Eran Morad

Ranch Hand
+ Follow
since Mar 13, 2020
Merit badge: grant badges
For More
Cows and Likes
Cows
Total received
0
In last 30 days
0
Total given
0
Likes
Total received
2
Received in last 30 days
0
Total given
28
Given in last 30 days
0
Forums and Threads
Scavenger Hunt
expand Ranch Hand Scavenger Hunt
expand Greenhorn Scavenger Hunt

Recent posts by Eran Morad

All job applications in USA require candidates to mention if they need the company to sponsor a visa now or in the future (i.e sponsorship). You need sponsorship if you have short term visas like OPT, H1B etc. On the other hand, you don't need sponsorship if you have long term work privileges like US citizenship, green card/GC or similar.

Unfortunately, it is quite likely that companies in the US break the law by willfully rejecting suitable candidates who don't need sponsorship (examples below). There are other tricks to reject citizens/gc, for example, by posting job ads in obscure local news papers which no one reads, paying advertising companies to post job ads but not actually posting the ads etc. Not all companies do this, but some do because they know they can pay H1B workers far less than the market wages. On the other hand, some companies simply replace their workers with H1B workers (examples below).

Hence, I wonder if Citizens/Green card holders could improve their chances of at least getting an interview by simply lying about their visa on job applications of ***SOME*** companies (not all), i.e. by saying that they will need sponsorship. The companies where you could lie might have small revenues, prone to offshoring, had recent layoffs, i.e. are more likely to commit visa fraud.

What are the consequences of telling such a lie ? Upon selection, the company might assert they can reject you simply because you lied about visa. IMO, this is not a material lie, i.e. no one is actually harmed by this lie. On the contrary, the company actually benefits because they don't have to worry about visa restrictions or expiry for a long time. But, the downside is that they are forced to pay market level wages.

Examples of fraud in H1B hiring :

1 - united states v Marijan Cvjeticanin - Google this. Its basically a case of paying companies to post job ads which offer h1b, but jobs were not actually posted.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-nj/legacy/2013/11/29/Cvjeticanin%2C%20Marijan%20Complaint.pdf

2 - Southern california edison -
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/fixing-h-1b-visa-loophole/509639/

3 - Disney -
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html
The American workers lost this case though - https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/tourism/os-bz-disney-lawsuit-workers-20180508-story.html

4 - Harley Davidson -
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amid-h-1b-visa-lawsuit-harley-davidson-execs-meet-trump-n716106
3 years ago
To the OP - Do you have a CS degree or CS education ?
3 years ago
@TimHolloway - Thank you for sharing your experience. I wonder why companies obsess over CS degrees these days for jobs that don't need any CS degree. Unless a job actually involves using "core" CS principles, it does not really need a CS degree IMO. If a non-cs employee encounters the rare occasion when he needs to optimize an algorithm or do CS stuff, then he can reach out to a senior employee with a CS degree.

Every guy on an army team does not need to be a medic. But, he can learn the basics of first aid to take care of injuries. He can always call a medic for more serious problems. But, always ensure that he has competent medics nearby. Otherwise, he might not be able to solve an exceptionally difficult problem.
3 years ago

Stephan van Hulst wrote:Les, I work in a software company that builds solutions that tightly integrate with many different Microsoft products. Over the past 5 years I've made two primary observations:

  • Microsoft has made great steps in becoming more open-source, and becoming less evil in general.
  • Microsoft still employs mainly shit programmers and it's horrible to write software that interfaces with their products.


  • Can Microsoft make more money by making it hard to interface with their products ? I mean, like being a dominant car maker & designing your cars to require frequent maintenance from authorized repair shops ? If yes, then it is a good strategy until good alternatives start showing up. One can always dip into the huge pile of cash from the good days. Perhaps even do charity with some of that cash.
    3 years ago
    These days we see many people in the US who get software engineering jobs without having a degree in computer science or any background in science. IMO, it is great that people get dev jobs at companies ranging from obscure to big name companies, regardless of whether they have the aptitude for software development or not.

    There are plenty of small companies which need a simple website for which a CS degree is not really needed on the job. Ex. Dentists, local real estate, lumber yards etc. There are also startups run by deluded folks who are building the next clone of Facebook, Grubhub, Blue Apron etc. or even the next vaporware. Non-cs devs who lack the aptitude can get jobs at these companies with relative ease. If they were working in low wage jobs earlier, then they can at least make more money as devs while the demand for devs exceeds the supply. If an economic downturn happens and there is an excess supply of devs, then they can always go back to their low wage job if it is still available. Making money during the gold rush is far better than being at a low wage job forever. The gold rush money can be spent on a CS degree, saved in a bank, put towards a house in a small city etc. OTOH, the non-cs devs who actually have the aptitude, can get jobs in better companies and might do quite well. They might have better chances of surviving an economic downturn, but there are no guarantees.

    So, I think that getting dev jobs without any degree, background or aptitude is a win win for job seekers. But, I don't know if it is good for their employers or for the industry in general. What do you think about this ?
    3 years ago
    It depends. I have read and coded basic algorithms like bubble sort, insertion sort, selection sort and merge sort only about 3 times in my life. I always forget them a few days later. IMO, its necessary to remember specific algos only before interviews. I remember things better and longer when I write them multiple times as if I am explaining it to beginners. That is why I always make stand alone notes of such things and refer to them instead of reading a book. YMMV.

