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titomc

505 karma · joined November 23, 2010

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titomc··on India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas
ex-H1B here, You have good skills, once you graduate, you will have to depend on your luck to get into the H1B system currently.

Why don't you get MS from good universities in Canada and enter the express entry immigration system which values your skills unlike H1B system which depends on luck ?

titomc··on India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas
Just a drop in the ocean.
titomc··on India's tech industry panics over U.S. plans to change high-skilled visas
ex-H1B Indian here, now permanent resident of Canada. Left US for good, because I was being exploited by tech firms taking advantage of my H1B status.

This is a welcome change in my opinion. H1B workers were exploited by the Indian body shops as well as American employers. Raising the minimum wages will prune the bad apples and make H1B a visa system for the truly skilled candidates.

Quirks:

1. Find & shutdown fake employers running fake payrolls to match the increased wages. A search for *consulting.com will bring up many 'one-room' body shops in the US.

2. Stop the lottery process and award visa to truly skilled candidates who can provide proofs for their skills.

3. H1B LCA process should be changed and made similar to the PERM process, so that it will be a true test of the market.

4. Giving preference to Master degree holders is not a good idea, having a Masters degree from an American University is not an indicator for "highly skilled". Most of the students from India obtain these Masters degree just for the purpose of getting an OPT visa to improve their chances of getting selected in the lottery for H1B.

Many of these 'master' degree holders show fake experiences & do 'proxy' interviews to get into companies. These fake experiences are backed up by experience letters from bogus companies setup for this purpose from India. Many of them also provide 'bonus' services like proxy candidate interview services on Skype.

5. Stop 'future GC'. Many body shops in US do this by taking a huge deposit from the candidates for their 'future GC services'.

titomc··on Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester
Proud to be a permanent resident of Canada now. I left US (H1B visa) some months back.
titomc··on Unique Identification Authority of India's Developer Portal
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is a central government agency of India. Its objective is to collect the biometric and demographic data of residents, store them in a centralised database, and issue a 12-digit unique identity number called Aadhaar to each resident. It is considered the world's largest national identification number project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar

titomc··on What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)
2008 subprime lending crisis happened only in America.

Lets think outside of America for this one. Lenders outside America are not idiots. Most of them lend on a solid collateral and someone from the family will have to have co-sign the loan, especially if its a huge sum.

titomc··on What Chinese students go through to get into top American universities (2016)
Part deux: What Asian students go through once they get their degrees from American Universities.

They go down the rabbit hole of America's broken immigration system, starting with OPT visa, then H1B (read lottery luck, not based on skills) & then the country based quota for green card currently 7 to 9 years for EB2 categories for India & China. Did I forgot to mention the exorbitant out of state tuition fees and the loans they took for it in their home country ?

titomc··on A Curated List of Software Engineering Blogs
If something can be done similar to a Klout score based on frequency of posts, ranking, topic distribution, it would be great.
titomc··on A Curated List of Software Engineering Blogs
me too and I found this very useful with the 'engineering_blogs.opml'
titomc··on U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination
Looks like you will have to disagree with the majority of HN community on this one.
titomc··on U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination
The companies have these "schemes" in place. If you look at an LCA posting, these scheming companies will post a salary range, eg : 75k-110k. 75k being the prevailing wages from the DOL for that area. This range means the company can pay the employee 75k and its legal. What does it take for the company to pay 110k to the employee as per LCA ? "Depends on relevant skills & relevant experience of the candidate" so that's the blurry line companies use to suppress the salary and its perfectly legal.
titomc··on U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination
" Most of the time it is just easier to hire Asian/Indian employees because they are readily available "

- I doubt that. It's "easier" to hire because they "agree" to lower wages and its easier to retain them, because their visa status is tied to the employer. The employers have H1B workers on a leash.

The process of hiring an H1B worker in short.

- Hire an immigration lawyer.

- Post an LCA.

- Apply petition to USCIS.

- Pay petition fees (higher for fast track process)

- Respond to USCIS queries.

- Get petition approved.

- Done

- Its a different game if the employer wants retain the H1B worker after 6th year of H1B.

