Andrew Ng: The suspension of H1B is bad for the US and bad for innovation - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/AndrewYNg/status/1275250038898212865 <comment><USER3> H1B is terrible for the employees, and for those who work alongside them. Companies try to slow down green cards, and use H1Bs as virtual indentured servants.

They also fake looking for Americans- in practice, many of the jobs are earmarked for a specific person, and you are wasting your time applying for it.

Losing your job as an h1b requires you to leave almost immediately, which isn't great for anyone.

Hopefully they'll reform the process to focus on bringing talent into the country without chaining it to a specific company

<comment><USER4> When I was a new grad, I interviewed at Qualcomm for an embedded software job. I studied hardware, and was very up-front with the hiring manager in the phone screen, and he responded "not to worry about it". I was flown out to do an on- site interview, and the first thing that struck me, sitting in the lobby for 20 minutes while my first interviewer arrived, was that 100% of the employees who walked through the front door were Indian. The interviewers were all Indian (except HR, who was white) and several of them mentioned they were H1B's. Anyway, I apparently failed the interview, mostly theoretical CS, so horribly that they cut the day short and dismissed me after lunch.

I wonder sometimes if the hiring manager was incompetent or was just using me as justification that no Americans could do the job

<comment><USER5> This is over the board racist comment! Re-read your comment by replacing "Indian" with "Black" and see how you feel about it.

<comment><USER6> If employment was a representative percentage of the US, then you'd expect 1.3% of the employees to be Indian. He's identifying that Indians are over represented by almost 76x. Let's say that the company is made up of 100 engineers. In order to get 100 Indian engineers randomly, the odds are much worse than 3720 to 1. It implies immense discrimination by the employers which is systemic.

<comment><USER7> Is only 1.3% of prospective qualified candidates Indian?

Using statistics from the general population is not relevant here.

<comment><USER6> Ok, let's say qualified candidates are 50% Indian. If 100 of the employees are Indian, what is the probability of that being a random coincidence? (.5)^100?

I see this throughout industry. Even if the qualified candidates are 75% Indian, and a team of 10 is 100% Indian, what's the probability that's a coincidence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see a lot of comments that miss the point. H1B visas have their problems and the system could be greatly improved by reforms. But that is not the issue. We are talking about suspension of ALL H1Bs and J visas!

Whatever you feel about the problems with the current system, it is a net positive for the US. It has some pernicious negative effects, but ultimately our economy benefits more by being able to draw and integrate top talent from all over the world. To put this in a context that might be more familiar to readers here, it would be like Google or Facebook putting a moratorium on aquihires, or implementing some other policy that hurts their ability to recruit.

Please do not buy into the hype that this is the first step toward reform. The current administration has had 3.5 years to overhaul the H1B system and has done nothing to date.

This is horribly short sighted and a strategic blunder. It will hurt American innovation and the American economy. It's the type of move made Yahoo and AOL in the mid aughts that ultimately led to their stagnation and demise 10 years later.

<comment><USER9> yeah. this is not about reform. it's about having another bullet point on some stupid list to please the voters. some of the same voters that were so disoriented to understand that obamacare is aca.

<comment><USER10> _> this is not about reform._

Agreed.

 _> it's about having another bullet point on some stupid list to please the voters_

Agreed.

 _> some of the same voters that were so disoriented to understand that obamacare is aca._

Disagreed.

The H1B system as it exists is not easily defensible, so Trump is basically unconstrained. It's easier to defend a system against executive abuse when the system is working as intended. There are things that Trump would like to kill by XO but which he will not kill because their popularity constrains his political capital. The less popular/functional a program is, the easier it is to justify screwing with it.

You're saying that other commenters don't realize this is a political issue. I think it's exactly the other way around: you don't realize how much political support for skilled immigration H1B abuse has burned in the past 10ish years.

<comment><USER9> some of the voters clearly did not understand that obamacare==aca

setting this aside, I don't think anyone is saying that H1B was a perfect system, but IMHO the benefits from it greatly outweigh the downsides. We'll see how this unfolds and what the medium and long term impact is (spoiler: people will think twice about coming to work/live in the US)

My favorite example when it comes to what's going on in the US is the Roman Empire. It lasted for 1000+ years but it did disintegrate when the people in power lost track of what made the Roman Empire great. I am not saying this is going to happen in the next 5, 10 or 15 years, but things are definitely shifting and the world your grand grand kids are going to live in is going to be radically different from what we call normal right now.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I agree with you on policy. I disagree on political strategy.

I think it's politically disastrous to go on using H1B how it's currently used.

We need to admit that there's a lot of low/midskill immigration happening using H1B and then fix it. If we don't, then we'll lose the H1B entirely. Already you see that the H1B is wildly unpopular because of a few large bad actors. So, we'll lose the baby with the bathwater. As we are now. If H1B were used how it's supposed to be used, then it'd be a lot easier to say "hey why are we kicking out our best scientists, our tippy-top engineers, and our surgeons? It's not like anyone loses by having these people here -- _clearly_ none of us can even quality for those jobs". Right now, that's just not an argument I can use to convince my uncle or grandfather to support H1B visas. That's a problem. Now we're going to lose even skilled immigration because of a few big abusers.

Because of those politics, I would rather restrict H1B to its original intent and then have the debate about low/midskill immigration on its own terms.

My argument is that your political strategy is bad, not that your policy imperatives are wrong :)

<comment><USER9> it bothers me that we are arguing about this when we know that you and I have probably put more though into this than Trump. I don't believe a crackdown on H1B abuse would have been half as bad as what is going on now and the "strategy" adopted now is just pure failure. Failure that is going to impact everyone in the long term

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> H1B visas provide employers every incentive to lie to import cheap talent and work them hard.

There are ways to meet the very real need to import the best brains from around the world. But H1B isn't set up to do this very effectively.

Off the top of my head, a better option would be to allow immigration with a $60k bond to the government that has to be paid down at $1k/month by the current employer. With the employee in question able to transfer jobs at any time with the bond transferring to the new employer.

<comment><USER10> Really, we should just enforce the _original intent_ of the H1B.

1\. Companies that import labor when they had a perfectly acceptable local candidate should face severe fines, and Justice should be given a real budget for running these investigations as a matter of course. And the burden of proof to demonstrate you needed to import labor should be pretty high. If you don't do this, then H1B abuse will happen.

2\. Companies should be forced to pay H1Bs _significantly above_ prevailing wage, where "prevailing wage" is interpreted liberally instead of conservatively. H1Bs for software engineers making less than $200K ( _maybe_ 150K) in a major metro area is a pretty obvious violation of the intent of the H1B, imo.

NB: this will have the effect of making H1Bs a lot harder to get and keep. But I think this is the least evil of all possible worlds. In addition, we could also independently argue for increased immigration in general. But midskill immigration to fill jobs for which local qualified candidates exist should not be done through the H1B program. That's not what it's designed for, and that mismatch between program design and actual use is the source of a lot of H1B mistreatment.

