programmers, and he seems to disregard that. We can't magically find the "other" 95%", and give visas only to them. And, in most cases, you won't know for sure till many years later. Also, I dislike the ideological debate of H1B's, which seems to be OP's main point. H1B's are used to increase supply, which has the collateral effect of lowering wages (or keeping them at reasonable levels). Per PG's post: "I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he'd hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said: We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning". What, exactly, is holding this CEO from hiring 30 great developers, today? They simply can't afford them. Particularly being a small-ish startup, that can't compete head-to-head in terms of wages/benefits with Google, Facebbok, Apple. Of course a massive influx of talented immigrants (100x or not) would be a blessing. This is not a bad thing. It's possible that this startup would create even more value, more jobs, and pay more taxes, if they had the 30 additional programmers. H1B's or not. But let's not pretend the reason why this CEO is not filling the open positions is because they're not available in the US, and immigrants would be the only solution. Above all, I think the US needs a better immigration policy for the talents that will supply demand in the next 5, 10 years. It's insane that our taxpayer dollars go to fund education to bright foreign student, and we (forcibly) send them home after graduation. This is the dumbest use of taxpayer dollars, ever.
flipped_bit 12y ago
I think both authors miss the point that historically (esp. post WW2 which corrected the abberation during WW2) that capital flow was increasingly borderless. It has been labor that is held back in some anachonistic time warp with visa restrictions and so on. In prior times, European colonialism in Asia precisely solved the labor issues by directly annexing, then enhanching, controlling, and regulating the historical Asian labor productivity flows. After decolonization, with diversions to socialist/communist and autarkic models in Asia, most of these countries are now back in the game largely in control of developed (and mostly Western) nations. You have to see the regulation of labor in these slightly larger timelines to appreciate what is happening even in SV, and in other parts of the world. Majority of labor needs were of blue-collar variety, but thanks to technology, even white-collar labor is not immune to this economic rationale of matching capital to labor. Borders will dissolve (they are mostly unnatural and artificial barriers), and before people bring up all the cultural and historical rights, even these items are ultimately driven by economics. High-tech jobs are no different in this equation and are driven by the same forces. The only thing that can upset globalization trends is war which is precisely what happened with WW1 and WW2 in the 20th century (which also arrested the globalization trends which started to peak just prior to WW1). You want to stop labor migration flows? Start preparing for war. The other possibility is for the labor vs capital imbalances to level out - for e.g. China and India become sufficiently advanced and developed to a point where there is no need for them to export their surplus populations, exactly how the British did in 18th and 19th century as they colonized North America (USA and Canada), Australia, and South Africa.
SwellJoe 12y ago
Some things this article doesn't address (though I think many of the things it does address are useful additions to the conversation, as was the previous discussion here at HN, which helped me grasp a lot of the nuances of the question): Ageism, sexism, and white/Asian supremacy, in the tech jobs market. Every time I read about the disastrous shortage of tech workers in the US, I have to fill in the fact that it's actually probably saying, "There is a shortage of young, male, white or Asian tech workers". Companies, in the general case, aren't hiring developers over 40, developers who are women, and developers who are black or brown. The best companies probably tap into one or two of these options, but very few tap into all of them. Even Google and Facebook, widely regarded as amazing employers with good diversity programs tend to draw primarily from the recently graduated, and even pre-graduated, including paid internship-to-employee programs that channel the best students into Google jobs beginning a couple years into a student's education at "good" universities. In the youth-focused culture of Silicon Valley, it would seem absurd to suggest the same resources be expended to re-train existing programmers (despite pretty good data indicating that experience is one of the bigger leading indicators of programmer efficiency). So, I understand why so many are reacting negatively to pg's essay. I know enough women, minorities, and older folks, who have left tech because the industry was simply not friendly to them--it paid them too little, it worked them too long and too hard, it treated them as outsiders--to make me suspicious of the motivations behind the pro-H1B camp. I am for open borders, which would imply companies being able to hire from anywhere (but also employees being able to work and live anywhere), but the H1B process leads to a sort of indentured servitude that provides employers with an effectively captive pool of talent. If there were anywhere near full employment in the tech industry, and if there were a convincing case to be made that employers genuinely were hiring across a broad spectrum of people to fill tech roles, and were paying tech workers what they're worth, I'd be more inclined to get on board with this particular push. This one is hard for me to figure out, because I genuinely do want more freedom for everyone to be able to move about freely and work anywhere they choose, and H1B is currently the only way a lot of my friends have been able to come to the US...so I support it, and even support expansion of the program. But, I don't like that it so clearly serves large corporations at the expense of workers. It makes immigration to the US much easier but only for those people willing to kowtow to their US employer.
caryfitz 12y ago
It really seems like both sides of the issue are arguing here. PG wants to argue for finding more of the diamonds in the rough, instead of spending triple the $$ to pry them away from a competitor. "There isn't enough to go around" he cries - well, if you pay more, of course you'll "get your guy". There isn't enough gold to go around either, that's why it is expensive. If programmer salaries doubled (say) - the programmers make the widgets so you have to hire them, and the customers probably won't pay more, so you have less $$ for the VCs. So they, would naturally, like to increase supply. This doesn't seem too controversial. On the other end, you have an engineer who is (I would guess?) competent and feels underpaid. That is what we all feel like, isn't it? And he'd prefer to make more $$ for his job. And he looks around and sees (or thinks he does) that the guys with the $$ don't want to pay him more - instead they go find other people to fill his role. "Don't want what I'm paying? Sorry! I'll find someone else". He would like to be paid more for his services, instead of the job getting given to someone else. I think it must be made clear that the people PG is talking about (rockstars hired by a startup) - and the people that are normally associated with H1Bs (junior level talent) - are NOT the same groups of people. With 65000 visas available - I would suspect what is really happening is this. Since there is no way for a government agency to determine if an engineer is good / bad / excellent / sucky. They have to pretty much "trust" the company to only submit the visa application in good faith. However, if you are a business manager with less than stellar scruples, you need to fill 50 seats and you can find them all with H1B visas for a "competitive" salary! (remember that is the gov'ts competitive salary, which probably lumps all engineers from the help desk to the architects into the same bucket...). Slam dunk! I just saved my company thousands! And those engineers I do hire can't leave for a few years! Double score! There is no risk for a company to try to bring in any and all H1B workers. And there is great upside. So - PG may be correct that there are hundreds / thousands of top top top engineers trying to get in on an H1B to a startup or google. There are also most likely tens / hundreds of thousands of middling engineers brought in to fill slots. We should not try to compare a "free market" like buying something off ebay, with employees and labor. Employees and labor have many many more real-life implications - and a wise handling of the issue should see that. real people have families, homes, mortgages, relationships, cultures, history, commuting times, taxes, immigration... There is a cost to switching things up in real life. On ebay, you just click a different link to select a better priced product. There is very little (no?) cost to switching things in a virtual "free" market. It can't be a "free market" when switching producers costs a large percentage of the products' cost. Think if a trade on the NYSE cost $10,000 a trade - instead of $15. I tend to view it as a class-based argument. And when someone tries to make it a "logical argument" it seems a bit farcical. There is too much self-serving going on. Facebook/PG/VCs arguing for more labor and less pay? And individuals arguing for less labor and more pay? I mean - that's pretty straight-forward. Both have a valid argument - both have selfish motivations. And given those two, I'd lean towards making a stronger middle class.
caryfitz 12y ago
It really seems like both sides of the issue are arguing here. PG wants to argue for finding more of the diamonds in the rough, instead of spending triple the $$ to pry them away from a competitor. "There isn't enough to go around" he cries - well, if you pay more, of course you'll "get your guy". There isn't enough gold to go around either, that's why it is expensive. If programmer salaries doubled (say) - the programmers make the widgets so you have to hire them, and the customers probably won't pay more, so you have less $$ for the VCs. So they, would naturally, like to increase supply. This doesn't seem too controversial. On the other end, you have an engineer who is (I would guess?) competent and feels underpaid. That is what we all feel like, isn't it? And he'd prefer to make more $$ for his job. And he looks around and sees (or thinks he does) that the guys with the $$ don't want to pay him more - instead they go find other people to fill his role. "Don't want what I'm paying? Sorry! I'll find someone else". He would like to be paid more for his services, instead of the job getting given to someone else. I think it must be made clear that the people PG is talking about (rockstars hired by a startup) - and the people that are normally associated with H1Bs (junior level talent) - are NOT the same groups of people. With 65000 visas available - I would suspect what is really happening is this. Since there is no way for a government agency to determine if an engineer is good / bad / excellent / sucky. They have to pretty much "trust" the company to only submit the visa application in good faith. However, if you are a business manager with less than stellar scruples, you need to fill 50 seats and you can find them all with H1B visas for a "competitive" salary! (remember that is the gov'ts competitive salary, which probably lumps all engineers from the help desk to the architects into the same bucket...). Slam dunk! I just saved my company thousands! And those engineers I do hire can't leave for a few years! Double score! There is no risk for a company to try to bring in any and all H1B workers. And there is great upside. So - PG may be correct that there are hundreds / thousands of top top top engineers trying to get in on an H1B to a startup or google. There are also most likely tens / hundreds of thousands of middling engineers brought in to fill slots. We should not try to compare a "free market" like buying something off ebay, with employees and labor. Employees and labor have many many more real-life implications - and a wise handling of the issue should see that. real people have families, homes, mortgages, relationships, cultures, history, commuting times... There is a cost to switching things up in real life. On ebay, you just click a different link to select a better priced product. There is very little (no?) cost to switching things in a virtual "free" market. It can't be a "free market" when switching producers costs a large percentage of the products' cost. Think if a trade on the NYSE cost $10,000 a trade - instead of $15. I tend to view it as a class-based argument. And when someone tries to make it a "logical argument" it seems a bit farcical. There is too much self-serving going on. Facebook/PG/VCs arguing for more labor and less pay? And individuals arguing for less labor and more pay? I mean - that's pretty straight-forward. Both have a valid argument - both have selfish motivations. And given those two, I'd lean towards making a stronger middle class.
