My interest in this thread is not about immigration. It's about how far too many Hacker News comments are uncharitable (in this specialized sense) and how that seems to go along with ill-spiritedness. It's time we all stepped up our game.
Given PG used that number in the article's title, and even in its URL, it does seem like it's worth debating. If the number was actually 50% as the parent suggests, then suddenly you have a very different argument.
Obviously anything is unobjectionable if you agree beforehand to disregard any interpretation you could possibly find objectionable.
It's a zero-sum game. If company X hires all 30 of the best engineers currently looking for a job, company Y cannot. Company Y can offer more in an attempt to lure them, but then Company X will be SOL.
We're talking about macro issues here. We want as many companies as possible to succeed.
So what? Why is that a problem that needs to be solved?
There is a positive (but not r=1) correlation to providing value to the economy and offering higher pay to employees. We (that is to say, software pros) don't want all companies to get as many software workers as they might want, because they wouldn't pay any one of us a decent middle-class wage.
I just explained this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8805475
> We're talking about macro issues here. We want as many companies as possible to succeed.
This is a "society exists for the economy" answer to the question. The whole point of the economy is to decide division of resources. If that means you don't get any as a CEO, well then you should just get the same treatment as a person entering your store without money.
Congress is not talking about increasing elite programmer visas (those visas exist, require extraordinary support for the visa, ie. extraordinary pay or extraordinary credentials, so these people are not a problem IF you're willing to pay). They're talking about letting the Indian "consulting"(what they call it)/slavery(what every sane person calls it) do double or triple the amount of work they do now. WIPRO will be the main beneficiary of this.
I find it kind of hard to believe that companies actually complain about this. But from a perspective of "more money for me (NOW), not for you" it makes sense.
From a perspective of maximizing our countries opportunities I would argue it does not (by itself) make sense.
"The US has less than 5% of the world's population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US."
A huge portion of the world can't even feed itself let alone educate itself to the high standard of an "exceptional programmer" [1]. If we're in the business of making flimsy assumptions then here's mine: I suspect that the US produces the same amount of "exceptional programmers" as the rest of the world combined.
"But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US, where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American." and "I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he'd hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said "We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning." And this is one of the hot startups that always win recruiting battles. It's the same all over Silicon Valley. Startups are that constrained for talent."
If you can't hire someone at your expected price then maybe you should raise it. Maybe the market price has gone higher than what you perceive it to be. That CEO could find his 30 "10x" engineers in a heartbeat if he offered 300-500k. Its not your god given right to be able to hire x number of employees for the price you hired your previous employees at.
[1] http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
In addition if you're going to claim an entire thread is of poor quality, back it up. And while you're looking for examples of poor quality, be sure to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity