Okay that is anti-competitive, than what shall we call dumping a useless service onto consumers that they have to overpay for? Also these ISP's keep their competitors at bay, so consumers do not have a choice but to pay them high fees for useless service.
Actually, here's how I'd put it. If you are not competitive (in your terms, drive down the salary) OR produce something great at prices others can. Then jobs and companies will go overseas. Not only will there be jobs will lower salaries but there will be fewer jobs, period. Now that will be problem for entire country.
Having more programmers will not be a problem for the country, they will only be a problem to those who want to maintain their salaries turning their eyes away from reality of globalization.
Here are the insidious effects of outsourcing and remote workers. Slowly and surely they will take over. Take a look at this and you will understand the dangers of offshoring and remote work. How Dell lost to Asus.
If you are just worried about keeping your salary up, that will go down no matter what, as the talent pool all over the world increases and companies will offshore more work, that not only means less salary but fewer jobs.
Most of those who argue against pg's argument here are concerned about lower salaries, no one is concerned about fewer jobs (because companies will move work offshore), less innovation (new product development moving away).
Creating boundaries and not letting talent in, is just a big downward spiral and if it accelerates to a certain speed it will be too difficult to turn it around. May be not in short term but in couple to few decades.
Why can't programmers work as contractors from their location before filing for their H1B's? Yes, hiring process has to change. The companies those who have distributed teams have figured this out already.
>If Paul can figure out a way to filter in the great developers while filtering out those that are only coming to make money, then I'd be completely behind his plan to let them all in.
You are implying that all (most) of the American programmers are exceptional. That is not the case. If you have a good team, you had to do it yourself, weed out fakes from real ones, didn't you? The onus is on the company/manager who is hiring to pick the right ones whether they are already on H1 or before company files H1 for them.
> but do people really not believe that if starting salary for an A+ developer was $150k, or whatever, that we might get more high-achievers
First, US is already the third country in list for highest paid programmers, there is not much room to grow.
Second, Companies are in business, not for charity.
Companies are there for profit so if they could hire a beginner programmer for 50k, they should, otherwise they would be out of business and you would be buying everything made in China.
Not much room to grow? Says who? Did I miss the referendum in which the computer science salary cap was enacted into law?
The fact that companies are not charitable institutions is exactly the point. If they want more or better engineers they are welcome to pay salaries that will motivate such people to work for them, much as the petroleum industry is currently doing.
Then let them carry on. Most of these companies are global in nature already. My naive view of the plea for more foreign tech workers to enter the US is that the majority of those controlling the money just really really really like like in SF and don't want to leave. When there's talk of tech worker shortage, there's not even any really serious effort to look around the US. Nope, the hive mind is in SF, and they'll move heaven and earth before they have to move someplace else.
The US is third? Well jeez, you'd think that a country arguing that they need to attract all the top programmers in the world would at least try and pay the highest in the world to start with.
1. There is, as dictated by the law of supply-and-demand, not an undersupply of good programmers, otherwise good programmers would be in a negotiating position such that they would reject your 50k offer for a 150k offer elsewhere; or
2. The market cannot support this hypothetical company's business model. If my restaurant fails because labor costs leave me overrunning my revenue, few people would argue that is evidence we need immigration reform so I can find cheaper labor.
But unlike a resteraunt, you can open abroad and capture labor resources in other countries. So if programmers get too expensive in the states, or Silicon Valley, relative to the world market, there is a point where you are forced to open an office elsewhere (if not your competition does and eats your lunch). Without immigration, that would happen sooner (rather than the mythical doubling of American programming salaries).
Programmers in the US are already wildly, wildly expensive in the USA relative to the world market, often by an order of magnitude. So, if that's the case, we're already screwed and we're only being saved by some market inefficiency. We should all prepare for the inevitable future where we are doing very well to make 15-20k.
Ultimately it's a world market for labor at the top end. Barring artificial distortions (immigration/emigration restrictions), people will move to where they can get the best deal; since good Chinese programmers can immigrate to the states, it puts a floor on Chinese salaries, the same is true in India actually.
It is a whole different game for soso programmers. If you want a soso programmer in China, they will be much cheaper in the states, but the bottom is also much lower than one from the states could imagine, and often you just get what you pay for (or worse).
> Barring artificial distortions (immigration/emigration restrictions), people will move to where they can get the best deal;
No, they won't. Many people value staying near home more than they value additional salary. That's especially true for people who'd have to move house thousands of miles into a new culture, but it's true even of people within the US.
There is some of that, but not when wages are a magnitude off. If I can only make $50k in saint Louis and $150k in SF, there is huge pressure to move and start climbing the ladder. The programmer making $20k in Bangalore will move to the Bay area to add an extra zero to the end of their salary if they have the ability.
This mobility checks salary bottoms for those who do want to stay (e.g. for the market I'm in over in China).
There certainly is some pressure, but be careful not to overestimate it. Most programmers are not in Silicon Valley and feel no pressure to be even though they would make much more money. And this isn't even about "great" programmers versus competent programmers.
I'm one of them. If you can excuse my lack of humility, I am a great programmer. I've been described by management and teammembers regularly as a rock star. I could easily make 10x the salary were I to move to SV.
I have zero desire to and I've never felt like I was missing anything. Out of my graduating class, only one guy moved to California - in fact, he's the only guy I know of at all who moved to California. I know at least a dozen "great" programmers who live here quite happily.
Of course the extra money is an incentive and there obviously has been and is an influx of programmers to Silicon Valley and the surrounding area. But the wage impact (in terms of setting floors) of the migration is pretty minimal relative to other effects. That's why there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of programmers worldwide, including very close to the full 5% of "great" programmers from those areas, that are working for what you and I would consider garbage wages.