I actually _don 't_ believe that ending the tie to an employer will help. I mean, we should do it anyway, but the abuse will continue.

<comment><USER12> Personally, I don't think it matters much. So what if we allow more software engineers from other countries? We haven't done anything special to deserve a job more than they have. My only concerns with it are about their well-being and freedom under the current system.

<comment><USER13> The problem is that it doesn't cut both ways. You will not be able to get a job in their country.

<comment><USER12> I mean, I don't really want a job in a country paying a fraction of what I make now? It's true though, there is not an existing reciprocal program afaik, but so what? We have things much better economically. And who knows, maybe we could arrange a labor trade deal of sorts with these countries.

<comment><USER13> By the logic presented earlier , it would only be fair if Americans could compete for jobs in foreign countries the same way their workers compete for jobs in ours .

<comment><USER12> Sure, I think that would be reasonable. I have two points though. Someone else doesn't have to do the right thing for us to do it. While it would be better if other countries reciprocated, it doesn't have to stop us from doing the right thing. Secondly, from a practical point of view the demand for people to emmigrate from the US and work in a country with lower wages is not nearly as high as the demand the other way.

<comment><USER13> With the high number of jobs being offshored and outsourced I would not be surprised if many Americans would gladly leave to increase their job prospects. It may be the case that people in the United States can no longer sustain a living here due to the high cost of living. Perhaps we will reach that point.

<comment><USER12> The United States had a very high employment rate leading up to the covid crisis. Lower than it had been during the 90s, but that was an anonymously propserous decade: [https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment- rate#:...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment- rate#:~:text=Employment%20Rate%20in%20the%20United%20States%20averaged%2059.25%20percent%20from,percent%20in%20April%20of%202020). It stood at roughly 62%.

According to the same website India's current employment rate is ~50% (part of this likely due to gender imbalances) and you can bet that wages are much lower. The relevant metric is purchasing power parity adjusted household median income. It's roughly 50 times higher in the United States than in say India (less so for China and Russia).

I don't understand how you can see countries like China or India as presenting more opportunity with local wages. There are of course cultural reasons to want to move there, but I don't think there's any reasonable case that there's more economic opportunity. Some things will be cheaper for sure (rent and labor, namely) but consumer goods, food, electricity, and the like, will not be commensurately cheaper wrt the drop in income.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but having a job and staying in the middle class in any country is much better than entering a lower class after your position has been either eliminated, outsourced, or off-shored and you cannot find another.

However, maybe there is an argument that the middle class in a different country is worse off in terms of purchasing power than the lower American class. I'm not sure if that is the case, but either way it would be better to be gainfully employed in an industry of a person's choosing than to be lower class in an industry a person does not want to work in.

The threat of this happening in America, as I perceive it anecdotally, is much more real than the statistics suggest. I could see a scenario where only the top 20% of skilled professionals in major industries survive in the United States, while the demand for the bottom 80% is met by outsourced or off-shored professionals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> IMO all this uncertainty is due to a lack of action from Congress on immigration. US Citizens need to come to terms with their immigration priorities - how many and what kind of immigrants do we need in the US, and vote for representatives who promise to bring this to a conclusion.

H1B, in its current state combined with green card laws have led to a massive group (600K+) of permanent non-immigrants in the US. This leads to a lot of pain and heartbreak for people who follow all the laws, pay all taxes and looking to establish a stable life. Many of these folks have US citizen kids.

Many don't realize how difficult it is to keep up with all the paperwork just to ensure you are in legal status in the US. The level of arbitrary regulation by USCIS is only making everyone's life painful while not solving the root cause (H1B abuse).

</comment><comment><USER15> ITT: People criticizing the H1B program for reasons that have nothing to do with why it was suspended, or considering the fate of people/families who are already here on H1Bs.

This is a pretty obvious move by the administration to discourage immigration, in any form. Could the H1B system be more equitable to workers, more efficient, less confusing, etc? Absolutely. But suspending H1Bs and green card applications like this does the opposite of all of that and throws thousands of families into limbo.

<comment><USER16> You shouldn't dismiss comments about H1Bs that are divorced from the perceived motivations of the White House. The effect of suspending H1B is not dependent upon the motivations of the decision. The decision is substantial. It has consequences and externalities that extend beyond whatever single motive we could ascribe to the White House.

<comment><USER17> This is disingenuous and only possible if you ignore the multiple other anti- immigrant changes the Trump administration has made.

<comment><USER16> As I said in the other thread, please don't hurl epithets at people. If you disagree with me, you don't have to call me deceitful.

Do you disagree that there are consequences and externalities to the H1B suspension that go beyond our best guess at the motivations of the White House? That's what I suggest in my comment, but you haven't addressed that at all.

<comment><USER17> I know the difference between "deceitful" and "disingenuous" and if I wanted to call you deceitful I would have. Besides,"disingenuous" isn't a name or pejorative, like calling you "ugly" or something. It's not an epithet. It literally means pretending to know less than you actually know which is exactly what I feel you are doing here. It does not require mind-reading to determine the intentions of the current executive administration around immigration. We have their previous behaviour with regards to different immigration policies to go on.

I think that regardless of how anyone felt about the H1B program that this change is bad for America and was done for the wrong reasons. If this was about the H1B program then why suspend L1 visas, student visas and green cards? What does suspending au pairs have to do with H1B issues?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As an intended MBA applicant for the class of 2021, the recent uncertainty around H1B visas makes me very uneasy and disappointed. I was forced to leave the U.S. back in 2016 despite having an investment banking job and paying meaningful taxes, which was incredibly frustrating. I was hoping for another shot at living and working in the US after completing an MBA, and now it looks like there either won't be a chance or it will be at best a shot in the dark. I am now seriously considering avoiding U.S. schools altogether and applying for top business schools in Europe such as LBS and INSEAD.

<comment><USER19> The other poster was remarkably rude for no reason. I'd say that you don't _really_ want an H1B though. What you want is a concrete and easily accessible path to citizenship that takes your high-skilled degree into account. To that end, I _would_ support broader immigration reform rather than trying to fix the irredeemable H1B program.

<comment><USER18> I 100% agree with your statement. But for now, all that was done was suspend H1Bs without a viable measure that would create a path to citizenship (or just settlement) via a high-skilled degree. So it seems like a step backwards and very disheartening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Like any other nation, the United States is in a _competition_ for top talent. People who have other viable choices -- who are in many cases also those who stand a high chance to create a ton of value in the US -- will now put the US lower down in the priority list.

As Victor Hwang put it [1]:

"While other countries fight a global war for top talent, America just packs up the tent.

Facts: \- Immigrants start new businesses at twice the rate of native-born Americans. \- Immigrants founded 44 of the 100 largest companies in America."

[1]: [https://twitter.com/rainforestbook/status/127517996429236633...](https://twitter.com/rainforestbook/status/1275179964292366339)

</comment><comment><USER21> Amidst this debate, I think it's worth looking at the EU Blue Card scheme [1].