chrisbennet 12y ago
I say the following as a software developer so I'm one of the lucky ones in this new world: When someone from the silicon valley uses the argument that "We need to do X to maintain our technological competitiveness." the "our" should be viewed as referring to those that have the capital to benefit from this increased "competitiveness". The Chinese are very competitive - because their labor is relatively cheap. This is the axis of "competitiveness" capital is aiming for with increasing H1B quotas, not "get smarter people". They could get all the smart people they want but that would require them to share more of the profits with those smart people - you know, the ones that actually create the value in the first place. All this "disruption" has benefited a very few disproportionately and the "winners" would like the rest of the populace to give up a little more so they can make even more money. "Oh but Chris, these new companies create jobs so we should cut them a special break - it helps us all in the end." According to Chris Benner, a regional economist at the University of California, Davis, there has been no net increase in jobs in Silicon Valley since 1998; digital technologies inevitably mean you can generate billions of dollars from a low employment base.[1] [1] http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technology-and-inequality/ http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technol...
auggierose 12y ago
Come on, PG just wrote this piece as an homage to this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/
fiatmoney 12y ago
Hey, guess what. There is a visa category for immigrants with "extraordinary talents". It is the O-1 visa. Someone on the level of John Carmack or Jeff Dean, for instance, would have no problem getting one of these. http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/o-1-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement/o-1-visa-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers... H1B, by contrast, is primarily used for cheap bodies, at not-at-all high salaries. This website makes it nicely available, but the raw data is available from the Department of Labor. http://www.h1bwage.com/ http://www.h1bwage.com/ http://www.flcdatacenter.com/ http://www.flcdatacenter.com/
vinceguidry 12y ago
> John Carmack is an obvious genius who keeps pushing the edge — but nobody ever hired him instead of 100 programmers. If I had the choice of working with 100 programmers or working with John Carmack, I'd go with Carmack Every. Single. Time. Wouldn't even hesitate.
bazookajoes 12y ago
In my opinion PG does his article a disservice by not being more specific about the great programmers should be let into the US. For example he could touched on the O-1 visa for "Aliens of extraordinary ability". Instead the conversation has devolved into the costs and benefits of H-1B visa. PGs goal is to bring more great programmers to the US, however the H-1B visa is specifically targeted to good programmers, not great programmers. From wikipedia: > The law requires H-1B workers to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage for the same occupation and geographic location, or the same as the employer pays to similarly situated employees. Other factors, such as age and skill were not permitted to be taken into account for the prevailing wage. Here are some other points of confusion: 1) Some people are hung on the term "programmer", I think what is meant by this term is someone who is A) deeply technical, B) codes, C) contributes to product fit, and D) contributes project planning. 2) Some people are hung up on the term "great" programmer". Good programmers get their work done on time and with high quality. Great programmers contribute key insights that transform the product or team in ways that that directly lead to accomplishing the team's goals. Personally I've found that it is often possible to distinguish between good and bad programmers. It has been much harder to distinguish between good and great programmers. 3) Some people are hung up on the fact that great programmers are frequently not paid 10 or 100 or 1000 times what good programmers are paid. There are three very good reasons for this. A) A great programmer has to be in the right position to be commensurately rewarded. (The world's greatest fly fisherman will receive a normal wage on a commercial fishing boat.) B) A great programmer is making decisions and taking actions that will result in raised profits. They don't get paid up front because the money isn't there yet. C) Many people have never worked with a great programmer. The programmers that they think are great are only 1.5X or 2X or 3X. That isn't. 4) Some people are hung up on the fact that PG seems to make either A) the assumption that H-1B recipients are great programmers, or B) the assumption that if the US grants more H-1Bs annually that there all the additional recipients will be great programmers. I don't think he's making either of those assumptions. There is a curve of capability and potential for H-1B recipients just like every other population. PG is saying that any increase in the number of great programmers in the US is good for the US. 5) The final question is what does it mean for something to be good for the US? A) If an H-1B recipient starts the next facebook is it good for the US? It will be great for angels, VCs and institutional investors. It will be good for the US because the US will tax everyone's personal compensation (although any eventually corporate profits will likely be tax sheltered). It will be good for the US because jobs will be created (although there might be fewer jobs at the companies being disrupted. B) If the H-1B recipient only winds up doing good job at a corporation then the corporation did not need offer a more attractive salary to a US citizen or train a US citizen to do the job. This is good for the corporation because their costs are lower (assuming the cost of the H-1B application process is lower than the cost of offering a more attractive salary or training an individual with potential). This is bad for the individual who might otherwise have been trained or received increased compensation. However if the role is truly a role that would not otherwise have been filled then there is no individual who is negatively impacted by hiring an H-1B applicant. Here is something to think about: 1) The company is willing to compensate a programmer $COST for a role. 2) The company expects an increase in revenue of $REVENUE as result of the additional headcount. 3) The company has a return on investment goal of ROI for the year. It might be an internal figure or something promised to its investors. 4) The company can only hire a candidate if (REVENUE-COST)/COST > ROI 5) There are two reasons for hiring H-1Bs A) because the company can not find anyone else who will accept a compensation that makes the equation work or B) because the company can not hire anyone for the role (perhaps they or their industry has a negative reputation or no reputation). There are certainly things that complicate this equations: 1) Perhaps the company is forward looking enough to hire in advance of expected attrition. 2) Perhaps the individual is in a role that supports revenue creation by another individual. 3) Perhaps the company has an "up or out" approach and they are hungry to find stars. 4) Perhaps the revenue that the new hire would bring in is very hard to predict. In this case the up front compensation would be reduced to account for the risk. Typically the role would come with the potential for increase compensation in the form of a bonus, stock options or commission.
DavidWanjiru 12y ago
Paul Graham's entire argument rests, as far as I can tell, on the assumption that the distribution of great programmers maps to the population distribution. Can this be empirically established or refuted? Because doing so would bring this matter to a close pretty quickly, I think. After all, is anybody arguing about whether America needs to import middle eastern oil? Of course not, because the global distribution of oil has been empirically established, and the need to meet local deficits with imports meets little, if any, resistance. I feel that the intractability of this immigration debate, such as it is, is due primarily to the fact that the global distribution of top quality "digital talent", as Graham calls it, hasn't been established. Some people say most of the best is out there, others say the best is just a matter of training.
Zigurd 12y ago
That, like other articles say that the real answer is "bid higher." Is that correct? There is one way to find out: Would employers pay significantly more for an H1-B employee than any other. Auction the visas, with a high minimum bid. If you need that PhD with a stellar track record from outside the US you will willingly pay $50-100k. If your goal is to supress wage growth in an industry with very high productivity, GTFO.
tarikjn 12y ago
To those making the argument that if companies can't find talent they are not paying enough (which I don't disagree with), I can't help but wonder isn't there a price point past which it's more cost effective and sensible for companies to open an office in a country which allows to hire from a pool of 7B people vs 300M?
DavidWanjiru 12y ago
There are so many complexities to this debate. For example, if you oppose foreigners coming to America, do you also oppose America exporting stuff to these foreigners wherever they currently are? Presumably no. If not, how are they able to afford your exports, which in turn keep you, an American, in your job? Their ability to create value, and trade this value for somebody else's value. What if, then, their ability to produce this value is magnified by their coming to America? You know, like that example given by a commentor, of a fashion designer from Oklahoma moving to Paris or Milan? Or my friend from Thika, Kenya? He has done design work for Daimler Trucks, but was denied a visa by the American embassy in Nairobi, having been seconded to the American branch of Daimler's trucks business by their German business. The embassy simply didn't see how this Kenyan kid landed this gig, despite all the supporting documentation and opportunity to verify, so they alluded his paperwork was fake and denied him the visa. Would he have made more money over there? You bet. At any rate I bet. Would he be able to buy more American stuff, keep more Americans in their jobs? Yes. But now he can't, coz your govt won't let him come over. Who is the loser here? Remember, the reason he caught Daimler's attention in the first place, despite his lack of formal design training, was his work. In fact, they wanted him to come to America to formally study design at Daimler's cost, since that formal education was part of Daimler's hiring policy. So it wasn't merely that he'd have taken an American job, or that Daimler can train plenty of the available Americans. He was a "great programmer", and I'd say America is worse off for not hiring him.
pmelendez 12y ago
One thing that bothers me about the "immigration takes jobs from locals" argument is that it would imply a reduction on job positions which I haven't seen in the technology industry.
mabbo 12y ago
The arguments keep going back and forth: just pay developers more if they're worth more (supply and demand, pay more for what's better, etc) vs work visa requirements are protectionist and we should get rid of them. What people seem to forget is that there is a lovely experiment going on that can (partially, with some caveats) answer some of these questions as to what would happen: NAFTA. If you have a technical degree, getting a work visa for the USA as a Mexican or Canadian is fairly simple. There aren't (afaik) any limit to how many there are. I've had a few (internships, full time job in Seattle). So what is the average experience for a Canadian or Mexican on TN visas to the US? I've been one, and I've known quite a few. Purely anecdotal, but as far as I can tell, we're just an increase in the usual supply of developers, which eventually just lowers the average wage of all developers. I'm sure we're pretty smart folks, but we're not worth 10x as much as anyone else- we certainly weren't being paid any more than the others. I think immigration limits for people with jobs lined up in the country they wish to enter are silly, and the whole world ought to have the same access NAFTA residents do. But I also think Paul Graham should admit that simply offering people more money would solve his problem. He's chosen the price he wants to pay, the market says you can't get very many great people at this price, so he's demanding the market change rather than his chosen price.

