And SF has a large populace of vegans like me, who have a choice of dozens of innovative restaurants with mind boggling vegan food, from Michelin quality and expensive to cheap and homely and everything in between, that I literally can’t find in any other city. It’s cool if you don’t like this kind of food but you did ask what kind of fare SF is known for, so it’s not clear what your point is.
I am a data scientist working at a big firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have a PhD in CS with a specialization in AI / Machine Learning / NLP from a US university.
I am from India. So I assume my nationality will be an immigration barrier in most countries. Is this something I should mention while formally applying?
I agree with the principle of your comments but not with the wealth aspect. My experiences have told me that the world of traveling is restricted to those with the right passports, i.e., North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and a few other countries considered privileged. If your passport is from the wrong country, like mine, throughout your travels, you'll come across incredible barriers irrespective of how much money you have. You'll constantly be reminded that you don't "belong" in the club of travelers.
If you have travelled to enough different countries, (60 for me and counting), you will have several instances of being detained by immigration, yelled at by consular officers, beaten up by border guards, have your passport flung at your face by police, and several such adventures. The fact that you went to great lengths to get the right visa papers (which could involve filling lengthy forms divulging every aspect of your finances and your life till date and wait months for a decision granting you permission to visit a country for a week) doesn't count. The fact that you have a PhD from a US university doesn't count. The fact that you have a great job at a fortune 5 firm in silicon valley doesn't count. The fact that you make a high income and have a lot of savings doesn't count.
In fact these could count against you, because immigration / consular officers will think someone with your passport is obviously making it up. That you are just trying to sneak into the country to get an under the table job washing dishes. This happens even when the country you are trying to enter gets a massive amount of financial aid from your own country.
So it's not a rich vs poor aspect. Traveling is a type of large-scale consumption that re-affirms self-worth through having the right passport.
They are. But it's drowned in the noise about undocumented immigrants, which is a much more emotional issue and more in the consciousness of the general public. If a politician says he wants to improve H1B, he'll get a primary opponent running ads saying he is pro-amnesty. Look at the comments section in any news article about improving H1B loopholes and the discussion is dominated by issues relating to the border with Mexico, amnesty, and undocumented immigrants.
Again you are technically right. But in practice this is of no help.
The AC21 allows you to change employer when you have filed the I-485. That is step 3 of the 4-step green card process. One can't file the I-485 until the "priority date" is current. That is not an issue if you are from any country other than India, China, or Philippines. Else you are looking at a delay of 4 to 11 years. So as I said, not practical for the poster who is from India.
Technically it is also possible to accept "normal career progression" changes in employment, i.e., promotions and raises, as you correctly pointed out. However in practice, what constitutes as "normal" is subjective, completely at the discretion of a visa officer. For a long time, this was very easy and a formality. In the last 1-2 years, the Visa Officers have become anal about this. Cases are being audited for something simple like Data Scientist using Python to Data Scientist using R (actual anecdote in my company).
Also visa officers are going back to approved cases from several years ago and retroactively denying them on some technicality like the above. So even if you know cases that were easily approved in the past, they can be suddenly denied and the employee can retroactively become "undocumented" for the past several years (again actual anecdote).
But the poster's employer has probably applied for a green card. Since the poster is Indian, that is a 10+ years process (4 for China and 1 for everyone else). If the poster changes employer (or accepts a promotion), the 10 year clock is reset to 0.
So for all practical purposes, the poster is locked to the employer. He is also locked at the same level and pay. Employers love this since they get an experienced person locked in at the same pay for a decade or more. Obviously this reduces wages for everyone.
Uh.. H-1B visas are used to for mechanical engineers, nurses, doctors, and MBA grads all the time. The reason you don't know them is because this is a tech-focussed forum and the absolute number of these visas going to the other professions is fewer.
But graduates of top civil engineering, nursing, biology, medical, neuroscience, physics, etc programs in the country primarily use the H-1B visa for post study employment.
Only for fungible types of workers. Programmers, software engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, etc aren't like farm or construction laborers. These skills aren't commodities.
