I find this extremely hard to believe. I completed two internships at IBM in my undergrad years when I was here on an F1 visa (international student visa). While I was on my F1 visa, I was making more than a lot of my American counterparts and lesser than others who were doing internships as well. The only things that factored into pay were the number of credits you completed in college, and whether you were a returning employee. Nothing else.
I worked for IBM for almost 12 months before I got out of undergrad. There were 4 hiring managers and a senior VP in a hardware unit who was personally vouching for me. Yet, IBM didn't hire me because they were ridiculously careful with hiring H1-B visas because of a snafu they had in the early 80s when the immigration dept cracked down on them. At least IBMs engineering divisions were only hiring H1B folks only if you had 2 years of experience with a Bachelors, or a Masters. I was extremely pissed at the time because I felt like I had more credibility based on merit and my time at IBM than many other interns who were getting offers left and right after spending most of their time playing counterstrike in the labs. They were being ridiculously paranoid about sticking with the books on this one. And sure enough, after I got my Masters I did have and continue to be able to get offers from IBM.
Like some folks said, this probably has to do with third parties who place folks at IBM. Keep in mind, I'm not trying to support them (I'm still sour about my undergrad days and not getting a job purely based on immigration status), but I'm just refuting the whole point about IBM hiring H1B folks just to save money. Just ask around your H1B friends who work at Fortune 100 companies (I'm sure most of you have many). The only ones that I've heard of doing shady things with H1B candidates are small consulting shops and third party staffers.
IBM has nearly a half million employees. I would suspect that their stance on visas is not completely consistent across all areas of the business. For example, I would only have to assume that GTS is much more inclined to go for H1B folks than say, GBS.
Nothing to do with credibility, certain positions are indexed by the Department of Labor which require a base salary and base experience. Highly likely that you did not meet the requirement as a fairly new employee or the base salary was too high for them to justify hiring you.
"But how are we to know what Jobs would and wouldn't have allowed?". Thanks for pointing out the obvious. My statement of what Jobs would have done was purely hypothetical. I could have ended that with "Hell yes!" and that would be an equally plausible scenario. When did I say it was a step backwards? I just pointed out one thing on the phone that bothered me (and clearly isn't bothering many people), and that I didn't like it. That's all!
I think I (and many others) latched onto the Steve Jobs thing because it's a bold statement and because it's your concluding paragraph.
I asked if you thought it was a step backwards because you said you liked the iPhone 4, but not the 5 (and of course also because Steve Jobs was around for the earlier launch). Neither side of the iPhone 4 is flush with the frame—it's literally a bit rough around the edges.
I started the article off with the good things about the 5 and clipped it because I don't need to rattle off about all the awesome things about it that folks here know about. I just wrote the article about the one thing I didn't like about the 5. I like both the 4 and the 5. In fact, I'll be buying the 5 (I didn't just because it was out of stock, and not because of the not flush glass) :).
Btw, I just now realized that when I said "I didn't like it", the "it" was referring to the glass sticking out, and not the iPhone 5. Bad wording on my part there.
Blame is a strong word, which is not what I did. I just said I didn't like it, which is a personal opinion and that doesn't demean anyones working on these things at Apple. You are just repeating what my blog said, which is that they made a decision that I didn't like :)
In fact, I did say in my blog that "I’m no industrial designer and I’m not saying that both sides must be flush, because of some kind of design philosophy that I might not know." The purpose of writing something like this is to spur a discussion, in which I express a personal opinion, hear counter points, and maybe learn something along the way. Your "sigh" does neither, and I don't need your judging skills to tell me whether I think or am a designer.
Your making the nit-pick of all nit-picks and then vigorously defend it by ending with the outlandish claim that this wouldn't have happend if Jobs was there, which would be the part where you do in fact claim to know more than the people who did actually design the iPhone. People who in fact are world class designers.
I never had an issue figuring out the front or back. Usually my fingers run over the home button or the ear piece which is what tells me what the front is. Honestly, I didn't even feel the edge till I repeatedly turned the phone around quite a few times, which is when I looked at it. Not sure this would let me determine what the front was, but that might be my personal opinion, or my insensitive fingers.
I think the iPhone 4/4S is a revoltingly bad industrial design, and am utterly flummoxed by the acclaim it's received. The iPhone 5 looks pretty good but I haven't actually held one yet.
