[nostrademons]

Value capture is related to competition, not productivity. You capture value when there are few other alternatives in your space, and so your counterparties have to pay your price or go without.

If engineers aren't capturing much value, it's because they're fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing. Engineers that do have very specialized skills - say, compiler design experts or people with deep expertise in transaction algorithms or high-ranking engineers on Google's search team - can frequently make into the millions in stock grants.

[djb_hackernews]

If engineers are fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing, then why have a guest worker program like H1B?

[davidw]

> If engineers are fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing, then why have a guest worker program like H1B?

If you think it through, one reason is pretty obvious: jobs can also go to those people in wherever they happen to be born, in many cases. Letting them come to your country makes things better for everyone. Remember, the labor market is not a zero-sum game, a "lump of labor": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

[HarryHirsch]

To keep down wages, why else? If you have the choice between an American, who can leave for a better-paid opportunity whenever he likes, and a foreigner, who is chained to his job because of the green card process, who would you hire?

There is the additional twist that an immigrant foreigner who got their degree abroad won't nearly be as encumbered by student loans as someone with a domestic degree and won't negotiate quite as hard for a higher salary.