The H1B abuse discussion comes up once every few months on HN and elsewhere but things have gotten a lot worse in the past 2 years with the lottery. There are a number of definitive and progressive steps that USCIS can take to prevent misuse by TCS, CTS and other consulting companies.
Just establishing a cap on the number of visas per company as a percentage of the workforce will solve this issue. This will work well for everyone (large tech companies, startups, small businesses) except the sweatshops. If i had to take a guess (not hard to verify), 95+% of employees of the consulting companies will be underpaid visa workers. The prevailing wage is a joke ($70k in the bay area for someone with 5 years experience) and enforcing salary based bidding isn't really a practical solution. It can easily be gamed or it will only be beneficial for a certain group of employers.
"Just establishing a cap on the number of visas per company as a percentage of the workforce"
This can be gamed too. Large employers could start operating bodyshops.
Say the H1B limit was only 5% of a company's workforce. Then Walmart could sponsor 110,000 workers. Yum!Brands could sponsor 22,000 workers.
This probably wouldn't even put Infosys or Tata out of business in the US they would provide the same recruitment and management services they do now, but other companies (in this example Walmart and Yum) would be the sponsors of record.
I was an intern at the UNHQ in New York city in 2010 and as a computer science grad student, i was definitely the odd man out. Right from my middle school days, i have always been intrigued by the UN and no one understood why a CS grad student would pick the UN for an unpaid internship instead of a typical tech company that paid $25-30+ an hour.
- My batch had 300 interns from 70+ countries and almost every intern was very talented and went to one of the top universities in the world. The internship selection process was similar to grad school admissions (essays, recommendations etc) and it was selective (around 5%). There were only a handful of tech people and it wasn't hard for me to get in! Unlike me (someone in tech), the internship was coveted for those in economics, international affairs and several other fields.
- Most people only see the irrelevant parts of UN where world leaders give prejudiced talks in the general assembly but there is a lot more to UN than that. UN plays a very important role in the world's peacekeeping, social development, human rights and several other things that aren't very visible to people living in developed nations.
- As a programmer, i built some internal publishing tools using PHP but i also got to wear suits and sit in group discussions at the world bank and with ambassadors of several countries. I loved that part. Out of my own interest, i also built an internal profile network for the interns and i learned a lot of new things doing that.
- The department that i worked at had many talented people who were well qualified and were passionate about what they were doing and i am still in touch with some. Of course, it is a large organization with a lot of red-tapism with many inefficient departments. My internship made me realize I didn't want to spend my 20s and 30s at the UN or any similar organization.
I probably spent around $8k-$10k out of my pocket to do the internship (travel, food, rent etc). I wish the UN paid me for the work but looking back, it was a very memorable experience and i would definitely do it again.
I replied to a posting on the 'Who's hiring' thread back in Jan 2011 and landed at my first real job out of college. I just left that company after 4+ wonderful years. I was an international student who wanted to work for a startup and very few startups were willing to take the risk back then. I had very little to prove and also came along with strict visa requirements. I am so thankful to this thread, i was able to connect with a person who identified my potential and eventually became a great mentor for me.
Capping the price at $150/mo isn't really a wise decision. If a big customer like MLB wants to use Tapalytics for their iOS app which i assume has millions of MAUs, you will still be forced to charge them $150/month because that is your top most tier and it comes with unlimited MAUs.
In the long run, there is a good chance that a significant portion of your revenue might come from enterprise customers who would be willing to pay you multiples of the $1800 ARR. Adding an enterprise/custom quote as the top most tier is a vey common practice. Looking at the pricing page of similar companies (Kissmetrics, VWO, Optimizely, Mixpanel) might help.
The index and score from Mattermark are great for consumer facing companies and mobile app companies but are pretty useless for most other industries. I checked some companies that are making making millions in revenue and they had a double/triple digit mattermark score. I am pretty sure that isn't a good representation.
