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Comment Re:JPMorgan Says $100K 'Prices Out H-1B' (Score 1) 125

“I’d have to think twice about making that decision [to pay $100k for H-1B],” Danzberger said. “In good conscience, I couldn’t do that. I’d just have to, you know, take the time to find somebody who’s already here.”

- CEO of Brooklyn Park-based Aprios Custom Manufacturing,
Minneapolis Star Tribune

"...take the time to fine somebody who is already here." Wow. The fact is that it is less costly to hire H-1B than it is to hire locally and train, etc. Including the risk the new hire will soon leave for another, better, position. The way to prevent that is to pay good wages, good beneifts, have a decent work environment, treat them well, basically make it pleasant enough that a worker wants to stay. And hey, no doubt, I presume hiring young people today is a dispiriting task. I can only imagine how annoying the the talent pool can be.

But many execs prefer the Machiavelli route, "...but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails." which applied to H-1B's is the fear of your employment being terminated and you have to return to your country of origin.

Comment Re:In many cases it isn't stalling, it never happe (Score 1) 51

Yep. Our firm, very US company >9,000 employees, had a back to the office mandate. People respected it at first, but it became apparent that a big chunk of people did not. After about 6-8 weeks people found various ways around it. Changing their status to hybrid (can't change to remote anymore), getting weird exemptions, or frankly just showing up once per week to stay on the radar and wait and see what happens.

The problem is that there are a ton a managers and executives, VP's even SVP's that also still WFH, or barely make it into the office. The staff is very much aware of this and comments on it frequently. So if those execs really want to put their foot down, they will be forced to 'eat their own dog food' too. So far...not many takers.

And lets face it, at a large company CEO's are no longer 'walking the floor' they are happily taking the elevator up to the top floor and as long as that floor is busy they don't know/care what else is happening beneath them

Comment Re:This is just security theater (Score 1) 37

Agreed, and to add to the parent. Can you imagine being a senior engineer involved in this. If you find out the process does work as advertised, there are back doors, or the code is BS. You won't be able to tell anyone. The 'deal' is done, its been announced at the White House. The (currnetly) richest guy in the world and the president are saying its a success. You or your boss would at best be ignored, at worst fired.

We're definitely in 3.6 Roentgen land now.

Comment Re:Trump can waive the fees (Score 2) 125

This. I feel pretty confident this is one of those things the Administration loudly declares but then does not follow through on. The policy has been declared loudly...on a weekend. So it will stick in their political bases minds as "fe de complet " But right away there was the typical administration back-tracking, providing conflicting details as key stakeholders start asking WTF type questions.

This 'policy' is full of many ways around this fee. I see this as ending up a negotiating lever with India (and lesser extent China) as part of larger negotiations. Maybe also negotiating tactic with FANG style tech firms. But basically it puts options for waivers on the white house and so people "know who to talk to if you want a special favor"

tldr; I would be surprised if in 2 years time the number of H-1B holders is much lower than it is today

Comment Re:Intel has lost a huge lead... (Score 1) 16

Yep, without having any detailed knowledge of that company the question is do you keep the folks who presided over the slow demise of Intel? Or were they talented people caught in an unforgiving corporate hierarchy.

I know folks on /. like to elevate engineers and technical folks, but once you've been around the block a few times you see that tech folks are just as susceptible to being sucked into stagnating corporate culture as the next person. My hope for Intel is that they are able to use this opportunity of 'hitting rock bottom' to make the deep needed changes. And for these long time, higher level execs the decision is correct (IMHO) to let them go and try something different. Recall that AMD was a mess 15-ish years ago, they were the one set to go bankrupt. But they anticipated and responded to the market and rebounded quite successfully.

Comment Re:Got me to look at the story (Score 2) 47

100% this. It's original incarnation was as a 'disruptive' house flipper. Went public in 2020 (?) around the heyday of pandemic driven real estate craziness. The overall idea was to have algorithms price houses just based on data, without a realtor, human appraiser, or home inspector being used.

Unlike the now ubiquitous "I buy homes for cash" guys that prey in elderly or people in financial distress with below market offers, OpenDoor was pretty generous with their purchase offers. They told the market that they had smarter algorithms (now called 'AI') , and were smarter about targeted contractors to get the 'flipping' work done quickly and well.

