And SF has a large populace of vegans like me, who have a choice of dozens of innovative restaurants with mind boggling vegan food, from Michelin quality and expensive to cheap and homely and everything in between, that I literally can’t find in any other city. It’s cool if you don’t like this kind of food but you did ask what kind of fare SF is known for, so it’s not clear what your point is.
I'm not exactly disagreeing, but just thought you might be interested - the last time I was in Warsaw, Poland, there was quite a variety of vegan places.
Guessing based on a huge pile of assumptions, from relatively few observations, I think it's more health motivated than animal welfare given the apparent demographics of the patrons, but I could very easily be wrong.
I am a data scientist working at a big firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have a PhD in CS with a specialization in AI / Machine Learning / NLP from a US university.
I am from India. So I assume my nationality will be an immigration barrier in most countries. Is this something I should mention while formally applying?
I agree with the principle of your comments but not with the wealth aspect. My experiences have told me that the world of traveling is restricted to those with the right passports, i.e., North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and a few other countries considered privileged. If your passport is from the wrong country, like mine, throughout your travels, you'll come across incredible barriers irrespective of how much money you have. You'll constantly be reminded that you don't "belong" in the club of travelers.
If you have travelled to enough different countries, (60 for me and counting), you will have several instances of being detained by immigration, yelled at by consular officers, beaten up by border guards, have your passport flung at your face by police, and several such adventures. The fact that you went to great lengths to get the right visa papers (which could involve filling lengthy forms divulging every aspect of your finances and your life till date and wait months for a decision granting you permission to visit a country for a week) doesn't count. The fact that you have a PhD from a US university doesn't count. The fact that you have a great job at a fortune 5 firm in silicon valley doesn't count. The fact that you make a high income and have a lot of savings doesn't count.
In fact these could count against you, because immigration / consular officers will think someone with your passport is obviously making it up. That you are just trying to sneak into the country to get an under the table job washing dishes. This happens even when the country you are trying to enter gets a massive amount of financial aid from your own country.
So it's not a rich vs poor aspect. Traveling is a type of large-scale consumption that re-affirms self-worth through having the right passport.
They are. But it's drowned in the noise about undocumented immigrants, which is a much more emotional issue and more in the consciousness of the general public. If a politician says he wants to improve H1B, he'll get a primary opponent running ads saying he is pro-amnesty. Look at the comments section in any news article about improving H1B loopholes and the discussion is dominated by issues relating to the border with Mexico, amnesty, and undocumented immigrants.
But the poster's employer has probably applied for a green card. Since the poster is Indian, that is a 10+ years process (4 for China and 1 for everyone else). If the poster changes employer (or accepts a promotion), the 10 year clock is reset to 0.
So for all practical purposes, the poster is locked to the employer. He is also locked at the same level and pay. Employers love this since they get an experienced person locked in at the same pay for a decade or more. Obviously this reduces wages for everyone.
> If the poster changes employer (or accepts a promotion), the 10 year clock is reset to 0.
This couldn't be more wrong. there is this little thing known as AC21 clause where you can change employers after some part of your green card has been pending for more than 6 months. This doesn't reset the green card clock at all if you're waiting to be current, but you do have to do the first couple phases again with the new employer (which are really quick)
I have seen many people I know use this to change employer with no problem. If someone under green card is unable to change employer, chances are they just can't find a better job.
Also it is wrong that you can't accept a promotion. For example going from software engineer to senior software engineer is fine. As long as the new position is at least 51% similar to the previous one you are fine, and it is easy to prove on paper with a little bit of magic with your lawyers.
Also wrong that you are locked at the same pay... Seriously I have never heard this yet, where did you get that? I know plenty of people (and myself included) who while waiting for the green card got multiple raises with no problem.
Again you are technically right. But in practice this is of no help.
The AC21 allows you to change employer when you have filed the I-485. That is step 3 of the 4-step green card process. One can't file the I-485 until the "priority date" is current. That is not an issue if you are from any country other than India, China, or Philippines. Else you are looking at a delay of 4 to 11 years. So as I said, not practical for the poster who is from India.
Technically it is also possible to accept "normal career progression" changes in employment, i.e., promotions and raises, as you correctly pointed out. However in practice, what constitutes as "normal" is subjective, completely at the discretion of a visa officer. For a long time, this was very easy and a formality. In the last 1-2 years, the Visa Officers have become anal about this. Cases are being audited for something simple like Data Scientist using Python to Data Scientist using R (actual anecdote in my company).
Also visa officers are going back to approved cases from several years ago and retroactively denying them on some technicality like the above. So even if you know cases that were easily approved in the past, they can be suddenly denied and the employee can retroactively become "undocumented" for the past several years (again actual anecdote).
Uh.. H-1B visas are used to for mechanical engineers, nurses, doctors, and MBA grads all the time. The reason you don't know them is because this is a tech-focussed forum and the absolute number of these visas going to the other professions is fewer.
But graduates of top civil engineering, nursing, biology, medical, neuroscience, physics, etc programs in the country primarily use the H-1B visa for post study employment.
Only for fungible types of workers. Programmers, software engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, etc aren't like farm or construction laborers. These skills aren't commodities.
That's exactly how Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and most other big companies view software engineers. Engineers go through standard interview process (3-5 technical interviews, 1 behaviour interview) and then companies assume that everyone above the hiring bar can be assigned to pretty much any project at the company. Companies use this process because it works - engineers are mostly fungible.
The above is not true for exceptional talent (Linus Torvalds, John Carmack, etc). I will vote in heartbeat for visas for people with total comp >$300k. If you are truly that valuable, you should be paid more than average Sr. Software Engineer at Google.
Specifically, they all fall under "Human Resources". While I suspect some issues even for CEOs might fall under HR, I also suspect that large company CEOs may also have unique employment contracts not available to the myriad software engineers at the same company.