108 points by mparramon 12y ago

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abat 12y ago

1) Some programmers really are worth orders of magnitude more than others. Really great programmers will help drive product decisions that can change direction of the company and the ultimate success/failure. The more responsibility a programmer has over product/quality/cost/delivery schedule, the more they can be worth a huge amount. 10X is probably a more common variance, but I'm sure there are single developers building the right thing that are worth more than 1,000 crap developers getting bogged down in product management BS. The thing is that communication/management gets harder the more people there are, so crap developers have very little value (and maybe even negative marginal value in certain cases). IE a developer that's 10X better than another developer can actually be worth 1000X because you can't just hire a 10 mediocre developers and have them be worth the same as a single great developer. 2) Really great developers are really paid a lot more than less good ones (but not their full value). Smart developers with no experience are paid more than what he suggests. A smart college grad can get paid 6 figures without any experience in the right job (not ~50K). People who prove their worth can ultimately get paid a lot more. However, they're pay will usually be increased above their peers outside of salary using RSUs/options that will be very valuable but vest over time. It is true that great developers often have to either co-found their own companies or take high level management roles to get 100X pay of an average developer. That said most companies don't pay programmers their true value, and it often takes a long time for a developer to fully demonstrate their value and develop a name for themselves. edit: TBC, I'm not arguing anything about immigration or the OP as a whole. I just take issue with the idea that there is little variance in value between programmers.

