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Paul Graham: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
An anonymous reader writes: Y Combinator's Paul Graham has posted an essay arguing in favor of relaxed immigration rules. His argument is straight-forward: with only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. can only expect about 5% of great programmers to be born here. He says, "What the anti-immigration people don't understand is that there is a huge variation in ability between competent programmers and exceptional ones, and while you can train people to be competent, you can't train them to be exceptional. Exceptional programmers have an aptitude for and interest in programming that is not merely the product of training."
Graham says even a dramatic boost to the training of programmers within the U.S. can't hope to match the resources available elsewhere. "We have the potential to ensure that the U.S. remains a technology superpower just by letting in a few thousand great programmers a year. What a colossal mistake it would be to let that opportunity slip. It could easily be the defining mistake this generation of American politicians later become famous for."
Graham says even a dramatic boost to the training of programmers within the U.S. can't hope to match the resources available elsewhere. "We have the potential to ensure that the U.S. remains a technology superpower just by letting in a few thousand great programmers a year. What a colossal mistake it would be to let that opportunity slip. It could easily be the defining mistake this generation of American politicians later become famous for."
If they come to the US, the US can tax their income. If they work remotely, their home country gets all the income tax.
That's the thing... it does translate into a better standard of living for them. These excellent programmers boost the value of the companies they're working at. They increase the amount of innovation going on, they pay more taxes to the american government than most. They increase the quality of the work being done in the country as a whole. That increases the average income, and increases the salary even of the less wonderful programmers.
The UK has an equivalent "problem". We see lots of immigration from Poland and Romania, because it's relatively easy for them to get into the UK thanks to the EU, and our wages are in general much higher than theirs. Many people see this as hugely negative, they see them as stealing our jobs, driving down our wages, and worst of all stealing our social security cheques. In reality, studies that actually measure the economic impact of them show that they bolster the economy by far more than they take out of it. More people, doing good jobs turns out to be so good for the economy that it even helps the every day guy who's been there for a long time anyway.
If you don't have to ask who they are, then they won't need an H1-B to get here. Seriously.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
say you interview as a graduating college senior at Facebook Inc. You may find, to your initial delight, that the place looks just like a fun-loving dorm -- and the adults seem to be missing. But that is a sign of how the profession has devolved in recent years to one lacking in longevity. Many programmers find that their employability starts to decline at about age 35.
Gone by 40
Employers dismiss them as either lacking in up-to-date technical skills -- such as the latest programming-language fad -- or "not suitable for entry level." In other words, either underqualified or overqualified. That doesn’t leave much, does it? Statistics show that most software developers are out of the field by age 40.
Employers have admitted this in unguarded moments. Craig Barrett, a former chief executive officer of Intel Corp., famously remarked that "the half-life of an engineer, software or hardware, is only a few years," while Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has blurted out that young programmers are superior.
Vivek Wadhwa, a former technology executive and now a business writer and Duke University researcher, wrote that in 2008 David Vaskevitch, then the chief technology officer at Microsoft Corp., acknowledged that "the vast majority of new Microsoft employees are young, but said that this is so because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with."
Doesn't matter if you're the best programmer in the world once you hit 40 - it's up or out, and there aren't that many "up" jobs.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
That's a lie for good programmers, for mediocre ones, it might be true. I'm 38 and I've never before had more offers. I work with 60 something programmer (not manager, just a coder) he's one of the best developers I've ever met. He's still in demand. Only crappy consulting jobs care that much about per-hour cost. Most high-end product development typically care a lot more about quality of the code produced and productivity than the per-capita cost of an engineer. They usually can afford to pay well and provide a decent technical challenge.