Also, a note for those signing up for the trial, there is neither an option to cancel your subscription directly nor information about billing inside the application. You have to email them to cancel the account and i got a response after 5 days(3 working days) when i sent an email asking them to cancel my trial account. While it is totally acceptable for an early stage startup to not have those features and i am sure they have it in their backlog, just make sure you don't send that cancelation email the day before your trial ends.
The bad part: The investment has to come from a canadian VC or angel firm. It doesn't clearly state if it is a requirement though [1].
The good part: As many have already mentioned, it is a permanent residency status and not just a temporary visa. It comes along with all the health care benefits and social benefits as what Canadian citizens get [2]. So even if your first business fails, you will have the opportunity to start another one or find a job.
Since I downvoted, I'll tell you why: this comment is factually incorrect. It's not possible to have sexual intercourse with a government program, let alone coercive sexual intercourse.
steve,down vote all you like. I could have chosen a better words. I agree. But we have seen the immigration system gamed by lots of people and companies. So having a qualified investors is a good thing. Trust me the Canadian government does not have the resources to look into everything.
Upvoted, that's great! I'm not saying that the system won't be gamed; I'm saying that using the word 'rape' in this context is inaccurate and of poor taste.
Your point could have been made the first time by just typing "we have seen the immigration system gamed by lots of people and companies. So having a qualified investors is a good thing. Trust me the Canadian government does not have the resources to look into everything." and I'd take zero issue with it.
I understand that often, metaphors are useful. However, I think this metaphor is both very poor and in very poor taste. For example, a government program could never experience any of the other effects of sexual assault[1] that are part of what makes rape such a heinous crime.
I know that saying 'rape' and feeling like one can hide behind a literary claim may make one feel 'edgy' or whatever, but it just comes across as excessively childish.
Yeah it's bad taste, but I understood it to mean that the program would be taken excessive advantage of.
I'm not even sure if it's an attempt at seeming edgy or w/e. Maybe once upon a time it was, but it's become a pretty common saying by now. You're fighting the good fight, but I doubt you'll win. :(
And there's a good reason why we need to push back against it. I think we've turned on the corner on this particular use of the word, but nonetheless.
This is the same thing as how people used to (and some still do) call things "faggy" and "gay". It's not cool, it's damaging and hurtful to a large number of people.
If you want to say "the system will be taken advantage of", we have an existing phrase for that. It's "the system will be taken advantage of".
Many companies in the A/B testing and optimization space publish a lot of resources in the form of blog posts, case studies and white papers that are well researched and based on real metrics. Here are some links to get started.
In enterprise sales, setting a common open price is very hard. If you look at the current offerings of Optimizely, they want to call you if you want to buy a package that is > $360/mo. The reason is, it might be based on the site traffic, level of service you are picking and a few other factors. Also, each sale will have legal contracts that might drag on for months with pitches to several members from the buying organization and negotiations.
In addition, your product offerings keep getting better every quarter and you also want to test varying price points, offer discounts and compete well against several competitors in the process. If you are going after a market trying to acquire 1000s of customers paying $xxx/month having a transparent open pricing works great but it doesn't when you are targeting enterprises.
Disclaimer: I work for monetate and we do have a pricing page that explains to the buyers on what to expect. http://monetate.com/products/packages-and-pricing. Also, most of the enterprise buyers are used to this kind of setup and putting a price tag on your website doesn't really work.
Just establishing a cap on the number of visas per company as a percentage of the workforce will solve this issue. This will work well for everyone (large tech companies, startups, small businesses) except the sweatshops. If i had to take a guess (not hard to verify), 95+% of employees of the consulting companies will be underpaid visa workers. The prevailing wage is a joke ($70k in the bay area for someone with 5 years experience) and enforcing salary based bidding isn't really a practical solution. It can easily be gamed or it will only be beneficial for a certain group of employers.
I wrote an essay two and half years back on how to fix this and it is sad that all those are still true http://ramanuj.me/fixing-the-high-skilled-immigration-proble...