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Until the law is passed that releases all restrictions on visa-workers and simply grants them citizenship or an extremely permissive stay-while-looking-for-a-jo

Until the law is passed that releases all restrictions on visa-workers and simply grants them citizenship or an extremely permissive stay-while-looking-for-a-job situation, increasing the h1-b quota is simply a means to create a reduced-rights cheaper workforce. It really fills me with disgust to see influential people present this issue as a skills shortage, while hiring workers at reduced wages and burdening them with the threat of deportation.

crdoconnor 11y ago
That's the reason behind this too: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-gates-celebrities-support-education-for-computer-programming/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-gates... Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates, Drew Houston, Tony Hsieh and Gabe Newell and Mark Zuckerberg aren't throwing their name and money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face - wages.
- chetanahuja 11y ago
  "throwing money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face" Wow that's a unique level of cynicism even for this generally cynical forum. I'm speechless. So you see all these efforts to raise interest in computer science in younger generation of Americans and all you can think of is how all these new, enthusiastic programmers are going to compete with you?
  - rewqfdsa 11y ago
    Well, they are, aren't they? Cynicism isn't somehow automatically wrong.
    - chetanahuja 11y ago
      Well it's not "wrong" in the sense of being factually incorrect but wrong in the sense of being just pathetic for a professional to be thinking such thoughts. Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students taking interest in your field, and instead of encouraging and teaching them, all you see is a threat to your livelihood... well... the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else, less competitive, to do.
      - crdoconnor 11y ago
        >Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students ...then you were looking at something else. That was a group of billionaires advertising their naked greed and self interest. When normal school-kids take an interest in computer science it doesn't appear in Forbes magazine. >the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else to do. Now that's pathetic.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    I don't see the vast majority of these young programmers recruited by this type of propaganda as being enthusiastic, sadly. They see the salaries, see that all of the other good middle class jobs have dried up and think "well, it's either learn javascript or be stuck in Starbucks forever". The fact that so many persist at it even while hating it makes me sad. These kids should have a multitude of options to a good middle class job, not just one. That's thanks to decades of vicious economic policy directed by billionaires like the ones smiling at you in that promotional video.
- SilasX 11y ago
  The economics of that theory don't (seem to) make sense. If you expand the supply of a factor of production, you expand the supply of the output. The employer pays less, but has to sell for less too. If widget specialists flood the market, their wages go down [1], but so do widget prices. The factory owner doesn't necessarily benefit, just like grocery stores don't benefit from higher tomato prices. (In fact, they may lose in greater shoplifting costs that can't be passed on to customers.) On top of that, there's the public goods problem, of how other employers, who aren't expanding the supply of programmers, can hire them just the same. So I don't see the monetary incentive to fund these things like you claim. [1] Of course, just like your claim about programmers, this ignores systemic/ecosystem effects: maybe the lower price of widget labor will lead to investment in capital that depends on widget labor, which leads more investors to look for better uses of widget labor, which bids it back up. This isn't an unreasonable dynamic to expect in software, as more app ideas might get pursued than otherwise as more programmers come on the market.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >If widget specialists flood the market, their wages go down [1], but so do widget prices. Only if we make the patently unrealistic assumption that the widget manufacturers have negligible market power (a perfectly competitive market). That assumption would also lead us to believe that they have negligible profits. They don't. Those billionaires have a lot of market power between them and make a lot of profits. If we used your assumptions, the tech wage fixing cartel of 2013 would also have been impossible. It happened.
    - SilasX 11y ago
      True: depending on the parameters of a particular market, things may go one direction or the other. I acknowledged as much in the footnote referenced in the part you quoted, and indeed gave a scenario where the input prices go in the opposite direction as profits! So your theory [1] would require that this "make everyone a better programmer" is more like wage-fixing (in terms of economic incidence) than the tomatoes, even though a) the wage fixing affected demand, and this education program affects supply, of programming labor; and b) the big companies are a much bigger fraction of the SV labor market than of the workers that would learn through this program. It's also not clear to what extent the wage fixing agreement was mitigated by driving programmers to non-conspirators. Getting the full picture would require a careful assesent to the sensitivity of these markets to all those parameters, not simply assuming that any increase in the supply of programmers purely benefits employers of them and doesn't affect the relative scarcity of their final output. And FWIW, I don't get your insistence that one theory requires "perfect competition"; it might require some level of competition, but why perfect? The tomato result would hold true even in very lumpy markets. (Or were you just exaggerating?) [1] I know, not "your" theory, but it's much simpler than "the theory you offered in your previous post", and I add this footnote only to fend off a possible indignant reply about "hey, that's not just my theory".

