

Access to Startup Skills Threatened by U.K. Visa Review - emre
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/10/access-to-startup-skills-threatened-by-u-k-visa-review/

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madaxe_again
We employ 30 something people. About 50% are UK nationals, 30% EU, 20% rest of
world on tier 2 visas.

Historically, they've been fairly easy to get - we've never had an application
refused, and when the home office do their surprise inspections, they're
pretty laissez-faire.

We had such an inspection a few weeks back - the assessor mentioned that we
should go hell for leather on tier 2 hires now if we need them, as we're
unlikely to be an eligible sponsor next year - it's being regeared to only be
applicable for large (£10m+ turnover) businesses.

The tories are not pro business. They are pro lining their and their chums
pockets, and blindsiding the masses into electing them. The most pro-small-
business initiatives have come from Brussels over the last decade, from R&D
tax credits to a plethora of grants - and they want out of the EU because
regulation hurts energy profiteering.

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cromulent
Often politicians say they are pro-business. They don't say: pro free market.
They really mean _specific_ businesses - their donors / lobbyists / chums /
future employers.

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matthewmacleod
Yeah, this is a really stupid, cack-handed approach to immigration by the UK
government.

I've worked with some people that had to just through preposterous hoops to
come and work in the UK – we're not talking unskilled labour, but skilled
engineers, paying a whole lot of tax on their generous salaries. And it's a
field in which is increasingly difficult to recruit talented individuals, too.
Their positions are constantly in limbo and require IMO far too much paperwork
in order to remain resident.

Meanwhile, there is essentially no control over immigration from EU member
states. There's a populist objection to immigration from the EU, because those
flows are perceived to be primarily unskilled workers displacing domestic
workers from low-paid jobs. It's not clear how much of a problem that actually
is, but it's a common perception nonetheless.

So we've a government elected after lots of loud promises to reduce net
immigration. Since there's essentially nothing that they can do about
immigration from within the EU, there is pressure to reduce net immigration
from outside it, to 'make up the numbers'. I haven't looked at the statistics
on this, but I'd wager that this disproportionately affects exactly the sort
of immigration we want to see into the UK – highly-skilled foreign workers.

One of the UK's strengths as a business base has traditionally been the ease
of hiring internationally. Now we have an ass-backwards immigration policy
which achieves exactly the opposite of what we want, primarily due to populist
pandering. It's going to do nothing other than harm the UK's competitiveness
in the short and long term.

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slgeorge
The Home Office has been tightening up skilled visa's for about three years
now. It used to be easy to do, but is becoming very difficult.

But, I can see the other side of the coin - there's no way you can claim that
skills are in shortage when you consider that you're hiring pool is the whole
of the EU.

All too often people claim they can't get "skilled workers" and what they mean
is that they only want the fully finished article and won't invest in training
or development for existing employees. Putting in career paths and development
for employees is good for retention and doesn't have to be that costly.

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ViF5Z3AD5b8XP
I am about to finish my MSc, and my thesis is on a very specific area of
research which got an attention of start-up which wanted to hire me. I passed
the interview, but they can't sponsor my visa at this stage of their
development. Which makes you feel powerless, since the problem is not
something I can fix, and it is not a first job offer which had to pass on me
because of my visa issue.

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blackbeard
FFS. I think they have no idea how few people we can get locally in London who
don't need a visa...

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ownagefool
What are you trying to recruit for and how much are you willing to pay?

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blackbeard
.Net 50-60k.

We have a billion applicants but they're all shit.

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chrisseaton
Are they so bad that they can't implement fizz-buzz, or are they ok
programmers but not good enough in your specific field, or something between
those two?

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blackbeard
Mostly that bad or worse at the moment. I think we've got around a 1-2% hit
rate through agents and job sites.

Despite being finance sector, we don't expect any qualifications or finance
experience, just people who know their shit. We do a "pin the data structure
on the problem" thing. Even people with fair amounts of experience rarely know
the difference between a list, a set and a dictionary.

Some guy, supposedly a technical architect, just sat there and smiled
awkwardly through the questions and didn't answer them.

It's actually quite depressing until you realise you could probably walk out
and can another £30k because you can actually do this stuff.

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chrisseaton
This amazes me. £60k in London is not too bad - I would have thought you could
have attracted someone who can program with that.

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blackbeard
I don't think what we do is very interesting so it only attracts people who
are shit or weird. I fit into the latter category :)

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fiatmoney
What a shame; apparently they're planning on deporting them to countries
without working Internet connections, webcams, or telephones.

