"Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him."
*...told Jobs the good things these machines could
do for humanity, not the reverse. I begged Steve
that we donate the first Apple I to a woman who
took computers into elementary schools but he made
my buy it and donate it myself.*
By a certain measure of successful.
Funny how Jobs was the 'Bhuddist.'
(afaik there isn't a standard transliteration but I could be wrong as I often am...)
* Although, to be fair to myself, Apple only turned into its current form after he left.
At the risk of a hundred downvotes, I wonder how many people can see the parallels in the current silicon valley push for "immigration reform."
Having watched H1B farms style companies up close and personal, I can say there is very little to recommend about this model of employment, other than the CEOs like having a lower employee expense base. It might sound more exciting to hear the pitch from a wunderkind like Mark Z, but it's still the same story.
Norm Matloff of UC Davis has literally been trying to expose this for decades, with little luck:
http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b.html
http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b10min.html
Moreover: this is entirely consistent with behavior of employer first observed in the 18th century:
[I]n every part of Europe twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent, and the wages of labour are everywhere understood to be, what they usually are, when the labourer is one person, and the owner of the stock which employs him another.
What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.
Marx, you ask? No. Engles? No.
That's Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H...
This is plain wrong. You can very easily shift and people do shift. You just interview with a different company, just like a citizen would.
This is even worse if a company brings you in through some other visa like a TN-1 or L1 (NAFTA and Intracompany transfer visa respectively), and then make you convert to an H1-B before they will sponsor you.
A word of advice: Always use your own immigration attourney and not the one being paid for by your company. If the company is paying for it, the attourney represents the company, and not you.
Here's a link: http://www.tnvisabulletin.com/tn-visa-adjustment-of-status/
I've seen a couple of people do this, and it allowed them to skip the H1-B hassle. You just have to be honest and show that your intention initially is just to work and return to Canada, but your future intention is to become a permanent resident.
My preferred reform would be for H1B to be fully unrestricted. If you're going to allow labor into the country, let it compete on fully equal footing with domestic labor. For the reasons Smith articulates and you've either failed to read or are intentionally choosing to ignore, employers already have the upper hand.
A better balance of power would be to repeal anti-unionization laws such as the Orwellian (100th anniversary of his death by the way) doublespeak "right to work" (really: "right to fire, and disrupt organization attempts") and ensure that labor has the same access to collusive collective action and mobility as capital and finance.
I also saw the effects of the liberalization of immigration regulations in the 1960s which saw floods of foreign students, many Indian, Chinese, African, and others, which had profound influences on US academic institutions, the communities around them, and, to be honest, on their home countries, one of which was a brain drain.
On that last point: one of the arguments for increased global wealth and/or population is that it would increase the number of geniuses and intellectuals (along with the rest of the population, one might suppose). That's possibly true, but I strongly suspect that the existing mechanisms for recognizing and promoting talent have already encroached on much of those possible gains. Not all, but a considerable fraction. Which means that the additional benefit would be smaller than a naive estimate would suggest.
Teaching opportunities are not good; there are far too many PhDs awarded compared to job openings for university positions.
It may be a benefit for private industry work, but remember that a PhD is primarily about showing you can perform rigorous scientific research, and compared to a Masters, matters less (or not at all) in jobs where research is not the focus.
You can interview at, accept an offer from, apply for and receive a new LCA for another company all while continuing to work at your existing job. This means you have a new job and (preparatory documents for a new) visa set up before even giving notice and triggering the 10 day period. I know this from personal experience (on the E3).
More specifically: in a case where an H1B holder had concern for employer retaliation (say: working for a sketchy, illegal, or otherwise undesirable firm), and was looking for an option to leave (or possibly whistle blow), the fact that not having employment would be grounds for deportation within short order would be a constant threat.
I've known many people over the years who've had varying levels of frustrations with emigration issues. Many spent at least some of that time as undocumented, what some like to call "illegal", including working without authorization. For others it was merely the frustration of waiting while an impenetrable and slow process worked its way, with several having to make unavoidable trips out of country to be able to retain eligibility, often leaving work, friends, family, and homes for extended periods (sometimes with greater levels of support and assistance). And this isn't just a DESI situation: Europeans, Canadians, east Asians, doctors, programmers, healthcare professionals, researchers, nurses.
Most eventually settled in the US, some did not.
All had a considerable toll taken on them.
its not hard but no way is it as simple as being a citizen.
What I'd like to see is things like a complete national abolishment of non-compete agreements as a rider on Immigration Reform.
Conspiring to keep out immigrants is interesting (who doesn't want to pull the ladder up after we're safe), but it if we're honest with ourselves it's not appealing to our better nature.
Which is twice surprising since I've read elsewhere that he was very tight on his own privacy.
A positive skew will effectively reduce all employees wages
> Google, like the others, used a “salary algorithm” to ensure salaries remained within a tight band across like jobs. Although tech companies like to claim that talent and hard work are rewarded, in private, Google’s “People Ops” department kept overall compensation essentially equitable by making sure that lower-paid employees who performed well got higher salary increases than higher-paid employees who also performed well.
