Hi Peter, suppose a Canadian founder got denied at the border for a B-2 visa and was asked to bring proof that they are not participating in the US labour market (ie. hiring in the US which they are not doing, they are just visiting their S/O). What kind of documents would constitute this proof?
Thank you for doing these AMAs, it's really appreciated and very helpful.
The standard documents are proof of employment abroad (in Canada) and Canadian bank account statements showing sufficient funds to support himself or herself while in the U.S. Also, something pulling this person back to Canada, such as a spouse or significant other or other ties and/or responsibilities.
The right incentives would motivate bug hunting, it entirely depends on company management. Most competent senior devs I’ve worked with spend a great deal of time carefully reading through PRs that involve critical changes. In either case, the question is not whether humans tend to act a certain way, but whether they are capable of skillfully performing a task.
Only that that time doesn't count toward the one year of qualifying employment abroad and that a Consular officer might question what this individual was doing in the U.S. - that is, whether this individual was working without authorization.
Many of the negative effects of social media and phone use seem to point to infinite feeds of content as the root cause. I spent my teens scrolling a Facebook feed that largely consisted of updates from my friends (with a few meme pages sprinkled in between). Most of my time was spent reacting to posts and engaging in lively discussions in long comment threads instead of passively viewing content, and the feed didn't randomly reshuffle itself the way it does now so you'd naturally stop scrolling once you'd caught up with the day's updates. I actually felt closer to my friends as a result. Using BeReal feels like using Facebook in its earlier days because it has a finite feed, and it seems to be the only social media app that encourages you to engage with people instead of content.
I get the sense that most ad-monetised social media apps are forced to show an algorithmic feed that maximises ad impressions; otherwise advertisers will just move to a platform that does.
I suspect that even BeReal will do this at some point unless they pivot to e.g. Cohost’s [1] model of paying a monthly fee.
Unfortunately achieving the network effects required for a successful social media app is at odds with the friction involved in paying for a subscription service. As such, “cool” apps like BeReal don’t stay cool for very long IMO.
From personal experience, the gender disparity can feel daunting but it gets easier once you start building your network in the industry and getting more experience. In my days as an intern, some of my first mentors were women software engineers with exceptional technical abilities who were indispensable to their teams. Lots of colleges have clubs for women in tech where you can meet and be mentored by other women, and many tech companies have placed a heavy focus on hiring and retaining strong talent from underrepresented groups including women.
As for women to look up to, I don't have an exhaustive list but here are a few that come to mind:
Curious if you've heard about socially-induced Tourette-like behaviours? There was a HN post about it not too long ago, one of the signs was sudden onset later in life: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33878155
Funny you mention this, because it was only when that story came out that I could even find info about sudden onset Tourette's in people. Mines is the full vocal and movement ticks. But ticks only happen when I get memory flashbacks, which are approximately 50-100 times a day.
