But if you whine loud enough, you can open more visas for cheap labor to come in next year.

I'm totally not against people coming in to the country - legally. One of my first tech jobs was at a company that sponsored a number of Polish and Czech engineers. They were all effectively captive - they were paid a barely livable wage (relative to US-born people doing the same job) but couldn't easily go out and take another job due to immigration status. But that meant the company 'saved' so much, and could use it to help keep other wages in line - 'you're already paid $x more than person Y!' sort of thing.

Ah yes, the "visa discount". The legal part of our immigration regime is exploitative, humiliating, and such a great deal for employers that I don't see it changing any time soon.

> If you can't hire people at a given wage, raise the wage. Or whine online about the lack of employees.

THANK YOU.

They simply aren't paying enough.

If they pay the same as everyone else, they don't stand out. And they require MORE work than other jobs with the same salary.

If the absolute level of remuneration isn't high enough, people with the necessary skills will just do their OWN startup.

They have to pay enough that the surety of the wage OUTWEIGHS the possibility of striking it rich, for people who could do their own startups.

This is pretty easy to see -- take the founders, and ask them if they'd switch to someone else's company for what they are offering new employees.

Or, ask them if they'd switch their OWN compensation package with whoever it is they are trying to hire.

No, THEY won't work for that little, even on their own baby. So why would anyone else?

Average wage = Average worker

It basically comes down to greed. If they MUST have rock star ninjas, but they REFUSE to pay for it, they aren't serious about succeeding.

If they CAN'T pay for it, then they need to raise money so that they can. If they can't raise money, they aren't any more stable than anyone else's random startup. Why bother working for them at all?

Better to combine salaries to get ONE expert than two or three or four middling employees.

Really the problem is there's too much glorification of FOUNDERS. We see time and time again that they don't have the skills needed to do whatever it is the company is supposed to do, so it's usually the early employees who do it. People think it's their god-given right as a "Founder" with a capital "F" to be king of the hill and get the lion's share of everything, and command an army of peons (who actually do the vast majority of the work) who are obligated to fulfill the "F"ounder's aspirations.

ViaWeb started with the people they needed. It's a lot easier to hire for the non-critical positions.

"If you can't hire people at a given wage, raise the wage. Or whine online about the lack of employees."

Or move your operations closer to the less expensive areas of the country (there's 48 other states besides CA and NY!).

Some industries are lauded for moving entires factories overseas and making a killing on wage arbitrage. But somehow 'the money' likes to keep 'blessed' startup activity within 10 minutes drive from all VC offices, and this is seen as 'the way things have to be'.

Factories are nothing like software development: factories are repetitive assembly lines and software development is a creative process.

When talent concentrates like it does in SF and NY, it creates a culture that becomes more valuable than the sum of it's parts. You've got people who are constantly meeting and exchanging ideas, often by coincidence or near accident. This doesn't happen when in areas without enough talent density to create a concentration. The same pattern is repeated in many forms of art and business.

Except there's obviously not enough talent density in areas where companies claim they can't hire anyone. Or there is and no one wants to work at those companies because the pay is too low, or conditions are abysmal.