I agree with the basic thrust of the argument, but there are a couple of sticking points:
The first thing that caught me reading through the comments section here is that a lot of folks complain about immigrants pushing down wages. While there are certainly places that happens, I don't think that's what Paul's talking about here. However, there is another form of that which does happen -- immigrants do stabilize wages, even at startups, and wage fluctuation dictates some of which businesses are tenable and which aren't (and where they're tenable and where they aren't -- some businesses that would make sense in Dehli wouldn't make sense in San Francisco).
For the CEO mentioned, as salary goes to infinity, so to does his ability to hire as many great developers as he would like. To hire 30 developers the next day, there exists a salary which would make that possible. It's just that his business would probably not be tenable paying that much.
So, I think there's a component missing to the essay: how much wage stabilization is desirable via immigration? There's already a salary gap between working as a developer in the Bay Area vs. working almost anywhere else. How large should the ratio be allowed to grow? How much of being the hub is defined by having wages that are a small multiplier of wages elsewhere in the world for the same positions?
Second, the title seems a bit unfortunate. There's obviously not a uniform distribution of great programmers around the world. There's probably a pretty strong correlation between the distribution of home computers a decade ago and the home countries of great developers. The distribution not being uniform isn't really important to the point being made (it's fair to assume that most great programmers weren't born inside the US), but since it's implied so prominently in the title, it's harder to give it a pass.
The first thing that caught me reading through the comments section here is that a lot of folks complain about immigrants pushing down wages. While there are certainly places that happens, I don't think that's what Paul's talking about here. However, there is another form of that which does happen -- immigrants do stabilize wages, even at startups, and wage fluctuation dictates some of which businesses are tenable and which aren't (and where they're tenable and where they aren't -- some businesses that would make sense in Dehli wouldn't make sense in San Francisco).
For the CEO mentioned, as salary goes to infinity, so to does his ability to hire as many great developers as he would like. To hire 30 developers the next day, there exists a salary which would make that possible. It's just that his business would probably not be tenable paying that much.
So, I think there's a component missing to the essay: how much wage stabilization is desirable via immigration? There's already a salary gap between working as a developer in the Bay Area vs. working almost anywhere else. How large should the ratio be allowed to grow? How much of being the hub is defined by having wages that are a small multiplier of wages elsewhere in the world for the same positions?
Second, the title seems a bit unfortunate. There's obviously not a uniform distribution of great programmers around the world. There's probably a pretty strong correlation between the distribution of home computers a decade ago and the home countries of great developers. The distribution not being uniform isn't really important to the point being made (it's fair to assume that most great programmers weren't born inside the US), but since it's implied so prominently in the title, it's harder to give it a pass.