So hiring is not easy. But retaining and paying them is "easy". So why do these corporations take this much pain in hiring H1B workers ? No its not the skills they are after. (after all H1B is lottery based not skill based right ? )

titomc··on U.S. sues Oracle, alleges salary and hiring discrimination
Why am I not surprised ? Yet another H1B discrimination story to rant about. (though the article do not say anything about the 'Indian' people's visa status, isn't it obvious ?)
titomc··on What Nutmeg Can Tell Us About Nafta
I am from the state (Kerala) which is called the "Spice Garden of India". Little did I know about the history of Nutmeg that grows in abundance at my home in my state.
titomc··on Dubai Police now using Crime Prediction software
What backups your claim ? The same online articles ? Have you had first hand experience of the same ? I have lived in both countries and have experienced personally what does it take to live as an H1B worker as well as in Dubai on a work permit visa.

Most of the western media articles that you read are very biased and westerners seems kind of jealous of oil rich countries developing at a faster pace than theirs. Western media reports the incidents in an exaggerated manner when it comes to middle east nations.

If women are not allowed to drive a car in Saudi Arabia, Nor are H1B dependents (H4) spouses allowed to work in the US. They are not allowed to have a SSN or a bank account. So what makes US any different ? Isn't just slavery in another form towards the migrant workers no matter in which country they work ?

titomc··on Dubai Police now using Crime Prediction software
US is no better if you want to speak about indentured servitude, that is H1B.

https://medium.com/@seeminglyquiet/modern-day-slavery-in-ame...

titomc··on India has launched a 648MW solar power plant
Kerala, India -- The world's first solar airport no longer pays for electricity http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/14/technology/india-cochin-sola...

USA -- whaat ?

titomc··on Fewer than 3% of cars sold in the U.S. have manual transmissions
Automatics makes the driver hands free for texting,snapchatting,makeup. A recipe for accidents. No I don't have data to back this claim.
titomc··on India's demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 notes
All the black money is in gold, dollars & euro ! or at the swiss banks. This is not going to smoke out the big players in this game.
titomc··on Amex for Developers
AMEX is closed loop network. The advantage possibly would be huge troves of data about customer spending habits, if they expose those in future(obviously without PII)
titomc··on Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
A "technical" recruiter asked me "how comfortable are you with 'tomcat' programming language". I said I am not at all comfortable with "tomcat" programming language because I have to invent one. He was furious and hung up.
titomc··on What it's like buying a $128k side project
Very good insights on buying a side project. I too have some side projects. But I never want to go fulltime into it because it's using APIs of some well known services. I always say " Never play soccer in someone else's ground ". You never know when they will throw you out of the ground. If you are basing the business out of github's resources you are at high risk.
titomc··on How we interview Engineers at Eventtus
wait till you scale.
titomc··on Two years spent spamming spammers back
I will admit that I have done this (bg repeat) too, on my lycos,geocities sites.
titomc··on Two years spent spamming spammers back
One spammer realised that he is talking to a bot and asks the bot about the three laws.

http://www.mlooper.com/conversations/3072

titomc··on USCIS Proposes Rule to Welcome International Entrepreneurs
What will happen after the 5 years stay ? Should the entrepreneur pack up and leave ? Why should an entrepreneur startup something when he/she is not sure about their residency in US. This rule says 'parole' & self petition, the residency path is not clear. And when it comes to residency, US immigration for skilled immigrants is so broken that you will regret applying for one.
titomc··on “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
Ironically, I just whatsapped all my "non-IT" friends on how to "not agree" by finding the hidden data sharing checkbox.
titomc··on Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash
Isn't that a problem with the recruiting dept ? and not generally with the Indians ? If the recruiters are not doing a good job, why blame your coworkers ?
titomc··on Confirmed: Walmart buys Jet.com for $3B in cash
https://jet.com/about-us - the photos shows there is a small army for Indians in Jet too. So do the "few smart people left here" want to jump over Jet now ?
titomc··on Uber and Under: China’s Hometown Advantage Claims Another Victim
" Uber has become one more casualty in China’s other wall, a towering fortress of restrictions, regulations and unfair play that keeps down American internet companies. "

The government is protecting the home grown companies as any other good government would do. So whats the problem ?

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