As an above average, but not great, USA born programmer, I say bring as many programmers as possible to the USA. Great one create can help create the new Google, Uber, etc which than create more jobs. More above average makes software companies more effective over all. There are a ton of horrible "programmers" that are net negatives that bring down the average for a whole IT department.

I don't know if you're making a tongue in cheek argument or not, but currently an enormous portion of the tech immigrants come to America to work as cogs in consulting companies or MegaCorporations.

And there isn't any precise way to pick the people who are going to start the next Google- except for the people who already run successful businesses and therefore have the money and influence to emigrate if they wanted to anyway.

So yes, it'd be cool to have all the Job Creators come to America so we could work in their companies, but I see no evidence that would happen.

I am saying to let everyone in from the best to mediocre.

Who cares if overpaid (compared to other professions) programmers wages are threatened? Are you entitled to make six figures? No, you make six figures because market forces coincidentally put that price on the skill you were lucky enough to land in. Why are you not in the same breath talking about already-depressed McDonalds workers wages? Are you just a better person entitled to a better wage?

By 'market forces' you mean 'employers colluding illegally to keep wages low', perhaps?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/google-apple-abobe-a...

No, I meant market forces. Yes, illegal things happen sometimes and perpetrators should be punished and made to make reparations.

Or are you insinuating that all changes in salary are due to illegal collusion? Boy have I got news for you!

> But my suspicion is

The principle of charity would ask you to suspend that suspicion in the absence of clear evidence for it (in which case it would be more than a suspicion).

Hey dang, maybe you should write a critique of pg's post, and how it fails in so many ways with the principle of charity. Just to give this discussion more balance since you've been criticizing other people's responses.

That seems to miss my point, which is not about immigration, but about the quality of discussion on Hacker News.

dang, what can I say, you seem to have missed my point. You're criticizing the way people have responded to pg's post. While that may be valid, you fail to criticize pg's 'quality' of writing, which can also be considered inflammatory. How about a little balance here?

I think that would be a mistake. There's a reason why the Principle of Charity doesn't add "except when you feel provoked". Human bias always sees the other person as having started it, being more inflammatory, etc.—so a principle which said "just do better than the other person" (or, to translate into the present terms, "just don't be as low-quality as you feel the article is") would never get applied at all.

So no, the onus is on all of us to contribute substantively even in response to something we consider unsubstantive. When we can't do that, posting nothing is a fine option.

The reason we're considering adding the Principle of Charity to the HN guidelines is that it gives practical guidance on how to comment substantively, which is what HN has always called for. I'm racking my brains trying to think of why anyone would object to having this rule, and so far haven't found a good reason.

dang, as many others have pointed out very well, pg's post contains "low quality," and in my view inflammatory comments. You refuse to call him out on it, not a peep at all. Instead, you call out others for responding in disagreement. Would you apply the "Principle of Charity" to the remarks of those that you think to be low quality? If not, can you justify why the "Principle of Charity" should not apply to pg but to everyone else who disagrees with him?

You say, "the onus is on all of us to contribute substantively even in response to something we consider unsubstantive." How about the responsibility of the original poster? Is it acceptable to write that way? Can he be legitimately criticized for that? If you don't accept that, then you've created an unfair situation.

(regarding your refusal to criticize pg) "I think that would be a mistake" The real mistake is the way you try to shut down dissent by painting it as "uncharitable" or misguided/mistaken. Can you point out the many examples of "much of this thread is of low quality" ? I don't think you can make that case, because it seems that you disagree with the opinions more than anything else.

Some of the dissenting opinions are passionate. And there is nothing wrong with that. Just look at pg's original post, there is a lot of passion there. I would suggest that you be an adult and understand that there are controversial topics which will cause passionate discussion. It makes no sense to a accuse everyone of being wrong in their interpretation and to scold them as if they're children. Just read the comments and you'll see that a lot of people here have unique knowledge and understanding of the topic. Your point is incorrect, and adds nothing to this very important (and passionate) subject.

What are you really against?

What do you want to see happen?

Common sense tells me that if he cared about the average USA programmer he would promote a more specific policy that would help prevent companies from abusing the H1B Visa program.

Hiring H-1Bs can drive all salaries down, including US programmers working at the same desk. I'd also like to see data regarding programmer age -- do we seek young US and H-1B alike to get cheaper, younger talent?

As an H1-B I can say that I'm paid the local market salary for my skillset. And so is my wife.

When supply goes up price goes down. Logic 101 says that H1-B immigrants lower "the local market salary".

Therefore we shouldn't allow in immigrants? By that logic we should close down our schools too, those new graduates are also lowering salaries.

Another thing that would lower salaries is the movement of the jobs themselves. If companies can't get enough workers here, at affordable salaries, they'll just move to a country that likes immigration, like Canada. In fact, this has already started: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-22/vancouver-we...

We already bring in 1,200,000 immigrants per year.

Limiting the number of new graduates is exactly what doctors and engineers have done to keep their wages high.

Only a fool would destroy his own livelihood. VCs would never, ever support a policy that would threaten their oligopoly on the good deals, for example.

Don't be a sucker. No one is looking out for tech workers but ourselves.

P.S. If these companies can successfully relocate to Vancouver it totally torpedoes the VC-sponsored idea that San Francisco is somehow essential. Limiting all the jobs to one city is NOT good for tech workers. Silicon Valley is not a good place to make money because the cost of living is stupid. I would go so far to say that the Silicon Valley anti-density and anti-development culture and government make Silicon Valley a shit place to start a company, and companies should be moving.

I would rather work in Vancouver or San Diego or most any other urban center than get raped by rent-seeking landowners in SV.

Only for fungible types of workers. Programmers, software engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, etc aren't like farm or construction laborers. These skills aren't commodities.

That's exactly how Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and most other big companies view software engineers. Engineers go through standard interview process (3-5 technical interviews, 1 behaviour interview) and then companies assume that everyone above the hiring bar can be assigned to pretty much any project at the company. Companies use this process because it works - engineers are mostly fungible.

The above is not true for exceptional talent (Linus Torvalds, John Carmack, etc). I will vote in heartbeat for visas for people with total comp >$300k. If you are truly that valuable, you should be paid more than average Sr. Software Engineer at Google.

Considering how Apple and Google tried to fix the salaries of software engineers to stay low, maybe even that isn't an option in big companies.

That's not how management sees talent like programmers and engineers. Management sees them like another commodity labor resource.

Specifically, they all fall under "Human Resources". While I suspect some issues even for CEOs might fall under HR, I also suspect that large company CEOs may also have unique employment contracts not available to the myriad software engineers at the same company.