
Startup Ducks Immigration Law With 'Googleplex of the Sea' - ukdm
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/12/blueseed/
======
Jun8
The term that is conspicuously absent from that article is "tax", most
probably they will have the ship registered to Panama or some similar and will
not pay any tax when doing business with the Valley. People suggesting
Singapore or Canada miss this point.

But apart from that, just think for 10 minutes, and you'll see how mind-
bogglingly bad this idea is. Living in confined spaces with N other coders
(that you didn't choose) most of the day is bad enough in a company space
where you can actually go home or go out every now and then. Doing so _in a
ship_ is insane.

I had heard some horror stories about how Microsoft treated its temp coders
from India. Similar stories for Asian nannies in Arab countries are dime a
dozen on the news. Basically, if you accept work in an environment where you
have unclear legal rights, exploitation is generally the next step. So, maybe
if your code breaks the build, you'll have to walk the plank in this place.

~~~
tryitnow
You're comparing an incubator space for entrepreneurs to Arab households
hiring Asian nannies? OK.

Even the Microsoft comparison is not the same because Microsoft and the temps
were not aligned with equity stakes.

Living with other coders actually would be appealing to some people. To those
who do not find it appealing I would suggest they don't use Blueseed's
services. I am not sure why there is confusion around this point. Blueseed is
proposing an incubator space, not a slave ship.

There is no way Blueseed is going to make money on this by using commodity
labor. I think the only way this is successful is if their equity stakes
provide an outsized return on investment. So it will only work if Blueseed
attracts the best and brightest and sets them up to succeed. Why would
Blueseed risk getting a reputation for exploitation?

~~~
Jun8
No, I'm comparing working at a place where your rights are secured by law to a
place where they aren't or it's not clear what rights you have, hence the
nanny example.

"There is no way Blueseed is going to make money on this by using commodity
labor."

I think this is _exactly_ what they have in mind, otherwise why not just
build/buy someplace near SF. Or if it's the ship idea that attracts the "best
and the brightest" why not just park it somewhere on the shore near the city,
why does it have to in international waters. The only explanation I can come
up is that they will use cheap Asian and Indian labor. If you have an
alternate explanation, I would like to read it.

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jrockway
I'll believe it when I see it. If they're quibbling over a measly $1 million
for real Internet connectivity, it's clear that they're not really going to
get this done.

Also, what's the point of being near Silicon Valley when nobody on the boat is
legally allowed to get a cup of coffee there? Might as well have your
incubator somewhere where visas for techies are easy to come by. (Singapore?)

~~~
kokey
I'm also skeptical if they could pull it off. That said the price some cruise
ships are going for at the moment is making it a good alternative to new
office buildings.

With regards to being near Silicon Valley, people are still allowed to visit
and have business meetings in the US with a normal visitor visa. They're just
not allowed to work.

I think the time to commute in will be an issue. This means you'll have to
live fairly close to the harbor you are being ferried from which could be a
problem. I figure what will probably happen is the need for another cruise
ship with cabins on them for part time residential accommodation.

------
compay
Inevitably there would be some kind of misbehavior by either the employers or
employees, and I'm curious how legal conflicts would be handled. What would
the jurisdiction be if, for example, if a worker needed to take a company to
court for not paying them?

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zeteo
Ignoring the fancy drawings, this is not necessarily such an outlandish
project. The main idea is buying a surplus cruise ship and transforming it
into office space for highly paid workers who can get a tourist visa but not a
work visa for the US. Simply the work certification costs and the delays
involved in obtaining H1Bs for all those people would probably offset a good
deal of the cruise ship's price. The workers can conduct activities they are
not directly paid for (presentations, informal meetings) on shore in the
Valley, and commute to do all their programming/other directly paid jobs on
board.

Unfortunately, it will not work, because the first politician who will see a
potential for voter outrage about this will exploit it to bring the whole
thing down, either by causing the shut down of the ship-to-shore
infrastructure, by digging up / stretching some obscure tenets of immigration
law to penalize the workers, or simply by having the Coast Guard overstep its
attributions and seize the entire operation (which is usually how micronations
end). The project is thus doomed without some high-grade political support,
and no sane US politician will offer any.

~~~
nickpinkston
So we've seen the ship loophole for things like gambling before, and that's
basically institutionalized. I think the truth is that immigration is too
politically charged to go through legislature change - instead it's
conceivable that, like Marijuana in decriminalized areas, that politicians are
fine with it as long as it doesn't cause too much of a fuss. Just my two
cents.

~~~
zeteo
Gambling and marijuana have constituencies, foreign engineers who can't get a
work visa don't.

~~~
bullfroge
But the companies who what those workers do.

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tryitnow
I support the idea behind this project. Having said that if I were a betting
man, I would bet against its success. Then again, I probably would have bet
against Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. That's why I am not a VC.

However, just trying to do this should be lauded. There are some fascinating
technical and legal problems that they are addressing. Anyone who is genuinely
intellectually curious should be excited about this.

