With programming being a sexy job now, and all of the bootcamps pumping out people, supply is higher than it&#x27;s ever been before.<p>I haven&#x27;t seen non-anecdotal evidence that salaries are inordinately high. &quot;Silicon valley&quot; tech salaries rose by a total of 13.7% from 2010-2014. (Look at the interactive chart at <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.dice.com&#x2F;report&#x2F;check-and-check-u-s-technology-salaries-and-bonuses-rise&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.dice.com&#x2F;report&#x2F;check-and-check-u-s-technology-...</a>)<p>A little more than 3% increase a year isn&#x27;t ridiculous. Especially when US inflation has averaged around 2% over that time period. And considering that other places in the US aren&#x27;t nearly as &quot;hot&quot; as the bay area.<p>The <i>real</i> shortage is in people who live in the bay area, who can code a prefix tree on a white board in under 30 minutes, who want to add routes all day for the company&#x27;s boring app, and who want to do it for less than the 3% a year average increase.<p>If you add enough bizarre qualifications, you can say that there&#x27;s a shortage of anything: There&#x27;s a shortage of Swift developers with 5 years experience!<p>American companies are notoriously bitchy about a talent shortage, but I think it just about always comes down to &quot;overqualified people don&#x27;t want to take underwhelming salaries&quot;. Right now, i believe good programmers are dramatically underpaid for the value they create<p>I have a vested interest in keeping out foreigners who are being screwed over with artificially low salaries and subsequently screwing natives over by driving salaries down (like with Tata + Infosys). I&#x27;m fine with people coming in, but it needs to be on a level playing field, and H1B doesn&#x27;t do that. I&#x27;m arguing for less restrictions around foreigners, and more restrictions on companies gaming the system