This is especially sad considering a recent cab experience I had in Boston. I lived in Boston for a about 5 years before moving out to Seattle, where I recently started using Uber. Boston has one of the worst cab situations especially if you go out late at night. I was back in Boston a few weeks ago, and ended up running into a few friends and stayed up till 3AM. When it was time to go home, there were either cabs that had passengers, or ones that just didn't want to stop despite waiting for 10 minutes. I pull out the Uber app and get a ride in literally a couple of minutes. My friends hadn't heard of the service and they were just dumbfounded that something like this existed, and they all became customers on the spot.
In Seattle, I use Uber only when I have to since cabs are easy to get. I can't imagine using Uber in Manhattan. But in a city like Boston with a shortage of cabs, and just generally grumpy cab drivers I can imagine Uber was just putting a serious dent in the cab business, more so than other cities.
I'm with you here. I rarely take cabs here in Seattle (I mostly bike/bus everywhere), but when I travel it can be indispensable.
I can't tell you the number of times I've had to (look up a local cab service and) call a cab, wait for it for 10-20 minutes... and not have it show up. Or schedule a cab to be there to pick me up early in the morning and take me to the airport and... not have it show up.
Three clicks on my phone and 2 to eight minutes later, there's an Uber.
Yeah, regular cabs have their place. I take them when I can, because they are cheaper. But in Chicago many will give you a problem if you don't pay in cash and many neighborhoods are underserved. When it's 3AM and I'm in a far-out fairly sketchy neighborhood, I'm SO glad Uber exists.
Wait, why do some of these "cheat" mode exist in production games? Isn't that the problem to begin with? Why does omething like "invincibility" exist in the game? Am I missing something here, or is this a noob question from a non-gamer?
This and the other startups like Interview Street seem to be focusing on the less lucrative side of the hiring problem. Like Joel Spolsky said, and like I know from personal experience, my best developer friends aren't in the market salivating to take interview tests, and do code sprints to prove they are good. They are passionate about developing, have many great jobs to pick from at a given time if they tried. If they have free time, they would rather put it on an open source project that excites them, or a smartphone/web app that they are making for themselves.
If you look at filtering mechanisms themselves, there are companies that try to have puzzles that they ask you to solve before joining (eg: ITA software). But they are really challenging puzzles that I would solve just for fun anyway, (which is what I did for months till I one day decided to apply for a job there). The fact that these puzzles are also made by the company (and not a third party website) makes a difference. It tells me about the people that work there and potentially about their culture. On the other hand, building a random web app to prove basic skills is not something I would imagine most talented web developers would like to do anyway.
If you look at it from the perspective of a company that is hiring, tools like this solve merely one part of the puzzle. It takes the subset of developers who are already in the market for a new job and filters them. As a startup though, what I want to do is lure the great engineers who are content at their regular jobs and not looking at all because of inertia. It sounds like there is more of a "search for developers" problem that will expand the breadth of all the developers available to me, instead of focusing on the ones who are already out there (and are most likely not the cream of the crop by definition).
In short, I don't mean to be negative, and am not saying that there might not be a market for a tool like this. But I am pretty certain that if you are a great developer, you don't have an incentive to make a web app on this.
I agree with this 100%. Coding tests and filters like this make sense when we have a market with an oversupply of developers that need to be filtered out. Right now, we're in the opposite situation with more jobs than skilled devs.
I think a few companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) have more applicants than open job reqs, so for them these types of products have value.
I worked for IBM for almost 12 months before I got out of undergrad. There were 4 hiring managers and a senior VP in a hardware unit who was personally vouching for me. Yet, IBM didn't hire me because they were ridiculously careful with hiring H1-B visas because of a snafu they had in the early 80s when the immigration dept cracked down on them. At least IBMs engineering divisions were only hiring H1B folks only if you had 2 years of experience with a Bachelors, or a Masters. I was extremely pissed at the time because I felt like I had more credibility based on merit and my time at IBM than many other interns who were getting offers left and right after spending most of their time playing counterstrike in the labs. They were being ridiculously paranoid about sticking with the books on this one. And sure enough, after I got my Masters I did have and continue to be able to get offers from IBM.
Like some folks said, this probably has to do with third parties who place folks at IBM. Keep in mind, I'm not trying to support them (I'm still sour about my undergrad days and not getting a job purely based on immigration status), but I'm just refuting the whole point about IBM hiring H1B folks just to save money. Just ask around your H1B friends who work at Fortune 100 companies (I'm sure most of you have many). The only ones that I've heard of doing shady things with H1B candidates are small consulting shops and third party staffers.