crdoconnor 11y ago

That's the reason behind this too: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-gates-celebrities-support-education-for-computer-programming/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-gates... Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates, Drew Houston, Tony Hsieh and Gabe Newell and Mark Zuckerberg aren't throwing their name and money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face - wages.

chetanahuja 11y ago
"throwing money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face" Wow that's a unique level of cynicism even for this generally cynical forum. I'm speechless. So you see all these efforts to raise interest in computer science in younger generation of Americans and all you can think of is how all these new, enthusiastic programmers are going to compete with you?
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  Well, they are, aren't they? Cynicism isn't somehow automatically wrong.
  - chetanahuja 11y ago
    Well it's not "wrong" in the sense of being factually incorrect but wrong in the sense of being just pathetic for a professional to be thinking such thoughts. Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students taking interest in your field, and instead of encouraging and teaching them, all you see is a threat to your livelihood... well... the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else, less competitive, to do.
    - crdoconnor 11y ago
      >Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students ...then you were looking at something else. That was a group of billionaires advertising their naked greed and self interest. When normal school-kids take an interest in computer science it doesn't appear in Forbes magazine. >the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else to do. Now that's pathetic.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  I don't see the vast majority of these young programmers recruited by this type of propaganda as being enthusiastic, sadly. They see the salaries, see that all of the other good middle class jobs have dried up and think "well, it's either learn javascript or be stuck in Starbucks forever". The fact that so many persist at it even while hating it makes me sad. These kids should have a multitude of options to a good middle class job, not just one. That's thanks to decades of vicious economic policy directed by billionaires like the ones smiling at you in that promotional video.
SilasX 11y ago
The economics of that theory don't (seem to) make sense. If you expand the supply of a factor of production, you expand the supply of the output. The employer pays less, but has to sell for less too. If widget specialists flood the market, their wages go down [1], but so do widget prices. The factory owner doesn't necessarily benefit, just like grocery stores don't benefit from higher tomato prices. (In fact, they may lose in greater shoplifting costs that can't be passed on to customers.) On top of that, there's the public goods problem, of how other employers, who aren't expanding the supply of programmers, can hire them just the same. So I don't see the monetary incentive to fund these things like you claim. [1] Of course, just like your claim about programmers, this ignores systemic/ecosystem effects: maybe the lower price of widget labor will lead to investment in capital that depends on widget labor, which leads more investors to look for better uses of widget labor, which bids it back up. This isn't an unreasonable dynamic to expect in software, as more app ideas might get pursued than otherwise as more programmers come on the market.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >If widget specialists flood the market, their wages go down [1], but so do widget prices. Only if we make the patently unrealistic assumption that the widget manufacturers have negligible market power (a perfectly competitive market). That assumption would also lead us to believe that they have negligible profits. They don't. Those billionaires have a lot of market power between them and make a lot of profits. If we used your assumptions, the tech wage fixing cartel of 2013 would also have been impossible. It happened.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    True: depending on the parameters of a particular market, things may go one direction or the other. I acknowledged as much in the footnote referenced in the part you quoted, and indeed gave a scenario where the input prices go in the opposite direction as profits! So your theory [1] would require that this "make everyone a better programmer" is more like wage-fixing (in terms of economic incidence) than the tomatoes, even though a) the wage fixing affected demand, and this education program affects supply, of programming labor; and b) the big companies are a much bigger fraction of the SV labor market than of the workers that would learn through this program. It's also not clear to what extent the wage fixing agreement was mitigated by driving programmers to non-conspirators. Getting the full picture would require a careful assesent to the sensitivity of these markets to all those parameters, not simply assuming that any increase in the supply of programmers purely benefits employers of them and doesn't affect the relative scarcity of their final output. And FWIW, I don't get your insistence that one theory requires "perfect competition"; it might require some level of competition, but why perfect? The tomato result would hold true even in very lumpy markets. (Or were you just exaggerating?) [1] I know, not "your" theory, but it's much simpler than "the theory you offered in your previous post", and I add this footnote only to fend off a possible indignant reply about "hey, that's not just my theory".