Comment by snakeyjake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snakeyjake | Hacker News Reader

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My employer cannot hire H1Bs. They are prohibited by law. All employees must be US citizens.

They pay extremely competitive rates. They are the reason for and a source of complaints regarding gentrification in my area.

edit: as an example the starting rate for high school work-study and college interns is the hourly equivalent of $78k/yr plus the same benefits as full-time employees from the second they show up.

The work environment is spectacular. There is no work from home because that is a practical impossibility so the work-life balance is carefully considered and benefits are outstanding. There are no after-hours tasks (there can't be, really).

You show up, work 9-5 in a relaxed environment, go home, cash your fat check, and enjoy travel and hobbies.

From IPC soldering-certified technicians to senior RF scientists and everything in between we cannot find enough workers for the amount of work we have.

For sexy startups trying to use sexy AI to steal user data in order to serve them sexy ads yes, maybe the market is saturated.

For hard-STEM fields my experience has been that there are too few people who take their linear algebra classes seriously.

I worked for a sexy startup (non AI and didn't steal user data, but did have ads) that got bought by one of these big hard-STEM companies. The scientists there who had 15 YOE and a PhD made less than programmers on our side with no college degree and 2-3 years of experience programming.

Hard-STEM seems to have lots of jobs where you can grind your ass off for the better part of a decade or two and hope to make $100-120k/yr by then if you're lucky. At least on the coding side you'll get to that level within a handful of years if you're willing to job switch often and optimize for that salary. Glad to hear there's at least one hard-STEM place where the grind isn't as bad.

True

The "hard-stem" places rely on a bit of gaslighting and the "holier than thou" self-image of the "hard-stem" people to pay them less and to overwork them

As much as the IT world has issues, it is night and day compared to the hard-stem world where a lot of times they won't even look at you if you don't have a MSc or PhD. Learn on the job, what is that?

I'm a U.S. citizen who does 1 hour of linear algebra first thing in the morning, when I'm not getting crushed by PhD-related deadlines. Currently working through Lang's _Linear Algebra_ for a new take on the material.

(side note: for the first 5 months of 2023 I did 1.5 hours a day of real analysis. I'll probably get back to doing that after getting through most of Lang.)

Can you give me a hint of the types of employers I should be looking for who would value this? How should I go about finding them?

I interned at a company that can hire H1Bs. They do so often. My manager and several coworkers were not US citizens. I received the hourly equivalent of more than $78k/yr, with a great working environment. I'm not sure what your comment proves?

There are several companies in my area that can only hire US Citizens, and they all pay lower than the company I interned at.

This kind of issue cannot be analyzed anecdotally.

> My employer cannot hire H1Bs. They are prohibited by law. All employees must be US citizens.

If this is a contractor that requires security clearances, that’s a significant barrier to recruiting even US citizens. Most of your best applicants will be snapped up by someone else prior to completing the months long clearance process (which requires telling their current employer they’re looking to move elsewhere at the start).

If it's just export controlled stuff(radar, dual use stuff), technically you can hire non US citizens, and IIRC it's actually discrimination if you only hire US citizens. But you need to get export licenses, which they might not grant based on the country of citizenship, and they require permanent residence.

But let's be honest, it's pretty standard practice to require US citizenship.

As someone not far removed from university, you will have a very hard time finding US citizens who take linear algebra seriously and also have a willingness to work for the Mil Industrial Complex (which this sounds like)

Only half, roughly, of our revenue comes from the Department of Defense.

If you have:

* Received an alert on your phone saying that it's going to rain in your local area in the next 10 minutes,

* Been alarmed by a paper containing synthetic aperture radar data showing high-resolution plots of coastal erosion and sea level rise, or

* Used a map or route planning application that has satellite imagery textured onto high-resolution terrain and 3d models of buildings and landmarks,

You've PROBABLY used our products.

The military just the sugar daddy who pays for the other stuff.

I mean, I don't do any of that stuff.

I just stare at error-ridden digikey product listings all day, argue with PMs about the reality of their schedules, and sit through endless design reviews. But somehow, someone somewhere in the company does that stuff.

I taught the class, where do I sign up?

Sounds like a NewSpace company... but not SpaceX.

Nope. You can (and will) take a lot of work home in the space industry. And remote work is definitely allowed.

This is most likely an intelligence/defense agency or contractor, working in secure environments where you can't take work stuff in or out.

What is staff level total compensation? In big tech you can make $1M/year with 8 years of experience.

You could do that with rapid valuation increases in tech shares over the last 10 years inflating your RSU award, and even then you're talking < 1% of engineers at that comp level. And that path is very likely closed now at FAANG (poor staff SWE will have to suffer with $400K TC). TCs in the millions will be reserved for high ranks at large companies, a few lucky early engineers at billion dollar startups, and phds in AI or whatever the new hotness is at the time.

I still see L7 and L8 offers like this handed out. You act like 99% of people can work profitably in hard science. What parent poster said is also available sub 1% of talent.

L7 and L8 aren't staff. That's senior staff and principle. They're both pretty hard to get and are very small portions of any company.

That’s true. L6 offers are 700k to 900k plus whatever stock appreciation and refreshers. L7+ has nominal value of 1M+.

My point is for the past several years staff has been clearing 1M W2 or more per year and the nominal offers are high 6 figures. L7 and L8 offers are nominally 1M.

If I could make that money working on cool science and aerospace I would. When I graduated, Boeing, Lockheed etc wouldn’t give me the time of day but adtech welcomed me and paid me more in 1 year than Boeing would have in 10.

L6 being 700k+ is a top tier offer even from a big company. That’s an exceptional offer for staff. I know several people in staff roles and they were not offered that comp upfront. They get to that through appreciation.

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