skylan_q 12y ago
1) This can't be discovered through an interview, nevermind an immigration process. It would just be increasing the entire pool of people who might qualify as "top talent" or "average" programmers. The author raised the point that 3rd world countries probably don't have as high a proportion in their general populace of skilled labour as the US.
- oe 12y ago
  We are not talking about 3rd world countries though? Most of Europe has as skilled programmers as the US, of which some would like to move to the US.

hluska 12y ago

First, it is hard to take this article seriously when the author seems confused by what PG and Y Combinator actually do. For example, consider these sentences: One obvious difference between Paul is that he’s an employer and I’m an employee. We have too many people coming out of school who cannot find jobs, and not enough tech types for Y Combinator (or my various employers) to hire. What would happen if a few large companies (let’s start with Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe from the lawsuit; I’d add Y Combinator, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle), all announced they would raise salaries in all H-1B categories by 5%/year for 10 years, while the US reduced H-1B visas by 10% per year for 9 years, ending at 8,500 (10% of current volume)? In light of this severe misunderstanding, it is no wonder that this article makes so little sense. The author seems to make the point that H1-B visas tend to go to more average programmers. And, then argues that if companies want to attract more qualified people, they should start offering higher salaries/more options to top people. The problem is that they already do this and there is still a scarcity of truly amazing programmers. This isn't all that complex, or am I missing something?

skylan_q 12y ago
H-1B visa demand is not high because companies are striving for excellence. The visas are being used to preserve the existing labor market (salary levels) rather than paying higher salaries as dictated by supply and demand. Paul’s suggestion would help US companies find employees, but drain brainpower from the rest of the world, and leave the US workforce uncompetitive for US jobs. It is not a good answer. That's his main driving point. Employees are not all the same, and the immigrants aren't generally excellent programmers. Their purpose is to increase the labor pool size of the "average programmer" variety. This puts downward pressure on wages for average programmer types while also failing to bring in top-level talent.
- hluska 12y ago
  PG said: The anti-immigration people have to invent some explanation to account for all the effort technology companies have expended trying to make immigration easier. So they claim it's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the US, where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American. Why would they go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same price? The only explanation is that they're telling the truth: there are just not enough great programmers to go around. There is nothing in this article to contradict what PG said - I'd love to see some well reasoned counter-arguments, but I don't see any in this article. In fact, I get the sense that the author has no idea what Y Combinator even does.

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abofh 12y ago

I do hope this isn't just ghosted since it's been up for an hour with no discussion, but.. Right on. You really want a 10x'er, you'll discover that they're usually happy where they are, which is part of why they bloomed into one. If you want to make them move, you need to offer them something above contentment and personal satisfaction -- at that point, if you can't offer me contentment and happiness -- money is really your best proxy, and you should fight with it. If they're really a 10xer though, expect the other side to fight back. Now, if you want to /make/ more 10x'ers, bringing in immigrants is probably a good way to ensure you're being selective (top 5% of people in schools around the world, as long as they're comparable to some selected baseline) -- but that's to /make/ the 10x'er, not to hire them, and the H1-B is to hire talent that cant be /found/ domestically, not talent that can't be nurtured domestically.

ta0348553 12y ago
I generally agree. But I am not sure that bringing in immigrants is a good way to make more 10x'ers, if you actually want to grow the domestic talent pool as opposed to just finding undervalued talent. People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the field are less likely to, since they have options. I would love to see a credible study on this, but intuitively I think it's likely that this effect could cancel out much of the net growth in the domestic talent pool that would otherwise have come from immigration. Before anyone argues that this is morally wrong, remember, we're not worried about what SHOULD be true, just about how to increase participation of talent in the field, empirically.
- anindyabd 12y ago
  >> People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the field are less likely to, since they have options. First of all, as someone born in what you term a "third world" country, I do find your argument morally outrageous, but apparently I'm not allowed to argue morality. But let's see: "Foreign-born entrepreneurs helped start one-fourth of all new U.S. engineering and technology business established between 1995 and 2005, including Google and eBay. In high-tech Silicon Valley, California, more than one-half of business start-ups over that period involved a foreign-born scientist or engineer; one-fourth included an Indian or Chinese immigrant" [1]. Is being a founder of a multi-billion or multi-million dollar company no longer considered prestigious? What is prestigious? Being a doctor? "Of the roughly 853,000 health care professionals employed as physicians and surgeons in 2010, more than one-quarter (27 percent) were foreign born. ... Persons born in India, the Philippines, and China accounted for 34 percent of employed foreign-born physicians and surgeons." [2] [1] http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/usforeignbornstem.aspx http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/usforeignborns... [2] http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-health-care-workers-united-states#4 http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-health-c...

schoen 12y ago

I don't understand why the author of this piece describes granting new work visas as offering employers an "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)". I would view it as exactly the opposite -- I see requiring visas for employees in the first place as the "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)". I guess this is a pretty deep disconnect. Some people see the normal or basic state of affairs as one in which any employer can hire any employee in the world, and then governments alter this background situation for political and cultural reasons by choosing to prevent some migration and employment offers (thereby artificially depressing the supply of labor in their territory and the demand for labor in other territories). Other people see the normal or basic state of affairs as one in which people can only seek employment in their own countries of origin; then governments alter this background situation for political and economic reasons by choosing to permit some migration and employment offers (thereby artificially increasing the supply of labor in their territory and the demand for labor in other territories). On one view, granting work visas is undoing a very small part of a very large prior government intervention in the economy; on the other view, it's creating a new intervention where none existed before. On one view, the baseline is a single world market for labor which then gets distorted by migration restrictions; on the other, the baseline is hundreds of largely isolated national markets for labor which then get distorted by importing foreigners.

skylan_q 12y ago
I see requiring visas for employees in the first place as the "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)". National boundaries, timezones, cultures, local governance issues, political issues, etc... still exist. The globalist view is ignores this and assumes that visas are an artificial barrier to entry. If the argument is to promote US interests, (as his is, and PG's possibly is) one can't view it through globalist glasses but nationalist glasses. Large corporations seek to increase their ability to get labor in whichever country their operations reside. This increases the supply of labor in that country, which drives downward pressure on wages.
- foobarqux 12y ago
  Promoting US interests rarely means promoting interests of the US middle class.

