"Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him."
*...told Jobs the good things these machines could
do for humanity, not the reverse. I begged Steve
that we donate the first Apple I to a woman who
took computers into elementary schools but he made
my buy it and donate it myself.*
I really respect Steve Wozniak. But why does he not rebel and leave him. Why does any body surrender when they have a choice unlike most others. And this is the reason i wish there are more people like RMS who are both talented and have deep philosophy.
This whole episode is pretty depressing. But, it's far better for people to live without illusions about the nature of their bosses, etc.
At the risk of a hundred downvotes, I wonder how many people can see the parallels in the current silicon valley push for "immigration reform."
Having watched H1B farms style companies up close and personal, I can say there is very little to recommend about this model of employment, other than the CEOs like having a lower employee expense base. It might sound more exciting to hear the pitch from a wunderkind like Mark Z, but it's still the same story.
The H1B issue is absolutely about providing cheap, endentured labour: visa holders are tied to their sponsoring employer and must appeal to be allowed to seek other employment.
Norm Matloff of UC Davis has literally been trying to expose this for decades, with little luck:
Moreover: this is entirely consistent with behavior of employer first observed in the 18th century:
[I]n every part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent, and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another.
What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
This is the dirtly little secret. Even if you hire at "market wages" there are all sorts of ways to exploit the relationship going forward. The power-assymetry this puts the H1B holder in is the opposite of 'negotiating leverage', and one can rest assure that this will not go un-noticed.
>The H1B issue is absolutely about providing cheap, endentured labour: visa holders are tied to their sponsoring employer and must appeal to be allowed to seek other employment
This is plain wrong. You can very easily shift and people do shift. You just interview with a different company, just like a citizen would.
Sure, but you can only renew the H1-B once (although you can get extensions). Also, most companies make it a policy to not sponsor you for a green card unless you've put in a year or two, and then once you apply for it they've got you by the balls. So every time you switch companies, you're starting the clock over again.
This is even worse if a company brings you in through some other visa like a TN-1 or L1 (NAFTA and Intracompany transfer visa respectively), and then make you convert to an H1-B before they will sponsor you.
A word of advice: Always use your own immigration attourney and not the one being paid for by your company. If the company is paying for it, the attourney represents the company, and not you.
Your statement " So every time you switch companies, you're starting the clock over again." is incorrect. After your i-140 is cleared and you have received your priority date you can port your i-140 and retain your priority date. Your clock doesn't reset per se.
Oops, good question. You port your priority date not your i-140. The new employer still needs to apply for a new i-140 with your previous PD. This way you don't lose your place in the queue.
Your comment about TN makes no sense to me. TN is not an immigration-intent visa - if you apply for a green card while on a TN, you have to maintain an address in Canada and prove that you plan to return there. This is very difficult to do, and your green card will almost certainly be rejected and you might be allowed back into the US on the TN. So of course they make you switch to H1B before they'll sponsor your green card.
Not quite. It's certainly possible to enter the US on a TN visa to work with the intention of returning to Canada but also intending on becoming an immigrant at some point in the future. Yes, you do need to maintain ties to Canada when you enter under the TN visa, but there is no requirement that you need to be on an H1 when filing for Adjustment of Status.
I've seen a couple of people do this, and it allowed them to skip the H1-B hassle. You just have to be honest and show that your intention initially is just to work and return to Canada, but your future intention is to become a permanent resident.
H1B throws all that much more friction into an already unequal relationship, tossing power further to employers.
My preferred reform would be for H1B to be fully unrestricted. If you're going to allow labor into the country, let it compete on fully equal footing with domestic labor. For the reasons Smith articulates and you've either failed to read or are intentionally choosing to ignore, employers already have the upper hand.
A better balance of power would be to repeal anti-unionization laws such as the Orwellian (100th anniversary of his death by the way) doublespeak "right to work" (really: "right to fire, and disrupt organization attempts") and ensure that labor has the same access to collusive collective action and mobility as capital and finance.
real changes that need to be made to h1b are the fact that they need to prioritize the h1bs to foreigners who graduate from US universities. Every year thousands of foreign PhD students graduate and go back to their home country not because they want to but because they could not get an H1B visa mostly because they wont work at the cut rate a person fresh from their home country would work for. These PhDs are trained with public funds because no PhD student pays their own way through school they receive public grants from the schools or other public entities that fund their research and their study. Americans just dont want to enter graduate school in the same numbers that chinese and indians want to and there is no problem with that as long as these people are not being trained just to go back to their country. They use US public funds to be trained so it is beneficial for them to stay in the US and boost the US work force
They do pay for their own education. They pay for it through substandard wages for the work they perform. If their department didn't pay for their tuition then there is no way those students would work for the peanuts they currently do. The net cost/income to the school would be the same but the current arrangement has less transactional friction and makes it very hard for the student to leave once they've started.
That is another element of possible reform, yes. I've watched the changes of the past 14 years with increasing gloom.