A few key differences versus the H1B (correct me if I'm wrong - <USER2> understanding of H1B features are basis discussions I have seen here):

1\. Not tied to a specific employer. At least theoretically this is the case though your residence permit clearly specifies your employer.

2\. Family-friendly options where your family can join you with the initial visa application. Spouses/Partners are immediately eligible to work.

3\. Integration courses for language and culture, offered for free usually, and for the entire family.

4\. After 2 years, you can switch jobs and after an another year, you can apply for permanent residence. The steps and guidelines are clearly specified and all the laws side with the employer to ensure no exploitation or harassment.

1 - [https://www.auswaertiges- amt.de/en/aamt/zugastimaa/buergerse...](https://www.auswaertiges- amt.de/en/aamt/zugastimaa/buergerservice/faq/02a-what-is-the-blue-card/606754)

<comment><USER22> These differences all look like net-positives, but I've always wondered how well "integration courses" would be received in America. In conversations with Europeans, I've found that many people are pro-immigration "so long as they integrate," but I think this same statement might be perceived as (rightly?) kind of racist or culturally insensitive in America.

<comment><USER21> Relevant point but given that the US is much more diverse, an integration course might not be relevant but such an immersion course might help non- English/non-western candidates feel at home faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I came to the US from Canada under TN status, and later switched to an H1B so I could get a green card. I used to think it was a good thing, but I have since changed my mind.

The Wikipedia article for the H1B outlines most of the problems, but I'll talk about my experience.

When I moved from Canada to the US (for a software engineering role), I thought I getting a huge raise. It was about twice what I was earning in Canada prior, so for me personally it was a big step up, but what I didn't realize at the time is that they were actually paying me about 50% below the market rate in the US. At the time I was making about $56k/year in Canada (in CAD, about $40k USD), and I was hired at around $85k/year in the US. This was in 2009. What I realized soon after, was that someone with my experience was making about twice that much in the US.

It wasn't until I got a green card (which took 5 years) that my salary adjusted upward to the market rate. The company that helped me get my green card was Airbnb, but even back then they hired me (while I was still on a TN) well below the market rate. I managed to negotiate my salary up, but I was still anchored near the bottom of my cohort.

While working at these companies (including Airbnb), I felt trapped because I could not easily quit or search for a better paying job. My employers knew this, since according to the rules I'm required to leave the country if I lose or quit my job. Many companies also don't want to deal with H1Bs or TNs because they don't want the fuss of dealing with immigration problems.

While waiting for my green card to arrive, I was trapped at Airbnb for about 2 years. They actually fired me from my job _before_ my green card arrived, and were kind enough to let me wait a few more months until I had the card in hand before I officially left the company. In those months I pretty much just sat around, enjoyed the nice lunches and dinners, and hung out with coworkers.

I think immigration is great, but I think these employment based visas only work well for employers. They make it easy to hire cheap workers at below market rates, and have them stick around because they can't leave. I think we need real immigration reform, or, better yet, allow companies to hire the best people and make it illegal to discriminate based on nationality. The TN/H1B system is just legalized discrimination.

<comment><USER24> We have labor laws forbidding discrimination based on national origin, and yes, some corporations use H1-B and related visa systems as a loophole around those laws to discriminate based on national origin and more than likely the rest such as race, ethnicity, etc. In my time spent in tech-related fields I have certainly seen companies provide more favorable benefits and overall treatment to say, Ukrainian SysOps vs their counterparts from India or Bangladesh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any blanket statement in this thread or elsewhere that reads like "H-1B visas X" is probably wrong, as the visa is used by a wide range of employers and employees.

That is probably the biggest issue with the visa. It's meant to do one thing but abused to be solve many other needs, some of which are needs society really doesn't want to solve (hiring cheaper labor for positions Americans could easily fill)

Attempts to solve this problem should start by shining a light on the many current uses of the visa, figuring out which are worth safeguarding and which are worth eliminating and then discussing how to reform this particular visa (and possibly create others) to address the worthwhile needs.

</comment><comment><USER26> Patrick Collison tweeted a powerful graph that quantifies this: [https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1275288642022289410](https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1275288642022289410)

<comment><USER27> How is that quantifying impact on the U.S. innovation? It shows people being moved out of a bunch of countries and to another but I see no demonstration of that positive impact.

<comment><USER26> The graph is not just people, but specifically inventors.

The US has a giant net influx of inventors (some of whom arrive on a H1B), which presumably creates wealth, jobs, etc.

<comment><USER28> How many of those really arrive on H1B, and how many of those have no other options? I was told that even _I_ could apply for some "talent visa" (the one that fashion models often use) because I competed in the math olympiad... the bar seems to be set incredibly low (speaking of myself, not the models).

<comment><USER29> I would recommend googling the process and try it out. Just try to find out if it is actually easy before commenting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Counterpoint: I'd rather gut the H1B system and ease the path to citizenship. The H1B system just exists for employers to pay lower wages to skilled workers. I would much rather those workers get fast-tracked to citizenship instead. Letting them leave with the money they make here isn't in our best interests and neither is preventing them from changing companies, which allows employers to underpay them. I would heavily support using the H1B as a probationary period to test assimilation into the US before granting full citizenship but that's not really in the spirit of the program at that point.

<comment><USER30> The reality is that the US government has done NO meaningful progress on immigration reform to guarantee a path to citizenship for skilled people. This leaves H1B as the only option and now that is gone too, but only due to executive order. I find it hard to believe there will be any meaningful reform under any administration. Particularly until they can get out of this habit of clumping all kinds of immigration (legal and illegal, skilled and unskilled) into one bill, so that nobody can agree on anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looking at the details, this allows for transitions from F1 and OPT status to H1B. However it suspends H1B stamping, meaning you probably cannot leave USA. Having said that, there's been rumors of some form of restriction or suspension of OPT as well.

I am researching on brain function and mental health. As a grad student I make less than what many Americans get in unemployed benefits. I think you'll be hard pressed to find any American willing to do my job. My mom was denied US visitor Visa several times, I need to travel abroad to see her and this suspension will force me to rethink my future in the USA.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow, amount of discrimination in the comments here reminds of facebook political discussions.

It's basically "I've once worked for a company with H1B, and it was a scam. Ergo all H1Bs are scam, should be eliminated ASAP, and they should go back to their own country!". Sadly, progressives and tolerance ends when it's touching your wallet.

<comment><USER33> The proclamation isn't even about ending H1B/H2B/J/L, it specifically says that it is to address the economic laborforce risk brought on by pandemic (thus it has expiration date).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Immigration is good for innovation, the H1B system is not. This administrations rollout of the suspension is cruel, which is the point. H1B Reform/Replacement is needed, the status quo is not.

<comment><USER35> Agreed completely. I feel like this administration exists simply to taunt Congress to take actual action with regards to its wild swings on various issues.

