I think you’ll find the companies abusing the process are almost entirely staffing agencies or worse. Very few, if any, are venture funded startups. At every company I’ve worked at and hired for an H1-B is more work to hire and is treated no differently from a compensation perspective as compared to their US citizen peers.
The theory that HN is part of a vast conspiracy in the startup world related to H1-Bs is misguided.
My most charitable explanation is that these topics do not lead to any novel discussions and instead creates flame wars between the pro and anti visa people for no benefit.
it's funny because that's obviously what people want
then instead in top 5 there is some weird article about like "How I used my old CRT monitor to create a fish tracking app using radios" and some guy reply about some home project in 20 000 words no one really cares about
ProTip: You can browse news.ycombinator.com/active for the topics that become "too popular for the front page." I visit /active at least once a day to see what interesting articles I missed because the algorithm immediately buried them.
You can watch it in action sometimes, with amusing results. Some very active posts do, in fact, vanish from the front page with surprising speed, whereas less-active posts can literally linger for days.
While your claim is plausible there is a lot of confirmation bias, among other biases, when it comes to our idea of what what see on a socially algo'd front page.
I'm not saying you are wrong but I'm saying my confidence starts quite low with this kind of idea. (e.g. the cause could be something different like manual moderation; the effect may just be confirmation bias and not exist; etc.)
Qualifier: I haven't looked into the algo at all, for all I know it could be openly published by YC/HN. I'm mainly responding because I feel like it is important to TRY to be self-aware of our own biases. Emphasis on the TRYing and asymptotically approaching 100% confidence (Qualifier to the Qualifier: it is also important to be at peace with decisions based on <100% confidence lol)
In the last 4 years of operations in Latam we saw it a handful of times, all during the last 1.5 years of the Covid hiring mania. Mostly by big companies.
What’s telling is that we haven’t seen those offers since.
In fact we’ve seen rates negotiated down unfortunately.
I co-founded Howdy.com (YC W21) about 3 years ago. It's a platform for building your own dev teams in Latin America; automate vetting, payroll, offices, equipment, etc. We're profitable and just closed a series-A.
Here's the kicker: My co-founder and I both have kids, family, mortgages. Here's how I did it in the years leading up to and during:
- I saved for years with the idea that I was going to use that money for entrepreneurship
- I was upfront with my spouse and kids about the amount of effort, risk and potential rewards; i could point to a successful dev/PM career as evidence that I could succeed
- Keeping the same standard of living was impossible, we had to budget for a new level of comfort
- We had runway timetable in mind to show some progress
- Our business approach had to be profitable from the start
Your business failure rate doesn't need to be 90% if you're flexible about the problem you're pursuing. We chose an idea that allowed us to bring in at least a little money to lengthen our personal runway. Once we had a sustainable business, it was easier to approach investors and pivot slightly to the market dominating, high risk/high reward version of our idea.
Hope this helps! Happy to chat about this with anyone who's interested in doing the same! f at howdy.com
Thank you Shorel! I think many people that object to the model haven't experienced these pain points themselves, either in the US or in Latam. But we recognize the model is not for everyone.
I had worked with a team in Colombia before and I speak Spanish, so we initially gravitated towards hiring people both in the Austin, TX and Colombia.
We found really great teammates, who spoke great english. We also loved the US timezones, it was possible to be more responsive to our US customers.
And finally, I was surprised at how much overlap in culture we had as software deveopers. For example pop culture like movies, shows, video games, anime, music, etc.
Yeah, good point, of course direct freelancing is always on option. We believe that we provide enough info so that everyone can make a rational economic decision.
For example, the way customers pay is : 1) Customers pay for the developer's salary "en mano", which is specified by the developer, not us, 2) Customers pay for a standard benefits package and taxes (Health insurance, education, equipment etc.) and 3) Customers pay our 15% management fee (charged to the customer, not the developer)
That setup, of course, may not work for everyone, but we do have great companies, companies whose names we would recognize, that feel more comfortable using a US business entity that they can sign contracts with to move specialized equipment, like locked down macbooks, installing special software on work equipment, or specialized local network equipment, etc.. These companies have physical security requirements that makes it tough for them to directly hire freelancers. Thus we bring those kinds of opportunities to our teammates that would be otherwise localized only certain US cities.
Interesting experience! Would love to know more, if that's okay. How many freelancers did you manage? and how big was your team?
I think that a few freelancers are manageable (not sure if that applies to you!) But we've noticed companies that are managing engineering departments with ~50 or more and growing quickly really benefit. At that point both the HR and engineering department need something like logistics partner on the ground to coordinate meaningful benefits, specialized equipment (test devices, locked down laptops), help with company events, etc.
I understand the frustration and I'll try to explain a bit more.
Candidate salaries tend to vary based on country, experience, skillset, etc. People on the platform set their personal salary requirements and it's up to companies to provide a compelling offer.
Astro itself doesn't have a fixed rate card or salary bands. Our concern is that we could unintentionally anchor or band someone's salary. That said, we do see trends in the market and we're happy to provide guidance on what's considered above or below market.
Someone earlier recommended we setup something like a AWS cost estimator, i think that's a great idea, so long as we can figure out a way to do it without undercutting people on the platform.
Still worth thinking through the application, it's a great way to think critically about your business.
When we first applied with Howdy.com, we didn't get in, but the process of filling out our application gave us some insights and clarity.
Second time we applied, we got in.
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