[pg]

The finance companies competing for programmers are also American. So even assuming that SV companies could draw star programmers away from Goldman Sachs by paying them more, there would still be exactly the same net shortage of them in the US.

[achompas]

The article is addressing a shortage of workers for STEM jobs. Quote from the article:

"If you're a high math student in America, from a purely economic point of view, it's crazy to go into STEM." The best of these students flock to Wall Street and corporate law firms and the rest end up employed in non-STEM jobs which often pay less and underutilize their skills.

If SV companies could draw star programmers away from Goldman, we'd then be talking about a finance shortage, no?

[don_draper]

The finance companies pay considerably more than Silicon Valley companies thus don't have the same problem with filling positions as SV does. Do you disagree with that?

Search 'finance companies lobby h1b visa'. Nothing Then search 'bay area companies lobby h1b visa'. Tons of results.

[pg]

I don't know whether finance companies pay or whether they have less problem hiring people. But what difference would it make it that were the case? We're talking about the same pool of people. The specific companies where the shortfall appears doesn't make any difference to the argument for immigration.

[don_draper]

We're talking about supply and demand. Wall Street understands that if the demand for talent is higher than the supply then the solution is to pay more, not whine about it.

[muzz]

If price is allowed to rise, demand drops.

[danmaz74]

Price is already allowed to rise. Any company can offer a higher salary to its engineering candidates.

[muzz]

Great, so the market-clearing level should be reached and there is neither shortage nor surplus.

[prostoalex]

Finance shops typically contract through an outsourcing agency. Wipro, Tata and InfoSys are typically among the most prolific filers for H-1B, and those filings fell significantly in 2009 post financial crisis.

[WildUtah]

If the finance companies couldn't hire top techies, they'd be fine.

It's a Red Queen race; whoever runs the fastest front-running operation skims all the rent from naïve institutional and individual investors. If everybody is 200ns slower, everybody is in the same position as before. All the talent invested in saving a few ns does no good to the world; it just changes the relative position of finance companies.

They might even be happier if there were fewer techies they could hire.