Congress has given way too much power over to the executive, and having the most corrupt real estate developer in a city frankly renowned for the corruption of its real estate developers in charge of the executive should be teaching Congress that they need to actually exercise power rather than just handing it over to whoever is sitting at that desk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Beg to differ. H1B's may live the high life in Big Tech, but that is not the experience of most H1Bs. For the rest, it is akin to indentured servitude. They are dramatically underpaid compared to American counterparts and unable to change jobs without losing your place in line for citizenship. I have worked with Indian subcontractors that have waited 20 years! H1B is nothing more than the wealthy using labor arbitrage to exploit foreign workers at the expense of American workers.

<comment><USER15> >I have worked with Indian subcontractors that have waited 20 years!

And you think this suspension will help them?

<comment><USER36> The solution is not to increase them, that's for sure. The solution is to abolish the quota system which Democrats keep upholding for their Big Tech overlords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 1/ Yes, there are companies like Tata and Wipro who game the system to hire software developers at below market rate. This is absolutely a problem that should be addressed. Outright banning H-1B does solve the problem, but it is nowhere near optimal. For many skilled talents, H-1B is the only path to work in the U.S. Banning H-1B is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

2/ No, there is no systemic difference in compensation for non-U.S. citizens at FAANG and equivalent. Compensation packages are formulaic. No one gets +/\- X% just because they are a citizen or immigrant. If Google one day decides to pay H-1B 20% lower, they would lose out on a ton of qualified candidates to, say, Facebook. It'd require the entire conglomerate of FAANG, and whom they consider "peer" companies, to agree to suppress compensation for this to work [1]. It would also require everyone involved in the hiring process, many of whom were immigrants, to be onboard. I simple don't believe companies who compete for top talents would find this tradeoff worth it. I might just be living in a bubble, and am willing to be proven wrong. Just show me the data.

3/ Many successful companies are founded or led by immigrants who now happily call the U.S. their home. These are success stories that the country should celebrate, not chastise. You might think that Larry Page could've founded Google without Sergey Brin. You might be right, or wrong. The fact is we only have reality to observe. We don't have counterfactuals to compare against.

[1] I know about the Steve Jobs no-poach email. That was also 13 years ago.

<comment><USER38> > No one gets +/\- X% just because they are a citizen or immigrant.

It's true. People get +X% because they negotiate. I believe citizens/LPRs have much stronger negotiation position: they can apply to companies, which do not consider H1B and they can walk away from any offer without catastrophic consequences even if they are between jobs so they can do "give me a raise or I walk" move at any time and not just when they have a next job lined up. I do not even mention supply and demand effects on the compensation for everyone here because it seems to be a very controversial concept.

> Many successful companies are founded or led by immigrants who now happily > call the U.S. their home.

Can you give an example of such a company founded by somebody on one of the visas being discussed here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> H1B is a scam. It allows employers to shortchange their workers and abuse immigrants who are beholden to them for their right to live in the US.

</comment><comment><USER40> My news and social media feeds are almost universally negative about this.

Who is happy about H1B Visa suspension? Who was advocating for it?

<comment><USER41> Everyone I know, including me? There is _no_ shortage of workers for virtually any industry. There is a shortage of people willing to work for submarket rates.

<comment><USER42> This is really not true. If you do hiring in tech, just finding qualified candidates is a long, arduous process way before even talking about compensation.

There's a hell of a lot of problems with hiring practices worldwide, but qualified software engineers are not abundant.

<comment><USER43> "If compensation were higher, qualified software engineers would be more abundant."

Supply and demand isn't just about what's out there _right now_ , it's about elasticity of both curves. When prices rise, supply increases, and demand decreases.

What you've said indicates that prices are so low that demand is very high, and supply is very low.

Yes, it does take a while, in some fields, for supply to ramp up - but bidding wars for the existing supply are part of the mechanism that increases the prices and signals to people with choice that software engineering (as opposed to, say, finance or corporate law) is the way to go.

There's a pretty strong case to be made the the H1B is specifically designed to create a population of software engineers who are not allowed to respond to market signals that would cause them to stop being software engineers in order to do something else (or perhaps not become a software engineer in the first place).

So back the the original question - compensation. What compensation package were you offering to compete for those rare and highly valuable software engineers you wanted to hire?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Here's an interesting alternative to the current H1B visa. It replaces the lottery with an auction. I imagine this would make companies think twice about hiring "cheap" foreign labor, but then again it might lower the salaries further given the extra burden on the sponsoring company.

[https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/aafs/2013...](https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/uploads/aafs/2013/05/Estimating- the-Economic-and-Budgetary-Effects-of-H-1B-Reform- In-S.744.pdf?fbclid=IwAR26rlc-NO--YQZfUPQ- AoVXSfWP28_ZbthfGartLpxfPAQTLgqy2CzKZ30).

<comment><USER44> Posted the wrong link before. [https://www.hoover.org/research/auctioning- temporary-visas](https://www.hoover.org/research/auctioning-temporary-visas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I am increasingly of the opinion that this is OK. Neither side is actually interested in a conversation. Businesses are not going to want to reform the H1B to make it less exploitative, and the people who think it's bad for Americans are not going to believe the stated pro-H1B case. People on the visa are stuck in the middle.

I am sympathetic to both sides, but I have no easy solution to propose.

End the damn thing and let's see what happens.

Having been through the gauntlet a few years ago, this might seem like pulling the ladder up behind me. But, I would really like to see the Indian education/employment system diversify out of body-shopping or emigration and into more local innovation and progress. Maybe it won't happen, but something needs to change.

</comment><comment><USER46> Whatever people think of H1B visas (and I'm generally very critical of these programs), since work from home is the new normal, will there be a drop in demand for visas? If Facebook have 9 engineers in an office, it makes sense to get the 10th into the country to join them. If 7 of those 9 work from home on any given day, does it really matter if the 10th is in <foreign place>?

</comment><comment><USER47> I would like to see them enforce equivalent salaries on H1B visas. There should not be a financial incentive for companies to do this.

The original purpose was to bring in talent where it could not be found in the US.

I believe this would be great for H1B visa employees and regular employees.

If companies want to offshore they still can and they still do. Companies that currently abuse the system would hate it.

</comment><comment><USER48> I hope this helps dissolve the network effects that gives an unfair advantage to the US and keeps the largest tech hubs there. We rest-of-the-worlders would like to partake also.

What say you Musk? You already have Canadian citizenship, with the ice caps melting, it's not even that cold up here anymore.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is good news for India. 60 percent of my classmates from a mid tier IIT work/study in US. This only increases competition levels for masters in India. GATE and PSU's would be frikin hard this and next year.

<comment><USER50> Unfortunately, I doubt this'll happen. The set of kids going for MS are certainly not the ones looking at GATE. Besides, having a masters in India doesn't improve your employability locally, so the opportunity cost of doing masters is quite high unless you're driven by need to learn more or wanting to get into teaching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Related to J1 visas, in my area they are used extensively to fill seasonal openings at resorts.