tptacek 12y ago

Graham didn't write that some programmers are merely worth 100x more than other programmers. He wrote: A great programmer will invent things an ordinary programmer would never even think of. This doesn't mean a great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because any invention has a finite market value. But it's easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. The job of someone trying to rebut this statement is to foreclose on the idea of imagining that a great programmer might invent something worth $10,000,000 (or that an "ordinary" programmer could do that while leaving their "ordinary" status intact). Graham didn't say this happens every day; he said "it's easy to imagine cases". And, obviously, it is. Scale the hyperbolic 100x down to Fred Brooks' 10x. The rebuttal is still wrong. It compares ordinary programmers to Zuckerberg and Andreesen, on the premise that those are two programmers worth >100x. But nobody, including Graham, has said those two are worth more as programmers. The telling comparison is to John Carmack. "Nobody would ever hire John Carmack instead of 100 programmers". OK. But they might hire Carmack instead of 10 developers. That's because there probably is such a thing as a 10x developer. I do not like or for the most part agree with Paul Graham's immigration essay. I think regional labor stickiness is a much more reasonable problem to solve than immigration. Our industry should get better at sourcing talent from Tulsa before lobbying to let more talent in from Krakow. Sadly, I haven't yet read a lot of strong rebuttals to Graham.

dvanduzer 12y ago
Let's just allow that Graham is only saying that inventive people tend to cluster in one economic zone. It's an easy conclusion to anyone interested in the continued economic success of the United States that we should get as many of those people into the country as possible. Now if what we really want is to maximize inventiveness as a species / civilization... We probably don't want a monoculture of thought. We want inventive people in a diverse number of environments, all getting slightly different experiences and fresh angles on local and global problems. We could take a further leap and argue that we need to import diversity to solve the monoculture problem in the United States. But that's not what Graham's arguing.
davidw 12y ago
IMO the biggest problem with PG's essay is that it was a bit too timid and too focused on only "really good people": http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/ http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs...

mcfunley 12y ago

PG's time would be better spent arguing for top marginal tax rate increases. Or something else that's testimony against self-interest. I think it's not at all surprising that the overall reaction to his transparently talking his book is blind rage. (This isn't a particularly great response, but it's in line with every other one I've read.)

jlturner 12y ago

I'd gladly hire 1 John Carmack over 100 average programmers. Is he really more valuable than 100 programmers? If you factor the added cost of managing 100 engineers (and the intangible communication overhead cost of getting all those engineers to agree and be on the same page), than yes it is far more valuable.

abat 12y ago
Agreed. I also wouldn't be surprised if he got paid >100X the average programmer with Oculus in the end as well.
oe 12y ago
Yeah, that example sounded wrong. I'd say Oculus Rift is better off with Carmack than 100 average programmers doing the same stuff.
droopyEyelids 12y ago
That is part of what makes this whole article so absurd to me. John Carmack or whatever other 10x employee is never going to work to sell your ads, or share your photos, or anything. A 10x programmer is a genius who understands the business well enough to pull ideas out of the air and has the chops to make them real. They're running their own companies. And if they join companies, they join for ownership stake.
petilon 12y ago
It depends on the program you are trying to develop. If you are trying to develop a typical business application 10 good developers could probably accomplish as much or more than John Carmack. But if you are trying to develop a game, even 1000 good programmers could not together accomplish what John Carmack could accomplish single handedly.

datashovel 12y ago

There is alot more to it I think than meets the eye. I've seen a wide spectrum of talents. I've seen some with the capacity to be 10x who have no motivation, and some with almost no chance of reaching 10x status with all the motivation in the world. I think one of the differentiators, in what makes a 10x programmer significantly more valuable is alot of things people are trying today have never been done before. So to have the insight that a 10x programmer can bring to the table is priceless. I think it's entirely wrong to believe, in these cases, that you can achieve the same result with average developers. On the other hand, if you're doing things that have been done a million times before, there's likely to be a few tried and true templates people can follow to get a functioning system up and running.

datashovel 12y ago
I do agree with the article regarding not enough competition between tech companies. Due to the enormous value a 10x programmer can bring to a company, there should be at least a few [pick your favorite job board] postings for $1 million / yr salary. Right now the state of hiring in Silicon Valley (being an outsider) seems to be a high level of collusion or some "unspoken promise" between employers in the area that they should not "rock the boat".

winter_blue 12y ago

I began programming when I was 8, like a lot of people on HN and elsewhere. Programming has always been my hobby, and I’ve enjoyed writing beautiful, readable, maintainable, and (sometimes) efficient code. I was blessed enough to have parents who were willing and could afford to send me over to the United States for college. But I was far more lucky to have won the H1B lottery that let me live here after college. Not everyone was as lucky. (See http://app.fwd.us/stories/429 http://app.fwd.us/stories/429) Students graduating with PhDs from Ivy League schools who wish to stay get kicked out of the country every year because they didn’t win a lottery. The truth is it’s incredibly hard to immigrate to the US legally. For a lot of people, the H1B acts as a stepping stone to a green card (i.e., to an EB visa). These people aren’t really “guest workers” — a lot of them will stay and become citizens. If you don’t have relatives here, are not a refugee, and aren’t lucky enough to score a diversity visa, skilled/employment-based immigration is the only route. And it’s incredibly hard to come to this country under the skilled/employment-based immigration route. One of the fallacies that a lot of people who oppose skilled immigration subscribe to is the “lump-of-labor theory”. It’s a hardened belief that jobs are a zero-sum game — and from this arises the idea that every skilled immigrant takes away a job from a U.S. worker. This isn’t true. More skilled, educated workers will actually add to the economy — and grow the economy. Just imagine: what if the U.S. had not let in the millions of immigrants it did during the 1800s out of a fear that citizen workers would loose their jobs? We’d have a much smaller population, and subsequently a lower total GDP. We might be equally well-off on a per capita basis, but we wouldn’t be the country we are today. PG might have been wrong in that not every skilled immigrant is 100x more skilled that his native counterpart. But I agree with him that letting more skilled/educated people in, would be a good thing for this country overall.

anindyabd 12y ago
America is a country of immigrants, that, throughout its history, has hated new immigrants [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_%28politics%29#Nativism_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_%28politics%29#Nativis...
- twic 12y ago

johansch 12y ago

I'm sorry to re-use a reddit meme, but in this thread, as well as the previous one: you can read about american developers arguing about why they should be the only one to have access to the most lucrative market for developers worldwide. It is pretty clear to most intelligent observers that: a) there is a low-end-market of mostly indian consulting companies abusing the H1B program. It would be very easy to stop this. My suggestion: set a H1B worker minimum salary of 120% of the average salary for existing native workers. b) The US, and the US companies wanting to employ the best software developers would benefit by getting the whole world as recruiting ground. c) Individual developers outside of the US wanting to work in silicon valley would benefit d) Not very good US developers in silicon valley, currently getting big salaries could be at risk. e) The rest of the world would not benefit by the brain drain this would cause.

walshemj 12y ago
your right and can make the same argument in other professions eg the AMA, Bar asociations and interestingly enough lawyers and accountants in India.
- tptacek 12y ago
  An irony here is that the legal profession was recently ravaged by a structural shift that eliminated lots of jobs, and it was caused in large part by the tech industry.
  - kencausey 12y ago
    I missed this apparently. Can someone explain this change and the technology which led to it?
    - petilon 12y ago
      Lots of jobs in the legal profession involves researching past court decisions - going through mountains of documents. This can now be done in low-cost countries such as India where there are tons of English speaking people. The technology that led to it is the internet.

