原文地址：http://paulgraham.com/95.html
借助翻译工具：Google翻译、DeepL 翻译
December 2014
2014年12月
American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier because they say they can’t find enough programmers in the US. Anti-immigration people say that instead of letting foreigners take these jobs, we should train more Americans to be programmers. Who’s right?
美国科技公司希望政府简化移民程序，因为他们说在美国找不到足够的程序员。反移民人士说，我们不应该让外国人担任这些工作，而应该训练更多的美国人成为程序员。谁是对的？
The technology companies are right. What the anti-immigration people don’t understand is that there is a huge variation in ability between competent programmers and exceptional ones, and while you can train people to be competent, you can’t train them to be exceptional. Exceptional programmers have an aptitude for and interest in programming that is not merely the product of training. [1]
技术公司是对的。反移民的人不明白的是，称职的程序员和卓越的程序员在能力上有很大的差异，你可以把人培养成称职的人，但你不能把他们培养成卓越的人。卓越的程序员对编程有一种天赋和兴趣，这不仅仅是培训的产物。[1]
The US has less than 5% of the world’s population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US.
美国的人口不到世界人口的5%。这意味着如果使一个人成为一个伟大的程序员的素质是均匀分布的，那么95%的伟大程序员都出生在美国之外。
The anti-immigration people have to invent some explanation to account for all the effort technology companies have expended trying to make immigration easier. So they claim it’s because they want to drive down salaries. But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the US, where they then paid them the same as they’d have paid an American. Why would they go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same price? The only explanation is that they’re telling the truth: there are just not enough great programmers to go around. [2]
反移民的人必须编造一些解释来解释科技公司为了让移民更容易而花费的所有努力。所以他们声称这是因为他们想压低薪水。但如果你和初创公司交谈，你会发现几乎每一家超过一定规模的公司都会通过法律手段把程序员弄到美国来，然后他们付给他们的薪水和付给美国人的一样。他们为什么要额外费尽心思用同样的价格去找程序员呢？唯一的解释是，他们说的是实话：优秀的程序员实在不够用。[2]
I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he’d hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said “We’d hire 30 tomorrow morning.” And this is one of the hot startups that always win recruiting battles. It’s the same all over Silicon Valley. Startups are that constrained for talent.
我问一家拥有70名程序员的初创公司的首席执行官，如果他能得到他想要的所有优秀程序员，他会再雇用多少人。他说：“我们明天早上要雇用30人。” 这是总赢得招聘大战的热门创业公司之一。整个硅谷都一样。创业是受人才限制的。
It would be great if more Americans were trained as programmers, but no amount of training can flip a ratio as overwhelming as 95 to 5. Especially since programmers are being trained in other countries too. Barring some cataclysm, it will always be true that most great programmers are born outside the US. It will always be true that most people who are great at anything are born outside the US. [3]
如果能有更多的美国人被培训成程序员就好了，但再多的培训也无法颠覆95比5这样悬殊的比例。尤其是其他国家也在培养程序员。除非有什么大灾难，否则大多数伟大的程序员都是在美国以外出生的，这永远是事实。大多数擅长任何事情的人都是在美国以外出生的，这一点永远是事实。[3]
Exceptional performance implies immigration. A country with only a few percent of the world’s population will be exceptional in some field only if there are a lot of immigrants working in it.
卓越的表现意味着移民。一个仅占世界人口百分之几的国家，只有当有很多移民在某个领域工作时，这个国家才会在某个领域表现卓越
But this whole discussion has taken something for granted: that if we let more great programmers into the US, they’ll want to come. That’s true now, and we don’t realize how lucky we are that it is. If we want to keep this option open, the best way to do it is to take advantage of it: the more of the world’s great programmers are here, the more the rest will want to come here.
但整个讨论都认为有些东西是理所当然的：如果我们让更多优秀的程序员进入美国，他们就会愿意来。现在确实如此，我们并没有意识到我们有多幸运，这是事实。如果我们想保持这个选择的开放性，最好的办法就是利用它：世界上越多的优秀程序员在这里，其他的程序员就会越想来这里。
And if we don’t, the US could be seriously fucked. I realize that’s strong language, but the people dithering about this don’t seem to realize the power of the forces at work here. Technology gives the best programmers huge leverage. The world market in programmers seems to be becoming dramatically more liquid. And since good people like good colleagues, that means the best programmers could collect in just a few hubs. Maybe mostly in one hub.