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badmash69
wow ! I always thought H1B was bad -- but this would be would be so much
worse. With H1B, I was merely prevented from seeking employment elsewhere or
walking away from the job but I was still protected by the laws and had some
rights. However this 'Googleplex of the Sea' could a prison for programmers.
If you left/lost an H1B job you have 30 days to pack your stuff and leave the
country or get a new H1B application in . I am not sure what the laws of the
sea are about leaving/losing a job on the sea.

~~~
badmash69
Not sure why I was down voted, but the ppint I was making os that as I have
grown older , I have come to appreciate laws including labour and immigration
laws. With H1B visa, I could invest in USA, I could buy a home in USA, my kids
could attend the local school,my family had health insurance -- these are all
nice rights to have. Al the while from being protected from harassment and
abuse and other bad stuff. A programmer on that ship is unlikely to have any
of those rights and privileges.

Let me put it this way -- would you be willing to hire programmers so
desperate for work that they would be willing sacrifice their basic human
rights and voluntarily give up all the protections provided by laws ?

------
ramanujan
Let's consider this from a pure econ perspective:

1\. In terms of supply, there are millions of people who spend long hours at
sea for often far less pay and creature comforts than the people aboard this
cruise ship would be getting. They are called sailors.

2\. In terms of demand, the H1B caps are still hit quite rapidly, though since
the peak[1] in 2008 (when they ran out in one day) the US has evidently become
a progressively less desirable destination.

Therefore, supply exists and demand exists. The main question is whether the
US government will arbitrarily harass these talented engineers and scientists
when they come ashore for meetings. A lot will depend on whether the officials
involved feel like they could pay a penalty in the media. I'd recommend that
Blueseed film all encounters with the immigration officials.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Congressional_yearly_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Congressional_yearly_numerical_cap)

~~~
arjunnarayan
Its explicitly prohibited to film or use a cellphone during immigration.

~~~
tryitnow
That in itself is pretty disturbing. I am a native born US citizen, so I am
not aware of things like this.

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ajays
This was tried during the last bubble too. I remember there was also a company
based out of the Caribbean which was offering outsourcing services. They had
imported as bunch of coders from India/Russia. The added kicker? If you gave
them a contract, your trips to the Bahamas (or was it Bermuda?) would be a
business expense.... ;-)

~~~
mlinksva
I'd love to see a reference to the Caribbean company.

There was sea-code.com in 2005, proposing to operate offshore of San Diego. As
far as I know they never got past the vapor stage.

Back then I thought <http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2005/04/20/really-
offshoring/> it wouldn't work out as ships are expensive, but it might be a
good seastead-based business. Now former seasteaders are planning to use a
cruise ship (I see they say such is inexpensive now due to low demand).

I very much hope Blueseed succeeds, but it is going to be very difficult.

~~~
ajays
You know, all I remember is that 60 Minutes (the CBS show) did a segment on
that around 1999 or 2000... I Googled a little, but couldn't find a reference
to it.

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SilasX
Dangit, I was going to make a snarky remark about how this story had already
been posted, and thus the submitter was "ducking" the search feature ... but
then I searched for that previous discussion and couldn't find it. (Tried all
combinations of ship, immigration, hack, startup, bay ...)

~~~
robinhouston
This one? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3310873>

~~~
SilasX
Ah, here are a few HN mentions of the same plan, although (still!) not the
recent one I was thinking of:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2830122>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223706>

Again, it doesn't help that each story's title manages to avoid the terms
"immigration, ship, hack, anchor, foreigner, visa", and, as mentioned before,
HN doesn't encourage summaries. _puts on flamesuit_

------
ctdonath
I don't see how this has any viable advantage over either hiring legal workers
in-country or international telecommuting. Who is so valuable that an
inability to get a work visa warrants the enormous cost of a workaround
infrastructure? instead of, say, just working the system until a visa can be
acquired, or an alternative worker found?

To be sure, kicking around the recurring idea of an independent artificial
island haven of raw [insert favorite "ism" here] is cool. There's a reason it
hasn't happened yet: the value thereof does not exceed the cost of achieving
and maintaining it.

There is decent/livable money in proposing exotic megaprojects - not because
they have any chance of happening, but because just the proposal process
attracts income.

~~~
nickolai
As you point out, the challenges to overcome for such a project to succeed
seem really huge compared to the expected benefit.

I think the one of the ideas about this kind of "overkill workaround" project
is to get as much airtime as possible while kicking and screaming about how
the current system is broken.

I wholeheartedly agree with the end goal, but to me this kind of article is
really a form of disguised criticism - "Our system is SO broken that SOME
PEOPLE are considering building an ARTIFICAL ISLAND (amazing, huh?, huh? HUH!?
- wink wink sigh - yes it's really THAT bad!) to work around it.

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stan_rogers
Does this not strike anyone as being vaguely reminiscent of the origin of L.
Ron Hubbard's Sea Org? I mean it's not the first time somebody has thought of
using a ship (or a fleet of ships) to get around visa problems. I don't mean
to suggest anything cultish about the plan, but it might be worth somebody's
while to look at the port exclusion history of the Scientology venture and so
forth before embarking on a venture like this. The combination of hostile
governments, adamant corporate leadership and a staff bound not by billion-
year contracts but by high wages (and slowly learning to accept new
inconveniences as they arise) -- I can see this going badly.

------
llambda
Previous discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3286693>

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goodweeds
During the last bubble there were two or three notable instances of people
scamming investors on projects like these, attempts to buy/lease and load up
cargo or cruise ships with "near-shored" indian developers. These scams often
remind me of "Aquarius rising: Project Atlantis", a scam that targeted
libertarians in the mid '90s.

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dmitrykoval
This idea looks unreal for anyone thinking at least a tiny bit of long-term.
It is not possible to provide all the infrastructure people need such as
hospitals, schools, everything else and I seriously doubt anyone would want to
put their families into such a circumstances when any of your entry to the US
might be rejected.

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DanBC
Where are they going to get the support workers for the ship? (Cooking,
cleaning, crew, etc)

Why why why is it better to buy a ship, retrofit it for office style work,
then ferry a bunch of people to and from it every day rather than just use
telecommuting?

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rbanffy
Norman Bel Geddes would love this one:

<http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/12/blueseed/?pid=3>

Me too, but it's still a _very bad idea_. I can't imagine the big advantage
when you have things like... the internet. Being able to conduct face-to-face
meetings is convenient, sure, but living on a boat is usually very limiting.

------
marshallp
How about opening shop in canada, a couple of hours flight away, almost the
exact same everything.

