

Ask HN: Who's hiring (for H-1B)? | Dec 2010 - agentx

I ask because there are not many startups that <i>I</i> know of (I'm probably looking in the wrong place?) that also take H-1B candidates into consideration.<p>I see all these awesome potential job opportunities on HN, but it's never clear whether a H-1B candidate would also be considered, as that is 99% never explicitly stated.<p>So - anyone hiring that'll sponsor or do H-1B visa transfers?
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nowarninglabel
Do you know _any_ startups that take H-1B candidates? I looked into it because
I very much wanted to hire a particular candidate, but the fees, time, and
legal expertise required are nearly insurmountable to a young company, in my
opinion.

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guelo
We did it at an early funded startup, I don't completely remember but I think
it cost us around $20k including the lawyer we hired to take care of it. The
guy was a superstar though, he was more than worth it to us.

I also saw it happen at a startup that initially relied heavily on
outsourcing, after a couple years they started bringing some of the best
Indian guys in-house.

~~~
vitobcn
If I remember correctly from a couple years back, H1-B Homeland security fees
are around $3k and if you hire a lawyer for the process you'll have to add at
least another $1k.

It's not cheap, but it is certainly not that expensive, as those fees will
usually be less than 1 month's salary of the hired developer.

In my opinion, timing constraints and uncertainty end up being a bigger
deterrent: you can only apply on April, the visa start the following October
and it takes a while to know whether the applicant was selected.

~~~
ojbyrne
As far as I know, only applying in April is incorrect. In past years the
quotas ran out almost immediately when they started in April, so that was
essentially the case. This year the quota hasn't run out yet.

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ahuibers
Bump is hiring and will definitely do H1B sponsorship. I believe visa
difficulty can vary by country though e.g. India may be more difficult.

We are hiring for server(python/redis/mongo/C)/operations/Android/DESIGN.

<http://bu.mp/jobs>

Please also mail hackernews@ourdomain to get above the noise.

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shykes
We just hired 2 engineers on an H1B. It's expensive and complicated, but for
important hires it's worth it. And in a startup every hire can mean life or
death.

An important caveat: H1B allows ZERO flexibility in the equity/cash mix. You
must offer market salary or the visa will be denied. Immigration ignores
equity entirely.

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tptacek
How expensive is "expensive"? For us, it seems to be in the neighborhood of
what you'd pay for relo; in other words, international candidates just cost
double relo.

Relative to fully-loaded cost, it just doesn't seem to be that big a deal.

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shykes
Yes, that's our experience as well. For a qualified candidate it's a no-
brainer.

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fxm4139
There are plenty startups that sponsor H1-Bs. Sponsoring an H1-B is not the
bottleneck sometimes when it comes to hiring. Even small consultant shops with
less than 5 people do H1-Bs. But many applicants will want to think twice
about it in case they plan on applying for employment based permanent
residency. An H1-B is valid for three years and can be extended for another
three for a total of 6 years. After that you can continue to extend it IF you
have a permanent residency application that is pending.

The issue for startups happen when you take a permanent residency application
into account. For instance, I had a friend who got into two great startups who
were willing to sponsor H1-Bs. He really wanted to work at either. However, he
also wanted to apply for his permanent residency within 2 years to continue
staying in the US. However, a company needs to have certain revenue (besides
other minimium requirements) to be able to apply for a green card. Both the
companies checked with their lawyers and they did say that it was a big risk
factor when it came to applying for a permanent residency. So he actually
ended up passing both offers.

In retrospect he would have been fine since both companies ended up getting
acquired by Intel and Google, where he would have been fine. But that is part
of the risk involved.