如果我们不这样做，美国可能会被严重搞砸。我意识到这是一门强大的语言，但是对此感到不安的人们似乎并没有意识到这里发挥作用的力量。技术为最好的程序员提供了巨大的杠杆作用。程序员的世界市场似乎正在变得更加流动。由于好人喜欢好同事，这意味着最好的程序员可以在几个枢纽中集会。也许主要集中在一个中心。
What if most of the great programmers collected in one hub, and it wasn’t here? That scenario may seem unlikely now, but it won’t be if things change as much in the next 50 years as they did in the last 50.
如果大多数优秀的程序员都聚集在一个集线器中而不在这里，该怎么办？这种情况现在看来似乎不太可能，但是如果情况在接下来的50年中不会像在过去50年中那样发生大的变化，那将不是不可能的。
如果大多数伟大的程序员都聚集在一个中心，而它不在这里呢？这种情况现在看来似乎不太可能，但如果未来50年的情况和过去50年一样发生变化，那就不会了。
We have the potential to ensure that the US remains a technology superpower just by letting in a few thousand great programmers a year. What a colossal mistake it would be to let that opportunity slip. It could easily be the defining mistake this generation of American politicians later become famous for. And unlike other potential mistakes on that scale, it costs nothing to fix.
我们有可能确保美国仍然是一个技术超级大国，只要每年让几千名优秀的程序员进来。如果让这个机会溜走，那将是一个多么巨大的错误。它很可能成为这一代美国政治家日后成名的决定性错误。而且与其他潜在的错误不同，在这个规模上，它不需要花费任何代价来弥补。
So please, get on with it.
所以请继续。
Notes
[1] How much better is a great programmer than an ordinary one? So much better that you can’t even measure the difference directly. A great programmer doesn’t merely do the same work faster. A great programmer will invent things an ordinary programmer would never even think of. This doesn’t mean a great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because any invention has a finite market value. But it’s easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer’s salary.
[1] 一个优秀的程序员比一个普通的程序员强多少？好到你都无法直接衡量其中的差别。一个伟大的程序员不仅仅是把同样的工作做得更快。一个伟大的程序员会发明普通程序员想都不敢想的东西。这并不意味着一个伟大的程序员就具有无限的价值，因为任何发明的市场价值都是有限的。但很容易想象到这样的情况：一个伟大的程序员发明的东西价值可能是普通程序员工资的100倍甚至1000倍。
[2] There are a handful of consulting firms that rent out big pools of foreign programmers they bring in on H1-B visas. By all means crack down on these. It should be easy to write legislation that distinguishes them, because they are so different from technology companies. But it is dishonest of the anti-immigration people to claim that companies like Google and Facebook are driven by the same motives. An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the last thing they’d want; it would destroy them.
[2] 有少数咨询公司把他们用H1-B签证引进的外国程序员大把大把地租出去。通过各种手段打击这些。要写出区分他们的立法应该是很容易的，因为他们和技术公司有很大的不同。但是，反移民人士声称谷歌和Facebook等公司是由同样的动机驱动的，这是不诚实的。大量廉价但平庸的程序员涌入是他们最不愿意看到的，这会毁了他们。
[3] Though this essay talks about programmers, the group of people we need to import is broader, ranging from designers to programmers to electrical engineers. The best one could do as a general term might be “digital talent.” It seemed better to make the argument a little too narrow than to confuse everyone with a neologism.
[3] 虽然本文谈的是程序员，但我们需要引进的人才群体更为广泛，从设计师到程序员再到电气工程师。作为一个笼统的说法，最好的选择可能是“数字人才”。把论点说得窄一点，总比用一个新词来混淆大家的视听要好。
Thanks to Sam Altman, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Geoff Ralston, Fred Wilson, and Qasar Younis for reading drafts of this.
感谢 Sam Altman，John Collison，Patrick Collison，Jessica Livingston，Geoff Ralston，Fred Wilson和Qasar Younis 阅读了此草稿。
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