[nevir]

Well, somewhat tangential: There aren't enough (sufficiently skilled) Americans to satisfy the demand for tech jobs (primarily, programming).

All the large tech firms are hiring as quickly as they can, and are still starving for devs. Ignoring the education problem, the next best approach is to hire from overseas; and that's also extremely difficult due to immigration law.

[jbail]

There aren't enough (sufficiently skilled) Americans to satisfy the demand for tech jobs (primarily, programming)

Can you provide some proof? I hear people say this, but I'd love to see real data to back it up

Wages are more or less stagnant (source: http://www.epi.org/publication/bp359-guestworkers-high-skill...) and many of the big companies Silicon Valley just got spanked for illegal no poach hiring agreements.

Are the large tech firms REALLY hiring as quickly as they can? Or do they just prefer guest workers they can pay less and exert greater control over via their worker visas?

[insuffi]

Uh, who spouts the bullshit about paying less, that it's become so widely accepted as fact.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/05/10-h1b-visa...

[gohrt]

Read the doc you linked:

Software wages are trending up

http://s2.epi.org/files/charts/IT-Guestworkers_Figure-O.png....

and judging from the spikes in that graph, the data is bunk anyway, including IPO millionaires in the average, instead of using median.

[gnrlist]

There isn't a shortage of engineers in this country... http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...