I like it here, and I'm happy with what I make, but when you factor in the exchange rate, a typical US developer would take a huge salary haircut working here; probably 40-50%.

I am a US citizen. As you point out, I don't need to dress "business casual" and I can (and do) work remotely, and the pay is good.

But in some specialties, developers are scarce in the US. They're probably also scarce worldwide, but the greater wages available here could entice them to immigrate.

In my niche in particular it's hard to find good developers for anything like reasonable wages. And in my specialty, it's not possible for a typical "generalist" to just hop in and learn quickly; for what I do, you'd need a broad background in C, C++, cross-platform issues, Windows, Android NDK, and Unix-ish development environments, as well as real-time/game experience. Someone missing any of those would have a steep learning curve.

I hear stories of developers making $500k+ per year, or getting job offers worth millions. At that level, then yes, I think we could stand to see a bit of downward pressure on salaries. I'm not quite there myself, though at my salary's current rate of growth I could see hitting that threshold in ten years or less.

That said, I do actually agree that H1B workers are often illegally used to pay below-market salaries. [1] I don't know how to combat this other than through better monitoring and stronger enforcement of the law. (For example, if an employer is found to be paying less than they should, forcing them to retroactively pay the difference in wages+penalties to any affected employees would be a strong motivator to pay them enough.)

Currently, H1B workers need to be paid 100% of the "prevailing wage"; maybe a higher threshold like 110% (or pick a number that makes sense) would convince critics that these workers are really hard to find in the US? Because if you can't find someone locally for 110% of the "prevailing wage" then that's a compelling argument that they aren't here.

[1] "Employers affirm in the labor condition application that the wage offered to the applicant is at least as high as that paid by the employer for the same type of job, and the number equals or exceeds the prevailing wage for the job in the same geographical area" http://www.immihelp.com/visas/h1b/h1b-visa-requirements.html

[edit] added comment about "hire a generalist" not being good enough

Average Indian earns $571/mo. Even if devs earn 2x average you’d be able to hire at least 3 for just the average SF/NYC rent a developer in the US has to pay let alone taxes, benefits, etc.

Not particularly good for the country or economy long term; is the end game to destroy the US and start over paying people here $571/mo?

Wages for a senior developer can be 250-300% higher in the US, with lower taxes. And no, "free" healthcare doesn't come close to making this huge pay cut worth it.

European developers get shafted badly, with the narrow exceptions of Switzerland and London (they get shafted less).

I used to work with developers in Eastern Europe who made the same amount of money as their peers in SF made, despite living in countries with median salaries of ~$8,000 USD a year.

People with skills can and do command high compensation packages that are independent of where they do their work from. Market rates for talent already factors in domestic and global markets.

I live in the UK and dev salaries are maybe half of the US, but people don't leave in droves because there are other factors - family, friends, quality of life, effort of moving your life across continents, etc.

The supply of decent programmers is just not enough to cover demand.

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.

You don't have to look to Sweden for cheaper devs. You could settle for UK. Or Eastern Europe who have a totally different cost of living.