Except this will only help large employers like Google and completely screw startups. How do you compute wages when it is paid in terms of equity?
1% of Google was worth nothing in 1995. It's worth a lot today. How do you identify if a startup is the next Google when calculating wages for your auction?
The only winners of your auction will be mega corps who will pay a huge salary upfront with no equity.
It is simply because the contribution of a musician, a model, and an athlete is more easily understood by peers in other fields. The value of a 10X engineer is not that well understood by "outsiders" and in many instances by "insiders" either.
Most folks think developers are interchangeable cogs in a machine. They don't think the same of musicians or models or athletes. This is exacerbated by the body shoppers and overseas outsources who indeed consider their developers as mere warm bodies or "resources", and who indeed abuse the H-1B visas. Startups are the losers.
The O-1 visa was introduced before the era of startups and wasn't really geared towards the use case of a startup, i.e., a good developer slogging away in a basement to make the next Google.
7 is not satisfied by a letter from any company CEO. The person writing the letter has to be a distinguished individual in their own capacity. A startup CEO, irrespective of potential, is a nobody. Tim Cook writing the letter means something. Also 1 letter doesn't suffice. O-1 applications typically require 7-8 such letters from distinguished individuals ~not directly related to your field~. At a minimum 3 or 4 are needed.
Remember, US immigration is not an objective process, i.e., you satisfy 3 of 8 points, you are in. It is a subjective process. The sponsoring company hires a lawyer to petition USCIS making a case for the visa. The subjective interpretation of the petition is completely at the discretion of the specific case officer. The recent multi-year trend of evaluating O-1 visa petitions seems to be completely dependent on number of publications in journals, impact factor of those journals, number of citations in google scholar, your work being published in major news media, and several letters of support from distinguished individuals from ~outside~ your primary area of expertise (your contributions are considered valuable if people not in your immediate field have a high opinion of you).
The law offices of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP, the immigration attorneys that 95% of Bay Area companies retain for filing immigration visas, will not even accept your case if the candidate doesn't have a Ph.D. with several years of high impact publications.
As you can see, this visa is geared towards positions as university faculty, major national lab scientists, or industry research labs of big firms. This visa doesn't help startups. I know of only one startup that successfully got the O-1 visa for a Chinese data scientist. But that person was part of the CERN team that won the Nobel prize.
There is a huge gap between the targeted beneficiaries of the O-1 and H-1B visa. One is geared towards Nobel prize caliber scientists, the other towards run of the mill developers working in body shops and overseas consulting firms.
The prototypical 10X developers that most startups seek do not usually meet the criteria for the O-1, and is at a disadvantage in the H-1B lottery. A lottery treats every application equally. It makes no distinction between an extremely competent individual and an extremely incompetent one. This favors body shoppers and outsourcers since they can mass-file visa petitions for every warm body on their payroll overseas hoping some of them make the lottery. A startup filing one or two visa petitions for a very specific individual is at a severe disadvantage.
Except talented graduates of the American higher education systems have to leave the country if they don't get selected in the H-1B lottery. Last year, there were 45,000 applicants for the 20,000 advanced degree H-1B cap.
The standards set by the government for the O-1 visa are more geared towards pure research scientist or professor kind of positions. A PhD is a minimum requirement along with publications in top international journals.
Most of the top engineers and developers don't have a PhD or scientific publications. O-1 is more appropriate for an university professor or NASA scientist position. Not for startup engineer.
Is anyone in Vancouver hiring? Perhaps there needs to be a "Who's hiring in Vancouver" thread, along with information on whether they will hire non-Canadians / non-Americans stuck in the Valley due to the immigration limbo.
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 place where I can have a stable immigration situation.
US immigration may be cumbersome but the most interesting jobs in Big Data seem to be in the US.
What is the Big Data startup scene like in Berlin?
I am about to graduate with a PhD in Machine Learning from a US university. I have talked to several Big Data startups in the valley but being a foreigner, the visa is a hurdle. But if this article is true, maybe I should look at the Berlin scene.