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Comment by ed209 | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking of moving to the Bay area for a while from the UK. Everyone I follow / engage with seems to be there so it seems like a good place to go.

One thing I'm hearing though is that companies are not that interested in hiring H1B candidates (at least for design) - I'm surprised that the increase in take-up is due to tech companies. Any Bay area companies able to comment on this?

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I really did not feel that. I just graduated in the UK and will move to the Bay area in fall (when H1B starts). All the companies I talked to were totally ok with H1B.

Then they are either $BILLION mega corps with a big legal dept or they have no idea about H1B.

Essentially if you aren't Intel/MSFT/IBM you don't stand a chance of getting an H1B application through

This is just plain wrong in my experience. Even small companies (< 15 employees) can easily get an H1B petition approved if they apply before the cap is filled and pay a lawyer ~$2k.

My experience was in the last dot-com bubble/boom. The caps filled as 12:01 on the day they opened by MSFT/Intel/HP etc

This hasn't been true since the recession. Also when the cap limit is hit a lottery system is used to select petitions. No companies have preference.

In fact the rules now are that they will include any petition received within the first five business days in the lottery. The rules are a little more complex than this, but it's essentially correct.

Any reasonably good lawyer knew they had to get things submitted on the first day due to cap uncertainties.

Does anyone have any good reference links for H1B positions or a list of companies that are open to them.

I'd quite happily pay the immigration fees myself to get into the states (currently in the UK also).

The monthly whoishiring thread [1] has some jobs with H1B, although I haven't had much luck with them.

Also, employers cannot make you pay the immigration fees, it's illegal.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053076

The ~100 ish person startup I work at has many h1b employees. The hiring company has to be willing to spend a few thousand before hiring on immigration lawyers.

Some of them were big companies and one was 20 employees startup. I assure you they knew exactly what H1B is and they simple engaged with an immigration lawyer (see replies).

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