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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I find it difficult to take at face value any claims of a "shortage of tech people" when huge numbers of engineering majors at top schools are still going into finance and consulting: http://web.mit.edu/facts/alum.html. At MIT there are still about 50% more people going into finance and consulting than computer technologies.[1]

When Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, start paying comparable salaries to Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and still can't find enough qualified workers, then I'll believe that there really is a shortage. Until then, I'm going to consider this the latest in a long line of anti-competitive moves to depress engineering wages: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-at-1076.html.

[1] And it's not because financial firms make more money per worker. Google is at about $1m in revenue per employee, Apple is at about double that. Goldman Sachs is at about $1.25 million.

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An engineer is not worth the same everywhere or to everyone. It's a matter of supply and demand. Goldman and Morgan Stanley pay engineers more than Google et al, because they know it's the only way to convince them to work on their shitty legacy systems rather than on cutting edge technology in Silicon Valley.

Most of the people Goldman, etc, hire from MIT are going into banking or programming trading systems, not doing back office infrastructure work. And if you look at revenues per employee, Google makes more money off its engineers, on average, than Morgan Stanley does off its bankers. And Google makes a lot more money per engineer than McKinsey or BCG/Bain do per consultant, and tons of MIT grads go to those companies instead of going into engineering (though for consulting less for the pay and more for the prospect of upward career mobility).

There is certainly a desirability aspect to it--all else being equal an engineer would probably rather be an engineer at Google than a banker at Goldman, but that's besides the point. You can't complain that the supply isn't there when you're paying a lot less money than other organizations with whom you are directly competing for top engineering graduates. If there are a ton of graduates available, but they're just going to do other things, it means you're not paying enough money.

>>If there are a ton of graduates available, but they're just going to do other things, it means you're not paying enough money.

I think you are a bit too hasty with jumping to this conclusion. It can mean you're not paying enough money. It can also mean a thousand other things. Maybe their parents are in banking and finance and they want to walk in their footsteps. Maybe they have friends in banking and finance. Maybe they just enjoy banking and finance. Alternatively, maybe they don't want to move to Silicon Valley. Or maybe they don't like the elite tech culture perpetuated by Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.

I mean really, it seems like you have made up your mind about programmers not getting paid enough, and you are interpreting everything to fit that conclusion.

All of those can be overcome by paying more money. That's almost the definition of "enough money"--getting someone to come work for you instead of choosing one of his other options.

A true skills shortage is something like what you had in the south after the civil war with regards to industrial skills. The south had very little industrial infrastructure and even fewer people with engineering skills. In contrast, in this case we have plenty of people with the relevant skills--they just choose to go work at other companies.

I think you're straining credibility a bit to suggest that finance is outcompeting technology on anything other than compensation. Engineers aren't going to work on clearing systems and tradable product catalog systems (zzzzzzz) because their parents were bankers (if that was the case, they'd be bankers). They're doing it because the pay is reliably much better.

>>Engineers aren't going to work on clearing systems and tradable product catalog systems (zzzzzzz) because their parents were bankers (if that was the case, they'd be bankers).

I think this is a strawman.

Let me give you an example: my parents are doctors. For a long time I thought about being a doctor, but ultimately decided against it. I like healthcare a lot, and I like the types of people in healthcare. I just did not want to become a doctor. I became an engineer instead.

That said, even as an engineer, I have a predisposition towards working in the healthcare industry. I'm familiar with it and I understand how it works. I know people in it, through my parents. As such, it makes sense for me to get a job in healthcare.

It has nothing to do with money. In fact, research clearly shows that after a certain amount (around $75k on average), money stops being a motivator for knowledge workers. At the end of the day, doing what you enjoy and working with people you like is priceless.

People very much want social prestige, about as much as salary. A profession associated with a high percentage of foreigners with strange accents and low cultural integration stinks of low prestige. It powerfully discourages entrants.

This unending elite driven media drumbeat for high skilled immigration creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The message to a talented young person is clear: to work in tech is to be regarded as a disposable commodity where you'll be lumped together with strange foreigners. If you want to work with people like yourself who you'll have nice dinners and drinks with, better shoot for something people with accents can't easily do, like management consulting.

Once a system is as large as Google, much of the work that needs to be done isn't very interesting. Most of the people I know at Google work on the Google equivalent of "legacy systems." Maybe it's not as shitty as working on a legacy system at a bank, but doesn't sound like a dream job, either.

They're concerned about a shortage of cheap tech people.

Averages miss the point. A top trader at a top firm on wall street will make millions in a few years. There's no chance of making millions by working at Google. The reason someone with a technical background can make millions on wall street has deeper roots in other parts of how our monetary and fiscal systems are setup and reward risk, and we should fix those too.

This argument would be valid if USA companies couldn't open offshore offices. Tech employees are earning salary comparable to USA salaries, working for USA-based company, but not paying taxes in USA.

If USA won't adapt their immigration policies it's matter of years until different place with reasonable immigration policies and friendlier government will gain status of Silicon Valley.

Just to play devil's advocate here, could you not argue the opposite? The government is artificially limiting supply of employees and inflating the salaries of engineers, at an overall loss of competitiveness globally? After all, what process decided that 65,000 visa cap? What rigorous scientific method was applied to come to the number?

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