brianbreslin 12y ago

Here's an idea, what if the funds that go towards H1-B visas were parceled out towards training domestic workforces of the future. There is a systemic flaw in this analysis (both the author's and PG's) in that we're comparing short vs long term solutions and problems and blending them together as if they were one.

winter_blue 12y ago
It's funny that you mention that because it's being done already. With every work visa application, a company with more than 50 employees has to pay $1500 towards the training of US workers, and companies with less than 50 employees have to pay $750. It's called the ACWIA fee. It was introduced by the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 (ACWIA). Source: http://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-form-i-129-petition-nonimmigrant-worker http://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees-form-i-129-pe...
- brianbreslin 12y ago
  Ah I had no idea. Thanks!
zodiac 12y ago
If by "funds towards H1B visas" you include salary paid to the H1B employees, most employers would refuse to do this.
- brianbreslin 12y ago
  no i mean the fees paid to the government for the visas. employee salaries shouldn't go towards training of other future employees.

njloof 12y ago

I'll note that when poaching between companies reached a critical mass, major companies like Google and Apple colluded to keep salaries down (see Techtopus for details).

guiambros 12y ago

My problem with PG's original post is that there's no easy way to identify the so-called exceptional programmers, and he seems to disregard that. We can't magically find the "other" 95%", and give visas only to them. And, in most cases, you won't know for sure till many years later. Also, I dislike the ideological debate of H1B's, which seems to be OP's main point. H1B's are used to increase supply, which has the collateral effect of lowering wages (or keeping them at reasonable levels). Per PG's post: "I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he'd hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said: We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning". What, exactly, is holding this CEO from hiring 30 great developers, today? They simply can't afford them. Particularly being a small-ish startup, that can't compete head-to-head in terms of wages/benefits with Google, Facebbok, Apple. Of course a massive influx of talented immigrants (100x or not) would be a blessing. This is not a bad thing. It's possible that this startup would create even more value, more jobs, and pay more taxes, if they had the 30 additional programmers. H1B's or not. But let's not pretend the reason why this CEO is not filling the open positions is because they're not available in the US, and immigrants would be the only solution. Above all, I think the US needs a better immigration policy for the talents that will supply demand in the next 5, 10 years. It's insane that our taxpayer dollars go to fund education to bright foreign student, and we (forcibly) send them home after graduation. This is the dumbest use of taxpayer dollars, ever.

flipped_bit 12y ago

I think both authors miss the point that historically (esp. post WW2 which corrected the abberation during WW2) that capital flow was increasingly borderless. It has been labor that is held back in some anachonistic time warp with visa restrictions and so on. In prior times, European colonialism in Asia precisely solved the labor issues by directly annexing, then enhanching, controlling, and regulating the historical Asian labor productivity flows. After decolonization, with diversions to socialist/communist and autarkic models in Asia, most of these countries are now back in the game largely in control of developed (and mostly Western) nations. You have to see the regulation of labor in these slightly larger timelines to appreciate what is happening even in SV, and in other parts of the world. Majority of labor needs were of blue-collar variety, but thanks to technology, even white-collar labor is not immune to this economic rationale of matching capital to labor. Borders will dissolve (they are mostly unnatural and artificial barriers), and before people bring up all the cultural and historical rights, even these items are ultimately driven by economics. High-tech jobs are no different in this equation and are driven by the same forces. The only thing that can upset globalization trends is war which is precisely what happened with WW1 and WW2 in the 20th century (which also arrested the globalization trends which started to peak just prior to WW1). You want to stop labor migration flows? Start preparing for war. The other possibility is for the labor vs capital imbalances to level out - for e.g. China and India become sufficiently advanced and developed to a point where there is no need for them to export their surplus populations, exactly how the British did in 18th and 19th century as they colonized North America (USA and Canada), Australia, and South Africa.

SwellJoe 12y ago

Some things this article doesn't address (though I think many of the things it does address are useful additions to the conversation, as was the previous discussion here at HN, which helped me grasp a lot of the nuances of the question): Ageism, sexism, and white/Asian supremacy, in the tech jobs market. Every time I read about the disastrous shortage of tech workers in the US, I have to fill in the fact that it's actually probably saying, "There is a shortage of young, male, white or Asian tech workers". Companies, in the general case, aren't hiring developers over 40, developers who are women, and developers who are black or brown. The best companies probably tap into one or two of these options, but very few tap into all of them. Even Google and Facebook, widely regarded as amazing employers with good diversity programs tend to draw primarily from the recently graduated, and even pre-graduated, including paid internship-to-employee programs that channel the best students into Google jobs beginning a couple years into a student's education at "good" universities. In the youth-focused culture of Silicon Valley, it would seem absurd to suggest the same resources be expended to re-train existing programmers (despite pretty good data indicating that experience is one of the bigger leading indicators of programmer efficiency). So, I understand why so many are reacting negatively to pg's essay. I know enough women, minorities, and older folks, who have left tech because the industry was simply not friendly to them--it paid them too little, it worked them too long and too hard, it treated them as outsiders--to make me suspicious of the motivations behind the pro-H1B camp. I am for open borders, which would imply companies being able to hire from anywhere (but also employees being able to work and live anywhere), but the H1B process leads to a sort of indentured servitude that provides employers with an effectively captive pool of talent. If there were anywhere near full employment in the tech industry, and if there were a convincing case to be made that employers genuinely were hiring across a broad spectrum of people to fill tech roles, and were paying tech workers what they're worth, I'd be more inclined to get on board with this particular push. This one is hard for me to figure out, because I genuinely do want more freedom for everyone to be able to move about freely and work anywhere they choose, and H1B is currently the only way a lot of my friends have been able to come to the US...so I support it, and even support expansion of the program. But, I don't like that it so clearly serves large corporations at the expense of workers. It makes immigration to the US much easier but only for those people willing to kowtow to their US employer.

