And those students might be helpful for these roles in a decade. So do you expect these companies to survive just cooling their heels until then?

Too bad for these companies. They gamed with basic supply and demand. Lot of industries which don't abuse foreign labor as much have a steady pipeline of candidates because these grads saw your company - shitty wages, awful working conditions, no future - and bailed the fuck out and into a other career path. Now these companies, dependent on cheap visa labor, may have to pay back some of the fat cash they've gained by screwing their own nations' workforce for the last two decades.

Tech doesn't need a steady pipeline there has been a huge increase in demand.

Where after you looking with shitty wages and awful working conditions? And what other career paths do you think these people bailed out into that have better pay?

Sure it does need more talent, but alleged pipeline has been stalled by multiple factors.

1) Foreign and outsourced labour taking the entry level jobs preventing experience from accumulating.

2) Turning many jobs into glorified web apps and CRUD. Can't really go senior on that. You could on OSS or big and long personal projects but that takes a lot of time and thus money.

1) Very few people are going to go through the hassle of sponsoring an overseas worker for a junior role. It's a pain in the ass. I think this is an issue that is hugely over stated.

2) I don't know if you remember this but back before everything was a crud web app they were crud desktop apps. Most development work just isn't ever that exciting.

Lastly you don't consider at all that demand has outpaced the pipeline.

That's a bit of a gotcha argument. Besides, it's my experience there are plenty of senior devs to go around.

Your experience is apparently going to a meet up to help a friend find a job. I'm not sure your experience is reality.