Matt Mullenweg of WordPress on Paul Graham’s argument that we the government needs to grant far more U.S. visas for software engineers:
I agree that the US deserves dramatically better immigration policies, but in the meantime I’m confused with the head-in-the-sand approach most tech companies are taking simultaneously complaining that there are lots of great people they can’t bring into the US, but being stubborn on keeping a company culture that requires people to be physically co-located.
Recruiting is about tradeoffs. One of the easiest ways to expand your pool of potential applicants is to remove the requirement for physical proximity. Managing a fully or partially remote team is a different and in some ways more difficult job than managing a group of people who all show up at the same office every day, but seems more feasible than changing U.S. immigration policy to make it easier to bring more engineers from overseas to the Silicon Valley.