A large proportion of the workforce is east European college students, working 2, maybe 3 jobs, over the summer.

<comment><USER52> Yeah those J1 visas must go too.

</comment></comment><comment> 1-6 H1B = Modern day slavery It has all the same characteristics. Large corps 'sponsor' a worker; smaller ones can't. The slave worker gets to enjoy a somewhat better life under their master but can't run when their master is a viscous slave driver. If the slave wins the green card lottery or comes into a lot of money, they can eventually get freedom.

<comment><USER9> that's just wrong. look up AC21. you can switch jobs on H1B. for an employer it's easier to do the paperwork for this vs a full-blown H1B.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is a good step. Companies abuse H1B visas and pay them less than what they would have paid citizens. I have so many friends who are paid 25-50% less for same jobs as citizens.

</comment><comment><USER54> H1B is an excuse for companies to pay employees less, and treat them worse.

</comment><comment><USER42> The message has been loud and clear: do not emigrate to the US because no career advancement is worth constant uncertainty about your possibility to build a life.

Middle income emigrants nowadays have a choice of multiple countries with a high standard of living and job opportunities, in addition to the many new opportunities that have been created by offshoring and satellite offices.

In the past 4 years I have seen all my software engineer and PhD friends choosing Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Denmark to emigrate. I have discarded the US for potential MBA studies since then too.

Desperate poor refugees will just take whatever country takes them as anything is better than war or genocide, so ironically this does very little to dissuade the most desperate, which I would assume would be one of the primary targets of these xenophobic policies.

</comment><comment><USER55> Most of the stuff Trump has done in the name of "America first" has restricted economic freedom for Americans. Tariffs make it more costly for American importers to do business, and restrictions on immigrations deprive American firms of the freedom to hire the most qualified candidate.

It is incredibly ironic that anyone views these moves to restrict freedom as beneficial to "America". They simply create small advantages for some at the expense of everyone else.

<comment><USER56> If you read the comments in this forum, you will immediately see how he gets support for these myopic actions. Everything from reneging from international treaties and institutions to long term policies that have been shown to benefit the country are axed for short term political gain at the polls. And the people, even on this forum, are duped by it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I for one am ecstatic about this. I want _less_ competition for my role, not more. It is hard to compete when the top 5% of every other economy comes in and crowds me out.

<comment><USER57> Doctors vs Software Engineers are very interesting case studies in my eyes.

AMA (American Medical Association) has successfully lobbied congress to cap residencies at 100K a year, essentially restricting supply. Foreign doctors have to go through a gauntlet of exams, tests, and licenses that keeps market from being flooded with cheaper talent and diluting local doctor salaries.

Software Engineers have failed to unite like this, so the MS+FAANGs and consulting companies have lobbied for free flow of cheap labor under the guise of innovation. There are no board certifications, no licensing exams, and no restrictions on supply. This is why software salaries have been artificially suppressed for two decades.

<comment><USER29> > Doctors vs Software Engineers are very interesting case studies in my eyes.

Actually, this is a great example. By restricting medical professionals, medical wages went high. Great for them!

But for the rest of America, this SUCKS. Medical expenses are through the roof, care cannot be had without selling all your money and often, specialist shortages mean appointments can be had only 3 months later. The lack of liquidity of healthcare professionals has made American healthcare the WORST in the developed world.

And this is in cities. Healthcare in rural America is pathetic.

Thanks for bringing to the fore how America has forever destroyed lives for the rest by trying to advantage the few.

<comment><USER14> Oddly, many of those immigrant healthcare professionals who put in the time to complete residency, get certified and take up jobs in under-served rural areas are on H1B visas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The largest H1-B visa sponsors are Cognizant, Tata, Wipro, Infosys, and Deloitte. None of those scream "innovation" to me. The system absolutely needs reform, and I think most people can agree with that.

But that said, blanket bans on immigration by the white supremacists and nationalists currently running our government and deciding our immigration are probably not designed to help America or innovation either.

The whole H1-B ban feels like something the admin could throw to their supporters without making too much noise in the press, because it affects very few voters and we have more pressing economic problems than the tech labor shortage.

<comment><USER59> I wasn't aware that our government was currently being run by white supremacists. Do you have a source?

<comment><USER60> [https://www.npr.org/2019/11/26/783047584/leaked-emails- fuel-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/26/783047584/leaked-emails-fuel-calls- for-stephen-miller-to-leave-white-house)

"For almost three decades, Jared Taylor has been publishing his ideas about race at the American Renaissance magazine and now at a website called AmRen, which is considered a mouthpiece for white supremacist ideology. ... The website is not well-known outside white nationalist circles — but it found an audience in White House adviser Stephen Miller."

<comment><USER61> So Stephen Miller is a white supremacist now? He must be hiding it pretty well, since I've heard through hundreds of hours of his podcast with Raheem Kasam and he has never said anything remotely racist.

<comment><USER62> Stephen Miller, the one working in the White House, doesn't host any podcast. You are thinking of Jason Miller.

<comment><USER61> You're right, sorry about that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Most H-1B to green card conversions are never really offered as competitive jobs. The job postings are so ludicrously specific that they are targeted to that one exact person. Plus, the pay is _always_ lower.

If we can't do the job ourselves, we shouldn't have the job.

<comment><USER63> Do you have a source for that "the pay is always lower" comment? As far as I know, visa status doesn't affect compensation for employees in the same full- time role at FAANG + Microsoft, though I only have direct experience with one of these companies.

<comment><USER64> All the h1b salary data is public. If you search any of the Faang companies, the salaries seem in line with market rates. I would also love to see a study that shows otherwise.

<comment><USER52> Is the salary public or also the stock options?

<comment><USER63> I don't think the stock options would be public, since it's discretionary at most companies, and varies from person to person. Anecdotal as it is, from my experience at Microsoft the stock sign-on and annual bonus don't correlate with visa status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I was an H1B and it was a terrible experiencing having to constantly move around.

</comment><comment><USER66> There are 2 sides to every coin.

It can be frustrating/demoralizing to American software developers as well, when they go to interview for a job, to see they are competing with an absolute flood of Indian and Chinese H1Bs. Then, when all of your interviewers are Chinese and Indian as well and you don't get the job, you sort of feel like the victim of favoritism and that you've been pushed out of your own country's industry by foreign nationals.

<comment><USER67> Well if you don't perform well on interviews then why expect we hand the job to you?

These Indians, Chinese, Russians, Brazilian developers are more willing to grind Leetcode and study until insanity (solving 300 Leetcode problems is not uncommon) and will kill majority of interviews out there.

They came here to study hard, from 3rd world countries, and they did it.

Study hard, work hard, be smart, and we welcome you to the arena.

Oh and by the way, this is not about race, because I've found plenty US born Chinese devs that suck and lazy.

<comment><USER68> Let's be honest, after passing through ridiculous interview questions and being hired I am frequently disappointed at what's on the other side. I have nothing against foreigners and wish them the best. H1B's are routinely abused and this in turn creates a toxic environment. This only makes the code quality worse as devs rush, creating even more technical debt as they go. Maybe they killed themselves to get here, but I'm not seeing sterling results in their work.

