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New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

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Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#161

Post by AlchemistCamp »

genmud wrote: post #83
toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a US citizen interested in improving the visa process who regularly interfaces with policymakers, propose an objective rubric that is better and I will get it in front of policymakers. Can't guarantee an outcome, will guarantee the effort. Patent quota is bullshit, but also "I know talent when I see it" (even though I do and how I hire) isn't going to fly. Sorting hats are hard, Goodhart's Law, etc. High level, yo…

I would love to see a revamp of visa system that when someone is sponsored by companies they are required to do a 1:1 match for scholarships on the salary of someone who they are sponsoring. Alternatively make the minimum $100k or max $250k. As someone who had someone come over on a O-1 visa, I 100% would have been willing to pay double for that person specifically. It also removes the common issue of people who are…

Rather than doubling the cost a company has to pay for a foreign employee, which inevitably pushes down wages for high-end talent, why not just rank applicants based on how much they’re actually paid?

If an employee is recruited at $250k, they clearly have skills the market values.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#162

Post by alephnerd »

blasphemers wrote: post #143
alephnerd wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a US citizen from the Midwest not getting it No offense, but maybe your resume didn't reflect that you had the skills required. The companies I worked at and now portfolio companies of mine pay Bay Area market rate to both citizens and non-citizens. We hire noncitizens because we didn't find the right talent we need.

So basically you only have open engineering positions in the same few markets that every other tech company does and then you complain when you can't find enough engineers. Engineering talent doesn't only exist on the coasts, despite startup tech culture pretending it does.

We listed all these jobs remotely. There just aren't that many engineers who know OS Internals, eBPF, or XDP in Indiana compared to Tel Aviv or Bangalore.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#163

Post by abduhl »

guitarbill wrote: post #153
abduhl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it an odd retort? If you haven't obtained a patent then the likelihood that you've actually gone through the patent procurement process with the USPTO is extremely low on this website. It's hackernews, not patentexaminernews or patentagentnews after all. It would be like me saying "designing your own operating system is easy" and having someone respond "how many OSes have you designed?" And by the way, your ow…

Not only is this unnecessarily hostile, but also easily refuted. Here's the process for software patents, which by the way some countries do not grant because it's such bullshit. Software "ideas" get written up and then transformed by a lawyer into incomprehensible legalese. Often to the point the "inventor" cannot understand them anymore. Sometimes, managers get added as "inventors". Then, the patent is submitted an…

Your refutation is the equivalent of:

Step 1 - Come up with a software idea and give it to a lawyer (let's not even get into how hard this step might be)

Step 2 - ???

Step 3 - Patent

There was nothing hostile in my reply. I just laid out the exact facts that GP put in their post in order to support the opposite conclusion that GP was pushing.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#164

Post by logicchains »

BeetleB wrote: post #145
danking00 wrote: post #63

Watching friends work through the decades long journey of citizenship, going to prestigious undergrad institutions, getting PhDs, publishing in journals, teaching part-time while working full time in industry, all just to get the right to stay in the country they’ve lived since they were 18 is fucking depressing. I doubt I’d qualify for EB-1 [1]. I’d have qualified for EB-2 at 28 when I attained five years of work ex…

> Now this hypothetical version of myself waits as short as two years (China-born) and as long as eleven years (India-born) China and India are the outliers. For most people, pre-pandemic (and post financial meltdown), the wait was under 2 years - almost everyone I know got it in under 2 years (EB-2, MS or higher degree). If you weren't born in China/India, and had an "advanced degree" in a STEM field (i.e. MS or hig…

>China and India are the outliers

They're not outliers in the sense that a significant percent of the world's population come from those two countries, so disadvantaging them disadvantages a significant fraction of the world's population.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#165

Post by anonfromsomewhe »

edgyquant wrote: post #82
thenaturalist wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economy is not a zero sum game. The US created literally all relevant consumer technology in the last 30 or so years and demand for tech talent has exploded ever since. Having a competitve sector/ economy which regularly pushes the edge of innovation and hence expands demand (both on sell and supply side) is actually what keeps salaries up. This logic is as deeply flawed as often as it comes up.

