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Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

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Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#261

Post by untog »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #229
projectmayhem wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend in a similar situation (eerily similar). Apple moved him to Vancouver to reside until they can get a visa for the US, but in the meantime more & more employees are being 'stationed' in Canada, which opens up the opportunity to simply setup a facility there instead of hustling the US system. Canada has been a regular "holding pattern" location for Europeans trying to get to the US. It's about time Cana…

Is that really ideal for someone who is at the top of their craft to be put into purgatory in Canada when they really want to immigrate to the US and settle down? If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country over putting my life on hold like that.

when they really want to immigrate to the US and settle down

I'm not sure that's actually true. They want to work for Apple/Google/Facebook/Tech Giant Inc. - they must live in the US to do so. If Canada is smart it'll give companies incentives to build permanent bases in the country - then people won't always be waiting to move south.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#262

Post by untog »

curiousDog wrote: post #220
inoop wrote: post #66

Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected, even though it was filed under 'premium processing', and the draw had been done using a computer in the first week after submissions closed. Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal…

You know why you lost the lottery? Because Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys, Wipro flooded it with applications to bring in cheap labor! There's no talent or extraordinary ability among the people they bring in. IMO, outsourcing companies should be banned from h1-b/greencard, period. Banning them, I doubt the H1-B quota will even fill-up EDIT: In response to the downvoters, Im Indian myself and I know the qualit…

I have interviewed a few candidates from companies like this, with Masters in Computer Science/IT/whatever. They were perfectly adept at coding C#, using the Entity Framework, etc... writing SQL? No. A few literally had no idea how it was structured.

One of a few reasons I'm glad to not be in the .NET world any more.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#263

Post by drpgq »

nikanj wrote: post #211
lsc wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Of course, in many countries the ability to get an advanced degree is not very dependent on being wealthy I... find your assertion to be unlikely. Of course, I could be wrong. Do you have statistics? Is there a country where there is not a very strong correlation between high parental income and advanced degrees?

Finland should have no correlation here, as all the schools are free and you get an allowance from the government for the duration of your studies. Unfortunately it turns out a high income correlates well with having an advanced degree, and a parent with an advanced degree correlates well with a child who has one. Which results in a situation where the higher socio-economical status of your parents makes you much mor…

Obviously IQ has something to do with this.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#264

Post by lennel »

arethuza wrote: post #181
jp555 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine him then moving to California and rarely going outside. Vancouver weather is pretty close to London England, except sandwiched between an ocean and majestic mountain range.

Vancouver seems to get a lot more rain than London (about twice as much) and nearly as much as Glasgow.

anecdotally I would say Vancouver gets more sunshine as well.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#265

Post by Solarsail »

refurb wrote: post #221
Dewie wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A recent gallup survey says 150M people would move to the US if they could, the UK was a distant second at 45M Now adjust those numbers to the population of those countries... oh look, the UK all of a sudden came out ahead. All of these studies comparing numbers usually just boils down to "The US is big". It has been brought up elsewhere that Canada, for example, has more immigrants as a percentage of population. B…

If the reason is the US is big, why would you look at it on a per-capita basis? Maybe adjust for land size? Then the UK would really come out ahead!

Only if immigrants are merely settling empty land. As long as they want to start out as part of society, they'll need jobs, housing and regular infrastructure. My own region is growing nearly as fast as housing can be built. More than 50% of everyone in some cities like Toronto have been in the country for less than 5 years, at any given moment. (Often starting out there, and moving to other parts of Canada later. Still limited by the population capacity of Toronto)

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#266

Post by rbanffy »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #229
projectmayhem wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend in a similar situation (eerily similar). Apple moved him to Vancouver to reside until they can get a visa for the US, but in the meantime more & more employees are being 'stationed' in Canada, which opens up the opportunity to simply setup a facility there instead of hustling the US system. Canada has been a regular "holding pattern" location for Europeans trying to get to the US. It's about time Cana…

Is that really ideal for someone who is at the top of their craft to be put into purgatory in Canada when they really want to immigrate to the US and settle down? If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country over putting my life on hold like that.

> purgatory in Canada

It's actually a nice place. Many friends of mine are doing the "holding pattern" thing and quite a few decided they'd just stay.

> If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country

It all depends on the size of your hill and the company you keep. Also, the hill gets lonely after a time. I like to surround myself with people smarter than myself and that becomes increasingly harder with a fixed size hill.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#267

Post by cgh »

curiousDog wrote: post #220
inoop wrote: post #66

Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected, even though it was filed under 'premium processing', and the draw had been done using a computer in the first week after submissions closed. Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal…

You know why you lost the lottery? Because Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys, Wipro flooded it with applications to bring in cheap labor! There's no talent or extraordinary ability among the people they bring in. IMO, outsourcing companies should be banned from h1-b/greencard, period. Banning them, I doubt the H1-B quota will even fill-up EDIT: In response to the downvoters, Im Indian myself and I know the qualit…

The quality of Indian programmers tends to vary wildly. I currently work with some guys who are really good, and one guy who is simply incredible, while in the past I've worked with people who literally had never since a command line interface before. This was for a position where we deployed to Linux.

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#268

Post by stevenbedrick »

LetBinding wrote: post #184

Is there a Big Data / NLP / Machine Learning scene in Vancouver? I rarely see any Data Scientist positions being advertised in Vancouver? I am a foreigner with a PhD in applied NLP from a US university and I have been looking at such positions in other tech hubs like Vancouver, Montreal, Berlin, etc. But these types of jobs only seem to be in the Valley. I work in the Valley and I like it here but I want to move to a…

Simon Fraser University has a well-regarded NLP group. That might be a good place to start networking if you were looking for something in Vancouver...

Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles

#269

Post by curiousDog »

curiousDog wrote: post #220
inoop wrote: post #66

Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected, even though it was filed under 'premium processing', and the draw had been done using a computer in the first week after submissions closed. Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal…

You know why you lost the lottery? Because Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys, Wipro flooded it with applications to bring in cheap labor! There's no talent or extraordinary ability among the people they bring in. IMO, outsourcing companies should be banned from h1-b/greencard, period. Banning them, I doubt the H1-B quota will even fill-up EDIT: In response to the downvoters, Im Indian myself and I know the qualit…

Here's a link to how many visas these companies steal: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/top-10-companies-request-visa... . They're literally flooding it (Around 75%, from the looks of it)
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