I also saw the effects of the liberalization of immigration regulations in the 1960s which saw floods of foreign students, many Indian, Chinese, African, and others, which had profound influences on US academic institutions, the communities around them, and, to be honest, on their home countries, one of which was a brain drain.
On that last point: one of the arguments for increased global wealth and/or population is that it would increase the number of geniuses and intellectuals (along with the rest of the population, one might suppose). That's possibly true, but I strongly suspect that the existing mechanisms for recognizing and promoting talent have already encroached on much of those possible gains. Not all, but a considerable fraction. Which means that the additional benefit would be smaller than a naive estimate would suggest.
It is very variable depending on your subject and research focus.
Teaching opportunities are not good; there are far too many PhDs awarded compared to job openings for university positions.
It may be a benefit for private industry work, but remember that a PhD is primarily about showing you can perform rigorous scientific research, and compared to a Masters, matters less (or not at all) in jobs where research is not the focus.
Read about "post doctoral treadmill" and adjunct gigs, which are like second tier faculty. If you get a phd in some programming related field, like compilers, programming languages, networking, yes, you can work for some valley firms. Yes, you can get green card easy, too. But there is no 'secure' employment like the phd grads of 1970s
I think you're being a bit unrealistic about how people behave. The H1B does give a lot of extra market power to employers because it means the employee has a lot to lose if things go wrong. The threat of being fired carries with it a much greater weight than for regular citizens.
Sure, the employee can interview for another job and applying for a transfer is not a difficult process. But, even with another job, the threat of being fired is still a huge pressure.
Plus, there's still a risk that the employer will find out they are looking for another job before they find one. Also, employees are unlikely to complain or make requests, since rocking the boat could get them fired and sent home. Most people are not risk takers and are not confident at being able to hide things.
On the E3 visa - and AFAIK the H1B - you can't be out of work for more than 10 days. If you're not confident you can find a similar salary (and have an approved LCA) within that time then that makes the idea of rocking the boat a little more scary.
Well it isn't that easy too if you bring in ethics to the table. This happened with my friend and it was done by a well known "online retail" company. So this guy got an offer from another "search engine" company. He went to his manager in the best interests of his present employer to tell them that he might be leaving in a few weeks and to hire a probable replacement for him. The next thing what this * company does is pass on a request for his H1B to be cancelled immediately. Thankfully , it all worked out for him in the end since his LCA luckily had already been filed by then. But this does bring into the question of how H1B is readily exploited by most employers.
I'm not keen to defend the ridiculous immigration system, but it's possible to avoid this risk in the following way:
You can interview at, accept an offer from, apply for and receive a new LCA for another company all while continuing to work at your existing job. This means you have a new job and (preparatory documents for a new) visa set up before even giving notice and triggering the 10 day period. I know this from personal experience (on the E3).
That remains a constraint a permanent resident wouldn't have to face.
More specifically: in a case where an H1B holder had concern for employer retaliation (say: working for a sketchy, illegal, or otherwise undesirable firm), and was looking for an option to leave (or possibly whistle blow), the fact that not having employment would be grounds for deportation within short order would be a constant threat.
I've known many people over the years who've had varying levels of frustrations with emigration issues. Many spent at least some of that time as undocumented, what some like to call "illegal", including working without authorization. For others it was merely the frustration of waiting while an impenetrable and slow process worked its way, with several having to make unavoidable trips out of country to be able to retain eligibility, often leaving work, friends, family, and homes for extended periods (sometimes with greater levels of support and assistance). And this isn't just a DESI situation: Europeans, Canadians, east Asians, doctors, programmers, healthcare professionals, researchers, nurses.
Oh, of course. I completely agree that the system is horrific. I only wanted to point out how one can minimize their risk if one is forced to interact with it.
He isn't wrong. I've had friends that had their processing take much longer and go into a more detailed review which delayed them taking a job. You can also get your "H1B transfer" denied for the new job even if you're doing a similar job to your old gig
+1. H-1B transfer process is much easier than an initial H-1B application process, so moving to a new employer is almost just as easy as if you were a citizen.
Immigration reform is fine but it needs to be balanced by restraints on corporate power to do things like wage theft.
What I'd like to see is things like a complete national abolishment of non-compete agreements as a rider on Immigration Reform.
Conspiring to keep out immigrants is interesting (who doesn't want to pull the ladder up after we're safe), but it if we're honest with ourselves it's not appealing to our better nature.
I don’t want to sound like I am excusing this behavior but this type of thing happens all the time in various other industries all over the country. This is not an isolated sv disease. And as much as it is about money in regards to salaries it’s also about employee retention which is also about money haha.
What vision? The idea to make technology easy to use? What a mind blowing idea. I'm sure nobody thought of that before, in 10,000 years of human history. But you know, Jobs actually DID IT, he had the balls to hire a bunch of engineers to make his personal phone easier to use, and stiff them over and over systematically, like any business would.. Wait, what exactly did Jobs do? He had a lot of money.
