Why even go to that length when you can interview on video?
YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
321–330 of 851 posts
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Texan it boggled my mind to hear people complain about immigration. Walk into UT, A&M, UH engineering departments, half the students are Chinese or Russian or Indian. In the grad programs it's even more. That means their best talent is here , paying US taxes, contributing to US companies, making the US more powerful, all the while contributing almost nothing to their home countries. How is that a bad thing! I do…
You might want to take a step outside the academic setting every once in a while. Chat with a cop, ambulance driver, or immigration officer from a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.
Yes. Of course, there are native born citizens who suck the system dry, too. But a sovereign nation can dispense with illegal aliens. (And should.) Then we must turn to, you know, growing the economy fast enough to support this massive welfare state for the people who are constitutionally entitled to it -- both native born and legally immigrated.
Or we could eviscerate the welfare state and be richer, freer, happier, and healthier! [1]
[1] Gratuitous Milton Friedman plug: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman...
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't worry so much. You have a mortal lock on the pipeline of first-time tech founders, and your cycles are overwhelmingly populated by graduates of US and European universities. Yes, a fair number of talented people from disfavored west Asian countries won't be able to start up here. That's OK: because of the way venture capital works, and because of YC's role in it, they really won't be able to start at all, and y…
"because of YC's role in it, they really won't be able to start at all" Not sure what the reasoning is here. How is YC doing anything to block people from starting companies? You don't lose anything by getting rejected from YC, other than the few days spent applying.
YC is just the beneficiary of the status quo. If they disappeared one of the lesser players would just take their spot in line. But the real status quo edge, the real big deal here, is the ability to get rich without actually making any money, i.e. unprofitable growth at scale (minus profits). This is a real, real big deal, but you can't do it without access. You can turn an honest buck anywhere. Making a bundle without actually turning a profit is extraordinarily hard to do outside of Silicon Valley.
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is a criteria in which China is "better" ethically or "better" by some criteria you select? I can think of none.
Foreign nationals killed in undeclared wars?
Why be specific to foreign nationals? Why not include the tens of millions of their own citizens the China gov't has killed?
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might want to take a step outside the academic setting every once in a while. Chat with a cop, ambulance driver, or immigration officer from a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.
The Trump administration has stated it might cap H1B visas further. This move will directly impact academia and the Tech industry and the influx of top talent. By combining the issue of illegal immigration with legal high value H1B visas, the Trump administration and its supporters are not helping their own argument. There is a nuance there which the parent comment was correctly mentioning. You want the best of anoth…
H1B is currently randomized lottery, benefiting sweatshops cluttering the pipeline, Current administration is not eliminating it but at least from their talk its about restoring their original intent, to bring in extra-ordinary talent. Which might actually be good news for SV, depending on how it is implemented?
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Canadian visa might sound appealing at first blush but won't help for ycombinator founders as far as I know. To be eligible you need to have funding from a canadian venture fund, see below. I guess ycombinator could setup a Canadian fund and apply for the funding eligibility, but with the principles being mostly American and living in the US, I'm guessing it would be a very tough sell. http://www.cic.gc.ca/englis…
Oh please no. Leave the VC reality distortion field south of the border please. We don't need YC ruining Canada with hopped up "startup" bros. If we even need more VC firms (I don't think we do), let indie VC or something like it come up. Edit: This isn't meant to mean people shouldn't start companies here. They should. But they should do it firmly grounded in reality, not based in SV VC world which has very little t…
I agree! Canada needs to continue giving depressed wages for the same/more work to its talented citizens and then just complain passive aggressively when they move down south.
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's almost always the government that makes or breaks a country.
I agree, but only with the 'breaks' part.
People are always diverse, culture is always adapting. The most immediate factor for change is the government.
On the longer term, other factors dictate the government, but they are still only indirectly linked to change.
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#328It's oddly ominous reading about America's rise on the back of textile patents taken from England and Europe, then poaching of German physics talent and scientific talent from across the world. Germany was, by far, the pre-eminent power in theoretical physics at the turn of the 20th century, with Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck & Born about to be at the peak of their powers. Then the country decided to turn on intellect…
Current changes proposed to US immigration policy would cost the country a small number of high-skilled individuals from the Middle East (a few thousand) and a large supply of agricultural workers from Latin America (~10 million). It's a small impact on the overall competitiveness of the US, hardly equivalent to the Nazi brain-drain.
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don' think the situation is as dire as people think. Europe exported many technical people during the war years and one would be hard pressed to say they are backwards because they lost talent. Japan as well is not very friendly to labor migrants and they are at the forefront of science in technology despite their small population size relative to other geographies.
It did, however, dramatically help the U.S. We got the atom bomb, moon landings, computer, and many other inventions out of European immigrants who fled the Nazis. The U.S. had a strong science program before the war, but its superpower status afterwards was just as much because we got all the brightest minds in Europe as because we bombed everyone else into rubble. I could see Australia, New Zealand, or Canada simil…
One big problem is economies of scale. The U.S. has more than five times the combined population of these three countries. A similar problem affects the Nordic wundercountries. They are some of the richest and happiest countries in the world and have some of the best education systems in the world, but their small population sizes hinder their sheer economic potential. Finland's population is only 5.4 million and Sweden's is only 9.5 million, and yet they still gave birth to Colossal Order, Spotify, Supercell, Rovio among others. Imagine how many tech powerhouses would come out of the Nordic countries if they had larger populations and thus larger economies of scale. Same with Norway. For years its economy has been tied to O&G, but with the collapsing price in oil the Norwegian government is investing their oil billions into startups; in the coming years, Norway's startup scene will explode. And all with a population of 5 million. If their population was larger, I think Norway's startup scene could be so, so much bigger.
Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might want to take a step outside the academic setting every once in a while. Chat with a cop, ambulance driver, or immigration officer from a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.
It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry, not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies. That sounds like a grossly inaccurate generalization to me. A lot of "illegal immigrants" are an absolutely essential part of the economy, performing jobs like picking oranges in the Florida heat/humidity, doing roofing work, washing dishes, etc. Interview farmers in the south and ask…
This is already happening: California Farmers Backed Trump, but Now Fear Losing Field Workers
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/california-farmers-bac...
I don't know why its so uncomfortable for conservatives to admit that illegals play a role in our economy[1]. If they didn't they wouldn't be here as the market would choose against them. This is why Democrats have been fighting for amnesty programs for long time illegals, to keep this labor and the work it does here. Native borns aren't fighting to pick oranges for 12 hours a day at minimum wage, but these guys will and do.
On top of the moral argument that these people have kids here and are rooted in our culture and schools and dragging their parents off to Mexico and breaking up families is just inhumane.
Thus far Trump has not addressed any of this. He has a "jail and deport 'em at high noon" attitude that does no one any good. Disregarding the labor they do is foolish just as Trump supporting California farmers are starting to learn.
[1] The only people I know who are definitely employing illegals are a white wealthy couple with an illegal Mexican nanny. Funny how that works.