H-1B Visa Petition Race Right Around the Corner

Rick — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:21:05 +0000

Last year, less than a day had elapsed before the ‘limit’ was hit. What’s it gonna be this year? An hour? Part of an hour?

America is going to Hell in a handbasket, I tell you.

Go read this:

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/spring_is_in_th.html

Youth and Hiring

Rick — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:31:36 +0000

BusinessWeek has an interesting take on hiring in IT engineering in their Viewpoint column of 15 January 2008.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2008/tc20080115_576235.htm

Sidestepping the H-1B visa limits

Rick — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:40:56 +0000

The H-1B issues have been a hot-button thing for me for quite a while. Go read this piece in Info World.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/12/28/52FE-underreported-visas_1.html

Business Licensing in My Town

Rick — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 18:30:20 +0000

Starting a new business is, among other things, an exercise in discovering exactly which licenses, permits and permissions one needs to obtain. My local municipality requires such a license. The application consists of a one-page form and payment of fifty dollars. It seemed simple enough.

The municipality has a decent Web site. Some might argue that the layout is hard to navigate but it doesn’t bother me. In short order I found several links to the required form. The trouble – you guessed it – none of the links worked! I played good citizen. I compiled a list which included a few other dead-ends I discovered in my quest and submitted a report. The next day my inbox held a reply. But what do you suppose I found when I returned to the site? The questionable links had simply been removed!

Following a couple of days of no progress I decided to visit the Municipal Complex in person. Just before firing up the motorcycle I checked the site for the proper form name and… what’s this? A restored link and an available form!

I pulled the downloaded PDF into an editor and went to work. Some questions struck me as odd but what the heck. I printed the result, cut a check, stuffed the envelope and sent it on its way.

In a couple of days I had voice mail from the town. We actually played phone tag for a couple more days. While playing I even tried to stop by the office twice to no avail. This was dragging on too long! But finally we made contact. Uh oh, the news wasn’t good. It looked for a moment like my application would not be approved! (Er, no mention of why my check was cleared several days previous.) Some polite conversation cleared up the issues and approval became certain. We ended with an upbeat discussion of technology and an introduction to the IT staff. Close call.

Fast forward several weeks. My license had arrived! What a disappointment. I mean, I print way better quality draft material from my inkjet. Half a colored sheet of crap-quality plain paper, n-th generation photocopy with a couple of fields inked in, they couldn’t even cut the bottom of the thing parallel to the top. To call it sloppy would be a huge compliment.

Oh well, it had a number and an official seal. And I guess that’s all that matters.

Lomcevak » career

H-1B Visa Petition Race Right Around the Corner

Youth and Hiring

Sidestepping the H-1B visa limits

Business Licensing in My Town