caryfitz 12y ago

It really seems like both sides of the issue are arguing here. PG wants to argue for finding more of the diamonds in the rough, instead of spending triple the $$ to pry them away from a competitor. "There isn't enough to go around" he cries - well, if you pay more, of course you'll "get your guy". There isn't enough gold to go around either, that's why it is expensive. If programmer salaries doubled (say) - the programmers make the widgets so you have to hire them, and the customers probably won't pay more, so you have less $$ for the VCs. So they, would naturally, like to increase supply. This doesn't seem too controversial. On the other end, you have an engineer who is (I would guess?) competent and feels underpaid. That is what we all feel like, isn't it? And he'd prefer to make more $$ for his job. And he looks around and sees (or thinks he does) that the guys with the $$ don't want to pay him more - instead they go find other people to fill his role. "Don't want what I'm paying? Sorry! I'll find someone else". He would like to be paid more for his services, instead of the job getting given to someone else. I think it must be made clear that the people PG is talking about (rockstars hired by a startup) - and the people that are normally associated with H1Bs (junior level talent) - are NOT the same groups of people. With 65000 visas available - I would suspect what is really happening is this. Since there is no way for a government agency to determine if an engineer is good / bad / excellent / sucky. They have to pretty much "trust" the company to only submit the visa application in good faith. However, if you are a business manager with less than stellar scruples, you need to fill 50 seats and you can find them all with H1B visas for a "competitive" salary! (remember that is the gov'ts competitive salary, which probably lumps all engineers from the help desk to the architects into the same bucket...). Slam dunk! I just saved my company thousands! And those engineers I do hire can't leave for a few years! Double score! There is no risk for a company to try to bring in any and all H1B workers. And there is great upside. So - PG may be correct that there are hundreds / thousands of top top top engineers trying to get in on an H1B to a startup or google. There are also most likely tens / hundreds of thousands of middling engineers brought in to fill slots. We should not try to compare a "free market" like buying something off ebay, with employees and labor. Employees and labor have many many more real-life implications - and a wise handling of the issue should see that. real people have families, homes, mortgages, relationships, cultures, history, commuting times, taxes, immigration... There is a cost to switching things up in real life. On ebay, you just click a different link to select a better priced product. There is very little (no?) cost to switching things in a virtual "free" market. It can't be a "free market" when switching producers costs a large percentage of the products' cost. Think if a trade on the NYSE cost $10,000 a trade - instead of $15. I tend to view it as a class-based argument. And when someone tries to make it a "logical argument" it seems a bit farcical. There is too much self-serving going on. Facebook/PG/VCs arguing for more labor and less pay? And individuals arguing for less labor and more pay? I mean - that's pretty straight-forward. Both have a valid argument - both have selfish motivations. And given those two, I'd lean towards making a stronger middle class.

caryfitz 12y ago

It really seems like both sides of the issue are arguing here. PG wants to argue for finding more of the diamonds in the rough, instead of spending triple the $$ to pry them away from a competitor. "There isn't enough to go around" he cries - well, if you pay more, of course you'll "get your guy". There isn't enough gold to go around either, that's why it is expensive. If programmer salaries doubled (say) - the programmers make the widgets so you have to hire them, and the customers probably won't pay more, so you have less $$ for the VCs. So they, would naturally, like to increase supply. This doesn't seem too controversial. On the other end, you have an engineer who is (I would guess?) competent and feels underpaid. That is what we all feel like, isn't it? And he'd prefer to make more $$ for his job. And he looks around and sees (or thinks he does) that the guys with the $$ don't want to pay him more - instead they go find other people to fill his role. "Don't want what I'm paying? Sorry! I'll find someone else". He would like to be paid more for his services, instead of the job getting given to someone else. I think it must be made clear that the people PG is talking about (rockstars hired by a startup) - and the people that are normally associated with H1Bs (junior level talent) - are NOT the same groups of people. With 65000 visas available - I would suspect what is really happening is this. Since there is no way for a government agency to determine if an engineer is good / bad / excellent / sucky. They have to pretty much "trust" the company to only submit the visa application in good faith. However, if you are a business manager with less than stellar scruples, you need to fill 50 seats and you can find them all with H1B visas for a "competitive" salary! (remember that is the gov'ts competitive salary, which probably lumps all engineers from the help desk to the architects into the same bucket...). Slam dunk! I just saved my company thousands! And those engineers I do hire can't leave for a few years! Double score! There is no risk for a company to try to bring in any and all H1B workers. And there is great upside. So - PG may be correct that there are hundreds / thousands of top top top engineers trying to get in on an H1B to a startup or google. There are also most likely tens / hundreds of thousands of middling engineers brought in to fill slots. We should not try to compare a "free market" like buying something off ebay, with employees and labor. Employees and labor have many many more real-life implications - and a wise handling of the issue should see that. real people have families, homes, mortgages, relationships, cultures, history, commuting times... There is a cost to switching things up in real life. On ebay, you just click a different link to select a better priced product. There is very little (no?) cost to switching things in a virtual "free" market. It can't be a "free market" when switching producers costs a large percentage of the products' cost. Think if a trade on the NYSE cost $10,000 a trade - instead of $15. I tend to view it as a class-based argument. And when someone tries to make it a "logical argument" it seems a bit farcical. There is too much self-serving going on. Facebook/PG/VCs arguing for more labor and less pay? And individuals arguing for less labor and more pay? I mean - that's pretty straight-forward. Both have a valid argument - both have selfish motivations. And given those two, I'd lean towards making a stronger middle class.

chrisbennet 12y ago

I say the following as a software developer so I'm one of the lucky ones in this new world: When someone from the silicon valley uses the argument that "We need to do X to maintain our technological competitiveness." the "our" should be viewed as referring to those that have the capital to benefit from this increased "competitiveness". The Chinese are very competitive - because their labor is relatively cheap. This is the axis of "competitiveness" capital is aiming for with increasing H1B quotas, not "get smarter people". They could get all the smart people they want but that would require them to share more of the profits with those smart people - you know, the ones that actually create the value in the first place. All this "disruption" has benefited a very few disproportionately and the "winners" would like the rest of the populace to give up a little more so they can make even more money. "Oh but Chris, these new companies create jobs so we should cut them a special break - it helps us all in the end." According to Chris Benner, a regional economist at the University of California, Davis, there has been no net increase in jobs in Silicon Valley since 1998; digital technologies inevitably mean you can generate billions of dollars from a low employment base.[1] [1] http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technology-and-inequality/ http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technol...

auggierose 12y ago

Come on, PG just wrote this piece as an homage to this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/

fiatmoney 12y ago

Hey, guess what. There is a visa category for immigrants with "extraordinary talents". It is the O-1 visa. Someone on the level of John Carmack or Jeff Dean, for instance, would have no problem getting one of these. http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/o-1-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement/o-1-visa-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers... H1B, by contrast, is primarily used for cheap bodies, at not-at-all high salaries. This website makes it nicely available, but the raw data is available from the Department of Labor. http://www.h1bwage.com/ http://www.h1bwage.com/ http://www.flcdatacenter.com/ http://www.flcdatacenter.com/

vinceguidry 12y ago

> John Carmack is an obvious genius who keeps pushing the edge — but nobody ever hired him instead of 100 programmers. If I had the choice of working with 100 programmers or working with John Carmack, I'd go with Carmack Every. Single. Time. Wouldn't even hesitate.