Yes it is. Every foreign employee getting that tech job is a US citizen from the Midwest not getting it. Fuck this dishonest talking point, I know people coding since high school working at Toyota plants while people from overseas with entry level skill sets have employers move them to the west coast and land jobs (for whatever reason.) It’s favoritism, it’s cronyism, it’s a nation putting its own struggling people l…

if US citizen with all best resources in the world for entire lifetime, is losing opportunity to some 3rd nation, maybe he/she/they is not competitive enough?

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#166

Post by tsudounym »

snakeyjake wrote: post #37
lgleason wrote: post #4

Expect further downward pressure on US tech salaries.

My employer cannot hire H1Bs. They are prohibited by law. All employees must be US citizens. They pay extremely competitive rates. They are the reason for and a source of complaints regarding gentrification in my area. edit: as an example the starting rate for high school work-study and college interns is the hourly equivalent of $78k/yr plus the same benefits as full-time employees from the second they show up. The…

As someone not far removed from university, you will have a very hard time finding US citizens who take linear algebra seriously and also have a willingness to work for the Mil Industrial Complex (which this sounds like)

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#168

Post by bee_rider »

blasphemers wrote: post #159
bee_rider wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every advanced economy is seeing stagnant population growth. Integrating immigrants is one of our most important skills and we need to keep practicing it.

Or we could try and solve the issues that lead to stagnant population growth which mostly stem from lifestyle and financial choices.

The government has much more control over immigration policy than individuals’ lifestyle and financial choices. Also it seems to be a pretty widespread problem, so I’m not sure which country we should steal ideas from.

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#169

Post by KMag »

satya71 wrote: post #6
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #3

>“You don’t have any accomplishments,” the lawyer told him. “You don’t have a patent, or even a product.” That scolding spurred Sanjay to make a list of what he needed to do to achieve his goal of staying permanently. He improved the technology his AI-based firm was developing, expanded its customer base, and filed for a U.S. patent, which was awarded earlier this year. In May those efforts paid off, allowing him to…

Not any more than other patent applicants. Currently all the layers in patent application process is incentivized to ignore quality. 1. Large companies pay a bonus for every patent applied and bigger one for approval. 2. Patent lawyers are paid for filed patents. 3. Patent office makes money on each patent. They view the review process as a cost center and optimize it for fast approval.

0. Large companies much prefer to settle patent disputes with "Okay, you might have a case for patents A, B, C. We have a case for you infringing on our patents D and E. We like your patents F and G. What do you like from our portfolio? Okay, and we'll throw in these 300 random patents to show we're willing to reduce our ability to drown your lawyers in paperwork. How about you throw in 200 random patents to bring down the size of your paperwork arsenal? Do we have a deal?"

Edit: so at some point in the patent portfolio cross-licensing negotiation, there's a pure numbers game, so for large corporations there is some value in patents nobody is ever going to implement.

At least that's my recollection from 15 years ago about why Google paid me as sole inventor of a patent. (I was working on indexing, and thought "Oh no, if someone does X, then indexing becomes incredibly harder, basically DRM for the web. Webspam could hide more easily. Oh, but if we patent X, that might make my life easier in the future." The patent lawyer zeroed in too much on my mention of CAPTCHA as a possible use case, so I'm not sure if Google could really use my patent to prevent its use as DRM/Webspam hiding. At some point, I decided pushing back against the lawyer to make the patent more broadly applicable might not be good for society. I didn't feel strongly enough to turn down my patent bonus, just strongly enough to stop pushing edits back to the lawyer.)

Re: New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM workers

#170

Post by bee_rider »

dudul wrote: post #158
bee_rider wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every advanced economy is seeing stagnant population growth. Integrating immigrants is one of our most important skills and we need to keep practicing it.

Did I make any comment about the current need for immigration? I was criticizing what I thought was a very weak argument.

Fair enough!
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