    I think it is more important to remember the basic concepts of algos instead of memorizing specific algos. If you need help to remember that itself, then make short notes. Anyway, unless you have a fancy job at some fancy company, chances are that you'd only be maintaining other people's code. The only algo you will use is the one baked into helper libraries like java.Arrays.sort(collection).
    3 years ago

    Vaibhav Gargs wrote:Is it safe to say that for same operations, streams will always have better performance compared to collections? Can you please share your experiences regarding this.



    Its not clear what you are asking for. Do you have any examples/sample operations to share ?

    I googled "java  stream vs collection performance".

    I found one link that sounds useful - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22658322/java-8-performance-of-streams-vs-collections
    Another one by Angelika Langer - https://jaxenter.com/java-performance-tutorial-how-fast-are-the-java-8-streams-118830.html

    Does that help ?

    3 years ago
    I should have clarified - multi-million dollar financial crimes like the financial crisis of 2008. Not the "nigerian prince needs money", "social security", "IRS" type of scams.
    3 years ago
    You get an error in that line because you are trying to access a member variable of a class from a static function/method. Java allows us to make static methods so that we don't have to create objects in order to use functions, like this - MyClass obj = new MyClass(); obj.myMethod(); If myMethod() was static, then we could simply call it without creating an object of type MyClass. Static methods are meant to be independent of the state/variable values of objects. That is why you get a compiler error.

    Btw, I encourage you to also find out solutions to problems by searching on google. Here is how I would search for your problem.

    1) Make your error message generic before searching.
    Non static variable longestWord cannot be referenced from a static context.

    Lets remove the "longestWord " from this error because it is specific to your code. Google is smart, but why make searching harder for it by adding extra, irrelevant things like "longestWord" ? Its unlikely that someone got the exact same error as you and that google will find that.

    2) Search the generic error message in Google.
    Non static variable cannot be referenced from a static context.

    3) Find a link, preferably from stack overflow or this forum which might solve your problem.
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2559527/non-static-variable-cannot-be-referenced-from-a-static-context

    We saw so many links in our google search results. Many of these were from stack overflow. Which one do we choose ? Lets go with the above link. Turns out that it has a very small code snippet (easy to understand) that has the same problem as our code. Lets read the answers from that link.

    Now, imagine if other links showed up before the above one. Those links had really long pieces of code. Try to skip such links and quickly find a link which mentions the same error, but uses a smaller code example so that we can understand quickly. This is especially helpful in case of more complicated errors.

    HTH
    3 years ago
    I vote for USA because no one really got punished for the 2008 financial crisis. The government let off the big banks leniently and only aggressively prosecuted the "Abacus Federal Savings Bank". Abacus was rightfully acquitted, but they lost a lot of time and several million dollars in fighting their case. Some of their low level employees (majority of who are of Chinese origin) were paraded in handcuffs, in front of the media. This is not a common practice and would never happen to employees of rich and powerful organizations.

    Is there any other country which is better for financial criminals ? Please give examples.
    3 years ago

    Piet Souris wrote:And the States would do wise to send, in return, the brilliant Mr. Trump to the donating countries.    (oops, that should be in the Rattlesnake's pitt)



    yes, but only as a circus clown.
    3 years ago

    Tim Moores wrote:

    I wonder if immigrants from developing countries are far more likely to get killed by accidents, disease, crime or terrorism in their native countries, than they would be by those things plus racists in USA.


    No doubt the answer to that depends a great deal on what kind of immigrants we're talking about - so-called highly skilled folks that end up working for tech companies, or (legal or illegal) refugees and economic migrants.



    Yes, but its possible that even legal, "non-hardship based" immigrants could suffer more in their native countries. See the traffic in big cities of south east asia for instance. Its a miracle if one can survive that for several years.
    3 years ago

    Campbell Ritchie wrote:When I was young, we had a phenomenon called the “brain drain”. People were leaving Europe for the USA, and the Government and the press inveighed against it severely. Years later, I learnt that many aeronautical engineers left Britain after cancellation of the TSR‑2 project (I have seen a real live TSR‑2), because there were no longer any jobs for them on this side of the Pond. The only people who would employ them were Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and Lockheed. That puts a slightly different complexion on the whole problem. We also had emigration to South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand; I know people who went there.



    That is interesting. I wonder why those people actually left (lack of jobs and/or not enough pay, low sunshine etc.) and if they came back. When other countries mess up, USA wins by employing all their smart folks (ex. German V2 rocket scientists, Soviet scientists etc.). In such cases, those countries are entirely responsible for their own loss. The more they falter, the better it is for other countries, but mainly USA.

    I guess most of the highly skilled immigrants make enough money (thanks to their skills) to not be impacted by the quality & price of education, health care etc. in USA. They can always afford their overpriced health care and pay for their kids private tutors. Their native countries might provide better government, better health care, education etc. But none of that matters if they can't "provide" them great jobs and money. Maybe eventually, most of the smart folks in these countries would have departed for the US and they willl be left with "ordinary" citizens and a few "special" ones.
    3 years ago