bazookajoes 12y ago

In my opinion PG does his article a disservice by not being more specific about the great programmers should be let into the US. For example he could touched on the O-1 visa for "Aliens of extraordinary ability". Instead the conversation has devolved into the costs and benefits of H-1B visa. PGs goal is to bring more great programmers to the US, however the H-1B visa is specifically targeted to good programmers, not great programmers. From wikipedia: > The law requires H-1B workers to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage for the same occupation and geographic location, or the same as the employer pays to similarly situated employees. Other factors, such as age and skill were not permitted to be taken into account for the prevailing wage. Here are some other points of confusion: 1) Some people are hung on the term "programmer", I think what is meant by this term is someone who is A) deeply technical, B) codes, C) contributes to product fit, and D) contributes project planning. 2) Some people are hung up on the term "great" programmer". Good programmers get their work done on time and with high quality. Great programmers contribute key insights that transform the product or team in ways that that directly lead to accomplishing the team's goals. Personally I've found that it is often possible to distinguish between good and bad programmers. It has been much harder to distinguish between good and great programmers. 3) Some people are hung up on the fact that great programmers are frequently not paid 10 or 100 or 1000 times what good programmers are paid. There are three very good reasons for this. A) A great programmer has to be in the right position to be commensurately rewarded. (The world's greatest fly fisherman will receive a normal wage on a commercial fishing boat.) B) A great programmer is making decisions and taking actions that will result in raised profits. They don't get paid up front because the money isn't there yet. C) Many people have never worked with a great programmer. The programmers that they think are great are only 1.5X or 2X or 3X. That isn't. 4) Some people are hung up on the fact that PG seems to make either A) the assumption that H-1B recipients are great programmers, or B) the assumption that if the US grants more H-1Bs annually that there all the additional recipients will be great programmers. I don't think he's making either of those assumptions. There is a curve of capability and potential for H-1B recipients just like every other population. PG is saying that any increase in the number of great programmers in the US is good for the US. 5) The final question is what does it mean for something to be good for the US? A) If an H-1B recipient starts the next facebook is it good for the US? It will be great for angels, VCs and institutional investors. It will be good for the US because the US will tax everyone's personal compensation (although any eventually corporate profits will likely be tax sheltered). It will be good for the US because jobs will be created (although there might be fewer jobs at the companies being disrupted. B) If the H-1B recipient only winds up doing good job at a corporation then the corporation did not need offer a more attractive salary to a US citizen or train a US citizen to do the job. This is good for the corporation because their costs are lower (assuming the cost of the H-1B application process is lower than the cost of offering a more attractive salary or training an individual with potential). This is bad for the individual who might otherwise have been trained or received increased compensation. However if the role is truly a role that would not otherwise have been filled then there is no individual who is negatively impacted by hiring an H-1B applicant. Here is something to think about: 1) The company is willing to compensate a programmer $COST for a role. 2) The company expects an increase in revenue of $REVENUE as result of the additional headcount. 3) The company has a return on investment goal of ROI for the year. It might be an internal figure or something promised to its investors. 4) The company can only hire a candidate if (REVENUE-COST)/COST > ROI 5) There are two reasons for hiring H-1Bs A) because the company can not find anyone else who will accept a compensation that makes the equation work or B) because the company can not hire anyone for the role (perhaps they or their industry has a negative reputation or no reputation). There are certainly things that complicate this equations: 1) Perhaps the company is forward looking enough to hire in advance of expected attrition. 2) Perhaps the individual is in a role that supports revenue creation by another individual. 3) Perhaps the company has an "up or out" approach and they are hungry to find stars. 4) Perhaps the revenue that the new hire would bring in is very hard to predict. In this case the up front compensation would be reduced to account for the risk. Typically the role would come with the potential for increase compensation in the form of a bonus, stock options or commission.

DavidWanjiru 12y ago

Paul Graham's entire argument rests, as far as I can tell, on the assumption that the distribution of great programmers maps to the population distribution. Can this be empirically established or refuted? Because doing so would bring this matter to a close pretty quickly, I think. After all, is anybody arguing about whether America needs to import middle eastern oil? Of course not, because the global distribution of oil has been empirically established, and the need to meet local deficits with imports meets little, if any, resistance. I feel that the intractability of this immigration debate, such as it is, is due primarily to the fact that the global distribution of top quality "digital talent", as Graham calls it, hasn't been established. Some people say most of the best is out there, others say the best is just a matter of training.

Zigurd 12y ago

That, like other articles say that the real answer is "bid higher." Is that correct? There is one way to find out: Would employers pay significantly more for an H1-B employee than any other. Auction the visas, with a high minimum bid. If you need that PhD with a stellar track record from outside the US you will willingly pay $50-100k. If your goal is to supress wage growth in an industry with very high productivity, GTFO.

tarikjn 12y ago

To those making the argument that if companies can't find talent they are not paying enough (which I don't disagree with), I can't help but wonder isn't there a price point past which it's more cost effective and sensible for companies to open an office in a country which allows to hire from a pool of 7B people vs 300M?

DavidWanjiru 12y ago

There are so many complexities to this debate. For example, if you oppose foreigners coming to America, do you also oppose America exporting stuff to these foreigners wherever they currently are? Presumably no. If not, how are they able to afford your exports, which in turn keep you, an American, in your job? Their ability to create value, and trade this value for somebody else's value. What if, then, their ability to produce this value is magnified by their coming to America? You know, like that example given by a commentor, of a fashion designer from Oklahoma moving to Paris or Milan? Or my friend from Thika, Kenya? He has done design work for Daimler Trucks, but was denied a visa by the American embassy in Nairobi, having been seconded to the American branch of Daimler's trucks business by their German business. The embassy simply didn't see how this Kenyan kid landed this gig, despite all the supporting documentation and opportunity to verify, so they alluded his paperwork was fake and denied him the visa. Would he have made more money over there? You bet. At any rate I bet. Would he be able to buy more American stuff, keep more Americans in their jobs? Yes. But now he can't, coz your govt won't let him come over. Who is the loser here? Remember, the reason he caught Daimler's attention in the first place, despite his lack of formal design training, was his work. In fact, they wanted him to come to America to formally study design at Daimler's cost, since that formal education was part of Daimler's hiring policy. So it wasn't merely that he'd have taken an American job, or that Daimler can train plenty of the available Americans. He was a "great programmer", and I'd say America is worse off for not hiring him.

pmelendez 12y ago

One thing that bothers me about the "immigration takes jobs from locals" argument is that it would imply a reduction on job positions which I haven't seen in the technology industry.

mabbo 12y ago

The arguments keep going back and forth: just pay developers more if they're worth more (supply and demand, pay more for what's better, etc) vs work visa requirements are protectionist and we should get rid of them. What people seem to forget is that there is a lovely experiment going on that can (partially, with some caveats) answer some of these questions as to what would happen: NAFTA. If you have a technical degree, getting a work visa for the USA as a Mexican or Canadian is fairly simple. There aren't (afaik) any limit to how many there are. I've had a few (internships, full time job in Seattle). So what is the average experience for a Canadian or Mexican on TN visas to the US? I've been one, and I've known quite a few. Purely anecdotal, but as far as I can tell, we're just an increase in the usual supply of developers, which eventually just lowers the average wage of all developers. I'm sure we're pretty smart folks, but we're not worth 10x as much as anyone else- we certainly weren't being paid any more than the others. I think immigration limits for people with jobs lined up in the country they wish to enter are silly, and the whole world ought to have the same access NAFTA residents do. But I also think Paul Graham should admit that simply offering people more money would solve his problem. He's chosen the price he wants to pay, the market says you can't get very many great people at this price, so he's demanding the market change rather than his chosen price.