Ask HN: Companies that are hiring new H1-Bs?
My girlfriend is a software developer from Japan.
She came here on a student visa to learn English, but decided she'd rather stay in the Bay Area because there are lots of really cool companies and smart engineers here.
Unfortunately, it's been tough to find companies that are willing to get her an H1-B.
Before coming here, she worked as a Java developer in Japan for a few years, but I got her into Python and Django, and she really enjoys working on side projects in Python.
She's got a pretty neat portfolio page here:
http://sandbox-kiki.dotcloud.com/keiko_sandbox/
As well as a blog (in Japanese) where she summarizes talks that she's attended, as well as writes informative posts about things such as git rebase:
http://kik.xii.jp/
Some of the side projects she's done since a few months ago:
* Made a web-based version of a popular Japanese word game: http://playshiritori.com/ https://github.com/keiko713/shiritori
* Contributed (a bunch of Python, Django, and Javascript) to a webapp for kegerators: https://github.com/philips/tapkick
* Made a gallery webapp that grabs pictures of sakura (cherry blossom trees) from Twitter and displays them: http://sakura.playshiritori.com/ https://github.com/keiko713/sakura
* Made a text message voting app using Twilio: http://textvote.playshiritori.com/ https://github.com/keiko713/twilio_app
* Contributed a patch to Django Social Auth: https://github.com/omab/django-social-auth/commit/46c8689e05454328aeb3f68dd0260c7ecfe627e1
* Contributed a patch to Apache Libcloud (added UUIDs to NodeSizes and NodeImages): https://github.com/apache/libcloud/commit/7271ddba6c17b9c09d21410bcdf6c6aed6c838af
She's also currently helping with translating the Django 1.4 documentation from English into Japanese.
Here is her LinkedIn profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/keiko-oda/22/295/234
If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. She has made it to an in person interview at a very well known company after 2 technical phone screens, but unfortunately it didn't work out in the end.
I think her technical abilities and passion are excellent, I'm just led to believe that there's a certain factor of willingness for the employer to do H1-Bs, as well as some luck in the whole process.
Also, please feel free to either comment here or email her with potential opportunities, if you think your company might have a role that fits her skill set.
Her email address:
keiko713@gmail.com