I am Peter Roberts, an immigration lawyer who does work for YC and startups. AMA

Post by angelbob » Wed, Dec 16, 2015, 11:07 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #203

angelbob wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, an employer specifically does not own your side work assuming you don't use any of their physical assets, protected know-how or paid-for time. In other words, if it's genuinely side work. There's a specific statute to that effect, and they're required to inform you of same. (I'm not a lawyer either, but I've worked in CA for a long time.)

> In California, an employer specifically does not own your side work assuming you don't use any of their physical assets, protected know-how or paid-for time. Of course, with the exception of explicitly-taken leave, its at least intuitively unclear how one defines any time as not "paid for time" of a salaried employee. (There may be case law that clarifies this, however.)

Post by vickychijwani » Thu, Dec 24, 2015, 7:15 AM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #119

jason558 wrote: post #59

Hi Peter, thanks for doing this session! My question relates to techniques and probabilities of getting H1B visa for potential hires. We are a 5 year old profitable start-up with more than $1 million in revenue...how hard would it be for us to sponsor a potential new engineering hire for the visa process? I understand that it can cost $4k in the application and X in legal fees ($5k?) which we would be ok with. My que…

Obviously not the OP, but the lottery is meant to be completely random, where the only thing that helps is being in the advanced degree bucket where you essentially get a chance in two lotteries. Last year the success rate for those without advanced degrees was something like 33%. I think you get one application per person, so you will hopefully get 1/3 of the visas you request, essentially 3Xing your costs.