<comment><USER69> Unfortunately, on average they are seen as cheap replaceable work with no resort to taking abuse. However, amongst them there are quite a few very talented developers. If the system worked properly they would be able to select them better. I work with quite a few H1Bs and the experience has been quite pleasing. However, I can see the abuse they take, the unpaid overtime they put in, because they can't say no. That may spoil our market and we would soon need to fall in line with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> While Andrew Ng is devastated that an H1B worker and their family has to pack their bags and return to their home country, one American worker will have the opportunity to enter the job market and feed his/her family.

EDIT: Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a situation where many engineers on HN are H1B workers themselves or start-up owners/affiliates who benefit and profit off of H1B workers so it's obvious that I'm against the tide here. For all the haters, tell me why my company needed to hire a large group of QA engineers to do manual GUI testing when this does not really require much more than a high school GED, if even. Honestly, look deeply past the corporate lobbyist agendas and your own personal biases and tell me H1B policies are not effectively a ploy to get around cheap labor. Yes, they are great when used properly to find rare and top talent but anybody who has worked in the industry knows this is rarely the case.

<comment><USER71> The lump of labour fallacy is just that, a fallacy.

<comment><USER70> Yes, in a vacuum. It ignores the fact that at a given point of time, there are only a limited number of jobs in the market.

<comment><USER71> No, you've managed to completely misinterpret how the lump of labor fallacy works and fell for the fallacy again.

Job demand is elastic. If tomorrow X of all immigrants who held a job in the US left, that doesn't mean X jobs open up. You're losing X customers and Y investors where Y is a subset of X. Jobs are not a zero-sum game and H1B does not exist just to take away jobs because inevitably some of those people will go on to create _more_ jobs and companies in the US.

Again, I will repeat: The lump of labor fallacy is a fallacy for a reason.

<comment><USER70> You're straying away from the point and overcomplicating things. When a company has an open position and it is filled by an H1B worker, an American worker has lost that opportunity. That's zero sum. Whether or not H1B workers are going to go on to create more jobs has no bearing. You could say the same thing about the American worker that lost that job opportunity.

You realize that just because something is named a "fallacy" doesn't mean it is one. Economists have bias too and are often employed/used by lobbyists to sway analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Since I'm disagreeing with the majority here: I have nothing but love and respect for people of all countries. I also happen to disagree with the groupthink on the H1B for reasons that have nothing to do with being bigoted.

1\. The H1B is unethical because it intentionally brain-drains countries.

Why is it good for the U.S. to take the most educated (and wealthy) foreigners from their countries? Doesn't this hurt these countries?

2\. The H1B is unethical because it advantages large corporations and rich immigrants over small businesses and locals.

Small companies can't generally hire using H1B, so they lose out on the scam. The immigrants are disproportionately the wealthiest people from their countries. By buying expensive educations, their parents are buying them access to the U.S. Rich corporations helping rich people by exploiting others.

3\. The H1B is unethical because companies commit fraud using it without consequence.

It's an open secret in the tech world that the H1B (and other visas) are being used to lower costs (through lower salaries, increasing supply, and coerced retention) and not to hire for roles that could not otherwise be filled by locals. This is fraud and yet there is little to no enforcement.

99% of the H1B jobs could all be filled locally. It would just drive up costs for large corporations like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Tesla.

<comment><USER9> > 99% of the H1B jobs could all be filled locally

that's a bold claim. do you have a any sources to back that up?

also, just because someone that is only interested in the financial aspect does a bootcamp, does not mean that they can immediately ramp up and do the work someone else has a formal education in and has been doing for 10 years. that's not how life works.</comment></comment>


The NYT's Visual Election Outcome Explorer - How we made the D3 decision tree - <AUTHOR> http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/nyts-512-paths-white-house/ <comment><USER2> In general I've been super impressed with NY times visualizations recently. I look at the 538 visualizations daily (<http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/>). Sometimes they're splashy and cool, but in general they're just tastefully designed in way that gives quick insight into the data that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And that's the really crucial part, I think: culling the data so that the relevant stuff is what jumps out at you.

<comment><USER3> The NYT Graphics Desk keeps a tumblr where they occasionally talk about the process behind their creations. <http://chartsnthings.tumblr.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I enjoy about the NYT interactives in particular is not just their technical sophistication (which is formidable given that the creators of Backbone.js and D3 are among their employees) but the sophisticated information design. There's rarely a graphic that is made to show off bells and whistles. The NYT is far and away he closest to embodying the Tufte spirit and thoughtfulness online, given that Tufte has said very little about best practices in interactives

<comment><USER5> I agree entirely. You never see the cliparty slapshy chartjunk that is most of the infographics online. Any infographic from NY Times is designed to show only the data and nothing but the data. For oil prices, a bar chart, not a chart of barrels.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Sites like visual.ly are the 99designs of infographics. They're graphic design 101 projects with often misleading/misinterpreted data thrown on a document the size of the moon. They're hard to read and even harder to digest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > We use a git-backed preview server that allows us to share versioned > previews of graphics (any commit, any fork) and get feedback.

I'm jealous that this exists and I didn't know about it. Anyone aware of something like this that exists in the open-source/SaaS world?

<comment><USER8> It's mostly open-sourced, available here: <https://github.com/mbostock/git- static>

<comment><USER7> Very cool. I love your work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> this is simply awesome, not only cause of the great visualization of data but because the interactions to model your scenarios blew me away. Really need to learn this D3 stuff ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER10> The NY Times should do a behind the visuals for every post with visuals. Excellent work recently.</comment>


Easy-to-exploit privilege escalation bug bites OpenBSD and other big name OSes - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/x-org-bug-that-gives-attackers-root-bites-openbsd-and-other-big-name-oses/ <comment><USER2> this is the X.org bug where they chose to zero day openbsd, I think this was posted yesterday?

<comment><USER3> Here is yesterday's discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18304894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18304894)

To me the takeaway is to not even install software that you don't need for a particular purpose. It's easy to do a complete installation, including X Window, for OpenBSD. But a firewall doesn't need X. So don't install it.

<comment><USER2> cheers!</comment></comment></comment>


Precious Ink – On handwriting - <AUTHOR> http://ttbook.org/book/precious-ink <comment><USER2> Yes, absolutely. When I worked as an employee, I would have a growing stack of all the things my co-workers printed (why do they print so much shit?) and I would write on the backs to try to get some use out of their paper. That is just for incidental notes, though. Any note that is just for remembering over the next few minutes to an hour goes on whatever scrap of paper I can find. But much longer-lived notes go into one of my growing stacks of notebooks. I use unlined art pads with ring binder sides for even technical notes. I scribble sketches and ideas at random in them, and mix in more serious drawings. They become a sort of journal for me, as I hate writing classical journal style. I keep them, then look back through the old ones every once in a while. It is a good review of how far I've come and also helps me recapture good ideas I had and dropped because either I wasn't ready or I got distracted by something else.