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frodo01
Yes they do. I just got a h1b job. This is my blog post on that -
<http://sans-voir.livejournal.com/9189.html>.

~~~
kazuya
Wow, I am trying to do what you did.

In fact I tried your option 2 (get a job at big co and ask relocation), though
that was in Canada, but got rejection after onsite interviews.

You relieved my feelings -- most of my friends say it's absurd not to go
through the usual university path.

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RichardPrice
Academia.edu hires H-1b candidates. We just did two H-1b applications for two
of our employees. Whether someone needs a visa for the US doesn't enter into
our hiring decision-making process at all. We're exclusively focused on hiring
the best software engineers.

Academia.edu's jobs page is here <http://academia.edu/hiring>, and a
description of our engineering culture is here
<http://academia.edu/hiring/software_engineer>. We're a team of 7, are backed
by leading VCs and angels, and are based in downtown San Francisco. We're
growing fast right now and are looking to hire smart engineers!

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squirrel
Boston (US) as well as London (UK) - youDevise, Ltd.

We're a 60-person financial-software firm committed to learning and
improvement as well as great web software and agile development. We're hiring
developers and other smart folks of many kinds. See
<http://www.youdevise.com/careers> and <https://dev.youdevise.com>.

We help successful candidates relocate to London or Boston including arranging
visas where needed. For example, earlier this year we hired an HN reader from
Denmark and we moved a Polish employee to Boston.

~~~
alexl
Nice. Gonna brush up the resume a little bit and then apply for Junior IT
Support Specialist. I mean, I know this is HN but the guys who know almost
everything else besides programming are very often ignored completely here.

How about competent beta testers, or sysadmins like someone else said here?

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meattle
Compete.com does H1B's. But Compete's not a startup anymore.

You should be looking at startups with at least a few US employees. Currently,
I think you'll find it rare for a startup with < 3-4 US employees to be able
to sponsor an h1b. Homeland security has been getting pretty strict about
this.

I believe it generally costs about ~$6k to sponsor one. More if you premium
process.

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qtrng
imo.im is hiring.

<https://imo.im/jobs.html>

~~~
qtrng
While our jobs page doesn't specifically say that we sponsor H-1Bs, we do. At
least 3 of our current employees have H-1B visas.

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jlees
An interesting question and if there's one takeaway from this: startups,
please could you mention on your jobs pages (not just this thread!) whether
you will look at non-US candidates?

It's time consuming applying to places that either won't take H1-B applicants,
or who aren't likely to get USCIS to approve the H1-B transfer even if we
already have the visa.

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cloudhead
Just make sure you have enough years of combined education and work
experience. I wasn't able to get an H1-B for that reason, even though the
company told me they could obtain it no problem.

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iworkforthem
Er... Not sure if you guys know, there is also H1B1, it's a variation of H1B.
More for both Chile and Singapore citizen to work in USA for short term. I am
not sure about the fees though.

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fsniper
Do you know any startups that take H-1B candidates for system administration
jobs? I know this is HackerNews but our species (of sysadmins) must be still
needed for some :)

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ora600
Not exactly a startup (but less than 100 employees), but the company I work
for is hiring sysadmins (both internal and as consultants for remote work). We
are taking H-1B candidates and I'd love to stop being the only H-1B employee
in the company :)

We are also looking for DBAs: Oracle, MySQL and even SQL-Server.

You can read my blog post about my experience with the company:
[http://www.pythian.com/news/16887/learning-on-the-job-
some-t...](http://www.pythian.com/news/16887/learning-on-the-job-some-
thoughts-from-mots/)

And apply here: <http://candidates.pythian.com/>

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samratjp
I remember seeing Heroku mentioning it -
<http://jobs.heroku.com/ruby_web_developer>

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tptacek
We'll talk to H1-B candidates. Please, let's not fragment the hiring threads
even further than they already are.

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shivaas
flyRuby (see <http://www.flyruby.com>) is hiring aggressively and considers
H-1B sponsorship on a case to case basis. We also try and leverage the OPT
period if possible before transitioning to an H-1B as required.

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jlangenauer
You're called flyRuby, but are only hiring Lisp and PHP programmers?

~~~
csomar
_The ruby is a pink to blood-red colored gemstone_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby>

