It is a system with a feedback time of months-years. At these time horizons, you can’t do rapid iterations, and you have to be extremely risk-averse. The system is also indeterministic so not conducive to hacking.
A friend of mine is an actor, not famous at all but was given this visa. Not and engineer at all but has some type of hacker mind: really stubborn and being resourceful in some scenarios.
You are very much mistaken. I have seen someone go through this and it is very hard. You need to prove your contributions to an area of interest to the US, and that it meets the extraordinary qualification. It is ok to not know but maybe dont make such statements.
Well I do know, and I have close associates with very mundane qualifications, masters from non T50 school in a CS related but not CS field, working for non-FAANG large corporation as "senior" (think 2-3 yr exp) IC with good legal of course that obtained an O-1.
I also know those with T30 masters degree, much more impressive on paper but working for at the time some dumb startup that were denied. They are now doing something extraordinary outside the country.
Sorry but the definition of extraordinary qualification is very capricious to make the claim about it being "hard" a bit meaningless. There are a lot of factors, but it isn't necessarily hard to obtain.
I mean you are literally commenting on a thread about a blog post where someone got it despite having any "extraordinary ability" in the generally understood sense of the term.
To me it's extraordinary because it's above what I'd consider ordinary. Let's say most people have Bachelor's and can't (or won't) start their own business. If you have someone with a Master's and also a startup owner they are extraordinary by that definition.
The USCIS has a much more concrete definition with different parameters. Is it an ideal one? No. But I guess any new improved definition still won't be universally accepted, especially by other talented people.