<comment><USER3> Default to duplex. After 10 years of service my old Brother laser printer died last month. Got the Brother HL-2270DW: duplex, laser, airprint, ethernet. PPD files available for CUPS, fits on shelf.

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00450DVDY>

<comment><USER2> This is actually less of a solution than my solution, because the printing of the paper is certainly a waste of the paper, the old coworkers didn't need to be printing anything, let alone on both sides of the paper. At least my note taking was constructive.

But I've solved the problem in an even better way, I just plain don't work in an office with coworkers anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know for certain that writing things down makes them more 'important' to my mind. Printouts and the like generally get forgotten a few minutes after they were printed. Whenever I need to map out an idea within a script/program I'm working on I usually turn to my good ol' number two pencil and a couple sheets of paper and map out the basics of what I need to do, why I need to do it and any similar links.

I find that this allows me to clarify things greatly, even the simple act of sitting for a moment and mapping things out. Pretty much I have found that without fail this leads to better outcomes with scripting for me and things just flow better.

I'm not saying this will necessarily work for you, but for myself at least, writing certainly clarifies and brings into focus programming tasks.

Also, getting into the whole bit with reading from LCD screens when reading from them, the material I read on LCD I find that it is remembered less clearly than when it is on paper (be it a book or, notes, etc.). So for myself, the order of order of best/worst material for remembering information is: Writing -> Printouts -> Screen.

<comment><USER5> >I know for certain that writing things down makes them more 'important' to my mind.

I'm sure it does, but are you certain that writing things down commits them more firmly than manually typing them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh gosh, this takes me back.

`De Laude Scriptorum' In praise of Scribes by Johannes Trithimeus, Abbotus of Spondheim Abbey, what now, something like 600 years ago!

A delightful and informative early book celebrating this most beautiful and ergonomically satisfying word machine ever made(1). The scratch of quill on vellum, is an itch scratched of divine satisfaction. This is the same Trithimeus who did the first book on Stegonography, absconded funds and stoled books to build up the library. There may be a free pdf out here somewhere. Parker, of the Parker Duofold fountain pen, whose quill recently quipped, "Writing with a ballpoint pen is like writing with a nail". We can mention here also Miller's Canticle For Liebowitz, with perennial novice Francis' inspired decades' dutiful inkish scrivening.

(1)But we must also remember and keep things in perspective, those monk novices were not allowed to get their groove on Fender Stratocasters.

</comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of Dijkstra's wordprocessor[1]. He had a pencil dangling from a string with a sign pointing to it saying "Word Processor".

[1] [http://vanemden.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/i-remember- edsger-d...](http://vanemden.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/i-remember-edsger- dijkstra-1930-2002/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I usually take notes in a notebook, but then transcribe them to OneNote later. This paid off handsomely when my bag was stolen last week, containing my notebook - all my notes are still safely saved.

</comment><comment><USER9> Going to sound silly but - a pencil every time. Just seems a better match to the mind flow. Very zen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I glanced thru this book at my local library - [http://www.amazon.com/How-Sharpen-Pencils-Theoretical- Contra...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Sharpen-Pencils-Theoretical- Contractors/dp/1612190405) \- Read very zen. My personal preference is a good/non-expensive fountain pen though. Still searching for one.

<comment><USER10> I'd like a fountain pen where the nib actually splayed on a little downward pressure so the width of the stroke was wider. Most nibs are far too strong and don't yield at all.

<comment><USER11> If you want a fountain pen like that (as opposed to a dip pen†), the only non- insanely-expensive source I've found is old pens with gold nibs ... If it's something not particularly attractive (there are lots of dull black old pens around), the price can be vastly more tractable than modern high-quality fountain pens.

Unfortunately the basic market for high-quality new pens seems to be as a luxury accessory, with price inflation to match. There's an apparent increase in low-priced new fountain pens in the last few years, but they all seem to have extremely stiff nibs made of thick steel or something.

[I met a guy in Boston who had a small open-by-appointment shop with like 4-5000 old fountain pens, most of which were not really pretty enough to sell well as boutique/antique items, but many of which wrote very nicely. He bought a lot of pens and eeked out a living selling the prettier ones; I'm not really sure what the eventual fate of the rest is.]

† There are tons of super cheap and nice flexible nibs available for dip pens, though I guess many are not well suited to general writing.

<comment><USER10> Thanks snogglethorpe, that reinforces an opinion I read a while ago when I last looked into this; modern manufactured nibs are steel with little yield and an old gold one can be a better buy for the price. Also, only the Japanese still bother with making old-quality nibs but at a huge price, e.g. the top ones tailor it after having seen you writing. :-)

I've seen nibs for dip pens in the local art-supplies shop, including drawing and map-making nibs, but it's just not practical so I haven't even tried them to see if they're what I want. If they were, I'm puzzled why they have to be dip-only, presumably a fountain nib works differently?

Having searched a little it seems 14K gold alloy is best, but modern rules mean it can't be labelled gold so isn't manufactured any more. <http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref/ttp/materials.htm>

<comment><USER11> I'm no expert, but this is my impression based on seeing and using lots of nibs :):

Most drawing / calligraphy nibs only work well when you're _pulling_ the pen (e.g. try pushing with a pointed nib, and you'll quickly tear up the paper or break the nib). Because of this, they can be of fairly simple construction, made of flat uniformly thin metal (generally just steel AFAICT). As they're relatively cheap and easily replaceable, it's not a huge deal if a nib breaks, you just put in a new one, and you're not out too much money.

Fountain pens, on the other hand, have to work reasonably well when pushing the pen too, so you can't really make them entirely out of thin flexible metal. Together with a more complex ink delivery mechanism, the nibs seem inherently more expensive, and so tend to be part of the pen rather than a disposable part (I imagine the average person who just wants to write his stuff wouldn't be very happy if they had to constantly replace the nib either). By making them out of relatively stiff metal, you can sort of avoid some of the problems while still using cheapish construction. I don't know why gold is better offhand, but I imagine it may be better able to put up with the forces involved when the nib is thinner and more fleixble, without breaking.

<comment><USER10> Ah, the "pulling" issue hadn't occurred to me.

Gold is good because it's flexible but pure gold is too soft and wears too easily so an alloy is used. 14K gold alloy seems to be the sweet spot between flexing and durability, modern 18K loses the former.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Userbin - Easy To Use Authentication - <AUTHOR> https://userbin.com

<comment><USER2> Neat! I saw [https://www.userapp.io/](https://www.userapp.io/) a little while ago and thought it looked cool too. What are some differences between userapp and this service?

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm co-founder and dev at Userbin. We want the integration of Userbin to feel somewhat similar to what you're used to when working with your favorite Ruby, Node or PHP auth library, rather than being a provider of a cloud-based database of user records. To be in the cloud is not the essence of Userbin, more a vehicle for providing a common configuration interface and suite of management tools.