Shocker that their algorithms were shitty spreadsheets and their contractors were the cheapest labor available. In the end they existed only with that initial IPO money, quickly rising home values, and lots of buying/selling churn. We know the rest, Pandemic ends, mortgage rates shoot up, and that rising tide starts draining away. Now they have $2+ billion in debt and were at something like a 3:1 debt to market cap ratio. Now at $9 share created out of sheer unicorn farts their balance sheet is better, but their business model is irrevocably broken.

I assume that someday we will learn that these meme, pump and dump scams were orchestrated by institutional investors looking to save their asses, but no one will be looking into that until 2029 at the earliest.

Disclosure: I bought a small amount of OPEN stock back after it started hitting the skids and I count myself fortunate to have come out even with this meme bump. Like scratch and win lottery fortunate.

Comment Re:One non-inconsistent observation != PROOF (Score 1) 40

Yeah, we need to come up with a name for when there is a post that you really align with, but then in the very last line the author drops some nonsense. Conspiracy theory, why this political party ruined, racial stuff, or just the old standby of gender blaming. Totally unrelated to anything about the subject matter, just something to get off their chest.

Maybe a "Inappropriate non-sequitur" tag. Or something like "The poster was clearly educated but like many in the 2020's has had their brain melted over time by over dosing on social media. "

Comment Higher on the list (Score 2) 46

Higher on the list of changes IMHO is figuring out the CEO pay thing. It should be structured so that the incentives for the company are aligned with the pay structure and amount. Today it's mostly just casino style win bug and cash out quick.

Off the top of my head I think there should be a generous base salary to satisfy the crowd that thinks CEOs are the bees-knees. then the stock comp or whatever should be geared to pay out at some longer term rate, like 4-5 years before vesting. This would help reduce de facto pump and dump schemes.

So yeah, CEO of Widgets Inc will have to survive on a measly $5 million per year for 4 years until their options start to vest

Also, also, the options pricing needs to be the same for CEO's as it is for all employees. At one big, public, company I worked for the executive comp rules were like 150 pages long and well over 2/3rds of it only dealt with C-suite rules. Needless to say their rules were very different from the rank-file execs (Directors, VP's, etc)

Also also, the comp committees should be replaced with an algorithm. Comp committees are worse than electoral redistricting committees. Just blatantly, unapologetically, corrupt as hell. Both should be solved by an algorithm.

Moving off-topic, but IMHO redistricting should follow these rules
      -be contiguous
      -have equal populations
      -be geographically compact
      -preserve city, county, neighborhood, and community of interest boundaries as much as possible
      -not favor or discriminate against incumbents, candidates, or parties
      (taken from alarm-redist.org with some editing on my part)

CEO salary might include, in no order
      -seniority in prev job. i.e. is this your first CEO job
      -running avg of net profit i.e. stock price is roulette table, show me the real money
      -other stuff with $ metrics. No fake project goals, or environment goals, or HR happiness goals

Comment Only meaningful cause is consolidation (Score 2) 35

McKinsey composed a report on this back in 2021. The answer was consolidation. Not interest rates, not over regulation, just big companies buying up the smaller companies.

"A double-click on the exit data reveals that about 95 percent of the exiting companies in our research base had been acquired (Exhibit 3)."
    https://www.mckinsey.com/capab...

This also parallels my qualitative experience. There used to be more airlines, used to be more cell phone providers, used to be more banks, etc

Comment In perpetuity (Score -1) 9

If this is your hobby, great. But I don't think everything that has ever existed in digital format needs to remain with us "..in perpetuity"

"....means this whole part from the early 2000s will remain with us forever."

The spacetime continuity can keep the original copy, no need for us meat bags to also create a spare.

Comment Re:Land of the free (Score 1) 111

Something like, " You can take my veggie burger when you pry it from my cold dead hand? "

wrt guns in Texas, the GOP politicians are against all regulation whatsoever. Even though its specifically called out in the Constitution, albeit the militia versus the devices.

" A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

But still, I really don't know how the uber-2A folks interpret the phrasing of the second amendment, other than to causally disregard it.

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