[OmarIsmail]

Businesses die when they run out of money.

Paying your programmers 3-500K/year is a sure fire way to run out of money really quickly.

And while a great programmer is obviously worth it, most companies (at the early stage) have so many external factors that even a great programmer isn't enough, they need the time to iterate and find product market fit. You know the whole lean startup thing. So how do you circle that square?

[gaius]

This is true of any commodity - salaries for your talent, square feet of office space, kilowatts for your technology, you name it. It's called business. And it's not at all clear why you, I or anyone else should subordinate our own best interests, to make this guy richer.

[OmarIsmail]

But you understand the world isn't that simple right?

Imagine you lived on a land with 100 square feet. You wanted to open a store, but the big supermarket (because they started early) already has 60 square feet and the price of the other 40 square feet is astronomical. So you can only rent out 5 square feet. Well, you can't do much with 5 square feet, and that big market is making lots of money with theirs. So they keep buying more square footage and driving up the prices until there's literally no way any other business can continue to exist.

See, by artificially limiting things you can create a situation where only people that are already in an advantageous position will strengthen that position. Now, if you want only big tech companies to exist and not see the innovation brought forth by small companies then sure continue supporting and advocating for restrictive policies. If you actually care about the long term future of what the human race is capable of then you'd want to remove all artificial restrictions and let the more natural "survival of the fittest" of the market iterate towards new innovations and technology.

[gaius]

Do you understand that the world is not that simple? The only artificial shortage in play, is created by those self same companies - or unemployment in the US particularly among 40+ programmers would be 0%.

If you care about the long term future of the human race you would be fighting both ageism and indentured servitude.

[OmarIsmail]

If you know of any great 40+ programmers please send them my way.

I think you are ascribing a conspiracy with something that can be much more easily explained. 40+ y/o programmers first started learning programming 20+ years ago when programming was more low level in general. Furthermore their skills were honed on broken processes and outdated technology. And, if a programmer has been in the industry for 20+ years and they are good, they've most likely made enough money to retire, or are in a management position (and expecting a management position). Lastly, there were a lot less programmers entering the field 20+ years ago than there are today (I'm guessing on this one admittedly).

When you take all of these factors together, how many job-seeking unemployed 40+ programmers are really out there? My guess is that if they are job-seeking and unemployed, they should be looking inwards for why. It's probably a problem that they can solve themselves. And of course it doesn't have to be skill based issues - most people don't live in SF which is where a lot of programmer hiring is happening now. By 40+ you have a family with roots that people don't want to uproot.

If you know of any good programmers that are willing to work as an engineer (not manager) in SF then please please PLEASE send them my way.

[gaius]

40+ y/o programmers first started learning programming 20+ years ago when programming was more low level in general. Furthermore their skills were honed on broken processes and outdated technology

When you have been around technology for a little while you will see that the changes over time are superficial. There's actually not much you can do with a fancy Angular app now, that you couldn't do with an IBM 3270 terminal 40 years ago. You have a form to enter records into a database, or a report to extract that data in a nicely formatted way. Or Facebook, or Amazon, or whatever, to an experienced programmer these are just forms and reports. They differ from earlier apps only in the most trivial ways, the engineering under them hasn't changed. These old guys built things like banking systems, airline booking systems, that have been running for decades, and will be running for decades more. They know 100x more than any "scrum master" or whatever is in fashion now.

Sadly attitudes like you demonstrate, are common. Hence, rampant ageism and the drive to hire cheap 20-somethings.

[OmarIsmail]

Fundamentally programming is all the same: it's pushing around some 1s and 0s. But you'd have to be crazy to think the people in this industry haven't been standing on each other's shoulders and constantly refining existing ideas and developing new ones.

If anything, the pace of innovation has been accelerating.

This kind of "I've been coding banking systems that have been around for 20 years what do you know you little snot" faux-elitism is the exact attitude that makes certain kinds of developers absolutely horrible to work with. I hope you recognize that.

[melindajb]

there is no god given right to cheap labor.

the problem here is that investors want to have it both ways; a free market in terms of laws, restrictions, HR policies, etc, but when that same free market drives up their costs, all of a sudden "whoa, why do we have to pay this?"

If the market can't support high priced labor, then you should go out of business. Simple. That's the way business works.