View Userbin as a kind of aggregator of all the boring and tedious things involved in setting up OAuth connections, designing login flows and tweaking transactional emails. For every new user that signs up through your Userbin account, you create your own local copy of its Userbin profile, much like you're used to when integrating an OAuth provider.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Credit Card billing practices - <AUTHOR> I just had an interesting experience with Brighthouse Networks, curious if this is a common practice in anyway.
We have autopay setup via a visa debit card, I had a new card issued because the bank decided to move to chip cards.  I missed changing a couple of autopays immediately, including brighthouse.  Not a huge deal, soon as I saw it I fixed it and never had any issues.
What is weird, is when I got the statement it showed Brighthouse tried the payment 3 times on the same day, first for the total amount due, then for 50% of the total, then for 40% of the total.  In my case they were all denied because I had a new card issued with new details so it wouldn't even process.  However, I got to thinking, had this been a situation where someone had a valid credit card or a debit card with just a low balance, then it technically could have created multiple overdraft (or over limit) charges at the bank.  I think this is valid because two smaller payments might get "covered" with the overdraft/over limit fees, but the combined larger amount might be rejected outright.  Hence two $35 or whatever overdraft fees for someone because the company decided to break the payment without first asking the consumer.
Is this a standard practice amongst companies?  I have never seen it before, and while it didn't hurt me it seems to be a questionable practice.  At the same time, I can partially see a benefit of a company doing this, for anyone that had a rough month it might keep their services on with the smaller payment until they get the rest of the funds together.  But it just seems wrong the company does it without asking the consumer first. <comment><USER2> Which is more likely:

1) Brighthouse has a problem with cards that decline a $100 charge, but won't decline two $50 charges.

2) Brighthouse has a problem with customers that have a $100 bill but less than $100 available on their credit/debit card.

I think the answer is the second. There's no reason for the first to occur. If a bank's fraud filter mistakenly identified a regular monthly bill as suspicious and blocked the charge, it'd probably block the followup charges from the same company too.

Then, the goal would be to collect as much of the owed money as is available on the card, not to split a payment into chunks. If the 100% charge wasn't declined, they wouldn't have attempted the 50% charge. If the 50% charge wasn't declined, they wouldn't have attempted the 40% charge. There's no possibility for multiple charges going through and creating extra overdraft fees if they do it that way.

That said, I've never seen this practice before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep see your point and agree totally on which problem they face most often likely.

I did talk to customer service to get an explanation of the statement since it just looked weird. When I talked to him he did say that if the first smaller charge (50%) goes through, the system automatically tries one more charge on the same day for a lessor amount too. He stated very matter of fact it is to try and collect as much as possible of the total due. He didn't say what that amount would be though.

I guess I am somewhat conflicted because I don't necessarily see this practice as all bad, but it does seem to have the potential to cause a problem for the very people that are most at risk to having an overdraft charge. After thinking about it I think you are right and it would not cause much of a problem for a traditional credit card, but for a visa debit card is where I could see the greater risk.

I was curious too because how we setup our monthly billing for clients is if we get a denied charge we send the client an email and let them know we will retry the charge in 3 days. This gives them time to update their payment info if necessary or fix the issue before we retry. That seems more standard to me with an autopay type solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Never seen it as a consumer or even as an entrepreneur. We just send an email on failed payments reminding clients to update with a grace period. I know that if you use something like stripe subscriptions, they have inbuilt function to try 3 times before stopping subscriptions but again, the amount is the same for each try unless you of course build your own custom solution.</comment>


MIT researchers develop sun-free photovoltaics - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/sun-free-photovoltaics-0728.html <comment><USER2> It was this line that got me:

> Based on that technology, MIT researchers have made a button-sized power > generator fueled by butane that can run three times longer than a lithium- > ion battery of the same weight; the device can then be recharged instantly, > just by snapping in a tiny cartridge of fresh fuel.

There seems to be tons of awesome applications for such a technology. The first one that comes to mind is electronics for camping. You could have your mp3 player for your week long backpacking trip.

<comment><USER3> It's the line that followed that really got me: _Another device, powered by a radioisotope that steadily produces heat from radioactive decay, could generate electricity for 30 years without refueling or servicing._

If that can be made safe, we're talking about devices that are self sufficient, under any conditions. Sounds like science fiction.

<comment><USER4> Actually radioisotope-powered artificial pacemakers [1] has been used commercially for some two decades now, even if they aren't very popular.

The technology of generating electricity from heat was somewhat different, but the technicalities of making small nuclear devices safe for Joe Average to just carry around in his chest are solved.

Welcome to the future, please fasten your seatbelts :^)

\----

[1] [http://duckduckgo.com/?q=radioisotope+artificial+pacemaker&#...</a>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any idea what the power output of these things is? I didn't see any information in the article. If they can compete with li-ion in Watts/current/whatever, consider me sold.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems inefficient to convert heat -> light -> electricity, though I freely admit to only having a cursory understanding here.

<comment><USER7> More inefficient than heat -> steam -> mechanical motion -> electricity?

<comment><USER8> Spot on.

Heat -> electricity

beats

heat -> mechanical motion -> electricity.

That being said, I've yet to find the paper on the microreactor they are using from the Microsystems Technology Lab [1] perhaps it will come out in the 2011 annual report.

One fascinating use proposed for these is to power monitoring systems for high-level radioactive waste using the heat generated by said waste.

Personally I'd love to have something I could put on my dashboard that would power a fan to circulate air through my car while it was parked in the bright sunlight.

[1] <http://www-mtl.mit.edu/wpmu/annualreport/?cat=6>

<comment><USER6>
      Spot on.
      Heat -> electricity
      beats
      heat -> mechanical motion -> electricity.

But this is heat -> light -> electricity. Unless you are claiming that the conversion from heat -> light and light -> electricity is lossless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really freaking cool, but I hear about some awesome new energy technology out of MIT every week. Any ETA on when they start using this in......anything?

<comment><USER10> My rule of thumb for stuff like this is minimum 3 years and generally 5-10 years. It has so-far seemed to be true just from about 20 years of reading about cool new technology X.</comment></comment>


What do you do when an employee dies? - <AUTHOR> http://crankypm.com/2011/04/death-product-manager/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCrankyProductManager+%28The+Cranky+Product+Manager%29

<comment><AUTHOR> A litmus test for many VC's is the question, "what would happen to your product if you were hit by a bus?"

This article talks a lot about the social aspects of what to do in the office if a co-worker dies. From a startup perspective, important projects can hinge on a single employee. One of the things that this article missed was how important documentation and communication are to avoiding the "hit by a bus" problem.</comment>


Hortonworks Files Registration Statement with SEC for an Initial Public Offering - <AUTHOR> http://hortonworks.com/press-releases/hortonworks-files-registration-statement-sec-initial-public-offering/

<comment><USER2> Hard to imagine this could go well</comment>