<snark ratio="0.5">My advice would be to make sure you could find a place to live there first</snark>
The big issue is that right now, $1200, even $1300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in this area would seem quite reasonable, even a bargain. That's banana crazypants. In Sacramento you could get a two-bedroom, one-bath place with all the amenities for under $900 a month without looking too hard. That means that if you were able to telecommute three days a week -- maybe even just two -- it would cost you less to live in Sacramento and take the Capitol Corridor train in to San Francisco on your office days than it would to live pretty much anywhere in the Bay Area.
I'm not advocating that (the thought has clearly occurred to me, but I have too many friends here in SV to want to make getting to them that difficult), but I think it points to a genuine problem with the local economy. The median housing costs across the Bay Area show an implicit assumption that everybody is making Big Tech Money, but they're not -- and some areas are starting to get too expensive even for the people who are making top dollar. This just isn't a sustainable mix.
There are plenty of places with decent rooms you can rent for $800-1000. I paid $825 for my old place in South San Francisco (20 min commute to SF). It was a 2300sqft house shared by 3 others.
And, I think my larger concern about prices still stands. That $825 a month could get you a 1BR place with W/D included in many other cities. Actually, it could get you at least a 1BR/1BA place with W/D in many other cities, and we're not talking "middle of nowhere" type places, either. There are still certainly reasons to live in the Bay Area rather than those other places, but we're paying an awful lot for the privilege.
Just like Wall Street != actual street.
This is how the media and public use the term SV.
Just like Wall Street != actual street.
Even if SV were the best place to be an engineer, it's hard to imagine it being worth sacrificing 300 hours per year.
A 10 minute commute is 25% of that, which is 75 hours per year, which is still a lot. But for me, there is a huge psychological difference between a 10 minute commute vs 40.
Is it worth it? What are the benefits?
If you plan to spend 8-9ish hours actually working, and another 10 per day on sleeping, eating, shower, and other such necessities, that leaves about 5 hours of real free time. A hour and a half a day of commute time is a pretty solid cut into that. 20 minutes of commute time is hardly noticable. Personally, I'd sooner take the 10 minute commute and have that mental seperation between work time and off time than have an extra 20 minutes a day and work at home.
Currently I have a 20 minute pleasant bus commute to work, and I wouldn't go back to that commute. For me, it wasn't worth it.
Of course, now I live in the midwest and am hating the weather. My commute? Not so bad. But I miss the weather.
While housing prices are quite high, working in technology you are certainly able to afford the higher rents. The problem is when you don't work in tech and live here.
My findings were that startups there are extremely busy. They are slow to respond to emails, meetings and interviews are often missed/rescheduled, and salaries are relatively low (<100k). When talking to execs it became clear that they demand 45+ hours a week.
Compare that to Austin, Seattle, DC, Chicago, and Portland, who all have thriving startup communities that often match SV wages, and SV starts to look less appealing.
SV working conditions are not something a college grad should strive for. They should focus on locking down a nice salary with relatively cheap living costs, clearing themselves of debt, and growing their personal worth with side projects.
Also, the wages here in SV can not be matched anywhere else. It's economically impossible to pay someone a SV wage anywhere else. Economically impossible because if you're a business that has intentionally based your company in say DC then why would you continue to pay your engineers SV-sized wages. You'd be amongst the wealthiest people in DC if you were paid what a typical engineer is offered here.
>...your company in say DC then why would you continue to pay your engineers SV-sized wages.
Because you value great employees? I mean think of it this way. A lot of people can't just pack up ship and move to SF. But a lot people can! Companies keep their salaries on par with the valley to keep up. Granted the numbers aren't a science. It is hard to compare salaries in different areas but It has been my experience that SV wages are not that much more than any other city in the US.
> You'd be amongst the wealthiest people in DC if you were paid what a typical engineer is offered here
This is just blatantly false. Do you know how much government workers and politician minions make? It makes engineering salaries look laughable.
1.) http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Web-Developer-l-Washington,-D...
2.) http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Web+Developer&l1=San+francis...
I do think that a developer getting paid 300k (not unheard of for top talent at top companies) in a place like Austin would be ridiculous.
I mean, Steve was a douche for a lot of other reasons. But this is savvy business right here. He had Chizen by the balls. Considering there's no mention of Apple intentionally trying to recruit from other companies in this article, I have to assume (until other evidence is provided, of course) that Apple was not doing such things.
To me it sounds like Steve knew he had the advantage, and he exploited that to keep his top talent where they were.
Savvy business and being a "douche" seem to overlap here.
Additionally, this is gossip and presumption.
>OK, I’ll tell our recruiters they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position correctly?
>if you [Brin] hire a single one of these people that means war.
Chizen's comment:
>if I tell Steve [Jobs] it’s open season (other than senior managers), he will deliberately poach Adobe just to prove a point. Knowing Steve, he will go after some of our top Mac talent…
Jobs sounds like a Grade-A Asshole, along with every other player involved in this mess. Makes me even less likely to relocate to SV than I already was. Though now I'm curious to know whether these wage-theft pacts extend beyond SV, perhaps to Austin... Many of the same players have a significant presence here. Seriously. If you've got info, hit me up.